Chapter 19
Fox
I hung up the phone with Harlow and followed the directions my phone was giving me. She was at her parent’s house, and there was a part of me that wondered what I was walking into. Were her parents there? Was this some sort of weird meet-up with them? Was she alone? Had someone followed her there? My mind was swirling a thousand times a second as my phone guided me to her place.
I was only fifteen minutes away from it at her place of work.
I had left her apartment and went straight to her office. And just like I thought, they were closed on the weekends. I had knocked on the door anyway, just to see if someone was there in their office, but no one came to the locked door. I was so relieved when Harlow had picked up the phone. When I had heard the heavenly lilt of her softer-than-silk voice. It had relaxed me instantly. Filled me with a warmth I got every time she spoke my name.
Or moaned it in bed, for that matter.
I knew going to her parent’s place was a massive risk. Especially with who her father was. But I figured Harlow was smarter than that. If she was with her parents, she wouldn’t let some tattooed, leather jacket-wearing man roll up into her parent’s driveway. Deep down, I knew she was keeping this a secret. Living her own life under the steep radar of her father. The security system in her apartment told me enough about him because Harlow sure as hell didn’t strike me as the kind of girl to install something like that in her home.
That was all her father.
Which meant he knew the shit show he’d kicked up was bad.
I ignored calls from both Snake and Mac. My club was trying to get in touch with me, but I wasn’t ready to deal with their shit. I’d already lied to them so many times that I wasn’t sure which ones to keep in the air any longer. And I wasn’t ready for all of those parts to come crashing down just yet. Harlow was the more important thing right now. Making sure she was safe and no longer being watched was a priority. And it wasn’t just priority for the club.
It was a priority for me.
When I hit the last stretch of the journey to Harlow, I turned off my phone. I knew the club would worry, and I would deal with their backlash later. I’d come clean, accept my punishment, and put all this shit behind me. But at that moment, I wanted unadulterated time with Harlow. This was a rare opportunity I had. I was going to be entering the home of the man that was making our lives a living nightmare.
And I could learn a lot about him if I kept my eyes peeled.
As I raced down the last stretch of road, I kept kicking myself. How the fuck could I have brought her into this shit? I was a risk. I knew I was a risk. I’d always lived my life as a fucking risk. It was the reason why I kept women at arm’s length. It was the reason why I never got attached. It was the reason why they never stayed over or had another encounter with my cock or any of that shit. I treated them well when they were with me. Paid for their food on the nights they met me. Then we had a tryst, they sucked a bit of cock, we got ours, and they left. They always left.
And there was a reason why they always left.
I didn’t lead the kind of life that allowed me to treat a woman the way I knew she deserved. I didn’t live the type of life that allowed for a home and a white picket fence. I didn’t live the type of life where I could keep a family safe from harm. Any children I had would be a target for enemies I made. Any woman I fell in love with became a way for someone to gain leverage over me. It took me months to erase myself from my father. To be nothing but a monetary provider for him so he could live out his days in the nicest nursing home in the state.
I didn’t even go fucking visit him anymore. That was how much of a risk I was.
My father had been threatened one time. And one time was all it took for me to instate precautions. One of our drug suppliers had miscalculated the load we needed to be shipped in, and we were short an entire fucking crate of drugs. We went back and forth with him for a while, and things got heated between him and Mac. Our President did what he was good at-- threatening the suppliers and making sure they knew who they worked for.
But this asshole decided to get funny.
He thought that threatening our families would get us to back off the lost crate. We all received some cryptic fucking letter about women they had screwed or people they had seen. But that asshole sent me a picture of my fucking father sitting on the porch of his nursing home.
Just… a fucking picture. With an ‘X’ through his fucking body.
That had been it for me. Mac and I took care of that asshole, and he had found another drug supplier who was willing to make up the crate that man cost us, and I started the process of peeling myself away from my father. I stopped visiting him as much and opted for sending him gifts. Then as his condition worsened, I backed off the gifts. I kept paying for his nursing home expenses and making sure his bank account was filled with money he needed for things. I had toiletries and shit he needed on an automatic shipment from a bank account that didn’t have my name on it.
I made sure I erased every connection of myself to him in order to keep him safe. Which killed me inside, but I knew it was the best thing for him.
And now that I’d allowed my cock to rule my world for one night, this beautiful little creature I’d come to enjoy was in trouble.
How could I have been so reckless? All I needed to fucking do was get up and leave. I ate her pussy, knew what she tasted like, and I could’ve whacked off to her in the shower when I got back to the lodge. But no. I had to fucking stay. I had to let her soft skin entice me down under the covers with her. I had to let my cock make all the decisions, and waking up with her just once was enough evidence the KG9’s needed to assume I had feelings for this fucking girl.
The problem?
I did have feelings for her.
At first, she was just a little bit of fun. A wild ride with a sheltered woman who had never been on the back of a bike. A little bit of kissing. Maybe a quick cock sucking break in the middle of the desert, then we were done. That was all it was supposed to be. She wasn’t supposed to mean anything. They never fucking did. But there was a pull to her. A pull that kept me at her side. A pull that forced me to smile down at her when the sunlight came pouring through her apartment windows. A pull that warmed my chest every time I heard her fucking voice.
I knew I was supposed to be keeping her around for information. But it was becoming harder and harder to remember that.
She had gotten underneath my skin. Wiggled her way into a space I didn’t understand to exist. There was a light she shined into my life I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager. Immune to the darkness of the world and bright-eyed with dreams. I had no idea if it was her innocence or her passion for wanting to live her own life on her own terms, but I couldn’t get enough of her.
And as I pulled into her parent’s driveway, I was having a hard time tucking all of that away.
She was unlike any other woman I had been with before. Her body was responsive, and she wasn’t afraid to say what was on her mind. Her emotions were so easily read on her face, like an open book that didn’t want to be closed. She could never lie to me, but more than that… I got the impression that she never wanted to lie. That lying was beneath her. That loyalty was something she valued above all else.
That was the kind of woman I enjoyed. Despite the innocence that was now under threat because of my idiotic actions.
As I parked my bike in the shade, I tried to box up my emotions. Compartmentalize them and keep them in check. This wasn’t a fun visit. This was a visit to make sure she was okay and to keep an eye out for shit in her father’s home. I watched the road, looking for any signs of cars that were casing her parent’s house.
And when no one passed by, I started for the porch.
I needed to place whatever these fucking feelings were aside. This was the worst time to get wrapped up in her again. As I stood on the porch and knocked on the door, I swallowed whatever heat was rising up into my gut. My cock couldn’t rule my actions. My thumping heart couldn’t rule my decisions. If there was any time for the logical side of me to come out, this was it.
But when Harlow opened the door, and my eyes settled on her, I knew I was a goner. I knew it wasn’t going to be possible. With her smile and her shining eyes and the hope that ricocheted behind them, I knew I was about to be pulled into her trap again.
Into the web, she had spun for me to lay back in while she digested me.
She was a virus. A spider waiting to bite my head off. She would be the end of me. The death of everything I had stood for to keep myself safe. She would be the one to lift me up before she dropped me off a cliff. But the funny thing was, I didn’t care. As my eyes raked over her body, taking in her summer dress that clung to every feature I loved about her, I smiled.
She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t limping. She wasn’t bruised or battered or trembling. By all accounts of what I could see, she was safe. Healthy. Upright and full of life.
“Fox,” Harlow said. “Would you like to come in?”
The sound of my name dripping from her tongue snapped the little self-control I had to lose. I barreled into her body, our lips crashing down onto one another’s as I slammed the door shut behind me. Her hands threaded around my neck as our tongues danced together, and I walked her down the hallway with my hands on her hips.
I was going to have her in this home. In any way, she would let me take her.
Then, I would get to looking around.