After the gun went off, Jessie waited.

 

She waited for a sense that she’d done something wrong.

 

She waited for a sense of horror.

 

She waited to feel anything.

 

It seemed to take longer than sensible for the man’s body to fall down into the dust. It had been strange how, at the end, he’d asked her to finish it. As if he was just as tired of this dance as she was. As Tex was. Was it possible that he’d felt some kind of remorse at what he’d done?

 

It didn’t matter. That was what she found at the depths of her heart, as her mind continued to ring with the intense explosive sounds of gunfire. It had been coming for a long time, and it needed doing. That had been a line in a movie once, hadn’t it? Some people just needed killing. Or it was written on some gunslinger’s gravestone in the old west. Something.

 

I’m in shock. This is shock.

 

The words seemed to reverberate around her mind, adding to her distant belief that, yes, shock was exactly what she was experiencing. But the thing that didn’t seem to make sense, so that her logical mind kept poking and prodding at it, trying to find some understanding, was that she wasn’t at all grieving having taken a life. It felt very much like she was just balancing the scales. It wasn’t pretty, but that was what it was. And that was just fine.

 

He’d put his arm around her neck, and put a bullet to a temple. A random self-defense class had saved her life. She couldn’t believe the move had actually worked, or that she’d remembered it. Or maybe he just hadn’t been willing to fight that hard. Maybe he had provoked Tex on purpose. Maybe he wanted it to end that badly.

 

She was sitting now, away from the body. Tex must have moved her. She wasn’t holding the weapon anymore. That was fine. It had felt like a live snake in her hands, something she had to hold so carefully to keep from biting her. It hadn’t felt good. Which it probably wasn’t supposed to. When guns started to feel good, maybe that was when problems started happening.

 

Someone sat down in the dust next to her. She glanced to the side and saw the leggy blonde who had appeared in Delilah’s Do—god, was it really just a few days ago?—and turned what was supposed to be a whirlwind romance into a fucking disaster. What was her name? Samantha, Sarah—Vanessa.

 

“Vanessa,” Jessie said out loud.

 

The woman nodded. “Hey,” she said. Her voice was too quiet for her bold frame. “I just want you to know…I never knew what he did. I wouldn’t have…acted like I did, or tried to pull Tex back in, if I’d known what Pedey did. Or that Mac was protecting him.”

 

Jessie couldn’t entirely understand why this woman was apologizing to her, but she nodded all the same.

 

“The Racketeers are gonna clear out. Go back to LA. The rest of us mostly didn’t want to be up this far north anyway. Cold as three day old shit up here.”

 

Jessie raised an eyebrow, and Vanessa burst out laughing.

 

“Yeah, all right, maybe not that bad. But I just wanted to say I didn’t know.”

 

“Okay,” Jessie said. There didn’t seem to be much else to say. “Thank you.” That always helped.

 

“I’m really sorry about your brother,” Vanessa added. “That can’t have been a good way to grow up.”

 

No. No it had not been. But thinking about it now didn’t spark the same level of bone weary misery that she’d experienced for so many years.

 

Vanessa didn’t say anything else, and Jessie didn’t have anything to say. She kept waiting for flashing lights to start to flicker in the distance, or a siren to split through the night, but if the authorities were aware of what was going on, they didn’t much care to get here in a hurry.

 

Vanessa stood up after a while and walked off into the night. Jessie waited. Tex would come for her; she understood that now. Whatever happened, whatever terrible situation developed, he would come for her. And she thought, maybe, he knew she would come for him.

 

Some of the Racketeers roared off quickly; others, from what Jessie overheard from Sons riders, were packing up the Club’s belongings, and they would move along shortly. At some point, Jessie saw Take rest his hand Tex’s shoulder and say something to him. After that, Tex came to her, lifted her up, and put her on his bike. She wrapped herself around him as he kicked the bike into gear and, as the wind whipped into her face, she finally felt wetness begin to rim her eyes.

 

She felt the turns on the bike in a different way than she had before. She could move with Tex in a different way than before, connecting to him on some intense level that felt powerful and magical. Or shock. Sensory overload during shock. That was also a possibility. Probably likely.

 

She didn’t even realize they were back in Castello until the bike came to a stop. She glanced up to see what red light they’d reached, and found they were in front of her little house. The one she’d been sharing with Tex. Where he’d pressed her up against the wall and tortured her just the way she’d always wanted. Where she’d finally felt at home in his arms.

 

She slipped off the bike once he’d steadied it and put down the kickstand, and then swayed on her feet. She was bone weary tired, she discovered – not exactly weak, but lagging. Her balance was off. Her brain was off.

 

Tex was right there, putting an arm around her to steady her. “Hey,” he murmured, and then there was a strange disorientation and the world swung sideways.

 

She flailed, almost caught him in the face with her forearm, and then realized what was happening. She looped her arms around his neck and let him snuggle her close to his chest as he walked in the front door. Some distant part of her mind cooed about a husband carrying his bride over the threshold, which was just silly. After seeing how things worked out with her parents, she had no intention of getting married. Too much fuss and mess and not enough reward.

 

But having this man in her bed for the foreseeable future? That she could wrap her mind around.

 

Inside the house, he carried her into the bathroom and set her down on her feet, carefully steadying her until she found her balance. She leaned up on her tiptoes—her heeled boots had disappeared at some point, she had no idea when—and pressed her lips against the pulse in his throat, just below his ear. He growled, the raspy skin vibrating as his fingers dug into her hips. She was hungry for him, not for sex necessarily, but for skin, and connection, and relief that she was alive. Because there had been guns and shots and she had shot a man in the head while Tex guided her aim and—

 

He moved her carefully to the toilet and held back her hair while she retched. Everything came up: the remains of the meal they’d shared hours before, the grief over her brother, the agony of knowing this all happened because her father was a worthless piece of shit that she couldn’t stand, and the sheer unending misery she’d managed to contain for the past twenty years. It all tore its way out of her body by way of her mouth, purging her until she was empty, hollowed out, and finally, for the first time in her adult life, clean.

 

Tears streamed down her face, and when the vomiting was done, she curled up into a ball, angry sobs wracking her frame. She heard the toilet flush, felt the harsh rasp of toilet paper — why did she never buy the nice stuff, she laughed to herself — over her lips and chin, and then felt a delicate touch on her hand.

 

Tex.

 

Always asking permission, always wanting her to invite him in. Once she let him in, he had his way with her, took care of her, made her who he needed her to be — but he always asked. Even when they were kids. Even that first kiss. The way he’d asked permission, with his eyes and his hands and his lips, had made the experience nearly holy.

 

This time wasn’t particularly different. It wasn’t something anyone was going to paint a pretty picture of, hang in a museum, and claim was gorgeous artwork, but it was real. It was true, and powerful, and she grabbed him, reeling herself back off the brink and into his arms.

 

He rocked her gently, pulling her into his lap. He was crying, too; she could feel the wetness on his chin as he tucked her in, and it was good that she was giving comfort as well as receiving it. She didn’t want to be his toy or his old lady, but she did want to be his partner. Whatever that meant. Whatever that meant to Castello, and the Sons of Chaos, and whoever else. Whatever else. She wanted to be the love of his life, and the one by his side.

 

“Okay,” he said, which was when she realized she’d been saying all of that out loud. “That’s just fine with me.”

 

After that, the tears eased a little bit. She wasn’t naive enough to think this was the end of her grief. It would come in waves, in time, here and there. She would see something and it would spark, and she would be sobbing all over again. That was how it had been for years. But right now, in this moment, it didn’t feel anything like as intense as it had for years previous. And even that break was nice. Was relief.

 

“What do we do now?” she asked.

 

Tex took a deep breath, shifting her against his chest. She sat up to look at him more clearly. “Do you mean in terms of us, or in terms of tonight?”

 

“Tonight,” she said. “I already know what happens with us.”

 

She felt the smolder in him, and tried to give it right back. She wanted him, wanted the reassurance of the blood in her veins and his urgent need for her. It would help her stay focused and stable right now. And she wanted him just for him. That was also true, and important.

 

“Tonight,” he said, and sighed. “First of all, after right now, we shouldn’t talk about it too much. He wasn’t someone the authorities are likely to miss, but still. It’s an ugly situation, and I don’t want you to have to deal with that.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“The Sons will clean up the mess. Put out the word that the Racketeers left town to the other clubs. Maybe drop some hints that it was at our suggestion, but nothing concrete.”

 

“And…the mess?” It was the most neutral way she could think of to refer to the carnage they’d left behind. Of course, maybe it wasn’t carnage to Tex. Maybe he’d seen much worse. Almost certainly, he had. God, that thought made her shiver. She pushed it away.

 

“Clean up what’s outside. Take was talking to the Racketeers about making sure it sounded like Pedey and Mac had it out over some club matter. They know better than us what’s believable. But that’s the basic plan. The clubhouse will probably be torched, the bodies inside. There was plenty of liquor in there, don’t even need to use an accelerant. Which means it’s not likely any of it will be a problem.” He gave a cold, dry chuckle, which conveyed absolutely no humor at all. “After all, let’s be truthful: when cops are looking for us, it’s because they think we committed a crime, not because we were the victims of one. Even if they suspect foul play, Eddie will convince the department they’re lucky nothing spilled over onto the nice folk of Castello.”

 

There wasn’t quite a sneer in his voice, but it was close enough that she studied him carefully. He gave her a little smile, and she decided to let it go. It wasn’t her he was talking about, or even her mother. It was the kind of folk who’d looked the other way when Danny was killed, because it didn’t matter. Her family was already trash, so who cared that the eldest son had been murdered brutally. If he wasn’t already stealing and dealing, everyone knew it was coming. Yeah. She knew exactly what he meant about the good folk.

 

“Is there anything you need me to do or know?”

 

He shook his head. “The Sons will have been at the farm all night. Eddie will convince anyone who thinks otherwise that they were wrong. I’ll give him funding to pursue that mission, if necessary. He’s as glad to have his no-good brother out of the way as we are.”

 

“And…is there anymore? Someone who will come for us now, for killing a brother, a father, a son?”

 

Tex’s eyes were so soft she wanted to kiss him, but she could taste the film on her teeth, and she held herself back.

 

“No, baby,” he said. “But I fucking love you right now, because you’re not asking to protect yourself.”

 

“No,” she agreed. “But I would want to make it right. Explain. Eye for an eye.”

 

He shook his head slowly. “You need a bath.”

 

“What?”

 

“You’ve got dust in your hair, and you look completely exhausted and wound tight enough to break at the same time. Bath. And then bed.”

 

Heat was surging around in her. It was true; she was so tired she barely wanted to stand, but at the same time, if she laid down, there was absolutely no way she’d be able to sleep. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, okay. But you have to get in with me.”

 

He hissed in air through his teeth. “Jessie,” he started.

 

She put a finger over his lips. “You’re no better off than I am. You’ve seen more death than I have, sure, but it’s never rested easy on you. You only get to take care of me if I get to take care of you back.”

 

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s — I am certainly capable of keeping my hands to myself, but I don’t want to. I want to — fucking —”

 

“You talk too much,” she said. “Why the hell do you think I’m inviting you in?”

 

The tension crackled between them, and she could feel the heavy pressure of his erection against her ass. “All right,” he said. “You get undressed and draw the bath. Hot water is going to be best. It’ll get the blood flowing again.”

 

“And I’ll brush my teeth,” she said.

 

He laughed. “Please.”

 

A few moments later, she was cleaner, her hair piled up on her head and stripped down to her panties and bra. It was just obvious that she needed to wait for the door to start to open behind her before she leaned forward to shake her breasts out of her bra and glide her panties down her ass. There was a rough sound behind her, and then the bright, sparking slap of a broad hand on her ass. She squeaked and laughed, all at once, and Tex’s voice was heated in her ears. “You want me to throw you down on the floor and fuck you right now?”

 

“If that’s what you want.”

 

“It isn’t. Not anymore. Now you’re going to wait for it. Now you’re going to earn it.”

 

“Oh, am I?”

 

“Get in the bath.”

 

She did, with plenty of bending and draping and making soft noises about how nice the water felt as she slid down, letting it embrace her pussy and ass. He kept silent, and didn’t strip off his jeans and shirt until she was fully submerged in the bubbles. His erection was dramatic, and she had a brief moment of wondering if he’d stop her if she turned her head and took in that massive length in her mouth. She might have tried it, but the water felt so good, supporting her body, that she couldn’t be bothered.

 

He slid in behind her, legs on either side of hers, tucking her up against his chest and trapping his erection between the small of her back and his pelvis. He groaned at the pressure and bucked against her twice before he got himself under control.

 

She glanced up over her shoulder, grinning at him. “You going to fuck yourself off against my ass like a high school boy?”

 

He pinched her nipple, erect and dark brown, where it broke the surface of the bubbles. She whimpered at the heat running through her, the water caressing her swollen folds and making her heave against him. He let out another sound. “No,” he said, his voice tight with longing. She was sure of it. He wanted her, so very much, so much it hurt. “Because right now, I am giving you what you need. What I need is different, and that’s okay. We all remember our humanity in different ways.”

 

“Okay,” she said.

 

“This first,” he said. She’d fastened her hair up in a clip, and he took it down, directing her to tilt her head back as he poured water over her curls, carefully wetting them, running his fingers through them to free any debris that had been there. Then he reached for her conditioner, cleansing the curls as gently as she did, massaging her scalp while she rested against his chest.

 

She floated in the water, indulged in the gentle arousal of the water lapping at her every time she shifted, embracing the pulse of need that happened when his hand randomly drifted down to caress her breast, making her shift against him. She could feel his erection pulsing and wanting behind her, but she trusted him. If this was what he said he needed, okay. That was okay.

 

When he was satisfied with massaging her scalp, he rinsed the conditioner clean, and then gently twisted her hair back up into its clip, pinning it up high enough so it wasn’t digging into him. She made a mental note to condition the ends when they got out of the water, but there was no point right now. Who knew what he’d do from here; if it was all going to get wet again, there wasn’t a point yet.

 

“Tell me what you want,” he murmured into her ear, and she felt heat spread through her body, from top to bottom.

 

“I want to feel alive.”

 

His hands began to explore her, tracing every inch of her skin. He started at her neck, stroking delicately down to her shoulders and collarbones. He explored the hollows there, then moved out to explore her upper arms. He gently massaged the tense muscles until her shoulders relaxed, a wave of tension stirring up in her neck and then moving on. He flexed her elbows so her hands rested on her lower belly — temptingly close to her lower patch of curls and the release she craved, but she trusted him to bring her to whatever peak was right. She knew herself, but he knew this state of being. Between the two of them, they would find some kind of peace.

 

He was delicate with her forearms and her hands, not really massaging them, simply tracing the path of her ligaments until they relaxed on their own. Then, he returned to her chest. He toyed with her breasts, lifting them and separating them, swirling up their mass without touching their peaks. She sighed and shifted, feeling him pulse against her back again as he let out a low, quiet laugh. His hands moved down to her belly, and she thought he was going to avoid pleasuring her entirely, but then his left hand, with unbearable slowness, traced a leisurely path back up her breast until he could roll the bud of her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. The pressure was painfully light, and she hissed with sudden rampaging need. She wanted to turn and mount him, fuck him hard until she found the release she was craving, but he shushed her back down. “Don’t you go undoing all my hard work,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you.”

 

“More,” she begged, shocked to find that she was already panting and gasping, twisting. She hooked her hands under his knees. If they were free, there was no way she could keep them away from her clit; she was desperate and eager and so wanting. She spread her knees and let the water wash over her as if the delicate licking of underwater currents could possibly be enough to send her over the edge.

 

“Eventually,” he said. His right hand stayed on her belly, keeping her stable and grounded, while his left played with her nipple, tweaking and teasing, taunting and testing.

 

She cursed, arched her back. Dug her fingers into his knees. Called him names. Begged him to just fuck her already, or failing that, to let her fuck him. She didn’t care. She wanted. She was nothing but want. She was nothing but need.

 

He didn’t care. He murmured low chuckles in her ear as he took her body from slow, soft peak to slow, soft peak, then kissed the spot behind her ear that made her whimper. He licked her ear lobe, bit her neck, and never gave her enough rhythm with his taunting. If she pressed her thighs together, that might even be enough to drive her over the edge, but she didn’t want that. She did, but she wanted him more. “Fuck me,” she begged, all over again, but he didn’t listen.

 

Until he did. She didn’t know how many centuries had passed with his humming laughter in her ear before his fingers finally left her right breast and began to make the slow, steady journey down her belly. She arched, trying to hurry him along, and he pinched the skin of her hip.

 

“Behave,” he said, his voice firm for the first time.

 

She was so wracked with sheer sensation that the words she’d always wanted to say rushed out before she could stop them. “Make me.”

 

He went still behind her, but his erection throbbed, and his breath was heaving. “That’s a lot,” he said.

 

There was a rush of shame, which somehow turned her on even more. “I can take it.”

 

“No games right now,” he said. “If you tell me to stop, that’s it. We’re done. If you want this again, we will — talk a lot more, and set down some serious ground rules. Got it?”

 

“Please. I want it. I need it.” She didn’t even know what she was asking for, not really, but when his hand moved off her left breast and very, very carefully, circled her throat, up high, just below her jaw, she knew it. The pressure was incredibly light, just his hand resting on her throat, really, with his thumbs digging in ever so slightly below her ears, but she was digging her nails into his thighs trying to keep her body under control.

 

“Are you okay?” he asked, very carefully.

 

“God yes. Yes. So much. Yes. Oh god. Tex. Oh god.” She lost what few words she had left when his right hand resumed its slow journey down her belly. He had been delicate, almost ticklish before. Now he pinched, teased, taunted. His fingers brushed down to the top of her curls, then came back up almost to her nipple, and then back down.

 

She made sounds. Eager, desperate, hungry sounds, full sounds, throbbing sounds, arching sounds. Begging sounds. Whatever part of her mind was responsible for thinking took a vacation; she was nothing but sensation, the burning fire points of his thumbs on her throat, and the slow and steady progress of his fingers, which came a few cells closer to her aching center with every teasing brush of his hands.

 

When he finally traced around her clit with his forefinger, her mind was nothing but bright light. She sagged against him, unaware that she’d been tight, and then everything was roaring through her. “Harder,” she whispered.

 

“No,” he said.

 

“Okay.” He had his hand on her throat, after all. She was hardly in a place to make demands. God, she loved that. It was everything. It was searing. It was beyond exquisite.

 

He teased her clit and her slit as he had teased her nipples. He didn’t rush, didn’t make a rhythm, didn’t push her, didn’t make her eager. She wasn’t sure if she ever orgasmed; there was pleasure, and it came in waves but nothing was the undeniable rush of sensation that left her limp and rung out afterwards. She screamed and she cursed him, and she wasn’t sure the back of his thighs weren’t bleeding, but she was alive. She was alive.

 

When she was limp and gasping, her clit so erect that it ached, he whispered in her ear, “Still want to get fucked?”

 

She knew the right answer without even needing to think about it. “Do you want me to get fucked?”

 

He laughed in her ear, and his cock. God, it was so heavy and intense behind her. If she let go of his thighs and wrapped her hand around it, would she get in two strokes or five before he came in her hand? Would his eyes roll back in his head? How hard would he come for her right now?

 

She thought he’d turn her around, pull her astride him. Maybe they’d get out of the bath. But no. His fingers left her clit for a moment, and she heard a little splash as something broke the surface of the water. “I got you a present,” he said. “As soon as I saw this gigantic bathtub.”

 

It was just enough that she had an idea of what was coming, but the buzzing vibrations pressing open her folds still made her gasp.

 

“You want this cock?” he asked, his voice as calm and conversational as if they were sitting in a restaurant. Jesus. She could imagine it, him with some kind of remote control vibe buried in her, asking her casually over spaghetti or pizza, did she want that cock as he turned up the vibrations and watched her try not to lose her mind in front of everyone.

 

“If you want to give it to me,” she said, but she tried to make her voice say that yes, she wanted it, she wanted it so badly, she wanted to be pierced by it, thrust heavily apart.

 

He gave it to her. She was so wet, so open that the toy slid easily inside of her. It was big, not as big as he was, but big enough to make her groan gently and think relaxing thoughts.

 

He brought his fingers back to her clit. He didn’t circle it again, just put a delicate pressure on the sore, aching bud. “Fuck yourself,” he murmured in her ear. “I want to see you feel good.”

 

He’d teased her so long that it wasn’t really an orgasm that rippled through her. After waiting that long, after that much torture, even when she’d teased herself, her body wasn’t quite willing to dive for a huge release. But something did ripple through her, something huge and powerful and intense, something that left her groaning deep and hard as her body bucked and her muscles convulsed. She reached between her thighs and took the huge toy from him and fucked herself slowly, dragging it in and out of her eager passage. His left hand stayed at her clit, circling and tapping, while his right came back up to her nipple, teasing and tugging at it. She writhed, exhausted, caught between release and ecstasy, and loving the sensation of being trapped. By her body, by his hand at her throat, and by her trembling nerves, reporting pleasure and over-sensitization in equal measure.

 

And then, somehow, her body decided it was done. The pleasure was gone, flipping the switch over into uncomfortable, almost painful sensations. Not the good kind of pain, either, just the done kind. She winced, and both his hands came away quickly. He took the toy away for her, setting it on the side of the tub and turning it off. He cupped his hand over her sex, pressing down firmly with the heel of her hand and letting her grind away some of the sensitization for a moment while she caught her breath.

 

When she could breathe again, she lifted herself up on her knees and turned around. He was still rock hard, so she leaned in to kiss him, her hand descending to cup his hardness. He accepted the kiss, but neatly deflected her hand onto his thigh. “I’m not done with you,” he murmured against her mouth, wrapping his arms around her and cradling her again.

 

“I’m — I don’t know if you noticed, what with the thrashing and the cursing, but I’m good. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

 

He laughed then, that rich, deep sound, and her shivered happily. “I noticed. I didn’t say more sex. I just said I wasn’t done.”

 

“Do I get to play with you tonight?”

 

He considered for a long moment. “Do you need to?” he asked, after a little while.

 

She let herself really weigh the words. “I want to,” she said, “but it’s not a need.”

 

“Then it’ll probably keep until morning. What I need right now is to care for you, not me. I know it’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but I’m asking you to trust me. It’s the best thing for me, right now.”

 

“Okay,” she said, and let him snuggle her in just a little bit closer. Feeling safe in his arms was something she could get used to. Something she very much wanted to get used to. Where her heart had been an open found for so many years, suddenly, it felt more like a scar. Tissue that was pink and delicate, that didn’t feel quite like it was supposed to, it no longer felt like she’d been torn inside out and poorly put back together. That was something, at least.