Trouble ain’t nothing new for me. I’ve been in trouble before. With the law. With women. With the men I’ve done jobs for. Name the trouble, and I guaran-fuckin’-tee I’ve been mixed up in it a time or twenty.

Frankie Helburn is a whole new level of trouble.

One my gut, my brain, and my cock can’t quite fuckin’ agree on.

Her fucking brazenness. Her audacity. The way she challenges me. Stands up to me like I couldn’t crush her with a single blow.

Then, there’s the way she looks at me like she wants to claw my fucking eyes out.

God fucking damn it.

I’m hard just thinking about it.

She was so wet I could feel it leaking from her even though we were in the shower. How fucking sweet she tasted.

How she was hiding that tiny waist, full tits, and epic ass underneath that baggy school girl uniform is a mystery. Now that I’ve seen her curves in all their glory, I can’t ever unsee them.

Even battered and bruised the bitch was beautiful and I don’t think I’ve ever thought about a bitch as being beautiful before. Hot? Sure. Sexy? Sure. Stacked? Sure. Down to fuck? Sure.

Beautiful?

Just Frankie.

I left Frankie alone in the bedroom un-cuffed so she can get dressed. Ain’t no way she’s escaping again. I’ve taken care of that pet door and bolted it shut.

I’m on the porch waiting for the babysitter Preppy texted and told me would be here shortly. I expect he sent his kid brother who’s been working with him for a while now, or one of Bear’s prospects from the Lawless MC.

That’s not who shows up.

A familiar high-pitched sound starts in the distance, and my swollen cock and Frankie are temporarily forgotten. The sound is coming from a small motor. One I’ve worked on before. A wheeze more than a roar. It grows louder and louder, and I know who’s coming long before the baby blue Vespa pulls up the dirt path and parks with a dramatic skid in the middle of the grass.

“Fuck,” I swear, shrugging on my cut.

I light a smoke and walk out to greet someone I never thought I’d see again. Someone I’ve made a mission out of avoiding. My one-time partner and friend.

Rage.

Rage sets down her kick stand and removes her pink helmet revealing her trademark long blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She smooths it down with the palm of her hands.

Rage looks like a typical teenage girl. That’s how she gets away with being a stone-cold killer for hire. Most men can’t see past her tight body and pretty face.

Until it’s too fucking late.

Rage spots me and doesn’t smile, doesn’t react. She grabs her duffle bag from the storage compartment below the seat and drapes it over her shoulders. She walks up to me with her hands on the strap. Her shirt is tight and pink and says BITCH PLEASE across her tits.

“Nice shirt, princess,” I say.

She shrugs. “Well, they didn’t have one that said STEP BACK OR DIE so I went with this one.”

“Good call.” I stub out my cigarette.

“Surprised to see me?” Rage asks.

“Understatement,” I reply. “Why you here?”

“Where’s my ward?” Rage asks, peeking around my shoulder and ignoring my question.

“Changing,” I say. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Now or NEVER?” she asks with a smile I know to be fake because I’ve seen her practice it in the mirror a million times.

I shrug. “Can’t say.”

The guilt I’ve felt since the night we parted ways has never left and standing in front of her now the whole shit-show of that night hits me in the fucking gut, and I want to puke and shoot someone all at the same time. “Didn’t think Preppy would send you of all people. Thought I’d get a Lawless prospect.”

Rage narrows her eyes at me. “First off, you of all people know that no one SENDS me anywhere. Second, he didn’t send me. He was sending his brother, but I volunteered instead. And third…” she reaches into her duffle bag and pulls out what appears to be a small version of a biker’s cut and shrugs it on. “I am one of the Lawless.”

Rage spins around to show off the cut and sure enough, the back has the Lawless MC logo. The front has a patch that would normally hold a title like Sergeant at Arms but hers reads Don’t Label Me.

“Cute,” I say, amused as all hell. “Can’t say I’m surprised though. Only you can get a fucking MC to make you a member. What brought this on? Thought you didn’t like tying yourself to any one group.”

Rage follows me up to the house. “You mean besides the threats of violence against them if they didn’t let me in?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

She stops on the porch and circles around to face me. “You.”

“Me?” I take a drag of my smoke.

She exhales and shakes her head. “Smoke, you were my mentor. My dahli-fucking-lama. You were my only connection to humanity before you inserted Nolan into my life because you knew I needed him and others around me. I didn’t understand it until him.” She lowers her voice. “You and I were a team, and then you left. I wanted another team. I needed to belong again.”

“Thought you didn’t have feelings,” I say, the pain in my gut growing.

“You of all people know that’s not true. It’s me who didn’t know it, but you showed me. And then you LEFT me.”

She pokes her little index finger into my chest.

I look away and stub out my smoke on the railing, lighting another one. “We don’t gotta do this right now.”

“We do! You left me. I didn’t realize it then, but I realize it now. You were like my brother. You were family. Then, you left.”

“What a fucking brother I was. I left because…” I lower my voice, unable to say the fucking words. “You know why I left.”

“No, I don’t,” Rage says, shaking her head and setting her duffle bag down on the porch.

“I raped you, Rage,” I say, my chest burning with anger toward myself. Bile rising in my throat. “While your man was forced to watch. You didn’t deserve that. Nolan didn’t deserve to watch that.”

Rage’s small hands grab hold of my cut. She’s the only person in the world that can get away with this shit. Any other man would be missing that hand by now.

“Look at me!” She yells, yanking on my cut. I look down into her blue eyes. “Smoke! There was NO RAPE! That shit-bag forced us to have sex at gunpoint. That’s not rape, and if it is, then, I raped you, too. ‘Cause this isn’t all on you. You can’t take all the blame.”

“It’s different for you!” I shout, raising my voice above hers.

“Why? Why is it different for me?” she challenges, releasing my cut and jutting out a hip. Her head cocked to the side.

“Because you zoned out. I saw that look in your eyes you used to get when you would wash the world around you away and crawled inside your own head. You weren’t there. I…I got hard. I fucking came for Christ’s sake!”

Rage rolls her eyes and shrugs. “Eh, different strokes for different folks. I once read about a guy who can only come with a gun to his head. Nobody’s screaming rape at the lady holding it. That’s biology, asshole. What else you got? ‘Cause that excuse is as weak as nonalcoholic beer. I AIN’T BUYING IT.”

Rage smiles and this time it’s genuine.

“What the fuck do you know about biology?” I ask, feeling the mood lighten around us. She doesn’t blame me. Don’t mean I can’t blame myself, but maybe I don’t have to fucking hate myself so much.

Not about this anyway.

“Besides being a germ expert, as you know, I am also a college graduate now.”

“You went to college?” I look at her with disbelief. “In a year and a half?”

She wrinkles her nose. “More like a half an hour. Just for enough time to threaten the dean into giving me a degree. It’s real pretty, too. I framed it. It’s hanging in my room at the MC. Come by. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

I chuckle. “Same old Rage,” I say, then reconsider my words. “Yet not the same ole Rage.”

Rage stills. “Don’t move, okay? I’m gonna try something,” she whispers, taking a step toward me.

I shift my feet. Rage is unpredictable, but she’s still Rage, and I trust her even though I know I shouldn’t. “Okay, but what are…”

“I said don’t move!”

I’m stone still as her tiny arms wrap around my waist, and she leans her head against me. I’m so much bigger that her head only comes to the bottom of my ribs.

“Thank you for helping me all those years ago,” she says. “Thank you for being my friend when I didn’t know what a friend was supposed to be. Thank you for setting me up with Nolan although you did it in the weirdest way possible. Thank you for knowing I needed him before I knew I needed him. Just, thank you, Smoke.”

“I…” I sputter, not knowing what to say. I feel myself soften, and before I know it, I’m placing one of my hands over her tiny head. I kiss the top of her hair.

“It’s all done. It’s over!” Rage announces, pulling away and clapping her hands together. “Now, let’s kill something and string its intestines up like Christmas lights.” The crazed look in her eyes returns, the one I’ve known and loved since the first time I saw her when she was sixteen years old.

“Yep, same ole, Rage.” I chuckle. “You got all this feelings shit down pat, don’t ya?”

Her shoulders drop. “Yeah, but it’s exhausting. There are so many layers of feelings, and sometimes, I just want to blow shit up and forget about it all, but…it’s worth it. Nolan’s worth it.” Rage points at me. “You’re worth it.”

“Thanks for coming, princess,” I tell her. I mean it.

“You’re very fucking welcome. This place isn’t nearly as gross as I thought it would be, so that’s a plus. Now, what the fuck do you have going on here, and please, please, please, can I do something involving knife play to whoever you have tied up back there?”

I think about how much to tell Rage.

“All of it. Tell me all of it,” she says knowingly. She skips into the house and props herself up on the kitchen counter. I shake my head and follow her inside.

I grab a bottle of whiskey from the table and take a long pull. “You remember Morgan?”

Rage nods. “Yeah, the brunette. Walked in on you banging her one day. I liked her. Great tits. No over the top moaning. Seemed clean.”

Clean to Rage means a lot since she’s a germaphobe and OCD and a lot of other things I don’t know the specific terms for.

“She’s dead,” I tell her, looking down at the bottle in my hand.

Rage doesn’t react because Rage doesn’t react. She lifts her chin and waits for me to continue.

I sigh. “Short version is that I found her in a pool of her own fucking blood. Hacked to bits. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out who did it until I got a lead from Griff. Frank Helburn, a hacker scumbag, is the one who did it although I have no clue why. The girl in the back room? She’s his kid. Using her to flush her old man out.”

“That all?” She asks, knowing me better than I know my fucking self.

I shake my head and light yet another smoke and take an even bigger swig of whiskey. “Nope. That’s not all. Morgan…she was carrying my kid.”

“So, this is a revenge mission,” Rage states, swinging her legs. There is no apology from her lips because Rage isn’t sorry. She didn’t know Morgan and she isn’t built that way.

It’s comforting in a way. It’s familiar. And shit if I need her pity or anyone else’s.

I nod.

Rage is processing, looking to the ceiling, deep in thought. This isn’t the time to try and shake her out of it unless you want to be on the bloody end of her crystal studded blade.

I take another swig of whiskey and decide I’m glad Rage came today.

Frankie enters the room and pauses when she sees Rage sitting on the counter. Frankie’s eyes widen in surprise, and she looks to me. “Who’s that girl?”

“That ain’t no girl,” I say setting down the whiskey. “That’s Rage.”