ANGEL HAD spent the night reminding me exactly what I did to him. How his length became hard at the mere sound of my moans. How his breathing deepened at my touch. How his eyes brightened with lust and desire at the mention of how wet my core was.
His words rang true in my mind. I was falling for him. Hard and fast. But I couldn’t let him know. I couldn’t let him see the affection I had for him in my eyes. I knew he wasn’t stupid, though. What he did for a living would prove that it would be hard to keep my feelings from him. He was trained to read people. I had seen enough movies to know that.
Angel wasn’t Tyler. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t the bastard I had fallen in love with.
“I don’t know how to love.” Angel’s words broke my heart.
I sighed. I sure knew how to pick them.
He was beautiful in the way he had expressed his feelings through the use of his body. I felt the same. God, did I ever feel the same. Maybe more. Thoughts of him were constant. I felt him when I wasn’t with him. I craved him in ways I never knew was possible.
Angel stirred beside me. His brows furrowed, his face grim and pained.
“Baby,” I said gently, touching his cheek.
He jumped, his eyes snapping open.
“You’re fine,” I told him, coaxing the fear of the nightmare out of him.
“Jay,” he whispered, hugging me against him.
“You’re fine,” I repeated, rubbing his back.
“Shit.” With a shaky hand, he pushed it through his hair. “I haven’t had a nightmare in a while.”
“Knocks the breath out of you, doesn’t it?” I cupped his cheek, brushing my thumb over his full bottom lip.
“Yeah. It fucking does.” He didn’t ask how I understood. He just rested his head in the crook of my neck and fell back asleep.
That. That was what I needed. What I had been craving my whole life. I was in a rut. Going through the motions of day-to-day life when I knew it wasn’t enough.
“What are we doing, Angel?” I asked, kissing his forehead. What if I couldn’t love him? What if Tyler had fucked me up so bad that I didn’t know how to love again? Tears welled in my eyes. Life was unfair. The one time I wanted to fall in love, the one time I had met a man who cared more about me than himself, I was scared to open up. I was terrified to give him all of me.
Maybe he wouldn’t like what he saw. I rolled out from under Angel, laying on my stomach and stretched my arms out under the pillow.
His arm wrapped around my waist, his hand rubbing up and down my back in small circles. Warm lips caressed my skin, placing light pecks here and there.
My heart sped up, a lump burning in my throat at the sweet contact. “What time is it?” I asked, trying to play it cool.
“Time to just feel.” The deep vibrato of his voice pushed its way into my soul. It was like silky chocolate, smooth and vibrant with its taste.
“Feelings hurt,” I told him. I slid out of his grip, rising from the bed, and got dressed. The clothes helped against the vulnerability I felt since meeting him weeks ago.
“What are you doing?” Angel asked, sitting up in bed.
“I should go.” I turned back toward him, regretting it instantly.
The early morning light shone between the curtains, casting a soft glow on Angel’s tanned skin. His muscles rippled with each breath. Scars marred his torso, begging for me to brush my fingertips against each and every mark.
“Baby, you know you don’t want to leave.”
“No. I don’t. But I have to go back to the club. I have shit to do. I’m not letting Tyler stop me from finding those girls or my sister. I need some sort of closure.” I was surprised at myself. Confessing my feelings to him threw me off. I didn’t like it. One dark stare and I revealed all.
“If you need any help, any at all, Vice-One is here for you. I am here for you.” He inched to the edge of the bed, reaching his hands out for me.
Placing my hands in his, I sighed at the contact. “Thank you.”
“I mean it, Jay. I know what these bastards are capable of.” He kissed my knuckles.
“I need all the help I can get,” I said, stepping between his knees.
“Can I see you again?”
“Yes,” I said without any hesitation at all.
“Good.” A wicked grin spread on his face. “Now let me give you a goodbye kiss.”
And he did. For the next hour.
***
(Angel)
“There has to be something we can do,” I told Vega, wrapping tape around my wrist.
“You couldn’t find shit about my niece,” he grumbled. “What makes you think you can find out something about your girl’s sister?”
“We need more time.” I rose to my feet. “It’s not our fucking fault they attacked us. They knew we were there.”
“That’s impossible.” He shook his head.
“Nothing’s impossible when it comes to this job.” I pointed at him. “You of all people should know that. Someone knew we were going to be there.” I didn’t know how. Even before all of that shit went down, a sickening feeling had taken up permanent residence in my stomach. None of it made sense.
“We can’t save everyone, Angel,” he muttered.
“But you want us to do everything we can to save your niece,” I added, rising to my full height.
“Yes.” He looked away. “I will do whatever it takes to get her back.”
“What about my girl’s sister? I will do everything I can to get her back. Dead or alive. Doesn’t fucking matter,” I insisted. Jay needed closure, and I would do everything in my power to give that to her. She may have been pushing me away. She may have been trying to convince herself that she wasn’t falling for me. It didn’t matter, either way, I wanted her happy.
“If you go against orders, this time you will be put on leave and not come back,” he ground out, meeting me with his dark stare.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” My fists clenched at my sides. “What would you do if it was your wife’s sister? Your daughter? Huh? Would you choose someone more important? How can you decide that? No one person is more important than the other. Put me on leave. Fire me. I’ll fucking resign my commission if I have to. I don’t give a shit. But I will find her.”
He nodded once. “Good.”
I shook my head. “Excuse me?”
“That’s good,” he repeated, turning on his heel.
“Wait. What the hell just happened?” I asked, stopping him.
“I wanted to make sure you were passionate about this.”
“I’m not following.”
Vega clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I know you’ve had a hard upbringing, Angel. I wanted to make sure you were choosing to do something for someone else and not just yourself. Now, piece of advice.”
“Uh…” I stuttered like a dumbass.
“Go tell her you love her before it’s too late.”
Fucking A.
***
(Jay)
The moment I arrived at the clubhouse, I had assumed the girls would be on me. Demanding where I went the night before. Needing to know how I was. How I felt. What I was fucking thinking. I loved them. My sisters were my life but they were women. They loved to talk. But I couldn’t talk to them. I couldn’t tell them that there was a darkness inside of me that became light since meeting Angel. I couldn’t tell them I had changed since my sister left. Max noticed but she never said anything. A part of me wished she would.
“We’re in here, boss,” Max said, peeking her head out of the office.
I nodded, making my way toward her. The time had come. Would I tell them everything I had wanted to? No. Because I was a little bitch and I was fucking scared.
“Hi,” I said softly, closing the door behind me.
A round of greetings circled the table.
“Now, before we begin, I have a couple rules. No asking about Angel and me. Vice-One is here to fix up our club and hang out. I’m sure you’ve met them already. I consider them friends, but what goes on behind closed doors, I can’t talk about yet.” There, I said it. Sort of. “We will talk about Dante’s Kings.” I pushed away from the door. “Give me your thoughts.”
“I think there’s a mole,” Brogan answered first.
“Excuse me?” My gaze snapped to hers. “How do you figure?”
“Something seems off. I have no idea,” she shrugged.
“Why do you think there’s a mole, Brogan?” She had me wondering if maybe she was correct. Especially when Meeka hadn’t commented at all. She just sat there solemnly, her gaze on her lap.
“How else would the Kings know anything about Vice-One? I know they have connections but we hardly know them ourselves,” Brogan explained. “Someone has to be telling them something.”
That was true except for the fact that I knew Angel. God, do I ever know him! His body. His scent. His taste. A burning heat spread between my legs, causing me to squirm in my chair.
Fucking Angel.
I cleared my throat. “Vice-One is looking for the same thing we are: the men and women who are taking these girls. I know some of them are junkies, some of them people won’t miss, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not cleaning the streets when murder is involved.” My heart sped up, my voice rising. “Meeka, can you talk to your FBI contact and see if they can pull some strings to set up a curfew?”
“I mentioned that already, and they said that more girls have to disappear before they’ll consider it,” she said quickly.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“More girls have to die?”
Max and Brogan went back and forth with their outbursts, but I just sat there, staring at nothing. More girls had to disappear. Who came up with this shit?
“What else did they say?” I asked Meeka, interrupting the ranting.
“They said we have no grounds to search out the girls ourselves. If we take this into our own hands and an accident happens, we are held accountable.” She sighed. “Basically, we won’t have any protection.”
“This isn’t right,” Max snapped, slamming her small fist on the table.
“No.” I sat back in the chair. “It’s not. But there’s nothing we can do. So, we’ll just have to deal with this on our own and make sure no one finds out.”
Max and Brogan agreed.
Meeka nodded slowly. A twinkle flashed in her gaze, the corners of her lips twitching.
Interesting.
But I knew if we did have a mole, that information would get out and if it did, it would be from one of the three women sitting in front of me. I trusted Max with everything in me. Brogan went with the flow. And Meeka? She was desperate. I didn’t know for what, but something told me that she was the mole. I just prayed she had just cause.
I didn’t want to have to kill my sister.