Cavan

Sometime around two o’clock in the morning, I woke up thirsty. I was still tangled up with Dani, both of us naked, the sheets knotted around us. I blinked in the dark and got my bearings.

Dani was asleep, her leg hooked over mine, her foot wedged beneath my thigh, her cheek against my shoulder, her hair tickling my skin. I had my arm around her, my fingers curled over the back of her neck. It should have been uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel a thing. My body, it seemed, was in a state of complete fucking bliss. It hadn’t worn off. I wondered if it ever would.

I slid my arm out from under her and looked down at her. I could see her thigh, the curve of her hip, one sweet breast and its cherry-pink nipple. Jesus, I was losing my mind, and I hadn’t even fucked her yet. I was naked in bed with the one woman on earth who would get me killed, and I had no desire to leave her.

But apparently it was thirsty work to lick the sexiest woman I’d ever seen, then watch her swallow as I came harder than I had in my life. So I reluctantly disentangled the rest of my body and slid out of bed. Dani didn’t wake, but she gave a dissatisfied sigh when I left. It could be very easy, I thought, to get used to hearing that sound.

I found my jeans and pulled them on, commando, my feet bare. The room smelled like cheap synthetic carpet and sweaty sex. I was a fucking billionaire, for God’s sake—Dani deserved better. I’d find a way to give it to her. In the meantime, I could at least get her a drink.

I found some of my cash and slipped out the door onto the motel veranda, which was dark and quiet. Gently closing the door behind me, I looked around. The street past the parking lot was silent, the lot itself half empty. The stretch beyond the motel had gone mostly dark, except for a far-off strip club and a bar with its lights still on. The motel itself showed no signs of life; even the front office was closed and locked.

At the end of this stretch of rooms I saw the glow of a drink machine, so I headed for it, the boards of the veranda quiet beneath my bare feet. A breeze blew over my skin and I felt goosebumps between my shoulder blades in the warm California night air.

The machine had soda, water, and juice. I was pondering the selection, and was slipping a dollar bill into the slot, when the sound came behind me.

My reflexes were faster than my brain, recognizing the sound before I could fully categorize it: the stomp of motorcycle boots against the boards of the veranda. Whoever it was had come from the parking lot. I turned without thinking, bracing myself against the machine and kicking my foot out just as a big guy in a leather MC cut came at me full speed. I had already put my heel hard in his gut before it registered that I didn’t recognize him. And then it was too late to do any more thinking.

I’m not a fighter. I never have been. But when you’ve grown up rough, then spent ten years living in the viper’s nest that is the Black Dog MC, you either learn a few skills or the brothers will stomp you into the dust. Men like the Dogs can smell weakness—it calls to them, drives them wild. The key to survival is never to show fear, even for a second. So I learned early to hit hard, hit quick, and hit first. I learned to sense when a hit was coming my way, and I learned not to wait for it.

I didn’t wait now. When the Dog bent double, I punched him on the side of the head as hard and as fast as I could. My fist hurt—his skull was fucking hard—but I was pretty sure I rang some bells in his head for a second.

I had to get back to the room, back to Dani. I didn’t know how many guys he had with him. But before I could move he was on me, fast for a big guy, shoving me back into the vending machine and making it shake. His big hands had my shoulders. He smelled like stale beer. I had no idea who the fuck this guy was.

“A little warning from McMurphy,” he growled. I saw his fist coming and ducked, but he still clipped me on the hard bone just above my eyebrow, making my head crack back onto the glass of the vending machine. My vision doubled for a second. I kneed him in the balls, making him grunt in pain, and when his fist came again I dodged it this time so he punched the glass and I got out of his grip.

I punched him low, slamming his kidneys as he twisted toward me. From the parking lot came the roar of a motorcycle engine, and then another.

In a second, my attacker was gone, taking off into the darkness. I had time to see the Black Dog insignia on the back of his cut before he vanished.

I sprinted for my door, ducking inside as more motorcycle engines started up. Dani was sitting on the edge of the bed, the blanket wrapped around her, her arms hugging her body tight.

“Are you all right?” she cried.

“I’m fine,” I said, coming toward her. “It’s a message. Just wait.”

She nodded. Messages were a pretty common Black Dog tactic: show up, give a guy a few hits, hopefully scare the hell out of him, and leave again. They weren’t meant to be deadly; they were only meant as a threat, though a serious one.

This one had come from McMurphy. My attacker had made that crystal clear.

I sat next to Dani on the bed, and we waited. Outside, the bikes in the parking lot roared, the lights blaring through our window. Four men, by my count. They took a circle around the lot, and then another, the sound vibrating through the room. One of them finished it off by shooting a bullet into the air, making Dani flinch with the noise, and then they roared away, the motors fading into the distance.

I looked at Dani. She was stoic: chin up, expression shuttered. “They found us,” she said.

I had the impulse to put an arm around her, but it was the wrong thing to do. “Someone did,” I said. “But not McMurphy. One of the satellite clubs.”

When had it happened? I thought back. When we’d stopped to gas the car? When we’d stopped to buy food? When we’d checked into the motel? Dani had been with me then. McMurphy had probably put the word out far and wide on the Black Dog network. And someone, somewhere, had seen Dani and me and made a phone call.

And McMurphy had sent a message.

“He sent someone,” I said to Dani. “I didn’t know this guy. McMurphy didn’t come himself. That means he’s not close.” If McMurphy had heard of our whereabouts, he would have wanted to come himself. That he’d sent someone told me that maybe he wasn’t as hard on our heels as we’d feared. Sure enough, he’d lost us after I’d ditched Dani’s phone in the first motel.

“But he’s coming,” Dani said. She switched on the bedside lamp and turned to me, still holding the blanket around her. She saw my face. “Cav, he hit you,” she said, her voice distressed.

I rubbed the sore spot over my eyebrow. I felt like someone had given my brain a shake, but otherwise I was fine. I’d gotten off easy. “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“It’s red. It’ll bruise.” She brushed her fingers over the spot. Then she said the words I knew she was going to say next: “This is my fault.”

I looked into her dark eyes. She was distressed, but she wasn’t afraid. She was worried for me. For a crazy second it almost struck me as funny, because no one ever worried for me. “I can take a hit to the head,” I told her gently. “It’s nothing. And it isn’t your fault.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then pressed her lips together briefly as if biting it back. “What do we do?” she asked me.

“Rest,” I replied. “They’re not going to come back tonight. We’ll move in the morning.” There wasn’t a rush, because we weren’t running anymore. McMurphy knew where we were. It was only a matter of his choosing when to close in.

Except I wasn’t done yet. Far from it.

We turned out the light, and I took off my jeans and got naked in the bed with her. To my surprise she rolled over and tugged my arm, pulling me with her. So I spooned her back, my knees bent behind hers, my arm over her waist. Her sweet, round body was against mine, her ass pressed up against me, and though my body hummed with its own ideas—men are fucking animals—I was content to just lie like that. I’d never slept in bed with a woman like this, and I was twenty-nine years old. What the fuck had I been doing for the last decade? Where had I been?

It took her a while, but she fell asleep. I felt it. But I stayed awake, breathing her scent and thinking.

I’d left the door unlocked behind me when I left the room, but McMurphy’s goon hadn’t touched it. He hadn’t even looked at it. I’d let my guard down, and that asshole could have come right in the room and had Dani. But he hadn’t.

Instead, he’d come for me.

My taunts had worked. McMurphy wanted me dead. Dani was collateral damage.

What he wanted was me.

That made things simple.

As Dani slept, I lay awake in the darkness, making a plan.