Chapter 23 – Beast
I was running late to pick Brenna up from work, but it couldn’t be helped. We were still investigating who destroyed The Black Angel and I was in a meeting with Axel from the Cursed Bastards and his VP Maddox. They were former military, just like the Death Dealers, and Maddox used to be an intelligence officer, so I thought I’d try to see if he could get together with Techy, our club hacker, and see if they could come up with anything.
Techy was in the meeting with us and he and Maddox were going over what they had discovered, or should I say what they had not discovered.
They had been over all of the footage from The Black Angel, as well as the red light cameras and any other CCTV and security cameras within a 10 mile radius of the club and they came up dry. Whoever was trying to send us a warning was good at covering their tracks. There was no footage of them coming to or from the building at the time of the destruction, so obviously they have the capability of meddling with the video feeds.
“So, as you can see, we’ve come up with fuck all.” Techy was finishing his report. “I’m going to keep running the program I wrote to try to see if there is any chatter on the dark web. Maddox is going to see if any of his contacts have anything either.”
I turned away from Techy and faced Axel and Maddox across the table. “I’ve got Knight on it too, but I don’t know what kind of contacts he has anymore, so anything you guys can do from your end, Maddox, I’d appreciate.”
Maddox closed up his laptop and looked up at me. “Yeah, brother, I’ve got you. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get anything, but I’ll put some feelers out. I have a few friends who are freelance contractors now and they might be able to come up with something.”
“You really think this is a threat, Beast?” Axel asked.
“I don’t know, Axel, but I don’t want to just brush it off and then suddenly we are at war. I don’t like to be caught out.” Plus, I had Brenna and the baby to worry about too. I didn’t want them to be caught in a cross fire. It was bad enough when Everly was kidnapped recently by a club whore, which thankfully worked out okay in the end. I didn’t want anything to happen to Bren and I’d do whatever it took to keep her safe.
I stood up from the table, Axel and Maddox following my lead. Techy was still sitting down tapping away at his laptop, but I didn’t take it as a form of disrespect. I could see that he was into something and I would leave him to it.
I stuck my hand out to Axel to shake. “Thanks again for your help, brother, I really appreciate it.”
He gripped my hand and clasped it in his. “I know if or when I have a problem, you and the Dealers will be there for us, brother.”
“You got it. Let me know if you guys come up with anything and I’ll give you a call if we figure anything out.”
Axel released my hand and with a nod he and Maddox left my office, going out through the clubhouse. Doc and Irish were out in the common area and they would make sure they got off okay.
I turned back to Techy and with a slap on his shoulder, I let him keep doing what he was doing. “I’m heading out, brother, I’ll see you later. Keep me in the loop.”
Techy lifted his hand to me and got back to it.
I pulled my cell out of my pocket and saw that I was supposed to pick Brenna up in five minutes. So, I rushed out of the building and jumped in my truck, hoping she listened and stayed in the hospital waiting for me.
When I arrived at the hospital, Brenna wasn’t in the lot, so I parked and got out of my truck, heading into the lobby to see her sitting with her back to the door, talking on her phone. I was thinking that I was going to have to talk about her being more aware of her surroundings, but when I heard what she was talking about, all thoughts of a lecture went right out the window.
“Yeah, I never thought I’d like to have a caveman in my life and in my bed, but damn it’s HOT!” She was obviously on the phone with Everly, which made me chuckle. Women might act all offended when guys talk about fucking, but they gossip about it just as much as we do, if not more so.
Hearing me behind her, Brenna turned around and ended her conversation, while standing up to face me.
“So, you find it hot that I’m a caveman huh?”
I picked Brenna up cave-man style and put her over my shoulder. She was laughing and begging me to put her down, but I carried her out to the truck, unlocking the passenger side door with her still slung over my shoulder. I gently put her in her seat, leaning over to do up her seat belt.
I’ve never been known for being a gentleman, but Brenna brought out protective instincts in me and I enjoyed taking care of her.
When I stood back to close the door, I looked at Brenna and she was leaning back in her seat just smiling at me. “What?”
“I don’t know, I just like this nurturing side of you.”
“Nurturing?! Babe, watch it, you’re going to ruin my reputation.” I leaned into the truck and gave her a kiss before closing her door and walking around to the driver’s side.
“You got anything you want to do tonight, Baby Girl?”
I glanced at her quickly as I drove. Her head was leaning back and her eyes were closed.
She opened her one eye closest to me and took a quick peak at me before shutting her eye again. “Truthfully, Beast, I really don’t. Working is taking all of my energy out of me and I’d really just like a night of quiet at home. I know that makes me boring. Feel free to just drop me off and head back to the clubhouse for some fun with the guys.”
I looked behind me to make sure that there was no one behind me and pulled over to the side of the road. I threw the truck in drive and undid my seatbelt so that I could turn to fully face Brenna.
Noticing that the truck wasn’t moving Brenna opened her eyes and turned to look at me. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, babe, there’s something wrong. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, I’m in this with you. If you don’t want to do anything but veg out on the couch and watch Netflix and pig out on your favourite foods, I’ll be sitting right beside you. If you want to have Everly over for a girl’s night, I’ll get Joker to come over and we can make ourselves scarce outside while you ladies have your fun. The only thing that will not be happening is me being away from you if you aren’t at work. I want you and the baby safe and I really want to be there through this whole thing.”
Brenna sat up and turned to face me halfway through my rant. I don’t usually talk that much, but I really just wanted her to know that I wanted to be here for her, for every part of this pregnancy.
“Okay, Grayson. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just know that neither one of us expected this to be a long term thing and I didn’t want you to feel obligated to be with me all the time. I don’t want you to stop hanging out with your brothers and I especially don’t want you to resent me or worse the baby.”
I leaned over and grabbed her under the arms and pulled her over to my side of the car, sitting her in my lap straddling me. I put my hands on either side of her face, holding it there so that she couldn’t look away from me. “I want you to listen to me, Bren. Can you do that?”
She tried to nod, but it came out as a slight movement of her head because of me holding it.
“I want to be with you and not just because of the baby. Since the first time I saw your luscious ass, getting out of your blacked out Charger and watching you walk into Everly’s backyard, I knew I was going to have you. Then I got to talk to you and I knew that no matter how much I wanted to tell myself that this was going to just be a quick fuck, that it was going to be more than that. The baby just made me realize that I wanted all of this sooner than I probably would have if he or she wasn’t in the picture. Do you feel me, Baby Girl?”
She tried to nod again, so I leaned in to give her a quick kiss and took my hands from the sides of her face.
“I feel you, Grayson. I feel the same way. I love waking up with you in the morning and I love how you take care of me. I’m just scared. Scared that this is too good to be true, scared that you’ll wake up one morning and decide we’ve moved too quickly, scared that you’ll meet someone else and break my heart, but most of all I’m scared out of my mind to be a mom. I didn’t think I would ever get the chance to be a mom and now that I am getting that chance I don’t want to fuck it or the baby up.”
She just verbalized everything I’ve been feeling about the baby myself. I thought I may one day be a dad, but I didn’t think it would be for years yet and I worried that I wouldn’t be any good at it either.
“Brenna, it’s okay to be scared. I’m glad you told me you’re scared, because babe, I’m scared shitless about being a dad. But, I figure we are in this together and we will do okay, as long as we stay in this together.”
Brenna closed her eyes and leaned her forehead onto mine. “Okay, Beast. Okay.”
I gave her one last kiss and put her back over on to her side of the truck. I know it probably shouldn’t have, but having her sitting there on my cock had me getting hard and I didn’t want to ruin the moment with a hard on tenting my jeans.
Brenna did up her seatbelt and I turned back onto the road, heading home.
Home. I’m now thinking of Brenna’s house as home and it had only been a few days.