She shook her head. “First, Blythe would be appalled if Czar wanted her to sit in on a meeting. She would refuse.” The amusement faded from her voice and she threw herself on the broken love seat and leaned toward Breezy. “Blythe is the best. The absolute best. She will discuss anything with us, talk to us about whatever rule we don’t understand, and she’s never condescending. I don’t know how Czar got so lucky, but she’s the best old lady ever born. We all benefit from her. If you need someone ever to help you, Blythe is your girl.”
“And Anya?”
Lana’s face softened. “We all love Anya. She works as a bartender, and she’s really good at it. She never forgets anything. Reaper’s got mad love for that woman and none of us blame him. We’re hoping she gets pregnant soon, so psycho man will settle a little. He’s all over her all the time, but so happy. None of us ever thought he’d be happy. We really didn’t. We thought we’d lose him, but she arrived out of nowhere and we’ve got him back one hundred percent.”
“Like Savage?”
The smile faded. She shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. Savage is really different and none of us, Savage included, think there’s a happy ending in store for him. He’ll hang on though. He’d never leave us unless he thought we could handle the Diamondbacks without him.”
Breezy didn’t like that, but she knew, just being around Savage, that he was different even from the others.
“Are you happy, Lana?”
Lana shrugged. “The things I want, I can never have, but I’m free and I’ve got my family. I love Steele, and he’s got you and Zane. Reaper’s got Anya. I know both men are safe. Those are the things that make me happy.”
Breezy wanted to say she wasn’t sure yet. She wanted to be, but there was that one huge milestone she was still trying to hurdle. The club. Lana and Alena were treated as full members. She didn’t know a single club where women were treated equally as members. Not one. Torpedo Ink was definitely different, and she had to make certain, before making a decision, that she was fair about it. That meant she needed more information.
Preacher threw open the door, glaring at his sister. “What the fuck, Lana?”
She grinned at him. “It wasn’t like I went looking for him. You remember Scalp? He liked to practice scalping the women he took to bed, the ones they would have sold if he hadn’t insisted on practicing his favorite sport.”
“And he’s still got his scalp? Didn’t you have a knife on you?”
Lana shrugged. “Breezy was here and I try to act civilized around her, so she’ll let me play with Zane.”
“Don’t let her kid you, Bree. She wants to swim in your pool.”
“I have a pool.” Lana smirked at her brother.
“True, but you like Steele and Bree’s pool better.”
“That’s true too, it’s awesome,” Lana admitted.
“Steele owns the house,” Breezy corrected.
“Actually, both of you do,” Preacher said. He heaved Scalp over his shoulder and walked out, leaving her with her mouth open.
THIRTEEN
Steele entered the motel room silently. It was well after midnight and he was exhausted but needed to see his woman. She had every curtain pulled and the fan running on high. He could barely make her out lying in the middle of the bed directly under the rotating paddles that fanned the hot air, making the room temperature bearable.
The garage hadn’t been. The smell of blood had permeated everything, so that he was breathing it in, so that it soaked into his pores. It didn’t matter; he got what he needed, and that meant he could take the terror from his woman’s eyes.
He’d been holding it together by a thread, trying not to think that his boy could be sold to some fucking pedophile and that what was done to him and his brothers and sisters would be done to his child. The horror of that was almost more than he could bear. He would do anything to get Zane back. Anything. He’d trade his life for his child. He’d torture and kill if that was what it took.
He had been angry that Scalp had slipped through, hidden inside the apartment’s attic. That was a fuckup that could have cost them. Even Dart and Bruiser hadn’t known he was up there. Living. His assignment had been to kill Dart if Bruiser didn’t and then kill Bruiser. Bridges’s plan wasn’t to sell his daughter. He was tired of no one taking care of him. He wanted to kill Zane in front of her, or sell him so she would suffer every day, but Scalp was to bring her to Bridges.
Scalp should have shot Lana immediately, acquired Breezy and gotten out of there, but he’d been greedy the moment he saw Lana. That wasn’t unusual. Lana had an allure, an appeal that quite a few men found hard to resist. The Swords member thought he could use her, keep her prisoner awhile, and then when he was tired of her, scalp her in his signature way. Scalp had died hard.
Steele moved close to the bed. There was a small lamp on an end table and he put it on the lowest setting so that he could see Breezy. He needed the innocence of her. The brightness of her. He looked down at the smooth expanse of her back. Her hair was braided and twisted up onto her head, presumably to keep her cooler.
He loved the line of her buttocks. The first time he’d ever seen her walking away in a pair of tight jeans, his stomach had dropped, his gut had tightened into knots and his cock had gone to full attention without his order. He’d been so shocked, he almost went after her right at that moment, but then sanity had taken over.
He’d been taught to be cautious, and he’d taken his time watching her. He didn’t think it was possible to really be around Breezy and not fall for her. Not feel that overwhelming emotion that tore him up inside and shredded his heart. He glanced over to the chair where his woman had placed her clothes. They were folded neatly. Perfectly. Her boots were right there against the wall, and he picked them up, frowning. There was a hole in one of them.
Fuck. A hole. He had bought her new clothes and put them in the closet at the new house. He had bought sexy lingerie, because he’d been thinking about himself. He hadn’t thought to buy her shoes. Boots. Walking shoes. She needed all kinds of shoes. She hadn’t said a word to him. They were waiting to ride until the next morning when he could get her some decent boots. He sent out a mass text knowing she wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t give a damn.
They had information. They had phones, and Code was so good at mimicking anyone if calls had to be made. Once Code could see a few lines of text, he could replicate style easily. Those phones gave them access to personal information as well as any nicknames they called one another or anything that they might have between them no one else knew about.
He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots, noting he’d done a good cleaning job. He’d power-sprayed the tread as well as the boot to remove any damning trace of blood. Then he’d made certain to dip the soles in the oxygen bleach the Guns and Skull club had handy. It was a trick they all knew. Regular bleach left behind DNA.
He lined his boots up beside Breezy’s and removed his shirt. It was a new shirt, one he’d packed along with jeans to ensure he could burn his clothes. They all burned their clothes. No one took chances. They made certain those ashes were properly disposed of, just like the burned ashes of the bodies they’d cremated in the underground basement oven the Guns and Skull club had for just this kind of problem. Unlike others, Torpedo Ink cleared the ashes and got rid of them as well. They didn’t believe in leaving any trace behind.
The phones were broken and disposed of in various trash cans over a three-mile radius. The sim cards were dropped in acid and what remained was also disposed of in different trash cans. They were thorough. They had searched for hidden cameras in the building as well as around it and found nothing.
Steele stood up and peeled off his jeans. He’d taken a shower, knowing he would come to Breezy and wanting to do it as clean as possible, not to mention, one couldn’t be riding around in clothes soaked in blood. He’d been s
lick with blood. Blood didn’t bother him. Nothing he did this day or night had bothered him, not when he needed to find his son. Going to Breezy with blood on his hands did.
He sank back down on the bed and ran his hand up her leg. She did something to his insides, twisted and melted them until he sometimes felt he couldn’t think straight. She turned her head at the touch of his hand, her lashes fluttering. Then he was looking into her green eyes and his heart turned over.
“How come, with your past, you’re not seriously fucked-up, woman?” He stroked his palm up her leg, from behind her knee to where the seam of her buttock met her thigh. One finger ran back and forth along that crease.
“I am, silly, or I wouldn’t be even contemplating having a relationship with you, let alone lying naked in this bed waiting for you to come back.”
It was a good answer and probably true. He knew she had major issues when it came to just talking about clubs and their life together in one. She had panic attacks. He leaned down and ran his tongue along that seam between her thigh and her ass just to feel her shiver. Sitting back up, he began to trace the tattoo that ran along the small of her back and dripped down over her buttocks, following the curve of both firm globes.
“When Ink was tatting this, putting my name on you, I thought my world was right. That it always would be because you were mine.” He gave her that because she gave him so much more. He ran the pad of his finger over his name. “I like you belonging to me, Bree. More importantly, I like belonging to you.”
She smiled, and his heart jerked in his chest, matching the way his cock jerked against his stomach.
“Are you going to let me have Ink tattoo Property of Breezy on your ass?”
He contemplated that. “Got your name here, right over my heart, sweetheart, but if that’s what it takes for you to give me your word you aren’t going to run the moment I put our boy in your arms, I’ll give you my word I’ll have that ink on my ass.”