“When I’m feeling like this, one isn’t going to do. Besides”—he sent her a wicked grin—“I need them, so you can see them from every angle when you’re busy.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re getting out of hand, Steele. Once we get Zane and get back home, I’m going to have to take you in hand.”
He pretended to think about it, then shook his head. “I don’t mind a hand job, babe, but I prefer your mouth. I’m not saying I’d turn it down, but . . .”
She punched his arm. “Everything is about sex to you.”
“Isn’t it with you?”
She laughed softly. “Only when I’m around you. I think it’s contagious then.” She turned in his arms, facing the window. “It’s really beautiful here, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Does it feel like home to you? You were born in New Orleans.”
She shook her head. “The only good times I associate with this place are from the year I was with you. Everything else was just learning to keep my head down and see what was going on around me so I could figure out what Bridges was going to want before he did. I wanted to go to school.”
There was longing in her voice that Steele was certain she hadn’t intended to show him. “Were you ever in school?”
“He’d put me in and then yank me out, even when I was really young. He liked being waited on, and if I wasn’t around to get him his beer, he’d fly into a rage. I was fortunate in that I learned to read early on so I could do the schooling at home. There was a teacher who would come in to work with me once a week. He was afraid of Bridges, and that was never a good thing. Eventually Bridges couldn’t help but taunt him, and the teacher stopped coming.”
“How old were you?”
“Probably seven or eight. I don’t know how Bridges managed to get a teacher to come to our home or the club and for the state to allow it.”
“You come from a very wealthy family with a lot of pull.” He indicated the mansion situated a few acres from them. Fortunately, the two houses were located on the same rise, so even though it was a good distance away, they could see it. “My guess is, when your father wants something, he makes his demands, just the way Boone does. The family is old-school, traditional, and has old money. They don’t want a scandal. Boone joined a motorcycle club. Not just any club, but an outlaw club. Bridges followed suit. The family probably gives them whatever they want to stay away.”
She nodded. “He never brought me here or told me much about my grandparents or great-grandparents. What I did know, I pieced together. His mother is worse than his father. At least he acted like she was; he scared me every time he talked about her.”
“That place screams money. Code said it’s valued at over four million. Here, in this area, that’s a lot of bank for an estate.” He nuzzled the top of her head, his fingers linked tightly just under her breasts. “Would you want to come back here to live, instead of living in California? It’s cold there at times.”
She shook her head. “I loved the coast. It seemed wild and I remember thinking I wished I could stay.”
“It was very cold in Russia, where we were. The heat here was stifling for all of us. The coast in Caspar is much more moderate, and we’ve been able to adapt. Thank you for giving me a chance, Bree. I know it won’t be easy, but I’ll do my best to make things good for you.”
“I know you will. I want to be with you, Steele.”
They both watched as Savage came into sight, moving around the bikes to the beat-up truck Transporter had chosen to bring with them. Savage pulled open the back door and reached inside to take a hold of Zane’s car seat and tug at it, making certain it was snug and properly bolted down.
Breezy looked up at Steele. “They are different, aren’t they? The club? He’s making sure that the seat is safe for Zane.”
“We’re different, Bree, but we aren’t saints. That truck is a rocket. If we need a fast getaway with Zane, we want that seat not to move.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder, and his cock stirred. It wasn’t his cock that got to him with its reaction to her. It was his heart. He had a strange fluttery sensation, a curious melting. She did things physically to him that were impossible from a purely scientific standpoint.
“What’s he like? I was always afraid of both Reaper and Savage. Reaper joined within a month or two after Czar and Savage showed up with him. In all the time they rode with the Swords, I never said one word to them, not even when I was yours. I was more afraid of them then I was any Swords member, even Donk.”
“You have good instincts, better than most of the Swords. They’re phantoms when it comes to killing, in and out and no one ever knows they were there. For big men, they walk softly and they can get into places you’d never suspect. Savage is edgy, difficult to predict. He’s nearly impossible to defeat when he’s fighting with his fists or his feet. I’ve never actually seen him defeated. We don’t let him kill anyone when he’s in a ring, but it’s always close. I’ll admit, it’s brutally cool, but equally as scary to watch.”
“You admire him.”
“Yeah, I do.” He did. Savage was implacable when he set on a course. No one got away from him. He’d been one of the top assassins Sorbacov had had. The most elite among the elite.
“And you worry about him.”
He glanced down at her again. She was right. He did. They all did. Sorbacov and his “instructors” had twisted all of them, but Savage, with his good looks, had been a favorite, and they’d really twisted him. He was the most damaged of all of them, and there was no cure for the years and years of the kind of sexual torture and abuse their instructors had used to shape the boy into the kind of man they’d wanted. Each of them had been shaped by those years, and no amount of counseling was going to overcome their needs. What seemed natural and right to them was considered deviant in society—or so they were learning.
“Yeah, baby,” he conceded softly. “I do worry about him. The things they did to him and made him do were cruel beyond anything they did to others. They wanted him to be like they were, I don’t mean with a penchant for children, because he wouldn’t go there, none of us did, but for other things.”
He swept his hand down the soft thickness of her hair. There was comfort in that simple movement
when the days and nights of his childhood were too close.
“Honey, I know this is hard for you. I didn’t realize, because I had no way of knowing about the terrible things you had to endure as children, but . . .”
“Zane is our son, Breezy. Ours together. We made him, from you and me. The club views him as theirs as well. We’re all family. Family takes care of family no matter how bad it is or what the cost to us personally is. If you belonged to Savage, and Zane was his child, I’d be right here, and so would everyone else. That’s what we do. We’re Torpedo Ink, and that is Torpedo Ink.”
Steele knew that Breezy’s fear of clubs was so ingrained in her that she would have to have that affirmation over and over again. He didn’t mind reassuring her often, now that he was aware of her issue. She had to reassure him that she loved him, so much so that she was willing to let him have photographs of them when he fucked her . . . That brought him up short. He didn’t “fuck” Breezy. It had never been that for him. He hadn’t known what it was, but it wasn’t that. He hoped she felt the difference just the way he did whenever he touched her.
She rubbed the back of her head against his chest. “Maestro and Keys watch over you the way Reaper and Savage have always watched over Czar. I noticed it even then, when you all rode with the Swords. They were never far from you. Most of the time, the members were close. Bridges used to be angry that he couldn’t be in the little ‘pussy clique,’ as he referred to you. He said you were pussy magnets and everyone considered all of you badass and were afraid of you. He wanted into that circle.”
Steele had known that about Bridges. All of them knew it. Steele had maintained a distant but friendly relationship with the man because he’d wanted Breezy and he had a plan to get her. He’d maneuvered Bridges into a position of offering her. He hadn’t wanted Bridges to know he was gone on her, that would have given the man too much power. As it was, in the year before Bridges had made the offer, Steele had beat the shit out of thirty-seven of the club members just for thinking about going there. Word had gotten around, that although Steele didn’t go near her, he used his fists on anyone who approached Bridges about her.