“They destroyed it.”
I shrugged. “Just made a mess is all.”
She began to pick through the stuff, looking completely devastated. “I can’t believe this.”
I leaned against the door, closing it, and crossed my arms. “Find your laptop. We don’t want to be here.”
“Ford, they went through my stuff.”
“I know they did. But hurry. We have to go.”
She moved through the space in a daze, like she was shell-shocked or something. She went into her bedroom and came out a minute or two later with her laptop.
“They didn’t take anything,” she said.
“Probably don’t have what they were looking for.”
“And what’s that?”
“No clue, sweetheart. But we better roll.”
She nodded silently and followed me back out. I kept my gun ready until we were back at my bike.
The devastation in her apartment had clearly shaken her. She held on tight as hell as we sped back toward my house.
Frankly, it was bugging me, too. Why would they toss over her apartment searching for something? She was just a witness to a murder. I couldn’t imagine they’d need anything she had other than her actual self. So why not just sit in her place and wait for her to come back to grab her?
Unless they knew we were protecting her. That was pretty likely since Larkin wasn’t being shy about broadcasting that fact to all the other clubs in the area. Maybe it was just a warning message to her, meant to scare the shit out of her.
If that was the case, I guessed it had worked. She’d been white as a sheet as we’d left her apartment. What had happened with her friend probably seemed like a distant, bad dream, and everything after like some crazy story happening to someone else. But seeing her apartment like that, well, maybe it had made her reflect on things.
We made our way back to my place and were climbing off my bike fifteen minutes later. The relative seclusion of my house had always made it seem so much safer, but I pulled out my gun anyway, making sure nobody was around.
My door was intact. I unlocked it and pushed inside, and the place looked fine.
“Safe,” I said to her.
“Really think they’d come for me here?”
“Can’t say, honestly. We should try to be safe at least.”
She nodded. “What now?”
I shrugged. “Get yourself settled. We’ll have to head back to the clubhouse in a couple hours for your little meeting with Jetter.”
She nodded and disappeared into my bedroom.
I walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer, cracking it open and taking a long pull. I hadn’t bargained for her taking over my whole damn place. I sat down on my couch slash bed and stared at the wall, thinking and drinking.
She came out a few minutes later, got a beer from the refrigerator, and sat down next to me on the couch. We sat there in silence, drinking together. I looked at her from the corner of my eye and noticed her staring blankly ahead of her. I loved the way her lips parted slightly just before bringing the can to her mouth.
I wanted to crush my body against hers. I wanted to press her down onto the couch and strip her clothes off slowly, make her watch me as I licked her pussy until she screamed. I wanted to fuck her deep, slow, and then rough and rougher. God, I got so fucking hard just sitting there thinking about bending her over the couch and fucking her tight pussy.
I wanted to make her mine. Yeah, I’d fucking claimed her, but she wasn’t mine until I got every inch of that sweet cunt.
I wasn’t doing anything to hide my growing bulge. She glanced at me and I grinned at her.
“Seeing my apartment like that,” she said, “that made it more real.”
“Wasn’t real before?”
“I don’t know. I guess it was. But that proved people are really after me.”
“Good,” I said. “You’re beginning to get it then.”
“What’s going to happen to me? How long do I have to keep hiding?”
“Don’t know,” I said honestly. “For as long as it takes for all this shit to blow over.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
I laughed, taking a long pull on my beer. “Believe me, princess, it always blows over.”
“But how can you know?”
I looked at her, grinning wickedly. “I’ve been here before. Been in a war before. Shit like this comes up, we deal with it, and soon enough something else comes up.”
“So I’m just one more annoying bump in the road for you guys?”
“Not to me,” I said. “My bike crushes bumps in the road. But you, I want to keep you around.”
“Why are you doing all of this?”
“You keep asking that,” I said, “but it should be obvious.”
“You feel guilty about what happened between us.”
I laughed an angry, rueful laugh. “Nothing for me to feel guilty about.”