It was a low move after the trauma I’d already endured and both Danner, who held his partner back with an arm and a glare, and King, reacted. My man bared his teeth and declared, “This conversation is over. Cressida is concussed and she has a fuckin’ fractured jaw. Asking her to talk to you in this condition is physically painful for her.”
The pain in my jaw was nothing compared to the pain in my hands, but I was done with the conversation so I allowed King to pull me to my feet and I followed him when he grabbed his bag and started for the door.
The cops let us go but I could hear Danner murmuring to Gibson to let us be. I was grateful to him because exhaustion hit me like a physical blow as we stepped into the fresh air. Thankfully, King had thought ahead and my car was waiting for us instead of his bike. We were silent on the ride home, mostly because I slept.
He took us to the compound but I didn’t question him. Truthfully, I was happy he’d made that decision. I was still shaken and I liked the idea of being on the compound, one of the safest places in BC if not the world.
“No one else is here except for my dad, Bat and Buck. They’re in the garage and I need to take you to them before I put you to bed,” King said as he let me out of the car.
My intuition prickled. “You have him, don’t you?”
King’s full lips thinned. “Yeah.”
I nodded. “I take it he isn’t in the kitchen drinkin’ tea with the guys?”
“No, babe, he isn’t.”
I sighed, not sure how I felt about my brother being held at the hands of The Fallen, however badly he may have betrayed me.
“If he hadn’t called us, I don’t know if we would have found you,” King told me as he closed the passenger door and swung me up on the hood of the car.
He stepped between the legs I spread for him and one of his hands found its place at my neck. His thumb reached around to rub at the taped-together blade wound just under the midline of my throat.
“He called?” I asked to pull King out of his memories and ‘what ifs.’
He nodded. “He called just after you were taken. We knew because Benny Bonanno spotted you getting hit over the head at the gas station and called Tayline who called me. We’d barely begun to mobilize with no fuckin’ idea where to look when your fuckin’ brother calls me, tells me the Nightstalkers got you and they’re takin’ you to a warehouse off the highway behind the gas station at the base of the mountains.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked because I didn’t have one clue how to process the information.
“That’s what I need you to find out. We got him here, babe, for two reasons. The man’s got to pay for fuckin’ with The Fallen but more, for fuckin’ with our Queen. And we need to know what the fuck kind of game he was playing. We roughed him up but he won’t talk, he says, unless it’s to you.”
He stared at me hard and long, his pale gaze burrowing to the heart of me. I wondered, probably because I was high on painkillers, if he found a mirror there that reflected his face back at him.
“I’m not patchin’ in. I meant what I said to you when I was in the clink. But, babe, this is my fuckin’ world and one day, I’m gonna rule it. I need you to know what you’re getting into if you take me on.” He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine. “Can’t lose you, won’t lose you, but I don’t know if I can walk away from my brothers, especially after what they just did to get you home to me.”
“I don’t want you to,” I admitted softly, pressing my own hand to the back of his neck in mimicry of his habit. “When you were lying there about to take a bullet to the head, I swore that I would kill anyone and anything that got in the way of you living, or you being in my arms every single day for the rest of our lives. It was awful but I meant it. I know I’ve told you a thousand times that I’m not the kind of woman who can deal with the MC life but I think I was wrong. Or, even if I wasn’t, I want to be that woman for you, with you. The rough and tumble Queen to your biker King.”
His smile nearly took my sight, it was so dazzling, but I kept my eyes on it, glaring happily into the sun, uncaring if it blinded me.