Page 48 of Savage Lust

The final pop of my exhaust echoed across the valley as I cut the bike off. Ahead of me, Merc was already hopping off his and shrugging out of his cut. The clubhouse was empty. The only sound was the hum from the flickering neon signage that hung on the sun-faded brick.

I followed him, hanging my leather on the back of a chair as we worked in silence, changing into a Rocky’s HVAC t-shirt.

“I’m driving.” He snatched the keys off the table right as Preacher’s text rolled through on my phone. I rubbed at the hairs that prickle up the back of my neck and made the place behind my ear itch.

Be there in half an hour.

“Preacher?” Merc asked, before locking the clubhouse door behind us.

When I cut him a sideways look, he chuckled and fired up the work van. “He’s not about to let that shit go.”

Preacher probably thought he could intimidate the youngest Ukrainian into selling weapons to the rednecks. “Or maybe he’s going to make a play over his head?”

Merc’s skeptic, sideways glance said everything. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Nope.” Ky wasn’t someone to fuck around with. Sure, he looked slick and clean—but I wouldn’t turn my back on him.

The van rattled over a pothole. The entire cab smelled like old copper. But there was nothing in the back except a few empty freon jugs that would rattle in their rack at every pothole we hit. We’d made this trip so many times in the last eighteen months I could almost pretend I was working on air conditioners from nine to five for a crummy pension.

And going home to a woman like her…

Something like fear jerked me upright before I settled into the passenger seat. My hands were sweaty, my mouth dry, and even the cool air blasting from the vents was blistering against my skin. I’d never expected to see my thirtieth birthday. Now I imagined a normal life with a woman I had no right to.

“You thinking the Preacher shit is going to go sideways?”

It could, but that wasn’t why I suddenly felt like I was going to hurl.

“Nah.” I lit a cigarette and despised the trembling of my fingers.

“Archer?” There were very few people who knew what I’d done, that knew the dark shit that lived in my past. Not that Merc would call me on it. He had his own in spades, but he understood what losing Archer meant to me.

When I didn’t answer, his tone changed, surprised. “Something with the girl?”

The smoke curled out of the window when I cracked it. I focused on those gray swirls, settling myself, much like tracing burns in the carpet, gave me something to focus on when Mom would shoot up. That memory was a reminder of all the reasons I could never have a normal life with anyone, much less Riley.

Because then I remembered the years that followed, the darkness that lingered there.

I’d seen too much shit.Done too much shit.

We turned off the highway well before the bright lights of the strip.

When I’d met Merc, he’d just been Jace. AP’s kid, the only one around close to my age. We were friends from the jump. Ride or die before our sixteenth birthdays. Underneath the dark beard and shaggy hair was a loyal bastard who tolerated zero bullshit.

Jace Merrick knew me almost as good as I knew myself.

“Don’t know.” I took a drag and tapped the ashes over the edge of the glass. “I’m still working it out.” Translation: I’d tell him when I had something to tell.

“Might want to let her know if you aren’t playing for keeps.”

When I snarled at him and ditched the cigarette, he rolled his eyes and snorted a laugh. “It’s all connected. Archer’s gone, you’re marking territory everywhere she goes, and pissing Preacher off. Let me know if I need to hop off this Savage train of self-sabotage.”

Never failed that when he really wanted to have an opinion on shit, it was something I didn’t want to fucking hear. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it?”

I thought for a minute. “Fuck. I can’t explain that shit either.”

He didn’t push and for a long time we rode in silence, just endless moonlit highway broken up here or there by passing headlights in the opposite lane.

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