Page 90 of That Girl is Trouble

Tucker grumbles and pulls himself out, then trudges back towards red castle.

When I look back up, Axe is gone.

Gritting my teeth and arming myself with a plastic ball, I turn to Harper. “When I yell for you to go, you go, all right?”

She nods, and I start the climb up. Axe is quickly on me, reaching to break my grip on the ladder and send me flying, but I toss my ball hard in his face, and he rears back. It’s only for a moment, but it’s long enough that I get inside.

Dalton is sitting cross-legged in the corner, smiling, face covered in chocolate, hand buried in a box of Milk Duds, and wrists loosely bound with blue flagging tape. Another flash of blue catches in my periphery. The flag. Wrapped around the nearest window flap. Victory is within reach.

I lunge for it, but Axe cuts me off, throwing me a wickedly dark smile.

“Got two options, Kitty. Surrender and submit to your kings, or I pick your pretty ass up and chuck you out of here. Either way, I win.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Only one person will be submitting today, Donovan, and it won’t be me.”

Chuckling, he says, “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Axe grabs for me, but I dodge him and leap at the flag, only to be caught around the waist and ripped away. He pulls me to the edge, but I turn in his arms and snake my legs tight around his. We both go down, and I twist us towards the back slide that leads down to the pit. He grunts as I dig my fist into his stomach, and when he lets up, I plunge us down the slide, sacrificing myself and him to the foam abyss.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

I wrench up from the pit and jump on him, pushing his head down into the foam and sitting on his chest. On the other side of the pit, Graves is being tackled by Lucas and Eli, one on his back, the other hanging off his bicep. Graves laughs as he works to pull them off, but he’s heavily distracted, which means it’s time to go.

“Now, Harper!” I yell.

She immediately heeds my command. She climbs and climbs, her blond pigtails swaying as she jumps into blue base and disappears. Axe’s hands are on my hips, and he struggles to flip me as we both flail and fight for dominance in the pit. I manage to stand, but Axe’s body connects with mine once again, and this time, the force of the blow knocks us both into the border of the bouncy kingdom, flipping us over the inflatable wall and outside its soft, comfortable boundary.

I land hard on the mat covering the gym floor, the breath expelling from my lungs in a quick huff as Axe practically crushes me to death.

“Asshole,” I mutter as I try and move beneath him.

He only laughs, and his laugh is just so… easy. There are no sharp lines today. No frown. No cold, harsh eyes. Axe is relaxed. Happy. It’s rare to see him like this. The hard-faced leader of the most notoriously dangerous biker gang this side of the prairies as soft as the foam pit I was just thrown out of.

Remembering Harper and her quest for the flag, I attempt to shove him off, but his grip tightens on my hips, and he pulls me into a kiss. And god, the kiss.

It’s anything but soft.

A ferocious, needy, soul-touching, heart-stopping, my panties are getting wetter by the second kind of kiss. Hidden from the world, sandwiched between bouncy land and the gym wall, he kisses me hard and deep and like he can do it any time he damn well pleases.

His hand wanders to my ass, and he squeezes tight, the chafe of my jeans painful against my still-sore skin. I whimper into his mouth, part discomfort and part memory of last night, of him and his belt and the marks he left on me.

“Kitty,” he growls, ripping away from my lips. “You keep making sounds like that, and I’ll be searching for a place to get you naked.”

A loud cheer echoes from the far side of bouncy land, and I pull in a sharp breath as I give Axe a big push and throw him off me, springing up so I can get a look over the wall.

“Yes!” I squeal as I throw a fist in the air.

My little crew of warriors all whoop in victory as they wave a blue flag over their heads from red base. I grin at Axe triumphantly. Despite the loss, he shakes his head and grins back.

I bound over the wall and start the trek through the foam and back towards my minions, who’ve all moved to the exit and have started what looks like a celebration dance involving a few slightly obscene gestures from the older kids. That earns me a couple disapproving looks from the parents still hovering around the inflatables. These are, after all, for kids, and the place has essentially been commandeered by four adults for the last hour or so. Two of which are mean faced, tattooed, and wearing Sinner cuts, and three of which take Capture the Flag very fucking seriously.

“Another round?” Tucker asks me as he throws me a high five.

I’m about to give him a big hell yeah, but then I catch more eyes on us—angry parents ushering their very small children into bouncy land now that it’s free from bikers and roughhousing child soldiers armed with foam weapons.

“Think that might’a been our last rodeo, kiddo,” I tell him.

His shoulders slump, but I quickly straighten my spine and throw him a two-finger salute.

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