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I wanted to be a soft place for him to land.
Maybe that was cheesy and romantic.
But it was how I felt.
And if there was one thing I knew in life, it was that what you felt was leaps and bounds more important than what others might think.
So I was going to give it a try.
Just one more time.
My head shifted to the clock, seeing it was well past five in the morning.
Okay.
I would try again after a few hours of sleep.SIXReeveFuck fuck fucking fuck.
My fist slammed down on the wheel as I cut the engine, my head slamming back into the rest.
That was exactly what I needed not to happen.
I needed never to know what her lips tasted like, what her body felt like against mine, what the sound of her moans did to me.
I needed never to know that shit.
Because it was making it hard to be noble, to do the right thing, to keep my ass at the compound, and not turn around and drive right back to her place, grab her, drag her to the bed, and try to forget why it was a horrible idea.
I know I was being that guy.
Everyone hated that guy.
The supposedly self-sacrificing one.
The one who believed himself too damaged to be with someone, so he pushed everyone away.
But anyone who thought that about me clearly just didn't know dick about what they were talking about.
I wasn't some pussy with 'trust issues' with the fairer sex.
It wasn't surface like that.
Guys who pulled those lines deserved the derision they would get from everyone around them.
Someone dicked you over? Welcome to life, bud. Man the fuck up, process it, and move past it.
This wasn't that.
This wasn't surface.
This was deep.
Deeper than anyone around me would likely even guess.
And I earned the right to use my past as a shield.
Because I barely fucking made it through it.
Both literally and figuratively.
With a growl, I threw open my door, taking a bit of comfort in the bite of the cold on my exposed bits of skin, finding it somewhat grounding, oddly reassuring.
My head tilted up to the roof, seeing the glass room that was so unique to The Henchmen. My eyes locked on Roan's who seemed to be waiting for me to arrive. His chin jerked, his version of a greeting. But then he raised a hand, fingers waving me up to him.
With furrowed brows, I moved into the compound, finding two chicks passed out on the couch, bottles and glasses all around. Sugar, Virgin, and Roderick were still young and single. They partied. Chicks and booze were commonplace in the compound these days.
I almost missed the lull that had been around back when Reign and the older members were too shellshocked and paranoid to allow strangers inside.
But, I guess, life must march on. Bikers must have liquor and clubwhores. That was just the way of things.
I went down to the basement, climbing up the ladder toward the roof, finding Roan already waiting for me.
"How'd it go?" he asked, almost seeming antsy, something that was completely uncharacteristic of him.
"Same as usual. Dead. Left around four. Found a fucking raccoon and had to get it to someone to take care of it."
"Something is up," he said, almost cutting off my words to get his own out.
There was no mistaking it now that I looked closer. It was in his fisted hands, in the tightness of his jaw, in the painful perfection of his posture. He was freaked. And if someone as calm in the face of, well, anything as Roan was freaked, it was time for the rest of us to worry.
"Did you see something?"
"Feel something," he corrected, turning, looking off into the night, seeming to see more than I could. Superhuman eyes, that was what he had. Maybe it came from years of doing this. His eyes adapted in ways mine hadn't yet. "It's in the air."
See, I didn't have a criminal past, the previous few years excluded. I didn't have that sixth sense that some of the men seemed to have, something that made it possible for men like Sugar and Virgin to predict a bar fight before it happened when we went out, or the way Reign would go inexplicably on-edge for a few days before we got word that shit went down among some other syndicates in the area. And I sure as shit didn't have Roan's spy mojo. I figured that if you spent your life trying to keep it from getting around that you were not who you said you were, it gave you a keen ability to just sense when something was going to turn to hell.
"Any idea what it is?" I asked, not sure what I was supposed to say here.
"Nah," he said, reaching up to run his hand over his beard. "That's the problem. Can't say shit 'cause I haven't seen shit. Reign might trust a gut instinct, but he isn't going to go for unsubstantiated hysteria about some unknown boogyman."
