Wings rolls off the bed, striding towards me with a shake of his head. “Fuck fun.” He wraps his arms around me from behind, nuzzling into the back of my neck. “I’m sorry I dumped all that on you tonight. And you know I just want to be with you, butterfly.”
I nod, even though there’s a niggling worry in the back of my mind. Wings is a born-and-bred Iron Flyer, and unlike me, he’s always going to want a connection to the club. I thought I could keep our two worlds separate, but am I being selfish for making him split his loyalties between us?
He presses a soft kiss on my scent gland, and I’m not sure if he’s admiring my scent or his talent with his tattoo gun. “Why don’t you grab a shower, and I'll make you a grilled cheese?”
I melt back against him, sighing at how good it feels to be in his arms. I’d almost bend a knee to Ark if it meant that Wings could be mine, without the shadow of the club hanging over us all the time. “You know all my guilty pleasures.”
He gives a rueful chuckle. “As long as my big mouth is one of them.”
I turn in his arms, everything else fading away as I focus on his lips. Like always, I’m completely under their spell, and I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “How about you put that big mouth back on my neck and we see how things go from there?”
Chapter Two: ABBIE
We make slow, perfect love until dawn, only stopping once to cook and eat that grilled cheese Wings promised me. He might not have a knot, but he stays hard inside me for so long, sometimes it feels like we're fused together. When we finally fall asleep, I’m too tired to dream, and I wake up to the smell of coffee wafting under my nose. Wings is already dressed and I pout at the sight of his Iron Flyers’ cut. “You have to go?”
“I’m heading to Williamstown to drop off a bike.” He sets the coffee cup on the nightstand and sinks beside me. “You gonna be okay? I’ll be back tonight. Midnight at the latest.”
“I have a shift from three, remember.”
“Ah, shit.”
This is one of the downsides of our split lives. Coordinating our calendars is an ongoing challenge. “You’ve got your key, though. Be here when I get off? We might only have a couple of hours before you head back to the club, but I promise to make them worth it.”
He grins and nuzzles his tattoo on my throat. “I’ll take every second I can get.”
Once I’m up and dressed, I decide to head to the dojo for asparring session with my sensei, Kate. She’s in her late fifties and as well as being a retired army major, she’s been practicing Shorin-Ryu for over two decades. She wears the black and red belt of therokudan, or sixth-degree black belt, which also happens to go perfectly with her sharp burgundy bob. She’s an expert teacher, combining her mastery of the art with the brutal practicality of an ex-soldier, and she never fails to push me to my limits. We practice advanced sparring, known askumite, at least twice a week, focusing on tactical strategy, controlling our opponent's pressure, and reacting quickly to any situation.
It emphasizes fast, combat-oriented techniques, like rapid movement, body shifting, and precise striking to vital points, and I usually feel completely wired into my body during these sessions. Today, I’m all arms and legs, and my frustration quickly bubbles to the surface. “Your focus is off,” Kate says as she steps back. “Take a break.”
I grimace, but I know she’s right, retreating to the corner of the dojo to grab my water bottle. I’m wiping the poorly earned sweat off my face when she walks over, hands on her hips. “What's up, Abbie?”
“Old ghosts,” I reply, then sigh, because I know it’s not an acceptable excuse. I’ve been attending this dojo for over two years, and I know that if I want to progress beyond a student, I need to own my actions. “Some stuff has just got into my head, but I’ll do better.”
Kate is unimpressed, as expected of a teacher of her level. “You’re here to learn, not dwell on the past.”
“I know. I honestly thought coming here would help me shake it off.”
“It will, just not today.” She gives a pointed look at the door, signaling an end to our session. “Remember that ghosts are like grudges, Abbie. They both get heavier the longer you haul their asses around.”
I smirk as I gather up my things. “Very profound, sensei.”
She snorts as she heads towards her office. “You want pretty lies, buy a fortune cookie.”
As bad as I feel about the aborted training session, I manage to have a productive shift at the clinic, including getting funding approval for Kaylee to attend the New Dawn boardinghouse. I head home in a more positive mood, but it quickly sours when I open the door to an empty apartment. There’s only the faintest trace of Wings’ scent in the air, and I drift aimlessly around for a while, the disappointment settling heavily into my bones. I check my phone again, just in case I missed a message, but his last text was hours ago. He’s on his Williamstown trip, which means he’s probably traveling with a couple of club members, but he always finds a quiet moment to wish me goodnight.
I spend a restless night tossing and turning, then drag myself through my shift the next day. The silent phone in my pocket eats into my concentration, and I have a pounding headache by the time I head home. The evening is a rinse and repeat of the last, and I toss and turn in my lonely bed until I need to return to the clinic at six am. I help out with a couple of emergencies, but the shift passes so slowly it feels like I’m crawling through glue.
When I finally hear Wings’ voice, I’m in the middle of discharging a patient, and I have to look twice because it doesn’t sound like him at all.
He’s brought in on a stretcher, but he’s fighting it, trying to roll off despite the nurses flanking him on both sides. His eyes are wide with distress as he argues thathe can walk, thathe’s fine, and thathe doesn’t need anyone holding his goddamn hand. But he has sweated through his clothes and there’s a graze on his cheek, red raw like road rash. I assume the worst. It’s a spill at high speed. A stunt gone wrong.A collision withsomething– a tree, a dog, a goddamn driver who never checks his mirrors -until I glance at his neck and see the bite on his throat.
It’s only then that I fully comprehend the man standing next to him. Alpha, six-two, his arms corded in defined muscle, like a boxer. He’s olive skinned, maybe Latino, with razored hair, high cheekbones, and pale green eyes. Like Wings, he’s wearing dark jeans and a faded tee, and he smells like a mixture of road sweat, citrus, and alpha musk.
“Who the hell are you?” I don’t actually need him to confirm his name. It’s stitched right there on his fucking Iron Flyers cut. PITT. “Did you do this to him?”
His winter grass eyes snap to my throat. “Thank fuck. You're butterfly?” His voice is low and rough, like it’s grinding through gears. “He kept talking about you.”
I curl my lip at him. It might say Sergeant-at-Arms on his cut, but there’s no way Wings has been blabbing about me to this stranger. “I seriously doubt that.”
