Page 39 of Diesel’s Desire

“Only because it’s you,” she pants. “Only ever you, you asshole⁠—”

“Damn right it’s me.” I snap my hips harder, and her back arches, tits bouncing with the force of it, and I lean down to drag my teeth along her collarbone. “Nobody else gets to touch you like this. Nobody else ever will again.”

“Evan—” Her body goes tight around me, spine bowing, and I feel her clench down hard, milking me toward the edge right along with her. “I’m gonna⁠—”

“Come for me,” I order, thumb finding her clit, circling rough and fast until she shatters, crying out into the dark, and the clench of her finishes me off half a second later—my own release tearing through me on a groan I don’t bother swallowing, hips jerking as I spill deep inside her, both of us shaking against the frame of a bike that’s seen a lot of things but never anything like this.

We stay like that a long minute, breathing hard, her forehead resting against my collarbone, my hand smoothing slow up and down her spine like I can’t quite convince myself she’s real.

20

PENNY

The Wicked Sinners clubhouse looks different in daylight than it did the night of Havoc and Sasha’s wedding, less like a fairy tale and more like exactly what it is—a compound. Gravel lot full of bikes lined up like soldiers at attention, a security camera bolted above the door that I clock without meaning to, old habit dying hard even here. I park my truck at the edge of the lot, not the cruiser, because whatever this is, it isn’t official, and I already know I’m going to lie about where I’ve been if anybody asks.

Sasha meets me at the door before I even knock, wearing jeans and an old Wicked Sinners T-shirt that’s clearly not hers.

“Hey.” She glances past me toward my truck, then back, something careful in her expression that wasn’t there over lunch last week. “Thanks for coming out here instead of the diner.”

“It’s fine.”

She steps back to let me through, and the door swings shut behind me. “Havoc thought it’d be better if we talked here. Not that he doesn’t trust the diner, just—” She shrugs, a little apologetic. “Fewer ears.”

The main room’s mostly empty this time of day, pool table quiet, the bar wiped down and waiting for tonight. It smells like leather and stale beer and something else underneath, cigarette smoke that’s soaked into the walls over the years. I follow her toward a smaller room off the back, and I hesitate when I see who’s already sitting at the table inside.

Jenson, first, silver hair catching the overhead light, hands folded loose in front of him like a man who’s used to being the calmest person in any room he occupies. And Evan, beside him, leaning back in his chair with one boot hooked over his knee, watching me walk in.

“Is it okay,” Sasha says, and there’s a note of apology in it now, “if Havoc and Diesel sit in? I know this is—I know it’s a lot to ask.”

I hesitate. Every rule I’ve ever followed says this is the moment to turn around, walk back out to my truck, drive to the station and forget I ever floated this idea to anybody wearing a cut. But I already crossed that line the second I dialed Sasha’s number, and there’s no clean way to un-cross it now.

In for a penny, in for a pound. My mother used to say that when I was small, usually right before letting me do something she knew was a bad idea because the alternative was worse.

“Fine,” I say. “It’s fine.”

I take the chair across from them, and Evan’s mouth curves, just slightly, something warm passing behind his eyes that I feel in my chest before I can stop it. He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t stand, doesn’t touch my shoulder on the way past, doesn’t do a single thing that would make this room feel like anything other than a business meeting, even though I can see exactly how much he wants to.

I appreciate that more than I expected to. For an outlaw biker who fucked me against an evidence shelf just days ago, he’s turned into a surprisingly respectful man in front of an audience.

He was like that before, too, I remember—before the cut, before the patches, before prospecting swallowed every free hour he had and turned him into somebody who came home with split knuckles instead of homework. He used to open car doors. Used to walk on the traffic side of the sidewalk without anybody asking him to. Some things, apparently, don’t get burned out of a person no matter what they become.

“So.” Jenson leans forward, elbows on the table, watching me closely. “Sasha says you need help with something that’s got your hands tied.”

“That’s one way to put it.” I pull my phone out, set it face-down on the table for now, not ready to show them Addison’s picture yet. “There’s a missing six-year-old. Addison Miller. Six days now.”

“We heard,” Jenson says quietly.

“What you haven’t heard is that she’s not the first.” I lay it out the way I laid it out in my own head last night—Emily Doss, Callie Whitfield, Maren Pruitt, all of them gone between four and seven days, all of them found alive, all of them coming home wearing something new nobody in the family bought them. “Every single case got closed inside forty-eight hours of the kid being found. Vague explanations. Parents who sound relieved on paper and terrified in the actual transcripts.”

Jenson’s expression doesn’t change, but something in the room does, a stillness settling over the table that wasn’t there before.

“And you think it’s Pemberton,” he says. Sasha clearly shared everything about our phone call.

I take a deep breath. “I think every one of those families owes him something. Rent, a job, a note on their house. I don’t think those three connections are a coincidence.” I flatten my palm against the table like I can pin the thought down there. “I took it to Morris. He shut me down before I got two sentences out. Told me if I went near Pemberton, I’d end my career and probably his whole department along with it.”

“He’s not wrong,” Jenson says.

My back straightens. “Excuse me?”