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“No,” she sneers back at me in a mocking tone. “It’s not all right. I told you multiple times already that I don’t know anything, and I’m not interested in digging out anything. Haven’t you heard? No means no.”
My jaw clenches, and I can feel the tension radiating off Ace, only a few feet behind me. I take another step forward, not to intimidate her, but I’m hoping my proximity will lower her mile-high defenses. “If we don’t cut this war off at the pass, it will affect all of us. Including you.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a fact. Cyrus has probably already told Nogales that I came to your rescue at the shop this morning.”
“You came to my rescue?” She lets out a hysterical laugh that tells me she’s starting to realize the situation here. “You showed up to buy breakfast. You just have the world’s most terrible timing.”
I shrug. “That’s not how he’ll see it or tell it to Nogales. You want to paint all bikers with the same brush, Maven? Fine, go right ahead, but let me tell you that Nogales is a crazy motherfucker. He won’t hesitate to firebomb your shit just because it might hurt us. He’ll hurt you and Willow and do terrible fucking things to you just to show that he can. You’re in this already whether you want to believe it or not.”
I try my best to even out my breathing because this woman riles me up like no other. She’s stubborn, and as much as I dig it, right now, it's fucking annoying. And dangerous.
“You think you can scare me?”
“If you’re not scared, you’re stupid,” Ace growls from behind me. “You think we’d be here otherwise?”
Maven scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest in a protective gesture that tells me she’s afraid. “You want information, and you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”
“You believe that?”
I know she believes it, and after her encounter with the Iron Kings last night and her boyfriend’s seemingly overnight change, which she no doubts attributes to his time spent with bikers, I can’t blame her. But I need to hear her say it.
“Yeah, Wilder,” she nods to emphasize her point. “I really do believe that.”
“Good,” I growl and close the last two feet of distance between us. “Then this won’t surprise you,” I tell her and bend my legs to dip down and put my shoulder in her stomach, flipping her over my shoulder to carry her back to the truck.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Put me down!”
“Sorry, babe, you gave us no choice.” I give her a smack on the ass to settle her, and the little gasp she lets out makes my cock twitch. “We’re not gonna hurt you, I promise.”
“Yeah, and right now you’re kidnapping me, so excuse me if your word means nothing to me.” She kicks her legs so hard I have to hold them close to my body to avoid any real damage, but her hands ball into fists and pummel the back of my thighs and my ass.
“I never promised not to kidnap you, honey. I thought you’d realize we only want to help, both your business and ours. Silly me, I thought you’d be reasonable,” I tell her as Ace opens the back passenger door of his truck, and I sit her inside.
“Reasonable! This is your idea of reasonable?”
“Not at all.” I grin at her and slide in beside her, using my hips to scoot her over enough that I can sit. “This is my response to your unreasonable response to my perfectly reasonable request.”
Ace slams the door and jumps in the passenger seat with Joaquin behind the wheel.
“Hit it, kid,” Ace tells him, and like the young buck he is, Joaquin squeals the tires and takes off out of the quiet, residential neighborhood.
I drop a hand on Maven’s thigh and give it a sympathetic squeeze. “This will all be over soon, I promise. You tell us what you know, and we’ll make sure you and your business stay safe if and when this war happens. All right?” It’s a promise I’ll keep even if she doesn’t believe it.
“Whatever,” she grumbles, but she doesn’t remove my hand from her thigh.
And neither do I.
Chapter Seven
Maven
My heart is racing like crazy as I sit inside a locked room at what looks like the Reckless Souls’ headquarters. I can’t stay still for even a second. My body needs to move to burn off some of this nervous energy, this fear that’s welling up inside of me.
One second, I’m watching my favorite astronaut show on one of the many streaming services I subscribe to. I didn’t get rid of them when life with Cyrus gave me more of a social life, and now without him, I had a whole season to catch up on. The damn doorbell rang, and now I’m here, a hostage inside something that looks like a biker stash house.
And worse than my fear is the audacity of these guys who think they can just snatch me from my home as if they have the fucking right! I’m shaking with indignity at their behavior, but make no mistake, just underneath the indignation lies the fear of what they will do to me.
