Fire Inside: A Chaos Novel (6 page)

My life
stunk.

Every bit of it.

Therefore, I started crying and did it like I did just about everything. I let it all hang out and thus, got lost in it.

This meant, when a hand curled warm and tight around the back of my neck and I heard Hop mutter, “Jesus, baby, what the fuck?” I jumped a foot, screamed a little bit as my head flew up.

He was crouched in front of me, staring at me with his usual intensity but there was more, a lot more, and all of that was about concern.

When my head came up, his hand didn’t move. It tightened.

Warm.

Warm and sweet.

Do… not… process, Lanie!

I stared at him.

Then I blurted, “What are you doing here?”

“Wallet fell out of my jeans,” he muttered, his eyes holding mine in a way that, even if I had it in me to try, which I didn’t, I couldn’t break contact. “Now, what the fuck?” he asked.

“What the fuck, what?” I asked back, trying for innocence. And failing.

His eyes narrowed. It was a little bit scary. Then they dropped to the phone in my hand and came back to mine.

“You’re crying.” He pointed out the obvious.

“Uh… I do that, like, for no reason. You know, like Holly Hunter in
Broadcast News?
I just cry but, unlike her, I don’t do it at my desk at work. I do it at night, um… alone.”

He stared at me.

He didn’t believe me. This was wise since I was lying.

“It’s just a release.” I kept lying.

“You gotta wrap your hand around a phone when you do it?” he semi-called me on my lie.

“Wrong number,” I lied again, and his eyes stayed narrowed but this time his hand tightened a bit on my neck.

“At midnight,” he stated, not hiding he didn’t believe me.

“Someone at a party,” I told him (lying). “They asked for Cheese Whiz.” More lying. “It’s the munchies hour.” This wasn’t a lie, exactly. It was the munchies hour if you were doing what one
should
do on a Saturday night, which was having fun. It was just that no one had accidentally called me erroneously to ask me to bring the Cheese Whiz.

Hop held my gaze.

I tried not to squirm.

Hop continued to hold my gaze.

I continued to try not to squirm.

Hop’s mouth got tight.

I switched to trying not to think that was really sexy, then I switched to trying not to think how weird it was that I thought him looking annoyed was sexy.

He gave up waiting for me to admit I wasn’t being honest and slid his hand from my neck while asking, “You done releasing whatever you gotta release at midnight, alone in your room?”

That sounded insane. Mostly because it was.

Oh dear. I was being an idiot.

“Yeah. All good,” I lied again.

He didn’t believe me and didn’t hide that either.

“So, you goin’ to bed?” he asked.

“Yeppers!” I answered fake-chirpily. His brows snapped together and his mouth got tight again.

Yeppers?

Yes. I was being an idiot.“Yeppers?” he asked and that word coming from his beautiful lips surrounded by his badass ’tache made me want to start giggling.

It also made me want to kiss him.

And last, it made me want to snap at him because, really, couldn’t he just let it go?

I decided speaking was not going well for me so I stopped doing it.

Hop again held my gaze.

Then he looked to the floor while straightening to tower over me, and he did this muttering, “I don’t get this from her. Complicated.”

He didn’t get this from me and I didn’t get it from him, either.

Had I mentioned my life stunk?

I held my breath and tipped my head back to look at him. He continued to stare down at me before he shook his head a couple of times, and I watched as he moved to the mess of my clothes he’d thrown on the floor a few hours earlier after he’d peeled them off me. He kicked some aside with his black motorcycle boot, unearthing his wallet. He bent, nabbed it, shoved it in his back pocket and came back to me.

His hand again wrapped around the back of my neck and then his face was in mine.

“Sleep, lady,” he ordered, sounding disgruntled, but still it came out gentle.

It sounded nice, even the disgruntled part.

Damn.

“Okay,” I replied but didn’t move.

Hop stood there, hand at my neck, and he didn’t move either.

Then he prompted, “Like, now, Lanie.”

I stared at him a second, nodded, my teeth coming out to graze my bottom lip, something his eyes dropped to watch, that something making me want to kiss him again but I didn’t.

I broke from his hold, stretched out and he flipped the covers over me.

Then, God,
God,
I used everything I had left not to process him tucking them tight all around me.

So sweet.

Too sweet.

Damn.

He bent low, kissed the side of my head and said against my hair, “See you tomorrow night, babe.”

Tomorrow night. Thank
God.

I tried not to process that I thought that and mumbled, “Okay, Hop.”

I got another kiss and my eyes watched him move to the light. He turned it off, plunging the room into darkness.

I didn’t watch, didn’t hear his boots on the carpet, but I still felt him leave.

I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath.

I opened my eyes as I let the breath go.

“Complicated,” my lips mouthed without sound.

After a few more seconds, I heard a Harley roar.

I listened and I did it hard until I could hear the roar no more.

Only then did I close my eyes.

But I did not sleep.

* * *

“Repeat it,” Dog clipped, and Hop watched as the junkie Dog had pinned against the brick wall with his hand in his chest and the barrel of Dog’s gun to the flesh under his chin, swallowed.

Then the junkie stammered, “I… I won’t… won’t ever make a buy on… on Chaos again.”

“Right now, I’m a little put out,” Dog informed the junkie, shoving the gun deeper into his flesh, making him squeak in terror. “I see you on Chaos doin’ anything but helpin’ an old lady cross the street, I’ll be unhappy. Heads up, you don’t want to make me unhappy.”

The junkie, eyes enormous, gulped and nodded.

Dog let him go, saying, “Outta my sight.”

The junkie took off.

Hop looked to the dealer he had shoved face-first to the wall with his forearm against the man’s shoulders. Hop had disarmed him and currently had the dealer’s as well as his own firearm shoved in the back waistband of his jeans under his cut.

Hop’s turn.

“Empty your pockets,” Hop growled.

“Fuck, man,” the dealer whined, and Hop pressed him deeper into the wall, making his face scrape against the rough brick.

“Empty your goddamned pockets,” Hop bit out.

With difficulty, the dealer put his hands in his pockets, pulling out small packets of ice and dropping them to the ground. As he did this, Dog moved them aside with the toe of his boot, then he brought the heel down, crushing the methamphetamine into dust as the dealer whimpered.

After this, Dog moved to their bikes and Hop moved closer to the dealer.

“You know, five miles,” he reminded the dealer. “Five miles around Ride is Chaos. You don’t sell here. What the fuck?”

“Benito’s claimin’ this block,” the dealer told him.

“Benito doesn’t get to claim this block. He knows it, you know it. So again, what the fuck?” Hop asked.

“I go where Benito says,” the dealer replied.

Dog was back with a bottle of water, pouring it over the meth dust on the sidewalk and the dealer groaned.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars washed away.

Benito would be pissed and not just at the dealer.

Hop didn’t care.

“You stay off this block. You do not come back. Benito sends you back, you find a way to explain to him; you’re here, his product is in the sewer. You got this one warning. Chaos doesn’t have patience with this shit. You see me, you’re fucked, and I don’t mean you goin’ back empty-handed to that dickhead. I mean, you’ll find it difficult to go anywhere ’cause you’ll find it difficult to move. You get me?” Hop asked.

“I don’t go where Benito sends me, I’ll find it difficult to do
anything
seein’ as I won’t be
breathin’
,” the dealer returned.

“Not my problem. You picked the wrong profession, motherfucker,” Hop pointed out, pushing him farther into the wall, his arm sliding up to the back of the dealer’s neck, extending it unnaturally. “I gotta teach you this lesson now?” Hop asked.

The dealer, hoping for mercy, decided to get generous and shared, “Benito wants Chaos territory.”

“No shit?” Hop shot back.

“No, I mean he
really
wants it,” the dealer clarified.

Dog entered the conversation. “I think we get that, dealin’ with motherfuckers like you.”

“He’s kinda determined,” the dealer went on.

“Again, man, you think we’re not in on this fuckin’ information?” Hop asked, shoving him hard against the wall before he twisted him around and then slammed him back into the wall with a hand wrapped around his neck. “What Benito has got to get is that Chaos is
more
determined. You feel helpful, you share that with him and try to be convincing. But don’t matter if you are. We’re happy to put in the work to convince him. What you gotta take with you when we let you walk away right now is, he sends you out of the trenches, we see your head pop up, we’re aimin’ at
you
. We gotta get our message across to him, we’ll use any means necessary and that means takin’ out every soldier he sends our way until we drive it back to him.”

“Chaos isn’t ready for this fight,” the dealer replied, and Hop moved so he was in the dealer’s face.

“My brothers bled to keep this pavement, fuckwad,” he ground out. “You got a brother’s blood in the sidewalks, it never goes away, you never let it out of your control, you keep what you fought and bled for. Benito needs to get that. You can’t convince him, the other dealers and whores we send back to him can’t,
we will.
”

The dealer pulled breath in through his nose, stared at Hop before his eyes shifted to the side and he took in Dog then he came back to Hop. What he saw on their faces must have convinced him because he nodded.

“Again, one warning. Next time, you don’t walk away,” Hop stated.

The dealer nodded again.

Hop jerked his hand up to the dealer’s jaw, yanked him away from the wall then slammed his head into it. The dealer cried out before Hop let go and stepped back.

The dealer crumpled to his knees, one hand to his throat, the other one to the back of his head. He tipped his head back, looked at Hop and Dog, got to his feet, and took off.

Hop and his brother watched until the dealer was out of sight.

Then Hop asked, “You callin’ this into Tack or you want me to do it?”

“I got it,” Dog grunted, pulling out his phone.

“Brother,” Hop called and Dog looked from his phone to Hop. “We patrol every night. Used to be, few and far between, we find this shit. This is the second night this week.”

“Escalating,” Dog agreed.

Hop turned his head to look down the sidewalk where the dealer had taken off.

Benito Valenzuela had been a minor player years ago but one Tack had heard about and intuitively kept his eye on.

Tack’s intuition, as usual, was right.

When things shifted in the underworld of Denver—big players like Darius Tucker opting out of the drug trade, Marcus Sloan downsizing operations, the Russian Mob losing its leader and reorganizing, amongst other things—Valenzuela saw his opportunity and didn’t waste time. He quickly amassed territory however he needed to do it, negotiating for it or going to war for it.

But Benito didn’t bother approaching Chaos for a piece of their island.

For over a decade it was known the five square miles around the auto supply store and custom car and bike shop the Chaos MC owned and ran was clean of drugs and whores. The brothers fought for it to be that way and went out every night to keep it that way.

Benito knew better than to ask.

So he was going to take.

Everyone who tried before Benito, and they were very few, left with a Chaos warning.

But the battle to free Chaos, inside and out, of all that shit had been fought so long ago, new players like Valenzuela didn’t know or didn’t remember how brutal it was. He didn’t know how far Chaos would go to keep their patch clean.

Hop remembered how brutal it was. That memory was burned in his brain and inked into his skin, the last just like every Chaos brother.

They didn’t need this shit.

Dog started talking and Hop turned his eyes to him.

They didn’t need Benito’s shit but they were ankle deep in it.

And it was rising.

Hop turned his eyes back to the night, listened to Dog reporting in, and he did this thinking…
fuck
.

After patrol, he wanted to go to Lanie’s, take off his clothes, lay his body down in her soft sheets, curl her warmth into his and fall asleep smelling her perfume.

He couldn’t do that, for a variety of reasons.

Instead, he did what he had to do. When Dog finished his call with Tack, they moved to their bikes, threw their legs over and resumed patrol.

And when they were done, Hopper went home and laid his body down in his empty bed.

I was on an upward glide when I heard Hop’s voice, low and growly, order, “Enough, lady, come here.”

I didn’t go there. I kept working his cock, lips, tongue, suction
and
hand, bobbing and stroking, giving it my all.

His hands, both cupping my head, moved, his fingers sifting into my hair, and he repeated on a half groan, half grunt, “Lanie, enough. Come here.”

I ignored him and kept going. Pushing it. Wanting to give it to him. Wanting to drive him wild.

It worked. I knew this when his hips drove up, his hands in my hair pressing down, filling my mouth with his cock. I moaned against it even as he groaned, “
Fuck
.”