The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (38 page)

We roll up to the Stricken-cult whatever-the-fuck-it-is breeding lair. The building’s dark. I see a glowing ember from a smoke in an alley across the street. Must be the crew. So I kill my lights and head into the alley.
 

Sparkles stiffens and holds me a bit tighter. Good. I like that.
 

Nash and Sorry emerge from the darkness, silent as the mean-ass predators they are.
 

Sorry glances at the girl. “You got her,” he says to me without a flicker of emotion.

“Yup.”

“Looks like she wasn’t alone.”

“Nope.”

We stand in the rain in silence for a moment. I know they’re waiting for me to say more. I’m not sure I want to, but finally I say: “Had her tied up inside a fishing boat. Half-dozen Skins and a Stricken dressed in purple fucking robes.”

“One of those Guardians?” Nash asks.

I shrug.

“Any alive now?” Nash says through a grin.

I don’t bother answering. Instead I say, “We’re gunna burn this shithole lair to the ground.”

Nash nods and paces in a quick circle, rubbing his hands together like a school kid. “Good, Prez, good. Let’s burn the fucker down! House-wrecker! Bricks through the windows! Torch the shithole! Burning and looting! Fuckin’ hell yeah lets do it—”
 

Nash is maybe the only Pureblood alive who has a hard-on for fire. For most of us it’s a necessary evil: it kills Stricken after you cut off their heads and tear out their hearts.
 

But the same is true for us.

“You wanna wait to see who shows up?” Sorry asks. “Maybe they come check out their torched lair?”

“Fire department will show up,” I say, thinking about the ride I promised Sparkles and how badly I want out of this fucking cesspool of a city.

“So that’s it?” Nash says, stoping his frantic hyperactive pacing to glare at me. “We let ‘em go? The assholes who shot up our club? The assholes who might have something to do with those fucking things spawning in there? And Lonny going all…we just grab a Skin bitch and ride off into the sunset?”

Shouldn’t bother me, Nash calling Sparkles a Skin bitch. But it does. And it bothers me even more that it bothers me, and then I see both my guys know it bothers me, and that bothers me some more.
 

Nash is a stupid fuck.
 

I nod over my shoulder in Lily’s direction, ever so slightly, and even the dumb hyena gets it. The Guardians will come for Lily. They wanted her bad enough to try and kill her in my club, abduct her from her home and put her picture on the wall of their secret breeding hangout. And although the guys on the boat tonight were mostly Skins I doubt their man at the top is.
 

Mr. Holy Roller Reincarnate. The head Guardian is a Stricken, and an interesting one, or my name’s shit.
 

I want to kill him. Real bad.

Mia rolls up with the gas. I send the three of them inside. Sparkles shifts against me, nice and quiet. Good. I was afraid she might be one of those nattering chatty bitches. Seems recent events might have dulled that sharp pool-game tongue of hers.
 

There’s a flicker in the building’s top window, and seconds later my crew piles out, laughing and tossing high-fives. Nash digs in his saddlebag and produces a bottle of whiskey. He takes a gulp that murders a quarter of the bottle and passes it to me while yellow-orange flames begin flicking out the building windows.
 

I take a swig of whiskey and motion at Sorry.
 

Sparkles taps me on the shoulder. “I could use some of that,” she says in a way that makes me think I should of given it to her first.

Nash calls me an inconsiderate bastard.
 

I laugh, tell him to piss off and hand Sparkles the bottle. She finishes it, then throws the empty into the street. It shatters with a sharp poof.
 

Glass tinkles across the road.

Mia rolls her eyes, and I know what she’s thinking, but she sure as hell better not say it.
 

She doesn’t.
 

Flames pour out of the building, and if I listen carefully I can just hear the high-pitched scream of Stricken spawn being cooked alive.
 

It’s a fucking symphony.
 

I
NEED
TO
phone it in.

Not that I’m doubting my decision to ride with Aaron and his crew.
 

Hell no.
 

But I’m watching the building burn and thinking about those two dead girls and my career as a detective. Maybe the shortest cop career ever. And I decide I need to phone the location of the boat the
Guardian
into the station. Maybe the cops will find something on that boat to stop the killers. Maybe there won’t be another murder. Another girl clubbed in the head like a baby seal and zap-strapped and tossed in a beater van.

The fire’s wrapping around the building’s roof in a flaming halo that spits swirling red embers and sparks high into the air. The rain’s stopped; there are even a few stars out, the night cool and cold compared to the fire blazing in front of me.
 

The MC boys Sorry and Nash leap around, punching at one another, throwing things, screaming.
 

They’re all blind impulse and raging instinct. Like animals.
 

But Aaron’s different. I can tell buy the way he stares at the fire, his broad shoulders slightly hunched. I’m sitting behind him so I can’t see his eyes, but I know they’re focused and intense. Brooding. I think about the slaughter on the fishing boat. What kind of a man could do that? And with less emotion than watching a sink drain.
 

A killer, that’s who.
 

I’m not fool enough to believe this man will ever change.
 

He is what he is.
 

But I also know he won’t hurt me. I knew it in the bar playing pool, and I saw it when he tore the duct tape from my eyes and heard it in his voice when he first walked into the boat’s engine room. If I didn’t think it was crazy I’d say I mean something to him, and then I laugh at myself, because that must be what all the girls think when a man like Aaron smashes into their lives: oh, he’s bad, but he cares for me.
 

Protects me. He’d never hurt me.
 

Bullshit. I’ve seen it before. Get him drunk and angry enough.
 

You’re such a fucking fool
, Lily, I think, shifting slightly away from him.
 

I’m trembling slightly, squinting against the bright flames. The heat’s carrying right across the road, warming my face. Sirens wail in the distance, reminding me of the other night after the bar got shot up. Sirens follow these men wherever they go, provide a soundtrack for their lives.
 

I want to ask how Aaron knew I was on that boat. What he knows about the men who kidnapped me. But I don’t. He said he’s going to take me for a ride, and before the weight of the real world crashes in I want that first.
 

The questions can come later.
 

Because those questions, I have a feeling, are going to tear me and the Prez apart.
 

Mia’s a a tight coil. She keeps glancing over at me and Aaron and squeezing the hell out of her handlebars. I’m surprised. I’m nothing more than a fuck to guys like Aaron.
 

If I’m even that.

I bring my hands around to Aaron’s stomach, slip my hand under his leather riding jacket and run my fingers down his chiseled abs and lower, beneath his belt. He leans into my touch. I stop just short of his touching his cock, then slide my hands up his chest and lay my head on his back. His pecs are wonderfully sculpted. The fire’s burning so hot I can’t look at it directly.
 

I better be a fuck to him, let me tell you.
 

***

A few minutes later we’re heading southeast out of Seattle, into farm country and the Cascade mountain slopes rising behind. Aaron opens the bike up on a straight country road and the wind whips the trench coat around my ankles and over my knees. Shivering, I press tighter to Aaron’s warmth as the bike rockets across the pavement and I wonder if we can ride fast enough to leave everything behind.
 

Eventually we slow and turn down a long, winding gravel driveway that leads to a strong-looking metal gate. Sorry hops off his bike, opens the gate, waits for us to roll through, then closes it with a loud clatter.
 

We pull up a large two-story bungalow, not recently painted but maintained well enough. The property is on a slope, half forested in cedar and fir and half open field, the brown grass flattened by late winter rains. It doesn’t look like a biker clubhouse. Aaron kills the engine; we glide to stop as Aaron looks over his shoulder and says, “You can get cleaned up here. Maybe find some clothes.”

Sorry and the twitchy-looking one, Nash, head round the side of the house to the barn.
 

Mia and Aaron share a strange glance, then Mia hurries after them. She doesn’t just walk across the gravel driveway—she glides, with a smooth, sinuous motion that makes me think of a snake swimming through a pond toward an unsuspecting victim.

“She’s sweet,” I lie as we head into the bungalow. “Whose house is this?”

“The MC’s,” Aaron says absently.
 

“Where’s the rest of the crew?”

Aaron stomps up the front steps, fishes in his pocket for a key and unlocks the door. “Out on a run,” he tells me, his face darkening. “Won’t be back for a long while. This isn’t their house anyway. It’s for Inner Council only. That’s all of us here right now…except one. We got a bar in downtown Renton serves as the MC’s official public headquarters.”

So it’s a safe house. Good to know. Maybe it’s even safe.
 

We step inside. The floors are scuffed oak and the walls are divided by wainscoting, the bottom half is robin’s egg blue wood panels and the top half is flowery wallpaper that reminds me of a grandmother preparing afternoon tea. It’s clean and it’s not a dump, but it’s clear no one’s worked on the house in a long while. For some reason the house makes me think of Connor’s cavernous and empty mansion by the lake, and that makes me think of Trish, and that makes me think of what I’m all of a sudden mentally referring to as
my old life.

As if this new life has a sort of permanence.
 

I scoff out loud, lean against the wall, cover my face in my hands and try not to cry.

Aaron hovers beside me, like he’s going to put his arms around me, and I want him to, I need him to, but I don’t look at him and then his boots ring across the floor and I hear newspaper being crumpled in another room.
 

I look up, wiping half-formed tears from my eyes. Aaron’s in the living room, bent before a wood fireplace, building newspaper and kindling into a little pyramid. I watch him spark a long match against the river stone fireplace mantle and set it to the newspaper. He moves with practiced, fluid grace. The flame lights the newspaper and I watch as Aaron gently adds more kindling to the small fire and teases the flame into life. The chimney backdrafts a bit, sending a puff of sweet cedar smoke into the room.
 

It’s his hands, I decide.
 

That’s why I’m watching him. His rough, strong hands. I imagine how they’d feel on my naked skin. I want to kiss his fingertips gently, brush them over my nipples, then feel his hands move lower, exploring me, want them to settle over my cunt, gently at first, then more demanding, and I wonder exactly what those hands are capable of, how firm they could be, how aggressive.
 

A murderer’s hands. But the hot flush spreading through my body tells me that matters nothing at all. I want him. I’ve wanted him since he first rolled past me on that goddamned ridiculous bike.
 

Aaron looks back quickly, catches me studying him, and for an instant I think I see him flush. “Shower’s upstairs,” he says, too quickly.
 

I nod and take a step up a flight of wide, gently curving stairs. Then I freeze, terrified at the thought of taking a shower. I remember my tiny apartment heavy with steam, and bending over my drawer, and then my knees weaken and I slump to a sit on the stairs, drawing the trench coat tighter around my chest and neck.
 

I stay like that, motionless and silent, too afraid even to cry, until Aaron walks around from the living room. The fire hisses and cracks behind him. I look up and meet his eyes. I can tell he’s worried but doesn’t know how to say it. I try and put myself in his shoes. This stranger cop chick nearly having a nervous breakdown in an outlaw biker’s house.
 

It’s all kinds of weird.
 

I tuck my hair behind my ears and say, “I’m a mess. I’m sorry.”
 

Aaron leans against the handrail. “I think you’re doing pretty good. Y’know. Considering what went down.”

I can’t tell if he’s telling the truth, but I want to believe him, and it does help, just hearing him say it. “Thanks,” I say, pulling myself to my feet.

He smiles in a way that tells me that’s all he has to give on the sympathy front. But there’s a question plaguing me. It’s way out of line. Entirely none of my business. But I need to know.
 

“Mia,” I say quietly. “Is she your…” My voice trails off.
 

Aaron’s eyes flash. “My old lady?”

I nod.

“Mia’s not old. And she’d be the first to say never call her a lady.”

Didn’t answer my question, though, did he? I give him a look that I hope says I mean to get an answer.