Torched (39 page)

He only slowed down once his wheels hit dirt, leaving him with the same walking-the-plank feeling as the very first time he’d come here. The sight of Zed sitting on her porch intensified it more, a juxtaposition of the woman he’d kill for and the club he’d die to protect.

And vice versa.

He parked by the front steps and smirked as he climbed up and got a look at Zed’s setup. The fucker was sitting snug as a bug in a pile of blankets and pillows. On the table in front of him, a tablet playing a movie and a thermos of something steamy.

“Let me guess. She wanted to be left alone but felt bad about leaving your ass out in the cold?” Torch asked.

Zed chuckled. “Pretty much. You know your girl.”

He looked through the window and saw her, leaning on the kitchen door frame with a bottle of beer in her hand, staring at him. “Yeah. I do,” he said with a smile. “Thanks for doing this, brother. And the unofficial vote.”

Zed stood up and shook out his crumpled jeans. “You know I’ll always have your back, man. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

They exchanged a hug, before Zed hopped down the stairs and got on his bike.

Torch stalked toward the door, which swung open just as he was about to go for the knob. There stood Liv, looking like a fucking dream in her pajama bottoms and tank top. And fuck, those goddamn lips…

He shook it off and cleared his throat. “We gotta talk, babe.”

She didn’t reply, instead taking a step toward him and reaching up to touch his jaw. She nudged his head to the side a little and flinched, getting a good look at the gash in his cheek. It probably looked a hell of a lot worse than it actually was, he just hadn’t bothered to clean up.

He should have started in on the speech he’d rehearsed on the way here, but all of a sudden his mouth wouldn’t fucking work. He cupped his hand over hers and brought it to his lips, closing his eyes as he kissed her soft palm.

She sighed. “Come inside.”

He stepped in and closed the door behind him. She pulled some kind of metal case out of the coat closet and took his hand, then led him to the couch where she motioned for him to sit down.

Just like she’d done at the clubhouse earlier, she sat down on the coffee table opposite him. “That needs to be stitched up, it’s deep. You okay with me doing it?” she asked.

He’d take a thousand fucking needles to the face if it meant she was touching him instead of demanding he leave. “Yeah,” he nodded, mostly because he didn’t know what the fuck else to say. It figured she knew how to sew up a cut too.

He watched as she flipped the case open, rubbed some sanitizing crap between her hands, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. She grabbed a fistful of tissues from a box on the table and tilted his head back. Holding the wad under his chin, she took a bottle of disinfectant and poured it over.

It stung like fucking hell, but he didn’t care. It was a good pain.

She then ripped open a packet of wipes and gently patted around the area, presumably cleaning away what was left of his dried blood. “You want Lidocaine?”

Thank
fuck
she had Lidocaine. He was too tired and on edge to hold still if she was anywhere near him. “Would you call me a pussy if I said yes?”

She smiled. “I’d call you an idiot if you said no. It’s just you and me, who the fuck cares?”

There is was, another reason he couldn’t let Livia Ash go. Ever. He grinned up at her. “Then shoot me up, beautiful.” He held still and stared at her face as she injected him and went to work on the stitches.

In no time at all, she’d sewn him up and started to clean up. She pulled a small mirror out of the case and handed it to him. “Make sure that looks okay. I tried to make them small.”

He took the mirror and inspected her work. Tiny and evenly spaced. Doc wasn’t even that good. Damn. “Looks great, baby. Thank you.”

She gave him a pat on the knee and stood up. “Sure. They should dissolve in a few days. Drink?”

Just what the doctor ordered, a shot of liquid courage. “Could definitely use one of those.”

: : : :

Torch washed his hands while I pulled a bottle of whiskey out of the pantry and a couple beers from the fridge. I couldn’t be bothered with shot glasses, this was the just one of those drink-straight-from-the bottle types of nights. As he dried off with a paper towel, I chugged down several large gulps and handed it to him. He threw back probably twice as much as I’d managed to.

He seemed nervous, a look I’d never seen on him now that I was thinking about it. Angry and snappish, sure, but never jittery. We both leaned sideways against the island and I slid him a beer.

He practically emptied that too. “We had to take care of some business tonight. That’s how I got cut—”

I sighed. “Torch, you don’t have to tell me. It’s fine. Just tell me when you’re gonna do it so I can start planning.”

He scrunched his face in confusion. “Do what?”

“Go after Mitch. That’s why you’re here, right? To lay down the law? Just tell me.”

“Jesus Christ, woman,” he snarled. “For once in your fucking life, just stop. Stop thinking, and analyzing, and fucking assuming.” He stepped away from the island and leaned back against the sink. “Just… fucking
listen
. I let you talk, it’s my turn.”

Well if he wasn’t here to tell me to suck it up and let him fix my problems, why the hell was he? I pushed myself up and sat on the island across from him.

He rubbed his beard with both hands. “The Serbs… they were trying to move into Linwood to cook and distribute a drug call Black Zombie. Masters was the middle-man between them and an investor we haven’t identified. All we know is that the investor used another middle-man, Hess, to make cash drops to Masters.”

Why the fuck was he telling me this? He
knew
I wouldn’t be able to resist looking into all of it. And if Buddha found out? Shit. I opened my mouth to stop him from making any more bad decisions.

He held up his hand to stop me. “We neutralized Maric’s men, but the shit still managed to get in under our noses. That’s why the DEA’s in town. A bunch of people ended up in the hospital from a bad batch of it this week, including Nadia. We paid her a visit, got the name of her dealer, and then had a little talk with him at a bar he owns. He tied it back to that Hess asshole. Guess he’s dropping off actual product now. We’re gonna have to find the stash house—”

“Seriously, why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

He groaned and looked up at the ceiling. “You know exactly why the fuck I’m telling you all this.”

No, I didn’t. My brain was mangled. I couldn’t trust it anyway, not since the episode with Zed earlier. I was fucking tired, cranky, and not up for a guessing game. “You want me to help you track these guys down?”

He lurched forward, and with a swoop of his arm, pulled me down off the counter and grabbed my face with both hands. “That’s
not
why I came here. You really need me to spell it out for you, baby? I fucking
love
you. More than I’ve ever loved another fucking human being. And don’t bother spouting off about how love isn’t enough. For me… with you… it damn well is. Because I don’t just love you, I fucking
need
you. I need your touch, your heart, your mind, everything. And I need all that by my side every day. If I knew then what I know now, I never would’ve left you behind in Ohio. I’ll regret that choice ‘til the day I die. Christ, I regretted it the minute I got back here. For eight miserable goddamn years, I couldn’t get you out of my twisted head. Everything reminded me of you, even in my fucking sleep. You realize how many nights I made myself stay awake, just ‘cause I couldn’t take another one of those fucking dreams?” He shook his head and combed his fingers through my hair. “I can’t, sweetheart. I can’t do it. I won’t lose you over fucking logistics. Not when everything else about you is so beautiful and right that I know I’ll never find anything like it again… I want your ink on my skin, and mine on yours. I want your face to be the one I see at the end of a good day, a shit day, and every day in between. I still think you’re gonna be the death of me, but I’ll die a happy motherfucker… It’s you ‘til I die, baby. Just let me keep you, Livia Ash. Be my old lady.”

I looked down as tears filled my eyes and started pouring down my face. But Torch wasn’t letting me run. He lifted it back up and with his thumbs, he wiped away the moisture. Then, instead of going for my mouth, he planted soft kisses on my cheeks, like some kind of symbolic ritual. Maybe it was only symbolic to me, but I couldn’t help looking at the gesture as his love wiping away and covering my pain.

His touch drawing me out of an exhaustion-induced haze, I finally understood why he’d come here tonight. And why he’d told me shit that I had no business knowing. I’d made it clear that the only thing standing in our way was the club code that said I’d have to live in the dark. Instead of an olive branch, he was offering me a flashlight. The question was whether his boss would hit him over the fucking head with it when he found out.

“The club—”

“Buddha knows I’m here and what I’m doing. So do Zed and Grimm. Along with me, that would’ve been a majority vote in church tomorrow. I couldn’t wait… Listen, baby, I can’t promise I’ll always tell you every little detail, but you’ve got my word that I’ll tell you enough to feel informed and safe. So help me, I trust you. You watch what you say and know how to keep shit quiet. And I know you’d never hurt the club, I’m betting my life on it. As for Henslow, we both know that fucker needs to be dealt with. But if you wanna put the bullet in him yourself, if you clue us in to what you wanna do and let us be the muscle, I’ll happily provide the gun and hold him down.”

Goddamn it.

The sincerity and desperation in his voice tore me deeper and deeper apart by the second. He’d taken a sledge hammer to that monumental wall around my heart and smashed it into the foundation, causing cracks to rip through it and send the whole fucking thing tumbling down. I was out of arguments, out of reasons to keep saying no, he’d figured out a way to use those same crumbling bricks and build a bridge between our worlds.

“Baby, just meet me half-way,” he pleaded.

I was there.

I grabbed the back of his head and brought our lips together, not a twinge of doubt getting in the way of claiming him. And letting him claim me.

“That a yes?” he asked, pulling away just far enough to talk.

I broke out in a smile. “You want me to spell it out for you?”

“Yeah, you should do that,” he replied with a grin of his own.

“Okay then,” I laughed. Weaving my fingers through his, I brought our hands up to his chest and looked him straight in the eye. “I love you too, baby… God, I love you. I’ve loved you since the day you asked me to get on the back of your bike, I was just too stupid and stubborn to listen to those fucking voices in my head. I regret every single time I picked up the phone to call you and talked myself out of it, because these past few weeks have been the absolute best of my life. I didn’t know how the hell I was gonna walk away from that. I need you too. More than I need air to breathe. Torch… it’s you, ‘til
I
die.”

He cocked his head to the side. “And?”

“And take the GPS off my fucking car.”

“Not gonna happen. Quit stalling,” he warned. “I asked you something.”

“I’ll be your old lady?”

“Say it again, without it sounding like a fucking question.”

“I, Livia Ash, will be your old lady. Better?”

“That’s the sexiest goddamn thing you’ve ever said to me,” he growled, before overtaking my mouth again. His strong hands started roaming, tucking themselves under my shirt. A deliciously familiar tingle started forming in my core.

I squealed as he bent down, slung me over his shoulder, and carried me through the living room. “Put me down, you’re gonna drop me down the stairs!”

Torch stopped at the base and patted my ass. “I’ll
never
fucking drop you,” he promised.

And then, he carried me up, making me feel like I never had to worry about falling down again.

: : : :

Torch did drop her.

Onto the bed.

He’d meant it, all of it, every single word. But that last part? That was a fucking vow.

He’d been ready to sell his soul, but after getting most of his rage out on Jimmy, he’d realized that—along with everything else he loved about her—Liv wasn’t greedy. Fuck, she’d been completely selfless all this time, both risking her anonymity to stop Maric and hanging out at the clubhouse everyday for over a month to help Biff. At no charge, with no expectation of getting anything in return.

Really, all she wanted was a little fucking peace of mind. Who the hell was he to deny her that after everything she’d done for him and his family?

Scratch that.

Their
family. And true to the Serpent brotherhood, they’d supported him, even if it meant getting a little creative in bending some bylaws.

But the only bendy thing he was interested in right now was Liv’s body. Every soft and smooth inch of it. He didn’t have to be at the clubhouse until noon, so he intended to take his fucking time. He didn’t just want to make her scream, he wanted to make proper love to his woman.