Beyond the Cut (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #2)(23)

Without thinking, she stroked a hand over his hair. So fierce. So passionate. What would it be like to have someone like Cade in her life? An idea stirred at the back of her mind, but she quickly dismissed it. Yes, she liked Cade, but not enough to embrace the biker life that had caused her so much pain.

Reality kicked in and her hand dropped. It would never happen. Wrong life. Wrong world. Entirely the wrong guy.





SIX

I will avenge all wrongs done to me and my club.

SINNER’S TRIBE CREED

Christ. Cade pulled open the door to the Conundrum Sheriff’s Department and steeled himself for a takedown. Damn cops would just love to toss a one-percenter in jail. If the Sinners still had Sheriff Morton on the payroll, he wouldn’t have been concerned, but the idiot had been caught stealing weapons from the evidence room, and that was the end of what had been a damn fine arrangement with the local police.

“Can I help you?” The receptionist glared through a Plexiglas window, her hand hovering over the conspicuous emergency call button at the side of her desk.

Yeah, he needed help. He needed someone to shake him up, slap him around, and tell him to get his sorry ass back to the clubhouse instead of panting after the only woman on the planet who didn’t want him.

What the f*ck was he doing here? She’d been joking around when she invited him to go with her to the sheriff’s office, and if she had any sense she’d boot his ass out the minute he showed up, if the cops didn’t throw him in jail first. But dammit, she had no one looking out for her, and the cops wouldn’t be able to help. Conundrum was a biker town. The kind of protection she needed was the kind of protection only a biker could provide. Still, showing up here took things to a whole new level. Maybe she’d think he wanted more than another night with her in bed.

Maybe he did.

“Sir? If there’s nothing you need, perhaps you could step out of line.”

And leave Dawn to the inept fumbling of the local police?

“I’m meeting a friend who’s seeing the deputy sheriff. Dawn…” Christ. He didn’t even know her last name. Par for the course. He usually didn’t care about a woman’s last name when he was buried deep inside her. Or her first name, for that matter. But Dawn wasn’t like the others and he silently berated himself for not making the effort.

“Dawn. No last name.” The receptionist lifted a manicured eyebrow in censure, and Cade scowled.

“Just make the call.”

Five minutes later, accompanied by two suspicious police officers, he walked into the intake area of the sheriff’s office. An assortment of drunks, vagrants, and a few high school girls in cuffs were seated in the waiting area. All the desks were in use, and the air was thick with the stench of unwashed bodies, old cigarettes, and pastrami.

The lead member of his entourage gestured to a desk in the corner where Dawn sat across from a cop with brown hair and the chiseled good looks of those losers on the front of men’s magazines. Cade snorted at the frickin’ gigantic shiny badge on the dude’s blue shirt, but his derision faded when the deputy met Cade’s gaze and then reached over the desk to clasp Dawn’s hand.

A growl escaped Cade’s lips. So that was the game. Bastard thought he could put his hands all over Cade’s girl.

Okay. Technically, she wasn’t his girl. But he’d slept with her, wanted to sleep with her again, and he’d had a good time with her and her kids on Sunday afternoon. Hell, he’d even missed joining Gunner and Sparky at a little pool party with Delilah and the girls from Peelers Strip Club. Now, that was something he would never live down.

His gaze still on Cade, the deputy stroked Dawn’s hand.

How f*cking pathetic. Was that his idea of a challenge? Seated at his f*cking desk in a collared shirt, patting Dawn’s hand? He’d give anything right now to get the deputy outside in the alley. Pansy ass would go down with one punch. Guaranteed. And the guy was an idiot if he thought he’d rile Cade up enough to risk assaulting a police officer. Not that Cade was afraid of doing time, but he had business to take care of first, and item number one was to get the deputy’s paws off his woman.

“Thought you were done with bikers,” the deputy said, loud enough for Cade to hear. Cade snorted and put more effort into thudding his boots across the tiles and rattling the chain hanging from his belt.

Let the f*cking games begin.

Dawn looked over her shoulder, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “I am. He’s just a friend.”

Friend? Ha. He didn’t f*ck his female friends. He didn’t give free rein to all the kinky, twisted shit in his brain and have them demanding more. And he certainly didn’t come so many damn times in one night that the sight of blond hair the next day made him instantly hard.

“A biker friend. Same poison. Different color.” The deputy’s face soured when Cade bent down and brushed his lips over Dawn’s unbruised cheek, a direct response to the challenge in the deputy’s eyes.

“Babe.” He stroked her hair for good measure and then sprawled on the empty chair beside her, ignoring the salivating police officers behind him. They knew who he was. And they also knew they had nothing on him. The Sinners kept their illegal activities under the radar, and if someone did get caught, they had a big-shot criminal attorney on retainer.

“Um … this is Cade.” She gave the deputy a weak smile, and then her cheeks flushed and she pulled her hand away. “Cade, this is Deputy Sheriff Doug Benson.”