Rough Justice (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #1)(91)
Pulse racing, she walked over to the window and rested her forehead against the glass, looking out over the calm, still night. Peaceful. Moonlight filtered through the dark clouds overhead, chasing shadows across the street. Just as the nightmares chased her. She knew now she would never escape them. They were part of this world. A world where she could never be safe. She had to leave Conundrum to truly be free.
The front door opened and closed. She heard the whisper of leather and the rattle of steel out in her living room as Jagger removed his cut and the heavy chain he wore around his belt. What time was it? Three? Maybe 4 A.M.? Where had he gone? But before she could ask, she felt his heat behind her, his body pressed against her own. Arianne’s bones turned liquid.
“You should be in bed.” He swept her hair to the side and kissed the sensitive dip between her neck and shoulder, his lips whispering over her skin.
“I couldn’t sleep. I keep thinking about being shot at when I ran for the cab.” She shook herself, changing the topic. Enough she had to deal with the nightmares in her sleep. “What about you? It’s late to be working.”
He pressed his lips to the back of her neck, and her stomach fluttered with awakening desire.
“T-Rex, Gunner, and some of the boys got ambushed by the Jacks on a protection run. Four men hurt, and we lost the weapons. T-Rex managed to get them help and rode to the clubhouse injured and alone. He just got back an hour ago and he brought this message.” He handed her a crumpled picture, but before she could open it, he covered her hand.
“Usually I lead the protection runs, but I wanted to stay with you, make sure you were okay, so I sent Gunner in my place. They’d been tipped off that I would be there, and Gunner took two bullets because they thought he was me. They didn’t just want the weapons, they wanted me dead.”
Her breath caught. “Is Gunner okay?”
“Thanks to T-Rex’s quick thinking, yes. He flagged down a trucker and had him take Gunner to a hospital. They left that picture in Gunner’s cut.”
Hands trembling, Arianne unfolded the picture. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held an actual photograph. Even Jeff rarely used his darkroom. She stared at the photo, and her heart seized in her chest. Someone had taken a picture of her, beaten and chained in Bunny’s basement. Although the light was poor, she was easily recognizable. She flipped it over, and written on the back was the word, Traitor.
Her blood chilled as Jagger tensed behind her. Although she’d managed to put him off for two days, there was no way he would let this go. Not as a man. And not as president of the Sinner’s Tribe.
“Tell me what happened. Who shot at you? I can promise it will never happen again.”
She recognized the fury in his voice from the night at Peelers, but this time every word was cold and calculated. Determined. He would not be so easily put off. And yet, she had to try.
“I told you before. I just want to forget about it.” Not only was she still reeling from Jeff’s betrayal, or the fact he’d shot her with her own gun, but she also mourned the loss of the brother she had loved so dearly. Even the drugs were no excuse. Somewhere along the road, he’d become his father’s son. And this picture—it had to be Jeff’s picture—proved it. Viper would never do anything as childish. Or as personal. And she betrayed him, too. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Wrong thing to say. Jagger fisted his hand in her hair and jerked her neck to the side, a shocking contrast to his gentle touch only a moment before. “You don’t understand what it does to me, seeing you like this, Arianne—the cuts and bruises, the bandages, the f*cking ropes and chains, knowing someone hurt you, shot at you, and I wasn’t there to protect you.”
“Jagger…” She tried to pull away, but he held her firm and scored his teeth down her neck, sending a pulse of electricity straight to her sex.
“Tell me who it was. I need to find the bastard or I’ll go f*cking crazy.”
“Please. Let me go.”
“I let you go once, Arianne. I won’t make that mistake again.” He grasped her breast in his broad hand, squeezing roughly until she gasped, more at the shock of his sudden change in demeanor than at the bittersweet pain that made her sex ache to be filled.
“What are you doing?” She tried to look back over her shoulder, but he gripped her hair harder, keeping her still. “Why are you being like this?”
He ground his pelvis against her, pressing his arousal along the cleft of her buttocks as his free hand tightened on her stomach, pinning her to his body. “I gave you time. I was patient. And while I was being patient, I sent my boys out to find out who hurt you. They came back with nothing.”
Was this his game? Seduce the information out of her? Well, no seduction needed. She could give him enough information to keep him satisfied. And then he could satisfy her.
“Jeff was at Peelers.” She scrambled to come up with a plausible story that wouldn’t implicate Jeff. But not a lie. She couldn’t lie to Jagger. “He saw one of the prospects when we arrived, so he hung around outside and caught me when I was in the restroom. He said he had given my passport to someone who was in his car. I couldn’t let you take him, and you suspected me of betraying you anyway, so I went to get it. A guy in a cut came around the corner, so we jumped in the car and drove away.”