Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(52)

He tucked some hair behind my ear and said in a quiet voice, “I wanted to take you to dinner, baby.”

Core.

Great in bed.

Great in a crisis.

Great during a breakdown.

Great with used Kleenex removal.

And sweet.

“Would drive-thru at Wendy’s work?”

He shook his head, lips again curled up, but asked, “You a Baconator girl?”

“Have you seen my ass?”

He squeezed it again, and said low, “Oh yeah.”

“So. What do you say?” I pressed.

“Sweetheart,”—he pulled me up his chest so we were face-to-face—“I wanted our first date to be special.”

Okay then.

Correction.

He could be very sweet.

“I don’t know what you consider special, but a man I like who I’m glad likes me taking one look at my outfit and making it clear he’s struggling not to caveman me to bed, then he semi-cavemans me to bed and gives me the best orgasm of my life, is a very special date in my books. And we’re not even an hour into it.”

His brows went up. “Semi-cavemans?”

“You backed me into my bedroom doing this down an entire hall all while kissing me.”

“Your hall isn’t that long.”

“Just let me be impressed.”

His body was shaking. “Have at it.”

“But if you want to get dressed and eat inside Wendy’s, I’m game.”

“You need to have Wendy’s now, don’t you?”

“Kinda, yeah,” I admitted.

“What’s a full caveman?”

“Dragging me by my hair, which I don’t advise, or carrying me over your shoulder, which I also don’t advise. Though it’d be hot, you couldn’t use your hips like you did if you have a hernia.”

“You’re not heavy,” he murmured.

I rolled my eyes.

“You’re a lot of things, Hellen, but too heavy in any way those words can mean, I already know, will never be one of them.”

What could I do after he said that?

I kissed him.

When I was done, I wasn’t on top of him, he was on top of me.

He lifted his head and said, “Let’s go get you a Baconator.”





“So, the Greeks,” I prompted before biting into my Baconator.

We were in a booth at Wendy’s.

And I had taken a moment to consider the state of the world when I walked up to order, bright lipstick smears across my chest above my tube top, and the girl taking our order didn’t even blink.

“Yeah, like I thought, a bigger operation,” he shared before biting into his.

I chewed, swallowed and asked, “Wow. How big?”

“There’s five guys here. There’s six working in LA. Three in San Francisco. And there’s twelve in Vegas.”

“How am I not surprised Vegas is a hot spot?”

“Yeah,” he agreed through a smile.

“So how’d you find this out?”

“We have some resources that can get us deep dive intel. Now we gotta pull together an operation. It looks like headquarters are in LA. We gotta take that out simultaneously with the locals. This means we’ll have to pull in favors from other MCs.”

I munched a fry then asked, “Is that a problem?”

“We like to keep things tight to our crew. Makes it more manageable and other MCs sometimes don’t have the discipline we do.”

I was equal measures curious, impressed and concerned by this.

“Does that make things dangerous for you?”

He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed while studying me.

“Me being a cry baby last night is not my norm,” I assured him. “I’m a big girl. You can be honest with me.”

And I need that from you, I didn’t say, but with the way he continued to watch me for a beat, I knew he was weighing my unspoken words, especially at this juncture in our relationship.

He made a decision, one which relieved me, because it was the right one.

“We’ll send one of our guys to each location to call the shots,” he said carefully. “Which means, yes. If the MC we’re working with goes off script, or is too gung-ho, or dicks something up, our guy there will be put in a spot.”

Not awesome.

“Where will you be?” I asked quietly.

“LA. It’s my op. So I’m on the command center.”

His op.

Now I was more curious and concerned than impressed.

“Okay,” I mumbled, dunking a fry in ketchup.

“We do a lot of this stuff, babe,” he assured, and that did nothing to alleviate my curiosity. “And sometimes it’s bigger than us. So we got practice with guys who might fuck shit up.”

“Okay,” I repeated, and popped the fry into my mouth. After I chewed and swallowed, I asked, “When is this going to happen?”

“It’s looking like early next week.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, bummed out by that, foremost because I didn’t want him working with some rogue, disorderly bikers that might put him in a spot.

Onward from that, I was still puzzled by his role in this at all, though it didn’t take much brain power to read between the lines. That said, he was not a cop, a PI or a special agent either, so the matter-of-fact, experienced manner he spoke of this stuff was troubling.