Reaper's Stand(41)

Too bad I’d already cleaned my oven.

Maybe Reese’s oven needed a good scrub? I could go out there later and check … Might as well text him and see if a schedule change would work, because I’d be out at the airport tomorrow afternoon anyway. If he wanted me to come out a second time this week, he’d just have to be flexible.

Family first—even a big, dumbass biker like Reese Hayes would understand that, right?

REESE

“Your girl did good today.”

Gage’s words echoed in my head as I drove home. I wasn’t quite sure if London qualified as my girl or not, but I wanted her—and not for a quick f*ck. She’d been pretty damned upset yesterday and I couldn’t blame her.

I’d rubbed Sharon in her face like an *.

But the thought of London and Evans rolling around naked together had lodged in my head like a virus. I’d wanted to break shit every time I pictured it, and I couldn’t stop picturing it … A little petty revenge had seemed fair at the time, given I’m a f*ckwit. Then she announced she’d broken up with him. Blew me away, because apparently London wasn’t the kind of woman to play men off each other. I’d sort of forgotten what that felt like. Now I respected her even more and felt like a tool in comparison. Screwing Sharon had been juvenile and stupid.

London was turning me into a dumbass kid again, and not in a good way. At least it seemed to go both ways—she wasn’t winning any maturity awards for that toilet prank … Laughed my ass off when I finally figured it out, though. Heather used to pull shit like that, too.

I needed to call London. Or maybe I should just show up at her place, because she probably wouldn’t take a call from me. This sucked. All of it. I liked one-night stands—clean and simple, not some high school bullshit where we danced around each other instead of getting down to business. Couldn’t help but wonder what other complications there might be, either. Would she even be able to handle me in bed—the real me? I wasn’t used to holding back, and if women couldn’t take it, I cut ’em loose.

Fuck it.

If I got my hands on London, I’d be damned if I’d let her go just because things got intense.

I turned around the final bend and spotted the cleaning service van in the driveway. What the f*ck? I had a brief, intense fantasy that she’d decided she couldn’t go one more day without my cock deep inside, and that I’d find her naked and waiting in the bedroom.

Yeah, right.

More likely she was in there injecting my toothpaste with strychnine. I parked my Harley next to her vehicle, studying it. She only had the one rig, and driving it had to suck. Like piloting a particularly shitty barge. I wondered if she’d ever been on a bike before, whether she’d like it. There was something about her—the restraint, the sense of duty that never seemed to fail … She didn’t take much time for herself, and I’d be willing to bet she didn’t get to let go often enough.

Get her on the back of my bike, bet she’d cream her panties.

Well, that or run screaming. Either could be worked … Yeah, I definitely needed to take her for a ride, and now was the time. I’d just gotten it up and running again that morning after way too long stuck in the shop. Huge relief, because when I couldn’t ride, I couldn’t breathe. Winters seemed to last forever some years, and by spring we were all a little crazy.

Nothing quite like that first ride of the year.

I pulled out my phone—sure enough, she’d called. Fucking great, must’ve missed it during church. These days all we talked about ’round the table was the cartel, which had been moving in on our territory for close to a year now. They’d hit several of our clubhouses and killed the president of the Devil’s Jacks six months back. For a while we skated the edge of a full-on shooting war, but things had quieted down recently, at least on the surface.


I knew the Jacks had been down south taking out select targets.

The Reapers had been doing their part, too, because nobody f*cked with us and got away with it. All the houses had full security systems now, and we’d been rolling up select probationary members from the support clubs.

Sooner or later, that shooting war was gonna hit.

We’d be ready for it.

The weekend coming up would be a huge part of that getting ready—patch holders from the Jacks, the Silver Bastards, and the Reapers were coming from all over the region to talk strategy, hopefully put together a joint offensive. We couldn’t just sneak around forever, or wait for them to bring the fight to us.

I flipped through my phone, finding the text she’d sent when I hadn’t answered the phone.

LONDON: Change of plans. I’ll be out at your place this afternoon. Something came up for tomorrow.



Something was comin’ up for today, too. My dick.

Christ, next I’ll be making fart jokes.

Juvenile as f*ck.

Standing outside my front door, I smelled that acrid, horrible stench I remembered from her house last weekend. I turned the knob and stepped inside to find London standing on a stool in the living room, angrily dusting the weapons collection over the fireplace. She wore cutoff shorts and a black tank top—straight out of a wet dream … except for that god-awful stink filling the air.

She rose onto her tiptoes, one hand braced against the mantel as she reached higher. Her shirt pulled up, exposing a narrow band of skin, and I held back a groan.