"So this is the infamous Christine Stone?"Christine did her best not to be intimidated by the man who stood before her, but authority oozed off of him in waves. He wore it like a badge of honor—it almost reminded her of Clinton."This is her." The don't-be-a-dick tone of Travis' voice told Liam that maybe he had laid it on a little too thick, but they were all on edge. Someone was threatening the club and members of their family."Why don't you have a seat?" he asked, sitting at his kitchen table.She did so, breathing a sigh of relief when Travis sat down beside her. She was half afraid that Liam would say he couldn't be a part of what was starting to feel very much like an interrogation."I'm not trying to scare you, honestly I'm not," Liam started, as he reached over and pulled a cigarette out of a pack that sat on the table. "You want one?" he offered it to her.After her experience moments before, she wasn't sure she ever wanted to touch a cigarette again in her life.
Travis sat in his cave later that night, checking on Heaven Hill's interests. As he scanned the cameras, he saw a car pull up to Roni's apartment building. It wasn't unusual for someone to park in her other parking spot, but this car looked familiar. Doing what he did best, he tapped into the Wi-Fi of the apartment building's security cameras and zoomed in."Well, I'll be damned," he chuckled. Rooster was making his way up the sidewalk, and miracle of all miracles, he wasn't dressed in his sheriff's uniform. Dare he say that Rooster looked like he was about to go out on a date? He shook his head as Roni let his cousin in and quickly shut the door. He clicked out of that feed and took a look at everything else. It all looked closed up for the night, and he was exhausted. The last few weeks had taken a lot out of him, and all he wanted to do was close his eyes for a week and catch up on all the sleep that he missed. It wasn't unusual for him to go on little sleep, but it was star
Lying down in the bed together had been one of the most awkward things that either one of them had ever experienced. The tension was so thick that it could have been cut with a knife."Is lying in bed with a man always this awkward?" she asked softly as she turned to face Travis, careful not to touch him.That comment struck him as odd, but he tried to make a joke anyway. "I don't know, I've never been in bed with a man before. Besides, you were married."She still was married, but she hated to focus on that. "Yeah, but we never slept in the same bed together."His eyebrow rose. "Never?" That was supposed to be one of the major perks of putting a ring on it. The fact that you could go to bed and reach over whenever you wanted to either be close or, if you were feeling the need, fuck her until you fell back asleep. "Nope." She shook her head. The sound of her hair moving against the sheet was loud in the stillness of the room."He only came to visit me for, what do priso
Their deep breathing was the only sound in the room as the gravity of what she said struck him in the chest. He was startled for a moment, and then he realized what she had actually said to him. "Yes, ma'am."Christine sucked in a deep breath as he attacked her with an aggression that she hadn't thought him capable of. Instead of the easy petting, the light tongue against her skin, this time he went after her hard. The stubble on his cheeks rubbed harshly against her skin, and she knew that she would wear that burn like a badge of honor, even if nobody but her could see it. His teeth worried the soft skin around her nipple. She gasped as his tongue soothed it, the slippery warmth of his mouth was a feeling she'd never felt before, and she strained against him. From where he worked, he tilted his eyes up, watching the look on her face. He noticed that she gripped her hair tightly, almost like she was afraid to touch him. He wondered if she thought she would break the spell if she d
Every grand plan the two of them had about how to tell Jagger was destroyed the very next morning. He wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the clubhouse, Travis had been absolutely sure of that. He was supposed to be at the shop, fixing Cash's car. Travis had verified that with more than one person. So to say he was surprised when Jagger walked in, his arm around B, as Travis was telling Christine where they kept breakfast stuff was an understatement. The silence in the room was deafening. Travis had never understood the meaning of that phrase before, but as Jagger's eyes went back and forth between him and Christine, the silence thundered in his ears. He could see the minute that Jagger put two and two together—it clicked in his eyes. The girls always talking about Travis having a woman, her being there this morning. He didn't say one word as Jagger growled and came at him. He side-stepped him, and grabbed Jagger by the wrist. "How long have you known?" Jagger didn't even recogni
Jagger finally broke the silence. His voice was low, the tone tortured. "Tell me. Just tell me everything that you went through. I need to hear it, and I don't want you to hold anything back. We need to get it out in the open if we're going to move past it."Christine couldn't look at him when she spoke, so she turned, facing the backyard, focusing on the fence that surrounded the property. "The day you left, I knew that my life was over. I could tell in the way Dad looked at me, the things he said to me. He would get onto me if I ate what he deemed too much, if I didn't exercise the way he thought I should. I had a feeling he was grooming me for something, but I didn't know what. I waited, and waited, and the closer I got to eighteen the more nervous I got."Jagger let out a deep breath and his stomach clenched. He wasn't going to like what she had to say, and he knew it, but he'd told her not to sugarcoat anything. If she had lived through it, he sure as hell could listen to it.
Christine sighed as she sat on the same back porch that she had been on earlier in the day. She needed to decompress. The events of the day had been tiring, and she knew all of it was because of her and the choices that she had made. Travis now lay in his bed, sleeping off the pain medication that Ashley had given him after she stitched up his head. That head was now almost bald, and even that made her feel awful. Jagger now sat in a jail cell, waiting to see if they could bring Clinton to them. She hated this. She should have made better decisions for everyone involved. The sliding glass door opened, and she looked up, seeing B. The other woman hesitated at the threshold before making her way out into the night."Hi," she said to Christine, almost shy."Hi," she said back.It was awkward, and Christine wasn't sure what to do. This woman obviously meant a great deal to Jagger, and she wanted to get to know her too, she just wasn't sure how to do that. The only friend she had made
Jagger had the decency to wait until the next morning to approach Travis about running the facial recognition. If he were being completely honest, he was nervous. He hadn't meant to attack Travis that way, it was the last thing he had wanted to do. Purposely, he had stayed away until late morning. When he entered the clubhouse, he spotted Tyler."You know where Travis is?"Tyler grimaced. "He and his much shorter hair are in the cave.""Shorter hair?""Yeah, dude. It was kinda short to begin with, but they had to buzz him to put some staples in his head where you busted it wide open. I'm not sure you're the person he wants to see today, if you get what I mean."Now Jagger felt really bad. His temper had gotten the better of him—that and the shock. "Has Liam said anything?" Things like that could have more than one potential consequence. It normally was not kosher to fight in the clubhouse."Nah, I think he gets it. Hell, we all get it, but the rest of us are far enough away