Page 23

Ace

One. Two.

Fuck! Rifle shots. Inside the clubhouse. Sounded like the rifle I’d left with Emma.

Three. Four. Five.

Fuck! Full magazine emptied in rapid succession.

Pulling my gun as I ran, I spied Jake and Mom in the kitchen, shock written on their faces.

“Where is she?”

“Games room.” Jake pointed down the hallway.

I pushed him out of the way and raced down the hallway. The door was shut. Locked. I raised my booted foot and kicked the fucking thing open.

Emma, my Emma, was sitting on the floor with the thirty-thirty I’d given her held so tight her knuckles were white.

A clicking sound kept repeating itself as she pulled the trigger on the empty magazine.

On the floor in front of her was a mountain of a man, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling, his chest a mass of blood and gore.

A thirty-thirty Winchester can do a lot of damage at point blank range.

I went to Emma and gently liberated the rifle from her hands, setting it down on the floor. Coaxing her to her feet, I led her to the sofa and sat her down onto my lap. She melted into me, letting out a long shaky sigh.

Jake entered the room, followed by Tiny.

“Get rid of the trash.” I gestured at the corpse with my chin.

“Yes, sir.”

The two grabbed the corpse by the head and feet and carried it out.

I turned my attention to Emma, wrapping my arms around her shaking body. In a perverse way, I was proud of her for doing what she had to do, protecting herself but I knew it never should have gone down like this.

I should have been here. I should have protected her. I should have killed the fucker, so she didn’t have to.

As soon as we’d hit the enemy base, I knew something was off.

We did our job. We took out the top three assholes just like we’d been asked to but none of them matched the description of the murderer that Emma had given me that night.

I’d stayed with my brothers, done my duty, made sure there was no remaining threat from the Atlanta crew, but a sick feeling in my gut told me it wasn’t enough.

I’d hiked it back to the clubhouse double-time, only to hear those shots the moment I set foot on the front porch.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Would she ever be able to forgive me? Would she ever be able to trust me again? I had no idea what I’d do if I lost her. In just this short time, she’d become my whole world.

She took a deep breath and lifted her face to look into my eyes. “He’s dead.”

“Yeah. He’s dead.”

“I killed him.”

“Yeah, babe. You killed him.”

“I’m glad he’s dead.” She shuddered as she laid her head on my shoulder. “It’s over now, isn’t it?”

“It’s over. We took out the head guys. Anyone left standing hightailed it back to where they came from.”

“He kicked me. My side hurts.”

I suppressed a blaze of white-hot anger. Asshole was already dead. I wished I could bring him back to life just so I could kill him again. Slowly this time.

I lifted her shirt to take a quick look. The bandage didn’t show any sign of blood, so I decided to leave it until the club medic could take a look at it.

“I’ll have Joker look at it as soon as he gets here. You hurt anywhere else?”

Her hand went to her cheek. “Probably going to have a bruise here. He slapped me pretty hard.”

I ran a gentle finger over the area, and she flinched. “We should probably get some ice on that.”

She didn’t say anything, just nodded and snuggled in tighter against me.

Rattler and Beast came into the room, quickly followed by Shadow.

“Your woman okay?” Rattler eyed up the bloody mess on the carpet.

“A few bumps and bruises, but she’ll be okay. Joker can check her out.”

“She did a fine fucking job on that asshole.”

“She did. I’m damn proud of her right now.” I made sure Emma heard me. “That’s one piece of shit that’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.”

“Good shooting.” As always, Beast used as few words as possible, but they conveyed his approval.

“You want me to open a line to our friends to let them know how it went?” Shadow phrased the question carefully, but I was done with hiding shit from Emma.

“Send the Feds a message to let them know it’s done. I’ll talk details with them later.”

“Will do.” Shadow turned and left the room.

I rested my chin on Emma’s head and inhaled her sweet scent.

I could have lost her tonight. But I didn’t.

Hell, we didn’t lose any of the guys. I had a cut on my leg where a knife had bit through my leather chaps, but the bleeding wasn’t all that bad.

Joker could throw a few of those butterfly strips on it for me.

A couple of the guys had minor wounds but only one required a trip to the hospital.

I credited the element of surprise coupled with good old-fashioned teamwork for the lack of casualties.

As if she could read my mind, Emma’s lifted her head, her hand going to my thigh. “You’re hurt!”

“Not a big deal. Joker will take care of it.”

Emma sat up straight, her face drawn in determined lines. “Take your pants off. I want to see how bad it is.”

Behind her, I could see Rattler and Beast grinning like idiots. Apparently watching their President get ordered around by a woman amused them. I glared at them.

“How about we do this up in my room?” I lifted her chin with one finger.

She pursed her lips. “Okay.” She slid off my lap and waited for me to stand up. “Anyone else hurt?”

Didn’t look like she planned to waste any time feeling guilty over killing a man. That boded well for when we had the talk about the future. Our future. Not saying she’d have to do it again, but the possibility was there.

It also pointed to the fact that she understood the difference between the law and justice. The law would have that asshole out on bail in under a day. Justice made sure he’d never hurt anyone again.

“Tiny took a strike to the ribs. Flak jacket stopped the bullet, but the impact bruised his ribs up something fierce. Blast went down with his bike on top of him, so he’s pretty bruised up.

Going to have to rest up for a week or so while he turns pretty colors.

Nothing too bad though. Deuce is the worst hit.

Took a nasty slash to his face. Those guys were fond of their knives.

He’s in emergency getting it stitched up. Missed his eye, but not by much.”

“He’ll be okay, though?”

I felt a twinge of jealousy at the concern in her voice.

Yeah, I was that far gone. Like a caveman, drag her home by her hair and lock her up just for me gone.

Of course, she’d kick my ass if I even tried to lock her down, so I just shrugged.

“It’ll probably leave a scar, but he’ll be fine.

It will give him something to brag about at the next club party. ”

I took her hand and shouldered our way past Rattler and Beast who seemed to be fascinated by her quick recovery. I twisted my head back as we headed out of the door.

“You guys might want to do something about the carpet. Bloodstains ain’t coming out of that one.”

We climbed the stairs in silence, holding hands like we’d been doing this for years. When we entered my room, Emma closed the door behind me with a gentle click. “Get those pants off.”

* * *

Emma

In my head I knew I should be more worried about having killed a guy.

Hell, I could go to jail. Or worse. Did Georgia still have the death penalty?

Self-defense was a good reason, though, right?

Ace told the guys to clean up the mess. Did that mean they were going to hide the body?

Or dump it somewhere? Did that make them accessories to murder?

I didn’t want to get anyone else in trouble.

I took a deep breath and ordered myself to ignore the whole shooting thing. Ace and Riptide would take care of it. That’s what they did: they took care of things, and they protected people.

Some punk had sliced Ace’s leg. I needed to make sure he was okay. The dead guy would still be dead tomorrow, and frankly if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t do it any differently. It had been him or me, and I wasn’t ready to die yet. I had too much to live for.

Ace. I had my future with Ace to live for, and no two-bit pimp was going to take that away from me.

The knife wound on Ace’s leg might not look to be bleeding badly but I wasn’t going to be happy until I saw for myself. “Get your damn pants off!”

Amazing how my vocabulary could deteriorate when I was scared.

“I’m okay.” Ace hopped off the bed, pulling his gun out of its holster and placing it on the side table. “It’s just a flesh wound.” He kicked off his boots and undid his pants, sliding them carefully down to his ankles.

I dropped to my knees, putting me at eye level with the knife wound.

It really didn’t look that bad. The leather chaps, and the heavy denim of his pants must have taken the worst of the blade’s bite.

Although more than a scratch, I doubted it would need stitches.

Some antibacterial cream and a bandage to keep it clean would probably take care of it. Joker could take a look to make sure.

Reassured he wasn’t in imminent danger, I inhaled a deep breath, sinking back on my haunches.

Ace reached down and captured my hands, drawing me to my feet. He kissed me then, long and thoroughly. When he lifted his head, a gentle smile played across his face. “Believe me now?”

“Yeah. I just had to see for myself.” I fell silent.

“I get it.” He sank down onto the bed, pulling me into his lap.

“Does stuff like this happen a lot?” I hadn’t considered this part of dating a biker as thoroughly as I should have.

“Stuff like this?”

“You and the other guys going out and maybe getting hurt or killed?”

“I got to be honest.” He caught my gaze and held it.

“We do what we need to. You know we provide protection services, and we take contracts that aren’t always legal.

We run ops for the government that they aren’t okay sending their own guys out on.

Sometimes justice means playing hard and fast with the legal side.

If things go bad, they can deny they knew anything about it.

Sometimes it just means looking scary, so people think twice about what they plan to do.

But when we need to fight, we fight. When we say death before dishonor, we mean it.

That’s just the way we live our lives. If we’re going to give this thing between us a chance, you need to be okay with that. ”

I saw the truth in his eyes. He meant every word.

And deep down I realized it didn’t matter.

I loved him, and part of that was loving a man who was willing to put himself on the line for his country, and for what he felt was right.

And I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he would fight to the death if anyone dared to threaten the Riptide family he and his brothers had formed. I loved him even more because of that.

“Yeah.” I reached up to trace the line of his chin. “None of us know how much time we have. I can’t say I’m okay with you getting hurt, but I adore your willingness to put yourself on the line for what you believe in.”

He pulled me in close, kissing me so thoroughly I could barely breathe. Damn, the man knew how to kiss. His hands slid down my spine to cup my ass. “So now that we got that out of the way, we going to discuss the other things?”

I tilted my head. “What other things?”

“You. Me. Marriage. A home. A little mini-Emma running around.”

My brows shot skyward. “You’re asking me to marry you?”

“Hell, yeah. I know I’m supposed to go down on one knee and all that shit, but I figured since I’m wounded and all I could get away with just sitting here.”

“Marriage is a big deal. It’s like, forever.” Did he mean it? We’d only been together a short time.

“I know. And I’m sure. I was sure from the moment I opened my door, and you fell into my arms.” He reached over me and plucked something out of the drawer in the bedside table.

“When I got back here today and heard those gunshots, it was the worst moment of my life. I’m not sure how I would have survived if I lost you. ”

He opened his hand to expose a burgundy velvet jewelers’ box.

“You’re kidding. You have a ring already?”

“Bought it the day after you came back into my life. Knew I was going to keep you.”

He flipped the lid open to reveal a diamond surrounded by emeralds. “To match your eyes,” he explained.

My heart felt near full to bursting. The ring couldn’t be more perfect if I’d picked it out myself.

“Well?” I saw the doubt in his eyes. As if he thought I could ever turn down a chance to be at his side, share his life.

“Yes, of course I’ll marry you!”

He crushed me against his chest, claiming my lips with a searing kiss that deepened into a soul-sucking caress. The feel of his hands and lips on me sent heat curling down to my toes.

I could get used to this.

When we came up for air, a thought occurred to me.

“Your place is gone, and mine’s just a rental and frankly it’s barely big enough for one of me.

I don’t think the two of us would fit. It would be a bit awkward to live here at the clubhouse.

Everyone could hear everything we did.” My cheeks flushed with embarrassment as I thought of all the things I wanted to do with my big bad biker.

“We can buy a house.” He dismissed my concern with a wave of his hand. “I’ve already got a guy lining a few places up for us to look at. Or we can have one built if we don’t find anything you like.”

“That would take a long time!”

He chuckled. “We’ve got forever, babe.”

I wrinkled my nose, trying not to beam from ear to ear. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

A knock on the door interrupted us. “You guys decent? Mom sent me up to check on your leg, Ace. She said you took a knife wound?”

“Come on in, Joker,” Ace said.

I tried to stand, but Ace held me firmly in place on his lap.

The door swung open with an abysmal creaking sound. I made a note to get it oiled.

Joker entered and let out a hoot of laughter as he took in the scene. “You don’t look like you’re in pain, bro.”

I realized Ace didn’t have any pants on, and the tent in his boxer shorts didn’t leave anything to the imagination.

“Hell no. You can be the first to congratulate us.” Ace boomed out the news, “Emma’s agreed to marry me.”