Page 25 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

Whip cleared his throat. “I’ve got to take Levi and X back to Psychos to get their vehicles anyway. I’ll get her things and deliver them back to her in the morning.” He glanced at the time, that read nearly 4:00 a.m. “Well, later in the morning anyway.”

“Thank you,” she told him sincerely. Offering him a half-smile.

Seriously? All I got was scowls and blazing anger, and he got smiles?

I was being a grump and I knew it, but this wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t the life I’d dreamed of having with her. I was supposed to get a job, a house on a quiet street, in a decent neighborhood where kids rode their bikes after school.

It wasn’t going to be a fancy life, but it would be honest and sweet because she was next to me.

And somehow I seemed to have set the whole thing on fucking fire.

Whip pulled up outside Fang’s place in Providence.

Violet dragged herself out of the front seat wearily. “I know we need to talk about this and work out what’s next, but not tonight. I just can’t.”

Whip nodded before either X or I could speak. “It can wait. You’re safe with your brother and the others. Just get some rest.”

She nodded, closing the door.

I got out of the back seat. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

She raised a hand in a stop motion. “Don’t. I’m fine. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

X and Whip sat in the car like obedient little dogs while she slowly shuffled to Fang’s front door. I watched her fingers move across the electronic PIN pad, and the panel light up green before she pushed down on the door handle and let herself in.

She didn’t look back.

My skin felt too tight. She was bleeding. Traumatized. And she was going to be up there in her bedroom alone. I already knew she wouldn’t wake her brother or Rebel.

I couldn’t stand the thought of it. It made me literally sick to my stomach to think of her curled up in the fetal position, crying, hurt, scared. She played a tough game, and she was angry, but beneath all that, I knew she was terrified.

Because I was too.

“Levi, get back in the car, would you?” Whip complained.

I glanced down at him behind the steering wheel, and X contorting himself into unnatural angles to climb over the center console from the back seat to the front.

I squinted at him, his big body half stuck somewhere in between. “Why the hell didn’t you just open the door and walk around?”

He lifted his head. “I have impulsive thoughts, Levi. Sometimes they win.”

He really didn’t need to say more than that.

Whip just grunted and tried to avoid getting one of X’s knees to the face.

I tapped the roof of the car. “You two go. I’m staying.”

X was head down, ass up in the front, practically doing a handstand trying to turn himself around in the too-small space. “Hey, Whip, did you know you have a bunch of Skittles down here on the floorboard?”

Whip ignored him, shoving his flailing legs out of the way. He caught my gaze through the open window. “You sure about this? She’s probably not going to be happy when she realizes you’re hanging around.”

But I didn’t care.

I couldn’t go home to the clubhouse and lie awake in my cold bed, just praying she was safe. Fang was a ruthless killer. I knew because I’d trained him myself, once upon a time.

But he was one man, and he had a family. A woman. Kids. Two other partners.

If something went down, his priority was going to be them.

But my priority would always be Violet. Whether she liked it or not.

“I’m staying,” I confirmed to Whip.

He nodded. “Your funeral.”

He put the car in reverse and zoomed backward down the driveway, with X hollering that he didn’t have a seat belt on.

I watched the taillights disappear around the corner of the darkened road.

The sun hadn’t started its rise yet, the night sky still an inky black, though I knew from years of watching through grimy prison windows, that the sky would start lightening in the next thirty or so minutes as dawn approached, and not long after that, it would be streaked with gold and pink and orange.

I wasn’t going to wait around out here to see it this morning though.

I crept across the yard on silent feet, keeping to the grass to cover my footsteps.

I took the stairs, eyeing the facade of the house Fang had found himself living in and swore under my breath.

“Pretty damn fancy, brother. No wonder you don’t sleep at the clubhouse anymore.

I wouldn’t either if my house was big enough to have wings. ”

It was a far cry from the days when the two of us had been the youngest in the club, him a prospect, sharing my shitty little bedroom with twin beds.

It had been my first taste of fucking with an audience.

Fang hadn’t been big on bringing women into his room.

He knew he scared most of them. Even as a teenager, he’d been huge.

Intimidating, with a face only his mother could love.

But that hadn’t stopped the occasional club slut from wanting him.

And what was a guy supposed to do when he woke up with a naked woman, getting him hard, begging to bounce on his cock?

I’d been older, living it up, out from under the nose of my parents for the first time in my life.

Sharing that room with Fang had been our version of college. Neither of us had finished high school, let alone thought about getting a degree, but those years sharing that room, enforcing for War’s old man back when he’d been the prez, had been some of the best and wildest days of my life.

Until Army had thrown me under the bus, and I’d spent six years in prison for something I hadn’t done. Away from the life I’d built. Away from my best friend.

I wasn’t even sure I could still be mad at Army for it. Because if it hadn’t been for those years in a jail cell, I would have never met Violet.

And knowing her was worth every minute I’d lost in that hole.

At the door, I punched in the code I’d watched Violet enter earlier.

It was easy, the numbers all spaced apart.

When the sun rose, I’d get them to change it.

And tell Violet she needed to cover her hand when entering a PIN.

But for now, it worked in my favor. The locks disengaged with a quiet whirr, and I pushed down on the handle.

The entry foyer on the other side was as grand as any I’d ever seen. Though there was a toy truck and a doll with messy hair left on the tiled floor. I closed the door behind me, silently toeing off my shoes so I wouldn’t be as noisy getting up the stairs.

I avoided some Lego, using the streetlight coming in through the large windows to make my way up the stairs.

The landing up there was darker, and I crept along the hallway, eyeing each closed door, trying to work out which room they would have put Violet in.

This house was insanely huge, the hallway wide, the ceilings high. The first couple of bedrooms were easily identified as kid rooms, their names on the doors, the girls in one room, the boys sharing the one across the hall.

In the next, a crib and change table gave away the baby’s room, the soft glow of a monitor lighting up the bub’s tiny, sleeping form.

All the doors beyond that were closed, but my gut instinct said, with a new baby in the house, the parents wouldn’t want to be too far away.

That was confirmed when soft noises came from the two rooms next door.

Snoring from one.

A squeak of a bedframe from the other, mixing with deep, low, male voices and soft groans of pleasure.

Heat rushed down the back of my neck.

I didn’t know the intimate details of Fang’s relationship.

But I knew the sounds of two men fucking.

Because I’d been very close to making them myself not all that long ago.

I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about Whip with his hand wrapped around my cock, and the way I’d grabbed his neck, hauling him in, claiming his mouth with my lips and my tongue.

I didn’t even know why I’d done it. I’d never been into guys in the past. Sure, I’d watched my brothers at the clubhouse fuck women, and enjoyed watching the way their bodies moved, just as much as the women beneath them, but actually fucking a guy myself?

No. Army would have fucking crucified me.

That had never been an option. Even in prison, I would have never let myself be that vulnerable.

And yet with Whip, it had been impossible to resist. I’d wanted his hands on me.

Wanted so much more than that, if I was really being honest with myself.

Which was fucking annoying because then he had to go and be a dick about it.

I shoved all thoughts of Whip and fucking men out of my head, my face blazing. Down the hallway I paused at each room, but my gut told me that because of the probability of a crying baby, Violet’s room would be the last one.

I took a chance and opened the door.

Violet looked up from her perch on the end of the big, four-poster bed and quickly wiped her eyes.

Her surprise quickly turned into annoyance. “Levi? What are you doing?”

I shushed her, which only made her eyes, still filled with unshed tears, blaze with anger. But I’d expected to piss her off. “Shh. Everyone is sleeping.”

Well, almost everyone, but that detail wasn’t important right now.

“What are you doing in here? Get out!” It was a whisper, but it was an angry one.

I closed the door behind me. “No.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What do you mean, no? You can get out or I can scream for my brother.”

“You aren’t going to do that.” I folded my arms across my chest and stared down at her.

“I know you won’t because you care more about other people than you care about yourself.

You know they’ve probably been up half the night with the baby.

And your screams are going to wake them all and that would be the last thing you want to do. ”