Page 21 of Nomad: Violent Devotion

“Why are we here?” Her lips graze my neck in the simulation of a lover’s embrace.

Or a betrayer’s kiss.

“I said I’d take you home.” I hadn’t. She’d asked. But I’m not here to argue semantics.

Her breath stills against my back. “Walker?” For the first time, there’s hesitation in her whisper. My name.

I yank my helmet off and turn to face her, letting my anger show. “Yeah, princess? Whose old lady have I been fucking?” I rake my gaze over her, possession heating my blood. I want to rip her miniskirt right up and run my fingers through her panties, knowing they’ll be damp from our playtime in the restaurant earlier. “Or are you the little girl the prez here keeps under lock and key and never lets out?”

Her lips part on a hitched breath and I know I’ve hit gold. Thank fuck. As much as it would give me pleasure to plow into a Saints’ woman and ruin her, the thought that Poppy might not have a claim on her leaves me hard.

“I’m not anyone’s.”

Liar.

I grip her thigh with hard fingers. Not enough to bruise, like the marks darkening her arm. She trembles under my hold. “You’re fucking mine. Mine since you decided not to run screaming from me. Mine since you wanted to play dirty.” I lighten my hold on her thigh, graze my knuckles along the soft skin inside that she’s bared for both our pleasure. Our twisted version of play. “You want me to be yours? Spill those secrets.”

Her eyes widen, and fear lances through them. The simple sight shoots pain straight through my heart. Because she’s not looking at me, but over my shoulder. At the man who’s emerged from the clubhouse to watch us play a hundred yards from his front door. His stance and patch are familiar enough. I’m looking straight in the face of the president of the Forsaken Saints.

Two prospects, club wannabes who are as yet unpatched members still trying to earn their way into his good graces, step up from behind him. Each bear a gun similar to the ones I watched Mutt and Lincoln purchase earlier when they screwed up the Saints’ deal. I wonder where they are and how they survived the misfire with the money issue. Not that I care, but I’ve heard that the Saints’ president, Samual “Tyrant” Anderson, doesn’t suffer fools. Not for long in this life, anyway. Mind, if he killed every idiot in his club, he wouldn’t have a whole lot of members left. Maybe that’s why prospects flanked him instead of loyal patched members.

I rev the bike, knowing that coming here has given me the answers I needed. But now I need to take Poppy out of the shit fight about to go down before this war between Sons and Saints becomes her own.

My teeth grind as Poppy settles against me, sighing out my name again. Trust—what she gives me but I don’t have from her yet. Or that I can’t take, even if it’s what I crave. This addiction between us is fast devolving into something else but this is the wrong landscape to sturdy it on.

The bike purrs beneath my hand as she leans up and licks my skin. “I’m sorry, Judge.”

My road name. But I never gave her that.

The singular thought flits across my mind as pain lances through my side—the other side to where she cut me before—but blood flows anew, much faster this time. I grip the handlebars as the Saints open fire and find her hands on my colder ones.

“I’m sorry.” Her comfort is lost as wind tears past me and the road is as dark as the sin stained on the blade she buried in my side where she left it seconds before. I track the white marks on the tarmac, but they fade as the world does.

All that’s left is her warmth and her voice as she strains around me to hold the bike up by some miracle I don’t understand.

“This isn’t my choice.”

****

“You’ll do what you’re fucking told, Slipper. Now open the goddam door and stitch him up.”

“I don’t do other clubs. You know that, flower child.” A sigh. A door clangs on cold night air startling crickets into silence. “All right. For you. Bring him.”

The door clangs again. The soft voice I don’t recognize gives directions and Poppy’s warm hands, slick with a metallic tang, drag me across the floor.

“Careful, cosita. You might want to use that later.”

Her lips are sweet on my drier ones. So fuckin’ thirsty. “Don’t die first and we can talk about it.”

“Promise me,” I grate on a dry throat.

“I promise.” Her eye roll is audible and even the unknown male huffs his amusement.

My arm stings, then my side a moment later. I think it’s a moment later, and my head hurts like hell, but the lights are on, and I think I’m in a different room. In a chair. Fuck.

“I passed out.” I peer through pure grit, seeking her. Only her. “The hell are we?”

“Saints’ doc. He’s discreet.” Hesitation lines her voice for the third time in ... Fuck knows how many hours.