Текст книги "Retribution"
Автор книги: Sienna Valentine
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 13 страниц)
~ EIGHTEEN ~
Muddy Waters came on the jukebox as Eva dried the last of the shot glasses. A wave of bittersweet memory washed over her—sadness, a little heartache, and the deep lust that Will brought out in her all mingled for her attention. She looked up to the front door, silent and closed, and wished for the hundredth time that it would open and reveal Will standing behind it.
It had been two days since Will left Swashbuckler’s with his friends—the other members of his biker gang, as it turns out. She hadn’t heard a word from him since. Like a whirlwind that ended as fast as it began, Will was just gone, and Eva couldn’t believe how much she missed him. More than that, she was worried for him. The last look he gave her was full of so much pain that it invaded her dreams at night.
Eva stored the clean shot glasses slowly, one at a time, her mind feeling slow and dulled after so many days of chaos and excitement. She thought about Will’s touch on her skin and felt a heat blaze between her legs almost instantly, making her miss him even more.
At the end of the bar, Charlie sat, reading a newspaper. He flipped the page loudly and cleared his throat, bringing Eva out of her thoughts. Even though they hadn’t had any trouble since Will left, Charlie had been shadowing her like an overprotective mother bear ever since. She didn’t have the energy to argue with him about it.
“What do you want to do for dinner?” Charlie asked from behind the paper. “I was thinking we could go into town somewhere new, get our minds off things.”
“Sure,” said Eva. “I’m fine with that.”
Charlie folded the newspaper down and looked at her with a frown. He looked at her the same way he looked at a schematic of something he was trying to fix. “You’re sad.”
Eva gave him a sarcastic raise of her eyebrow and said nothing, wiping the counter down instead.
He folded the paper and put it on the counter. “Are you still mad at me?”
Eva shrugged. She really didn’t know how she felt about their fight before. It seemed unimportant. “I guess not.”
“Then what is it?” said Charlie. It only took him a few seconds to soften and add, “Oh. Is it… that..?”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Charlie,” she said as she threw the dish rag down into the sink. She leaned on the counter and hung her head. “I don’t need it from you.”
Charlie cleared his throat and shifted, uncomfortable. “All right, I guess I deserve that. I just don’t like seeing you upset. I’m sorry you’re sad.”
Eva closed her eyes. She couldn’t find the composure to look up at her brother. She just nodded with her face toward the counter. Me too.
The bar door swung open, squeakier than ever, it seemed. Eva took a deep breath and stood straight. Charlie turned, too, instantly on guard as he had been with every visitor for the past two days.
A familiar, hulking figure came in the doorway. It was the dark-haired man that called Will his friend. He pulled his sunglasses off and tucked them into the black leather vest that wrapped around his broad chest. Eva looked at the vest closely for the first time and saw it was covered in patches, including one that bore his name: Jase. Eva’s heart leapt into her throat as he approached.
“Hi, folks,” said Jase. He walked up to the bar and took a stool a few down from Charlie. “Can I get a beer, please?” he asked Eva directly.
“How’s Will?” she said. She didn’t even make a move to fulfill his request. She only stared at him, waiting.
Behind his big black beard, Jase’s expression went soft, surprised. He tipped his head just a little to the side as he looked at her. “Will is fine. That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
Eva felt relief rush down her muscles in a furious wave. She closed her eyes and let out a breath, not caring at all about displaying such emotion in front of her brother or this stranger. In some dark part of her mind, she feared Will was not going to survive his confrontation—feared he had crossed some forbidden line in his dangerous world. Her hands shook as she poured Jase the beer he requested.
Charlie held a hand to him and Jase shook it. “I guess I didn’t really introduce my sister to you last time. This is Eva.”
Jase’s eyes met hers and he grinned. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about Eva.” His smile grew when she blushed.
Charlie cleared his throat, clearly trying to change the subject without being forward. “So, you have some news for us?”
“I do,” said Jase, taking a drink of his beer. “First, you’ll be happy to know the problem from before has been solved. You will never be bothered again, and neither will your uncle, whenever he returns.”
Charlie scoffed. “You got a guarantee on that?”
Jase reached two fingers into a small pocket on his vest and came out with a white business card. He handed it to Charlie. “Here’s your guarantee. That’s the direct line to Henry Oliver, president of the Black Dogs. He has extensive influence, and you now get to count yourself among his allies. If anyone tries to hassle you again, call him, and we’ll take care of it.”
Charlie took the card with a surprised expression. “The Black Dogs Motorcycle Club?”
“Yes, that’s our organization, mine and Will’s,” said Jase. “Will is actually a very important part of our club.”
“Didn’t seem like it the other day,” said Charlie.
Jase sighed and took a drink. “That’s complicated. Everybody goes through dark times. Will’s just going through his. We don’t abandon brothers when they’re wounded. In any case, the club formally apologizes to you both for his, uh… methods. This was unusual for everyone.”
Charlie gave a hearty nod and stuffed the card carefully into his shirt pocket. “That’s appreciated. All we wanted was for things to get back to normal,” he said as he looked at Eva.
Speak for yourself, she thought.
“You should be able to do that now,” said Jase. He finished off the last of his beer, and Eva held up a hand and refused his money when he tried to pull out his wallet. Jase gave her a smile. “Hope you guys have a good evening.”
As Jase rose to leave, the office phone rang from the back room. Charlie jumped up and excused himself, clapping a friendly hand on Jase’s arm as he passed and disappeared around the wall. Seeing an opportunity, Eva called out to Jase just before he got to the door. He turned to her with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Can I talk to you for a minute—alone?” she asked.
Jase looked over her head to where Charlie had disappeared. “Yeah, sure.”
Eva crossed her arms, feeling vulnerable and a little embarrassed. “Look, I don’t really know how to ask this, so I’m just going to come out and say it…” She squirmed a little on her feet. “I’m worried about Will. Is he really doing all right, or are you just telling us that to keep us settled?”
Jase smiled at her and pulled the smoke out of his lips. “I wouldn’t fuck around about something like that. Will’s my closest friend, I want to see him well, too.”
“I know he’s a dangerous man,” said Eva. “Just like I’m sure you are.” She looked around nervously. “I know this doesn’t make any sense, the kind of girl I am… I’m probably not his usual type… but he connected with me. We connected.” She had to pause and take a breath. Jase watched her with patient eyes. “I know he’s not in a good place. But I feel like I got to see the real Will under all that pain. And I… I really care about that Will. Can you promise to let me know if there’s something I can do for him?”
Jase watched her face quietly a moment before he grinned and said, “I can see why he likes you so much.”
Eva’s face flushed with heat. “What? What do you mean?”
Jase shook his head and laughed. “No, no, that’s not my conversation to have, and if you’re Will’s girl, that means you’re smart enough that you already know that, anyway.” When he winked at her, Eva blushed again and she gave him a guilty half-grin.
“I don’t know… but I hope,” she said.
“Will doesn’t exactly have a ‘usual type.’ He’s always been a very… self-sufficient man. So if he’s connected with you, Eva, then I would say don’t worry about all that surface bullshit.”
“You’re not going to kick him out of the gang, are you? You seemed so angry at him before.”
“Well, first, we call it a club. But no, we’re not kicking him out of the club. Will’s made amends. He’s on a good path to getting back to himself, now. He’s just going to have to serve out his punishment, first.”
Eva’s eyes widened and she felt her heart drop. She imagined something horrible and bloody. “Punishment?”
Jase paused, then laughed when he read her expression. “Relax, it just means he has to tend bar at the clubhouse for a few weeks instead of working any of the fun or important jobs. I guess ‘demotion’ is a better word for it.”
Eva let out a relieved laugh. “Luckily, we’ve already given him some practice with that. Although I’m surprised he’s accepting a demotion, to be honest. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who listens to people when he doesn’t want to.”
“That’s the thing. I think he wants to, now,” said Jase. “Not that he wants to put up with demotion, of course. It’s that he wants to be different, and he knows step one is putting up with his punishments.” Jase paused a moment, then added. “I shouldn’t say ‘different.’ It’s more like Will wants to be himself again. The Will he was two years ago.” He nodded toward her. “Which, I would guess, is the same Will you got to see underneath his pain.”
Eva was silent. The thought made her heart ache.
“Maybe you can help him get there,” said Jase. He gave her shoulder a gentle pat and left the bar.
~ NINETEEN ~
“So this is what it looks like on the other side,” said Tommy as he propped up his boots on one of the bar stools and gave Will a shit-eating grin.
Will handed him an open beer and gave him a half-smile. “Don’t get used to it.”
“No way, I’m never going back,” said Tommy with a laugh, clinking his beer against Will’s. They both took a drink.
At that moment, Will didn’t mind the idea of the simple duties of being a bartender. It seemed like a fucking vacation, compared to the turmoil and trauma of the last two years. Already in the few days since the meeting with the cartel, he felt ten times lighter, a thousand years younger. Like someone had finally released the steam building up inside of him so he could breathe and think. He didn’t feel half as angry anymore, and while he wouldn’t go as far as to say he was happy, he was basically a pig in shit compared to how he felt just a week before. He was glad to toss off the heavy responsibility of being a spymaster for a few weeks. He’d come back stronger; he always did.
And now that the clouds in his head had fully cleared, he really only had one desire left: Eva.
He thought about the sadness in her face when he left her at Swashbuckler’s days ago. He hadn’t been back since—had been in no shape for it, really. After the cartel meeting, Will went back to his house and slept for fifteen hours, a deeper sleep than any he’d had in months. He woke up and met with a fresh disgust for the living conditions to which he’d subjected himself, and immediately began cleaning up the mess he’d been living in. It was like his brain was running at full function for the first time in two years.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about her—far from it. Not ten minutes passed by, it seemed, without something as simple as her name popping into his head. It was only that Will was suddenly awake to his own sickness, and self-preservation had to come first. The man he used to be, the one he wanted to be again, kept a tighter ship than this. The man his grandmother raised was better. He had to dig that man out from the ashes of the fire.
After that, his next responsibility was showing up to pay his penance to the MC for his behavior, taking over as clubhouse bartender and maintenance man for Tommy Castillo, while the young recruit finally got his shot at some field work. Playing bartender only made him think of Eva more and more. He replayed memories of bending her over the counter, kneeling underneath her soft heat, making her writhe on top of his face. He could practically see her, sitting there at the bar, reading and smiling up at him, eyes heavy with attraction. The thought made his chest ache.
Deep down, Will knew he cared about Eva, but he wasn’t so sure she cared about him—not now. Thinking about that day Jase and Ghost dragged him out of the bar filled him with shame. After that, Eva probably thought he was some lunatic. Who could blame her? He couldn’t have looked sane, pushing his best friend around for no reason, readying to drag Charlie out into battle. He may have saved the Murdocks, in the end, but looking back, he could recognize that he really just got lucky things didn’t go a lot worse. He had no confidence that Eva saw him as anything more than an opportunistic fuck, an exciting affair with a bad boy to get her blood going.
You’ve never told a bigger lie to yourself, came the thought from Will’s own mind. The last thing Eva would do is use you.
“You are literally the worst bartender that has ever existed.”
Will looked over and saw Ghost, both hands spread wide, leaning on the bar.
“Did you say something?” asked Will.
“ ‘Dear Yelp friends: don’t go to the Black Dogs clubhouse. Bartender was lost in a sissy romantic daydream and couldn’t even get me a fucking beer. The available pussy was acceptable. Half a star,’ ” said Ghost, pounding his fist on the bar.
Will smiled and cracked open a beer, handing it across the bar to him. “Everyone knows those reviews are bought.”
“Fair enough,” said Ghost. He took a drink and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “So, how you feelin’, sport? Get that grumpiness dug out yet?”
“You’re such a poet,” said Will. “And I’m feeling better, yes. Thanks.”
“You were a grade-A jagweed there for a while, man. And that’s my thing,” said Ghost, sticking a thumb in his own chest. “Glad to see you feeling like yourself again.”
“Glad to be feeling like myself again.”
“So, where’s your little girlfriend?”
Will swallowed his beer and gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not so sure about the future of that.” He looked down at the hands wrapped around his beer bottle. “She didn’t exactly meet me at a positive time in my life.”
“Yeah, but she knows that, doesn’t she? And she liked you anyway. I think she helped this along.”
Will crooked an eyebrow at him. “Are you trying to give me romantic advice, Ghost?”
Ghost’s face twisted into an expression of mock outrage. “What the shit is that supposed to mean? I’m not a man? I don’t have a heart just because I’m amazing at killing things?”
Will rolled his eyes with a laugh and punched Ghost in the arm. He listened to Ghost ramble on in his dramatic, pretend offense as more members of the MC started to trickle in for the Friday night meeting and subsequent party in the den. So many people were coming in and out that the sound of the door opening had faded into the background, along with the music from the jukebox, and the competitive jostling from Jase and Bones at the pool table.
Will started pulling up beers as new arrivals came in. When he stood up, Eva stood in the big wide doorway that connected the den with the main hallway. She looked like a vision from some nostalgic painting of Americana. Her slender frame was draped by a pastel pink dress, tied neatly around her waist with a matching belt. Her soft, thin brown hair fell in gentle curls at the cut of her chin, freshly washed and brushed. She wore a thin, white cardigan over her shoulders on this chilly evening, and her hands fidgeted at her waist as she gazed into the big den full of bikers, her eyes wide, but unafraid.
Will froze for a moment. She didn’t look real, standing there in all her color and softness in the midst of everything that wasn’t. Her beauty didn’t belong here, and yet Will couldn’t have been happier to see it again. He felt bursts of emotion run through his skin as he stared at her, soaking in every inch as she searched the room for his face.
“Whoa…” said Ghost from his seat suddenly, halting his annoying fake monologue. He was looking at Eva, too. “I mean… whoa. She’s like a cupcake come to life.”
Will put his beer down and gave Ghost a stern look. “Behave?”
“I wanna eat her right up.”
“Ghost.”
“I’m serious. You better be able to get around that bar faster than I can get off this stool.” Ghost started chugging his beer and held up his fingers in a slow, awkward countdown as he drank. Will just shook his head and slapped the back of Ghost’s as he came out from behind the bar and walked by.
Will felt his heart start to race as he walked up Eva. When she spotted him, her face immediately lit up in a smile that crinkled her eyes and sent a heated flush through her skin. He saw her jaw drop a little when he stopped before her.
Eva stared deep into his eyes, like she was searching for something. “Wow, I… I came here to check and see if you were doing okay, but I can see already… you look like a different man.”
Will flushed with a rare feeling of self-consciousness, smiling downward. He took his big right hand and grasped the middle of Eva’s fidgeting fingers, holding them there in a warm, tight embrace. She wrapped her hands around his lovingly, her small fingers curled and rubbing in little strokes.
“I hope not so different,” said Will. “I’m sorry I haven’t reached out to you. What you saw in me…” He shook his head. “I figured you’d never want to see me again.”
Eva smiled softly at him. She put a palm up to his face and caressed his cheek, and Will felt his stomach flutter. “I did see some darkness,” she agreed slowly. “But I think I also saw a true glimpse of who you are, Will. And I think that’s the man who is standing in front of me right now.”
“I wish you didn’t have to see me like that,” said Will. “I know I was already deep in before you arrived, but I still wish… I still wish I could take it back.” He squeezed her hands. “It was old pain I was fighting, but a new danger that was real. I only wanted to protect you. You believe that, right?”
Eva nodded. “I do. And you did, Will. You protected us. You made the difference. I’m glad the wolf in you was there when we needed it.” She smiled a little. “Coriolanus wasn’t all wrong…”
Will returned her grin. She’s really not afraid. She’s like a queen. My queen.
She looked down like she was gathering her courage. “You’ve made a difference to me. A big difference. I know I don’t really fit into your world here and… and I understand if your interest isn’t the same… but I just wanted you to know that you made me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. And I’ve had enough of being alone, and enough of being careful, for a fucking lifetime.”
Will raised his eyebrows at her curse, and couldn’t help but smile. It made Eva blush.
“I just mean… I liked spending time with you, and for more reasons than just your dick,” she said with a mischievous smile that made Will ache with lust. “So if you wanted to keep spending time together, maybe try and see what we’re like without a bounty hanging over our heads, I think I would like that.”
Will smiled so big, his face muscles hurt. He leaned down and rested his forehead on Eva’s, whispering, “You really would?”
Eva nodded under his face, and planted a tiny, heartbreaking kiss on his lips.
“My life isn’t always as insane as last week, but it’s also not boring. Are you sure you want that kind of trouble?”
Eva smiled. “Are you kidding?” She reached a hand out and ran it across his abs, under his cut, and around his back. Will groaned as even this touch made his lust start boiling for her. “I’m done being jealous of my books. I want some adventures of my own.”
Will wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her into him. “I think I can help with that.” He cupped her jaw and ran a soft thumb across her pale skin before he leaned his lips into hers, kissing her with slow, deliberate passion as she clung to him tighter.
It was only a few seconds before the men in the room erupted into ludicrous cat-calls, whistles, and howling as they watched Will and Eva kiss. They tried to ignore it, but the longer they did, the louder everyone became until he and Eva both broke down into embarrassed laughter as the MC got riled up. Sometimes, Will forgot how much of himself he kept hidden from the people in his life—this was the first time the MC had ever seen him with a woman who wasn’t just a casual fuck.
“Well done, sir!” Jase clapped from the pool table.
Will shook his head and looked down at Eva with apologetic eyes. “Welcome to the jungle, I suppose.”
“If Will’s going monogamous, tell the house ladies I’m taking his spot as the club’s sex-crazed maniac,” said Ghost, raising his beer in the air. “To my dick, and all its future successes!” Before he could take a drink, someone threw an empty beer can at him, making him spill his beer with a curse.
Will shot Eva a glance, worried about how she’d react to Ghost’s mention of his prior sex life, but Eva surprised him again by laughing full and loud, with only a little embarrassment on her flushed cheeks. She tucked her head against Will’s chest and he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer, planting a kiss on top of her head as he led her into the den to make introductions.
