Her hair smelled like honey and coconut. This meant she smelled both sweet, and like a vacation.
He dug that about her.
He’d always been about brunettes. Exclusive.
Rosalie had been a brunette.
So he was done with brunettes.
“Good?” he murmured.
“Yeah, Beck,” she whispered into his skin.
“I’ll clean you up,” he said.
“I’ll do it.”
He twisted his neck and dipped his chin in a way she had no choice but to slip her head to his shoulder.
He caught her eyes and slid his hand up to her face.
He pulled the hair out of her lashes, smoothed it back, then again cupped her jaw.
“I’ll clean you up,” he repeated.
He’d learned this too with Rosalie.
Or after Rosalie.
You take care of your woman.
However that came about.
Even if that woman wasn’t really your woman.
If she was giving you something—her time, her body, her heart, a not-so-great blowjob—you took care of her.
She looked into his eyes, sadness in hers.
She knew she was getting the good after he’d done his last woman so wrong.
He’d wondered about her at first, why she’d take him on after what he’d done to Rosalie, seeing as everyone, even her, knew what he’d done to Rosalie. He thought she was gonna be about pain, push it with him, get off on the abuse.
It shocked the shit outta him it had not gone down like that.
She did not want to get near his club. Not that he’d let her, but that was the only thing she was weird about. She liked being with him (really liked it), but she didn’t want anything to do with his club.
That was not a surprise.
Not after Rosalie.
But he was the instigator with that, and that he did not get.
It worked in his favor, so he didn’t question it.
She also knew she wasn’t gonna last. He didn’t often spend the night. He showed. She fed him. They both came one way or another. And he was out.
What she didn’t know was that making it clear they were temporary, and they were definitely temporary, was Beck doing her a favor.
She deserved better.
“Okay,” she said.
He bent in and gave her a light kiss.
Then he set her aside, yanked the sheet over her and headed to the bathroom.
It was later, after he persuaded her out of her panties, ate her to another orgasm, then fucked her to another one for both of them, and she asked him to stay the night, he relented for once.
Now she was asleep.
He got out of her bed, tugged on his jeans and went to her living room.
He made sure to close the bedroom door.
He stared out the living room window after he made his call.
Brock “Slim” Lucas of the Denver PD answered.
“It’s late, Beck,” he growled.
“It’s the way it is,” Beck sighed.
“You got somethin’ for me?”
Beck thought about Digger.
But Beck said nothing about Digger.
“Bounty lost their charter. They’re not disbanding. They’re gonna form their own club.”
“Not sure we give a shit about the organizational ins and outs of that MC.”
“Well you should, since they aren’t gonna take that hit and go quiet into the night,” Beck replied. “They’re not done. And they’re morons. So who knows what they’ll dream up to do next.”
“Word on Valenzuela?”
“Nothing out and out. Only smart thing those fuckers have done is grow cautious about Valenzuela. Before and after he disappeared, he let us swing, all that went down. But someone’s still in with him. Something’s still happening outside the club, I feel it in my gut. And I’m on the team,” he was not gonna call it a committee, “to dream up our new charter. Web is too, so I’ll start with him and dig into him about that.”
“You know whose strings Lannigan was pulling?” Lucas asked.
Again, Beck thought about Digger.
But he said, “That’s harder to hit, man. Told you the club blew up when it came out an ex-Chaos was behind our intro to Valenzuela. No one is copping to it.”
He heard Lucas sigh then, “Anything from Janna?”
The girl in his bed.
Costumes and makeup for Valenzuela’s porn biz.
He went after her for intel, part of his plea agreement, the reason he didn’t do but a coupla weeks for that beatdown on Rosalie and was able to get his “brothers” let loose with minimal time so they could fuck up and then really go down.
He was an informant.
What he’d jacked up Rosalie for doing.
His penance.
His contrition.
He’d targeted Janna because she’d been into him.
And she’d seemed weak.
He was fucking her for info.
But then he found he liked looking at her. He liked how hard she tried to give a good blowjob. He liked that she didn’t let him take off her panties unless he got her seriously hot, making him work hard to earn something good for the first time in his life. He liked how she fried him extra crispy crinkle cuts because she knew they were his favorites and smiled all shy, but happy, when he walked in her house for her to feed him and him to fuck her.
So he hadn’t pushed.
But she was a good girl. A good girl who somehow got sucked into the porn business, but still a good girl.
So he’d need to set her loose.
This meant he needed to get what he could out of her and then let her be free to find a real man who’d do her right and deserve those crinkle cuts.
“Workin’ on it,” he muttered.
“Work harder, Beck. Our agreement stands only if you give us good shit. You aren’t givin’ us dick.”
Beck did not get wound up at Lucas’s threat like he would have done just months ago.
Pride one hundred percent goes before the fall.
He was standing, but he was the lowest of the low.
And he knew it.
“I’m on it.”
“Right. So I can expect more from you soon?”
“Yeah.”
“Fantastic. Later.”
The man didn’t say goodbye.
Beck went back to Janna’s bed, put his phone on her nightstand, took off his jeans and slid in beside her.
He settled on his back and curled her into him.
She stayed there.
She was warm, soft and smelled like honey and coconut.
So he kept her there.
He was about to hit sleep when she twitched, it was not gentle, and his eyes opened.
She twitched again, stiffened, and jerked even more violently.
No way she could stay sleeping through that.
“Babe?” he called.
“God,” she breathed, sleepy but sounding freaked out.
He drew her closer and looked down through the shadows at her hair all over his chest.
“You okay?”
She shivered.
What the fuck?
He gave her a squeeze.
“Janna.”
“Just a bad dream, honey.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
She hesitated.
Then she settled into him and said, “No. I’m okay. Go back to sleep.”
“Sure?”
Another hesitation and, “No. I’m good.” She tightened the arm she had around him and snuggled into him. “All good.”
She was lying.
He knew it not only with the hesitations but also with the fact she didn’t go back to sleep.
And Beck lay on his back in her bed with her draped on his chest, not sleeping, knowing she was not sleeping, struggling to find the man inside that could handle a pretty woman who fried him crinkle cuts and didn’t mind showing she liked he came through her door, who right then had his cum inside her but was troubled with a bad dream and it was his job to make it all right.
She fell asleep before Beck found that man.
And this meant Beck did not sleep at all.
Pope
At the same time in Boulder, Colorado . . .
Pope sat at his club table, the one with the emblem of the Range MC carved into its wood in the middle, and watched the door open, Spooks coming in.
Spooks looked around, his mouth tightened, and he closed the door, walking to the opposite end of the table from Pope and crossing his arms.