Breezy hesitated. She hadn’t been able to take a bath since she’d left the club. Her tiny apartment had a little shower stall, just big enough for her to get into. She doubted most men could have showered without turning sideways and stooping. Certainly, Steele couldn’t. She knew the exact width of his shoulders and there was no way he could get into that little stall.
She wasn’t going to argue anymore with him. What was the point? She was going to lose and every minute she spent arguing was more time in his company. She sank onto the mattress, and of course it was far nicer than any she’d ever slept on in her life. Tearing off her boots, she resisted throwing them at him.
“Do you have things at your place you need me to get for you?”
God. His voice. He could turn her inside out with that voice. “A few things matter to me, but not at the risk of your life. I’d prefer you get Zane for me.”
“Make a list and write down the address of your apartment.”
She nodded and started to lie down.
“I’ll need your jeans off, Bree. I have to look at your thigh and I have to examine your ribs, so lose the tank as well.”
She lowered her lashes, her sex clenching hard. She didn’t have the same figure she’d had when she’d left. Her breasts were larger, and her hips fuller. She hadn’t had a lot to eat during her pregnancy, so she hadn’t gained a lot of weight, but she still had a couple of small stretch marks. She told herself she didn’t care. She wasn’t trying to impress him.
Refusing to look at him, she peeled off her jeans and tank and then draped them over a chair. It wasn’t like she was wearing really pretty panties and bra. They didn’t even match. She bought the cheapest cotton bikinis she could find and the cheapest bras that were functional. Stretching out on the bed, she looked anywhere but at him.
The room was larger than she expected and far nicer than the flop rooms for the Swords members to sleep in. He sat on the edge of the bed and instantly she felt caged in.
“Damn it, Breezy. You’re covered in bruises.” There was genuine distress in his voice.
She closed her eyes at the brush of his fingers. She’d forgotten how gentle he could be. That whisper of a touch on her bare skin. The moment he did that, every nerve ending sprang to life. She hadn’t wanted a man since she’d left him. She hadn’t thought of wanting a man. She’d avoided them like the plague, first because she’d been pregnant, then she’d been a single, harassed mother and then because men were disgusting creatures and she’d wanted no part of them. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, if she was honest, it had been because they weren’t Steele.
Those fingers whispered along her ribs, so gently she thought she might cry.
“Hurts here?”
He was bent over her, his hair falling toward her bare belly while his hands slid over her ribs. A healer’s hands. A lover’s hands. He’d been both before he destroyed her.
“Yes.”
“They aren’t broken, thank fuck. Your old man do this, or Junk?”
Now his hands were on her thigh, sweeping over the large bruise. Everywhere he touched her, there was heat, and then somehow, miraculously, the terrible ache would subside. He had magic in his hands. “He kicked you in the ribs as well, didn’t he?”
“Yes. It was my father. Junk had Zane. He had his hand over Zane’s mouth and I thought he was going to kill him.” She breathed deeply to keep from sobbing. She would never forget that moment. Lying on the floor helpless, her father kicking her while her brother had his hand over her baby’s mouth, a grin on his face.
“I’m going to beat the shit out of both of them before I kill them,” he said. “Break every bone in their fucking bodies.”
He sounded like Steele. Calm. But she knew he meant it.
“If you think I’m going to object, Steele, I’m not. They took my baby.” This time the sob escaped before she could prevent it. She turned on her side, face to the wall, jamming her fist in her mouth. She didn’t want him there to witness her breakdown. That was hers alone. He’d thrown her out like trash, and she’d made something of herself. She hung on to that. She’d even finished high school, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
He leaned into her, his mouth against her ear. “We’ll get him back, baby. That’s what we do. We don’t let perverted clubs like the Swords take children. We’ll get him back.”
He was gone before she’d turned to face him. What had he meant by that? That was what they did? What did that mean? And how had he made her ribs and her bruised body feel so much better just by touching her? Steele. He broke her heart in so many ways.
THREE
“We’re going to have to clear the calendar to get Steele’s boy back,” Czar said, the moment the twenty fully patched members of Torpedo Ink took their places around the large, thick, oval table made out of oak.
Czar looked over at his vice president. “You get her settled?”
“She’s going to give me trouble, but I deserve it. I’ll handle it.” Steele knew Breezy wasn’t going to be won over easily, but as far as he was concerned, there was no other choice. He had to win her over for his own self-preservation.
Czar nodded. “First business, where are we with the boy we’ve been bidding on? Is there anything new popping up?”
Code shook his head. “They shut down the auction saying some member of the crime unit had bid on him. They sent out a warning and disappeared. I had traced them to Las Vegas, but they may have moved the kid and the operation. I’ve done everything I can do to be alerted if they pop back up. My friend Cat is also working with me and she’s got just as many alerts up as I do. Sooner or later they’ll try to sell the kid and we’ll be back in business.”
Finding the little boy they’d heard was being auctioned on the Internet was a fierce need for all of them, and frustration showed on their faces. Now, they had to find Steele’s child as well. There was no way they could sacrifice one child for the other. If necessary, they would break into two teams. They’d done so often enough that both ran smoothly.
“Ice, Storm, if Code gets anything at all, you may need to head to Las Vegas to poke around. You might uncover something he can’t find online,” Czar said.
“No problem,” Ice agreed without hesitation.
Storm just nodded.
“Anything else pressing before we move on to finding Steele’s son?” Czar asked.
Gavriil nodded. “I’ve been contacted by a former schoolmate. He’s living in the Trinity area and he’s got about twenty others from our same school riding with him. They have no affiliations with any club, and they want to come in under Torpedo Ink. They all have residences and work in the Trinity area and want to stay there. They’re on their way and have requested a meeting with you.”
“Another chapter?” Czar said, speculation in his voice. “You know them? All of them? I imagine he sent names to you.”
“Our school wasn’t quite as brutal as yours, but our instructors did like to torture those of us whose parents Sorbacov particularly hated. I know most of those in their club. I can vouch for a few personally, but not all. I can give you the names of those I know well. They’re assassins, Czar, trained just as we were.”
Czar tapped his fingers on the table and looked to Steele.
Steele knew what that look meant. “Like us, I doubt they fit anywhere.” He looked around the table. “Input?”
“Could be trouble for us,” Reaper said. “The Diamondbacks are looking very closely at us. Pierce”—he named the enforcer for the Diamondback Mendocino chapter—“is no pushover. He saw right through us and knows we’re lethal as hell. Allowing twenty or twenty-five of us in their territory is one thing. Knowing we’ve got another twenty or twenty-five a day’s ride away is something else, particularly if those men were trained the way we were—and he knows we were assassins for our government. He can’t prove it, but he knows it.”
Gavriil had attended one of the four schools that had been a training ground for assets for the Russian government, although that really meant assassins for Sorbacov. All of the schools had been brutal in various degrees. The school Steele had attended had been the worst. Gavriil’s had been right behind it in cruelty to the children being raised and trained there.