Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
“If ‘what’s necessary’ turns into kidnapping her to a safe house, I won’t lose sleep over it,” Kane added. “Seems like a convenient place to start working on getting your woman knocked up.”
Jax looked up from the laptop. “Can we not schedule breeding retreats while I’m operating on six minutes of sleep?”
Edge grinned at him. “You’re just bitter because your newborn is unionizing.”
“My newborn is a terrorist with tiny socks.”
Axle rubbed a hand over his mouth, failing to hide his laugh. “You’re all making safe houses sound like vacation rentals with restraints.”
Shifter’s eyes narrowed slightly at Axle, a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. “That your kink, brother?”
“Need to know,” Axle quipped.
I laughed despite the situation because there were only so many ways a man could stay tense with this group of assholes around him. “I’ll keep the safe house option in mind.”
Kane’s stare cut back to me, his humor fading. “Do.”
I sobered fast. “I don’t think she needs a bodyguard hovering over her every second. She’d notice, and she’d hate it. But I want discreet eyes on her whenever she isn’t at school, here, the clubhouse, or with me.”
“Done,” Kane agreed immediately.
“I’ll set a rotation,” Jax added. “Prospects on loose coverage. Brothers close enough to move if needed. I’ll also put alerts on her car, her apartment, the school perimeter, and any camera that captures her usual routes. Not invasive enough to piss her off if she finds out, but useful enough that if the Serpents breathe near her, we’ll know.”
“One more thing.” Kane looked at me, and whatever dark amusement had been there a minute earlier disappeared behind the man who’d built an empire and kept every brother in it alive. “The rival MC comes first because they’re an active threat. Once that’s handled, Saylor is family. If she decides she wants Sutton handled, helped, hidden, turned over, or left to rot in whatever mess she made, we’ll do it her way.”
I held his gaze, my throat tightening with something I wasn’t going to name in front of a room full of men who would never let me hear the end of it. I hadn’t expected anything less from Kane, but that didn’t mean hearing it didn’t land. He wasn’t offering mercy to Sutton. He was offering loyalty to Saylor. That was different, and it meant everything.
“Thanks.”
Kane nodded, accepting my gratitude without making a thing of it. “You’d do the same.”
“Yeah.”
Edge rose from the chair, stretching his shoulders as if the meeting had been casual instead of a line drawn around my woman. “Good. Now that we’ve agreed Century’s going to impregnate a teacher in a secure location, can we go back to ruining the Serpents’ week?”
Jax closed his laptop. “Month. Week feels small.”
Axle opened the door. “Year has a nice ring to it.”
I followed them out, my mouth curving despite the heat still burning under my ribs. “You assholes done?”
“Not even close,” Edge replied over his shoulder. “But we’re pacing ourselves. Family men now. Need to protect our energy.”
Kane gave him a look. “You’ve never protected anything you didn’t intend to sharpen.”
“Exactly. Energy’s a weapon.”
I shook my head and let them file out ahead of me, the weight of the meeting settling into me as I returned to my custom bay. There was still a threat breathing too close to Saylor, a missing twin with a gift for creating disasters, and a rival MC dumb enough to think the Kings could be studied from the outside and exploited.
But now the club was moving. The Diesel Serpents had no idea what they’d stepped into when they cornered Saylor. They thought they were chasing intel. They were about to learn they’d touched the edge of something a lot sharper.
10
CENTURY
By that evening, I’d spent too many hours buried under work and not nearly enough of them with Saylor. I’d known before lunch that I wasn’t going to make it to the school when Saylor finished for the day, and the knowledge had put me in a foul mood that got worse with every hour. The rest of the guys at The Pit noticed and wisely gave my custom bay a wide berth.
It was my space, built for the kind of work that needed precision and privacy, and sat apart from the main floor, separated by a rolling door on one side and a locked entrance on the other.
I stood beside a stripped-down bike frame, checking the curve of a custom bracket I’d shaped for a customer’s rear fender, when I heard footsteps stop just inside the open bay door. I glanced up, expecting a mechanic or maybe Gauge coming to tell me some customer was whining about a timeline, but the world narrowed when I saw Saylor standing there instead.
She had a takeout bag in one hand and her schoolbag looped over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a way that made me want to wreck every bit of her composure. Her clothes were more buttoned-up than what she’d worn to the track, but that almost made it worse, because now my head supplied the image of peeling away every respectable layer until she was flushed, breathless, and saying my name like she couldn’t remember anything else.