Page 22 of Saved By the Rogue

"It’s a meeting place for a lot of different people," I admitted. "People...people who are willing to do pretty much anything as long as they get paid for it."

She sank her teeth into her bottom lip.

"You think he might have been hiring someone else to...?"

"Yeah," I replied. "That’s exactly what I think he was doing. Paying someone off to come looking for you since Bailey and his friend fucked up."

She shivered, and gripped tight to my hand, squeezing on to it like she didn’t want to let go.

"Fuck," she murmured. "I...I don’t..."

"Let’s get out of here," I told her urgently. "If he’s paid someone off to come after you, we don’t want to be around when they start their search."

She slipped her helmet back on at once, hiding out underneath it, but it wasn’t as though anyone would have been able to overlook someone like her hanging out here. With that long blonde hair, that sweet laugh, and those bright blue eyes, she would be a sitting duck for whoever her sick father had sent after her next.

Chapter Thirteen – Star

"Thanks, Abbey," I told her. "I appreciate it. I’ll meet with you tomorrow, okay?"

"I’ll speak to you then, Star," Abbey replied, her voice practically bubbling over with excitement. "Looking forward to it..."

I hung up the phone before she could say anything else, because I felt as though I might lose my nerve if I talked to her for another moment. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do this, of course I did, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what kind of danger I might be putting myself – or Jaxon – in to make it happen.

Jaxon was pacing back and forth in front of the couch while I made the call to Abbey. I had been in touch with what felt like pretty much every journalist and newspaper in Atwood, and all of them had shut me down the moment I had tried to explain what information I had. Either they thought I was lying, or they were so far up my father’s ass that they didn’t want to risk pissing him off and earning his wrath when he came into power again.

But, eventually, I had managed to get in touch with Abbey Finley, an independent journalist who had worked in another city up until recently, where she’d been involved with exposing a corrupt politician, not dissimilar to my father. I called her up, half-expecting her to shut me down just like everyone else had, but she had agreed to meet with me and do a preliminary interview to talk over everything I had on him. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and, after I had seen my father at that bar, I knew I needed to make a move quickly.

I couldn’t believe he had been in that place, meeting with God knows who. Didn’t anyone care that he was so obviously involved with people he shouldn’t have been? How deep did the corruption go in this city, that he could stroll out of there and climb into his usual driver’s car without anyone raising so much as an eyebrow?

It was corrupt enough in Atwood that the only chance I stood of actually making a difference that mattered was if I worked with the Dark Dogs, and I knew how crazy that sounded. If you had told me just a few months ago that I would have put all my trust in a biker gang, I would have thought you were crazy. But they’d been there for me – they had helped me when nobody else had.

And, more than that, I trusted Jaxon more than anything. He had stuck his neck out for me when he really didn’t have to. And there was no doubting our connection, physical and otherwise – no doubting how good it felt to be close to him.

He sank down onto his knees in front of me, hands resting on my legs, an easy, comfortable closeness that made my head swim a little.

"You going to meet her?" he asked, and I nodded.

"I don’t know if anything’s going to come of it, but yeah, I’m going to give it a try," I agreed. "I...it’s kind of scary. I don’t know if she’s going to believe me..."

"If anyone will, it sounds like she’s the one you should trust on this," he pointed out gently. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply, trying to pull myself back down to Earth, and nodded.

"You’re right," I agreed. "I just...I can’t help but feel as though she’s going to hear what I have to say and think I’m crazy. That my father would never do something like that. He’s been so respected for so long, it’s going to take a lot to bring him down..."

"And his daughter speaking out against him is a lot," he pointed out. "It’s going to work, Star, I know it will. They’re going to believe you."

I reached down to push a hand through his hair; it was slightly overgrown, curling around his ears.

"I don’t know what I would do without you," I confessed softly. He leaned down to plant a kiss on my thigh, just below the hemline of the skirt I was wearing. A shiver ran along my spine. God, I was still getting over the novelty of having a man like this show me this kind of attention, and I wasn’t sure I would ever entirely get used to it.

"You’d find a way," he murmured to me. "But I’m glad I get to be here to help you."

"Just help me?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at him suggestively. He grinned, leaning down against me to kiss my thigh – and, this time, baring his teeth and biting softly. I squealed, laughing.

"Sorry," he murmured, grinning up at me. "Let me kiss it better."

He closed his eyes and began to inch his mouth along the inside of my thigh, slowly pushing up my skirt as he went – my breath was coming harder and faster with every inch he moved closer to my sex, his hands sliding up to my hips so he could hook his fingers around my panties and tug them down. I was still getting used to this feeling of being exposed in front of another person, but he always made me feel so comfortable, gazing at me as though he couldn’t believe he got to see me naked. I lifted my hips from the couch, letting him slip my panties down, and he tossed them aside – and then turned back to me, spreading my legs and letting out a low groan.

"Fuck, you’re so hot, Star," he told me, as he retraced the path of his lips up my leg once more – tugging me to the edge of the couch, he glanced up at me as he hovered his mouth above my pussy, and then, finally, he planted his lips against me.

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