Page 20 of Devil's Own: Roughneck

“Dammit, woman—I ain’t got time for your shit,” he snaps.

“Ah… but there’s where you’re wrong. Not only did your club’s president seek out my services to help you, but I’m not your wife, so I don’t have to put up with your whiny bullshit.” Dr. Brennan-Ellis is the club’s doctor. She’s also married to Duke, the club’s president. And damn, she’s as feisty as she is hot. Let me make one thing clear: She’s tall, all ass and tits with wavy, red hair that reaches just below her shoulders and a face that would make the holiest of men jack off to her picture. She’s a bombshell.

Elise, Boss’s wife, hobbles in on crutches. She sprained her ankle when Boss tackled her outside the club. Elise is the club’s general manager, and even on crutches, with her honey-haired bun now a mess and a rip up her tight pencil skirt and blood from her husband on her white blouse, she’s every bit as hot as Dr. Ellis. These brothers all married bombshells.

“Hush, now,” Elise says to Boss and it’s a feat for her to bend in and kiss him, but she makes it happen. “Please just let Caity do what she needs to do. The boys are scared for you.”

“Shit. You had to bring the boys into it, didn’t you?” he asks and she must be talking about their sons.

She smiles. “Did it work?”

“Woman,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t put up any more fight when Dr. Brennan-Ellis moves in to re-stitch one of his bullet wounds that he tore open during his little tantrum there. Damn, these men got lucky with the women in their lives. I’d say just as lucky as the brothers of my club. How many times did I meet one of those bitches and wonder why I was the one still alone? Then Gia drops her fine ass down on a barstool next to mine on a day that was really pretty shit for me. I can’t help but wonder if she’s the one I’ll finally get to build a life with. A life like all my brothers, both Horde and Lords, have already started building. At the very least, she’ll be a hard habit to break. Here we are on important club business and all I want is to be back in my bed fucking her, holding her, and then fucking her again. My first hit of Gia hooked me. I can’t get enough.

The door to the room, which happens to be Dr. Brennan-Ellis’s small ER that she set up here at the compound, pops open and Detective Tommy Doyle strides in looking ten kinds of pissed. He and Boss go way back, tight as brothers, meaning he’s tight with the Lords as a club, too. He’s helped the Horde a time or two as well. The tall man was a sergeant in the Thornbriar Police Department when we first met him. He let his hair grow out a bit from the buzzcut he used to wear in uniform. Broad-shouldered and built motherfucker, one thing’s for sure, if he decided to ditch the badge, the Lords and the Horde might come to blows to bring him on.

“Boss,” he says to the Lords’ VP after he nods his hello to the rest of us.

“This is a bunch of shit,” Boss replies.

“What happened?” Tommy Doyle asks.

“Don’t really know. Elise and I were heading home. I stopped to talk to Toad, who was just walking in. A black SUV turns into the first opening to the club from the street and I don’t think anything of it. But they don’t park. It fucking happened sped up and in slow motion at the same damn time. Fuckers rolled down the windows enough to aim their guns and shots rang out as bullets ripped through the air. My only thought was Elise. I tackled her to get her out of the spray. Heard Toad cry out, but I had to protect my wife.”

“Elise? Anything?” Tommy asks.

“Only that I think the SUV was a rental. It had a small sticker in the window with numbers. It was a Yukon; they have a third row. If it wasn’t a rental, they bought it from a rental company.”

“Or stole it,” Boss put in.

“Or stole it,” she agrees.

Fuck.Black SUV—Yukon. My brothers will be hitting the war room when we get out of here. Duke bursts into the room followed by the rest of his lieutenants: Chaos, Sneak, Scotch, Hero, Crass, and Blood. A surly group of motherfuckers. You wouldn’t want to get on any of their bad sides and I’m in the fucking Horde. What kind of death wish do these men have to make enemies of both our clubs?

Vlad steps up to Duke, placing his hand on his shoulder. “Sorry about your man,” he says.

The Lords’ president turns solemn eyes on him. “Same.”

“I’m worried that your involvement helping us out when our compound fell under attack is directly related to this hit.”

Once again, these men prove they have our backs because they don’t give the reply that I expect anyone in their situation would, that beingget the fuck out of here and don’t ever darken our doorstep again.

Boss—yes,Boss, who took bullets and had to tackle his wife to get her safe, speaks up. “Wouldn’t have done anything different.” I feel those words deep.

“You wouldn’t?” I ask, surprised. All eyes fall on me and I shrug. “I just assumed—”

Duke cuts me off. “Never a time when we won’t help out women and children.”

“You know you’ve got us whenever you need us, for anything,” Vlad says.

“I like this a lot better than trying to kill each other,” Blood says. Blood is short for Bloodhound, because once that ginger haired motherfucker sniffs out a trail, he doesn’t stop until he finds what he’s looking for.

“I’ll drink to that,” Chaos says. Except for the fact that he and Blood grew up thick as thieves, I have no idea what the man saw in the biker life. If I’d chosen his name, he’d be known as Mr. California. He looks more like he should be hanging in dance clubs on the beach, dancing to synth music rather than rumbling down the highway on a hog wearing leather and acting all kinds of badass.

“You ain’t drinking shit,” Boss teases him with some kind of inside joke. The Lords look at me and my brothers, then Boss goes on. “Liv, his wife, is about ready to drop their first kid. He won’t drink a drop because he’s on call.”

“Didn’t saywhatI’d drink. Soda and coffee is just as valid,” Chaos says in defense of himself.

“Congratulations, man.” Vlad claps him on the back now. “We had our first, my boy, six months ago. Never in my wildest dreams did I see myself as a dad. Now, I can’t picture my life without him in it.”

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