Page 46 of Axle
“Fucking perfect.” I felt the snarl break free in my chest like a dog off a leash. “Gonna call Prez.”
Kane and Edge were already two steps into the office before I could lift my phone. Nitro sauntered in behind them, and the door clicked shut again. The temperature of the room shifted in the way it always did when a decision was about to calcify into action.
Kane’s gaze cut to the map and then to me. “We in business?”
“We are,” I confirmed before sharing everything Jax had just laid out, short and sharp.
“Could let the others tear her apart,” Kane suggested, not because he wanted to, but because he was our prez and his job demanded he lay down every option on the table, even the ones that tasted like ash. “No tie back to us if they do it. No clean-up. Just another monster eaten by other monsters.”
Jax and Nitro watched me with steady focus, while Edge rolled his knife over his knuckles, somehow managing not to get sliced by the lethal blade.
Kane wasn’t asking me to fall back and let someone else dole out my retribution. If I chose to act, he’d back me with blood. It was no less than I would give him if the one wrapped up in this tangle had been Savannah.
I didn’t have to visualize Ashlynn to feel her, but I did it anyway. The way she’d looked this morning, hair a wild spill across my chest, my T-shirt hitched high on her hips, the flat of her palm resting unconsciously over her belly like her body already knew what we’d made. She was everything to me, and I needed to make sure this shit never touched her or our child. To make it happen with my own hands and see the cause of my woman’s pain bleed.
“We end it now,” I growled, my voice threaded with steel.
Edge’s grin was a flash of teeth—feral and pleased. Nitro pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, coiled for action. Kane nodded once, and it felt like the air pressure in the room changed to something darker, thick, and sizzling with anticipation.
“Get your gear,” Kane ordered. “We roll before dawn.”
Ashlynn wason the bed when I walked in, sitting cross-legged near the headboard in only my T-shirt, which did absolutelynothing to hide how she filled it. Despite all the shit crowding my mind, my body reacted immediately. My cock swelled, and my hands itched to feel her silky skin beneath them. She looked small and gorgeous; soft and stubborn; mine in every way that mattered.
She read my expression before I spoke, and suspicion narrowed her eyes. “Club business?”
“Yeah,” I replied, because that part was true.
Her mouth tilted. “Is it my business too?”
I hated and loved her all at once for that question.
“It touches your life,” I admitted. “Which is why I’m telling you instead of making you guess. We’re going after Bellatrix.”
She unfolded from the bed in one smooth motion and planted her feet on the floor like she was bracing for a fight. “Then I’m going.”
“No.”
She crossed her arms and tapped a finger against her bicep. “I can stay in the van. I won’t get in the way. I just—” She faltered, and it killed me. “I just don’t want you shouldering this alone. You’ve had my back. Let me have yours.”
“That is my favorite sentence you’ve ever said,” I told her, too honest for my own good. Then I closed the distance and caught her jaw in my hand, not hard, but enough that she felt the strength in my resolve. “But you’re mine. And you’re carrying our kid. There is nothing on this earth that would make me agree to put you in danger. Not now. Not ever.”
Her chin tipped up another notch. “I know how to stay out of the way. I won’t try to be a part of the action.”
“I know. That isn’t the point.” I pressed my mouth to hers, slow. Then a second kiss that was sharper and deeper because I needed the taste. When I pulled back, her eyes were glassy with heat and frustration. “I walk into hell so you don’t have to, angel.”
She was still simmering when I stepped to the closet. I reached up to the highest shelf and pulled down the box Kane had slid into my hand three days ago. I hadn’t asked him to make it, though I’d intended to, but he hadn’t waited for me to find time. He’d handed it to me after we found out about the baby. He understood the timing, especially with his own woman pregnant.
I cracked the box and took out the vest. Black leather. Smaller than mine, a perfect fit for her. Her name was stitched across the left breast, but the patch I cared about most took up the whole back. The Redline Kings logo in the center and the words PROPERTY OF AXLE arched beneath it in bold.
I turned and held it out to her.
“Be my old lady.” The words felt tight in my throat because I’d never said them to anyone, and I never would again.
She looked at the vest and then at me. Heat, shock, a flicker of fear that wasn’t about me at all.
When she didn’t make a move to take it, a small pulse of hurt thumped in my chest. I didn’t let it show, but she must have seen the hint of fear anyway because her face turned soft.
“I want it,” she said quickly, almost tripping over the words. “I want you. I want this.” She lifted her chin, her gaze unwavering, but with moisture gathered in her stormy gray eyes. “But I don’t want you to give it to me now because you think you might not come back.” She stepped close, and her hand touched the leather, then flattened over my heart. “Go handle that bitch. Come home to me. Then give this to me, and I’ll wear it with pride.”
