Page 71 of Running on Empty

“I will. Fuck…” He whimpered at the sight of the blades, the moonlight gleaming along their edges. “I can give you money, real estate, drugs—”

“That was the wrong thing to say,” I snarled.

“What about intel?” Ash asked, his voice ice cold. “You had to drug Stevie because you knew you’d never get anything as sweet as her without it. You’re a piece of fucking shit. You can’t even get it up unless a woman is drugged out of her fucking mind because no fucking omega will ever go naturally in heat for you, so tell us how you’re getting that drug and where its being distributed and maybe I can convince Stevie to spare your life.”

He couldn’t. He knew it and so did Ronan, Jax and the dads. They all stood in a circle around Jax, my alpha using Rock’s hair as a handle to keep him on his knees before us. Rock reached down, pulling off his smartwatch and handing it to Ash with shaking hands.

“The Viper Room,” he said, Ash snatching the watch from him. “The PIN is 6666.” Ash snorted at that. “It all comes from there. We keep the drugs in the office, use it as a hub to distribute from because it's not even illegal.”

“Yet.” Ash bit that word off. “But corporate espionage is.”

“That will get you in the door,” I said, remembering that much.

“Well, I’ve got what I need,” Ash said, pocketing it. “Stevie?”

Jax used the man’s hair to pull his head back, revealing the expanse of tattooed neck. He put his blade against it and then stared at me.

“I’ll do it, beautiful. You can go up the alleyway and away from all of this and know it will be done.”

“And where would be the fun in that?”

I was being flip, but right now I felt hard, brittle, like one sharp tap and I’d shatter to pieces and I couldn’t tolerate that. I expected Jax to try and school me, advise me against what I was about to do, but he grinned just then, all of the boyish charm he usually displayed in it and something else besides. Something far darker as he jerked his head, making clear I needed to come stand beside him.

There was a strange contrast, between the welcome warmth of his body and the reek of Rock’s as the alpha started to beg now without prompting.

I didn’t pay any more attention to Rock than he had me, Jax slotting me behind the kneeling alpha and then setting my blade against Rock’s neck. The dads and my alphas all stepped backwards, but their eyes were all on me, gleaming green in the gloom. There was something of a religious rite to this, but rather than the sacrificial surrender of the son of God, this was one fit for a dark goddess.

“A quick slice across his throat and he’ll bleed out quick,” Ronan said. “And step away or you’ll get blood on you.”

I looked at Ash, saw the concern there in the small crease in his forehead, but he smoothed it away with effort.

“How many other men and women did you do this too?” he asked Rock, the street confessor to the other alpha’s sins.

Rock seemed to sense what was coming, the tension leaching out of his body and as he went limp, it came. A vicious laugh, one that echoed all the way through the alleyway, seeming to fill the space up, taint it with his filth, reaching for the moon itself.

“More than I can fucking count,” he said, right before Jax and I silenced him.

Jax helped me the way a master would his apprentice, and together we forced the blade to cut deep, slice clear across Rock’s throat in a sharp swipe. I’ll never forget the way it felt, skin, muscle, cartilage giving under the razor sharp edge before Jax kicked Rock forward, leaving the alpha to suffocate in his own blood.

“Stevie…”

Jax pulled me away from the site, hiding my view of the alpha’s death with the big wall of his body, but he didn’t need to. He let out a little hiss as I grabbed a handful of his hair and used it to drag it down, our lips smashing together. He got the message, hoisting me up into his arms and pressing me into the wall, making clear just what his body thought of all of this. And if I was worried that I’d see, feel Rock, not Jax, I needn’t have. Rock was done, finished with and I didn’t want anything more to do with him. Only Jax.

His lips seared mine, burning away all the shit that had come before, just leaving him and only him, until Ronan appeared, leaning on the wall beside us.

“Hey beautiful,” he told me, looking every inch the cocky bastard. But this was no bad boy act. He was the baddest man in any room and right now, he knew that. “Got some of that sweetness for me?” His eyes flicked up to meet Jax’s when he growled. “Now, now, brother, you gotta learn to share. And anyway, think about what you could be doing to our omega when I’m kissing her.”

That resulted in me being hauled away from the wall and tipped back, Ronan’s long fingers sliding over my cheeks, then around my throat, as he kissed my lips.

And that’s when I saw how hollow and wrong what had happened with the Spencers. It wasn’t just the abuse that made this completely different. Even if they’d never given me Rush, I’d needed to down mouthfuls of whiskey and smoke their shitty weed to even countenance touching any of them, but not now. I was fully conscious, my perception of what was happening crystal clear. So I caught the frantic sucking in of breath Ronan made the moment he kissed me, my own whine coming shortly after. And the burning trail of Jax’s kisses, working their way down my sternum, closer and closer to what I—

“Fuck yourselves stupid in the car on the way back to the bunker,” Ash said, breaking us out of our haze. We all blinked at that. “We’ve got a way into the Viper Club with this.” He held up the smartwatch. “And we need to capitalise on this intel before the Spencers senior are alerted to this fact.”

“Some day you’ll care more about me than the mission,” I said with a smug smile. “You won’t care about what anyone says but me.”

“It’s because of you I give a shit about the intel.” His eyes drilled into mine. “We’re in the process of cutting a bloody swathe through the city and I can’t even say I’m upset about that. But if something happens to you.” His fists tightened as he looked at his brothers. “Any of you, I can’t have that, so let's move before someone discovers the body.”

“Listen to Ice Man,” Rusty said, clapping his hand on Ash’s shoulder. “This Viper Club? The MCs are all very interested in what’s going on inside. We get some information we can funnel back, we might end up with more allies in this fight.”

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