Up in Smoke

  “Fuck,” Duke swears. He pales, blinking rapidly as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He shuffles backward and forgets the door is still closed, hitting his back of his head against it.

  “Smoke. Don’t.”

  “He laid his hands on you,” Smoke seethes. “The only reason I haven’t already fired is you’re standing too fucking close to him so step away, hellion.” Smoke cocks the gun.

  I step in front of Duke. “No, Duke is my friend.”

  “You let all your friends stick their tongues down your throat?” Smoke says with a snarl.

  “I knew you weren’t okay,” I hear Duke whisper from behind me.

  “I am okay! I’m fine, but you aren’t going to be if you don’t leave,” I say to Duke. “Now go and don’t say shit about this to anyone. I mean it. It’s important. I promise I’ll explain all this later but please. I need your word, Duke.”

  Duke glances wide-eyed over my shoulder to Smoke and then back to me. I don’t need to look over my shoulder. “You…you’ve got it,” he says on a shaky voice. He feels for the door at his back, and when his hand finds the handle, he turns it quickly and stumbles out.

  Smoke steps in front of me. “Before you ever think about touching her again, think about this. Any part of you that comes in contact with her I’m going to rip off your fucking body with my bare hands.”

  Duke scrambles backward and runs for the GrubTrain car. Smoke steps back and closes the door. I take a step back from the fuming volcano before me.

  “You fuck him?”

  “No!” I toss back. Now, it’s my turn to be mad. I cross my arms over my chest and jut out my hip. “He’s my friend. Or, he was my friend.”

  “A friend, who you let kiss you?” Smoke closes the distance between us. His nostrils flare.

  “Sometimes,” I admit, swallowing hard. I remain defiant, pushing out my chest. “And sometimes more.”

  “More?” Smoke questions, the word is a rumble in his throat and touches me right between my thighs. I press them together. He’s so close now. Water drips from his hair onto my t-shirt. “I swear to fucking Christ, Frankie, I need one good reason why I shouldn’t chase after that motherfucker and paint that ugly ass green car of his red with his own fucking blood.”

  “Smoke, he was my sort of friend. When I had to stay away from the world, he was the only person I let in because he was nice and he was safe. He dated all the girls in my school so I knew he wasn’t looking for anything serious so yes, from time to time he came over, brought me groceries, and kissed me. Sometimes a little more. Never more than what I’ve given you. Ever.”

  Smoke’s shoulder muscles seemed to relax, even if just a fraction. His knuckles, on the other hand, are still white. “My little hellion.” He brushes my hair from my eyes.

  My shield is down along with all the other defenses I’ve tried and failed to keep him from getting to a place he can really hurt me, and I don’t mean physically. Physical hurt is nothing compared to what Smoke can inflict on me now. Because he’s broken through. He’s inside.

  And there’s no turning back.

  I’m terrified. More so than in that prison cell as his captive.

  I try to remain defiant. I stick out my chest and straighten my shoulders, holding my chin up high. “And don’t you expect me to apologize for it, either. I won’t. Duke kept me company. He made me laugh. He was my friend. My onlyfriend.”

  I press my flat hands against Smoke’s warm wet chest and a current runs through me, zapping my arm hairs to attention. My breath catches, and I glance up at Smoke. He’s looking at my arms, and I know he felt it, too. I lean into him. He smells like fresh soap and toothpaste.

  I remember I’m trying to make a point, so I don’t inhale deeply as much as I want to.

  “Duke was there for me. I had nobody,” I say, then pause, rethinking my choice of words. “I havenobody.”

  Smoke tilts my chin up. Our eyes meet. The anger is still written all over his face from his furrowed brows to his tight jaw but there’s something else there that looks a lot like concern.

  “You have me,” Smoke whispers so low I think I might be imagining it.

  “Do I?” I regret the words as they leave my mouth.

  Smoke’s answer is pressing his lips to mine in a slow and tender kiss that shakes me to my very foundation. He tells me everything I need to know with his lips. His tongue.

  The uncontrollable man is showing me control. I’m lost. To him. To this.

  To us.

  Forever has passed when we finally come up for air. My skin is flushed. Lips swollen. Pussy throbbing with unrelenting need.

  My heart stops.

  “I do have you.” I say, running my hand through his wet hair, keeping my fingers tangled within it.

  “Yes, you do have me,” Smoke nods. His forehead falls to mine and my heart starts beating again. His pupils are dilated, his dark eyes are glossy. His words lick their way across my skin. He lifts me into his arms, my legs instinctively wrapping around his waist. “Now, I’m going to haveyou.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  We’re lying in bed.Frankie’s bed. Some tiny frilly thing that smells like her. Frankie is curled up around me, her leg hiked up over my thigh.

  I send the text to Griff.

  FRANK HELBURN IS DEAD.

  It’s done.

  Not even three minutes pass. My phone rings.

  “You found him and killed him without permission? Where’s my fucking money?” Griff snaps. “That asshole is the only one who knows where my money is, and he better have told you before you ended him.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I snap back. “The fucker was slumped over when I got here. And Griff? I’d watch my tone if I were you. I’m not one of your boys, and I ain’t a ‘yes man’. I wasn’t the one who killed him. I think his ticker just gave out. So remember who you’re fucking talking to.”

  There is a moment of silence before Griff speaks again. “I’ll send a team for his computers tomorrow. Maybe, they can track down my fucking money.”

  “Send mine while you’re at it,” I say, “What the fuck do you want me to do with the girl?” I don’t have to pretend to sound annoyed because this fucker is grating on my every nerve. More than usual. I look over at Frankie, the sheet draped haphazardly over her tits, her shiny dark hair splayed all around the white pillow.

  She wakes with a flutter of eye lashes. Her golden eyes meet mine.

  I’m done for.

  I can’t imagine a world without her in it. I can’t kill her. Don’t think I ever really could’ve. Not when she’s already killed me, or at least the person I used to be.

  “Whatever the fuck you want,” Griff snorts. “Dispose of the girl. But before you go, move Frank’s body off the desk so my team has complete access to his computers when they get there tomorrow. Maybe, second time is a charm, and they can track down my fucking money. I’ll transfer your funds now.” The line goes dead, and I stare at the phone. Griff wasn’t his usual self. There was no small talk. No questions about my future plans. No comment about my one-man team. Something is off. Not to mention this was the first time he’d hung up on me and not the other way around.

  “Is everything okay?” Frankie asks sleepily.

  I click the burner phone shut and set it on the nightstand. As much as I want to wrap my arms around her and sink into her again for a much needed repeat of last night, something isn’t sitting right with me about that call.

  About Griff’s demeanor.

  “Did he buy it?”

  “Yeah,” I say softly, but I’m going over the conversation in my mind for the hundredth time in the last few seconds, searching for the knife in the needles.

  “What is it?” Frankie asks, sitting up and wrapping the sheet around her chest.

  It hits me like a bullet to the back. “Shit,” I leap out of bed. “Get dressed. We gotta go, and we gotta go NOW.”

  For once Frankie listens and pulls on her clothes, I do the
same “What happened?” she asks, shoving her feet into her shoes and pulling her t-shirt over her head.

  “He told me to remove your old man from the desk to give his team better access to the computers when they get here,” I tell her.

  “So?” she asked, hopping up and down to pull up her shorts.

  I grab my cut and shrug it on. “So, the problem is My text said that I found your old man slumped over dead. Didn’t say shit that he was at the computer or at a desk.”

  Frankie’s eyes went wide with understanding and fear. “Cameras?”

  I nod. “Fucker saw and heard everything.”

  “Shit,” she says, pushing her feet into her shoes.

  “He knows it was you and not your old man. He’ll be coming for us soon. I bet his men are almost here already.”

  “I have to tell you something,” she says.

  “Not now, right now we have to get the fuck out of here.” I take her by the arm and lead her from the room just as the window of her bedroom shatters. Glass shards pierce my back. A bullet whizzes right by my ear before exploding into the wall a few inches over Frankie’s head.

  Over the unending, unyielding barrage of gun fire, the urge to protect Frankie is downright overwhelming. It’s my only goal. My only mission. The most important fucking job I’ve ever had. While the house explodes around us, a realization hits me harder than any bullet.

  I’m not just in love with Frankie.

  I’m prepared to die for her.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  There’s so much gunfire.I barely have my shirt on over my head when the walls explode all around us like they’re made of paper. Smoke’s grip on my hand is so tight it’s almost crippling as he yanks me down the stairs, but I don’t tell him to let up. I won’t. I need to be connected to him.

  We race down the stairs and out the back door through the woods.

  The gunfire follows.

  The pace is lung-burning and never-ending. I’m in good shape, but I’m falling behind.

  Smoke stops, tugs on my arm and lowers me to the ground on my hands and knees. He pushes me toward a large tree with a hole no larger than a couple of feet hollowed out at the bottom of the trunk.

  “Hide in here,” Smoke orders. Voices shout to one another in the not too far off distance. “I’m a huge moving target. They’ll spot me a lot faster than you, but I can outrun them. Stay here. Stay quiet. I’ll lead them away from you.”

  “No! Don’t go!” My words are a whispered yell followed by a choked-out sob.

  I’m hurting. My feet. My muscles, my heart. I can barely see him through the blur of my own tears like I’m looking up at him from under water. I’m drowning in the depths of my own misery, every breath I suck in is killing me. My heart is hammering out a frantic SOS to the rest of my body and it’s crushing me from the inside out.

  “Meet me here in the morning,” Smoke says, reaching into the inside pocket of his cut and producing a black sharpie. “If I’m not there. If I don’t make it—”

  “No!” I shake my head and close my eyes, not able to bear the thought.

  Smoke’s grip on me tightens. He tilts my chin up so our eyes meet. His voice isn’t louder, but it’s sharper, more precise, like he wants to tattoo his words into my memory.

  “Listen, Hellion, and listen real good. First light, I want you to head to this address. It’s the Lawless MC compound. You’ll be protected there.”

  I hold out my hand thinking he’s going to write on my palm, but he surprises me by pushing the fabric of my shorts up my leg, writing directly on the skin of my upper thigh.

  “Less obvious,” he mutters. “Take this,” he says, unclasping a pair of the cuffs from his wrist and clasping them around mine. “Show it to them. They’ll know I sent you. Just get there and wait for me. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. But you better be there, Smoke. I mean it.” I’m trembling. My lip quivers. “Is this good-bye or just good-bye for now?”

  Smoke brushes his thumb over my cheek. “Always with the questions,” he says, a sad smile on his beautifully scarred face. “I’ll do everything I can to meet you there.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I try to argue once more.

  The sound of gunfire and shouting in the distance is all the argument Smoke needs.

  “It’s the only way to keep you safe,” he says, softly. He tenderly brushes his rough thumb over my cheek, and I can’t help but to lean into his touch. I close my eyes briefly then look up at him through my wet lashes.

  More gunshots. This time they’re closer. Smoke looks over his shoulder and then back to me. “First light,” he repeats with a much too brief searing kiss to my lips. “You wanted me to choose you, Hellion. Well, this is me...choosing you.”

  My. Fucking. Heart. Breaks.

  I can’t find the words to protest as he places branches over the cutout in the trunk to conceal my hiding space. I hear him jog off, and I silently cry into the dark space. I pull my knees to my chest and crawl as far back into the hollowed-out stump that I can.

  Every gunshot I hear feels like it’s a direct hit to my heart because with each one, there’s a possibility that come morning light, Smoke won’t be there.

  This is me…choosing you.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  I movethrough the woods like a wild animal because I am a fucking wild animal. It’s dark, but I use instinct to creep up behind Griff’s men. I slit one’s throat; the blood sprays in my face. It’s warm and wet, and I don’t bother wiping it off as I drop his body quietly to the ground.

  I move without making a sound. My boots don’t even crunch against the fallen leaves. I lay another man out, knife to the base of his spine. And then another, stab and twist to the neck.

  I feel like a kid again. These woods are my home. I breathe in and use the smell of pine to fuel me.