Claimed

  “Yes.”

  Frowning, he shifted around so he could see her eyes. “Yes, what?”

  Her head jerked to the table beside her. “If you… did what you just described… then, yes, I’d love every second of it.”

  The soft, heat-laced words nearly blew the tip of his cock off.

  Without a word, he stalked out of the cabin. The rock between his legs made it difficult to walk properly – and confirmed what he’d already suspected.

  This woman was very, very dangerous.

  “I don’t like this,” Pike announced the next morning. He shoved aside the cup of coffee Connor had dropped in front of him, but they both knew he wasn’t referring to the coffee.

  “Me neither.” Xander sounded equally annoyed. “Why the hell would you bring a stranger back to camp?”

  Connor frowned as he sank into the chair across from Pike’s. He’d sent Kade to grab their boys from the bar, and the man had apparently used the return trip to tell Pike and Xander all about their new guest, because it was the first thing Pike had brought up when he’d entered the lodge.

  “Hey, don’t look at me,” Connor muttered. “These two assholes guilt-tripped me into it.”

  “It wasn’t a guilt trip. It was the truth,” Kade said, his normally laid-back demeanor replaced by barely contained anger. “It’s dangerous for her to be alone. It’s dangerous for anyone to be alone. Dominik and his men are out of control.”

  Connor couldn’t disagree. They’d been hearing too many nasty stories lately. More rapes, more violence, and a lot less peacekeeping. The Enforcers didn’t seem interested in talking anymore, or giving outlaws the choice to rejoin society. These days they just put a bullet in your head and called it a day.

  Kade went on. “Look, she’s smart, and she’s obviously got skills. She might be an asset.”

  “You forgot hot as fuck,” Rylan said wryly.

  Pike scowled. “Is that it? You brought her here to screw her? Because you can find pussy anywhere, for chrissake. You know, the kind you don’t have to invite to live with us.”

  “She’s not staying,” Connor said firmly.

  “Good. We need her gone before the run tonight,” Xander answered. “It’ll be risky enough without throwing an unknown variable into the mix.”

  “Did you speak to the people at the bar?” Connor asked.

  The other man nodded. “They didn’t have anything good to say about that storage facility. Apparently it’s more heavily guarded than the other ones we’ve hit. Motion sensors, cameras, at least six Enforcers on site.”

  “Actually, it’s only two,” a female voice hedged.

  The men turned as Hudson entered the lounge, and damned if Connor’s dick didn’t harden at the sight of her. Black leather pants were glued to her endless legs, and the fabric of her gray T-shirt – the same silvery shade as her eyes – was so worn and thin it might as well have been a second layer of skin. She wasn’t wearing a bra either, and Connor knew he wasn’t the only one who could see the perfectly outlined nipples straining against her shirt.

  Rylan’s visible approval made him stifle a sigh. Hell, even Xan’s eyes had flared with heat.

  Shit. He couldn’t have his men getting hot for the woman. It was a distraction they couldn’t afford right now.

  Hudson glanced at the two newcomers. “Hi. I’m Hudson,” she said shyly, then gestured to the coffee urn. “Can I have some of that?”

  Xander, who had just vocally objected to her presence, was the one who hopped up to pour her a cup. Sexed-up moron even pulled out a chair for her. Fucking wonderful. Two seconds in Hudson’s presence and Xan was already singing a different tune.

  “Thanks.” She took a sip of coffee, then continued in a tentative tone. “Anyway, like I was saying, you only need to worry about two guards.”

  “Yeah? And how do you know that?” Connor challenged.

  She shrugged. “I ran into an Enforcer deserter a few days ago when I was making my way here. He gave me some valuable intel.”

  Pike’s dark eyes shone with the distrust that everyone else was feeling. “That so? Because we sure as shit haven’t come across any deserters around these parts.”

  “They don’t like to advertise it, but trust me, they exist.”

  An edge hardened Connor’s tone. “Met a lot of them, have you?”

  “Just two.” Another shrug. “One was a member of my group before they were killed.”

  “Funny, you didn’t mention that last night.”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  She took a dainty sip, but the feminine innocence of her body language was deceptive. Yeah, she’d blushed like crazy when he’d seen her naked last night, but sexual inexperience didn’t mean weakness. Because the woman was tough as nails – Connor could see it just by looking at her. Even as she sipped her coffee like she had no care in the world, she was meticulously aware of her surroundings. The positions of the men, the weapons on the table, the various exits in the room, every last fucking detail. Her gaze was as sharp as his, and a crazy thought suddenly occurred to him.

  Was she an Enforcer? One of the deserters she’d hinted at?

  But no, that was impossible. All the Enforcers in the Colonies were marked with a compass rose. The men had it tattooed on the back of their neck. The rare women who joined the military unit were inked on their wrists.

  Before Hudson could react, Connor leaned across the table and snatched both her hands. Her breath caught, and the tin cup she was holding shook wildly, dark liquid spilling over the rim and splashing the tabletop. He wrenched the cup from her hand and set it down, then twisted both her wrists so he could see the insides of them.

  They were bare.

  When he lifted his head, Hudson was watching him warily.

  “Are you done?” she muttered.

  He released her without a word. Couldn’t have done it soon enough, either, because the second their flesh had made contact, a zing of heat had traveled from his fingertips straight to his balls. Hell. Maybe he ought to fuck her already. Get it out of his system so he could concentrate on what mattered – getting rid of her.

  Their gazes locked, and he glimpsed a flicker of fascination in her eyes, as if she was intrigued by whatever she was seeing on his face.

  “Anyway.” Rylan cleared his throat. He glanced from Connor to their unwanted visitor, humor in his eyes. “So your source says security at the storage facility has been downgraded?”

  Hudson shifted her gaze to Rylan. “He’s certain of it. I guess the Enforcers were worried they were wasting too many resources on the storage stations and not enough on city patrols and colony sweeps. So they reduced the amount of guards.” She paused. “They installed land mines to compensate for the loss of manpower.”

  “Shit,” Rylan murmured.

  “Land mines,” Connor echoed. He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Any chance your source knows what kind of explosives we’re dealing with?”

  “Sorry. That’s all he told me. But I assume he meant the ones that go boom.” Her sarcasm rivaled his.

  Pike joined in with a surly scowl. “You don’t have anything else we can use? Locations? Trigger mechanisms? Blast radius?”

  “Sorry,” she said again.

  Connor bit back a curse and thought it over. He supposed they could always reschedule the raid, at least until they conducted some more recon. They’d accounted for six Enforcers, which was usually the deal. Definitely hadn’t accounted for land mines, though.

  But they were in desperate need of supplies. They were out of antibiotics because Rylan was an impulsive motherfucker who couldn’t stop from getting hurt every time he stepped out the door. They needed more ammo too, and battery packs if they could find them. They were doing all right in the food department, but stocking up for winter would be nice. Assuming they’d be here in the winter. At the moment, their camp was secure, but that could change in a heartbeat.

  “Are we holding off?” R
ylan asked, reading his mind.

  After a beat, Connor shook his head. “No. But we’ll have to leave now.”

  The others looked startled. They didn’t travel in the daylight if they could help it.

  “Are you crazy?” Xander demanded.

  “We need to be ready to move at night. That means extra recon during the day. We’ll watch the rotation of the guards, however many there are —” He speared Hudson with a curt look. “And we’ll assess this potential land mine situation before we even think about moving in.”

  The men’s reluctance faded as they each nodded at his orders. The way they trusted him implicitly made him ill at ease. Technically, Rylan and Pike had more military experience. Although the People’s Army had “officially” disbanded two decades ago, there were outlaw groups that continued to train and fight for the cause, waiting for their chance to wrestle the power from the GC’s hands. Rylan and Pike had once trained recruits for the cause.

  Connor’s training had ended the second his father had taken a bullet to the head when Connor was ten years old. After that, he’d been forced to teach himself everything else he needed to know. He’d had his mother to protect, not to mention the rest of their group, which had consisted mostly of women and children because the other men had suffered the same fate as Connor’s father.

  He’d never wanted to be a leader. Fuck, he didn’t want it now. He couldn’t stomach the thought of having any more deaths on his conscience.

  “What about her?” Pike jerked a thumb at Hudson.

  “I’m right here, you know,” she said irritably. “You don’t need to talk about me in the third person.”

  “How about you shut your smart mouth, little girl?” Pike snapped. “The only reason you’re even here is because my boys think with their dicks and not their brains.”

  Anger radiated from her body, but she wisely stayed quiet.

  “He has a point,” Rylan said tentatively. “We can’t leave Hudson alone at camp when we go.” He shot her a rueful look. “No offense.”

  “I get it. We’re strangers.” She glanced around the table. “But I meant everything I said last night. I’ve had training, and some knowledge of how the Enforcers operate. I can be an asset if you give me a chance.”

  Every pair of eyes flicked back to Connor.

  Hudson smirked at him. “Wow. Look at the blind obedience you invoke in them. I’m impressed.”

  He ignored the barb, still thinking about what to do. He was never not thinking, and fuck, it was exhausting sometimes. He hadn’t asked to be in charge, and he resented his men for placing this much faith in him.

  He studied Hudson’s earnest face, her golden hair and flawless features. Her looks were a goddamn distraction, but despite what Pike believed, Connor didn’t think with his dick. Maybe he’d fuck this woman, maybe he wouldn’t. Right now he was concerned only about what she could do for him outside the bedroom. He recognized the strength in her. She’d held a knife to his throat last night. Gotten close enough to do it, which didn’t happen often.

  “She comes with us,” he said briskly.

  Gratitude and pleasure brightened Hudson’s expression. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  Connor shifted his gaze in dismissal and scraped back his chair. “We leave in an hour.”

  4

  These men could never know the truth about her.

  She’d almost confessed everything to Connor last night, when he’d held her captive with his hypnotizing eyes and taunted her about bending her over the table, but common sense had prevailed at the last second. She heard the contemptuous tone they used when they spoke about the Enforcers. If they knew who she was, they’d kill her on the spot.

  Or… send her back to the city.

  No. She couldn’t go back there. She might not be safe among the outlaws, but she wasn’t safe with Dom anymore, either. Her brother had turned into a stranger, and the only life she’d ever known had become more dangerous than anything she might encounter in outlaw territory.

  And even if Dominik wasn’t looking for her, there was no doubt in her mind that Knox was.

  A chill raced up Hudson’s spine as she pictured Knox’s face. Handsome and cruel. Savage dark eyes and a mouth that was always curled in a sneer. It frightened her to think what he’d do if he found her. If her own brother had refused to protect her from that monster, then nobody else in the city would.

  Which meant she had to protect herself. She had to stay silent and prove to Connor and his men that she could be trusted.

  Easier said than done. The fact that he’d examined her wrists this morning told her that Connor was more suspicious of her than she’d thought. In that moment Hudson had never felt more grateful to her father for marking her neck instead of her wrists. He’d wanted her to feel equal to Dominik, had thought it would please her to be treated as if she were one of the boys. But her title of “Enforcer” had always been an honorary one.

  Because she wasn’t an Enforcer. She was a nurse, and she helped people. She was a good person, damn it.

  But even though she was currently plastered to Connor’s body like glue, she could still feel deep waves of mistrust rolling off his powerful body. He’d refused to let her out of his sight, insisting that she ride with him today, and for the past two hours she’d clung to his muscular chest as the motorcycle sped down the dirt back roads they were taking to the storage facility.

  The hard muscles beneath Hudson’s palms were wreaking havoc on her senses. Connor’s body was remarkable. Every sleek, defined muscle strained against her fingertips, and despite the wind that was battering her face and whipping her hair around, she could smell his woodsy, masculine scent, breathing it in whenever she shifted her head.

  He slowed down as they rode along an overgrown stretch of road with grass and shrubs slicing up through the cracked pavement. They hadn’t passed a single town or city on the way, but now they were approaching an area that showed signs of former civilization. Run-down houses and abandoned storefronts came into view, but Connor revved the engine and quickly veered onto another back road.

  It was another hour before they finally reached their destination – a wooded area behind a fenced-in warehouse that looked shiny and new compared to the other structures they’d seen. The chain-link fence was tipped by barbed wire and stood twelve feet high; at the top of every fence post was an ominous black camera sweeping the perimeter.

  It always startled her to see technology in use outside the walls of West City, but she knew the Global Council made sure to keep certain communication towers and satellites in operation to aid the Enforcers who worked beyond the city borders.

  Her boots connected with the ground, and she flinched when Pike stalked up to her and Connor. She wasn’t going to lie – Pike scared the shit out of her. Of all the men, he was the most difficult to read, and yet it was easy to figure out he didn’t like her. Or trust her. Or want her around. If it were up to him, she probably would have been banished on sight.

  So… if she wanted to stay with these men, she needed to win over Pike.

  Or maybe just Connor, because Pike seemed to follow his lead even when he clearly disagreed with some of Connor’s decisions. Winning them both over, however, would definitely guarantee a stress-free existence.

  Except… who was she kidding? There was no such thing as a stress-free life, not in this unfamiliar world she’d found herself in. Not when she wanted Connor more than she wanted her next breath.

  “Split up,” he barked at his men. “Get in position. Cover all four quadrants, same as usual. Hudson and I will take up position here.”

  She marveled at how fast the others snapped to action. She’d never met a man who commanded swift obedience the way Connor did. Even her brother, who’d been leading the Enforcers for years, didn’t inspire that same level of loyalty from his people.

  Hudson wondered if Connor had ever heard the word no. If he’d ever clapped his hands the way he had now and gotten refusal i
nstead of submission.

  She honestly didn’t think so.

  “Tell me what you see,” Connor ordered after the men had dispersed. He dropped a pair of binoculars in her hand and gestured to the warehouse two hundred yards away.

  Was this a test? Taking a breath, she raised the glasses and took a good long look. The oxygen lodged in her throat when she glimpsed an Enforcer uniform: black tactical gear, with the red compass rose stitched on the right breast pocket.

  She’d known that coming along for the raid was a risk because she might spot someone she knew working at the storage station, but she’d been confident Connor wouldn’t let her step foot inside, not when the facility was chock-full of dangerous goodies she could use against them. She was relieved that she didn’t have to worry about the perimeter guard recognizing her – the young man guarding the facility was a complete stranger.