Outrage poured through the line. “How dare you—?”
“She’s deaf, Grandfather. Not incompetent.”
“She’s suffered a traumatic experience. She needs rest.”
“It has been a year,” she argued. “How much rest could she possibly need? You’re making excuses. Don’t forget the Japanese quote—
You can always die. It’s living that takes real courage
.”
“That’s from an anime, Chloe.”
“Still a great quote.”
“What gives you the belief I would even entertain the thought of agreeing to such demands? You don’t exactly have a sound history with relationships.”
The statement sliced through her heart. No, her first relationship, the one with her parents, had been rooted in hatred. The rest had been her way of trying to find love.
“If you give me what I ask for, I will forgive you.”
His sharp intake of breath let her know just how much her words affected him.
“You forced my mother to marry my father,” she continued. “Even when she told you she couldn’t stand him. You insisted, and because of you, she beat the shit out of me on a regular basis, killed my father, and forced a thirteen-year-old girl to commit matricide.”
He was silent, but she could hear him breathing so she knew he was still on the other end.
“Who I am is your fault, and I’ve made the best of the life I’ve been dealt,” she whispered. “I know there have been terrible tangents in the past, but you have to believe me that I am where I’m supposed to be.”
“You never did back down from an argument,” he said.
“You taught me well, Grandfather. You taught Kaiya well too. You don’t have to worry about her. The club will take care of her.
I
will take care of her.”
There was another long period of quiet. Then he cleared his throat. “I will have the weapons to you in three days.”
“And Kaiya?”
“You shall have her too.”
He hung up without another word. She’d won. Holy hell, she had stood up to him and she’d won. She wanted to jump up and down, or twirl around… Do
something
to memorialize the moment. Chloe didn’t even realize she was crying until Dax wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“You okay?”
She nodded and smiled. She wasn’t the girly girl who would jump or twirl in glee. “Three days. Everything will be here then.”
“Thank you, Chloe,” he said. He ran a finger over her cheek. “Having you will make it worth being under a Yakuza thumb.”
She frowned. “Boone mentioned something similar. Dax, I’m not asking you to join the Yakuza. Not unless you want to. This offer is strictly from me.”
Several emotions filtered through his eyes until he managed to mask them. She wasn’t quite sure what he thought of her offer now, but damned if she could stop it. The hand had already been played. But she knew one way to take his mind off things.
She fell to her knees in front of him. His cock was already hard again and she peeked at him through her lashes. “Half hour my ass.”
He grinned. “I’ve had that ass. I’ll do that ass anytime.”
“And I like this cock.” She licked the head and tasted a drop of his salty pre-cum. “Yum.”
He groaned and buried his hands in her hair. It didn’t take much to guide her mouth to suck his cock. She happily swallowed him down. Chloe didn’t understand a lot of girls who said they didn’t like giving head or being fucked in the ass. She couldn’t imagine two better ways to pass the time, unless it was waiting for Romeo to join them for a
ménage à trois
.
“Suck me, sweetheart,” Dax moaned. “Holy fuck, that feels good.”
Chloe held the base of his cock so she could better suck on him and she began the blow job with short, shallow thrusts. Each time she took him into her mouth, she eased her throat muscles a little more. Allowing his cock to go farther, deeper took practice since her mouth was small, so she had to work up to deep-throating, but Dax didn’t seem to mind the wait. He was moaning, the involuntary thrust of his hips shallow and stilted.
Little by little, Chloe increased the tempo, sucking him harder—faster. She squeezed Dax’s sac, gently rolling the balls. Dax gave a heavy gasp, his hips twitching under the restraint he held.
“Fuck!” he grunted. “I should be able to last, but your mouth is heaven. I’m going to come.”
Satisfaction rolled over her. There was nothing quite like causing a big, strong man like Daxton Squire to lose control. She continued her assault, not moving her mouth off him or slowing her rhythm. With one more slide of her tongue, he exploded, shouting out his pleasure. She swallowed down his cum, milking him for every drop he spewed. After a few moments, Dax slumped, and she pulled off, using the nearby sheet to wipe her mouth. Guess she was going to have to do laundry again.
When he had managed to get his breathing under control, he hauled her up and into his arms. She rested her head upon his chest and heard the steady rhythm of his heart. And damned if it didn’t make her heart beat with some type of emotion she’d never felt before. What it was, she didn’t know. She only knew she liked it and wanted more of that contented feeling.
Chapter Sixteen
Romeo sat in his chair, watching the men file into the room. Dax was the last, finger-combing his wet hair—and he knew why. Romeo had known he was in his bedroom with Chloe, and he’d deliberately stayed away. To make this thing between them work, they had to have some time to themselves. He’d waited for jealousy to kick in but, surprisingly, all he felt was hope that Dax was as connected with Chloe as he was.
He banged his gavel and brought the meeting to order.
“Where’s Bandit?” he asked.
“Shitter,” Boone replied.
Romeo nodded. “Well, someone can catch him up. There are several issues that need to be addressed,” he said. “We have a good lead on Red Eye, who says he has something special for us. He’s willing to sell us eight kilos of his new powder for two hundred grand.”
Murmurs broke out among the members.
“We can net a pretty good profit even keeping our regular territories,” Boone replied. “But we have to trust the reliability of his brand.”
“I thought we didn’t have any money,” Sioux said, addressing the rumblings.
“We don’t,” Romeo replied. “Yet. But I have a proposition to bring to the table, one that alleviates that particular pressing need.”
“Let’s hear it,” Hook demanded.
“I’m sure you all know Chloe,” Romeo said, looking around the table. The men nodded. “She’s the granddaughter of a Yakuza boss. She’s offered to give us weapons and cash.”
Shocked silence encompassed the table.
“I’m bringing this to a vote, because if we all agree, we’re looking at being Yakuza subjects—”
“No, we’re not,” Dax interjected.
Romeo frowned. “What?”
“Chloe is offering this on her own. I talked to her earlier. Her grandfather is supplying the guns, of course, but only with her money.”
All the men glanced at each other. Romeo felt as if someone had punched him extremely hard in the stomach. Her money? How much fucking money did she have? And how the hell did he feel about her having enough money to fund the Men of Hell?
“What’s the catch?”
Dax shook his head. “No catch. She’s…” He looked at Romeo, their eyes met and held. “She’s me and Romeo’s old lady.”
Jaws dropped. A shocked silence drifted through the room, and one side of Romeo’s mouth curled up.
Well, shit. I have an old lady.
Wait, did that mean Dax was his old man? No, that was too fucked up. He was going to have to call Branch about this, not that he was opposed to suddenly losing his bachelorhood. Dax had stated what had been swimming through his own head, a half-formed idea that had slowly been taking root ever since his and Chloe’s night together in Wheels’ house. But relationships were hard work to begin with, so adding in another member was going to make life interesting.
If she’s rich, does this make me her boy toy?
“I guess your older brother was a bad influence,” Boone remarked dryly.
Everyone laughed.
Romeo let them have their moment to poke fun because he was confused as hell. Was he supposed to be happy? Accepting? He really didn’t have time to deal with this right now, so he pushed all his personal thoughts to the side.
“All right, rein it in,” Romeo ordered sharply. “I suppose that takes one thing off the agenda.”
“And relieves my mind,” Boone added. “No offense, but I personally didn’t want to be a Yakuza bitch.”
Romeo silently agreed. “Although I like my bitch,” he said.
“You’d better not let Chloe hear you call her that,” Dax warned. “Because I think she knows how to tie nuts in a knot.”
Several of the men winced.
Romeo glanced around the table, knowing that this was the time to bring up the change of leadership topic. He stared at the gavel in his hand and wondered how he’d feel watching Boone bang it to bring a meeting to order. Wheels had often told him that ownership of the gavel was a combination of leader, peacekeeper and politician, and now that he was so close to giving it up, something inside him seized.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to push the words out.
This was the right thing to do. Not for him, but for the club.
“You’re holding us back, Beau.”
“You can’t waver, Romeo.”
“I need to bring up something else, something…different from Wheels’ vision of who should sit at the head of this table.”
Dax frowned. Boone frowned.
He opened his mouth to continue, and the lights suddenly went out. And it wasn’t just in the chapel. Screams and yelling came from the front of the clubhouse, where the women and children gathered in the evenings after dinner.
“What the fuck?” Romeo surged to his feet, but everything was pitch dark and he hit his knee against the table.
A couple of members pulled out their phones to give them light. They all hurried from the room, toward the front. Some of the women had found flashlights and candles. Romeo didn’t know they even
had
candles.
“Power outage?” Dax asked.
Romeo could tell from the suspicion in his voice that he didn’t think so. Neither did Romeo.
“Get the families to the bomb shelter,” he ordered, thinking quickly. “Tell the old ladies they’re going to have to deal with the sweet butts. Have Burrito and Hook go with the women and children to protect them.”
Dax nodded and left to follow the directives. Romeo turned to Boone and Gabby.
“Take a few men and check the perimeters,” he said. “Make sure I’m just being paranoid.”
“On it,” Boone replied.
“Wrench,” he addressed. “Take Hawg and go check the generators and see why they aren’t kicking in.”
“Okay,” Wrench said and hurried away.
“Sioux,” he called out as he moved to the door. “Come with me to the munitions storage so we can distribute what guns we have.”
The Native American man followed him. They headed across the murky compound quickly. Romeo didn’t like that every glimmer of light seemed to have been extinguished. Even thick clouds obscured the moon. Glowing lights flashed through the blackout, and sometimes the bright screen of a phone cut through the night. He and Sioux had just reached the storage unit when gunfire erupted. Romeo ducked down and hurried to the side, trying to find any type of cover, and he felt Sioux dive beside him.
“What the fuck?” He pulled his 9 millimeter from its shoulder holster under his cut.
“I see several flash points,” Sioux muttered. “God damn it, how did they get in?”
From his vantage point, he couldn’t answer the question. But the majority of the firing came from the direction of the gate, and that left a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Listen, the combination to the storage unit is forty, thirty, twenty-one. Get it open and distribute the guns.”
“Yes, boss.”
Romeo focused on one origin flash as gunfire again erupted through the night. It seemed like the assholes were aiming at the clubhouse and he was glad he had the families moved. But Sioux had asked a very important question.
How in the hell
had
they got in?
The one advantage he had over the fucking attackers was the fact that he knew every square inch of the compound, and he utilized that knowledge by maneuvering silently to the gunman closest to him. A mound of tires separated him and the person shooting, and when he heard the click of the hammer, Romeo realized his opportunity. He didn’t want to kill the person right away. He wanted to know who the fuck was trying to take them out.
Romeo charged and barreled into the man, sending them both to the ground. The first thing he realized was that the attacker was wearing night-vision goggles and quickly yanked them off. Disoriented, he tried to fight blindly, but Romeo blocked his punches, reared back with his own fist and bashed it into the man’s face. He grunted and fell. Romeo pressed the barrel of his gun against the fucker’s forehead.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Fuck you,” the man gasped.
Romeo aimed his gun and shot him in the hand. A blood-curdling scream left his lips and the warm spatter of blood hit Romeo’s face. He placed the gun’s barrel back on his forehead and the man gasped when the hot metal seared the skin.
“I’ll be happy to shoot off all your extremities,” Romeo said coldly. “Tell me who the hell you are and I’ll consider not doing that.”
“T-The D-D-Double Guns.”
“What do you want?”
The asshole only groaned.
Romeo grabbed the other hand and pushed his gun into it.
“No!” the man cried. “Bair! We want the town. And Vicious wants Romeo and Boone dead.”
“Vicious?”
“Yeah. Vicious and Bizerk run the club. That’s it, I swear. That’s all I know.”
“Noted,” Romeo replied and shot the poor sap in the head. He felt no remorse for killing anyone who had invaded and shot ruthlessly into a house that had been full of women and children. Relief that he’d gone with his gut to get them to the bomb shelter made him more determined to hunt the fuckers down and destroy them.
Besides, they had killed Babyface, Drifter and Candy Box. They weren’t exactly even, but this certainly helped alleviate some of his vengeful rage.