Dex ARe (12 page)

Then I got to watch her come. She tore a hand through her hair and pinched her own nipple. “Fuck,” I whispered. She was going to be the death of me. Then she threw her head back and settled her weight on her palms. With her eyes wide open and a lustful smile on her face, my Ava found her orgasm. She screamed my name and threw her head back. She gushed around me and I felt her pussy spasm and clench, as she thrust her pelvis forward.

“That’s it, baby,” I said. “Fuck me. Don’t you ever stop.”

I sat up and got my arms around her back just as she started to go slack. She was spent but I wasn’t.

“You can sleep after, baby,” I said. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

She let out a sultry laugh. My girl knew just what I needed. Exhausted as she was, she crawled to the center of the bed. Lowering her chin to rest on her hands, she thrust her ass high in the air.

“Just like that,” I said. “Don’t move.”

She wouldn’t dare. I gripped her hips and angled her even further back. Then I plunged my cock into her gaping pussy as deep as it would go. We’d been so long apart, it was going to take some time to build up the stamina I’d need to go all night. But you can be damn sure that was next on my list.

Ava screamed my name as I poured myself into her for the second time. If I had my way, there would be a third, fourth, fifth, maybe a sixth befor
e I let her fall asleep again.
And I’d become a man used to getting my way again. When I folded her against me, I saw mixed emotions cross her face. She was happy, sated. But there were shadows in her eyes. She was cautious; she guarded her heart even though she was willing to give me her body. I knew she meant to protect herself by thinking of this as maybe just a one-night stand.

It was fine for now. I would give her time. I had abandoned her, after all, even though it had not been my choice. And she’d suffered in ways I had never dreamed. For that, I would never forgive myself. A new anger bubbled within me toward the men I’d charged with protecting her. Sly never should have let her enlist, much less stand by when they sent her to war. I fulfilled my duties to the club; I wanted to know why he hadn’t kept her safe.

Ava fell asleep in my arms. A line of worry furrowed her brow and I knew her doubts about me were what put it there. That and perhaps the memory of old wounds I’d made her call to the surface. She may have had doubts but I didn’t. Ava was mine. I would give her space, but she belonged with me.

Chapter Twelve

It was well past lunchtime before I finally let Ava sleep. She didn’t have to work tonight and I was glad of that. I wanted her to stay here at the Den as long as I could keep her. I had selfish reasons for that, of course, but with Franco’s attack, I wanted her close by, just in case. I didn’t think she’d worked out my second motive yet, but worried how she’d react when she did. Our first night back together, and there was already club bullshit brewing. I’d made her so many promises the first time around that I never kept. This time, I was going to get it right.

While Ava slept, tangled in the bedsheets, I took a quick shower, threw on a fresh pair of jeans and t-shirt and headed down to the bar. The rest of the guys were already assembled in the private kitchen. Mo was back and had made enough French toast to feed a football team. My heart skipped at the thought of what Ava had been through and it was on my mind to have words with Sly about it. I was a little angry. Well, more than a little.

He was busy stuffing his face at the end of the table. He waved his fork at me and shot me a wink as I grabbed the pot of coffee and poured myself a cup.

“You do my heart good,” Mo said. I leaned sideways to let her kiss me on the cheek. “I plan on fattening you up good and proper before too long.” She patted my arm. Mo was just a little thing at four foot ten. She had the face of Ireland with creamy white skin and a shock of thick red hair piled high on her head. Anyone who underestimated her size for weakness did so at their peril.

“Get a good night sleep, did ya?” This from Colt. Sly shot him a menacing look and he slinked off his stool. Sly was right to do it. The last thing I wanted was a ribbing from the guys. This was Ava we were talking about, not some bar chick I’d hooked up with on the fly. If I had my way, those days were long gone. I’d make damn sure I
did
get my way.

“Why don’t you head over to the gym?” Sly said to Billy and the others. “I’ll fill Dex in on what we know.”

I took a sip of my steaming coffee and slid onto the stool Billy had just vacated.

“The kid still doing all right?” I asked.

Sly nodded. “They took out his spleen and transfused him a half a dozen times but he’s stable. His sister came in from Philly and he’s in good hands. Even so, I’ve got Tiny and a couple of the prospects hanging around the hospital to keep an eye on him.”

I nodded. “You want to tell me your theory on what the hell happened?” There was an edge to my voice. I had half a thought I should tread a little lighter. I didn’t want to tell Sly his business, but between Pagano’s little phone call and Ava’s revelation, I wasn’t in a great mood about any of it.

Sly raised a brow at me. “You want to tell me yours?”

The room conveniently cleared out when he said it. Billy had been given his marching orders. Mo and Charlie left the kitchen arm and arm. Everyone else found a reason to file out into the bar as well.

“You know what I think,” I said. “You said yourself Pagano’s decided to make his move now that he doesn’t have me to play with. Have you reached out to him?”

“Indirectly,” Sly sipped his coffee. “His man here is a guy by the name of Ed Londo. Billy and I are meeting with him later this afternoon. Of course, he’s denying up and down his crew had anything to do with what happened to Franco.”

“You and Billy are meeting with him? I need to be part of that too, Sly. The fucker called me the other day.”

Sly narrowed his eyes at me then shook his head. “You need to trust my judgment on this one. You’re a sore point with Pagano. You know why. If he reached out to you that’s even more reason to keep you out of this. You need to lay low where they’re concerned, at least for a little while. You come at ’em right out of the gate guns blazing and it gets a whole lot harder for me to keep anything contained.”

I barked out a laugh as I sipped my coffee. “This is you keeping shit contained?” Sly’s eyes narrowed at me. He was getting the hint that this conversation was about more than just what happened with Franco. And I felt a distinct brush-off about Pagano that didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me. “Fine.” I started again. “How are you planning to approach it?”

“If this was Pagano’s way of sending a message, Londo’s not going to be coy about it. Pagano’s not a hit-and-run type of guy. And I know what you’re saying and I know why you think he’s behind this. I’m still not sure. He uses
us
to send these kind of messages.”

I let out another bitter laugh. Sly could show me all of the spreadsheets he wanted, but that hard fact made it tough for me to think very much had changed since Blackie Murphy’s days. But he was club president, not me. I’d abide by his word but that didn’t mean I was going to like it. And I didn’t like it one damn bit at the moment.

“I’ll play it your way. I know there’s still a lot I have to get up to speed on. So what’s your number-one theory of what’s going on?”

Sly shrugged. “I know it seems obvious, but I really think DiSalvo’s people could be behind this. They had a hell of a lot more to gain by putting Franco out of commission. Just because it’s obvious, doesn’t mean that bastard’s not crazy enough to try it.”

I nodded. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you and Tiny to pay DiSalvo
’s father a visit. He’s running the show for them. Shouldn’t be hard to scare
the piss out of him. He talks a big talk but he’s small time. If he’s made to understand he’s got the full weight of the Great Wolves about to rain down on him, I think he’ll fold pretty quick. I think you’ll be able to figure out whether he’s involved just by seeing how he reacts.”

“Good.” And it was, sort of. I believed in my heart this was Pagano, but Sly wasn’t wrong that we had to rule out every other possibility. I knew I had a personal vendetta against the guy and it was damn hard to separate that from what might or might not be going on with the club. Plus, this little excursion might be good for me in other ways: my years of pent-up rage and everything else needed an outlet.

And now that we had that settled, there was another subject Sly and I needed to have out. He knew it too. We’d spent over a decade away from each other, but he could still read my mood as well as he ever did. “So what’s up your ass?” he said.

I straightened my back and leveled a stare at him. In a lot of ways, Sly and I had been tiptoeing around each other since I got back. We tried to feel each other out. It wasn’t like us. It had
never
been like us. If we had a beef with each other, more times than not we resolved it with words and sometimes fists, just like real brothers. He turned his palms up in a questioning gesture, waiting for me to get to the point.

“Why didn’t you stop her?” I finally said.

Sly exhaled and set his coffee cup down; in fact, he almost slammed it.

“You know,” he said. “I think this is a conversation I’m going to need a much higher blood alcohol level to get through.”

I clenched my fist and pounded it once on the counter top. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Sly.”

He shifted and turned to face me. “Are you seriously asking me that?”

“I am.” My voice came through gritted teeth. I harbored even more anger on this subject than I realized. Sly swore me an oath when I went inside. I would keep mine to the club; I would never do or say anything against them even if it meant I could have freed myself. It wasn’t our way. But it was the club’s job—it was Sly’s job—to protect what was mine when I couldn’t. Among other things, that meant Ava.

“What the hell was I supposed to do? Lock her on a chain and give her a water dish?”

I pushed my chair away from the bar and stood up. I tore a path back and forth in front of him. Rage simmered so close to the surface. I truly hadn’t meant to lose my cool with this. But I felt in my heart if this had been a woman of Sly’s I could have found a way to keep her out of Iraq, for God’s sake. “Don’t sit there and try to spin this as anything other than you not looking out for her.”

Sly’s eyes narrowed. He stood up and took a step toward me. We were almost nose to nose; I clenched my fists at my side and thrust my chest out. He did the same. If this was going to come to blows, like a brother or not, I’d knock him on his ass.

“Don’t
you
fucking stand there and accuse me of that. I get where this is coming from. But yours wasn’t the only life that got ripped apart when you went inside,” he said. “You did what you had to do in there, we did what we had to do out here.”

We both stood stock still. The slightest move by either of us and this conversation was going to turn into something else. And the thing is, I wanted it to.

“You could have stopped her,” I said. Some small part of my brain told me to quit right there. I blamed Sly and I didn’t. I’m not proud of everything that happened next, but I’d spent too much time checking myself, keeping things bottled deep. “You
should
have stopped her. What happened to her over there is on you.”

And there it was. My words hung there between us and I felt a tinge of sadness at the same time my anger rose. I couldn’t help it. The memory of those scars on Ava’s perfect skin still had me reeling. Then there was that deadened, sad look that came into her eyes as she struggled to tell me what they meant.

“Once.” The word came out of Sly’s mouth as a snarled hiss. “You’re still the closest thing to a brother I’m ever going to have. And what you suffered, what you lost is more than even I can imagine. So for that, I’ll let you say that to me once. Not again.”

“She almost fucking died,” I said. We were still nose to nose, chest to chest. My blood boiled in my ears. There was something deep brewing in both of us that probably had a hell of a lot less to do with our words and more to do with what was in our blood. “She’s covered in shrapnel scars. She won’t talk about it with me yet but she’s got deeper scars on the inside. It was your job to stop her. I never would have let her go.”

Sly moved first. He crossed his arm over my chest and pushed me back against the wall, thinking he could hold me there. Coffee cups that had been hanging next to the shelf near my head crashed to the ground and shattered. “She went there because of
you
, asshole. Not me. I told you, you weren’t the only one whose life got ripped apart. And I didn’t know she was going until she called me on a pay phone after she’d already reported to basic training five hundred miles away.”

Red rage clouded my vision. Later, I’d understand what happened next really wasn’t about Sly at all. It was about me trying to take back some control and make someone pay for everything I’d lost. Even if I knew Sly wasn’t the one who owed me anything. I dropped low, grabbed Sly around the waist and shoved him back as hard as I could. We toppled backward in a heap of arms, legs and flying fists, crashing over the top of the bar and sprawling onto the kitchen floor.

Sly got in a good blow to my jaw, I got in a better one dead square to his nose. I drew first blood.
We called each other every vile thing we’d been raised on. Rolling end over end through the kitchen, we both got to our feet and I got my fists up, ready to take another swing. Sly dropped low and meant to charge me again. Before he got the chance, a shower of ice-cold water rained down on both of us. Sly slipped in it and landed on his ass.

“That oughtta cool ya off, ye couple a thick-heided mongrels!” Mo McGillivray had lived in Northern California for thirty-odd years, but when her temper flared, her Irish brogue got thick. And she was spitting mad right now. She stood in the center of the kitchen aiming the spray nozzle from her sink straight at us with the same murderous intentions as if it were a broadsword.