“So, what’s the proper, Devil’s Jacks–approved policy regarding scary spiders and children’s books?” she asked lightly. “Do your bylaws stipulate extra points for making more than one reference in a conversation? ’Cause I’m not really a Dr. Seuss fan.”

I stared at her, startled.

“Em, you gotta be a f**kin’ communist, you don’t like Dr. Seuss. Jesus.”

She started laughing and relaxed her stance. The gun was still out, but she came over and sat down about six feet away from me, back to the bunkhouse wall. I lit up and took a hit, feeling the harsh smoke slide down my throat and into my lungs. I wasn’t a huge stoner, but I figured I’d earned a little relaxation.

“So what did you want to tell me?” she asked. I took another hit, then let my arms rest on my knees.

“Well, the cops caught Toke,” I said. “You probably knew that.”

“Nope,” she muttered. “I’d guessed things were settling down, seeing as we’re not at war, but nobody confirmed it for me.”

“You sound a little tense. Sure you don’t want some?”

“No. I want to shoot you in the balls.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned that,” I said slowly. “I’m startin’ to think it’s not a joke?”

She smiled at me. Not a nice smile.

“Nope. Not a joke. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this all week. Just because I’m not screaming and yelling doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”

I studied her face, trying to decide how to play this out. I took another long drag, enjoying the cloudy feeling in my head.

To this day, that’s the only explanation I’ve got for what I did next.

“Okay, let’s compromise,” I said, standing slowly. “No shooting, but you can kick me if it means you’ll forgive me? I get that it’s over between us, but I don’t want you hating me. It’s important.”

The whites of her eyes grew huge in the moonlight.

“Are you serious?” she asked, scrambling to her feet.

I shrugged.

“I know I’ve earned it,” I admitted. “Probably earned more. Just do it and get it over with. Before I change my mind.”

I took one last inhale and then tossed the joint into the dirt. I think some part of me didn’t actually believe she’d follow through . . . I mean, in a movie she’d be overcome by the gesture and fling herself into my arms.

But Em? Not so much.

She straight-up kicked me in the balls, her pink Converse hitting me hard. Damn f**king hard. Agony erupted in my crotch, and I fell to the ground, biting my lip to keep from whimpering like a baby. Christ, what a bitch. Then she made it worse, because she laughed at me.

“Wow, that felt really good.”

“Jesus, I can’t believe you did that,” I grunted, stars still exploding behind my eyes. It was all I could do to keep breathing. Couldn’t f**king believe she actually did it. And I let her. I should’ve just asked the nice ass**le Reaper inside to shoot me and be done with it.

After a few minutes, I managed to pull myself up. Em was sitting against the wall, calmly smoking my joint, gun propped up on her knee. Would’ve been kind of sexy if I had even the slightest capacity for anything but excruciating pain in my groin.

On the bright side, I didn’t have to worry about an inconvenient hard-on for once.

“Oh, I’m thinking about doing something even more fun,” Em said sweetly. “It’s so sweet to see you rolling around in pain that I’m reconsidering shooting you.”

She lifted the pistol and pointed it straight at me.

Fuck. I had seriously misjudged this situation. She held my gaze for long seconds, taking another slow drag and blowing out a smoke ring. A f**king smoke ring. Somewhere in the back of my head, I heard the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly playing.

Liam “Hunter” Blake was about to be shot dead by a cliche.

Then Em burst out laughing. “The look on your face right now is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m never letting you scare me again.”

I sagged in relief as she let her weapon drop, then held the joint out to me. I sucked it down, hoping to kill some of my adrenaline.

“You’re a scary little bitch when you want to be,” I muttered. “Christ, Em. You need to stop playing with guns.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. “So tell me whatever it was you came here to say.”

I shook my head slowly, trying to think. Kind of hard to focus between the pain, the adrenaline, and the weird, surreal sense of pride I felt in her.

She’d make an amazingly unholy old lady.

“Toke’s in protective custody in the Clackamas County Jail right now,” I said slowly. “Nobody’s talked to him. I guess if the Reapers made contact, they aren’t telling us. They have a lot more to lose than we do.”

“How about your friends?” she asked. “The ones he shot up?”

“All good. I mean, they definitely got hurt, and Clutch has some rehab ahead of him. Your guy did a number on him—”

“Not my guy,” she broke in. “He sliced me open, remember?”

Oh, I remembered. I’d never forget the sight of her half naked, her fantastic tits right in front of me just begging to be touched. My dick twitched and I shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. That was good news . . . Glad to know all the plumbing still worked.

“So what happened between the clubs?” she asked. “Truce in effect again?”

“Yup,” I said. “Picnic and Burke hammered it out. I don’t know what you told your dad, but he helped push it through. Good news for all of us. Means we can get back to riding and living instead of fighting with each other. You see a Jack, you don’t need to be scared of him.”

“Yeah, that is good news.”

Silence fell between us, and Em scooted a little closer to pass me the joint. Slowly I relaxed, considering Em’s little demonstration of force. I still felt the occasional twinge of pain, but the more I thought about it, the funnier the situation was.

“You f**king kicked me in the balls,” I said, looking up at the sky.

“Yup. Enjoyed it, too.”

“Maybe you don’t realize this, but usually people try pretty hard not to piss me off. Bad things happen when I get pissed off.”

“Bad things happen when I get pissed off, too. You might want to remember that.”

I snorted, a reluctant smile crossing my face. We sat in silence for a while longer, the evening air just cool enough that I wished I had a blanket. Or Em’s warm body up against mine. After a while I scooted down, lying back in the grass and looking up at the stars. For once I wasn’t totally preoccupied with sex around her, which was kind of nice.

“It’s really pretty out here,” I said finally. “You’re lucky you grew up in a place like this.”

I heard her moving, and then she was lying in the grass next to me. Not too close—we weren’t touching. But close enough I could smell that unique, flowery scent that seemed to follow her everywhere.

“Where did you grow up?” she asked.

“Hell,” I said shortly.

Silence fell again.

“I miss you, Em.”

She didn’t answer. I yawned as something dark flew over us, followed by a second shadow.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Bats.”

“No shit?”

She laughed.

“Yeah, I’m lying to you about the bats, Liam.”

Christ, I loved hearing my name from her lips. Without thinking, I reached out and caught her, pulling her over and into me. She stiffened.

“Relax,” I whispered. “You’re safe.”

She pulled away for an instant, then sighed and nestled her head against my shoulder, slowly relaxing. Just holding her in the darkness kicked ass.

“You know, you were wrong about something,” she said after a while.

“What’s that?”

“I’d make a shitty old lady.”

“How do you figure?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Well, among other things, I have a habit of warning my club’s enemies so they can get away before they’re killed,” she said slowly. “You won’t tell anyone about that, will you? Dad would never forgive me.”

“Of course not,” I said, my voice firm. “You saved my f**kin’ life. I wouldn’t do that to you. Hell, I don’t want to do anything to hurt you. Should’ve stayed away tonight, but I wanted you to know it was all over.”

Bullshit. I wanted to see her. Touch her. Smell her hair.

“It’s hard to know what you’d do,” Em said. “You taught me an important lesson—you can’t trust guys you meet online, remember?”

I winced.

“Yeah, about that . . . I’m sorry. It was a dick move.”

“But you were cool with romancing me and using me to manipulate my father in the first place?”

“Well, to be fair I did it to get laid, too. Wasn’t all business.”

She gave a little snort. Not an angry snort, more of a snuffly, surprised laugh that caught her off guard.

“Are you going to erase those pictures?” she asked, finally, her voice sobering. “I don’t want them out there. You owe me—I saved your ass, I saved Skid, and I saved this precious truce of yours.”

She made a good point. But there was no way I’d erase those pictures. Fuckin’ crown jewels in my spank bank.

“I’ll get rid of them,” I lied. Shit, if that was the worst one I told today, it’d be a damned record.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? For all I know, you’ve emailed them to your whole club already.”

“Naw, if I’d done that, it would’ve made the rounds of your club, too,” I told her. “No way my brothers would be able to resist sending them to your dad. I’ll take care of it. You never have to worry about seeing them again, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, her voice drifting. She was falling asleep, I realized. I held perfectly still. After a few minutes I heard a very soft, very feminine little snore.

Note to self: Pot knocks Em on her ass.

I smirked, and then it faded because not like I’d have a chance to use that information. Pretty sure I wouldn’t be seeing her again after tonight. Hell, best-case scenario, the peace would hold and I’d see her across a campfire in a few years at some kind of gathering between the clubs. She’d have an old man by then . . . I’d just have to deal.

Unless it was that cocksucker Painter. I didn’t like that guy.

My last thought before I fell asleep was that if I ever saw him with Em, I’d have to kill him.

Just no escaping it.

EM

The birds woke me up. I was freezing cold on my right side, which seemed to be resting on . . . the ground? My back was warm, though, and a man’s arm lay heavy over my body.

What the f**k?

Then it came to me.

Liam. Hunter. Whatever the hell his name was. He’d met me outside last night. I’d kicked him in the balls, and the memory warmed me immediately. Then we’d talked and smoked and it hadn’t been bad at all. Shit. That’d probably been stupid. But even with the ground all cold and damp beneath me, I felt fantastic cradled in his arms. His bicep made a hell of a nice pillow.

Ewww. I’d drooled on him.

I felt carefully in my pocket and pulled out my phone. Five thirty in the morning. I needed to get back inside, I realized. Not that Painter was my boss or anything, but he was a damned good spy for my father. I slid out from under Hunter’s arm carefully, then stood over him, taking him in one last time. Like so many people, sleep made him look young and innocent. Sure, he was still a big man made up of strong muscles and sharp angles, but his face had softened. Dark stubble covered his chin, and his near-black hair flopped forward over his eyes.

He wore his Devil’s Jack cut, too—the first time I’d seen it.

It looked good on him, I decided. Of course, everything looked good on him. He was such a beautiful son of a bitch, I thought wistfully, and now I’d probably never see him again. I couldn’t help but wonder what could’ve been.

Pulling out my phone, I took a couple quick pictures, figuring he’d done far worse to me. Then I walked carefully around the side of the bunkhouse and back to the house. I felt like a teenager sneaking inside after a date, a more accurate analogy than I’d realized because Dad’s bike was parked in the driveway. Sometime in the night he’d come home, although how I’d missed the sound of his big black Harley I couldn’t imagine.

Oh yeah. I’d been stoned off my ass. Oops.

I opened the door carefully. Then I snuck past Painter and climbed the stairs. I pulled out the phone and the gun, setting them on my bedside table before crawling under the covers. On Monday I’d give the folks at the aesthetician’s program a call, I decided. Follow up, see what they’d think of me coming to Portland for classes when the next quarter started.

It was a city, after all. Not like I’d ever see Liam at all.

Part Two

CHAPTER NINE

SIX WEEKS LATER

COEUR D’ALENE, IDAHO

EM

I considered the playlist I’d put together on my phone, and smiled.

Then I hit play on the stereo system’s control app.

Bass filled the front of the house, rattling the windows. Dad’s room was in the addition off the back, so it wouldn’t be too loud in there. Just loud enough to make a hangover much, much worse, if you were unfortunate enough to have one.