Suit up, Tatum.

Suit the fuck up.

I stepped forward.

Closer to him.

“I work for Billy Jones. He would not want me dead.”

King stilled. “You’re one of his girls?”

“Yes.” Kind of.

His eyes narrowed at me. “How long have you worked for him?”

“Six years.”

That number was a winner for me. Everyone in Sydney knew that if a girl worked for Billy for longer than a year she was gold. He went through his girls like he went through his women. Fast.

“Fuck,” Nitro muttered.

It was also common knowledge that Billy would kill for his golden girls.

King glared at me like he wanted to wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze the life out of me. “What’s your name?”

My name was the last thing I wanted to give him, but I’d have to if I had any hope of escaping them. “Tatum Lee.”

He turned away from me. “I don’t have time to deal with this at the moment, Nitro. Get her out of here and watch her until I can verify this.”

With that, King stalked out of the office, leaving Nitro and me alone. Raking his fingers through his hair, he said, “I see you changed your mind about living.”

“I decided I didn’t want to die at the hands of a filthy biker.”

He scowled. “But you’d be happy to go back to Billy fucking Jones?”

I returned his scowl. “He treats me better than you have.”

Tension punched through the air between us and if I thought I’d seen Nitro angry before, something I said made his mood far worse. Dipping his face to mine, he snarled, “Get your ass out that door and to my bike. And don’t say another fucking word about Billy Jones to me.”

“It would be my absolute pleasure to not say another fucking word to you, full stop,” I snapped, before spinning on my heel and marching out of the clubhouse.

I decided then that I could deal with a lot of things, but bikers weren’t one of them.

 

 

5

 

 

Nitro

 

 

“Pretty Vegas” by INXS

 

Tatum Lee was a pain in my ass.

We’d arrived at my house an hour earlier and after she had a shower, I’d given her a shirt to wear and set her up in my bedroom because it was the only room with a bed. If she’d been anyone but a woman who meant something to Billy Jones, I’d have tied her to a fucking chair and left her alone. As much as I loathed Billy, he was one of Storm’s loyal allies and since we’d declared war on Silver Hell, we needed to keep every ally on side. Pissing him off was not a good move.

“You’re not sleeping next to me in this bed,” she said as I entered the room and lifted my shirt over my head.

“I’m not sleeping, Vegas. And I’m doing that in the bed next to you.”

Raising her handcuffed hands in the air and jerking her chin at her feet that I’d tied together, she said, “You’ve detained me. I can’t go anywhere. I hardly think you need to be so damn close to me.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I reached to remove my boots. “You and I would get along a hell of a lot better if you stopped thinking.”

She muttered something under her breath that I didn’t catch. Not that I cared to hear it. The less talking we did, the better.

Once my boots were off, I settled on the bed, my back to the bedhead, legs crossed at the ankles. Eyeing her, I ran my gaze over her body. Ignoring the bruises and swelling, I remembered how she’d looked when we first met on the casino floor. Besides the fact she had curves in all the right places, muscles that only accentuated those curves, long blonde hair that was exactly my type, and a beautiful face a man would never forget, Tatum Lee had skin that was inked to perfection. She had quotes tattooed on her legs that I wondered about. What had she been through in her life to permanently ink them into her skin?

“What?” she demanded.

I met her gaze and we watched each other cautiously for a few moments. Getting into a conversation may not have been on my list of priorities, but she seemed to be dragging me there.

“I’m wondering what the hell possessed you to put yourself in that situation tonight? Because I’m guessing that you being in that hotel room wasn’t random. Not if you knew that guy murdered your brother.”

Her mouth curled up in anger. “And I’m guessing that you’d do the same thing if someone murdered your family.”

“Yeah, but I’m capable of not getting myself raped or killed.”

“He beat me, and he got his dick out, but he didn’t fuck me with it.”

I leaned in close to her. “He might not have, but he sure as fuck would have if I hadn’t shown up. And a word of warning—you may not play with those kinds of men often, Vegas, but they don’t hesitate to kill you if you piss them off.”

She pushed her face near mine. “Why didn’t you kill me? And why the hell do you keep calling me Vegas?”

Fuck, her fight caused my dick to harden. Waiting with a hard-on while King decided what we were doing with her was the last fucking thing I needed, so I moved off the bed. “Go to sleep,” I ordered as I left the bedroom.

After I grabbed a beer out of the fridge I headed to the couch in the lounge room. As far away from Tatum Lee as I could manage. The desire to fuck her wasn’t one I needed to fuel by being near her. She’d complicated shit enough already.

 

* * *

 

“Nitro!”

I jerked awake at the sound of Renee’s voice to find her standing in front of me, a worried look on her face. Sitting forward, I rubbed my eyes. “What time is it?”

“You never called me back.”

I ignored the accusation in her voice. Pushing off the couch, I said, “What’s the time, Renee?” The dark night clung to the windows still. I guessed it to be about three or four in the morning.

“It’s just after five. Mum’s not good. I needed you and you weren’t there for me.” Her accusatory tone disappeared and all that remained was her broken spirit.

Fuck.

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. But she’s not coping, and she’s getting worse.” She paused for a moment, her face crumpling before the tears fell. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”