And that terrifies me.

12

Nox

Having Lucy at my back feels like heaven. She’s soft, warm and the way her hands keep moving over my abs has my dick twitching. This feels good, right. Perfect.

Everything about her excites me, and I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. I’ve never felt anything for anyone I’ve been with, but Lucy has my mind in knots.

As we ride, I try to keep my focus off the woman behind me and on my surroundings. Bringing her out of the safety of the clubhouse could be a mistake, one I might regret, but if she’s going to be there for a while, she needs her own shit around her.

We’d have to do this trip at some point. Better to do it with her here, so we can get in and out fast.

As we move through different territories, I keep my guard up. Titch cleared the route for us, but you still never know what can happen when going through someone else’s patch. It pays to be cautious, aware. We should have come in a cage, but selfishly, stupidly, I wanted her on the back of my bike. I wonder if Lucy knows how big a deal it is to have her sitting behind me. In our world, that means something. It means she’s mine. I don’t think she’s ready to hear those words yet, but I would claim her in a heartbeat. I’ve fallen hard and fast. I always said snatch couldn’t sway me, but Lucy is different. She’s everything I’d want in an old lady and more. I can’t stop from wanting her. There’s a connection, chemistry that can’t be faked.

As we get closer to where she lives, my jaw starts to clench tightly. The area is rundown, deprived, not somewhere I’d want either Lucy or Sasha living, but this is home to them. I try not to judge, but I can’t help from seeing this place through a lens. It’s a shithole.

We’re surrounded by a ring of high-rises, graffiti on every wall I can see. The buildings are rundown, old, decrepit. I swallow bile as we pull up outside a two-storey building and cut my engine. I hear my brothers’ bikes rumbling behind me before they fall silent too.

Fuck me, no matter what happens, she ain’t coming back here to live. I’ll buy her a place before I let her step foot back here.

My eyes slide to the group of kids hanging around the corner of the street, their eyes locked on us, fascinated by the bikes probably. Some of them look young, too young to be out on their own.

I pull my attention back to Lucy and pat her leg.

“Hop off, baby.”

She peels herself from my back and I feel the loss of her warmth, cold licking up my spine, and it’s not just because she’s no longer touching me. This place is giving me fucking chills. Her hands come to my shoulders as she climbs off and gets back onto solid ground. The grin that’s covering her face doesn’t go unnoticed. Lucy enjoyed that ride, and that makes my own smile spread.

“That was… phenomenal,” she says a little breathlessly.

“Ain’t nothing quite like being on the back of a bike.”

“This is yours and Sash’s place?” Daimon asks, peering up at the building. I don’t miss the wrinkle of his nose. Sash moved in with Rav the same day Lucy turned up at the clubhouse bleeding. He, Kyle and Levi had gone to move her shit while I’d stayed with Lucy and handled security back at the clubhouse with Fury. If I’d seen this, I would have packed Lucy up too. How the fuck did Rav not tell me how bad this is?

It’s old, brick, the mortar crumbling in places, huge paint tags covering most of it. I wouldn’t let a dog live here, let alone Lucy and Sasha.

Colour stains her cheeks as she nods. “Yep, home sweet home. It was all me and Sash could afford.”

“You don’t have to explain,” I tell her.

“Ain’t judging,” Daimon is quick to add.

She gives us both a thin smile. “I know it’s not perfect, but this place saved us both.” She glances up at the building and I don’t like the look that crosses her face. Shame maybe, guilt even—I’m not sure which.

“Come on,” I reach out for her hand and thank fuck she takes it. The last thing I want her to think is I’m looking down on her choices. I know she and Sash did the best they could.

Daimon and Titch stay with the bikes while she leads me over to the stairwell and we climb up the steps that wind around the outside of the building. There are two other flats on the first floor, but she moves past both and leads me to the end door.

As we approach, Lucy pulls her keys from her pocket, the metal jangling as she tries to find the right one.

Her hands are shaking slightly, and I cover her fingers with my own. She peers at our joined hands before raising her gaze to meet my eyes. Then she takes a deep breath. Without a word, I take the keys from her and put them in the lock. It turns easily and I push the door open.

As I step into the darkened hallway, I take a moment to adjust to the change of lighting before Lucy flips the switches behind me. Light floods the small corridor, which has two doors off it. I tell her to wait where she is and pull the gun from the holster under my kutte. Then I move through the space. It’s clean, well decorated. Poles apart from the outside. It looks like Lucy and Sasha tried to make this home, tried to give Lily-May something nice, something good. There’s shit missing from the bookcases and indentations on the carpet where furniture would have previously been. Sasha cleared out everything of hers to move in with Rav. It makes the place feel a little bare, barren even.

I move from room to room and when I step into the back bedroom, I realise I’m in what must be Lucy’s room. It’s decorated in different shades of blues and greens, feminine, but not overly fussy. There’s a wardrobe, a double bed, some bedside tables—the usual shit you’d find in a bedroom. I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror on the wall and I can’t help but think what kind of man wants to destroy all that purity, all that innocence. Lucy doesn’t deserve the tattooed thug, wearing a kutte, brandishing a gun. She deserves better, but I want her to want me, as selfish as that is.

I shake it off and leave the room. The two other bedrooms are empty, but one of them has ponies on the walls, so I assume it was Lily-May’s room. I head back down the stairs and find Lucy waiting by the door where I left her.

“Go grab what you need.”

She moves around me and I grab her wrists stopping her, then I dip my head and kiss her.

“I won’t be long,” she tells me.

Lucy pulls out of my hold and I let her go. Then I watch her arse as she moves up the stairs. The jeans are practically painted on her, clinging to her body in all the right places. I want to follow her up those stairs and take her, but I move into the living room and peer through the blinds. Being here is risky, but I’m not afraid. Whatever happens I know me and my brothers can protect Lucy. No one will touch her again and I’ll kill anyone who tries.

13

Lucy

As soon as I close my bedroom door, I shrug out of Nox’s leather jacket, tossing it on the bed and rush over to the chest of drawers. I sag down onto my knees in front of it, my heart pounding.

Glancing at the door, I check Nox isn’t going to come bursting in before I carefully pull the bottom drawer free of the runners. There’s a little box hidden in the recess between it and the plinth around the base of the unit—just enough space to hide what I needed.