Axle's Brand (Death Chasers MC 3)

And that’s how he takes me.

Slowly.

Reverently.

Preciously.

With his eyes never leaving mine until I close them again, overwhelmed by sensation. He buries his face in my neck as his hips pick up a little speed, just enough to send him over the edge right behind me.

He kisses my neck—butterfly soft kisses. I run my hands over him slowly, sweetly, committing everything to memory as I keep my eyes closed, worried I’ll cry more if they’re open.

We lie like that, silently wrapped up in each other for what seems like no time, before someone knocks on the door.

“You said to get you in four hours,” Drex’s voice calls out. “What’s going on?”

Axle tenses against me, his grip tightening on my hips. Yes, I start thinking he’s about to tell me he can’t do this. That he can’t let me go. Or that he can’t let me go without him.

Instead, he says, “Let’s get you to that extraction team.”

With that, he pushes up and off the bed, putting on his clothes, and he walks out, leaving me to get dressed alone.

CHAPTER 31

AXLE

“You have your roller skates?” Eve asks Maya, forcing a smile as I do everything in my fucking power not to break something. Or hit something. Or kill someone.

Those are currently my life goals.

Maya nods, not smiling in return, and I’m one step closer to risking everyone’s lives when she quickly swipes at a new tear that has fallen.

She’s crying over me.

Over. Me.

And I’m ready to kill over her. For her.

If it wasn’t putting everyone else at risk, I’d say to hell with it all. But everyone else is at risk. And it’s really fucking selfish to watch people who’ve had my back for years risk certain death because I finally found something I want in life.

“You know,” Drex says quietly as he joins me at my side, his eyes on Maya and Eve as they talk near the vehicles, “I sent Eve away. Swore it was the best way to keep her safe. Didn’t work out so well, in case you’ve forgotten.”

He’s careful not to touch me as he crosses his arms over his chest and continues to stare ahead at the girls.

“Eve didn’t have an entire elite force at her fingertips when she went home. That team can’t be here. It’d easily draw too much attention, and be too noticeable to her brother or Phillip. The guys she trusts are the guys they know.”

He nods slowly.

“But you’re not sending her home for her safety, are you?” he pries. “You’re sending her home for ours. Which is, to be completely honest, really fucking insulting.”

He quirks an eyebrow at me, and I blow out a breath while looking away.

“Not in the mood to fucking bullshit, Drex. We both know we’re hurting right now. Too many loyalties are torn, and too many people are willing to fuck us over.”

“At least until we make a statement,” Drex says with a shrug. “Maya would be safe then, right? Since Pop’s guys would be a little less brazen to just fuck with us? Right now, they still see me as his brat kid and the old man as the one with all the brains, but if we—”

“Drex,” I say, feeling tired and really fucking sick of talking, “not right now. We’ve been strategizing to the point we’re trying to make Herrin look like a rat to the feds, a traitor to Benny, and a thorn in Phillip’s side. Today, I don’t want to talk strategy. I don’t want to talk at all.”

My jaw tenses as the sound of a chopper nears, the desert sand stirring in warning. I don’t look to the sky to see how far away it is, because I can’t stop looking at her.

It’s likely the last time I’ll ever see her.

If I’d have known I’d fucking feel like this right now, I never would have let her skate her perky little ass into my bedroom. I’d have let Dash talk her into—

Fuck that. I would have beaten the shit out of Dash if he’d talked her into bunking with him and had her the way I did.

Then again, she never wanted Dash.

Just me.

Figures life finally pays me a debt to make up for the hell it has put me through, only to take it away the second I realize how much I want it. Guys like us don’t get the sunshine and motherfucking rainbows.

We get the exhaust fumes and oil spills.

My eyes flick down to her rainbow shoestrings inside her white Converse tennis shoes, almost as if they’re taunting me. She’s all the good things, and I should have known it was too good to last for me.

The chopper gets louder and louder, and when I feel the first breeze of the blades, I turn and walk away, unable to fucking stand here and watch her leave. I told her goodbye with my body.