Property of Drex (Death Chasers MC 2)

Drex’s smile is quick, but just as brief when he banishes it. Axle rolls his eyes as though he doesn’t want to be in here anymore. Just knowing he trusts me to go out on my own is enough.

“As nice as that sounds, I’m going to be downstairs a lot, and I want you to be able to come down with me. If you wear your prissy shit, the guys won’t take you seriously. Besides, I need to be showing off your new ink so that word spreads throughout the club how mine you are now.”

Sighing, I shrug. “Okay then. I’ll get clothes tomorrow.”

He nods once, then turns back to Axle, explaining the schedule. Axle leaves without looking my way again, and Drex shuts the door behind him.

“You’re sure I don’t have to worry about Benny?”

He slowly shakes his head. “Benny won’t attack in public. Besides, he invested a lot of bank for you. If anything, he’d approach you instead of attack you.”

My brow furrows.

“Why would he approach me? I hate him and he knows it.”

He smirks as he walks toward me. “Spoken like a true Death Dealer.”

That has me resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

He settles onto the bed next to me, tugging his shirt over his head before slipping out of his jeans. Once he’s down to his boxers, he pulls me to him. The fingers on my right hand absently toy with one of the barbells in his nipple, while he stares up at the ceiling.

“Benny wants to know about details of our business—how we do what we do. I don’t know how long he’s been asking questions, but Drake told us a lot tonight. He knows we fix cars to conceal things that can’t be detected. Dogs can’t sniff anything out, x-ray devices are tricked, and compartments are hidden too well for the casual search to reveal. Not just SUVs, but bigger rides too. It helps smuggle bulk quantities of things across the border without the risk. You can’t exactly drive a container full of weapons or drugs around and hope to not get caught. So you split up the loads between ten or more vehicles that are equipped to carry large amounts. Apparently Benny wants his bite of the business, because it’s a lucrative business.”

I still against him. “I don’t want to know this stuff.”

He laughs bitterly, a soft sound that is actually a little depressing.

“It’s not technically illegal,” he goes on, acting as though I didn’t just say anything. “We play in a gray area, but they’d find a way to prosecute us for aiding and abetting. Dash designed a system to fool the x-ray machine. I concocted the device that fools the canine units. And Axle is the genius behind the hidden compartments. Before this, Pop was pushing drugs, transporting them, and assuming a lot of risks.”

I flick his nipple bar a little harder, almost pinching it to silence him.

“I said I don’t want to know this. It’s better if I don’t. That way they can’t assume I’ve told someone if anyone finds out.”

The smile that blooms across his face is confusing. “I know you don’t want to know, but I’m trying to trust you. This isn’t something just anyone learns. It’s not like I’m telling you the formula for success; only the guys and I know it.”

My twisted heart swells with a touch of excitement and pride. He wants to trust me. He already trusts me enough to tell me something as major as this.

He continues while sliding his hand up my leg, dragging it across his waist.

“Considering my mom was a junkie, I wanted Pop away from actual drugs and all temptation. He uses on occasion, but he’s never grown an addiction to it. Before you say that’s impossible, that’s not true. It’s rare, but some are immune to forming addictions. In fact, they get high off the power they have over denying the drug. Pop is more addicted to power than anything someone can manufacture.”

I kiss his chest, wishing I could empathize, but this isn’t how I was raised. Even though my father was apparently a little more jaded than I realized.

“Axle, Dash, and I worked on this for a couple of years when we were teenagers. Snake helps us with the installs. I met Dash and Snake in detention… school detention.”

He laughs as though it’s a pleasant memory. “We became instant friends. Then I met Axle in an actual detention center during the short period I was there after I got busted for beating the shit out of a kid my age. I was fifteen at the time. So was Axle. He came to live with us after he got out at sixteen.”

At fifteen I was drawing in my sketchbook to let off steam and blushing if someone cursed in front of me. I don’t mention that though. It makes me sound ridiculously out of place.