Duke (The Henchmen MC 5)

The tears stung again and I was too preoccupied to fight them, two slipping out the corners of my eyes and sliding down my temples as Duke planted deep and came on a hiss.

His hand dropped my thigh and moved up to wipe one of the tears away, not saying anything and I was more thankful for that silence than anything before.

Because there was no way to explain it.

I didn't even understand it myself.

The best way I could describe it was it wasn't like sex I had had before, bodies satisfying bodies.

It felt... meaningful.

Maybe that was silly and sentimental and old-timey, but that was how it felt.

His body curled, his hands planted beside my shoulders, and he leaned down to kiss me, hard and deep but undemanding as if sensing I had already given him all I had.

My entire body felt like it was humming when the sharp, shrill sound of his cell made us both start. He pulled back, looking down at me with regret as he let out a slow exhale.

"So it begins," he said, leaning down to give me a quick kiss again before pushing up, pressing back, and taking his feet. He fetched his pants and dug out his cell. "Reign," he said, moving off toward the bathroom to, I imagined, get rid of the condom.

I rushed to grab for my shirt, slipping it on and fetching my panties. I had my feet in when he walked back in, leaning back against the doorjamb, watching me as I pulled them into place then moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Yeah. Right. What time is it now?" Whatever Reign must have answered made his face fall slightly, his gaze falling to the floor as his hand went up to run through his hair in frustration. "Yeah. Got it. We'll be ready."

With that, he hung up, and moved toward where his pants were on the floor, dragging them up.

"Is every..." I started to ask, then stopped myself. Of course everything wasn't okay. He had just lost a ton of men. "Are you alright?"

He reached for his shirt, bunched it up, and paused. "Bruno didn't make it to the hospital," he said, grief plain in his voice.

"I'm so sorry about your men," I said, genuinely meaning it.

He shrugged a little and pulled on his shirt.

"Cops are all the fuck over the compound trying to figure shit out. Hell, at this point, we almost welcome them if they could tell us who the fuck is doing this. Doubt they'll find shit that will trace back to anything though."

I nodded, understanding the frustration. I swallowed hard. "Did Wolf..." I started.

His eyes went pained. "He was in surgery for six hours. He hasn't woken up yet. Janie isn't handling it well. She won't leave his side."

I wouldn't have either.

"Do we need to leave?" I asked, looking around the floor for my pants.

He nodded. "Eventually. We have a little bit. Let's see if I can scrounge up something decent to eat," he said, moving over to the storage shelves.

"I can wait until..." Until Hailstorm? My stomach twisted at realizing we were running out of time.

"You've got to be starving," he said as if he wasn't. But if I had walked in on a massacre, I doubted I would ever be hungry again.

Figuring he needed something to do to occupy him, I let him look around for food as I grabbed my pants and made my way to the bathroom.

He was right. It was nothing to write home about. But the composting toilet wasn't as weird as I had been expecting and the silver tub thing actually looked deep enough to take a decent bath in. When I reached for the tap, I was almost surprised when clean water readily came out. There was a dressing mirror propped up against the wall and I knelt down in front of it to finger-comb my hair into some semblance of order then squeezed toothpaste onto my finger and scrubbed my mouth. Then I scrubbed off what was left of that pancake makeup.

My reflection showed me a little different than I had been a few days before. The bruises had faded to mostly a yellow and green. But my face looked a tad thinner and the bags under my eyes showed not that I had been lacking sleep, but had been stressed beyond anything I had ever known before.

Curious, I reached for my shirt and pulled it off, turning away from the mirror and looking over my shoulder to check out how bad the cuts were.

It was the first time I saw them.

It was the first time I saw that they weren't just random slices.

They were three big lines, two vertical ones running parallel but on the far ends of my back and then one horizontal line connecting them.