Jack (The Kings of Mayhem MC Tennessee 1)

Her lips brush my ear. “You have a shower while I pour us a drink.”

In the bathroom attached to her bedroom, I strip out of my clothes, and under a spray of warm water, my body finally starts to relax as two weeks of sleeping rough slowly washes away.

Relaxed, I step out of the shower to stand naked and wet in front of the mirror over the basin. Feeling a wave of fatigue wash over me, I grip the edge of the basin and lean down, closing my eyes while waiting for it to pass. It isn’t the fatigue of two weeks on the road, it’s the deep fatigue of five years chasing down a ghost and feeling the failure to find him bleed deep into the marrow of my bones.

To look at my reflection, I raise my head. I haven’t shaved in weeks, and my hair falls past my shoulders and down my back, and the scruff on my jaw is dark and thick. I study my face. At almost forty, I’ve seen a lot of living. Most of it hard-knuckled and soul-destroying, and my face has the lines to prove it.

When I leave the bathroom, Antoinette is waiting for me at the small table by the large bay window overlooking the valley. A lamp of colored leadlight glass casts a beam of light over the chessboard in front of her.

I smile at the familiarity. We play every time I visit. It’s our thing. Antoinette is as smart as she is beautiful, her mind sharply strategic and calculated, and in the game of chess, often lethal. She’s kicked my ass more times than I care to admit, but it’s what keeps the thrill alive.

“Feel better?” she asks, her husky voice smooth. As she crosses her long legs, her skirt falls on either side of her firm, milky thighs.

“Insanely, better.” I sit opposite her—the chessboard between us.

“I’ve been thinking about you lately, wondering when I was going to see you next.” She hands me a glass of cognac. “Wondering if you were any closer to finding what you’re looking for.”

She knows all about Ghost.

Knows about my vendetta.

I take a mouthful of the cognac. It’s rich and warm and goes down easy. “Not yet. But I’m close.”

“And when it finally happens, do you think you’ll rest better?”

“I think when it finally happens, I’ll sleep for a fucking year.”

A small smile plays on her lips as she moves her first pawn. “Will you be happy?”

“I don’t know about happy, but the job will be done.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.” Antoinette is like a vault. I can tell her anything, and that fact makes her the perfect confidant.

“Will it have been worth it?”

“Knowing he’s no longer breathing, yes.”

I move my pawn.

Which Antoinette immediately captures.

“You never mention your wife.”

“My ex-wife.”

“How do you feel about her?”

Did I mention that Antoinette was a psychologist before she was a madam? When she lost her job, she saw the potential in the profession and used her nest egg to open The House of Sin.

“I’m happy that she’s happy.”

“Do you have a good relationship with her?”

“Very good. She’s remarried to a great guy who treats her well. She’s happy. It’s all I wanted for her.”

I move another pawn, which Antoinette also claims.

“Do you see her often?”

“Her husband runs our club, Candy Town.” I move my bishop to take out her pawn. “They’re a good match.”

“Do you think there are still some residual feelings there?”

“Me or her?”

“Both.”

“Her, no. She’s well and truly moved on, and I can’t blame her. I broke us.”

In a move I’m relying on, Antoinette moves her knight to capture my bishop.

“What about you?” she asks.

“I moved on long ago.”

“But you’ve never had a girlfriend or a permanent lover.”

The sultry way she says lover hits me in the dick. I haven’t been laid in months.

“No.”

She cocks her head to the side. “Why?”

“Because my heart is too damn broken.” I move my queen. “Check.”

Antoinette’s only response is to move her pawn, which I capture.

She arches her eyebrow and looks at me, questioning my move. She knows there’s a strategy behind it, but she’s still surprised I’m sacrificing my queen, which, of course, she captures.

“Are you really are prepared to give up your chance for love because of this vengeance?”

“Darlin’, vengeance is the only thing I’ve got left.” I move my bishop to claim her pawn. “Checkmate.”

Her ruby red lips slide into a wicked smile—our games turn her on.

While my brothers get their cocks sucked and their needs tended to by Antoinette’s girls, she and I play into the night, drinking her most expensive cognac from antique glass goblets as we do the dance of strategy and slaughter on the chessboard.

Sometime after midnight, we move to the opulent velvet sofa sitting in the middle of the room, where we continue to talk into the early hours. She’s a good listener and around her, I’m a good talker. She’s my sounding board. Happy to listen until my lids grow heavy, and I fall into a disturbed sleep.