Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

He didn’t. He sat up, helping her to sit as well. Very gently, he handed her the wipes he’d brought with him. Normally, he would have cleaned her himself, just because he would want to do it for her. Instead, he gave her some privacy while he took care of his own business. He’d known she was going to retreat. He hadn’t known she thought she should be all over him because otherwise it meant she wasn’t into him. What a crock. Men and women had different needs. Didn’t all adults know that?

Hell. He needed his brothers. He needed his colors. He was going to have to ride all the way home feeling naked and vulnerable after having the best sex of his life because he wasn’t wearing his colors. After feeling absolutely certain that Scarlet was the woman for him. He could use his voice, but then he would spend the rest of his life knowing she wasn’t there because she chose him. He wanted her to choose the man. He needed her to choose him. Then and only then, and with her consent, would he use his talent on her.

He packed up the picnic things, slung his arm around her neck and kissed the shit out of her before heading back to the bike. He was very grateful she responded, but he didn’t like the feel of the tears in her mind.SEVEN“Damn it, Absinthe, you fucking know better,” Czar snapped, glaring at him. He stood behind the oblong-shaped table where the entire Torpedo Ink club had once again gathered.

Absinthe couldn’t sit there. He paced the length of the room. He detested what was about to happen. He’d given Code the fork with Scarlet’s prints and her photograph knowing Code could find anyone. With that kind of information, he’d have just about everything there was to know about her. It felt like a betrayal. It was a betrayal.

More, he’d taken a photograph of the teenager in the expensive frame sitting on the scratched nightstand beside Scarlet’s bed and he’d turned that over to Code as well. There was nothing at all of Scarlet’s past in that house but that one single photograph. That had been of a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She looked so much like Scarlet that for a moment Absinthe had thought it was a picture of her from high school. Looking closely, he could see small differences.

The girl didn’t have as generous a mouth, or as full lips. Her eyes weren’t as large. She didn’t look nearly as sexy nor was her hair quite as brilliantly red, not that Scarlet couldn’t have grown into all of those things, but he was certain he would have recognized her.

Using his cell phone, he had taken a picture of the photograph, careful not to touch it, not to move it even a fraction of an inch. This was the one thing in the house that she clearly cared for. It was out, by her bed. Enclosed in an expensive frame. The photograph was turned toward the bed so that it would be the first thing she saw when she woke and the last thing she saw before she went to sleep. At the time he searched the house he knew that girl in the photograph meant the world to Scarlet. Now he knew it was her sister, Priscilla.

When Reaper had first met Anya, circumstances had made it appear as if she might be spying on them and Absinthe had been forced to interrogate her. Doing so had sickened him, but he’d done it for the safety of the club. He now knew what Reaper must have felt like. Scarlet wasn’t there. She wasn’t witnessing Absinthe’s betrayal of her, but somehow, for him, that made it worse. He was going behind her back. He wanted her to tell him about her past. He didn’t want everyone in the room to know her secrets even if they were his brothers.

“I took precautions,” Absinthe said. “I’m not five fucking years old, Czar. She’s one woman, no matter how trained she is. I’m more experienced than she is.”

“But you knew she not only was experienced in some sort of martial arts and combat training, but she was carrying weapons on her.”

“Of course I knew it. I was carrying weapons as well.”

He refrained from putting his fist through the wall. That would shock the hell out of them all. He was Absinthe. Always calm. Always centered. Always the one who kept his voice low and matter-of-fact when he was jumping out of his fucking skull. Like now. Because they were about to take his woman apart. His woman. He didn’t have the time to bind her to him, to get her to trust him enough to tell him on her own what or who she was afraid of. He wanted that from her.