Atonement (Angel's Halo MC 5)

I hadn’t so much as looked at another female in the weeks we had been away, let alone touched one. I probably should have been worried about my dick being so quiet lately, but I knew that I hadn’t lost my mojo. Every time I thought about how tight Quinn had been, how her liquid heat had gushed over my dick as I had slid deeper into her, I went from zero to a hundred in point two seconds.

She had been front and center in my mind, day and night—especially at night. Every time I licked my lips, the ghost of her taste haunted me. It was like she was made of sunshine, and one taste, one small lick, and now I was addicted to it. The heat of the sun did nothing to compete with her in my mind. It was why I had stolen her number from Colt’s phone and tortured myself, agonizing over whether I should call her or not.

But as much as I wanted to hear her sweet voice, I didn’t want to call her out of nowhere and tell her everything that had been jumbling up my head while I had been gone. I wanted to see her, touch her, explain why I had kept her at arm’s length for so long.

Now I knew I could give her the monogamy she deserved. I could be a one-woman man, and I wanted to be her man.

One night with her, one taste of what I could have with her, and I knew she was my forever. That girl owned me. I just hadn’t let myself believe that until now.

“While you were dodging bullets, De Stefano called the compound,” Colt muttered, keeping his voice low while he glanced over his shoulder at the Italians still rushing around to secure the warehouse.

“What’s up?”

“He’s on his way back, but he thinks we should head home.”

Something in his voice had my nerves suddenly standing on edge even more so than when I’d had bullets coming at me from every angle. It wasn’t just his tone, though. Trigger was suddenly standing statue still, coldness seeming to flood off him. Creed and Warden were just as quiet, something that was completely abnormal for them. Creed was almost as bad as Tanner, especially when it came to running his mouth, if not more so. That he was quiet told me something was up.

“Fontana knows that Hawk was in on getting intel from his brother. De Stefano told me to get back and take care of our family. He will deal with the shit going on here himself.”

“If he knows Hawk did that shit, then that means there is a snitch.” I knew it wasn’t any one of my brothers. The only ones who had even been with us at the time were my three blood brothers, Uncle Jack, and Trigger. None of them would have said a word, even under the kind of torture Hawk had dished out.

That left either one of Vitucci’s men or the Russians.

I couldn’t picture any of them turning on their bosses to give up anything to Santino or Fontana, but men turned their backs on loyalty all the time. Whether that information had been given under fear of death or the promise of money, it didn’t matter. Someone had squealed, and now our family was in the crosshairs of a fucking sociopath.

Everyone we cared about would be in danger of Fontana and his soulless men. They were all a target now.

Raven. Gracie. Willa. Flick … Quinn.

Rage started to burn through me at the thought of anyone trying to harm Quinn.

Fuck no. There was no way I would let that happen.

Chapter 15

Quinn

There were a million things on my mind, but I welcomed them. The distraction helped me stay in my own head while I worked through the shift at my second job. Mentally going over everything that was weighing me down, my body moved on autopilot. Honestly, it moved more fluidly when I didn’t think about what I was doing.

Over the last four weeks, while Colt and Raider had been gone, I had been able to save up money, but it still wasn’t the amount I was hoping for. Another week or two of the kinds of tips I had been getting while I danced and took my clothes off for a crowd that got bigger and bigger with each passing night, I would be able to put Creswell Springs, and everyone in it, behind me.

Now they were back, though, and I didn’t know how

I was going to keep Colt from finding out what I was doing with my nights. He had been at my house the night before when I had gotten home. It wasn’t out of the norm for him to show up unannounced, especially now that he was dating Kelli.

I didn’t know why it was okay for his girlfriend to be a stripper and him not lose his shit. Probably because Kelli was so much like Raven, and he didn’t really worry about his sister.

Kelli, while she sometimes talked with an accent that I imagined some snotty prep school kids had, didn’t need anyone to hold her hand. She could and did take care of herself. She was the kind of chick that every female wanted to be—confident, strong, and sassy.

I wasn’t nearly half as confident or sassy as I liked to believe I was, but I was finding out with each passing day that I was a hell of a lot stronger than I had ever imagined.

In the past, Colt and I would hang out until I was ready for bed, and then he would either go to Kelli’s room and wait for her to get home, or stay up and watch TV in the living room. But I hadn’t been there the night before, and he had been upset about how late I was getting home, like some raging papa bear who couldn’t handle not knowing where his little cub had been.

Even though said little cub was twenty-five freaking years old.

His reaction wasn’t typical of the Colt I knew so well. He didn’t usually fall off the deep end just because I wasn’t home, even if he was the most overprotective man I had ever met, something I had always cherished because no one had ever cared or loved me as much as Colt did. Still, I was curious as to what was going on with him to make him so anxious for me to be out late.

Could he have found out about me and Raider?