Ride Hard (Raven Riders 1)

As aroused as she was, she was so moved by his words that her heart pounded out a hard beat against her chest. She pulled him down beside her, and they lay completely entangled with one another. Their foreheads close enough to kiss, their arms embracing, their legs entwined.

He stroked his hand against her hair, his fingers softly combing against her scalp. “I can’t seem to get enough of you, Haven.”

“I hope you don’t,” she whispered, absolutely melting at his words. Skin against skin, body against body, it was the most intimate moment of her whole life, not just because they were naked, but because they were so exposed. “I know I won’t ever have enough of you.” She closed her eyes to keep him from seeing her sadness. But, God, she never wanted this to end. This crazy, impossible thing she had with him.

He kissed her forehead, and his thumb stroked her cheek. “Pretty girl,” he whispered, everything about the moment feeling like the life and connection he’d talked about before.

She felt it, too.

But now morning was here and the storm was over. Which meant he’d take her back to the clubhouse and continue making plans to send her and Cora away. She knew he had to. She did. But that didn’t mean everything inside her wasn’t screaming to stay, for this quiet, peaceful, perfect moment to last forever.

And then his cell phone rang, bringing them back to reality even faster than she’d feared.

CHAPTER 22

“We’ve got a problem.”

Phoenix’s words were still ringing in Dare’s ears as he led Haven into the clubhouse, their stolen night together feeling like way too distant a memory even though he could still smell her on his skin.

“I hope everything’s okay,” Haven said when they got inside.

“Me too,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, when what he really wanted was to push her against the wall and devour her. One more time. “I’ll see ya later.”

She nodded, and he hated the uncertainty in her expression. But he couldn’t blame her for it.

He found Maverick and Phoenix in his office waiting for him, both of them wearing troubled, agitated expressions. “Happy fucking Monday morning,” Dare said as he pushed the door mostly shut and dropped into the chair at his desk.

“Yeah,” Phoenix said. “That about sums this up. Got two calls this morning. One from Marz and one from the Iron Cross. The two confirmed one basic point—refugees from the Church Gang are not only being taken in by the Iron Cross, but the Iron Cross is recruiting them. Hard. Word on the street is that it’s a join-or-die-type invitation, and it seems to be working. Because Dominic, the buyer who called from the Iron Cross, made a point of demonstrating that he knew the specifics of our inventory. He could only have gotten that intel from a Churchman who knew what the original arms deal—the one where we picked up the hardware—was supposed to entail.”

“Shit,” Dare said. “They’re probably going after intel like that as much as building their ranks.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Phoenix said. “Hoping to defuse this, I told Dominic we were already in talks with another buyer but that we’d be happy to do business with them another time. He told me to walk away from the other deal.”

That feeling of dread that Dare had been feeling the past few weeks ballooned inside his chest and weighed down on his shoulders. And not just because this group could be the source of new threats to the Ravens and their interests. If the Iron Cross could get that kind of specific intel on the arms inventory, they could certainly find out about Haven and the reward. Or maybe already had.

“Makes you wonder why he thinks he has the leverage to make that demand,” Maverick said, those dark blue eyes flashing.

“Yeah,” Dare said. “It sure does. So the question is, do we sell them all, part, or none, and let the shit fall where it may. Damnit, I don’t want to give them anything, especially pulling this bullshit.”

Phoenix shook his head. “Neither do I. We could always call their bluff. They’re clearly desperate for the guns. Maybe without them they’re all bark and no bite.”

“Did Marz have any other insight on them?” Dare asked, his mind racing through all the ways this could play out.

“Just that by all accounts, the Iron Cross is best situated to come out on top when the dust settles. They were already strong competitors of the Church Gang, so they’ve got market share and territory, and they seem to have stepped into the power vacuum the fastest to grab up everything the Churchmen had.”

“So there’s gotta be some bite there,” Dare said, his gut telling him they were going to have to do some kind of business with these jackholes. And this was why the Ravens stayed out of guns and drugs as much as they could.