Chasing Claire (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club) (28 page)

But he was alive. And he looked beautiful.

“Claire.” His eyes met mine.

My whole body melted with relief at the sound of his voice. I stood frozen with gratitude and offered up a silent thank you. I was too afraid to move. I was paralyzed with fear that this was an illusion, a dream that I would wake up from to find a very different outcome.

“Babe,” Reno called softly to me again, “come here.”

I walked unsteadily toward the bed. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but my hands were like lead weights at my sides.

I knew, I just knew, that if I reached for him, he would be gone. I knew that he would disappear and be forever trapped in some dark magician’s magic spell. Or he would be snuffed out like a candle flame that was caught in a too-strong wind.

And I knew that if Reno disappeared, I would die. Right there on the spot.

“Closer.” Reno’s gaze touched me everywhere. I moved until my knees almost touched the side of his bed.

“Closer,” he said again.

“Reno . . .” I looked at the IV in his arm and the big pieces of gauze that covered most of his chest.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said softly.

“You won’t.” His eyes held mine.

Still I hesitated.

“Claire, come here,” he whispered to me.

I leaned in and over him then. My hair fell loose and brushed against his bare skin. My tear-stained cheek pressed against the rough stubble of his jaw. I felt the heat from Reno’s body rise through the thin fabric of my blouse as my breast softened into his hard chest. The musky familiar scent of him was edged with the metallic smell of blood and the unmistakable odor of antiseptic.

I inhaled deeply.

He smelled wonderful.

As if on its own, my hand reached out to him and laid itself over the small patch of skin that was not covered by the protective bandages. I could feel the rise and fall of his warm chest. I pressed with the slightest measure of force against the place that covered his heart.

I wanted to feel it beat. I needed to feel it beat.

“I can’t feel it.” I looked at him helplessly.

“Can’t feel what, Claire?” Reno had closed his eyes again and had leaned against the pillows. His big hand covered my own.

“I can’t feel your heart, Reno. I can’t feel it beating.” My voice cracked with the sound of desperation. A part of me had gone a little crazy.

“It’s all right, Claire. I’m okay, baby.” Reno’s amber eyes flew open and were on me now. His hand squeezed mine.

“We’re going to be okay. I’m not going to let anything take this away from us, honey.”

I heaved against him now. Safe in the power of his love, but not even close to recovering from the shock of almost losing him.

“It’s been hours since they came for me. They came to school, Reno. And Crow didn’t tell me . . . I didn’t know why . . . I didn’t know . . . they came to get me . . . you weren’t there and I didn’t know why. Prosper told me that you’d been shot . . . And there was
blood . . . Dolly was covered in blood . . . The doctor came and then . . . nothing . . . for hours and hours . . . no one came out to tell us . . . to tell me . . .” My whole body shook with released adrenaline.

“Shh,” Reno smoothed my hair and murmured to me. “It’s okay, baby. Everything is okay. I’m going to be fine. Just fine.”

I nodded “I know that. I do. I know that,” I heaved.

It was true. I knew that it was true. Reno was going to be fine. Just fine. He was going to be sore and uncomfortable and laid up for a while. Reno was all right, but I was falling apart.

“I don’t want to ever lose you,” I managed to choke out.

“You won’t,” Reno sighed into my hair.

Then he grabbed my hand and gently pressed my fingers to his neck.

He pushed them against his pulse point.

“There, baby. Feel that? I’m here. Trust that. Keep your fingers there all damn night if you need to. I’m not going anywhere.”

I looked at our entwined fingers. His big, callused hand held my smaller one prisoner. I knew it was a matter of only milliseconds, but it seemed like forever. Then I felt that strong steady rhythm of his pulse. Like tiny drums. The beats pounded against my fingers like a thousand tiny drums of celebration. They pumped and circulated the life-giving blood to and from his heart.

His heart.

“Baby, don’t cry anymore. It’s going to be okay.” Reno pushed the hair out of my face, wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, and he pulled me closer.

He knew.

He was the one who was hurt. He was the one who was lying in a sick bed. His body was the one that had survived the deep wounds left from a spray of bullets.

Reno was the one that was wounded.

But he knew that I was the one who had almost died.

He saw the unmistakable signs of the deep terror that had burned a hole deep within me. He could see the razor-edged fear and the panic. He recognized the shock that coursed through my veins, and the desperation that made me want to curl up inside of him.

He knew.

So he reached to me, pulled me close, and he kissed me. At first gently and tenderly, and then with all the strength he had left.

I felt his body rise against me and his hand wrap itself in my hair. His tongue moved ever so slowly against my mouth leaving in its wake tiny trails of light and love. He traced my lips with his finger, slowly letting me taste him. When he felt me sigh against him, with small, slow movements, he parted my lips. Taking his time, he explored every moist, secret place of my mouth. His tongue found mine and plundered it like it was a long lost treasure. I groaned when I felt him withdraw slightly from me, but then he was back again. Reno pressed warm soft kisses on the corners of my mouth, up to my temple and in my hair. Then he moved downward and rained soft kisses down my neck, all the while soothing me with words. His big hand cupped the back of my head, then he pulled slightly back on my hair until our eyes met.

“You are never going to lose me, baby, and I am never going to lose you. I’m sorry, Claire. I’m sorry that shit touched you today. I never wanted any of this life I chose to blow back on you. I’m sorry that I let you down, honey.”

Oh, my God.

“Stop it, Reno. Everything good that ever happened to me was because of you. The bad came but it didn’t take you away. It did its worst and it still didn’t kill you. You were stronger than it was. You didn’t let me down,” I said hoarsely.

And suddenly I realized that was true. Were there still things we had to work out? Still things we had to talk through? Sure there were. None of this erased the fact that there were still parts of Reno and me
that didn’t make sense. But I also knew that without him, nothing at all made sense. Without him, none of the rest of it mattered.

Reno sighed softly against my hair, then he leaned deeper into the pillows, taking me with him. Drawing me close to his right side, he finally succumbed to the events of the day. I lay nestled close to him for a long time, then I fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER 45

T
his convalescence shit sucked.

Absolutely, totally sucked. Reno hated being laid up like this. Fucking hated it.

He had too much damn time to think. He could not stand the thought of lying in a goddamn bed when he should be out handling business with his brothers.

It wasn’t his first time mending from a bullet. But he had never been shot up this bad before.

And it didn’t help that he replayed the shooting over and over again in his mind.

When had he become such an unobservant idiot? Brothers who lived their lives unaware did not live long.

This was all his goddamn fault.

On a quiet Monday morning, in the shadow of the Celtic cross that marked his father’s grave.

The bad had come.

If he had not been busy giddy-upping all morning long, acting like a teenage boy who had just gotten his first blow job, Reno would have been ready.

He should have sniffed the danger in the air the minute that he had stepped out of the car.

But he had been too busy thinking about being dick-deep inside of his woman.

That was the thought that plagued him. Self-recrimination rolled over him in boiling waves of rage.

And that was just one thing, on a shit pile of other things, that gnawed at Reno’s gut.

First on the list was that psycho killer Luisa Sievas.

The thought of her filled him with a primal and deadly fury.

He wanted that pock-faced insane bitch dead.

Again.

The cut glass to her throat and the bullet in her evil, black, fucking soul was not enough.

He wanted to kill her again, slowly.

While he lay in bed gagging on pain pills and feeling the sting of needles stuck in his arm, he thought of all the things that he would have liked to do to that she-bitch. The dark thoughts were always a little different but all along the same lines. In those first hazy days of recovery, it was that anger that kept him sane.

The bitch had gone after an unarmed man and his mother paying respects to his dead father.

Reno wanted to kill her again.

He wanted to use a chainsaw on each one of her limbs. Then he wanted to filet her with a dull, serrated knife. He wanted to spend days peeling that pockmarked skin away from her bones. Reno wanted to hear the pop and crackle of each of the bitch’s vertebrae as they snapped like twigs under the weight of his fingers. He wanted to look her in the eyes and see the heartless whore’s pupils dilate in pain and horror, as she watched her intestines splash and splatter on the ground in front of her. He wanted to cut out her tongue and shove it up her ass. Then he wanted to feel the pull of the knife as he carved the eyes out of her sockets. First the left, then the right.

Yeah. Reno wanted to kill Luisa Sievas again. And again. And again.

The fact that he was lying on clean white sheets with fluffed pillows under his head while the rest of that bitch’s crazy-ass crew was out loose somewhere, possibly planning their next fucked-up play against his brothers, or even worse, against their families, was enough to make him writhe in fury.

He knew that Prosper and the other bosses were all over it. Bloodletting would not be enough. Ten pints would not even come close to covering it. Every crew within five states who had any kind of affiliation at all with the Saints was in lockdown. There would be a major meet soon, just like there always was when shit like this went down. Every fucking country heard from. Each with their own stake in the outcome, each looking out for their own interests, each with their own opinion.

But this time it would be different.

Because even in the underworld of motorcycle gangs, Italian mobsters, Russian mafia, black gangstas and all the rest, there existed a code. And that code was pretty clear. No one screwed with the hereafter. Even in the ruthless world they lived in, or maybe because of it, this kind of jump hit just did not happen. Whites, Blacks, Italians, Mexicans, and Asians each had their own ideas of what they held sacred. But the one single truth, the one universal agreement that crossed all colors and clubs, was that the dead were left in peace. There was enough hell in this world for each and every one of them. There was no need to have that violence follow this life into the next one.

That Colombian bitch was straight up crazy pulling that shit. Bands of brothers all over the East Coast had been standing in line to take that gash down for years. Many of them had been looking for an excuse for a very long time to put a bullet between her eyes. The only problem that they would have with him taking her down is that they did not get a chance to do it themselves. Now the alliance just had to figure out how far this assassination plot extended. They
had to determine if it was merely personal, as Luisa had screamed out that it was, or if it was something more far-reaching. Prosper and his brothers kept Reno informed. He knew that things had been set in motion to right this wrong. Like artfully carved chess pieces, the outlaw nations had made some strategic and carefully planned moves. Reno had listened closely, gave his input, and felt some of the impotent rage leave him.

Luisa Sievas’s crew, what was left of them anyway, were dead men.

Outlaw justice would be served.

CHAPTER 46

T
he light breeze blew in through the window and danced through the long strands of Claire’s soft, dark hair. She looked hot, sweaty, wet, and annoyed. And unbelievably beautiful.

It was a week before Jules gave Reno the go-ahead to take a full shower and shave. The hot stinging sprays of the water coupled with the cool mentholated foam made him feel healthy and whole again. And it had covered his woman with provocative wet splashes all over the front of her T-shirt. Yep, so far, for him at least, the day had been a win-win. Jesus. She looked good enough to eat.

She started to leave.

“Claire,” he called to her.

He could see the back of her shoulders lift and rise with barely controlled restraint. A whoosh of air shot out of her in a deep sigh.

She was getting riled. Reno suppressed his smile before she turned around. “This bandage is seriously messed up,” he said.

“No, it’s not, Reno. It’s perfect. I just wrapped you myself. You are fine.” Claire stared at him with more than a glint of anger in her eyes.

“
It’s really uncomfortable. You didn’t do it right this time. I can feel this big knot in the back of my spine,” he fired back at her. “Baby, why would I make this shit up?”

“Can’t you wait until I come back?” Claire was pulling at the thin fabric. She might as well be wearing nothing. He knew she was
embarrassed by the way she kept blushing and putting her hands in front of her. She looked so damn sexy he wanted to jump up, pull her under him, and bury himself deep inside of her. For days.

“No, I can’t, Claire,” Reno said evenly.

Pulling again at her shirt and sighing deeply, she went to his bedside. She reached behind him to feel for the knot.

He smelled her hair and felt the cool damp part of her shirt flatten slightly against his heated chest. Her wet puckered nipples pressed into his warm skin. She reached far behind him with both hands, and searched for the source of his discomfort. He put both his arms around her.