Iron & Bone (Lock & Key #3) (28 page)

He pushed one of my hands away, and his hot wet mouth sucked on the other breast. Suddenly, his hand left my body, and he dropped to the floor, his mouth between my legs. I cried out, my back arching, as he spread my legs wider, a hand around my thigh. He sucked on me with a needy hunger, and my hands clung to his hair. I shattered in that swirl of color and heat.

“Santiago!”

He stilled. My trembling body squeezed around his immobile form. My eyes fluttered open and snagged on his. Hard glass, impenetrable. Not windows to the soul. Opaque barriers.

His hands released their grip on me, and he slid away. He sat back on the sofa, his gaze averted. A slicing ache replaced the fullness.

Shit. Shit. What just happened?

I wasn’t sure, but it was as if a switch had been turned off. An alarm had sounded, and he was on edge, upset even.

I sat up, pulling my skirt down and lifting my top over my bare chest. “Bone?”

The barrier had seeped from his eyes and hardened down his face. The ridge of his dark brows was tight, giving him a forbidding severity. The playfulness, the raw sensuality were gone.

“Boner, did I—”

“It’s nothing.” He wiped at the edge of his mouth with his thumb and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I should go. I’ve got a run tomorrow to the chapter in North Dakota anyway. Got an early start.”

He rose from the sofa, kernels of popcorn tumbling down his leg. “I’ll be spending the night up there. I’ll call you.” He brushed my cheek with his hand as he headed for the front door.

“Boner, wait—” I followed him.

His long strides and heavy footfalls pounded out an unmistakable beat—
reject
,
retreat
,
get me the fuck out of here
.

He left.

I locked the door after him and peeked through the side curtain. He didn’t glance up at the house as he swung on his bike. He took off, and his powerful engine droned right through my shaky heart, leaving only acrid fumes behind.

“
WHAT THE FUCK
?”

The case was empty. It was gone.

Dig’s Python .357 was missing.

The cherry wood case with the glass top I’d picked out myself was splayed out like a plundered treasure chest in a corner of the meeting room where a number of knives, skull sculptures, local awards, framed photos, and other club memorabilia were on display.

“We had the Howl last night, and people were roaming everywhere,” muttered Kicker. “Could’ve been anybody.”

I’d been at our North Dakota chapter the past two days, and I’d stayed an extra night. I hadn’t wanted to be back here for the Full Moon Howl, as we’d tagged the party years ago. After the last time I’d seen Jill, I’d needed…fuck, I wasn’t sure what I’d needed. But a club party was no answer.

My heart thundered against my ribs at the sight of the empty case.

It was exactly that—a treasure plundered.

Dig’s favorite gun since he’d first won it in a knife fight with a drunk cocksucker on a winter run to Daytona in the early ‘90s.

The gun he’d used to kill Jill’s kidnapper.

The gun Grace had used to shoot his killer.

Fucking gone.

After his death, that gun had become a symbol of the man who’d dedicated his life and energy to the One-Eyed Jacks, who’d striven to move the club forward and make it strong.

My eyes darted to a photo of us hanging on the wall. Dig and me and Wreck exhausted on the side of a highway after Jump had wiped out on the way to Idaho. Another one of Dig flashing the finger, his face full of cocky bravado, as he sped off on his ’67 Panhead.

Sour bile rose in the back of my throat.

That gun was fucking sacred, holy.

I gnashed my teeth. “Who the fuck took it?”

“Someone who’s got balls. Someone who knows how to hit where it hurts when he wants to make a point,” rose Kicker’s voice behind me.

“How the hell—?” My voice roared, and I reined it in. “How did this happen?”

Here, in our meeting room, where our traditions were observed and celebrated, our decisions made, secrets shared, and ambitions forged. Here, under the witness of photographs of our chapter’s members, past and present. Here, under our very roof, under our fucking noses.

“I don’t know, man,” Kicker muttered.

“You’d better work on changing that answer. This door’s always locked during a party,” I said.

“Well, yeah.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Kicker shifted his weight. “Jump was in here.”

“’Course he was. He’s the goddamn prez.”

“I mean, with women. Alicia’s been gone for over a week now, visiting family in Texas.”

I rubbed a hand across my chin.

“I’m not sayin’ that—”

“I get it. Contact all our pawnshop buddies—and I mean, all of them—and not by email. Get them on the phone, personally, and put them on the lookout for the Python. This includes all our other friends in the gun trade—on and off the grid.”

“Right. On it.”

“Hey, you finally back?” Butler stood in the open doorway, his jawline a harsh, blunt edge. “What the hell is going on?”

“Somebody stole Dig’s Python. Broke the case.”

“What the fuck?” He strode into the room, filling it with a wave of emotion. “Anything else gone?”

“So far, no,” I replied.

He held my gaze. “That piece ain’t worth shit to anyone else. Yeah, it’s a collectible. It’s worth a few bills, but—”

“But it’s priceless to us, and whoever took it knew that. They’re making a point. A fucking ballsy point. I’m gonna get it back and then cut his fucking balls off.” I eyed him. “Led knew about this gun. Now he’s gone.”

“Yeah. Him and those two other Flames from Ohio came back here for the Howl,” said Butler.

“I thought they’d all left together a while back?”

“They did. All three of them took off to do the usual touristy shit—Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, Sturgis. But they all came back last night for the Howl, partied, and then left for Ohio first thing this morning.”

My pulse throbbed in my neck. I hoped to hell it was Catch and the Flames jerking our chain. The alternative sent an icy claw ripping up my spine.

Alejandro’s threat from years ago remained fresh in my mind: “
I will find you, wherever you go, and you will suffer. I will find ways to make you pay...One day, I will take it all away from you. I promise you.”

I was losing my mind.

Inès had disappeared without a word after we’d fought about going to LA. My friend Julio told me he’d heard she was with the Calderone brothers, our fucking bosses.

Julio and I were two of their many soldiers. We rarely actually saw them though. The Calderones would come to you. You didn’t find them. I’d usually get my orders through a fine line of other worker bees unless it was a special assignment, those they handed down personally. And there were plenty of special assignments for me.

After a success, I’d be invited to hang with them at one of their infamous parties. I was their prized discovery, their exceptional apprentice in the dark arts of vengeance and terror, and I enjoyed being singled out. I’d drink from their wine. I’d eat from their table. I’d take Inès, and we’d have ourselves a taste of the good life, their high life.

The fucking crazy life.

Big mistake.

Over two weeks after she’d taken off, I caught them at our place. I noticed their shiny hot rod double-parked outside our building that afternoon. No one double-parked in my neighborhood and lived to tell about it.

The moment I opened the door, I heard the moaning and the low guttural Spanish, the seething tone of a male voice. Slaps and hard smacks on flesh and heavy panting. My hand released my knife from my lower leg, and I prowled silently through the dark narrow hallway of our shabby apartment, my pulse racing.

I reached the end of the hall, and my brain stuttered. My eyes burned.

Inès was on all fours on the rug on the floor, sucking off Felipe Calderone, while his brother, Alejandro, held her hips up high in a tight grip and drilled his dick inside her. Inès’s small tits jiggled, her whole body bouncing with the force of Alejandro’s fucking.

I bit down on my lip, and the metallic flow of blood filled my mouth. My heart pumped so hard that I thought it would explode, yet an eerie cold oil slimed through my veins.

They were saying ugly things to her and to each other, and it drove them faster, harder. Their faces were scrunched in intense concentration. They were blitzed on an acid high. The large muscles of the brothers’ legs, their arms, their asses bulged and bunched up under the strain.

Felipe’s pelvis thrust in her face, his long dick plunging in and out of her mouth. She stared up at him like he was a god who held all the secret answers to her life. Both his hands were fisted in her mass of dark hair, keeping her facing up at him. Moans warbled from her throat, saliva dripping from her lips. He came with a loud growl, and she swallowed.

Felipe pulled his wet dick out of her mouth. “You like that, don’t you,
mi
perla negra
?”

Black pearl? What the fuck? He already had a pet name for her?

“I love it,” Ines replied. “I love you.”

Obviously inspired, Alejandro fucked her harder from behind. Felipe held onto her, muttering to her in Spanish, swatting at her tits.

Inès was their possession, their slave, their drug, and they were addicted.

And so was she.

That tiny room reeked of sweat and sex and betrayal, choking me, flattening me. The blue-and-pink Indian rug we’d found in a flea market together, the huge beaded pillows she insisted on keeping on the floor, the shimmering curtains we’d created out of brightly colored fabric samples and scarves—everything now defiled, everything foul, everything melded with the shadows.

You are ours. You are nothing.
They had told me as much from the beginning, and it was true, wasn’t it?

I slid and stumbled back down the hallway and out the door, vomiting the minute I rounded the building, my head spinning.

I waited and waited, sweat running down my enflamed chest. Laughter, muffled words, and the
roll
,
scrape
, and
bump-bump
of a suitcase burst out the door and down the broken cement steps.