Tex (Hell's Ankhor #5) - Aiden Bates Page 0,53

the same thing.

“Yeah?” Blade asked. “He offer you something interesting?”

Baxter sneered at Blade. Mal tightened the chokehold.

By the porch, Dante had wrangled Ryder and Trip to the ground easily, pinning them with a knee on Trip’s back and a forearm across Ryder’s throat. They’d stopped struggling, and were cursing instead, calling Dante and Mal every name in the book. Dante looked bored as he added a little more pressure to Ryder’s throat. Heath looked like he couldn’t look away.

“At a bar!” Ryder choked. “Up north! He was there!”

“Oh?” Mal sneered and tightened his chokehold. “Wanna tell us about that, Baxter?”

Baxter sneered. “What’s there to tell? He was just trying to recruit people to the Vipers to take down Hell’s Ankhor. I said no, but now I’m wondering if I made the wrong call.”

“Yeah, you made a bad call, all right—but not by turning down Crave.” Mal sighed and nodded at Blade. “We’ll take care of this.”

It was a clear dismissal. We’d gotten what we came for: confirmation that Mal wasn’t going to let the guys off, and the promise of reparations. But since Junee was part of Hell’s Ankhor territory, it was still within our rights to step in and handle these assholes ourselves if Blade wanted to.

Blade glanced at Priest. Priest just raised his eyebrows. It was Blade’s choice now.

“All right,” Blade said. “Back to the clubhouse, guys.”

He trusted the Liberty Crew to make the right decision regarding their troubled members. I did, too—but I wasn’t sure what to think about Dante. He kept Ryder and Trip pinned with barely any thought, and his gaze was fixed unashamedly on Heath. What the hell had caught Dante’s interest like this? I was more than a little protective of the kid. Even with what Jazz had been teaching him, he couldn’t hold his own against a guy of Dante’s size.

Violence clearly wasn’t on Dante’s mind, though. Not for Heath.

I tried not to think about the way Jazz had looked at me right before he kissed me.

“Come on, kid.” I tugged at the collar of Heath’s jacket like I was scruffing a dog. “Time to roll out.”

13

Jazz

I sucked what felt like half the smoke from the cigarette into my lungs in one long, delicious, burning drag. The nicotine was a sweet rush from my head to my toes, though I knew I’d regret it tomorrow morning when I had a sore throat and a pounding headache. But right now, I needed to take the edge of my anxiety.

I’d spent all day in Elkin Lake on enforcer duty while most of the club was in Junee. As soon as they’d returned and relieved me from duty, I’d hopped on my bike without so much as a word to Tex and gunned it to Monterey. The ride typically took ninety minutes—I cut it to just over an hour.

I always felt good on Monterey, lighter, with the sea breeze cool and constant and the sounds of laughter echoing from the open bars. It didn’t hurt that it had a kick-ass gay bar, either. As long as I could keep my memory from circling back to the last time I was here, with Tex and his thoughtfulness and passion and ocean water dripping down his body, I could really enjoy it.

I ground my cigarette butt out under my heel and then shouldered my way into the crowded darkness of Stallions.

The club inside was just as I remembered it: dimly lit, sticky-floored, humid with sweat, and booming with bass. It was a place I could get lost in—a place I could become anonymous. Find some guy to pull into the bathroom and suck off just to take the edge off.

But first I needed a drink.

I worked my way through the crowd and made space for myself at the crowded bar. Shouting over the noise, I ordered a whiskey, straight, and took a long sip from the highball glass when the bartender pushed it over. The liquor burned scratchy-hot down my throat—certainly wasn’t the expensive stuff.

The sensation was sweet, familiar, how it warmed me from the inside out and began to push away the more painful thoughts circling my mind.

Thoughts like: the soft give of Tex’s lips against mine. The barely there scratch of his beard.

The moment time had stopped, my breath frozen in my lungs as I realized what’d I’d done in the loopy half-asleep dream state. The moment I’d thought—however briefly—that he wasn’t going to pull away.

But of course, he had. He’d practically shoved me off