RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4) by Franca Storm (ebook voice reader .txt) 📕

said, scrubbing his hand over his face, pain in his eyes as my recollection became all too real. It definitely had some similarities to what he’d done to the Strikers as well, so that had to be hitting close to home, much more so than he liked, or ever cared to admit. “It was a massacre.”

“Absolutely,” I said, unapologetically. I didn’t doubt for a moment that they’d deserved it, or that it had been the only way to protect those women, and to rid the world of The Jackals, once and for all. The law wouldn’t have been able to stop them, even if they’d somehow ever managed to get enough solid evidence on their activities to put them behind bars. Even imprisoned, guys like them could go on with their network of contacts on the outside. It would never have been truly over if I’d gone that route. But, death. Yeah, death was an absolute guarantee. Permanent.

“It was a necessary act to cleanse the world of demons,” I told Slade.

“I get it,” he admitted. “More than I wanna admit sometimes.”

I leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh. “Unfortunately, you and me carry burdens that most others can’t stomach, or ever hope to live with.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Sometimes, we gotta do bad things to protect people who can’t be protecting themselves.”

“We are what the world needs us to be.”

We locked eyes, the heavy realization hanging between us.

Just like the weight of the darkness, grief, and brutality that we carried with us every day of our lives.

Slade Mitchell was the only person I knew who met me on my level with all of that.

He was unprecedented.

Unfortunately, that also made him a complication.

A rogue element.

8

~Slade~

 

“SHIT.”

I scrubbed my hand over my face and tried to force the grogginess away and wake up fully.

It’d been another long night working out my frustrations on the punching bag in the basement. After discovering it that first night here, it’d become a stress-relieving and anger-reducing routine for almost a week now.

A week.

I’d been holed up in this safehouse doing fuck all and just damn well waiting and benched for that long. It was enough to drive a man insane, especially a guy like me who was used to doing.

But as frustrating as it was, I knew it was necessary. If I went after Nolan again too soon and unprepared, it was real likely I wouldn’t make it out alive again. Nah, I had to do it right. And to achieve that, we needed more intel. More intel was how we’d find an opening to get at him again, and a strategy to see it through all the way, until he was put to ground.

So, keeping it together until then had me working out like a madman basically. I’d hit the sack at around five in the morning, thinking I’d still be able to get four or five hours’ worth of sleep and manage to get a good start on the next day.

It’d barely been two fucking hours and I’d been woken up.

The damn alert I’d set up on my phone had been firing off its high-pitched, hyper annoying beep. Well, it was annoying for a reason. I’d wanted it to cut through anything so I’d notice it right away.

And it was a good thing I had.

The blinking, red triangle was moving across the screen.

Before I’d headed into Indulge, I’d tagged Nolan’s car with a tracer. He’d been in the hospital pretty much since I’d left the area. Now he was out and he was on the move, big time. He weren’t just heading back to Indulge. In fact, he was going in the opposite direction. A direction I didn’t like the fucking look of.

Before I could get much further with it, the door to my room flew open.

I looked up to see Willa striding in. She pulled up short when she caught sight of me sitting up in the bed naked, the covers slung over the other side, basically exposing me all the way. I didn’t have a problem with her seeing me in my birthday suit, but she sure did. Her breath caught in her throat and she went beet red.

I couldn’t help grinning.

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped.

I chuckled. “Didn’t say a word, darlin’.” But her reaction said a hell of a lot.

Just like last night.

I hadn’t missed her eyes roaming all over me when she’d come down to find me working out in the basement. She’d looked about ready to jump me. She was lucky I’d had the good sense to steer things away from that. There was no way she’d be able to handle me, especially not the way it would end up being with all this crazy-ass tension building between us. I’d fucking well break her. Didn’t matter how tough she thought she was, that was different. Especially, given her revelation about it being a while since she’d fucked anybody. Nah, that wouldn’t mesh well with my hard, rough, and brutal brand of fucking.

“What’s wrong? What was that sound?” she demanded, averting her eyes. “It sounded like some sort of urgent alert. Not exactly your typical alarm clock.”

I rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of her not being able to look at me right now. I walked to the dresser, grabbed a pair of black boxers, and pulled them on. It didn’t seem to do enough, so I also snatched a black t-shirt out of another drawer and put that on too. “Christ, woman,” I muttered.

She finally managed to return to normal, or whatever passed for normal with her, and look my way again. “So?” she pressed, urgency and her usual kind of brashness returning.

My go-to reaction was always to play things tight to the vest, to only reveal things on a need-to-know basis, or when there was no other choice. But things weren’t operating the regular way right now. She’d had my back with Nolan and I was staying at her safehouse. I also needed her to take care