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

“I gotta clear my head. All that bull with Nik, taking down the Strikers, everything with the club… it’s been a lot. It ain’t settled for me yet. I gotta take a step back for a bit and get my head on straight.”

“I get it. I thought you’d been off lately. Being messed up myself at the time, I’d put it down to me being paranoid.”

“Nah, you were right on.”

“I’m sorry, Slade. You need me, I’ve got you, all right?”

“Yeah, I know, brother. Appreciate it.”

“I’ll let you get back to it. See you in a couple of weeks now?”

“Yeah.”

“All right.”

We hung up and I blew out a breath and slumped down on the steps at the front of the safehouse, pocketing my phone in my leather jacket. There was a chill in the air, but I was welcoming it, all the stress lately making me sweat and overheat way too often. I’d been coming out here a lot for the last few days that I’d been here. The place was soothing and quiet. The log cabin was surrounded by nature, a wall of thick foliage on all sides. There weren’t a road for miles, so there was no traffic noise pollution. There was a river nearby that I could hear babbling, a real peaceful sound that helped to relax me at least a bit.

If there was one thing I’d learned over the years, it was that when the world was raging all around you, you had to take comfort in the little things, in whatever you could. It was the only way to remain sane.

That was getting harder and harder to maintain all the while I was rooted to one place, trapped. I didn’t do trapped well. It’s possible I might’ve had a slight bit of claustrophobia. Slight. But more than that, I was a take-action kind of man all the way. I liked to come and go as I pleased. The whole MC lifestyle itself was all about that, all about that kind of freedom, living life on your own terms. It weren’t by chance that I’d found my way into that life and stayed there for decades.

It was a real kick in the junk that the role as Prez actually had me feeling the opposite way about it all nowadays. I knew my age was also a factor. Getting older had you seeing things differently. Things that used to be a challenge became a burden. Things that used to get the adrenaline pumping became tiring. The sexual thrill of having so much pussy thrown at you became old hat and boring as hell. You couldn’t take the bullshit as well as you used to, couldn’t let it just roll off your back. You wanted a simple existence. You craved peace.

At least, that was how it’d played out for me.

I’d been planning all of this for months. Getting out. Stepping down. Leaving the club.

I already had a whole retirement plan worked out. I knew where I was gonna go, what I was gonna be doing, the whole deal. These last few months, sometimes just the idea of it had been the one thing that’d kept me going.

It was my anchor. There was no stopping me from making it a reality.

Nobody was gonna stand in my way.

Not even those two shitheads, Nolan and Freeman.

But if it turned out to be true about them teaming up together, they’d become a much more dangerous force.

When I’d been gearing up to lead the boys in the takedown of the Strikers MC, I’d gotten word at the last moment that Freeman was staying put back at the clubhouse, as some kind of last-resort defense because Nik had been worried that I’d send a strike team to his clubhouse as well, as a two-pronged attack strategy. Part of me wished that I had. But Liam getting shot and Cole nearly getting killed had been enough to stomach, enough pain to inflict on my boys. Heading to the Strikers clubhouse, a compound that was extremely heavily-fortified, would’ve wreaked way more havoc and caused some major damage, probably even some fatalities. At the end of the day, the club came first. Lives mattered above all else.

Freeman had been quiet since the takedown. No moves by him in months. It was looking like that hadn’t been him laying low at all, just gearing up for war.

I pushed off the steps and started pacing, trying to calm the adrenaline coursing through my system at the thought of it. I was itching to get confirmation on it, so I could act. A week spent twiddling my thumbs was bad enough. Knowing what might be happening out there right now was skyrocketing all that intensity to an unmanageable level.

I was on board for doing it Willa’s way, as long as it didn’t involve sitting still any longer.

She was a real good asset to have. She didn’t take shit, she was ruthless, and she had the experience in all this down and dirty shit. That whole hell bitch thing she had going on was really gonna come in handy.

But to do any of that, we couldn’t be as we were.

We had to be in sync.

There had to be trust and respect.

Goddamn it.

I had to fucking well apologize.

10

~Willa~

MY BACK HIT THE WALL.

It was barely a jar, barely an impact.

What the hell?

I slammed my hands up and out, breaking Slade’s grip easily and shoving him back a couple of steps. Way too easily.

I rolled my eyes. Unbelievable. “You’re holding back.”

He wiped the sweat off his brow and leveled that smirk of his at me. “Am I?”

God, he was infuriating. Standing there in all his powerhouse glory. He was wearing sweatpants and a muscle tee, nothing special, or as enticing as the leather jacket and jeans get-up that I was known for enjoying on a man. But the way he wore it was a whole other level. Pants hanging low on his hips, giving a tease of those chiseled grooves