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

a long time. Whenever I came up for air between missions, it always came back to that, to him. And it bothered the hell out of me, because I should be better than that. I shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t have been able to get under my skin.

But he had.

He was still there, beyond skin deep.

“We knew each other well enough by then. Hell, we’re the same. You knew it. I knew it. What was there to be afraid of?”

“It weren’t fear!” he snapped. “It was good fucking sense.”

“Bullshit.”

With a snarl, he got in my space, looming over me. He stepped even closer, so close that his body was pressed against mine. Dipping his head, he leaned down, and spoke in a low rumble at my ear, “If I’d come to you that night, I never would’ve been able to let go. Neither of us were ready for that. Didn’t mean to hurt you. It was the last thing I wanted. I didn’t mean to take a choice away from you neither; you know I respect the hell out of you. But it had to be done back then.”

His lips brushed lightly against my cheek, his hand sliding into my hair. He held tight for a good few seconds.

Then I heard him sigh with regret and pull back. “And we ain’t ready for it now neither, darlin’.”

It took me a moment to recover from the intensity.

But then I gave a nod. “No. No, we’re not.”

With two people like us, what were the chances of that ever changing?

11

~Slade~

 

“I’VE GOT SOMETHING.”

I stilled, a second away from taking the first mouthwatering bite of the triple meat sandwich I’d just finished up making, when Willa burst into the kitchen.

Her perky tits bounced in her strappy black tank with her rapid movements. My gaze went lower, to the ripped gray jeans she had on that were so damned tight they could’ve almost been painted on. She was sporting a pair of combat boots. In the fucking house. The woman couldn’t relax even a little, no matter what. High-strung didn’t even cover it.

“Got what?”

“Best if I show you.”

I gave a nod, then went to take the sandwich with me, but she shook her head.

Fuck. Fine.

She’d made it clear that there weren’t no food or drinks allowed in her office, around all that expensive and real-hard-to-obtain equipment packed in there. I might’ve had a rep as being an asshole in a lot of ways, but I wasn’t a complete dick through and through. Besides, I was a guest in her home and she was helping me out. The least I could do was respect her rules, no matter how anal I thought some of them were. It was for the good of our partnership.

I dropped the sandwich back down on the plate and muttered, “After you, darlin’.”

I followed her down the hall to the last room on the right. She rushed through the open door and I strode in after her, watching her hurriedly running around the main desk in there and hopping onto her chair, her attention riveted on her laptop.

She spared me a quick glance, before announcing, “You were right.”

“How’s that?” I asked, coming right up to her desk.

Damn, I still couldn’t believe this fucking room. She simply called it her office, but it was way more than just a room in the safehouse with a desk and a computer. There was a wall of monitors fixed to the desk, eight in total, and God knew how many computers with all the gear obscuring some areas. There were at least two laptops as well, multiple keyboards to go along with everything. She had multiple VPNs setup. There were command windows open all over the place. Some of the monitors depicted a bunch of camera angles and views on a single screen, from surveillance feeds she had running all over the place, keeping an eye on key players, former clients, enemies, and potential threats. It was an intelligence center, a tech nerd’s wet dream, for sure.

Willa sat back with a heavy sigh and I could see it in her then, not for the first time, how heavy she felt, that the burden she carried on her shoulders was getting to her. That night in the basement gym had been the first time she’d admitted it outright to me in such a blatant way. And I’d seen further proof during these weeks I’d been under the same roof as her, in such close quarters.

The cracks were there.

As much as I hated having a reaction to somebody else’s pain and suffering, because of the compromise it could mean to me and my need to stay stoic and levelheaded, it was there. It was because I knew. I knew how that felt. It clawed at you like a merciless beast that wouldn’t be satisfied until it had your guts, blood, and soul. It wouldn’t let go until hope and strength were just old, worthless memories. Until it decimated you.

“Well?” I pressed her.

“Like I said, you were right. And before I tell you the details of what I’ve unsurfaced, I want to know what you’re planning.”

“Planning?”

“I know you. I have a very good understanding of how your mind works. You have your own plan in your back pocket ready to pull out if you don’t agree with where I’m going to take this mission.”

Well, she wasn’t exactly wrong. But it didn’t have the intention she thought it did. It wasn’t to overrule her, or screw her over, or go behind her back, nothing like that.

“You know me as well as you claim, then you know I’m a real good tactician. I see shit others don’t, shit they can’t. It’s what’s kept me alive through all the crap that’s come at me trying to take me out.”

She stared at me.

Nah, it was more than even that.

Those deep-blue eyes of hers looked like they were literally trying to pierce right through my gaze. She was trying to see