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

head. My breathing was labored and when I tried to shift my weight just a little, it had me wincing at the ache in my ribs. Probably bruised. If they were broken, it would’ve been a lot worse, a real fight just to draw in a single breath. There was a burning sensation in my right shoulder. I knew what it was right away, because it’d happened before. It had been dislocated, then popped back into place. Fucking great.

I clearly wasn’t in the best condition right now.

But it was tough shit, because I had work to do.

I was in a pair of my black sweats and a white tee, thankfully out of my bloodied and dirty clothes. At least I didn’t have to worry about the frustratingly difficult task of getting dressed while injured.

I went to get out of bed, only to find that I couldn’t.

A sharp pain shot through my wrist and I looked down to see an IV hooked up to my right arm. I followed the tubing to see one of those clear plastic hospital bags hanging up beside the bed I was lying on with some kind of solution in it. Judging by the grogginess and the slight high I was feeling, it was a heavy-duty painkiller.

Fuck. I didn’t wanna be feeling that right now. I never wanted to. I didn’t do drugs, never had. I hated the way they messed with your head. I couldn’t have that, couldn’t have anything compromising my ability to think straight. I had to always be at my best. People counted on me.

As I slowly took in the room, I realized I was somehow back in my room at the Steel Titans clubhouse.

Plain. Simple. Small. The dark-red sheets of my bed, the blackout curtains covering the windows, the small table passing for a desk in the corner that had one too many cracks in it from my anger getting the best of me every now and then over the years, and the small-ass closet over by the bathroom door.

What the fuck? How had that happened?

The last thing I remembered was fending off that crazy-ass attack back at Willa’s safehouse.

I fought through the numbing, mind-scrambling meds in my system to remember more.

As I tried to piece together what the fuck had gone down, one thought came slamming into me, wiping out everything else, overriding it all.

Willa.

Those bastards had taken her.

The last thing I’d seen before I’d put down a bunch of those soldiers before they’d blown the safehouse to hell had been that fucker, Freeman, subduing her. I’d been right on the verge of hauling ass out there and wailing on that piece of shit and anybody else who tried to stop me from freeing my woman, when Rick had pulled me back and forced me into that underground escape tunnel. He’d witnessed some of the soldiers planting explosives, while my focus had been strictly on Willa. Fuck, he’d saved my goddamn life.

But I didn’t remember us getting out of there.

Had he made it? Had those shits taken him too?

I’d never seen it up close, but Freeman was known by reputation for his sadism and his affinity for playing a whole twisted cat and mouse game with whatever prey he got in his sights. My stomach roiled just at the thought of that happening to Willa, and it had me bolting off the bed, and tearing the goddamn IV right out of my arm. I hissed at the spike of pain, but shrugged it off quickly.

I stormed toward the door, but a sudden wave of lightheadedness slammed into me, making me waver on my feet. Nausea surged and I had to stop in my tracks and grab at the wall to keep my balance.

As I tried to rally and fight through it, the door flew open, and Liam strode in. The moment he took in what was happening, me out of the bed, the IV dangling and dripping blood onto the floor, and me struggling to hold my own weight up, he rushed toward me.

“What the fuck, Slade?” he chastised. Wrapping his arms around me, he helped me back to the bed. I sat my ass down and scrubbed my hand over my face with a frustrated curse.

He tried to help me back into the bed, but I batted him away.

“Back off,” I grunted.

“You need to rest. You almost died.”

“That’s a hell of an exaggeration.”

He glared at me. “Yeah? When we found you, that’s what it fucking well looked like at first. You just got lucky, that’s all. It’s the only reason you’re still here.”

Anger was coming at me, but we’d been through way too much over the years for me to take him at the surface level. I could see beyond that. It was pain and fear. He’d been worried about me, afraid he’d lost me.

“I’m all right.”

“If you saw yourself in the mirror, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

“How did you find me?”

“Rick called us, told us the deal, and we headed down there like bats out of hell.”

“He all right?”

“Yeah, he’s gonna be okay.”

“Here?”

“In one of the spare rooms. We figured that was what you’d want with him saving your ass and everything.”

“It is. Good.”

Liam scrubbed his hand over his face. “Fuck, Slade. I thought we’d worked beyond all this covert, secret-keeping bull.”

“This ain’t the same.”

How much did he actually know? After going out of my way to keep the boys far away from all this, I weren’t about to reveal the whole shitshow if I didn’t have to, if all he knew were just bits and pieces.

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Once again you didn’t trust me enough to bring me in on it.”

On what? What the hell did he know? “Rick told you?”

“Of course. How else would I know what’s going on with my own Prez, huh? Of course it wouldn’t come from you! Jesus, Slade! What the fuck is going on? I mean, I knew something was off, that you weren’t your normal self, but I reasoned it