Burning Daylight (A Devil's Cartel MC Series Book 2) Read online

  Out of gratitude and desperation, I reach out for Judge and pull him in close. His thick, muscular body tightens as I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him tight. His thighs hit the bed between my legs, and I bury my face into the nape of his neck and cry. It flows through me like a tsunami. I expect him to pull away, to tell me to suck it up. What I don’t expect is for him to put his arms around me and hold me back. I can’t remember the last time someone held me and just let me cry. The gestures bring the tears on harder and I soak Judge’s skin and his shirt, but it doesn’t last. The warmth from his body seeps into my pores and soothes the cracks in my heart—albeit temporarily. Sniffling, I force myself to release the Devil’s Cartel president and keep my attention on the picture of Nicolás.

  “Sorry,” I murmur, pushing a rogue teardrop off Nicolás’s forehead before it soaks into the card. “I wasn’t expecting…” I swallow the forming lump in my throat, letting the sentence go as I lift my gaze. Warmth spreads up my neck at the sight of him watching me, his expression hard and concerned. “Thank you.”

  He doesn’t say anything. Why would he? Judge turns and walks out of the room, leaving me alone with the most precious gift anyone has ever given me.

  Hope.

  J U D G E

  I didn’t know what the hell to do when she grabbed me. My brain told me to pat her on the back and put as much distance between me and her emotions as possible, but the urge to comfort her wound through me. I wasn’t easily moved by shows of emotion, but there was something about Minnie that reminded me of my old self, back when Nila was alive.

  Not to mention, the woman survived one hell of a beating and an explosion that decimated an entire motel. If anyone deserved a hug, it was her.

  “Are you listening, Prez?” Hawk snapped and Creed straightened in his chair, glaring across the table at our road captain. If I gave him the nod, Creed would jump the table and cut Hawk’s heart out of his chest for talking to me the way he was. Good thing I wasn’t a fucking tyrant. “I said, we can’t fuck with Elias Vergara.”

  I rubbed my chin. He didn’t get what I was saying. “You won’t. I will.”

  They all looked in my direction, but it was Creed’s stare I felt burning holes in my face. He’d follow me to the end of the world, if I went, so I knew he’d take a lot of convincing to stay behind. If he refused to listen, I had a Plan B and her name was Blondie. I was sure she could put on the waterworks and beg him to stay. Maybe jiggle her tits for him, for good measure.

  “As in…by yourself?” Armi asked, scratching his head.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Sorry, Prez,” he exhaled, sitting back in his chair. “Can’t let you do that.”

  “I wasn’t asking for permission.” I adjusted my position in my seat at the head of the table, drawing my shoulders back, lifting myself a little higher. “I’d ride 66—no colors. In and out.”

  “Do you know where he is?” Creed asked, leaning forward on his elbows, his cut creaking. “How many men he has with him? Whether the boy is even alive?”

  “I know he’s close.” And that was about all I had.

  The table erupted into conversation, one side arguing about coming with me, the other side shouting shit about suicide. We had to make this decision as a unit, I knew that, but whether they approved or not, I was going, and I was going alone. I dragged my stare to Modo, who was uncharacteristically quiet, those damn Ray-Bans covering his eyes.

  “Modo?” I boomed over the discussion, and the men fell quiet.

  Nothing. He’s sleeping? Again?

  Stoic nudged him with his elbow hard in the ribs and he jolted, grunting like a pig.

  “I agree,” he shouted, pulling his sunglasses from his face. “We do need more clubwhores and would it kill you to get mature-aged women? The little teenyboppers you’ve got running around here just ain’t doing it for me.”

  Someone snickered. I stared at him. We all stared at him. First of all, the clubwhores were all twenty-one and over. There weren’t any “teenyboppers” running around our clubhouse. Second of all, he looked like shit. His skin was oddly pale, and his eyes held the biggest bags I’d ever seen.

  “What’s going on, Modo?” Creed asked, reading my mind. “You look…”

  “Like the underside of a nutsack?” Ayr joked, grinning wide.

  “Oh, piss off.” Modo lowered his sunglasses to the long, oak table. “Haven’t had much sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s…” He pursed his lips together, and glanced around the table at each of us, discomfited. “There’s a spider in my room.”

  I rolled my eyes as multiple snickers made their way around the table and Modo shifted in his seat, huffing. Modo, the crazy British bastard, was over six-foot-tall and he was wide with thick muscle. A spider? He fed his parents to a fucking illegally acquired Komodo Dragon, for God’s sake. To many, he was a walking nightmare, a psychopath without a cause. In a way, he was our secret weapon. Every man at this table feared him in some way—except Creed—and he was scared of a spider? I shouldn’t be surprised. He felt the same way about snakes, even though his room was filled with all kinds of scaly creatures.

  I scratched the bridge of my nose. “So, kill it?”

  He balked and fisted his beard, shivering in his cut. “Yeah, fuckin’ right.”

  “Don’t you have lizards and shit in there?” Armi said. “Make one of them eat it.”

  “Spiders aren’t a part of their diet,” he stated. “And also, that’s fucking gross.”

  Laughter erupted around the table and I groaned. I didn’t have time for this. A spider was the least of my worries. “Armi, when we’re done here, take care of the goddamn spider in his room so he can get some sleep, will you?”

  He nodded and conversation erupted once more. I grabbed the gavel in front of me and slammed it against the sound block with a bang. The room fell quiet, the men around the table focusing their attention on me.

  “Back to the main topic of this discussion. Elias Vergara.”

  “I meant what I said. You’re not going alone.” Armi drummed his finger against the table. “You need me, and you know it.”

  “You need all of us,” Casino chimed in, taking me by surprise, given our disagreement when I tried to bring Yasmine into the clubhouse. “You’ve been there for us when we needed it, so if helping that broad is something you want to do then…we’ve got your back.”

  I nodded at him, a silent thank you. “Then it’s settled. Our chapter will go up against Elias Vergara.”

  “The mother chapter won’t like it,” Creed pointed out. “There’ll be repercussions if this goes wrong, since none of us have laid claim to Minnie.”

  I pressed my teeth together and dragged an inhale through my nose. If this goes ass up, the mother chapter will see it as a terrorist attack and end it all. “Then it can’t go wrong.”

  I demanded Rah find out everything he could about Elias’s location and to liaise with our road captain, Hawk, to find us the quickest way in and out. Then, he needed to speak with Armi about soldier numbers, and Armi would set us up with the best plan of attack. We had to follow Hawk and Armi’s lead, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I slam the gavel into the sound block one last time, ending the meeting. The men file out of the room and spill through the clubhouse, but Creed doesn’t budge. When we are alone, he exhales and turns his whiskey stare on me.

  “Why are you doing this, Damon?”

  I pushed my chair back and lifted myself out of it. “You’d do it for Izzy.”

  “Yasmine isn’t Izzy,” he pointed out, almost offended. “A few days ago, you didn’t care about this woman and now you’re ready to risk it all for her?”

  Maybe I did care. Maybe I cared more than I wanted to admit. I grabbed my gavel and turned away from the table. “Atonement.”

  “Atonement?” Creed paused in thought. When I placed my gavel back on the bookshelf next to the thick binder of our bylaws, I turned around and rea
lization lit his features. “You have nothing to atone for. Nila wasn’t your fault.”

  The mention of her name made my heart stutter, then guilt sank in. When was the last time I went to the cabin? When was the last time I walked our favorite track down to the river?

  “It’s not about Nila.” I swiped at my forehead. “Minnie’s trying to get her son back and I wasted her time.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Such is life. You don’t owe her anything.”

  “I don’t owe her? I treated her like shit, James.” A strange expression rippled across his face. I rarely used his first name because he didn’t like it. Only Blondie could use his first name without incurring his anger. “I treated her like a nuisance, like a druggie, like a whore, like a servant. I let her go back to that shitty motel where she got beaten within an inch of her life, then nearly blown to shit. I wasted her time and called her a crazy, lying bitch when she told me nothing but the truth.”

  Yeah, I was an asshole, but I wasn’t totally fucking heartless. Creed looked away. If he didn’t get it, he didn’t get it. He wasn’t there when I told Minnie I’d help. He didn’t see the way her eyes sparkled with hope, or the way her skin brightened, my words literally breathing life into her. He didn’t see the look of total heartbreak when she saw the photo of Nicolás, either. Nor did he feel what I felt when she held me tight. It was…well, I didn’t know what it was.

  Yasmine Garcia was the most emotional woman I’d ever met. And I liked it. Every tear she shed chipped ice off my heart and pulled me further out of the emotionless tar pit my ex kicked me into. My heart didn’t thump right, not since Nila’s murder, but it changed its beat the more Minnie cried into my shoulder, her sweet tears seeping into my pores and changing my DNA.

  Creed cleared his throat. “I said I would ride with you and that wasn’t a lie. I just want to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

  “What are the right reasons?” I asked, just as Blondie strolled into the room.

  I flicked my stare over her small black boots and up her tight black jeans that clung to her thighs. I tilted my head as I surveyed her black lace bodysuit, and her little leather cut draped over her shoulders. She looked like a bad bitch, but her sweet face betrayed her secret. She was still Exeter’s sweetheart and that’d never change. In her manicured hand, she held a clear, flat-lid cup with green juice. Yep. She’d always be the privileged princess she was when we took her from her father. I didn’t mind it. Call her a spanner in the works, a colorful swirl of pink perfume in a sea of black stench.

  Izzy beamed at me, exposing her bright white teeth. “Hey Judge.”

  “Blondie.” I flicked my hand, a small wave. “What’s with the get-up?”

  She shrugged her slender shoulders, her attention on Creed and only Creed. “Thought I’d try something different.”

  I kept my eyes on her, watching her stroll toward the table, toward her lover boy. I rolled my eyes as he pushed out his chair and she sat in his lap, placing her drink on the table. The green liquid sloshed up the sides and ran back down.

  “Are you ready to go home?” she asked him, caressing the sides of his face. “I can cook steak for dinner and run us a hot bath afterward. Then, if you’re not tired, we can watch a movie in bed.”

  Her eyes sparkled when she looked at him, like he was her whole world. I guess he was. She threw her studies out the window to stay in Exeter with him, to be his old lady. They even bought a big house at the end of Burning Road, the same road the clubhouse was on, on a large slab of land by the secluded Mary River. It was a six-bedroom house and I knew for a fact four of those rooms were for the tribe of kids they were going to have as soon as Isabelle felt she was old enough for children.

  “Fuck.” Creed groaned and pulled his face out of her hands. “Can’t. We’ve got something coming up and I have to stay here until it’s sorted.”

  She tilted her head, and behind her ear I noticed a black smudge. “Okay. I don’t mind staying here, like old times.”

  I stepped closer as they whispered to each other until I could make out the teeny-tiny motorcycle tattoo with the initials J.C. and a small heart tattooed beside it. I lifted an eyebrow. When did she get that done?

  “It’s bad luck, you know.”

  Izzy and Creed cast me the same irritated look.

  “What is?” she asked.

  “The tattoo.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  My lips quirked at the corners. “Am I behind the other ear?”

  Blush ran up her neck and swirled in her cheeks. “Why would you be?”

  I shrugged, relishing in the way Creed scowled at me. The other men liked to poke fun at him and his commitment to Izzy, but he had it good. At the end of the day, when all this club shit was over, he had her to keep him company. He didn’t climb into bed with a different woman every night. It was the same woman, the same body, the same smells, and the same feelings. Lately, that weighed on my mind heavier than ever, and it was thoughts like that that contributed to my disinterest in Liv, and any other woman in the clubhouse. I teased Blondie and Creed a lot, but I knew, deep down, women like Blondie would never understand me. They hadn’t lived the same life or made the same sacrifices. How could I be with someone who didn’t understand the pain I lived with and, therefore, could never help me heal it? Blondie was good for my body, but meaningless to my soul. Isabelle and Creed were made for each other and they knew it the moment they met. I joked about it, but I’d never come between them.

  Isabelle leaned forward and kissed him. She made a whole show of it too, kissing him hard and fast, pushing her tongue inside his mouth. She slid her small hands up his chest, neck, and into his hair, forcing him harder against her. I blew air from my lips and turned away.

  As I passed the threshold of the meeting room, I called over my shoulder. “When you’re ready for a real man, you know where my room is.”

  I heard their kiss break from out in the hall.

  “Damon, you fuck!” Creed shouted, and I simpered.

  I had to stop playing or he was going to shoot me dead one day. As I entered the main room of the clubhouse, I inhaled and held the smells of whiskey and barbeque in my lungs. I felt different—free, sort of—because I left that room without the usual worms of jealousy squirming through my insides. When I looked at Blondie, not a single thought I had was about wanting her.

  I no longer envied Creed.

  TEN

  Y A S M I N E

  Two weeks later

  Disturbed.

  That’s the name of the band whose music is thundering through the clubhouse. It’s also a word that accurately describes how I’m feeling. Disturbed. These people don’t stop. Life’s a party. They ride, drink, fuck, and turn it up all day, every day, and well into the night. Harlei told me this is the way, especially when there’s a big, dangerous mission coming up, and since that mission is because of me, I guess I have no right complaining. Since each party brings me closer to Nicolás, I should welcome it.

  The guest room is situated at the beginning of the hallway, where it opens up to the main space. Naturally, the music hits my room first. By the time it gets to Judge’s, one of the last rooms at the end of the hall, it’s a dull drone and the bass sounds like the beating of a heart instead of the bashing of a drum. Can I go to his room, like I did on the first night? Or is that inappropriate? What if he has company? My stomach turns and I ease myself onto my side, tucking my knees higher.

  Harlei is very happy with how quick I’m recovering, but I don’t think I had anything to do with it. The woman has healing hands, it’s incredible. Because of her, my bruises are faded, my cuts closed, and my swelling gone. The various burns on my body are still there, but they don’t hurt, and she thinks if I continue to take care of them, they’ll leave minimal scarring.

  Giggling in the hall pulls me from my thoughts and I blink into the darkness, waiting for them to pass my door. When they do, I ease the blanket off my legs l
ift myself off the squeaky queen bed. Maybe I can make my way to the infirmary and get some more sleeping pills. I open my bedroom door as quietly as I can and I peer out into the empty hall. Then, I glance down at my loose, black tee and short, black bed shorts that Harlei gave me. The infirmary is on the other side of the building, meaning I’ll have to go through the thick of the party to get there.

  I’d rather not.

  I turn my head left and stare down the long hall to Judge’s room at the very end. Is he in there? Would he spare me a tablet just for tonight? I haven’t seen him in two weeks. I don’t know how his plans are progressing or when he’s leaving to get Nicolás. This could be a good opportunity to get more information from him. I step into the hall and close my door behind me. As quickly as I can, I tiptoe toward his room. When I reach his door, I swallow hard and blow air from my lips, wiping my clammy palms against the fabric of my shorts. Then I knock.

  But there’s no answer.

  I hope he isn’t asleep…I knock again and yield the same result. Holding my breath, I push on the handle and gently open his door.

  “Judge?” I utter, slipping my head into his spacious room.

  The glow from the big TV mounted on his wall is enough to light up his space. I say his name again and slip inside, closing the door behind me. I stand still, folding my arms over my chest, and I wait until silent seconds stretch into silent minutes. He’s not here. I turn around to leave, but the paused video on his T.V. snags my attention. It’s the blur of a little girl mid-spin, her arms outstretched, her head tilted down to watch her feet.

  I glance at the door. I really should go…but I find myself moving toward the television, toward the black leather sofa in front of it. I take the thin remote off the armrest and sit down. Reason screams in my head, demanding I mind my own business and leave Judge’s room, but I want to see her. I want a glimpse of Judge as a dad. I hit play and happy, childish laughter fills the room.