Chapter Nineteen

BISHOP

Hearing her footsteps coming down the stairs, I got to my feet and adjusted my club cut.

I felt like some teenage boy waiting for my prom date, fighting a fucking hard-on as she stepped around the banister in a rich, purple gown. The top was corset-like, pulling her waist in tight while pushing up her breasts. And if that wasn't enough to almost kill me, a large slit sliced up the left side of the floor-length skirt, almost to her hip, leaving every inch of her thigh on show.

The memory of her wrapped in my arms the previous morning was still so vivid.

Her skin was just as soft as I'd imagined, the curve of her body fit perfectly into mine.

Every part of me wanted to have her.

To claim her.

To make her mine.

But there were things that needed to be done well before I made that decision.

"Eyes up here." Her smart remark drew my attention back to her face, where a slight blush tinted her cheeks, though she was clearly amused. "You like it?"

She slowly twirled, and the slight wobble had a smirk tugging at my lips.

"You look beautiful," I told her, the words falling from my lips with a weight of sincerity that surprised even me. I wasn't exactly Casanova. It'd been a long time since I'd genuinely been awed by a woman, but Shay did it almost every day with her empathy, conviction, and ability to be strong and continue to fight even when her vulnerabilities screamed at her to back down.

She pulled to a hard stop midspin, her back to me. Her shoulders rose dramatically, and she sucked in a deep breath, continuing her turn to face me. "Thank you."

"I mean it."

Her laughter was light and airy. "I know. I think we've been over that."

"We should probably go. It's at least forty-five minutes away," I told her as I stepped forward and pressed my hand to her back.

She followed my lead, hooking a small handbag over her shoulder with a silver chain. "Anything I need to know before I step into the lion's den?" she questioned, holding my hand tightly as she maneuvered down the porch steps and to my Chevy truck. It was new, only a year or so old, and it had probably been driven more times in the past week since Shay had moved in than in the past year.

I didn't mind, though.

While my Harley had become an extension of my body over the past twenty years, my actual body was getting older. I'd be fifty next year. I wanted to be able to continue riding with my men for as long as possible, but I was starting to understand that that meant occasionally letting my old fucking ass rest a little.

Driving Shay around was the perfect excuse, though I knew one day soon I was going to get her on the back of my ride.

To feel here there at my back.

Fuck.

I just knew there would be no going back.

For most of the ride, we sat in silence, Shay humming along to the radio while I navigated the highway to Ann Arbor and then out into the countryside.

It wasn't the first time I'd been to Frank Martelli's house. The club had done business with him in the past, and he and Rook were surprisingly tight, which was the only reason I'd had the fucking balls to show up at his weekly game of golf the previous week and ask him to back me instead of his fucking son.

Respect—that shit goes a long way in this world.

And it's not always about who's the biggest and the baddest.

Who's the most ruthless, or who's killed the most men.

Sometimes it was just about being able to stand up and face the shit that scares you.

"Do you hate being inside the vehicle?" Shay asked as we weaved the windy road into the countryside, her eyes alight with wonder as we passed trees, fields, and ponds.

I snorted. "Not as much as you'd think. Being in a car or a truck makes the drive a little less stressful 'cause people don't know how to drive around motorcycles. They don't pay enough attention and pull out in front of you, or they freak out at the engine's rumble and suddenly lose the ability to drive altogether."

She chuckled softly. "I think I could be guilty of that."

"Why do you ask?"

She tugged at her dress, adjusting it a little. "I just wondered what riding this road on a motorcycle would be like. I mean, it's beautiful through the window, but it must be pretty amazing to be out in the air and feel it around you."

It was.

It was the freedom of not being confined that a lot of men became addicted to. The air, the breeze, the elements gave you this sense of being in the world, not just watching from the outside.

It was another thing I suddenly couldn't wait to share with her.

"I went to rehab when I was sixteen," she said suddenly, and we almost ended up in the creek beside the road when I glanced over to see if she was serious. "Yup. I know. We were ripping people off to get money for pills, and we got caught. Ali made a deal with the court that he would take the fall for it all if they didn't charge me, and instead, they sent me to rehab to get clean."

"Bet that was hell," I said, a shudder moving up my spine as I thought about being locked in a tiny white room. "Fuck that."

She tapped on the window. "This just made me think about it. How much we take for granted and don't appreciate the world outside until we're locked away from it. How we don't appreciate the people in our lives until they're dead."

How we regret not telling that one person how we feel until something horrible happens.

Fuck, maybe I was wrong.

Maybe waiting until the Martelli shit was done to have that conversation with her wasn't the right thing to do. What if shit hit the fan at the party? What if I never got the chance to tell her—

"This is it." I quickly pulled off the winding road and onto a cobbled driveway with two large security gates and a small guard's house between them. The four guards standing outside wore black suits, carried semiautomatic weapons, and searched and scrutinized every car that drove up to the gate.

"I thought we were going to the Martelli's house," Shay questioned, shifting uncomfortably in her seat and glancing between the elaborate security and me like she wasn't sure what to make of it. "What is this?"

"This is Frank Martelli's house," I told her as the white Mercedes in front of us finally pulled through the gates, and I inched forward, rolling down my window. "Bishop. Exiled Eight MC President."

The large gun hung casually across this guy's chest as he flipped through the pages on his clipboard, finally jabbing at it with his finger. "Yup." He looked past me, checking with the rest of the assholes surrounding the truck, their little mirrors rolling underneath so they could make sure I didn't have a trained assassin holding on below.

With a nod from each man to clear us, he finally pointed to the gate as it rolled open. "You can go."

"Thanks."

It must have been the longest fucking driveway in the world, trees lining each side, gardens perfectly planted and manicured with a rainbow of flowers.

"It looks like we're in some kind of country club," Shay whispered, staring in awe out her window at the serene landscape. "This place must be worth millions."

"Well, when you have your finger in every fucking pie in the state of Michigan, you can afford to live in a place that resembles a resort." I kept my eyes on the skinny road. I couldn't let the rest of it overwhelm me. The men and women who would be there were every one of any kind of local importance.

Politicians. Police. State officials. Business owners.

Frank Martelli wasn't about to have an event—especially his fucking birthday party—and not make sure the world was there to witness it. I was here for a reason, to solve an issue and make sure no one I cared about got hurt.

We got in.

We got out.

I respected Frank and his family, but the less time we spent around them, the less chance there was that something would go wrong.

A valet directed me forward, right up to the front steps of the house.

He reached for the handle, but I slammed on the lock button before turning to Shay. "You good?"

She nodded so quickly her brain must have rattled a little. "Yeah. I've got this. It's fine."

"You keep your head down, you stay out of trouble, we do what needs to be done, then we make a quick exit," I explained quickly. "Yeah?"

She sat taller, plastering this beautiful fucking smile on her face and brushing her hair back behind her shoulders. "Yeah. Let's go."

That's my girl.