The back of his neck burned with want, and he swallowed it down because this was the worst moment to be having those feelings and the worst man to be having them for. When he gained control of himself, he dragged a hand down his face and chanced a look at Kicks, who wasn’t laughing anymore, though his lips were still twisted up in a grin.
“Your brother as funny as you?”
Jude stared at him in some surprise. “You’ve not met him?”
“Just for a couple of seconds at the bar, but that was when Smokey was damn-near bleeding out, so we didn’t exactly have time to get to know each other. Shit has been really chaotic for the last couple months.” The tone of his voice wasn’t angry, but there was a fatigue and worry there that Jude didn’t like. Eliah had seemed confident over the phone that this was under control, but something about Kicks’ face told him different.
“Does this happen a lot?” he asked, waving his hand. “People getting shot at? Random professors being put into protective custody.”
Kicks snorted and shrugged, draining the rest of his beer before heading to the fridge for another. “It wasn’t like this before—when I first patched in. But last year, some shit went down with our VP, and all this has been at our heels since then.” The fridge door slammed, and he didn’t speak again until after he’d taken another long drink. “I didn’t come from another club though, so I’m not really sure what’s normal and what isn’t.”
Jude’s brow furrowed. His understanding of biker culture was shaky at best—terrible TV dramas and the old bubbes in his service who would always clutch the ends of their scarves whenever the motorbikes rumbled by. But he thought he was right in assuming it was a culture that people didn’t just trip and fall into.
“So, what did you do before all this?” he chanced.
Kicks stared at him like he wasn’t sure he was going to answer, then he let out a noiseless sigh, his shoulders rising and falling with it. “I was in the service. Army,” he clarified. Jude stared at him and realized he could see it in the way he carried himself, the way he was always turning his head from side to side, like he was trying to make sure he didn’t miss anything. “I wasn’t in long. I got hurt.”
“Were you deployed when it happened?”
Kicks stared at him, and there was something in his face that looked haunted. “No. No, I…” He licked his lips, then glanced away. “Some shit went down when I was on leave. I got hurt, couldn’t serve anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Jude started, but Kicks scoffed and shook his head.
“Don’t be. Is what it is.” He pushed away from the counter and started toward the hallway. “Look, I’m gonna head outside and make a couple calls. Make yourself comfortable. We’re gonna be a while.”
Kicks didn’t give him the chance to say anything before the front door slammed, and he was left there in total silence, wondering what the hell was supposed to come next.
5
It wasn’t until Kicks got outside that he felt like he could breathe again. When he picked up the rabbi, he was expecting the irritation he felt at the babysitting job. He sure as shit wasn’t expecting to have to outrun his goddamn erection because the man had a fucking filthy mouth and a command about him that made Kicks want to drop to his knees and do anything the man asked.
And he had a feeling Jude wouldn’t have turned him away if Kicks had begged for attention. He would have put his fingers in Kicks’ hair, he would have held him in place, he would have told him to…
He cut his thoughts off with a gasping breath and forced himself to put more distance between him and the house. Trudging through a small clearing, hoping he avoided any poison ivy, he sagged against the trunk of a tree and tipped his head up. His gaze was foggy, focusing his eye on a large cluster of moss that hung just out of reach. Calm settled over his bones once again, though his fingers were still shaking, and his dick was still hard.
He’d always loved forests like the canopy above him when a kid. The first time he’d ever seen Spanish moss was when his parents had taken him to New Orleans. They were too broke to stay in the city, so they got a room just outside it and took the bus to the French Quarter every day for the four days they were in town. He remembered staring in awe at the passing trees, having read descriptions in the romance novels he’d stolen from his mom’s bedroom when she wasn’t looking. There was something otherworldly about it, and he never quite forgot it, even when he was shipped out to the ugly pine forest of upstate New York with nothing but brown trunks and evergreens for miles and miles.
Now, this view was home. The swamp was no longer alien, but a comforting reminder that he’d found somewhere to belong. His brothers were his family—and he would more than just die for them. He would kill for them. He would commit unspeakable acts and use his carefully cultivated talents to bend and break laws in order to keep their heads above water.
And he would have given damn-near anything to be back at his computer in River Crest right now. Trying to figure out who the fuck was tampering with security footage sounded a hell of a lot better than trying to fend off the needs of his neglected dick at the promise of a dirty mouth.
If Smokey’s hunch was right, and it was the guy from his former club, Kicks wasn’t going to have time to explore whatever the fuck he was feeling anyway. Blaze was bringing back rumors of discord being sown among neighboring clubs, and it wasn’t really a surprise. Though Kicks didn’t have a club background, it wasn’t difficult to pick up on threads.
They functioned like a monarchy inside a democracy, and there were patterns to the rise and fall of empires. Kicks was never really good at getting people to like him, but he was good at getting information out of them. If it wasn’t for his tactical mind, he probably would have been given the Enforcer patch.
He enjoyed his job though. The military had given him a skill and education that he wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. It had also taught him how to turn off the part of his brain that hesitated whenever he had to raise a gun and put his finger on the trigger.
And he’d learned to cultivate that emotionless part of him and fine tune it into the monster that lived in the shadows of his mind. Because he didn’t have a choice. Not after what those men did to him.
The night of drinking—and fists flying, his eye going dark, and being tied up as the skin on his back burned away—would never leave him. That was the night that had stolen his military career and set him on the path to become the man he was now. It had shaped the beast he had inside.
He liked to think that in spite of all that, though, a decent person existed inside him. Maddie liked him anyway, and Gunner trusted him with her life, which counted for everything. And Rory, who had been just steps away from adulthood when Kicks met him for the first time, seemed to think he was worth something. And Rory wasn’t the kind of man who gave his trust easily or willingly.
But he was being tested, stuck in this shitty little house with that man. He’d been too shocked by his initial impression to really consider Jude an individual person instead of a job he needed to get done, but now…
Now, the man had made him laugh. And want. And he damn-near made Kicks spill the worst of his darkest secrets. Not even Smokey had been able to drag those details from him, and Kicks trusted that man with everything.