The rhythmic pounding was getting faster.

“He’s workin’ that out,” Rush finished.

“This is why when we go visit them, we’re staying at a hotel.”

“So you won’t hear it?”

“That, and so they won’t hear us. We should have told them to stay at a hotel tonight.”

“That was never gonna happen and you know it, honey,” he said. “Until he knows he can completely trust me, you’re not out of his sphere.”

That was so true.

“Or Maddox’s,” he went on.

That was so true too.

“And since, until this shit is over and I know you’re safe, you’re not out of mine, this is how it’s gotta be,” he concluded.

And this was also true.

“What biker has a guestroom?” I groused.

“One that regularly has Chaos poker games and got sick of Speck getting loaded and crashing on my couch, making me wake up and find him there, snoring, with his hand down his shorts.”

That would drive me to setting up a guestroom too.

An unmistakable noise sounded along with low, gruff indistinct but distinctly encouraging murmuring, and I shut my eyes tight.

“Well, Diesel just got his emotion out,” Rush muttered with amusement.

I decided not to respond.

Some slow rolling bed pounding and then quiet.

I stayed tense listening to the silence.

“Maddox blew earlier, during the blowjob. So you can relax,” Rush informed me.

“Gah!” I cried, dropping to my back.

Rush chuckled.

I loved he was cool with this.

I really did.

And I loved that he dug it that D and Mad could be free with him, his family, even feeling very free down the hall.

But seriously.

I gave it some time.

Not much.

I was a little sister.

“We could hear you!” I shouted.

“No shit!” Diesel shouted back. “We could hear you!”

Fantastic.

“Do it on the floor next time!” I yelled. “Gagged!”

“Wait ’til we fall asleep next time!” he yelled back.

“You suck!” I hollered.

“Yeah, I do!” D hollered back.

“Ugh!” I bellowed.

Diesel had no retort.

Silence prevailed.

Rush broke it.

“So . . . this talk about sucking?”

I turned to him and shoved hard at his chest.

He fell back, wrapping both arms around me, taking me with him, and doused the noises of his laughter by burying his face in my neck.

When his mirth left him, his arms gave me a squeeze and he said, “You got a good brother and he found himself a good man. I like them.”

And I loved that.

But I settled into his body feeling more.

Because it was then I realized that the careful smile Tabby gave me earlier might not have been about her not knowing if she liked me yet, but her worried if I would like her.

When it meant something, and this meant something, and everyone knew it, it had to be right all around.

I liked Tabby.

And Rush liked Diesel (and Maddox).

So it was right all around.

Not surprising.

But still awesome.

I turned my head, kissed his neck and said there, “You’re a good man, Rush Allen.”

One of his hands slid up, the other slid down, and he murmured, “Thank you, baby.”

I snuggled into him.

“Now about that blowjob,” he carried on.

I stilled.

Then I started giggling.

After that, I slithered down my man’s body and sucked him off.

He fingered me after until I came.

Take that, Maddox and D.

After we were done, Rush tucked us into a spoon and we’d barely gotten there before D shouted, “Christ!”

I again started giggling.

And shortly after, I fell asleep.

So shortly, I didn’t know for sure, but I think I did it still giggling.

Inflation

Chew

Around that same time . . .

“What a waste,” Chew muttered, staring down at the body.

Damn Tack.

If it wasn’t for that asshole, Chew wouldn’t have to do shit like this.

Then there was Harrietta, that dumb bitch.

And Valenzuela, that stupid fuck.

But mostly it was Tack.

High and mighty Tack who thought he was king of the goddamned world.

Chew moved to her cheap skirt and dug in the back pocket, where he saw her shove the money he’d given her.

The fifty for the blowjob became two-fifty, seeing as she was good giving head, so he wanted all in, and before he blew in her mouth (or in the condom she was blowing, couldn’t leave that DNA), he paid to fuck her.

She was good with all the rest.

A pro.

That thought made a snarky smile hit his face as he retrieved the money and saw she hadn’t yet connected with her pimp that night to do any handovers.

She had an additional eight hundred bucks.

Sah-weet.

He pocketed the cash, went to his jacket, pulled out the surgical gloves and snapped them on as he moved back to her body.

Of course, he’d had to kill her. He couldn’t just rob them.

After he did, he couldn’t have her opening her mouth to anyone.

She had a gold necklace with a delicate chain and a little gold cross around her neck.

Like God was with this bitch.

She was lying there, very dead, but outside looking dead, she looked forty but probably was barely in her twenties, proof positive that religion shit wasn’t true.

That necklace wouldn’t bring much, but Chew needed all he could get. It wasn’t safe to find a fence, not with all those fucking cops sniffing around, Chaos up in everyone’s shit to find him, Valenzuela all over his ass. But just in case shit went south (though no way it’d go south, he had it all covered—but he wasn’t stupid, plan for all eventualities), he had to have whatever stash he could get.

He snapped the chain, pocketed it, checked her ears.

Cheap hoops. A bunch of studs up the lobe. Nothing worth anything.

Her wrists and fingers, the same.

He left her lying on the floor with her head in the pool of blood that had formed after he’d smashed it into the edge of the nightstand.

He moved to the bed.

He gathered the sheets and pillows and took them to the bathroom. He tossed them to the floor and nabbed the small cake of soap by the basin, threw it in the bath, plugged it and set it to running with hot water.

He moved back to the room and his jacket, reached in, yanked out the plastic packet of anti-bacterial wipes and went over the room. Anything he touched. Even her body. Anything he didn’t touch. He went through the whole packet of wipes.

Done with that, back to the bathroom. He flushed the wipes. Made sure they went down, as did the condom he’d flushed earlier before he’d dressed. Turned off the water to the tub and shoved the sheets and pillows in, being thorough, not leaving until they were saturated.

Back to the room, he swung on his jacket, tugged down the baseball hat and didn’t take off the gloves until the door latched behind him.

Head down, he moved along the outside walkway of the motel to the sidewalk, down three blocks and around the corner to his car.

Well, not his. It was someone else’s.

But now it was his.

He reached under the dash, sparked the wires and the car started running.

It sucked he had to do this shit.

But the guy he wanted to partner with had assessed the situation, followed the brother Snapper, looked into Benito’s operations and shared that a hit on Snapper would cost a quarter of a mil, and retrieving the bones from Benito an extra one hundred large.

A quarter of a mil.

Chew could not believe that garbage.

When Crank had taken the hit out on Black, it only cost ten grand.

It had been years, but inflation wasn’t that fucked up.

Then again, that guy who did Black was a moron. Chaos had found him in a fucking blink and then no one saw him again.

Apparently, Chew’s partner didn’t want that to happen to him.

You could make a pretty guaranteed getaway, you had a quarter of a million dollars.

The problem was, Chew didn’t have a quarter of a million dollars.