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  He removed the metal he’d covered the bodies with. The tub was affixed to some type of small carry trailer, built with a sliding mechanism that allowed the tub to lift so that he could dump the soupy contents into the hole with ease.

  After everything was dumped and the tub was back in place, Aaron started the task of covering Chuck, Clint, and Dutch’s remains with dirt. Again, I waited to feel remorse, but it never came.

  Chapter 18

  Megan - Day 29

  After peeling myself away from Aaron’s chest, I turned off the blaring alarm clock. It was 2:30 a.m. We needed to get dressed so that we could use the cover of darkness to get rid of Chuck’s vehicle. Aaron had parked Chuck’s truck behind his house until it was time for us to get up and get rid of it.

  As I followed Aaron, who was driving Chuck’s blue heavy-duty truck, I marked off another day in my mind. This was day twenty-nine in my thirty-day ride with the August Knights Motorcycle Club. I’d gotten a lot more than I’d bargained for in dealing with this club. I’d shot one man in the shoulder. Shot and killed another, stared death in the face, and had continued to carry on a sexual relationship with one of the MC’s chairmen.

  After hours of driving, we’d traveled over the Florida state line and crossed into the state of Alabama. Aaron stopped to refuel and to take a bathroom break.

  Before we got back on the road, he hopped into his truck with me and sat on the passenger’s side.

  “I want to get Chuck’s vehicle as far away from Florida as possible. Let’s head up north into the mountains of Tennessee. I know a place where I can roll it over a cliff into the water.”

  Already dirt-deep into the shit, I nodded my head. It was obvious that this was a new endeavor for Aaron—having someone he could share his dirty deeds with. The fact that I could handle the aftermath of so much death without showing remorse appeared to impress him.

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” I agreed, flashing a smile. I wasn’t smiling because of his suggestion. Just looking at him sent my hormones jumping. The man emitted sex appeal like he’d sprayed it on. On the rare occasion he let loose a smile, any female within sight would be in deep trouble. He never attempted to be sexy or seductive—he just was.

  To my surprise, Aaron leaned over his center console and placed a sweet kiss on my cheek before exiting the vehicle. I glanced around the area. Anyone could have seen us, but it occurred to me that Aaron never seemed to care what people thought.

  If I’d read him right, I’d say he was starting to develop feelings. Shit, I’d developed them the moment he touched my body, but I had enough sense to know that we had always been one screw away from our end.

  A wide grin lit my face when I thought of some of the things I’d done with Aaron. He lived a life outside the law, and although I was starting not to want to, I needed to get back to my reclusive life of writing books.

  However twisted, living this adventure with Aaron had been one of a very few highlights of my life. I hadn’t shared much about my life with Aaron. Although I chose to live a sheltered life now, it hadn’t always been that way.

  My life as a foster care kid had been a hellish anarchy of violence and crime that had twisted my mind into so many knots I’d be entwined for the rest of my life.

  * * *

  Six more hours and another pit stop brought us to the area Aaron had picked out. I watched him wipe down Chuck’s truck with a dusty white rag he’d found in the tackle box. He leaned under the open driver’s side door into the vehicle and did something to the brake and accelerator before he stood behind the truck and attempted to shove it forward. His boots scratched up rocks and dirt as several loud grunts sounded before the truck started to move.

  At first, it rolled at a sluggish pace before picking up enough momentum to teeter over the cliff. The scene was like watching a clip from a movie.

  Hurrying from behind the wheel of Aaron’s truck, I climbed out in time to see the ass end of Chuck’s truck careen over the side of that rocky bank. My gaze remained glued to the scene. The metal of the truck groaned and strained as gravity pulled it down and sent it hurtling into the dark grayish-blue water below.

  The truck didn’t go down the rocky bank easily. It scratched and clawed against the jagged sides of the mountain all the way down. The windows were left rolled down, and the back window remained open. When it finally hit the water, it sank, bubbling to the bottom of the waving dark bed of liquid.

  On our return trip, I reclined the passenger’s seat and napped most of our drive back to Aaron’s house. When we drove into his yard around six that evening, we found his father sitting in the yard inside his truck with the motor running.

  Shark’s fingers drummed against his steering wheel as he eyed Aaron and me suspiciously. His door screeched when he finally exited his vehicle.

  I purposely remained in the background as father and son stopped and chatted on the porch. Aaron gave Shark the quick version of what had taken place inside his house and where we had just returned from. Shark’s eyes flashed a small crease of concern, but it was easy to see he had a lot of confidence in his son’s ability to take care of himself.

  When Aaron relayed the part I’d played in taking out Chuck and his crew, Shark’s long, lazy stare unnerved me. He was taking a deep enough look to see the real me for the first time as Aaron had stared me down in his kitchen last night.

  Shark’s gaze remained on me, but his words were meant for Aaron. His forehead creased like he was having a hard time trying to decide something. His eyes squinted as he continued to study his son and me.

  “Son, you know I’m a man of my word. Martha’s thirty days are up tomorrow. I think she’s proven that she can be trusted. Do you want me to take her where she needs to go and drop her off or do you want to do it?”

  He didn’t say out back, so I guess that meant Shark hadn’t decided to kill me. Although I believe I’d done enough to earn the MC’s trust, I’d also seen and heard enough that it wouldn’t be a stretch for them to still want to put a bullet in my head.

  Aaron frowned as he glanced from his father to me, likely just realizing our time had come to an end.

  “I’ll take her,” Aaron said, his voice tight.

  Shark turned towards me. “Consider your sister’s debt paid. I’ll put the word out to the MC that they are to leave her crack head-ass alone. What is her name again?”

  The fact that Shark couldn’t remember mine or my sister’s name was not reassuring, considering I’d worked a month to clear the debt she owed to the MC.

  “My name is Megan, not Martha, and my sister’s name is Jennifer. Thank you for keeping your word.”

  Shark nodded and gave me a strange look before waving back at his son and hiking back to his truck. I think he sensed something was off the way he kept glancing back at Aaron and me.

  * * *

  Before cooking the last meal I’d likely make for Aaron, I took a long hot shower. His face had drooped, and he was quieter than usual. Was he going to miss me? Men like him didn’t miss women. They usually had a line of them waiting their turn.

  When I handed him his second beer, he gripped my hand after transferring and setting the beer on the small table next to him. We sat there with him gripping my wrist until he made the decision to pull me onto his lap. I straddled his legs, inching my pelvis closer to his although I didn’t think his intention was for sex.

  His heavy gaze searched my face as his hands massaged my thigh and lower back. He reached up and brushed one of my escaped curls from my face. Unrecognizable emotions flashed in the strained lines of his handsome face. Emotions that I didn’t expect and was not prepared to see.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful, Megan.”

  My bottom lip inched away from the top as my body ceased all movement. I wasn’t much of a talker, but his unexpected compliment left me speechless. I think he noticed as I was pretty much a deer in headlights. He gave me a soft peck on the lips and pulled back to glance into my face. His
penetrating emotion-filled gaze scared the shit out of me. This was not the Aaron I’d come to know. He wasn’t soft and sensual and careful.

  However, it seemed he was attempting to be careful with whatever he was about to tell me. Please God, not the L-word. Not with Aaron. Not right now. Not with me. I was too messed up. Too complicated and twisted. And so was he.

  “I have to be honest with you,” he said with a pinched brow. “The news about tomorrow being your last day has my mind all fucked up.”

  Relief swept through me. It wasn’t that dreaded L-bomb, but it was nearly as bad. What the hell was I supposed to say after he’d admitted something like that? We were supposed to be fucking, not feeling. However, when it came to Aaron, no matter how much my brain thought one thing, my damn mouth said something different.

  “I know. It was all I could think about on the drive back.”

  Aaron kissed me hard. His urgent lips crashed into me as his strong tongue seem to wrap circles around the slippery contours of mine. After a moment, the harshness of the kiss died, and it started to soften and become delicate and slow.

  I drew back, eyeing Aaron like I didn’t know who the hell I was kissing. This was not his way. This shit was scary in a way that it had me jittery and anxious to get out of his lap. He couldn’t even hold my eye contact. His head landed on my shoulder as he tugged me into him, gripping me like he wasn’t ever going to see me again.

  Truth was he wasn’t going to see me again. Was this his goodbye? I was not good with goodbyes. Goodbyes fucked with your head, as he’d just admitted that I was fucking with his. Goodbyes had you doubting what you’d already made up your mind to do. I couldn’t let anything sway me from doing what I knew I should. I needed to get back home and resume my life.

  “Stay a few more days,” he uttered the statement into my neck, barely above a whisper.

  I drew back, searching his eyes. “No,” I said, surprising myself as much as I seemed to have surprised him.

  His jaw tightened at my rejection. I shook my head, attempting to rid it of the self-doubt creeping in. My eyes pinched as I glared into his, fighting to be strong when all I wanted to do was give in to his request.

  He appeared hurt, and I felt the need to explain myself.

  “I hate goodbyes even worse than I hate dragging them out. We should rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. You drop me off at the airport and let that be it. I had the best sex of my life with you, fun moments, murderous moments, an all-around whirlwind adventure, but I have a life I need to get back to, and so do you.”

  He didn’t say anything. He only stared at me and considered my words. His left eye twitched and his expression was almost painful like he was having a hard time accepting the reality of our situation.

  “Fuck. You’re right.” He shook his head, trying to accept what I’d said.

  I reminded him, “If you think I’d ever tell anyone about what happened here, I won’t. I participated too. Killed someone too, and I don’t feel bad about it, considering they hunted you down to come and kill you.”

  After those words, he kissed me with such tender and delicate ease that it was like I’d kissed an entirely different person. My damn insides were fluttering like crazy, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  This kiss… Damn if it wasn’t the most intoxicating kiss I’d ever had, but more than that, it was filled to the brim with pure, raw, uncut emotion; the kind of emotion that scared the shit out of you. It was the kind that made you do dumb shit. But such emotion didn’t belong to Aaron and me.

  He pulled away, breathing harshly. When he glanced at me this time, I didn’t miss it. Right there in his eyes. My eyebrows shot up so fast that I’m sure they landed at the top of my hairline.

  Aaron jumped up and almost sent me tumbling to the floor, but he gripped my wrists in time to keep me from falling.

  “I need to get some fucking air. For fuck’s sake, I can’t take this shit,” he expressed, shaking his head as if he were attempting to shake off whatever had climbed into his body.

  He dropped my wrists and shivered before he took off towards his front door. I understood what he meant about not being able to take this because I couldn’t move. I stood there, shaking and staring at the door he’d stepped out of. The level of emotions he’d dredged up in me scared me shitless and excited me at the same damn time.

  When Aaron returned two hours later, we ate and talked about every damn thing except what was so obviously between us. Had it been there, hidden between us the entire time? We’d fooled ourselves into thinking we could fuck without emotion, ignore the strong chemistry between us, and move on without a second thought. We had been so fucking wrong that the truth of our situation was drowning us.

  Later that night, Aaron fucked me into oblivion, and he fucked me some more after that. By the time we fell asleep, it was after 2:00 a.m., and I was having a fucking crisis of conscience. A part of me wanted to stay with Aaron, but the part of me that made the hard decisions had won the battle.

  Chapter 19

  Aaron - Day 30

  Sleep didn’t come easy last night even after I fucked myself into what I assumed was a minor coma. The idea of Megan leaving didn’t sit well no matter how much I attempted to convince myself otherwise. I’d developed feelings for her…feelings I’d never had for any other woman. They were feelings I didn’t even think I could produce.

  I didn’t have to reach to know that Megan wasn’t in bed with me. I sensed the emptiness before I raised my head.

  She was likely making me breakfast for the last time. She was one of the most extraordinary women I’d ever met. There weren’t many women that could take the kind of murder and mayhem that usually revolved around my life. Not only did Megan prove that she could take it, but she was also capable of dishing it out.

  It should have been me in that tub of acid in that grave in the woods instead of Chuck, Clint, and Dutch. If Megan hadn’t been brave enough to pull that suicidal shit and react against two men with guns intent on killing us, we’d likely be dead. She had saved my life. My father claimed she’d also saved Wade’s life by shooting Scud. Did she have any idea the level of respect she’d earned from my MC in such a short time? Maybe I saw what I wanted to see in my father, but when my father found out she’d saved my life, I could have sworn I’d seen pride flashed in his eyes.

  Megan was the kind of woman I’d been searching for my entire life and today was her last day with me. All these years it seemed that no woman had ever been good enough for me and could never fully satisfy me the way I wanted. None had ever understood my personality. Megan did. She fit. She made sense to me. She understood me. Knowing what little I knew about her, I knew her well enough to know that once she left, she wasn’t coming back, no matter what kind of feelings were swimming between us.

  I crept down to the kitchen and like I thought, she’d made me breakfast. Where the hell was she, though? She was nowhere in sight. I stood there for a frozen moment, glancing around my empty kitchen that held the scent of cleaning products beyond the aroma of bacon and eggs.

  As I stepped past the table, a chill rode me so hard that I shrugged my shoulders trying to roll it away.

  The silence in my house grew more intense the longer I searched and didn’t see Megan. Her phone was gone. The guest room she’d only slept in for two nights of her fifteen-day stay was clean and empty. Her backpack was not in the living room closet. No trace of her was left.

  She was gone. I knew it. I sensed it. But, dammit, I didn’t want to accept it.

  When I stepped out onto my porch, my gaze ran past my parked truck and panned around to the woods that surrounded my place, particularly the area I’d informed her was eight miles in the direction of the town.

  “She fucking didn’t.” The words flew past my lips as my feet bounded the steps. A dusty gust of wind came out of nowhere and swept against me as I skittered over sticks, rocks, and dirt. I was headed towards the eight-mile stretch of densely popula
ted woods.

  Megan had expressed to me that running was one of her most well-liked hobbies. I’d seen her run, ten, twelve, and even fourteen miles on that damn treadmill. If she’d wanted to get away from me, she was in damn good enough shape to leave whenever she wanted to.

  It didn’t take me but a minute to find the disturbed earth, broken twigs below my shoulder level, and a few broken branches that she’d stepped on. She damn sure wasn’t kidding about not wanting to say goodbye.

  My first thought was to hop in my truck and see if I could track her to town, but I discarded the idea. She’d been right. We needed to rip the Band-Aid off. Nothing good would come of us attempting to forge something that wasn’t meant to be.

  I sat on my steps and stared at that stretch of woods for an hour. My earlobes tingled to have her whispering her motivating curse words into my ear, telling me how good I was fucking her. My fingers ached to touch any part of her lush and intoxicating body. The sight of all that soft and silky brown skin had turned me on like nothing else ever had. My nostrils flared for a remnant of her sweet smell. My tongue skimmed across my lips, wishing it were her juices passing over them to rain all over my tongue. My dick throbbed, aching to sink into her magical pussy.

  I sat there, waiting, I suppose, for her to change her mind and come out of those woods. The fucking insects and birds teased me with their buzzing melodies as they sat high in the trees.

  She had fucking left, disappeared like she’d never existed. The longer I sat, the angrier I became. The darkness that constantly lingered at my back loomed, taunting and laughing at me too.

  A devilish smile inched across my lips as I leveled my daring gaze at those woods. I was the one the MC called on when they needed someone found. Therefore, if I really wanted to, I could find Megan.