Free REIGN: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel by Meg Jackson Page A

rush. And it hurt.

 
    Reign looked at me as though he could see right through me into my
head. He dropped his hands to his sides, came to sit on the edge of the bed
beside me.

 
    “Do you want me to stay?” he asked. I could see it wouldn’t be an
imposition on him. I shook my head. He couldn’t just stay forever. At some
point, I’d have to be on my own. And that might as well start now. And, I
figured, I was so exhausted I would probably pass out quicker than I thought,
anyway.

 
    “I’m okay. But…you…no one will tell anyone where I am, right?”

 
    “Of course not. We’re not in the habit of selling people out. And I’ll
make sure everyone knows you ain’t even here,” he
said, then paused, seeming to think. “Give me your car keys.”

 
    My chest constricted. What did he want those for? What, was he going
to steal my car? But then why would he ask for my keys? What if he wanted to
strand me here? What if, under all that charm and sincerity, he was just like
Jeremy – worse? What if he was going to make sure I couldn’t leave?

 
    “I’m just going to move it to the municipal lot down the block,” he
said, as though reading my thoughts. “That way, if you’re right and he’s
tracking your wheels, he won’t know where you are, just that you’ve been here
at some point. But if you’re parked right outside your room…”

 
    “Oh. Of course,” I said, still not entirely sold but also seeing the
logic in his proposal. Besides, if I was going to be stuck with an abusive man,
it might as well be an abusive man who was willing to give me mind-blowing
orgasms than one who just wanted to give me reasons to wear concealer. I gave
him my keys from where they sat on the nightstand.

 
    “You won’t…you won’t, like, steal it or anything?”

 
    Reign smiled, finding humor in my panic. I’d have been offended but
that smile was like a get-out-of-jail-free card.

 
    “What would I do with a junker like that? I
only need two wheels. But I am gonna see if we can’t
get you something new to ride around in. Even if you decide to go through with
this fool plan of yours to head to the border, we’ll make sure you get there as
incognito as you can,” he said, reaching out to stroke my cheek. My eyes
closed, my head lolled against his palm, the warmth of him like a panacea for
my fevered mind. He rose, jangling my keys.

 
    “Don’t you run off on me, now,” he said, and I thought I could detect
a hint of actual worry in his plea.

 
    “How can I?” I said, gesturing to the keys he held in his hand. He
looked down at them and smiled, laughing at himself.

 
    “I’ll come back ‘round later, or see you at the bar,” he said, leaning
forward and cupping my chin in his hand, our lips meeting once again, tongues
just barely touching for one soft, blessed moment.

 
    And then he was gone, a shaft of too-bright light appearing in the
room as he swung the door open, then disappearing as he shut it.

 
    Do you know the tale of the tell-tale heart?

 
    As soon as I was alone in that room, it was like that duffel bag in
the safe was the beating heart plaguing the narrator in Poe’s story. I fell
asleep, slowly but surely, to a dull, imagined throbbing sound emanating from
the safe. As though it were alive, glowing and thumping against the walls.
Trying to escape.

 
    A metronome that lulled me to sleep as much as it frightened me.

 
    It could have been my own heartbeat.

~ 8 ~

 
    “Give me a screwdriver, Honey” Reign said, sliding onto a stool in the
tired morning light of the bar. He’d moved Gabriella’s car, loving the smell of
her that lingered in the driver’s seat, and walked the two blocks back to the
bar in a sort of exhausted, lust-or love-struck stupor. He hoped it was just
the former, prayed that it wasn’t the latter. Honey twisted her dishrag around
her hand, looking at him with her eyebrows raised.

 
    “Now what in the hell’s got you