Temperance (Defiance #4) Read online

  *

  Caspar watched Tru dancing with her friends. Even though they were on high alert, so far there hadn’t been any blowback from the murders of Big C and Fletcher.

  No, the Defiance members wanted Declan out, but for much different reasons. But none of them had made the connection that Declan had been the assassin. It helped that it’d been set up to look like a war between the two factions. And if Rebel and Declan had been able to come back before most people were let up from the underground, it might’ve worked perfectly. But now that they’d been gone for two nights, Caspar knew it was inevitable that Defiance members would put two and two together.

  Before this, no one noticed they’d been missing, not with the storms keeping everyone underground and separate. Tonight was the first night that the rain receded enough to hang out outside, at least under the tents. And Caspar heard rumblings, members putting the pieces together when they couldn’t find Rebel—and by extension, Declan.

  Caspar refused to say a word beyond the announcement of the killings. Rebel and Declan would be back soon enough and then he’d deal with everything. But for now, it was time to party and blow off some steam.

  Kian, the Kill Devils president, had rolled in with his bodyguards a couple of hours after Declan and Rebel left. When Lance was in charge of Defiance, the Kill Devils were most definitely enemies. And when Caspar took over, that seemed like it wouldn’t change…until Tru came into the picture. Tru was a legacy of Defiance, but she’d run before the Chaos. And she’d come back three years post-storm to find Caspar home from the military, trying to deal with what the world had become.

  Lance had still been in charge, but Tru had picked Caspar. And Caspar had murdered Kian’s brother, thereby helping Kian take control of the Kill Devils.

  Now, the two MCs were tightly banded, although they tended to keep that information quiet. For both their benefit.

  “Kev and Carter here?” Kian asked now as they stood together, surveying the scene.

  “Sent them on their run with their crew,” Caspar informed him.

  “How are they?” Kian asked tightly.

  “Not great.” Caspar had gotten the call from Kev last week when he’d made the discovery of the body parts strewn in the road. Caspar had told Kev to try to identify the men…and to his credit, Kev had already done so, had come back to Defiance, covered in blood, shaken, but with a frayed Kill Devils patch.

  “My men?” Kian asked now.

  “What’s left of them,” Caspar said bluntly. “We counted ten of them.” God, not all the body parts had been there, so Caspar had to rely on the heads. He’d recognized some of the men, but Kian’s MC had many rogue members who lived out this way. “Their rockers were gone. No wallets or anything else to identify them.”

  “They took the body parts with tattoos,” Kian said quietly.

  “Burned them.”

  “Fuck me,” Kian muttered. “I need to bury my men.”

  “That’s why my men are standing by to help you.” Caspar paused. “Supposed to be Defiance,” Caspar said.

  “We could be targets just as easily,” Kian protested. But none of it mattered in the end. What did was who was willing to kill that brutally. “It’s not the LoV. Bullshit they did the massacre at Keller’s.”

  “With Fletcher,” Caspar reminded him, but both men knew what—who—they suspected was pulling the strings. They were just too motherfucking superstitious to say the name out loud.

  “Did you talk to Keller about it?” Kian asked finally.

  “Yes.”

  “Are we all on the same page?”

  “Yes.” Caspar had already filled Kian in about the most recent assassinations—right before they happened. “Reb’s going to be pissed I didn’t tell him sooner.”

  “Then maybe you should’ve.” Kian sat back and Caspar shot him the finger. “Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty—except mine.”

  “Fuck.” Caspar ran his hands through his hair. “Knew getting in with Keller meant war, but this is major.”

  “Take ’em a while before they realize who fucked ’em. If they ever do,” Kian offered. “In the meantime…”

  In the meantime, the Nomads were coming—Caspar could feel them, like they were riding the fucking wind or something. When he was younger, he’d convinced himself they were some goddamned fucked up MC fairy-tale myth. He knew better now, but he wished he didn’t.

  As if reading his mind, Kian said, “Nomads are evil fuckers.” Kian spit after he said the MC’s name, then knocked the back of Caspar’s wooden chair.

  Caspar couldn’t blame the guy’s superstitions. Since Declan had mentioned the Nomads at the last meeting, his sleep had been more fucked than usual. Lying next to Tru had gone a long way toward helping him over the past years, but something about the idea of the Nomads actually surfacing? Nightmare-inducing.

  “You were hoping they’d been destroyed?” Kian asked him now.

  “You blame me?”

  “Not a bit.” Kian drew a long drag from his homemade cigarette. He rolled them expertly with one hand—so his other hand was always free to grab his weapon, he’d explain to anyone who asked—in seconds. Something that mesmerized everyone, especially the women. Tru had told Caspar many of the women on the Defiance compound would be willing to pull up stakes to go with Kian if asked.

  Kian definitely enjoyed his time at Defiance, but he wasn’t in the market for commitment…beyond committing to his MC helping Defiance. At least that’s what he told everyone. But the way he watched Kat? Yeah. Caspar wanted to pat him on the back and wish the miserable bastard luck. Instead, he’d sit the fuck down and watch the show.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Re-entry to Defiance was a bitch, in all respects. First, the storm had made most of the roads back almost impassable. It was slow going, even in Declan’s truck, which was built like a tank and able to power through pretty much anything. Rebel still white-knuckled it through, refusing to let Declan take the wheel.

  Why Rebel was babying the fuck out of him, neither of them understood, but Declan had stopped fighting it. Especially once he realized that Rebel wasn’t pitying him—not by a long shot.

  “I know what I’m walking back into,” Declan had assured him this morning, right before they’d gotten on the road. And he’d been right. At the gates, there were a swarm of men, all wanting answers. It was only when Caspar appeared, shooting a shotgun into the air several times to break the shit up, that the truck could pull through.

  With Caspar in the backseat. He didn’t say anything, not until the mob was behind them. And then he asked, “You both okay?”

  “Fine, yeah,” Declan said absently.

  Rebel could only nod. “Doesn’t seem like things are okay here.”

  Caspar stared back at him through the rearview. “They’ll deal. Had to be done.”

  Rebel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You sound like…wait, you knew what was going to happen?” Caspar continued to stare at him, obviously annoyed at being questioned. But Rebel didn’t care. “You sent me in unprepared. What the fuck?”

  “Sent you in with Declan. Call that prepared, Reb.” With that, Caspar slid out of the truck. It was only Declan’s hand on his arm that stopped Rebel from following.

  “Don’t fuck with him,” Declan told him. He was right—Rebel heard the barely controlled anger in his voice. “I’m going to take on the retaliation from this MC, so he doesn’t have to. I’m okay with it.”

  Rebel would have to take it on too—guilt by association.

  “It was necessary,” Declan continued.

  “I don’t know what the fuck to believe anymore.”

  “You can believe everything I told you,” Declan said quietly. He took his hand away and Rebel stared out into the darkness, the CD that’d been playing while they were driving restarting and swirling around him.

  He hadn’t even heard Declan get out of the truck. Once he realized he was alone, he got out and dragged both their
bags down into the tube. But Declan wasn’t there either.

  He found him ten minutes later by following the yelling.

  Declan was in the middle of the circle, fighting upward of seven Defiance members. Or at least that’s how it appeared to have started. By the time he got there, Declan had taken down four men, incapacitating them easily…more easily than they should’ve gone down.

  Caspar stood at the edge of the group, his icy gaze on the scene. Rebel couldn’t jump in while Caspar was there, not giving orders to break it up.

  And really, Declan was doing fine. More than fine, actually. Watching him manhandle the men stirred something in Rebel.

  He can protect you.

  He can handle you.

  It was nothing he didn’t know, but seeing it illustrated in spectacular Technicolor made it crystal clear. He shoved his hands in his pockets in case his dick took the lead and gave his feelings away.

  Declan squared off against the final man. His hair glinted blond in the last of the sunlight, his eyes burned as Kiefer, the biggest of the bunch, taunted, “You gonna have us exterminated?”

  “I can do that all by myself,” Declan promised. “Want to meet your maker now? I’ll give you a final smoke. Or wank, if you prefer.”

  The man’s eyes went cold with anger, especially after Caspar snorted. Rebel wondered if Declan was hinting at something about the man’s sexuality, goading him.

  Rebel was sure the big man had goaded him first. He forced himself to stand there and watch Declan make quick work out of Kiefer.

  “Think we’re fuckin’ done here,” Caspar called then. “Everyone back to your goddamned tubes. Rain’s comin’ in.”

  And it was. Rebel heard the rumble and, as he walked Declan back to his tube, lightning tore the sky in half, illuminating Declan’s face. Declan wouldn’t meet his gaze, stared straight ahead, not picking up the pace even as the rain and hail started. They were both pretty soaked when they got safely inside the tube, and only then did Rebel ask him, “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “Guess they missed me.” He shrugged. “Thought they weren’t supposed to know we were gone.”

  “They didn’t, at first. Storms fucked it up. And they’ve been underground for days. They’re all pent-up—nervous about the murders. They don’t know what the fuck to do with themselves.” Rebel paused. “They don’t know you killed those two men.”

  Declan laughed a little, with zero humor behind it. “Come on, Reb. Not too hard to figure out. Even MC men can put two and two together.”

  Rebel’s brows raised but he let that go in favor of tending to the few cuts Declan bore. He guided Declan to the bed, sat him down, got a washcloth and the first aid kit and began to gently wipe Declan’s face. His lower lip was split, and there was a cut above his eyebrow, and Rebel carefully got rid of the drying blood without resplitting it, and then he covered the cut in steri-strips.

  He ran his hand along the side of Declan’s face. “It shouldn’t scar.”

  Declan rolled his eyes. “They all do.”

  “That’s all you can goddamned say?”

  “I could add that you almost came when you watched me fight.”

  Of course the fucker would notice that. Hell, maybe that was even part of why he’d fought in the first place. “You couldn’t just come back here and lie low?”

  “No, I couldn’t. I won’t. Fuck off, Reb, if that’s what you’re expecting,” Declan spat, then took a deep breath. “Look, I fucking hated that you had to be involved. I don’t want you involved.”

  “But I was—I am. I’m in this up to my fucking neck,” Rebel growled. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  The tension between them was thick as the night—the fight had only made things worse, wound them both up past the point of no return. They were walking dangerous ground.

  Declan and Bishop were both assassins for Keller…except that Declan didn’t seem to let it bother him. Rebel tried to ponder that, wondered what the hell that meant about Declan. What it meant for him since he was attracted to Declan. “How do you do this shit and not let it affect you?”

  “You think I’ll lose sleep over this?” Declan growled. He grabbed Rebel’s hand and put it on his chest, where some of the deepest scars were. “You’ve felt them from day one. These happened during my kidnapping. I was sixteen. It was right before the Chaos. So yeah, I don’t have guilt in getting rid of people who deserve it. I don’t agree with a lot of my father’s methods, but this? I’m in.”

  Rebel let out a harsh breath. Declan let go of his wrist, but Rebel kept his hand on the scars, traced them with his fingertip, even though his eyes never left Declan’s face. “We’re all fucked up, Dec.”

  “You think I don’t know you are? That I didn’t get it from the first night?”

  Rebel tried to jerk away, because he hadn’t expected the conversation to go there. And Declan wasn’t letting him run, not this time.

  “I hate MCs. Hate what they stand for, their barbaric shit. But the Chaos changed a lot of them, especially Defiance.”

  “So you hate MCs.”

  “And you hate Keller’s men,” Declan shot back. “But nothing’s changed. I’m still the same guy you fell for. Who I am shouldn’t matter.”

  “Everything’s changed. And it matters to me.” Rebel slammed against him, but Declan wasn’t letting that happen. It was the first real, physical fight they’d ever had, and for the first time, Rebel realized that Declan could’ve been easily overpowering him this entire time, but never did. Instead, Declan was choosing to remain submissive, and it pissed Rebel off more, thinking that the guy was doing it because he sensed Rebel’s unwillingness to be touched.

  But when Declan pinned him, holding his full weight against Rebel, chest to chest, Rebel started to flip. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that Declan was tough—the guy was a Keller soldier and an assassin, after all. But with Declan on top of him, pinning him, forcing him down…

  He was okay for like half a second. Because it was Dec. But Dec was Keller’s fucking son. The betrayal of that ripped through him, nearly flayed him. The fact that he was being held down? That made everything worse.

  “Get off me,” he told Declan.

  “Not until you listen.”

  “Declan…” His voice sounded far away to his own ears, his face flushed and his ears buzzed. He wasn’t in Declan’s room anymore. He was eight years old and the shit that was happening to him would ruin him forever, it seemed.

  “Rebel, come on. Breathe,” Declan was saying. It took Rebel a few moments to realize Dec had moved off him. That he was telling Rebel exactly what Rebel would tell Luna when she had her panic attacks. Finally, he rolled onto his side and stared straight ahead at the wall. Declan stroked some hair off Rebel’s face and said, “What happened just now has nothing to do with whose son I am.”

  “Fuck you. You’re an assassin, not a shrink.”

  “That’s how easily I see it. You think I don’t notice that I’m not allowed to touch you? That we don’t fuck so much as you fuck me?”

  “If you’re not satisfied…”

  Declan pinned him again, fast, and Rebel forced himself to remain calm. “I’m satisfied, Reb. But I’m worried. You’re a ticking time bomb.”

  Rebel bucked hard, backing Declan off him. Rebel got up and Declan did too, and the men circled each other as Rebel observed, “Convenient to say that now.”

  “Yeah, everything about this is really convenient. Are you ever going to tell me what happened to you?” Declan asked him point blank. His voice was low and dangerous, his eyes sparking in a way Rebel hadn’t seen before.

  Even though Declan was the killer, Rebel was the rougher one. But now, with Declan advancing on him, Rebel stumbled back until he hit the wall, the concrete not going anywhere but pressing his body while Declan had advanced to cover his front. “Don’t fucking do this,” Rebel asked him.

  “Why not? I’m supposed to lay all my secrets out on the floor and let y
ou keep all yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  Declan tilted his head and stared at him. Rebel wanted to close his eyes, do anything to break the gaze, but he couldn’t. The man’s hand moved up to his throat, cupped it so Rebel’s Adam’s apple pressed his palm. Not a tight grip, but not a loose one either. It was a hold meant to keep him in place, and along with Declan’s strong body weighing on Rebel, it was surprisingly effective. “Tell me, Rebel. Tell me what the fuck happened to you that I can’t touch you when we have sex.”

  *

  Rebel, to his credit, lifted his chin and allowed the grip. It was an unusual show of submission for him, and Declan took it as a sign of Rebel’s unconscious want to share.

  For now, it was enough.

  Declan moved his hand away. Kissed Rebel’s neck where his hand had been. “You want to know what happened to me?”

  Rebel nodded.

  “The scars? The burns? The beatings? They were all part of it.” He paused. Shut his eyes for a second then forced them open. “So were the rapes.”

  Rebel’s eyes flicked over his face, surprise visible. Declan couldn’t blame him. But Declan had always liked it rough, so that obviously had no connection to what had happened to him. Every time he let Rebel tie him down, he wasn’t reliving the most awful week of his life. He was rising above it, not letting it ruin the kinks he’d been born with.

  Every time he let Rebel tie him down, Declan won. And it felt damned good to win. “I like it when you tie me down. That would’ve been me, no matter if the kidnapping happened or not. You need to know that. To believe it.”

  “I do, Dec.” Rebel’s voice was rough with emotion, but he held it together.

  That’s what allowed Declan to continue. “I told you, I was sixteen when they took me from the boxing gym. My dad’s goddamned gym. I was supposed to be safe there. And at first, I assumed it was about Keller’s money. Because there had been threats before—always threats, but they’d never been followed through on. Keller was—is—fucking crazy. And everyone knew it. But this time…it was different.”