Chapter 5 Chapter 5

Harlow

The clubhouse was quieter than usual that night. Word had already spread about the Reapers hit on the east warehouse. Brothers came in tight-jawed and short-tempered, drank heavier, and left earlier. I kept the glasses full and my mouth shut. Nobody wanted small talk when blood was still drying somewhere across town.

I felt eyes on me before I saw him.

He wasn’t a brother. Just a hangaround who’d been drifting through the edges of the club for a couple of months—mid-thirties, too much gel in his hair, the kind of smile that never reached his eyes. He’d been buying me drinks for the last three nights and taking the refusals like they were part of a game he still thought he could win.

Tonight he waited until the bar thinned out.

I was restocking the bottom shelf when he leaned over the wood, close enough that I caught the sour edge of his cologne.

“Closing soon?” he asked.

“Not for you.”

He laughed like I’d told a joke. “Come on, Harlow. You’ve been playing hard to get all week. Let me take you home. I’ll make it worth your time.”

I straightened and met his eyes. “I’ve already told you no twice. Don’t make me say it a third time.”

Something ugly flickered across his face, but he backed off with both hands raised. “All right. No means no. I hear you.”

I didn’t believe him. Men like that never really heard the word. They just waited for a better angle.

An hour later the last of the regulars filtered out. Knox had already left to handle something with Diesel. Rook was gone. Even the prospect from two nights ago had made himself scarce. I was wiping down the final stretch of bar when I realized the hangaround hadn’t actually left. He was still near the pool tables, watching.

I grabbed my jacket and headed for the side door that led to the lot. The night air hit cool and clean after the smoke inside. My bike sat under the security light, exactly where I’d left it. I was ten steps from it when a hand closed around my upper arm and yanked me sideways.

I hit the side of the storage building hard enough to knock the breath out of me. He crowded in immediately, using his weight to pin me against the corrugated metal. One hand braced beside my head. The other clamped on my hip hard enough to bruise.

“I said no,” I snapped, shoving at his chest.

He didn’t move. “And I said I was done asking nice.” His breath was hot and sour against my face. “You give it up for half the club. Don’t act like you’re suddenly too good.”

I drove my knee up. He twisted at the last second and took it on the thigh, then used the momentum to shove me harder against the wall. His hand slid under my shirt, rough and greedy. Panic flared sharp and bright in my chest—real panic, the kind I hadn’t felt since the night I left my old life behind in a pool of someone else’s blood.

“Get the fuck off me—”

The sound of a fist meeting bone cut me off.

The hangaround’s head snapped sideways. He staggered, lost his grip on me, and went down hard onto the gravel. Wolf was already following him, silent and lethal. He hauled the man up by the front of his shirt and hit him hard again. Cartilage crunched. Blood sprayed across the gravel. A third shot put the guy flat on his back, coughing and trying to curl in on himself.

Wolf stood over him, chest rising and falling once. His voice came out low and flat.

“You touch her again, I take the hand. You look at her again, I take the eyes. You come back to this lot, I put you in the ground. Clear?”

The hangaround made a wet, broken sound that might have been agreement. Wolf stared down at him for another second, then turned his head just enough to look at me.

“You hurt?”

I shook my head. My pulse was still hammering in my throat. My arm ached where the bastard had grabbed me, and I could still feel the imprint of his hand under my shirt, but nothing was broken. “I’m fine.”

Wolf didn’t look convinced. He glanced back at the man on the ground, then at the side door.

“Knox,” he called, not raising his voice. Knox appeared like he’d been waiting for the summons. One look at the scene was enough.

“Get him out of here,” Wolf said. “Make sure he understands the geography.”

Knox nodded, hauled the bleeding hangaround up by one arm, and dragged him toward a waiting van without a word. The lot fell quiet again except for the distant hum of the highway.

I pushed off the wall and straightened my shirt with hands that only trembled a little. Wolf was still watching me. The security light carved hard shadows under his cheekbones and made the green of his eyes look almost black. He looked furious. Not just at the man he’d just beaten. At me. At the situation. At whatever the hell kept pulling us into the same orbit.

“I had it under control,” I said, because silence felt more dangerous.

“No,” he answered, quiet and final. “You didn’t.”

He stepped closer. Close enough that I had to tip my head back to hold his gaze. The same heat that always lived under my skin when he was near flared hot and sudden. My body didn’t seem to care that I’d just been pinned against a wall by someone else. It only cared that Wolf was here, breathing the same air, looking at me like he was one second away from either walking away or doing something irreversible.

“Go home, Harlow,” he said.

Same words as the other night. Different weight behind them.

I should have moved. Should have gotten on my bike and put distance between us before the tension snapped. Instead I stayed exactly where I was, pulse loud in my ears, and asked the question that had been living in my mouth for months.

“Why do you care?”

Something dangerous moved behind his eyes. For a long second I thought he might actually answer. Then he stepped back, the moment fracturing.

“Because this is my club,” he said. “And nobody puts hands on what’s under my roof unless I say so.”

He turned and walked toward the side door without another word. I watched him go until the darkness swallowed the broad line of his shoulders. Only then did I let out the breath I’d been holding.

My hands were still shaking when I climbed onto the bike. Not from fear. From the leftover adrenaline and the far more complicated heat that Wolf left behind every single time he got close.

I started the engine and rode into the night, the taste of almost-violence still sharp on my tongue, and the knowledge that something between us had just shifted whether either of us wanted it to or not.