Final Absolution: An MC Romance (Savage Kings MC Book 20) Read online

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  Savage Redemption

  “My life was all about revenge until I met her.”

  I want them destroyed.

  The Anarchists killed my father, haunt me and my brother, and seek to destroy my club, the Savage Kings.

  For years, I have stopped at nothing to annihilate them.

  But for years, I also never forgot her.

  She was everything to me.

  She brought joy to my life.

  And I had to leave her without explanation.

  But a chance encounter has brought her back to me.

  And now, everything has changed.

  My life is now all about having her—and nothing can stop me.

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  Final Absolution

  Carter Steele

  Contents

  1. Zane

  2. Renee

  3. Zane

  4. Renee

  5. Zane

  6. Renee

  Epilogue

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  1

  Zane

  I knew which apartment was Renee’s.

  And I knew by the fact that Owen’s bike was parked outside of it that she was in serious danger.

  No, I didn’t have actual proof. I hadn’t seen him enter her apartment. I hadn’t gotten any text or notice from her that she was in danger and needed help. There was nothing of that nature.

  But I just knew on a very deep level that she was in trouble. And I knew on a shallow level, too.

  “Follow me,” I said quietly to Landon as we both cut off our bikes. “And get ready to kill Owen.”

  “You think he’s in—”

  “I know, trust me,” I growled.

  We had no time for theatrics or subtlety. I just had to hope that we had enough time from our entry to targeting Owen to kill him without him hurting Renee. Because God help the world if Renee so much as suffered a bruise from him; the hell there would be to pay would be unlike anything anyone had ever seen.

  Everything that transpired next probably happened over the span of no more than a dozen seconds, maybe twenty. But as they occurred and as I went through them, everything seemed to move in slow-motion; everything seemed to carry such weight that each second lasted an hour.

  First, I raised my leg, kicked her door down, and rose my gun, the barrel rising before the door had even slammed into the wall. I took one step forward and saw Owen raising his gun toward me… but Renee was right beneath him. I fired, but I missed. Owen, in turn, fired, and I had to take cover behind the wall.

  “Shit!” Owen roared.

  I turned back around to see Owen having taken cover behind a kitchen table. Renee crawled on all fours out of the crossfire to what looked like her bedroom. At least she was safe. But as soon as she disappeared, my mind erased her from my thoughts. The only thing that mattered right now was killing Owen, no matter what it took.

  “We got him pinned!” Landon yelled.

  “And he’s got a shitload of bullets,” I growled.

  It was true. I had counted the number of shots that he’d fired, and he had gone well beyond eight by this point. He either had multiple guns, or he was incredible at reloading in a very short window of time. It was well known during his time at the Savage Kings that he was an expert in weapons, but I didn’t think that would have made him a god at reloading.

  I looked up above him. There was a chandelier above him, not a fancy one, but one with a lot of glass anyways. We weren’t going to move in on him without getting damaged in some fashion; he had too much distance on us and too much ammo. And even though he’d run out eventually, we’d run out first.

  But if we could find a way to distract him, to divert his attention from us and toward something else…

  Three shots. You get three shots to make this work.

  I took a deep breath, turned in a moment when Owen wasn’t firing, and aimed my pistol at the chandelier. The first shot missed. The second shot hit one of the bulbs, but the splaying glass didn’t make Owen react. The third…

  Missed.

  One more.

  I took one more shot, aiming at the chain holding the chandelier. This time, my accuracy was finally on point. The chandelier severed from the ceiling, dropping straight on Owen. Landon reacted a half-second after I did, but by that point, I was already storming in, oblivious to whatever Landon was doing on my six. I turned the table, pinned his wrist with my boot, and pointed my gun straight at him.

  “What did you do to her?!?” I roared.

  Owen just looked up at me, laughed, and shook his head.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, you little—”

  I shot him square in the forehead.

  And that was the last that anyone ever heard of Owen. Good fucking riddance, scum.

  “Holy shit,” Landon said, and suddenly, time seemed to get back to its normal pace. It was like everything started to rush forward, and I honestly felt a little overwhelmed. I’d just killed the last scourge of Romara to the Savage Kings… I’d just saved my therapist and love interest… and I’d done it all not as a member of the Savage Kings, but as something of a rogue vigilante. “That’s it. He’s dead.”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a few deep breaths. “This place is gonna be a mess. People will have heard us. Sheriff Jones is going to be here in a matter of minutes.”

  “I can take care of that, that’s no problem,” Landon said.

  “You sure?”

  “Wasn’t he the one that sent your ass to therapy in the first place because he arrested you?”

  That was a good point that was hard to argue with.

  “Yeah, I’ll take care of him when he shows up.”

  I nodded, taking a second to just contemplate what had just happened.

  And how would Renee react to all of this? How would she feel knowing that she had nearly lost her life, and then we had saved her? I didn’t say that from the perspective of expecting to be owed anything. I simply just wondered if, as a therapist, she had ever encountered a situation so… well, so unusual.

  I had my doubts that she had even read anything like this, let alone experienced a patient like this.

  “Hey, you did good, man,” Landon said. “Go. Go take care of Renee. I promise that I will take care of everything else here, OK?”

  I smiled.

  “OK, thanks man.”

  I walked up to the door to her room, which she had slammed shut. I took a deep breath. Whatever she does, however she reacts, that’s up to her. You have to accept it.

  I knocked.

  2

  Renee

  I sat in my apartment, a blanket over me, as I curled up in the fetal position in my bed. Zane and Landon were still taking care of final details outside, but frankly, I just wanted Zane by my side right now.

  Was that so wrong to think? He was still, technically speaking, a client of mine.

  But I think the whole, you know, almost getting murdered and then witnessing a literal fight to the death in my apartment was enough that I could have used some comfort right now.

  I definitely knew I was going to need my own therapist when this was all said and done. Just because I was a trained therapist didn’t mean that I didn’t need someone else to lean on; I had my own blind spots, although I couldn’t exactly call what had just transpired a “blind spot.”

  I heard their muffled voices say something that sounded like “I’ll take it from here,” and “OK, thanks,” followed by someone—I presumed Landon�
��walking away and out the door. I heard the sound of a siren coming as well, but as I tensed for the next several seconds, I never heard anyone enter the room.

  Eventually, the sound of a car and a motorcycle both driving away filled my ears, making me believe that Landon and Sheriff Jones—or perhaps someone else—had spoken and had departed. I knew the sheriff and the club had some sort of unspoken agreement, but that didn’t mean that I understood it to any degree. As far as I was concerned, lying here in bed, I just wanted to make sure I was on the side of safety, and I think I had hedged my bets well enough.

  A knock came at my door. I mumbled “come in,” though I couldn’t really say the words came out with any energy or force. The door creaked open, revealing Zane standing. He stepped inside and shut the door quietly, eying me the whole time.

  “You OK?” he said. “I wouldn’t wish what you just went through upon anyone.”

  “Well, I could lie and say I’m fine, but I think you would see through that pretty well,” I said. “And besides, it wouldn’t be very professional of me to lie.”

  Zane gave a half-chuckle, like he thought halfway through he was being insensitive by laughing. He came to the edge of the bed and put his hand on my shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze.

  “I’d try and give you some advice, but I think you’d probably laugh at them, given how you’re a professional and all.”

  “Nonsense,” I said with a slight smile. “We all need advice now and then. Just because I help others for a living doesn’t mean that I’m very good at helping myself.”

  “That bad, huh,” he said.

  I deliberately made space on the bed, hoping that he would pick up the hint. Fortunately—though perhaps not for reasons I wanted to consider—Zane was an expert at picking up subtle cues from women, and he got on the bed, slid under the blanket, and cuddled up against me. It was the first close touch we’d had since I was high, but now I was sober as could be.

  And let me tell you, it felt even better sober. Although “better” is a hard word to describe anything with everything that just happened here.

  “I’m sorry for what you’re going through,” he said.

  “I appreciate it.”

  I took a breath.

  “It’s nice having you here again like this.”

  I guess honesty had a way of winning out when you were that close to death, even if it potentially risked everything that you had built with your career.

  “I know last time we wound up in this spot, we were both a little whacked out of our minds. That was a bit on purpose, given that I wasn’t ready to do it in any sober state. But now… well…”

  I turned over to face Zane. For a guy who was so adept at saying so much and being boisterous, he was keeping perfectly quiet right now.

  And it was the exact right thing to get me closer to him.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  And closer…

  And soon, we were so close, our lips could touch. My eyes closed.

  And his lips brushed up upon mine. I wrapped him up, and his arms came into me.

  And just like that, we were doing what we should not have done but were doing anyways. And unlike at the hotel, when I had looked for a reason to get out of it, here, I just let things happen. I couldn’t exactly say that I was gung-ho about it and eager for it to happen, but there was no real resistance on my part. Whatever happened, I was willing to let happen.

  His hand reached for my pants and pulled down. I smiled, but the enthusiasm normally reserved for sex wasn’t quite there. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t want this to go down—my body was yearning for him, and my hips were quivering in anticipation.

  It was more just… it wasn’t the special kind of sex that I had envisioned having with someone else. There were too many mental barriers in my head to get to that point.

  He pressed his lips up against my sex. The physical sensation sent a chill through my body, and I murmured gently as the tingling spread from my hips to my breasts to my neck and to everywhere else. Zane certainly had skill, and the experience of getting eaten out certainly felt amazing. Pretty fucking good…

  For one of your patients.

  The thought immediately impeded any progress I had toward orgasm. I didn’t stop him, and it still felt good, but the emotional block was too strong. I wasn’t going to come.

  I let Zane go for a little longer so I didn’t make him feel bad, but after a couple minutes, I pulled him and gave him a gentle kiss. I’m sure the picked up that something wasn’t committed on my end, but that didn’t stop him from wrapping a condom on and then hovering in position.

  This was the last chance I had to ask him to stop. But I didn’t really want him to stop. It was almost like I felt like I had to let this keep going in order to… well, I don’t know what. Be with him? The only way that’s going to happen is if you remove all the emotional hurdles. Get rid of him as a patient. Just be with him as a romantic interest.

  But what was I going to do, pause and have that conversation on the spot right there?

  He entered in me, and the physical rush of his enormous cock filling me was incredible. There was nothing bad I could say about the sensations rushing through my body. I just accepted that I wasn’t going to orgasm, and let the experience ride out.

  I think Zane picked up about halfway through that I just wasn’t into it as much as he was, because he went from a gentle sort of rhythm designed to push me to orgasm to something resembling a jackhammer just trying to finish the job. I moaned and encouraged him to keep going, saying his name and grinding my hips into him, but it wasn’t anything that was passionate. It was a means to an end.

  When Zane finally came, after a couple of seconds, he pulled out, and rolled over… away from me. Both of us stared at the ceiling, a bit in disbelief that that had happened. I wasn’t mad or disturbed or upset; I was just sort of numb. I’d just nearly had my life taken, and I’d just had sex with the man who had saved me. That the savior was my patient wasn’t even something that crossed my mind right there; that thought had entered into my brain enough.

  “You OK?” he said after several seconds.

  I gulped.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “You guess?”

  It was a literal statement. I didn’t know how I felt, honestly. There was so much confusion in my head and so much uncertainty that saying I was OK was a best approximation of how I felt.

  “A lot just happened, Zane,” I said. “I feel good, physically. But trying to make sense of this… it’s all too much right now.”

  Zane opened his mouth, like he was about to say something to me that could have overburdened me even more. The last thing I needed right now was a pitch of any kind from him; just his presence was really all that I had asked for. That we had fallen into sex was a result of this, not the goal. But the sex had, obviously, complicated things.

  Thankfully, perhaps showing a bit of maturity for his youthful self, he kept his mouth shut and just nodded. Silence crept over the two of us for another couple of minutes as I let my mind sprint through all of the various thoughts.

  “I just need some time to process everything, Zane,” I said.

  “I get it,” he said, though I knew he thought he was done for with that statement. “I’ll let you have your space.”

  He didn’t say it bitterly or resentfully. He did, however, start to get dressed. I remained on my bed, watching him, less with admiration for his body—which was admittedly pretty fucking great—and wondering instead how the hell this was all going to play out.

  I kept going back to the thing that I always told my patients—be truthful with yourself.

  But it was hard to be truthful with myself when I could barely separate fact from fiction in my head.

  The one thing I was starting to come around to, though, was the idea that I needed to drop him as a patient. Even if we didn’t start dating or hooking up again, too much had happened between us personally. I owed it to
Zane and to myself to end that particular relationship.

  As I watched him go, though, it was anyone’s guess whether other types of relationship would blossom in its place or if this was the end of the line.

  3

  Zane

  That was probably the most awkward sex I have ever had in my life.

  Is it bad that I want to have her again? Maybe at a point when she’s not n a mess of a space?

  Too many questions ran through my head, none of them good or productive, as I headed back to my bike and drove back home. The overall feeling was one of relief that Owen was gone and that Renee was safe, but that didn’t mean it was at the exclusion of everything else. Instead, I just had the nagging sense that for all that we had built toward, a fleeting moment of sexual intimacy had made it so awkward that it couldn’t be worked back in again.

  It didn’t really help matters that when I got home, I saw one text from Renee.

  “I’m releasing you from my client list, Zane. You don’t have to come on Friday mornings anymore.”

  I should have felt enormous relief. After all, I had the sleep schedule of a college student who went out on Thursday nights.

  But I didn’t. I just wondered if I was supposed to read into it that I wasn’t supposed to contact her again. If our professional relationship ending meant any personal one would also go out the door. Logically? Probably not.