“You’re wrong, West,” I whispered.

“I’m right, Clara,” he replied not in a whisper.

“She’s all I’ve got, and he was loaning her out,” I reminded him. “Not to mention, I need the money.”

“It worth that to her, to you, to get dead?” he asked.

“You do what you have to do,” I told him on a shrug.

“Yeah, and what you shoulda done is put her in your car and got the fuck outta town, found yourselves jobs doin’ whatever the fuck you could do under names that are not your own and prayed he never found you.”

“He’d find us,” I returned. “Therefore, that really wasn’t an option.”

“Clara, a man like Esposito burns fast, he burns bright and then someone snuffs him out. He’s makin’ enemies everywhere. He is not long for this world. All you had to do was wait him out.”

His point held merit.

“Your point holds merit,” I told him.

He was silent a moment before he burst out laughing, his arms tightening around me, and he rolled me to my back, him on top.

“Though,” I continued, “I didn’t have a biker advisor when I was making this decision.”

“Bad luck, baby,” he said softly.

“Mm,” I mumbled in reply, before I asked, “Are you ever going to let me deliver his message?”

“His message is, no, he’s not gonna pull his shit off our patch. He’s gonna keep sendin’ his dealers in, he’s gonna keep movin’ his product through, and he’s gonna do this too fuckin’ close to our shop. I knew that was his reply to my request the minute you walked in.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m gonna hafta expend the effort of pullin’ his shit off my patch.”

Oh dear.

That didn’t sound good.

“Buck—”

He cut me off.

“No. Me and my brothers got mortgages and mouths to feed. We cannot have customers not show to buy ceiling fans and mix paint because some dealer is makin’ a sale on the corner where they can see. We got a situation where people think it’s cool to buy a paint roller from a bunch of bikers. We don’t need them to think we got seedy shit happening on our turf. That would fuck everything.”

It would, indeed, fuck everything.

Though, I had to admit, his commitment to this seemed pretty intense, considering, as mentioned, he and his boys were pretty rough-looking.

Not to mention, it seemed he knew a whole lot about men like Esposito, Breaker Walinski, and Imran Babić.

I shouldn’t judge.

However…

“So you guys are totally clean?” I asked.

“We are.”

Wow, I thought.

“Wow,” I whispered out loud. Then, “Cool,” I finished.

He was quiet.

I felt his hand rest against my face before he said softly, “And I take clean to my bed, baby.”

Oh dear.

“Buck—”

“You’re cute, Toots, you got courage and you got heart. Now, you gotta use both a’ those to fight for clean.”

Oh God.

“You think I’m dirty?” I whispered, horrified.

“Babe, point of fact is, you take drug and pimp money to deliver messages.”

Oh God.

He did.

He thought I was dirty.

And that felt…

It felt…

Somehow, it felt worse than having everyone in Phoenix think I was insanely greedy or a chump.

A lot worse.

“Please get off me.” I was still whispering.

“Toots—”

“No,” I said, pushing at his shoulders. “Please get off me.”

“Clara, listen to me.”

“No,” I repeated, still pushing at his shoulders and also bucking against his body.

“Cool it, Toots, and listen to me.”

“Get off me.”

He pressed me into the bed with his long frame and his hand slid from my face to my neck and curled around, the pads of his fingers digging in gently to make a point.

“I said, listen to me.”

“No, Buck, you’re judging me again,” I retorted.

“You cannot say what I said isn’t true.”

I stilled. “You’re right. Absolutely right. Now, before I sully your safeguarded cleanliness any further, you should release me from your bed.”

“Babe, don’t piss me off,” he warned. “You’re not lettin’ me finish my point.”

I stared at his face in the semi-dark.

There I was, drunk, naked, stupid, desperate, and in bed with a man I barely knew.

What was wrong with me?

When did it happen?

I’d kept myself safe for years.

When did I start making all the wrong moves?

“You know,” I started conversationally, “I have to say, I don’t care to let you finish your point. You’ve said enough. Now, I’d like to go.”

“Yeah? And where are you gonna go?”

“What do you care?”

“Toots—”

“I get it. I understand fighting to be clean. I get that. Because the only person who ever loved me was pimped out by her husband. So I did what I had to do to help her stay as clean as she could get. Which, by the way, is never, ever going to be clean. Not in her mind. So yes, I took drug money to do it. If that makes me dirty, so be it. For me, my company is Tia, and I’ll take that. So, I’ve asked you, repeatedly, to get…off…me.”

I shoved his shoulders on my last word and lifted him off me enough to scoot out from under him. I almost made it to the end of the bed. But then he hooked my waist with his arm and pulled me back under him.

Thus started a tussle. Which, a few seconds in, I knew I wasn’t going to win because, firstly, he was bigger than me, secondly, he was stronger than me, and thirdly, he wasn’t (kind of) drunk like me. So I gave up and glared at his face in the semi-dark.

“You gonna listen to me now?” he bit off.

“I will hear you, but I can’t guarantee I’ll listen to you,” I returned.

“Fuckin’ hell, babe, you need to get smart real fuckin’ fast.”

“Oh, so now I’m dirty and stupid.”

“You’re the last if you don’t learn to make the right allies, and the right allies are not sociopaths who’ll send you to deliver messages hopin’ you won’t come out alive or, one way or another, no longer intact.”

“So, what you’re saying…your advice is I should sleep with you to keep you sweet so you’ll take care of me?”

“Actually, yeah.”

I stared at him through the dark.

I was being facetious.

He was not.

Then I asked, my voice pitched higher, “Is that clean?”

He lifted a hand and glided his fingers through my hair, down, pulling it over my shoulder and his voice was gentle when he replied, “Yeah, Clara. It’s honest. We both know what it is. We both get somethin’ out of it. So it’s clean.”

Oh God.

I was going to cry.

I thought my life couldn’t possibly get worse, and here it was, worse.

This really cool, handsome man who listened well and was great at sex wanted me to prostitute myself to him so he would take care of me and I could “make a good ally.”