Worse, her daddy.
Worse still, me.
I blew out a shaky breath as I looked up at her. She had the glossiest brown hair, and those eyes of hers made a mockery out of her name. All the books I’d read, and somehow, the knowledge had bypassed me that a baby’s eyes changed color a few weeks after birth.
Joke was on me, but still, Cyan suited her. It was beautiful, rich, and vibrant, just like her.
She had a pixie face, delicate features, and her bones were like a bird’s. That she hadn’t inherited from me, or Storm. I wasn’t sure why she was so skinny, didn’t know why she kept on spurting upward, just knew that when she was a teenager, she was going to give Storm and me nightmares with boys.
“It’s okay,” she repeated, her voice far too mature for her years.
I didn’t say anything. What could I say? Instead, I cupped my fingers around hers and murmured, “Love you, baby.”
“I love you, Momma. Thank you for this dress. I really do look like a princess.” Her grin told me how happy that made her. “I want a cut like Daddy’s, then I can look like a real biker princess just like he calls me.”
My lips curved, and I wished Storm was here to hear that. He’d fucking love that his girl wanted a cut.
“I’ll talk to—” Before I could finish that sentence, a knock sounded on the door, then the lock jiggled.
The second that happened, I knew who was there and, warily, I got to my feet and headed out of the small kitchen toward the door.
The knock came louder this time, and I wasn’t surprised when Storm growled, “What the fuck, Keira? Let me in, dammit.”
I headed to the door and unlocked it, but left the latch firmly in place. The second I peered through the opening I’d made, I saw him scowling at me. I arched a brow. “That how you think you’re going to get in here?”
Keira O’Shea was many things, but a fool she wasn’t. Well, not anymore. I’d been an idiot back in the day, but now? Nope. I knew the score. Knew what he was like, knew what was happening and had been happening in the time since we’d parted.
It was how the MC worked, how things rolled, and it was what I loathed about being Storm’s Old Lady.
The reason we were here?
The sweetbutts.
The bastard had cheated on me one too many times, and because that was how shit worked in his world, he didn’t seem to realize I wasn’t cuffed to him. If I wanted out, if I wanted away from his cheating ass, I could go. So I had.
I wasn’t denying him access to his daughter. I wasn’t moving out of the county. I’d just moved away from the house we’d shared, had very little to do with the Sinners’ MC unless it involved a few of the Old Ladies who helped me out by watching Cyan when I needed to work, and that was it.
Of course he hated it.
Hated that I wasn’t under his thumb anymore, and the truth was, I wouldn’t have minded any of it, just the cheating was something I couldn’t stand. The shit he did for the MC, the laws he broke, the long runs he went on at the drop of a hat, the fact that he could be imprisoned and sent to jail for years…I could handle it. I could. But cheating?
Nope.
Big. Fat. Nope.
He was a handsome bastard, and that was how he’d wormed his way between my legs all those years before. Well, that and everything about him screamed bad boy, something that had tempted the good girl in me more than I could say. All that he was had been a temptation, and to this day, I still felt the fire I’d felt all those years ago. Nothing had doused it. Not even what he was.
But that didn’t mean I had to accept it.
I wasn’t a masochist, after all.
His hair had always been a mix of black and gray, even when he was younger. Back then, it had been more delineated. Almost like a streak of white lightning through the unrelieved black. It was why he’d gotten his name. Lightning, he’d jokingly told me all those years ago, wasn’t worthy of a road name.
His eyes, Cyan’s eyes, stared back at me from the top step of our front stoop, and they were glittering with fury. His stubborn jaw was set, and the nose that had been broken one too many times was flaring with his outrage.
“You changed the fucking locks?”
I shrugged. “Wasn’t about to have you coming in whenever you wanted.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means exactly what I said. You’re not my man anymore, Storm. You don’t have the right to just walk through the door—”
I’d expected a rebuttal loaded with anger at those words, but if anything, he blanched. “The fuck?” he whispered, interrupting me. “You changed the locks so I couldn’t get in?”
He looked like a kid whose puppy had just been kicked.
I firmed my lips, refusing to be affected by that. Refusing, point blank, to relent, I lifted my chin and said, “Yes.”
Simple.
Effective.
He swallowed, looking confused and bewildered, like we hadn’t argued for months about his behavior. Like this was all coming out of the goddamn blue. “Why?” he rasped.
“You know why.” I went to close the door so I could release the chain. His eyes flared in astonishment at the move, and I heard him growl under his breath.
Fuck, that sound got to me. He made a similar noise when he thrust inside me, his hardness plowing my softness, and God, it had been so long since that had happened. Since he’d been inside me.
I released the chain the second the door was closed and pulled it open, surprised to note he was halfway down the path to the curb where he’d parked his hog.
“Where are you going?” I queried, leaning against the jamb.
“You shut me out—”
“No. I was unfastening the chain.”
He twisted around, glowered at me.
“Cyan wants to ask you something.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw our kid watching us from her stool in the kitchen. I saw the hurt in her eyes, knew the physical distance that I’d put between father and daughter was a strain on her, but I wasn’t about to let my baby be raised in an environment where it was okay for a man to treat his partner like her father treated me.
No way, no how.
That was not a lesson I was okay with imparting.
My mom had been subservient to my dad. Always doing as she was told. Always behaving. Never acting out because, God forbid, the neighbors might see. He hadn’t hurt her, but he’d controlled her. All the time.
I genuinely believed that my experiences growing up had made me put up with Storm’s shit for as long as I had, and with that at the forefront of my mind, I knew I had to show Cyan another path.
Even if she hated me sometimes for leaving her daddy.
Storm’s jaw was like it’d been hewn from stone as he rushed back to the door. He didn’t shove past me, but he made sure that his arm brushed against my body, dragging nerve endings to life that would always surge into being for him.
And fuck if I didn’t resent the shit out of that.
I hated my body some days. Hated it with a passion because the way he made me feel obviously wasn’t reciprocated. If it was, then I’d be enough for him, and I never had been.
Ever.
Not from the start.
If I’d started to soften a little, just thinking about what Kendra had told me, sneering all the while as she ground me into the dirt with her hooker heel, strengthened my resolve.
She’d been sucking his cock while I was carrying Cyan.
He’d been fucking around since he’d claimed me.
The bastard.
Then, just as hate filled me, Cyan squealed as he stormed into the kitchen, hauled her into his arms, and swung her around in a circle that had her laughing as she huddled into him.
Storm was many things, but I couldn’t say he wasn’t a good dad. He was. Sometimes, he wasn’t as present as I’d like. And that had been before I’d moved out. It was partly to do with his responsibilities at the MC, but more so his
choices that kept him at the clubhouse longer than I felt sure was required of him. Still, that didn’t take away from the fact that he loved his baby girl and she loved him.
I would never, ever get in the way of that.
No amount of bitterness would ever spill into their relationship because what they had was exactly what I wanted for the pair of them.
So, even though it hurt to watch them, I closed the door behind me and smiled as I leaned back and watched them together.
The hard biker.
The little girl in a fairy princess dress.
Incongruent and all the more beautiful for it.
“Now, what’s my baby want to ask me?”
Cyan plucked at his cut then she dipped her chin, twisting her head slightly to the side and, peering up at him from under her eyelashes, murmured, “Well…”
Lily
It was stupid.
Weird.
Wrong even, considering what was going on in my life, but when I pressed the bullet vibe to my clit and closed my eyes, the first thing I thought of was Link.
That mass of tousled waves on his head.
The cheeky grin that could turn deadly.
Those eyes that could cut then, out of nowhere, could soften and make me realize he wasn’t as hard as he liked to make out.
That body, framed by a cut that declared to the world he was a rebel, exuding power, the pecs that were delineated through the wifebeater he wore, those biceps that were burnished with the sun and had glinting, golden hairs dotted here and there…
Fuck!
I pressed the vibe harder against my clit and rocked my hips up. Frustration worked through me, making me spread my legs under the covers and arch my hips up, frigging the air if I couldn’t frig anything else.
A breath escaped me, hiccupping out into the ether as I thought about him, thought about him between my legs, thought about his hands on my body…
“Oh God,” I muttered, slightly overwhelmed by the need flushing through me.
I wasn’t often aroused, and that was a nasty truth. Maybe in my situation, it made sense. I was living among sharks, sharks who bit. Often. I was usually stressed, tense, and unhappy. None of those things made a woman feel horny. But today? After having been in that biker’s presence?
God.
I shouldn’t like him.
Bikers were dirty, right? Gruff and rough, mean and…what?
My dad wasn’t a filthy bastard? Rough and mean and violent? The only difference was, my father had a shit ton of money in his wallet and that smoothed things over, kept the world from seeing exactly who he was and what he was capable of. Money was a front, and it shored up the façade that he was a good man.
He wasn’t.
And Link? He wasn’t good either. But he was delicious, all the same. And he cared. Fuck, he did. He’d been hurt, distressed about Luke’s prisoners, making me wonder exactly what my brother had done. I’d put nothing past him…and shit, there went my arousal.
Wincing, I forced myself to focus on Link. He’d been on my mind ever since we’d parted ways back at Crosskeys. I had, indeed, met with the local sheriff, and all the while I’d been thinking about the biker.
How he’d slouched back against the bench, legs splayed, the thin cotton of his wifebeater clinging to his torso in a way that let me see every part of him. I thought about his hands, big and large, flecks of grease around the nail. Not in a gross way either. I could see he’d scrubbed his fingers hard because they were slightly soiled, and all I’d been able to think about was how those calluses would feel against my body.
How he’d feel against my skin.
Boom.
There it was.
My arousal was back.
I thought about his hands on my breasts, rubbing my nipples, slipping down over my belly, toward my sex. I thought about him touching my clit, rubbing me there before slipping a finger or two inside me.
My left eye began to twitch and I dug my heel harder into the bed, pressing down firmly and letting my inner muscles strain as I worked toward my orgasm. The high-pitched throb of the bullet echoed around the room, whining in a way that made me hate it, but I forced the thought aside, thought about Link fucking me with his fingers and there…right there!
I groaned long and low as the pleasure had me tensing, all my muscles freezing into stillness before I released a shaky breath and sank back into the mattress.
Pulling the vibe away from my clit, I switched it off and let the pleasant sensations worm their way around my system.
Grateful that I felt drowsy, I welcomed sleep and actually felt quite rested when I woke up five hours later. That was a good night’s rest for me. I’d only ever slept longer than that when I was in the finishing school over in Switzerland and at college. Both times I was out from under my father’s roof. If he was traveling on business and I had the house to myself, I slept better but not that well.
Whenever he was here, I couldn’t rest. Would you? Knowing the enemy was in your midst?
As I stared at him over the breakfast table, I knew my cover was firmly in place because, twice, he smiled at me. Actually fucking smiled at me. Though my loathing was masked and masked well, it still surprised me. Father wasn’t exactly cheerful, but he’d been like a bear with a sore paw ever since Luke’s death. More so than usual.
“Did you sleep well, Father?” I queried, as I cut my grapefruit into segments. My Earl Grey tea was steeping at my side, and I had a bowl of yogurt and granola to my right.
I hated granola, hated grapefruit too. The only thing I actually liked was the tea, but my father selected my breakfast.
Always had.
Always would.
God, I couldn’t wait until he was dead.
As I envisioned how I’d do it, how I’d free myself from him, I waited on his response.
“Knowing that you’re eager to avenge Luke soothed me,” he imparted. “Luke and I were bred from the same root. I didn’t realize you were too, Lily.”
I wasn’t.
Thank God.
Maybe I had some of their twisted evil in me, otherwise I wouldn’t be counting down the moments until I could kill him, but I wasn’t like them.
I wanted my mother’s money in my bank account so I could do something with it. So I could do good with it rather than just try to accrue more and more. I wanted to help people, wanted to help people like me. Women and children who were trapped in an abusive situation. Who didn’t know how to get out, and who, when it came down to it, had to do things that weren’t their natural inclination just to survive.
In another place, another time, I wanted to think that I wasn’t the sort of woman who could contemplate murder. But this was here. Now. And my family was how it was.
Thankfully, Giulia Fontaine had cut one of our trio out, sparing me a job in the long run.
“I’m proud to be a Lancaster,” I told him, keeping a faint smile on my mouth as I lied to him. I couldn’t smile too much, that would give away the fact I was bullshitting him. He was used to me shielding my expression as it was something he’d bred in me, so to be overexuberant would get me nowhere.
“This pleases me,” he intoned, as he sliced into his egg white omelet. “It pleases me greatly. Did you speak with the sheriff?”
“Indeed.” I took a dainty bite of grapefruit, letting it slip down my throat even though the taste made me want to gag.
“How did it go?”
His impatience washed over me, but I ignored it. It was usually why he hit me, because I didn’t concede to him, didn’t cower before him. For the first time, I thought he appreciated that because he just cocked a brow when I stirred my tea and took a sip.
Only after I’d swallowed did I answer, “I didn’t make it obvious we were courting him, Father. Softly softly catchee monkey,” I told him, using the same phrase Link had yesterday.
It had stuck out in my mind because it was the exact opposite of what I’d imagined a biker saying, so I’d googled i
t. Turns out it was a quote from Victoria, the show about Victoria and Albert. I didn’t have a clue how he’d come to know it, couldn’t imagine him watching something like that, but I liked the phrase. Liked what it meant.
Tread softly.
Be careful.
And you’ll gain everything you desire.
I desired a helluva lot from this bastard.
My father winced. “Haste is imperative in this matter, Lily,” he argued.
“I’m sure it is. But you can’t treat officials as though they’re servants. I ascertained that he was irked by the family’s demand that we bring in outsiders to investigate Luke’s passing.”
He sniffed. “I was well within my right. Technically, that bar lies on the county line.”
Carefully, I hitched my shoulder. “Regardless, he’s irked.” I repeated the word, knowing it was the truth, and knowing, even though I hadn’t spoken to the sheriff about my brother’s case at all, that he was irritated was simply a given.
“Bloody peasants,” he sneered. “They don’t know how lucky they are to have a job.”
I hummed under my breath, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, as I partook of my boring morning meal.
“I have to go to Hong Kong tonight.”
That had me cocking a brow. “Would you like me to pack your bag for you?”
God, this was like a modern version of Downton Abbey. Tasks like packing his bag, hand-signing invitations, and sending handwritten ‘thank you’ notes for the birthday and holiday gifts we received fell on my shoulders.
“Yes. I’ll be gone three weeks.” His jaw tightened, and his knife scraped against the china plate. “It’s unfortunate timing, but a merger can’t go ahead without my presence.”
“I understand, Father. I’ll do what I can to ensure that things carry on in the right vein regarding Luke’s case.”
“It does relieve me to know that you’ll maintain things in my absence.” He set his knife and fork on the dish and sat back against the chair. As he did, I felt his eyes on me, felt them because it was like having insects crawl over my skin.
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 37