Clubs: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 6)

by Hazel Parker

  He repositioned himself so his legs were folded on the bed, and he looked right through my eyes and at my soul. I mirrored his position.

  “Go back to the darkest time in your life,” he said. “I… assume it was when you had the miscarriage.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to go back there. I fought like hell to think about anything else—but it was a futile fight. I had to trust that Brett was taking me to this awful time for a reason that would ultimately prove beneficial.

  “When you went through that, and in the days after that happened… who did you want the most?”

  I bowed my head as tears welled just from thinking of the memories. The nights spent alone, with no friends and no family. The moments on walks when I’d see pregnant women or newborn infants. The conversations I’d pick up at coffee shops about kids. Hell, even the responsible friends at the strip clubs who said they had to take their drunk friend back because their kids would be around that weekend.

  In all of them, regardless of my emotion before, regardless of if anyone was hitting on me, regardless of how long it’d been since I’d had a similar moment…

  “You,” I said as tears splashed on the comforter on my bed. “It was always you.”

  I looked up at Brett to see him crying too. It made me cry more, and we found ourselves in each other’s arms just moments later. I didn’t want to leave this man. I didn’t want to abandon him ever again.

  I wanted us to remain in this hug forever, but more than the embrace, I wanted the security of knowing we would both be with each other forever. Life had thrown a hell of a lot of wicked curveballs my way—to say nothing of the fact that I was slowly beginning to suspect, though I had not yet confirmed, that I was pregnant—but I felt that if I had Brett by my side, I could take any of them on.

  “Brett,” I finally said as I ran my hand over his back. “You are a reminder of the joy in my life. You are the one I want to be with all the time. I was scared you wouldn’t take me back. I was scared when I saw you my first night here…”

  “It’s OK,” he said. “Just be with me right now.”

  I thought of saying we had a second chance at having a child.

  But then I thought that if I wasn’t actually pregnant, if I’d just missed my period because of stress or some other reason, and I’d built up false hope, he’d feel used. Not telling him this didn’t feel like being a coward; it just felt like a smart decision. I did swear to myself, though, if I confirmed that I was pregnant, unless he was literally in the middle of a gunfight, I would tell him as soon as I saw him.

  So, instead, I just kept silent and held him.

  I had never felt so at peace, so calm, so vulnerable yet happy in my life. It was a feeling that I almost fell asleep to; we were like two fossils, immortalized in our embrace forever.

  “I’m so sorry for everything I did, Brett,” I finally said. “I’m so sorry for turning you into the man you are.”

  “Don’t be,” Brett said. “You faced something that hopefully most of us will never face, and you’re still here. That’s a testament to your bravery.”

  I nodded, closing my eyes, listening to his heartbeat. It was a little fast, but it was surprisingly calm compared to what I’d heard before. It made me want to hear the heartbeat of my child, to listen to their beating rhythm and know that he or she, regardless of the gender, was happy and thriving.

  “I appreciate you, Brett,” I said. “I’m going through a lot of scary shit, and I have no idea how any of it is going to turn out.”

  “True,” he said. “But you’re at least around for the next three weeks, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Then let’s just make those three weeks the best three weeks of our lives,” Brett said. “Worry about the future when three weeks are up. I’m not saying this as a ploy to get you to quit law school or stay with the club or anything like that. You need to be a lawyer someday. You’ve wanted it since I’ve known you. If you quit to stay here, you’ll never truly be happy. You’ll always want it.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “No, I know.”

  I know too. I just want to pretend that I could throw it all away in the name of love. I wish to believe that I could find happiness with you and you alone, Brett. I certainly haven’t found it anywhere else.

  “Let’s just be a couple for these next three weeks,” he continued. “I promise not to hide anything from you. No more hiding behind deflections or half-answers. I’ll tell you anything and everything I know. Whatever I need to say, I will. And if, after those three weeks, you still want to leave? If you still feel like moving out is the best decision? Go for it. At least we’ll have the peace of knowing we experienced these three weeks to the best of our ability.”

  It all sounded so sweet and so romantic. It sounded so perfect.

  But what would happen when, at the end of that time, I still wanted to leave? Would Brett feel betrayed?

  “You’re sure this is what will happen? You’re sure that if I decide I need to leave, that you’ll accept it?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I choose to see it like this.”

  He paused, took a breath, and cleared his throat.

  “We won’t live forever, right?” he said. “Death is the final separator. It separates us from our lives; it separates loved one; it separates parents from their kids, everything. So eventually, like it or not, death will part us someday. But yet, around the world, people still get married. They still say ‘I do’ even when they know the battle against death can never be won. They still live in the moment and embrace everything about it. So for us, maybe our relationship ‘death’ comes in three weeks. We’ll still be alive, obviously, but the relationship will be at an end. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t enjoy each other until then, right? It doesn’t mean that we won’t be there for each other, holding each other, and loving each other, right?”

  For someone who was as reserved and closed off as Brett could be at times, what he had just said was beyond remarkable. It stirred my soul, made me want to cry all over again, and made me like—no, love—him even more. Maybe our love would die in three weeks.

  But damn if they weren’t going to be the most passionate and thrilling three weeks of our lives.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Brett said. “I’m at peace with whatever happens. Doesn’t mean it’ll feel great if you leave, but it does mean I’ll have done all I could.”

  “OK,” I said, taking a deep breath. “OK.”

  I bit my lip and sat up from Brett, looking him in the eyes. If there was any bullshit in what he’d said, if there was any doubt to what he had said, he was showing none of it right now. I had never had such belief in him.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 19: Barber

  We might as well have been a married couple over the next three weeks.

  We spent all our time together. Cassie all but moved in with me, only going to her apartment when she needed to pick something up. She spent all her time with me, slept over every night, and one time even half-jokingly called herself “Mrs. Pierce.” It was almost perfect.

  I say almost because it could never be absolutely perfect so long as we knew she could walk out the door at the end of the three weeks. Even after my unexpectedly deep words, I couldn’t perfectly rationalize my brain to be one hundred percent in. Maybe older couples experienced this when one of them was on death’s door—I didn’t know, but I weirdly felt like I understood it better.

  Still, those thoughts only came when I was alone, and she was at The Red Door or just elsewhere. When I was with her, I was able to shut my brain the hell up.

  In those three weeks, we went bungee jumping off of the Stratosphere. We went skydiving south of Las Vegas. We ate at just about every major buffet in town. We rode the roller coaster at New York-New York. We acted both like teenagers who had fallen in love for the first time and like an older couple desperate to check off
every item on their bucket list. We kissed in public, hugged each other in private, and had sex of all kinds, from the sensual and slow to the erotic and teasing to the rough and tumble.

  We fit a lifetime’s worth of a relationship into three weeks, or it at least felt that way. I did start to think about going back to the Savage Saints, if only because of what Mama had said, but now, it had less to do with giving a middle finger to BK and Richard and more about just embracing the moment with Cassie Erickson.

  But, unfortunately, time was undefeated in all battles. It marched forward mercilessly. For every moment that I wanted to capture and hold onto forever, time looked at me, laughed, and kept going. As much as I wanted to pretend that three weeks would feel like three lifetimes, it just felt like three days. And so it was that on that Tuesday evening, the day after what would likely wind up being Cassie’s final day at The Red Door, I felt like death was coming in the evening.

  Cassie had gone out to the grocery store about five in the afternoon—still early in the day for us—with the idea being that she would cook a midnight dinner, the kind of candlelit, romantic thing that would provide the perfect nightcap to our last night together. We’d avoided calling it “our last night together,” but by this point, it just felt like we were playing pedantic games. The plans, the meals—it wasn’t fooling anyone.

  At first, we stuck to our plans. At six, we went to “lunch” at Cut Steakhouse in the Palazzo, each of us ordering whatever we wanted without regard for price. After we ate, we took a gondola ride through the Palazzo and the Venetian, pretending that we were in Venice. She tucked her head into my chest, and I rested my head on hers.

  When the ride ended, we had plans to go back to the place where we had really gotten close—the Stratosphere bar. We even got so far as having the limo driver park in front of the building.

  But I couldn’t pull the trigger.

  “Brett?” Cassie said as I remained in my seat.

  I bit my lip and smiled to try to hide the feeling of sadness that was creeping in.

  “I just want to be with you and you alone,” I said. “I don’t want us to be around other people. I don’t want us to have any ritzy distractions of drinks and cocktails. I want to spend this last night with you and with you alone. If you want to go up there…”

  “No, Brett, it’s OK,” Cassie said, getting back in and placing her hands on my knees. “I was going to suggest the same thing, just after this round of drinks. Let’s head home now.”

  I nodded, putting my hand on her thigh as she sat down, and I just leaned into her as the limo silently drove us back to my apartment. At this point, we were past the point of words. Nothing could convey what we were feeling quite like actual touch, affection, and actions.

  The thing about tonight was that I didn’t want to take any risk at all that something could happen. I didn’t want to bump into one of the club members. I didn’t want Cassie to see one of the dancers from afar. Hell, I didn’t even want one of the bartenders to make casual conversation with us. Tomorrow, our love was going to meet its death, or at least it would start to become official. I wanted to be selfish.

  I wanted to have Cassie Erickson all for me, for no one else to have her.

  Cassie started to sniffle as we got closer to the apartment, so I put my arm around her. I gazed outside—Las Vegas still looked the same as the day that I had first seen her at The Red Door. Maybe somewhere, someplace, a new restaurant had opened, an old establishment had closed, or something unexpected had happened that changed the visual landscape, but the outside world still looked the same.

  It wasn’t just time that remained unstoppable. It was also society in general. The world at large would not care or even realize that Cassie Erickson and Brett Pierce were no longer a couple. It didn’t have the time too.

  That made me even more resolute and certain of my decision to cancel our plans and have Cassie at the house. We may not have meant much to the world, but she was my world right now.

  When we got home, I had my hand on the small of her back the whole way as I escorted her back to my room. She leaned into me the whole time—I wasn’t sure that we had broken skin contact since she got back into the limo.

  I unlocked my apartment with my left hand, my right still on her back, and opened it, moving my hand from her back to her hand. As soon as I shut the door and locked it, I turned to her, embraced her, and kissed her gently.

  I wanted our kiss to last another three weeks, another three days, hell, anything that would have kept her around a little longer, anything that would have prevented her from leaving me again. I wouldn’t get that, but just the fact that I could tell she wanted it to be the same way was all the encouragement and joy that I needed.

  Cassie and I made our way to the bedroom, our clothes slowly coming off. It probably took us about five minutes of kissing, rolling, and feeling each other for us to both get down to only our underwear. This definitely wasn’t something that I wanted to rush.

  And there was no better way to start than by making sure she came first.

  I rolled her to her back and started trailing kisses down from her lips to her cheek, her neck, her chest, her belly, and then her thighs. She moaned my name as I kissed; I wanted every kiss to be a ticker for a reason for her to stick around a little bit longer.

  I locked eyes with her, smiled, and then leaned forward, my eyes still on her, and kissed her sex, wet and throbbing despite me having not yet touched it. She tensed tightly as her hips arched up to meet my lips. I cupped my hands under her ass, squeezed, and let my tongue work its magic.

  “Oh, Brett, yes, please,” she said softly, her voice more staccato gasps of air than a coherent sentence.

  I was hard as a rock and wanted to get inside her now. I wanted to feel her warm juices enveloping my cock, to thrust deep inside, maybe even… maybe even try or a child. No, don’t do that. Even though I’d come in her a few times already, even though she had said she was using birth control, it felt like an unfair move to manipulate her into staying through a child. There would have been some emotional gratification to having a child successfully after the miscarriage, but…

  I shook my mind from those thoughts and focused on remaining emotionally present, trying to move my tongue in rhythm with her body and her hips. She was getting closer and closer to orgasm, and the intensity of her gasps suggested the progression toward climax was accelerating as well. Her juices spread all over my lips and beard—a taste I wanted to have with me for as long as I lived.

  “Brett, I’m so close, I’m so close,” she gasped. “Don’t stop. Don’t you ever stop. Keep fucking going forever.”

  I smiled, as much as I could with my lips pressed into her pussy, and firmly pressed my tongue on her clit, slowly, fully dragging it across.

  When it reached the top and lurched off, the movement got her to come, and I followed this up with more continuous pressure even as her hips quivered. Only when she begged me, her legs twisting to the point that she could have kicked me, did I stop.

  “Oh my God, Brett,” she said. “Come here, please, I need you. Come here.”

  I climbed up on top, aware that this, too, was probably the last time I was going to be inside her. Make it good. Make it memorable. Make it something that’ll satisfy you for as long as possible.

  I slid in as slowly as I could, every centimeter of my cock wanting to remain in its area of wet warmth.

  “I love you, Cassie,” I said as I slowly moved forward. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

  “I love you too, Brett,” she said squirming. “More than I’ll ever love anyone else.”

  I had to bury my head between her shoulder and her face to prevent that comment from getting too me too much. I increased the pace to a gradual, steady thrust, the kind of rhythmic movement that was not rushed, but also not so slow as to barely qualify as sex. I pushed in at the rate that Cassie let out her gasps and moans of pleasure, each rush of breath a push, each brief moment of si
lence a retreat.

  It was like the dance we had played for the last couple of months—pushing in, stepping back. Pushing in, pulling back. Like the relationship, the dance would eventually end, and we’d have to separate completely. But damn if I wasn’t going to relish this hot, dripping sex around my cock as long as I could.

  “Let me,” she said, and we slowly flipped over.

  From this vantage point, it was like I was watching a goddess in action. Cassie’s perfect body, her perfect breasts, and her perfect face rode me from above. Our eyes met, two magnets that could not pull apart, as she dug her hands into my shoulders. I put my hands on her hips, gently moving her up and down.

  “Cassie…” I said breathlessly.

  I wanted to say everything, but I could only find so many words. It was equal parts frustrating and beautiful—so damn annoying I wasn’t a wordsmith, but so wonderful that I didn’t need to be for this moment to feel special.

  “I need you,” I said. “I need you with every bit of my being. I’ve needed you more than anything I’ve ever wanted.”

  Cassie just smiled, a single tear streaking down her face. I felt my eyes well up as I pulled her in for a kiss.

  We switched back to missionary one more time, so I could kiss her as I felt myself swell in preparation for orgasm. I had planned on pulling out, but I didn’t want to disrupt the kiss—I’d take the risk. Nothing could separate us from this moment.

  As I finished, it wasn’t just that I was coming into her; it was that I was putting my soul into her, releasing a part of me into her that… well, maybe that could last forever. I didn’t literally want it to turn out to be a child, not unless Cassie wanted it so, but I hoped that this moment, this single moment of climax, was something that Cassie would remember.

  And when I finally finished, our lips were still together.

  That was it for our first round of the night.

  But it could not be it for anything.

  “Cassie, baby,” I said, still inside of her. “Please don’t leave. Stay here. We’ll figure it out. You can go to law school at UNLV. Please.”