“Get the hell away from me,” I growl out at him, but he just laughs, this naughty chuckle that makes me want to stab him. How dare he turn me on when I’m bent over the toilet like this? I take it he’s also smug because I spent the night in his room last night. More importantly, I let him fuck me with his hand and that stupid vibrator, and I practically begged him to slide into me while I was coming with strong, violent contractions.
I’ve just been swapping one man for the other at night for the last several days, and it’s seemed to work okay. I try to watch when certain people are out of the house for work or when they’re in their own beds. We haven’t formalized this or talked it over in any way, but I can at least see how committed they are.
More than me, even. I say that because when I told Crown that I would run, I meant it. But them? They’ve committed to me so deeply that they’re willing to actively defy their own president. It’s sacrilegious; it’s impossible. It doesn’t happen in the life.
It just doesn’t.
And yet … we’re fallen angels among fallen angels. How does that even work? Do we rise again? Are we so sinful that we’ve come full circle and become holy?
“You should come see this,” he encourages, rising to his feet and holding out a hand for one of mine. I eye his proffered fingers with suspicion, but in the end, I’m a sucker for these men. I accept the help and rise to my feet, flushing the still-clean water in the toilet, and then pausing to brush my teeth.
Sin leans against the wall beside the door, arms crossed, watching me with an expression of true wonder, like he isn’t sure how we ended up where we are. Like it’s too good to be true. Sad, isn’t it? That we can romanticize what’s going on with us when so many other, more horrible things are happening in our orbit.
I finish brushing my teeth, pausing to swish some mouthwash as Sin rolls his eyes dramatically.
“Oh come on, Gidge. You don’t have to get your mouth that clean just to suck me off.”
I snatch a towel to wipe my face down, and then I throw it at him. He catches it with a cocky laugh, and then tosses it over his shoulder.
“Last time you asked me to suck your dick, you promised to fuck me,” I remind him, flicking the bathroom lights off as I follow him into the hall. It’s an old house, so there isn’t a light in this hallway. Needs a lamp or something. Anyway, it’s dark enough that when Sin turns back toward me, he looks menacing in the half-light. “And then you tried to renege. Why should I trust you now, huh?”
“I was trying to protect you, Gidge,” he says, his voice tinged with his signature melancholy. “I’m not trying anymore—not in that regard.”
“Trying to protect me by letting me suck you off?” I query back, and he sighs, grabbing the towel off his shoulder and using it to lasso around my waist. He snatches the other side and yanks me toward him, until our fronts bump together, and I’m finding it suddenly hard to breathe.
“By teaching you a lesson about the world,” he offers up, and I laugh. Because I can, because for the first time since I threw myself into this fucker’s arms on a cold, cemetery day, I’m actually allowed to do that. I’m allowed to hold him when I want to, put my arms around him when I want to … suck his dick when I want to.
“Was the lesson: true love always prevails?” I murmur, and he yanks even harder on the towel, ensuring there isn’t a single atom’s worth of space between us. I kiss and lick at the side of his neck, wondering if I shouldn’t leave a few good hickeys for the club whores or the other wives to take note of.
“Must’ve been,” he says, releasing the towel just enough so that I can reach between us, undoing his belt, and then teasing hungry fingertips against the button of his jeans. Sin catches my hands and then exhales sharply. “I really do have something to show you.”
“Really? You’re turning this down?” I whisper back, but he just shakes his head.
“Hell no. I’m just …” He takes my hands and brings them to his lips, his tongue like a garrote, slicing through my emotional wards as he licks my fingertips and captures my gaze with those ethereal, silver eyes of his. “Postponing it. Come with me.”
I groan as he keeps my hand in his and pulls me down the hall toward the front door.
We step outside and I frown as I squint into the orange sky. Yet another smoky, hazy day in Ashbury.
Sin ignores it, pounding down the steps and moving around the side of the house. He heads in the same direction that Beast went when he took off. Instead of moving into the backyard—or what functions as a backyard considering there’s no fence, no grass, and no plants currently—he takes me over to an outbuilding that sits behind and to the left of the house.
It’s a garage of some sort, clearly. The door is open and Sin strides right in, pausing beside a beat-up but still very pretty red and white Indian motorcycle.
“What is this?” I ask as Sin moves over to a mini-fridge that’s situated on the floor against the wall. He squats down beside it and opens the door, digging a bottle of beer out for himself and glancing back in my direction.
“What do you want? Water? Soda? Iced tea?” He pauses and his mouth quirks. Sin grabs a drink before I even get the chance to answer, standing up and kicking the fridge door closed before he turns around and holds it out to me.
It’s orange juice.
My own mouth twitches, and I snatch it from his fingers, admiring the pretty figure he cuts with his blue hair and his earrings and his eight ball tattoo, those red lips inked into his skin making me hope for his sake that they have no connection to any real-world woman.
“You bought me orange juice just to put in this mini-fridge?” I ask, unscrewing the top and then sighing as the heavenly citrus scent fills my lungs. Yep. Guess even I’m not immune to simple, earthly things like pregnancy cravings.
“You have a big day ahead of you,” Sin tells me with a loose shrug of his shoulders, using a bottle opener that’s screwed to the wall to take the cap off his beer. He swigs some of it and then moves behind the bike, running his fingers reverently across the handlebars. His belt is still hanging loose, and that turns me on like nothing else. I want him to leave it like that, undone and waiting for something more.
“Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to be at the clubhouse organizing transportation for all the families that want to go to the airport.” I scratch at my temple with a single finger and close my eyes. Not only is the mafia still a constant threat, of course, but the wildfire danger is increasing exponentially. The town just forty-five minutes south of us got bumped up to a level two evacuation warning. Basically, that means you need to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
Level one is ‘be ready’. Level two is ‘be set’. Level three is GO.
Anyone who has family out of town is jumping ship.
As they should.
“Not today,” Sin tells me, continuing to tease his fingers along the handlebars, like he’s caressing my cunt instead of a motorcycle. The way he’s staring at me, I see that the move is intentional. “I already talked to Crown; you need a day off.” He pauses for a minute, like he’s reconsidering his words. “Well, not off-off, but a change of pace.”
I’m not about to complain about that. I’m a hard worker, but even I have to admit that I’m human—whether I like it or not. Breaks and self-care don’t have to be justified.
“Whose bike is this?” I ask, taking a drink of the juice and trying not to groan with manic pleasure. It shouldn’t taste so good, should it? But shit if my senses aren’t heightened like crazy. Everything smells stronger, looks crisper, tastes sharper.
“It’s mine,” Sin says, patting the brown leather seat. “Hop on.”
With a shrug, I step forward and swing my leg over the seat, ignoring the sudden roiling in my stomach. Damn it. I lock down my iron will to keep from sprinting for the bushes outside.
“This is nice,” I murmur, caressing the dented chrome. “But it doesn’t look like any bike I’ve ever seen.”
“Be
cause it’s not,” Sin says, setting his beer down on a red and silver storage chest that’s as tall as he is. This entire garage smells like home, like safety, like comfort. Motor oil and grease and leather. I close my eyes for a brief moment. “This is a 1915 Indian 8-Valve board track racer. To start the engine, the bike had to be towed, pushed, or given a bump-start to light it.”
“So it’s as old as you are?” I quip, opening my eyes as Sin offers up a crooked, cocky half-smile. “Or at least as old as my husband. Doesn’t he turn thirty-four sometime soon?”
“In June,” Sin returns with a lifting of his brow. “Don’t you even know your own husband’s birthday?”
“I forgot my own birthday,” I tell him with a shrug, finishing my juice and handing him the empty bottle. He sets it on the storage chest. “So, what are you up to with a vintage bike anyway?”
Sin moves past me, opening a drawer on another storage chest and digging around like he’s looking for something in particular.
“Fixing it up.” He points at me with a wrench in hand. “These things are worth a lot of money. This one was sold to some investment banker douchebag who had no idea what he was doing with it. He crashed it the first day he owned it, and I bought it for cheap. Now I have to fix all the shit that he broke.” Sin tosses the wrench back in the drawer and continues his search, his eyes sliding over to meet mine. “And you’re going to help me.”
“Me?” I query, looking down at the bike and then lifting my head up to peer into the shadows that fill the rest of the garage. There are no lights on in here, just natural sunlight from outside. If it wasn’t so smoky, and if that smokiness wasn’t paired with mud from last night’s rainstorm, it’d be relaxing. Hell, it’s relaxing anyway.
I can hear birds chirping, the gentle swish of charged wind in the trees. It’s idyllic out here, I won’t lie.
I ignore all of that in favor of studying the motorcycles lined up in the rear of the garage. There are several, most of which look like they’re in need of work.
“I don’t know anything about fixing up motorcycles,” I remind Sin, turning back to look at him. “I understand a lot about the life, but you know, my vagina somehow disallowed me from being able to ride one of these or spend time tinkering with them. I guess clitorises like, spontaneously explode when allowed near such manly devices.” I roll my eyes so hard that I almost make myself dizzy.
Sin grins at me and finds what he’s looking for, removing several tools and laying them out on a workbench beside him. He turns around to lean his ass against the bench, studying me as he crosses his arms. His muscles move beneath his ink like well-oiled machines, and I lick my lower lip.
Our eyes meet.
“Do you not want to learn?” he asks me, and I scoff at him.
“Of course I do,” I blurt, before I can stop myself. I frown as Sin chuckles.
“Crown let me move all of my shit from the garage near the clubhouse up here.” He sighs contentedly as he looks around. “He isn’t as bad as I thought, you know? I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to share you with someone like him.”
“Yeah, well,” I start, standing up off of the bike and giving it a once-over. It’s clear the shiny red paint was once perfect, the leather seat unscathed, the gold Indian logo on the side carefully restored. It’s all jacked-up now, but whatever. If that means Sin was able to get it at a good price and do his own thing, more power to him. “You guys keep thinking you’re sharing with each other. Really, I own all of you outright.”
“Pretty sure we talked about that,” Sin says, pointing at me with a screwdriver this time. “I own your ass. That’s been well-established.”
“Prove it,” I say, and the words come out before I can stop them.
He laughs at me and tosses the screwdriver aside.
“You really know how to push all my buttons, don’t you?” he asks, moving over to stand in front of me and taking my face between his hands. I inhale deeply, pulling in his unique scent mixed with all the smells of the garage, and I feel for a moment like I might actually be at peace. “But no. No sex yet. I told you. You have to earn it first.”
He drops his face toward mine like he might actually kiss me again and then turns away at the last second, moving over to the fridge and getting himself another beer. He offers me up a second orange juice, but I turn it down.
“Anyway, you deserve this for lying to me about that Ryan guy.” He pops the top on his new drink but sets it aside before taking a single sip. “Trying to fuck with my head and make me jealous.”
Sin squats down beside the bike and examines the mess of mechanical parts near its center, making me wonder if I might be able to look at a motorcycle one day and understand all of the moving parts like it’s second nature. That’s how he’s looking at it right now, like he understands it on an intrinsic level.
“I know the answer to your question,” I blurt suddenly, feeling my heart race like a wild thing inside my chest. I don’t know why I’m bringing this up right now, in broad daylight, when it’s just me and Sin and the soft rustle of the breeze.
He pauses then and stands up, turning fully around to look at me.
I both love and hate that, that he’s stopped what he’s doing to take careful note of my words. I want him to do that, look at me like a treasure, treat me like one. Fuck me like an animal. I clear my throat.
“Yeah?” he asks, his voice softening slightly. Just like when I blurted ‘Crown told me’ at the hospital, and he knew I meant the pregnancy without any clarification, he knows what I mean now.
“If you could go anywhere and do anything right now, what would you choose?”
I told him then that I’d get on a bike of my own and take off on a road trip, that I’d simply drive until I felt like stopping. He asked me who I’d take with me, and I said that I didn’t know.
Only I did.
I was just too nervous to put words to those feelings; I’m not anymore.
I slide my palms up the leather of his cut, picking at the patch on the front right pocket. Sin. Road Captain.
“I would take you,” I tell him, staring at his chest instead of his face. My gaze moves up to the small bandage on his neck. It’s more like a large Band-Aid now than a proper bandage which is nice. Time flows, whether we like it or not, and it heals wounds that seem like they’ll be forever bleeding. Some of them scar. My sisters, Sin’s sister. Those ones leave marks like the jagged lines on my legs, but even though they’re never gone, they don’t throb with a mind-shattering insistence. But every now and again, every once in a while … I exhale and make myself meet his gaze. “I would take you and Grainger and Beast and Crown.”
Sin’s mouth lifts up in that perfectly imperfect smile of his, the scar on his lip making me think of his story and his sister and his mother who named her daughter ‘heavenly child’. She left Hawaii to be with a monster of a man who ruined her life. Who ruined her children’s lives. I didn’t want to be a woman like that, who made a huge mistake in the name of love.
But I’m not.
I’m strong.
I’m not saying I won’t weather storms, that I won’t fight for my romance, but I also won’t let it destroy me. That’s not what any of these men want. I know that. The simple fact that they stepped back and left me alone for nearly two years, to give me time to think and grow away from their influence, that matters.
“Oddly enough, when I thought about it, I could also see taking my daughter with me. Showing her how to ride. Letting her know that she can get whatever she wants out of life if she’s willing to fight for it.”
Sin sighs heavily, putting his hands on my hips and making my skin ripple with fire. I love when he touches me that way, almost reverently, like he’s had a dream of his come true and is afraid to wake up, just in case.
“What if we have a boy?” Sin queries, and I snort.
“I don’t want a boy,” I mutter, and he laughs, pulling me into his arms and pressing his sharp mouth to my hair. It doesn’
t matter where he kisses me or how he does it, it always shifts my world around, makes me rethink things, makes me believe in shit that’s only true in fairy tales.
“Well, if such an unfortunate circumstance were to befall us, what would you do then?”
I sigh and let myself relax into the circle of his arms, feeling my skin get hot and knowing that for me, at least, a moment like this is more intimate than sex. Being held, being hugged, it triggers all of my emotional issues, snaps my boundaries, makes me feel vulnerable in a way I’m not used to.
“I guess he could come, but he’d have to ride bitch seat on the back of my bike.”
Sin laughs at that, a full-body chuckle that stirs my hair as he draws away from me so that he can look down and meet my eyes.
“Even if I feel sorry for this possible future son, I like your answer. I don’t want you to feel trapped here, Gidge.”
“I don’t,” I promise, because it’s true. If I did, I would leave. I had the opportunity before, with Grey. I could’ve married him and chosen a different life. Then, after the club rescued me, I could’ve taken Crown’s offer up to smuggle me off the compound. “I want to be here.”
“Good. Because I want you here, too.” He studies my face as I look up at him. “You know, we do actually need baby things. Cribs and strollers and clothes and shit. Maybe a bagger with extra cargo room to stuff the baby in during long rides.”
I chuckle at that. A bagger is a large motorcycle meant for long-haul trips.
“You’re right. I almost forgot that babies, like, need things.” I think on that idea for a second. I guess we’re all going to live in Crown’s farmhouse? We haven’t exactly worked out the specific details of our living arrangements, but I know that these men won’t want to be separated from their child. Beast considers it his already, and the others won’t know who, exactly, is the biological father. They’ll all want to be there.
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