by Jayne Blue
I stood still. One hand was in a tight fist around the strap of my bag. The other was out in front of me, my fingers spread in a motion that screamed, “stop!”
Hammer took another step toward me.
“I am not going to hurt you. I promise.” I laid it out for him now. I was as honest as I could be, to this stranger.
“Hammer, I can’t go back to him.” I was fucking crying now. I didn’t want to cry. Desperation, frustration, futility, all of it welled up in me. I was trapped. I was never going to get away from Rex Lynch.
I dropped my bag, my hands, and my guard. And Hammer swooped in towards me. His arms were strong around me.
I sank into him. He was the life preserver in this mess I’d found myself in.
I didn’t know how it started or why. But the embrace turned into something more. I lifted my face to his. He leaned down, and his lips were on mine. They were warm but rough. The touch between my lips and his was like the spark of a match. I put my hands on his hard chest. His arms pulled my hips forward. There was hunger in this kiss between us – from me, and him. It was desperate and wild.
I had no business feeling this. I had no idea what this even was, but my body wanted more. The sensations he produced in me overrode all logic. All I wanted was more of him.
I moaned. The sound escaped my body, which now was doing the only thing it could do: respond to his touch.
I felt Hammer’s lips travel from mine, down to my jaw, down to my neck. I held on to him. I wanted to get closer. I needed his strength. Whatever he had, however he touched me, it was right, but it wasn’t enough. I was overwhelmed with something I’d never experienced before. What was happening to me? I should break free. I should at least try to leave again, but I didn’t want to, not at all.
I ran my hands through his dark hair. I wanted him to take me right there, on the grass, in this woods, in the middle of the day. I had run from him, and now, it was the last thing I could imagine doing.
I wanted to taste his skin as he was tasting mine.
I could have let him strip me there and then.
But as my hands reached for his leather, his cut, I realized. That feeling, that leather. It was why I had to leave my life behind. Why I was on the run. It was a different cut, a different leather, a different kiss. But it was the same bad judgment on my part.
It snapped me out of the strange spell I’d been under the moment we kissed like this. I had to stop. This was insane!
I pushed away. I separated us.
“We have to stop,” I said, and hated saying it.
Hammer and I were gasping for breath. A powerful attraction wanted our bodies next to one another.
I didn’t know what to do. But I knew I had to stop wanting Hammer. Getting involved with a biker had ruined my fucking life. And here I was, ready to do it all again. Hammer was more dangerous to my heart than Rex Lynch had ever been, and this one kiss proved it.
Eleven
HAMMER
“We have to stop.” Daniella pushed me back. I had gotten out of my head with her so fast. She tasted so good. Her smell was like a drug. Every cell in my fucking body wanted more of her, now.
My arms around her had turned into a mind-blowing hot as hell kiss in an instant. It was animal, the way I reacted to her; the way I wanted to possess every inch of her.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it was me too. I…” She stopped mid-sentence. I knew what she meant. There was something between us I’d never felt with another woman. Her body was made for mine. I felt that last night, but the more I talked to her, listened to her, and watched her, it was more than that. I was utterly fucked because I wanted more, body and soul, of Daniella.
“Look, you can’t run. If it’s not me, someone else will be after you.” She looked around the woods like she would find an escape hatch if she kept trying.
“I can’t go back to Flat Rock. You’ll have to fucking knock me unconscious.” She jutted her chin out.
“You will get back on my bike. Now.” I was not going to have her run again. It was dangerous and stupid. Plus, I couldn’t protect her at all if I didn’t know where she was. In my mind, I had made that shift, completely: from catching her, to protecting her.
“Are you going to make me?”
“Yes.” I stepped forward. I didn’t want to make her. I wanted her to want me, to trust me, to understand what I was feeling. But that was nuts since what I was feeling was a fucking tornado. I didn’t understand it myself.
Her big green eyes softened. There were tears pooling, and it cut me to the core.
“Hammer, please help me.” She practically fell into my arms again. I smoothed her hair, my hands roamed over her shoulders, her back. I pressed her close to me.
“Okay, look, come on. Let’s get out of the fucking woods to start.” She looked up at me, and I wanted to take her lips again, now. So, I did. I pressed my lips against hers, but lightly, gently this time. They were soft, sweet, and she lit me on fire. There was no other way to describe it. We stopped, I pulled back if I wanted her to trust me, I had to try to put the brakes on fucking her on the ground right here. Not exactly a trustworthy thing to do.
I grabbed her hand and led her through the underbrush, back to where I’d ditched my bike.
I put her bag on the bike. Then I put my finger up to her lips. She stood, confused, but quiet as I called Steel. The phone rolled to his voice mail.
“Hey brother, yeah, still on the east side, nothing new, just checking in. Chasing a lead, I think she might have headed to the Cleveland area. I’ll call later.”
I had straight up lied to my brother, twice. I trusted Steel more than I trusted my own mother, and I’d made shit up about what was going down.
“Who’s Steel?” Daniella asked after I hung up.
“He’s my best friend in the MC, on the planet.”
“You’re lying to him?”
“Yes.” I watched her green eyes process the information.
“Why?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Which was only partially the truth. I did know. I wanted to keep her with me. I didn’t want her in the hands of The Hawks or even my club. She was too fragile. And even that was a lie. She wasn’t too fragile. I’d seen her handle herself just fine. She was accident prone, that’s what it was. Disaster seemed to follow close behind her. She handled it, but I wanted to help keep that disaster at bay for this woman.
I was fucking unsure of what I was doing here. I only knew I wanted her with me, and away from danger.
“Are you going to turn me over to Rex?”
“No, you’re safe with me, okay?” She looked up at me with trusting eyes. There was almost relief in them. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
She got on the bike behind me and held tight this time. I felt her press into me. It felt goddamn amazing. It felt right. And it felt like nothing was going to be more important to me, ever, than keeping her safe.
But I still didn’t know the whole story. I still didn’t know what I had gotten myself into by choosing her over everything else right now. Because make no mistake, that’s exactly what I had done. We were both twisting in the wind right now, on our own, and I had to figure out what the fuck to do next.
I drove her back to her little apartment. I figured it was safe, for now. I was the only one who knew she was here.
I cut the engine to my bike. For a moment, she didn’t move, didn’t let go. I didn’t want her to.
“We can stay here another day, but that’s about it,” I said as she opened the door and we went inside.
“I thought I’d never see this again. I love this afghan. I worked hard on it,” Daniella said.
“Sit down, I need the full story,” I told her. I didn’t ask her. I couldn’t be in the dark if I had any chance of figuring out what was next. She took a deep breath. She looked up at me, with what looked a lot like trust in her green eyes.
“I didn’t love him. I sort of find consolation in t
hat. My heart was smarter than I was.” Daniella continued to want to beat herself up for being with Lynch.
“So why were you with that asshole?” She flinched at the way I’d spit it out. I felt bad about that. But I couldn’t help how much I hated the damn Hawks, and how much I hated anything they were a part of.
Daniella was blinking away tears. She was trying to be tough. I wished I hadn’t made her feel that she had to be tough. I waited.
“I was barely with him. He came into my work, a group of them did. One of The Hawks, pinched me, as a joke, hard. It hurt. He left a frigging bruise. Anyway, I dropped a tray, there was glass everywhere, and I was about to get canned.”
I imagined the scene.
“Daniella Moore, you are accident prone, not stupid, that’s what I see.”
She smiled at me and blinked away the tear. I swear that smile was worth whatever fucking work I had to do to get it to happen.
“Well, Rex was there for this whole scene. He helped me. He stopped his guys from hitting on me. It was nice, sort of, I guess. He was nice, sort of. At first.”
I didn’t want to hear about a nice Hawk. Not even a little. I bit my tongue on the complete bullshit of putting The Devil’s Hawks and nice in the same sentence. I kept quiet so she could say what she wanted to say.
“We were okay together in the beginning. He took me to the club. We had a good connection. I thought. He bought me stuff. Which I wasn’t a fan of, but now, the gifts, that was how I paid the deposit here and had enough to run.”
And now we were getting to it, the running part.
“It didn’t take long before Rex turned ugly. He was possessive, controlling, and I didn’t like his club. When he brought me there the first time, he sat with me. It was like a dive bar or something. But then he’d leave me there, and it was scary. He got mad if I complained. He bossed me around, and it got meaner and meaner. The final straw was he lost it when I visited my Granddad instead waiting for him.”
“Did he hit you?” If that bastard laid a hand on her, I would kill him.
“No, he didn’t. He grabbed my arms hard enough to bruise, but that still wasn’t it. It was the anger in his eyes, the arrogance, and his absolute belief that I should be where he said, when he said, for as long as he said. I saw, in one instant, what he really wanted from an old lady. I got the hell out of there after that. Before he could hit me.”
“Lynch says you’re in danger because you saw deals going down.”
“He’s lying. He wants me back under his thumb. I did hear and see a lot of stuff, but that wasn’t it. I never threatened to rat him out. He wants to control me, wanted to marry me even.”
“You may not have threatened to go to the cops about his shit, but you could. He can’t have that either if he’s not with you anymore.” She turned away and shook her head.
“I just wanted to be free of him. I thought he would forget about me if I was out of sight. I should never have dated him in the first place. It was so stupid.” Daniella curled her legs up on the couch and hugged them with her arms. There was no doubt she was scared. I still wondered if Lynch had hit her, or if what she saw was enough to get her killed even if he wasn’t obsessed with controlling her.
She’d put her head on her knees now. She was totally curled into a ball.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe with me. It’s okay.” I put her hands in my hands. And then I pulled her on top of me. I cradled her in my lap. Daniella clung to me like I was her last lifeline. And I probably was. If I didn’t figure something out, Lynch would send someone else. I was sure of it. I had to think.
The soft way she felt in my arms had me fucking rock hard. It was impossible. I wanted her naked. I wanted to touch her skin. But the last thing I wanted was to take advantage of a woman who’d already been through something frightening. I tried like hell to ignore the pull she had on me.
“I shouldn’t feel safe with you. But I do,” she whispered, and I felt her breath hot on my earlobe. I closed my eyes. I tried to stop the rolling tide inside. She nuzzled in closer, and I kissed her head. I felt my hands pull her closer to me. Daniella leaned back, and I had to kiss her neck. It was under my tongue. I scraped my teeth over her collarbone. And she moaned. I was fucking lost.
I leaned her back on the couch and buried my head in her breasts. They were lush, soft, more than she should have for a woman so little everywhere else. I pulled up her shirt and tossed it. I bit at her nipple through the fabric of her bra. The cups barely held her. I ripped her jeans down over her hips. I grabbed her ass, hard, in my hands, and pulled her panties off in the next move. Her smooth skin under my fingers had me on fire.
She was nearly naked underneath me, and I wanted all of it. I wanted her body open, exposed, mine to do what I wanted, but also to make her feel better than anyone before me ever had. I know I was rough. I know I ripped her bra off. I should have been more careful. But there she was, naked, fucking gorgeous.
And I paused. What if she didn’t want this? What if I was just another bad decision in her life that she couldn’t stop? As much as I didn’t want to let her go, I also didn’t want to hurt or confuse her.
My hands couldn’t stop, they found the hard pebble of her nipples, and I twisted them. She cried out. Shit. I should stop. I should let her decide.
I leaned up. And with a fucking ton of effort, I held her completely still. I stopped.
Twelve
DANIELLA
I wanted his hands back on me. I wanted his lips, his teeth, his tongue. But he’d stopped. He was looking at me like I was torturing him, not the other way around.
“What?”
“I don’t want to be another Lynch in your life. Do you want this?” I felt him hard against me. I wanted it. I wanted him. More than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.
So, I said it.
“I want you to do whatever you want to me. Now. I’m begging you to.” I wasn’t great at seduction or talking dirty. I could only say what I thought and felt, and that was it.
His mouth closed over mine, our tongues were hungry for each other’s. I spread my legs around him and held him. I was nearly to climax, and he was still fully clothed. He sucked hard on my nipples, one, then the other, and I felt his fingers, slowly at first, at my entrance, and then a tease inside.
“Oh, oh.” I was on the moon already. He handled everything without missing a beat. His zipper was undone, and he had a condom on before I could even ask to help.
And then he paused again. I wanted him inside me so badly. But he paused his hard length just almost there. We locked eyes. I was writhing. I couldn’t stop. I wriggled myself closer. I was going to have him, dammit.
He smiled. I swear he fucking smiled. It was the sexiest smile I’d ever seen, and it almost did me in. Then Hammer earned his name. His huge cock pounded into me. I felt him from my core to my toes. I was out of control. I just wanted him to keep going to keep doing what he was doing. He rocked me hard, over and over. And then he leaned up, the angle changing with his position. It was incredible. The friction, the way he filled me, the way he smelled, the way he pulled me down at my hips instead of letting my head slam on the couch arm, all of it was right.
“Hammer, oh, oh...” I had no words other than his name. He pulled almost out, almost away, I felt a keening, a tightening. I wanted him back. I wanted him as close as I could get him. And he plunged in again. I was exploding in sensation, pleasure, ecstasy.
He growled my name.
“Daniella…”
He lost himself in me too. I knew it. His body was instinct and frenzy, and I held tight to receive everything he had.
He thrust into me again, harder, and again. I was overwhelmed with him, by him. He thrust in again, and I knew he’d come hard, just as I had, just as crazy.
“What the fuck?” he said, and I knew he didn’t really want an answer. It was the same question in my head too, what the fuck had just happened? It was way more than anything I’d ever felt, or e
ven dreamed.
Hammer looked down at me, clear-eyed and somewhat back down to earth. He gently softened my hair, brushed it away from my face. He kissed the cut over my eye. I closed them. I was floating in the aftermath of the sensations he’d sparked all over my body.
“Here,” he said and slid me around, so I was on his side instead of under his weight. The explosion of sex with Hammer was over. But we weren’t over. He wasn’t done.
Hammer’s fingers ran up and down my arm. He slid them over my hip, around again to my backside. I let him touch wherever he wanted to touch. I was suspended with him, somewhere outside of space or time. He was still more or less dressed I realized. He pulled the afghan I’d made around from the back of the couch and gently put it over me. But I didn’t need it or care if he had me naked all the time. This was not me. Or it had never been me before.
The way Hammer lavished his fingertips, his eyes, and then his lips, over my skin made me feel warm and powerful. Like it was right that I was naked with him in the middle of the day. Anywhere.
He slid down so his lips could catch my breasts. I felt his teeth on me. I squirmed at the sensation. I was raw, sensitive, and overstimulated. He kept going. Soon, I was on top of him; our positions had reversed from before.
“Sit up,” he said, and I knew what he meant. I straddled him. His big rough hands ran over my shoulders, down my chest, and to my hips. His eyes were open, and I watched him watch me. It was like a drug. All of it.
And I felt the need again, so strong, to have him inside me. I put my hand down and held his hard length. He moaned when I squeezed, just a little. And then I moved him where I wanted him.
Hammer was underneath me. I splayed my hands on his massive chest, and he let me ride him. His mouth was so fucking sexy. So was his jaw. I took in all of it as I moved up and down.
Quickly, more quickly than I would have wanted, I was in a frenzy again. I needed this. I needed him. He held my hips steady as I lost it, completely. I turned into a wild animal that wanted one thing.