by A. J. Downey
28
Glass Jaw…
I kept going back and forth between being fucking furious at her and scared fucking shitless for her.
All the while, the same fucking question rattled around in my brain, why? Why, why, why, why, why? Why would she do this, how could she do this? She had her whole life, she had Marc, why would she take this kind of risk for me?
She got out of the car, and I stared down the drive with a baleful look as she turned in my direction. The other girls she had with her bailed out of the car and four sets of eyes fixed on me. They were all frozen like rabbits, but they had their own men to deal with.
I didn’t envy Maverick. He had two women to put in their place between his best friend, Dahlia, and his woman Marisol. Dahlia I wasn’t so worried about. She knew what this criminal enterprise shit was about. It wasn’t advertised, but she’d grown up some kind of mafia princess. That’s how she and Mav knew each other. Their respective crime families had some kind of a thing. An unholy fucking union between the Russians or Ukrainians or whatever the fuck Maverick was and Dahlia’s Italian side.
Marisol and Dahlia pulled up and turned into the driveway behind Aspen’s car and I pulled out my phone.
“Yeah?” Maverick growled into the phone.
“They’re all here,” I said.
“Tell Marisol and Dahlia to get their asses to the club,” he said. “Let the boys deal with the rest of their women until we can all get together and figure it out.”
“Copy that,” I said and hung up. Dahlia got out of the driver’s side of her car and cocked a hip, hand on it, eyebrow raised.
“Narcing us out?” she asked coolly.
“You know where my loyalty lies,” I growled.
“Hmph, swear you got Mav’s dick so far up your ass his voice just came out of your mouth,” she declared, and everyone was frozen, staring at her, mouths agape.
“You’re already on thin ice, Princess,” I spat at her. “Disrespecting me is the definition of ‘fuck around and find out’ at this point.”
She rolled her eyes and turned.
“Let’s get this shit unloaded, shall we?” she asked sweetly.
The back door popped open, and Cadence turned. “Marc, go back in the house,” she said sharply.
“Whoa, nice to see you too, Mom,” he said, holding his hands up as though in surrender.
“Back in the house!” she gritted out between her teeth and her kid was just like her, stubborn and didn’t know when to quit.
“Fine!” he snapped, rolling his eyes and slamming the door behind him.
“Go,” Cadence said to the rest of the women, and they started pulling out and handing suitcases down the line old-fashioned fire-brigade style, rolling them into the darkened pit of her storage unit.
She stalked across the grass toward me, and I seethed, Dahlia having gotten me properly riled up.
I was so fucking angry, and the defiance in her eyes was so fucking hot, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to punch something or… yeah, the boner stirring in my pants told me just what I was going to do, the minute we were alone which fuck if I knew when that was going to be.
“You can’t answer your fucking phone?” I demanded.
“I had it off,” I said. “I only turned it on long enough to get the check-in texts from Marc, but I saw yours.”
I got right up in her face and said under my breath just loud enough for her to hear, “I don’t know whether to fuck you or kill you.”
“You needed the help,” she said, and her eyes were flinty, the green sparking like fireworks in the sky. I wasn’t about to tread carefully.
“I didn’t fuckin’ ask you. None of us did!” I said lowly.
“You didn’t have to,” she fired back, stepping into me. “You needed the help and so did all of those people. We couldn’t sit by and do nothing, so we did something! Now, you can take over and get this shit out of my house and where it needs to go, you ungrateful shit!”
She whirled away from me, and I snatched her arm and pulled her back. “What we do is our business, and fucking none of yours,” I said savagely. “We go out of our way to keep you bitches safe.”
“Bitches, huh?” she demanded, and I raised my eyebrows.
“When you act like this? Yes.”
“Go fuck yourself, Glass Jaw,” she said with derision. “It’s all you’re gonna get with that kind of disrespect.”
The green fire of her eyes was extinguished by her hurt and I dropped my hand from her arm to rake it back through my hair.
“Fix whatever it is you need to fix on that thing and get the fuck out of my yard until you’ve had a think,” she said, and I felt the corner of my mouth twitch.
Dahlia looked past my Cadence with a smirk in my direction and said, “Atta girl.” Cadence went to her back door and opened it.
“Shut up,” she said with disgust and slammed the door like her son had a moment before.
“What she said,” I shot at Dahlia. “You and Marisol get your ass back to the club. Mav’s there waiting on you. The rest of you, git on home. Your men are waiting on your asses too.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Marisol said, rolling her eyes.
Fucking hell, it was a full-on mutiny!
I went back to work on changing my oil and a few minutes later, Marc came slamming out the back door looking pissed. He got his bike from where it was leaning against the back of the house and walked it past me.
“Save yourself, man,” he said, rolling his eyes. “She’s in a mood. Must be that time of the month or something.”
“Hey,” I said. “I know she’s got you pissed off, but don’t think you can disrespect your mom in front of me, again. I’m your friend, but I’m not one of your little bros. That’s my woman you’re talking about and disrespecting her ain’t gonna fly.”
Marc mounted his bike and rolled his eyes. “Whatever!”
“Hey! Where you going? Your mom know?” I shouted at him.
“The park! I got my phone!”
“Alright!” I waved him off.
“Making friends wherever you go,” Raven declared with a flat, unfriendly tone. I turned around and looked up from where I’d kneeled back down by my bike.
She held out Cadence’s keys.
“She, like all of us, did this for you. Because we’re all fucking scared to death of losing you. Remember that and try not to be an asshole more than necessary,” she said.
“Take that shit up with your own ol’ man. Pretty sure he’s waitin’ on you.” I raised an eyebrow, and she rolled her eyes at me and Jesus, fuck! There was a lot of eye rolling going on around here and only one fucking teenager. Was that shit contagious or something?
She went back and caught a ride with Dahlia and Marisol, which made sense with her apartment’s proximity to the club. Kestrel looked out the back window at me from the back of Dahlia’s car as they left. Her catching a ride with them also making sense with her and D.T. being right there on the way to the club. She would likely be dropped off first.
That just left Aspen out here with me, looking on as the rest of her girl posse left, standing at the open door to her car. As soon as the other girls were out of sight, her eyes started to well.
She was cracking.
Shit.
“Better get home to Fen,” I said tersely, and she sniffed and nodded mutely, dashing at the tears starting to slide down her face.
I knew how fucking crazy the fucking Viking could get but I also knew what a fucking soft spot he had for Aspen. She was going to be fine. He would never hurt her in a million years, and I already knew, that when it came to punishment for her, it was going to be whatever hell confrontation she dreamed up in her skull and tortured herself with all the way home.
I watched her pull out, her bottom lip trembling, tears spilling silently as she held her shit together as best she could. As soon as she was out of sight, I pulled out my phone and called Fen.
“Yeah?” he answered, and he
sounded pissed.
“She’s on her way, bro, and she’s scared shitless. Maybe go easier on her than even you were thinking,” I said. “I mean, far be it from me to tell you how to wrangle your woman, but she’s seen how you can get and it’s written all over her that she thinks she’s going to bleed when she gets there.”
There was silence on the other end of the line and then, the call just ended.
He’d heard me.
I gave it a minute, staring at the back door of Cadence’s place, willing it to open, and when it didn’t, hung my head and cursed softly as I dropped my wrench all over again, got the oil pan draining and heaved myself to my feet, wiping my hands on an already dirty shop rag.
I went in the back door, through the laundry area and found her in the kitchen. The microwave was going, something heating, and I stood by the fridge and glared daggers at her back where she stood at the counter, leaning heavily on it, hands pressed to the stone, shoulders hunched.
I was half-afraid that like Aspen, she was cracking, but no… not my girl. She turned around, the fire in her eyes banked but there was a righteously hot coal bed still burning in them.
“Your attitude change?” she demanded, and the rage was back in me, just like that. I dropped the rag, strode up to her and pressed her back into the counter roughly. She made a noise of protest, and I grabbed her face, hard, pinching her chin, between fingers and thumb, hand almost at her throat.
Gloves were fucking off.
I kissed her, hard, pressing my mouth against hers, thrusting my tongue in her mouth, past her teeth while she pushed fruitlessly against my chest in a bid to get me to stop. I finally tore my mouth from hers looked her in those gleaming emerald eyes of hers and told her the truth.
“You scared the fucking shit out of me!”
The fire in her eyes went out, and she froze. We stared in each other’s eyes from mere inches away, her half bent backwards over the counter, hands dropped from my chest, fingers curling around the edge while she stared at me, speechless for the moment.
Her position thrust the front of her hips against mine and I knew she could feel my raging boner pressed as it was against her.
“Congratulations,” she spat. “Now you know how we feel.”
I felt my brow crush down and some of the fire left my blood.
“I’ve done the whole secrets and lies thing, Jared. I won’t do it again. We either find a way to communicate better, or we can’t do this anymore.”
I dropped my hand from her face and took a step back, staring at her. She moved her jaw around and looked vaguely ill.
I shook my head.
“I will never hurt you,” I said.
“That hurt,” she said, putting a hand to her jaw and coming away with a bit of grease on her fingertips from her face. “Nice,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought it was hot. You’ve got me all fired up and fucked up, Cadence. I wasn’t lying, you scared the fucking shit out of me when you wouldn’t answer my texts or my calls.”
“My phone was off. Dahlia said it was for the best. Tracking and listening, and all of that.”
I nodded mutely and finally said, “I should have thought of that, but I couldn’t think straight. Baby, you can’t ever do anything like this again, you don’t even know—”
“Oh, trust me, I know,” she said and shook her head as though trying to banish whatever thoughts that’d been chasing around in her skull away.
“Can I ask?” She looked at me and I met her eyes with mine. “What were you thinking?”
She almost shuddered and said, “That I didn’t want to lose you. That those people you all help, that they needed the medicine… that I had a choice to make.” Her eyes did well then and she looked away. “That I could do the right thing or that I could do the legal thing and guess which one I chose?” She turned back to me and dashed at one of her tears.
“I’m coming back,” I said. “And I’m going to kiss you just as hard as I did a minute ago only this time I’m not going to stop until you’re naked and screaming my name underneath me.”
She stopped breathing, her gaze where it met mine fevered and luminous as she tremulously said, “Okay.”
Consent given, I crashed back into her and kissed her fiercely, her hands going to my face to cup it, and pull me into her instead of pushing me away this time.
I had to concede, she wasn’t right, I wasn’t wrong, the situation was a total no-win for either side but fuck, these girls had no clue how much of a dangerous precedent they’d set with this shit.
They were playing with fire, and they didn’t know what they were doing.
29
Cadence…
Jared crashed into me, his mouth crushing over mine, shoving me back into the counter again. The microwave on my lunch had gone off a while ago while we’d been arguing, but it was all a distant memory, my hunger for food replaced with a hunger for him like I’d never felt before.
The fact that he was willing to fight with me, willing to argue, and was seemingly desperate to keep me safe and to keep me with him… God, I had been so desperate for so long for someone to just… just… fight for me. To want to be by my side and be with me to the point of desperation!
I felt that from him. In the way his hands moved over my clothes. In the way his body pressed against mine desperate to be near me, in the way he lifted me up, onto the edge of the counter and simultaneously pulled me to the edge, urging my legs around him.
I clung to him, kissing him back with every bit of fervent need, trying to tell him without words that yes! I choose you! I want you and I want to be with you! I just need you to want me too!
Tears wanted to leak from the corners of my eyes at how desperately afraid I had been that doing this whole thing to protect him and keep him out of jail… at how it might backfire and break us. At how I knew deep down it had the power to break all trust between us and how it had all but been a precarious thing, fragile, a new hope, from the very beginning where we were concerned.
Trust… as invisible and as fragile as a soap bubble on the wind. So precarious in its structure that to even look at it wrong, it could burst, winking out of existence.
“Don’t let me go,” I breathed in desperation against his mouth.
“Never,” he growled back, and he pulled me against him tighter and demanded of me, “Hold on to me.”
I clung to him desperately, locking my legs and arms around him and he lifted me off the counter with a slight grunt and strode past my dining room table and around the corner, past the bottom of Marc’s stairs and turning sharply again, down the hall to my bedroom.
He kicked my door shut with an impatient growl and threw me down on the bed, pulling his stained and greasy light-gray tee over his head from the back like men do and that just drove me nuts, laying back like that, him standing over me, muscles moving beneath his skin, coiling and bunching powerfully as he wadded the tee up and cast it aside.
I sat up and he flung me back down onto my back with a shove of my shoulder. I blinked in surprise, and he shook his head, going for his belt, toeing out of his boots as he undid it and I nearly swallowed my tongue watching him.
Every movement was strapped, precise, and measured. It was like he was an explosive personality and the only thing keeping the wildness in check was his own ironclad will and resolve not to hurt me.
He stripped and stood looking down at me, cock erect, a darkness in his eyes, but also a deep longing as he cupped the heel of one of my boots. He lifted it, never breaking eye contact and almost lovingly lowered the zipper on the inside.
He was slow about undressing me, almost tender, and it wall all round alien and frightening – no, thrilling watching him do it.
I propped myself up slowly, carefully, to watch him work, and there was a sort of savage beauty to it all.
The fact this man could be so angry with me, scared for me, and yet treat me so carefully. It was honestly an aphrodisiac like no ot
her.
I was wet, craving him like he was my perfect drug, and maybe? Maybe he was.
That thrill, that edge of danger every time we fucked, I had to confess it was like loving a tiger or something equally as dangerous. Always that one change in mood away from being shredded to pieces.
It was so fucking hot, and the fact that a man like Jared could want and love a woman like me… so plain, so boring… that was even hotter.
He stripped me naked and vulnerable and any time I tried to rise with any significance he would push me back down. His hand was gentle but firm where he grasped my ankle now, his lips soft as he planted them in a kiss against my shin. I watched him climb my body one kiss at a time, his hands massaging my legs, parting them so he could kneel between them. His gaze was weighted and smoothed over my skin with an almost physical touch of its own.
He pulled me bodily down the bed a short distance, his cock thrusting up against my wet and waiting pussy, but not penetrating. Wrong angle. Still, he slid himself against my pussy lips, dry humping – if you could call it that – because I was so fucking wet and ready for him. I made a small mewling noise in my throat that I could hardly believe came from me, but I was prepared to beg him if he willed it.
He looked down at me, his eyes hooded with a combination of love and lust as he teased me, his thumb finding that bundle of nerves, slicking through my wetness and teasing me to greater heights but while it was nice, it wasn’t what I needed. I needed him… I needed him to fill me, to go so impossibly deep I rode that edge between pleasure and pain.
“Jared, please,” I begged, gasping, breathless with my desire and my desperation for him. He stared down at me, face imperious, unreadable, and he would not be swayed. He smoothed hands up my body, rocking against my pussy with his hips, sliding his hot, thick cock up and down my wet and waiting slit, pinching my nipples between forefingers and thumb, rolling them, causing such exquisite sensation, as he angled his cock to take over rubbing my clit where his thumb had been before.
It was kinky, it was bizarre, why didn’t he just fuck me? But he would not be swayed, he just silently kept at it, relentless, forcing me closer and closer to the edge of that precipice without giving me the satisfaction of having him inside me which I so craved.