Irrevocable (The Exiled Eight MC Book 1)

by Addison Jane

  “Yeah, man, we don’t mind picking it up and taking it through to Cali,” Ham said as he leaned against the wall just on the other side of the door. “A couple of these boys need to be versed in the ways of transport, so I’ll bring a few of the prospects with me.”

  I listened for a few minutes, making a note on my phone of the times and days and places that he named, but trying to keep it as vague as possible in hopes it would be enough to satisfy Caleb but to still keep the boys out of trouble if he couldn’t find them.

  “I told you,” Meyah crowed as she bounced down the staircase.

  My heart jumped, and I rushed back to the bar, my hands shaking. She shoved the phone in my face, but I was strangely unfazed by the photo of a man garnishing a cocktail with a dead cricket. My mind was elsewhere, and I was acutely aware that my best friend intended on getting me very drunk so we could watch movies and eat far too much cake. So, if I was going to do this shit, I needed to do it now.

  “Hey, I just need to call my mom,” I lied as she focused on the drinks in front of her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Hurry,” she urged as I took the stairs. “The boys will be in soon, and if I can get one to work, I want to try it on them.”

  “Yup,” I called back, jogging up the stairs and down the hall until I reached what was still considered my room. I stepped inside and closed the door, locking it, and then stepping away.

  My fingers shook as I fought to dial the right number. It was one I had memorized, so I didn’t have to explain to anyone why it was in my cell. I couldn’t believe that things had gotten to this point where I was about to go behind these people’s back, where I couldn’t trust them to do what was best for me, or tell them just how deep my hole was and hope that they would be able to pull me out.

  Because I didn’t know that.

  They couldn’t guarantee that, and I kept seeing flashes of Evie’s smiling face in my mind, a reminder of the consequences if I didn’t get this fucking right.

  I placed the cell to my ear and listened to it ring. One time, two times, three times. He picked up on the fourth, and the harsh hello that answered instantly had me on the defensive. I wanted to hang up, and I wanted to throw up, but I managed to hold the stomach contents in their place.

  “Hey, it’s Dakota.”

  Don’t do this.

  Don’t do this.

  Don’t do this.

  “Dakota?” he asked in a pleasant toned surprise. “Do you need something?”

  Evie.

  Amelia.

  Mom.

  Austin.

  I cleared my throat but the emotion was still there, and a tear slipped down my cheek as I forced myself to speak.

  “There’s something going on.”

  RIPLEY

  I climbed onto a stool at the bar. The ride down here had been a bitch, and I’d managed to get caught in traffic backed up because of a multi-car pileup, and then if that wasn’t frustrating enough, a rainstorm hit just before I made it to Phoenix. All I wanted was to climb into a hot shower and get some fucking sleep.

  Shake walked over and patted me on the back before pulling his hand away and shaking the water off. “Man, you got drenched,” he pointed out like for some fucking reason I hadn’t noticed. He continued around the other side of the bar pulling a bottle of whiskey from the shelf and filling a shot glass. He pushed it across the bar. “Here, this’ll warm you up.”

  I didn’t waste a second picking it up and throwing it back. It wasn’t even on my tongue long enough to make me cringe with the sharp woody taste.

  “Thanks, man,” I praised with a nod, shaking my head when he raised the bottle to offer me another. “Nah, I’m gonna head upstairs. We’ll talk about the Empire shit later?”

  He nodded. “Or tomorrow. Ain’t no rush.”

  “Tomorrow sounds even fucking better,” I told him, tapping the bar in thanks as I jumped off the stool and headed for upstairs. My room was exactly the way it was left.

  Almost.

  The lump of a person beneath the sheets—that was new. I shut the door with a hushed click before walking around the side of the bed, suddenly really not caring so much that I was soaking wet and tired as hell. I managed to get within a few steps, but that was it.

  “You’re back,” her voice murmured.

  “I’m back.” I didn’t know what else to say, and the cold shoulder she was giving me right at that moment was entirely warranted. “Why are you in my bed?”

  “Because your sister made me try all her horrendous cocktails this afternoon,” Dakota mumbled, keeping the blanket pulled up around her face and refusing to turn and look at me. “I’m pretty sure it was the crickets that pushed me over the edge. I was slightly tipsy, and your room was closer than mine.”

  “Crickets?”

  “Crickets,” she confirmed, I hadn’t heard her wrong.

  “My room is about twenty feet closer than your room,” I pointed out, calling bullshit to the rest. “Your drunk ass couldn’t stumble a few extra feet?”

  There was the button. It was bright and shiny and red. And I’d pushed it.

  She threw the blanket back, the hem of it smacking me in the face as she rolled out of bed and on to her feet. “Have your fucking bed back, Rip,” she spat, standing there and staring me dead in the eye like she wasn’t only wearing a bra and a pair of lace panties that were both completely see through. Nope. She just stood a little taller. Lifted her chin a little higher. She owned it. And even when I caught the moment in her eyes that she realized she was almost naked, she still stood her ground.

  “I hope next time you go shopping for chocolate chip cookies, you accidentally pick up oatmeal raisin cookies instead,” she fumed. “And then you take a bite of it and you spit it out because it’s not chocolate chip, but now the store is closed so you can’t go and get a new packet so you just have to cry yourself to sleep.”

  “I like oatmeal raisin.”

  “No one likes oatmeal raisin!”

  “Did a raisin hurt you?”

  Dakota held up her middle finger. “I’m going home.”

  She turned to walk away, but I grabbed her arm and spun her back toward me. “Woah there, pixie. You aren’t going anywhere. You might be sobering up, but I can tell there’s still a lot of alcohol in that little body of yours.”

  “Then I’ll walk,” she clipped, snatching her arm out of my grip and backing up. The dark cloudiness in her eyes began to melt away, and that was when I spotted the hurt through the hardness. Yeah, I’d fucking screwed up.

  “Dakota, I’m sorry, okay.”

  I wish I had something to wash that sour taste away with. Apologies were like biting lemons.

  She laughed and shook her head as she moved to the end of the bed and picked up her jeans off the floor. “You’re sorry? That’s great, Ripley.” She started to tug them on over her feet, but her balance was still not great, and she fell onto the end of the bed. “I’m sorry, too, you know. Sorry for that stupid part of me that believed for one moment this could have been anything more than you sticking your dick in me.”

  Classy.

  So fucking classy with her words.

  But that was Dakota.

  She didn’t sprinkle sugar on it or add bows to pretty shit up. And honestly, I didn’t want sparkly, I wanted real. She was fucking real.

  “And that’s the part that scares the fucking shit out of me because it is more,” I barked back, rounding the bed so I was standing directly in front of her, while she continued to struggle with her pants.

  She stopped for a moment, her hands frozen with her jeans bunched up around her knees as she fought to get them on. “I am far too hungover to have this talk right now. I just want to go home.”

  “Stay with me,” I demanded, instantly knowing it was the wrong move.

  Stubborn fucking small woman.

  “No.”

  I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to pull her jeans back off and throw her
beneath the covers, but right now, that wouldn’t solve shit, and she’d proven on more than one occasion that there were times if I pushed too hard, she would push back. Harder.

  “At least let me drive you home.”

  She licked her lips, but finally looked up at me and nodded. “Okay.”

  Fuck.

  Small wins.

  Of course, she’d made me drive her in her car all the way home. That was apparently a non-negotiable which I’d tried to negotiate and which she’d won like a professional.

  She yawned long and loudly as she pressed open her front door. I followed her into the kitchen completely entranced by how this girl could get even more fucking tenacious with a little bit of booze in her, but when she flicked on the lights, that was all out the window and my mouth hit the floor.

  “Holy shit, did you rob a fucking bakery?” I exclaimed, walking over to the tiny, two-person table which had three or four levels of Tupperware stacked on it in different sizes, shapes, and colors. They were all semi-colored clear plastic, so as I got right up close and could see what was inside. Some had cupcakes, some had cakes, pastries, other strange looking deserts. Some were frosted, and some weren’t.

  “I bake when I’m in a bad place,” she groaned, dropping onto one of the tiny chairs and reaching for a container of muffins with pink frosting and popping the lid open.

  It took my brain those few seconds to compute what she’d said. “Why weren’t you in a good place?”

  She froze for a brief moment before she started to laugh. “Because of this, Ripley!” she crowed, plucking a cupcake out of the container and thrusting it between us. “Because I don’t even know what the fuck this is. But what I do know is that watching you walk out that door last week, it crushed a part of me I didn’t even know existed.”

  She suddenly seemed pretty sober.

  “Also, because I have no fucking idea how you feel about things because you’re so goddamn good at shutting your emotions down, and just giving me the Ripley that pokes fun at me, or who knows the parts of my body that sing when you touch them.”

  It was because I could feel parts of me changing. There were things I was thinking about that had never surfaced before, and frankly, I just wasn’t sure what to do with them. I was imagining how fucking incredible our kids would be. I was wondering whether Dakota was the type to marry. Whether she wanted some kind of commitment and how willing—no, not just willing—how fucking eager I was to show her my loyalty. Because I’d never felt like this for another girl. And I can’t fucking imagine feeling it for anyone else either.

  “Just… go back to the clubhouse, Ripley,” she said sadly, getting up and turning away when I failed to answer. I grabbed her arm, spinning her body back toward me. She pulled her hand away, and I reached for it again. “Rip, stop!”

  “Not a chance,” I threw back, tugging on her arm and spinning her body so her back was pressed against my chest. “I fucked up. I walked away. But it was only because I’m fucking petrified.”

  “Petrified? What the hell are you scared of?”

  “Of how you’d be so willing to hurt yourself to protect me,” I whispered in her ear. It caught in my throat for a second, and I had to clear it. I spun her back out, and she stumbled for a second looking at me with wide eyes. “And fucking terrified that I would do exactly the fucking same thing.” I grabbed her face with my hands a pulled her into me, pressing my lips against hers and kissing the fucking life out of her. She melted like butter under my hands. At least she did for a few minutes.

  I was ready for her to push me away, but what I wasn’t ready for was the cupcake that came flying at my face and crushed against my cheek, pink frosting and all smeared across my face. She took a step back, her mouth hanging open as she looked at me in horror like she hadn’t expected this situation when she decided to slap me with a pink frosted food item. She continued to back up, the shocked open mouth slowly beginning to curve upward into a smile.

  Meanwhile, I didn’t know what to do. Did I just wait for it to fall off, or did I need to wipe at it? What the hell did one do in this fucking situation?

  “Dakota…”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I forgot… I swear,” she tried to explain at the same time, trying not to laugh, her hand moving to cover her mouth.

  I swiped my tongue out catching some of the frosting on the tip and pulling it back inside my mouth. It was fucking good. And she stared in awe, her own tongue moving between her open lips as if she wished it was tasting what I was tasting too.

  “Come here,” I ordered, my tone rough.

  She stood up taller, her mouth opening as her natural instinct was to argue back when she was told to do something. But nope, not this time. I wiped the cake off my face and took two steps forward. She stumbled back in the tiny kitchen, her back hitting the counter before she could go anywhere. I swiped my finger through some of the frosting that was still lumped on my cheek and pressed it to her lips.

  Her eyes drooped closed, and her tongue snaked out to steal the sweet sugary substance and just as they did, I took the cupcake that I’d smuggled in my free hand and smashed it against her chest, right above her breasts.

  She gasped.

  It was cold.

  It was kind of wet and weird feeling. But it was going to taste fucking amazing.

  “You got any more of that frosting?” I asked, grabbing her hands and pulling them up over her head as I dipped down and licked at her chest swiping my tongue over the curve of her breast.

  “Yes?” she croaked. “The fridge.”

  I trailed my tongue up her neck to her ear. “Good. I hope you like the color pink because it’s about to be all fucking over you.”

  DAKOTA

  The drinking hangover that had started to come on was well and truly gone as Ripley suddenly let me go and walked over to the refrigerator, leaving me standing against the counter with a fucking cupcake in the middle of my chest.

  I picked it off and put it to the side on the counter, leaving the frosting. It was sticky and wet, but I had this strange urge to run my fingers through it. I swiped a finger through, but before I could get it to my lips, a hand encircled my wrist.

  “Don’t you dare.” He pulled my hand to his mouth and sucked the frosting off the tip of my finger. My nipples instantly hardened, and my mouth fell open. It felt strange but holy shit, it sparked a flame. My body was already tingly with excitement, my heartbeat racing a little faster as he placed the tub of frosting on the counter.

  “Clothes off,” he ordered, stirring the beast in my stomach.

  “Excuse me?” Those beautiful creamy eyes soon clouded, and I realized this was probably not the time or place to demand that he use his manners. “Clothes, gotcha.”

  I pulled at the hem of my tank top tugging it over my head before making quick work of the button on my jeans leaving me standing in the middle of the kitchen in my matching lacy bra and panties. His eyes roamed over my body in appreciation, and I felt my cheeks start to heat. “Rip…”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “Fucking perfect, you know that,” he murmured, walking toward me and grabbing my face in his hands, pulling me against him. His lips explored, his tongue swiping over my lips. I could taste the sweetness on it.

  It lit up my senses.

  I wanted more.

  He turned my body walking me backward to the table that was piled high with cakes and cupcakes, and before I could protest, he pulled back, sweeping his arm across the entire table and sending them all flying onto the floor.

  I gasped.

  Some popped open, there were cakes upside down on the floor and a rainbow of different colored frosting and shit all across my floor. Ripley didn’t even give me time to threaten him and tell him how he’d be cleaning them all up afterward before he picked me up and sat my ass on the table.

  “Lay down,” he ordered, and I slowly laid back sucking in a sharp breath when the cold table touched my back. He chuckled. “Good girl.”<
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  “I’m not a dog,” I argued, glaring up at him.

  He slipped in between my legs pressing the crotch of his jeans against my pussy and grinding hard. I threw my arms out to the side and gripped the edges of the table as I struggled not to just scream at him to fuck me already. “No, you’re right, but today, you’re going to be like my canvas. I’m going to paint you, and then, if you’re a good girl and stay real still… I’ll lick it all off.”

  God.

  Fuck him and his goddamn games.

  “And if I move?” I rasped, finding it hard to get the words out as my body was already so fucking turned on and alive.

  He braced his hands on either side of me and leaned over looking down at me with the most devious smirk. “Every time you move, I get to spank you that many times before I let you have my cock.” He pressed it in against me, harder this time, just to reinforce his rules.

  “You’re a bastard,” I hissed, rolling my hips and letting a groan slip. Totally involuntarily.

  He pressed his lips to my neck making my entire body shudder. “I’m going to count that as one,” he whispered, and I could hear the grin in his voice.

  “Fuck you,” I muttered.

  “Two,” he laughed, sweeping my hair back from my face with his hand. “You want to keep going?”

  I pressed my lips together but let him know just how unhappy I was about it by narrowing my eyes, which actually only made him more amused as he pulled away and reached for the tub of frosting. “I see you, kitty cat, with your angry stare,” he teased. “Now let’s see if we can make you purr.” He placed it on the table beside me, and with his hands, he pulled down both bra cups to expose my breasts before hooking his fingers inside my panties and dragging them torturously slow down my legs before depositing them over his shoulder with a bright smile.

  I felt open, exposed, and horny as fucking hell. Goddammit.

  I was excited and absolutely terrified at the same time, and to be honest, I’d given in to the fact that my ass was just going to be sore as damn hell after this because there was no way I was going to be able to stay still with his hands on my body.