“Lie down,” I instruct. “I want to see all of you now.”
With no hesitation at all, she shrugs free of her bra and discarding it by the side of the bed, she lets me ease her back until her head is on the pillow.
I don’t waste time. With my eyes on her face, checking she’s right here with me, I ease my thumbs into the elastic of her pyjama bottoms she’d obviously worn ready for bed, and take her panties down with it.
She’s bare, just how I like my women. I tell her so.
“I hate it.” She stuffs her hand against her mouth. “I had no choice, it was lasered.”
“Fuck.” There’s nothing else to be said. I try to make her see the bright side. “But it does mean you can feel my beard.” It’s not much more than stubble, but she hisses slightly as I rub her, giving her sensations I’m sure she’ll enjoy.
“Maccceeee.” She draws out my name. Then tries it again, “Mace.”
“What do you want, darlin’?” From the way her legs are rubbing together, it doesn’t take much for me to hazard a guess. “Want me to eat you out?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
I chuckle, making sure she can feel the vibration. “Not God, but a devil instead.”
I part her legs gently and settle between them. It doesn’t take much to encourage her clit out of its protective hood, and I alternate between licking her clit and sucking and tonguing that bundle of nerves, my hand and fingers making up for where my tongue is not.
She’s writhing, as I wanted, thinking about nothing but how good I’m making her feel.
Under my free hand I can feel ripples of her stomach muscles, then she goes taut and screams. I become gentler with my administrations as I bring her back down. It’s been a long time since a man has made sex about her.
“Fuck, Mace. That was good.”
“Good? Feel like I’m damned with faint praise, sweetheart. Seems I’m going to have to up my game.”
She notices the grin on my face. “Very good?” she offers as a substitute.
“Better.” Growing serious I study her carefully. “Ready for more?”
“God, yes.”
I laugh again. Okay, so I don’t mind being a god with her. I turn so I can sit on the bed and get my boots off my feet, then stand so I can take off my jeans and underwear. Turning toward her, I see her eyes fixed to my cock. I taunt her by tugging on it.
“Mace, I want that.”
I grin. “I kind of hoped you would.”
“I like your tats.”
“I’ll let you study them later, but first things first, babe.” My cock is throbbing almost painfully in anticipation of the event ahead. I slide on the condom I’d extracted from my back pocket before the jeans fell to the ground.
Her eyes have dilated, and she can’t take her eyes off my dick. “You ready for me, darlin’?”
“So ready,” she breathes.
I have never felt like this in my life before. Never expected to, never dreamed I’d find a woman I wanted to keep in my life. I fuck and don’t give a damn about it, it’s just another part of being alive, as insignificant as riding my bike, enjoyable yes, but not momentous. At this moment, the thought of making love—not fucking, this won’t be that—for the first time to Shayla has made me nervous. I don’t want to fuck it up. I already know I want to claim her, though I won’t name it that. What if we don’t fit? If she doesn’t like it? If I’m mediocre at best?
Fuck. I’ve never questioned my performance, but it’s never been as important as this.
“Mace? What’s wrong?”
Christ, I’m taking too long, staring like a lunatic at her perfect cunt. I decide to go for honesty.
“I don’t want to fuck this up. I want this to be perfect.”
“It’s you, Mace. It will be.”
Her reassurance is all I need. I move onto the bed and leaning my body over hers, take her lips in another of our earth-scorching kisses. Then I pull back to watch her face as I start to push my cock into her. She’s wet, but tight and it’s a fight to get inside.
She’s lying passive beneath me. Passive.
A light bulb suddenly goes off in my head. I’m an asshole. She’s been used, abused for months. Holding the condom, I pull out and throw myself on my back.
“Mace?” she asks, tentatively. Beside me I feel her body stiffen.
“You drive.” I turn my head to the side, grinning into her face. “Use me, babe. Take what you need. You don’t want this? You just say the word.”
“I want this,” she wails. “Mace, don’t you want me?”
“Take me.” My cock’s throbbing, at full mast, bobbing as blood pulses through the veins. “Ride me, baby. You’re in charge.”
Not always, that man isn’t me. But right now, something tells me this is what she needs. Those assholes took and didn’t give, now it’s time for her to chase her own pleasure and use me.
Pulling herself to her knees, carefully she straddles my thighs. Her eyes lock with mine as she rises. When her hands touch my cock, I hiss. Just the feeling of her fingers on that so-ready-for-her part of me is driving me crazy.
“Don’t mind your hands on me, babe, but keep that up and I won’t last long.” I open eyes which have fallen shut by themselves, and I wink. “I don’t care, I’ll come either way. But if you want me—”
“I should move this along?” As she completes my sentence, I notice the stress lines which had appeared on her forehead have smoothed out again.
Now she positions my cock at her entrance, and deliberately, tortuously slow, lowers herself onto my dick. She rises and falls, her teeth biting her lips as air whistles out through my teeth. When she’s finally worked me fully inside, her hands land on my chest. Using my body to brace against, she begins to fuck me.
I let my hands gently rest on her hips, not trapping, just for support. I get to watch her head thrown back, as she uses my body to bring herself close.
My cock thickens, my spine tingles, but still I hold myself back.
“Mace,” she cries out, her brow drawn down.
“What do you need? Need me to work that pretty clit, babe?”
“Mace. Please.”
I do, rubbing as best I can, and at last I feel her muscles clamping down on me.
“Mace I’m gonna…”
“Me too…” I shout.
We come together. Two sweaty bodies pulsating in time, two foreheads meeting as she brings her head down.
After our breathing has slowed, she lifts up, and I hold that condom steady, then curl my abs to sit up. “Gotta…”
“Yeah, go get rid of the evidence.” She grins.
I do. When I return from the bathroom, I pause a moment, my eyes feasting on the sight of this woman in the bed. The only thing wrong is that it’s hers and not mine. Half closing my eyes, I imagine her in my room.
“Come,” I say fast. When her head tilts, I tell her again, “Come to my bed. Cause that’s where I want you sleeping from now on.”
“That sounds permanent.”
“It’s what I want.” I know as I utter them, truer words I’ve never said.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then she stands, wrapping the sheet around her. When she bends to pick up her clothes, I reach out my hand to stop her. “I’ll come back for your shit, later.”
One hand holds the covering to her, the other reaches for mine. It takes less than a minute to change rooms, and less again before it’s my bed she’s lying on, my comforter under her perfect ass.
I catch my breath. She looks right, as if it’s her place, an adornment to my room I hadn’t realised I was missing.
Crossing the room to her, I slide behind her, pulling her back to my front. Out of my mouth come words I never expected to say in my life. “Stay with me, Shayla. Stay. Here in my bed, here at the compound, or a new home we’ll get together instead. Stay, Shayla. Stay with me.”
She’s quiet for a moment, then says, “If I stay, I may never leave.”
“D
idn’t say anything about you leaving, babe.”
I swallow back the words I’d love to say. I don’t tell her she’s mine, I don’t tell her I’d like it to be my property patch on her back.
She’ll be my ol’ lady. But some of the meaning we put to that will probably never be spoken between us.
Her breathing starts to even out, and I think she’s dropped off to sleep, but then she murmurs, “Rodger told me he loved me, Mace. But he lied. He wanted someone to keep house, and I was convenient. Look how easily he replaced me, while Vanna waited for Lizard more than a decade.”
Rodger. Hell, there are probably hundreds of men with that name in Vegas, but maybe if I’m sneaky I can get a last name someday. Then I’ll go pay him a visit.
“If you disappeared, Shay, I’d move heaven and earth to find you. I might not have expected to feel this way, but I do love you. I’ve never said that to a woman before.”
“I can’t say it back,” she tells me, honestly. “Not yet. Loving a man gives them power over me.”
I’m going to show her although she may have said the words to someone else, she’s never truly been in love before. Somehow, one day, I’m going to hear her say she loves me.
How can I be so confident? Because I’m going to do everything to be the man she can give her heart to, knowing it will never be broken again.
Chapter Forty-Two
Vanna
The rap-rap wakes me. It’s dark outside. A hollow feeling settles inside me as I reach for my phone. It’s four-thirty a.m. Being woken at this hour means only one thing. Trouble. It’s almost exactly the same time as I was woken with the call telling me Lizard had been injured and was going to be medevac’d out and flown home. The time indelibly written on my brain. That had been a Thursday too.
Does history repeat itself?
Only one way to find out. I jerk up and out of bed, slipping into my robe and go to the door.
“What’s happened?” I ask Lizard fast when I open it. If he’s okay, it must be my other male I worry about. “Is it Cas?”
“Nah, Castiel’s fine, babe. I needed to talk to you.”
“It’s barely dawn,” I observe, my worry not dissipating at all. “What’s so important it couldn’t wait?”
There’s a difference about him, a confidence that’s been missing since I found him again, or at least, since he’d been able to recognise me. He raises his hand, lays it flat against my robe covered chest and pushes me into the room, steps inside, and closes the door behind him.
“I grabbed a couple hours of downtime after I came back from the emergency room, but I could wait no longer, Vanna. I need to talk to you.”
He’s been to the hospital? “What is it, Liz? Oh God, what happened to you? Are you worse?”
But I notice he’s only using one crutch, and while he’s still using it to help, he’s putting even more weight on the leg that hadn’t been much use to him before.
“What’s happened?” I repeat. My life’s been blow after blow, I’m conditioned to expect the worse now.
“Let’s sit and talk.”
Again he pushes until the backs of my knees hit the bed, then with a hand on my shoulder he encourages me down, and sits beside me.
“Vanna, don’t worry. It’s good, not bad.” He rubs at his head. “Things came back so fast they blindsided me. Pain, flashes.” He chuckles softly. “Literally my life flashing before my eyes. Brothers were worried and got me checked out. Swelling’s gone down, babe. Things have shifted in my head. My memory is back. Almost all my memory.”
“You still remember me?” I ask, fast. My breath stalling as fear rushes through me.
“Fuck, yes.” His eyes are full of concern as they turn toward me. “I remember everything about you, babe. Only things missing are how I got home from that tour and the aftermath, and exactly what happened before I left.”
I turn, my hand fluttering in the air before resting on his cheek. Pulling it away, he brings it to his mouth and places a tender kiss to my palm. “I remember you. Remember getting the call telling me Cas had been born. Remember coming home on leave to see him, my gorgeous baby boy. Don’t remember much about me being an ass, or how we split up. But I do remember coming to Colorado.”
“Which means, you remember the club?”
A faint rise and dip of his head. “Yeah. I remember Hatch, remember visiting him in Denver.” Now there’s a flicker of pain. “Remember how the club offered me a home, a place to belong. I remember the last ten years. As I said, not much about the two before that. Can’t remember being at home. Remember I left but know fuck all why.”
“You were badly banged up, Lizard.” It makes sense to me. “You couldn’t remember who you were one moment to the next. Your short-term memory gradually resolved itself, but it was hard.” My eyes glaze as I think back. “Every day you had to relearn who Cas and I were, and the next you’d forget all over again. When you did remember, you thought our marriage was a lie, and that Cas was fathered by someone else.”
“I was fucked up,” he agrees, shaking his head. “I can’t see how you can ever forgive me, Van.”
“It wasn’t you, Lizard.”
He takes a breath and tells me what’s on his mind. “I need to know why you’re here. I need to know whether you’re here out of duty as you still wear my ring on your finger, or whether you want to try again as man and wife.” I open my mouth, he gives another little shake of his head. “I fucked whores, Vanna. Let’s get that out in the open now. I didn’t know I was taken. You might have worn yours, but I had no ring on my finger. Nothing to tell me I wasn’t a free man.”
“They had to cut it off,” I remind him. “Seemed insignificant compared with keeping you alive.” Such a small thing, but would that token have helped him remember? I never thought about it at the time.
He’s thoughtful for a moment. “There’s nothing I want more than to win you back. But I want to get shit straight right now. No point either of us hoping for things which aren’t going to happen. I know you wanted me to have a hand in bringing up Cas, and whatever happens between us, I’ll be there as his father. But you and me? Got to lay it on the line here, I want everything. I want a wife by my side and in my bed at night. Can you put the past behind you and come back to me, Vanna? As a true partner?”
“I’m older, Liz.”
“So am I.” He wipes his hand over his hair now shorn short. “I might have been imagining myself twelve years younger, but I’m not. I’m older, more wrinkled, and greyer. I’ve got miles under my belt too, darlin’.”
He’s not grey on his head. Oh, but… I force myself not to consider his groin area.
“The girls,” I start. “They’re all young and pretty.”
“Fuck, woman. Don’t compare yourself to them.” There’s now heat in the eyes he turns on me. “This feel like I don’t want you?” I might have avoided looking at it, but when he places my hand over his thickened cock, I can’t avoid feeling it. “This is for you, Vanna. Seems something else now works. Doesn’t even twitch when I think of the girls, but it’s hard as steel for you.”
He smiles at me, that megawatt panty-dropping grin that I remember as he repeats, “I want you. Question is, do you want your husband?”
I raise my hand away, too tempted to explore and see if it’s the same as I remember. It would be easy to say yes. Simple to accept the fairy tale he’s offering, my prince re-awoken. Turn back the clock, or wind it on to where it should have been all the time.
“Liz, there’s never been another man for me.” It’s my turn to stop him. “But for twelve years it’s been me who’s had to be the provider, the decision maker. I’m not the empty-headed girl you left.”
“Appreciate that, Vanna. I’ve watched you these past few weeks, remember?” He chuckles. “Know what you mean now about sorting out the mess I left. I’m not much of a manager.”
“You are,” I disagree, bumping his shoulder with mine. “I just needed to sort out those handwritte
n notes you left all over the place.” Then I reiterate again, “You left a homemaker, a housewife. I’m not able to pick up where we left it before.”
“You’d have grown into yourself, whether I was there or not. Maybe not quite as you are now, but you’d have changed. Fuck, I was away more than half the time as it was, that streak of independence would have developed anyway. I’d have matured along with it. The fact that you go head-to-head with me now? I fuckin’ love it. I want a partner, not a meek woman who looks to me to make every decision.” He looks away from me, growing serious. “I just hope I can become your equal.”
“You will, Liz, I’m sure of that. The progress you’ve already made shows that.”
Sincerity drips from his voice. “Since I came back from the hospital last night, I’ve been trying to think, trying to sort everything out in my head. I know what I want first up, I want you and Cas, babe.” I go to speak, but he stops me with a little shake of his head. “I was beginning to like the men in this club, even before I regained my memory. In my perfect world, I’d have brothers at my back. If that’s what you want too, it would mean you moving your life here from Denver. I don’t mean live at the club, we’ll find a house together. But if that doesn’t appeal to you, we’ll make life work, however you want to live it.”
I remember what Demon had said about Lizard needing the club and know I couldn’t take him away from it. Honestly, I’d miss everything about it as well. The support and company of Vi, Jayden, Steph, Mel and Beth, the older women too while I figured out what I was dealing with had been invaluable. The loss of their friendship would cause a hole in my life if we tried to start over in Denver. What have I there to keep me? Just one good friend who I can visit or who could come here. I’ve no job to return to. A fresh start could help Cas straighten himself out, and Lizard’s inevitable parenting mistakes—mine too—could be tempered by my son’s new uncles.
He’s rubbing at his right wrist with his left hand, then flexing fingers which seem to have more movement than before. I know him too well, he’s agitated, impatiently waiting for me to respond, but giving me space for my thoughts. I put him out of his misery.
Devil's Spawn: Satan's Devils MC Colorado Chapter #6 Page 36