by Raven Dark
“Hiding from your mother again?”
I shake my head. “No, she’s gone for a couple of days. I just don’t want to go home and stare at four walls yet.”
There was always Sandra’s house, but she’d be spending the night with Skeeter. And besides, Vicious and I needed to talk. Birdie’s behavior only emphasized that.
“Then we’ll go somewhere. Just you and me, all right?”
I nod. God, he’s so perfect, it’s painful.
He gasses up, and we ride out to Lover’s Ridge where we’d been together for the first time. Vicious parks the bike and then sits us down under the shade of a tree. He pulls me against him so that I’m sitting with my back against his warm chest.
“You’re quiet.” He rests his cheek against mine. “Talk to me, baby.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back on his chest. I know the word baby is just an endearment, but it cuts right now. I might as well get this over with.
“Vicious, exactly how old are you?”
“Are you still thinking about Birdie’s bitch-fest?”
“Please, just tell me.”
“Thirty-nine.”
My heart sinks. “That’s twenty years between us.”
“So?”
I turn my head and stare up at him. “You really don’t care?”
“Not even one rat’s ass.”
“I don’t think you’re thinking about this rationally, Vicious.”
He snorts. “When it comes to you, you’re right, I don’t. But you think too much. Your age doesn’t matter to me. If it did, I wouldn’t have sat at that grease pit waiting to ask you out. You are mine, and that is what matters.”
“That woman at the clinic thought I was your daughter.”
“And?”
Oh, God, he was infuriating. “Vicious!” I snap, turning around to face him and sitting on my knees. “Don’t you get it? I can guarantee that won’t be the last time.”
“I told you, I don’t give a fuck what others think.”
I pushed to my feet. “Think about this, okay? I hardly know you. We can’t have much in common. The longer we’re together, the harder it will be to ignore. We don’t like the same music, and we wouldn’t have the same interests.”
“How do you know?”
“Vicious, what happens when you want to go out to a bar? Birdie said the bars are cracking down. What happens when I can’t get in?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
I shake my head, desperate. “My age doesn’t matter to you now because we’re new. Because you don’t really know me. And I don’t’ know you.”
“We know enough. I know enough to know I want you in my life. Why does anything else matter?”
I roll my eyes skyward. “Vicious, please listen to me.”
“I am.”
“Do you know what kind of girl I am? I like hanging out with my friends—”
“So do I.”
“—in clubs where they play loud dance music and most of them are in their twenties. I like bubble gum ice cream, and playing Katy Perry at full blast—”
“That’s what headphones are for.” His eyes dance with half-reassuring, half-teasing light.
“I like reading Harry Potter and running in the park,” I go on, hoping I’ll hit on something that really makes it clear just how young I am. Something he’ll hate. “I love every Walt Disney movie that has ever been made. Including Frozen.”
He grunts a laugh. “You would get along great with Badger’s Old Lady. She knows every word of Let It go.”
“Vicious, come on!” My eyes well up. Why does he have to shoot down every sensible reason that we don’t make sense? Why does he have to make it so easy to just believe that it won’t end exactly as it did before?
“All right.” He heaves a breath and gets to his feet, holding out his hand. “Get over here.”
“What?” I wipe a tear away.
He grabs my wrist and reels me in gently until I’m enveloped in his arms. “Listen to me, woman.” He wipes my tears away. “So far you haven’t said anything I can’t live with. Well, the Katy Perry thing we’ll have to talk about,” he adds, and when I give a broken laugh, he pinches my chin. “No, for real now. Relationships are never easy. I’ve yet to see one that doesn’t have something that has to be worked through. But when you know something is right, and I mean when you really, really, want it, it’s worth fighting for. When you’re meant to be together, nothing else should matter. You understand?”
Oh, how I want to believe him. He makes it sound so simple. So right. I can see it in his eyes, that deep, all consuming need to take care of me, to just be us. It makes my heart feel full.
I sniffle and bury my head in his chest, clutching his cut in my fists. “Why do you have to make it so easy to be with you?”
“It’s a gift.”
I give another broken laugh.
His shoulders shake. He kisses the top of my head and cradles my face in his big hands, tipping it up. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in this life, beautiful. Sometimes it seems like trouble finds me no matter where I go. If I do only one thing right in this life, I want it to be us.”
“Oh, God, Vicious.” I squeeze him tight, and he massages my back. His lips crush mine. We lose ourselves in the kiss, and suddenly, for that single long heartbeat, nothing else does matter. There is no age gap, there is no Birdie, no overbearing mother who might find out and turn it all upside down.
And that’s when it happens. That’s when I know, somehow, it will be all right. Somehow, we will make this work.
7
Dirty
Once again, we drive back to Whiskey, rumbling through the darkened streets. My arms are wrapped around Vicious’ waist, my cheek pressed to his warm back. As we get close to my house, I lean up and kiss him on the cheek. I see his smile in profile, and I rest my chin on his shoulder, squeezing him close. He rubs the back of my hand on his stomach, and I know he’s telling me he feels the same bond with me that I feel with him.
We pull into my driveway, behind my beat-up junker. My mom’s car isn’t there, and I can’t help feeling a sense of relief that she hadn’t decided to come home early from her conference.
Vicious walks me to the door, his warm hand enveloping mine. It’s a lazy walk, and I wonder if he’s savoring the last few moments. I don’t want him to leave.
At the door, Vicious turns me to face him and pushes my back against it. One of his hands is beside my head, the other massaging my waist. The way he’s looking down at me makes me feel all kinds of crazy.
His lips claim mine, and I slip my arms around his neck, loving every possessive sweep of his mouth. I groan, letting my tongue roll and flick with his. By the time he lifts his head, my senses are reeling.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
I unlock the door and open it without letting go of him. “How’s that for answer?”
He groans and hoists me onto his hips. My legs wrap around him.
We kiss like that for a while before my body slides down his and I’m on my feet. He kicks the door shut with his foot and locks it.
We go into the kitchen hand in hand. “You want a drink or something?”
“No.” He pulls me close so that my back is to his chest. “All I want is you. In bed with your legs wrapped around me.”
“Do you ever think about anything else besides sex, Vicious?” I tease. He’s kissing my neck and biting my ear, and I bite my lip, turning my head to the side, trying not to tell him to take me upstairs right then.
A man like Vicious needs to take the lead, and right now, I’m happy to let him.
“With you, no.” He chuckles and sucks hard on my neck.
“Let me get a drink first.”
“Hurry up.” He lets me go with a tap on the ass.
He walks around my mother’s perfectly clean house, all white walls and thick carpets, not a speck of dust anywhere. As big as a tree in his leather and tats, with his scary si
lver rings, he looks hilariously out of place.
“See?” I say, getting a glass of juice. “No husband here. No boyfriend. No secret man.”
“I beg to differ, beautiful.” He waits until I’ve drank the juice down and takes the glass, setting it in the spotless sink.
“Huh?”
His lips quirk. “Do I not qualify as your man?”
“Smartass.” I run my hand over the bare part of his chest the cut doesn’t cover. It warms my heart to think of him as mine.
We make our way up the stairs to my bedroom. Pictures of my mom and I line the walls, photos of us at a picnic area, one on opening day at The Eatery, and one at Whiskey’s summer fair, always with us laughing and hugging.
At the top of the steps, Vicious looks over a photo of me and my Mom with her arm around my shoulders. She’s kissing me on the cheek with an embarrassing clinginess that succeeded in mortifying me. There, she looks more relaxed than she has in a long time.
“Where’s your father?” Vicious asks after looking down the line of photos, all with just us girls. “Did something happen to him?”
I clear my throat, not having intended to take away from the wonderful night with something that definitely isn’t dating talk.
“He died when I was little,” I say softly to the carpet. “Heart attack. He was forty-five.”
His eyes widen. “That’s young.” He cups my nape. “I’m sorry.”
I shrug off the old pang of grief. Sometimes it still hurts, especially when I think about what it would have been like to tell Dad about Vicious. He wouldn’t heartily accept him, but he’d listen and leave the decision up to me. After he met him and interrogated him, of course.
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I was nine. It was before we moved out here.” I take his hand and look up at him. “Okay, that’s enough depressing talk.” I give a shaky laugh at my own boldness. He’s rubbing off on me.
“Absolutely.” He leads the way to my bedroom. He can tell which one it is, since it still says my name on the door on a plaque put there when I was a kid. It even has stars all over it. Man, I need to get my own place, stat.
Vicious stops at the door and snorts at the plaque.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I keep forgetting to take that thing down.”
Thankfully, the rest of my room isn’t that girly, with a simple bed in white linen and oak furniture. He ducks to get in.
“Come here.” He yanks me into the room, into his arms. “I’ve been wanting to do this for days.”
“What’s that, christen my bed?”
“Mm.” He spins me around and shoves me onto the bed.
I whoop and bounce onto the mattress. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
He shakes his head and leans over the bed with his hands to either side of my head. “Don’t see any point in pretense, Anne.”
His head swoops in and his lips rake across mine. My whole body erupts into flames of need. I cling to his shoulders and run my fingers through his thick, silky hair.
Vicious cups the top of my head with his palm and angles his head, deepening the kiss. His hot tongue darts in, skillfully flicking over mine. My sex clenches.
“See?” He lifts his head, his eyes pools of dark blue hunger. “This is why I wanted you to have that shot. Now I can do whatever the fuck I want with you without worrying about fucking up your life or mine.”
“My sex fiend biker,” I tease. “I like the sound of that.”
He pushes me further across the width of the bed, knee-walking onto it between my legs. Sitting up, he slips off his cut. I lean up on my elbows, taking in the heavenly display before me.
He really is a god. Without his cut, thick layers of muscle across his shoulders and chest create a feast for a woman’s eyes. His stomach is sculpted to perfection. Black ink conforms to his muscles, thick swirling tribal lines that draw attention to his strength.
“Wow.” The word slips out before I can stop it.
A wicked smirk toys with his lips, and my face heats.
Without a word, his fingers undo the buttons on my shirt. He flicks it open and unclips my lacy black bra at the front. My breasts spill free. The heat in his eyes blazes, and my nipples bunch at the sight.
“Wow is right. Look at these tits. Made for sucking.” He rolls each nipple between his fingers until they harden to the point of pain.
“Vicious.” My back arches off the bed, pushing my breasts toward his touch.
A groan escapes him, and his head dives as he sucks one nipple into his mouth.
Oh, my God. I’ve never felt anything so intense from nipple play. During my single sexual experience, despite his being in his twenties, the jerk of a man-boy I’d been with had virtually ignored them, except to jiggle my boobs like jello. Total turn-off. Vicious knows exactly what he’s doing.
He sucks lightly on the nipple at first, working me up and massaging my breast with his palm. When I wriggle for more, he flicks his wicked tongue until the sensation becomes almost too much, then sucks, a long, hard pull that makes me cry out. My sex is soaked, and I push his head closer, desperate.
He does the same to the other nipple.
“God, Vicious, you’re driving me crazy.”
He rumbles in approval. The vibration around my nipple makes me wetter.
He sits up, and I groan at the loss.
Until he works open my pants and jerks them off along with my panties. He spreads my legs and his head dives between them.
“Oh, shit…”
The first hot flick of his tongue nearly makes me come. He keeps going, trapping my legs with his palms on my thighs.
No one has ever done anything like this to me before, either. The wet heat of his tongue is a whole new sensation as he works my clit, teasing and licking.
I curse again and rock my hips, fucking his tongue.
When I get close to the edge, he stops. I lift my head as he sits up, grinning like the Cheshire cat. The orgasm fades and I want to scream.
“That’s not fair, Vicious.”
He runs his thumb over my lips. “Do you remember what I said I would do to you yesterday, Anne?”
His voice is rough, pure carnality.
I shake my head, too dazed to think straight. He backs off the bed. He opens his belt and his pants with a few flicks of his wrist.
Oh, God. I remember now.
He jerks me to the edge of the bed, then pulls me upright so that I’m sitting on the bed in front of him. Anxiety makes quick work of my insides, my own inexperience looming.
“Vicious, I don’t know how to… What if you don’t like—”
He puts his fingers to my lips and takes out his cock with the other. It’s hard as steel and jutting straight up and proud between his legs. “Do you trust me, Anne?”
“Yes. Completely, but—”
“Then trust that I’ll show you what to do. I’ll love everything that sweet mouth of yours does to me, beautiful.”
The warmth and the fierce need in his eyes shut down my trepidation with frightening ease.
I let him guide my head as he slips his cock between my lips. It feels strange, hard, but like silk between my lips, huge, almost to the point of uncomfortable, but somehow it also feels right. The masculine smell of him drives my senses wild, the taste of him a rich musk on my tongue.
I follow his gruff instructions, running my mouth up and down Vicious’ cock, licking the head and swirling my tongue around the crown, then sucking hard the way he seems to like.
“Fuck. Anne, slow down, beautiful. You’re going to ruin me.”
A thrill races through me at my effect on this big, powerful, dangerous man. I smile and suck him faster, bobbing my head. I love the feel of him, so hard and getting harder.
He growls and grips my hair in his fist. “You want me to lose control? Is that it?”
My eyes go to his, and I hum around his cock. Yes. Oh, yes.
Vicious grips my head harder, his eyes on fire. “Open y
our fucking mouth.”
I open wider, and as soon as I do, he abandons all his carefully maintained control. He fucks my mouth fast and hard, grunting his pleasure. I groan, thrilling in his roughness, in the savagery of having Vicious take my mouth as if it’s his to use as he pleases.
“Damn it, Anne, I warned you not to play with me.” The growl rips out of him. He shoves to the back of my throat, and I almost gag, trying to pull back out of reflex.
“Don’t pull away,” he orders. “Let me fuck your mouth good and hard.” Vicious traps my head with both of his hands, one gripping my neck almost painfully, the other cupping my head and pushing it swiftly up and down while he thrusts in and out.
Maybe his being this aggressive should scare me or turn me off, but it doesn’t. He’s bad and he’s dangerous, he knows what he wants, and he’s just a little mean. It tears down all my good girl instincts, stripping me down to someone I barely know, a rebel who sucks her guy off in her mom’s house when she isn’t home and lets him fuck her mouth as if it were made just for him.
I love it.
I groan and suck harder. Vicious’ cock hits the back of my throat. His whole body cords tight.
“Fuck.” He gives a few more thrusts, and then he spills into my mouth, just like he promised, filling it with hot come. “Swallow it, Anne.” He pulls out and cups my chin, raising it up and watching to make sure I do as I’m told.
The taste of his come is powerful and almost too much, but I have no intention of spitting it out. I swallow every drop.
“Good girl.” He traces the line of my lips with the head of his cock, painting my lips with his come. His praise goes right between my legs, licking like an eager tongue.
Shit, he’s so hot.
He holds me to him for a minute, as if he needs to calm himself. He’s still hard. Vicious releases me.
“Next time, it’ll be your turn,” he says. “I won’t last long enough to do it now. Roll over.”
An instinct to make him work for it rises up; he’s so bossy, I need to see what will happen if he doesn’t immediately get what he wants. I lay back, grinning up at him. “Make me.”