Andi and Niro

by Gadziala, Jessica

"I don't think I'm going to like this game," I decided as his hand moved across my chest to my other nipple.

  "I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it," he told me, smiling as his other hand slid down my belly, slipped under the waistband of my pants and panties, found my clit, and started moving over it in soft circles. "Nuh-uh," he scolded when a needy, mewling sound escaped me, his fingers moving away from my clit.

  "Niro, please," I demanded, shamelessly grinding myself down on his hand.

  "Be quiet and you can have whatever you want," he told me, pulling his hands out of my pants, turning me to bend forward over the sink, then drawing my pants and panties down my legs, leaving them around my ankles as he stepped forward, massaging my butt for a second as he worked himself free.

  I could hear the crinkle of the wrapper a moment before I felt the head of him slide between my thighs, a promise of what was to come, but also what he was refusing to give me as he slid himself up my cleft over and over, driving me up, but never quite giving me the contact I so badly needed.

  I took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm the chaos in my body.

  But just like that, he shifted, and slammed inside me, catching me off-guard, something I think he did on purpose. A low, moan escaped me, making Niro still inside me.

  "Please," I begged.

  "You know the rules," he teased, his voice getting a little rough.

  Sure, his rule was that if I made a noise that he would stop. That didn't mean I had to, did it?

  Taking a deep breath, I started moving against him, getting that perfect friction I so badly needed, along with an encouraging growling noise from Niro as one of his hands landed on the side of my ass, squeezing hard enough to smart, resisting the urge, I think, to slap me, knowing the sound would carry in the small office.

  "Oh, my God," I whimpered, circling my hips as I ground back into him, close to the edge already.

  "Shh," he demanded, one hand slapping over my mouth, the other grabbing my shoulder, holding me in place as he started to thrust into me.

  Hard.

  Fast.

  Relentless.

  Driving me to that edge and then over it before I could even draw a steadying breath.

  The orgasm stole every bit of strength from my legs, making me glad for the counter in front of me as I went down on my forearms, legs shaking, body crashing, wave after wave as Niro slammed into one last time. Hard. Deep. Jerking upward, he hissed out his breath as he came, his body folding over mine, crushing me to the counter.

  "Fuck," he sighed, planting his hands next to my arms, pushing up, sliding out of me. "Not that I mind the view, baby, but are you planning on standing up and pulling your pants back up anytime soon?" he asked what seemed like a lifetime later.

  "I'm not sure my legs are working," I admitted, getting a low chuckle out of Niro as he stooped down, pulling my underwear and pants back into place, then grabbing me, turning me, pressing his lips to mine.

  "It smells like sex in here," I declared a moment later.

  "It better," Niro agreed.

  "I have a patient."

  "We have a patient."

  "Well, we can't have a patient in a room that smells like sex."

  "Use the room across the hall. Tell 'em that cat pissed in here," he suggested, pulling me toward the door.

  "Okay," I said a moment later, trying to pull myself back together. "How do I look?"

  "Freshly fucked," he informed me, looking proud of himself.

  And, I guess, he had every right too.

  "You know," he said after the last patient of the day. "If this outlaw biker shit doesn't work out, maybe I will get a job here. Then I can fuck you anytime I want."

  "You're ridiculous."

  "You love it."

  He was right.

  I did.

  I really, really did.

  It was easy, effortless, even.

  To go from loving him to being in love with him.

  I hardly even noticed it was happening until it was already done. But there was no mistaking it.

  I thought I had been in love before.

  I'd certainly milked the sadness of my breakups like a woman in love would have.

  But now that I had Niro, I was sure that I'd never felt anything even close to what I felt for him for anyone else before.

  Maybe it was unfair to compare them. I had a literal lifetime of loving Niro, of learning every little thing there was to know about him, of sharing every bit of myself with him. Mentally. Emotionally. And, finally, physically.

  Nothing had ever compared.

  Nothing ever could.

  I was fabulously, stupidly, head-over-heels in love with my best friend.

  "Ya done eye-banging each other?" Adler asked, snapping me out of my stupor. "Fallon is calling church. We have to get back."

  "Duty calls," Niro said, apologetic.

  I guessed I would just have to find another time to tell him how I felt.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Niro

  The common area of the clubhouse was a war room.

  In just a few hours after getting the intel we needed from Andi at the vet's office, Finn had managed to throw together a mess of information that would make his hacker aunt proud.

  It was all plastered up across the walls, pictures of the Alcazar Cartel along with ones of the Soto Cartel that used to rule things.

  I'd grown up with Fallon and Finn, and while Fallon had all the bravado, the penchant for violence, he'd never struck me as someone who could pull off this level of focused detail so quickly. Finn, on the other hand, shrugged it off like it was no big deal.

  "You're with Andi now?" a deep, rumbling voice said at my side, making me turn to find the giant form of Malcolm standing there, staring at all the fact sheets and pictures on the wall.

  "Yeah," I agreed, nodding, expecting a lecture. It didn't matter that everyone in the club had known me my entire life. Andi was still one of the girls they were raised to protect, to take care of. And to this ragtag group of violent men, that meant they all felt the need to pull me over and give me the old If you ever do anything to hurt that girl speech.

  Malc was, arguably, the most protective of any of us in our generation. He somehow thought it was single-handedly his job to make sure none of them ever got hurt, ever needed for anything. It was probably watching his father be much like that with his mother that taught him it.

  He was always the one hauling his ass out of bed to go drive one of the girls home from the bar instead of her taking a potentially sketchy Uber, calmly dealing with their inane drunken ramblings, their horrific chick music blasting from his speakers, pulling off to the side of the road to hold their hair back while they got sick, then never speaking a word of it again.

  He was the one who drove his truck out to whatever backroad they might be stranded on, fixing flat tires or jumping dead batteries or towing their cars back to someone with a lift who could see what else might be going on with it.

  He was the one the girls flocked to just a little bit more than the rest of us, despite having less in common with his reclusive, mountain man ass, despite him showing absolutely no interest in being dragged into their craziness.

  I guess it was his quiet disposition paired with his patience and the most loyal heart of any of us.

  The girls knew that, wanted to be close to that.

  They also got a kick out of trying to shake him out of his shell, sticking flowers in his beard. And, of course, in Billie's case, hitting on his friends.

  I already had my now memorized speech on my lips. Last time I counted, I'd needed to spout it off twelve times. About how I was the last person in the world who would hurt Andi, about how I wasn't even capable of taking her for granted, that I was going to spend every day of my life endeavoring to deserve her.

  But Malcolm surprised me by making one of his trademark non-committal grunting noises. "'Bout time," he said, walking off toward a wall, flipping up a sheet of plain white paper that
someone had the foresight to put over what looked like a pretty brutal crime scene image.

  "I wonder sometimes if Reign made the right choice," Hope said, moving into the space Malc had vacated, handing me a coffee that I knew Andi must have made since Hope was more of a "Do I look like your maid?" or "You have your own two hands" type of woman.

  When I glanced over, her gaze was moving across the room, taking in everything that I had been standing there looking at for the past ten minutes.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Fallon has all the bravado, all the confidence, the impulsiveness that I guess Reign had when he was younger. But the fact that Finn put all this shit together in a couple hours makes me wonder if that sort of attention to detail and calm focus wouldn't make for a better leader. Especially with you guys diversifying into legit ventures too," she said, shrugging.

  "You think?" I asked, looking around again, seeing the strings that connected certain major players he had mapped out. He'd even color-coded people based on seniority, had put small red tabs on the sides of their information sheets, each tab indicating a murder supposedly attributed to that person.

  "Yeah, I mean, you know I love Fallon," she started, "but he's always been a punch first, ask questions later kind of person. Finn was always better with this kind of thing. Maybe because he was the youngest. With his sister becoming some badass assassin and then his brother becoming an MC president, he figured he needed to find his niche. I think he found it. The club won't have to outsource so much of their research to Hailstorm anymore. But I guess Reign wanted Fallon because he's just more of a natural leader. I guess Finn would make a good Secretary," she decided.

  "Who would you have as Vice President if not Finn?" I asked. Typically, it just went through the family like that. Or, at least, that was how it had gone with Reign and his brother—and Vice President—Cash.

  "I don't know. I think Brooks might be a good fit. More of a balance for Fallon's extremes. He's a hard worker. And he has the balls to stand up to Fallon if he needs to. Then you as the Sgt at Arms, you violent prick. Malc as the Road Captain like his old man. Seth as the Secretary... you guys are going to need some new members soon," she added. "You don't have enough people to even fill in all the basic positions of power."

  "I think Reign is waiting for the rest of the Legacies to age up before he starts opening up to outsiders again. I'm surprised you're still here," I added. The trouble seemed to be de-escalated for the moment. "Don't you have a job to get to?"

  "I'm heading there," she agreed. "I just wanted to see Andi for a few minutes."

  "And now you're here to threaten me again?" I asked, giving her a smirk.

  "Oh, the horrific mutilation I would impose upon your body would be talked about in hushed whispers by generations of jaded medical examiners if you ever hurt that girl," she agreed. "But, no, I wasn't here to threaten you. Just to say that I am glad you got your head out of your ass. I was worried it might need to get surgically removed. It's nice to see you guys together," she added, giving me a sly smile.

  It was right in that moment that I realized this generation of Navesink Bank women had their very own matchmaker. And unlike in the previous generation, it wasn't a hopeless romantic who read romance novels by the dozen at night while kicking ass by day.

  Oh, no.

  It was the jaded, tough-as-nails, "love is a lie made up by the greeting card people" soon-to-be private investigator.

  Life was starting to get really interesting.

  I was curious to see how things were going to go in the coming years.

  But for the time being, I was happy to be mostly thinking about my woman, then getting back to her once Fallon and Finn were done filling us in on the cartel.

  "So what you are saying is, you have no fucking idea if they are a threat to us or not," Fallon concluded when Finn finished speaking, needing to get a drink because he'd taken so long.

  "I'm saying if we play our cards right, we might be able to keep the peace," Finn suggested.

  "And we should want to keep the peace with a violent cartel dealing drugs in our town?" Fallon asked.

  "Third Street sold H for years and no one did anything. Lyon sold cocaine. That idiot we went to school with sells shrooms and acid. We looked the other way for them. Unless we have a reason to engage, I don't see why we shouldn't in this situation too. I think there is enough going on with the new MC, with new generations taking control of their parents' empires. We don't know what is coming our way. Why seek out trouble if we don't need to?"

  "Your brother has a point," Reign said from his position lounging on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table that was scuffed from so many of us doing the exact same thing. "Besides, seems like it's the women who come into this club that tend to be the ones bringing all the trouble our way," he said, sharing a look with his men, most of whom knew intimately what he was talking about.

  "None of us are looking for that," Fallon insisted.

  "You think we were?" Reign asked, smiling. "Some woman is going to blow into your life and knock you on your ass. And any woman capable of doing that deserves a ring on her finger."

  "I think he's already met that woman," Hope said, voice low.

  "What are you talking about?" I asked, brows furrowed. You never found Fallon with a woman for more than a night.

  To that, she gave me a smirk.

  "I'm saying buckle up, it's bound to be a bumpy ride," she told me, walking away.

  I wanted to know what she was talking about.

  But I wanted to see my woman more.

  Because, of course, Reign was right.

  When you find the right woman, she knocks you on your ass.

  I never wanted to get back up again.

  Epilogue

  Andi - 3 Days

  "What are these for?" I asked, running my finger over the geographical coordinates over his heart.

  We'd been lounging in bed for hours. We'd climbed out first thing in the morning to walk Nugget, to grab coffee, tea, and some snacks, then got right back in, watching movies, talking about our lives we hadn't shared in the in-between, then, finally, giving each other orgasms until we had no energy left.

  My body had only just agreed to respond to commands, allowing me to push up and look down at his.

  I'd been curious about his tattoos since I'd first seen them that night after the fight, but there had always just been so many other things to do, to talk about, that I hadn't gotten around to it yet.

  "Top one is the coordinates to my mom's birthplace. Second is my dad's."

  "And the third?" I asked. When he didn't answer, my gaze slipped up, finding his on me, intense.

  "Yours, Andi," he said, voice low.

  "Mine?" I asked, feeling a tightness start to constrict my chest. "You tattooed my birth coordinates on your chest?" I asked, eyes starting to sting.

  "Who the hell else would ever belong right here?" he asked, pressing his hand over mine which was resting just over his heart.

  "When?" I asked, my heart feeling like it was swelling in my chest.

  "The summer before you went off to college," he told me, making me flash back to practically begging him to go to the beach with me in those final days before I left, but him refusing, coming up with other plans. At the time, I thought he was being stubborn. I remember being frustrated with him about it. All the while, he was hiding his tattoo from me, likely so it would heal, but also so I wouldn't ask questions.

  Taking a deep breath, my hand slid over to the flower on his arm. "And this one?"

  "Daisy," he said, shrugging.

  "My favorite flower."

  "Yes."

  "And this one?" I went on, tracing the crack on the clock face.

  To that, he took a deep breath.

  "It's the time," he told me.

  "The time on the clock?" I clarified. "What does it stand for?"

  "Remember that night," he started, voice a little far away. "When you called me
after that dickwad broke up with you?"

  "I, ah, yeah." It was a time-warped memory. At the time, it had felt like my entire world was falling apart around me. Time had shown me just how wrong I had been about that boy, about how much he would eventually mean in the story of my life. He was hardly a footnote now.

  "It was that night that I realized I had to let you go."

  "So you tattooed the time of that on you? That's... that's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Why would you do that?"

  "As a reminder. It was not easy. Especially at the beginning. To let go. You were a huge part of my life. Those were the days before the fighting. It helped to have a reminder every time I looked in the mirror."

  "See," I said, trying to make my voice light even if my heart ached for that younger version of him. "This is why you don't get things like that tattooed on you. What are you going to do now?"

  "It's still a factor, a part of my life," he told me, shrugging. "I guess now I can just get happier ones moving forward."

  "You know," I said, lips pursing. "Nugget was telling me that he's a little disappointed that neither of his parents love him enough to have a tattoo for him."

  "Well, maybe we should fix that," he said, tucking my hair behind my ear. "You finally gonna get some ink?"

  "What can I say? You've been a terrible influence on me," I teased, pressing my lips into the center of his chest, moving slowly downward.

  "Hm, can't say I mind that one bit," he teased. But then my lips closed over him, and there was no more talking.

  Niro - 3 weeks

  "This seems completely unnecessary at this point," Andi said, finally frustrated enough with her security detail to snap about it.

  And, to be fair, the club had dropped the security on all the other women and the kids. That said, they hadn't been the one kidnapped and surveilled and confronted on multiple occasions.

  Fallon had suggested we let it drop a week before. Begrudgingly, I might add, since he was clearly not in agreement with his brother and his father, but hadn't quite gotten the leadership position yet, so he had to follow orders for the time being.