Within Sight (New Adult Biker Gang Romance) (Night Horses MC Book 5)

by Sorana, Sarah

  “I… I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, holding my hand in his own. “I don’t want to ruin your fucking life, okay? You’re beautiful and you’re smart and you could do anything. I… I didn’t have those choices.”

  I snorted.

  “You’re not going to tell me you’re some stupid bumpkin, are you?” I demanded. “You’re the boss of the Night Horses. Even I’ve heard of the Night Horses. You don’t get to be the leader of a group like that without being seriously smart.”

  He shrugged. “Sure, but… That was my only choice. I never could have gone to college or anything. No money. No family who cared about me.”

  “Looks like I have no money and no family now,” I said. “Isn’t it nice to have things in common?”

  It was a terrible joke, and I burned with embarrassment after I said it.

  When I opened my mouth to apologize, he shook his head.

  “Yeah. Do you get what I’m saying, though? It hasn’t been that goddamn long since you were going to prom, living in a nice-ass suburban house, going to the best public school around… Shit, you were probably in AP courses, getting college credit and shit.”

  I looked away.

  “Two,” I said. “English and U. S. History.”

  “That’s all changed for you, since you met me. Since I came into your life, I’ve done nothing but fuck it up, make you fucked up like me,” Merle said.

  I refused to look at him. I didn’t want to see the pain in his eyes. Hearing it in his voice was bad enough.

  “Bullshit,” I repeated in a whisper. My voice grew stronger as I went on. “When you met me, I was sitting there crying because my asshole prom date got me mixed up with some scary gangbangers.”

  I reached out and took his other hand, finally looking towards him, meeting his eyes.

  “You didn’t sweep me away to a life of drugs and sex,” I said. “You gave me a handkerchief and bought me breakfast. How the fuck is that fucking me up?”

  I got a smile from him. God, his smile was so amazing, breaking out like a sunrise, to illuminate his whole face… and turn me sappy.

  “Merle,” I said. I felt like if I said his name enough, if he said mine enough, our connection would have to stay strong.

  It was all I really wanted from him.

  I didn’t want his apartment, his money. I sure as hell didn’t want his drugs.

  I wanted more than that.

  I wanted every fiber of his being. I wanted the dark intensity of his soul I saw behind those amazing eyes. I wanted all of that passion focused on me.

  I don’t bother dreaming small.

  Merle leaned over and kissed my cheek, and then my lips, softly, chastely, sweetly.

  I sighed and leaned against him.

  “The storm is broken?” he asked.

  “I’m done throwing things,” I said.

  “Can I take you out to dinner?” he asked. “We can talk about what you can do.”

  Before we left, I got out a dustpan and swept up the remains of my temper tantrum.

  Now that I was calm, I was ashamed of what I’d done.

  How on earth could I expect Merle to treat me like a responsible adult when I was acting the spoiled child?

  Fuck me, I’m dumb sometimes.

  Merle took my dumb ass out for a burger at a decent place downtown.

  I found myself eying everyone who walked by, my heart racing each time someone looked our way.

  Merle’s eyes were a little shadowed.

  His smile twisted.

  “We own this place. Everyone who works here is a… friend, or a friend of a friend,” he said.

  “How do you own it?” I asked. “Like, do all of you own it together, or one person?”

  “Well, on paper, Alex owns it. He’s in charge of… making things look good on paper,” Merle said. “It’s a useful business.”

  “Makes a lot?” I asked.

  He laughed out loud.

  “Shit, no,” he said. “It costs us money to run, sometimes.”

  I frowned at him. How on earth could a business that cost money be useful?

  Seeing my confusion, he explained. “We need a way to pay ourselves, legally,” he said.

  “We have a few businesses around town, and we’re all on the books. We have social security, workman’s comp… everything you might want.”

  “But… why?” I asked. With all Merle talked about not having any options, why go through all the trouble for social security and all that?

  “The IRS,” Merle said, simply. “You can fuck with the law in a lot of ways, but if you don’t pay your fucking taxes, you’re totally boned. That’s how a lot of the big guys get taken down – they’re in for life on tax fraud or tax evasion and that sort of bullshit.”

  I almost laughed. That sounded like such a… such a white-collar crime, and a lot of these guys I’d met were as blue-collar as you could get.

  “You want a job at one of our places?” he asked. “You can have your choice. We’ve got a laundrymat, this place, a quick-mart… I’d go for the laundrymat. You can sit and do your homework and make sure nobody actually walks away with an entire machine.”

  “What would I have to do if they tried?”

  His grin was wolfish.

  “Text me, of course,” he said. “Somebody’d be there in five minutes or less. You can’t get a big machine out faster’n we can get there.”

  “So, no confronting anyone?” I asked. “No heroics?”

  “Shit, we’d dock your pay if you fucked up that bad,” he said.

  I considered it.

  That didn’t sound that bad. It would be somewhere to go other than school and my apartment. I’d feel like I was actually doing something.

  “I wouldn’t be taking a job from anybody else?” I asked.

  Merle grinned at me, no trace of the attitude that made him so dangerous. Just amusement. I sometimes wished that that was the only side I saw of him.

  I always wished that his life hadn’t made him hide that part of himself.

  “A few shifts a week are punishment for new assholes,” he said. “Guys who won’t do what they’re told, even when it’s boring, aren’t worth shit to me unless they’re smarter than I am.”

  “Anybody who won’t do what they’re told?” I asked.

  “Alex, maybe Jackson,” Merle said. “Alex keeps our accountant honest and manages our business interests. He’s gone against my orders a few times, and it’s been a good fucking idea every time.”

  “And Jackson?” I asked.

  That grin had the wolf in it.

  “He’s the only son of a bitch I think could take me in a fair fight,” he said. “Not that he’d fight fair. If he could, he’d just shoot me from a tree someday. Bill’s lucky Jackson just beat on him.”

  “Sounds like they’re tough men,” I said.

  “The toughest,” Merle said. “I met them a while back, brought them here. Best thing I ever did for the Night Horses.”

  “How’d you meet them?” I asked.

  “That’s… a long story,” he said. “I want to talk about you.”

  There weren’t many things he refused to tell me about, but I’d learned not to press him on topics he avoided.

  I was afraid he’d answer.

  The weeks until graduation seemed to pass endlessly. Every day was the same. Walk through the rumors and by the whispers. Hold my head by. Answer no one.

  Let them think what they wanted to.

  There was nothing that would stop the group of asshole boys from calling me a slut and telling me what they’d like to do to me.

  Nothing that would stop the groups of bitchy girls from sneering at me, from keeping me away from their boyfriends.

  From closing ranks.

  From keeping me outside.

  I mean, not everyone was like that. There were some nice people, some who talked to me or sat next to me without acting like they were hanging out with Mary Magdeline.

  A girl
even invited me to hang out, to go shopping with her at a thrift store.

  I thought about it.

  I pictured the two of us, walking through the aisles, holding things up to ourselves. Bright clothing. Bright smiles.

  It didn’t look like me. Some other girl would have to wear my face for that.

  I shook my head, and walked away.

  Later, I wished I’d smiled, but it couldn’t be helped.

  She didn’t offer again.

  Just like that, my world was a little bit smaller. I promised myself that, next time someone nice asked me somewhere, I’d at least smile at them, talk to them, not act like some sort of gruff robot.

  Error. Error.

  Real girl not found.

  Error. Error.

  I found myself spending all my free time with Merle and his buddies.

  At first, I felt out of place hanging out with them. I felt too young, too cleaned-up and rich.

  It took me a few weeks to realize that none of them really gave a shit.

  Merle liked me, and I wasn’t being a prissy bitch to them, so I was okay.

  It was that simple. I didn’t have to make it more complicated.

  I didn’t have to deal with school, or the gang, or anything. I didn’t have to think about my parents, for damn sure.

  There wasn’t really anything that reminded me of home in a group of bikers and their girlfriends, tattooed, shaggy, wearing denim and leather and drinking beer by the truckload.

  One night, leaning against Merle, dozing slightly in the warmth of a bonfire, I pictured my parents sitting across the fire.

  My Dad’d wear a button-up shirt and khakis, probably have a special marshmallow-roasting doohickey he’d bought for the occasion. He’d glare at anyone who offered him a drink and try and tell his golfing stories.

  My mother would have at least worn jeans, and a flannel shirt, but she’d have worn her look of cheerful bewilderment that pissed people off at the best of times. That made me want to sink through the ground even when it wasn’t likely to get her stabbed by some drunk girl.

  “What’s so funny?” Merle asked.

  “Picturing my parents here,” I said.

  “Hey, they weren’t born forty years old and in J. Crew,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “They totally were,” I said.

  “Do you miss them?” he asked.

  I frowned at him.

  “Of course,” I said. “How could I not? They’re my parents. I mean, I’m mad, sure, but… I don’t want to never speak to them again.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you miss yours?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Prison’s the best place for my asshole dad, haven’t gone to see him in five years. My mother… I don’t miss her, but I wish I did. I don’t really remember her,” he said.

  “How did she die?” I asked.

  “Overdose,” he said. “I was three. She’d gotten clean when she was knocked up with me, stayed clean for a while, but…”

  His voice trailed off. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows from the fire.

  “That royally sucks,” I said.

  I felt bad, thinking about my own problems. I had wonderful loving parents for eighteen years. One fight, even one fight bad enough for them to kick me out, was… nothing.

  “I should apologize,” I muttered.

  “Why? For being a teenager?” Merle asked. He shrugged. “Do what you’ve gotta do, but what they did was shitty.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  I didn’t respond. It was too nice a night, too cozy, too sweet lying against Merle.

  After a few minutes breathing in the smoke and the smell of Merle, I turned and murmured into his ear. “Would you like to go to bed?”

  He glanced quickly at me and then let his eyes wander around the campfire, taking his time, looking at each and every man and woman.

  Most of them were drinking or talking quietly. There was no undercurrent of anger or tension.

  “I think that that could be arranged,” he said. His voice was pitched low, to carry only to me, and the heady promise in it made me shiver.

  He said his goodbyes and made his excuses, and we stood up. A few men raised bottles to him, grinning wickedly and making me flush.

  “Do they all know?” I hissed to Merle.

  He looked at me and grinned. “Every last one of them, sweetheart.”

  I rolled my eyes, but then a thought struck me.

  “So, it won’t matter if we do this…?” I asked, and picked up my pace into a run, heading to Merle’s cabin with the wind in my hair, laughing.

  He caught up to me easily and, before I really registered it, picked me up out of my run and tossed me over his shoulder.

  He jogged to the door of his cabin with me laughing and beating my fists half-heartedly against his back.

  The bikers around the campfire hooted and hollered at us, yelling suggestions about what Merle should do to me.

  None of them followed, of course. It was an easy, silly night.

  He shut the door behind us and tossed me gently onto his bed.

  Before I could do more than sit up on my elbows, he was on me, covering my body with his own strong one, bending to kiss a line from my ear to my collarbone.

  I shivered and moaned, bucking my hips up to meet his. I could feel him, hard and straining, through his jeans, through my jeans.

  I thought about reaching down and pulling down his zipper, yanking his jeans down his hips, revealing him bare and hard before me.

  I thought about it, but my hands instead reached up to cling to his back and encourage him.

  We hadn’t had sex yet. We’d barely done more than these passionate makeouts.

  I wanted him so badly, but I was so nervous that I couldn’t ever seem to take the next step… and he told me that he would never until I did.

  I tried, once. I really did.

  Of course, I ended up giggling so hard I almost cried.

  Not my finest moment.

  So, instead of being brave, I indulged myself in the feel of him against me, in the bliss of having his body against mine, his lips whispering in my ear about how beautiful I was, how wonderful, how he would protect me and care for me.

  I buried my hands in his thick hair and pulled his face up to mine, encouraging him to claim me in a searing kiss.

  “What do you want?” he asked, pulling away from me with a grin.

  “Tease,” I gasped.

  “Always,” he said, leaning down to nip at my collarbone again.

  As I lay back and moaned underneath him, he repeated his question.

  His eyes were intense, dark, on fire with some emotion I couldn’t quite read.

  “What do you want, Megan?” he asked.

  “I want you,” I whispered, “I want you, but I’m afraid.”

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  I waved a hand vaguely.

  He sat up and sat next to me, pulled his knees up to his chest.

  It was not a sexy pose, not exactly, but everything about him called out to me.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  I wasn’t even brave enough to tell him.

  “I’m afraid that if we go too far, if we have sex, you won’t want to look at me any more,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll look back in a few years and think I took advantage of you. I’m afraid you won’t enjoy it, or you’ll just remember those assholes who kidnapped you threatening you and you’ll hate it.”

  He spoke calmly. I squirmed to hear his words. I knew he was treating me like an adult, having a calm conversation about important things, and I just wanted to run the fuck away.

  He looked away, and his voice grew soft.

  “I’m afraid you’ll hate me. I’m afraid I’ll break you,” he said.

  I grabbed his arm.

  He was so tense under my hand.

  “You’d never break me, you’d ne
ver hurt me,” I said. I didn’t know I could sound that fierce. “I could never, ever, ever hate you. Okay? Do you hear me?”