But despite all of that, it was hard to ignore his lies. It was hard to swallow the fact that he didn’t want me meeting his friends. It was hard to be left in the middle of the night or early in the morning, only to be told he’d be back soon without letting me know where he was.
It was hard, and it got old fast.
That was the first time we’d ever fought. One of our bike rides was interrupted by a phone call he received. I could tell it was urgent by the way he spoke, but instead of taking me with him or filling me in, he simply dropped me off at my place. Gave me a quick peck on the cheek and told me he’d be back soon.
He was gone for four days before I heard from him, and the lies flowed forth ever since that moment.
I felt the bike slow down before we pulled into an abandoned parking lot. He pulled off into the shadows behind an abandoned building and brought his bike to a stop. He put the kickstand down and shut the engine off, and I scurried away as quickly as I could. I needed to breathe something that wasn’t tainted by him. I needed to get my hands away from his rock hard form. I needed to keep my eyes diverted from his, and I needed to focus on what the fuck had just happened.
He almost killed a man tonight.
“We needed to get away from the bar,” he said as I slid my helmet off.
I scoffed and shook my head as the hazy fog of his musky scent slowly lifted from my body. We were in a part of Henderson I recognized. A part of the town that had flourished when I was a child. But now, it was worn down. Abandoned. Forgotten and overgrown with weeds. My eyes took in the dark scenery before me as broken windows cast jagged shadows on the walls of abandoned homes. I saw the playground I used to play in, the swings rusted and the merry-go-round bent and cockeyed. I saw the old gas station that used to sell one-dollar slushies, its doors were torn to shreds and the walls spray-painted with gang signs.
I looked up the hill behind us and saw an old and abandoned diner. Reminiscent of the one Jace and I used to frequent.
“Is that…?”
“Yep. That was Sassy’s Diner. Don’t worry, though. They didn’t shut down. Just moved.”
I nodded as my gaze slowly panned back over to Jace.
I had no idea how I needed to feel at that moment. Was I supposed to be sad? Upset? Scared? Defeated? I was turned on. I was ready to hop his bones and recreate our fondest memories on his bike. My eyes raked over his tight shirt, his chest swelling as I looked back up to his eyes. He loomed in the shadows as the darkness cast jagged outlines upon his face.
But his eyes.
They were always softer than the rest of him.
But instead of settling on that, I settled on anger. He had dislocated a man’s jaw with one punch. He almost choked the fucking life out of him. He barged back into my life thinking he had some sort of claim on me, and that needed to be addressed.
No matter how much fire coursing through my veins was setting my body aflame.
“What the hell was that, Jace?”
Chapter 13
Snake
I sighed with a groan before I shook my head. Of course, that was all she latched onto. My actions back at the bar. Screw the fact that I’d gotten her out of trouble. Screw the fact that I’d saved her from whatever disgusting bullshit that asshole had in store for her. Fuck the fact that it was obvious she wanted me with the way she was feeling me up on the damn bike ride.
I was the one at fault. Always me.
“I’m not your property anymore, Jace. What the fuck was that?” Laiken asked.
“Are you really upset that I got you away from that asshole?” I asked.
“No!” she said. “I’m pissed because you apparently thought it was your responsibility!”
“Seriously, Laiken? I saved your ass.”
“Because you thought my ass was yours. Admit it.”
I stared into her eyes and saw them dripping with frustration. Years of pent-up anger and forgotten memories were surfacing for her. It was obvious she’d tried to forget me. Tried to move on and was unable to do so. I never tried. I tried to replicate the feeling I had with her, but I never attempted to erase her. She was the best damn thing that had ever happened to me, and I wanted to make sure I held onto that. Held onto that standard, she set in my life.
But it was clear I was not a standard to her, and it only twisted the knife she was plunging into my gut.
“You creep out from the shadows and come over to me in some random fucking bar because a guy is touching me and you expect me to thank you? I would’ve gotten that man off me. You know me better than that. And if I struggled, that bartender would’ve blown the guy’s fucking dick off before he got me out of there. Why the hell were you necessary?” she asked.
Anger was coursing through her veins. She held my helmet underneath her arm as she balled up her fists. Her body was trembling. Shaking with the words she never got to say to me that day.
The day I tossed her out of my fucking house.
“You think you own me, but you don’t,” she said. “You think you loved me, but you didn’t. You lied to me, Jace. You lied to me, you accused me of turning into my mother. You made me fall in love with you before doing fuck-knows-what. I assumed you were probably cheating. Creeping around behind my back. Why the hell else would you have been done for days on end? Getting up in the middle of the night? Lying to me about the ‘boring life’ you told me you had? Huh!?”
I let her yell at me. I let her get it out. It turned my stomach that she thought I could cheat on her. After the perfection, she’d brought into my world. When I was with her, I tried to get her to see what she meant to me. I tried to learn how to treat her. I tried to learn how to spoil her and comfort her and love her in the ways she needed. I stood up for her. Defended her to people in her life that walked all over her and tried to diminish the light she brought into this fucking hellhole.
But she was right. I had lied on multiple occasions to keep her at arm’s length with my own life. Partially because of her aspiring dreams, and partially because I wanted to protect her.
And I would never take those motives back. I would never take back the lies I fed her. Pushing her away was the best thing I did for her because had I introduced her to my life she might have rejected me. Spat at me. Called me pathetic. Possibly even came after us if she had pursued her dreams. But if she hadn’t? If she had accepted my life and kept her mouth shut?
She would’ve been there at the shootout. The night with The Devil Saints that changed all of us forever.
“You know, I could never prove you were cheating,” Laiken said. “I went through your phone. Dialed numbers to see who you fucking pick up. Asked you repeated questions to see if I could get you to trip up in your stories. I would check your body for marks when we made love and smell your clothes after you’d come back in. You made me paranoid. Your lies and your deceit made me lesser of a fucking person. I stooped to doing things I cringe at people for now. But there’s one thing I can prove. One thing you did do that you will never come back from.”
I braced myself for the hurt I knew was going to come with her words. The one thing she could accuse me of that was true.
The one thing that made me physically sick at night.
“You broke my heart,” she said. “You ripped it from my chest, you heel-stomped it into the ground, and you left it to rot.”
I didn’t know what else to do. Her words cut to the bone as she left me to bleed out on the street. Tears were cresting her eyes as she tossed her helmet at my chest. I caught it in my hand without a second thought and propped it up underneath my arm. She had every right to be upset. Every right to say what she was saying. She had every right to accuse me of cheating because what the fuck else was I supposed to be doing? No woman thought her man was involved with a gang. The most common answer was cheating.
And even though it angered me that she could think that about me, I could understand her train of thought.
What else was I supposed to do, though? Just…
let her in to that life? I tried to protect my sister from it, and look at what it fucking got her. She spread her legs for a guy I tried to keep her away from, and now she was holed up in the fucking main lodge of our compound trying to outlive an impending war. She got sucked right into the middle of shit that didn’t even concern her because Talon got selfish and couldn’t control his dick.
“You broke my fucking heart, Jace. And I don’t think I ever touched yours.”
Her words echoed off the recesses of my mind, and I lost it. Even though I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut, that was not a lie I was going to allow her to convince herself of.
“Never touched mine? Laiken, are you fucking serious!? You don’t think, for one measly second, that you broke mine in the process?” I asked.
“Oh. And what is it that I did to hurt your fragile little ego?” she asked.
“You called me a manipulator! You just accused me of cheating when that wasn’t what I was doing! You blamed your paranoia on me when I could not just put you in danger! I lived a hard life back in those days. I still fucking do. And I wasn’t going to allow you to get wrapped up in that shit. Not with my sister, or my mother, or my father, or my fucking friends, Laiken!”
“But couldn’t you see that’s all I wanted from you?! I didn’t want your money or your idiotic idea of romance or for you to fuck my brains out all the damn time. I wanted your life, Jace. I wanted your world. I wanted to be a part of it. Not an escape from it,” she said.
“Only you would call being someone’s escape a shitty thing,” I said, snickering.
“And either way, you’re the one who fucking threw me out. Who grabbed my arm, tossed me out onto the porch, and slammed the door closed in my fucking face. What the hell was I supposed to do? Knock on the door and ask for your forgiveness? I wasn’t your princess, Jace. I wasn’t your shy little girl that would come crawling back to you when I made you angry.”
“And I never assumed you were!” I exclaimed.
“Then how the fuck did I break your heart!?” she asked.
“Because you were just fucking gone after that!” I yelled.
“Of course I was! You literally threw me out!”
“There was nothing! No phone calls. No text messages. You weren’t at school, and you fucking weren’t at home. I traveled everywhere to find you after that damn fight. Everywhere! I drove to every damn city we ever traveled to and went into every damn bar I ever took you to! I was desperate to find you! I even attended your fucking graduation ceremony just so I could corner you so we could talk.”
My chest was panting as Laiken stared at me with wide eyes. Her anger was cracking. Her strong body was crumbling. Her shoulders settled back into her body, and she settled back onto her feet. Her fists unfurled, and her fiery eyes extinguished into burning embers. I could see the shock rolling over her face as she turned my words over in her head.
“You… did what?” Laiken asked.
“You might not have given a shit about me over these past few years, but I never forgot you. I never forgot the beauty of your eyes and the feel of your skin against mine. I never forgot how your laughter washed over my body whenever I got a chance to pull it from you. I never forgot how wonderful it had been to feel your body pressed into mine as we rode my bike. And I sure as hell never forgot what your lips felt like on mine. You think I didn’t let you in? Laiken, I let you in and never fucking let go.”
Her hazel eyes locked on mine as her entire body relaxed. A tear slowly made its way down her cheek, and I had to fight the urge to wipe it away. I was looking at Laiken for the first time in years, and I was witnessing her cry for the third time ever. She hurt. She was in pain. She had been carrying around all this anger, trying to stuff it down while she led her own life. It was obvious she had left. It was the only explanation I had to not being able to find her after the fight.
“I searched for days, Laiken,” I said. “Weeks, even. Every memory I could conjure of us, I went there. Hoping to find you. Hoping to get you to myself so I could talk to you about that fight. I wanted to apologize to you, for fuck’s sake. For grabbing you the way I did. It was disgusting of me. It made me feel like… like my father.”
I watched another tear fall from her dimly lit eyes. I took a step closer to her before I set the helmets on my bike. No woman should ever cry alone. Especially when she was in the presence of someone. I took another step towards Laiken and hoped she wouldn’t run from me.
But the reaction I got was very different from the one I expected.
Before I could reach out to dry her tears, her hands reached out for my body. They gripped my leather jacket, fisting the material as she pulled me closer. She closed the gap between us as she stood up onto her toes, tears freely flowing down her face as she crashed her lips up into mine.
And for the first time in years, I felt whole again.
Chapter 14
Laiken
His lips felt like ice against the fire dancing upon mine. I could feel my body trembling as I melted into him. His leather was familiar in the palms of my hands as my body pressed itself into him. I could taste his tongue on the tip of mine for the first time in years. His arms encompassed the whole of me, pulling me towards him as he drew in desperate breaths. Our teeth scraped against one another as our tongues battled for dominance, but that familiar ache in my gut was still present.
Anger.
Frustration.
Betrayal.
Shoving him away from me, he stumbled back. His eyes were wild with lust as he ripped his jacket off his shoulders. I strode back towards him and placed my hands on his chest, shoving him again and again until his back hit the wall. The shadows covered our bodies as our lips crashed together again. His hands ran all over my body, cupping my clothed breasts and squeezing my ass. I could feel his cock growing against my stomach as his warmth wrapped around my body.
But I was going to show him.
Show him what it felt like to be grabbed and cast aside.
He swung me around and pressed me into the building as his lips scaled down my neck. My hands raked through his hair as his beard tickled my skin. My nipples had risen to puckered nubs behind my bra, scraping against the material as his hands ran up my shirt. The calluses on his hands burned my skin, pulling moans from my lips. I ripped his head up and found his lips again, then I pressed my hips into his body.
I knew what I wanted to feel from him, and I wasn’t settling for anything less.
My hands flew to my pants as I shoved them down my body. My underwear was soaked, and the smell of my arousal hit both our nostrils. I looked into Jace’s eyes, watching them dilate with passion and wild abandon as he licked his lips.
I pulled his head back and frowned before I shoved him to his knees.
I pushed his head down before I pulled him into my pussy. It was dripping down my thighs as I parted my knees for him. My back laid against the abandoned building we were behind, the wind shivering my skin as Jace’s face hummed into my warmth. I twisted my hand into his hair, raking my fingernails against his scalp as he growled into my body.
“Lick,” I said.
I felt his tongue slid from between his lips and part my folds. His hands planted on my knees, shoving them further apart to gain more access. My juices were dripping onto him, tainting the sand underneath us as he licked a thick stripe up my slit.
My legs shook as my eyes rolled into the back of my head.
Years. It had been years since I’d allowed myself to think of this. To remember how good his tongue could make me feel. As he slid his wide tongue into my pussy and pressed his hands to my knees, I could feel myself opening up to him. Showing him a side of me that had taken months for him to coax out of me.
His tongue found my clit and flicked it expertly. I held him tightly to my body as my hips rolled into his mouth. I coated his face with my scent, covering him with the one thing I knew he wanted more than anything. He moaned into my pussy, ricocheting vibrations up my core
before he pressed his tongue deep into my body.
“The only good thing you ever did give me,” I said breathlessly.
I looked at him and saw his eyes flicker up to mine. His gaze was sharp, chastising me as I grinned down at him. I wrenched him away, and he took a big breath, then I placed him back at my pussy as he pulled my lips apart.
“Suck that clit,” I said. “Do what you’re supposed to.”
He took my breath away as he set himself to work. His lips wrapped around my swollen clit while his tongue flicked away. He pressed and circled as his beard tickled the insides of my thighs. I squeezed my legs around his face as he held his breath. I could feel his body shaking. I could feel his skin heating up. I ground down into him as that coil began to wind up in my gut, and just as I was about to lose it, I pushed myself off the wall.
Jace gripped onto my hips and held me towards him, his strength sending me over the edge. I was standing on my tip toes as I held onto his hair for leverage, shaking and writhing against nothing but his face. Stars burst into my vision as more tears brewed behind my eyes, and as I came down from my high, I could hear him swallowing me down.
He was gulping me down. Like his body had been starved of water and I was his only source of it.
I stumbled back into the wall as my pants hung around my ankles. My body was quaking, and my knees were weak. My throat was hoarse from biting back the urge to moan his name. He wasn’t going to get that from me. He wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of hearing his name drip from my lips.
Just as I was regaining my composure, I felt my pants pulled off my legs and something strong pin me to the wall. I opened my eyes and looked up into the nighttime sky, but it was obstructed by Jace’s angry gaze. His arms flipped me around and pressed my chest into the wall, his hand pressed between my shoulder blades as I heard him fiddle with his belt.
“The only good thing I ever did for you?” he asked as he slid his pants down. “You think that was the only thing I was ever good at?”
Snake (The Road Rebels MC Book 3) Page 8