by Stacey Lynn
“Tell me you want this.”
I dropped my hands to her tank top and began pushing it up, my thumbs sliding across her nipples after I unclasped her bra at the back.
Damn, she was so beautiful—so soft and tender and able to quench all the anger inside of me.
I played with her nipples while she dropped her head back and moaned.
Her hips shifted against me and I hissed in a breath. “Take it, darlin’,” I whispered into her ear. “Get yourself off on me, right here, right now.”
“God, you’re an ass.”
“I know.” But hell if her rocking against me wasn’t about ready to set me off. I wanted to watch her before I took from her. Wanted her to see what I’d give her.
Pleasure.
Her breath hitched and her pulse jumped in her neck as I pressed her hips against me, rocking her harder against the denim and my erection.
My dick ached to get free, to sink into her wetness, but this time was all for her.
And then I felt the tightening of her thighs and her quiet gasps.
“Come, Meg. Let me see you fall apart for me.”
She did.
Her head dropped to my forehead and her hands reached out, squeezing the sides of my abs as her entire body shivered and rocked when she came.
So fucking beautiful.
“I want to be inside you,” I told her.
“Mm-hmm.”
I laughed, kissed her cheek, and picked her up.
“Don’t break me,” she whispered when she wrapped her arms around me as I started heading up the stairs.
And fuck if I could wait to get to a bed. She didn’t mean drop her, she meant her heart—and I wasn’t sure it was a promise I could make with words.
I’d show.
“Need you now,” I muttered and set her down on the stairs. I leaned in, dropping on the stairs in front of her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, and I smiled when I saw that her eyes had gone smoky and cloudy. I did that to her. I drove her crazy.
“Want to taste you,” I told her and spread her thighs. My hands slid up her inner thighs and I smiled as her skin prickled, following my soft, teasing movements. When my fingers dug into her waistband, she shifted her hips and I pulled off her shorts and thong together.
Her pussy was glistening and bare. So fucking hot.
“You’re beautiful,” I told her, meeting her eyes. My finger ran down her slit, becoming slick with her wetness, and I held my finger up to her lips. “Taste yourself. You see what I do to you?”
She nodded. “I know what I do for you,” she said, and fuck if she didn’t suck my finger into her mouth like it was my cock.
I dropped my head and licked her juices, sucking on her folds, and then I pressed the flat of my tongue against her clit. Her thighs shook, but I held them open as I played with her clit, teasing her until she started shaking again.
“Finn.” Her hands flew to my head. Her fingers tightened in my hair and I growled against her pussy from the pain of her grip.
I fucking loved it. Loved how wild she became under my touch. No woman had shown herself so entirely to me before.
As she came again, my mouth soaking with her taste, I continued licking and sucking until her body stopped shaking. My hands went to my jeans and I undid the button, kicking my boots and jeans off on the stairs.
I looked like a fool and I didn’t give a shit.
I could only think about sinking into her wet warmth and having her clamp around me.
“Wrap your legs around me,” I whispered when I picked her up again. I stayed still on the stairs, one hand on her ass, the other hand on my cock, and as she fell down, she sank onto me, sheathing me fully.
I turned and rested my back against the wall, the handrail digging into my back along with the heels of her feet.
“Holy shit, Finn.”
“I know, baby,” I groaned and met her eyes. “Where’s your bed?”
“First door upstairs.”
I carried her, loved the way she gasped and moaned with every step as I jostled her around my dick.
I was bare inside her, and I knew I should pull out but fuck if I wanted to.
“Meg,” I finally said when I found her bed and lay down following her, us still connected. “You on the pill?”
Her eyes opened as if she suddenly realized what I was talking about.
“IUD,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”
I brushed hair off her cheeks and pulled out slowly.
Her hands went to my ass. “Stay inside,” she said, licking her lips.
“I’m clean.”
“I trust you.”
Fuck if that wasn’t the best three words in the entire fucking world.
“Fuck me, Finn,” she groaned, arching into me.
I did. I lost complete control. I pushed and pulled, taking her harder and deeper until only our gasps filled the room. As we finally came together and I sank balls-deep inside of her, I swore loudly.
Meg didn’t fucking silence the beast inside me.
She demolished it.
I was still deep in her pussy, her walls clamping around me, when I began speaking.
“Had a foster dad who sold this girl for sex. He used her, and she came to me, needing someone to touch her who didn’t hate her. We were tight, Meg, and I don’t want to talk about Piper inside you, but I’m not pulling out either.”
Her brow furrowed as if she didn’t register what I was saying.
“When I was seventeen—just a kid—and Piper even younger, I got her knocked up. But by then she was hooked on drugs and couldn’t stop, said she needed them to get through the nights she had to fuck other men.” I inhaled a breath. I was giving her the basics, not the stuff of my nightmares, but I knew those were gone anyway.
She’d done that for me, and I wanted to give her everything she ever wanted.
“Finn,” she said softly and when I looked at her, her eyes glistened with tears. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Her hand brushed down my cheek to my shoulder. I felt her touch everywhere, all over my body, and my dick started hardening again inside her. My balls tightened with the need to release, but I fought it back even as I rolled my hips.
“God, you’re good at this,” she murmured, a slight smile on her lips.
“Need to finish,” I told her and stopped moving again. When Meg looked at me again, tears still in her eyes, I said, “I watched Piper die the night she gave birth to my kid, Jesse. He never breathed on his own before he died the next day.”
“Oh my God.”
“Left Australia two days later and haven’t spoken about it since. Olivia knows I lost a kid, but I haven’t told anyone the whole story until you.” I leaned closer, brushed my nose over hers and then pulled back, straightening my arms. “The kind of man you’re hooking yourself to, Meg, is a guy who at seventeen watched his baby die and then slit his foster dad’s throat in revenge. I’m the man who enjoyed it because the asshole deserved it for all the shit he put us through.”
Beneath me, Meg gasped, but her eyes stayed on mine. I brushed away her tears and kissed her cheek.
“I’m telling you this, not because I’m gonna let you go, but because you deserve to know straight-up that the kind of man I am is someone willing to kill.”
“No, Finn.” Her voice was firm and my eyes snapped to her. Her fingers threaded through my short hair. “You’re the kind of man who would do anything to protect the people he loves. That’s not a bad man, that’s an honorable one.”
I didn’t fully believe her, but I finally wanted to. And that alone was progress.
When her hands squeezed my ass and she pushed me into her, I quit talking.
We had all the time in the world for that.
Tonight I wanted to make love to Meg even if I couldn’t tell her with the words she deserved, and as she came for the fourth time, hours later, and I saw the look shining in her blue eyes, I knew she was doing the sa
me for me.
Loving me.
Epilogue
Meg
Six weeks later
Motorcycles roared down the packed streets, and between their motors and the loud music that seemed to filter from every bar and street-side shop, hearing was not only difficult, but practically impossible.
I covered one of my ears and turned to Finn, grinning. “This place is fantastic!”
He tugged me closer and wrapped an arm around my back. “Sturgis is a pain in the ass.”
But he was smiling, and I knew he was only halfway joking. Mostly, over the last two months, I’d learned that Finn joked a lot. He might not have before, but as we continued to grow closer, he slowly began opening up, telling me more about his life in Australia.
I knew about him killing men in an underground boxing ring. I heard all about Piper and how as a teenager he’d done everything he could to convince her to leave the house they’d been in. And then I heard the dirtiest parts. The night he watched Piper almost bleed out in front of him and how he was standing outside the NICU glass walls when Jesse went into cardiac arrest and his tiny heart stopped beating.
He assured me he cared about Brayden and me, but was certain he never wanted kids of his own. I didn’t mind and I allowed him that with complete understanding.
I wasn’t with Finn because he could give me something.
I was with him because somehow my world wasn’t right until my large and broody Aussie biker was right next to me.
And he always was. For the first month after we returned to Jasper Bay and reconciled, I didn’t go anywhere without Finn driving me or following me. Even when I found a job working as an insurance agent’s assistant in Two Harbors, a nearby town, Finn always followed me on his bike, making sure I got there safely, or drove me in his truck.
Nights after work were the same, and I would leave my building to find Finn sitting on his bike. Women in town swayed their hips a little bit more obviously when they passed my man lounging on his bike, waiting for me. Men eyed him warily.
Me? I ran out, threw my arms around him, and kissed him for all I could…every damn time.
Because every time still felt like the first time when Finn wrapped his arms around me and held me close.
But the biggest adjustment of all was when Finn told me to move in with him into a new apartment just down the hall from Jaden and Jules.
The place was decent—not overly nice, but it was safe and had space for all three of us. It felt quick at the time, but Brayden and I needed to get out of Ryker’s house, and before me, Finn had lived at the clubhouse—something I hadn’t known before, and it saddened me when he told me.
We were adjusting.
We were still getting used to one another, and Brayden and Finn were still figuring out their relationship, too.
But more importantly…we were all happy. Something Finn reminded me often that he’d never felt before me.
Thinking of that, I leaned into him and squeezing Brayden’s hand on my other side, pulled him with us.
“What’s the name of the band playing again tonight?” I asked.
I had learned that Sturgis was an insane bike rally that the club went to every year. I’d been warned to only walk certain blocks due to clubs they didn’t get along with also having tents and makeshift homes for the week. Not that it mattered: Finn hadn’t left my side.
“Candlebox.”
I hadn’t heard of them, but I was more country than rock, so I wasn’t surprised.
“Finn?” I asked and stopped moving. The sudden stop made his arm jerk back and he took a step away before he looked down at me.
I didn’t know what it was—whether it was the heat or the crowds or the completely overwhelming feelings I’d been dealing with in the last two months—but it suddenly all poured out of me, needing an outlet.
Finn cupped my cheek with his hand and then dragged it across my forehead, as if checking for a fever.
I smiled and leaned toward his touch.
“You okay, Meg?” He frowned, his eyebrows pinched together, and I nodded.
“You know I love you, right, Finn? That I’m so in love with you that I can’t imagine a day going by without seeing you.”
He inhaled a sharp breath, hissing it in between his teeth, and the way he froze for a moment—his warm, honeyed eyes on mine, swirling with something I didn’t understand—almost had me regretting my outburst.
But then his hands cupped my cheeks and he dropped his forehead to mine. My heart flipped.
I loved it when he did that.
I couldn’t stop my grin.
“Aw hell, darlin’, you know I love you, too, right?”
“Yeah, Finn.” I breathed through a large smile, my heart flip-flopping all over my insides like a ping-pong ball. “I know.”
“Thank Christ.” Then his lips dropped to mine and he kissed the hell out of me on the middle of the sidewalk, jam-packed with hundreds of bikers and their old ladies, and kids and celebrities, and neither one of us paid them any attention.
He kissed me so thoroughly I lost my mind until Brayden tugged on my hand and groaned.
“Aw, man,” he moaned. “You guys are kissing again. Can’t you knock it off?”
Finn pulled back from the kiss before he lightly brushed my lips one more time. “No way in hell, kiddo.”
He bent down, picked Brayden up, and swung him until he was seated high on Finn’s shoulders.
Brayden cheered and I laughed as Finn kept one hand wrapped around Brayden’s shin and settled his other arm around my shoulders.
“I plan on kissing your mom every day, any time I want, for the rest of my life.”
My heart flipped again and I rested my head against Finn’s shoulder.
It was the best thing I’d heard in my entire life.
* * *
One Year Later
I was honored to stand on the altar, even if it was third in line, as I watched Jaden and Jules exchange their vows in front of the club and Jules’s parents.
At almost four, Sophie looked completely adorable in a white fluffy dress tied with a black sash. She wiggled on her feet, back and forth, but she paid attention as best she could while Jaden and Jules each held onto one of her hands.
Brayden’s misery looked equal to Sophie’s happiness, squeezed into a black suit coat and black dress shoes. Thankfully the men were all wearing jeans, so I didn’t have to force dress pants onto the kid.
“With this ring,” Jaden said, “I promise to love you and cherish you for the rest of your life, Jules.”
Jules swiped a tear off her cheek when Jaden squeezed her hand and let it go, and then he dropped to one knee in front of Sophie.
“Hey, pint-size,” he said with a slow smile. He raised his hand and held up a gold chain that held a small gold ring. “With this ring, I promise to love you, too. And I’ll always be here for whatever you need. Okay?”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, short stack.” He leaned forward, clipped the chain around the back of Sophie’s neck, and pressed a kiss on her forehead before he stood up, and then he and Jules both returned to facing the minister.
I wiped tears off my eyes and noticed Faith and Olivia doing the same thing, except Olivia was doing it while holding her sleeping three-month-old baby girl, Cherry, in her arms.
Life had changed a lot in the last year.
Finn and I were engaged.
Faith was pregnant.
Olivia had just had her first baby a few months before.
And I didn’t know life could be so good that you just knew it was going to keep getting better.
* * *
Five Years Later
“Brayden Michael Walker! Get your butt inside right this very minute!”
“Not sure calling him his entire name is going to make him clean his room.”
I spun on my heels and my breath caught in my throat, just like it always did when Finn walked into the kit
chen.
It was our new house, one we’d bought a year after we were married four years ago. It wasn’t big but it was nice and bright. Finn and some of the men from the club spent months updating the kitchen from a sixties retro-puke orange disaster to a kitchen with gleaming silver appliances and sparkling granite counters.
I drooled over the counters almost as much as I drooled over Finn.
I popped my hip and watched Finn’s eyes drop from mine to my legs. A slow smirk tilted one corner of his lips, and just like that, my stomach went swoosh.
“Maybe I like his name,” I told him. We’d talked about it and over the years, Brayden had taken to calling Finn ‘dad,’ and even though I wanted him to remember Byron, it was Finn who would be his father while Brayden grew up. I wasn’t entirely sure Brayden had understood, but when he went into second grade after the adoption process was completed and proudly stated “I’ve got a new name because my new dad bought me over the summer,” I figured he understood enough.
Although it did make for an awkward first day of school conversation with the principal.
“What’d he do wrong this time, anyway?”
“He’s not keeping his room clean, and it’s driving me crazy. He knows he’s supposed to do it before he’s allowed to play video games.”
Finn laughed and closed the space between us. He was in the doorway across the room one second, and in front of me with his hands on my hips, lifting me onto the counter the next.
I didn’t mind.
“Darlin’, he’s a boy. Boys make messes.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice all breathy because my husband was hot. And he no longer had a pain hidden in his eyes. Hadn’t for years. Somehow, we’d worked through all our pasts and our nightmares and come out stronger. “But that still doesn’t mean he can’t learn to clean.”
He leaned down and ran his nose along my jaw back to my ear. “But when he’s playing the Xbox, he leaves us alone for more than an hour.”
To demonstrate exactly what he meant, Finn pressed his hips into me and I felt how excited he was about an hour alone.