by Stacey Lynn
“Fine,” I snapped and looked for any sign in his eyes that he cared about me.
I came away with nothing.
It didn’t stop me though, from letting him wrap an arm around my waist while he held my purse and papers in his other hand. He walked me to the door, pausing only to dig out my keys. In one guess, he used the right key to unlock the outside door and did the same thing again once we reached the top of the stairs, as if he had been here before.
I didn’t want to stop and think about if that was true or not.
Once inside, I walked to the bed, and collapsed on it while he locked the door behind me.
“What is it?” I asked when he stood staring at the door to my apartment.
He turned to me with a frown. “Your security is shit.”
I bristled. “No one’s trying to kill me. Not anymore.”
“You’re the President’s daughter, Olivia.” Walking to my kitchen area, he filled a glass of water.
“I know who I am.”
“Do you?” I looked away from him after he handed me the glass of water. His point was made.
“You can go now.”
He leaned back onto my battered couch that Gunner used to have sitting in the waiting area of the tattoo shop until I made him by a new one. It was a puke brown color and the threads seemed to disintegrate more every day.
I had never cared; never been ashamed of the meager life I was living, until Daemon Knight sat in the middle of the small room looking like he wasn’t planning to leave anytime soon.
“Does Travis know what you did today?”
I ignored the question. It wasn’t any of his business. The faster I got Daemon out of my apartment, the better for everyone. “Why did Faith call you?”
He shrugged and lit a cigarette, blowing the first exhale of smoke out slowly and closed his eyes. “She had something come up at the bar; said you needed help.”
I could have thanked him, but there was no way in hell my pride would let me. Had it not been for Daemon turning his back on me years ago, we would have been out of this fucked up town and living happily ever after. At least that was how it always happened in my dreams or nightmares. They plagued me constantly. What life would have been like if Daemon would have only loved me the way he claimed he did.
God, I was so naïve back then. Too innocent to think any man who grew up in our families’ motorcycle club could be anything but a liar. I had hung my hopes on his words and vowed never to trust anyone related to anything resembling a biker again. And it had worked, mostly. Which made it easier to be around Travis. He was as anti-biker as you could get.
“A client?” I sneered at him, more willing to put the focus on Faith and her job than my shitty day.
“Don’t judge us, Olivia. It’s beneath you, and more than anyone else, you know what it’s like to do anything you need to in order to survive.” His eyes glared at me, the smoke fell from his flared nostrils. Suddenly my studio apartment felt smaller than a shoebox.
“Fuck off, Daemon, and just leave. I don’t need you.”
He was at my side of the bed in a second, leaning over me and bracing himself with both hands next to me. I could smell the smoke in his breath and couldn’t take my eyes off the sparkling green ones that stared down at me. My breath caught and my body reacted to his seductive gaze.
I wanted to punch him in the balls when he smiled—knowing what I was thinking.
Damn it.
“You’re wrong, Princess.” I scoffed at the nickname. I hated it. Always did. “You do need me. I don’t give a shit about…”
“I know you don’t,” I snapped at him.
“Shut your mouth before I kiss you and make you be quiet.” I inhaled a sharp breath and pressed my lips together. His eyes darkened and trailed the length of my body. God, how could he look at me like he wanted to devour me after what he thought I had just done? And after what he had done to me? I hated him. Yet, I wanted to pull him closer to me. Wrap his leather cut in my fists and force his mouth against mine to see if his lips felt the same, tasted the same, as I remembered. “I don’t give a shit why you did what you did today. It only tells me one thing.”
I waited. He lowered his face until he was inches from mine, his breathing heavier than mine if that was possible.
“I will have you under me again, on the back of my bike, and back in the club with your family where you belong. It’s only going to be a matter of time.”
No way in hell was I ever going back to the club. I pressed my hands against his chest and shoved him off me. He grinned, and looked sexy doing it. The top of his lip disappeared slightly under his facial hair making him look dangerous and hot at the same time.
We heard the footsteps coming up the stairs, at the same time both of our heads snapped toward the locked door.
“Travis?”
I nodded. “He has a key.”
“You goin’ to tell him what you did?”
“My relationship with Travis is none of your business. And besides,” I grinned. It almost felt like I had a knife; and I was preparing to stick it into his gut. “I didn’t go through with it. I’m having his baby so you can fuck off.”
A vein on the side of his temple popped out. “You’re right,” he snapped and grabbed his cigarettes and keys from the coffee table. “It isn’t my business. But I’d fuck you again, anytime.”
“Find a club whore.”
“Already have one.” The door opened just as I was about to jump out of bed and smack him. Travis stood frozen in the entryway, glancing back and forth between the two of us.
His blue eyes narrowed on Daemon and I watched his chest puff out before he exhaled and fixed his glare on me.
“Olivia?” he asked, his lips thinned when he saw me lying on the bed. “What in the hell is going on?”
“Flu,” I lied easily, or maybe it was partly true. I suddenly felt like I could throw up at any second. With both of the men in my tiny home, I felt violated and sick to my stomach. I was amazed they hadn’t whipped out their pistols yet. They were both carrying. They always did. “I almost passed out on the sidewalk and Daemon was there. He helped me home.” I glared at Daemon as his lips twisted into a wry grin. “He was also just leaving.”
Travis nodded at him. “Thanks for helping my girl.” It was insincere, an arrogant way to put Daemon in his place, at best.
Daemon smiled easily and headed for the door, getting closer to Travis who didn’t look threatened at all.
“Just because you get the privilege of sticking your dick in her,” I gasped at the crassness and noticed Travis curled his hands into fists, “doesn’t make her yours. She’s always been mine, Larson, and she’ll come back when she realizes where she truly belongs.”
“Go to hell, Daemon,” I clipped from across the room.
However, he was already gone; the door snapped closed behind him.
Fuck. I lit another cigarette as soon as my feet hit the pavement. I was going to kill Faith for tricking me into picking up Olivia from that dumpy med clinic. Then I was going to put a bullet in Travis’s stomach just for the sake of knocking Olivia up in the first place.
Shit. Olivia was pregnant with Travis Larson’s baby. He was everything I knew she was looking for, a stable life, someone who would come home at night and give her a family. If I wasn’t such a prick, I might have been happy for her. But I wasn’t. Jealousy flooded my veins at the thought that the moment she rolled back into town, she went to him.
Travis Larson. The boy had had a crush on her long before I ever made my move on her when we were teenagers. She should have come home—back to the club and back to her old man—but she didn’t. I had never seen our Prez as pissed as he was the day he learned his daughter, his princess, ran to the other side.
It wasn’t where she belonged and we all knew it. It was only a matter of time before Liv realized who she was; and fuck it all, if I wasn’t going to make sure I was there the day she returned.
I hid my
irritation when I saw Jaden propped up against the side of my truck with his arms crossed over his chest and feet crossed at the ankles. It was a casual stance, but I knew it was all a façade. Jaden was my best friend, and a ruthless asshole. He knew me better than anyone else and understood the choices I had made even when I hated myself for making them.
That he was there, at my truck, and outside Olivia’s apartment, was no surprise. Olivia would be the only one surprised to learn that all the members of the club had to do their duty of protective watch. Her father insisted. She may have thought we all turned our back on her, but she was dead wrong.
She was protected, whether she wanted to be or not.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I threw my half-smoked cigarette on the ground. My throat and lungs burned from the excessive smoking I had already done and it was only early afternoon.
“Making sure you don’t do anything stupid.” Jaden didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes trained on Liv’s apartment. The place I didn’t want to fucking leave, but knew it’d take me forever to be invited to stay with her again. I had fucked all that up years ago—not that I didn’t still want her—God, I did. Even seeing her today, broken and sad, she was still the sexiest thing I had ever seen. I wanted to rub my hands along her sides and her tits, take one nipple in my mouth while my hand played with the other, right before I shoved my dick deep inside her again.
She had that pull on me. Always did. None of the biker whores who threw their pussy in my face so eagerly had ever been able to erase my memory of the one night I spent with Olivia under me and on me.
My nose twitched. “I’m good.” I shoved Jaden out of the way of my door but he didn’t budge.
“Prez is going to kick your ass if you fuck this up with her again. He wants her back home.”
“I know,” I snapped, “but Travis is a dead man if Prez finds out that Liv is pregnant.”
Jaden’s face was expressionless, but he knew what I was talking about. Fucker had probably been shadowing me ever since I took off from the club in a rush when Faith called me. I didn’t know Faith’s motives for calling me instead of handling everything like she had told Olivia she would, although she knew we kept our eye on Olivia. Maybe she just figured it was better that I was there over any other guy in the club.
I didn’t fucking know. I didn’t care.
I cared about the fact that Travis had gotten Olivia into this mess; and yet, he was the one inside her apartment right now, comforting her. He was taking care of her even though all of this was his own damn fault to begin with. He probably did it on purpose thinking he could trap Olivia into marrying him.
Someday, that decision was going to bite him in the ass. And when it did, I would be there, smiling and taking back what had always belonged to me while he cried like the pussy-ass baby he always had been.
If it wouldn’t have given me away completely, I would have asked Travis to leave the minute Daemon stomped down the stairs. In his wake, he left a river of tension that instantly separated Travis and me. I wondered if that was Daemon’s plan the entire time. Find a way to get back into my life, push Travis out, and do everything he could to make me all wrapped up in him all over again.
I let out a small groan and wrapped my arm around my stomach.
“You really sick?” Travis asked. He still hadn’t moved from the spot that he’d been plastered to since he walked in and spotted Daemon. Occasionally, he ran his hand through his buzzed light brown hair, but that was the only move he made.
I didn’t answer. I just rolled over in my bed, clutched my stomach and brought my knees to my chest. I hoped he’d get the point and just leave. I didn’t want my relationship with Travis to end. I just didn’t want it get more serious either.
“What can I get for you?” I felt the edge of the bed dip from his weight. He didn’t touch me, and I didn’t turn to look at him.
“Ginger ale. I have some in the fridge.” He left and when he came back, I took a few sips of the cold and bubbly drink before setting it down and finally pulled myself into a sitting position. “I thought you were working.”
He smiled sadly. “I thought I’d come over and take you to lunch.”
That was Travis, always so thoughtful. I was such a ruthless bitch, using him for his company and his kindness and refusing anything more. It wasn’t the first time I wondered when he’d finally see my game and walk away before I crushed him beneath the heel of my boot.
“Sorry.” And I was. Just not for the reasons he was thinking.
“I can bring soup for you later when I get off my shift.” His eyes roamed my apartment, as if looking for something out of place. Maybe he could smell the lies that permeated the air between us. “It’ll be late, though.”
“I’ll probably be sleeping.”
He nodded and leaned down, pressing a light kiss against my temple. “I should get back, then. I love you.”
I didn’t say it back. I never did. Today was the first time I felt guilty about it, but I still couldn’t force the words out of my throat. Travis closed his eyes and dropped his head before leaving my home quietly.
A coldness filled the small space after he left but I knew it wasn’t the air. It was at least eighty degrees out, the height of summer in Northern Minnesota, and I didn’t have air-conditioning. The air was probably warm and stuffy in my home. It was my heart that spread ice through my veins as I pulled a blanket over me and shivered.
It was only then that I finally allowed myself to consider what had happened earlier.
Daemon Knight had so easily walked back into my life as if he hadn’t run away in the first place. As if he didn’t turn his back on me, the night I needed him—the night I spent in a hospital room, mourning the death of my mother with a bullet wound in my thigh.
He should have been there for me.
Instead, he was gone. And by the time he came around, spewing his excuses and wanting my forgiveness, I wanted nothing to do with him.
He was dead to me. Just like my mom, my dad, and the rest of the club.
I had no one.
Except I did, because I knew Daemon showing up at the clinic wasn’t a coincidence. My reaction to him the moment I saw him earlier was as visceral as it had always been. There had always been some tie between us. An invisible connection that existed solely between the two of us, whether we wanted it to be there or not. And I didn’t want it. Not anymore. Regardless, it was still there. I could still feel a pull toward Daemon, even after he shut the door and walked out of my apartment. I could see him, still smell him, as if his presence had been left behind, even though his body was gone.
It had always been that way. Even hours away in Minneapolis while I attended college, my thoughts would always drift back to Daemon and my memories of life in Jasper Bay whenever the sun set and the quiet, dark of night appeared.
I put my hand on my stomach, wondering what in the hell I was going to do with a baby. The child of a man that I not only didn’t love, but wasn’t sure I wanted. I wondered how long it would take for the tie that bound Daemon and me together to break. How far could I run before it either snapped me away, or flung me back into the life I despised?
I allowed myself an hour of wallowing before I brushed back the covers, fixed my hair and grabbed my keys, locking the door behind me.
Gunner shot me a look of surprise when I entered his tattoo shop, GetInked.
“What are you doing here?”
I waved him off, hoping he couldn’t see my swollen and reddened eyes.
“I thought I’d finish up the quarterly reports.” I ignored his strange look and walked to the back office.
Five years of trying to graduate college and I finally realized besides math and accounting I was never going to pass a damn class. Walking away and heading back to Jasper Bay without a degree or a job hadn’t hurt my pride as much as I thought it would. I didn’t leave much behind when I left Minneapolis. What stung more was realizing that most likely, the only reason
I graduated from high school with honors was because the teachers were terrified my dad would shoot them if they had given me the grade I deserved.
Fortunately I’d stumbled across Gunner’s ‘Help Wanted’ sign the day I drove back into town, not having any idea of where I was going to live or work.
I still wasn’t sure if Gunner gave me the job because he truly thought I could do the work, or because of the Motorcycle Club that I’d been raised in. Maybe I was the only one to apply. Regardless, I was thankful he gave me a chance because who in the hell knows what I would have done if he hadn’t.
I didn’t realize how lost I was in the paperwork until Gunner opened the door, holding a bottle of Jack Daniels and two small glasses.
“You look like you needed this.”
God, did I, more than ever. I shook my head, knowing I couldn’t.
“No thanks,” I told him and watched him frown at me.
“You never turn down a drink with me. What’s going on?”
I studied him for a minute, wondering why he was even asking. Finally, I decided his concern was not only genuine, but he had no ties to anybody I knew. Gunner was friendly with the club, doing a lot of their ink work, but tattoos were as close as he got to them.
I sighed, finally needing to get it off my chest. “I’m pregnant.”
The man was covered from head to toe in ink. His baldhead, his face, his neck, and every inch of skin I could see peeking out from under his clothes. The only place not inked on him was the skin around his eyes. He looked scary. Like a freak. I knew that’s what most people thought of him anyway. But he had been good to me, and those un-inked eyes radiated a kindness I hadn’t seen in anyone else in a long time.
“Travis’s?” he asked and poured himself a glass of JD. I watched him swallow it down full of envy that he could drink and I couldn’t. “That should make him happy.”
“He doesn’t know.” Quieter, I added, “I’m not sure I’m going to keep it.”
He held up his glass and tipped it toward me before throwing the rest back down his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed slowly.