Dawn paled and for a moment he thought she’d refuse him, but she rallied and took his hand. “Of course. Can’t let the old man dance alone.”
He led her to the dance floor where a few brothers and their girls were making out on the pretext of dancing, but that was because the DJ was playing some shit boy-band pop crap. Cade caught the loser’s eye and shouted. “Put on some real music or I’ll rip off your balls.”
“Nice.” Dawn put her hands around Cade’s neck. “Our first dance and you threaten to rip off the DJ’s balls. If I had any illusions about being back in the biker world, they have now been well and truly dispelled.”
“My woman doesn’t dance to shit music,” he muttered. God she smelled good, like the flowers his mothers had planted every spring, no matter how disparaging his father was about her choices.
“Sounds like your woman now has to dance to the Forest Rangers’ ‘House of the Rising Sun.’” Dawn snorted a laugh after the DJ changed the tune. “Why do civilians think every bike gang is like the ones on TV?”
“’Cause if they knew what we were really like, we’d all be locked up for our own protection.”
Her hips swayed gently to the music and he slid his hands around her waist, pulling her close, molding her soft, lush body to his own.
“You watch biker shows on TV?”
Dawn’s face flushed a delightful pink. “Yeah, I like them, although they’re so far removed from reality sometimes I laugh the whole way through. I also like watching boxing and MMA, and…” Her voice trailed off.
His interest piqued, Cade gave her a nudge. “She gives me a hard time, but she likes her violence. What else?”
“Survival shows. Whenever I’m feeling down or having regrets about the past, I watch survival shows and think about how I’m a survivor and how hard I fought to get where I am.”
“Damn right you should.” His heart warmed with pride. “And you’re still fighting, but now you got me by your side.”
She sighed and melted against him. And then everything changed. All his anger and tension, even the pain in his back, just faded away. She just felt so … right—perfect—like they were meant to be together and the world had gotten in the way.
“We never danced before,” she said softly. Her breath was sweet, citrusy, and he was tempted to lick that sugar from her lips, but uncertainty held him back.
“We never did a whole lot of anything before except fuck.” Exactly what he wanted to do now. And afterward, maybe they could talk, or do what couples did, although never having really been part of a couple, he didn’t know what that would be. Watch TV? Go for a ride? Fuck some more?
“Maybe that’s ’cause that’s all we’re good for together.”
That gave him pause. Yes, he enjoyed sex with Dawn, but he genuinely liked her. She was smart, sweet, sensitive, and funny. She had more grit and determination than anyone he’d met, working three jobs, putting up with Shelly-Ann, never giving up hope she’d get her girls back. He wanted to spend more time with her, but she was always running away.
“Well, we gotta have something together, because now you’re wearing my cut and there’s no turning back.” He brushed his fingers through her beautiful long, blond hair. They had that in common. But Dawn was soft, where he was hard. Curved where he was straight. Sweet where he was bitter.
“If you’d told me three weeks ago I’d be in a biker bar, dancing with a biker and wearing a cut, I’d never have believed you. This was the last thing I ever thought I wanted. Me. A biker’s old lady again.”
His old lady. He liked the sound of it. He liked watching the words on her lips, tumbling over the silky softness and into his heart. Three weeks ago, sitting in his booth at Peelers with Delilah in his lap, he never would have believed he’d have an old lady. “Say it again.”
She licked her lips, and the sight of her little pink tongue made him hard.
“Old lady.”
“My old lady. Say it.”
Dawn studied him for a minute, considering. “Yours.” She leaned up and kissed him and he lost the last threads of his control.
His fingers convulsed, digging into her flesh, pulling her hips against his until he could feel the softness of her belly against the hard length of his cock. He didn’t know if she was teasing or torturing or where this was going to go, but right now, if he didn’t get her out of here, Jagger was going to get more of a show than he had bargained for.
“Let’s go.” He pulled away just as the DJ spun Preacher Stone’s “Not Today.”
“I want to dance.” Dawn slid her arms over his shoulders, dropping her hands to his back. Cade winced and bit back a hiss.
She stilled and dropped her arms. “Does it still hurt?”
“No. It’s fine.” He couldn’t feel the pain except when she touched him, overshadowed as it was by the pain down below.
Dawn pressed her lips together. “Doc Hegel is here. If there’s something wrong, he can fix it.”
“The only fixing I need involves you, me, and a bed.”
“Cade, honey.” She slid her arms around his hips and then cupped his ass, just as he had done to her, little fingers digging into his flesh as she ground her hips against his painfully hard shaft. “Don’t you want to have sex on the night you got hitched?”
Arousal pounded through his veins, a thunder so loud he couldn’t think straight. Or was it Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some” coming through the speakers? Seemed like everyone was getting some except him. Unable to get words past the lump in his throat, he grunted.
“I bought something special for my first night as your old lady.” She pressed a soft kiss to his throat. “Under my dress. You can have a little taste.”
He smoothed his hand over the curve of her hip, skimming his fingers along the bottom of her dress, his mouth watering in delicious anticipation. But it wasn’t the promise of what lay beneath her golden dress that tightened his throat; it was the fact that she’d bought something for him. For tonight. To celebrate being his old lady. As if it was real. “I thought you were pissed at me.”
“I am.” She licked her lips. “Using sex to get your way is not on. But I’m willing to forgive you and give you your present if…”
“If what?”
The music segued into Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and she swayed to the beat.
“If you show me your back.”
* * *
“The wounds are infected. You need to go to a hospital.” Dawn grimaced as she patted an antiseptic cloth over the angry red streaks marring the Sinner’s Tribe tattoo on Cade’s back. Although she tried to stay calm, her voice wavered. His back was in worse shape than she’d thought, the cuts obscuring most of the tattoo and forming wheals on his back. Jimmy must have used a rusty knife or coated it with something before he went out. She’d seen him do it before and it had sickened her then as it sickened her now. There was no honor in poison or tainted blades, but then Jimmy was far from an honorable man.
“No hospital.” He shifted in the chair, his elbow hitting the desk with a loud thunk. Riders’ manager had let them use his office, a small, windowless room with faux-wood paneling, a cheap metal desk, and a credenza covered in papers and empty beer bottles; it smelled almost as bad as Cade’s room before she tidied it up the night after the fire, worried she might suffocate in her sleep.
“Well, then let me go get Doc Hegel. He’s on call tonight so he hasn’t had anything to drink.”
“Fine. I’ll give you this one ’cause I want that present and I want it soon.”
She found Doc Hegel by the bar. A solidly built redhead with a small goatee and a big stomach, he helped club members with injuries that would ordinarily draw police attention at a hospital, and in return he had been granted nomad status at the club. No voting rights, but he was allowed to ride and participate in most club functions, save for church meetings.
“What he did to your tat is unforgivable,” Hegel said as he tended to Cade’s back. “And beca
use of the infection, you’ll have scars. It will never be the same.”
“I know.” Cade looked up to where Dawn perched on the desk. She saw more than anger in the depths of his eyes. Pain. Confusion. Betrayal. She understood why the Sinners hadn’t avenged Cade right away, but it had clearly affected him deeply.
Hegel gave Cade a shot of antibiotic, and instructions about caring for and dressing the wound, and then Dawn walked him to the door.
“Do you think he knows how bad it is?” he said quietly.
Dawn looked back over her shoulder. “They defiled it the second they touched it. Doesn’t get worse than that.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Dawn asked after Doc Hegel left to rejoin the party.
“Yeah. A few cuts aren’t gonna slow me down.”
“Even if they’re here?” She placed her hand over his heart. Cade jerked back and her hand fell. What had she been thinking? After Doc Hegel’s treatment he was probably hurting. “Sorry.”
Cade clasped her hand and brought it back to his chest. “I like your hands on me. It was just what you said … like you knew what I was feeling.”
Heat sparked between them and she wondered if he knew what she was feeling. She liked her hands on Cade. Maybe too much. She liked everything about him, from his loyalty to his possessiveness, from his gentleness to his ferocity. And he was right about Jimmy. She couldn’t take him on alone when he came part and parcel with the Devil’s Brethren. Would it really be so bad to accept the Sinners’ help?
And afterward? What would happen when they both had their justice? Already, she couldn’t imagine not having him around, feeling his arms around her, watching him laugh with her girls, lying with him in bed at night knowing she was totally and utterly safe.
A dangerous place to be for a woman who had sworn off bikers for life.
Standing in his arms right now was also a dangerous place to be. Especially with the weapon straining against his fly. She had plans for that weapon and they involved the white lace corset, garters, and panties she’d bought for the occasion.
Time to focus on now, and worry about the future later.
Weapons shouldn’t be wasted.
THIRTEEN
I will do without question what has to be done for honor, for loyalty, and for my brothers.
SINNER’S TRIBE CREED
He couldn’t stop himself. Even though his back burned, it was nothing compared with the pain of keeping his desire at bay. He had to have her. And it had to be now.
“You made me a promise. Now I intend to collect.” His arms snaked around her and he crushed her to his chest, trapping her hand between them. He could hold her forever. A balm for his soul.
“Here? Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere … private?” Her head tipped back and he leaned down and kissed her. Soft lips. Sweet kiss. She tasted of the bourbon she’d sipped from his glass, smooth and rich, and he licked the stickiness from her lips. Dawn melted against him and his cock throbbed, pressed against his fly, blindingly painful, as if he’d been wanting her forever.
Maybe he had.
“Can’t wait. I’ll do you here, then I’ll take you home and fuck you there, too.”
“Does this mean you aren’t angry at me anymore for twisting your arm to see Doc Hegel?” She reached up with her free hand, tangling her fingers through his hair, pulling him down. Her soft moan cranked him higher and he thrust his tongue in her mouth and devoured her, leaving no inch untouched.
“I could never be angry with you, although you seem to have picked up the old lady attitude pretty damn fast.”
“Good to hear.” She dragged his hand up her thigh, pulling up her dress until the tops of her stockings were visible, complete with their little elastics. “Because I bought this for you.”
“White lace.” Cade breathed out his appreciation. “I would have picked white for you if I bought it myself. So beautiful against your skin. Like an angel.”
He yanked her dress up higher, revealing her garter belt and the thin strip of matching lace panties. “A naughty angel.”
Cade traced his finger along the edge of her garter belt. God, he loved the lingerie women wore. Light and filmy, smooth and sexy, lace and leather, and ribbons that he wanted to pull, unwrapping the treasures just visible beneath. Did women have any idea what it did to a man to get a peek at something he shouldn’t see?
But Dawn … in this … So fucking sexy he could barely breathe.
He lifted her and settled her on the desk, parting her legs with his hips to give him better access.
“You’re hurt…”
He cut off her protest with two hands around her heart-shaped face, tilting her head back so he could ravage her mouth some more.
“Cade…”
Even as she kissed him, even as her hands smoothed over his shoulders and her fingernails dug into his skin, he heard the hesitation in her voice. Desperation seized him. He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her. He wanted her to need him as he needed her. He wanted her to know him as he was now, consumed by her, and not the Cade that went from bed to bed looking for what now trembled in his arms.
So he threaded his hand through her hair and tugged her head back because he knew she loved it.
So he slid his lips down her neck, to that sensitive spot on her shoulder that made her moan.
So he yanked the dress over her head, baring her to him, knowing his dominance aroused her.
But he wasn’t prepared for what lay beneath. Creamy, voluptuous breasts nestled in a froth of white lace. A pure, lush, decadent feast. A bride. And he was a bastard because he was going to take her here on a hard desk in a filthy office, instead of a nice soft bed in a fancy hotel room, and there was fuck-all he could do about it. He’d never felt want as he felt it now: pulsing, throbbing, pounding want.
“Dawn, babe. You are so beautiful you could make a priest sin.”
“Good thing then I already have a Sinner.”
When his palm cupped the smooth perfection of her breast, and his thumb brushed gently over her taut, rosy nipple, he couldn’t hold back. With a groan, he eased her back on the desk, wrapping her legs around his hips.
“Touch me,” she whispered.
“What my old lady wants, my old lady gets.” He smoothed his hands along her inner thighs, his fingers brushing over the lace tops of her stockings and along the garter elastics, until he reached her lace panties. She liked lace. He remembered tearing lace panties off her before, the soft rend of material as erotic a sound as her whimper when he stroked her wet pussy.
“More, Cade. Don’t tease.”
His body shook like it was his first time, like he had at the age of fourteen when he discovered he could lose himself in a woman’s embrace and the shouting and crying and screaming he heard at home would fade away beneath moans and whimpers of desire. He couldn’t stop the pain, but at least he could give pleasure.
He cupped her breast in his hand, tugging down her bra to take her nipple in his mouth.
“Oh God.” Dawn arched off the desk, offering him more. Her hands slid over his chest, sending wave after wave of heat down to his cock. Unable to stop himself, he ground his erection against the curve of her sex until he was on the verge of spilling himself like a teenage boy.
Her hips rocked against him, her heels digging into his back. With her head thrown back, her hair spread around her in a golden wave, she was a goddess, devastatingly beautiful, irresistibly wanton … and his.
Mine. Overwhelmed with a need to claim her, he grasped the edge of her panties and eased them over her hips, sliding them over her lean legs and off. Too pretty to tear away.
He heard her gasp, and if he hadn’t been so wound up, he would have savored her, licked the salty sweetness from her skin, and teased her nipples until she writhed beneath him. But that was for another time. Another place. A night when they weren’t the guests of honor at their own party and everyone would be wondering where they were. Now was about sex. Rough and
raw. Pure and primal. Now was about making her truly his.
“Are you wet for me, babe?” His hand dropped to his belt and he worked at the buckle.
“So wet.”
“Are you hot?” The buckle gave way and he tore open his fly.
“So hot.”
“Legs on my shoulders.” He pulled a condom from his pocket and ripped it open with his teeth, then sheathed himself as she positioned herself, calves on his shoulders, her glistening pussy wet and inviting.
“Now,” she demanded.
He entered her with one hard thrust, his hands around her thighs, holding her in place. Dawn arched against him, rocked into his rhythm, her hands clenched tight on the lip of the desk.
“God, you feel so good.”
The desk squeaked across the floor as he hammered into her. When he felt the little quivers in her sex that told him she was close, he traced his thumb over her clit, spreading her moisture up and around until her legs tightened around him and her heels dug into his freshly dressed wound. Pleasure-pain suffused his body and he felt a familiar pressure at the base of his spine.
The doorknob rattled and Cade froze. “Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Not again. Someone’s gonna die.”
“Hey you two,” Tank yelled. “Come outta there and join the party, or else we’re coming in.”
Cade heard laughter and the sound of voices. His cock throbbed so painfully his eyes watered. “Fuck off.”
“Maybe we should…”
He thrust deep and Dawn’s back arched. “Oh God. So close. Make them go away.”
“Pleasure.” Cade reached across the desk for his gun. Sex with his old lady was serious business. Not to be disturbed. Especially when he was so damn close he had to grit his teeth against the pain.
“No. I didn’t mean—”
He fired at the door, aiming his shots at the ceiling. A woman screamed. The brothers gathered outside the door roared with laughter.
“Catch you at a bad time, brother?” Sparky shouted. “We need to know if you’re fighting at the next fight.”
The Sinner’s Tribe Motorcycle Club, Books 1-3 Page 50