by Claire Adams
I rolled my eyes. “Trust me; it’s not as hard as you think.”
“Sure, Mila,” he said sarcastically. “Whatever you say.”
“You’re not my type, Zack,” I lied.
“Good-looking and masculine is not your type?”
“Arrogant and rude is not my type.”
“You could have fooled me,” he said. “Considering the things you’ve told me about your ex-boyfriend.”
I frowned. He had me there, and he knew it.
“It’s just as well,” he continued. “Devon told me to stay away from you. He seems to agree that I’m not your type either.”
I glanced at Zack, wondering if he was just making things up to try and get a reaction from me. “Devon said that?”
“Sure,” Zack nodded, leaning back a little. “He thought you were too innocent and inexperienced to handle me.”
“Excuse me?” I said, feeling myself rise to the bait despite my better judgment.
“You disagree?”
“I’m not used to this lifestyle,” I said. “But that does not mean I’m… innocent.”
“And what about inexperienced?” Zack asked, catching on to my omission. “Do you agree with that?”
I gritted my teeth together. He was more perceptive than I had given him credit for, but I was fairly certain he had no idea just how inexperienced I was. Who would ever expect to come across a twenty-three-year-old virgin in this day and age? But how could I possibly admit that to him?
“I have plenty of experience with men like you,” I bit back.
“Really?” he asked. “Do tell.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” I snapped. “We’re not here to get to know one another. We’re here to train.”
“True,” Zack nodded. “And you know what’s a great training technique? Motivation.”
“What are you getting at?”
“We get into the ring and whoever manages to disarm or corner the other gets to ask a question… and that question must be answered honestly.”
It was a dangerous idea, but I knew that backing down from it proved that I was trying to avoid answering certain questions.
“Fine,” I said, with a confidence that I most definitely did not feel. “Let’s go.”
Smiling, Zack walked to the ring, and I had no choice but to follow behind him. I was at an unfair disadvantage, and we both knew it, but I was also too proud to point that out. Instead, I vowed to do my best and focused my mind as I ducked into the ring and reached for my dagger.
“Ready?”
I nodded once, and we began. Within ten seconds, he had me flat on the ground, and my dagger flew out of my hands and landed on the ground beside Zack.
“Ok, my question,” Zack said happily. “Ready for it?”
“Just ask and get it over with,” I said, through gritted teeth as I pulled myself up off the ground.
“Are you attracted to me?”
He was smiling knowingly at me, and despite the fact that the answer was obvious, I knew he wanted me to admit it out loud.
“Well?”
“Fine,” I said, forcing the words out. “I’m attracted to you. Are you happy now?”
“Very.”
“But trust me… I don’t want to be.”
“No need to elaborate,” Zack said, in a self-satisfied manner. “The yes was all I really needed to hear.”
“Come on… let’s go again,” I said,
I was fast, but he anticipated my moves, and he had me on the ground, but this time it took him longer, and I managed to keep my dagger in hand.
“Fuck,” I screamed, banging my hands down on either side of me.
“Next question,” Zack said, clearly having a great time. “Do you fantasize about having me fuck you?”
I gritted my teeth and struggled to my feet. “Zack—”
“Answer the question honestly, please.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “I have thought about it. But I also fantasize about punching you in the face a couple of times every day.”
“Again… no need for added commentary. The yes suffices.”
“Let’s go again,” I said, feeling the adrenaline pumping through my body, fueled by new determination.
I wasn’t sure if his concentration was lowered, or if the adrenaline gave me the boost I needed, but I actually managed to whirl through his defenses and have my knife at his throat. He stopped short, and then his expression of shock turned up into a huge smile.
“Fuck, you did it.”
“I…did,” I nodded, panting a little. “I actually managed to back you into a corner.”
“If this was a real fight, you could have finished me off.”
“The night’s still young,” I told him.
“You’ve earned the right to ask me a question,” Zack said.
I wondered if I dared, and then I decided that I did. “What happened between you and your father?” I asked. “Why did you fall out with him?”
Zack clearly wasn’t expecting that question. He froze for a second, and then his expression ironed out into one that I couldn’t read.
“Seriously?” he asked. “That’s your question?”
“Yes,” I said, refusing to take it back. “Are you refusing to answer it?”
“No,” Zack said, after a moment. “Fair’s fair, and you earned an honest answer.”
He didn’t seem in a hurry to reply to me, however, and I decided to allow him to take his time. This must have been a hard subject for him to broach.
“You know what?” I said, changing my mind. “It’s ok… you don’t have to answer.”
“No,” Zack said firmly. “A deal’s a deal. You asked a question, and I have to answer honestly.”
I waited patiently. When Zack finally spoke, his voice was almost monotone and devoid of all emotion. “I was…rebellious as a teenager,” Zack admitted. “And because of that, Dad and I didn’t get along very well. I got mixed up with the wrong crowd. They were a bunch of other high school kids who were into drugs. Dad told me to stop hanging out with them, and I refused. He told me that if I wouldn’t follow his rules under his roof, then I just had to get out from under it. So I left, and Dad let me go.”
I watched Zack’s face carefully. He seemed detached from the story, as though he had no real connection to it whatsoever. I wondered for a moment if he was really telling me the truth, but I had no reason not to believe him. It seemed a fairly small issue to have been so badly blown out of proportion, but there were all sorts of families in the world and all sorts of parenting techniques.
“But you came back?”
“Because I realized that Dad was right,” Zack replied. “I had to earn back his respect but… in the end it was worth it.”
I nodded. “Thank for you telling me the truth,” I said.
He avoided making eye contact with me. “Don’t thank me,” he said, in a barely audible voice.
Silence fell between us for a moment, and then Zack seemed to shake off the quiet. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. We’re not done with training yet.”
We started another round, and this time I came at him with more confidence than before. But my mind was preoccupied with what Zack had just revealed about his past, and he managed to disarm me and throw me to the ground. Before I could recover, he was kneeling on top of me, and I was trapped between his legs.
“You seem to like this position a lot,” he said, back to his old self.
I tried to push him off me. “Give me back my dagger.”
Zack laughed, but he refused to get out of my way so that I could stand. “You owe me an honest answer,” he said.
“Ok?”
He leaned in close so that his lips were only inches away from mine. I felt my heart rate rise up rapidly, and I felt a strange tingling between my thighs.
“Do you want me to kiss you right now?”
I felt my breath catch, and for a second, I considered lying. But I knew it was useless. I want
ed him. I had been dreaming of the kiss we had shared every day since it had happened.
“Yes,” I replied before I could stop myself.
His lips were on mine in the next second, and I could feel his hands on my breasts, clawing at my clothes frantically. I had never experienced a connection quite as overwhelming, and for a second, I was immersed in the beauty of it. Then I felt Zack’s hand slip down into my pants, and the wall went up. I pulled back and pushed him off me.
He was so surprised by my reaction that he rolled off me easily, and that gave me the time to jump to my feet.
“Mila—”
I didn’t stop to turn back or speak to him. I just jumped from the ring and ran for the door, trying to hold back tears as I went.
Chapter Eleven
Zack
“Zack?”
I looked up. Red, Smith, and Justin were staring at me as though they were trying to figure out what was wrong.
“What?” I asked.
“We’ve been speaking to you for the last ten minutes, and you didn’t seem to be listening.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well, that was clear,” Red nodded. “Is something up?”
“Nothing’s up,” I snapped. “I was just… thinking.”
“Worried about Godwin, huh?” Justin asked.
Obviously, they would assume the rival MC club preoccupied my mind. And any other day, it would have, but all I could focus on was that morning in the training ring with Mila.
She had disappeared into her room for the rest of the day, and she hadn’t even come out for lunch. We had all congregated in the living room for dinner, and there was still no sign of her. The obvious chemistry between us had sparked and burned, and I was certain that we would end up fucking in the middle of the boxing ring.
Then something had turned on in Mila’s brain, and the desire I had seen in her eyes had been replaced by… fear? I wasn’t quite sure. She had high tailed it out of there faster than I could have imagined, and I had sat in the boxing ring looking after her, wondering what the hell had gone so wrong so fast. It wasn’t that she wasn’t into me because her own answers this morning had confirmed that that was not true, so it had to be something else.
“Zack?”
“What?” I barked.
I turned to Lonny, who had just walked in. He raised his eyebrows at my harsh reaction. “I brought burgers for everyone. You interested?”
“No,” I said shortly, before getting up and walking upstairs.
I could hear the guys resume their conversation once I cleared the room. I stared at the wall between my room and Mila’s, contemplating whether I should just leave her well enough alone or barge in on her and demand to know what had gone wrong this morning.
I had never been so conflicted before. Nor had I spent this much time worrying about a woman or her feelings. I usually stayed clear of shit like this. I wasn’t interested in long-term relationships. Any time one of the guys came with news of a steady girlfriend or an engagement, I mourned the loss of their freedom. So why was I pursuing something that was bound to lead nowhere?
As much as I’d disliked Devon trying to warn me about staying away from Mila, he had a point. She was wrong for me. My lifestyle scared her, and my behavior repelled her… most of the time. Was I just reading too much into a purely physical connection? Maybe that’s all it really was: lust. But if that was the case, then why did Mila run from me?
I went into my room and shut the door. I collapsed onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling. “Fuck,” I said, unable to get Mila out of my head.
As strange and unsettling as her reaction had been that morning, I kept thinking about the moments leading up to it, and every time, I got an erection so painful that it made my head spin. I hadn’t had sex since Mila had arrived and that was starting to bother me too. The day I had told Mila I was going to go out and fuck some random girl had never actually come to pass. If I was being honest, I had just been trying to make her jealous. She certainly seemed to be for two seconds there.
I had actually gone so far as to head into town to one of my favorite bars. There’d been a couple of girls who’d caught my eye, all of whom seemed willing to come home with me if I’d approached them. But every time I thought about going over and making my move, Mila’s face popped into my head and my mood shifted so far that I’d come home alone and gone to bed horny.
I thought about the little game we had played this morning during training. It had started out as a good idea, and then Mila had derailed the whole thing with her question. I hadn’t been expecting that, and despite my insistence on honesty, I had lied, and I suspected that Mila knew as much too.
I sat up as I heard a noise coming from Mila’s room. We shared a wall, and that meant that I could hear what was happening in her room if I paid close attention. She seemed to be pacing, and I wondered if she was obsessing about this morning like I was.
“Fuck it,” I said, standing up and walking over to Mila’s door. I knocked hard and waited for her to reply.
First, there was silence, and I knew she knew who was at the door. “Mila,” I said, taking care that I didn’t speak too loudly so that the boys downstairs didn’t hear. “Open the door.”
“No,” she replied immediately, and her voice was slightly muffled. “Go away.”
“No,” I shot back. “We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“You know about what,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said. “Please… just leave me alone.”
“I’ll give you up to the count of five, and then I’m breaking this door down.”
“You wouldn’t?” she asked, but I could tell she was uncertain.
“Watch me,” I said confidently. “One… two… three… four—”
Just before I went with ‘five’ the door opened, and Mila stared at me with flashing eyes that were in equal parts angry and conflicted.
“What the hell do you want?” she demanded.
I walked into her room, backing Mila further into it. Then I turned around and locked her door. “Alright,” I said, turning to her. “Now what the hell went wrong today?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I repeated, in disbelief. “You freaked out on me and ran!”
“Because I realized it was a mistake,” Mila shot back. “It was a mistake to get involved with you.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, raising her voice. “You’re a brute… an egotistical brute who is prone to violence. I don’t want to get involved with someone like that.”
I found myself getting on the defensive, despite my resolve to stay calm. “Get involved?” I repeated, in a quiet voice. “Whoever said anything about getting involved? All I ever wanted from you was a good fuck.”
She winced at my words, and I felt a stabbing pain in my chest that I couldn’t immediately identify. All I knew was that I didn’t like seeing her react that way. Mila fell silent for a moment, and her blue eyes seemed to get softer and sadder. I had been trying to hurt her and apparently, I had managed to do just that. I realized suddenly what that uncomfortable stabbing feeling in my chest was. It was regret… regret that I’d hurt her that way.
“Mila,” I said softly, taking a step towards her.
She backed away from me and flinched. I froze and stared at her for a moment. “Are you scared of me?” I asked.
I saw her tense a little, but she didn’t answer me. Was it possible that she was really scared of me? I was trying to protect her… I was trying to make sure she could protect herself. Surely, she knew that I would never hurt her? Sure, I was rough with her. I was vulgar and rude and sometimes dismissive, but that was how I was with everybody. I figured she just knew that about me. But what if she was taking everything personally?
“Mila—”
“I’m not scared of you,” she said, as her eyes snapped up to meet mine. “Ok?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Ok,” I nodded.
“I just… my whole life has been a series of bad choices and shitty luck,” Mila said. “And when it comes to men… I don’t ever make the right decisions. I choose assholes that don’t treat me right. I choose men who don’t actually give a shit about me.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that that wasn’t true in my case. I did give a shit about her. But the words froze on my tongue, and I realized I had never been that honest with anyone in my life. I wasn’t used to tender words or sentimental displays of affection. I was exactly the brute that Mila said I was. I shut my mouth and waited for her to finish her thought.
“I choose dangerous men,” Mila went on. “Maybe in some twisted way I actually believe that those men will protect me. They’re strong and confident and powerful, and I assume that I will be safe with them, but it’s just not true. It was true of Walter, and it’s true of you. I’m not saying you’re like him because I don’t actually believe you are. But you are still a dangerous man, and you live a dangerous lifestyle and… I’m not interested in being used until you get sick of me.
“Because you will get sick of me at some point, right?” Mila asked. “You said it yourself… all you wanted from me was a good fuck.”
I wanted to tell her that that wasn’t true. I had only been trying to hurt her because her rejection had hurt me. But that was a little more honest than I was capable of at this point.
She was looking at me as though she expected me to say something. And I did have lots I needed to say. I just didn’t have the courage to actually say them. “I guess there’s nothing more to say then,” I said.
I wondered if it was my imagination or if Mila looked slightly disappointed. She nodded and turned away from me. I could see only her profile. With her silky waterfall of auburn hair and her light blue eye sparkling in the muted light, she definitely didn’t look like she belonged here. A part of me realized that she deserved better too. She deserved more than a man like me… a man with baggage that I would carry around with me for the rest of my life.
I was about to turn for the door when I changed my mind. “You know what… fuck that,” I said, turning back to her. “I was there this morning, and I’m pretty sure you felt everything I felt this morning. You wanted me, but something is holding you back.”