Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Brimstone Lords MC 3)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  It’s not a stretch to discern his meaning. Why did I leave him? Why wouldn’t I let him come to me sooner?

  “I don’t know,” I whisper the answer to his unasked questions.

  This calms him. “Where in Virginia Beach, baby?”

  “The Oceanview Inn.”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t open the door for anybody until I get there, understand?”

  I owe him that. “Yes.”

  “Good, baby. Stay on the line and just talk to me.”

  For him, and I guess for me, I stay on the line even through the long stretches of silence where I berate myself for my stupidity at leaving Gage in the first place and then not telling him where to find me. Finally, during these pauses, I start thinking about how Gage deserves so much better.

  Each of these times, it’s like he knows exactly what I’m thinking and shuts down those thoughts.

  We’re on the phone all throughout the rest of the day and well into the night until he whispers, “What room, baby?”

  I get scared and excited all at once. So scared and so excited, I forget to answer.

  “Liv, what room?” he asks again.

  “Three-oh-seven,” I mumble.

  “Be up in a second. Don’t open the door ’till you hear my voice.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he repeats.

  “Gage?”

  “Yeah?” he asks.

  “Love you.” Right after I speak, he disconnects.

  Mere minutes later, so I know he had to have run to catch the elevator and then head down my hallway, there’s a knock—well, actually, several hard raps on my door followed by, “Liv, baby.”

  Even knowing it’s him, knowing his voice, I leave the long latch closed so if by some chance it isn’t Gage, Michael or whoever couldn’t push his way in.

  When his shimmering blue eyes catch mine, and he smiles, I know I made the right move. Only then do I unlatch the long latch and open the door for my man.

  Strong, warm, familiar arms wrap around me in a firm, unwavering embrace as I’m pushed back from the doorway, allowing him to enter.

  In one swift move, he uses the heel of his boot to shut the door and falls back against it. I stumble into his body. His embrace shifts and tightens, even as he rests his forehead against mine.

  “Gage,” I whimper, unsure of what else to say, which is fine when he quiets me.

  “Shh…” he orders. “Just let me feel you.”

  “Oh look, it’s the Brimstone whore,” Chunk, our vice president Tag’s stupid son, taunts me. “Oh wait—that was your mom.” He grabs a hold of my arm to drag my protesting body against him. “Let’s see if it’s like mother, like daughter. Bet that pussy is sweet.”

  “No,” I shriek, struggling to get out of his meaty grip. I’ve never had sex before. I certainly don’t want to lose my v-card to a lunk-head like Chunk.

  He shuts down my ‘no’ by slamming his lips down on mine in a sloppy kiss. I might not have had sex before, but I’ve been kissed plenty, and this sloppy kiss is terrible—the worst kiss of my life.

  Then it gets worse when he tears at my underwear under my skirt. Holy shit. This is going to happen.

  “No,” I shriek again.

  “You want this,” he says, or more like grunts against my mouth, smearing his gross, wet lips against my skin.

  “No,” I insist choking back a sob, one last act of defiance while the tears fill my eyes, blurring my vision, and flow like a river down my cheeks.

  Right as I feel his hand where I don’t want it, there’s a commotion and Chunk is ripped from me. There are grunts and slushing sounds—which, coming from a biker club, I’m all too aware means someone is bleeding.

  Then Chunk is on the ground with Gage standing over him, he kicks Chunk in the ass, one last humiliation to put him in his place.

  “You made a big mistake, motherfucker,” Chunk threatens Gage with garbled words. “How dare you attack a Lord?”

  “You’re not a Lord yet. And what do you think your dad will say when he finds out you tried to rape Ripper’s daughter?”

  “You’re dead,” he threatens again, grunting and huffing as he pushes his beefy body up off the cement to run away.

  “I got Raif on my side. I like my chances,” Gage calls after his retreating form.

  “Gage,” I whisper, tears streaking down my cheeks.

  “Shh…” he orders. As he brings his forehead down to rest against mine. As he holds me tight.

  “Liv?”

  I blink.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I’m right here, Gage. With you.” A desperate weeping rips free from deep in my soul as I come to terms with what I’ve always known. Gage is here when I need him. Always here.

  Aside from holding me, he makes no other moves. Not to remove my clothing. Not even to kiss me as he lays us down in bed. Although he does strip down to his boxers, tossing everything in a pile on the floor. Not many people can rest in boots and jeans.

  We talk some but mostly sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. His warmth fills me with exactly what I’d been missing all these lonely weeks.

  I hate that Michael forced my hand, leaving me no option but to call Gage. But I could never, would never, regret having him here with me.

  We’re Gage and Liv, as we’ve always been meant to be.

  I lay in his arms much longer than I sleep in them. Having driven for so many hours, and most likely from the months of worry about me, my man sleeps soundly until close to three in the afternoon. The hotel offers an awesome room service menu. I call down to order us the softshell crab mac and cheese, a Virginia Beach version of poutine, chocolate-cherry lava cake and white milk because Gage drinks white milk with his cake.

  He wakes, stretching, right after I hang up the phone and lay my folded arms and chin on his chest. Then he folds one hand under his head, and the other he uses to play with a thick strand of my hair, winding and unwinding it around his finger.

  “You’re so beautiful, Liv. Can’t believe I got you back. Jesus, I’ve missed you, baby. Come’ere.” Gage tugs lightly on my hair to pull me closer to his face. “Kiss me.”

  “Gage, I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

  “Don’t care. I don’t care if they’re fuzzy and green. I need a kiss from you.”

  As long as he doesn’t care, I push up to sitting, throw my leg over Gage’s hip to straddle him, brace my hands against his strong shoulders and bend in to kiss him. It’s a long, sensual kiss using only our mouths. His hands gently rest at my hips.

  “Gage,” I whisper against his mouth, reverently. And I breathe in and out—heavy, ragged breaths. “I think I want you to make love to me.” Then I use my teeth to tug at his bottom lip.

  “Is that a good idea? After what happened yesterday?”

  “He touched my breasts, Gage. He didn’t rape me.”

  “It was still a violation, baby. He scared you, scarred you. I don’t want—”

  “I know I haven’t given you reason to trust me, but I won’t freak out this time, babe. And I need to feel close to you. I need that safety, warmth and comfort only you have ever been able to give me. Please.”

  His answer comes in the form of a hand sliding up my back to capture my neck, his other anchoring me to his pelvis, then he pulls my head down to kiss me again and flips us around so my back rests against the sheet. As he continues to kiss me, he grinds his hard cock against my sex through our bottoms, my bikinis and his boxer briefs.

  Between his mouth and dry humping, the first tingles of my first orgasm of the day hits. I moan and lift my hips for him to remove my bikini bottoms. He’s slid them halfway down my thighs when there’s a knock on the room door.

  “Room service.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?” Gage grumbles, running his hand over his face. “Be back, baby. Don’t you move.” Then he drops a quick kiss to my forehead and pushes up off the bed… in only his boxer briefs… with a raging hard-
on. He flips the covers over top of me and answers the door.

  Gage pulls the door open wide and gestures with his hand for the bellman to enter with the cart. The kid looks between Gage and me and drops his eyes to look only at the cart. His cheeks blush even as a smile spreads over his lips.

  “Enjoy your meal,” he says, still avoiding eye contact with either of us.

  “Oh, I will,” Gage says back. And I swear the poor kid chokes on his own saliva. But to be fair, he bends down to grab his jeans off the pile on the floor and pulls a one-hundred dollar bill from the billfold in his pocket, handing it to the kid as a more-than-generous tip.

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” The bellman turns quickly on his heel and speed-walks out of the room.

  With the door firmly closed and locked, I start to get up. Gage wags his finger at me. “Nope. We’re having naked dinner tonight, then I’m going to fuck your brains out. I was gonna go slow, but now I’m thinking hard and fast to start. You up for that?”

  I bite my lip to hold back the smile, and nod.

  He rolls the cart closer to me. “Then we’ll go sweet and soft.” Oh, lord. He drops his voice. Gage knows what he does to me when he drops his voice. “Still with me?” he asks.

  Am I still with him? Hell yes, I’m with him. Again, I nod.

  “After that we can end however soft or hard you want it before we rest, maybe take a dip in the pool, and come back to start the fuck fest again.”

  I’m stuck on ‘start the fuck fest again’ when he drops a knee to the bed, flips me around and proceeds to strip me naked, strip himself naked and uncovers all the dishes. Before he climbs in he grabs us a couple of beers from the mini fridge. He’s as much a work of art from behind as from the front, the way his long, sinewy muscles move so gracefully, so beautiful. His perfect ass naturally dimples when he walks, like he’s flexing his glutes. I’m giddy and breakout in a fit of giggles at the idea of having my beautiful, loving Gage back. He looks over his shoulder to blow me a kiss.

  From there he slide in next to me, back to the headboard, one arm wrapped around my waist, and we settle in to eat a fat-filled, carb-filled dinner while watching a movie.

  After we’ve cleaned our plates entirely—even his glass of milk fully drained—he uses the remote to flick off the television, though the movie isn’t over.

  “Hey,” I protest. “I was watching that.”

  “I got something better for you to watch, baby.” Gage starts humming seventies-sounding porn music and I throw my head back and laugh.

  I immediately quit laughing when he moves over top of me to begin grinding his hardening cock against my sex again. No clothes means no barriers. And it… feels… exquisite. The pulse of it as he grinds, as he kisses my jaw hinge, then glides down to my chin.

  Heart palpations. Serious, serious heart palpations.

  Dear lord, the way he glides down my neck, dropping kisses, licking the salty sweat from my skin. My hands hit a wall of hard, smooth, muscular chest, there to draw him closer, not push him away even a millimeter.

  “God, baby…” Gage murmurs, concentrating on laving his tongue along my pulse point. “…never gonna leave me again…”

  So hot for my man, I bypass the rest of our foreplay by widening my thighs and lifting my knees to squeeze against his ribcage. Right where I belong. Right where he belongs. It’s been months since I felt my Gage inside me. Every part of me aches to have him. If he didn’t know before, he sure knows how badly I want him now when I tilt my hips forward in silent begging.

  Lips to lips, he takes me in a hard, hungry kiss. One I feel all the way down to my toes. Giving a slap to my ass, he pulls far enough away to look me in the eyes and peck the tip of my nose before he aligns his massive cock with my so-slick-with-arousal opening and rams into me.

  I throw my head back, screaming his name. Gage knows how I like it. And that’s how he gives it to me. Hard, fast fucking.

  I can’t contain my moan. The sting from his brutal intrusion has me seeing stars. I feel stretched and full, and if he keeps going I might actually reach nirvana. I’ve missed this. I probably don’t deserve it, but I love it. Missed it.

  As much as I love him, as much as he loves me, we have to get past any animosity he might have toward me, to let go of all the anger or hurt he undoubtedly built up from my leaving and worse, staying gone. He grips my hips hard, digging his fingertips into the tender flesh of my hipbone and he continues his savagely beautiful attack on my pussy. Thrust after thrust, I take it and beg for more.

  “Harder,” I plead. “Fuck me harder, Gage.”

  He stops mid-thrust to flip me over, reconnects me to his dick, positions his knees between my spread ones, shoves down on my upper back so my ass rests higher than my shoulders at the same time he fists, then twists and pulls my hair hard so my head angles back and he resumes his pounding. The change in position lets me take him even deeper.

  My thighs begin to quiver, but I try to hold on longer, wanting to prolong this glorious agony.

  “Come for me, baby,” he orders.

  “No,” I hiss, but even as the words pass from my lips, I feel my sex begin to convulse and know it’s a lost cause. One last time, I rear back into his thrust and let loose a fierce, animalistic cry into the mattress to muffle the sound while my soul breaks apart from the force of my orgasm.

  Gage groans loudly—he’s always liked how it feels when I come around him. And he bends to cover my back with his chest, cocooning me by wrapping his strong arms around me, placing tender kisses between my shoulder blades, keeping my orgasm rippling throughout my body just like stones tossed into a pond. The familiarity is as hot as the sex. Or maybe the sex is so hot because of our familiarity. Though in this position, his movements shift from deep cervix pummeling thrusts to these shallow ones that drive me absolutely crazy.

  It’s going to happen again. Shit. I… I… can’t hold it back any longer. I can’t hold back, don’t want to hold back. My muscles clamp down on him to involuntarily brace myself for what’s about to hit. And then, no kidding, I burst out in a round of tears along with my orgasmic cries.

  Fuck me, crying and trembling in his arms after sex? But it’s not just sex. It’s sex with my Gage—finally, after all these months. Sex with my Gage, who came to my rescue the minute I called and told him I needed him. Sex with my Gage, who had been willing to give up a lifelong friendship to be with me. Sex with my Gage, the love of my freaking lifetime and probably into the next if there’s such a thing as an afterlife.

  If that’s not worth my tears as I orgasm, then I have no idea what is.

  “Hey… hey.” He collapses to the mattress and rolls to maneuver us face to face. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

  Hurt me? No. Nothing in my life has ever felt like being with Gage—he’d never hurt me. “No,” I tell him honestly. “You’re just… here. With me, and we just… I’ve missed you so badly. I’m so, so sorry that I didn’t call you sooner. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Nothing to forgive, Liv. Long as you promise not to leave me again, it’s water under the bridge, baby. And I’ll tell you a secret. If you do ever take off again, I’ll sic Blood on your scent or I’ll hire a private detective. But what I’ll never let you do, Livvy Baxter, never let you do is leave for good. Not unless you could absolutely promise that you didn’t love me anymore.”

  “I can hardly imagine that,” I say, calmer now that the tears have begun to subside.

  “What are we doing about home?” he asks suddenly. Putting me on guard. “Not Kentucky home, here home. The house you’re staying in. We can’t live in the hotel.”

  “Well, he broke in.”

  “Right, so security system with cameras and we’re changing the locks. Are you okay with that?”

  I nod.

  “He’s crazy, though—I mean legitimately crazy. I told him I had a man; he thought it was him and I was playing games. I’ve never led him on. You know I don’t play those kinds of games. And
I have a man. From the moment you rescued me, I’ve never strayed.”

  “I’m not scared of your stalker, Liv. We’ve faced too much shit already. I can use your computer to conference work, we got that program that lets me get files from anywhere. All I have to do is download it on your computer, and I can make calls from anywhere.”

  “But—” I start to protest. He talks over me.

  “But if he breaks in while I’m there, Liv, it’ll be once. I guarantee it’ll never happen more than once. You’re safe now.”

  I know I’m safe. I feel safe. That’s why I called him, isn’t it? “We can go home whenever you want to, babe.”

  “I know a guy in the security business. He did a couple jobs for us a few years back, moved out to this area. Norfolk, I think. I’ll give him a call.”

  He did exactly that. I got up to shower and when I came back into the room he was lying on the bed, still naked I might add, talking to this security guy on the phone.

  My Gage is really back. I hope I’ve done the right thing bringing him here.

  8.

  Gage

  I owed my brothers a call. I owed Blood. After Liv and I decided to spend another couple days here in sunny Virginia Beach, after we managed to persuade ourselves to leave the bed and find something suitable for Liv to wear home, after making a stop at one of the pristine beaches around here and then grabbing a bite to eat, while she passed out back in the hotel room, I called Blood.

  “Where’d you go?” he asks as his hello.

  “I’m with Liv.”

  Silence. Then, “Finally. She okay?”

  “Some douchebag started fucking with her. Wouldn’t take her no, got a little rough.”

  “You need me?” Blood. I feel his anger through the line. No matter their issues, he loves his sister.

  “Not rough in that way, and she’s not ready to deal with the club yet. I’ve gotta go gently with this one, brother. I don’t, she’ll bolt.”

  “Fuck. Yeah, I hear ya. God, my sister can be so stubborn. Everyone misses her; she needs to be with family. You sure you still want her? Don’t think she’ll ever give ya harmony.”

  “I don’t need harmony, just need Liv. I got her, I got everything.”