by Nicole Fox
“I’m out of the club,” I tell her, watching her face.
She frowns at first, and then a smile lifts the corner of her lip, and then she frowns again. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“That’s not a simple question, Gloria, so it might be you’ll forgive me if I don’t give you a simple answer. It’s this: I love the club. I love my brothers. I never saw myself leavin’. I used to look at the old fellas and respect ’em more’n anybody else, except Jackson. They’d shown what true loyalty was. They’d never wavered. They’d shown that a man can be part of somethin’ bigger than himself. So no, if circumstances were different maybe I’d stay in the club; might be I’d even lead it. But I love you more, much, much more than I love the club, and I reckon I love our son, too.” I walk around the coffee table and kneel down next to her, placing my hands on her knees. “I love you and I love our son. You’re right. If I stayed in the club, you’d never be safe. You’d always be looking over your shoulder. So I’ve removed that as a possibility. I want to be a father and your man, if you’ll have me.”
She’s fighting back tears, I can tell, blinking way too much. She loses the fight and tears slide down her cheeks. She wipes at her face with the sleeve of her bathrobe but more and more tears fall. She reaches down, clasping my face in her hands. “I want that,” she says. “I want that more than anything: to have a life with you, Jack, a real life.”
I stand up and pull her to her feet, hug her close to me, smell her, smell all of her, a scent that’s my lady’s and hers alone, a scent that I’d fight a thousand Lady’s Death to be with.
“I love you, too,” she says, and then giggles. “Who would’ve guessed it, Jack? That a chance meeting in a hotel would lead to this?”
“Not me,” I say. “But I’m glad it has.”
I kiss her then, kiss her like I never have before. Like I’ve never kissed any lady. It ain’t a kiss meant to lead to other things. We explore each other’s mouths, going slow at first and then faster, and then she breathes in and I know she’s going just as crazy as me. I lay her down on the couch and untie her bathrobe and look down at her naked body, the most perfect body I’ve ever seen, the only body I’ll need for the rest of my life. I take off my jeans and lean over her, looking in her face all the while. We’re both crying now, and dammit but I ain’t ashamed to cry in front of her, not like I’ve been my whole life. I ain’t ashamed of much around her.
I slide inside of her and it feels like coming home, a warm, perfect place where I lose myself and where she loses herself, both of us, eyes locked together, writhing closer and closer to unbelievable pleasure. This isn’t fucking. It’s making love. We do it slowly, feeling every tiny movement, and then she goes tight around my cock and squeezes her hands down on my shoulders, panting fast as we make slow love, her pleasure causing her body to twist this way and that.
Once her pleasure has passed, I can’t hold myself back any longer. She’s too sexy, too beautiful, too mine. I thrust into her deep, as far as I can go, and then empty myself entirely inside of her. My balls ache with the release. My chest aches with it, too; my heart, dammit, my heart aches!
Afterward I lie on the couch next to her, hugging her close to me, kissing the back of her head over and over. She’s falling asleep just as Jimmy starts to murmur on the baby monitor. She makes to rise.
“Don’t,” I tell her, giving her another kiss. “I’ll go.”
Epilogue
Gloria
In the passenger seat, Jack fidgets. He messes with the window, opening and closing it unnecessarily, and then chews off his already-short fingernail and spits it on the floor. And then he opens the window again. After a while he takes out a cigarette, puts it in his mouth, and then puts it back in the packet. He hasn’t smoked since I met him but when we decided to do this, he bought a packet. The strange thing is he still hasn’t smoked. The routine of getting one out seems to comfort him, though.
“It’s going to be fine,” I tell him, for what must be the thousandth time.
“Dadda!” Jimmy exclaims from the back seat. “Happy—Dadda!”
“That’s right, little guy.” He turns to the back seat and ruffles Jimmy’s hair. Jimmy giggles in delight. “Maybe we ought to turn back,” he says, returning to the front of the car, his hands gripping his knees. “What do I expect to happen, anyway? The past is the past. We can’t do sh …” He trails off, cutting off the swear word halfway through. “We can’t do feces about it anyway.” We share a smile. “I don’t know what I expect, Gloria. White lights, some sort of epiphany?”
I pull up to the side of the road. “If you want to turn back, we can turn back.”
He lays his hand atop mine. He has some oil stains on his, since he just came from work: a nine-to-five at a garage in town. It’s been three months since the day in the hotel and each day has been better than the last. He’s working, he’s coming home, we’re living together; it’s like we are a regular couple with a regular life. Except that he has lots of money saved from his outlaw’s life, enough so that we don’t have to worry for a long time. I lick my finger and rub the oil away, and then lean across and kiss him on the lips.
“I mean it,” I tell him. “We don’t have to do this.”
“But you said it’d be good for me,” he says.
“It will. I haven’t changed my mind about that. And it was your idea, remember,” I remind him.
“Yeah, yeah, we all get ideas, don’t we? I’ve got a few ideas of my own right now.” He looks at me with that animal expression.
“No.” I touch his face, and then push him away from me. “You’re not going to derail today with your magic, Jack.”
He clicks his neck from side to side. “Let’s keep driving,” he says. “Might be this fear is a good sign. I can’t let it rule me forever, can I?”
“No,” I agree. “You can’t.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence except for Jimmy’s occasional inputs. Then my GPS tells me we’re outside the house, but I don’t need GPS to know because Jack’s face says it all. He’s gone as white as a sheet and his hands are shaking as he climbs from the car. I walk Jimmy to the doorstep with him and the elderly lady opens with a kind smile.
“Cynthia?” I ask. “I’m Gloria. We spoke on the phone?”
“Yes, yes, come in! I’ve made tea!”
She’s a friendly old lady with a pink bow in her hair and a smile that never once leaves her face. Jack takes a breath before he walks through the door, as though summoning his courage, and then the three of us walk in together. I lift Jimmy up, though he’s getting heavier by the day and soon I won’t be able to. Cynthia leads us to the top of the basement. Jack stands here for a long time, staring down the staircase, fists clenched. I think he might turn back but then he begins to slowly descend. I follow him, keeping some distance, and soon all three of us are in the basement where Jack’s parents tortured him.
It’s a washroom now, with a washer and a dryer and some laundry stacked up next to an ironing board. Jack walks to the middle of the room. “The bedframe was here,” he says. When he turns to me I expect him to be crying, or angry, but instead he’s smiling. “But it’s gone now.” He sounds lighter, as though a weight has been lifted from him. “It’s been gone for years.” He laughs, shaking his head. He jumps up and down on the spot. “My hell was here, Gloria, but that’s over. It’s all over. Come on, let’s go and have some of that nice lady’s tea.”
On the way back to the car, I say, “I’m proud of you, Jack.”
“Don’t be proud of me yet.” He smiles. “The best part of today is still to come.” He grins at me as he falls to one knee. “I wanted to come here so I could put this part of my life behind me. All my life, since the first day they dragged me down there, I’ve still been that kid. I’ve spent my life runnin’ away from what happened to me, which is almost the same as letting it rule me. But I’m done with that. I ain’t that kid anymore. I’m a father, and, hopefully …” H
e reaches into his pocket and takes out a ring box.
“Wait!” I cry. I quickly get Jimmy into his high seat and return to Jack’s indulgent grin.
“Ready?” he asks, laughing.
“Ready!”
“Gloria Griffiths, will you marry me?”
I’m sobbing as I say yes, as he slides the ring onto my finger, as he kisses me with the only lips I want to taste for the rest of my life.
THE END
***
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Books by Nicole Fox
Click any of the covers below to go straight to the book page!
Ciro’s Promise: A Bad Boy Mob Romance (Santora Mafia) (The Outlaw’s Oath Collection Book 1)
I promised I’d ruin her for all other men.
She’s suffered enough at the hands of an abusive monster.
But I showed her how to find pleasure in pain, in submission – to me.
Afterwards, I tried to erase her from my mind and be the cold-hearted don my father wants me to be.
But part of me always knew: one night with Sofia would never be enough.
SOFIA
Everyone makes mistakes, of course.
But not everyone makes mistakes as stupid as sleeping with Ciro Santora.
You gotta be a special kind of crazy to have a one-night stand with a mob underboss…
While still married to the crooked cop on his payroll.
They say there’s no silver linings in a deal with the devil.
But I did get my four-year-old son Christopher out of that sweaty, sinful night.
And he's the best thing in my life.
But time is ticking and it's just a matter of time before my psychotic ex figures out who the real father is.
And when he does… there'll be hell to pay.
I need safety, fast.
And there’s only one place to run:
Into the arms of the mafia monster who brought this chaos into my life in the first place.
But the problem is, Ciro's protection comes with a high price.
And I don't know if I'm ready to be the mobster’s bride.
CIRO
Danger. Money. Power.
They all have their reasons for sleeping with me.
And I don't discriminate.
Sofia was different, though.
I had no right to her – but since when did that ever stop me?
But, if I could do things over again I would have stayed away.
Left her to raise Christopher alone.
No kid deserves this life.
Trust me; I know.
But I can’t go back.
My sins are etched in stone.
And now, my best friend is dead and his blood is on my hands.
Brokering a deal with the Vincenzo family isn't going to cut it.
Someone needs to pay for his death.
It's time for me to become what I was always meant to be:
A ruthless don with no mercy in his heart.
Made to Riot: A Motorcycle Club Romance (The Ancestors MC) (Beards & Leather Book 5)
It starts with a drink. It ends with a baby in my womb.
“One night only” is a slippery slope.
I fell hard for the biker – then he disappeared.
But he’s back now, and this time, when he leaves…
He’s dragging me with him – whether I like it or not.
ANYA
He showed up in my emergency room looking like the devil had worked him over with a tire iron.
But Bryce Johnson didn’t want a nurse.
He wanted a gun, a car…
And a hostage.
And lucky for me, I was his first pick.
I’d always wanted out of this small town.
But I never thought my ticket to freedom would barge into my life like this.
A gorgeous biker with windswept hair and inky tattoos crawling over his muscular shoulders?
He might’ve looked like a dream.
But the outlaw f**ked like a nightmare.
Like an animal.
Like a brutal, savage beast.
I’d never been with a man like him before.
And after the first kiss, the first touch, the first night, I knew:
I’d never want another man again.
But landing in the biker’s bed was just the start of this madness.
Now, I’m riding shotgun with a killer behind the wheel.
And there’s no telling if I’ll make it out alive.
BRYCE
Life for me as an outlaw biker has always been simple: take the job and get it done.
By any means necessary.
Some men were born to create chaos.
To burn things down.
To f**k sh!t up.
And God knows I’m one of them.
I’ve always managed to escape the mayhem alive.
But this time, I might’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
Even though I’ve done dirty things before, and there’s no doubt in my mind I’ll do them again.
And I thought I’d learned the hard way not to get distracted when there’s a mission on my plate.
But the curvy nurse with the shining eyes is testing my focus.
She’s a do-gooder, a saint in scrubs, a angel if ever there was one.
She deserves a white picket fence, a boring-a$$ husband, and a few obnoxious, giggling little kids.
But she ain’t gonna get that with me.
Because my world is a hell of a lot different.
My world is mobs and MCs, suspense and submission, whiskey and women.
I drink fast and ride hard.
I f**k. I break. I hurt.
It sure as hell ain’t for everyone.
So I did the fair thing:
I pointed my gun at her head and gave her a choice.
She can either run for cover.
Or she can get in the car with me, and see where the road takes her.
That’s just the beginning of our story.
And I’ll make a vow to you right now.
This will end only one way:
With my ring on her finger, my brand on her skin…
And my baby in her belly.
Meant for Sin: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Thunder Riders MC) (Beards and Leather Book 4)
I’m nothing but a toy in the biker’s hands.
Nothing in this world comes for free.
If I want Granite’s help, I’ll have to pay for it.
But he’s only accepting one form of tribute:
My bare body bent over his bed.
ALLISON
Everything happened too fast.
One bad idea after the next, until I ended up somewhere I never thought I’d be:
Bared in the lonely bedroom of a man who’s dying to break me.
I can see it in his eyes – those sharp, predator’s eyes.
So hungry and cold.
Staring right through me.
Stripping me, breaking me, teasing me, owning me.
All while he stands in the entrance, with that taut, tatted body of his at complete ease.
His hands are by his side right now, but in a moment, they’ll be on me.
And I’ll have no choice but to submit.
Because, as sick and twisted as this whole situation is, one thing remains true:
I need him.
I need Granite more than I ever thought possible.
I need him to help me rescue my brother from the clutches of a drug-dealing street gang that will kill Brandon if he ever tries to leave.
I need him to keep me safe from the other brothers of the Thunder Riders MC, each of whom is more eager than the last to run their filthy tongues across my skin.
But most of all, I need him to tame the fire that’s raging between my legs.
I thought I was a good girl.
But in Granite’s hands, I’m slowly learning the reality.
As long as I’m here, I’m only meant for sin.
GRANITE
She’s terrified.
Anyone could see that.
Hell, I would be too, if I were a skinny, innocent little girl like her.