Hay blanched. Swallowed. He looked around for support, but his VP was being held at gunpoint and all his guards were out for the count. He finally wilted under Mac’s glare. “Okay!” he said at last. “The coke’s worth more to us than the auctions. But what about Volos?”
“You tell him it’s over. Annabelle stays with us. And if he has a problem with it, he can come see me,” Mac told him.
We filed out. Mac and I trailed behind everyone else and walked in silence all the way back to our bikes, not even looking at each other. I kept replaying the scene in my head. What the hell had gotten into me?
I stopped beside my bike and turned to Mac. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He stared deep into my eyes. Mac was always so damn good at reading people—that’s what made him such a good leader. “You ever do that again,” he told me, “I’ll put you down. And then I’ll take your patch.”
I nodded. “I know.” Then I shook my head. “I don’t know what got into me.”
Mac sighed. “I do.” He grabbed me and pulled me into a hug, holding me tight and slapping my back. “And you’ll figure it out too.”
He got onto his bike and roared off, leaving me alone.
I swung my leg over my bike and settled in the saddle, but didn’t start the engine. That was the second time I’d defied Mac in as many days. Yet he and the club were the most important thing in the world to me….
Until now.
That’s when it hit me. I’d been fighting so hard to stay away from Annabelle because I knew I couldn’t change. But she’d already changed me. She’d gotten deep inside me, right down in my soul, and I couldn’t get her out no matter how hard I tried. Without her, there was no way I would have lost control like that and no way I would have defied Mac.
But there was no way I would have left Hay alive, either. It was thinking of Annabelle that had stopped me pulling the trigger. She was becoming my conscience.
Keeping my distance from her wasn’t an option anymore. Things couldn’t stay as they were.
I started my bike and gunned the throttle.
I knew what I had to do.
23
Annabelle
I was in heaven. Scooter had shown me how to disassemble the engine and now it lay in gleaming pieces around me as I sat cross-legged on the floor. He’d been cautious at first, maybe having second thoughts about letting a woman into his precious workshop. But the more we talked, the more he relaxed. The language we talked wouldn’t have been intelligible to anyone else: it was pressures and ratios, cycles and strokes. He had the knowledge but I had the enthusiasm and I soaked up everything he told me like a sponge. By noon, he trusted me enough to leave me tinkering while he wandered into town to get us a couple of sandwiches.
And yet despite being exactly where I wanted to be, despite all the wondrous, shining parts around me, I couldn’t fully focus on the engine. I couldn’t stop thinking about Carrick and what he’d told me. Could I be with a man who did things like that? A criminal whose job it was to scare, to hurt, even to kill? I remembered what Mom had told me: did the angel outweigh the demon?
As the hours passed, my thoughts changed. They’ve been gone too long. What if he’s been shot? What if he’s—
I closed my eyes for a second, trying to push that thought away. What made it worse was knowing that any danger he was in was because of me. I felt something hard between my fingers and realized I was stroking the shamrock necklace.
I wished I’d asked Mom how to cope with this part of it. I tried to imagine never seeing him again and couldn’t. Just the thought of it made my chest ache. I remembered the feel of his body against mine, when he’d first rescued me at the auction. The way he’d told me I was priceless, his tenderness all the sweeter because he was normally so gruff. The way he’d pushed me away so hard, just to protect me….
And suddenly, I knew.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what he’d done. The violence sickened me but...it was part of him. The club was part of him. The demon came along with the angel.
And the angel was worth it.
At that moment, I heard the roar of a bike. My heart leapt and I ran for the door but I didn’t even make it out of the workshop before Carrick pulled up right outside and jumped off his bike.
For a heartbeat, we just looked at each other. Long enough for me to see in his eyes that the battle was over...and for him to see in mine that I wanted him, demon and angel together.
Then we ran at each other, our bodies slammed together and his lips came down on mine.
24
Annabelle
I was panting. I couldn’t stop panting. It was the adrenaline of finally kissing him after all this time: we’d kiss and then come up for air and I’d barely have time to gulp in oxygen before we kissed again.
His lips were demanding, forcing me open, as strong and determined as he was in everything else. But my lips were at least as desperate as his, open to drink in as much of him as possible, then closing to kiss him back, my softness against his hardness. He growled low in his throat, stroked both hands through my hair and kissed down into me, tilting my head back. His tongue traced my lips and then sought me out, finding my tongue and dancing with it, and I moaned. I’d been dreaming of this kiss for years and it was even better than I’d imagined.
Those big hands that had refused to touch me for so long swept under my ass and cupped me and I let out a shriek as he hoisted me effortlessly into the air. He pulled me close, my legs wrapping around his waist, my breasts mashing against his chest, and I went weak. His hands stayed on my ass as he kissed me and kissed me, squeezing and kneading. His whole body was tight and hard with lust: I stroked down the backs of his arms and I could feel every vein throbbing, every muscle tensed. His heart was thumping against my breast, his breathing as fast and urgent as mine.
He broke the kiss and looked around the workshop. I let out an audible gulp when I realized he was looking for a place to fuck me.
I followed his gaze and I could see it running through his head. The stool? Too unsteady with two of us on it. The floor? Covered in shining engine parts.
He looked at the workbench. Then walked us over to it and set me carefully down on the edge. Without speaking, he grabbed the hem of my tank top and yanked it up to my armpits.
I was reeling from how fast it was all happening, after so long waiting. The sexual tension had been winding tighter and tighter, storing up energy, and now it was all being released. I glanced over his shoulder. “Door!” I squeaked.
He glanced behind him. The workshop had a metal shutter-style door big enough to drive a car through and it was still open. I could see clear across the compound to the clubhouse and members were strolling around in the sunshine outside.
Carrick glanced back to me and there was such a melting look of sexual hunger in his eyes, I actually thought he was going to shake his head, too turned on to stop, and just fuck me with half the club able to see.
But then he turned from me, stalked over to the door in three big paces, grabbed the handle and hurled it down towards the floor. He didn’t even wait for it to close. The clattering of the door drowned out even the thump of his heavy boots as he came back to me. He pushed between my legs just as the door slammed into the ground with a sound like the end of the world. And in the soft silence that followed he stood there, hips between my knees, body hulking over me as I sat, and he spoke to me.
“I’m going to kiss you. All over. Every inch of that soft skin. Your shoulders, right down your back, your ass...everywhere. I’m going to slip my fingers deep inside you and feel you as you come.”
I let out a high little groan.
“But right now,” he told me, “I’ve got to see you.”
He moved back just a little, grabbed the tank top that was still up under my arms and hauled it over my head and off.
With the door closed, the only light came through a skylight, a solid pillar of sunlight that lanced diagonally down throu
gh the darkness and lit up the workbench where I sat. It bathed my skin like a spotlight.
Carrick gave a low growl of satisfaction. He drank in the sight of me and then stepped close again, running his palms up my sides and then over my bra. I swallowed. I knew he’d already seen me naked, when I was changing into the dress, but—
And then he bent and kissed the top of each breast, his lips firm against their softness, and I gasped and forgot my nerves. His mouth felt so good there, the pleasure crackling across my skin and throbbing through my entire chest.
Then his hands went behind my back and my bra suddenly went loose. He drew it off my shoulders and I was topless before I knew what was happening, nipples throbbing at their sudden exposure. But before I could even catch my breath, his mouth was on me, engulfing me, tongue swirling over my hardening bud and the soft pink around it. I arched my back and groaned, feet twisting in the air behind his back.
He buried both hands in my hair, stroking through it, fingers toying with the strands, as he bent and licked at my breasts, alternating between them. One second, his tongue would sweep across a nipple or swirl around the edge of my areolae. The next, his mouth would be gone and the cool shock of the air on my slickened skin made me catch my breath. The pleasure was already climbing inside me, spiraling higher, filling me.
He stepped back and shook his head as if to say, enough. He reached for the belt of my jeans.
But I shook my head, too. I had to see him. I pushed at his cut and he got the idea, pulling it off and dropping it on the bench next to us. Then together we hauled his white t-shirt up and over his head.
He stepped close again and now it was skin on skin, him hard and tan, me soft and pale. My breasts pillowed against his pecs and both of us drew in our breath.
“You’re filthy,” he whispered, stroking his thumb across my cheek and showing me the dark smear.
I realized my hands were oily from working on the engine, and that I must have rubbed my face at some point. God, I must look a mess! I flushed.
He grinned a wolfish grin—the first time I’d seen him smile since he’d rescued me. “I fuckin’ love it when you blush,” he told me, and kissed me again, hot and deep. I groaned and wrapped my arms around his body, knowing I was probably leaving dark handprints on the muscles of his back and not caring.
We only managed to keep the kiss going for a few panting, frantic seconds before he grabbed for the belt of my jeans again. I pressed my palms into the wood of the workbench and lifted my ass to help him, and my jeans and panties slid down my legs. He dragged my sneakers and socks off, too, and suddenly I was naked.
He didn’t let my legs go right away. He captured my ankles in one big hand and hoisted them high in the air, then kissed all the way down the outside of one leg to my hip. Then, as if he couldn’t wait any more, he let me down and knocked my knees apart, stepping between them. He reached for the belt of his jeans, both of us staring down at the same spot, our heads almost touching. I watched him slide the buckle free and pop the buttons one by one. Then the jeans fell and he hooked his black boxer briefs down—
I swallowed as his cock came into view. A thick, long shaft with a perfect arrow-shaped head, soft curls of black hair around the root. It brushed my inner thigh and I melted inside as I felt the heat of it, the solid, loaded, weight of it.
He grabbed my naked hips and pulled me to the very edge of the workbench. As I slid forward, my knees had to open wider to pass his hips and I felt myself flower open.
He reached down between us, warm fingers stroking through the copper curls of hair and then over the lips of my sex—God, I was soaking. “I kept thinking about what you’d look like,” he told me, gazing down. “You’re perfect.”
I watched as he rolled the condom on and kicked his boots and jeans away. Then his hands were on my inner thighs, steadying me, and he was pressing forward….
I threw my head back as he touched me, the heat of him throbbing through me. He glided up and down my lips a few times and then drove in. My head came forward: I had to see, had to watch as his cock spread me, breached me—God—gliding up into me—
I clutched at his back, fingers digging into his shoulders as he filled me. My knees squeezed tight against his sides and for a few seconds we just stayed there, panting at the feeling. I ran my hands up and over his shoulders and down his chest, wanting to feel every inch of him, my fingers drawing oily marks on his chest. Every time I looked down and saw his muscled, tanned hips tight between mine, a new burst of heat exploded in my chest and sank down to my groin. I’d imagined this so many times but the reality was so, so much better.
Each perfect silken slide sent a new wave of silver pleasure rippling outward from my groin. His size stretched me just right, both of us catching our breath as he went deep. It was slow at first but the rhythm built quickly until he was slamming into me.
My legs rose and wrapped around him, my heels at the backs of his knees. With each thrust, tight waves of pleasure crashed outward and then contracted down into a glowing, white-hot center, quickly slipping out of control. My hands frantically searched his back, unable to get enough of him, sliding over every hard muscle from his shoulders all the way down to his tight, thrusting ass. I could feel myself rushing towards the edge….
His mouth came to my ear, lips nuzzling me before he said, “I dreamed about doing this,” he muttered, never slowing. “Looking into your eyes when you come.”
The accent, the words, the heat of his breath in my ear...all of it took me closer. And then he pulled his head back just enough to look into my eyes. When I saw the clear blue there and that hunger to watch me, it was too much: I let out a cry and shot over the edge, spasming around him. With two more hard thrusts he buried himself and I felt his ass contract as he shot inside me.
When I could breathe again, he lifted me and laid me gently down on the floor, knocking engine parts out of the way with his feet to clear a space. The concrete should have been shockingly cold but its coolness was exactly what our heated bodies needed. We cuddled and kissed, rolling around, getting filthy and not caring at all. We only stopped when I rolled on top and Carrick suddenly cursed and half sat up.
“What?” I asked in panic.
He dug under him, pulled a shining metal gear from under his ass and tossed it across the room. I laughed and, for the first time ever, I heard him laugh, too.
25
Carrick
Annabelle’s eyes bulged as she gazed towards Ox. I’d never seen eyes so wide.
“Trust me,” I said under my breath. “It’s meant to be that big. He’s a big guy.”
She shook her head in wonder. “But how can one man...it’s so much meat!”
It was a lot of meat. The waitress had to use both hands to set the platter in front of him. It’s not often you see a double rack of ribs. But, as I said, Ox is a big guy: big big, not fat-big. And this was his traditional dinner when we came here.
We were at the diner in Haywood Falls, about fifteen members plus a few old ladies and hangers-on. The meals had become a weekly tradition for a year or so, now. An actual meal made a change from the drunken parties at the clubhouse and Mac thought it was good to show our faces around the town and demonstrate we were the good guys, or at least not the bad guys. It was a respectable, family place and the owners had been tight-lipped the first time we’d showed up, but Mac had promised to kick the ass of anyone who caused trouble. We’d been nothing but good customers and heavy tippers and now they welcomed us.
Annabelle and I sat side by side near the middle of the big table, with Mac, Hunter and Ox facing us. It was two days since the sawmill...and since I’d finally gotten together with Annabelle. I was in heaven: the sex was the best part but waking up each morning to find her wrapped in my arms came a close second. I’d never slept so good. We talked, which was all new to me. I’d even gone down to the lake with her and spent a lazy few hours just walking around, soaking up the summer heat, though with her pale skin we�
��d had to stick to the shadier paths. It was idyllic.
True, there was stuff I hadn’t told her, the stuff from my past that was too toxic to tell anyone. But I’d convinced myself that was okay.
She’d insisted on ordering a huge chocolate milkshake. When it arrived, it came with two straws. I stared at it, confused.
“Like in the movies,” she explained. “We share it.”
I looked at her. Looked at Mac. He was trying not to laugh.
“Um…” I said.
Annabelle thrust a straw at me.
I felt my ears heating up. Fuckin’ hell, was I blushing? I fingered the straw as if it was an unexploded bomb and glanced across the table again. Now Hunter was close to losing it, too, and he never laughs.
“Go on,” said Annabelle. She lowered her head and drank, then stopped. “It’s romantic,” she told me.
I looked across the table again. Ox was silently quaking, too, all three of them loving it. A whole stream of curses flew through my head….
But I couldn’t refuse her anything. I lowered my head and drank the damn milkshake, with my brothers almost busting a gut, they were laughing so hard. I heard at least one of them snap a picture of the notorious, stone-cold Irish sharing a milkshake.
But it was worth it. When she looked up at me with those moss-green eyes and smiled, it was worth it. When we’d finished, she grabbed her straw. “Souvenir,” she said. “Our first date.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. She was really into the romantic stuff—maybe because, from what she’d told me, she’d missed out on it all in high school. It was stupid, of course. It was only a damn milkshake.
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