Clutch

by Drew Elyse

  “Answer me,” I coaxed.

  “Yes,” she confessed.

  Fuck. Yes.

  I slammed my lips against hers, taking her mouth the way I wanted to fuck her: hard, deep, and unrelentingly. She let me, moaning as I dominated her. I deserved fucking sainthood for pulling myself away rather than fucking her where any of my brothers—Tank included—might walk out and see us.

  “Come on,” I demanded. I needed her back in my room—immediately.

  There were voices as I stomped through the clubhouse. Some of them may have even been directed my way, I had no idea. My one and only priority was getting Cami naked and laid out beneath me—somewhere I could close the rest of those assholes out, preferably.

  Sweet fucking mercy, I hadn’t locked the door to my room earlier. The odds of my pussy-crazed self getting a lock undone were pretty bleak. I could, however, yank the door open, slam it shut behind us, and flip the lock into place.

  “Take it off, darlin’.”

  “Take off what?” she asked coyly.

  “Don’t tease me,” I warned. “Get those clothes off before I destroy them.”

  She stayed still for a beat, like she might challenge me. My face, clenched hands, or raging hard-on must have clued her in that I was far from joking. Breathing through my nose, I watched her pull each piece of fabric away. I didn’t move, didn’t release my fists even as my knuckles cracked and ached. She had no idea what was coming, but I’d been planning it for a while, realizing what would set her off like nothing else.

  Once she got those damn clothes off, I lost the fragile hold on my self-control. Those perky breasts peaked with pink nipples I wanted to suck on, inch after inch of skin offered up like a fucking feast, and the sweet, plump lips of her pussy…

  She was on her back on the bed before I realized I was moving. I ripped at my cut, my shirt, the demonic button of my jeans keeping my cock trapped.

  “Hurry,” she pleaded while I lost the battle of my damn life to denim.

  “Touch yourself,” I ordered in a hoarse voice. “I need you ready for me.”

  Swear to Christ, my brain shorted out when her fingers teased her clit and dipped down into the wetness I wanted to devour. Her body undulated, and my cock jumped. Watching her pleasure herself was the hottest goddamn thing I had ever seen. I forced the fuckin’ pants down, kicking my boots out to clear the way, and threw all that shit aside. My cock was solid, leaking pre-cum, and ready to blow.

  Climbing onto the bed between her mercifully spread thighs, I grabbed her hand away from her pussy and sucked her glistening fingers into my mouth. I licked them clean, her flavor exploding on my tongue, telling me all I needed to know. My woman was so ready for me.

  One hard thrust and I buried myself inside her. I had no clue where the restraint to wait until she rolled her hips to urge me on came from, but I held out. That frayed thread of control snapped the moment she did.

  I went fucking wild, thrusting fast and hard until I thought it might actually be too much to take. Cami cried out for me, again and again. The sound was like a demand for me to keep up the punishing pace. Both our bodies might be destroyed by the time the wave we were riding broke, but it would be the sweetest agony.

  As her muscles coiled tighter, building toward the release I craved to unleash, I shifted my weight to one arm and wrapped my free hand around her throat. I gripped her fiercely enough to feel her pulse hammering against my palm, to cause her eyes to fly open in a mix of shock and arousal—just enough to bring out the adrenaline rush the fear of suffocation would cause without putting her at risk. I was ready to release her if she fought back, but I knew she wouldn’t. Cami wanted that feeling, had been trying to give it to herself for so long. I’d watched her countless times as she clenched every muscle and held her breath when she was about to come. Each time, the orgasm following was explosive.

  If that was what got her off, I would be the one to provide it.

  The result was immediate. I scarcely pumped twice more before her walls clamped down around my cock, the pressure so intense, it drove my release right out of me. I came hard and long, until I felt like I might pass out. As soon as it hit, I released my hold on her throat before I lost control. I savored the way her pussy rippled around me, the way our screaming filled the air. It was fucking perfect. If I was dying, like I thought I might be, it was the best goddamn way to go.

  “Shit. Cami. Fuck,” I roared as I continued to come, wave after wave releasing inside of her.

  Coming down from that high felt like it took years. We could have wasted half our lives lying there sweaty and satiated, trying to calm our bodies as we recovered from the intensity.

  Minutes, hours, fucking centuries later, Cami panted out, “How…did you…know to…”

  I wrapped her up tight as our bodies collapsed to the mattress on our sides, keeping her pressed against my chest. “Because I know you,” I answered.

  It was true. I knew Cami better than I knew my own damn self. Which was why I knew we were having the exact same, fucking monumental thought. It was roaring where it had been a whisper before, filling my head, and I knew, without any doubt, it was filling hers as well.

  “I love you.”

  Cami stared at me. I should have kept my fucking mouth shut.

  “I love you, too,” she finally said.

  There was a pounding at the door, and I nearly grabbed my Glock to shove up the ass of whoever was out there. “Sorry to interrupt, kiddos,” Daz’s voice carried in, “but Dani just popped!”

  Five Months Later

  “I can’t believe how fast she’s growing,” I said as I rocked the cooing baby girl.

  “I can’t believe she’s still not sleeping through the night,” Deni groaned. The poor woman looked dead on her feet—or dead slumped against the arm of a couch.

  Juliet Katherine Davis, baby Jules, came into the world five months ago, after torturing her mother through seven hours of labor. Gauge and I had gone to the hospital to wait with several of the brothers. Watching the lot of them fret over Deni and the unborn baby through hour upon hour of labor would have been amusing if I, too, had not been worried about the pair. Slick appeared a handful of times to give the crowd updates, and he had been a sorry sight—completely haggard, the stress of awaiting his daughter’s arrival while seeing his woman in pain getting to him. Of course, once Jules finally made her entrance, he rebounded full force, beyond thrilled.

  “She’s still being difficult about sleep?” I asked.

  “Try impossible. Everything I’ve read says we should be at the point where she’s able to get about seven hours, but we’ve yet to get more than four at a time,” she explained. “I’m so wiped. I can’t last much longer without some sleep.”

  “I’m sorry.” I could only imagine how exhausted she was. I looked down at the little princess in my arms, her lavender onesie proudly proclaiming her a “Daddy’s Girl”, and cooed, “You really need to start sleeping through the night for your mommy.”

  “Anyway, enough of my complaints,” Deni rubbed at her eyes and made a show of focusing her attention on me, “what’s new with you?”

  “Oh, you know…” I shrugged, not really wanting to go into total unload mode on her.

  She pressed on, “How is everything with Gauge and the baby?” Beyond the exhaustion, her eyes told me she knew that was the exact topic I struggled with.

  “Fine.”

  “And Stacey?”

  Was she secretly a detective?

  “Alright, fine. She’s driving me crazy. I can deal with her needing his help a lot, she’s due to have his baby in about a week and lives alone. It’s just…every call he gets is an ‘emergency’ he needs to take care of right away, yet she is always all happy-go-lucky once he gets there.” I let loose everything I had been holding in, everything I’d been fighting each day not to say to Gauge.

  “Are you worried she’s making things up?”

  Reassured I was not immediately getting a
lecture from my new-mother friend about how difficult it was to be expecting, I decided to level with her. “I’m afraid she’s trying to be upbeat all the time to make it seem like they could be some sort of happy little family or something.”

  “Cami—” Deni started, but I cut in.

  “I know I probably sound crazy and jealous,” I admitted. “Maybe I am. There’s something unsettling about the way she’s been so excited all the time. No drowsiness, no complaints about sore feet or having to pee, nothing negative at all. Happiness, I could buy, but it seems so disingenuous sometimes.”

  “She’s happy all the time? At…what? She’s got to be past eight months, right?” Deni asked.

  Baby Jules shifted around in my hold, squirming so she could face toward her mom’s voice. I handed her off, missing her softness and fresh baby scent the moment she was out of reach. “Yeah, she’s nearly at nine. She’s about a week out from the predicted due date.”

  “Well, you were around for the last few months of my pregnancy,” Deni said, “I wasn’t exactly floating around in my happy bubble the whole time.”

  No, she was not. Deni, who, despite having a mouth on her at times, was generally mild mannered, had been on edge throughout the end of her pregnancy. She definitely had hormonal covered, plus irritable and exhausted. “That’s my point. Stacey is walking around like someone surgically cemented a smile on her face. It’s weird. I did not know her before she was pregnant, but was she always like that?”

  “Look, I’m not going to say you should react any one way. Being pregnant is more bizarre than you can imagine. This might be her strange way of dealing. But I’ll be honest, she was not like that before. She was kind of quiet usually, serious. Nothing like what you’re saying. I’m a big believer in trusting your instincts. If you honestly think there’s reason to be concerned beyond the fact that you don’t like another woman so close to Gauge, you should listen to that. Keep an eye on her if you think you have to. But you also have to remember something,” she suggested.

  “What?”

  “Gauge is in with you. Completely, as far as anyone else can tell. You’re his old lady, not Stacey. There was plenty of time before you came around for him to give her that, but he didn’t. He picked you,” she emphasized.

  “You’re right,” I conceded.

  “I know I’m right,” Deni said with a smile that drooped as her eyes fell shut and she yawned. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so wiped.”

  “Why don’t you go take a nap? I can watch Jules until Slick gets home,” I offered.

  The look she gave me was absolute reverence tempered with a pinch of hesitation. “I couldn’t ask you to…”

  “You’re not. It was my idea. Now, go,” I insisted.

  She looked like she might protest some more, but the call of the bed was too great. “Thank you,” she said before bringing Jules back to me, kissing her little head, and then shuffling her feet toward the stairs up to her bedroom.

  “It’s just you and me for a while, cutie,” I said to Jules as she stared up at me like I was some kind of big mystery. Her pudgy little cheeks and wide eyes were so adorable. The intensity I felt while holding her, the urge to care for her and never let go, astounded me. She wasn’t even mine, yet holding her overwhelmed me. What must it feel like to hold your own baby in your arms?

  More than ever, I felt the sinking feeling in my heart at the knowledge I would never know the answer to that.

  It pleased me to say I handled Jules just fine for the next hour. Nothing more than a little fussing came my way, which I was perfectly willing to take all the credit for. When Slick came home, I had her seated in her little bouncer, perfectly content.

  “Hey, Cami,” he greeted. “Where’s my wife?”

  “She’s asleep upstairs. I took baby duty for a while,” I told him.

  “Thank you,” he said earnestly. “She needed that. I hated having to leave seeing how tired she was this morning.”

  “It’s no problem,” I insisted.

  Slick came over and hefted his daughter from her seat. “And how is my princess?” he greeted her, rubbing his nose against her tiny one. “Has she given you any trouble?” he asked.

  “None at all. She’s been great.” My voice sounded strained to my own ears, but I could not help it. The minute Slick picked her up, I could see Gauge doing the same with his son. Maybe it would even happen after I watched him for a while. Would that be my role? The sometimes babysitter?

  “Cami?” Slick called.

  I looked over at him. The bemusement and growing concern on his face told me he had been talking to me while I had gone on an excursion into my own head.

  “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Wow. I had been saying that a lot.

  “You want to try that again? Maybe I’ll believe you next time,” he grunted.

  Damn know-it-all bikers.

  I considered telling him I did not want to talk about it, but the words spilled out on their own. “Did having Jules change the way you feel about Deni?”

  That previously mild concern turned up a few notches. “Are you asking because of what’s doing with Gauge and Stacey?”

  I pointedly did not answer that, making it his play. He released a breath and settled his daughter back into her bouncer before taking a seat on the couch with me.“Yes, it did,” he admitted.

  Not what I wanted to hear, and he knew it. I appreciated his honesty, though.

  “Look, I can’t speak to Gauge’s situation. I loved Deni long before she was pregnant, and I’d have continued to love her even if Jules never happened for us. Sharing that with her…yeah, it mattered. She gave me my daughter and that means the fucking world to me.” He winced, having realized he’d cursed. Deni was trying to limit that in front of the baby, fearing for her daughter’s early vocabulary with the Disciples around.

  “Gauge is in a different place, though,” Slick continued. “I imagine he’ll still feel some of that. I think it’d be hard not to appreciate what Stacey will give him, but it won’t be the same as what I’ve got with Deni.”

  I nodded. What he was saying had merit. I wished I knew what the future had in store. Too bad he couldn’t help me with that.

  “Look, you stand by him through this, he’s going to feel thankful to you, too,” Slick said. “And you guys still have time to share this down the road. This baby doesn’t have to be the only one, if you don’t want it to.”

  I didn’t correct him on that. It was plain as day he was already uncomfortable with our heart-to-heart as it was. His body was tight, and he kept looking away from me before he spoke. Asking any of the guys to get in touch with their feelings was a request usually denied. It was incredibly sweet of Slick to put up with it for me. I did not need to make the situation infinitely more awkward by talking about my fertility problems.

  “Thanks, Slick,” I said instead.

  “Yeah, no problem.” Even though I knew it was a bigger deal than he played it off as, I dropped it.

  I hung out while he went to check on his sleeping wife. The door made the faintest squeak when he opened it, the sound repeating as he obviously shut it once more. The quick thudding of his boots on the stairs preceded him into the room, and I watched as Jules’ eyes swung that way.

  “Is that Daddy?” I asked her, laughing along as she giggled in response.