“I’m helping him with a little problem.” Shadow finally entered the discussion.
“By fucking my fucking problem,” I spat back on a surge of anger, forcing Wolf to push back and remind me he was in control.
“I what?” Shadow’s face was almost completely neutral when he addressed my insulting accusation. If this guy had played cards, he’d either have been a millionaire or barred from every casino in the Nevada state.
“That fucking bitch did it again. She fucked my friend. I want him gone from the club,” I shouted, and that was when Shadow finally reacted. He took a small step back, a mere shuffle, and as a quick as a snake, threw out a fist around Wolf and landed a punch on my cheekbone.
I heard tables and chairs being shoved aside as Wolf dropped me to contain him. Seizing my moment, I pulled back my right arm and gave Shadow a jab back, only this time, I followed it with a left hook.
The brothers still in the room headed to Shadow. They weren’t stupid; he wasn’t described as silent but deadly for no reason. It took three of them to hold him back while Wolf shoved me as far back as he could until I was against a wall, out of arms reach.
“No brother in this club would do that.”
“You think?”
“If someone doesn’t talk then I’m gonna be the one throwing punches and no one wants that.”
The brothers restraining Shadow looked across at me and Wolf with panic on their faces. They had no idea which horse to back, but an unleashed Wolf was just as lethal as a smoldering Shadow.
I looked at Shadow. His eyes seemed to be pulsing in their sockets. I’d never seen him like this. He vibrated, like he was using all his mental strength just to remain in control of himself.
“Who was she?” Wolf hadn’t been in club when Malia had wandered in, but he’d know about it. Nothing on this property, not the actions of his brothers or the wellbeing of the women and kids, went unnoticed by him.
“A girl from my past,” I ground out.
“And?”
“And she stayed with him last night.”
Wolf seemed concerned the loose words about a brother fucking another man’s women might actually be true. “She yours? You claimed her?”
“No. But—”
“Well, she ain’t yours then.”
Fuck.
That hurt.
It hurt just as much as the last time I’d realized she wasn’t mine.
“Shadow,” Wolf barked. “She yours?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then why’d you take her home?”
In a flash, with some footwork worthy of a dance routine and some nifty arm work, the ninja had slipped his three minders and got right up close to me. “Because you weren’t fucking thinking straight. She couldn’t stay there. If something had happened to her, you’d never have forgiven yourself.”
“I told you to leave it!”
“And I know you didn’t really mean it.”
I thrust my hands in my hair. “Fuck!” I was at a crossroads. I needed to try to close the door to my past again. It had creaked open a little, and bit-by-bit, it was threatening to blow wide open if I didn’t do something about it.
The brothers all remained quiet, all sensing the monumental precipice I was on.
“She’s still at mine.”
“What?”
“Knew you’d change your mind.”
His smirk was off the scale. The man who was a master at hiding emotion so the world never got a glimpse of the true man, Shadow became a little clearer to us all. He was one of us, even though he prided himself on the distance he worked to put between us. He wasn’t an outsider. He was a brother all the same.
Wolf let me go, knowing I was going to do exactly as Shadow had suggested.
I looked at Shadow, our eyes level, passing a look that I wanted to convey was one of pure irritation. I needed him to know that he’d pissed me off with his interfering, but I knew it was really him who was trying to send me a message.
I couldn’t work out what that was right now; my brain was tied up with her, again. He didn’t wait for me to figure it out. I just heard, “You’re welcome, asshole,” as I went in search of my cut and bike keys.
Wave
I let myself into Shadow’s house. I’d been here when he’d first moved in, but it still looked the same. I was expecting his furniture to come out of storage, but clearly not. Right now, it looked like a fuck pad and it just made me feel angry again. Shadow had brought her here and I found it hard to believe that he’d done it for her or me. That guy rarely did anything that wasn’t pre-meditated, and definitely not something out of the goodness of his heart.
I didn’t tiptoe in or hide the fact that I was there, but she still didn’t notice there was someone else in the house with her until I was in the kitchen space beside her.
Fuck.
Just like the last time I’d seen her, she was bent double over a counter top. Yeah, she might have been cleaning this time, but I’d have appreciated it if my brain would stop dishing up reminders that irked me even more. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, her hair piled high on her head, and she was going to town on Shadow’s cabinets with a dish cloth and a bottle of cleaner.
“Made yourself at home then.”
I watched as she jumped, dropped the cloth and cleaner and then managed to bang her head on the underside of a wall cabinet all in a few seconds. “Shit. Ouch.”
My body urged me to take a step forward and check she was okay, but I resisted.
“What are you doing here?”
“Could ask you the same,” she threw back petulantly, a reminder that Malia’s personality was still headstrong, even difficult.
“Thought you said you’d be gone by sun up.” I stepped away from the counter top and planted my feet. I wanted answers, not bitch fighting, and she was doing what she’d always done best: irritating me.
“I was supposed to be, but Shadow asked me to hang back for a delivery.” Her mouth fell open and she began to cuss to herself. She knew she’d been played. “And you’re the delivery. Damn him.” A small smile ghosted her face.
“Mal.” My voice gently using her nickname for the first time took us back to a time and place we’d both rather have forgotten for different reasons, and it got her attention. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I think you made that clear last night.”
I hated and loved her stubborn streak with equal measures. That need to protect herself against all odds had come from her past, which was why what she did with Dean hurt even more. Malia was very careful about the people she let into her life. She’d had so much disappointment that her reserves were empty, and they never got topped up. People just piled on and let her down, sucking her non-existent reserves drier. That was why I could never understand why she’d been fooled by him. He was not the giving kind. He was a taker of the worst fucking variety. Dean Morrison was always out for himself and his own pleasure. His happiness was always his singular end game. Our friendship had survived because I’d had years to understand and adapt, years of operating around him so that I didn’t let that taint me. There were always flashes of care and detail when I wondered and hoped that the goodness of his parents, the sheer decency of them and myself, might have rubbed off on him. I stayed loyal because of our history, our family connection, when I should have just said ‘fuck it’.
“Why did you choose him?” It was the one question I’d promised myself I would never ask, and it slipped from my lips unwillingly. It was the one unknown that had always evaded me, hearing the reason why she’d thought he was better for her than me.
Malia’s shocked look showed me that she wasn’t expecting it. I watched a range of emotions play across her face as she debated how to answer, fuck, whether to answer me at all. The air around us became stifled and pregnant, about to burst when she finally opened her mouth and shattered me.
“You always chose him.”
Those four words weren’t what
I was expecting. I expected her to go into a whole excuse-making monologue about her decision, but she didn’t. She laid it all at my feet and told me that she’d chosen him because I always did. “What?”
“You loved him. You made it clear from the first day we met that he, your friendship, and everything you’d had growing up together was worth more than me. You valued him so much that I figured he was worth it. If you, an inherently good person, someone so kind and loving, could see the best in him, then there was something worth loving and I saw flashes of it. I figured one day I’d get it all like you did.”
I just stood there, dumbstruck.
“Part of it was that he wanted me. He was willing to take a chance on me. He saw me as something special, special enough to put me ahead of you. For once, I was the top priority on someone’s list.”
I felt such a rage coursing through my body that I didn’t know how Shadow’s house was still standing. The bricks and mortar should have crumbled and imploded to dust around me, such was my emotional intensity. This was a feeling I’d never felt before. I stood there and let the knowledge of her admission take shape and form like a physical being in my brain. It latched onto the blood flowing in my veins, and like a vine creeper, spread through my psyche, telling me, hammering it home, that I was the one to blame for all of this. My fisted hands clenched and unclenched, willing the feeling to pass, but it didn’t, and with an animalistic roar, I reached for the wooden chair closest to me and launched it like a missile against the wall. The plaster cracked on impact and the chair collapsed and fell to the ground in splintered pieces.
Malia remained in front of me, unmoving, unaffected by the land mine she’d just tripped within me. She watched and saw what her words had done to me, the effect her truth bomb was having. She’d caused this and she knew how it would go.
I’d made the pact with my then best friend decades ago, to keep her safe, to keep her from choosing one of us over the other, and it had happened anyway. He’d got what he wanted. But like every other time, there was always something he couldn’t give to her and this was that on repeat. Malia needed help, needed something he was incapable of providing, and so she came to me.
She’d loved him because I’d shown her how to have faith in him.
I’d made her believe that there was good inside Dean Morrison.
I’d shown her how to see the good in him, when all she should have focused on was just how bad to the core my so-called best friend had been.
I grabbed for the next chair, unable to accept my part in this, and as I looked at my knuckles, white and tightly clenched around the top of the chair, her hand appeared on top of mine. “Stop.”
“Get the fuck away from me!”
Her touch was too gentle; it burned. It was everything I’d missed out on. It was everything I’d always wanted and never been able to have. I shoved her hands away from mine, but like a stubborn mule, she wasn’t to be deterred, and when her hands connected with mine for a second time, I felt a different surge of power. Excitement buzzed through me, which was just as fucking terrifying.
“Stop throwing things.”
“No!” I bellowed the word harshly in her face, seeing her shrink back a little. My need for control of the situation and myself demanded I react this way.
“Yes. It’s done and we can’t change the past.” Malia’s voice was oddly calm, her attempt to show me simple sense poking at the corners of my rage.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you? In some fucked up cathartic way, you get to unload this and then walk away. You’re flipping me the bird because I never let you tell me before.”
“There’s nothing cathartic about living with the mistakes you’ve made. They’re like an anvil on my chest and nothing I do will make that heaviness lessen,” she whispered.
“Why did you stay with him?”
“Because he was all I had. My dad made it clear his new family would always be his priority, and my mom… well, you were there and then you left, too. I’d had years of being alone and I just wanted someone to want me. Dean wanted me.”
“How could you not know how I felt about you?” I put my hand on the back of my neck, hoping to ease the tension in my body.
“I thought I did and then you’d do something that made it easy to convince myself I was day dreaming. Then you had Callie and you weren’t the cheating type. I could never rationalize how you could be with her and want me, so I told myself you didn’t. Until the day you left.”
“She was a distraction,” I admitted, “until she became a necessity to keep you at arm’s length.”
Malia was so close to me that I had to calm down and get a grip on my feelings. If I didn’t, she’d be in the firing line.
God, she was so fucking beautiful. She had once been the shining hope in all my dreams.
I needed to get this back on track.
“Why can’t he help you?”
“Because he’s the problem.” Hearing that, in some sick and twisted way, was like a knife being slowly skewered through my skin. Each layer that was penetrated hurt more and more.
“Mal, for the love of God, I’ve got a slim grip on my shit. I need to you quit fucking around and tell me. I’m done dragging this out of you.”
“I think he’s going to kill me,” she whispered as water filled her eyes and she sucked in oxygen to try to regain control.
“Come again?” I had to ask her to repeat it because I was sure my ears were playing some cruel joke on me.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out, just the sad sound of her crying. It hurt so much that she still cried over him after everything. I didn’t want to, but there was no way I could not console her. I wrapped her in my arms and let her sob over him.
I was consoling the only girl I’d ever loved, even though she still loved my ex best friend.
Forget the skewer in the skin; this was like someone was digging through my chest cavity with a goddamn soup spoon.
Apart from the last time I’d spitefully kissed her, I’d never really felt her this close to me when she was emotional. She’d always been so brave and never really needed me for my emotional strength.
Malia was in my arms, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t what she wanted. She was only here because he’d hurt her, and she had no one else to turn to. If whatever had caused her to come hadn’t happened, she’d still have been with him, and I… wouldn’t.
The only way to get her out of my life now was to help her so she could move on, and the sooner I accepted that the better off we’d all be.
Malia
All of a sudden, I lost the comfort of his arms.
“Stay here. Don’t leave. In fact, don’t move,” he grunted.
The loss of him around me felt like I’d been teleported from the hottest desert to the coldest iceberg. I swayed after him, my body not ready to accept the lack of closeness so quickly.
“Where are you going?”
“I… I need to think. Be ready to tell me all of it when I get back.” Despite the words coming from his lips, there was something that told me not to let him leave. I smelled betrayal in their intent.
“Don’t go!” Reef seesawed on his boot, clearly undecided, and I knew I needed to bring out the big guns to keep him here. “I’ve missed you.” It was a Hail Mary, a clutch at straws. I felt deep in my core that letting him walk through that door would be a huge mistake.
Some of the polar freeze surrounding him melted.
“I…” I couldn’t find the words.
“You what?” he prompted, his voice thick with emotion. His eyes told me he wanted more from me but was terrified over what words would spill from my lips next. Instead, I reached out a hand and touched the bruise developing on his cheek. It worked. Show don’t tell was the best route to take.
No words.
Just actions.
I stepped back to him and looked up. He was so tall, so grown up, but there was still so much about him of the boy I’d once known—the depe
ndable, lovable boy who had grown into a dependable, sexy guy.
I popped up onto my toes, aiming for his lips and inhaling his scent. The need to feel his lips on mine was so desperate there was every chance we might combust on impact.
I heard him inhale and mumble, “Lemons,” before he growled, “fuck it,” and slammed his lips to meet mine. I felt his hands find my ass and pick me up as I reached for his face. I needed to make sure this was real, he was real, and this was really happening. On impact, I enclosed his waist within the grip of my thighs and climbed up his front. The sounds I made while kissing him were almost animalistic. The touch and taste of him were everything my teenage self had dreamt of and so much more. Decades of longing crashed between us and when I felt his rough fingers touch the skin of my belly, I shivered.
“I want this,” I mewled.
“You’re taking it, Mal,” he replied, causing another shiver that was much more like an Earth tremor.
When he roughly pulled the cups of my lacy bra down, I heard the fabric snap and give way under the pressure as my head fell back and connected with the wall.
Wall?
When had he moved us to a wall?
I nearly exploded when I felt Reef tweak and pinch my nipple, sending a message to parts of my body that had been seriously neglected. That message was understood loud and clear, courtesy of someone else and definitely better than anything self-induced.
“My pants,” I begged around his lips. “Take ‘em off.” Reef dropped me briefly, unbuttoning and unzipping them before shoving them down my legs hastily. As I bent down to remove them completely, I was faced with his crotch where the denim of his pants was strained and tented because of his dick.
Seizing my moment, I released his dick from its prison and felt my eyes grow wide at seeing how thick and long it was.
Reef was very well blessed.
When I folded my hand around his silky soft, iron hard dick, I fell to my knees and let my legs splay open. The urge to touch myself overwhelmed me, as my adrenaline demanded I start the chase for an orgasm. When I fed the swollen head into my mouth, I heard him hiss and groan, followed by his fingers threading into my curly hair. As I sucked and tried to maintain control, he fought me for it every step of the way.
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 13