There's nothing he could say that would inspire me. Nothing. I'm not completely opposed to getting involved in some sort of religious or spiritual something (most likely Buddhism because it sort of goes against everything my father's club stands for), but this church, this man, this isn't it.
Why did I agree to come here? I think, picking at the strap of my ribbed tank.
When he starts warning the congregation about the dangers of marijuana (it's the devil's lettuce, apparently), I lean over and whisper in Dena's ear, my lips almost touching the row of silver rose earrings lining her lobe. She reeks of perfume, almost as badly as the building itself does.
“We're in. But I can't use the front door. Is there another way out?”
Dena bites her lip and pushes my hair back to whisper.
“Head to the bathroom and then turn right, there's a storage room that nobody ever uses, and it's always unlocked. Go now, and we'll meet up at the Baby.”
It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to roll my eyes.
Dena's mom is a wealthy patent lawyer who lives in DC and never comes home, but who sends massive hordes of money back to Dena and her father. As a result, my bitchy little classmate drives a brand-new Mercedes convertible that she calls the Baby.
I have the strongest urge to slap her.
Instead, I squeeze Reba's hand and whisper, “let's bail.” She gives me a warning look, but I know that if I leave, she'll follow. I don't think Reba trusts me on my own. I don't blame her; look what happened after my sisters died.
I went full-on batshit.
I get up and head for the bathroom. As I pass by the entrance to the church, I can smell the sweet tobacco scent of Grainger's cigarette. For a second, I pause and consider heading out there to join him. If this was sophomore year, I might've. I might've gone out there and flirted, winked and tossed my hair, licked my lips.
Look where all of that got me, I think as I shiver and shove my way into the ladies room, this meticulously clean little four by four square of old orange tile and dried flowers. This is where that old lady perfume smell is coming from.
I decide to piss before making a run for it; there's no way in hell I'm using that shady outhouse at the lake. And peeing in the water? Let's not even go there.
I wash my hands real quick and let myself out into the hall.
Where, of course, I run straight into Grainger.
As soon as I close the bathroom door behind me, he's there, pinning me in against the faded wood with both hands.
“What do you want?” I ask, leaning back, feeling that dangerously seductive scent of his roll over me. Heat flashes through my body, sharp and sudden, like lightning bolts in a night sky. All of a sudden, I go from bored and apathetic to electrified.
“What are you up to?” he asks, his dark brown eyes simmering. It's the only part of him with any softness. The rest is just … hard. Including the shape of his cock behind his leather pants. That, and all the gloriously rippling muscles in his abs and chest, in those strong arms braced on either side of me. “I saw those bitchy little prom queens climb into their convertible. Your religious friend was right behind them.”
“Don't call her my religious friend,” I say, even though that doesn't really matter at all. “Her name is fucking Reba.”
Grainger's lip quirks up at the corner. It's not a smile though, just a smirk.
“Wow. Not even trying to deny it, are you?” he asks, dropping a hand to push some hair off my forehead. I wonder if I look different to him now, my face clean and clear and free of makeup, my clothes simple and unassuming. I wonder if he sees me differently like this.
“Since when do you give two actual fucks?” I whisper back, the sound of Preacher Wesley's voice echoing dully around the corner and down the hall toward me. “Back the hell off, Grainge.”
“Since your father entrusted me with your goddamn life, Gidget. So yeah, believe it or not: I really do give a hell of a lot of fucks,” he says, our gazes connected in this confusing tie of emotions. Two years and I've barely spoken to him, and now here he is, penning me in against the door of a church bathroom.
A woman with a crying baby passes by and Grainger pauses a second to glance back at her. I use that moment to duck under his arm, reaching for the door to the storage room. If I can slip in and lock it behind me … but he's right there, shoving his way in and slamming it closed.
“Mm, sorry Gidge, but you're not bailing on my watch,” he says, swiping his tattooed right hand down his equally tattooed left arm.
I take a step back, stirring dust motes in the dusky afternoon sunshine. It leaks through the stained glass windows and bathes the old wood floor at my feet in brilliant color. Behind me, rows of pews sit stacked haphazardly with boxes and bags, right next to an ancient organ with rusty pipes and two pulpits with flaking paint.
“You want to tell me what's going on?” I ask, even though I know it's futile. None of these guys give a shit about me—especially not compared to the club. Sin might've turned my words into a joke, but if their president, my own father, decided I needed to be hushed up and buried … I'd end up six feet under.
I can never let myself forget that.
“Not particularly, no,” he says, folding his bulky arms over his chest and looking at me with that … that fucking look. Like he knows he has an effect on me and he loves it. His rust-red hair is buzzed short on both sides of his head, slicked back down the middle. He runs a hand through it and smirks. Again. I'm surprised his face hasn't frozen that way.
With a sigh, I sit down hard on the edge of a dusty pew and hope that even though Dena and Chardou are bitchy cunts, that Reba will make them wait for me.
“I'm not an idiot, Grainger,” I say, sweeping my hair back from my face with both hands. “Dad's been a protective asshole since …” I don't have the energy to say it right now. No, I'm saving my energy for an escape to the lake instead. “But he hasn't plagued me with round the clock bodyguards either. You can't tell me details—fine. At least tell me how worried I should be.”
“Not at all,” he says, his voice just dripping this overconfidence that makes me sick. Out of the four of them, Grainger is the worst by far. The bossiest, stupidest alpha male prick to walk the planet in a Death by Daybreak cut. “As long as you stop trying to give us the slip.”
He runs his tongue over his lower lip and scrapes his hand across his red-brown stubble.
Grainger takes a few steps closer to me, leather riding boots stirring up more dust from the floor. He's the cockiest, the most willing to take risks, the least concerned about going up in flames.
“You've barely spoken to me in two years,” he says, but not like he's upset about it. Just observant.
I lift my head up, and suddenly, it just feels like he's close. Too close. Way too goddamn close.
Pain cuts through me like a knife, that night rising up inside me, a specter of the past that's both pain and pleasure, this awful hybrid that I despise the same time as I'm drawn to it.
“You've hardly looked like you cared,” I say, wondering if Grainger and Beast and Sin and Crown … if they talk about me when I'm not around. If they remember that night and the part they all played in my sinful, seductive ruin.
Grainger stares down at me from a face made of sin, that mouth of his a slash of heat that warms up all the cold places inside of me. And his eyes … the color is soft, but the set is stern, the faintest dusting of lines at the edges a testament to how goddamn hard this life is. His skin is tanned and slightly weathered from the sun, but all it does is make me painfully aware of his beauty, this wildness in him that can't be contained. That I wouldn't want to contain, even if I could.
“Let’s go,” he says, and there's this edge to his words that makes me wonder what he really wants to say. If Grainger's holding back, there's only one explanation. Either club business … or Cat. I don't think the man's afraid of anything else—or if afraid is even the right word.
“This place is fucking creepy.”
He turns to walk away and I stand up. Too quick, too sharp.
Grainger turns back around and looks at me. Stares. Narrows his eyes.
His breath huffs out in a rush.
“You've been avoiding me for two years,” I say, standing my ground when he takes a step closer, that biting, blazing scent of his wafting around me, drawing me in. Why am I just standing here? Being around Grainger is dangerous. “It goes both ways.”
“Does it?” he asks, taking another step. Another. My eyes flutter closed and my heart thunders like a herd of horses. As soon as his hand touches the side of my neck, I know I'm in trouble. Fire races through me, searing, agonizing. It incinerates me from the inside out. It melts me. It makes me wish I could blaze so long and so hot that there'd be nothing left at the end but ash.
Grainger curls his fingers around the back of my neck and draws me in close, each fingertip burning a small brand into my skin. That's one of the things that drove me crazy about him before, how possessive he is. I both loved and hated it.
“I want to fucking kiss you,” he says, and then, “I'm going to goddamn fucking kiss you.”
I keep my eyes closed, but the feel of his breath against my parted lips makes them open.
We're so close, I can see the tattoo near his right ear, the one that's partially buried under his hair. I can't quite make out the design, in this dusky light bathed with the colors from the stained glass, but I know from memory that it's of a sun and moon, intertwined like they're fucking.
Grainger leans down, cuts the distance between us, kisses my mouth and taints it filthy.
Fucking filthy.
Sin kissed me in the kitchen the other day … Grainger won't stop at a kiss.
I stumble back a few steps and he follows me, bumping my thighs into the high, curved back of one of the old pews. Without preamble or question, he drops his hands to my hips and lifts me up, parking me on the narrow edge so he can wedge his big body between my thighs.
“Grainger,” I start, but his lips have captured mine, taken them hostage with prurient fervor.
I knew I should fucking stay away from him! I think, but it's too late. My hands are on his chest, and his smell is mixing with the warm leather of his vest, the tobacco from his cigarettes, the distant burn of motor oil.
My thighs part of their own accord, and he leans in, grinding his sex to mine, rubbing against the carnal heat at my core.
Grainger and I exchange groans, growls, snarls of pleasure.
It occurs to me that we're in a church.
“We'll burn in hell for this,” I gasp as he tears the button on my jeans and sends it flying.
“Honey, hate to break it to you,” Grainger says, sliding a hand tattooed with the moon and stars into my jeans, cupping my pussy, slicking a finger across my opening, “but this is hell. Might as well enjoy the sins.”
Grainger takes my mouth like he's fucking me with his tongue, slipping his finger inside of me and teasing the tender walls of my cunt. My own hands drop to his belt, fumble it open, slip inside. My fingers find the long, velvety length of his cock, teasing the hot heat of his body with messy, groping strokes. I'm too out of practice—I've only had sex once before this—and too riled up to care about details and intricacies.
Messy, hot, desperate.
That's what this is.
Maybe if I do this … then I'll be able to fucking think again, like a logical person.
When I start to moan, nice and loud, Grainger clamps a hand over my mouth to keep the churchgoers on the other side of the wall from hearing me. Warm liquid drenches the hand that's inside my jeans—the fingers that are inside of me—as I gasp and fight the wild flickers of pleasure crashing into my body. Like shooting stars, the sensations pummel me, bury me, take me to a place that's either hell, as Grainger suggested, or heaven. Maybe both.
My fingers strain to keep pleasuring him, my grip loosening as Grainger grinds the heel of his hand to my clit, using those oft used skills of his to bring me to a violent climax, one that hurts almost as much as it feels good.
It does absolutely nothing to sate my feelings, to make me forget that two years ago … something happened with Grainger and me. With Sin and me. Crown and me. Beast and me. It happened, happened, happened, happened. And this is just more proof of that.
I lean my forehead into Grainger's warm chest, listen to his heartbeat. But he's not anything close to comforting, and he grabs my hair with his hand, yanks my head back, and kisses me so hard and fierce and fast that I feel dizzy. My own fingers keep moving, working him up, encouraging his hips to thrust as I work the cum right from his balls and into my hand.
“Fuck,” he snarls, as he comes hard and fast and messy against me.
As soon as he's done, he pulls back and keeps cursing.
“This is … goddamn it, Gidget.”
“Fuck you,” I say, standing up and pausing as he reaches out and grabs my arm with a rough hand.
“You're not fucking skipping out on me,” he snarls, still panting, sweat dripping down the sides of his face. His cum is all over my hand, and my pants are undone, my panties soaked, my lips swollen. And here he is … doing his club-ly duties.
“I just want to wash this,” I say, lifting up sticky fingers, “off in the bathroom.”
Grainger lets me go, his dick hanging out of his leather pants, and watches as I open the door and head straight into the restroom.
As soon as the door's closed and locked behind me, I wash my hands, use the toilet, wash them again.
And then I fucking climb out the window.
“What the hell took you so long?” Chardou asks, putting on a pair of shades and grinning at me. “Get lost in the toilet?”
I hop into the back of the convertible next to Reba and notice her eyes immediately lock onto the missing button on my jeans.
“Gidget …” she warns in a quiet whisper.
I ignore her and reach over Chardou's shoulder, stealing her shades and slipping them onto my own face.
“Let's get the fuck out of here,” I say, watching over my shoulder as Dena revs up the car and peels out of the dusty parking lot. The two girls in the front seat laugh as the wind steals our hair and makes it dance around our faces like autumn leaves.
Reba glares at me; I breathe a sigh of relief.
And this is exactly why I hate Grainger.
Two and a half years ago …
Cat thinks moving us into a new house will fix things, will make this broken unit of ours into a family again.
I don't think it'll do a damn thing. After all, we've never really been a family.
“Have you seen my bathroom?” Posey asks, standing in the doorway to my new bedroom and beaming like crazy. Her blonde hair is messy, random pieces sticking out of her bun in every which way, but she's still pretty. Her and Queenie both, gorgeous. I don't look anything like them. I'm too pale and my hair is too dark, my eyes too red.
One of dad's asshole officers said I looked like a vampire the other day.
I think his name's Cade Grainger.
“I'm sure it's palatial,” I say as I flop down on my new mattress and take a deep breath of fresh paint and cardboard. Everything in this house feels forced, like it's trying too hard to be nice. I miss our old place already.
“Gidget,” Posey says, popping out a hip and tilting her head to the side. I can see from her facial expression that she wants to comfort me, ask me what's wrong, do what Queenie does as easily as breathing. But that's not her job. Queenie takes care of us; Posey makes us laugh; I point out flaws.
“This is a really nice house for a guy whose only job is being president of an MC,” I say, but we all know that dad's dirty, that the club's dirty, that drugs and hookers and guns paid for the nice bathroom and the new wood floors and the canopy bed that I hate.
Mom picked that one out.
“No matter what you do,” P
osey says, dropping her hands to her sides and sighing. “No matter how much you complain, it won't change what or who Dad is. You might as well enjoy this, kid.”
She gives me a bitchy look, lifts her brows, and then spins on her heel, walking down the hall in heels as tall as mom wears. Big and red and shiny. Posey is like a mini-Nellie, right down to the flirting and the fucking and the occasional hit of whatever-the-hell's-on-hand.
“Fuck you,” I murmur, curling up onto my side and looking at the sea of cardboard boxes around me. As soon as I identified that my life was a fucked-up, disturbing warp of reality, I started hating it. I don't understand how that can happen, how a person can be happy and content with what they have and then just … not.
I sit up with a huff, shove my hair back from my forehead, and stand up.
When I pad down the stairs for a drink, I find that the fancy kitchen is full of bikers.
As soon as I enter the room, the conversation stops.
“What do you want?” Cat asks in that gruff, weird way of his, staring at me from the direction of the fridge.
I stare back at him and then let my eyes trail to the others. There's René, the gray bearded treasurer of the club, a man I've known my entire life. He's like an uncle to me, twice as warm as my own father. Of course, twice of zero is still, you know, zero but he feels about a billion times more approachable.
The other four guys … three of them I know—Crown, Sin, Beast—but one is new.
Nobody bothers to introduce him, but I can see from his name tag.
Grainger. Cade Grainger. Right, that's the vampire fuck.
“Hi, yeah, my day's been great. No, thanks, I don't need any help unpacking and yeah, it does make me uncomfortable when you act like my vagina makes me too weak to carry even small pieces of furniture.”
“Oh, fuck,” Cat says with a sigh and a hand to his forehead, “here we go with the femi-Nazi crap again.”
I curl my lip at him and walk right through the center of the bikers in their black vests and boots, feeling tiny prickles take over my skin. A rush of heat slams into me, like I'm stepping into a sauna, and I almost freeze. Go completely still and stand there in the middle of the kitchen, dumbstruck.
I Was Born Ruined Page 4