by Jc Emery
To everyone’s surprise, Grady raps his knuckles against the wooden table and says, “I want Trigger for sarge.”
“You yankin’ my dick?” Ryan’s eyes are narrowed and his brows are pulled together.
“You’re a shithead, you got a loud mouth, and you’re disrespectful. You need to chill your temper, and there’s no better way to do it than to be responsible for the discipline of your brothers. Time to grow up, son.”
It’s a bold move, but after a few comments from the brothers, they vote in favor of the nomination. Diesel takes over as road captain, and then we move on to discussing whether or not Squat deserves his top rocker. Bear, Torque, and Grady are hesitant. Torque doesn’t really know the guy, and Bear and Grady think he needs more time with the club.
“Every man at this table has a history that brought him here. For Rob, that was Aaron. Aaron died trying to keep our women safe. His death still fucks with Mindy. They got close before he died, and she’s made friends with Rob now. He’s hurting, but he shows up every day, does his part, and doesn’t bitch. I don’t doubt his heart,” Ian says.
“So, take another vote,” Torque says.
We do, and this time, everybody votes in favor of patching the little fuck in.
“I’ll get his top rocker, Pres,” Pop says from the other end of the table.
“Asshole,” I say and shake my head. He just had to call me that. “Somebody get Squat in here. I want this meeting over with as soon as fucking possible.”
CHAPTER 3
“This party is shit,” Duke says. He tips his head back and looks over his shoulder at his old lady who’s breastfeeding their baby across the room. Not gonna lie—Nic’s tits have gotten real nice since she had Robin. Not that I’ve been looking since Duke caught me eyeing ’em a few weeks back. There’s a lot of shit brothers don’t care about, but respecting their old ladies is mandatory.
“You’re the one who’s turning this place into Chuck-E-Cheese,” Grady grumbles with a sideways glance at Duke.
“I’m just saying. We didn’t plan anything.”
Neither Grady nor I make a move to get up. The clubhouse isn’t dead, but it’s not hopping either. It’s a weird night, and nobody knew Jim was going to ditch the gavel today, so we weren’t prepared for anything.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say and finish off the beer in my hand. “We’ll have Ruby get something together.”
“Except she’s not the pres’s old lady anymore.” Grady shoots me a taunting grin. I do my best to ignore him. I know what he’s getting at, and I have no interest in going down this road with him.
“And on that note, I’m gonna go find some pussy.”
Standing from the table and surveying the room, I spot two lost girls behind the bar. One is bare at least from the waist up, and the other has just a bra on. They’re quietly talking to one another while wiping down the bar top. With the snap of my fingers, I have their attention, and with the crook of my finger, I have the new girl coming toward me. I haven’t had her yet—don’t even know her name—but she’s here and she’s willing, so she’ll do. Anything to get Amber out of my head.
Grady is a real fucker for bringing her up. It’s not like I can go more than a few hours without thinking about her as it is. I’m on autopilot as I grab a hold of the bitch in front of me and take her mouth. I can’t really feel her touch even though she’s trying to get her hands on every inch of my skin that she can. My body is here in the clubhouse, but my heart and mind are back in Michigan in a grassy field watching a girl give a mean old man the dirtiest look I’ve ever seen.
Amber Wallace isn’t the love of my life.
She’s not the one who got away.
She’s not my old lady.
She’s my everything, and if I weren’t so used to admitting that to myself, I’d feel like the biggest fucking pussy.
I keep my eyes mostly closed as I devour this bitch’s mouth and palm at her ass. My gut twists the closer we get to my room. It’s like a lead balloon that’s getting bigger with every step. The woman in my arms is soft to the touch but not nearly soft enough. It’s not the skin I miss getting lost in. Her curves are all wrong, and her hair is too straight. Nothing about her feels right, and even though I know I’ll be hard enough to pound her pussy once we’re naked, I’m not going to enjoy it the way a man should enjoy getting his dick wet.
Regret is a powerful emotion, and it doesn’t get any easier with the passing of time. If anything, it just gets worse. Days go by, and you don’t chase after her. Then weeks. Months. And finally years go by, and no matter how much you want to drop to your knees and rip your own fucking heart out of your chest for breaking the strongest woman you’ve ever met—you don’t. Because some mistakes can’t be fixed, and there’s no going back.
Not everybody gets a happy ending, and I’ve had to learn to live with that. Even seeing half my brothers get hooked up with old ladies isn’t enough to make me seek out mine. I’ve been down that road more than a time or two, and it always ends with me in a two-week detox. It was fucked enough when I was VP, but as president, I can’t be going off the fucking rails for some pussy that rode somebody else’s dick and walked out on me over a decade ago.
I’ve got the chick pressed up against the door to my room when the lead balloon in my stomach feels like it explodes. Amber isn’t some pussy, and I’ve never believed she cheated on me. I just don’t know how to make any of it any better. I can’t make it hurt less. I can’t make myself forget her. I’m rendered totally inept when it comes to moving on from Amber Wallace.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
I hear the bitch I’m mauling speak, but I ignore her. There’s nothing wrong except for the fact that she’s not my old lady. She’s not the woman I’d spent four successful hours not thinking about before Grady brought her up. She’s not the woman who once told me I’d make a great president. She’s not my fucking body and soul, so I ignore her because she’s nothing more than a warm wet hole I can drown in for a little while to numb my self-loathing.
My hand wraps around the door knob, but I stop. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I just don’t feel like having sex. With one hand, the nameless whore grabs at my dick, and the easy fuck jumps right up. Well, there goes the whole being good thing. Her other hand covers mine on the doorknob and we tumble into the room. She giggles, and if I didn’t already feel like an old-ass pervy fuck, I sure do now, and then she turns on the light. I’ve barely adjusted to the light in the room when a throat clears from the other end.
My heart stops immediately.
My lungs won’t work.
“Oh shit.” The words leave my mouth before I even realize I’ve said anything. I’m still processing what I’m seeing.
Amber Wallace.
My old lady.
My entire fucking world is in our bed. An angry scowl drags her brows together and has her mouth pinched up in the corner. Her reddish-brown hair is up in a messy bun that’s half fallen off her head, and her green eyes are trained on me like I’m something disgusting she stepped in. I don’t deserve that look, and it pisses me off. I don’t deserve the goddamn gift of having her here—even if she is pissed—and I sure as fuck don’t deserve to have her anger. I threw all that shit away a long time ago.
In a matter of moments, the last twenty years of my life flash before me. Everything from my bullshit teenage angst to the first time we kissed to the last time I had her naked and writhing underneath me. I work to fight the instinct to rush to her, claim her, and never let her go. I can’t go down this road again. I’m not Fort Bragg’s number two. I’m their president, and that means I have to keep my shit straight no matter how much I want to spend the next two weeks repenting for my sins, both of us naked and greedy for one another.
Amber’s arms are pulled up above her head, locked around the metal headboard with a pair of cuffs. She wiggles her wrists and grins at me, never breaking eye contact. She says, “Honey, I’m home,” like she me
ans it. But I know her better than to assume she’s really back. Not that it matters, because she never really left me. She’s always been here—in my heart—right where the crazy bitch belongs.
CHAPTER 4
Wyatt’s eyes harden in an unfamiliar way, and he tilts his head to the door as he says, “Out, bitch.” His eyes don’t leave mine, but I know he’s not speaking to me. Not that it would matter if he was, since my ass is handcuffed to this fucking bed. The stupid bitch doesn’t leave. My hating on her has nothing to do with her. It’s purely about the man before me—the man staring at me with such indifference that I feel even less significant than I did back in the day when he was screwing anything with tits.
“Maybe you’re hard of hearing, but my man told you to get the fuck out.” I bark the words at her but don’t take my eyes off of Wyatt. His eyes widen but just barely, and if I hadn’t spent so many hours over the years just looking into those beautiful eyes, I wouldn’t notice it. Before I let myself absorb the change in his behavior, I turn my attention to the woman at his side. She looks so angry that I think she’s going to charge at me. Her nostrils flare, her eyes bug out, and she’s breathing heavy. She thought she was going to spend the night with the VP but is getting her ass kicked to the curb.
“And who the hell are you?” she snaps.
A slow, steady warmth fills me as my lips curl up into a smile and I say, “I’m his old lady.”
When Wyatt doesn’t correct me, her shoulders slump and she slinks out of the room. She’s barely cleared the doorway when he slams the door shut and locks it. He’s acting strange, and I don’t understand it.
We stopped being us before Zander was born, but we’ve seen each other a handful of times since then. Each time begins and ends the same way—with my man walking toward me and scooping me up in his arms. He takes my mouth and palms my ass and tells the entire world that his old lady is home. And then he drinks a bottle of whiskey, fucks me until I pass out, and when I wake up, he’s higher than a kite. He doesn’t talk to me until he’s good and wasted and can’t remember anything. He always asks about Baby Z and I always tell him about our son and with tears in my eyes I tell him I want him to know our boy. And then he does a couple of lines, downs more booze, and promises me that we’re going to be a family.
And it’s over when we start fighting because he starts making unreasonable demands that don’t make any sense. And no matter how much I want my son to have his father, Wyatt ends up detoxing out of town in a cabin somewhere, and I always hope he’s going to reach out once he’s clean and sober, but he never does.
“You think this is cute?” he says with a nod to the handcuffs.
“Yeah, don’t you?” The sarcasm in my voice can’t hide the shakiness. There are a few things I don’t doubt—that the two best people on this planet call me mom, and that this flawed man loves me, the kind of true, deep love that consumes you, and that I love him impossibly more than that. Except now, in this moment, I’m questioning that second one. We don’t engage in small talk. Actually, we don’t really talk at all. We’ve never needed to. We were always better at showing how we feel through touch.
“What do you want? I got shit to do,” he says without an ounce of emotion in his voice. I have to swallow all the love and hate and fear that threatens to spill out of my mouth while he’s so . . . blank.
“Well, uncuffing me would be a solid start.” I nod my head at the table where Diesel left the key. “Your guy Darius seems to think I don’t uphold my end of a bargain.”
“Diesel cuffed you?” A smile graces his face, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it since we conceived Piper. I miss his smiles. Truth is I miss everything about him except his not-so-fucking-little chemical dependence problem.
“No, asshole. I cuffed myself. Thought it’d be fun to hang out in your cum stains for the evening.”
He moves one foot in front of the other so quickly that I don’t realize he’s thrown himself on the bed. He’s hunched over, his fists and knees planted in the mattress. Wyatt is every bit a predator with his narrowed eyes, calm, even breaths, and taut muscles that would intimidate most men and excite every woman on the planet.
“In this clubhouse, with this club, you are my property. I don’t give a fuck where you go or what you do, but goddamn it, woman, when you’re here, you’re gonna act right.”
Oh. Fuck. No. My heart rate speeds up and a thin sheen of sweat covers my forehead. I feel gross having been stuck here for hours, but more than that, I just feel pissed off.
“I may be your property, but you represent me, and no man of mine fucks some whore in my bed.”
He inches closer, his fists flanking my legs. His eyes have a laser focus that sends a shiver down my spine. It doesn’t matter how much of a jackass he is—he still affects me the way he always has.
“Bitch, you need to watch yourself.” His words are laced with an angry warning that might scare other women, but I was raised by a man far less loving than Wyatt, so they fall short with me. My man knows how to fight, but I think he’s forgotten who taught him how.
He continues to crawl up my body. I purse my lips and wait until my knee is perfectly aligned with his amazing dick. I fight the urge to tell him what I’m about to do is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt him. I don’t make a habit out of lying to people, so I’m not about to start now. In all honesty, I’ve been fantasizing about this for years.
I take a deep breath and clear my mind of every reservation I have about sending his ball sack up his ass and throw my knee straight into his dick, but he’s picked up on the move. In the last second before I make contact, he shoves his huge-ass arm in between my legs, forcing my knee to the side and into his hip instead. He palms my ass, giving it a rough squeeze, and settles his undamaged family jewels in between my legs. His lips hover just an inch above mine, and his hair falls in my face. My wrists ache under the strain of my position—half sitting up and half lying down without a meaningful grip of the headboard railings—but I refuse to ask to be let up.
“That’s no way to treat your old man.” His warm breath washes over my face. He smells of whiskey and cigarettes but nothing else. He can’t have had much to drink yet, because his eyes aren’t bloodshot and he’s not slurring promises of love and devotion that he has no idea how to keep.
God, I just want to stab him with tweezers or something. One day I’d like someone to explain to me how I can love this man so much that my body physically aches to be near him but still want to force him to swallow his own tongue. He’s annoying, insufferable, and by far the absolute most difficult man I’ve ever met. He’s going to make me gray early, and that’s just going to piss me off even more. Of all the dysfunction in my life, Wyatt Strand takes the cake.
It’s on the tip of my tongue—the confession that I’m here to make.
“You teach people how to treat you,” I say. In my head, I’m telling him right now about Zander. In my head, he’s losing his shit on me because I’m still handcuffed and can’t get away. And I chicken out.
“Good thing I taught my son to treat women better than you treat his mother.”
My son.
I should have said our son. It would have been so easy to just say it. Except for the fact that I can barely breathe at the thought of telling Wyatt he has a fourteen-year-old son. You’d think with how many times I’ve told him about Zander that it wouldn’t be hard to do it now—except for the fact that he’s sober now, and he’ll remember this time.
“I can’t have this conversation with you,” he says thoughtfully. His eyes look are so much bluer now and his voice is rougher. The fight blows out of me, and all I have left is the sorrow in the pit of my stomach that never goes away.
“We have to talk about him.” There. Effort. “Like, we really have to talk about him.”
“Talk later, fuck now.” Wyatt cups my ass with his hand and kneads. I bite my lip, trying to keep silent, but it’s no use. A soft moan escapes me. I want nothi
ng more than to wrap my arms around him and never let go. But I’m still freaking cuffed.
“You’re not fucking me with these cuffs on,” I say.
He just lifts an eyebrow and smirks in such an incredibly sexy way that I’m left speechless. The few inches that separate us disappears, and Wyatt skims his nose along my jaw. My body buzzes with his touch. It doesn’t even matter how obnoxious or difficult he can be. I won’t deny him because I love him. Because the only thing worse than loving a man like Wyatt Strand is loving him from afar.
“Baby.” The word escapes my lips like a plea or a prayer, I’m not entirely sure which. I want more—so much more—but we really need to talk, and if things keep going down this road, we won’t be doing any talking. I tell Zander all the time that history repeats itself if you don’t learn from your mistakes, but maybe I should be taking my own advice, because with Wyatt and I—we don’t talk, and then when I’m ready to, it’s too late. Every single time.
I’m about to open my mouth when my man brings his lips to my neck. It’s second nature to tilt my head to give him more room. His tongue drags itself over a vein in my neck, from the bottom of my jaw all the way down to the top of my collarbone and back up again. Every hair on my body stands at attention, reveling in every tiny little touch I get and anticipating the next one. Being touched by him, like this, is the kind of gift that can’t be taken for granted.
“What are you thinking?” His breath is hot on my skin.
“I miss you,” I say as honestly as I can. “I miss us.”
“You left me,” he says, reminding me of something I’ve never once forgotten. “Walked out with your kid and left me.” He takes a deep breath and sits up. There’s a flash of regret in his eyes, and I can’t tell if it’s over a history that neither of us really wants to revisit or if this is something new. I don’t say a word as he pulls a key from his pocket and leans over me, unlocking the cuffs and freeing me from my prison. I laugh to myself at the thought of those cuffs being my prison. The only thing that’s ever really bound me is sitting in front of me with a grim look on his face and a sorrow in his eyes that I don’t know I’ll ever be able to fix.