Reaper's Promise: A Wild Reapers MC

by Kiki Leach

  "I don't remember asking you to pay for anything last night, but I'm STILL asking how and why the hell this all happened?!" I screeched; my tone was so hard and loud that he made a face at me and stood back. "Because there's no way in hell that I would've married you like this last night, drunk or sober!"

  Damn it, what the hell was I even thinking in coming out here to Vegas with him in the first place? And alone? Sure, Jeremiah and I were done for good after I had just so happened to come home from a late night run to the grocery store, only to find him with one of those MC whores named 'Cherry' of all things, and in a bed that I had paid for with my own hard earned money no less.

  But the minute Roman told me in that hard, gruff voice of his and with a certain look in his eye that I only ever saw in men who wanted to screw my brains out, that I needed to get my mind of off everything swirling around inside my head regarding his stupid brother and move on; and that going to Vegas of all places would help to do the trick, I should've walked right off of that compound just as quickly as I had stormed onto it to confront him about Cherry and the other club whores they often had laying around, hopped into my 1965 orange Mustang and sped the hell off, never to see him or his jackass of a younger brother ever again.

  But I didn't. Instead I got sucked right into that killer smile, into that lusciously deep voice that seemed almost too determined to make me feel like I was the only thing that ever mattered to him and ever would; sucked into all things Roman 'Brawler' Starvaski II and hopped onto the back of his bike with nothing but my purse in one hand and my lack of dignity in the other. As my shoulder length, caramel colored hair went flying out behind me in the wind, I tightened my arms around his waist and grazed the tips of my fingers against his rock-hard stomach. Then I closed my eyes and prepared for the unknown, never dreaming I would get so blackout drunk that I would wake up the next morning in a fleabag motel with him standing over me like a moving brick wall and calling me his wife.

  Of all the stupid things I had ever done after breaking up with someone, this had to be at the top of the list in being the absolute stupidest. If I could've kicked my own ass for what I had done, it would've saved a hell of a lot of trouble in other people doing it for me, which after getting back to the city, I knew would be coming soon enough.

  Roman leaned his head aside and glowered in response to my reaction, then finally said, "Well, you did, darlin'," referring to my agreement of marriage to him. "Both drunk and sober."

  Confused, I leaned back on my heels and folded my arms across my chest. "What the hell does that even mean? You asked me to marry you when I was sober, then plied me with shots of liquor to get me to say yes to you while I was drunk?"

  He shoved his brows together in ire, then jammed his index finger into the center of his chest and bent forward. "You really think this shit is all on me?"

  "What the hell else am I supposed to think?" I snapped. "You have very clearly managed to remember what the hell happened last night while damn near everything after showing up to this city is nothing but a complete blur for me, aside from maybe a few things."

  "A few things like what?" he asked me, his tone serious.

  I bit the inside of my cheek, a bluster of nervous suddenly filling my chest, and shook my head. "They don't matter," I told him.

  "They should."

  "They don't. Anyway, add to the fact that you're not even bothering to offer up any kind of explanation as to how we got here in the first place and why, which I'm sorry, makes me somewhat suspicious about your role in all of this, and here we are."

  He grinded his teeth together so damn hard that they were making harsh crunching sounds. He was pissed at me now, I could tell. But the reason behind his anger wasn't exactly something that I was able to fully comprehend, considering. "You know what, babe? Truth be told, the shit doesn't even matter all that much anymore, alright? What matters right now is that I asked you to be my wife last night and you said yes to me without ever even thinking about it--"

  "Which is the entire point!" I said. "I wouldn't have said 'yes' to a marriage proposal from you in my right mind last night and in Vegas of all places, which is almost too cliché to even admit aloud. Which means that you must've forced me into it, you had to!"

  He took a step forward and threw his hands down on top of the table, forcing the edge of it to nearly crack in half as the legs shook in their own version of fear. The muscles in his arms flexed, extending the width of his tats; his jaw clinched as his face became hard and his brows furrowed again. I dropped my arms and jumped back in both straight up fear of this man, and deep, unabashed arousal. My mind hated my body being so turned on by everything he did while my body just wanted my mind to shut the hell up already and get with the rest of the sexy as hell program.

  "Nothing that happened to you last night was forced in any way, shape or goddamn form, babe," he replied. His tone was stern and unflinching as his eyes trickled from my face down to my breasts. It was then that I realized I was still in my black skirt and matching tank top from the night before; one that just so happened to make my breasts look much bigger than they actually were thanks to the tight fit and an amazing pushup bra behind it. He darted his tongue between his lips while keeping his eyes focused on them, then brought them back up to my face and stood up straight again when he noticed me staring directly at him. "I need you to stop saying that shit as if you even getting on the back my bike last night wasn't something that you wanted just as much as I did."

  Just as much as I did?

  What the hell?

  "Now, I asked you to marry me last night," he went on, "and you said yes, end of fuckin' story."

  "Wait a second, hold on. It's not the end of any story. If anything, it's just the beginning of one -- Hey!" I reached out for his arm as he tried turning from me again and wrapped my fingers around as much of his bicep as I could. But instead of pulling him back toward me, he tugged me forward along with him just before stopping. I tripped over my bare feet and stumbled directly into his chest. It felt like falling into a pile of stones encased by plush bedding.

  Quickly, I readjusted myself as best as I could, then released his bicep, which had flexed inside my hand, and rested my arms and hands alongside myself to keep from reaching out for any other part of him; particularly the one between his thighs which felt like a giant steel rod the minute my thigh grazed against it.

  I cleared my throat.

  "We need to get this marriage annulled as quickly as humanly possible," I told him, hoping like hell to keep my voice from rattling with nerves in the process. "As soon as we get back to Culver City, I can have my friend Maxine handle this. She's been a top-notch attorney with one of the local law firms for six years now. And since she's known me for at least the last three of them, I'm sure I can get some kind of family and friends discount for whatever the hell she plans on actually charging us for it."

  He dragged his feet back and leaned against the counter near the stove. Then he shook his head at me while muttering a quick but quiet, "No."

  My shoulders dropped and I glared. "What?"

  "No," he said again, his response much louder and more firm this time.

  I guffawed. "You can't be serious, Roman, we can't stay married! I was practically engaged to your brother at one point for crying out loud."

  "That motherfucker never actually proposed to you, Colette," he snapped. That harsh truth brought me right back down to a reality I wished I had no longer been part of. "He never got down on one knee in front of you and asked you in the way that a man who gives a damn about marrying a woman is supposed to."

  "And I'm supposed to believe that's exactly what you did for me last night while I was drunk off my ass?" I asked him. "Got down on one knee and made everything so damn magical for me that I just couldn't bear the thought of ever saying no?" He fell silent for a second time and tightened his jaw again. I wasn't sure what the hell to make of his almost non-reaction this time, but continued anyway for fear that if I didn'
t, I would find myself more caught up in this mess than I had ever originally planned or wanted to be. "This just can't happen between us, okay? You are an on the run criminal--"

  "I've never been on the run from anything a single day in my entire damn life, darlin', alright?" he told me in a cool voice, as if I were crazy to make such an assumption about a well-known local criminal. Sexy as he was and maybe even a little bit out of his mind to think that this was in any way sane, I wasn't blind to the fact that the man had a record as extensive as the road was from here leading us straight back to Culver City.

  "Well, you're an outlaw," I said. "A one-percenter if I recall correctly--"

  "You do?" He grinned heartily and a thrill of something that I could only describe as being 'electric fire' shot straight through me like a lightning bolt and settled at the base of my core.

  I stopped to roll my eyes at him to keep him from taking much notice of it and continued. "Which means that you don't abide by the rules of any laws but your own and as a result, the cops could pick you up at any second for something that you've done."

  "Or some shit they think I've done, which has managed to be the case from time to time considering who the hell I roll with and how the hell we go about doing it." He sucked in a deep breath, pushing out his chest, and dragged his eyes from my face right back down to my breasts in the same way he had before.

  I noticed his muscles clench in every visible place on his body and the bulge in his pants enlarging by the second. I shifted my eyes across the room again to keep from practically drooling all over myself and muttered, "Whatever. The point is that I'm a school teacher -- and at Wayland Academy on top of that."

  He shrugged and carelessly looked aside. "So?"

  "So that plus anything you're planning on calling yourself this week doesn't exactly go hand in hand," I said. "I can't afford to have the cops banging on my door at three o'clock in the morning because of whatever might have gone down with you and your brothers or someone else at the club. And I can't afford to bail you out of jail in case you decide to do something stupid in terms of retaliation against another MC or anyone else who just so happens to piss you off."

  "We never get caught."

  "Famous last words," I said under my breath.

  "Babe, something that you need to know in being with me is that one-percenters are a helluva lot smarter than the regular motherfuckers who're always managing to get caught up in a shit storm because we have to be. They play by the rules and get fucked. We don't and never do."

  "Either way, I can't afford to be on the local news if and more than likely when something happens to go down out there that you can't keep under wraps or control." I paused as he deeply sighed in agitation and dropped his eyes down to the floor. Then I asked him, "Why the hell would someone like you want to stay married to someone like me anyway?"

  He lifted his head to stare me in the face again and narrowed his eyes in either confusion or annoyance this time. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about the fact that your club is always crawling with half-naked women often trying to get their piece of you and the others, so why the hell bother with me? Your brother couldn't--"

  "I'm not my brother," he replied.

  "Sure, but I distinctly remember hearing from your president during one of those 'parties' he once suckered me into showing up for that 'old ladies' weren't exactly welcome to them like the other women who were often known for giving themselves up to whatever brother happened to be ready for them at the time."

  He sighed. "Well darlin', regular club pussy doesn't seem to be giving me the same kind of pleasure that it used to anymore."

  I eyed him up and down in slight disbelief and held back the urge to chuckle. "And since when the hell was that?"

  He rolled the tip of his tongue against his bottom lip and while arching up the corners of his mouth into a sharp-toothed grin, gave me that same look of wanting to fuck my brains out. Though his gaze was so much more intense this time, around to the point that I was sure if his eyes had the ability to burn the clothes right off my body and onto the floor, they would've done so in less than two seconds flat.

  "Since now," he said, and in a voice so deeply and suggestively seductive that my stomach lurched and my mouth fell open in response. He chortled to himself and moved forward into my personal space, just as he always did without me even asking for it, then slid his index finger beneath my chin to close it. "You." He brushed his thumb back and forth across my chin, then glided his finger down the center of my throat and snickered at the wild pace of my insanely beating pulse.

  I gulped as my entire body tensed at the softness of his touch, as the muscles in my stomach tightened and the butterflies fluttering behind them spazzed completely out of control. My lips slightly parted to inhale the light sheen of sweat forming just above his brows and upper lip as he dipped his head toward me. And as the throbbing between my thighs returned and slid against my sex like the fluttering tip of what I wished had been his tongue, I closed my eyes for the entire length of a heartbeat and imagined his hand moving down between my breasts just before making its way directly beneath my skirt and inside panties. All I needed was for one of his thick, long fingers to slide deep inside of me and make itself at home. Just one reaching for my G spot and clit and forcing my heart to damn near stop where I stood right in front of him.

  Damn it, just one.

  Maybe two. Or even three.

  "I--" I started as my eyes flew open to stare up at him again. But he wouldn't let me finish, instead moving in closer and unleashing a harsh, thick groan that oh God, was so unbelievably sexual in nature that it pricked my skin and dared me to release an all too quiet moan just for the two of us. As his cock brushed against the back of my hand and between my knuckles, long, thick and hard, and dear Jesus was I desperate as all hell to know the taste of it on my tongue, I gasped and dropped back, then rested a hand across my chest to keep my heart from completely exploding right through it.

  I couldn't believe how much this man was teasing the absolute hell out of me and just how damn good he was at doing so. I knew there was no way he was serious about a marriage with me of all people, about starting a life together? Sex was practically a given, I could see it in his eyes just as I was sure he could see it in mine, feel it in the nature of his touch and straight down to the core of who he was as a man, in the thickness and hardening of his cock. But there couldn't have been much more to it than that. And considering what he had been used to for most of his life, I wasn't looking forward to playing house with him just for that reason alone.

  "I'm not going to be some kind of experiment for you," I finally told him.

  He placed both of his hands in front of himself and laughed aloud. "What, babe?"

  "You heard me," I said, breathing as slowly as I could and doing my damnedest to keep my voice from fading in and out as I spoke. Dear God in heaven, why the hell did he have to be so terribly sexy? Muscles upon muscles, a soothing voice, eyes that could see right through me, straight down to the core of my soul if I let him. And a giant, thick cock that could make me scream until my voice reached another octave or just gave out completely between thrusts. I shut my eyes for two seconds this time, then peeled them wide open and looked straight up into his deliciously chiseled face again. Damn, I was doomed. "I know that you want sex out of this."

  He wagged the tip of his tongue up and down against both corners of his mouth and rubbed his hand back and forth across his chin. "I wouldn't be opposed to it." His face darkened, becoming more serious than I had ever seen before.

  "Well, I..." I stopped to relieve myself of the lump building up in the back of my throat and gulped. "I'm not going to be that something different for you; that something outside of your usual, slutty norm."

  He stared down at me like a confused dog. "What are you talking about?"

  "Just what I said," I told him. "The facts are that you like an excessive amount of booze and cigarettes, p
robably before, during and after a random night of wild sex. You like Harley's, crime, guns and loose women, and I've never wanted any part of that life -- I've never seen the appeal of it."

  He bobbed his head. "Alright. So, what exactly appeals to you then, darlin'?"

  I blinked up at him and frowned. "What?"

  "What appeals to you?" he asked me again. "What do you like?"

  It was a question that I was less than prepared to answer, if only because I wasn't exactly expecting him to ask me about it.

  But after taking a few minutes to think in silence, I finally managed to blurt out, "I like the idea of having only one man to sleep with for the rest of my life and no one else."

  His brows quickly arched high up on his forehead just before lowering back to their normal position. I wasn't sure just yet if the expression of clear shock that crossed his face was a good or bad thing. "Alright--"

  "And I like a clean house and bed with fresh sheets in a variety of colors," I continued, "and home cooked meals after a long day of dealing with screaming children and sometimes their inept parents."

  "I could give you all that and more, Colette."

  I laughed aloud. "I highly doubt it."

  He lifted his shoulders, and in a tone so low and genuine that I almost caved into throwing myself on a silver platter right in front of him and offering myself up as a meal, he asked, "Why?"

  I looked left to right in a slight panic and quickly rattled my head. "Because you just can't," I told him, hoping he hadn't noticed the slight squeal of my voice. "It's not who you are as a person or as a man; you're not into any of that."

  "What am I into?" he retorted.

  I took in a breath while struggling to form a response. "You're into sheets that are plain, white and wrinkly," I told him, knowing damn well it wasn't good enough but continuing on anyway. "And you don't give a damn if they get dirty as long as you don't have to see it all piling up. I also know that you're used to eating out of paper bags around the bar at the club at 3am and drinking from whatever glass happens to be laying around at the time, regardless of if it was yours or someone else's to begin with, even if the bottom is covered in ashes and cigarette butts. I hate the smell of smoke unless it comes from a grill and I'm obsessed with organization, from the lining of my furniture against the walls inside my house, to the way I fold my laundry and stuff it all inside my drawers. You don't care what anything looks like as long as you don't have to deal with it for longer than a few minutes at a time."