by Kiki Leach
He grinned, flashing his teeth and I wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor like a box of ice cream left out in the sun. "You think you know me pretty well then, yeah, babe?"
"Erm." I tucked my hair behind my ear and turned my attention elsewhere to keep from being distracted by the absolute perfection that was his face. "I think I know you well enough to know that this little stunt between us can't last."
"It's no stunt, babe." He pointed down at my hand and nodded. "That ring on your finger is permanent; 'til death do us part and all that shit, and even after." His face didn't flinch and he didn't blink. I knew then that he was being honest and it scared the absolute hell out of me more than the black and white coiled snake tattoo that I knew graced the center of his back. "Now get your shit together and start packing up the little you came with." He tossed his hand toward my purse in the chair in the corner of the room and sighed. "We've only got this hotel room for another hour and a half or so, and I've gotta get back to the club before the boys start church later this afternoon."
I lifted my brows in surprise at that. "Church?" I asked him.
"That term we use for a meeting between the brothers, babe. I think I've told you about that shit before."
I chewed the inside of my cheek and nodded. "Oh yeah."
"Watch out." He bobbed his head and pressed his hand against my arm to gently shove me aside, then headed straight for the bathroom on the other side of the room.
As soon as he slammed the door shut behind himself and turned the lock, I thought about grabbing my purse and shoes, wherever the hell they were, and running out of the place without ever taking a single look back. But the fact was that we lived in the same city and knew too many of the same people. He knew exactly where my house was located right down to the street number and color of my garage; he probably knew just how many cracks lined my driveway all the way up to my front porch.
There was no way in hell that I was officially escaping him, not like this. If I wanted to get out of this mess that I had helped to create for myself, I knew that I had to suck it up, stop bitching about what the hell happened and why, and start playing by his rules.
At least for now.
Chapter Two
Roman
I leaned over the counter surrounding the bathroom sink and stared straight into my own damn reflection in the mirror. Jesus Christ, I was fucked. I knew it the minute I invited her out here and even long before that. But when she came out to the club last night with tears in her eyes, screaming and waving her arms and hands at me about how my idiot brother was such an asshole for screwing around on her in her own damn house and bed with one of the club whores, I felt as if I didn't have any other choice but to make up for that shit in some way.
And in all honesty, I invited her out here for myself too. Not just because I'm a selfish, son of a bitch or prick at heart, that's only part of it. But because from the moment Jeremiah first introduced me to her on the hottest fourth of July on record nine years ago, when she was just a wide-eyed nineteen-year-old girl filled with nothing but the hopes and dreams of being with that asshole forever, I knew that she should've been my woman instead of his. I was a hell of a lot better looking than that bastard, still am, and a hell of a lot older too. Not in comparison to my old man and his damn near teenage 'lady friend' at the time, but old enough to know that I shouldn't have been wondering what the hell those cherry colored lips of hers would've felt like wrapped around my twelve-and-a-half-inch cock when she first walked up wearing those shorter than short-shorts and that tight as hell tank top, with her head resting down on Jeremiah's shoulder and her hands tightly wrapped around that string-bean he called an arm.
I needed those hands wrapped around my arm instead, along with those sweet brown eyes of hers staring up into my face while I stared down into hers, beaming like the same kind of love-struck assholes we often made fun of back at the club, with my arm wrapped around her waist to pull her in close to me with never a thought of ever once letting her go. The woman was like an angel sent straight down from heaven; straight down from God Himself as a gift to mankind, still is. But sent straight down to a piece of shit, worthless motherfucker who never once deserved to call her his own.
I knew before she even had the chance to open her mouth that he wouldn't treat her right; that he would take every bit of her perfection for granted. Knowing that despite her anger and fears that he would screw her over, given his long running reputation throughout Culver City for treating women he claimed to care about like shit, worse than any brother from the club in 'pumping and dumping' and leaving them out to dry, that she would still care about him even while claiming to hate him because it was just who the hell she was. She was too good of a person for a jackass like him, too motherfuckin' intelligent and sweeter than a goddamn sin in the same way I often imagined those perky tits of hers to taste as I slid my tongue across and between them, sucked her rock-hard nipples into my mouth and tugged them between my teeth until she came.
Fuck.
I couldn't even bear to look her in the eyes when she finally told me her name because I was too damn tempted to ask her to say it a few more times, but slower and in a softer voice just so that I could see it roll off the tip of her tongue and between those plump, red lips of hers at the same damn time. I wanted to know just how the hell it would feel against the base of my ear as I lowered her to the bed and dipped my fingers into her silky brown skin, as she dragged her nails along the muscles in my back and gasped for air between sobs of joy and screams of ecstasy, while I slid myself between those warm thighs of hers and made myself right at home.
When I didn't respond to her in the way she wanted, which was at all, and instead looked down at the ground, at the beer in my hand or around the lake and at anyone else that walked even a few feet within distance of us, she lifted her hand to me, daring me to take it in my own. But I couldn't do it. Just the thought of even touching her made my cock go completely out of control inside my jeans. Any closer and I would've had her bent over the side of a nearby picnic table with her legs spread wide open and my tongue rammed against the soft, sweet opening of her slick, wet cunt.
She would never know any of that shit though, instead being convinced that because of my lack of response and care to get to know her as a person in the beginning that I didn't want a single damn thing to do with her. It didn't help that I pretended to be annoyed as shit whenever she decided to come around, or maybe it did. Grunting like a pissed off animal anytime she showed up out of the blue to spend time with my brother, excusing myself from the room whenever she decided to make herself at home right in the middle of our living room, and often wearing something so short and tight that my mind raced like a motherfucker with thoughts of my hands all over her body, squeezing her tits and cupping those rock-hard nipples as she suffocated the hell out of my kiss and sucked on my tongue. Shit like that often forced me out of the kitchen as soon as she reached high up for something in a cabinet or on top of the fridge while proclaiming to make dinner for all three of us, and insisting that I stick around to watch a movie right after that she had initially picked out for just the two of them.
I realized all too quickly during those times that it was her way of not wanting me to feel as if I was a third wheel inside my own damn house. Or her way of not wanting me to feel so damn left out with the two of them being together as a couple, while I was just some lonely asshole whose only comfort was booze, a random, nameless whore from the club from time to time, my brothers who were more like family to me than my own damn flesh and blood at times, and my '65 Harley Davidson. I've never had much else to satisfy me outside of those few things from the time I was eighteen, but part of me became convinced after a while that if I had her, she would be just enough of everything I ever needed and more. So I finally manned the hell up and toned down being such a dick, pushed aside whatever feelings I had of trying to be respectful to my brother and of his relationship and started responding to her in the gruff, hard
voice I knew women liked hearing from me right after she would say 'hi'; I'd even give her a small wave of acknowledgement just before taking off to the club for business and sometimes the pleasure I knew I would never get from her.
The best was when I started going out of my way to open doors for her because it benefitted us both; shit made me look like a decent person in her eyes and I got to have a nice long look at her from behind, and Christ, was she beautiful as all hell from behind. Shorts, jeans, skirts, no matter what the hell she wore with a pair of red or black heels, it was perfect; the woman was shaped like a coke bottle and had to know that her body made just about every cock in sight completely lose its shit. Though she wouldn't ever believe that I often qualified as one of those men who wanted their taste of her because of 'loyalties' to my blood. Shit, I couldn't even afford to be nice to her for more than a few seconds at a time over the years if only because I was sure as hell that I would try to turn it into something more, something I had often hoped she wanted from me in return but was never too sure. Jesus, my dumbass brother didn't know what the hell he had when he had this woman; what's worse is that in all the years they were together, all the time she could've spent being mine, he never once seemed to give a damn about any of it.
As she continued screaming in my face about him last night, I just let her, all the while knowing the reason behind her anger before she even showed up thanks to the text I had gotten from him earlier in the night about what the hell he had done. My brothers thought I was crazy as shit to let a woman who had yet to even see my cock in person lose it on me on my own damn property and right outside the front of the club; not even in the back of it like most of them often handled shit with their old ladies and 'random pussy of the month', but I didn't give a damn about any of it.
The truth was that I liked hearing her scream at me, though I would've preferred having her on my cock while she was doing it. But I liked when she got fired up with her arms going all over the damn place and her nose scrunching in confusion of what to say to me between deep breaths. I liked when her brows would flinch and small wrinkles would form between them as she tried glaring at me in the same way she often did my brother when she was pissed off.
I sure as hell didn't like the reason behind it, but if I could've calmed her down with just a simple kiss, placed my beer on the ground next to my bike and slammed her up against the wall of the club with my body, shoved my knee between her legs to separate them from each other, wrapped my hands around her wrists to keep them in place and slid my tongue across those sweet red lips of hers before dipping it between them just to get a single taste of her... If I could've done all of that and more to keep her from screaming out about that asshole, to get her mind and body completely focused on me and no one else ever again, I would've done it in less time than it would've taken for a single heartbeat to pass between us.
Instead, I cut her off with the suggestion of coming out here with me. And after clamping her lips back together and lowering her arms back down to her sides, she looked at me like I had two heads shaped like watermelons attached to both sides of my neck and asked me, "Are you're serious?"
I bobbed my head and eyed her up and down without saying another word in response. She fell radio silent and swallowed hard, then darted those almost too-damn-perfect-for-words dark brown eyes across the yard while shaking her head at me and smiling in a way that my cock couldn't help but react to it in front of her; though I tried like hell to keep her from taking notice, shifting positions so the bulge wouldn't be as visible as it pressed down hard against the crease of my zipper.
As that caramel colored hair of hers swirled around her shoulders in the wind, I sucked back the rest of my beer and just stared up into that perfect face, wondering just how in the hell any part of her -- every goddamn part of her could even be real.
Shit, she had no idea how much I wanted her on the back of my bike; no idea just how much I needed to know what her hands felt like wrapped around my waist, what her thighs felt like tightening around my hips as I revved up the engine and the seat hummed beneath us. She was oblivious to my need of knowing the feel of her breath on my skin in place of the wind that often slammed against me as I sped from one end of the city to the other without a single care in the world outside of my club and sometimes her. I was practically begging her to come out here with me like a bitch in heat the longer she stalled with an answer, taking her hand in my own, ignoring the swelling of my cock and balls as her soft fingers slid across my palm and her lids hooded with desire. An electrical current of some kind shot right through me then, like the feeling you would get after jamming a fork inside a busted outlet, and when her fingers stilled and her eyes shifted, I had no doubt that she had felt that shit too; maybe even a little bit more than me.
I tightened my hand around hers to keep her close, then tossed my beer aside, pushed away from my bike and stood right up to my feet. Her eyes traveled up past my stomach and chest, landing right at my face. When I matched her gaze with a smirk, she slid her tongue across her bottom lip, then sank her teeth into it and gulped. I knew right then and there that no matter what I told her next, she wouldn't be able to say no. And so I said for the second time that she needed to come out here with me while I handled some business for the club, and without another second of hesitation, she gripped the strap of her purse across her shoulder with her free hand and bobbed her head in agreement.
I didn't even bother telling my brothers that she was coming along with me to meet up with the Prez of the Crimson Devils MC because they would've had my ass for it. Rules are that when handling business with other clubs, especially during drop-offs, you're never supposed to bring outside people along with you. There's not only a chance that they could see something they're not supposed to and get killed, but there's a chance that if they don't get killed, they could take what they've seen back to someone who never needed to know about that shit in the first place and you could be the one who ends up dead.
But when it came to Colette, I knew she didn't give a shit about anything that had to do with my club outside of the whores often hanging around it. So after my business was taken care of, we rode out to the only bar I knew within the area that served the best but cheapest drinks to anyone willing to pay no more than five bucks a piece for them: a tiny hole in the wall named Dolly's just a few miles west of The Strip.
After heading inside and grabbing a pair of empty seats at the end of the bar, she ordered a gin and tonic along with a shot of whiskey. I ordered a beer on tap and two shots of tequila.
"I didn't know that you were much of a tequila man," she told me, her voice lifting as she eyed me with content. "I've only ever seen you drink beer, vodka and rum back at your house or out there at the club."
I rested my arms along the edge of the bar and shrugged. "You know the shit they say about what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, yeah, darlin'?"
She swung her hair over her shoulder and lifted the corners of her lips into a sly grin, then rolled her bottom lip into her mouth and sucked down hard as if she were imagining the taste of my cock right between them. It was some of the sexiest shit I think I had ever seen. "If only that were true," she said.
I bobbed my head at her and adjusted myself in the seat to keep my cock from making an unwelcome appearance in front of her, and snickered. "Yeah," I told her. "Yeah, if only."
After a few more beers shared between us and an entire bottle of whiskey that she seemed to enjoy the taste of a hell of a lot more than I had expected her to, she tugged at my hand and attempted to drag me out into the middle of the floor for a dance.
I sucked back the remainder of beer number I-couldn't-even-manage-to-fuckin'-remember by that point, and wagged my head at her. "No."
"Come on." The bridge of her nose wrinkled and she pushed her eyebrows together to show legitimate anger toward me. But instead, she just looked like a pissed off kitten. I couldn't help but find it sexy as hell. My cock couldn't seem to help it either. "There's n
o more than five people in here anymore," she said, turning her head left to right before focusing her eyes back on mine. "And that's including the bartender. Nobody will care that you can't dance, they're all drunk already."
I laughed aloud and tossed back my last shot of tequila. Then I wiped my mouth clean with the back of my hand, turned back to her and said, "It's not that I can't dance, darlin'."
"Then why won't you come out here with me?" She dropped her hands down to my thighs and shoved herself between my legs. My cock rose to immediate attention; the heat pouring from between her thighs shot straight into me like a goddamn fireball. "Just one dance, that's it, that's all I'm asking for. Just one." She curled her nails into my jeans and I dropped back against the bar, forcing her to lean in even closer. "Come on with me, Roman, please?" My name sounded like sex and sin rolling off her tongue and between those cherry lips; the shit made me want to suck every bit of her dry 'til there was absolutely nothing left.
"Babe."
"Please?" She blinked up at me and dipped her head forward. "You don't even have to move all that much, I can just move for the both of us. Here, it'll be fine. Come on." Come on. She rolled her hand beneath mine and with an ease that I let happen, she pulled me up from the stool and out into the middle of the floor between a set of empty tables and sprawled chairs. As the jukebox in the corner flipped to some piece of shit music I had never heard of before, she tossed her arms around my neck and started moving her body from side to side. Not knowing what the hell I was doing, because most women who danced with me never wanted to really dance with me at all, I snaked my arms around her waist and followed her lead as best as I could. She stared down between us, then leaned her head back to look me in the face again. "You're not terrible," she said, a half smile splitting those perfect lips in two.