by Stacey Lynn
I stood outside with my arms crossed protectively around my stomach for no reason except I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
The scorching kiss Ryker planted on my lips, the heat from his hands searing my cheeks as he cupped my face while he claimed me in front of the entire club, old ladies, and club bunnies, left my knees wobbling and mind reeling.
Women glanced at me. Their eyes raked my body from head to toe with a smirk on their lips that left me knowing exactly what they thought of me.
Not that I wasn’t used to it. I had been an escort in Jasper Bay for five years. A part of me had become immune to snap judgments and vicious looks from women on the streets. But seeing it in the Nordic Lords clubhouse, feeling it in every pore of my body from the club bunnies who I knew were thinking I was no better than them, left a cold and slimy feeling covering my skin as soon as I no longer had the protection or warmth of Ryker surrounding me.
Uncertainty began to sift into my mind and fill my veins, flooding my body from the tips of my toes and upward, rippling its way through my body, until my arms shook slightly from fear and the leftover shame of my life that I knew would never go away completely.
“Hey.”
I jostled to the side, wobbled on my feet, and replanted them to regain my balance from Liv’s friendly bump on my hips.
Her arm went around my waist and she tugged me to her. It wasn’t the same comfort as Ryker, but it was something.
I eyed her, not moving my face from the closed gates at the end of the parking lot.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?” she asked as her fingers dug slightly into my hip.
I ran a finger through my long and tangled dark locks, fidgeting with myself. Eventually, I shrugged. “I’m…” Hell, I didn’t know. So much had changed in such a short amount of time.
“Come on,” Liv said, removing her hand from my waist and grabbing onto one of my wrists. “I know just what you need.”
I followed her as she dragged me to the club’s firing range, not saying a single word as she prattled endlessly on about Daemon and how much she hated it when he left on a run or to do a job, but that she was slowly learning that the way to keep her mind off the worry was to keep herself busy.
“So you shoot something?” I asked, palming a small and comforting Beretta in my hands. It had been years since I’d held a gun. My dad and Liv’s dad, Bull, had taught us girls how to shoot when we were young, insisting that someday we might need to know how to use it. The cool metal chilled my sweaty palms—part from the humid summer air and part from nerves.
“It helps,” she said. Then she slid a clip into her own pink gun and aimed it at the target twenty-five yards out.
When I was younger, I had naively assumed my dad would keep me safe. Then I’d assumed Ryker would keep me safe.
But as I held the cool metal of the gun in my hand and loaded it, a strength came tumbling through me, replacing the uncertainty and fear from earlier.
It was time I learned how to take care of myself. It was time I no longer allowed myself to play victim to anyone.
I would never again let anyone take advantage of me the way Cain and the other members of Black Death had done to me.
“Fucking slick bastard.” I growled the words out, frustration lining every feature of my face as I scrubbed it and ran my hands through my hair.
Cain had slipped past us.
Again.
Three fucking days of trying to track the asshole down, and every time we got close, he beat us.
I was tired. I was hungry. I was horny.
And I missed Faith.
“Come on,” Daemon said, slapping a hand on my shoulder harder than necessary.
I turned and glared at him. My eyes piercing his with a serious “don’t fuck with me” look.
The dickhead grinned.
“We need to eat and head home. We’ll figure this shit out later.”
My head dropped back and my feet were firmly planted on the pavement as I straddled my bike. The sun was setting and the sky was filled with shades of oranges to purples. Had I been a chick, I’d probably call it beautiful.
But since I had a dick, the setting sun only reminded me that we’d spent one more day hunting Cain—and lost. Eating and sleeping had become a waste of time, a distraction that put us further behind the smart fucker who kept evading us.
We’d been to bumblefuck and back and all over the northern half of Minnesota, trailing Cain who was running but not going anywhere. None of it made sense. Least of all, the insane niggling in the back of my mind that continued to question—why in the hell was Faith or her mom so damn important to Cain in the first place?
My ass burned from the constant vibrations of the road.
And I needed a serious shower.
But Daemon was right. We needed food and it wasn’t like we could do anything about Cain now.
I opened my mouth to tell Daemon that he was right when his phone buzzed in his hand.
He looked down at the screen with one eyebrow arched.
“Who is it?”
He ignored me and answered the call. “What is it?”
As he listened to the caller’s voice come through the line, Daemon’s eyes darted to mine. Then he froze. His jaw tightened, and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the phone tighter. My chest tightened in response to his instantaneous reaction.
“Tell me you can track her phone, Xbox.”
Her. My hand went to my chest and pressed in hard, trying to relieve the ever increasing tension. It felt like someone had put my ribcage in a vice grip and began squeezing mercilessly. My other fist tightened on the handlebar of my bike as I continued to watch… silently helpless at whatever phone call Daemon was getting.
Liv’s been shot. The memory of the words Daemon had spoken to me only a few months ago rang through my mind as Daemon’s growl into the phone became indecipherable.
And all I could do was stand next to my bike, rubbing the hole in my chest filled with pain and impatience while he barked orders into the phone at Xbox to get his technological genius ass on whatever he was supposed to be doing.
He hung up the phone, lowered it to his side, and looked at me.
My eyes stayed trained on the phone in his hand. His knuckles still gripped it as if he wanted to shatter it into a million jagged fragments.
Pain sliced through my chest up to my throat and the hair on my arms stood on ends.
Time might have stopped when Daemon opened his mouth.
“Faith’s gone.”
Four Hours Earlier
With my legs propped up on a worn, leather couch in Daemon’s living room, I munched on handfuls of popcorn while mindless reality television about an ink shop blabbered on in the foreground.
Lockdown from the club was horrific.
Gut-wrenching concern every time the phone rang for the last three days while I couldn’t do anything to help—couldn’t do anything except sit around and hang out with Liv and sometimes Jules—was worse.
My fingers and my hands and my mind all itched to do something. Anything.
Yet there I sat, a beer on the floor next to the side of the couch, a bowl full of heavily buttered and even more heavily salted popcorn in my lap, while I lay out on the couch like a sixty-year-old man.
“We need to get drunk.”
I grabbed the beer and dangled it from my thumb and middle finger, letting it rock back and forth. “We’re on it.”
Liv rolled her eyes, but her eyes danced with unspoken and not-yet-acted on drunken regret.
“One beer isn’t drunken fun.”
“And I bet you’re going to tell me what is.” Placing the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, I swung my lazy feet off the couch and onto the floor. My shirt and short yoga shorts made a sticky-tacky sound as I shifted.
It was August. It was summer. It was hotter than Hades, and my clothes had gotten stuck to the couch from my lazy afternoon.
“Call Jules,
” I said. “I’ll watch Sophie and you two can go out.”
“Or her parents could watch Sophie and we can all go out. Do some shopping, get some martinis, maybe get our hair done, and pretend we’re classy and shit.”
I laughed. Leave it to Liv. Being from biker families didn’t make us classless. Liv had more class in one hand than most women carried in their whole bodies. She just covered it in chilled out, ripped denim and Harley tanks because she was that awesome.
I took in my own lazy day appearance. Stained gray yoga shorts, a yellow sweaty tank top, and chipped nail polish on my toes because I no longer had to look perfect all the time. My hair looked decent, but only due to the copious amounts of dry shampoo I used to make it look less greasy. I was unwashed and unshaven—basically a completely sloppy mess.
But I was dying to get out of the house.
I opened my mouth to agree that I’d go out, at least for the shopping—a girl could always use a new purse or shoes, and maybe a new haircut—when a quiet tap hit the front door.
“Who’s that?” I ask, whipping my head to Liv.
She shrugged and picked up her phone. “No clue, but Finn’s supposed to be outside.”
The slight creaking of the old wooden screen door alerted us to the fact that whoever had been outside was now inside.
My eyebrows pulled together when a quiet, feminine voice called out, “Olivia?”
Olivia set her feet on the floor and used her hands on the armrest of her chair to push her up to standing. As she walked by me, she mouthed, “I think it’s Melissa.”
Which was odd. Melissa was not only not our friend, but she had been Daemon’s club bunny for a long time until Olivia came back into the picture. I had seen her around town for years, her cheeks almost always slightly bruised, which I knew came from her asshole of a father.
I reached out to clean up my popcorn and empty beer bottle and was halfway standing when Liv returned to the living room with Melissa on her heels.
Melissa’s blonde hair hung down the sides of her face, parted directly in the middle and hid half of her cheeks. I knew what that meant.
My blood immediately began thrumming in my ears. Any man who would hurt any woman—especially his daughter—should have a reserved seat in hell, as close to the eternal fire as possible.
“Hey,” Melissa said, looking at me for a split second before she looked down at the floor, effectively cutting off any more eye contact.
“Hi, Melissa.”
She opened her mouth and then shut it. I shot Liv a “what the hell” look as I made my way to the kitchen. Whatever Melissa was there for had nothing to do with me.
Washing and rinsing out the popcorn bowl, recycling the beer bottle, and pretending to scrub the already clean kitchen counter, I delayed my return to the living room filled with hushed voices for as long as possible.
When there was nothing left I could do to stretch out the time, I headed back to the room, my feet trudging quietly along the slick kitchen floor.
My jaw dropped as I hit the doorway to the living room and saw Liv, crouched on her knees in front of the coffee table, and Melissa sitting on the other side, the edge of her butt resting on the couch I had vacated.
Paperwork covered the table in front of them.
“What’s all this?” I asked as I entered the room. Both women turned to me, but Melissa’s bruised cheeks turned a different shade of pink before she glanced a way. When she did, she slide the edge of her thumbnail into her mouth and began chewing.
“Melissa wants to go to college.” Liv’s grin tilted up slightly higher on one side. Her eyes flashed wide before she nudged her head in Melissa’s direction.
“Wow.” It was all I could say, but my feet closed the distance and I took a seat on the couch next to Melissa. “Getting out of town, huh?”
I smiled so she knew I was being friendly and happy for her. And I was. She was a sweet girl and always had been. It certainly wasn’t her fault she was born to a loser mom and an asshole dad.
We could relate that way, I figured. Shutting off the line of thought that hit whenever my mom was brought up, I reached out and grabbed a stack of papers.
“FAFSA?” I dragged my scrunched eyes to Liv.
“Financial aid.”
I arched a brow, my fingers absentmindedly fidgeting with the corners of the thin, cool paper.
Liv glanced at Melissa before returning her eyes to me. “I told Melissa that if she wanted to get out of town and go to college, I’d help her figure it all out.”
My eyes snapped to Melissa, who refused to look at me. Her fingers alternated between tapping the paper in front of her and playing with her the ends of her hair.
I knew. I knew the hesitancy she was dealing with. The fear that was wrapping its tendrils around her already fragile and shattered heart while some quiet voice spoke inside of her, telling her to flee, telling her she could do this.
My nose stung and I sniffed away the tears that threatened to grow in my eyes.
Instead, I sat back on the couch and threw an arm around her waist, pulling her to me.
She stiffened in my arm, but I pulled her closer and held her tighter.
“I get it,” I told her, my voice quiet, almost as if I was terrified of scaring away the frightened little rabbit.
But I was. And so was she—the frightened rabbit.
And I knew that with certainty while I looked at her because I saw me in her. The fidgeting of the hair and the fingernails. The inability to look someone in the eye. The way her shoulders slouched and her toes tapped mindlessly against the carpeted rug in Daemon’s living room. She lived her life in fear every day.
This step—this attempt at freedom—was the single most amazing and bravest step Melissa would ever take.
I knew that because it was how I felt the morning I allowed Ryker to drag me out of his room at the clubhouse, plop my ass in a stool, and feed me.
Melissa slowly relaxed into my arm as my hand that was wrapped around her waist squeezed her tight. “It’s so brave of you to do this,” I whispered against her cheek. Liv pretended to ignore us as she flipped through paper after paper, but I knew her ears were perked in our direction even if her eyes were glued to the stack in front of her. “You’ll do great wherever you go.”
Melissa’s chin trembled slightly. I dropped my arm from her waist and pulled back, allowing her the time to regain her emotions.
Smacking my hands on my knees, I pushed off the couch and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said, hitching my thumb in the direction of upstairs. Both Liv and Melissa glanced at me with smiles on their faces. One was proud, and yet one was still uncertain and shaky. “Call me when you’re ready for shopping, okay?”
“Got it.” Liv threw a thumbs up in my direction, smiled at Melissa, and started talking again.
The voices disappeared as I headed up the narrow and darkened staircase.
Quickly, I peeled off my sweat lined clothes and turned the water on in the bathroom. The warmth of the water and the pounding of the spray against my shoulders and my back erased the tension in my shoulders from worrying about Ryker. They’d only been gone for three days, but we hadn’t talked much. Every time we did speak, his deep voice was tinged with a tightness that equaled my own stress and worry.
Except below his, I sensed an anger and a need for revenge that rivaled my own hatred for Cain. Black Death had essentially left town weeks ago after The Nordic Lords, Daemon leading the charge, had annihilated their charter and their President, Hammer.
But that wasn’t where my mind went to as beads of slightly stinging hot water tumbled down my back, into the crevices of my behind, and down the front of my chest.
My hands in my hair as I massaged the shampoo into my scalp, I watched bubbles and water beads drip and roll down my chest, over the swells of my breasts and my nipples. My eyes closed, lost in the seductive tingle of the water on my skin, I saw two black eyes peering at me in my head.<
br />
Ryker’s eyes. The way they crinkled slightly at the outside edges when he smiled. The way they narrowed on my body when he raked them over my chest and body just days ago.
I felt his eyes on me as I stood underneath the water, my hands drifting to where Ryker’s had been days before, his firm, calloused hands roamed my body, tugged at my nipples, and pleasured my body in a way that only he could do.
My heart rate increased as my hands gripped my own breasts, pulling on my nipples, mirroring the way Ryker touched me.
I envisioned running my hands through his short black hair, tugging him to me, holding him against my skin as his lips and his unshaven morning shadow scraped against my tender skin. The way he woke me up by pressing his lips against my thighs, teasing me until he had placed his mouth directly onto my sex before licking.
I moaned, my fingers teasing myself the way Ryker had done for me. It wasn’t enough.
I needed more. I needed him. The only man who had touched me in such a reverent and awe-inspired way. My orgasm rocked through me quickly and fiercely. One hand of mine propped on the wall of the shower, one foot on the edge of the shower tub combo, as my fingers pressed against my clit, so close, but not nearly close enough to the perfect orgasm Ryker could pull from me.
When it was finished, and I only felt slightly satisfied, I knew I would never feel immense pleasure again unless it was Ryker’s hands or body doing the pleasing.
With that knowledge, I turned off the water in the shower, dried myself off with a towel, wrapping it around my chest, and grabbed another towel and did the same with my hair, piling it on top of my head so I looked like I was wearing a fluffy gray turban.
My slightly damp feet padded across the worn carpet into Ryker’s childhood room where I’d been staying for the last few days. The same room Ryker had been staying in since he’d been back in town.
His masculine scent cloaked the room and enveloped me in warmth and memories of good times in my youth every time I entered.
This time was no different as I traipsed across the room and headed straight toward a small bag of clothes I had brought with me. Clothes Liv and Jules had bought for me, yet they were perfectly me in fit and style.