“Nope.”
“Mama?”
Karen shook her head. “Media. Reporters, newspapers. They all want the story.” There was a long pause, and then she pushed forward. “You talked about him trying to rape you.”
She groaned again, burying her head in her hands and pulling her knees up to her chest. “Oh, I really hoped that part was just a dream.”
“Can I turn the light on?”
“Sure,” Ali said. She covered her eyes, winced as the brightness filtered through her fingers, and then let herself adjust. There was definitely a sledgehammer inside her skull, but she’d had worse. Not many worse, true, but worse.
Slowly, as the pain filtered down to a level that she could manage, she opened her eyes. Karen sat across from her, sporting dark circles under her eyes. “What time is it?” Ali asked.
“Past midnight,” Karen said. “Can we talk about—what happened to you? What he did?”
“I guess,” Ali said, though her guts twisted up at the thought. That night— Bobby had been so drunk, and part of her wanted to excuse what he did as nothing more than that. But at the same time, it didn’t make it right, and it didn’t make it right that he’d just pretended it never happened. Yes, he’d stopped drinking, and yes, he’d been polite to her face since. But at the same time, Alejandro had thrown out something at the church about Bobby trying to ruin her business. Had he tipped off that blogger about the club helping her with the business? Had he been the one trying to run her out, to drive her back into his arms? If that was true, how could she ever bring herself to trust anything he said ever again?
“I’m glad you said it out loud, but saying it in church like you did…” She gave a low whistle that was entirely out of place with the woman who’d so primly commented on the looks that Alejandro and Ali had shared that day. “People are going to get excited about that. You might want to think about how you’re going to tell your story, or if you’re going to tell it at all. Have you talked to anyone else about what happened?”
Ali shook her head. The hammering hadn’t stopped. In fact, it had gotten louder. And it seemed—outside? Could that be right? She stood up, wavered a bit, and then got her feet under her. Holding on to walls and backs of chairs, she made her way to the rear door of the ranch. She’d made her way through the place in the dark of night so many times that it was no real trick now, though the floor seemed a bit more inclined to pitch over than usual.
Karen followed her. “You sure you want to answer that?”
“It’s not a reporter,” Ali said. She could feel Karen’s skepticism coming off her in waves, and she added, “I just know.”
She got to the back door and opened it. She recognized Alejandro’s frame, silhouetted against the dark Texas night. “I’m not ready to talk to you yet,” she said, ready to slam the door in his face.
“Ali, please,” he said, his voice low and scared, something she’d never heard from him before in her life. “I don’t know where else to go.”
It was an instinct; she would have let a wounded animal in, too. She stepped back, and let him inside as Karen turned on the kitchen light. She closed the door as Karen gasped. When she turned around, she saw that Alejandro was covered with blood. His shirt, his hands, his worn jeans, all black with blood. She wavered, and had to grab onto the chair to keep from going down.
Karen snapped into action, lifting his lifting his shirt to examine his abs, running her hands over his thighs, then his arms. “Is any of this yours?” His gaze was locked on Ali’s, and she snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Focus for a minute. Are you bleeding? Is any of this yours?”
Slowly, like a man moving through thick August heat, Alejandro shook his head. “No. Not mine.”
“Did you kill someone? Because she’s got enough in her life right now, she doesn’t need you bringing a storm cloud of hell down on her.”
He let out a stream of Spanish. Ali caught a few curses, and a few names. Names of the guys in the club. The ones closest to him. “The Diablos,” he said, eventually, when he’d run out of steam to swear. “They came to the headquarters we were using, outside of town, and I don’t know how they got the jump on the guys, but— Some of the guys are dead. A lot of them.”
Karen glanced at Ali, but Ali still couldn’t find any words. “Did you call the police?” Karen asked.
Alejandro nodded. “I had to. There was too much—no way to cover it up. So I called. But the Sheriff is in bed with the Diablos. They’re supplying his needs now. It’ll come down on my head sooner or later.”
“Is it safe for you to be here?” He finally turned his gaze to Karen, his brow furrowed in confusion. She huffed out a breath that made her bangs float up into the air for a moment. “Safe for Ali. Will they follow you here, or will the police come after her?”
His gaze snapped back to Ali like a magnet. “They already know where you live, baby. I thought—I was afraid they got you too—”
She was up and in his arms. “I’m okay,” she said. “Hungover from what Cristina fed me, but okay. Just don’t talk too loud, and I’ll be fine.”
He clung to her like a lost boy coming home, and she let him, but when he went to kiss her, she ducked away. “I meant what I said. I’m sick of everyone telling me how to live my life, giving no thought to who I am or what I want. You’re no better than Bobby in that.”
He gave her that cocky smirk that had made her swoon in high school and—tell the truth and shame the Devil, Gran had always said—it made her knees more than a little weak now. “But there’s lots of ways I am better than Bobby, aren’t I?”
She fought the smile that wanted to bend her lips. “You need to get cleaned up. You’re messing up my—” they both looked down, and she felt a surge of heat between her thighs. “My corset.” She’d come home in Karen’s clothes, and she’d passed out on the couch. She’d shed Karen’s T-shirt, meaning to switch into pajamas, but hadn’t gotten that far. She was wearing the corset and Karen’s capri pants. Her voice was thready and weak. Where their hips pressed together, she could feel Alejandro swelling, eager and hard.
Karen laughed. “Before you two drown in each other’s gazes, Ali, just tell me if you want me to stay the night or bow out now?”
Ali laughed, and Alejandro made a vague effort to mask the heat in his eyes. She turned back to Karen and took her hand, squeezing it tightly. “You’re welcome to take the guest room for the night, but if you need to get back to your uncle, I understand.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay,” she said. “I booked an overnight caregiver from the service, and if I go back now, I’ll pay the fee, but the caregiver will go. I could use the sleep.”
“That’s just fine,” Ali said. “Did you want to take a shower before bed?”
“No, I’m alright.” Karen eyed Alejandro one more time. “He needs it more than I do, anyway.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Alejandro said. “For looking after Ali when she wasn’t herself.”
Karen shrugged in the doorway. “I think she was more herself than she’s been in a long time.” She disappeared, and Ali heard her footsteps heading up the stairs and down the hall to the bedrooms. She turned back to Alejandro, and felt her heart pounding in her chest as she tried to keep her reaction to his nearness under control. The fact that she was standing in front of him in her wedding night underwear was not lost on her.
“We need to talk about what happened at the church,” he said, and she found herself shaking her head.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“That thing can’t be comfortable,” he said, tracing a fingertip down the soft satin that covered her stomach.
“It is, in a weird way. Makes it so I don’t have to fret about my posture, and that’s nice.” Daring swelled up in her, and she pressed her breasts together, watching his mouth open in longing. “Makes my breasts look amazing, too.” She gave Alejandro a look like she was really concerned about his opinion. “Don’t you think?”
&nbs
p; The sound he made was painfully close to a growl. “Do you want to talk, or do you want me to tear that thing off you?”
She considered for a moment, dragging one finger over the tops of her breasts where they swelled out of the corset. “Both?”
He came at her, fast and hard, like he always did, and this time she met his kiss, parting her lips when his tongue begged for her, and letting him dive down into her mouth. He was hard, swollen and hard already, and she ached at the thought of him pushing her open, filling her. Bobby tried hard, but he’d never managed to be the lover she wanted, especially after the second go-around with Alejandro. There was no passion in him, no drive. At least, not for her release.
She reached down for the hem of his shirt, and he leaned back to let her tug it over his head. But that somehow made the dark stains on his hands and arms even more obvious, and he sighed, pulling back and running his fingers through his hair. “Let me clean up first,” he said.
“I’ll help you.”
He chuckled dryly. “Baby, you follow me up to that shower, and I’m not sure that it’s going to be just my hands getting washed.”
She let her shoulders rise and fall in a liquid shrug. “So I’ll scrub your back.”
“You told your friend to stay.”
“So?” She reached forward and threaded her fingers through his belt loops, pulling him into a gentle sway against her, her heart throbbing with how forward she was being. “You’ll just have to be quiet so she doesn’t wake up.”
He laughed, his hands on her hips, the weight a pleasant heat, even through all the fabric and steel boning. “Ali, it’s never been me that had a problem staying quiet.”
She pursed her lips and lifted an eyebrow at him. “I bet I can be quieter than you.”
His turn to raise his eyebrows. “I’ll take that bet, girl. You’re going to regret it.”
She laughed like a kid as she took his hand and led him upstairs to the master bathroom.
CHAPTER FORTY NINE
There is something different in Ali’s eyes, he thought to himself. She looked freer, stronger, clearer than she ever had before, even when they were kids and she thought they’d be together forever. He’d always known better. He’d known she was destined for someone better than him, brighter than him. But here she was, ready to fall into his arms all over again. He said a silent prayer of thanks and told himself that he’d spend the rest of his life figuring out how to be worthy of this gift. He’d clean up the Padres, if that’s what it took, or make an honest woman out of her, or whatever she wanted. He’d protect her any way she wanted. If she wanted.
His hands were covered in his friends’ blood. When he’d gotten to the warehouse, Zig had been holding Crapper’s hand. He’d never thought he’d see so much destruction in one place. So many men, their faces and bodies torn up by bullets. He’d seen violence before—that part wasn’t new to him. Not really. But his friends, his men, the men he should have been protecting.
He’d made Zig call 9-1-1. He hadn’t wanted to, but want he’d said downstairs was true. Even though he knew precisely how dirty the Sheriff was, there was no way to cover this up, not from his end. And some of the guys were still breathing. If they were going to survive, they would need actual medical treatment.
While they put pressure on wounds with whatever they could find, the thought of Ali had finally flickered through his head. He’d been loud about their breakup, and the papers had been loud about the wedding, but that didn’t mean it had been enough that the Diablos would stay away from her. He had no idea where she’d gone after she’d left the church with the woman from the project day, but the ranch was the only place the Diablos would have known to look for her. If she wasn’t there, she was safe, and if she was there, she might need his protection. So he’d jumped on his bike and roared back through town for the third time that day.
Zig had understood. Zig had told him to go. But he still felt like he’d needed to abandon one love to look out for the other.
He pushed it out of his mind and focused on scrubbing other people’s blood out from under his fingernails. Ali was sitting on a small bench, watching him. He surveyed his face in the mirror to keep from falling into the delicious cleavage the corset created. He felt her eyes meet his in the mirror, and he wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Strong jaw, prominent cheekbones, ruggedly handsome? What did she think of his wind-tanned skin, his dark eyes, and his smooth cheeks?
“I’m thinking about how incredibly handsome you are,” she said, responding to the thought he hadn’t voiced aloud. “And wondering why you chose me.”
His hands were clean now, and he’d gotten the smears off his face and cheeks. He turned to her, and let the light and the love she inspired in him shine through to his eyes. “Because you’re brave and strong and beautiful. You make me want to be worthy of you.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Ali stood, letting her hips sway just a little bit extra as she walked toward Alejandro. “I didn’t leave him for you,” she said quietly.
He nodded. His hands were folded in front of him, his fingers tight together. “I know.”
She took a washcloth from the cabinet, wet it, and started to wipe off the smears that had hit his neck, the backs of his arms, the places he couldn’t see. “I left for me. So I could find my own self.”
“I understand.”
“I want you in my life. But that’s not the same. You understand?”
“I do.”
She let the silence speak for her for a bit as she ran the cloth over his body, cleaning away the dark splashes and smears of the darker life he led. He’d shucked off his jeans on the way upstairs, and he stood before her in his boxers, his cock eager and hard, but his hands were carefully neutral, letting her do what she needed to do before he moved. She liked that. Appreciated it. She ran her hands over the tattoos, the ink that had somehow not faded, even though he’d had the work done ages ago. But then, their feelings for each other hadn’t faded either, had they? They’d intensified, deepened, matured. But they’d never managed to fade. Sometimes, she thought it would be better if they had. Easier.
She let the cloth fall away, and traced the planes of his body with just her hands. Everything had been so frantic, so urgent with him, she’d never taken the time to get reacquainted with his body. As a girl, she hadn’t really known better, and now, he’d hardened over the time they spent apart. The softness he’d still had in his late teens had melted away, replaced with firm lines, solid muscle, and a man’s confidence.
“You still like what you see?” he asked after a little while.
She looked up into his eyes, and saw so much contained within them. Love and lust, but darkness, heat, and a certain surety that he would do whatever was necessary to come out on top. To protect those he cared about. That was why he’d pushed her away before, and why he’d come back to her.
“Can you stay the night?” she asked.
He paused for a little while, something quiet settling over his features before he smiled. “If you want me to, baby.”
She leaned up into him, pressing her lips to his in answer.
His restraint held for just a moment, and then he was in rapid motion, fast and hard. He scooped her breasts out of the cups of the corset, bending down over her and licking the rapidly-hardening peaks as he pushed her back against the vanity. She spread her thighs, making room for him, and he lifted her up, depositing her butt on the sink. She wrapped her legs around him and sighed as he took her nipple into his mouth, suckling it hard, grazing it with his teeth, while the other hand twisted and teased at her other nipple. She was dripping, soaking, and she let herself shift against him, enjoying the sensation of his thick heat pressing against the seam of her body.
“Remember,” she gasped. “Quiet.”
He growled into her skin, and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying out. “Make sure you remember,” he said. He lifted her again, and the capris slid down her hips, which he tossed
into the corner. “Happy wedding night, Miss Owens,” he said.
At first, she was shocked he’d say such a thing, but she saw the calculation in his eyes. She gave him a grin and wrapped her legs around him again, tugging him one layer closer to her core and watching his eyes burn. “I don’t think I’m ever getting married, Alejandro. I want to be my own woman, and I don’t know how to do that unless I’m on my own.”
He gave her a smile that was softer than anything she’d seen on his face since he came back into her life. “I understand that better than you think,” he said. “This is on your terms, Ali. It always will be. I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe, and if it gets too dark, then you walk. But I’ll trust you. I should have in the first place.”
She ground against him, feeling the heat and the electric surge of her body in response to him. “Bedroom,” she said. “Now. Right now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, and she laughed as he picked her up and carried her into the room. He tossed her on the bed hard enough that she bounced, and she giggled a little. She rolled onto her stomach and reached towards the nightstand to turn off the bedroom light, and then felt his hands on her hips. “Oh, that’s nice, Ali. That’s very nice.” She felt the press of his cock—he’d shed his shorts by now, she was sure of it—against the thin fabric of her satin panties. They were bright white, matching the corset, and something about her bent over like this for him, on her hands and knees, his hands pulling her towards him as he stroked himself over her crease was shockingly intense. “Leave the light on. Do you mind?”
Don’t You Dare: A Bad Boy MMA Fighter Romance Page 63