“Oh my god,” she whispered, her hands clenching at the sheets.
He moved fast then, sliding down the bed, leaving kisses in his wake, but not pausing anywhere until his face was between her thighs. He lifted her hips to the angle he seemed to love, and his tongue came down on her clit, sliding through her cleft and pouring into her like lust made molten.
She groaned, her body grinding into his mouth as he fucked her with his tongue, just as urgent and hard as he’d thrust into her a few moments before. She felt naked, exposed, sure she’d fly to pieces, and she clung to the bed with her hands.
He moaned into her, devouring her, his pleasure and delight at tasting her—at tasting the both of them, mixed together—coursing through her with every movement of her body. She fought for words, to tell him that she loved it, that it felt amazing, that she wanted more, but she couldn’t find more than pants and whimpers and cries of delight.
She lost track of how many little, delicate, shuddering orgasms there were. They blended into each other, one plateau leading to the next as she gasped in each breath, coursing a little higher each time. He didn’t stop, didn’t let her rest, just suckled her clit a little harder, moved down and thrust his tongue a little bit deeper, his noises meeting hers, promising her that he loved what he was doing, that he’d do it all day if he needed to.
She wanted to come for him, she wanted to burst for him, spill into his mouth and let him lick her clean, but each time she thought she was done, she was sure this plateau would send her tumbling down, the sensations pushed just a little higher, a little faster, a little more electric.
Just before she came, the world went entirely silent. Her hips arced up into his mouth as though they’d been shocked, and she ground against him, feeling his fingertips dig into her skin, feeling her entire soul vibrate with the energy he’d pulled from her.
And then she did come. The world slammed back into her with a violent burst of sound and light. She bucked, wild and crazy, as the waves of pleasure rocked through her, and he seemed to know just when she’d had too much, when she was finally done, as he moved from the fierce suckling on her body to a soft press of the flat of his tongue against her body, soothing her, settling her. His hand on her stomach grounded her, let her fall back into her body, gasping and panting. He moved back up her body, landing on his side next to her, his head up on his hand. He wore a goofy grin, and when she had energy enough, she slapped his arm.
He laughed, pinning her hand up above her head. “What was that for?” He pressed a kiss against her lips.
“For being entirely too satisfied with yourself,” Ali said, but she couldn’t keep the smile from playing over her lips.
Alejandro cocked and eyebrow and laughed, kissing her again. “Maybe you didn’t notice. I lost track of how many times you came just then. That’s probably a record, even for me.”
“Were there a lot of girls?” She asked, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.
His face shut down immediately, the wall that they’d worked so hard to banish slamming into place between them again. He sat up, and began rooting around on the floor for his jeans.
“Alejandro—”
“No,” he said. “If you’re asking if I’m clean, I am. I got tested every six months. All the guys did. Piss tests, too, when we could. We didn’t allow guys to use heavy shit in the club, and if someone was sick, they needed to get healthy. We had too much going down to be messing with that. But if you’re just asking because you want to feel bad, or you want me to feel bad, about what happened when we weren’t together— Ali, I won’t play that game.”
“Okay,” she said, sitting up, wrapping the sheet around herself. “For me, it was just Bobby.”
“I don’t want to know this.”
“I need you to know it,” she said. She saw his shoulders stiffen, saw him fight and give in. He sat down on the edge of the bed again, but he didn’t turn to face her. “I was broken for a while. And he pulled me out of it. And I told myself that I loved him. Hell, I think I could have loved him if Kip hadn’t died, if everything hadn’t changed. But I always wished he was you. I would close my eyes sometimes, and hope that when I opened them, he’d be gone, and it’d be you leaning over me.”
“And then it was,” Alejandro said, still staring out the window.
“And then it was,” Ali agreed.
“When we killed Crocket’s old lady,” he started, and it was her turn to shake her head. “I listened to you, now you listen to me. What is it Cristina tells you all the time? Take your medicine?” He waited, and when she didn’t protest, he continued. “When we killed them, I thought, ‘That could be Ali.’ I thought, ‘That could be the woman I love.’ And yeah, I panicked, and I pushed you away for no sane reason. I took away your choice, because I was sure it was right. I’m sorry for that, Ali. Crocket— He was scared, for himself and for her, but they made their choice.”
There was a long silence, and it took everything she had, but she let it sit until he was ready to talk again.
“If we survive this, and we get rid of the Diablos Verdes, I’m going to do what I can to change things, mi amor. I don’t want more blood on my hands.”
She was ready to speak, but a loud bang downstairs made her heart slam into overdrive. Alejandro stood up, and pulled a weapon from God alone knew where. “Stay here,” he whispered to her, his voice low and tight, and then he was moving out of the bedroom.
Ali stayed put for a handful of seconds, then grabbed a button down shirt off the floor and pulled it on. She grabbed her own jeans, pulling them over her hips commando, wincing for a moment as the rough denim seam came into contact with her swollen and well-used pussy. And then she followed him.
Karen had poked her head out of the guest room door; Ali waved her back in. Karen rolled her eyes and fell into step behind Ali. They crept down the stairs as quietly as they could. Ali could feel Karen’s fingers clinging to her belt loops, and she smiled to herself, just a little.
She could see Alejandro in the kitchen, moving carefully towards the back door. He saw her then, and the expression on his face was pure anger. He started to gesture at her, but the banging came again, and he snapped to the wall. He glanced out the door, fast as lightning, and then she saw his shoulders relax, saw his entire body lose that snake-like tension that had poured through him as soon as he’d drawn his weapon. “It’s the guys,” he said. “Some of the guys who weren’t in the warehouse. Can I—”
“Yeah,” Ali said feeling her own tension level slide down a few notches. “Yeah, of course. I’ll make some coffee.”
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
Zig and Pitbull sat at Ali’s kitchen table. Slider was still in critical condition in the ICU. Most of the other guys had been killed in the shootout. Pitbull had been hit, but it had been relatively minor; the ER docs had patched him up, and then he and Zig had managed to give them the slip before Sheriff Hennesy got to the hospital to question them. “We gotta fly, Shakespeare,” Pitbull said, his eyes resting nervously on Ali. Big change from how he’d eyed her before, and it made Alejandro want to laugh at the same time that he wanted to rest his forehead down on the table and cry. To complicate things further, Turk had fallen into a coma. He’d made his preference known for Alejandro to take over as President when he was gone, but without the official transfer, he felt somewhat uncomfortable wearing the title of Prez. “We can’t stay here.”
Alejandro shook his head. Ali kept silent, passing out cups of coffee and putting cream and sugar on the table, and Karen had raided the fridge and started frying bacon and eggs, making toast, and chopping eggs for hash. “We can’t just turn this community over to the Diablos Verdes, either,” he said. “We’re no saints, but they’re killers.” He thought for a while, trying to clear the happiness out of his mind so he could focus. It was amazing, being with Ali, hearing her say that she was going to stick with him and find a way, no matter what happened. It left him feeling fuzzy, soft, smiling. That wasn’
t what he needed right now. He needed to be the rock-hard soldier who had tattooed his exposed chest rather than call a girl and tell her that he loved her. He needed to be strong.
“I say we give them the drugs,” he said, finally.
Pitbull and Zig exploded up from the table, both of them shouting and cursing. He stared at them, like Turk would have done, until they subsided down into their chairs. “It’s just us. We’re decimated. How many of them were there, Zig?”
Zig grumbled. “‘Bout ten, maybe twelve, by my count.”
“They destroyed us. Even if we call up to San Antonio, and more guys come… They’re the weekenders, the casual guys. They’d be slaughtered. I want this to end, and I don’t want any more blood on my hands.” He let the silence play out, and then he said the truth—what he knew they’d both hear. “Crocket’s old lady was enough. That never happens again.”
“But if we give up the drugs, Shakespeare—” Pitbull started, and it was Zig who put his hand on Pitbull’s arm, stopping the flow.
“It’s Prez now, Pitbull.” He turned his eyes back to Alejandro. “I know Turk had been talking about cleaning things up for a lot of years now. Maybe this is a chance to make that happen.”
“But the rest of the guys—”
“The ones who were making money off it are dead, or sitting here at this table. Slider will go either way, you know that. He’ll go along to get along. So I need to hear it from you. Do we clean things up with the Diablos, protect our community, and run the club Turk would have wanted? Or do we go in there, guns blazing, and die for nothing?”
He knew the argument they could make, the argument he could have made just a few weeks before. Die for nothing but honor, and honor was everything. Only maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there was something to having more than just your honor. To having something—someone—at the end of the day who could wrap you up in their arms and tell you they loved you and take you to such blazing plains of glory that you thought maybe your heart would stop.
Maybe there was something to that.
He watched as Pitbull ran through the options in his mind. Zig was already with him, watching him steadily, but Pitbull needed to take some time. He’d been in the club almost as long as Alejandro had, and it was going to be a change, thinking of him as Prez and not just as another guy in the club. And that was fine; Alejandro would give him the time he needed. As long as he came around eventually.
He jumped a bit when he heard Ali’s soft voice behind him, her hand touching feather light between his shoulder blades.
“Say you turn everything over to the Diablos,” she said, and he watched as Pitbull and Zig turned to look at her. “Suppose you do, and you let them take over. What do you know about the Deputies in the Sheriff’s office?”
Pitbull shrugged. “They’re decent guys, with families. They put up with Hennesy because they don’t see an alternative. If they get one, get a chance to stop it, I think they’d be happy for it. Especially if one of them got the star instead of Hennesy.”
Ali nodded, and Alejandro could see her thinking as she stood there, staring off. “And if Hennesy were gone, and we had some actual law protection in this town, the Diablos would need to find another place to cross the border. Am I right?”
Alejandro saw where she was going, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, baby, they would.”
“All right, then. You men figure out what to say to the Diablos without getting yourselves killed. I’ll deal with Hennesy.”
He glanced back at his men, and saw them both grinning. “You gonna make her official or what, Shakespeare?” Pitbull asked.
“Yeah, Prez. We gonna start calling her Prospect next?”
He reached back and twined his fingers through Ali’s. She put on her thickest southern belle accent and giggled. “I just don’t have a thing to wear with a leather vest, boys, but you’re so kind to think of me.”
Pitbull and Zig laughed hard, and Ali joined them, a rumble coming up from her belly that felt more honest than anything he’d ever seen from her. Well, outside of the bedroom, anyway. He mouthed the word “mine” at her, and she nodded.
“All right, boys,” he said, turning back to the decimated remains of the force that had come to Arroyo Falls just a few months ago to sort out what should have been a simple handover. “Let’s start planning what to say to the Diablos.”
***
When everyone had eaten their fill, Ali excused herself. There were a few things she’d need to take care of before she could put her plan into action.
The first call she made was to Travis Lathrop. It killed her to say it, but the program was done for. Maybe somewhere else, she would’ve been able to expose what Bobby had done and show the townsfolk that the Padres Knights were good men, at the core, and rebuilt what she'd lost. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not here. There were too many memories. And a lot of them were good memories, strong memories, proud memories. Of growing up with her grandmother, of being loved by that old woman until the day she died. But some of them were of Bobby assaulting her, of losing her sense of self so fully that she'd almost married a man she didn't love, and of her parents pushing her to do it so that they could rise in the social standings of South Texas. And she couldn't do that. She couldn't be that woman any more.
The check Lathrop had given her had a phone number on it. She tried that first, and when she got his voicemail, she left him a simple message. "Mr. Lathrop, this is Ali Owens. I wanted you to know that my circumstances have changed, and I'm going to tear up this check. I'm not going to be able to move forward like I'd hoped. Thank you for your faith in me, sir, and I hope that everything goes well for you. Thank you." And she disconnected the call.
She had to spend a moment wiping away her tears before she could dial the next number.
CHAPTER FIFTY THREE
She had to call back twice before Cristina answered the phone. "Ali?" She said in greeting.
"How bad was it, after I left?"
Cristina sighed. "Pretty bad. Your mother fainted, your father screamed at Carmac. Bobby turned shades of purple, and then he started asking people to get him a drink. There were reporters calling me all last night."
"Yeah, Karen warned me," Ali said. "I guess I made a mess of things."
She waited for Cristina to agree. She heard a sigh, and then heard some movement as Cristina closed the door to the room she was in and settled down somewhere. "Why did you do it, Ali? Was it because of Alejandro?"
"You remember when you kept asking me what I wanted?"
"Of course."
"I'm still not completely sure. But I know I don't want Bobby. At least, I don't want the life he's going to have. I don't want to live in the public eye, and I don't want to have to spend all day figuring out how to match my hat with my shoes. I want to go to the feed store in my shitkickers and take care of my horse and help some kids. When Bobby and I were going to do that together, I could deal with some of the other stuff. But he's turning into someone I never knew, someone I never wanted to know. And I kept waiting for him to switch back, to become that man that I fell in love with back in college. Only he never did."
"Did you feel differently once the Xanax wore off?"
Ali chucked. "I felt hung over as all shit, that's for sure."
Cristina laughed too. "You weren't supposed to take that many."
"Well, you told me to take my medicine."
They laughed together, light and easy, like they had months ago. Before Alejandro came back to town.
"Do you promise me that this wasn't because of my cousin, mami?"
There was so much sorrow and worry inside of Cristina’s voice that it plucked at Ali’s heart. “Why does it matter so much that I not be with him, Cristina? I know he lives a rough life, but I feel alive when I’m with him.”
“Because I introduced you,” Cristina cried out. “When he came to our cheerleading practice, I told you who he was. I let you flirt with him, I encouraged you to have a fling with him. And n
ow— If you’re leaving for him, if you’re with him, and something happens to you, that means it’s my fault. That means I killed you, and I can’t live with that.”
Ali heard her friend collapse into harsh sobs, and the sound twisted her heart into bits. She searched for the words she needed. “Oh, sweetie, I promise. I’m making my own choices. I’m not leaving for him—though I’m not gonna lie to you, I am with him, at least, at the moment—but I’m leaving because I need to make my own life. I left Bobby because it was the right thing not to marry him. And being with Alejandro right now— It’s the only thing in my messed up world that feels right.”
She listened while Cristina cried herself out. “No governor’s mansion for me,” she said, finally. She was laughing, but there was a bitter hint in her tone.
“Not unless you get there on your own,” Ali said.
“Wouldn’t that be a sight,” she said, and just like that they were friends again. Not as close as they’d been once, Ali thought, and maybe they never would be again. But closer than they’d been when she picked up the phone.
Don’t You Dare: A Bad Boy MMA Fighter Romance Page 65