by A Parker
But this? The softness of Samantha’s hips under my hands as I squeezed the meaty flesh there, the soft sighs escaping between her lips, the beckoning glisten of her pussy—this felt like winning.
I leaned over her and kissed her. Her tongue searched my mouth as her chest lifted and fell in labored breaths, her breasts crushing against me. She rolled her hips and must have felt my cock straining inside my jeans because she smiled and giggled coyly, knowing full well the power she held over me.
I trapped her hands over her head and held them there in one hand.
She smiled daringly up at me with rosy cheeks and parted lips.
I kissed her cheeks, her jaw, neck, collarbone, breasts, and released her wrists as I worked my way down the length of her stomach and past her belly button. Her stomach fluttered under my lips as I moved farther still, until I settled between her strong thighs and pressed my mouth to her pussy.
Samantha moaned.
I explored her with my tongue and she continued to swell up. I used my fingers to spread her open and find that delicious spot a couple inches in and up. Her breath hitched and she gripped the couch cushions beneath her. Knowing I’d found the prize, I teased her, sliding in and out while I suckled her clit and watched her breasts rise and fall as she fought to stay in control.
It would be a losing battle.
She whimpered and writhed until I gave her what she wanted, curled my fingers up, and fucked her until a cry escaped her and her legs trembled around me. She struggled to breathe, moaned my name, and squirmed to escape when I pushed deeper inside.
She was so damn sensitive. And tight. And glorious.
I straightened and unzipped my jeans. She sat up, her belly folding in a way that made me want to squeeze her flesh and savor her softness, and tugged at my jeans desperately. I stepped out of them and my boxers and plucked the condom from between her breasts.
I tore it open with my teeth and rolled it on. Samantha watched with dark eyes and bated breath.
Standing, I motioned for her to sit up. Like the good girl she was, she did as I said, and soon I had her positioned on her knees leaning over the back of the couch.
I put a knee between her legs and a hand on her lower back, pushing down. She arched for me and stuck her ass in the air. I slapped her hard. She muffled her cry in the back of the couch just as I gave her all of me. Her body tensed, muscles in her shoulders rolling, the line of her spine deepening, her fingers burying into the soft cushions on the back of the sofa.
I gripped her hips and held her down on me until she relaxed.
“That’s it,” I growled as her pussy gripped me. Fuck, she felt so damn good. “Take it.”
Samantha looked over her shoulder at me. “Please.”
Her plea shattered every ounce of self-restraint I had left. I lost myself in her. With my hands still on her hips, I held her in place and fucked her with abandon. Her come slicked the inside of her thighs, and her cries led me to the brink of my own climax, but I held on a little longer.
She clawed at the sofa in desperation. I grabbed the back of her neck and yanked her up, bringing her back flush to my chest. I held her there as I slid in and out of her, feeling her wetness and arousal as I reached around in front and rubbed her clit.
Samantha’s eyes rolled back and she rested her head on my shoulder.
She gave me what I was after almost immediately. Her second orgasm pushed me past the point of no return, and I let the pleasure sink its teeth into me.
Chapter 17
Samantha
My apartment was dark. Neither Jackson nor I had managed to make it off the couch in the last hour to turn the lights on or bother to put our clothes back on. We weren’t tacky with sweat anymore and I found myself grateful for the air-conditioning unit I installed two summers prior.
Without it, Jackson and I might have perspired until we were nothing but puddles of water on the apartment floor, and Toes might have drunk us up.
Jackson lay beside me on the deep sofa. My head was propped up on a pillow and he had his cheek on my shoulder. His left arm lay draped across my stomach, and every now and then, he’d reach up to play with my breasts.
I wanted the moment to last forever.
“I’m going to stay here tonight,” he said.
Smiling, I ran my hand up the back of his, tracing tendons and scars up to his forearm. “You don’t have to. I’ll be just fine. I have Toes to protect me.”
He lifted his cheek from my shoulder and met my eye. “I wasn’t asking.”
Sighing, I nodded. “All right.”
He smiled smugly. “That was easier than I thought.”
“I’m too tired to argue with you.”
“Glad I could fuck some sense into you.”
“Too bad it didn’t go both ways.”
Jackson chuckled and propped himself up on an elbow. “Do you have to go back downstairs at some point?”
“I should.”
Should and had to were two different things. I knew my team could run the bar without me. Sunday evenings were usually quieter than other nights because a lot of my customers liked to have family dinners at home in preparation for the new week ahead. Usually, I’d be able to cut a server loose and send them home early. Sometimes I could even let some of my kitchen staff go home, too. I suspected they were downstairs already making those decisions for me, and I didn’t mind. Running a good business depended on having good people I could rely on.
My father taught me that.
Jackson pushed himself up the rest of the way and leaned over to peer at the floor, searching for his clothes.
I studied the sharp line of his jaw, the way his pulse fluttered at his throat, and how there was no tension in the corners of his mouth or his forehead. Not in this moment anyway.
“We can take a bit more time up here,” I suggested.
He shot me a smirk with an arched eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“There are perks to being the boss.”
His chuckle vibrated the whole couch as he lowered himself over top of me, eyes flashing like a wolf’s. “Oh believe me, baby. I know.”
His hand moved back between my thighs, and I pinched my bottom lip between my teeth. There was something about the way Jackson touched me that made me feel like I was going to burst into flame. I wanted him, over and over, and as I lay there, he teased me, leaving his fingers inches from where I wanted them.
Impatient, I took his wrist and guided his hand down.
For once Jackson took orders, pressed two fingers inside me, and growled in my ear. “Good girl.”
Jackson followed me down the stairs into the bar about fifteen minutes before we were scheduled to close. Most of the tables were empty and the chairs had already been turned up. A group of four sat at the bar finishing off the last few mouthfuls of their drinks and picking at a shared bowl of peanuts, while an older couple made their way to the front doors and called goodnight over their shoulders.
Morgan, who was cleaning up behind the bar, looked up and smiled when she saw us coming. “Welcome back, you two. Did you have a nap?”
Jackson stretched and yawned, as if that was exactly what we’d done. When he reached his arms over his head his shirt inched up, showing his lean, muscular stomach and a couple inches of dark blond hair around his navel that disappeared below his jeans.
Morgan’s cheeks turned pink and she pretended to be very interested in wiping the already sparkling clean bar top.
“Slept like a baby,” Jackson drawled.
He took a seat at the bar while I went into the kitchens and said goodnight to my staff who were trading their aprons and kitchen shoes for their usual attire. Morgan came around back shortly after, still pink in the face, and told me everyone had gone for the night except Jackson.
“What were you two doing up there for so long?” she asked.
“That’s hardly an appropriate thing to ask me, Morgan,” I said.
She chewed the inside of her cheek.
“Are you seriously not going to tell me?”
“I’m seriously not going to tell you.”
Morgan stamped her foot, mumbled under her breath about how unjust the world was, and tossed her black server’s apron into the laundry basket by the employee lockers. “Well, I’m going to ask you again tomorrow afternoon.”
“You can go right ahead.”
She left out the back door. I stood by and watched her get in her yellow Beetle to make sure she would get home safe, and then I locked up and made my way back to join Jackson. As I made my way through the kitchen, I heard a chorus of other voices out in the bar.
Frowning, I came through the kitchen doors.
Jackson still sat at the bar, and he was surrounded by his other MC members. I didn’t know any of their names except for Mason and Brody. Everyone else had street names, like Toke, the billionaire baddie, and Tex, the ex-ranger.
I spotted a blonde-haired young woman standing beside Mason and grinning up at him.
Susan.
What were they all doing here?
Jackson stood when he saw me standing behind the bar like a deer in the headlights. He swept behind the bar and put his hand in the small of my back. “I hope you don’t mind that I invited them for a few rounds?”
I shook my head. “I don’t mind at all. I just… thought I was off work.”
He chuckled. “I’ll help.”
Together, Jackson and I poured pitchers of beer and fetched clean glasses. Everyone migrated to one of the largest tables in the bar, which sat sixteen people, and pulled chairs down to take their seats. Jackson fell heavily into the chair at the head of the table and pulled me into his lap, where I felt like I was on display for everyone to see.
Nobody seemed to think anything of it.
Susan leaned back in her chair with her beer and kicked her heels up onto an empty chair in front of her. Mason took the chair beside her, and she reached over to tap her glass against his. The one I knew only as Knox pulled out the chair next to Mason, and he said something that made the other two laugh.
Jackson wrapped an arm around me so he could tuck his hand right under my ass. “Do you know everyone?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
Jackson cleared his throat. “Fuckers, this is Samantha. Samantha, these are the Devil’s Luck assholes.”
A round of “fuck you, Jackson” echoed around the table, but they indulged Jackson as he introduced me individually to each man, and his sister, who I’d spoken to in passing in the bar for the past several years. She gave me a warm smile and lifted her beer, and we both sipped our drinks in unison.
“Sick of our boy yet?” Joker asked me. “Black Jack’s hell on wheels on a good day.”
I shrugged. “He’s a bit bossy, but aside from that, he’s all right I guess.”
Susan chuckled. “Bossy? Jack, are you going to stand for that?”
Jackson slid his hand in the back pocket of my jeans and squeezed my butt. “Anything she says now, she pays for later.”
The men laughed.
I turned neon pink and cursed him out of the corner of my mouth. “Can you please try not to humiliate me?”
Susan, who must have heard my plea, kicked her heels down from the chair she’d rested them on and leaned forward on the table. “Don’t mind us, Sam. We’re a family. It’s what we do. If you can’t laugh about it, it’s not worth doing.”
Mason snorted. “Is Jackson worth doing?”
The heat in my cheeks only intensified.
Jackson pointed a warning finger at his Vice President. “Watch it, High Roller.”
High Roller, or Mason, I wasn’t sure which to call him, lifted his beer to me. “He’s all yours.”
If there hadn’t been so many eyes on us, I might have leaned back and kissed Jackson. But all these people sitting around us made me feel a bit off kilter. I knew them as acquaintances—as men on the street I could go to if I was ever in trouble. I had made jokes with them before if they ever sat at my bar for a late lunch after a long afternoon on their bikes. I’d swapped surface-level conversations and eavesdropped when they happened to have business discussions when William was still alive.
But all of a sudden, it felt like these people were becoming something more to me, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.
They were technically criminals, after all.
They’d broken laws. Cut corners.
They’d hurt people.
Jackson had hurt people. Hell, he’d probably killed some too, especially while he was overseas.
I wasn’t sure what all this meant for my future, but as I looked around at the smiling faces of the men and Susan, I began to wonder what my father might think of me sitting at this table on this man’s lap.
Would he disapprove? Would he think it was just me trying to figure out how to survive? Would he tell me that this was a bad idea and it wasn’t too late for me to abandon ship?
Or would he see that I truly felt something for this man who made me feel as safe as my father used to?
I hoped it would be the latter because the thought of walking away from Jackson made my chest tight. I relished in the warmth of his hand on my ass and the steadiness of his muscled chest against my back. I savored the ease of his laugh as his friends pulled jokes out of their asses at his expense, and just for this moment, I pretended there was nobody in our world named Walter Bates.
Chapter 18
Jackson
A soft, steady rumbling sound woke me on Monday morning. My eyes fluttered open, and I blinked up at a popcorn ceiling. Beams of sunlight painted stripes on the ceiling, and I looked down to find a purring orange tabby wedged between mine and Samantha’s hips.
Stubborn bastard.
The cat had been vying for my spot on the bed all night long and wouldn’t take no for an answer when Samantha gently nudged him toward the foot of the bed. He’d walked his tiny little paws all over me, and he wasn’t a light cat. Each step felt like a tiny little bruise—especially when he walked on my actual bruises, still tender from Jim’s fists.
Toes opened his big amber eyes and stared unblinking at me.
I sighed, gave him a scratch under the chin, cursed myself for going soft, and slowly rolled off my side of the bed. The springs groaned softly beneath me as I stood but Samantha didn’t stir. She slept with her back to me, her black hair a splayed mess across her pillow, her breathing deep and slow. One long bare leg wrapped over the covers while the rest of her was hidden from view. After getting dressed, I moved around to her side of the bed, ran my hand gently up her leg to her hip, and leaned over to kiss her forehead.
“I’ll be back,” I promised quietly.
Toes crept right into the spot I’d just vacated, curled up, and purred even more obnoxiously.
I scowled at the cat as I slipped out of the room, crept through the living room, and let myself out of her apartment, making sure to lock the handle behind me. I moved down the stairs of the bar, which was empty and would be for some time still, and left through the back door so I could again lock the handle behind me.
There was no way I was leaving any doors unlocked in my wake.
Not with Bates out for blood.
Out in the lot, I hopped on my bike, revved the engine, and spat gravel as I screamed out onto the street and left Reno’s Well in my wake. It was too early for the roads to be all that busy, so I opened up the throttle and sped to my destination, Grant’s place.
When I pulled into the drive, Jameson was already there waiting for me. He stood leaning against one of the posts outside the front door, his ankles crossed, a cigarette pinched between his lips. When I got off my bike, he flicked his cigarette, crushed it under his boot, and walked toward me, his eyes hidden behind his dark sunglasses.
“You’re sure you still want to do this?” he asked.
I nodded. “Sure as shit. Let’s go. She’ll be starting her rounds in less than an hour and I want to make sure we beat her there.”
Jameson, or Tex, hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his black jeans. “Some of the others are having second thoughts.”
“Like who?”
“Knox.”
“It was Knox’s fucking idea.”
“He’s worried things will get out of hand,” Tex said smoothly. He was a man of control. Tex rarely lost his cool, and if he did, he had good reason. I always assumed his time as a Texas Ranger taught him to keep his head on straight even in the most tense situations. “Once we grab her, there’s no going back.”
I, on the other hand, did not possess the same level of calm that Tex did.
My lips peeled off my teeth in a snarl. “There’s already no going back. William is dead. What the fuck does Knox want me to do? Sit around keeping my leather seat warm while Bates rides around pissing on everything to mark his territory?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Get on your damn bike, Tex.”
Hogey’s intel proved true when Tex and I watched a pearl-white Range Rover pull into the parking lot behind the beauty salon. We’d parked in the shade of the narrow lane between two businesses, the salon and a Bubble Tea takeout restaurant, and I doubted Caroline Bates could see us on our bikes.
She got out of her car with an expensive handbag draped in the crook of one elbow. She walked on long, thin legs to the back door of the business, which she threw open recklessly. It slapped against the cinder block walls on the inside and slammed closed behind her.
“Charming,” Tex muttered.
We didn’t know how long we’d have to wait. All Hogey had told me was that Caroline did this little routine every Monday to collect payments from the local businesses her father allowed to stay open. I had no concept of exactly how much money they were taking out from under these small businesses, but even a dollar would be too much in my books.
About seven minutes after she went inside, Caroline emerged. She stopped when the door closed behind her to drop a wad of cash secured with an elastic into her purse. While we watched, she took a pair of sunglasses out of a case and slid them on her nose.