She also said that night she was on the pill. But at The Iron Horse she stated it wasn’t always effective. Had she lied about being on the pill at all?
No matter what, he had only expected to sit, drink and watch Jayde from a distance as she danced with the club sisters. Then he planned on going back to his room at church and whacking off at least once to that memory.
But when she continued to tease him from across the room and then again in a dark, hidden spot outside the large tent...
When she got up on her tiptoes and took his mouth, shoved her tongue inside, then ground her belly against his hard dick as a sexy moan bubbled up her throat...
There was only so much a man could take.
Especially since she had been the fodder for his daily whack-offs for years.
Finally, when he got to sink into her soft, wet heat...
Fuck.
And that was after he got to taste her sweet, silky honey. Something he hadn’t forgotten to this day.
He closed his eyes and drew his tongue over his bottom lip in remembrance. The oxygen left his lungs and his dick twitched in his jeans.
Fuck.
When she whispered, “Linc,” on a shaky breath and touched his thigh, he stiffened, and his eyes popped open.
He brushed her hand off. Her touching him was going to make it harder for him to keep his head on straight. “Who knows?”
She dropped her hand back into her lap with her other one and stared out of the windshield. “No one yet. I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Well, thank fuck for small miracles. There may be a way out of this mess yet. He steeled himself for what he said next, “Ain’t telling nobody. Getting rid of it.”
She gasped, and her head spun in his direction. “No. I... No. No, Linc.”
He shook his head. “Gotta, Jayde. Got your life ahead of you, this will fuck up your plans of finishing law school and shit. You can’t. We can’t.”
The woman wanted to finish law school. To pass the bar and join Kiki’s firm as a partner instead of just an assistant. This would fuck everything up. She had big dreams. She needed to follow them. She didn’t need to be tied down with a kid.
“I could still finish school,” she whispered.
“How? Law school is fuckin’ expensive. How are you gonna pay for that if your daddy don’t do it for you?”
“I’ve been saving... Kiki...”
He shook his head. “You’ll be disowned, Jayde. Your father... Hell, your brothers...” He swallowed hard and tried a different approach. “Being a dad ain’t for me.”
“How do you know? Look at Diesel.”
“Jewel is D’s ol’ lady.”
“So? You think that makes a difference?”
“Fuck yeah, it does!” he yelled. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then responded more calmly with, “Yeah, it does.”
“Violet wasn’t planned.”
No shit. No one forgot the shocker of D going down like a tree in the middle of a Redwood forest. “But they got a connection. They were together before she got knocked up.”
“And we can be together after.”
He shook his head. “No. I live above church. You’re still living with mommy and daddy, for fuck’s sake!”
“We’ll get a place.”
“No.”
“Linc.”
No. No. No. He didn’t want to be the reason she fucked up her whole life. Saddled her with a kid. Dashed her dreams of becoming a lawyer. Made things rough between her and her family.
Just fuck no.
She would eventually regret it and come to hate him.
He couldn’t live with that.
She was smart. She should know this would screw up her plans for her future.
She was college educated, had career goals. Why the hell would she even want to have a kid with a biker like him?
He needed for her to see the sense in what he was saying.
“No, Jayde. Fuck no. This ain’t right. Don’t wanna fuckin’ kid and don’t want one with you.”
Chapter Two
Jayde lost her breath at his words. Her stomach twisted into a knot.
Don’t wanna fuckin’ kid and don’t want one with you.
She was stupid. Totally fucking stupid. She should’ve known that he wasn’t going to jump up and down with joy, then drop to one knee and propose after expressing his deep love for her.
What the hell had she been thinking?
He was right. This was a complete disaster. Even so, she hadn’t expected him to say that she should terminate the pregnancy. That had caught her completely off guard.
It seemed as though all the women in the club were either pregnant or just had babies. She had to admit, baby fever had swept through her. Though, she didn’t plan this. Maybe he thought she had.
Maybe he thought she was trying to trap him.
She wasn’t.
Yes, she’d been attracted to him from the first day she spotted him across the common room at church. He’d been a prospect everyone called Abe at the time. He’d been playing pool and his green eyes had followed her intently as she crossed the room on her way to see her brother, who had just been released from prison.
When Z walked her back out to her car, Linc had watched her every move then, too. She couldn’t ignore his heated gaze and it had made butterflies flutter in her stomach. And even lower.
Even though she’d been ordered to stay away from church, to stay away from the DAMC, to stay away from bikers in general by her father, she’d snuck over to the clubhouse time and time again. Just to see Linc.
To watch him. To talk to him. To be near him.
To breathe his scent. To hear his voice.
It gave her something to hold onto when she was in her room, in the dark, alone at night.
He’d been interested, too. At least until that fateful day the Warriors had shot up The Iron Horse during the club’s Christmas party. Linc had covered her with his own body, shielded her from the bullets and the flying shrapnel. Risked his life for her.
Because of that, she swore she fell in love with him a little bit that night. Then her father showed up and caught them together. Not doing anything except talking, but it was enough for him to go off on Linc, threaten to kill him if the man ever touched his daughter.
It didn’t matter to her father that Jayde had been in her mid-twenties at the time. An adult and certainly not a virgin. She was still her father’s “little girl.” Probably always would be.
Their father made sure his kids weren’t part of the DAMC and remained on the outskirts. Her father had dragged himself away from the club a long time ago. He’d decided to take a different path, and not follow in his own father’s footsteps. Especially after her grandfather, one of the founders of the DAMC, was killed by a rival MC.
Mitch Jamison had walked away and never looked back. He went to the police academy and stayed on the straight and narrow. Unlike his brother, Rocky, who, after dishing out retribution for Bear being killed, ended up in SCI Greene for multiple counts of murder.
Her father always said that he followed the light instead of falling into the darkness.
Mitch dragged her older brother Axel along with him toward that light, encouraging him to become a cop, too. He did. Both of them loved their jobs and did them well.
Then there was Zak...
Her oldest brother had patched into the club as soon as he could, despite their father’s disapproval. Became DAMC president at an unheard of early age, then...
Then he spent ten years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. For something he was set up for.
Now he was back at the head of the table and their father was livid about it. While Z worked hard to keep the club above water, both financially and legally, murder and chaos still managed to seep in. There always seemed to be cracks that her brother couldn’t plug. Rivals he couldn’t rid them of.
Like the Shadow Warriors.
Time and time again, tha
t outlaw nomad MC had wreaked havoc on the DAMC. They’d been a threat for decades.
So Linc was right, her father was going to blow a gasket because she was reckless and got knocked up by a biker whom he detested.
Maybe this wasn’t the best time for her to bring a child into their lives. But was there ever a perfect time?
Her hand pressed against her stomach as she dropped her head, letting her long hair curtain her face to hide the hot, hopeless tears that spilled down her cheeks.
A life had been created inside of her. A combination of two souls. A gift that Bella could only wish she could provide Jayde’s brother, Axel. And here Linc wanted her to get rid of something that someone else, like Bella, would take in a second. A gift she would cherish.
Maybe Bella and Axel could adopt the baby, raise the child as theirs if Linc didn’t want it.
Or Jayde could just raise the baby herself. Her mother would help, but her father would most likely make her life unbearable. Eventually he might come around, since he didn’t have any grandchildren yet besides Zeke. Though, stubbornly, he refused to give in and let Zak bring his son over to the house. Not that Z wanted to. Their mom even had to go behind her dad’s back to see her firstborn grandson.
Axel and Bella would never be able to provide grandchildren. Unless they decided to adopt. So one would think her father would appreciate the only grandchild he had.
Maybe her father would shut out her child like he did with Baby Z. He’d definitely kick her out of the house. She’d end up on her own, struggling to make it and provide for her own child.
Linc was right. She’d never be able to return to law school this fall if she had this baby. She’d never even lived on her own. The only time she’d lived away from her parents was during her first four years of college, which they paid for.
Her father even bought her a fucking car!
What the hell was she thinking? She was now twenty-eight years old and ended up being one of those adult children that still lived with their parents and relied on them for everything!
She was no better than one of those basement dwellers, who lived in their childhood home, that her and her friends made fun of on dating apps.
She was such a loser.
And now the only man she truly wanted to be with was pissed.
Her body hiccuped as a sob ripped through her.
Holy shit! She was going to ugly cry in the car sitting next to Linc. Her mascara was going to run, her eyes and nose were going to get red and puffy, and...
A large hand grabbed her chin, lifted her face and turned it toward him.
“Sorry, baby. Didn’t mean to make you fuckin’ cry. Just shocked the shit outta me.”
She sniffled, keeping her eyes tipped downward. “No, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”
“Fuckin’ Jayde. Ain’t all your fault. I fucked up by not being prepared.”
“I pressured you. I—”
“Woman,” he said softly, stroking a thumb over her cheek, cutting through the stream of tears. “Didn’t do anything I didn’t wanna do. And I wanted to do you.”
And I wanted to do you.
“It was just sex,” she stated flatly, staring at the center console.
“Yeah.”
“And now this.”
“Yeah. Gonna deal with it.”
Right. Deal with it. A few hundred dollars later their “problem” would be solved.
The ache in her chest increased and she rubbed at it. He captured her hand and dragged it into his lap, squeezing it.
“Jayde, want you, baby, I do. But this shit... This ain’t the way to go about it. When you aren’t under your father’s thumb, we can revisit it. Until then...”
“Until then, you want to get rid of the evidence of our mistake.” The disappointment of this decision—one she hadn’t expected to come from his mouth when she had showed up at The Iron Horse—washed through her. It made her heart thump in her chest and the tears fall even faster.
“Jayde, baby. Only want what’s best for you,” he whispered.
Her eyes flicked up to his face. He feared her family. Maybe rightly so. He only wanted what was “best” for her. Sure he did.
“Bullshit,” she bit off. “Bullshit, Linc. You want what’s best for you.”
“Got no future, Jayde. You do. Don’t got a college degree, a big career planned. Know what I got? This fuckin’ club. My sled. A room above church. That’s it. I’m a fuckin’ bartender in a fuckin’ biker bar. Can’t offer you anything. Got shit.”
“You have me. And now this baby.”
Linc shook his head. “Been dancing ‘round each other for years. Finally fucked once. That shit don’t make a relationship, Jayde. It fuckin’ don’t. Don’t make good parents, either. Trust me, I’ve seen it with other folks.”
She lifted her head and brushed away the hair that clung to her damp cheeks. She studied him through blurry eyes. He was right again, damn it. She didn’t know much about him besides his time in the club. She had no idea where he came from or anything about his family.
He knew everything about hers.
She could understand why this news would scare the shit out of him. All three male Jamisons—her father and her two brothers—would want to kill him. They would see it as defiling their little sister and daughter. They wouldn’t understand that she had wanted to be with Linc as much as he’d wanted to be with her that night. They would lay the blame solely at Linc’s feet.
Jayde would be the “poor innocent girl” that Linc took advantage of. That wouldn’t be fair to him.
She knew he’d been buzzing the night of Hawk and Kiki’s wedding reception. She had taken advantage of him while he was weak. Not the other way around.
She would need to make sure her father and brothers knew that. She needed to make that very clear.
She had mistakenly thought once he had a taste of her, he wouldn’t be able to resist her anymore. He was wrong on one thing. They hadn’t been dancing ‘round each other. No. He’d been keeping her at arm’s length for a while.
But they’d hooked up almost two months ago and since then, nothing. Not one text, one call, nothing. She gave. He took. And then he didn’t look back.
“Jayde,” he murmured, and she tried to focus on his face in the limited light. Though she couldn’t see him clearly, she knew what he looked like only all too well. His tightly trimmed hair, the color of maple syrup, his intense moss green eyes. His strong jaw. His numerous tattoos, which seemed to have exploded in number once he patched in about three years ago. He’d let Crow do what Crow did best. Linc had given the tattoo artist free rein to practice on him. So now Linc had two full sleeves and the night of Hawk and Kiki’s wedding Jayde saw what was hidden under that T-shirt. Solid tats. Over his chest and stomach. His back sported the colors of loyalty and family—the DAMC rockers and center patch—like all the rest of the fully-patched brothers had. His legs—when she had seen them two months ago—made up of long and lean muscle were almost tattoo-free except for the barbed wire tat that circled one ankle.
“Baby,” he murmured again, stroking his thumb gently over her cheek.
She had stopped crying because tears weren’t going to help their situation.
“If you weren’t who you are, then shit would be different. But you are, and it ain’t. It’s never gonna work.”
“Because of my father and my brothers.”
“Yeah, ‘cause of them. Might not have a college degree but I’m not stupid.”
“I know you aren’t. Hawk always says you have a lot of smarts and have a good head on your shoulders. That you run The Iron Horse like it’s your own and you manage it well.”
Linc grunted.
“If it wasn’t for you, he’d still be tied down with the bar and unable to spend more time with Kiki and the baby. Kiki’s grateful for you, too.”
“She say that?”
“Yes,” Jayde whispered. “She said Hawk wants to rely on you more, especially since her
firm is busy as hell and he needs to step up with Ashton.” Kiki had just come back to the office after giving birth to their son Ash about a month ago and was finding it a struggle to leave the baby unless she left him in Hawk’s care. Especially since the Warriors still existed.
Linc grunted in answer again.
She sniffled and smiled. He was so like the rest of his club brothers. He had fit in perfectly, even when he was only a prospect. There was never a doubt he’d become a DAMC brother. Not one.
He slid his thumb over her lips. “That’s it, baby. Need to smile, not cry. Fuckin’ beautiful when you smile.”
“So are you,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Nothing beautiful about me.”
“If there wasn’t, you wouldn’t have caught my eye.”
Linc sighed, wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck, squeezed, then pulled her face to within inches of his. Even in the dark his gaze was intense, searching. “What’re we gonna do, Jayde?” he asked in a rough whisper.
“Have a baby,” she answered just as softly.
With that, she closed the small gap between their mouths, pressing hers to his. He didn’t fight it. His only reaction at first was his fingers digging harder into the muscles of her neck.
His lips opened, and he took over, kissing her hard, tilting his head to tighten the connection, to make sure he could explore her whole mouth. Their tongues tangled, and he captured her moan before giving it back to her.
The fingers at her neck slipped into her hair and, grabbing a fistful, he yanked her head back and kissed her even harder, crushing her lips. Blindly, she reached for her seatbelt and unfastened it. She climbed to her knees on the seat without breaking the kiss, their tongues now sparring. His other hand dragged down the front of her throat, over her chest until he cupped her breast over her shirt. Then his fingers found her puckered nipple and twisted it through her clothing. She gasped, breaking the kiss, and tried to pull her head back, but he wouldn’t let go of her hair.
“Fuckin’ Jayde,” he murmured against her lips. He snagged her bottom lip between his teeth and tugged gently before releasing it. “That fuckin’ mouth. Fuck.” He shoved his face into her neck, his breathing coming rapidly as he scraped his teeth down her throat, along her pounding pulse.
Down & Dirty: Linc (Dirty Angels MC Book 9) Page 2