by A. E. Fisher
“Get on your hands and knees,” I ordered, loving the small flicker of fight in her eyes before she conceded, the lust winning her over.
I reached into my bedside drawer, pulled out the bottle of lube, and squeezed it over my fingers.
I chucked the bottle on the bed, and using my free hand, I splayed it over her ass cheek and pushed it to the side, giving me more access to her ass. My two fingers went in slow, her body trembling as I pushed them deep inside her ass.
During sex, I had been slowly getting her used to her ass being played with, and now she welcomed the feeling of my fingers as I moved them in and out, her muscles relaxed and responsive to my touch. “This ass is mine tonight,” I promised, adding a third finger to widen her.
Anna’s body trembled, either at the feeling of my hand or the anticipation of what was to come.
I kept moving my fingers in and out of her, reaching with my other hand to play with her clit, forcing her to relax as I made her wider and wider, accustoming her to roughly what she was about to get.
“Wolf,” Anna moaned, her ass meeting my fingers for my quick thrusts. “Put it in.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. Satisfied with my preparation, I lined myself up behind her. I placed one hand on her hip and the other one splayed over her back, keeping her steady as I pressed my tip into her crease, lube oozing out of her hole. “Take a deep breath,” I ordered, waiting until I could feel her ribs expand under my touch before I began to push in.
Anna’s breath immediately rushed out of her as I gently thrust, keeping my pace steady as she regained her breath, her ribs falling in deep, slow breaths. “Keep breathing,” I urged, nearly all the way in as she let out a soft whimper at the tightness.
“I’m all the way in,” I announced, my voice hoarse as the feeling of her hot anal muscles tightened around me.
“Shit,” Anna groaned, shifting slightly and making my dick twitch. “You’re so big.”
“Thanks.”
“Fuck off,” she hissed.
I waited until I felt her fully relax around me, her breathing back to normal. “I’m going to move,” I said, waiting for her nod as I slowly began to pull out, making Anna gasp and then moan in the process until I was almost all the way out.
I was slow and steady with each thrust, letting her get used to the sensation until I heard that hot little moan. “Harder,” she groaned, her hands curling into the bed sheets.
“Fuck,” I hissed, unable to hold on to my restraint as I began to move faster, Anna meeting my thrusts pound for pound.
I could feel her as she neared the edge, her thighs trembling and her moans becoming short, quick stutters. I reached down between us, feeling my own end approaching, found her clit, and pinched.
Anna cried out, her muscles squeezing around my dick as her orgasm rocked into her. I thrust twice more and pulled out just as my hot cum sprayed over her bare back, the white color glaring out against her red, blushing skin.
Exhausted, I dropped down beside her and dragged her limp body on top of me, too hot to even bother pulling the sheets over us.
Anna’s eyes were closed in pleasure as she panted softly against my chest, about to fall straight to sleep after our workout, when I heard her soft, nearly incoherent voice.
“Happy birthday,” she grumbled and then fell promptly asleep.
Happy fucking birthday indeed.
Chapter Eighteen
Anna
I woke up a few hours later with my property jacket draped over my shoulders, alone and naked on Wolf’s bed. I looked up, my ass twinging, and saw that Wolf’s clothes were gone. I also noticed that my skin was clean and figured Wolf must have wiped me down after I passed out and went back to the party.
Fucks me in the ass and then leaves me all alone.
Bastard.
I sighed—my annoyance short-lived because I knew he was probably dragged back to the party—and stretched, probing the feeling in my ass and determining that, despite being a little sore, it was manageable. I looked around the room, seeing the normal duffle bag of clothes I usually left on the chair in the corner was gone. It took me about five minutes of rooting around before I found my clothes hung on one side of Wolf’s wardrobe.
My heart felt funny, which I promptly squashed—it was just wardrobe space, for God’s sake—and pulled free a pair of comfy leggings and a long shirt. My boots were on the bottom, which Wolf must have also taken off me after my amazing new experience, and I put them back on.
I was about to leave the room when I saw my property jacket laid on the bed. It’s too late to back out now, I thought to myself, grabbing the damn thing and putting it on, pretending to hate the way my back straightened with pride before stepping out into the clubroom.
The room was still filled wall to wall with people, and when I checked the clock, I realized that I had only slept an hour or two at the most, meaning the party was in full swing.
I felt like I was snaking endlessly in and out of people, and yet, my search for Wolf came to no avail. I did find Julia, however, who was having her fun with Jax as he dragged her upstairs to his bedroom. I hoped she wasn’t using my game with Wolf earlier as a reference to thinking Jax’s kind of kink would be fun. There was an extreme level of difference between handcuffs and Jax’s S&M.
I would have laughed at the thought if a sudden dose of cold beer hadn’t hit me. I spun, furious that the beer was dripping over the leather of my jacket, and turned on the assailant.
“Shit, babe,” the guy gasped, blue-green eyes looking down at the damage he’d done. “I’m so sorry about your jacket. Here, you can use mine if you’re cold,” he said, pulling off his denim jacket, revealing a curling snake tattoo reaching up to his forearm, bright red eyes glaring back at me as he held the gray jacket out toward me.
It took a second for my guard to go up. This party was only for club members and affiliates, and yet this guy had just poured his beer over my property jacket and treated it like a minor mistake. The property jacket of this club’s president’s old lady.
“You’re not meant to be here,” I growled, deprioritizing the condition of the cut as my hackles rose. My voice must have dripped poison because the guy flinched in surprise as I called him out.
His innocent, apologetic expression turned to cold ice in a flash, and I didn’t get the chance to scream as he shoved his hand over my mouth and pulled me against him.
My heart raced as the adrenalin kicked in. I lifted my leg, about to show him that he messed with the wrong fucking girl when I felt the tiny prick in my side and my blood ran cold.
“You’re a clever girl,” he whispered in my ear, the Russian accent I knew too well clear in his voice. “Now, I’m going to let go of your mouth before someone thinks something’s up, and you’re not going to scream, you got me?”
I nodded into his hand, the knowledge and information about what Wolf had found out from Charon swelling in my brain. This man was a Black Jack. No doubt about it. There was no way Pipe would have let him in unless...
“What did you do to Pipe?” I growled the second he freed my mouth.
“He’s indisposed,” he said, and the indifference in his voice made me think Pipe was in more trouble than I thought.
My eyes darted over the man’s broad shoulder, looking for anybody for help, but there were too many people here to find any of the brothers, and the people around me didn’t notice my distress. To everybody else, it would have just looked like he was talking in my ear. I was on my own.
“Why are you here? What do you want?” I demanded.
“Everything else we’ve tried hasn’t worked. We needed to take extreme measures.” His voice was calm and collected as he kept the knife poking a hole through the thin material of my shirt.
“You won’t gain anything by taking me hostage,” I growled, my eyes looking over to the bar, where I saw the crowd part, revealing Wolf, Jasper, and Polo sitting on stools, beers in their hands, drinking.
; I begged the universe to make Wolf look my way as his eyes began to glaze over the room like they always did, and for a second, I thought they’d passed over me. But then they didn’t. His brown eyes did a double take as his eyes met mine, and a breathtakingly happy smile transformed his rugged face.
Relief flooded my body, and at last, I thought I was saved.
“I’m not taking you hostage.” For a second, I could swear his voice sounded sympathetic.
Then he plunged the knife into my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pulling the knife out and walking away.
My whole world seemed to slow as my eyes became impossibly wide, stuck in a transcended moment of pain where time just waited. It waited for me to etch the smile on Wolf’s face as he moved toward me. It let me savor the way he walked with confidence and purpose, like I was his only goal. And last of all, it tortured me by allowing me to witness the painful moment of devastation when the crowd between us parted and his eyes dropped to the red soaking through my shirt and dripping into a puddle on the floor. The moment when my man’s world came crashing down around him.
Wolf’s roar cut into my slow world and everything came rushing down on top of me.
I collapsed to the floor, hitting the ground long before Wolf could reach me, as screams and sudden shouting exploded around us.
“Anna!” Wolf’s broken voice yelled as he slid to his knees, his hands shaking above me as his brain tried to process what he should do.
He chose to press down on the wound, and I expected it to hurt, but instead, it just felt cold. A freezing, chilling cold swept through my veins as drowsiness took hold.
“Pipe,” I breathed, my tongue suddenly feeling too heavy to move. “Check on Pipe.”
“Don’t talk, Anna,” Wolf snapped, his eyes flicking to my face as he tried his best to offer me a controlled, confident smile through the tears rolling down over his big, rough Russian’s face.
I became aware of someone else dropping down by my side, but I didn’t have the energy to waste looking at who it was.
“Ch-check on Pipe,” I insisted, my breath soft and staggered through my chattering teeth. “C-crap, why am I s-so cold?”
“You’re going into shock, but you’ll be fine,” Wolf reassured me. “You’re going to be fine.” He took my hand, his other bloodied fingers brushing the hair out of my face.
I could feel my consciousness sinking and tried to fight tooth and nail to stay awake, while Wolf begged me to keep my eyes open. But my fight was fading.
“Kiss me,” I blurted, the urgency to touch him, to feel him, suddenly overwhelming all my senses and thoughts.
Wolf shook his head, his eyes glazing. “No,” he growled through clenched teeth. “I’ll kiss you tomorrow. I’ll kiss you the day after and the day after that. Not now.”
“Wolf,” I hissed, my words taking way too much energy than they should. “Kiss me,” I pleaded. “Kiss me now.”
I saw the conflict in Wolf’s eyes as he fought to be stubborn.
But he took too long and my eyes closed, the darkness reaching to take me in its grasp.
And then warm lips pressed against mine, and despite everything, I could taste his scent of expensive whiskey and cigarettes and remembered wishing it would never end.
It was the last thing I felt before my world fell into silence.
Chapter Nineteen
Wolf
It had been a long time since I last prayed.
I suppose it would have been natural for me to have lost faith in God after Sasha and the children had died. But that’s not why I stopped praying.
I stopped praying because there was nothing for me to pray for. After leaving Russia behind, I had nobody to pray for happiness with, nobody to ask God to look over... nobody to ask God to protect. To save.
I squeezed my fingers tighter. The overlaid fingers almost turning blue from the force of my hands pressing together, veins pronounced in my arms, head pounding from the thickness of my blood churning in my veins as I pressed every ounce of will in my body in the hopes that my prayer would be heard. That if my will was strong enough, if it made my voice just that little bit louder... that it might be heard.
Don’t take her. Don’t take another one. Not this one.
The words were like a vicious cycle in my head as I was torn between the past and the present.
Images of Sasha and the children were throwing themselves at me, the memories of their funeral, of their unidentifiable bodies in that small satin coffin overlaying where Anna lay in the hospital ICU bed. It was like a superficial weight on my chest that made the simple effort to breathe almost unbearable.
I could barely stand to look at her, but at the same time, I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
No matter which brother or woman told me to go home and rest, there was no one who could move me from that hospital chair. I was barely functioning, and it had taken a lot of coaxing just to get me to change my shirt. My other one had been covered in Anna’s blood, and so were my arms.
Kay had been patient with me, though, using a wipe to clean the blood away from my skin. But my arms itched like it was still there, reminding me how it was still under my nails and in the cracks Kay had missed. My woman’s blood.
Guilt churned at me. Guilt telling me that I should never have had that party. I should never have let my guard down, that this was my punishment for doing so.
I knew it sounded unreasonable, but sitting in the same place for over twenty hours, not moving, not speaking, barely functioning as my woman was in a hospital bed she might possibly not wake up from had me bordering on self-destruction.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I prayed to whatever God would listen. How many doctors or nurses had checked her over and over again to see if her condition had changed.
Each time they reassured me that she would wake up. That she would be fine.
It didn’t stop the horrible pit growing in my stomach, though.
“Coffee,” Hunter said, appearing beside me.
He held out a Styrofoam cup of the steaming hot liquid, but my eyes cataloged only the tired expression of his face and the fact he was wearing the same T-shirt he wore to the party.
He gestured one of the cups of coffee to me. I sat back into the cushioned hospital seat, feeling my stiff muscles ache in protest and my spine almost creak as it straightened for the first time in hours, and reached for the cup.
I paused midway, though, my eyes locking onto that tiny little crack of blood hidden underneath my nail. My slight freeze was barely a millisecond, though, and if Hunter noticed it, he didn’t say anything as I lifted the cup.
Hunter dropped into the seat next to me, both of our massive sizes seeming to take up the small chairs with ease. It felt surreal, noticing that tiny detail, wondering how I could be so big when right now I felt so impossibly small.
“Why are you here?” were the first words out of my mouth. They sounded a lot harsher through my hoarse throat than I had intended, but Hunter was supposed to be at the clubhouse with everybody else. Only Kay, who had jumped into action to stop Anna’s bleeding in the clubroom, came with me, and Lamb showed up a little while later.
Hunter didn’t take any offense to my tone. Instead, he just gave a soft shrug, his eyes moving from me to look at the cross pinned on the far wall. His green eyes crinkled underneath the heavy fur of his brow.
“Figured you could use the company. Lamb’s a good brother, but we both know comfort isn’t his strong suit,” Hunter answered.
I nodded, accepting it. He was right; Lamb had your back and was the best V.P. I knew, but he wasn’t the cuddly type.
“Pipe’s going to be alright, by the way.” Hunter said, filling the empty air with news I hadn’t even thought to ask for. Some president I am. “Got a grade 2 concussion so we’re going to have to watch him for a few days, but he’s otherwise fine.”
I nodded, wishing part of me could feel even a microgram of relief at the
fact our newest recruit was alright after having his head smashed against a wall repeatedly and left to drown in his own blood before we found him moments after all hell had broken loose. He had been brought in the same ambulance as Anna.
At the mere mention of her name in my thoughts, I found my head drifting up to her bedside. Hunter’s eyes followed, and his reassuring expression sank.
“How is she?” Hunter asked, moving to brush a strand of Anna’s ice-blonde hair out of her face. She didn’t stir.
She looked almost like a porcelain doll, laid in a white bed, her makeup gone from her face, the color drained out of her skin, and hair soft and flat against her bed pillow. The Anna I knew was loud, feisty, and wore the color red like it was the blood of her fallen enemies. She was passion and fire and everything explosive. This Anna wasn’t.
Even when sleeping, Anna had always looked like she could bite my balls off at any second for looking at her, but this Anna... she looked simple... plain.
I hated it.
“She looks like a stranger,” I whispered, the confession cracking my voice ever so slightly.
Hunter flinched at my words, his green eyes tightening hard under his torn expression. Empathy resonated through him, and I remembered that only months ago, he had been looking at his own wife this way. Mallory had overdosed on a drug that had only been milligrams from slipping her into a coma. It had been touch and go for a week, but she pulled through. Hunter, on the other hand, had been a despairing wreck for months afterward.
“It’s not your fault, Wolf,” he interrupted my thinking space.
I looked up, surprised to be caught red-handed.
Hunter gave me a sympathetic smile. “I can see the guilt.” He shrugged. “I saw it every day in the mirror for months after Mallory was hurt.” He sat his untouched coffee on the side of the table. “I abandoned her when she needed me most. That was on me. But this”—he gestured to Anna’s prone form—“isn’t on you. It’s not your fault.”