by Wilde, Leah
“Is it about my mother?” I asked eagerly, leaning forward.
“I said I’m not talking about it, Paris. That’s the end of it.”
“But—”
“No.” He slammed a fist onto the table, making all the plates jitter.
I wilted immediately, shrinking back in my seat. The joking twinkle had disappeared from his eyes. He looked stormy, furious. I understood immediately why he was a leader of the men he rode with. There was not a chance in hell that anyone could stare him in the face and cross him. I didn’t know what to make of him. He was part warrior, part caveman, part ferocious, snarling beast. Any thought I had of pressing further evaporated instantly when he hit the table.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
The clouds slowly drained away from his face. A moment later, they were gone, and I wasn’t even sure what I’d seen in the first place. He looked like the same man he had been when we’d first sat down to eat, all calm and languid. But my heart was still pounding fast in my chest.
We ate silently, but I wasn’t doing much more than chewing tiny bits of food to death before unwillingly swallowing. I waited with my hands folded in my lap until Micah had finished. Then I stood up, chair scraping against the floor, and began gathering dishes to take to the kitchen for washing.
Micah sat rock still while I cleared the table. His arms were still crossed over his chest and he was staring into empty space with a blank expression. When I came to take his plate, he jolted back to life and looked up at me.
“I can take that,” he said. His hand closed over mine. I paused for a moment, not meeting his eyes, then relinquished it to him. He stood, stacked the remaining dishes on top of his, and brought them over to the sink.
Neither of us said a word as I flipped the faucet on to rinse over the piled dirty dishes. I turned to grab a plastic container from a bottom drawer to my left. Finding the right size, I started to straighten back up, but as I did, a huge rush of blood to the head threw me off balance. Dizziness overwhelmed me; colors ran fluid across my vision. I felt myself collapsing to the left.
I was sure I was going to collide with the ground. If I was especially unlucky, I’d clip my head or neck against the counter edge on my way down. But just before I really lost it, I felt Micah’s strong hands grab me once more. He snatched me out of the air and pulled me into him.
My breath came rushing back into my lungs as the world righted itself around me. I took a deep, staggering inhale and closed my eyes for a second. When I let them flutter back open, he was staring at me with intense concern on his face.
“That’s twice,” he murmured. His voice rumbled in his chest. I could feel his vibrations in my palms, which were planted flat on either side of his torso.
“It’s a good thing I keep you around,” I said. The dizzy spell had passed as suddenly as it had come, but a whole new kind of disorientation was coming over me. We hadn’t been in this close proximity since the wedding ceremony, when he had almost-but-not-quite kissed me for the first time since our first night together. Up close and personal like this, his scent was overpowering, his breath came in gentle plumes across my face, and I could feel the strength of his arms holding me upright.
“Good for which one of us?”
“Neither. Both. I’m still deciding.” His face was so close to mine. Just a few inches away. I could just crane my neck a little bit and my lips would meet his. They looked so plump and soft. Kissable. Bitable. Delicious. His arms were the most solid thing I’d felt in a long time. Realer than real, almost. The ink was finely detailed where it was etched into his skin. He was soft and hard, dark and light, all at the same time. He was so close. He was so close.
“What’s the make or break factor?” His voice was barely a whisper, and yet it filled my eardrums, filled my senses. I felt numb and tingly all over, alternately hot then cold. My whole system was going bonkers in Micah’s presence.
“I’m not sure of that yet either.” I couldn’t read his eyes. Was he feeling what I was feeling? Did he want me the way I wanted him? The urge was so powerful and so immediate that I was having trouble forcing words around it. All I wanted in this world was to taste Micah’s lips, to feel his hands teasing my clothes off of me one more time. I felt so hollow and there was only one thing I could think of that would be suitable enough to fill me up. It was right in front of me. He was.
He leaned in. There, it was coming, confirmation that the same thoughts running through my brain were going through his, too. His lips were a millimeter away, just a cell’s breadth apart from actually touching mine. My eyes were half-lidded. I felt like desire incarnate, like every single inch of me was on fire with desperate need for more of Micah, as much of him as he could possibly offer and then a little more.
Just a little more. Just a little more. I closed my eyes and waited for his kiss.
But it never came. I felt his hands loosen and slide off of me. He backed away as I opened my eyes. He looked confused, more lost than I had ever seen him before. The confidence that normally rolled off of him in waves was ebbing rapidly. I could almost see him retreat inside his head as he took two steps away from me.
“I, um…I need to, to, um, to not.”
It looked like his tongue refused to cooperate with him. Mine wouldn’t either. It was all I could manage to force out a barely audible, “Okay.” He whirled away and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving me standing by myself in the kitchen as the stream from the faucet quietly splashed across the plates in the sink.
I cleaned up in numb silence. I couldn’t form proper thoughts or even begin to process what had just happened. It had felt like an electric moment, and I knew without thinking that Micah had felt what I had felt. But he’d backed away. Damn near run away, actually, looking back on it. What was he so afraid of? What was I so afraid of?
Every time I thought I’d reached a resolution about this incomprehensible turn of events that my life had taken, something new got thrown into the mix. I knew of course that I’d been attracted to Micah from the very beginning. That was the start of everything, obviously, that first night at the party. But I had been so certain that I would be able to ignore that attraction. He was just a man, after all, no different from any other. I didn’t need his affection.
At least, that’s what I’d told myself going into it, before the wedding, before the move to this apartment with him. But just now, when I was clasped in his arms and his mouth was right there, so close to taking me and making me his, I’d felt not the tiniest shred of ability to resist. He could have had me without a second thought. Hell, I’d thrown myself at him almost literally. But he hadn’t done anything. He’d backed away. Left me alone.
He emerged from the bedroom an hour later. Pacing up to the kitchen counter, he laid his hands to rest softly on the marble. He didn’t look at me as he spoke.
“I made up the bed for you. Clean sheets and everything. I’m going to sleep on the couch tonight. Bedroom’s all yours.”
“Okay,” I squeaked out quietly.
Without another word, he turned, walked over to the couch, and lay down with his back facing the kitchen.
I put the last of the dishes away before heading for the bedroom in timid, uncertain steps. Was this really what he wanted? To be so far away from me? Did I disgust him? All I had were questions and the man on the couch was quiet and still enough to be a corpse. He wasn’t offering me anything resembling an answer.
An hour later, I was in his bed, freshly showered and ready to sleep. But sleep wasn’t coming, not by a long shot. I felt as wide awake as if I’d just pounded back-to-back espressos. I didn’t understand the way the evening had gone. He was funny, then he was serious. He was charming, then he was distant. There was just not placing him, no comprehending what wild, pinwheeling thoughts were taking place behind that gorgeous face of his. I didn’t know whether to scream or cry or punch the pillows in frustration. Half of me wanted to march out to him right now and demand that he
explain himself.
But I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I stayed under the covers, staring up at the ceiling while the same repetitive thoughts circled around and around, unsatisfied, like a flock of birds in search of food that just didn’t seem to be coming.
Chapter 20
Micah
I felt like hell the next morning. The couch may have looked comfortable when I bought it, but I found out quickly that it was a real bitch to actually spend the night on. Still, I didn’t regret my decision. I didn’t trust myself to be anywhere near Paris last night. I wanted to be far, far away from her, far enough that I’d be able to crush my desire to claim her into submission. There was no trusting that wily bastard. It had almost gotten me to succumb when I’d grabbed her during her dizzy spell. Being that close to those lips, that body, those beautifully pale eyes—it was torture of a cruel and unusual variety. A weaker man might have crumbled. Hell, I’d gotten pretty damn close. But I made it out with my promise intact. No touching. No staining. Just distance. Pure, blissful distance, as uncomplicated as a straight line.
We bumbled around the house awkwardly during the morning as the sun grew hotter and stronger through the windows. We both reached for the coffee pot at the same time, and when our hands brushed by accident, each of us leaped backwards like we’d been shocked by electricity. She giggled nervously, but I just turned and walked away. I needed to get the fuck outta there. I felt like a teenager again, all bristling libido and not the faintest clue of what to do with my eyes or my hands. Paris looked as uncomfortable as I felt. By the time my phone rang and Bolt’s caller ID popped up on the screen, I grabbed it like it was a float and I was a drowning man.
“What’s up, Bolt?” I asked. I winced as the words came out of my mouth. I knew I sounded like an overeager little bitch.
“Damn, boss, what’s gotten into you? You never sound this peppy in the morning.”
I shifted my tone down an octave, noting as I did that Paris’s eyes flicked up to me from where she sat on the couch filing her nails absent-mindedly. I winced again. This was a train wreck. I needed to get out. Fresh air. Clear the ole head. Too much shit floating around in this room for me to think straight. “Nothing,” I said brusquely. “What’ve you got for me? Any follow-up?”
“Unfortunately not,” he replied. “I’m having the boys pull old files from the storage room, just like you asked, but you know what it’s like down there.” I did. It was a fucking shithole, to put it lightly. The previous presidents had never much bothered to keep things in order, preferring instead to just chuck boxes full of crap down the stairs of the basement without caring if they landed with any semblance of organization, the dumb bastards. I’d had the cleanup languishing on the very bottom of my to-do list for years, but I’d never quite gotten around to it. Looked like that was going to come bite me in the ass just when I needed a break desperately.
“How long?”
“Hard to say. Have you seen the rats down there? They’re fucking huge. I’m not letting Cringe anywhere near that basement.” Cringe was Bolt’s Rottweiler. He was huge in his own right, and vicious when provoked.
“No, I haven’t seen the rats, and I don’t think I want to either.”
“Probably a good call,” he mused. “I wonder if you can train them. Couldn’t be that hard…”
“Focus, Bolt.”
“Sorry, got a little carried away there. Anyway, like I said, they’re sorting through the files, but between the rats and that little leak we sprung last year, it’s going to be a long time before they find what we’re looking for. And even if we do, the boxes could be too damaged to be of much use. I’d say it’s a few weeks at best before they’ve done a decent enough job to start analyzing what we’ve got on hand.”
A few weeks. Goddamn it. After my conversation with James Porter, I’d tasked Bolt with digging through the club’s old records to see if there was anything else we might have missed. Newspaper clippings, illicit photocopies of police documentation that our informant on the force had managed to slip us—anything like that that could provide an extra clue, some context, whatever it took to double down. But by the sound of it, we weren’t exactly going to be racing to an answer.
“Alright, thanks, Bolt. Stay on top of this shit. I want results as soon as possible.”
“You got it, Micah.”
“And Bolt…”
“Yeah?”
“Keep those fucking rats downstairs.”
He chuckled. “Will do.”
I hung up and sighed, tossing my phone onto the kitchen counter before burying my face in my hands. I could feel Paris’s eyes still locked on me.
“Trouble on the home front?” she asked. It was the first thing we’d said to each other all morning. Her tone was cautious and deceptively light. But it was a peace offering, or something close to it. I needed to stop being such a child and just accept that things were either going to be bearable or they weren’t, and it was up to me to decide which one. We were coexisting now, for better or worse, at least until a better option arose.
“Rats the size of dogs, a filing cabinet that makes burning junkyards look like the goddamn Dewey Decimal system, and nothing for me to do but sit around and twiddle my thumbs. Yeah, things are going swimmingly. Christ, I need a drink.”
“Little early for that, isn’t it?” she asked as I dug through the cabinet over the stove and found a half-empty bottle of Jack.
The first sip hit my throat with that hot, familiar fire, immediately taking the edge off my nerves, although I was still jangling and fidgety.
“No such thing as too early,” I replied with a belch.
“Lovely manners there, dear,” she shot back sarcastically.
I whirled around to face her and narrowed my eyes. “Yeah, well, Mama wasn’t around often enough to correct me, so things kinda just are what they are. What you see is what you get, more or less.”
“Hmm. What’s the return policy on husbands?”
“Very funny,” I mumbled, but I screwed the cap back on the whiskey and tucked it away again. She was a sassy little spitfire when she wanted to be, but I had to admit that it was growing on me. Nice to have someone around who didn’t fall all over themselves to do my bidding. A man got soft when he wasn’t challenged every once in a while. I never would’ve imagined that this girl—barely five feet tall, frail as a twig, with a snowball’s chance in hell of defending herself if she were ever to be suddenly tossed into the wild—would be the one to do it, but hey, life’s full of surprises.
I went into the bedroom and tugged on a fresh t-shirt, then swung my jacket around my shoulders before coming back out. “I’m gonna go to the clubhouse for a bit,” I said. “Check up on things.”
She looked up at me and smiled. I felt my chest surge with something that, once again, I couldn’t quite identify. It was like a big weight settling on my rib cage, but I felt light-headed at the same time. Twenty-five years of life and my body was choosing now to start acting up on me? I didn’t like it any more than I had the first time I started feeling these weird little tingles when Paris was around. Then there was the ever-present pang in my cock when she switched her crossed legs, revealing a sliver of tanned skin high up on her inner thigh. That particular reaction was expected, though, and I crushed it as brutally as I had every time before. No touching, I reminded myself. Don’t even think about it.
“I’ll see you later, Micah.”
# # #
A few weeks went by and we settled into somewhat of a rhythm. It took a while to come down off my constant edge, but eventually it became almost normal to have the low-level tension rumbling in my stomach whenever I was home with Paris. She’d been hard at work buffing and rearranging the house. It seemed like she was really throwing herself into it judging by the amount of change I saw every time I came back from a day hauling half-eroded boxes out of the club’s decrepit basement.
I’d slink in through the door, my neck screaming with a million di
fferent aches and pains after being hunched over all day long, to see her beaming with pride at the newest blooming plant or tastefully chosen picture hanging on the wall. I didn’t know the first thing about decorating, and my idea of feng shui was having the liquor and my gun close enough that I could grab either one without getting up from my seat. But even I had to admit that the place had started to look pretty damn good.
“Where’d you learn how to do all this shit?” I asked one day, almost three weeks after the wedding had gone down.
“I dunno.” She shrugged, turning her sparkling smile on me. “I just see something and know what’s supposed to be there. Kinda weird.” She crinkled her nose. “You like it?”
“It looks great,” I said. I turned to face her squarely. “But—what are these called?” I asked as I rubbed the velvety white petal of a flower between my finger and thumb.