A hand grabbed her. She shrieked, but she was too terrified to turn around.
“Liana what happened to you? Why are you—”
“Jack’s car. I saw it. He’s here,” she sobbed to the familiar voice, still too frantic to pause to acknowledge why. Her chest heaved, trying to drink in oxygen like water. She was safe for now, logic told her. But why should this feel safe when there was a man here? Men brought pain. That was the only thing they brought; seeing Jack’s car again should have reminded her of that.
And yet here she was, sinking into the arms of Nicholas Stone, who hadn’t been nearly a man when she’d first him. He’d only been a boy—the first boy she’d ever kissed, that she’d ever touched. She struggled against him, clawing at his shirt, raking her hands against the metal zipper of his jacket. She couldn’t let this happen. “Please, don’t make me go back there. Don’t make me go back to the house. He’ll be there. He knows where I am; he’s going to—to—”
“Shhh,” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear, a strand of his copper hair brushing her face, filling her nostrils with exhaust, leather, the bite of wind, the outdoors. It awakened something primal in her, a place of comfort and absolutely security. “Nobody’s going anywhere. Nobody’s doing anything. Not right now. Not yet. I promise.”
She heard the door of the shed unlatch as he pushed it open, and a whiff of cedar wood hit her nose, reminding her of the newly-built house down the street she used to play in as a child. “It’s not what he’s done,” she said, hugging the wall of the shed, talking half to him, half to herself. “It’s what he might do. He won’t leave me alone. He won’t let me live. He won’t let me breathe. I’d go to rehearsal and he’d be there. I’d go to the coffee shop and his car would be waiting outside. I’d go home and check Facebook and there’d be five messages waiting. I changed my phone number, but he just used the cops’ database to find my new one. He’s using it now,” she sobbed. “There’s no escape. I deserve this. After all I’ve done, I deserve it.”
Nick paused. “You don’t deserve this, Liana. Nobody deserves it.” She let out another sob, clutching for her breath. “Now listen to me,” he said, a tone of authority in his voice. His hand was on her back, stroking it gently, knuckles curled, as if he weren’t sure it was what she wanted. But she exhaled as she leaned into it. “We’re going to stay here as long as we have to for you to feel safe again. Just you and me, nobody else. And then I’m going to call Tryg and he’ll bring the guys over to comb the place from top to bottom and make sure Jack’s nowhere around. In fact, I’m going to text him right now,” he said, pulling out his phone. “And then after it’s safe, we’ll go in the house.” He shut the door and grabbed a couple of two-by-fours, pushing them up to the door to make a barrier. There wasn’t anywhere to sit in there besides a couple of buckets and a sawhorse, and an old blue tarp in the corner. Nick grabbed the corner of the tarp and spread it in the back corner of the shed. He raised his head, quirking up his mouth at her, an invitation.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Quickly she settled her limbs in a corner, curling into a ball. Nick settled himself beside her, his back against the wall, watching the door. Sunlight filtered in through the one filthy window, casting shadows in the shapes of the twigs that tapped the glass.
“Why would the club come here?”
“Because I asked them to.”
“So it’s for you they’ll do it, not for me.”
“You’ve been away a long time, Liana.”
“Of course I’ve been away a long time,” she muttered and, despite herself, she nestled closer into the warmth of Nick’s body, beneath his leather jacket and flannel shirt. There was something about its strength and solidity that was settling her down, and she needed that right now, despite what consequences might be. He didn’t move away. “Noel made sure I didn’t have anything to do with the Vipers. I had to get away from Noel. And now that he’s gone, I don’t have anybody.”
“They’re still here for you,” he remarked. “They’re just being cautious.” But Nick’s gray-green eyes widened as he swung his head up to regard her face-to-face, suddenly terribly serious and earnest, as if something vital had just occurred to him. “Think, Liana. This is important.” He touched her shoulder, and though his grip was strong like always, there was nothing violent about it, nothing angry. It was tight only out of concern. “Do you remember Jack ever doing or saying anything about the Vipers? Did he ever talk to any of them on the phone, or go to a meeting with them?”
Liana shook her head, desperately trying to think. “He met with all kinds of lowlife types. He told me it was because worked undercover a lot. He was really proud of how, even to this day, some of the guys he’s infiltrated don’t know he’s cop.”
Nick’s brow furrowed, trying to make sense of what she’d said. “But could he be the muscle behind an entire M.C.?”
“I don’t know. At first he made it sound like he was done with them, but with Jack, you never know. He was as dirty as they come. He’d walk into a bodega and look for dirty water on the floor or flies on the sandwiches, then show them his badge and tell them he’d have them shut down unless they paid him. They always did it. Naïve as I was, I thought that was the way all cops worked.”
He paused. “So you’re saying it’s possible.”
She sighed and shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Helena told you I said I thought you were with the Vipers, didn’t she?”
“She was only trying to warn me,” she mumbled, turning away from him.
“Warn you about what?”
“Against seeing something that wasn’t really there,” she said. “Something in you.”
“In me?”
“She said that you were only protecting me because of your obligation to the Black Sparks. Because I’m a Ryan.”
“Is that really what you think?
Liana hung her head, picking at the crack in the floor with a sliver of wood she’d found. “That’s sure what it sounded like at dinner last night.”
Nick groaned, running his hand through his hair, as if disgusted with the person he’d been yesterday. “Liana, I know I might have implied that, but it was only because I was still upset at you. I was blindsided by seeing you again, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. That spy stuff was all Tryg’s idea, and I never believed a word of it.”
“It’s not that Nick. It’s Helena,” she said, just realizing now herself what precisely was weighing on her. She thought back to what Helena had said earlier about her and Nick. About the two of them together.
Nick jumped in. “There’s—”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings, Nick,” she snapped before he could finish. She knew what he’d been about to say, that there was nothing between them. As if that meant anything. Even if there hadn’t yet been, that didn’t mean it wasn’t in the cards. “If you want to be with her, feel free. Just because you’re helping me, doesn’t mean you have to—”
“I don’t want to be with her.” He withdrew a little, sliding his back down the wall, curling in on himself.
“What do you want, Nick?”
To her surprise, he smiled a little as he stared up at the ceiling, and what he said surprised her. “Do you know how few people in my life have asked me that?” he remarked, raising his head to look at her. She smiled and then looked down at her hand, flat on the floor, a centimeter away from his own hand, in the same position. “One of my foster dads actually told me that once. Son, you don’t get what you want. You get what you get.”
“That is awful.”
Nick laughed. “The thing is, at the time I believed him. He thought he was being folksy, building character or something. He sent me outside in February when it was twenty-below to chop wood. He made it seem like a game. He was like, “Son, you chopped thirty logs last night. Challenge yourself. Now see if you can beat that record. I had to take my gloves off to get a good grip on the axe and—” he stopped suddenly, gazing down at his
hand.
“What?”
“I got frostbite,” he explained with a grimace. “The tips of two of my fingers went permanently numb,” he continued, almost with a laugh in his voice, showing her the first and second fingers of his right hand. She grabbed his fingers and pulled them toward her, noticing the callouses. “You can take a lighter to them, poke them with a needle, and I won’t feel a thing.”
“Oh, Nick.’
“Hey, it’s a sweet party trick, at least. At the time, in fact, I wished it had been more than my fingers. I wished it were my entire body. I’d be like a superhero then – impervious to pain.”
“And pleasure,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Yeah, I didn’t really think it through,” he laughed.
She took his hand closer to her, interlacing their fingers, trying not to notice how her hand was shaking—or she’d never be this brave. “You really can’t feel this?” she asked, touching her lips to the end of his fingers.
He leaned on his left elbow, his other hand flat on the dusty wooden floor. The hand she held was stiff and awkward, but when her lips met his slightly wind-chapped skin, she felt him relax minutely. His pupils had widened as he gazed up at her from underneath his bangs, as if he couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight for even a second, as if everything she was doing kept him rapt. She let the tips of his finger enter her mouth and bit down ever so lightly. Nick’s eyelashes fluttered briefly, but he didn’t move away. “That’s as hard as you can bite?” he joked.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.
“You won’t,” he replied, removing his fingers and stroking her chin with along her chin and jawline. “Nothing can, now.” He looked away for a second.
Chastened, Liana withdrew slightly, shrinking away from his touch. She knew he, perhaps, hadn’t mean specifically that it was because of her, because of what she’d put him through—but they were both thinking it. She rested her head against the wall’s rough boards, gazing up at the opposite wall, trying to settle her heartbeat, which, in the last few seconds, had begun to flutter rapidly, almost without her even noticing. This was a different feeling from the terror that had gripped her moments ago. Her heart, strangely, seemed to know the difference.
“Do you remember,” she began, “how you used to leave your backpack hanging on the hall closet door, even after my mom told you to put it away, and I always wondered why you always left it in that specific place? I couldn’t figure it out. It was like, of all the stupid things you could get in trouble for, why that?”
Nick laughed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah. And then one night Noel was pissed off because of some business deal of his that had gone south. And I made the mistake of telling him I’d do the dishes as soon as The O.C. was over.”
“And he—” Nick shuddered, as if the mental image was flashing across his eyes like a horror movie still, of emerging from the hallway just as the back of Noel’s hand was making contact with Liana’s face.
“And then you told me you’d leave your backpack hanging open on the hook and when he was in a good mood, closed.”
“I wish I could have done more, but—”
“It was enough. I learned to be on my best behavior, and steer clear of him if I could,” she said.
“And then you started leaving yours in the same place to send a signal to me.”
“We thought we were Alan Turing,” said Liana.
“Cracking the Nazi code?” asked Nick. “I saw that movie,” he added slyly. “Furious 6 was sold out.” Liana smiled, looking down, realizing they were
sitting closer together than she thought. “You had no reason to do that, Nick. Or cover for me when I got home late at night. Why did you do that, when it would just lead to you getting hurt?”
“At the time, I asked myself the same question,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “All I knew was that if I didn’t, I’d hate myself. And my life was already shitty enough.”
She admitted to herself that wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for. “So it wasn’t me.”
Nick jerked his head up suddenly; he was staring as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. No, she didn’t know what kind of man he’d become; how could she begin to know or understand all that happened, all that had changed him since they last were close? But those eyes, she was sure, held the answer. An answer she wasn’t sure she was quite ready to know. Here she was, face to face, her head in the hand of the man who had imploded her world six years ago.
And she knew she was about to kiss him again. Again, as if nothing had happened, as if she knew no better, as if something—fate, something she wasn’t sure she believed in—had thrown them back together, as if the two of them, together, had not been a mistake after all. She tipped her head back, and then it was happening.
“Of course it was you, Li,” he said fiercely, bringing her face to his, his mouth sealing hers over, as if he wanted to take her breath away, to quiet her, to eliminate her doubt. All she could do was suck in her breath, to go with it, to close her eyes. “It was always you.”
His lips moved down to her collarbone, then behind her ear and onto her temple, and though she knew it was probably the wrong thing to do—not here, not now, not after all that lay between them—she was ready to succumb. But could she let him? Could she lay back and let him take her? After all, it was what she had wanted from the beginning. It was also what had ruined them both.
He slid his hand up underneath the silk top Helena had given her, tracing over the firm skin beneath, which yielded to his touch. She cradled his head between her hands, his mouth moving as urgently as it had before, the slight tap of his teeth against her sensitive neck, just above her breasts, along the low collar of her blouse, seemed to send radio vibrations through her. She threw back her arms for a second, behind her, stiffening, elongating her body, ready to take everything he was offering to her. His hands curled around her hips as he raised the bottom of her blouse and kissed his way up the center line of her body, and she raised her hands again, outstretched like the wings of some bird, rising and sliding up his back, caressing the twin mountains of his shoulders, thrusting her pelvis forward, burying one of her hands in his thick locks of hair, pushing his head away from her.
She reached over and lightly undid one of the buttons on his shirt, gently caressing the smooth skin she hit underneath. Pushing him back to arm’s length, then darting down like a little silver fish, she flicked one of his hardened nipples with her tongue, the baby-smooth skin of his torso warm against her face. Her arms skimmed down his body, her eyes glancing only briefly at the bandaged wound on his shoulder, a stab of sympathy running through her.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he murmured, noticing where her eyes went. “I promise.”
“Still, I’m done with causing you pain,” she said. “I want to make you feel good for once.” She breathed the words, almost as if she were talking to herself. He raised his head a little, as if he were surprised at what she’d said.
Her knuckle brushed over his torso, then farther down, and it didn’t take much to feel his arousal, just in that short amount of time they’d been touching. He seemed to fill her hand, expanding in her palm, straining, crying for her. A thrilling shiver coursed through her, to know that after all this time, after all she’d done, she hadn’t killed his need for her. Even if the moment in Kirrily’s living room had never happened, she would still know the way she caught him looking at her sometimes, as if he thought she wouldn’t notice, how he dipped his head when she looked his way. There was no mistaking that. She’d learned not to like the feel of a man’s eyes on her—she felt judged, stripped bare, vulnerable. But for some reason, with Nick it was different, and it always had been.
Quickly, she reached for the top button of his jeans, fumbling with two fingers. “It’s the least I can do,” she murmured,” breathing in the heat, reaching her face ever closer to his body, “after everything I’ve put you through.”
“Stop,” he said, and his hand darted toward her wrist, pulling it away as if she had hurt him physically. He closed his eyes, revealing how painful this denial was to him. “Listen, Liana,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
“You don’t want me to—?”
“No,” he cut her off. “Not for that reason.”
She knew he was remembering the moment at Kirrily’s, when he’d taken her almost as if she had no will of her own, how she’d just stood there, stiff, as if it were her duty to submit and offer no resistance. As if she owed it to him. Could it be true, that she didn’t really want to do this, that she was only doing it as some twisted way of repaying him for all she’d taken? She hadn’t felt that way a moment ago. The long, flat, smooth body of the man beneath her, shirt now mostly unbuttoned, chest rippling up and down in hypnotizing rhythm, the full, parted lips, the gray-green eyes that shone wide and almost hurt as they gazed up at her beneath his bangs. All of him begged to be touched, as much as if she were sixteen and curious again—only now it was better, because she knew what to do.
“But—”
“No,” he said sternly.
“But Nick, don’t you see? It’s okay now. We don’t have to hide. I can do whatever I want, and I want to,” she said, getting up on her knees so she can look him properly in the face. In the silence of the little hut, she could hear them both breathe. “I want to,” she repeated. “I. Want. To,” she said, enunciating the words, as if she had to put that much emphasis to get it through his head that his touch was no longer forbidden, no longer considered beneath her.
Suddenly, he had a very serious look on his face, as if he had made up his mind once and for all. “Okay.”
And then she was kissing him again, and he was reckless now, hungry as a man who had been starved for years for the one thing that could satisfy him. His hand was on hers, undoing the button and zipper now, and her fingers stroked along the hard, shaft, dry and smooth, stroking rhythmically. A smile reached her lips as Nick closed his eyes.
Long Ride: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Black Sparks MC) (Whiskey Bad Boys Book 1) Page 11