Forgiveness

by Wilder, Chiah

  “Don’t fuckin’ threaten me, Duchess.” He jammed his hands into his pockets, and she saw a muscle jump in his jaw.

  Flux’s look went through her with an icy blow, but Maggie pretended to shrug it off. He licked his lips, shaking his head with a snort through his nostrils.

  “You wanna talk to me so badly that you’re throwing threats at me? I don’t go for that. Doesn’t seem very friendly to me, now does it?”

  “I think we passed friendship about four hours ago, big guy.” She glowered at him, ignoring the wild beating of her heart.

  Maggie had never in her wildest dreams felt as pulled in by this biker than she had by any of the upright, cowboy types who’d fallen in her romantic path over the years. And that was the trouble. Sure, she’d only known him for a short time, but he was like a burr stuck on the bottom of her foot that just wiggled its way deeper into her skin. No matter if they ignored each other for the rest of eternity, the way he’d touched her, the way he’d talked to her—it would all be etched in her head as “the bar,” and good luck to any other man who tried to compete with it.

  “Yeah … I guess we did.” Maggie started to say something but he cut her off with a scowl. “You wanted to listen to me, so fuckin’ listen ’cause I’m only saying this shit once.”

  She nodded and dropped her hands down to her sides as a burst of adrenaline made her lightheaded. Whatever was coming, it had to be some kind of turning point. Maggie tried to mentally prepare herself the best way she could while Flux rubbed a dirt-streaked hand along the back of his neck before cracking his knuckles.

  “Nothing about being near you is fuckin’ easy, you know that, Duchess?”

  Maggie didn’t make a sound. She was too afraid to break whatever spell allowed him to talk to her without walking in the other direction.

  “Last time I checked, I wasn’t a billboard, so I don’t need to advertise myself to anyone. No one gets to demand jack shit from me, except my brothers in my MC. Do you see any of them here right now? Because I sure as hell don’t, but I’m here talking to your perky little blonde ass because you asked me to. Shit.”

  “That’s it?”

  Flux splayed his hands on his thighs. “Whaddya want me to say? That I’ve been a fucking dick all day?” His gaze flew to her face, but the anger in his eyes had been replaced with something infinitely softer.

  Tenderness? It couldn’t be. Maggie moved her boot around the dirt in circles. “Yeah, because you have been a fucking dick.”

  Flux exhaled a long breath like he’d been holding it for a while. He blinked at her. A muscle tensed, then loosened in his jaw. “Yeah, well … fuck … this isn’t easy, Duchess. I thought it would be like all the others and fall right back into place—with the two of us on the same page that what we shared was nothing more than pure sex. But fuck, that isn’t what happened and we both know it.” He cracked his knuckles again and moved his head from side to side like he was working out a kink or something, then he tilted his head back. “Whenever I close my eyes, I see you staring up at me. I fuckin’ hear your greedy little moans in my ears. And your scent, you fuckin’ marked me up last night, and all I can taste past this goddamn whiskey is your lips.”

  Flux’s gaze never wavered. He watched her intently as if gauging her response, and Maggie had to keep herself locked in place so she didn’t go to him. Now wasn’t a good time, even if every muscle in his body seemed to strain beneath the burden of airing everything out that was inside his head. He turned around and put both his hands on the top of the stall, leaning his weight against the wood.

  “What I did this morning and this afternoon was fuckin’ wrong of me—you didn’t deserve it.” He breathed out an audible exhale, a whoosh of air that made Maggie tense again, wondering what could be coming next. “But you don’t know me, Duchess, and you need to walk the fuck away right now before you get to know me.”

  “Flux, I don’t need you to make cho—”

  He held up one hand to stop her from speaking, and Maggie forced her lips closed while everything inside her longed to argue with him. But he needed this space to air out his shit. If she didn’t give it to him, who knew when he would clam back up again and re-erect all those walls.

  “It’s my fuckin’ job to do everything in my power to keep you the hell away from me. You don’t have a goddamn clue what darkness I got inside me. You and I would never fuckin’ work. I don’t want any woman in my life. I’m a nomad, choosing to live in solitude. I stayed away from you today for your own fuckin’ good, even if you don’t see that right now, Duchess.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second, Flux. For some reason you’ve decided that you should live a life of pain and loneliness and that’s batshit crazy. I don’t understand why can’t we be friends. It’s not like I’m proposing marriage here.” Maggie threw her hands up, at a loss for why he would want to completely cut her out of his life when they had a good thing going between them. “I just want you to acknowledge that I exist and, maybe, go out for a few beers once in a while, okay?”

  Flux pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, it’s not okay. That’s how shit starts with us. It’ll never be one or two beers and then we’re done, it’ll be one or six beers and then we’re fucking in your truck or I have you pressed up against a tree with my hands in your pants. This isn’t something I can escape or get rid of or scrub from my damn head.” He was breathing heavy as he turned around to face her and the rawness that sculpted his features took her breath away.

  “Something changed last night. I know you know what the fuck I’m talking about so don’t play dumb, Maggie. I can’t come back from that place. And you don’t wanna know why I can’t go there with you … You don’t wanna know me at all because you won’t like what I bring into your life. Just be satisfied to leave me in the one-and-done category, and let me get on with the rest of my fuckin’ existence.”

  “Flux, the fact that you’re opening up to me right now is a huge sign that we can be something other than what we were together last night. You’re manning up, but you’re also being vulnerable with me. I need you to know that I appreciate it, and I get how hard it must be for you.” Maggie didn’t want him to just slip away from her—she wasn’t ready for that, not now … maybe not ever.

  Flux flinched as if she’d struck him, but then she watched the mental wheels turn in his head as he digested the magnitude of her words. There was hope for them. If he could break himself down to her right now, at least work on stripping down his walls like this, then he couldn’t be nearly as bad as he thought he was inside.

  “There’s nothing wrong with us being friends and casual sex partners. Neither of us will toe the line and we can keep it all separate. I’m a big girl.”

  Flux looked skeptical as he stomped his boots in the dirt and glared in her direction.

  Maggie took a step forward as a soft smile brushed across her lips. “Do you really think I would risk breaking one of my hard-fast rules of not getting intimate with anyone I work with if I didn’t trust what we have together? We keep it honest and you double down on the communication instead of hiding from me and we’ll be golden.”

  “Are you trying to convince me or yourself of that fact, Duchess?”

  Now, it was her turn to flinch and look at the facts he was laying down for them both before she jumped into anything without a parachute.

  “If we do this, are we seeing other people?” Maggie asked the question as if his answer didn’t matter. “I think that’s important to figure out.”

  The best thing they could do was outline the parameters. As long as she knew her course, she could stay in the lines. That was how it worked with barrel racing and that was how it would work with him. “Know your boundaries.” Her coach’s voice echoed in her head. She’d been hearing that since she was a kid.

  Flux’s eyes narrowed, his lips becoming a grim line. “You wanna fuck other people?”

  “Do you?” she countered, tilting her head to the side.
<
br />   “No,” he replied gruffly, the single word portraying a slew of emotions. “I want just you.”

  Suddenly Flux’s intentions blazed through his expression, every inch of him telegraphing a masculine sense of possession that made Maggie take a step backward. A warm blush flooded her cheeks and she chewed at the inside of her cheek and crossed her arms. His intense gaze never let up, and she hated showcasing to him exactly what was on her mind.

  Polite wasn’t really his thing. To a degree, she appreciated the gruffness. She would never have to wonder where they stood with each other and that alone was refreshing. Still, she wanted nothing more than for the blush blazing across her face to go away. Or she would at least settle for the sudden ability to speak, which had gripped her vocal chords out of nowhere.

  “Duchess. You haven’t answered your own question.” Flux licked his lips while his primal intensity made her lungs squeeze tight in her chest.

  “No, I don’t plan on seeing anyone else,” she whispered.

  “You don’t plan on it or …”

  Now he was being an asshole and giving her a hard time, but the teasing brought a grin to her lips as she relished the fact that he was getting back to his old self.

  “I’m not seeing anyone else. If that changes, I’ll send you a courtesy text.” Maggie tossed her hair over her shoulder.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Flux

  Damn this woman gets my blood boiling. And that was one of the many things Flux liked about Maggie, but he wasn’t going to think about it because what they’d just agreed to was casual fucking, and that meant no thinking about shit like how she made him feel or what he liked the most about her.

  Flux’s mind kept telling him to get on his bike and get the hell out of Dodge after the show that night, but he didn’t want to and that’s when he knew he was asking for trouble with this arrangement. No doubt about it. But they’d had their heart-to-heart bullshit and he had to trust that Maggie knew what she was doing in the grand scheme of things. Flux could only trust himself so far. The only thing he knew was that this decision could turn out to be the worst mistake he’d ever made by opening the door he’d kept closed since Alicia and Emily had been murdered. Murdered. The word alone burned a hole through him like acid.

  “What’s going on?”

  Maggie’s soft voice saved him from falling through the demonic rabbit hole. Shit … what was I thinking when I agreed to do this? His gaze snapped to hers and he stepped forward. “Are you hungry? We got some time before the events start. I thought we could grab a bite to eat now that everything’s sorted out.”

  Maggie eyed him suspiciously, then nodded. “Yeah, I could eat. But we’re splitting the bill. This isn’t a date.”

  “Whatever, Duchess.” Flux fixed the way his cut hung on his chest. “Let me go wash up and I’ll meet you by your truck—you’re driving.”

  He was happy when she nodded, turning without a word to head toward the parking lot.

  “Any reason we’re taking my ride and not yours? I feel a little gypped not getting to be a bike bunny or whatever you guys call those women.”

  “Back warmer, biker chick, biker babe—take your pick.”

  “What do you call them?”

  Flux shrugged. “Nothing—I don’t take chicks on my bike.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened. “You’ve never had a woman on the back of your motorcycle?”

  Alicia’s red tendrils whipping across his face and her soft body pressed against his back flashed through his mind. “Only one”—he saw curiosity light up in Maggie’s eyes—“and I don’t wanna talk about it. I’ll meet you by your truck in ten,” he said as he walked toward the washroom.

  Fifteen minutes later he saw Maggie leaning against one of the concrete walls and looking down at her phone. Flux ambled over and her gaze flew up to his face; for an instant, it looked like fear, then it morphed into relief. She thought I was that fuckin’ Chet. Anger crackled through him.

  “Ready?” She threw him the type of smile that went straight to his dick.

  Flux turned away, not wanting her to see what a horny bastard he was. “Yeah. I thought you’d be in the truck. It’s so damn hot out here.”

  “I don’t mind the heat as long as it’s dry.”

  The gravel crunched under their boots as they walked toward the pickup.

  “Am I ever going to get to ride on your bike?” she asked as they shuffled along.

  Flux looked at her from the corner of his eye. “What is it with chicks and bikes?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the idea of doing something dangerous and rebellious. And I bet it’s fun and exciting to experience the world in a way you never could in a car.” She paused for a beat, then gave him a mischievous look and added, “It’s also pretty damn sexy … and a powerful Harley has that bad-boy mystique written all over it.”

  Women craved a ride on his bike and that didn’t surprise him at all. Most chicks fawned over his metallic-green Road Glide, and he was guilty of hinting at long rides for his own sexual advantage more times than he could count, but damn, if the idea of Maggie clinging to his torso didn’t make him hard all over again. Her hands on his body, squeezing right where he wanted her to be until he took one of her palms and moved it a little lower and right to his—

  “Hey, big guy, where do you think you’re going?” Maggie laughed, her voice dragging him out of his fantasy world.

  He’d walked halfway across the parking lot away from her truck. Flux shook his head and backtracked as coolly as possible. There was no fucking way to maintain his outlaw credibility if he kept acting like a damn pussy around her all the time. Of course, there was always the chance that she would grow weary of his rough edges and his resistance to fit into her world, and she’d push him to the side in favor of a more polished, suave cowboy.

  Even the idea made Flux cringe inside, but he couldn’t walk into this arrangement like a blind man. Soon enough Maggie would find herself a Duke, and when that happened, he’d be back to bottles of Jack and half-burnt joints for company. At least he knew what he’d be getting if and when shit hit the fan. He’d move on to another town, another job—not the rodeo because he needed a break from it—and another chick in his bed. But she won’t be Duchess. Flux pretty well knew that after Maggie, no other woman could compare to her. With that thought, he jacked himself up into the passenger side of her truck’s cab.

  “You’re driving, you pick. Ladies choice.”

  “How chivalrous.” She teased him before putting the car into gear and rocketing them onto the main road.

  “You drive this thing like a pro.” Flux jerked on his seatbelt and looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “That surprises you?”

  “Well, I don’t see many women who can handle a pickup this big unless it’s a minivan loaded with a bunch of soccer balls in the back of it.”

  “Oh, sick burn.” Maggie taunted him with her laugh, another thing about her that went straight to his dick. “I learned to drive a truck when I was twelve. My dad needed me to help him on the cattle ranch, and he didn’t want me working directly with the cows, so I got truck duty. I would ferry things out to my family when they were in the fields and pick things up that we needed during a rigorous work day. You name it and I was the girl for the job.”

  “How the hell did you see over the dash?” Flux tried to paint a mental picture of a younger Maggie and all he got was the blonde hair, nothing else matched up.

  “I was tall for my age. It seemed like I sprouted up all at once and then stopped. Anyway, my dad taught me on a lot of the unused roads, and I mostly stuck to those while running errands, it still being illegal and all.”

  There was a moment of lapsed silence and he didn’t really feel the need to fill it. Sitting in her presence while the intense afternoon sun beat down on his arm as he pressed his elbow against the window was enough to make him want to close his eyes and take in the rare bit of peace. Immediately, that emotio
n shattered as soon as he’d realized contentment flitting across his brain.

  “Tell me more about you.” Flux really did want to know about Maggie—from the littlest things to the bigger, life-defining moments. She was … different. That was for damn fucking sure. He watched her with naked interest, concentrating on the smallest details, like the tiny hitch in her breath when she inhaled too deeply, and the way the small hairs at the corners of her temples were stick straight, but the rest of her hair was wavy.

  “What’re you doing?” she breathed out, taking a somewhat jerky right turn that jostled them both in their seats before she kept driving straight. “I can see you looking at me—there’s no two-way mirror in here.”

  Flux quirked his lips and looked away. There was no reason to make her think he was anything like Chet, the leering asshole. At the thought of the SOB, Flux’s thighs clenched tight and his lip twitched in a protective snarl. What he wouldn’t give to have fifteen minutes with the fucker in a dark alley, or a lit barn stall. It didn’t really matter where so long as he could sink his fist into that cocky asshole’s belly.

  Flux swallowed and shook his head, trying not to allow anything to screw up their time together. Even if she didn’t require it, he still felt like he should at least be kissing her ass a little bit for being a bastard that morning. After all, he did have some decency left in him even after Alicia—

  “I’m returning the question. Your turn.” Maggie threw on her turn signal and checked her mirror a little too long than what made him comfortable.

  “You checking for that asshole behind us? What does he drive?” Flux looked over his shoulder but didn’t notice anything unusual.

  “Why are you dodging my questions?” she fired back without missing a beat.

  “I’m not dodging shit,” he grumbled. Flux rubbed a hand across his mouth. He figured he owed her some information since he’d been buried inside her the majority of the time the night before. Still, the idea of opening up at all made his shoulders tighten, and he rolled them, cracking his neck. One fucking step at a time. Maggie was more than worth it. He blew out a breath and looked out the window, watching the sun burn hot in the bright blue sky as stucco houses with red tile roofs flew by them.