Nitro: MC Biker Romance (Dark Pharaohs Motorcycle Club Romance Book 4)

by Ivy Black

  But there’s another piece of me that’s scared to have her here. All of those unresolved feelings and the baggage I’ve been carrying since she left haven’t gone anywhere. There’s part of me that is afraid that with her here, she’ll trigger that old familiar downward spiral in me. There’s a part of me worried about it since I still have all of these feelings for her but won’t be able to act on them. I’m kind of nervous that I’ll have another depressive episode. But then, that’s not her problem. It’s mine. What’s she going to do if I do have one? Break up with me?

  “Yeah, of course. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to,” I tell her. “On one condition.”

  “What’s the condition?” she asks.

  “That you’ll tell me about this dude you think broke into your place?” I reply. “When you’re ready, of course.”

  Her smile is soft. “Deal.”

  “Okay then,” I tell her. “The guest room is—”

  “I remember,” she says with a wry smile. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “In fact, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to go lay down for a minute.”

  “Sure,” I reply. “I’m going to order some pizza in a minute—”

  “Valentino’s?”

  “Like I’d order from anywhere else.”

  She grins. “Half pineapple?”

  “I will never ever for the life of me understand why or how you eat a pizza with pineapple on top.”

  “Happily,” she tells me. “I eat it happily.”

  I laugh. “Go. Lay down. I’ll wake you up when it gets here.”

  She drains the last of her cocoa and sets the mug down on the coffee table. Hadley gets to her feet and I watch her walk toward the back rooms. I’m still utterly baffled by the fact that, of all the places in Blue Rock she could have gone, she ended up here.

  As nervous as I am about her being here, there’s also something that feels so normal about it. Natural. It even makes me feel a slight twinge of happiness—though I’ll be sure to temper that with the reality that this is a short-term thing. This isn’t the beginning of some grand reunion or rekindling of the love we used to have. This is just me giving her a place to hide out for a bit. Nothing more and nothing less. Unfortunately.

  I pick up my phone and hit the speed dial button for Valentino’s to order our dinner. On the TV screen, I turn and see Doughty fire a slap shot from the right circle that goes over the shoulder of the Vancouver goalie, hitting the back of the net. It’s then that I notice the score. The Kings are now up a goal with time winding down.

  I guess miracles really do happen sometimes.

  Chapter Eight

  Hadley

  After a hot shower, I brush my teeth, pull my hair back into a ponytail, and slip into a T-shirt and some boy shorts then climb into bed. It feels strange being back in Milo’s house. Even stranger that I’m sleeping in the guest room. But in some ways, being back here feels a little bit like home. Milo’s heavy footsteps sound in the hallway, and I listen as they retreat down the hall. A moment later, I hear the familiar squeak of his door as it closes.

  “He still hasn’t oiled that thing,” I say with a quiet laugh.

  Milo and I were good together for a long while. That’s something I can’t deny. He’s a good man and he’s got a great heart and I’ve missed him. Milo was the love of my life and before things with us went off the rails, I was really picturing a future with him. I thought he and I would be together forever—and not in the high school-puppy love-summer love-infatuation kind of way. I mean, a grown-up, mature kind of way. I thought he was the one.

  But things obviously don’t work out the way we plan them to be. What was that old saying? Man plans and God laughs? It was something like that and it was very true. But hey, we had our good moments. He was always just so goofy and funny. Milo is a smart guy. He’s witty and clever. And when he’s on an even keel, nobody could make me laugh like Milo.

  Thinking of what we had and what we shared together—and what we lost—leaves an empty feeling inside of me. It’s crazy that even after this long, these feelings are still so powerful. Crazy that they’re still so sharp and poignant. It tells me exactly how special what we had was. But that was then, and this is now. We’re not together anymore, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I have to admit though, hanging out with him tonight brought all those feelings rushing back to the surface again. It all felt so normal and so natural. It felt so much like how things used to be that all the bad things in my head and all the thoughts of my apartment being broken into just disappeared. It felt like old times again, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that simply because this wasn’t the old times.

  I shake my head and try to push all that aside. But I can’t quite get over the fact that this is the first place I thought to run to. Looking back at it now, I know I could have gone and checked into a hotel. Or I could have gone to Brent’s house to hide out for a while. He’s got a large house and since it’s only him rambling around in it, I’m sure he would have put me up for a few days. He probably would have enjoyed the company too.

  But I didn’t do any of that. My first thought was to run to Milo. I tried to avoid overthinking it or twisting myself into knots about it. The simple answer is that Milo has always made me feel safe. So it stands to reason that when I felt threatened, I automatically ran to the one place I felt the safest. Simple. Nothing more to it than that. Right?

  I pick up my phone and open up my text messages. I consider my words for a couple of minutes, simply because I want to tell Robin what’s going on, but I don’t want to alarm her. So I key in my message, keeping it simple but giving her enough information so she doesn’t freak out on me. I sign off by telling her there’s no need to respond and with a promise to fill her in over coffee later and send it off. I wouldn’t have bothered with the message, but Robin sometimes pops over to my place and I didn’t want her to worry if she stopped by and I wasn’t there.

  My phone buzzes with an incoming text a couple of minutes later. I pull it up and quickly clap my hand over my mouth to stifle my laugh. Robin sent me a very obscene GIF in return with a message telling me not to do anything she wouldn’t do. I quickly shut off my phone and plug it in, feeling my cheeks flush with heat.

  Still laughing softly to myself, I nestled down under the covers, turned off the bedside lamp, and laid back against the pillows. Although I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I couldn’t fall asleep. My brain was too busy running rampant with a thousand different thoughts. And it seemed like the more I tried to shut it off, the louder it got in my head.

  I closed my eyes to clear my mind, trying to wipe away the anxiety I felt and push aside the surreal feeling of being in Milo’s house again. Nothing I did was working and the noise in my head only seemed to grow louder. Frustrated, I grabbed my phone and started to scroll through my social media. Nothing caught my interest so I closed out my apps.

  Still holding my phone, I pulled up my photos and started to scroll through those. A smile crossed my face as I came upon pictures of me and Milo during better times. I pulled up a picture of us at an aquarium a few years back. He was wearing a goofy foam hat in the shape of a killer whale and was making a face at the camera. He had his arm around me, and I had the kind of smile on my face I haven’t had in a very long time.

  I scrolled through some more photos, and I felt my smile growing wider as the memories of those times we shared came flooding back. Gradually, my body began to relax, and my mind started to clear as the good memories filled my mind. And I had many, many good memories with him.

  I came across a candid snapshot of Milo from a restaurant I’d taken him to for dinner on his birthday. I told him after I’d taken it that it was the most handsome picture of him I’d ever taken. And it was. He had his long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and his green eyes sparkled like polished jade in the
flash of the camera. His skin was tawny, and his beard was still long but less bushy than it is now.

  I trace my fingertip along his strong jawline in the photo, a gentle smile crossing my lips. Milo is a handsome man, and he still has a profound physical effect on me. He always has. But I’ve always known that physical attraction is only as strong as it is because of the mental and emotional connection we have. Had. The connection we had. Past tense.

  I close my gallery and set my phone down on the nightstand. Staring up at the ceiling, a smile on my face, I remember those good times with Milo and feel a sudden familiar warmth filling my belly. I try to push it aside, not wanting to let myself go there but that feeling persists. Even worse, it starts to spread and I feel a tingling low within me.

  I strain my ears to listen but don’t hear anything. Milo’s gone to bed. With the fire burning deep within me, I slip my hand under the covers and slide it between my legs. Images of the last time I was with Milo flash into my mind, fanning those flames of lust burning in my most intimate places.

  I bite my bottom lip, stifling my moans as I slip my hand into my shorts and trail the tips of my fingers along lips that are already wet, swollen, and incredibly sensitive. As I gently stroke my clit, an electric tingle runs across my skin, and my breath quickens as my pulse starts to race.

  In my mind’s eye, I picture Milo down between my legs, his tongue flicking across my button. I see his green eyes looking up at me as he licks and laps at me with zeal. He was always a generous lover and seemed to enjoy going down on me more than anything. I can practically feel his tongue sliding into me, hear his groans of pleasure as he tastes my sweet nectar.

  A breathy moan escapes me as I continue stroking my clit, so I grab a pillow with my other hand and put it over my face, trying to smother the noises passing my lips. As I plunge a pair of fingers into my hot, wet center, I’m imagining Milo above me, bracing himself on his arms. He looks into my eyes, his expression earnest, and as he begins to move himself inside of me, I feel my entire body clench up.

  I bite the pillow I’m smothering myself with, my entire body rocked with sensation as I drive my fingers into my core again and again. My fingers slide along my slick inner walls, and I remember exactly what it felt like to have Milo inside of me, feeling him drive his cock into me in a hard, steady rhythm. My every nerve ending feels like it’s on fire as I picture myself, sitting on his lap, my legs locked around his waist, grinding myself down on him.

  Milo always liked looking into my eyes as I rose and fell upon his staff, taking him deep into me. I could feel his tongue in my mouth, feel the pressure of a passionate kiss as I rode him. A shudder ran through me as I recalled the way his hands felt running through my hair then down the skin of my back as I continued to roll my hips, sliding up and down on his cock.

  My body’s tensing and I can feel the pressure building up low inside of me as I continue pumping my fingers into my center, driving myself toward the brink. In the theater of my mind, I see the way Milo used to pick me up and toss me around when we had sex. He used to be rough with me and I loved it. I wasn’t the type who went in for BDSM or anything like that, but Milo always knew how to push the envelope with me. Without even trying, he unlocked pieces of my sexuality I never knew existed. It heightened all my senses and made everything so much more vibrant.

  As I drive my fingers into myself, I imagine the way he’d pull my hair or slap my ass. I visualize the way he’d squeeze my throat as he pumped his cock into me harder and with more force, and I feel my body reacting to it. I clench my jaw, feeling like I’m being consumed by the flames of my desire, and the peak I’m racing toward grows ever higher.

  I bit my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood as I slid another finger into me, plunging it as deep as I could, and felt all the muscles in my legs tense up. My body was rigid, and my legs started to shake as a stuttering groan issued from my mouth. And then all at once, I feel weightless. I feel like I’m plunging over that initial drop on a roller coaster and my stomach is in my throat, stealing my breath.

  I writhe around on the bed as my orgasm crashes down over me, lighting me up with sensations I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s all I can do to keep my face buried in the pillow to keep from crying out. My body bucks and thrashes, and I feel so out of control that it’s frightening—but I like it.

  Slowly and gradually, my orgasm loosens its grip on me, and I can finally breathe again. My heart is still racing and my body is twitching, but I sink back into the pillow with a trembling smile on my face, riding out the currents of ecstasy. I stare at the ceiling, recalling the way Milo would always hold me after we had sex. I felt so small and fragile in his arms, but he’d always made me feel safe. He always made me feel absolutely loved and cared for.

  I haven’t been with anybody since Milo; the desire just hasn’t been there. I’m the kind of girl who has to feel a deep connection with somebody before I’ll sleep with them. I’ve been on a few dates here and there since Milo, but I haven’t clicked with anybody like I did with him. And I’m not sure I ever will.

  I close my eyes, giving myself over to the feelings of bliss that are enveloping me. My body is still quivering and that feeling of electricity, though muted, is still flowing through my veins. In that moment, I feel content. And it’s with a smile on my face that I’m finally able to sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  Nitro

  “So? How was it?” Spyder asks with a salacious grin on his face.

  “It’s not like that,” I reply.

  “It’s always like that.”

  “You of all people should know that’s not true.”

  He chuckles and loads another box into the van. I left early this morning, long before Hadley woke up, to help get all the contraband loaded up. Because of Sheriff Singer, we know the ATF has a guy snooping around in town and at some point, he’s going to be paying us a visit. The sheriff couldn’t be specific with a time or date but told us to be on our toes, so Prophet wanted to play it smart. Which is something I can totally get behind on since I’m not real crazy about the idea of doing time.

  So we got to the clubhouse before the sun even rose this morning to get all the contraband loaded up and ready for transport. And all morning, I’ve been distracted, my mind consumed by the fact that Hadley is back at the house. It was so strange to have her show up out of the blue like that. And yet I like the fact that when she was scared, the first place she thought to come was to me.

  Still, it’s a bit disconcerting. Her being there has stirred up all kinds of memories inside of me—and the emotions that go along with them. The truth is, I miss her. I’ve missed her since the day she left. There’s a large part of me that’s still in love with her. Probably always will be. But I can’t say that to her. I can’t give in to the emotions that continue to linger inside me simply because I don’t think she’s still in that same place. She’s moved on with her life. But the reason I can’t let it go entirely is because I know I’m the one who fucked it all up.

  “So what are you going to do?” Spyder asks.

  I shrug. “Not much I can do.”

  He scoffs as we walk over to a stack of long, rectangular crates. He grabs the handle on one of the boxes and I grab the other. Together, we lift the box of weapons and haul it over to the van, sliding it on top of the others.

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong,” he says.

  “Oh, here we go. The world according to Spyder.”

  “Damn straight. The world would be a better place if everybody listened to me.”

  I laugh. “Would that be the brooding, emo Spyder before you got together with Bellamy?” I ask. “Or the softer, kinder, gentler, pussy-whipped version of Spyder that came after you got together with Bellamy?”

  “Go fuck yourself,” he says and gives me the finger but laughs as we walk back for another crate. “Anyway, as I was saying, there is a lot you can do—like man up and tell her how you feel.”
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  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Sure it is. You’re just complicating it because you’re all up in your head like normal,” he replies. “You need to get out of your head and break things down to their simplest components.”

  “Oh, yeah, why didn’t I think of that before? It’s so simple.”

  He chuckles. “Listen, she came to your place for a reason.”

  “Yeah, she was scared because somebody broke into her house.”

  “True. But there were other places she could have gone. And yet she came to your place,” he said. “That’s not insignificant or meaningless.”

  I’m not going to tell him that the same thought had already gone through my mind. I have no desire to inflate the man’s ego any more than it already is. While I agree that it’s not insignificant or meaningless, I’m not sure it means what he thinks it does. It could just be a matter of me being a large man who’s got a lot of weapons and isn’t afraid to use them, and it makes her feel safe.

  She and I have a lot of history together, and the one thing I remember the most is that I made her feel safe. I remember it because it meant a lot to me. Hadley isn’t a girl who trusts easily. She doesn’t give her heart out to just anybody. So the fact that she trusted me with her heart and said she felt safe with me isn’t something I take lightly. I never did. It’s something I still value.

  “It doesn’t mean she wants to get back together or anything like that,” I note.

  “No. Perhaps not yet,” Spyder replies. “But in times of crisis, what a person says and does says a lot. You should know that from being over in the shit as long as you were. It’s never words. It’s always actions that matter.”