by V. Theia
Archie wasn’t all that tall, but he had a stature that made people take notice and when he stepped up to the desk—the suit fit him perfectly, holding a leather briefcase, he arched a brow at deputy dickface, his voice resonated calmly, authority burning from his eyes. “I’m here to see my client, Paige Simmons, I trust you haven’t questioned her without my being present.”
Right behind Archie rocked up Rider, Preacher, Lawless, Hawk, Tag and Capone. More of the boys were sat astride their bikes outside, blocking the entrance.
It was Rider who clapped Reaper on his back and spoke low. “Let Archie do what we pay him for.”
There was an eighty percent chance he would have jumped that desk and fought his way into every back room to find Paige, if not for his boys lining themselves up behind him. Tag had a strong hook on the back of Reaper’s neck talking to him quietly.
The hottest flames seemed to lick at Reaper’s nerve endings, he couldn’t unclench his fists and his jaw hurt from grinding down on his teeth.
This was absolute fucking torture.
Reaper’s brain was already five steps ahead. He had no problem going on the run with her, whatever he had to do. He’d take her back to New Zealand, his brother had a farm, no one bothered them that far out.
The moment Archie announced himself he was shown to a room out back.
Reaper’s jaw practically ground to dust.
He loathed waiting.
Thirty minutes. Forty. Sixty minutes hobbled by slowly.
The boys didn’t move an inch, inside or outside. They kept right by Reaper’s side, making nuisances of themselves, garnering side eye glances from anyone walking through the doors.
Even Charlie Timmons decided to show up and informed Rider and Reaper that Paige had volunteered to blow the whistle on her father but in turn indicated herself for drug trafficking. The charges she was facing were steep.
Fucks sake. Reaper’s skull nearly blew out of the top of his head.
“She’s done nothing wrong!” He burst from anger. Tag had to physically hook an arm around the front of Reaper’s collarbone to hold him in place. “Her father is the piece of shit. I’ll drag that motherfucker here by his front teeth. You let her fucking go or I’ll blow this place apart, Timmons!”
A few of his boys snickered but Reaper couldn’t feel any humor, not with his whole fucking world afraid somewhere in this goddamn building without him.
He’d promised her they’d be happy. He should have taken care of her father immediately; he knew it and hadn’t done anything.
And now his sweet girl was shouldering all the blame, taking on all the trouble like she always did.
He paced.
He paced so much his knees protested, and he caught a lot of sympathetic glances.
If they looked at his eyes they’d see only blackness, devoid of color.
His emotions seethed.
Death. Blood. Fury.
He felt it all.
What the fuck did it mean being part of an operation like the Renegade Souls if he was powerless to do anything to help the one person he loved beyond all reason? But then more than two hours after Archie was led away to do his lawyer thing the same door opened, and all eyes turned to see him walking back through. Reaper was about to rip his head off for doing a shit job when he saw strands of pink hair behind him.
He was already pushing his guys out of the way in his haste to get to Paige, who was doing her own rushing as she threw herself at him. He caught her around the waist, dragged her into him, almost as if he could fuse her into his skin and felt his heart start back up again.
“Reaper. Reaper. Reaper.” She cried; her head buried in his neck.
“Got you, baby. I got you.”
Overwhelmed. Relieved. He just clung onto his trembling wife and reassured her in hushed words by her ear that no one on this green earth was ever taking her away from him again.
“Are you okay?” He asked when he finally set her feet on the ground, both hands cupped her face. Dark circles marred her eyes and her shoulders slumped, but his girl was so fucking brave smiling up at him. “I’m fine. I know you’re probably mad at me.”
“I wanna spank you raw.” He growled low, foreheads together, loving her so fucking much. She smiled. Reaper thought it was Preacher who cackled the loudest.
Keeping her in the curve of his arm, Reaper turned to Archie. “What we looking at here? I’m taking her home,” he added more forcefully with a warning shaking his voice. If any fucker tried to stop him they’d see what kind of psycho he could become.
Moving his briefcase from one hand to another, Archie glanced at Rider. “Maybe give me more than a five-minute heads up next time with drug charges.”
“Will do. What’s happenin?”
“Fortunately, Miss Simmons didn’t tell them too much before I got here.” Reaper squeezed her tightly. “If charges are to be brought, they’re going to be minimal at best. I did what I could under the circumstances.”
A dark growl formed in his mouth. “This is bullshit.”
“I agree. Which is why with my counsel, my client told everything she knew about her father dealing drugs and to whom and as of right now, the man in question should be getting picked up.”
“Paige…” He rasped, looking down at her. She was deathly pale and all he could think about was shepherding her out of the cop shop and getting her home into a hot bath. Maybe a locked safe room where no one else could try to take her from his arms.
“I had to,” she said quietly. “I’ll go to prison, I don’t care.” Another animalistic sound from Reaper. Over his dead fucking body. He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Don’t say anything else, baby, until we’re out of here. I can take her, right?” He phrased the question to Archie.
“Yes, she’ll need to come back for questioning at some point. I’ve signed all the necessary paperwork for now. I’m available twenty-four-seven if they should come to get her and remember, Miss Simmons, not a word this time before I get here.”
“Thank you,” Reaper said, offering his hand and the other man grinned. “It’s what you pay me for. Miss Simmons, we’ll speak soon. Try not to worry so much.”
En masse, with Paige’s hand firmly locked inside his, they made their way out to the bikes. She pulled him up short before he could get her onto his bike. “You took… care of Sony properly, didn’t you? There’s nothing to discover?”
“There’s nothing,” not unless you could glue ashes back together. “Is that what he was holding over you, Paige?”
She looked away and whittled her lip, he brought her gaze right back by cupping a hand under her chin. “I panicked. He said he’d get you thrown in jail if I didn’t do his jobs again. But then something occurred to me, if dad had anything on you, he would have used it long before now, he’d do anything for a quick buck. He’s good at blackmailing.” laying her forehead to his chest, his boys began to climb back onto their bikes, he vaguely heard Rider tell him he’d seen him at the club before he got on his Harley too.
She sighed and went into a string of apologies he stopped with his thumb on her lip.
“I fucking love you. I was gonna kill him, bug. Your father. When I worked out what that asshole was doing, I was gonna put him in the soil.” Her eyes widened at his confession, but she didn’t pull away, wasn’t disgusted in his claim. Taking his thumb over the apple of her cheek, he didn’t like seeing her so pale, so fatigued.
“We do what we do for love,” she said finally, and he felt himself exhale. Thank fuck she didn’t hate him. “Let’s put him away, baby, so he can’t hurt us ever again”
The endearment speared his heart. A long time ago she called him baby all the time, he’d waited so fucking long to hear it again.
“I love you,” Paige whispered, the breeze carrying her hair around her face as she lifted it up for him to press a gentle reaffirming kiss to her lips. “I love you, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It won’t happen again. And spank me later?”
All her words ran into one and he found himself smiling before kissing her again as motorcycles thundered off around them. “What the fuck am I gonna do with you, ladybug, huh?”
“Keep me, love me forever, spank me. Hint, hint.”
Reaper would swear there was no more threads to vine him to Paige, but as her words warmed the inside of his eyelids, he felt the vines reach out and crawl around Paige, locking her tighter to him in all ways possible.
Husband.
Boyfriend.
Friend.
Protector.
Sidekick.
Caveman.
He was all things to Paige, as long as he was hers, he was a happy asshole.
“Let’s get you home, I have an ass to redden.” He growled in her ear.
They had a lot to go through, serious shit before he could love on his woman, but to hear her giggle again? He would have lifted her skirt right there and palmed her cheeks, if not for him being a possessive motherfucker who would gauge out anyone’s eyes for seeing his girl like that.
“Home,” she sighed leaning into him, and she allowed him to lift her onto the back of his bike.
Another shared kiss, he did just that, by riding under the speed limit and he took his precious cargo home.
* * *
He did spank her.
Much, much later, after a long conversation and renewed promises to never hold anything back from each other again.
They got word from Archie a couple of days later that Sargent had fled on hearing the sirens but was soon caught on the highway with a bag of cocaine and dirty Russian money adding up to more than fifty-five grand, so the case was handed over to the feds. He tried to roll over on the Russian middleman who worked for Grigori, but the bratva had bigger lawyers that could lie better than Archie and so far no charges would stick.
Sargent though? Her father was going to go away for a very long time and try as she might, Paige couldn’t muster any feelings of sadness for the fact. He’d made his bed a very long time ago. She didn’t even bother to call her mother to let her know.
A hand stroking over her belly brought her thoughts back to the present, in their living room, with the man of her dreams lazily looking at her with a slight smile on his lips.
“Marry me.”
She blinked; sure she was hearing things.
Sex sweat drying on both of their naked bodies.
That same hand roving over her belly moved down and fingered the already sensitive skin of her pussy, making shudders roll through her body. The couch they’d fallen onto for a lazy nap after their continued, raucous making up sex wasn’t all that comfortable with them squashed together like sweated-out pretzels. And considering the week they’d had—not to mention Paige’s stress fearing she would lose Reaper; she was still exhausted and almost positive this was a dream inducing hallucination.
The tender kisses starting at the base of her back said she was very much awake. “Paige, marry me again.”
“Y-you want to marry me?”
She was flipped over onto her back, her man, big and gorgeous, with his messy hair hanging in his face, loomed over her, his thigh caught between her legs.
They’d had each other every which way in the last hours yet her blood sang, body burned with lust, between her legs quivered as his thickening length nudged between her wet sex.
“I’d marry you every day if that’s what you wanted.” He rasped. “We don’t need it, baby, we’re tied together with blood and skin, but I want to give you the wedding I couldn’t give you the first time around. All that fancy shit I know you’d love.”
“A wedding ceremony every day would probably take up a lot of time…” she giggled.
Lightheaded. Heart full.
“Say yes, bug. Tell your man yes and put me out of my misery and back into your arms again. We’ll drive to the beach, hire out a hotel, one of those fancy-ass country clubs if that’s what you want. I’ll drag that pastor guy from the church and take him with us.”
Paige dissolved. “Firstly, you can’t go around dragging pastor’s off to places, that’s called kidnapping.”
Her beautiful boy shrugged like it was no big deal, but then he smiled, and her heart went into free fall knowing he was at the bottom to catch her. Always.
“Don’t care, you want it? I’d do it.”
The reality was, she couldn’t remember their first wedding. Feeling all those butterfly nerves and excitement as she waited for him. She didn’t remember slipping that gold band onto his finger or hearing him call her wife for the first time. Reaper was good at giving her memories one at a time, filling in the small details of their life. Now she was itching to know more of their wedding. What they ate afterwards, did they dance? How amazing was the wedding night sex?
All those firsts were lost to her, but there was nothing saying she couldn’t have a second first time. She threw her arms around his neck; felt how he drew her in and fit her perfectly against him. His lips followed on the side of her neck. His place.
“I want to marry you again so freaking much, Reaper. Not at a fancy hotel though. Here with all our friends.”
As she looked into his eyes she saw all her days before her. The new memories mingled with the old. The happy days they were yet to share but she was so excited to get there with him.
He was the first man she’d loved, and he was the second man too… the only man.
He was the man who waited for her to come back to him.
Passion resurfaced for a number of reasons, but a love like theirs…
That always, always persisted.
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
“I know you.” – Paige Renner
Who knew a wedding didn’t really belong to the groom.
At all. Not even a little fucking bit.
Reaper hadn’t. Not until his woman and all her gaggle of girl-friends educated him when he tried to have one little piece of input about how many people descended on the day.
He was asked his opinion on colors of napkins—did that matter? Apparently so. He was asked if he wanted steak or fish, but what counted most to Reaper? Was how happy Paige was doing all those nuisance details.
If she was happy, he was ecstatic, so he drove her around, and held her overstuffed purse while she registered them for plates or whatever they’d done in Bloomingdales for sixty-seven hours or thereabouts.
The wedding grew and grew until by the main event arrived there was a big-fucking-marquee out in the compound grounds facing the mountains with a bunch of fancy-ass tables and chairs covered in white cloth, flowers and bows everywhere, enough to hold two hundred people.
A knock on the door in his old room brought Reaper’s head around. He’d been lost in thought for too long just leaning against the windowsill in his gray suit and tie. “Yeah?”
Hawk cranked the door open and he frowned at the VP. There was no order of business today, so he wondered what Hawk needed, seeing as how the VP wasn’t the type to hang out with Reaper.
“Gia said your old lady wants to see you.”
Instant panic worked into his sternum and he pushed off from the windowsill with speed “What? Is something wrong?”
Last night was the first night in months they’d spent apart. All his ladybug’s idea, something to do with tradition of not seeing the bride until she was standing at the altar. Wanting to give Paige the wedding of her dreams, something he couldn’t do the first time around, he’d have agreed to anything, even if he did sleep for shit because he missed her curled over his chest.
Not going to sleep with her body pressed into his or getting a goodnight kiss fucked with his head. The quicker he got them remarried the better.
But it couldn’t be good if Paige was breaking her own rules by asking to see him. He followed the VP out into the hall, hands pushed deep into his tailored pants pockets.
At the door he turned to Hawk. “Do you think she’s changed her mind?”
They’d been to hell and back it fe
lt like these past months, it wasn’t easy to get Paige to a place of peace again, not with the pending charges against her. Thankfully they had a shit-hot lawyer who knew how to grease the right hands in the DA’s office and a month after her father’s arrest, Paige was told her involvement in his case was now over as long as she testified and hung her father out to dry, no charges brought against her.
Had it gone the wrong way he already had fake ID’s ready and a place in the Utah chapter to lay low for a while.
As for her cock of a father. No one knew beside Rider and the crooked guard at the county jail who had a pocketful of bribe money, that Reaper paid Sargent a visit three days after he was locked up awaiting sentencing.
The old man nearly shit himself when he saw Reaper stride through the visitors room. Knowing he only had three minutes tops while the guard turned off the cameras, he got to his message real damn quick and beat the fuck out of that guy, leaving him in a broken mess sprawled across the visitors table and Reaper’s face twisted into a smug smirk.
At the door, before he saw his father in law for the last time, he warned. “Pray, you motherfucker.”
He spat blood and teeth out onto the floor. “W-what the fuck you talkin’ about?”
“It’s all you can do now. Because one day, when you least expect it, you’re gonna come to a timely end, Sargent. You won’t see it coming, so I want you to know now, that gift is from me. The Souls can reach you anywhere even solitary confinement. Sleep easy, you fucking cockroach. You’ve hurt my wife for the very last time.”
He never told Paige of that visit; he wouldn’t give her a seconds worth of worry ever again.
Love struck him that long-ago day in Tennessee, and he wasn’t giving it up, ever.
“Maybe.” The VP answered him, smirking just to put the fear of God in Reaper. “You know what I did on my wedding day?” Reaper arched a brow waiting for the answer. “I did anything my Gia said. Today is for your old lady, what comes tomorrow is yours, brother.” As Hawk strolled off down the corridor in the opposite direction to which Reaper needed to go, the VP turned his head and smirked again. “Your bike is out front, if you need a quick getaway.” Fucker. Reaper chuckled and watched his furred sidekick running alongside Hawk. His pup wore a bow around its neck and still looked like a badass next to her master.