“Strip,” I commanded dropping her onto my bed.
She shed her clothes as I did the same. Our eyes never left the other—we were fused together.
I climbed up her body. “Mine. Do you understand that?” I dipped my head to her sweet pussy.
“Yes.” She groaned fisting my short hair in her hands. I was in no mood to be tender, with a ruthless precision I worked her clit with single-minded determination, pulling the first orgasm from her. Before she could even come back to herself I slammed home, needing her tight pussy clenching me.
“Yeah,” she purred. “Fuck me hard.”
My almita was my other half, made me complete. I hammered into her, needing her to understand she was mine body and soul.
“Whose woman are you?” I demanded.
“Yours,” She cried out. “Rock, yeah. I’m yours.”
My balls tightened, I don’t know if it was the words or the way she milked me, my release building, moments away. “Come with me, now.”
I bent my head and sucked in her nipple, worrying it between my teeth. She pushed up into me with a frantic need. She shuddered, her second climax clamped my cock tight in her pussy. “Fuck, almita.” I claimed her mouth as I came inside her. Fierce and final—Avery was mine now and forever.
Holding my weight on my elbows, I nuzzled her neck in the afterglow of our explosive connection. The anger was gone from her face. I needed to keep her close to me. I was still inside her and my world was perfect.
She caressed my cheek. “I love you.”
I froze. She’d never said those words to me, and I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been loved, not really, except by my brothers in the club, but that wasn’t the same as what we shared.
“Almita.” I kissed her forehead as emotion filled me. “How can you love me? I’m not—”
She put her finger on my lips. “You are the best man I’ve ever known and I love you.”
I dropped my head into the crevice of her neck, holding her tight to me. She held me just as tightly as those three words crashed through me shattering me in a way nothing else ever could.
I rolled over bringing her atop of me and glanced into her happy eyes. “You love me?”
“I do.” She traced my jaw with a finger. “Stubborn and sneaky and sexy and I love you.”
“Yeah?” I kissed her chin. “I know that the thought of being without you makes me crazy, but love, I don’t know much about that. No one’s really ever loved me.”
Her soft eyes teared up but she blinked away the wetness. “I’m the lucky one then who gets to show how loveable you are.”
My cock hardened inside her. “Almita, you are my soul, my everything. I don’t know much about it, but I love you too.” I pushed into her and circled my hips. “Mine,” I whispered.
“I love you,” She whispered, arching into me. “I love you.” She repeated the words again and again until I claimed her lips, needing to touch her, hold her close as a new happiness ripped through me, tearing me apart, filling me anew with a hope I hadn’t even known was missing.
We held tight to each other building up together, eyes locked, bodies in synch, souls merged. Her breath caught and her grip tightened. She was close. I thrust faster and her body coiled. “I love you,” she cried as she came. And that fast I fell over with her.
“Te amo, mi almita.”
We stayed in bed holding each other in no hurry to move. I thought about our earlier argument, senseless. I couldn’t wrap her up and keep her safe, no matter how much it appealed to me. I hated admitting it, life was dangerous and no matter how vigilent things could go wrong. But I also loved her free spirit, one I’d been crowding the past week. I wasn’t willing to say I was wrong because I did worry about her father, but maybe she had a point too.
“I’ll call Mark off.”
She gazed up from where she’d laid in the crook of my arm. “Thanks.” She swiped my nose. “I have you on speed dial.”
“And you’ll keep a Taser in your shop.”
She frowned then nodded. “Deal.”
“And call me when you leave the shop and get home, if I’m not taking you home.” I pushed this last precaution. I needed to know she was safe.
“Totally. I like talking to you.” She kissed my lips and her stomach growled.
“Mmmm... I need to feed you.” I gave her one more smacking kiss before I climbed out of bed. “Dinner coming up.”
“I’m going to shower,” she called after me.
* * *
About a half hour later she strolled into the kitchen.
“Come in and keep me company.”
“Yes, master,” she sassed.
I started the broccoli steaming and moved to the fridge trying to decide what should go with it.
“Sit up at my counter and tell me your favorite meals.” I bent my head and dug through his fridge.
“Steak and any potato, but then I’m a country girl. Any Mexican, the spicier the better, and pizza with pineapple.”
“Ew, pineapple, just pineapple?” Pineapple was not for pizzas but then I couldn’t think of much it was good for.
“No, usually Canadian bacon, but bacon or beef work too.” She ticked off the toppings with the same beautiful grin on her face.
I loved her smile and her laugh.
“Shrimp, any seafood, but especially shrimp.”
“I like it too, so we’ll have shrimp tonight.” I opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen shrimp.
“You can buy good frozen shrimp?”
I nodded as I put a skillet on the burner.
“You cook better than me,” she blurted.
I glanced over to see her cheeks red. “You’re bright red, almita.”
“Eggplant, mostly eggplant parmesan, but I like it about any way it’s fixed. I have five awesome recipes.”
I wrinkled my nose at the eggplant, another food I had little use for. I melted butter in the pan, added some spice and poured in the shrimp. The broccoli beeped and I placed both in bowls before I grabbed two plates, forks and brought it all to the table.
I sat at the table. “Come sit on my lap.”
“Why?” she mumbled, but sat sideways on my legs.
“Feed me.” I opened my mouth wide.
She picked a shrimp up by its tail and laid it on my bottom lip. Our gazes locked and I sucked the shrimp into my mouth, biting off the tail, she discarded it on the table. The second shrimp she placed on my tongue and I snapped my teeth down, severing the body from the tail. With each one she fed him, the heat grew more intense between us.
“Now it’s my turn.” She was too tempting.
I didn’t know if I could stand much more so I kissed her. The butter made our lips slippery. I plunged my tongue into her mouth, in fast thrusts showing her what I wished we were doing. My pulse raced when she rubbed her pebbled nipples against my chest. I growled into her lips and broke away. “You know what I want...”
She gave me a doe-eyed, expectant look.
“To feed you shrimp.” I held one between my thumb and forefinger. When I put it in her mouth she sucked in my fingers and bit down, not hard, but enough to make me thrum with need.
We fed each other shrimp until the bowl was empty. I grasped her wrist bringing her fingers to my mouth, licking the buttery sauce off each one with slow strokes. Her eyes fluttered closed.
“Are we okay?” Avery asked, hiding her eyes behind her long bangs.
“Yeah.” I tilted her chin up. “Why would you ask me? You love me, nothing could be better than that.”
Her lips tipped up in a half-smile. “My brain is reeling, first we’re fighting, then we have that great, fantastic, mind-blowing make-up sex. But you gave in, and why did you change your mind?” She wor
ried her lip with her teeth.
“Because you’re right, I can’t keep you under my eye all the time, but I need you safe, as safe as possible.” I tried to put into words how important she was to me. “I’d tear this town down, burn the world, to keep you safe, how much I need you scares me.”
She clasped me tight in a hug. “The way I feel for you scares me too.” Her hand cupped my cheek. “I’d like to know more about you—your past and other stuff.”
I had a feeling other stuff had to do with my masochism, that shit I wasn’t so excited to talk about. “Let’s go out back, we can talk.”
She slid off my lap. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, but I’m grabbing whiskey. Maybe I’ll pass out before we get to the crap I don’t even want to think about.”
“You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”
“I know,” I sighed. “But I like talking with you, and I have my own questions.”
Out back I lit a fire in the fire pit and we sat together on a bench by the fire. I also lit the citronella candles to help keep mosquitos at bay. She cuddled next to me, leaning into me.
“Families,” I said. She’d been very quiet about that subject.
She wrinkled her nose but nodded.
“Have you and your dad had problems before? Often?”
She blew her bangs up and frowned at me. “He never had time for me when I was a little girl, always out with Chet, but we didn’t butt heads until I was a teenager. I loved the emo music of the mid 2000s and I came home with pink highlights, still long hair then. He went ballistic, but Mom stood up for me. The more I rebelled the worse he got, but maybe I’m too like him.” She leaned away from me. “Stubborn like him. The more he disliked it, the more extreme I became. I’d never pleased him, never been good enough, so I think I tried to provoke him. But he never laid a hand on me.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even think it was a possibility.”
“Is that why you went home with me?” I’d always wondered if I’d started as a rebellion.
“No,” she snorted. “That was all me being horny, but maybe my biker fantasy, wanting to be a biker babe, started as a way to rebel from his way of thinking.” She leaned to me and kissed my cheek. “You are all about you—sexy, strong, and sooo addicting. I can’t get enough of you. You let me be free, release me from expectations.” She beamed at me. “Until you, no one got me, not even my friends, they didn’t accept me, just kind of tolerated me. I’m pretty sure they thought I’d outgrow me.” She twisted her face away but not before I saw the hurt flash across her features.
“Then they’re stupider than I thought.” I had little tolerance for her so-called friends. They spent more time trying to tell her how to live than supporting her.
“I know nothing about your parents—tell me about them.” She straddled the bench, looking up at me.
I drank a swig of whiskey. “Nineteen when I last saw my pa and brother. Twelve last time I saw my ma.” I hated thinking of my fucked-up family. I sucked down a deep drink of Crown.
“Tell me about the last time you saw your mom.” Her hand curled in mine.
I hated thinking about that. “My ma is Navajo, decided to leave the reservation for a few years, go to college, met my old man and had me. She left before I was three—left me with him.” I glanced into the fire and watched the flames dance. “Turned twelve, my old man buys me a bus ticket and sends me to her, I’d heard them on the phone fighting about it, but she had to have agreed.”
I blew out a breath. “I spent a week there. No one in the area—you can’t even call it a town where her family and two other families lived—would look at me let alone speak to me. They believed in purity—no one for four generations had married off rez, let alone a scumbag like my pa. They were rabid about it. On the Monday, after I’d been there for six days, she takes me by the arm and we walk into this scrubby not quite desert area, so different from here.”
I could still smell the sage and feel the gritty wind on my skin.
“She says, ‘You have blood to stay, but this is how it is—took me years to earn my way back from you—the mistake of having you with him. You go to school, take what the rez gives all of us, but I won’t clothe you, buy you a damn thing. Food if it’s there, fine, that’s all. Every day I see your weasel eyes, his eyes, I will hate you a bit more.’ She spit on the ground and left me there.” I drank deep. “I took the $100 bus ticket she gave me and started muling his drugs, it’s why he’d sent me away to begin with.”
Avery had plastered herself across me while I spoke, I’d wrapped my arms tight around her, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.
“A heartless woman, she will reap what she sowed. Karma is always going around.” Avery kissed my chest.
I laughed but it wasn’t the happy kind. “She thought I was already her bad wind—her term for karma.” I drank again.
She leaned up and kissed me with a tenderness that tore at my chest. “Her loss. You’re the best person I know. I love you.”
Chapter Nineteen
Avery
My heart broke for the boy who’d been rejected by his mother. I’d like to punch her, but then she didn’t even deserve my anger. She was nothing, but Rock, he was everything. My family hadn’t been wonderful, but my mom loved me. I’d grown up safe with friends and a life that was so different from his, yet he was a better man than those who’d grown up with all the advantages he’d never had.
He bent his forehead and rested it on mine. “I love you too.” He sucked in a breath and met my eyes. “My dad muled drugs in Oklahoma City, but he became a meth head, so my older brother ran his business. My old man was a waste before I was 15, and my brother was mean, not right in the head mean.” He glanced out into the darkness. “He tried pulling a gun on me when I left, I knocked him on his ass. And never went back. I don’t even know if they’re alive.”
My heart ached for him. “I’m glad you found your true family—the Brotherhood.”
He squeezed me tight. “I’m glad you understand. They showed me what it was to be a stand-up man—accepted me without a second thought.”
Now I understood better. He’d found a family after years of being denied. I might not agree with the MC on everything, but I’d never say another word against the club. They’d probably saved him, and for that maybe they deserved my loyalty.
We sat silent eyes drawn to the flames.
“Ask me.” He stood. “As soon as I get back from the kitchen, you can ask me about it.” His hooded eyes stared down at me and I wished I could read the emotion on his face, but he was lost in the shadows of the night.
What did I want to know? Everything. Yet, I just understood this topic was one he avoided. I was torn, but I couldn’t ignore the opportunity he handed me. Of all my questions, why, how long, when he’d first known, how we should treat masochism in bed together, and the list was endless, the one that bothered me most—why was he ashamed.
He came back out with one of his flannel shirts for me and a fresh bottle of Crown. “We don’t need to talk about this tonight. It’s been a heavy day—fights, declarations of love, shrimp and confessions. Maybe we should focus on more sex and call it a night.” I used all my self-control to say those words because I was dying to know.
He laughed and I noticed the way his eyes were just a bit fuzzy.
“I’m ready as I’ll ever be, better take advantage of me.” While he didn’t slur his words, no doubt my bad boy was lit. The first time I’d seen him drunk, or approaching drunk. Well, I’d given him an out, so now I was going for the kill.
“Why are you ashamed of...do you think of it as masochism or just liking pain...whichever, why are you ashamed?”
He shook his head. “Right to the heart of it.” He stared into the fire. “Addiction.” He brushed his hand back and forth through
his hair. “My old man wasted away addicted to meth, and the appetite I have for pain, it’s the same, an addiction.” He swallowed down more whiskey. “Weakness,” he mumbled.
He believed what he said, but that wasn’t what I witnessed in Marr’s dungeon.
“Strength,” I countered. “You’re sexy, strong and like the feel of a rod on your back. I saw the way you became lighter.” I held him close to me. “It’s not wrong if you like it. If you could would you never have a pain session again, never be beaten with a cane or a lash?”
“No, and that’s the shame—I’d never willingly let it go.” He gulped down the whiskey. “Addiction.”
I wanted to rant at him, yell until he saw that he wasn’t broken for liking pain, but he wouldn’t hear me, so I knelt at his feet. “If what you do is wrong, bad, or shameful, then my love for you is wrong. I’m addicted to you.” I hung my head. “If you are ashamed because you wouldn’t choose a life without pain, then I should be too.” Tears pricked my eyes. “Because I’d never give you up.” I folded in on myself, seeing how much I relied on him. He could break me into a million pieces because I loved him so much.
We sat like that for a long while. His hand rested on my head but he didn’t speak. I began to think he wouldn’t.
“Neither of us is wrong. Maybe some addictions are good for you,” he whispered.
I snapped my head up, smile on my face. “Definitely, they are definitely worth it.” I stared into his eyes. “Ask me what I saw when you were with Marr.”
He flinched and turned away.
I straddled the bench, touching his arm.
Eyes full of desperation he stared at me. “What? Tell me.”
“I saw you—all of you raw and exposed. I’d be lying to say it was beautiful, but it was arresting and stark and you. I’ve never seen, before or after, that kind of release, all the burdens, you carry—totally stripped away.”
I caressed his cheek and climbed onto his lap, facing him. “You were so completely light and free, it’s why I wouldn’t look away. Do you know, I never even understood you were so weighed down until I saw you freed. There is zero shame in a moment like that.”
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