by Skyla Madi
“I’m coming,” I rasp, breaking the kiss to look down where his fingers play me. “Yes…fuck.”
My orgasm takes over, and I hunch forward, my abdominals clenching painfully tight, my thighs seizing up. Warmth spreads through me as I explode into a million tiny pieces, crying out.
I move harder, faster, grinding out my orgasm until Creed releases my clit, grabs my ass, and tries to push me away from him. Caught up in the heat of the moment, I keep my grip on his hip, desperately wanting him to spill inside me since, unbeknownst to anyone, I have a birth control implant in my arm.
“Come inside me,” I beg, digging my nails into his flesh, making him hiss.
“Shit,” Creed growls, though he continues to push deep. “Fuck, Izzy.”
Then he groans and shoves deep one last time. Stilling, I feel him spill inside me, his taut muscles spasming with every spit of his release. I rock against him, prolonging his orgasm until he clamps a hand on my hips, holding me still.
We lay in silence, the damp sweat on our bodies drying. Creed softens inside me, and the ache in my muscles comes back with a vengeance. When the fog clears, I glance down at his hand on my hip and notice the blue-black bruising around his knuckles. Frowning, I graze the tips of my fingers against them, and he twitches.
“Do I want to know what happened to the person on the receiving end of these?” I ask, my voice husky.
Creed nuzzles into my hair and kisses my neck. “Even if you did, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Club stuff?”
“Yeah, babe. Club stuff.”
He rolls away from me and swings his legs over the side of the bed. I fall onto my back and watch as he kicks his crumpled jeans off and stalks around the bed, stomping toward the bathroom.
“Does it have something to do with my father?” I ask, rolling back onto my side, and Creed pauses at the threshold to the bathroom. “Have you…have you hurt him?”
Something aches in my chest at the thought of Dad being hurt by someone so much bigger than him. My father fights his battles with brain, not brawn. Creed would decimate him.
Straightening his shoulders, he turns around and pins me with an irritated look. I swallow hard, dreading his response all while keeping my attention above his belly button.
“Do you love him?”
“My dad?” I frown. “Of course I do.”
Although we have a turbulent relationship, and I’d rather live countries away from him, he’s still my father. Loving him despite his flaws is the burden I carry as his daughter. Creed’s golden eyes flash with annoyance, and he purses his lips, choosing his next words carefully.
“He loves his job more than he loves you.”
My eyelids flutter. “Unfortunately.”
I’ve known Dad to be a workaholic my whole life, so Creed’s statement isn’t groundbreaking. I’ve sacrificed a lot in the name of politics, for the sake of his campaigns. Still, silent words I’ve thought only to myself are painful to hear aloud. I shift on the bed, suddenly coveting a shower to clean myself with.
“At risk to myself, I’ll tell you that Jonathan paid a rival gang to ransack your house, kidnap, rape, and beat you—”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“—to keep his campaign promise to get rid of us.”
“You’re lying,” I snap, shifting on the bed, uncaring if I leave residues of the mess we made during sex. “He wouldn’t—”
“We caught one of the imposters during the fight this morning.” He flashes me his knuckles. “Judge told me if I made him talk, I’d get you, so I made him fucking talk.”
“Then he’s lying.”
“Doomed men have no reason to lie.”
I swallow. Did he just confess to murder? A chilling swirl of dread curls through my chest then turns hot in the pit of my stomach. “You killed him? The man?”
He doesn’t flinch at my question, doesn’t flush, doesn’t twitch. He keeps eye contact and blinks softly. “There are conversations we can have and conversations we can’t have. This is the latter.” Creed flicks his head toward the bathroom. “Let me clean you, then I’ll cook you some food.”
I stare after him as his confession about Dad sinks in. Is it true? Can I trust Creed to tell me the truth? Or is he using me against my father, like he did with the photographs? What could be more victorious to the Devil’s Cartel than having the mayor’s daughter as a whore on the arm of a patch member? Sickness twists through me, wringing my bones, at the thought of being played.
“Blondie,” Creed calls, and I startle as his voice echoes through the room. “Shower’s hot.”
My thoughts spiral out of control, but I force them to the back of my mind and saunter into the small bathroom. Steam clings to the glass walls of the shower already, and Creed pushes the door open, exposing his wet, naked body to me. My lips part as I inhale deeply, and I rub my palms with my fingers. The sight of him…it stokes my blood into fire. Water drips from the tips of his wet, messy hair, and I follow them as they make their way over his sculpted, tattooed chest and into the depressions between his perfect abs. One drop trails the edge of a vein that starts in his Adonis belt and leads to his impressive cock. The water defines his beautifully sculpted body. I once told my psychologist I thought it was the leather that made James Creed irresistible to me, teamed with dark denims and faded tees. Turns out he’s just as irresistible when he’s naked too.
Clearing my throat, I drop my gaze to the floor and enter the shower. It’s a small shower, at least a quarter of the size of the one I have at home. My nipples harden and touch Creed’s flesh when the hot jets of water hit my back.
“You think I’m lying to you,” he states, his voice cool and calm, and I lift my head to look him in the eyes.
“Are you?”
He glides his hands over my water slick body and pulls me close. Steam dampens the edges of my hair and fills my lungs as Creed steals the air from it. “Don’t know how to prove I’m not lying, so my answer doesn’t matter.”
Our torsos touch, and he cranes his neck, lowering his head to kiss my lips.
“I need to see my father,” I blurt out, pulling away before giving him the power to distract and silence me. “If what you’re saying is true, I want to confront him.”
Creed glances between my eyes, his expression not betraying his thoughts. He leans in for a kiss again and speaks against my mouth, his top lip brushing mine. “Then I’ll take you to him.”
“Oh.” I let out an exhale. I didn’t expect that to be so easy. “Thank you.”
He cups my face and kisses me. It’s passionate and demanding, and it sends my head reeling, making it hard to tell which way is up. I’ve never had a kiss full of lies before, but if this is it, I’m in big trouble.
TEN
C R E E D
I couldn’t take my eyes off Isabelle as she sat cross-legged on the old daybed I helped Judge carve out of redwood a lifetime ago. She shifted underneath the gray faux-fur blanket that was draped over her shoulders and smiled politely at Judge. I listened to the way she spoke and interacted with him. She was articulate and charming, and it interested me the way she directed the conversation, always turning it away from herself, making it about Judge, who didn’t notice their entire conversation was on her terms. It was a coping mechanism, a survival tactic she used to navigate vile, political waters, I’d bet.
I lifted my beer and swallowed a mouthful as I shifted in my hand-carved redwood chair and turned my attention to the center of the stone courtyard. Fire crackled in its decorative metal bowl, casting long shadows all around us. Out of everything Judge built here for his daughter, Nila, the fire pit was her favorite. Like her father, she was a little pyromaniac. Most little girls dreamed of ballerinas and unicorns, but Nila was obsessed with fire and brimstone, with motorcycles and things that went bang. She swore she’d become Queen-President and take over the Exeter chapter, and I believed her, too. She was too fucking precious for this messed-up world, and the death w
e brought to the piece of shit that murdered her was too fucking nice…
…even if we did keep him alive for months and slowly pick him apart until his body couldn’t take any more.
Blondie’s melodic laugh pulled me from my thoughts and vanquished the images of Nila’s limp body as Judge clenched her tight, sobbing into the crook of her tiny neck.
“Is that true, James?” Iz asked, and I paused.
James. I love it when she calls me James. I’d been with a lot of women, more than I cared to count or cared to remember, but Isabelle was different. If anyone else, any clubwhore, called me James, I’d lose the plot, but I liked it when Isabelle called me by my first name. It was…intimate. Izzy was sincere. She wasn’t trying to seduce me for my patch or my rank.
“Is what true?” I asked, tilting my head.
I’d been zoning in and out of their conversation for well over an hour. I wanted to join, but I couldn’t seem to deter my mind from dark shit or getting between Izzy’s thighs again.
“That you dumped fifty pythons into Modo’s room through the hatch of his skylight?”
Judge snorted, and my lips kicked up at the corner as I recalled that one morning last year and Modo’s shrill squeal. “Yeah. I forgot about that.”
We laughed, and it was fucking nice. I hadn’t felt so unwound in years, so relaxed, so satisfied. There were still a shitload of problems to sort out back at the clubhouse, but I chose to ignore them. I was celebrating because Izzy was finally mine, and I’d take her to her father and make him prove it. His daughter was my bitch—my lady—and he’d see her on the back of my bike whenever we crossed paths in town, provided he didn’t go to jail for what he’d done.
The urge to touch her prickled down my spine and arms. I didn’t want to sit across the fire from her and barely hear her laughter over the crackle of flames any longer. I wanted to sit behind her, and I wanted to feel every laugh vibrate through her back and into my chest. I placed my unfinished beer on the ground, lifted myself out of my chair, and sauntered around the pit. She followed me with her pretty stare, smiling as I took the blanket off her and slipped onto the daybed behind her. After sex, and after the shower, she was awkward. I could tell she wasn’t sure where we stood once I’d gotten what I wanted from her. To be honest, I didn’t know, either. I was used to losing interest once sex was over, but it had been hours and I still wanted her as much as I did earlier.
I placed my legs on either side of her as she uncrossed them and leaned against me as I rested on the plastic-covered cushions behind me. I draped the blanket over our legs and wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her to me. She smelled good, like soap and berry shampoo, and she looked cute as hell in an over-sized white sweater with loose sweatpants. All I could think about was peeling them off her and licking her all over.
I glanced at Judge, who flicked his curious stare over us, over my hands as I held her.
“An hour alone together and you two are a thing now?” He smirked, tilted his head, and kissed his teeth, lifting his beer toward his mouth. “I guess the sex was good.”
“Sex?” Izzy balked, but Judge wasn’t having it.
He flicked his hand at her and rolled his eyes as he swallowed a mouthful. “Don’t play dumb. I heard you. The whole fucking forest heard you.”
Isabelle’s body vibrated with embarrassed laughter as she shielded her face and dropped her head against my chest. I squeezed her and stroked her sides with my thumbs. She had nothing to be embarrassed about. It was second nature for Judge and me to taunt each other, and we were comfortable discussing anything at the dinner table. Hell, we were comfortable doing anything at the dinner table, no matter how many brothers were present. She’d grow accustomed to it eventually.
“Anyway,” she deflected, pushing her long blonde hair out of her face. “We were discussing your gang.”
“I hate the word gang,” Judge said, sitting forward. He reached into his cooler and pulled out a can of beer. “It carries a negative connotation.”
Isabelle’s head twitched. Bet she didn’t know an uneducated criminal could use words like that in a sentence—and correctly, too. Judge wasn’t an idiot. None of us were, except Modo.
He lifted himself out of his seat and brought it over to Izzy, who shook her head, so he offered it to me. I took it and cracked it open.
“We’re good people. Have never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. Yeah, we do bad shit to get paid sometimes, but we protect what’s ours, and we support our community more than Jonathan ever has.” He dropped himself into his seat and sank into it.
“You support the community, how?” Iz asked, leaning forward.
I knew Isabelle spent a lot of time helping her father organize fundraisers and charity balls, and I knew she enjoyed it wholeheartedly.
“We host blood drives and bake sales to fund cancer treatment for sick kids. Every quarter, we donate leftover funds to services that provide for children who come from broken homes, and last month, we bought a bus for the nursing home on Bleaker so the oldies could get out more.”
I sipped my beer as pride swelled in my chest, and I remembered why Judge was voted president and why it was a fucking honor to be his second in charge. I had a lot of bad in my life, had experienced the worst of it, but Judge knew how to combat it. He knew how to weave goodness through the chaos and give everything purpose. I was a criminal, but I never felt like a criminal under his rule. I murdered for him and stole for him, but I never hurt an innocent. Sure, we liked to throw our weight around town, encourage rumors, and spook the locals, but they were safe from us. We meant them no harm, so long as they didn’t get caught up in club business.
“That’s really nice of you,” Izzy said, glancing over her shoulder at me. Her bright eyes sparkled with adoration, her lips held in a gentle curve, a perfect soft smile. “I want to join. How do I join?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “As a patch member?”
“Not in a million fucking years,” Judge answered.
She frowned, and I hated that it was so endearing. Isabelle turned to face him. “Why not?”
“Because I said so.”
“I know it’s not because I’m a woman. You have women in your gan—club.”
That was true. We did have women members. Judge didn’t discriminate. It didn’t matter the color of your skin, your gender, or your sexual orientation. If you brought something to the table, something Judge could use, you were in with a shot. That often landed us in hot water with our brothers from other chapters who still ran a tight and exclusive ship featuring white, straight men only. In my opinion, Blondie brought plenty to the table, but only for me. Judge had no use for her, none of the men did, so the only way she could get in was through me. But it was a risk. I could lose a lot, and so could she. If I brought her in and she betrayed us—betrayed me—I’d have to hurt her. Really hurt her.
She looked at me again. “What do you think, Creed?”
What’d I think? I thought our MC was no place for the pretty girl in my lap. Although our chapter was progressive and inclusive, men still dominated and made sure our female members knew it. They were all sexist assholes who made sly and nasty comments. As an equal member, she’d have to deal with that—I’d have to deal with that—but as my woman, I could deal with it on her behalf. As my woman, none of the men would have the balls to sexualize her. I opened my mouth to tell her she had her head in the clouds, but Judge cut in.
“You’re new here, Blondie, and it shows. It doesn’t matter what Creed fucking thinks. I’m president, and what I say goes.”
I carried on drinking my beer as she tilted her head, holding Judge in her gaze. If she wanted in, she had to fight for it. If I fought on her behalf, he’d never respect a word that flew out of her mouth.
“That’s not entirely true, though, is it?” she argued. “The president of an outlaw motorcycle group can’t make solo decisions. He must discuss with the other patch members in church before anything can be motioned.
”
I smirked as Judge thinned his eyes. “You’re not gonna get patched in, Blondie. Forget it.”
“Iris is a prospect. You’re telling me that she’s can get patched in, but I can’t? She’s smaller than me.”
“She can shoot,” I said, coming to Judge’s aid. I figured I better say something before he accused me of being pussy whipped. “Best gunman I’ve seen.”
Judge nodded in agreement, drinking more beer. When Kace brought Iris to the club, we laughed her off and she left fuming. She showed up the next day unannounced and shot a hole through Judge’s beer can from yards away. She had our attention and challenged Armi to a shoot-off in the range. Iris won by one point, fair and square.
“You ever shot a gun?” I asked Isabelle, already knowing the answer, and she shook her head.
“No.”
“Are you good with knives?”
She shook her head again.
“You like laying on your back?” Judge snickered, tossing an empty beer can across the firepit, and I scowled at him. “Because that’s the only way girls like you ever get into the club.”
It pissed me off that he saw her as a piece of meat, that sex was all she had to offer. I knew he was goading her, that he was using his own shitty technique to encourage her to tell him how bad she wanted it.
“I do like it, actually,” she shot back, and I felt her body warm against mine.
She was wound tight with frustration, her voice leaving her lips in bites of attitude.
Judge grinned at her, sitting up straight. “With thirty different men? Sometimes two—maybe three—at a time?”
A subtle shudder rolled down her spine. “No…just with James.”
A thick, delightful, and damn scary sensation slithered through my stomach, sinking low. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
