So Hot MC Boxset

by Blair Grey

  “Allow me to correct you,” Cal said as he got up and came to take me by the shoulders and made me sit on the sofa. “This ain’t about you, baby. This is about some fuckers messing with our brother. You’re a pawn in this whole thing is all.”

  Pawn or not, I knew that Lucas had feelings for me and that he might do something crazy because of that. “Stop calling me, baby.”

  “I call all chicks that, don’t flatter yourself.” He took a seat on the chair. “You think too much is about you that isn’t.”

  Rolling my eyes, I knew he wanted me. “So, you don’t want to screw me, Cal?”

  “I want to screw most females, baby – you included.” He wagged his finger at me. “And we’re running out of time for that – if you get what I’m saying here. What is it – a month or so before he gets out?”

  In the last few weeks, I’d barely allowed myself to think about Ryder. But his question brought him to mind. “A month and a half.” Six weeks. Six damn weeks until my life with Lucas has to end.

  Putting my hands over my face, I fought back tears. I hated myself when Ryder came flooding back into my brain. I’d betrayed the man I loved and had made the ultimate commitment to.

  Cal seemed completely unaware of my feelings. “I’m just saying that you should get a piece of my action before you can’t anymore. Did you read the manuscript I gave you to edit for me? I can perform that act on you if you’d like me to.”

  I hadn’t read it. I was going to read it with Lucas later that night so we could make fun of Cal together. “Unless you want me to throw this lamp at your head, you’d better keep your nasty comments to yourself.”

  The sound of Lucas’ bike coming up the drive had me jumping up. Throwing the door open, I ran out to meet him and found Cal right on my heels.

  He wasted no time. “What happened, Lucas? Was there a fight?”

  I spotted blood on his knuckles. “Oh, God! Lucas! What happened?” I took both his hands, finding the right one looking far worse than the left one. “You hit someone.”

  “Yeah, I did.” He ran one arm around me as we headed inside. “Joey Brand is the most infuriating motherfucker that I’ve ever dealt with.”

  As we got inside, I had Lucas sit down while I went to get something to clean up his wounds with. “I’ll bring you a glass of Scotch and get something to fix you up.”

  Cal took the seat across from Lucas as he had to know every little detail about what had gone down. “So tell me everything. Man! I hate that I missed that. Did everyone fight or just you and that guy?”

  As I went to the bar, I couldn’t hear them talking anymore and found my knees going week. Stumbling into the room, I fell into the nearest seat. My heart pounded, my blood boiled, and my head began to hurt.

  This is just too much!

  When I’d met Ryder, I’d thought him to be a part of a legitimate motorcycle club. Like the kind you see riding in local parades from time to time. Just some people who like to feel the wind in their hair and some freedom from time to time.

  But I’d been wrong. I’d realized that before we got married though. I couldn’t say that I’d had no idea what the hell I was marrying into. But somewhere inside of my head, I’d thought that the men my husband ran with didn’t get into any real trouble.

  Only a year after we’d said our vows, my husband was framed and set up with a trunk full of drugs. Things began to sink in at that time. I really was married to a man who lived a dangerous life. And now I was in love with two men who lived dangerously.

  Knowing that Lucas was in pain and in need of medical treatment, I shook it off and got up, filling two glasses of Scotch because I needed one too.

  Taking the drinks to the living room, I stopped as I overhead Lucas. “So the stupid son-of-a-bitch pointed at me and said that I had taken Hailey. How he knew that I don’t have the slightest clue. And he told me to bring her to him. He said that Ryder had hurt someone he loved and now he was going to hurt someone Ryder loved. And that’s when I saw red and attacked him. I would’ve beaten him to death if Carl hadn’t stopped me.”

  Leaning against the wall, I took a sip of the strong drink. Lucas will kill for me.

  I knew his feelings for me would put him in even more danger. And now I had proof. He was going to beat the man who’d threated my safety to death.

  This is bad.

  “So, did you guys disband them or not?” Cal asked.

  “I’m not sure. We left them all beaten pretty badly from what I can recall. I kind of blacked out with rage.” He took a deep breath. “It took a good while for me to calm down.”

  Knowing he needed the drink I held in my hand, I pulled my body off the wall and went into the living room. “Here you go.”

  Handing one glass to Lucas, I found Cal taking the other out of my hand as well. “Thanks.”

  “Okay.” I looked at my drink as Cal took a swig of it. “I’ll go get something to clean up your knuckles, Lucas.”

  Leaving the room again, I went to get a washcloth and found some painkilling antiseptic ointment to put on Lucas’ wounds. The whole thing bothered me immensely.

  Cal had said that I was just a pawn, but my life was in real danger. It was just now hitting home that I needed Lucas to protect me – to keep me alive. I needed the man in so many ways now – ways I hadn’t truly comprehended before.

  As I came back to see to Lucas, I saw Cal heading out the door. “I’m going to go hang out with the rest of the guys to hear their war stories too.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “You’d better stay right next to this guy until we know for sure that those assholes got the message, Hailey. If we lose you, Ryder would kill us all.”

  Nodding, I sat down next to Lucas. “Let me see, babe.”

  Holding out his right hand, he watched as I dabbed the wet cloth on the many tiny lacerations that covered his flesh. “I kept hitting him. I couldn’t stop. I was like some kind of machine, just pummeling the shit out of him.” He took a drink before going on, “I’ve hit a man before. Lot’s of times, really. But I have never lost control of myself before.”

  “You love me.” I took the tube of ointment and put some on my finger.

  His lips pressed against the top of my head. “I do. I really do.”

  I had no idea what we could do about anything. “Am I going to be safe with that man alive, Lucas?” I remembered what Ryder had told me about the guy’s sister. “He might be as crazy as his sister was.”

  “Don’t you worry even a little about him. I won’t let him harm a hair on your head.” Wrapping his arms around me, he pulled me to sit on his lap, cradling me as he nuzzled my neck. “And once Ryder gets out, he will keep you safe. No matter who is taking care of you, you will always be safe. I promise you that, honeysuckle.”

  Ryder was every bit as capable of keeping me safe as Lucas was and I knew that. But I didn’t want to think about when that time would come. And I didn’t like thinking about being under someone’s protection all the time either. “Can you teach me how to shoot a gun?”

  Running his hands over my hair, he chuckled. “You don’t trust us to keep you safe?”

  “I do trust both of you to do that. But I think I need to be able to take care of myself too. There shouldn’t always have to be a man around to protect me.” My heart felt as if it was made of taffy, being pulled in opposite directions by two very strong men. I needed to figure out how to pull back from both men at least a little and become more of a stable entity on my own.

  “If you want me to teach you how to shoot a gun, I will. I actually told Ryder that I would teach you self-defense, a thing I have yet to do. I should keep my promises to him, I think. Tomorrow we’ll begin your training.” Caressing my back, he whispered huskily, “Tonight, I need your tender kisses all over my body to make the pain go away.”

  “You’ll get plenty of them, my hero.” I kissed his cheek. “And it would make me happy if you were a bit more careful when it comes to fighting men over me. It would devastate
me if you got hurt while defending me in any way.”

  His body shook as he chuckled. “Well, the fact is that I might get hurt. I will defend you no matter what that means for me. It seems kind of out of my control.”

  “Well, learn to control that.” I kissed his lips. “Cause, I don’t want to see you hurt ever again.”

  “You don’t, huh?” He leaned his forehead against mine. “I don’t want to see you get hurt either. And if that man ever got a hold of you, then I think he would do very bad things to you and I would surely kill him if he did. Hell, I would kill him for even making the threat, it seems.”

  I’d never thought about what it would feel like to know for a fact that someone would take another person’s life just to protect me. It felt oddly heavy. I didn’t want to think of Lucas committing such an act at all. But knowing that he would do it over someone just saying they were going to hurt me really bothered me.

  “What if this Joey guy is all talk?” I shrugged as I thought that no one really knew if he was even capable of what he was threatening.

  Eyeing me, he asked. “Where is your husband right now, honeysuckle?”

  “So, you think that because he was capable of framing Ryder that he’s also capable of hurting me or killing me?” I wasn’t sure if he was or not. “Framing someone is much different than physically harming someone.”

  “You haven’t seen this guy or any of them. I think they’ve fucked their brains up with drugs, to be honest. They all look like something out of a nightmare. Tats everywhere – on their faces, their necks, their hands – everywhere. And lots of piercings too. All of them are unnaturally skinny too. But they all seem to have bulging biceps. I think they shoot something into those muscles to make them that way.”

  “And Ryder dated this dude’s sister?” I had to wonder what she’d looked like. “Did you ever see her, Lucas?”

  “Ryder brought her around some. She was one of those goth chicks. Long hair she’d dyed black and had purple highlights, her face was caked with pale white makeup while the makeup around her eyes was black.”

  “Black lipstick?” I asked, horrified.

  He nodded. “Yep. She was a real scary looking chick. Not a thing like you. To be honest, he’d always been into those kinds of women. Then he brought you around and none of us thought you two would last. Seems we were all wrong.”

  Seems I didn’t really know everything about my husband.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucas

  Later that night as we lay in bed, Hailey stroked her long, pink painted nails over my chest as she lay her head on it. After she’d kissed my entire body we’d made love - soft, sensual, endearing love. “Lucas, I think this is getting unhealthy for both of us.”

  I sort of agreed. But my selfish side wasn’t about to stop before I had to. “I think we can just take things a day at a time and enjoy what time we have left.”

  “I tend to agree with you on that, but I have the feeling that we’re only making things harder on ourselves. What we just did wasn’t like what we’ve done before. If we fell in love while having great sex, what’s going to happen if we keep finding ourselves making love like that?” She pulled her head off my chest to look into my eyes. “You don’t have to answer that because I already know. We’ll make deeper roots within each other. I’ll start yearning for things that just can’t be.”

  “Like having my baby?” I knew she had to be thinking in that way. “Stupid Cal for bringing that up, huh?”

  “For real.” She sighed then laid her head back down on my chest. “I love to fall asleep to the sound of your heartbeat.”

  I wondered if she’d done the same thing with Ryder. I didn’t want to know for sure, but I did wonder. In my imagination, everything she and I had done were things she’d never done with anyone else, nor would she ever do with anyone else. The sex on the bike, the sex in the shower, the sex in the backyard with the sprinklers on – mimicking a rainy spring day. But especially the lovemaking that we’d just done. That was a thing I wanted to believe with all my heart that she would only ever do with me.

  Yeah, I’m going to go crazy when she has to leave.

  Stroking her silky, soft hair, I whispered, “I love falling asleep with you laying on my chest too.”

  Perhaps it was all the violence that had gone on that had me needing a tender moment. And there was Hailey, ready to give me what I needed. In the beginning, I’d thought her to be a people-pleaser. But she didn’t give a lick about pleasing Cal nor anyone else we’d been around, so that idea had gone out the window.

  Hailey just liked pleasing me. And that meant something.

  Maybe in another place and time, Ryder and I could’ve figured out how to share the woman we both loved. But not in Baltimore and not while being brothers in the Iron Cobras. Our society wouldn’t agree with something like that. And it wouldn’t be fair to make Hailey deal with two men at one time either.

  The sound of her breathing changed as she fell asleep. So, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep too.

  The sound of someone crying softly woke me up sometime during the night and I found the bathroom light on and my bed empty. Getting up, I went to see what was wrong with Hailey. And when I opened the door, I found her standing there naked with a pair of scissors in one hand and the other held a mass of her hair. “What did you do?”

  Tears poured down her cheeks. “I can’t do this.”

  Raising her hand up high, she held the scissors in a way that made me think she was about to stab herself in the chest. “No!”

  “Lucas?”

  My eyes flew open and I found Hailey leaning over me with a worried expression. “You were screaming in your sleep, honey. Were you having a bad dream?”

  Sitting up, I felt my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to wake up. “It was just a dream!”

  “What was?” She ran her hands over my cheeks. “You were tossing and turning and mumbling then you screamed the word, no. Do you remember any of the dream?”

  Taking her by the arms, I knew I had to stop sugar-coating things. I’d kept on playing it cool about how one day we would have to stop playing house and get back to real life. But with that dream I knew that it might make one or both of us suicidal. “We need to talk.”

  “Okay.” Leaning over me, she picked up a bottle of water off the nightstand. “Here, have some water. You look kind of pale. Was it about the fight you had earlier tonight? I bet that was traumatic for you. Do you wanna talk about it?”

  I took a drink of the water as I shook my head. “No. I want to talk about us and what will happen when this is over.”

  The way her eyes drooped with just the mention of the conversation, I knew she’d been avoiding it as much as I’d been. “Lucas, I would rather not talk about that.”

  “My dream told me that we have to get some things straight.” Putting the bottle back down, I knew the talk had to happen. “Everything has to come to an end, no matter who you are, how rich and powerful you are, or how weak and penniless you are. Everything has to come to an eventual end. So we need to be happy that we’re getting this beautiful and wonderful experience. But we need to be more than just happy about this. We need to be thankful for getting to feel something like this.”

  “I agree.” She ran one hand along my shoulder. “I do feel thankful for getting to know you and spend this time with you.”

  “And we need to truly believe that we will both be fine when we can’t live this way anymore. You will move on and so will I. And we will be happy for each other.” I wanted a life with her in it. But I knew I couldn’t have it the way I wanted it. “We will still be able to be friends. We can even stay close. Only the physical part will have to end. That’s all that will have to stop.”

  Nodding, she agreed. “We can still go antiquing together.” A blush filled her cheeks, turning them pink. “Only, we’ll take a car and not ride on your motorcycle. That just makes me too hot for you.”

  I felt the same way. �
�Right. We can still do things like that and even go out for lunch now and then to catch up. You’re like my best friend, Hailey.” I felt a knot forming in my throat and almost couldn’t believe what was happening to me. “Shit, I’m not going to cry. Goddamn it.”

  “You’re my best friend too, leather. We don’t have to lose that.” Cocking her head, she leaned up and kissed my cheek. “I don’t think that Ryder thought this would happen to us. But I know him well enough to know that he won’t expect us not to remain friends. And like you said, there are no secrets between MC brothers. So, we won’t keep this from him. He needs to know that we found love but that we both respect him and our marriage, so the sex won’t happen after he’s released.”

  It had never occurred to me to tell him anything about falling in love with his wife. And maybe that was the reason behind the nightmare. Maybe it wasn’t Hailey who would turn suicidal, maybe it was me who would dive into a deep depression. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe honesty is the best policy.”

  “In most cases, it is.” Taking a deep breath, she smiled as she exhaled. “We can’t beat ourselves up over this. This isn’t our fault.” She smacked me in the arm. “We’re both so freaking great, how could we not fall for each other?”

  I had to laugh. “Yeah, we’re both so freaking great alright.”

  She’d made me laugh and I forgot all about the angst the nightmare had made inside my head. The woman really was my best friend. If Ryder got pissed about that, so be it. He would have to get the hell over it.

  Nuzzling into me as she leaned back against the headboard, she sighed. “If Ryder gets his ass put away again, promise me that you’ll take over for him again.”

  “What if I have my own old-lady by then?”

  Sitting back up, she looked at me with wide eyes that filled with jealousy, even turning her blue eyes green. “You will tell her that she has to share.”

  I had to laugh again. “You should see the look in your eyes, baby. Ha!”