So Hot MC Boxset

by Blair Grey

  I’d made a commitment to Ryder and thus far he hadn’t done anything to have me withdraw it. Not even the neglectful period of our short marriage was enough for me to call it quits. Leaving him for another man wasn’t a thing I could see myself doing. Not even if the other man was Lucas. But thinking that someone would kill us over running off together hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  “Betraying a brother isn’t a thing that’s tolerated,” he informed me.

  “He asked you to take care of me. He knew what that meant even if I didn’t. So, in my opinion, he will have to accept whatever I need him to. And if that means that I fell for you and I have to figure out where we stand, then that’s how it’ll have to go.” I put my hands on my hips and nodded to let him know that I had some power too – Ryder wasn’t going to be able to call all the shots.

  “I knew better than to let my emotions play a part in this thing with you, Hailey.”

  I’d had it with him calling me by my name, instead of the cute nickname he’d given me. “So, honeysuckle is just over now, leather? I make one mistake – granted a terrible one – but just one, and now you’re going to act like we have never had anything?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do or act like,” he said with a loud huff that told me he was exhausted. “I need some space. So, are you going to be cool and give it to me? Or do I have to upset you and take what I need without your approval? Either way, I’m taking the space I need right now, whether you understand why I need it or not.”

  “Then I guess I’ll give you the space you need. But you should know that the bed is still open to you if you get cold out there all alone. I am sorry for what I said. But I’m not sorry for loving you. And I never will be. If Ryder can’t accept what has happened, then he’s the one with a problem, not us.” It wasn’t me who’d been in a situation to end up in prison, it was him who’d put himself in that predicament.

  The furrowed brow on Lucas told me that he wasn’t thinking that same way I was. “We’re the ones with problems. Ryder gets what was his before he had to leave. Even if he had committed a crime, he would still get what’s his when he was done serving time. It’s our way.”

  Their way was stupid. “Go on then. Go sleep in the living room and try to make yourself believe that I used you and don’t love you the way I say I do. If that will help you to not feel guilty, then do that. Keep on living that fantasy life of being a gang member with no feelings and no attachments.”

  “It’s not like that entirely.” His hand on the doorknob let me know that he was actually going to go and leave me all alone in my bed. A bed that I would surely be crying in when he left. “We can love. Of course, we have to find our own woman to love and not steal one from one of our brothers, but we can love. Not that I believe in it.”

  How it pissed me off that he still thought that love couldn’t be real. “I. Love. You. Lucas Hoss.”

  His eyes glued to the floor, he murmured, “I’m not going to say those words to you anymore, Hailey. I’m not about to let myself get any more battered than the way my mother left me. You’re another man’s woman. You can never be mine. Our love is not only a thing that isn’t real, but it’s also a thing that can’t be real. So, let it go. Let me go.” With one swift motion, he left my bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  I barely got a couple of hours of sleep before the sun woke me up when it came streaming through my window. Looking at the empty space beside me, I got up, wrapped my robe back around me, then went to talk some sense into Lucas.

  I am not sleeping another night alone.

  But I didn’t find Lucas asleep on my couch. Instead, I found Cal smiling at me. “Morning, good-looking.”

  “Where’s Lucas?” I knew I sounded rude but didn’t care. Lucas had left without telling me a thing and that upset me.

  “He had to meet an insurance agent at his house. He texted me to come over to watch you.” Cal patted the seat next to him. “Come on and sit down next to me. I can see that you’re angry. Why is that, baby?”

  “Don’t call me that. Lucas is the only one who can call me that.” Striding past him, I went to the kitchen to make some coffee.

  But Cal was suddenly right there when I turned back around. “What’s going on with you two?”

  Not sure about what I should say, I decided people should know. “We’re in love is what’s going on with us.”

  A smile broke over his face. “You better get over that, sweetheart. There’s no way Lucas is going to step on his MC brother’s toes. Not even for you. So, you don’t want Ryder anymore of what?”

  I did want my husband, but I wanted Lucas too. Flopping down in a nearby chair, I fought the urge to cry. “I want them both.” Burying my face in my hands, I tried not to cry too loudly.

  But when his firm hand took me by the chin and pulled my face up so he could make me look at him, I knew self-pity wasn’t a thing Cal was going to let me wallow in. “You need to think of Lucas as nothing more than a concubine, baby. He’s here to protect you and make sure your needs are met so you don’t look for sex outside of our circle.”

  “Lucas is more than that.” I wasn’t going to let anyone think he was nothing but a sex toy for me as well as a bodyguard.

  Cal shook his head. “That’s all he is to be for you.” He sat next to me, so close that our legs touched. “I tell you what. Since he’s promised Ryder that he’ll protect you, then I’ll let him continue to do that. But if you need sex, get it from me. I can have sex easily without involving any emotions. I’ll teach you how to do that too. In no time at all, you’ll forget about this silly thing you think you feel for the chaplain and you’ll be ready for your husband when he’s set free.”

  But what if I don’t want that at all?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lucas

  Being away from Hailey to see to things at my home made it possible for me to come to terms with the way things were. She is another man’s wife.

  That was it in a nutshell. Hailey Winslow was not a woman who I had the privilege of falling in love with. I had to go right back to the beginning of this thing to fully understand things with us.

  I went for the unattainable and Hailey was simply a lonely woman who had been disillusioned with her marriage before her husband had been put away for some time. Classic, really when I got to thinking about it.

  Love wasn’t a thing I knew much – if anything – about. And Hailey wasn’t an expert at knowing what it truly felt like either. Loneliness can make a person believe feelings are real that aren’t.

  At this point, I wasn’t even sure if the woman actually liked shopping for antiques or just wanted to develop common interests with me. It was what a person who wants to be accepted does. They mimic the person they’re trying to connect with. That means finding interest in things that they normally wouldn’t.

  Hailey had a husband who would be coming home to her within a month’s time. She needed to get over this idea that she and I had fallen in love. And only space would make that happen.

  Not only did I owe it to Ryder, my MC brother, to give him his wife back without me having a tether to her heart, but I also owed it to her and myself as well. Hailey and I had put this love affair behind us. It wasn’t real anyway. It might as well have been a fairytale written to entertain people for all it was worth. She and I had no future and our past was nothing but two people in survival mode – trying to get through each day until normalcy came back into play.

  Cal’s hog in Hailey’s drive told me that things had gone okay in my absence. That was yet another thing I had to work on. I didn’t have to be with Hailey at all times the way I had been. Others could watch over her from time to time. I had to make space between us somehow. That would mean asking others to watch over her now and then – but much more often than I had been.

  The front door opened, and Cal came out with a grim look on his face. “Hey, chap. We need to talk.”

  Not that I was in the mood to discuss anythin
g with him, but I nodded anyway. “Sure. What ya got, Cal?”

  Crossing his arms over his wide chest, he huffed. “Okay, so Hailey told me about this whole in love thing and I’m here to tell you that it has to stop. Ryder is only a month away from coming back to his life and his old lady. It wouldn’t be right for him to come back to a woman who was in love with someone else, now would it?”

  “I’m already on that, Cal.” Something inside of me didn’t like the fact that Hailey had talked to him about our private affairs. “No need to worry about our brother, I’m not ignorant of our protocols. Taking care of one’s woman doesn’t mean stealing her heart away from one’s brother.”

  “So, how do you plan to rectify this delicate situation, chap?” The way his eyes scrutinized me didn’t make me happy one bit.

  “If you must know, I’m going to put some space between us. Not complete absence because absence makes the heart grow fonder and we’re already too fond of each other as it is.” I knew I had to handle things the right way since I’d fucked it up so badly. “I’ll still watch over her and be cordial to her. But intimacies have to stop. No sweet nicknames. No touching. Just business with a few niceties.”

  “Glad to hear that.” He shifted his weight to the other foot. “So, you get it that you shouldn’t take care of her physical, sexual needs then, right?”

  His line of questioning had me growing tired. “Yeah. No sex. Of course, no sex. That’s where I lost control of this whole thing. That and shopping together. And her riding with me on my bike. All those things led to where we are right now. So, none of those things.”

  “Except for the shopping shit, I’ll take on the other things.” Even though there wasn’t even the slightest hint of a smile on his face, I could see it lurking just beneath his tanned skin.

  With my blood beginning to boil, I tried to calm myself by taking one deep breath before I said something that Cal would definitely take badly. “Do you mean that you will take on protecting her? Because I made a promise to Ryder that I would do that, and I plan to continue that part of our agreement.”

  Shaking his head, he quirked his lips to one side. “Nah, not that part. The other part. The physical shit. I’m not like you – soft in the heart. I can take care of her needs and leave feelings out of it.”

  This son-of-a-bitch!

  My fists balled at my sides as I wanted to knock his fucking head off. “No.”

  Confusion filled his face. “What do you mean, no?”

  “No. You won’t be taking care of her physical needs. You can watch over her when I need you to, other than that, we won’t need your help.” I had to leave the man’s company before I said things I shouldn’t say.

  But his meaty hand on my shoulder stopped me. “Chap, I respect the shit out of you, and you know that. But she’s got a month to go before her man gets out. She’s gonna need some attention and you are too close to give her what she needs.”

  Looking at his hand on my shoulder, I turned my eyes to his. “Hands off, Cal.”

  “Sorry.” He moved his hand. “It’s just that you’ve gotten too involved with this woman and someone needs to step in and take over before you make mistakes that will lead you and her down a dark path. You know that we can’t allow you to steal our brother’s wife.”

  As if I don’t know that.

  “Look, I’ve already begun the separation process and if you feel that you have to intervene on Ryder’s behalf, I understand completely. But you have to understand that Hailey and I have something that only she and I can deal with. Outsiders are not a necessity and actually, you’re starting to piss me off.” I figured he might as well know how he was affecting me.

  “Outsider?” A grim expression told me he didn’t like that I’d insinuated that he was an outsider. “I’m far from that.”

  “I mean that you’re an outsider where she and I are concerned.” It felt as if I just kept digging my hole deeper with every second we kept having the conversation.

  “Well, Hailey agreed with me taking over everything but the protection part of what she needs,” he informed me.

  Red began to tinge my peripheral vision as I walked around him, heading straight to see Hailey. “She did that, huh?”

  “Yep.” Cal was right behind me.

  That only served to piss me off further. “You will give us some privacy to talk, Cal.”

  “Sure, chap.” He came in the front door behind me. “I’ll be right here. I ain’t going anywhere.”

  “We’ll see about that.” I didn’t want the guy around all the time. I only wanted him around when I couldn’t be there for her. But now that I knew he’d been talking to her about things that didn’t concern him, I wasn’t about to leave him alone with her again.

  Hearing the television on in her bedroom, I headed straight back, finding her sitting up in her bed, watching a movie. “You’re back.”

  “Yes, I am.” I looked over my shoulder, making sure Cal had stayed in the living room. “So, what is this that Cal has told me? You want him to take care of your sexually?”

  The way her eyes went wide, made my heart race with fury. “I’m not sure what to do about this.”

  “Fucking him doesn’t seem like the way to handle what’s happened between us.” Pacing back and forth at the end of her bed, I tried not to fly off the handle, but it was getting increasingly harder to do.

  Her lips formed a tight line as she looked at her clasped hands in her lap. “Lucas, I don’t know what to do here. I love you.”

  With those words, she’d plunged a knife in my heart. “No! You don’t get to say that. Not anymore. I’ve heard you say those words more than anyone has ever told them to me in my entire life. You’ve washed my brain to do whatever you want with those three words. No longer will I give you that power over me. There is no love. There is loneliness and there is a need for companionship that you’ve missed with Ryder’s absence, but there has never been and never will be any love.”

  “You’re wrong,” her simple statement slipped off her tongue with ease.

  But she was the one who was wrong. “I wasn’t angry with you for what you’ve said and done. But now that I know what we are really doing here, it’s beginning to bother me that you won’t see things for what they really are. You were lonely. I was a man you could count on for anything and there would be no repercussions for anything you did with me. It’s that simple, Hailey.”

  Tears dripped down her cheeks as she looked at me with her head shaking. “It’s not simple at all. I do love you. But I know who I belong with. So, when Cal said the things he did, I had to wonder if learning how to have sex without feelings would be the smart thing to do for me.”

  Red filled my vision with her words, and I slammed my fist into my palm. “You’re better than that, Hailey! You aren’t in need of sex. You have never been in need of that. You want to be a part of a couple, is what you were missing. And I filled that void. But stooping to having sex without feelings with anyone will only serve to ruin the amazing woman inside of you.”

  Cocking her head, she looked me over. “What do you want from me, Lucas? Do you want me to be some sort of a saint? Do you expect me to be your woman until Ryder is let out? How is that going to work? Cal explained things to me that made sense. I can desensitize my feelings by having meaningless sex. He can show me how to become a machine of sorts while engaging in the act. It doesn’t have to be intimate. I am married to a man who will always be in danger of being sent away again. And you might not always be around to take care of me when he’s put away again.”

  “You aren’t like the rest, Hailey. I don’t want you to become like the rest of them either. And neither does your husband. If he did want you changed into someone other than who you were when he was taken from you, then he wouldn’t have asked me to take care of you.” She couldn’t be serious about having sex with Cal or anyone else. “You’re not fit for a life like the one we live. You’re better than that. You’re better than us.”

>   Getting up, she glared at me as she came to stand in front of me. “You’re doing it to me too, Lucas. You’re putting me up on the same pedestal that Ryder did.”

  How does she not see that she deserves to be put up there?

  “Hailey, you have to admit that you’re not like the other women who hang out with our club?” She had to have seen that when I took her out to the bar the night before.

  Stamping her foot as she crossed her arms over her chest, she frowned. “I am no better than any of them, Lucas! The only thing different with me is that I keep clinging to men who think I’m the best thing on two legs. I’m the same as they are. No less and no better. Maybe I need someone to show me what it means to be nothing special.”

  “That’s what you really want?” I’d had it. I didn’t even know the woman who stood in front of me. “You want to be nothing special?” Turning on my heel, I had to leave before I said some really mean shit. “I can treat you like that. I can show you mechanical sex. I’ve had plenty of it before you came into my life. I can treat you like you don’t matter if that’s what you really want, Hailey.”

  With one glance back at her, I saw her standing there with a tight jaw and her body rigid. She hardly resembled the woman I’d left alone in her room the night before. That woman was still set on trying to figure out how to make things between us work. This woman was set on becoming a shell of her former self just to fit in.

  And the whole thing is all my fault. Mother was right, I can’t do anything right!

  “Lucas, wait,” she whispered.

  Even though her voice was low, I heard hear and turned around to face her. “What?”

  “It’s just better this way is all.”

  “Better?” That was it. I couldn’t take in even one more word from her or Cal. “You have just proven to me that nothing is real in this life. I’ll never stop watching over you until your husband is set free. But I’ll be goddamned if these hands ever caress your skin or these lips ever press against yours again. All that’s over for good!”