Axel: (A Gritty Bad Boy MC Romance) (The Lost Breed MC Book 2)

by Ali Parker

  He started slowly, his tongue darting out to touch my clit and then lazily tracing over it in a slow circle until the breath I held shuddered out of me. All my muscles tightened, and I clutched at the sheets as Axel’s tongue dipped into me. He pulled slowly from me, gliding up and down my opening until my climax rolled over me like an insatiable beast.

  Axel leaned over and grabbed a condom from his nightstand. He came back between my legs and tore open the wrapper. He rolled it on in seconds, just as my body was recovering.

  I was a quivering mess, and all I wanted was his body moving against mine. I tried to tell him that, but his lips sucked on my clit as his fingers pressed into me. My voice was lost to another thigh-shaking orgasm.

  Axel’s lips shifted to my thighs, and then he started working his way up the length of my body. My belly and ribs were incredibly sensitive, and every kiss and nibble seemed to set my skin ablaze. I shifted beneath him eagerly. I lifted my hips from the bed as he positioned himself above me so I could feel the tip of him rest against my pelvis.

  I smiled up at him, and he stared steadily down at me as he dropped his hips to mine to rest the tip of his cock against my opening. Before we joined, he lowered his face to mine, and his tongue slipped between my lips. His cock did the same between my legs, demanding all of me right then and there.

  My legs fell open wider as his hips pressed down on me so he could bury himself to the hilt. I gasped at the pressure and gripped his shoulders, pressing the tips of my fingers into his firm muscle. He held himself deep inside me until I relaxed, and then, he began a slow and steady rhythm of thrusting.

  As he moved in me, I strained upward to kiss his throat and chest. I kissed his tattoo and his scars and traced them with my fingertips like I could imprint the sensation of them on my own skin. I wanted to feel like this for eternity.

  Our foreheads were together now. His name came out between my lips again as I wrapped my legs around his hips in a desperate attempt to somehow be able to hold on to more of him.

  He granted me one last moan before crushing his lips to mine. His hips bucked against mine, and I sighed into his mouth as I drew closer and closer to finishing. He groaned into our kiss, and together, we finally gave control over to our bodies and gave in to our orgasms.

  Axel kissed me playfully as he held himself above me. Then he kissed the tip of my nose a couple times before stopping to just stare down at me. There was a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

  I poked him in the chest. “What?” It was impossible not to smile up at him the way he was looking at me.

  He ran his fingers through my hair and watched my blond curls fall back to the mattress after leaving his fingertips. “I just need you to know something.”

  I studied him. “What is it?”

  His eyes finally met mine. He was still a little breathless from our lovemaking, but he looked calm too. Relaxed, even. Then he smiled. It was unlike all the other smiles I had seen before on his lips. This one showed true joy.

  “I’m in love with you, Ellie. I have been for a long time.”

  My soul sang, and I became acutely aware of each individual heartbeat. “I love you too.”

  We stared at each other a moment longer before erupting into giddy laughter. He fell to his side beside me on the mattress, and I rolled over to face him, cupping my hands under my cheek. He put a hand on my hip, and I watched as suddenly, the happiness in his smile ebbed away and was replaced with his usual broody expression.

  “If something happens to me, I needed you to know how I felt.”

  I tried to ignore the fear the rose up in me at those words. “If something happens?”

  Axel nodded and looked at his hand on my hip. “Watson and I have made an arrangement. If I do a job with him, he’ll leave me and the MC alone for good. Please, don’t ask me to tell you what it is. I can’t tell you. It’s better this way, for everyone. You trust me, don’t you?”

  I searched his face and wished he would look at me. Of course, I trusted him. I trusted him more than I trusted myself.

  I placed a finger under his chin and forced him to look up at me. “I trust you. I know you’ll do what you know is right. But I can’t help but be scared. For the first time in a long time, I have something I really, really don’t want to lose. Two things all of a sudden.”

  Axel laughed, but it was a short-lived expression of emotion. “I’ll take care of myself. I want to get back to the two of you. But no matter what, just know how much you mean to me. You’re everything, Ellie. Absolutely everything.”

  He was speaking the words I had been aching to hear for years, but they didn’t give me the rush of joy I always imagined they would.

  Instead, they left me cold with fear. Now that I had him, I was terrified a psychopath from Axel’s past was going to swoop in and destroy everything and leave me to pick up the pieces of the life I should have had.

  Chapter 27

  Axel

  When I pulled up out front of the Victorian mansion, Watson and his mob squad—for lack of a better word—were all standing in a neat row in front of two black sedans. There were six including Watson, leaving me as the seventh man involved in the robbery.

  I already didn’t like how big this was going to be.

  I parked my car and stepped out, shielding my eyes against the bright sun cresting over the roof of the house. I moved into the shade to better see the six men.

  They were dressed casually like me, mostly in jeans and long-sleeve shirts. Watson was standing at the end of the line, and his dark eyes were fixed on me.

  “Had a feeling you might bail on me, Jeremiah.”

  I shrugged him off. “Let’s just get this over with. I’m looking forward to putting you in my past for good.”

  Watson chuckled and gestured at the black sedan at the front of the driveway. “Your chariot awaits.”

  I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. He was still the same as he had always been. Cocky, obnoxious, and altogether too infatuated with himself. One of Watson’s boys opened the back door, and I slid inside.

  Watson took the front passenger seat, and the same man who had given me a hard time when I first showed up at the mansion the other day slid into the back seat beside me. He shot me a look that clearly expressed how unhappy he was to have to be sitting in the back with me, and I gave him a nice, big smile back.

  “Morning sunshine,” I said. “Bet you didn’t think you’d ever be on the same team as me, hey?”

  Watson looked over his shoulder at me in the back seat. “Don’t go stirring any shit. You’re lucky I’m willing to give you a shot at this. Otherwise, your precious little MC would be on my radar.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I leaned back casually in the seat. I didn’t miss the looks the driver and the asshole beside me gave me. It was obvious they weren’t used to being around someone who wasn’t afraid of Watson. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “Driver’s wait by the cars with the trunks popped. The remaining five of us go in and fan out. I’m doing the talking. No one else says a fucking word. First person to reach for the emergency button gets a bullet in the stomach. Straightforward enough?”

  “You don’t need to shoot anyone. We can get in and out of there before the cops even get halfway there.” I leaned forward. “No need to kill someone just so you can maintain your reputation with your new buddies. There’s no honor in murdering a fucking bank teller.”

  Watson gave me a devilish grin. “It’s not to maintain my reputation. I just like blowing people apart. You can’t have already forgotten that. It hasn’t been that long.”

  “If someone dies in there, the deal is off.” My voice was a low growl. I barely recognized it in my own ears.

  “Whatever you say, Jeremiah,” Watson chuckled, adjusting his jacket as he turned to face back out the windshield.

  That’s when I spotted the pistol on his hip.

  I was suddenly incredibly grateful I had told Ellie I loved her.

 
We parked outside the bank along the curb, and all of us piled out of the cars. The drivers immediately popped open the trunks and went to stand at the back of the cars.

  The sidewalks were busy with pedestrians rushing to work. It was Monday morning, and everyone had somewhere they needed to be.

  Peering through the bank windows, I could see that there were roughly forty to fifty people inside. The teller windows were all busy, and there was a winding line through the middle of the bank. There were too many targets in there, too many people a stray bullet could easily find.

  Or an intentional bullet.

  I was in over my head.

  Watson and three of his friends began moving down the sidewalk. I stayed where I was, mind racing, heart pounding, until all at once the rage at what was about to happen came tumbling out of me.

  “No.”

  The word was sharp and angry like a whip, and all four men walking away from me turned back. Watson was smiling like he knew this was what was going to happen. Like this was the real plan all along.

  “Don’t have the balls for it anymore, old boy?” Watson teased, his face a mask of pure insanity now. This was the look I remembered, the wide eyes riddled with tiny red veins, the purpling cheeks, the pulsing neck, the deranged and crooked smile.

  Watson was going to crack. I had to channel his fury on me, or a lot of other people were going to find themselves bathing in a puddle of their own blood.

  “The balls?” I asked, forcing myself to scoff. “I had the balls to walk away from you, you sick bastard. And you never had the nerve to come after me because you knew you were no match for me. Never were. And I know how much it gets to you. I was never afraid of you, Watson. You were afraid of me.”

  Watson’s goons looked from him to me. The unease was heavy in the silence between us. I just had to push him a little farther. The implosion was coming.

  “Look at you, Watson. You’re still doing the same old shit. You’re irrelevant. You always will be. Nobody will ever give a damn about you—”

  Then it happened. Watson let out a furious bellow and charged me.

  I bent my knees to brace for the impact and lower my center of gravity. Watson slammed into me, and we both stumbled back. My back collided with the sedan we had just gotten out of, and I heard the metal crumple beneath me.

  I buried my knee in Watson’s gut as his hands reached for my throat. He grunted with the impact but didn’t double over as I had hoped he would. Instead, he caught himself on my shirt, hauled himself up, and then lifted me forward and drove me back down against the car again.

  The wind was knocked from my lungs, and just as I was almost able to take a breath, Watson sealed off my windpipe with his massive, meaty fingers.

  His lips peeled off his teeth, and his gold cap glittered in the sun as he smiled at me. “Bet this isn’t how you saw your day going,” Watson wheezed.

  I grimaced against the burning in my lungs and the pain in my throat but didn’t give him the satisfaction of watching me struggle.

  In fact, I only let him pin me down for another second before I reached out and pressed my thumbs into his eyeballs.

  Watson let out a high-pitched wail and tore himself away from me. I pushed myself out of the crumpled groove my body had made in the sedan. I was only dimly aware of the crowd that had gathered at a distance to watch the scene unfold. I wanted to scream at them to get the fuck away from us, but my voice was gone from having my throat squeezed closed.

  Watson clutched his hands over his eyes and started screaming at me.

  “You fucking piece of shit! I gave you everything you could have asked for, and you repay me by fucking running. Running like a little bitch! You might think you’re too good for us, Jeremiah, but let me let you in on a little secret. You’re just like me. Always have been. Always will be. You and me? We’re two peas in a pod.” Somehow, he managed to open his eyes. They were bloodshot and already starting to swell. I wanted to bury my fingers in his eyeballs up to my knuckles. He swayed where he stood and finally managed to steady himself. He looked me straight in the eyes. “I’ve always known it would come to this.”

  I froze as Watson pulled the gun free from his hip. The crowd scattered and screams assaulted my ears as the hundreds of fleeing feet made the ground beneath mine vibrate. I straightened, and the gun followed my chest as I moved.

  “I’ve been waiting a long fucking time for this,” Watson snarled.

  I braced myself to receive the bullet. My mind was full of flashes of Ellie.

  Ellie cooking dinner in nothing but one of my T-shirts and a pair of gray knee-high socks. Ellie sipping a glass of wine while reading a book on my sofa. Ellie playing with Cade in my backyard and chasing him around the outside of the shop. Ellie lying naked on my bed, ready for me to join her.

  Then, there were other flashes.

  Ellie and Hanna singing in the car on the way to work. Ellie and Hanna dancing in the living room to terrible cartoon music. Ellie and Hanna waiting for me at my front door to come home.

  I gritted my teeth.

  I had done all I could.

  Then someone was shouting. It took me a moment to process what it was that they were actually saying.

  “Drop the gun!”

  I looked to my left to see four police cruisers all pulled up in a line. Officers were hiding behind the cars, nearly a dozen of them, and all had their weapons drawn and aimed at Watson, who was looking at them with a slack-jawed expression.

  His eyes swung back to me.

  “Drop the gun!”

  I wasn’t sure if he would listen. I could see the hatred burning in his stare, and if the shoe were on the other foot and I was a psychopath with a deranged thought process, I would have shot me.

  “Drop the gun! Last chance! Drop the gun and put your hands on your head, all of you!”

  I slowly raised my hands to rest them on top of my head. I never took my eyes off Watson.

  Then, much to my surprise, the gun slipped from Watson’s fingers, and he put his hands on his head. He turned away from me to look at the cops who were now rushing forward. Most kept their guns drawn while a couple others pulled handcuffs from their belts and approached us with caution.

  I let the male cop who came to me take my hands off my head and pin my hands behind my back. As he did that, another cop pushed Watson to the ground and pressed a knee into his back. Watson’s cheek was flat against the pavement, and he was staring up at me.

  “Should have taken the shot,” I said.

  “Next time,” Watson snarled.

  The cops loaded us into the backs of their cars and took us to the station, where we were unloaded separately. I was forced to wait in the back of my car while all the others were escorted into the station to be processed. The two cops in the front seat never said a word as I waited, and I held my tongue as I considered what this was going to do to the rest of my life.

  How long was I going to go to prison for? Twenty-five years, at the least? Hanna would be twenty-eight by the time I was released or older, and there was no way in hell I would ask Ellie to wait for me.

  She was going to kill me for this.

  As that thought crossed my mind, I was taken out of the car and brought through the station to a small office at the back. Most of the cops ignored me, which I was thankful for.

  When I arrived in the office, the two cops who had escorted me put their hands on my shoulders and pushed me down into a chair across from a desk.

  Then, to my surprise, they undid my cuffs and left the room without saying a word. I was pretty sure they didn’t even lock the door behind them.

  Confused, I sat there and waited.

  I didn’t have to wait long. The door opened, and I kept my back to it. I listened to the soft footsteps of someone who couldn’t have weighed very much. A woman, possibly.

  My guess was confirmed when a short brunette cop crouched down in front of me and gave me a charming dimpled smile that erased all the panic in my gu
t.

  “Dani,” I blurted out.

  She nodded and patted my knee. “Yep. Johnny caught wind of your little shindig with Watson. He played it cool. Instead of exploding on going on a rampage, he recruited yours truly to deal with the city’s biggest player. Which makes you my informant. Good job out there. Without you, we never would have been able to catch bad boy numero uno.”

  “Wait, Johnny knew about all of this?”

  Dani nodded. “Yep. A few people knew about this.”

  I arched an eyebrow. All the tension of the day had vanished. I felt lighter, somehow. That was probably because I no longer thought I was going to prison. “Define a few people.”

  Dani shrugged. “Why don’t you go find out? They’re your ride home.”

  Chapter 28

  Ellie

  Dani hadn’t taken any of my shit when I asked her if Hanna and I could meet Axel at the police station. She had refused and given me a deadpan stare before saying, “You want to risk these assholes seeing you? Axel would be livid.”

  There was reason to her words. I hadn’t thought it all the way through. I just wanted to see Axel and make sure he wasn’t hurt.

  Dani had called me in the afternoon, a couple hours after Axel left to go meet up with Watson, and gave me a rundown of the plan she had concocted with Johnny and, in turn, the police department. She told me not to worry and promised she had it all under control. I trusted her. I had seen the woman in action before, and she was someone I never would have messed with. Johnny also had complete faith in her, and he was a good judge of character.

  Dani had me wait at Axel’s place until I received a phone call that it was safe to head down to the station. The cop who called me also told me Axel was fine and that he would be happy to see me. Everything had been taken care of. No fatalities. No serious injuries. Watson was going to prison for a long time.