by Evelyn Glass
“Maybe I should let you take care of me more often,” Cade said. Dawn had her hand pressed against his heaving heart, and she nodded into him as Cade ran his hand down her back. As soon as his hand met her ass, Dawn pulled away from him with a deep breath and let her legs curl around his long limbs. It felt as if there was no way of knowing where his body ended or hers began, and Dawn crawled up his torso as she kept kneading his tight flesh.
“Happy to be of service,” Dawn said. She nuzzled his cheek and let her head fall to his when he turned her eyes to his gaze and smiled brightly under the moon passing through the clouds.
“Cuts both ways,” he said. “Call it a give and take. Would you… Dawn…?”
He seemed unable to finish his thought, and Dawn seized the sides of his face and waited as she bit down on his lip. His silence and the prospect of whatever loomed behind his playful stare nearly sent her head spinning, and Dawn was on the verge of hitting him again. Not to hurt him; only to drag the truth away from his lips when Cade pushed her back and held her to the ground. Now she made no move to struggle as he held her arms at her sides, and Dawn accepted a brief kiss when his tongue moved down her neck. Burying his head in her breasts, he lapped at her nipples, biting down lightly. The contact made her feel as if she was floating towards the sky, but Cade brought her back to earth with a gentle push.
“Where… where you going?” she managed to ask.
“Time to return the favor, Dawn.”
Before she knew what was happening, his mouth pressed close to her cunt. His tongue darted in and out of her soft folds, teasing her with the promise of complete contact. He drew back every few seconds to suck in a deep breath. Cade exhaled around her pussy like a gust of wind crashing against a stony shore, and Dawn shifted her body to move closer to his lips when Cade consumed her. His tongue worked wildly, and Dawn dug her trembling nails into the earth, her head falling back as she begged for more.
His face popped closer to her eyes, her own lust dripping from his lips as he nestled her cheek and whispered into her rumpled hair, “Say that again, Dawn.”
“Say… say what?” she asked.
“Tell me that you need me,” he said. “Tell me that you need me enough to trust me.” Their eyes locked, and Cade started to push his head back between her legs.
“Not just there,” he said. “But when I bring you into the breach.”
“So you… you do still want me to come, Cade?”
“Always and in every way,” Cade answered. “But you will follow my lead.
Dawn softly nodded her head, and his neck was like hot clay in her hands as she guided him back to her pussy.
“Show me the way,” she said. Dawn felt his laughter swirling around her fiery folds, and she clenched her tender muscles around his tongue. His mouth moved with a strength that rivalled his cock, and Cade sucked her desperate pussy to a place where the blood left her head. Forget the sky; now she felt as if she was falling through the ground towards the earth’s core. It might have been the sweetest way to slip into a dream, but Cade shifted his body again and took hold of the back of her head with a moist smile.
“Sleep later,” he purred. “There’s too much to do tonight.”
She kissed him, her own taste passing through his lips as she clung to his neck and stretched up to stare deeper into his eyes.
“Like plan for a war, Cade?” she asked.
“Something like that,” he admitted, as he started to hang his head.
“No. Can’t just brush me off now,” she said.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Here.”
Helping Dawn to her feet, Cade brushed the dirt and the leaves from her back. Pulling up her jeans and swiftly following suit with his own denim, he patted her cheek and smiled at her under the light of the moon.
“Time to plan for now and plan for time,” he said.
“That some kind of a riddle?” Dawn asked.
“No,” he continued. “Only what’s needed most. Here. Take my hand.”
She accepted his fingers without another sound passing through her lips, and she leaned on his arm as they moved back to his bike. He lifted her up and swung around in front of her. Still shaking from the force of his kiss, Dawn clung to his neck and rested her head to his back.
“That’s my girl,” he said as he kissed the top of her head.
“Is that what I really am?” she asked.
“After that show?” he said. “How could I ever think about anyone else?”
“Even… even Nicole?” Dawn managed.
Cade looked taken aback as his blue eyes grew as wide as an ocean, and Dawn fought the urge to dive in deep when he grabbed her neck, his nails just digging into her skin.
“She’s like… she is my sister, Dawn,” he started. “And do you really believe that I would hurt her after… after what she went through.”
“It didn’t stop, Lenny,” she reminded him.
“That’s their thing. I don’t get it. But there it is.”
On the verge of believing him, Dawn sighed heavily.
“But there… there has to be more to the story,” she said. “I know that much.”
“What if I told you that you’ve reached a dead end, Dawn?”
She lurched back and forgot her lust as he took hold of her face.
“On that front,” he said. “I took care of Nicole. Guess I got her back where she needed to be. But it stops and ends there. And this… this…”
Cade dragged his lips down her cheeks, stopping at her lips to smile against her mouth.
“This is where we all are now,” he said. “I’d ask you if you want to step off, but I need my head on straight to ride.”
“So you can lean into the turns?”
“And you are coming with,” Cade said. “On my terms.”
“On our terms, Cade.”
He hesitated before finally nodding, and he kissed her fast before turning his head back to the night.
“You ready?” he asked.
She murmured her assent into his ear, and Cade’s back slipped closer to her breasts as he revved up the motor.
“Then just hang on to me, Dawn.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cade rode down a hill, cutting through the forest as low branches dotted her back. Holding him tighter, closer, Dawn feared that they might be heading into a blackness from which there was no hope of ever returning. She nearly whispered her worries into his ear when he suddenly turned the bike sharply away from their current path. Dawn gasped as the entire world seemed to open up in front of them, but the bike hit a bump in the road and threatened to send them crashing to certain death.
“Cade, what’s happening?” she cried.
“Keep holding on to me!” he ordered. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Longing to believe him, Dawn closed her eyes tightly. As the bike tottered and started to spin, she pictured them resting under a cloudless sky or walking hand-in-hand on a sun dappled beach. Just the two of them, contented and alone and so far away from any kind of harm. In her mind’s eye, Cade smiled and swept her into her arms. His kiss was light against her cheek and like fire around her mouth before they fell as one and consumed each other’s flesh with desperate hands and longing tongues. Dawn hung on to that hope, holding fast to something that might never come to pass when she heard Cade curse under his breath. Daring to lift her lids, Dawn saw their bodies and the bike perilously close to the edge of a cliff. A scream brewing in her chest clawed its way up her throat, and the sharp sound hit the air when Cade grunted for her to just keep still.
“But, Cade, I—”
“I’ve got you, Dawn!”
He backed up his promise by turning away from the edge of everything and leaning back into the open road. Dawn’s eyes slammed shut again; she prayed for Cade to work his magic fingers and bring them back to safety, and her pleas for salvation became his name trickling off her tongue over and over again until the bike started to slow. Was Cade the
answer to a prayer? Or had they crashed without her knowing, and was this what it felt like to pass over to the other side of things?
“Sorry about that.”
Cade’s voice was ragged and tinged with guilt, and Dawn felt his body leave the bike as he pulled her closer to his chest. Looking into his eyes as she touched his face, Dawn quickly understood that he was real, that they were living and breathing in what was still a strange new world.
“What… what happened?” she asked. “I thought you knew where you were going? What you were doing.”
“I do, Dawn,” he said. “I just wanted to get there quicker.”
“A shortcut?” she said. “Are you out of your mind?”
“You gonna hit me again for wanting this over and done with so I can just get back to you?”
Dawn had no choice but to blush at his reasoning, but that didn’t mean he was playing with a full deck if his moves nearly got them killed.
“Then why take the chance?” she demanded. “Were you trying to impress me or something?”
Cade growled, but Dawn didn’t flinch as he peered hard into her eyes.
“No,” he said. “Can see that it wouldn’t have worked anyway.”
“Then what the hell just happened back there, Cade?”
“I’ll show you.”
Dawn tried to dig her heels in as he dragged her back to the thicket. What would he say? Point out a ridge in the road that he had leapt over more times than he could count and sheepishly say that he wanted to impress her by how high he was able to hit the air before coming out the other side with every bone intact?
“Take a look, Dawn.”
“I don’t care what you try to—”
“Just look!”
His hands pressed into her shoulders, and Dawn peered down to see a steel bar carefully positioned between two stones. The item had no business being there unless the roots of trees had suddenly turned to metal and poked through the dirt in perfectly straight lines. Falling to her bended knee, Dawn touched the impossible barrier, and she offered no resistance as Cade knelt at her side.
“My shortcut,” he said. “Had a run in with some of the Panthers here once before. Guess they figured that I might come back the same way, and—”
“And they left this for you,” she said. “Total trap.”
“Looks like, Dawn.”
Hating herself for doubting him, Dawn slowly looked over her shoulder and tenderly tugged on his golden hair.
“So I jumped the gun,” she stated flatly.
“I kind of like that about you,” he said. “You think with your heart. But, Dawn…” He brought her back to her feet and kissed her cheeks before running his fingers down his arms and grabbing her hands. “I would never have made the move if I thought that anything might have happened to you.”
“I… I believe you, Cade. In you.”
She folded him into her arms and savored the feel of his warm breath passing through her hair. Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced towards the edge of the perilous cliff, and she shuddered at the thought of what might have been when Cade cradled her chin in his hand and smiled. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Just keep trusting me.”
Nodding into his arm, they walked back to his bike, and he appeared ready to mount again when he seemed to think better of the course of action and simply wrapped his fingers around the handlebars.
“Not far now,” he said. “Might even make more sense to keep the motor quiet. Wouldn’t want to give our position away.”
“And how do you turn into the curves when you aren’t riding the thing hard?” Dawn asked.
“You’d be surprised what my legs alone can make happen,” he responded.
“Think I’ve already got some idea.”
Walking silently at his side as they weaved down a soft patch of hill, Dawn pictured him younger, shorter. Darting through the trees until he came across the shortcut, in search of nothing but the way home.
“This… has this really been your whole life?” she asked.
“For as long as I can remember,” he admitted. “Harold Whitaker took me in when my folks passed.”
“And how did that happen?” she asked, sad to even have to form the words.
He clammed up, as his jaw clenched, and she decided to let the matter drop, as she rubbed her fingers down his arm and shot him a small, soft smile.
“But you figured a way back that no one else knew about,” she continued.
“Guess I thought as much,” he said. “All spoiled now.”
He looked tragic as he made the admission, as if something precious had been snatched from his grasp without his even knowing how it happened. Bringing the bike to a halt, he fixed his eyes on the ground, his heavy sigh working its way around his shoulders.
“Dawn… they…”
Cade rested his bike against a strong tree, and he took his head in his hands as he spoke into the space between his fingers.
“Think you want to tell me what came before the shortcut?” she asked.
His head swooped back, and Dawn watched his face soften as he smiled around a memory that she could hardly see yet still envision.
“I… I didn’t just choose to be an Alpha, Dawn,” he started. “I was born into the fold. Not long after Nicole.”
“So that’s why you think of her as a sister.”
Cade nodded without words, and Dawn waited for him to finish or rather start his thought when he clutched her hand and breathed between his lips.
“Maybe… maybe if my mother had lived she would have pushed us closer together,” he confessed. “Sealing the Alpha line in place for the next generation. But all I can do is carry the mantle and try to do her proud.”
“Which you do,” Dawn said. “I… saw you with Nicole. Never should have thought that it was anything dirty.”
He laughed darkly as he looked into her eyes and shook his head.
“Everything is dirty when you bury your parents.”
“Oh, Cade…”
Dawn started to fall into his arms when he held her back, baring his teeth as he pierced her stare.
“They were true,” he said. “And they believed that there could be peace between the crews. My dad… Harold said that it was a sure thing. My mom followed him into the night. Always sort of wondered why they both kissed me before they left.”
A single tear started to trickle down his cheek, and Dawn folded him into her arms as he rested his head to her shoulder. She felt no desire to hit him now; he already seemed so beaten down.
“Cade?”
He sighed and tried to push away from her. But Dawn caught his chin in her hand and made him look into her eyes.
“It wasn’t the Panthers,” he said. “Whole crew would be smoked by now if that was the way it went down.”
Dawn relaxed slightly in his arms, but her ears still pricked to attention as her lips started to form the consummate question.
“Then… then who, Cade?”
“Don’t really know,” he said. “Panthers still came along after that, and we had to go underground. But someday I’ll make it right.”
“We… we will, Cade.”
She kissed his brow and just held him as a breeze raced up their joined backs. Dawn started to shiver, but Cade’s arms made her feel warm even as she knew that they couldn’t just stay like this. They pulled apart slowly, and Cade touched his warm finger to her nose with a small smile.
“And nothing or no one is going to hurt you,” he said. “I’ll lose you first.”
“Cade, don’t talk like—”
“We can always find each other later,” he promised. “But you have to stay safe.”
His eyes wouldn’t let her object, and even as she silently vowed to keep close at all costs, Dawn bowed her head and curled her chin closer to his lips.
“Then keep… keep me that way,” Dawn said. “Don’t make me hit you again.”
“I like that, Dawn,” he said as the light returned t
o his eyes. “No other girl ever touched me like that.”
“So there were other girls?” she asked, struggling through the sadness still permeating the air to keep things light and sweet.
