13
BOOTH
Home. Being in this woman’s arms felt like home. All the bullshit from yesterday could wait for a few more minutes. I just wanted—no, I needed to hold her. Her face was a fucking mess, and she was worried about me? Jesus Christ, where did she come from? And how did I get so lucky for her to end up at my club? Whatever I did, I would do it repeatedly to keep her here with me. We stood in each other’s arms just enjoying each other’s hold.
She needed to answer so many questions, and I would be getting to them, but first, I had to ask her a very important one.
Pulling back from her just a bit, I looked into her eyes, trying to avoid staring too much at her split lip and swollen nose. Her eye was blackened just slightly underneath, and she had a small amount of red on the eyeball itself. Probably a few burst blood vessels. How I am just noticing this? The prick who had done this to her must have gotten her with a fingernail or a ring. Fucking arsehole was going to pay and pay big.
I calmed my boiling rage. My woman was in my arms, safe, and mine, but I needed to know she was on the same page as me. Too much time had been wasted by both of us—mainly me. I had always known her feelings for me, so the blame was on me. But now? Now I was done with wasting time. Lifting my hands, I gently placed my thumbs on her soft cheeks, taking care not to hurt her.
“Stella, are you my honey?” I asked her softly. As soon as I asked it, I wanted to take it back. What if she said no? Fuck! There was that possibility. I mean, I had been an absolute arsehole to her. I held my breath as I waited for my fate.
But instead of saying, ‘No, get fucked, Booth,’ I saw something that made my heart start to beat faster. Stella’s beautiful face lit up with a wide smile, and her eyes shone with unshed tears. Happy ones, I prayed.
“Yes, Booth, I am. Are you my handsome man?” she asked, and it was all I could do not to drop to my knees and bawl like a baby. Thank fuck! I returned her smile with a huge one of my own.
“My fucking oath I am, Honey. My fucking oath,” I replied. It felt like my heart just started beating again. Since this prick Rogue started playing with us and then targeted our women, I had felt nothing but cold dread and responsibility, but when Stella came up on that security feed with bruises and cuts all over her, that dread turned into fear. I was afraid of no man, but this beautiful creature in front of me could bring me to my knees.
“Booth?”
“Yeah, Honey?” I kept my voice low and my face in her neck. Her skin was so soft, so bloody soft.
“We still need to sort out a lot of stuff before we can move forward,” she said quietly, her hands making circling motions on my back, and damn, it felt great to be touched again. Touched by Stella. But I could tell she was worried, and so was I. We would work all our shit out. I would do anything and wait as long as she needed, so long as she was mine. But for now, I just needed to hold her, and fuck, if that wasn’t the greatest feeling.
“Yeah, Honey.”
14
STELLA
It felt strange and oddly wrong being in the war room. This room was for the men only. That had always been the rule around the compound. However, not only was I sitting at the large, wooden desk, but Charlotte was, also.
“It really needs some knick-knacks and a bit of a dust, doesn’t it?” Charlotte leaned over and whispered in my ear, making me giggle.
“Something funny there, Honey?” Booth looked at me with his eyebrows raised and his mouth in a thin line. He looked pissed, but his beautiful grey eyes were twinkling at me. It was so unreal to see him like this. I mean, yeah, he was pissed a lot of the time, which I was used to, along with the nasty comments I didn’t like that had been thrown my way.
But now he had a calmness about him. Like our claim on one another, just ten minutes ago, had flipped a switch. We weren’t out of the woods yet by any stretch, but there was light at the end of the tunnel, and my prize was Booth.
I tried for an innocent look and batted my eyes at him. “Yes, handsome, but you have to be a woman to understand it, and sorry, military man, but that is something you are far from.” As I sassed at him, I let my gaze drift up and down his sculptured perfection. Oh, Lord, the things I wanted to do to that body. Thinking about one of my go-to categories on Pornhub, one particular video came to mind. My eyes travelled back up to his, and what I saw had me biting my lip. Hmm… He was so sexy.
“Well, that’s good for you, Honey. Now behave and take a seat. Teach, you too. Both of you sit at the end of the table where we can all see you.” Booth, giving me a wink to take a bit of the sting out of his words and the situation I had managed to get myself in, took his seat at the head of the table, opposite from where Charlotte and I were sitting. I wasn’t sure why I was sitting so far away from him, but I was sure there was a reason for it. Booth never did anything without prior thought. The other guys were also at the other end of the table, three on either side of Booth. Ford made up the sixth.
“Creed.” Booth motioned with his chin at his brother, his voice suddenly different. Now he was the leader of the Wounded Souls, not the man who had held me gently in his arms and asked me to be his.
“Stella, who is hitting you?” Creed asked.
Okay, then. Q and A it was. I shouldn’t have been surprised that they would lead with this, but I would rather not have to answer it. I was glad Booth gave Creed the lead on the questioning because I wasn’t too sure I could have answered them otherwise, which was something I was quite sure my man already knew.
I felt my hand grabbed under the table, and Charlotte’s small, warm hand gave me quiet strength. Taking a fortifying breath, I started.
“My stepbrothers and stepfather. They used to always belittle me and torment me when I was a young girl, but my mother was always around to protect me for the most part. Then she got sick, and her illness progressed so quickly and took her life well before we thought it would. So then, there was no one to stop them. They easily graduated to more physically violent attacks on me. It started with pushing, hair pulling, and silly childish things like that. When Mum’s will was read, and we discovered she’d changed it, leaving me the house, they upped the stakes, and the hitting started.” I kept my tone as neutral as I could, my eyes away from Booth. I wanted to make it through this as fast as possible, and I knew if I looked at him, it would be game over, and the sob-fest would begin.
“Why haven’t you come to us with this, Stell?” The question I was sure they all wanted to ask came from the club’s VP.
I liked Cooper Steel, and we had become fast friends. Sometimes I worked at his Bar and Grill when he was short-staffed. Steel was a mountain of a man, not like Darth was—Darth was big everywhere, and it was hard to escape from his size—but Steel, though, was tall. His hair was long and straight, hitting the middle of his back. His chest and arms were massive, which was why he was such a mountain. His face was perfect and could have been on the cover of a hot romance novel. He was gorgeous—amazing green eyes, a constant five o’clock shadow on his strong square jaw and the cutest dimple in the middle of his chin. I could see why Mia was so smitten with the man, but he wasn’t my type. I tended to like the grey-eyed, pissed off kind of guy. The kind who was glaring at me with those narrowed grey eyes as we spoke.
“Honey, you wanna answer the man instead of staring at him like you want to lick him,” Booth said, growling. Holy shit! Did he seriously just say that?
“Seriously, Booth, did you just say that?” I said, repeating my thought aloud.
“You were looking at him for too long. Your fucking eyes were all over him,” Booth said, giving Steel a one-fingered salute when the gorgeous man smirked at him then blew me a kiss.
“She knows quality when she sees it, Pres. What can I say? When you got it, you got it. All the chicks think so,” he replied with a cocky smile on his handsome face. Pig.
“Oh, no, he didn’t.” Charlotte gasped from beside me.
Yes, he certainly did. It was time to bring him down a
peg or two.
“But does Mia? Did you know she is going out with the new bartender at the Bar and Grill?” I said as nonchalantly as I could to Charlotte, raising my eyebrow. Charlotte caught on right away, and flicking her long, blonde hair over her shoulder, she looked directly at Steel.
“Yep, and if the kiss they shared in the car park is anything to go by, things are getting pretty hot and heavy. She will have that little problem of hers taken care of in no time.” Charlotte played along, fanning herself. Of course, Charlotte was talking about Mia wanting to get rid of her virginity. Mia had tried with two of the prospects, but those guys knew their place and were all scared shitless of the VP.
Despite Mia’s beauty, none of them was willing to help her.
“Sweetness.” The growl from Deck held a warning tone, but if his smile was anything to go by, he enjoyed seeing his woman happy. Since the car accident and the bombing of her car and Deck’s bike at the prenatal clinic, Charlotte had been a little on edge. She was convinced Deck would be unhappy with her being pregnant, especially so early in their relationship. After all, they had only been together a few months. But unlike the other men, Deck worked in speed-of-light mode and was happy as punch—my word not Deck’s—that he was going to be a dad again.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Steel said, his jaw clenched.
Aha! I knew he was interested. I couldn’t wait to tell Mia.
“Will everyone fucking focus, please. VP, you figure your shit out with Mia later. Teach and Stella, behave yourselves. And Stell, one last warning. Keep those eyes right here,” Booth ordered, pointing to his chest. I knew he meant it, but damn, I liked poking the bear. He was right, though. I needed to focus if I was going to get through this. Shiloh’s birthday party was in a few short hours, and nothing was going to come between that little girl and her big day.
I knew I had to answer Steel’s question, but I didn’t know what it would do to Booth once he heard it. I decided to go with total and complete honesty—it was the only choice. There had been too much secrecy on my part.
“I had no choice. My stepfather is a police officer, a detective, and he said if I was to tell the club, he would bring down so much shit on you all. I couldn’t be the cause of that. This is my family, and I will never do anything that that could ever put Shiloh in danger. Ever. So I said nothing and took my punishment.” I shrugged. There really wasn’t much more than that. My eyes never left Booth. His breaths were coming out in low pants, his hands sitting on the desk in front of him, clenched tightly. Oh, boy.
“Are you telling us that you have been taking brutal bashings to protect us?” Mannix asked, his gaze wary as he looked at Booth, who hadn’t said anything to my answer. Oh, boy.
“It’s okay. I’m fine, really,” I scoffed, waving my hands in the air as if it was no big deal. It was definitely the wrong thing to say, and I knew it the minute the words left my mouth.
“You’re fine? You’re fine. It’s okay?” Booth repeated in a very low, dangerous voice. Like a panther, he got out of his seat and moved towards the big screen TV behind him. Picking up a remote, he turned on the screen. A picture of me with a scratch on my cheek instantly appeared, and I saw it was a security camera image with a time stamp in the top right-hand corner. Pushing another button, another image of me appeared, but this time with a bruise on my jaw. Another showed a cut above my eyebrow. Booth kept pressing the button on the remote, showing dozens of security pictures of me at the club in different rooms but all with the same common theme. Each one showed a bruise or mark that my stepbrothers had left on me.
“Does this look like you are fine, Stella? Do you look okay in these images? What about this one?” He changed the screen, and in the picture, I was crying as I lifted my top to reveal a deep purple bruise on my side. “Really, Stella, this is you being okay? Because, to me, these images show me a woman—my woman—being abused by three fucking cowards. To me, this is you hiding shit from me to protect my club. You have things shit-arse backward, Honey. You should have come to me.” He roared the last part as he threw the remote hard against the wall. I watched helplessly as it smashed into pieces. I jumped in my seat from his outburst, and beside me, Charlotte let out a shriek. He saw this and flinched. Oh, no, I didn’t want him to think I feared him, because I didn’t. Far from it.
Deck got up and made his way to his fiancée as her shriek spurred him into action. His first thought was always to protect his woman. Charlotte and Shiloh were his reason for living, so he would do anything to protect them until the last breath left his body. Putting his hands on her shoulders, Deck glared at Booth.
“Brother, take it easy.” His tone held a warning we all heard loud and clear.
Booth was pacing before the screens with his eyes glued to them. When he’d thrown the remote, he’d lost the ability to change the picture from my bruised face with tears streaming down it as I held my jumper up and inspected the boot print on my ribs. I remembered that day. Bradley had been nasty. Unlike his brother, Michael, who used his fists, Bradley liked to kick, and steel-capped boots were his favourite foot attire. Booth didn’t need to be looking at these. It happened, but now it was over. He would see to it. I believed that down deep in my bones. Booth would protect me now.
Getting up, I made my way to my strong man.
“Booth.” One word.
And then he was one with me.
15
BOOTH
“Booth.” That was all it took, one word. My name from her lips. I spun around from the heartbreaking image on the screen and buried myself against Stella. Her arms came around underneath mine, and she held me tight to her.
I couldn’t believe what she had endured for me, for my club—beatings, torment, and bullying. All because some cop who thought he was too big for his badge had threatened the Wounded Souls. Family. She’d called us her family. And we were. Fucking damn straight we were. But fuck me, taking such abuse for us. My honey should have never had to go through such shit.
I didn’t think I could hold her any closer if I tried. I knew my hold was probably too tight for her right now, the image from the strip club car park was only two days ago, but I didn’t seem to have it in me to let her go.
Then suddenly, I heard her sweet voice in my ear, singing to me. She was singing a song called ‘Yours.’ I was not sure who sang it. Ella someone? I had heard Stella singing it around the compound as she cleaned. It was a sweet song about belonging to someone, about trusting someone completely to look after them. She trusted me, and she wanted to be mine. Fuck. This woman. She was soothing me with the song. Was there no end to her faith in me? In my club?
I needed to be alone with her and not for sex—at least, not yet. I wanted to lie with her and hold her in my arms. I needed to feel her under me.
Making my decision, I lifted her into my arms, and her legs automatically wrapped around my waist. I figured this was probably the safest way to carry her with her sore ribs.
“Hold on, Honey,” I whispered against her neck. I felt her nod of acquiescence. She was always so willing. “Tell Shiloh not to worry. We will be at her party on time,” I said to Deck as I walked us past him, stopping briefly to bend and drop a kiss on Teach’s head. I’d scared her with my outburst, and that wasn’t what I wanted for the women of this club. We didn’t scare them or intimidate them. Instead, we just confused the shit out of them. “We good, Teach?”
Her soft smile was her answer, but she gave me the words too. “Yes, Vincent, we are good. I am sorry, but I couldn’t betray Stella.”
I got that. My life and the brotherhood relied on trust. It was the core of our commitment to one another. I was glad Deck had such a strong, loyal woman to go through life with. I gave a chin lift to my men as I walked us out the other door that led directly to my private rooms.
16
Stella
I had been in Booth’s room before many times—I was the cleaner, after all—but to be in there because he brought me mad
e it much more special. He was a clean guy, so when I came in to clean, it was mainly just to do a general tidy, dust, and grab his dirty clothes hamper. His room was decorated in blues and charcoal grey tones. When I’d brought all the hampers for the men’s rooms, I’d tried to colour coordinate as much as possible. It made it easier when I had six or more hampers lined up in the laundry room at one time.
“Honey, will you let me hold you? I know you got shit to do for Shiloh’s party, but we got time, and after all the fucked-up shit that just went down, I need to breathe you,” Booth asked in the only way he knew. Sweet with a good dose of alpha.
“Breathe me? I like that. Show me what that entails,” I said.
I was still in his arms, so he walked us to the bed and plopped me down in the middle. He reached down to take off my shoes, then sat on the bed, unlaced his boots, and toed them off. He then reached behind his head and grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt, pulling it over his head. His eyes found mine, and he waited. Sensing what he wanted, I sat up and gingerly removed my own shirt, leaving on my bra and jeans. Booth got on the bed and pulled me carefully into his arms. With our fronts together and our arms wrapped tightly around each other, we became one person.
“This is breathing you, Honey.” His grey eyes were on me, and our mouths were inches from one another, his voice hushed and low. God, I loved this. I loved this man, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Not yet. We had so much to talk about, to explain, but for now, we had this.
I let my hands comb through the hair at the nape of his neck. The long, silky strands felt glorious through my fingers. I had always loved Booth’s hair. It wasn’t too long like Steel’s or Darth’s, who both liked to wear it up in man buns, but Booth’s was perfect down around his shoulders.
His Honey Page 7
