by Marata Eros
I've banged a hundred women, but none of them made me cum like I thought I was going to die if I didn't—like there would never be another drop left.
Sara did. Sara does.
She's curled up in a tiny ball against me. Exactly like she used to fall asleep in that fucking closet. As though even in sleep, she had to protect herself.
I open her hand, and she stirs, whimpering in her sleep. I lay a kiss in her open palm, and she snuggles against me deeper.
I loved washing her in the shower. I loved the sounds she made when I did it even more.
First thing I'm going to do is move her out of here and into my place. No more working The Crawl. No more malesʼ eyes on my girl.
I move over the top of her, throwing a leg over hers and twisting her face to mine. Her sleeping eyes slit open, and I kiss her all over her face, trailing the lightest skin-to-skin contact I can. I don't kiss sweet butts. Somehow kissing means something other than fucking.
“Oh, now you kiss me,” she says in a soft voice, thick with sleep.
I smirk. “I kissed you.”
Her face fills with light pink color. “Yeah,” she agrees. Because she can't deny it.
I made love to her pussy with my mouth. My tongue.
Hugging her against me, I tell her what's what. “You're coming with me, Sara.” I push the hair from her face and hold her small face between my hands.
“I can't let you take care of me, Snare—it won't work. You need to have a life.”
I press my finger against her lips. “Knock that shit off. I've been walking around like a fucking scooped-out corpse since you left me.” My eyes search her face, willing her to listen—to understand. “I'm part of the MC culture now. A one percenter. We don't follow citizen rules, like the other ninety-nine percent of the population. We take what we want.” I let that sink in for a second, giving her time to make sense of my words. “I'm taking you, Sara. We're meant to be together.”
I open her legs, looking deep into her eyes. They hold sadness, relief—eagerness.
I dip my finger inside her, and she moans. “Can you deny this?”
Sara shakes her head, but her tears fall. I reluctantly remove my finger and rub the tears from her face. “What is it? Why can't you see how fucking much I love you?”
“I do see.” She nods, soft surprise overwhelming her expression. “But if you really love someone, you don't force them to take care of you from some false sense of obligation.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I flop down on the bed, covering my eyes with a forearm. “Sara,” I ask to the ceiling, “do you love me?”
A heartbeat of time wavers between my question and her answer.
“Yes.”
I turn to face her, propping myself up on an elbow. “Then what the fuck is this?”
She covers her face with her hands. “I don't want to be someone you have to protect.”
I take her hands from her face. “I can't not protect you, Sara. I was meant to be your protector from the moment you moved in. I loved you that day—that hour. I was yours the moment I saw you. It's not a choice. That's what you're not fucking comprehending.”
Sobs break out from between her lips, and I pull her against me. “Why does it sound like your heart's breaking?”
“Because I gave up,” she whispers between frantic tears.
I tilt her face with my hands. “You what? What did you give up on, baby?” My eyes move over her face, kissing the tears.
“Life,” she whispers.
Her explanation is so close to the way I was feeling before tonight, I can't respond. I hold Sara while she cries.
She holds me like I'm the last solid thing in the world.
And for me, she is.
12
Sara
I don't ever want the night to end.
Snare arriving is a dream. And a nightmare.
The very thing I tried to avoid has happened. I didn't save my stepbrother in the only way I knew how.
He found me.
And Snare isn't like he was before. Life has made him hard. Life has made me hard too.
I didn't realize until I said the words how little hope I really had. I've been hanging on for Jaylin, keeping one foot in front of the other to give her what she needs.
Jaylin. Oh my God, I have to tell him.
I look away from the softness in his blue eyes, knowing I have to confess I've kept him from his daughter these past four years.
“Listen to me, Sara—I'm sorry about how rough I am.”
I shake my head, tears springing from the wells of my eyes. “Don't be. I don't know where you've been or what you've had to do since...” I don't say the words.
He does. “Since you ran out on me.”
I nod, still not looking at him. “I didn't want to.” I had to.
“Let's get this behind us. There's so much shit we have to put to rest, and it's gotta be done fast. I know”—his eyes scan my room, hitting the clock on top of my chest of drawers—“we can't get dick resolved at one thirty in the morning.”
Jaylin's coming home in a half hour. I don't want that revelation on top of everything else. I gulp back my anxiety. “I know,” I say.
He lifts my chin with a finger, studying my expression, mining my soul of the hidden diamonds I've buried. “Is there something else you need to tell me? Aside from the fact of how I found you in The Crawl?”
He doesn't announce the blow job part again, but it's between us.
“And you were celibate when we weren't together?”
He snorts. “Fuck no, I've been with more women than I can count.”
Nice. I jerk my head away from his touch.
“Uh-uh—don't you go all fucking chick sensitive on me now. I know I'm a man-whore. I had no reason not to be.” I feel him shrug against me, and my anger fades. I have no right to be pissed. I gave him up, so he could be—or do—anything or anyone he wanted to.
He plows his fingers through his short dark hair. “I fucked all those bitches to forget you, Sara.”
I shut my eyes against the visual, the crudeness of his explanation. “What made you look for me now?”
Snare's eyes stare at his hand as his fingertips trail along my side. “I finally decided I was gonna self-destruct if I didn't know where you were. How you were.” His eyes narrow, shifting to mine. “And thank fuck I did.”
I can't meet that condemning look. Deep down, I know Snare wouldn't have self-destructed with women if I hadn't let him go. Another thing to add to my guilt. “I did what I could to survive,” I admit quietly. “That was my first time in the VIP. I needed the extra money bad. All these years of shedding clothes and that's the first time I did private dances.” My eyelashes grow thick with my sadness, heavy with tears. “I had my reasons. The Crawl is a great job. I only work twenty-four hours a week, three eight-hour shifts, and I pull in eight K a month.”
Snare shakes his head. “No more. I don't care if it's eighty K a month. No taking your shit off for other dudes.”
I finally meet his eyes. “I want so bad to give in. I love this.” I slide a fingernail lightly down his semi-hard erection. It hardens beneath my touch as the pleasant ache between my thighs throbs in a sigh.
“You do me in, Sara.” He leans forward, and I press my palm to his chest.
The frown he gives me holds anger, rejection.
I'll clear that up. “I can never say no now—and it scares me.”
He pulls me against him. “Don't. I've found you again. Don't overthink shit. We're not a couple of kids living with Riker and the fear of his fists. Fuck him.”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “He's back, Snare.”
Snare pulls away. “I know. My brother, Noose—” He reads my expression and smiles. “That's what we call other men who've patched into the Road Kill MC—brothers.”
I nod, not fully understanding. “Oh.”
“Anyways, Noose has connections. He hunted you down then found
out he wasn't the only one looking.”
I glance at the clock.
Snare catches my look, his brows knitting. “What, you got a hot date?”
I laugh, the lie startled out of me. “I watch a little girl, and she's coming back at two.
Snare grunts. “Fine. Hide me.”
I raise my eyebrows. “It's not that.” My lips tweak. “I'm too damn beat to explain everything in the middle of the night.”
His thumb caresses the side of my face. “Agreed. But we're coming up with a plan for Riker.”
“I'll explain more later, but he's trying to force me to lie about our past as a key witness.”
His face hardens. “Why?”
“Micah and Denny. They're of age and coming against him. My mom's in a coma.”
Snare's face rears back. “What the fuck?” he hisses.
I nod. “Yeah. The twins want to keep him away from my mom—from them.”
“So in his fucking pea brain he thinks you're going to walk in there and give him a pass for what happened?”
“Yeah.”
Snare scowls. “Fuck that.”
I smile.
“I like seeing that,” he admits in a satisfied growl, pressing a fast kiss to my open mouth.
Snare moves to the edge of the bed, and my eyes are glued to the fine view of his ass. He must keep in shape because every bit of him is ripped and bulked up. He's not a small man full of lean cuts of muscle. He's large and bulky, the outline of a six-pack and the shadow of the rest but not sculpted. Just a gorgeous chunk of male.
He turns, and I watch his cock harden under my gaze.
Snare palms himself, lifting his heavy erection. “I love you looking at me like that, but if you don't stop, I'll fuck you again, kid or no kid coming back.” His inky eyebrows rise, the scar moving with the motion in clear challenge.
I blush, the heat making me dizzy. “Okay, you're right.” I shake my head with a small laugh.
Snare hops into his pants, jerking them up commando style with a zip and button. Stuffing his sizeable cock inside the denim isn't easy, and he softly curses as he shifts the load around. “Only you could make me get it up twice in an hour.”
I cover my mouth with my hand to stifle a giggle, mourning him leaving already. So quickly my convictions leave me in Snare's presence.
Moving to the edge of the bed, I open my arms, and his strong, warm body fills them. “I'll be back early afternoon. Got a job to do. Then we pick up your shit and leave.”
My heart thumps between us. I think about it. This place. Lola. The Crawl. What guarantee do I have that things will work out between me and Snare? If they don't, then I've lost my job and have to start over. Then there's Jaylin—she does't know she has a dad. Riker... he'll try to force me.
“Hey—whoa. Calm down.” Snare's hand covers my furiously beating heart. “We do shit together. Face shit together. Riker's not going to take a piece out of you, Sara. We're adults. We head him off at the pass, claim Micah and Denny for our own if we have to.”
“Our siblings.” I say, thinking of my stepsiblings.
Snare nods. “Our blood.”
I hug him, pressing the profile of my face against his chest while he holds me tight.
If only things were that simple. Call me cynical, but after five years of surviving and loving Snare's memory, the real Snare has shown up, along with all the problems that came with loving him.
Jaylin hasn't been explained, and she's real. My daughter needs me.
And I don't know how Snare will feel once he knows he might be taking in not only his stepsister but also a child he never knew he had.
*
I softly shut the door, so tired I feel like I have sand embedded behind my eyelids.
My hand hovers over the knob, wanting to look at a sleeping Jaylin yet again. Make sure she's safe.
Instead, I turn to Lola. “Thanks so much.”
Lola looks me over in my sloppy pajamas, my hair a mess from not even combing it out when it was wet. I'd been busy with Snare. “You look frazzled.” Lola cocks her head. “Tell me how things went at VIP.”
I hold up a palm. “Not now, it's two thirty in the morning.”
Lola shrugs. “Spill it, sweet thing.”
I sigh. “Fine.” I tell Lola everything, ending with Thorn coming in and breaking up the mess.
Lola seems to want to say something, then pauses. “Okay, I knew that you lost your v-card to your stepbrother.”
I groan, dumping my face into my palms. Who could forget that morsel?
“Pfft—it's no big thing, Kitty. I mean, there's what? Three billion guys in the world and you had to do the nasty with your brother. I gotcha.”
God. “Stepbrother,” I mumble.
“Thank God for small favors.” She winks.
I roll my eyes, watching the fine wheels of Lola's mind turn. Her face goes from a look of grim concentration to revelation in a slide of seconds.
Her face whips in my direction, her eyes intense. “Holy shit.”
I don't even pretend to feel good about her connecting the dots. “Jaylin's his.”
I give a single, miserable nod. “Yeah.”
“I just assumed... does he know?” Her hazel eyes look black with only the weak light pollution that seeps through my apartment windowpanes to illuminate our expressions.
I shake my head, my still-damp hair clinging to me wherever it touches.
“Oh my God—Kitty—you have to tell that man he's a father.”
“I can't—not yet. I mean, I spent the last five years running with guilt chasing my ass because he—that scar I told you about? It's there because of me,” I confess in a hoarse whisper, tears streaking down my face in a hot spill of grief. “If I hadn't been there, Snare would be whole.”
“Oh, baby, c’mere.” Lola doesn't wait for me to move. She reaches for me, and I fight her comfort. “Stop—Kitty, fucking take a hug for once in your life. Stop fighting people who want to love you.”
I collapse in her arms, sobbing for the second time in a space of a few hours. Finally, when I can keep my crap together, I pull away.
Lola dips down, looking at me, her worried eyes holding me. “Better?”
I nod.
Her eyes don't leave my face. “So are you going to split with brother?”
My grunt is pure displeasure. “God—don't keep calling him that!”
Lola snickers, her carefully coiffed Marilyn Monroe hair bouncing with the movement. “I can't resist.”
My eyes feel like they're bulging out of my skull. “Gah!”
“Quiet, you'll wake princess.” She seems to consider something for a moment, then asks, “Are you going to go off into the sunset with Snare?”
I fold my arms. “Eventually. But I have to be careful. Take things in stages.”
“How so?” Lola does a small pirouette in the living room. “What, leave all this, and not get a big dick installed in your vagina on a regular basis? Tell me how this is better than that.”
I giggle. “I should have never told you.”
“But ya did.”
True. “I think we can date... then go from there.”
Lola shakes her head. “You don't date your stepbrother, who you had a child with, and who you just screwed six ways to Sunday an hour ago.”
I look down at my hands. Fuck, what a mess.
“You don't date that kind of a man. Snare”—she pauses over his name, like she'd like to call him my brother again—“he doesn't sound like the kind of dude to trifle with. He's MC, right?”
I look up, nodding. I don't know much about motorcycle clubs except what I've caught glimpses of on TV.
“They're really different. Like a subculture of society. One of the dancers ran off with an MC dude, never saw her again. They go hard with the chicks.”
My brows come together. “What do you mean ʻgo hardʼ?”
“I mean, when they take a woman for themselves, it's not casual, it's like beyond mar
riage. And this guy? Snare—he's not going to forget you. And I know it's intense and you're scared, and you hoped to—I don't know—repay this thing between you guys like it was a debt you owed him. But it's not a debt to him. Snare doesn't see you like some fucked-up obligation. Look at his actions, Kitty.”
Lola wraps her hands around my narrow shoulders, her fingers digging into my flesh. “You see yourself that way. Don't put the way you see you on him. I guarantee you, Snare sees you for what you really are.”
I can't speak. Lola and Jaylin are the only constants in my life. I don't want to let her go. I don't want to let Jaylin down.
I'm scared at how badly I want Snare, how two hours into seeing him after five years had me sexing him against my wall. The pull is there like it never left.
“Take a chance, Kitty.”
I look up. “It's Sara.”
Lola smiles. “Well Lola isn't my real name, honey.”
“I figured.” I laugh.
Her face smooths to serious. “You gonna quit TC?”
“The Crawl?” I think of how sick it made me going down on that guy—the Dick—and how I'm so jaded about men I can't see them differently now. Snare's not a Dick, he's a Penis. The thought makes me smile. “Yeah, but I bet I'll regret it,” I answer after a minute.
Lola nods. “Maybe. But you know what you'll really regret?”
We stare at each other.
“You'll regret not trying and wondering for the rest of your life what could have been.”
I nod. “I can't use him to get out of this thing with Riker.”
“Fuck Riker. That prick beat the fuck out of you, Snare, and those twins. He needs to get his. You guys are out of there now. And he's messed up your mom now too?”
“Yes,” I hiss under my breath.
“So your mom's in the hospital, Sara”—she says my real name for the first time—“and the twins are barely eighteen. They need you to tell the truth. Snare doesn't have to protect them anymore like he felt he had to back then.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you still afraid?” Her intense eyes sweep my features. “Call his bluff. Tell Snare about Jaylin. Tell him that you want him to stand with you in that court and admit what Riker did.”
