Grounds for Divorce

by Helena Maeve

  Booker tracked her gaze to the red-eyed blonde in the corner. “You sure?”

  “I’m her boss now, right?” Or she soon would be. The sooner Lou was dealt with, the better.

  Lou glanced up when Kayla’s shadow landed over her, expression shifting from confusion to wariness in an instant.

  “Outside.” Kayla bit out. “Now.”

  The clubhouse door muffled the wolf whistles and meowing noises that echoed from within.

  Lou rounded on her with hands clenched in the fabric of her baggy shirt. “I’m sorry. Kay, I’m so sorry—”

  A raised hand halted the mea culpas. Kayla breathed in the burnt-rubber smell of the parking lot, the arid heat. “I’m guessing Zach didn’t force himself on you.”

  Reluctantly, Lou shook her head. Good. Honesty alone could help her now.

  “When did it start?” Kayla pressed.

  “A few weeks ago.”

  So when you were telling me to leave him, you were just looking out for your own interests, huh?

  Resentment simmered in Kayla’s breast. “Are you in love with him?”

  “No!” Lou’s eyes were wide, her headshake vigorous. “God, no. It was a mistake. He came on to me and I didn’t want to turn him down—”

  “He should’ve known better.” Work wasn’t easy to come by in Hackby. Lou was right to worry about her job. Zach would’ve fired her out of wounded pride.

  Kayla was tempted to do it out of sheer spite.

  She shifted her weight, looking down the row of Harleys. “There’s going to be some changes at the Grounds. New management, more hands-on oversight… I’ll let you stay on, but I need to know that this won’t happen again.”

  Lou nodded fiercely. “I swear it.”

  “Good.”

  They had been friends once—or close enough—but now all Kayla could think of was that she’d been lied to. She spun on her heel, eager to forget.

  “Hey, Kay?” Lou smiled ruefully. “You throw a pretty good punch.”

  The slam of the clubhouse door was all the answer Kayla had for her.

  * * * *

  In the sullen light of a reading lamp, Booker slowly peeled off his shirt. “So she’s staying on. You sure that’s wise?”

  No. “She hasn’t done anything I haven’t.”

  “Fair enough.” Booker lowered his jeans down his hips and kicked them off. His cock was visible through his boxers, a hard bulge that nearly bulldozed Kayla’s lingering pique.

  “You okay with that?” she snapped. “Knowing I screwed your brothers…”

  “What, all of ’em?”

  Kayla shot him an icy glare. Really?

  “Look,” Booker sighed, “you can’t rewrite your past. They know I’ll break their hands if they touch you now that you’re mine.”

  “Oh, is that what I am?”

  “Smartest girl in—”

  “Shut up.”

  Booker’s gaze darkened, eyes narrowing dangerously. “What did you say to me?” When his voice got low and gravelly like that, Kayla wondered if she shouldn’t retreat. Apologize. Booker backed her against the door, his body a broad, brawny obstacle in her path. He looked dangerous.

  He was.

  They run guns, blow… Zach’s vitriol rang in her ears.

  So what?

  “I said,” Kayla gritted out. “Shut. Up.”

  Booker snagged a hand in her hair and pulled her to him in a kiss so harsh that Kayla felt it all the way in the back of her skull. Their teeth clicked, grazing lips and tongues, raking flesh. He held her still when she made to adjust the angle, intent on plundering her mouth whether she liked it or not.

  It was a heady notion, a powerful aphrodisiac. Booker seized the straps of her tank top and bra and wrenched them down her arm so roughly that the cotton tore.

  Kayla gasped. “Hey—”

  Booker slammed their lips together as he palmed her breast. He wasn’t apologetic about groping her. They’d left gentle behind in their rearview.

  Kayla quaked in his arms, too weak to fight the wave of delight that raced up her spine. She needed this—Booker’s hands on her, his mouth sucking bites along the soft, fragile skin of her neck. Her breath caught when he pulled her top and bra down her other arm, baring her from the waist up.

  The wood grain of the door was cold against her spine, hinges rattling as Kayla tilted back. There were too many thoughts racing in her skull and she couldn’t pick just one to tell Booker how much she wanted this. Everything came pouring out at once.

  “Wait, wait, I gotta… I know I’m a hypocrite—for what I did to Zach. I’m sorry if—if I screwed things up for the club. I was just… I don’t know what I’m doing since you showed up. You’re messing with my head…”

  Booker rested a hand around the base of her neck in silent warning.

  Kayla swallowed just to feel the pressure against her windpipe. He wanted her quiet but she wasn’t finished.

  “Men have a way of bailing,” she blurted out, “when they hear about the kid. That’s why I didn’t tell you.” I wanted you to stay. I wanted this.

  “Does it look like I’m bailing?” Booker wondered, his eyes so dark they were nearly all pupil. He kissed her, answering a foregone conclusion, and Kayla promptly lost her train of thought.

  She had no memory of shambling to the bed, much less toeing off her shoes, but suddenly Booker was pushing up her skirt, hands warm on her thighs. She rested her weight on hands and knees, air knifing in and out of her lungs on every inhale. “Fuck…”

  The sound of ripping fabric shrilled through the room. It took Kayla a moment to comprehend that those were her panties being torn apart. She blushed hotly, inner muscles clenching against a sudden burst of want.

  Shame vanished when Booker pressed her down with a hand at her nape. She could picture what was coming in her mind’s eye, but even with the delicious throb of anticipation in her veins, it was still a surprise when he palmed her cunt.

  “This belongs to me, understand? You want to be in my bed, no one touches you but me.”

  “Yes,” Kayla choked out, acquiescence muffled by the sheets. “God, yes, whatever you say…” She was so turned on she would have been hard-pressed to refuse him anything.

  “Good girl.” Booker entered her with two fingers. He must’ve wanted her to feel it.

  Kayla arched her spine, hissing through her teeth. The sharp stretch made the pleasure that much sweeter when he kissed her shoulder blades and told her she was his—only his.

  He fucked her roughly, by Zach’s standards, but not so roughly that Kayla didn’t beg for more when he scissored his fingers inside her.

  “You like that? I can feel you clenching around me like a good little slut.”

  “Y-yeah…”

  Kayla barely recognized her own voice. It was so raw, so desperate. She should have been mortified for the moan that tore out of her when Booker ran his thumb up the cleft of her ass, teasing, at first, then zeroing in on her hole when Kayla rocked her hips into the caress.

  She’d never learned how to beg for that, always worried that Zach would think her weird, always mistrustful of the men who paid up front. Her dread evaporated when she was with Booker. Even as he guided her down and exaggerated the arch of her spine, Kayla trusted him to make her feel good.

  She wasn’t disappointed. The first scrape of his stubbled chin to her pussy triggered a whimper and a jolt. Booker held her in place when she made to pull back. Beard burn on her labia seemed like a terrible idea until he ran his tongue from her clit to her gushing vagina.

  “Fuck, you taste good,” he growled and dove in. Within a few strokes, Kayla understood that she wasn’t dealing with a novice.

  A few more and she was biting the sheets to keep from riding the sharp point of his wicked, wicked tongue. Her hips shook, tendons pulling taut to hold her up as Booker fastened his lips around her clitoris and suckled the tender nub of flesh into his mouth. Electricity zinged through every nerve, sending
powerful tremors all the way to her core.

  “Oh God,” Kayla panted. “Oh, fuck, you’re gonna make me come…” She could count on one hand the number of times she’d come from oral, none so overwhelming.

  She glared over her shoulder when he pulled away with a groan. She hadn’t meant for him to stop.

  But Booker was tearing off his clothes and any thought of impeding that quickly vanished from her mind. The ink on his skin gleamed like oil streaks in the dark—here a cross, there a skull, letters and symbols scattered like runes over his flesh—and Kayla wanted nothing more than to stare at him until she figured out how to read the language etched into his flesh.

  Then Booker wrenched the bedside drawer open and she remembered herself.

  She could stare at him later.

  The ripping of the condom wrapper was a counterpoint to their syncopated breaths. Kayla braced herself on the mattress and tilted her hips in silent invitation.

  Booker slid in fast, a single stroke filling her up. A ragged whine tore from her chest, echoed by his heavy groan.

  “Put…put your finger inside me,” Kayla pleaded. She was past the point of shame, desperate for his touch.

  He didn’t make her ask twice.

  Her sphincter clutched at his thumb despite her best efforts to relax. He didn’t have small hands, which made the ache even better. His thrusts jostled her, adding the burn of friction in her ass to the delicious stretch of his cock inside her pussy. Kayla made to press her hands to the mattress and move with him, but Booker caught her forearms and pulled her wrists to him, pinning them against the small of her back.

  She had no leverage, no way to return the pleasure he was giving her. He set the pace and controlled the depth of his shaft inside her. He had her entirely at his mercy.

  Kayla’s eyes stung with tears of relief. She didn’t realize she was sobbing until he’d picked up the cadence of his thrusts, racing for his own release. Surrender came quickly as his rhythm began to crumble. Kayla clenched around him with a startled whimper, orgasm spreading out from the tips of her fingers and the ends of her toes, hurtling through her faster and faster until every tendril of delight coalesced behind her clit.

  She had the distant notion that Booker followed suit when he buried himself deep inside her, cock pulsing as he spent into the condom.

  He pulled her to him, a hand around her waist and the other anchored at her shoulder, cupping her breasts as her ribcage heaved like a bellows.

  “You’re mine,” he panted, voice shredded with effort.

  Kayla didn’t have the breath to tell him he was hers, too. It was understood. This couldn’t work otherwise.

  * * * *

  They lay in bed afterward, slick with sweat and the evidence of their shared orgasm. Kayla rested her head on Booker’s chest, lulled to a pleasant half-sleep by the steady rise and fall of his rib cage.

  “I don’t get it… How can it turn you on? I thought you liked me helpless.” Punching Zach should’ve put Booker off.

  “I like you submissive,” he clarified. “In bed. There’s a difference.”

  “Hmm.” She wasn’t sure she believed that, but instinct and the euphoric afterglow urged her to give Booker the benefit of the doubt. He hadn’t seen her wrong yet. Reluctantly, Kayla rose up onto her elbow. “I should head home…”

  His frown was a short-lived thing, a matter of confusion more than upset. “Oh, right. Tamra.”

  “Yeah…don’t want her wondering where I disappeared off to again.”

  Booker didn’t argue otherwise. He sat up with her. “I can give you a ride.”

  “You don’t—” Kayla bit her tongue. If this was serious, then playing back warmer and getting free bike rides would become part of her life. They weren’t favors. “Yeah,” she breathed. “I’d like that… And, uh, if you want, you can stay for a really late dinner.”

  Booker’s expression shuttered. “You don’t have to do that. I get not wanting your kid—”

  My kid is better off with a family to protect her than not. Kayla cupped his cheek. “Have dinner with us.” They could figure out the rest one step at the time.

  Booker kissed her palm, lips curving warm and soft against her lifeline. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:

  Feint and Misdirection

  Helena Maeve

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Imogen contemplated whipping out her phone to check the time. If anyone saw—if the bride saw—she’d never hear the end of it. The tux had already raised a few eyebrows, but most of the guests had seemed content to chalk it up to eccentricity and moved on. Only Imogen’s mother had pursed her lips tightly and said “how nice”, in the kind of voice that implied the reverse.

  She was striding toward Imogen now, a slice of wedding cake in one hand and her indignation clasped firmly in the other. It would’ve been too much to ask that she leave it at that.

  Imogen cast about for an escape—or failing that, a glass of liquid courage. Finding none, she dug her oxfords into the ground and smiled with false cheer. “Good cake?”

  “The icing is runny and the sponge is too sweet,” her mother said, reverting to Vietnamese as she often did when criticism was forthcoming. She was all about saving face, if not necessarily Imogen’s. “You didn’t bring a date?”

  This was well-trodden territory. Mrs Dao had begun with casual hints, veered into outright insistence and had finally reached the stage of constant harping, which explained why Imogen hadn’t seen her parents in months.

  Imogen shook her head. “I didn’t want to steal Sherry-Ann’s thunder.” Not that it would’ve been possible. Her childhood friend had elected to tie the knot in nineteenth century crinoline and serve caviar at the banquet. Her band of choice involved a banjo, a qin player and two saxophonists—an experimental ensemble from VanderCook whose version of The Way You Look Tonight was surprisingly not bad. She was bound for a honeymoon in Antigua on a flight later that evening.

  Imogen hated her like she hadn’t hated anyone in a long, long time.

  Mrs Dao pursed her lips. “Hmm,” she said, not even a word and yet so pregnant with disapproval that Imogen felt her insides churn.

  She hated this. She felt like a teenager again, seeking her parents’ endorsement on boyfriends or boxing lessons when they had already made their opinion known. Loudly.

  “What about that brute of yours?” her mother prompted, just when Imogen thought she was off the hook. “Couldn’t he come?”

  “His name is Russell,” Imogen sighed, in English. And he wasn’t a brute, though the thought of his thick biceps stretching a formal dinner jacket was enough to trigger an absent-minded smile. “I didn’t ask him.” The intention had been there for the space of a heartbeat, before he’d pulled out and started hunting for his clothes.

  There hadn’t been a good time after that. Imogen shoved her hands deep into her pockets and cast her gaze at the couples crowding the dance floor. Anywhere was preferable than looking at her own mother, whose silent censure was enough to make Imogen squirm. She was almost relieved when the levees broke and her mother smacked her rouged lips together.

  “I don’t know why you persist in keeping such company,” she sneered. “He is a no-good thug, who hits you—”

  “And I hit him back,” Imogen interjected, bristling. “It’s called sparring, Ma.” The way her mother had said it made it sound like Imogen was a battered woman.

  “It’s inappropriate,” her mother insisted. “You wonder why you don’t have a date? Who wants a girl who gets into fights?” She sighed pointedly, reaching up a hand to brush Imogen’s hair off her brow. “A girl with such ugly bruises? You will attract the worst sort of man. Is that what you want?”

  “No…”

  But one paltry victory was not enough to curb her mother’s diatribe. “And would it kill you to wear some makeup? You can see every bump and scratch… Perhaps if you just tried to behave like a l
ady, you could—”

  “What, Ma? Find a husband to give my life meaning? How’s that worked out for you?” It hadn’t escaped Imogen that her father was imbibing by the bar again, his face flushed and his collar undone. He’d been there since they’d arrived at the restaurant. All the same, the outburst cost her.

  Her mother pressed her lips into a tight, red line, her gaze shuttering.

  It was impossible to go through one of these events without someone commenting on how similar Imogen was to her mother. If only she didn’t crop her hair short, if only she wore a dab of lipstick and a proper ao dai, they could be sisters. The compliment always fell short of the mark. Imogen knew she had inherited her mother’s austere features, but her prominent mouth and nose belonged to her father’s side of the family. The proportions of her face had always seemed a little off to her, even as a little girl. Getting her nose broken twice hadn’t helped any. These days she wore her welts with pride and no foundation, but that was a personal choice.

  “Ma,” Imogen started, casting about for something to say that would take the sting out of her retort. It was too late for that.

  Her mother drew herself up a little taller and said, “Perhaps if you tried to behave like a lady, you would be happier.” A slap across the face would’ve hurt less than watching her spin on her heel and depart into the joyous swarm.

  Imogen ran a hand through her hair, wishing she had something to kick without causing a stir. “Shit,” she mumbled to no one in particular.

  As if in answer, her iPhone shrilled to life in the pocket of her dinner jacket. Imogen rushed to answer without checking the caller ID. “Is it time?” Anticipation mixed with relief in her voice, blending into a murky cocktail.

  “You said you wanted me to call to—” Russell sounded wary, but by now he should have been used to Imogen interrupting him. They had known each other a year, been working together for six months. They were practically married.

  “I’m leaving right now,” Imogen promised. “Be there in thirty minutes.”