by Isabel Wroth
The next thing she knew she was in his arms and any thought Ripley might have had about controlling herself, staving off the tears she had been choking on, vanished as soon as his hand found it’s way into her hair. He pressed his lips to the pounding pulse in her throat, his ragged exhalation washed over her skin, his arm so tight around her back it was hard to breathe.
“It’s alright, princess. I’m alright.”
She felt Saint take a deep breath with his nose pressed into her hair. She nodded, wanting to cling to him, but not sure how badly he was hurt, all she could do was press her hands to his bare back.
She must have gotten too close to a hurt, because she pressed to bring herself closer and Saint hissed softly. It made her cry harder, wondering what Ghost had done to him, trying to apologize through her sobbing. He smiled at her and bent to kiss away her tears, soothing her with soft murmurs until the tide of overwhelming emotions ebbed back.
She knew she looked hideous with red, swollen, puffy eyes. Ripley couldn’t even think about the snot factor, but Saint was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He had a dark bruise on the left side of his jaw, a really bad cut at the corner of his lip, an even bigger bruise growing before her eyes on his right shoulder, bandages around his wrists, and a smaller bandage covering the reopened wound on his side. She had to breathe through her mouth, the smell of lemons coming off of him intense enough to make her nose burn, but she didn’t care.
Saint curled his bruised arm around her shoulder and steered her deeper into what turned out to be a jaw-dropping den of dominance and submission. Ripley had thought Nasa’s basement bedroom was insane, this was…ten times as crazy. And it appeared to be only half finished. Saint didn’t give her much time to get a good look at everything.
He took her up a grand staircase on left side of the building, up to a landing that looked like something out of Better Homes and Gardens, or some French provincial farmhouse. Her face must have reflected her shock, because Saint chuckled as he steered her down the open hallway.
“Apparently being a kinky pervert doesn’t mean you’re required to drown in fifty shades of black and red.”
Ripley just nodded, blinking over the room Saint showed her into. It would have fit right in at a five star resort and spa. The deep purple walls were offset by silver wooden furniture, white bedding on the enormous king-sized bed, and a glass partition separated the room from the built-in bathroom, which was…awe inspiring. Ripley had an odd, burning desire to re-do her own bathroom to look like this one.
The deep, modern looking clawfoot tub was big enough for two and set on glittering purple and silver glass tiles. A fluffy towel rack sat beside it filled with paler purple towels and toiletries. The toilet was in a little cubby and a steam shower with eight showerheads dominated the remaining corner.
“We’ve got a few hours before everyone else gets here, come lay down with me and tell me what the fuck happened at the compound. What were you even doing there, princess?”
Ripley kicked her shoes off and climbed into the bed. Groaning over how she just sank into the mattress like it was made from the fluffiest clouds imaginable. Saint crawled up beside her, lying down to face her and pressed kisses to her fingertips when he curled his hand around hers.
She started from the beginning, at not having gotten a text to say he was on his way home. Pen still asleep on the couch hours past Saint’s scheduled arrival time. Top coming to tell her Saint was gone and the grueling hours of waiting, not knowing whether or not Saint was alive.
She told him about Wren, watching thoughts race across his face, ideas forming, dots connecting. The news that Ghost had cut a hole in the bathroom floor at the spa made Saint’s jaw clench so hard it turned white.
His expression went from shocked, to downright disbelieving, when Ripley told him about how Ruckus had been patched in for his reckless bravery in picking up the first grenade thrown into the compound to toss back outside. But it faded to a furious glare when Ripley admitted she had agreed to meet Ghost after receiving the picture of Saint strung up.
“I never want to hear you tell me you voluntarily agreed to walk up to a man who has threatened to rape and murder you, ever again.”
Not wanting to argue, Ripley agreed quietly. “What about you? What happened?”
Saint shook his head and rolled over to his back, deep lines forming as he frowned up at the ceiling. His jaw blanched white with how hard he clenched it. Ripley might have thought it was physical pain, if not for the look of anguish and rage in his eyes.
“I fucked up.”
Ripley scooted up to lie along the length of his side, setting her palm right over his beating heart. “What? How so?”
Saint opened and closed his mouth a few times while he struggled to explain. It took him a good ten minutes to finally speak.
“Ghost is every bit as good as we were led to believe. The day Harper was born, I’d just flown in from Nevada to brief the club on what the Leviathans were up to. I told them everything I knew about Ghost and his murders. The whole time he was right there, sitting in the fucking room with us.”
“W-what?”
Saint closed his hand over hers, looking up at her with such a tormented expression she almost started to cry.
“Toad. Top hired him eight months ago, long before my informants got me the intel on Ghost. The club needed someone with experience with disguises to tail housewives who were cheating on their husbands. Or paranoid business owners who had cheated some sad sack employee out of money. A few of the cases the club took last year, we got made because Meeks and Milo were too easily seen.
“The guy Top hired was from LA, had lots of experience, and with his skills, he was the perfect way for Ghost to get as close to us as possible. We had no idea, no reason to suspect Toad, and you never met him so you wouldn’t have known. I looked at all three of the faces he wore to fool us and I didn’t see it. I didn’t see him.”
The dread Ripley had been fighting for the last twenty two hours came in a sickening rush. “Three?”
“Three.” Saint confirmed. “Toad, Jerry, and Sam.”
“B-but I showed Wren Sam’s picture! She said it wasn’t him.”
“I’m sorry, Ripley. He admitted it to me and Damon both.”
Her eyes unfocused while she stared at their joined hands.She wanted to believe maybe Saint had just been in so much pain that he didn’t know what he saw. She wanted to believe anything other than the truth.
Anything other than the fact a professional killer had walked into her life and she had been completely oblivious. She’d kissed him, for god’s sake! She wanted to be sick. It took her a few hard swallows to get past the urge, to remember to breathe.
“As soon as Wren started talking about her ex-husband being a murder mystery writer, I knew.” Ripley managed woodenly, shivering despite the warmth of the room. “Wren said it wasn’t him and because I was so worried about you, I let it go. I guess I shouldn’t have been so quick to get pissed when you questioned me about Sam being a murderer.”
“He fooled all of us, princess.”
Ripley shuddered, the feeling close to that hair-raising shiver her body made when she scraped a knife across ice. It left every hair on her body on end, quivering with an overload of uncomfortable electricity.
“I let him get to me.” The harsh rasp, the emotion behind it, made Ripley push up on her elbow to look down at Saint. Lifting her hand from his chest to cradle his jaw, carefully turning him to face her.
“How?”
Saint turned his face so he could press his lips to the center of her hand, his breath washing across her skin in a soft huff. “We trusted him. This last year he sat in our meeting room, lived upstairs, worked alongside us. Damon and I were getting ready to load up Gee’s bike when Toad showed up at the spa. He told us some bullshit story about Frankie leaving his ass at a bar to go home with a woman. I turned around to call Frankie and give him the
ass chewing from hell.
“Next thing I know, I’m strung up in that shit hole, and now I know why he killed Jerry. He needed access to your bathroom to cut a hole down into the sewer. Preparing his little torture room. He showed us the news broadcast reporting the fire at the compound.
“Fuckin smiling like a Cheshire cat while Damon and I watched the place go up in flames. I didn’t know who was inside, but Ever’s truck and Athena’s Jeep were parked outside…I lost my mind.”
“I spent almost nine hours losing my mind not knowing where you were, if you were alive. Then I got that picture-”
Her voice hitched and Saint drew her down for a kiss. Hours of not knowing, of fear, pain, and devastation, all of it pushed them to sink into one another and find the reassurance of flesh and breath, alive and warm. Safe.
Saint’s fingers dug into her hip, encouraging her to mount up, both of them hit with an urgency that was undeniable. Ripley had forgotten about the gift Nasa had given her until Saint gave a short shout of pain and pushed at her right thigh.
“What the fuck is that?” he growled.
Ripley winced, shifting to make sure she didn’t accidentally bump Saint’s aggravated wound. “Did you know Nasa is kind of a doomsday prepper?”
“Kind of?” Saint scoffed. “That bastard has enough freeze dried food to feed the entire club for a year and three five-gallon buckets of lube per member.”
Ripley couldn’t help but laugh at that. “No such thing as too much lube. He has two shipping containers worth of stuff to make us girls comfortable. Diapers for Harper and Lyon. Herbs and things stored up for Athena. Stockpiles of our preferred brand of tampons. The guy is prepared. He had some clothes for me and this.”
Ripley pulled up the hem of the blush-pink wiggle dress Nasa had stashed for her to show Saint the spanx-like shorts beneath. The shorts weren’t even the coolest part. The cool part was the LC9 sub compact Ruger pistol with a Barbie-pink grip that fit in the pocket on the inner thigh of her left leg. Saint lay beneath her staring at the little gun in her hand with a disbelieving expression.
“You have got to be shitting me.”
She leaned down and reached over to set the little pistol on the handy nightstand. “I thought it was sweet. And you didn’t know I was carrying, did you?”
Saint shook his head and his hands resumed their sensual stroke of her hips and thighs, his lashes growing heavy with desire. He unzipped her dress and helped her out of it, watching when she rolled off of him to peel herself out of the concealed-carry shorts. Despite having the piece of hardware between her thighs, it hadn’t gotten uncomfortable or made her walk funny.
“Come up here, princess. You’re gonna have to do most of the work this time. Much as I hate to admit it, I can barely raise my arms right now.”
She sat astride his hips, looking down at the road map of abuse stretched across his body. Saint was exhausted, she could tell, little wonder seeing as how he had been hanging by his wrists for nearly eighteen hours. Ripley wished she had that many hours to replace with pleasure.
“I don’t mind, Saint. Not one bit.”
She leaned down to press a careful kiss to the bruised edge of his jaw, pleased to hear the hitch in his breathing when she nipped at his neck. She kissed a line down his throat, between the hard ridges of his pecs, and took a moment to rub her cheek over his pounding heart.
He twitched at the scrape of her teeth over his abs, hissed when she dipped her tongue into his navel. Ripley looked up the magnificent line of his body to see he had gone rigid with anticipation.
He gritted his teeth when she wrapped her hand around his shaft and shifted to let her lie between his legs. It wasn’t her favorite position to take him in her mouth, but she knew how to make it work. She let her tongue drag along the throbbing vein of his cock from bottom to top and saw his eyes cross at the soft suction she laved to that spot, just under the flared crest that was, at this very moment, so flushed it was shiny. His soft groan was music to her ears when she licked away the milky drop of fluid welling there on the tip, feeling the heavy throb of blood against her palm when she stroked him.
Ripley felt his entire body shudder when she wrapped her lips around the head of his cock and suckled softly, faintly tasting the lemon soap he had bathed with. She twisted her hand to cup the weight of his testicles, feeling them drawing up tighter with every sweet suck.
She squeezed them carefully while she shifted her weight to rise higher up on her knees. Ripley could feel her own arousal slicking her inner thighs, her body heating with the pleasure she took in making Saint struggle to breathe.
She made a mess of it, of him, her cheeks hollowing tighter and tighter with each pass, lips curving when Saint tensed and started a hoarse litany of curses. Ripley wasn’t trying to draw this out like she normally would. She loved sucking his cock. Loved driving him crazy with teasing licks and the scrape of her nails on his inner thighs.
She knew all it would take now to make him explode was to add the barest edge of her teeth and to find the soft skin just behind his testicles. A simultaneous rub there, the edge of her teeth, and he would flood her mouth with his release.
“Don’t. You. Dare,” he bit out, giving a sensual grimace when she rolled her eyes up to look at him questioningly. Her mouth still full as she slid down and took him to the back of her throat, smirking inside to see a fine sheen of sweat break out on his chest. With the crest of his cock nudging her tonsils, Ripley swallowed.
“Inside, princess. I want inside you. Now.”
Ripley gave one last loving lick to his cock and crawled up the length of his body, settling most of her weight on her elbows, just there on either side of his head. She sank into his kiss, the sensuality of being in control starting to haze over her.
Of being allowed this opportunity to worship him with her body, isolating him in this moment where all he had to think about was her.
She watched his eyes as she settled on his cock, sliding back and forth until the thick shaft spread the lips of her pussy apart, coating his hot flesh with the slickness of her arousal. She watched the burning lust sear across his bright eyes, how he struggled to just lie still and let her have her way. He grimaced in pain and she almost stopped, but his hands on her thighs made her keep moving.
“Saint, just lay back and let me-”
“I’m gonna. But there’s no way I’m not touching you.”
Conscious of his fresh stitches, Ripley spread her thighs wider, tilted her hips forward to catch the head of his cock, and pressed down. She savored every sensation, the stretch of her body giving way to his. The promise of ecstasy, the heat their bodies generated, the intimacy of this moment.
Wrapped up together in their own pocket of time. She pushed up on her hands for better leverage, gave her hair a toss over her shoulder, and moved in a slow grind. No thrusting or bouncing this time, this was going to be a long, luxurious ride.
Saint’s gaze dropped to follow the gentle sway of her breasts. He licked his lips and growled when she took her hand from the mattress to cup one of them, leaning forward as she rocked to offer him her nipple.
He latched on hungrily, sucking the furled point hard, using his tongue to press the tender little nub to the roof of his mouth with a groan. An immediate wash of delirium rolled over her, heat, pleasure, a tightening of her belly that edged her that much closer to the promise of bliss.
Saint let go of her nipple with a pop, his fingers digging into her ass.
“I love you, Ripley. So fuckin much.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Saint bit back a groan of pain, agony radiating through every pore, even though Ripley’s hands were feather-light as she spread Athena’s salve on his shoulders. He could feel the warmth starting to penetrate the abused tissues already, but the topic of discussion flowing around him was doing nothing to ease his growing tension.
Their home base, the Perdition compound, was nothing more than a metal shell with a doomsday vault one s
tory below ground. The rest, their memories, their personal items, all of it was ashes.
None of it was worth dick in comparison to the living, breathing bodies standing in front of him. Saint didn’t care about the things housed inside the building, all he cared about were these people. His family. Ripley. If Top hadn’t secretly tapped Damon’s old team, they’d be screwed, and Saint knew he would have died down there in the sewers.
Ripley had given him the Reader’s Digest version of what had happened once Ghost had gotten his hands on him and Damon. Having to explain to his brothers, to Top, about Toad’s true identity, having to confess just how dismally he had failed was almost as torturous as having been strung up down in that sewer.
It was a hard hit, one that wouldn’t be forgotten any time soon.
Then, as if the Leviathans sending a dozen men across multiple state lines to take out the Perdition compound wasn’t enough, add insult to injury, the Leviathan lackeys had stolen all their bikes. Those too, were replaceable. Nasa had every one of them insured, well, except for Top’s 1953 Indian Chief. That had been his father’s old bike, one Top had spent countless hours restoring and customizing for his own pleasure.
It was the first bike Top said he’d ever ridden on, so to Saint’s way of thinking, that bike was irreplaceable. But the slap in the face to say Perdition was enough of a threat to take out, but not enough of one to fear any sort of retribution was downright insulting.
Duke and Tobias were giving them all the information the former urban warfare team had gathered. Ten of the twelve low level Leviathan gang members were waiting to be handed over to the authorities. Saint was waiting to get the order from Top and the decision on which agency to call. His vote was the FBI, but the ATF and DEA also had a sizable hard-on for the arms dealing, human trafficking, drug hauling gang.
