I take one more look in the mirror, and I can’t help smiling, even though I spend every day with a permanent knot of fear right there in the pit of my stomach. What’s about to happen now, this is going to be a few minutes of relief; a small, brief moment of escape. I deserve that, don’t I? But I still leave the necklace on. I’m not taking the risk of removing it.
I leave the bathroom and head back outside. He’s standing up now, looking out across the yard, and for a second I just watch his back and I try not to think about what I’m getting into here. But I need to remember why I’m doing it. And I need to keep remembering that, if I’m going to do this.
I walk out onto the porch, and there’s a slight breeze now, which causes goose bumps to form on my skin but I don’t even register the drop in temperature. And he hears me, and he turns around, and he smiles.
“Hey.” I return his smile, and he gets the message. He wants this. I know I do. I definitely do. Now. Even if I might regret it in a few hours’ time.
“Hey…” His eyes finally meet mine. “Look, Skye, I…”
I go right up to him, and I push myself against him and I kiss him slow and deep, and he responds. Of course he responds. His hand slides around to cup my ass, and his cock hardens against my hip as he pushes me firmly against him. He’s as ready as I am. He wants this as much as I do.
“Ready to have some fun now?” I murmur.
He slides a hand up under my dress, and the second his fingers touch my skin I actually gasp, Jesus! I guess not having sex for a long, long time can cause that reaction. But he knows it’s game on now.
He lifts me up and pushes me back against the wall, and my legs wrap loosely around him, and I close my eyes and bite down on my lip as he thrusts into me. And it feels good, I’m shocked, at how good it feels, how good he feels. His thrusts are long and deep, he starts off slow, and I grasp his hips tighter, locking my ankles behind his back, and his kisses, they’re hot as hell as his tongue finds mine, just as his thrusts start up a new, faster rhythm.
I bury my face in his hair, muffling my moans as he fucks me hard, my fingers digging into his flesh as every thrust slams me back against the wall. And then he stops, just for a second, and he kisses me slowly, and that kiss carries on as his body bucks and jerks against mine, he’s coming. He’s coming fast and hard and I feel my skin start to tingle as my own climax takes hold, a wave of white-hot pleasure ripping through me at a breathtaking pace. Because I haven’t had sex in a long while. And maybe I needed this, to help me focus. Because when it’s over, when we’re both done, and all that’s left is that silence filled only with our ragged breathing and the sound of traffic somewhere in the distance, I feel another wave wash over me, but this time it’s a wave of fear. The reality’s just hit me, the enormity of what it is I’m really doing here.
“You OK?” he whispers as he carefully pulls out of me and lowers me down.
“I’m fine.”
“Here.” He takes off his jacket and slips it over my shoulders, and I can’t help but think that’s the old him showing himself there. Maybe he was a real gentleman back in his lawyer days – a good guy. The kind of guy women like me aren’t really supposed to want. “It’s getting cooler out here.”
“Or we could just go back inside.”
He smiles, and then he laughs, and he pulls me against him and he kisses me again. I like his kisses. I wish I didn’t. “Yeah. I guess we could do that.”
I pull away from him, and I hand him back his jacket. “I’m gonna go get cleaned up.”
“OK… Skye?”
I swing around to face him.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” Pull yourself together, girl, come on! “I could do with another drink, though.”
He smiles again, and I head back inside, back into the bathroom, and I quickly wash myself, taking a second to breathe, because sometimes I think I forget to do that. I forget to breathe.
I go into the bedroom and get changed, pulling on some denim cut-offs and a shirt, and I reach up and touch my pendant again. That really is something I’m going to have to be careful of, drawing too much attention to that choker around my neck. And once again those nerves I can’t afford to feel hit me like a sledgehammer. So much so that I need to sit down and take another minute.
“Is everything OK?”
His voice coming from the bedroom doorway literally makes me jump, I’m sure my heart actually stopped beating there, just for a second. “Jesus Christ! Do you make a habit of scaring the shit out of people?”
“I’m sorry, I just… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
I get up and I walk over to him. Yeah, I’m a bit pissed that he thinks it’s OK to just walk in here, and I’d still be pissed at that even if I didn’t have something dangerous to hide. But I’ve got to keep him on side. Got to keep him close. I’m just going to have to be way more on my guard around him; around all of them.
“It’s all right. I’m fine, I just needed a minute, that’s all.”
He reaches out for me but I stop him from touching me by taking his hand, keeping him a safe distance from me. But I do lean forward, and I kiss him slowly, letting him know that I’m still OK with this. With him. And now we’ve well and truly broken that ice, maybe it’s time to start talking.
“You got me that drink?” I smile, and he grins back, gripping my fingers tightly.
“I also found some cold pizza in your fridge. ‘Cause, I don’t know about you, but sex gives me one hell of an appetite.”
My smile widens, and I let him lead me back out into the living room.
We’re going to eat.
We’re going to drink.
We’re going to start talking…
Gabriel
I can’t sleep. And I know why. I just don’t want to admit it, because it’s ridiculous.
I turn over and look at the clock on the nightstand. It’s almost two-thirty in the morning. In a few hours I need to be up and out of here, I’m meeting Skye, to find out how last night went. Did she manage to get Theo to talk? About anything that might just help us work out what’s going on here? Because I’m beginning to get a real uneasy feeling about this now. And I don’t know when that all started to happen, but it’s been almost constant these past few days. I can’t kick it.
I fall onto my back and stare upwards, resting my hands on my stomach as my eyes focus on the shadows of the trees outside my window projected onto the ceiling.
What happened with Erin tonight, that’s thrown me slightly too, but that needed to happen. We’ve been playing that game for far too long now and it needed to end. It should’ve ended long ago. But she didn’t want it to, and I didn’t have the energy to fight it. And now suddenly I have?
I close my eyes and almost beg sleep to take over. I’m tired. Of so many things. I’ve been working biker gangs for over a decade now. I’ve won some, I’ve lost more, and sometimes the soul destroying nature of this job takes over; wears you down. And I always promised myself that, once it started to get to me, once it started to affect me to the point where cynicism and frustration overtook everything else; once that happened, that’s when I’d make a change. And this job; this assignment, it’s my last one. My final shot at a win. When this is over, when I’ve finally – God willing – put away those men and shut down their clubs, it’ll be time for me to make a decision I should’ve started making a long time ago.
If everything works out, the timing could be perfect.
And if it doesn’t…
Theo
“You said, the other day, that we’re both new to this MC.” She looks at me as she sits cross-legged on the couch, clutching a tumbler of bourbon in one hand and a slice of cold pizza in the other. “I didn’t realize you were new. You not been with the Soldiers long, then, huh?”
I said that, yeah, and maybe I shouldn’t have done. But I guess I’m gonna have to answer the question now. “No. No, I haven’t.”
“Wher
e were you before? I mean, you came from another club, right?”
She takes a bite of pizza, her eyes never leaving mine, man, she has one hell of a stare. It’s hot; she’s hot, but I need to be careful here. I can’t tell her too much, can’t let her into my world, it’s way too dangerous.
“My brother – he introduced me to this life.”
“He a biker?”
I shake my head and I drop my gaze, just for a second. I don’t want to give her any reason to think I’m lying. About anything. But I am. Because I have to.
She takes a sip of bourbon and she frowns as she bites into her pizza again. “The guys I’ve known – club members, I mean – they were either born into this life, or they feel like they don’t fit in or… they’re running away from something. And I don’t think you were born into this life, so…”
“What makes you say that?”
“You don’t look the type.”
I laugh. “The type?”
She lets a couple of beats pass before she speaks again. “And you also said, just there, that it was your brother who introduced you to this life, and if that’s the case, then you either ended up here because you feel like you don’t fit into whatever people consider to be “normal” society, or you’re running away from something.” She finishes her pizza and wipes her hands on her cut-offs. “You running away from something?”
Her eyes are still fixed on mine and I have to hold her gaze. “Does it matter?”
She shrugs and takes another sip of bourbon. “Just wondered, that’s all.”
“What about you, huh? Are you running away from something?”
She smiles slightly. “Like you said, does it matter?” She finishes her drink and places her glass down on the table. “I just needed a change of scenery. I got into a mess, a lot of stuff turned to shit and, well, I had to get away. I had no choice.”
I drop my gaze again and look down into my almost empty glass of whiskey. “Yeah. I know how that feels.”
I throw myself back against the couch and close my eyes, my fingers gripping the glass tight. Sometimes everything I’m doing here – everything I’ve done – it weighs so heavy I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m trapped in my own kind of hell. And maybe I am. I caused this, I created this mess, and I’m trying to put all the crap right, I really am. But sometimes I wonder if I’m going the right way about it. And then I realize there really isn’t any other way. I’m in too deep now.
“Hey. Where’d you go there, handsome?”
My eyes spring open and I look at her. “Sorry, I… I must’ve drifted off for a second.”
She cocks her head to one side and frowns again. “Yeah. That makes a girl feel really special.”
I smile, and I sit up and lean forward to kiss her quickly. “I just got a lot on my mind, Skye.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I take her hand and squeeze it tight, looking down as her fingers slide between mine. “I can’t.” I wish I could. I need to offload all this shit sometimes because keeping it locked inside is killing me. It’s fucking exhausting.
She gently cups my cheek, her fingers lightly stroking my skin and I don’t know who this girl is, but somehow that makes all this so much easier. She’s a stranger. I’m not connected to her in any way but – can I trust her? She’s lived this life all her life so anything I tell her – she isn’t gonna be shocked or surprised or go running to the law, she wouldn’t do that, if this is her world.
“We’ve all got secrets, Theo,” she whispers as she rests her forehead against mine, and I squeeze her hand tighter as she kisses me. And I’m suddenly realizing how much I need this, this chance to escape, just for a few hours. To not have to think about the future; to forget, for a little while.
“You too, huh?” I smile, and she returns it.
“I should go. It’s been a long day.”
She pulls back and stands up, collecting the empty glasses and the pizza boxes and I watch her walk into the kitchen, but I wait a second or two before I follow her.
She turns around as she hears me come in, and she leans back against the counter and folds her arms. “Hey.”
“Hey back.”
I move a little closer, but she’s keeping those arms crossed against herself – is that a defense mechanism on her part? Is that her body language telling me to stay back, to keep that distance? Is she calling the shots here? Does it fucking matter?
“You can stay. If you want to.”
She’s telling me I can stay, but her body language is still telling me to keep that distance. “Is that what you want?”
She smiles slightly, and I’m not sure what to do. I want to be with her, I do. But I really don’t want this to turn into something it can’t be.
“I’m fine either way, Theo. Stay, go back next door…” She shrugs. “But I don’t see the harm in us keeping each other company.”
“I’m not looking for a relationship, Skye…”
“Whoa there, Romeo. Neither am I. And I’m sure we’ve already been over this. I’m not asking you to move in, I’m just saying, if you want to stay the night I’m quite happy to share my bed. Or you can go home and sleep alone, either way, I’m good.”
I look right into her gray-flecked eyes, and there’s some kind of connection there, I can feel it. Or is it just that I want to feel it? Why the hell do things have to be so fucking messed up?
“Look, Theo, I think we’re both a little lost. Right? Me and you, maybe we need each other, in a no-strings kind of way. Does that make sense?”
I smile, and I move a couple of steps closer, and although she keeps those arms crossed she accepts the kiss I give her. I feel comfortable, here. With her.
“Does this mean you’re staying?” she whispers.
“I guess it does.”
I want to be with her.
She makes me feel safe.
And that isn’t something I’m used to feeling right now.
Chapter Six
Gabriel
“You had sex with him?”
“Weren’t you listening?”
I wasn’t listening at the time, I was at home, I only heard what happened last night just before I came here to meet with her. And I don’t know why I’m so on edge today, but I am. I’m fucking agitated as hell.
“Jesus, Skye…”
“Where are you going?”
“To stretch my legs. Come on.”
I get out of the car and head into the dilapidated old barn I’m parked outside of. It’s a place we use every now and again for these meet-ups. One of the many places we use, we never keep going to the same place all the time. It’d be foolish to create any kind of pattern.
She follows me inside and leans back against the wall, shoving her hands in her pockets, her eyes following me as I pace the floor.
“You all right? You seem pretty edgy today.”
Christ, is it that obvious to everyone? “You’re doing well, Skye. OK? You’re working him just like we wanted you to, but getting him to spend the night…?”
She widens her eyes as she stares at me. “That not allowed?”
“It’s not wise. And you know why, so don’t ask, you’re not that naïve.” I move closer to her, and her eyes never leave mine, they keep me locked in her gaze in a way I’ve never seen – never felt before. “It could start something dangerous, Skye. You get close, you don’t get too close, do you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
I take a step back and I look at her. I think, in all honesty, it’s the first time I’ve actually looked at her properly since all this started. And I can still see that beautiful woman beneath the hard exterior, but I don’t know if that’s someone she’s created, or if that’s really her. Usually I wouldn’t care. These people we get to do this shit, as long as they get it done I don’t give a crap about anything else. But this woman intrigues me. She comes across as tough and strong and yet she was weak enough to allow herself to be set up in the way that she did;
she got herself into the kind of mess she should have been able to avoid. And for the first time I feel a little unnerved by that. She allowed herself to be weak once. Could it happen again? Because this really isn’t the time to show even a hint of weakness.
“He’s starting to trust me, Gabriel.”
“I know.” I bow my head and drag a hand across the back of my neck. “I know he is.” I sigh and throw back my head, digging my hands into my pockets. “I’m just nervous, Skye. I’m real nervous, darlin’.”
“You don’t think I can do this? Jesus, Gabriel, you put me in this position, you gave me no fucking choice… You really think I could mess this up?”
I look at her, and I am trying to ignore everything that’s kicking up inside me right now; the mess that’s filling my head because I’m still trying to deal with Erin leaving – the way I made her leave – and the fact we are this close to taking down some real dangerous men. I’m not sure I’m thinking straight one hundred per cent of the time.
“No, Skye, I don’t think you could mess this up. Because when I said you had no choice, I meant that.”
“I have to do it, right? Or you just wash your hands of me and let me take whatever shit I got coming to me?”
I nod, and I take another step toward her. “What we’ve got so far, it’s good. It’s useful, it helps. But we still need something that’s gonna lead us to whatever shit they’re planning. So any information you can gather, we need it. And we need it fast. Because I think time is running out.”
Bound (Soldiers of Darkness MC Book 3) Page 6
