And just like that, I was gone. Transported. He was like a time-machine that I never wanted to get out of. Everything I had been trying to forget, all of the pain, all of the trauma, the heartache, the empty sadness that I never seemed to be able to shake, it melted away like ice under his intense heat.
The hunger for that escape had ruled my life. I may not have known it in the last few days consciously, but underneath everything? I had been starving for it for years. Ryder’s touch burned away the memories of the past, replacing it with love. Replacing it with trust. Replacing it with something I had been searching for for all my life.
I just never imagined it would come in this package. Ryder.
I sighed into him, opening to him more, spreading my limbs and pushing up as he sank into me. His hardness was smooth and full as he moved inside me, his breath quickening, his mouth devouring mine. I twirled my tongue around his, wrapped my thighs around his hips as they hammered into me, over and over, his deep strokes taking me to that one beautiful place that existed.
No past. No future.
Just right now, in this moment, with nothing to think about but Ryder’s touch on my skin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ryder
The couple sitting in the car in the parking lot of the Rodeo Roadhouse stared at me as I parked my bike. I noticed them right away, and immediately pegged them for cops. My bike and my cut always brought attention. I was used to it. I ignored them, and walked inside.
I had left Sam in bed. I had business to take care of in Seaside today, and it was a long drive there and back.
I had decided to stop in for a beer on my way back to the clubhouse. I needed some time alone. Some time to think. To figure out what the hell I was going to do about Sam, or Grace, or whoever she was.
Why was there no trace of her after the trial? It didn’t make sense. She had disappeared completely. Riot had stopped me in the hallway this morning to tell me he had searched far and wide and still came up empty. She simply vanished into the world without a trace. It didn’t make any sense.
I didn’t mind it, though. It just meant I had more time with her before she had to go back to her life. And if time with her meant spending time together like we had last night, then that was just fucking fine with me. She was the sexiest woman I had ever known, and my body couldn’t get enough of her. On top of that, she was smart, brave, and not to mention her beauty had a way of striking me right in the heart every time I looked at her.
What the fuck had happened to me? I wondered, as I sat there at the bar, drinking my beer and eating my burger. She had done it. There was no doubt. She had gotten under my skin. She had touched my big, stupid, untouchable heart. So much for the armor I had built up around it.
With one glance of her huge green eyes, she had penetrated what I had worked so hard to protect all these years. But, fuck, if I couldn’t help it.
And it was time to admit I didn’t want to, either.
Maybe there was a way to work it all out. Maybe she could stay. Maybe she didn’t have anywhere in particular to go back to, after all. Maybe she had just disappeared off the radar and lived a quiet, peaceful life and got mixed up with the wrong dude. And now, he was gone.
And she didn’t seem to be disturbed at all by the fact that I had killed him.
I was relieved, and that relief had allowed me to start thinking about the future. A future with Sam.
Maybe it was possible. Maybe it was time. It had been so long since I had lost Julie.
Julie. When she died in that car accident, I thought my life was over. And now, I was living an entirely new life. Maybe it was time it included the love a woman.
A damn fine woman that I couldn’t wait to get home to and sink right back into.
“Excuse me?” A voice to my right interrupted my thoughts, just as I was about to adjust the growing erection straining against my jeans. I looked over and saw the couple from the car outside. Cops.
They weren’t in uniform, but their neat little suits screamed law enforcement.
I grunted in response. I was used to getting harassed by the cops, but they were usually in uniform and in a gang.
“I’m Detective Judd Jeffries,”the man said, and then gestured to the woman at his side. She was a busty, petite woman, with frizzy red hair. “This is Dawn Andrews.”
I grunted again, ignoring their outstretched hands.
The bartender walked up to us.
“Can I help you guys?” he asked. John was an old friend of mine, who only still worked here a few days a week. He knew I wasn’t about to be friendly with a couple of cops.
“Hi, sure, sure,”the man said.“We’re just going around the area, looking for a missing person, actually.”
“Oh, yeah?”John said. “How can I help?”
I watched as the woman shoved a picture in John’s face.
“This woman. Have you seen her?”she asked.
John whistled, and then gave the picture back to her. I glanced at the picture and I knew right away it was Sam.
“Nope, but she sure is pretty. If I had seen her, I’d remember. Here, give me that back, let me ask my waitress,”John said, taking the picture again and disappearing into the kitchen.
John wasn’t working the day I brought Sam here, but I knew his waitress was.
The woman pulled another copy of the picture of Sam out of her pocket and pushed it over to me.
“What about you?”she asked. “Have you seen her?”
I looked down at the picture, the green eyes I had grown to love staring back at me.
“Nope.”
She took the photo back, and putting it back in her pocket. John came back, and handed the picture back to her.
“My waitress doesn’t remember her either,”he said. I looked through the doorway into the kitchen and saw Susie, the waitress, staring back at me. “She in some sort of trouble or something?”John asked.
“No, she’s an officer. Disappeared on an assignment, we’re just trying to find her.”
My heart dropped when I heard that. A cop? A fucking cop?
How could that be? I sat there, stunned into silence, paralyzed by disbelief.
The two cops walked out after leaving their card. I looked down at it, and read it - Portland Police Bureau.
So, that was it. She was a fucking cop. Fuck me!
What the hell did this mean? What was I supposed to do now? Hell, I had just confessed to her that I had killed someone!
“John, I need some whiskey.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Grace
I woke up feeling like a complete fraud. I had to tell him the truth. When I realized I was alone in his bed, I sighed a sigh a relief. I didn’t want to face him in the daylight, my lie written across my face. I knew he was going to be so upset.
Cops and outlaws don’t mix. That’s an obvious fact. Sure, I wasn’t the kind of cop that was all about following the letter of the law to a’t’but I was still a cop. I had become a cop for one specific reason and that was to fight the abuse of women and children. I didn’t give a shit if someone did drugs, or anything else they wanted to do. As long as it didn’t hurt anyone, I didn’t care.
And because of that, the fact that Ryder was a God didn’t faze me one bit. I knew a lot of cops that were a lot less moral than him. Ryder was a good man, and that patched vest didn’t make that any less the truth.
It didn’t matter, though, what I thought. It didn’t even matter what Ryder would think once I told him. What mattered was what society thought, what the precinct thought, what my partners would think and what my captain would think.
I knew there was no way I could continue my job and continue spending time with Ryder.
Our lives were like oil and water.
I might have had a taste of what happiness might be like with him, but that was all that was meant to be.
Long-lasting, healthy relationships had never been a part of my life. And there was no sense in fooling
myself that it could be now.
I had slept in, and just as I was getting out of the shower, wondering if I should just start walking and call the precinct to send a car for me, Ryder walked in the door.
I was wearing his robe, my hair wet and dripping onto his bathroom floor. He walked in, his eyes on fire with desire, and without saying a word he kissed me so hard I would have sunk to my knees if he hadn’t held me up. Electricity shot right through my core, melting every thought of leaving right out of my head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ryder
A cop. A fucking cop.
Over and over, the words played in my head as I raced back to the clubhouse. I had to tell her what I had learned. But maybe she already knew? I can’t believe I had brought a cop into the clubhouse, the Sons of Chaos MC fucking clubhouse! I never, in a million years, would have guessed the answer to the question we had been searching for was this.
Was I being set up? No, that couldn’t be. There was no way she faked being unconscious for three days. No way that scene at her house in Lincoln City wasn’t real. Fuck. I still felt horrible for her, but this fucking changed everything.
What now?
And why in the hell was my cock still raging hard? I couldn’t think of her without my body telling me to forget everything else and just be with her. But my prick apparently had no regard for reality.
I couldn’t just bring a cop into my life and expect anything to work out.
I was a fucking outlaw!
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
By the time I pulled up to the clubhouse, I was a wreck. I had every intention of walking in and confronting her, telling her everything. But then I saw her.
And for fuck’s sake, if she didn’t just knock me on my ass again. She had never looked more beautiful. She was wearing my old ratty robe that was torn on the shoulder, her green eyes shining bright in the morning sunlight. Her long hair was wet, sending tiny droplets of water dropping down onto the top curve of her breasts. The robe was open completely, and as my eyes traveled down the front of it, past the flatness of her strong belly, and down to the pretty‘V’of her pussy, the memory of the sweetness that was waiting for me there overwhelmed me, and I had to have her again.
Before it ended. Before we had to say goodbye. Before my little brief respite from the loneliness of my life was over, I had to feel her once more.
I pulled open my pants, pushing my boxers out of the way, and pulled her thighs around me, sinking into her right there on the bathroom floor. I couldn’t wait, she didn’t ask me to, and I dove into her, pushing, pushing, as hard as I could, the moaning and whimpering escaping from her full lips encouraging me to push harder and harder until I was exploding inside of her.
I picked her up, carrying her into the bedroom, and laid her on the bed, my cock nowhere near being spent. I devoured every inch of her, memorizing every detail, trying desperately to resist the urge to tie her to my bed and never let her leave.
But that wasn’t an option, no matter how much I fucking wanted her.
She wasn’t mine. She was never going to be.
But for today? I sure as fuck was going to pretend.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Grace
We made love until the early morning, when we finally fell asleep in each other’s arms. When we woke hours later, I heard birds chirping outside our window.
His window.
I was entirely too comfortable here. I needed to leave. It was time to tell him, and as soon as he woke up, I planned to do just that.
I cared about him too much to continue the lie. I was in a different head space now that the hours had passed, and the sun had come up. Sleep had helped, too.
I had to do the right thing.
When I felt him stir beside me, his strong, muscular arms pulling me back in to snuggle close to him, I sighed with regret.
Regret for everything. Regret for being born into a family that was completely fucked up. Regret for getting in that car with Dice. Regret for everything that my life had become now that I was a cop. I didn’t even have any friends.
There was nobody out there looking for me.
My own mother didn’t even know I was in danger. There was no connection. There was no love.
There never had been.
Until now. And what I was about to say was going to blow all that love to smithereens.
“Ryder,”I whispered. He shifted slightly, groaning.
“Ryder, wake up,”I said again. I had to do it now before I changed my mind and stayed in bed fucking him again all day. It was incredibly easy to do, it turned out.
I silently said goodbye to that peaceful stillness I had found, and said his name one more time, louder this time, and slightly poking him with my elbow in his ribs.
“Ow,”he said, his eyes opening. “You okay, babe?”
He fucking killed me. The concern. The constant concern for my well-being. I wasn’t used to it. People didn’t care about me. That’s not how things worked in my world.
“I have to tell you something important,”I said.
“What, beauty?”he murmured. I turned around, facing him. God, he was so fucking sexy. His sleepy face just increased his handsomeness. My pussy quivered as I fought my every instinct to wrap myself around him once more.
“I’m…,”I whispered, pausing before I crashed into our world with the unpleasant reality.“I’m a cop.”
One corner of his mouth stretched into a slow grin as he finally opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Yeah, I know,”he said, simply, easily, like I had just told him I was breathing.
“What?”I replied.“What the fuck do you mean you know?”
“I know. I found out yesterday when I went into town.”
“What! And you didn’t fucking tell me?”
“Well, Sam, I could say the same thing. In fact, I did mean to tell you but I walked in here and you were all naked and wet under my robe, and well…I couldn’t resist, cop or no cop,”he said, shrugging.
“Did you just remember in your sleep?”he asked.
“No, I remembered yesterday, while you were gone,”I said. “I was going to tell you, too, but I - well, you - came home and we…yeah,”I said. “How did you find out?”I asked.
“I was at the Rodeo Roadhouse having lunch. Couple of cops came in flashing your picture around. Said you were a missing cop,”he replied.
“Oh. That’s probably my partners,”I said.
“You wanna explain a little for me, Sam? What did you remember?”
“I remembered everything, babe. I’m sorry, Ryder. I should have told you.”
“At the cost of last night? Fuck that, babe. It’s all good. You can tell me now. There’s no more secrets between us.” He pulled me back into bed, and we laid there all morning, as I told him everything.
I told him how I had left as soon as the trial was over. I changed my last name to Evans, and made sure to keep my name change private. Because of my job, I had managed to keep my identity a secret and under the radar of anyone who might try to look me up on the internet. I told him about my work. And I was comforted immensely by his occasional murmurs of approval.
Maybe he could see me as a real human being instead of a cop.
“You have to go back, Sam,”he said, his voice sad but firm.
“Yeah, I know,”I replied. And I did. I had made up my mind. I couldn’t just give up on all those women and children out there. I might not be able to save them all, but I had to keep saving as many as I could.
“So, no husband? No children?”he asked.
“No. My life is a lonely, empty landscape.”
“Well, that makes me sad and happy all at the same time, Sam.”
“That’s just the way it’s been. Ryder, what are we going to do?”I asked him.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, is there? What are our options? You go back, you’re a cop, and I’m an outlaw. How do you see that fitting together, Sam?”<
br />
I thought about it, for the millionth time, and I couldn’t figure it out.
“I don’t know.” My eyes filled with tears. It was everything I knew and I hated it.
“Well, me either. Listen, as much as I care about you, as much as I want you to stay, it’s just not the right thing. You belong out there, doing your thing. If I was any other man, I’d come with you, we’d find a way. But that just won’t work for us. I know it. You know it. Ain’t no denying it, Sam.”
REMEMBER ME: GODS OF CHAOS MC Page 12
