Steel: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark and Dirty Sinners’ MC Book 4)

by Serena Akeroyd

  I’d been waiting eighteen years to feel it. I think I deserved to be a little curious.

  I shrugged at his question, and murmured, “Why wouldn’t I think it?”

  “Because I keep on telling you I’m going nowhere?”

  Had he?

  I mean, he’d been glued to my side throughout my stay in the hospital, but I couldn’t remember any heartfelt vows and promises of love and adoration.

  No ‘in sickness and in health’ talks.

  He heaved a sigh. “Woman, I swear you just don’t listen.”

  I laughed a little. “And you do?”

  “True.” He scraped a hand over his face. “Don’t you remember what Indy told you?”

  “Told me about what?” I asked, not feigning my confusion. “Indy tells me a lot. What in particular?”

  “About the appointment at her studio?”

  “What appointment?”

  He sighed. “Your appointment.”

  “I’m not getting a tattoo,” I retorted. “I don’t fucking want one.”

  “You want this one.” His hand was suddenly in my hair, and how he’d moved on the bed without knocking me or making the mattress shift, I’d never know.

  But his hold on my hair was absolute, and the way he arched my neck, all without making me uncomfortable, was like weaving the lyrics of a song and singing them in my ear.

  He tipped my head back, made sure I was staring straight at him, and muttered, “You’re mine. About time the world knew it.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what about vice versa? Hmm? I’ve seen Nyx’s and Link’s brands. Sin’s too.” I huffed. “If you think I’m getting a tattoo, then you’re nuts if you think you aren’t adding to your collection—”

  He took the wind out of my sails by moving away from me and twisting around to reach over the nightstand, and when a light flickered on, I winced as it made my eyes ache.

  When the pain ebbed away, the glow too, I stared at him, scowling at the jerk move, then I saw his back.

  Oh.

  God.

  It was old.

  Fucking ancient.

  Well, as ancient as a thirty-eight-year-old man could be.

  But there it was.

  My name.

  His brand.

  My brand on him.

  Pierre in massive letters. The French word for stone. The name that was on my birth certificate.

  Fuck.

  I started crying. I had no choice. No freaking alternative.

  I sobbed, and it hurt and felt so good all at the same fucking time, but the poison of years’ worth of misery and heartache just wouldn’t abate.

  I cried until I was in pain, and cried some more whenever I opened my eyes, which were on the same line as him now he was sitting slouched over the side of the bed, where I could catch a glimpse of that massive fucking tat that declared to all the fucking world that he was mine.

  Without me even knowing it.

  “Why?”

  The question didn’t slip from my lips. Oh, no. It roared from me.

  I was hurting in more ways than just physically. But even though I wanted to strangle him, I urged myself into a sitting position, sore stomach be damned, so I could trace the lines of my name.

  It spanned the width of his shoulders, a long, cursive slant that spewed from the ‘hot lips’ logo for which my name had been granted—my mom was a Rolling Stone superfan.

  I stared at it, tracing the letters, unable to believe, unable to credit what I was seeing.

  It felt like a dream, which was slowly turning into a nightmare. Because if this was as ancient as it looked, the ink old and slightly faded, not fresh, then he’d put us through decades of misery, and for what?

  Because he didn’t want to be tied down?

  That was the only thing I could think of.

  My brain was a buzz, a blur of sounds and images, flashbacks of all the shit he’d done over the years.

  From fucking clubwhores, to ignoring me, to shoving me away, to being absent when he’d been the one constant in my fucking life.

  I was sure, at that moment, that I hated him.

  I hated him so fucking much in a way that could only ever be the flip side of love, because this hatred went so deep, it funneled into me, tunneling into my heart.

  But I couldn’t stop touching him.

  He was here.

  He was naked.

  He was showing me this.

  He’d been with me for months, sitting with me through my recovery, and I knew something had changed in his mind, something that had been like a light switch flipping on, morphing into a ‘yes’ we can be together, from a ‘no’ this can never be.

  He’d tensed at my touch, and I got the feeling he thought I was going to hit him.

  But I didn’t.

  Even if he deserved a knife in his fucking back.

  Shit, he deserved for me to carve out my name and to throw it at his fucking feet.

  Years of misery, and for what?

  Beneath my touch, his shoulders were bunched, and it took a second for me to realize that he was speaking through the white noise in my head.

  “I made myself a vow to you, that I’d protect you from me until I died. Well, I died,” he said simply. “And I was tired of being a hero. Tired of being away from you. What’s the point in living if I can’t have you at my side?”

  For a second, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. Steel wasn’t poetic anymore, wasn’t even that sentimental. At least, not the man I’d come to know. And not with me.

  As a kid, he’d been gentle with me, and he’d said sweet things, made me feel like I was lucky when he’d scrawl something with a Sharpie on the front of my notepad. Something that would make my teen heart melt.

  But this was different.

  Steel was harder now. He’d done shit that I would never know about, killed people, done bad business, and I just knew that the MC was likely helping Nyx purge his soul with the rash of vigilante murders that were happening around the Northeast.

  I pressed my face into his shoulders, ignoring the ache in my stomach, the way I felt all rattled up inside, and instead, I breathed him in deep.

  “You died?”

  “It’s a miracle I’m alive,” he rasped. “I knew the second the bullets hit I was gonna die. When I woke up, I knew it was a gift. Knew not to waste shit a second time over.”

  I felt like an orange had lodged itself in my throat. “Why did you waste it the first time?”

  He inhaled, and it was more of a rasp than a smooth sound. “I know I have to tell you, but I’ve been keeping this shit bottled up inside for so long that I don’t know if I can.”

  The pain in his voice, the sheer agony in the words?

  I believed him.

  I couldn’t not.

  Whatever it was, whatever goddamn motherfucking reason he’d been using to keep us apart for all this wasted time, it hurt him.

  Maybe as much as the poison I’d been given had been hurting me.

  “My mom told you something that day, didn’t she?” I asked softly as I moved to lie down, suddenly feeling way more fatigued than I ought to after basically just sitting up.

  Fuck, this recovery was going to be a bitch.

  Sweat had popped up on my brow, beading at the back of my neck, and it was with relief that I cascaded into the pillows.

  When he joined me after switching off the light, he curled into me, his body curving so I was as close to him as we could be together.

  This was so beyond surreal. To have the heat of him scorching along one side of me, to have his breath brushing my lips. The scent of him in my nose, the essence of him burrowing into the sheets.

  I’d had boyfriends over the years, because I wasn’t a nun, but I’d never moved in with any, never let them stay over at my place.

  We’d always split up because they wanted more, and I was happy with being close fuck buddies, and it was because of this man.

  Not because I w
as holding out for him, although maybe I was, but because I’d been burned once, and there was no way I was going to be burned again.

  So why was I willing to listen to this? Why had my mood been so down today at the thought of him just dumping me at my digs and then heading home?

  He’d torn me up, ripped me into shreds, and him pasting me back together again was going to take a long time. Trust? Fuck. We had so much shit to make up for, but I felt like…

  Christ.

  I’d learned a long time ago that hoping was for fools.

  I didn’t hope for shit. It might as well have been a wish.

  I worked hard. I studied hard. I fought for everything I got, and nobody could say that wishing or dreaming or hoping was how I’d done it.

  No.

  I’d fucking strived for every miserable inch of ground I’d broken.

  But Steel made me hope again.

  And that was dangerous, because I wanted to hope. I wanted to trust. I was just scared of being hurt again.

  His hand came over to cup my cheek, and I shuddered as the callused thumb rubbed along my jawline.

  But the callused thumb made me think of what I’d overheard today. “Hard to think of you breaking up shit in a chop shop. You always hated the auto shop class in school.”

  He tensed at my words, then his lips twitched. “Fuck, we did it again, didn’t we?”

  “What? Talked club business in front of me?” I laughed softly. “Yeah. You did. But I bet Rex knows.”

  “Rex knows all and sees all. He always loved you.”

  “I always loved him. He must know that I’d never do anything to hurt the MC.”

  “Probably knew that the first time I tore out your heart and danced on it.” He gritted his teeth, then he lowered his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m so fucking sorry, Stone.”

  I gulped, because it wasn’t enough. The words weren’t enough.

  “Just tell me why you did it.”

  “Lana Jane was…fuck, she was a bitch.”

  His insult didn’t offend me. I’d never liked my mom all that much while she was alive, and in the aftermath of her death, when I’d been left to handle a lot of her affairs, some that had seen me taking a beating meant for her because she was in debt to some nasty people, I’d liked her even less.

  “I know she was.”

  “Yeah, you think you do,” he rasped. “But you don’t.” He sucked in another shaky breath. “That kiss has kept me going, Stone. I swear to fuck. Every morning, it’s the first thing I think of, and at night, it haunts my dreams.”

  I scoffed, “I’m sure, what with all the snatch you’ve been fucking to screw me out of your system—”

  He shook his head. “Never that. Not possible. To get through the agony of being away from you, sure. But it’s like a heroin junkie just derailing and using to take the pain away. I probably fucked more women than you can even imagine” —ouch, that didn’t hurt much, did it?— “and not a single one ever counted. It was like scratching an itch. It never meant anything to me, and no, that isn’t supposed to sound good. I know how shitty it sounds. But your mom, she fucked me up. She fucked me up real good, and I couldn’t deal with what she told me.”

  “How about you start with telling me what she actually said?” I questioned, my tone deliriously calm.

  “Her first thing was, ‘If I’d known you were into kids like your daddy, Steel, I’d have sold Stone to you when she was younger.’”

  Whatever I’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that.

  It was never, ever, in a million lightyears, that.

  I froze. Unable to compute all the different things he was saying. Then, when I was just as mind-blown, unable to process it, he murmured, “Yeah. That was pretty much my reaction, and to be completely frank, even all these years later, even reliving that afternoon a million times, I still can’t get over how she said it. Just so fucking blasé that it was surreal.”

  I gulped, unable to believe it, but also able to accept it too.

  I’d always known—

  Hadn’t I?

  I sucked in a breath. “I got the vibe that if I’d been thinner, or prettier, she’d have tried to sell me, so I guess it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.”

  My words were a husky rumble that had him tensing. “I’d have fucking killed any bastard who touched you. You have to know that—”

  “I do. I did. You guys kept me safe a lot of the time, especially with all the shit she pulled.”

  His hand moved to my other arm, so that his forearm rested on my chest. It was a heavy weight, but it made me feel closer to him. He couldn’t hold my stomach, not with the surgical sites still a mess, but this was how he could hold me, and I’d take it.

  “Her Johns would wiggle the handle on my door some nights—” I released another shaky breath. “I never slept so well as I did at Rene and Bear’s place.”

  “I can imagine,” he murmured. His lips went to the curve of my shoulder, to the ball, and he whispered, “But you missed something crucial in her words, Stone.”

  Had I?

  “You mean you didn’t break things off because you thought she’d been whoring me out—”

  He sat up in an explosive move that had me yelping as it jolted my body. Even as he was hissing, his hands snapping out to stabilize me, he ground out, “Fuck, I’m sorry, baby doll. No! That wasn’t why I broke things off! Fuck, Stone. Fuck! How could you even think that?”

  My mouth trembled. “Well, something tore you away—”

  “Yeah, what she was saying. What she was enjoying telling me.” He gritted his teeth. “My father… Do you remember Kevin? Nyx’s uncle?”

  I tensed.

  How couldn’t I remember Kevin?

  That weird time when I was, like, nine, when Mom had brought him over to the house? And he’d been looking at me…

  I wrinkled my nose at the memory, because it had ended with me throwing a tantrum to get out of the room and being grounded for a month for ‘showing Mom up in front of guests.’

  When Carly, Nyx’s sister, had killed herself, when Kevin had died a little while later, it had come out then exactly what Kevin was. And after that, when he was long since dead, Indy had confessed that he’d visited her room at night. That was why she had nightmares now. That was why she had insomnia.

  “Of course I remember him.” If I sounded like I was wheezing, then that was because I was. “The sick fuck.”

  “She told me he was my dad, Stone. She told me Mom had told her.”

  My mouth trembled. “Oh, Steel,” I whispered. “You couldn’t believe a word she said! You know she was a liar!”

  “I did, but the way she said it, Stone, just fuck… I knew it was true. She got a kick out of it. She enjoyed telling me. So I got out of there, and I made sure I went and asked the one person who I knew would know.”

  My throat tightened. “Bear?”

  “Yeah.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Kevin is my biological father.”

  For a second, the revelation hovered between us like a bomb that was just waiting to explode.

  I could feel the seconds ticking down as I tried to figure out what to say, what to do.

  Then, he rasped, “I’ll go if you want me to.”

  I shook my head, but he didn’t see it, and when he started to get off the bed, I groaned as I shot up and snapped my hand around his arm.

  “You’re going nowhere,” I growled.

  “I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror, Stone, I can’t fucking bear it. So why the fuck should you want me anywhere close to you?”

  I didn’t know what to say, I truly didn’t. I never could have anticipated this, but I figured I was just mad.

  “You slept your way through the population of Sweden and pushed me away because of who your sperm donor was?” I whispered, just wanting to make sure I saw things the way he saw them.

  “No, I stayed away from you because you were young, and I realized I wa
s just like him.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Huh?” I let my hand slip away. “You like…” For a second, I couldn’t even say it. “Kids?”

  “No!” he ground out. “I liked you. When you were young.”

  “But you were young too!” I reasoned, totally perplexed.

  “There’s a four year age gap between us. My God, it creeps me out now just thinking about it.”

  I felt like I’d been tossed down the rabbit hole headfirst.

  All I knew was that soon, my brain was going to reach a melting point, and when that happened, steam was going to be coming out of my ears. Especially as it was more like three years considering how close to his birthday mine fell.

  “You didn’t so much as kiss me until that night, and that was a month before my sixteenth birthday,” I pointed out softly.

  “The second you got tits and an ass, I wanted you—”

  “Isn’t that the exact opposite of what a pedophile would want, Steel?”

  He froze at my question. “What?”

  This was the most disturbing conversation I’d ever had, but trying to convince the love of my life he wasn’t a deviant pervert really topped the fucking list of weird shit I’d had to do.

  Ever.

  I gulped, then reasoned, “Pedophiles groom young children for a long time, and then, when they start to sexually mature, they…ummm…well, they don’t want that, do they? If anything, when I grew a set of tits and a butt, you should have been turned off. If you were like your father, I mean.”

  A ragged, explosive sigh escaped him, and suddenly, I was flat on my back and he had a leg curved over my thighs, his face was tucked into my throat, and even though he’d hurt me so many fucking times, even though he’d broken me, that was nothing compared to feeling this strong, powerful man break down against me.

  His sobs of relief as he accepted my truth made my own eyes burn, and I curved my arms about him, because this, I realized, was mental torture.

  He’d been in a prison since he’d found out, a jail of his own making, sure, but a jail that he hadn’t known how to escape from.

  His every betrayal I wore like a scar on my heart, but this?

  Living proof that he’d endured an agony far worse than mine.