Devil's Mark

by Megan Crane

  She couldn’t tell, as he reached over and took her helmet from her to loop it over the nearest handlebar, if she was shaking because she was off in the darkness alone with him or if it was aftershocks from the bike ride. Or more likely, both.

  “I’m not gonna ask if you enjoyed that,” he murmured, rich and dark, like the Louisiana night itself. “I could tell you did. You melted all over me.”

  It would take a far stronger woman than Holly had ever been to keep from wondering if he would say something a lot like that after sex. Which she was definitely not picturing. Because she certainly didn’t now have his shoulders and back and gloriously taut and ridged abdomen burned into her senses forever.

  “Are you going to tell me lies to get in my pants and then write my name in a high school bathroom stall?” Holly asked. She didn’t sound like herself, really. She sounded like the sort of girl who would be out on the old railway bridge with a very, very wicked man. Soft and amused at once. She liked it. “Because I heard that’s the only thing that happens to girls who come out here.”

  Uptown laughed, then reached over and took her hand as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if they’d held hands a million times. He laced his fingers in hers as if he already knew how well they fit and then he tugged her along with him as he walked out toward the bridge that stretched above the lazy river that hardly seemed to move at all and even so, moved a little too fast to qualify as another bayou.

  He led her out over the old trestles, slowing as she picked her way carefully over the ancient wood in her too high, horny-bastard platform heels, taking care not to topple between the cracks.

  When they were out in the middle of the bridge, Holly thought her heart might somersault through her ribs with all that not-panic, but all he did was sit down. He let his legs dangle over the side, high enough from the water’s surface that no pissy alligator could view him as bait. He tilted his head back to look up at her, still holding her hand, and waited.

  And what was she going to do? Turn around and mince her way back off the damned bridge, forced to tiptoe because of the shoes on uneven ground? Even if she did—then what? Start the long and thankless walk back into town? It would take her most of what little was left of the night, and that was if she didn’t encounter an alligator all hopped up on its mating season and looking for reasons to bite.

  Why on earth are you pretending you don’t want to sit down? she asked herself then, because the truth was, she couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted more. She wanted to be the girl he’d brought out here, flushed with her own daring on the back of a Harley. She wanted to be the infinitely more wicked girl who sat down with him out here where no one could see them and did…whatever came next.

  She wanted to stop pretending, for once.

  Holly knew she shouldn’t want any of this. She shouldn’t want more from a man like Uptown. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the perils of that kind of thing. Wanting more was very likely how Katelyn had ended up where she was now, a position Holly refused to name in her head, though she could still see the way her friend had looked at her earlier when she’d discussed the old ladies. And Digger Guillot, the DKMC president. Holly didn’t want that, surely. There was deciding to step away from the life her father had planned for her because her father was, as maybe she’d always known on some level, a big liar. That wasn’t the same thing as jumping off the sort of cliff Katelyn had. She didn’t want that.

  Wasn’t that the trouble though? Holly didn’t know what the hell she wanted, when left to her own devices. She’d never had to worry her pretty head about that before, not with so many expectations already laid out for her, spoken and unspoken. She wasn’t sure she even knew how.

  “Sit with me,” Uptown said, grinning at her.

  And that made sense. She felt it, everywhere. Yes, Holly thought, with every last cell of her body, conviction stamped deep, like bone.

  This was exactly what she wanted.

  This night. This man. This, whatever that meant.

  She eased herself down, letting her own feet hang over the edge, relieved that the shoes she wore had straps around the ankles that kept them tethered to her. The water was a long way down, and there was no telling what lurked in it. She swung her legs like pendulums and didn’t object when he pulled her closer to him, slinging an arm over her shoulders. His arm was heavy, solid. Sheer muscle, just like the rest of him, but something about the weight of it made her quiver, deep inside. It made her feel safe.

  It got her wet.

  So wet she was surprised she didn’t turn into a puddle, then and there.

  “What are you doing now?” he asked her, his voice calm. Easy. As if they’d spent endless nights together just like this, hanging out in the dark and talking.

  But that would involve getting used to Uptown and Holly couldn’t imagine that ever happening. She was lost in the feel of him, all around her. The scent of him, male and right. His huge, hard body next to hers, so that every breath she took set her on fire. The fact that he was so calm, so relaxed in comparison, should have humiliated her, but it seemed a little too hard to care about that when, if she turned her head, she could bury her face in the crook of his neck.

  For a giddy, dizzy moment, she couldn’t think about anything else.

  “With your life,” he added when she didn’t respond. Because she couldn’t. “You went off to college. You graduated. Don’t you have some fancy life all planned?” He made a sound that was a little too hard to be a laugh. She knew his laughter by now—because it was a blazing thing inside of her, bright and hot and wild—and this wasn’t it. “Let me guess. Your daddy makes those decisions.”

  Was it better or worse that he wasn’t wrong about that? Holly kept her eyes focused out on the river, where she could see the water moving and a faint suggestion of the stars on the murky surface.

  “Some girls might take a little umbrage at that notion,” she pointed out. Quietly. “Even if it was true. Maybe especially if it was true. This is the twenty-first century and Lagrange isn’t a medieval keep. And even if it was, my father is just the mayor, not some grand high king who can make royal proclamations and expect me to follow them.”

  “Does he know that?” She could feel Uptown’s gaze on the side of her face, probing and insistent. After a moment, he looked to the river again. Happily, his arm stayed put.

  Holly thought that maybe, when she was back in her mint green and crisp white childhood bedroom that had always felt like a showroom and not quite her own, she would retreat beneath her covers and hide from the world and live forever on the memory of that tough, strong arm around her. Holding her tight. Keeping her close. Making her aware of her body and her skin and the places she was too warm in a way only a humid summer ever had before.

  “I haven’t consulted my father about my plans, as a matter of fact,” Holly answered him finally. And there were so many things she didn’t want to know. Most especially, why Uptown was so familiar with her father and his fondness for issuing decrees. Or, more accurately, she had a very good idea why but didn’t want to get into it because it might do something to move his arm off her shoulders and his body away from hers. “For all he knows I’m going to backpack across the world for a year or two until I find myself. Likely on a far-off beach somewhere unpronounceable, where I’ll live off the land and make jewelry from the local grasses.” She cleared her throat. “Or something.”

  “Are you?”

  Holly sighed. “No. I’d like to see Europe and stay in nice hotels in famous neighborhoods, sure. But I don’t think I need to trek around with a pack like a turtle lugging its own house, collecting situational tattoos and questionable piercings like mementos.”

  “The longer you talk about the shit you’re not doing, the more I think you’re avoiding the question, babe.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “I’m not avoiding it. I just don’t know.” She reached up and tucked a chunk of her hair behind one ear. And then decided to be
honest, for once. Because if she couldn’t be honest here, on a bridge in the middle of the night with only a very bad biker to hear her, maybe she wasn’t capable of honesty at all. “Everyone seemed to just know, suddenly. Out of the blue. All my friends are going into graduate programs or getting their teaching credentials or getting married. Or they’re going off to work in some career they somehow woke up and knew was the one for them at some point before graduation. I never woke up and knew anything. My life hasn’t ever changed all that much and I didn’t imagine it would after college. My daddy has certain expectations. He always has.” She shrugged. “But I pretended I had a whole new life planned out, too, because that seemed to be expected and what else could I do?”

  “Tell prying assholes to mind their own business. Including me.” He shifted slightly, there beside her. “Do what you want, babe. Anyone who tells you that you can’t is either trying to trap you or is trapped themselves. And if you buy into that shit? It’s on you.”

  She moved a little closer to him without thinking. Then she thought about it and liked it, so she smiled at him, too. “I think maybe the road not taken looks a little clearer to an outlaw biker.”

  He leaned back as he laughed, rocking her with him, and her heart flipped over in her chest. And the kinds of trouble she was in here washed over her, but it stopped mattering. It all stopped mattering. Because she’d been so good for so long. She’d pretended not to see anything but her duties, her obligations, her father’s expectations. All her life. Surely she’d earned the right to a little bit of trouble, this far out of town where nobody could see her.

  Especially because Uptown was talking. “I wasn’t always an outlaw biker. For a long time I was just a kid with no choices. Then I decided that was bullshit. There’s always a choice. You just might not like it very much.”

  Holly wanted to ask him about that kid with no choices, but she didn’t quite dare.

  “Well, I decided my choice was to move down to Lafayette and get a cute little apartment,” she told him. “Or maybe Baton Rouge, whatever.” She blew out a breath. “I figured I’d join the Junior League when I was old enough, like my mother did back when. I’d get a job, do a little charity, and that’s a whole life, right? Not even a bad life, if you think about it.”

  “It sounds boring as fuck, babe.”

  Of course it did. To a man like Uptown, a little life like that was a kind of death. Holly didn’t want to think about the part of her that agreed. She shook her head, entirely too aware she was too close to him. That his face was right there. And that she was less scared of that—of him—by the second.

  “Not everyone is seized with an urge to be a doctor or a lawyer or a Devil’s Keeper at a young age. Some of us have to stagger on out into the world and figure it out as we go.”

  And Holly had to accept that she wasn’t honest after all, because she couldn’t quite bring herself to mention the other, better things she’d imagined she’d be doing with her life. Finding that appropriate someone. Settling down. Finally having a family that was hers—that wasn’t all silence and pretending and terrible ghosts everyone acted as if they couldn’t see. Finally having a place she belonged.

  She couldn’t possibly tell this man that.

  “What do you want?” Uptown asked, his voice as unflinching as the gaze he leveled at her from all of an inch away. “What do you dream about?”

  And Holly couldn’t have said why the question made her so…edgy. She didn’t want to talk about the family she wanted or the family she already had that had always made her long for a real one. Tonight the only dreams she remembered clearly—the only ones she was prepared to admit to herself, anyway—were the ones starring him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s pretend that what you laid out just now isn’t the most depressing shit I’ve ever heard,” he said, that same steel in his voice. Which didn’t make him sound like he was pretending much of anything. Because why would he? He wore his identity right there on his chest, visible to anyone and everyone who looked. “You’re gonna throw something at a map and randomly pick a city. That’s not a plan. That’s called flailing. So is hoping you’ll also randomly trip over some asshole who fits into whatever the hell accidental life you stumble into once you get there.”

  That stung. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to say it, princess. It’s who you are.”

  How did he do that? How did he make her feel ashamed of herself when he couldn’t possibly know her heart? More importantly, when had she let this rude, overbearing man close enough to her that he could make her feel anything?

  “You don’t have any idea who I am,” she gritted out.

  Uptown let out a hard, low laugh. “Do you? Are you gonna choose something or is your half-assed decision to avoid making a choice gonna turn into your whole life? Just like that.” He snapped his fingers and Holly glared at him. “But instead of waiting for a sad, boring death in some suburb with three kids who hate you and a douchebag husband who bangs a new bitch every time he leaves on a business trip, you’re here. Sucked back into Lagrange to watch your old man’s downfall up close and personal. Why?”

  “Is this how you lure all the girls?” she asked, a little sharply. Maybe more than a little, because she’d spent years deliberately not asking herself these questions. She didn’t much like it when he asked them for her. “Because if it is, I can’t imagine why someone didn’t push you off this bridge years ago.”

  “I thought we went over this.” He shifted then, so he could trace the line of her jaw with one of his deliciously rough fingertips. Her breath caught and she had to remind herself of how rude he was. How overbearing. “Normally I just fuck them ’til they scream, princess. But I’m not doing that with you.”

  That scraped at her, a lot harder than any snide comments about her future, and she frowned at him.

  “You’re not?”

  She felt him smile more than saw it. “No. Not tonight.”

  “Is this biker chivalry? Is that actually a thing?” She tried to keep the outrage from her voice and failed. It had been bad enough—or surprising, anyway—that first night in Dumb Gator’s. He’d told her he wanted to be the one to break her, which had been as thrilling as it had been a little overwhelming and then he’d…walked out of the office. Then disappeared for a week. Talk about a mixed message. Her frown tipped over into a full-on scowl and she didn’t try too hard to stop it. “Why do I get the special treatment that no one actually wants?”

  He laughed again. Then he turned, wrapping one of his hard hands over the nape of her neck and holding her still. She lost that heavy arm over her shoulders, but it was difficult to mind too much when he was holding her like that, keeping her face near his. Taking control, in case she’d had any illusions on that score.

  His voice was gentle. “You’re a virgin, baby.”

  Holly wanted to die. She froze into a column of ice at the same time a wave of sheer humiliation washed over her. There was a large part of her that wanted to simply tip forward over the side of the bridge and let the river take her, because who talked about these things? So…baldly?

  He’d indicated that he thought she was a virgin before. But this was different. He wasn’t throwing something at her to shock her. He knew.

  He knew.

  “That’s not a secret and I’m not ashamed of it,” she made herself say with every last scrap of her resolve. Because both of those things had been true before tonight. Before right this minute. “But I don’t see how that’s anyone’s business but mine.”

  “Princess, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Uptown said, and that gentle note in his voice was gone. Evaporated, as if it had never been, and something like a shiver snaked down her spine.

  “You told me what you were talking about, though.” She tipped her chin up, which was harder to do than it should have been with his hand on her neck. His palm seemed hotter than before, as if he was branding her with his
touch, but maybe that was just the temperature inside her. That raging, impossible fire. “In detail. I rode off with you anyway.”

  “Are you begging me to fuck you, Holly?” he asked, stark and to the point. It cut through her. Then seemed to bleed sensation deep between her legs, so intense she was grateful she was already sitting down. “Because if you are, then beg. If you’re not, if I were you, I’d stop pushing. I’m not a preppy Ole Miss frat boy, ready to dance around on a leash because you’re pretty and like to hold your pussy in reserve like a big-game trophy.”

  There were so many things she could have been offended by in that growled little speech, delivered so close to her face. But Holly ignored them, because it occurred to her that as alive and free as she’d felt on the back of his motorcycle, she felt no different now. And if she was truly honest for a change, she’d had a taste of this exact sensation all those years ago behind the church, just watching him. She wanted to call it panic, but it wasn’t. It seared through her in the same way. It made her aware. It made her feel breathless and out of control. But this wasn’t panic.

  It was him.

  “Would begging work?” She didn’t know where she got the nerve to ask that, and she regretted it almost in the next second. She could feel the way he stilled, that powerful body of his very nearly vibrating with a different kind of tension, as if he was coiling up to strike. Just in case she’d forgotten that this man was a predator. “Not that I’m planning to, ah, do anything about my virginity. But if I were, would that do the trick?”

  Uptown shook his head, a strange little smile toying with those perfect lips of his. Holly didn’t see him move, but suddenly she was off balance and his arm was there behind her. He held her at an angle while he leaned over her, and then bore her down until she was on her back on the railroad tie and he was half on top of her. Trapping her, she understood, as her pulse rabbited through her body and she did absolutely nothing to fight it.