by Violet Blaze
God, I hate the look he's throwing my way, this judgmental, self-righteous glare that cuts straight to the center of my soul. Maybe it hurts because I know he's right. I've always been adamant that I was not getting involved with the club in any way, shape, or form. And here I am, in love with an officer, with the enforcer of all people. But then I think of Lyric and how she has a life completely separate from the Wolves and still manages to make it work with Royal. I could do that, couldn't I?
“Wow,” Loren says when I don't immediately respond. “Just wow.” He plants his hands on his hips and takes a long, deep breath. When he looks up at me, his eyes are glittering with pain and hurt. “You're fucking him, aren't you?”
“Why would you make that assumption?” I snap, narrowing my eyes, hating that he's right.
“Because some guy from your dad's gang isn't gonna drive all the way over here just to watch a movie with you.” Loren slides a Blu-ray case and a plastic wrapped microwaveable popcorn bag from inside the front pocket on his hoodie and throws them on the kitchen table. “I can't believe you.”
“So, what, you have some right to just know everything I do all the time? We're friends, Loren. You're not my keeper.”
“Whatever you need to say to make yourself feel better, Ren,” Loren says and then he turns around and leaves out the front door, slamming it hard behind him as my eyes sting and I run over to the kitchen window to watch him descend the steps to the driveway. The entire floor plan of our houses rests on top of a massive garage down below, so I have a bird's-eye view of Loren lighting up a cigarette next to his car, pulling his phone from his pocket.
Fuck him.
I can't deal with this right now.
I head back into my room, grab some clothes and hop in the shower, my heart racing faster and faster and faster as the minutes tick past. Glacier's coming here. It hardly seems real.
I climb out, dry my hair with the blow-dryer and drag it back into a ponytail. I pop some shadow on my eyes, some clear gloss on my lips, and then pull on a pair of dark jeans and a white midriff top, layering on a zip-up hoodie and a leather jacket, both of which I leave open, exposing my belly and the four piercings arranged around it.
When I head back into the living room, Loren is still there.
“What the fuck?” I ask him, all of three seconds before I hear the sound of Glacier's booted feet coming up the steps. The blood drains from my face as Loren glances over his shoulder at the front door. Saint … he doesn't bother to knock, walks straight in and finds me there with Loren.
“Holy shit,” Loren says, backing up, instinctively nervous around Glacier. And he should be. My blonde haired, blue-eyed demon looks at the younger boy with a cold facial expression and then … smiles.
“You again,” Glacier says, dressed in a leather Alpha Wolves jacket, a red wifebeater, and dark blue jeans tucked into his boots. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“You're the … guy from the alley,” Loren says and then glances back at me warily.
“So I am,” Glacier says, slipping his black nailed fingers into his front pockets and leaning back with this swagger that just screams bullshit. This is the facade I'm used to seeing from afar, the one he throws on for his brothers. Funny, silly, happy. And it's such a lie I can't stand it.
“Glacier,” Loren says, and Saint's brows pop a little, his smile stiffening slightly. The air feels like it's being sucked from the room. God, if I'd have known the idiot was going to hang out and wait for me … “You're Glacier.”
“And you are?” Saint asks, voice cooling a little as his blue eyes flick over in my direction, take me in from head to toe, flash with … something, and then go blank again as he looks over at Loren.
“Loren Gaughen,” my friend says, clearly uncomfortable, clearly this close to having some sort of panic attack. “You're a friend of Serenity's dad?” He looks Glacier up and down, but like most people, I think he's having a hard time getting a read on his age. With his blonde hair and his bright eyes and that face, most people peg him as being in his very early twenties—even with the tattoos and piercings.
“I'm Serenity's,” Glacier says in that cool way of his, goose bumps pebbling my skin. Not Serenity's friend. Not even Serenity's boyfriend. Serenity's.
“Serenity's friend,” Loren says, casting another look my direction. “Got it.”
“I assume you're on your way out?” Glacier asks, stepping away from the door and holding out his hand. “Don't let me stop you.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Loren snaps, pursing his lips at me and shaking his head before storming out the door again. This time, I hear his car engine start up almost immediately, tires churning the gravel as he accelerates with a special kind of rage and rockets down the hill.
“Saint,” I start, unsure of what to say exactly. I'm not even sure what we're doing right now or why he's here. I mean, I'm glad that he is, just … I'm confused, too.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Saint asks, still smiling, voice and expression mild. “I saw you kissing him in the alley the other night.”
“So what if he was?” I ask, because I just need to see what Saint will do. Apparently, I have that sort of problem, this need to push and prod and pick at him.
“Well, that would be unfortunate for him,” Saint continues, slipping his hands out of his pockets, moving across the cream colored carpeting towards me.
“And why's that?”
“You've hooked me, Serenity Westbrook,” he says, slipping a single finger under my chin, dragging his nail lightly along my flesh. “You've got me right where you want me.” He drops his hand, still smiling. I try to get a read on his mood and come up blank. “Did you fuck him?”
“Just a handful of times,” I lie and Saint's entire body goes stiff as hell. “What are you going to do to him?”
“When?” he asks sharply. “Last night?”
“Would that matter?”
Glacier grits his teeth as I reach up and push the leather jacket off of his shoulders. I love them bare, the hot air ballon tattoo on his left side, the colorful swirls of clouds, rays of golden sunshine, trees and birds and skulls and knives and a dichotomous assortment of random things.
“It matters,” he says, looking down at me with those gorgeous, gorgeous eyes of his. “If you want this with me, then it matters a lot.”
“Do you really think I'd do that? Fuck somebody else after what happened yesterday?”
Glacier relaxes a little—just a little—and lets me run my palms down his arms, something I've been wanting to do since forever. The hairs on his arms are thin and pale and blonde, so it's almost like he doesn't have any at all, leaving his tattoos shiny and bright and vivid against his skin.
“Stop playing games, Serenity, and tell me the truth,” he says, and he's not smiling anymore—but I am. Glacier is jealous, actually jealous over Loren. It's the clue I was looking for. He's jealous, but I don't think he's going to go batshit crazy and start murdering my male friends either.
“The only man I've ever slept with is you,” I say honestly and he makes this … sound in his throat that gets me all hot and bothered, makes me feel like I'm going insane. I look away from his arms and back up at his face, our mouths just a few inches apart. I think Glacier's around six one and I'm five ten, so we're close. Told you I was tall. “What are doing here?”
“I'm supposed to be looking for rogue dealers,” he says, staring down at me. “But you didn't show up at the compound this morning and I needed to see you, to establish our boundaries.”
“Boundaries,” I echo, not liking where this is going. I almost step back, but Glacier catches me by my upper arms and I wince, even though he's not grabbing onto me hard. It's just the bruises from before, they hurt.
He makes this face, this awful face and then smooths away the pain, pushing my sweater/jacket combo down my shoulders the same way I did his, tracing his thumbs lightly over the surfaces of purple-yellow bruises.
“I can't always promise I'l
l be in control of myself,” he says, staring at the bruises for a long time before he moves his eyes back to mine. “I need to give you something to snap me out of it, in case I go too far.”
“Like a safety word?” I ask, but I don't think he's just talking about sex.
“Pick a word, Serenity,” he says, “and don't even utter it unless you're serious.”
“I need time to think about it,” I tell him and he almost smiles. I think. Glacier drops his hands by his sides. “The word, I mean. Not the rest of it.”
“You told me you wanted everything,” he says, his eyes drooping until they're half-lidded and full of wanting. “I'm prepared to give it to you. I'm going to ask you one more time: are you sure about this?”
Deep breath, a pounding heart, those eyes on my face, tracing their way down to my lips.
Somehow, I'd convinced myself that this day would never come, not really. And now that it has, it feels too good to be true. What's he asking me though? To date? To fuck? I'm not sure.
“What did you mean by boundaries?” I ask, before I give my answer. Saint breathes out and then lets his leather jacket slip the rest of the way down his arms to the floor. The hard muscles in his chest and tummy are painfully obvious now, framed and draped in the ribbed wifebeater, the color of fresh blood. This man tortures and kills people for a living. I should want nothing to do with him. Instead, I've never wanted anything more.
“As in,” Saint says, his voice a dark, dark whisper, “there are none between us. I'll let myself go completely, let all the need and the want and the desire free. I'll crave you and fuck you and let's be honest, I'll probably ruin us both.”
“I won't let you,” I tell him as he really does smile this time. And yes, it's a little scary, but … I like it. “I know what you need, Saint. I've known it for a long time. Just by looking at you, I could tell.”
“And what is it that I need, Serenity?”
“You need to be loved,” I tell him and he closes his eyes, just snaps them shut and stands completely still, the heat from his body making me feel warm and squirmy and female. I just want to wrap myself around all of him and calm his beast.
“Last. Time. Are you sure you want me?” Me, this time. Not this. But me.
“Yes.”
Saint or Glacier or whoever he is, because in all reality it doesn't matter to me, opens his eyes again and the vibrancy of the color almost knocks me back a step. I know all we've done just now is exchange words, but it feels like so much more than that, almost like a spell's been cast, binding us together in an irreversible way.
“Where is your bedroom?” he breathes, just like that, each word enunciated with a great amount of effort.
“Up here,” I tell him, reaching down and curling my fingers through his. The sensation is sudden and overpowering, that sense of belonging and ownership. I know I keep saying this, but he really does feel like he was made for me. Or, I guess, since he's the older one, that I was made for him? I don't know.
Glacier follows silent and still behind me, up to what's technically the third floor of the house, and down the hall to my room. I open the door and lead him inside, shutting it with my back and locking both the knob and the deadbolt. Yes, I have a deadbolt on my door—Dad's paranoid suggestion actually.
Glacier moves into my space like he already owns it, pausing and examining the angled ceiling, towering a good twenty feet above us in rough wood beams and sloping down towards the eight foot wall on my right. I've painted all the walls in black and covered them with art pieces—some I made, some I got from my friends or purchased or printed off the internet.
My bed sits shoved in the corner, a queen size nest of black and red blankets and mounds of pillows. I have a white lacquer dresser, a red love seat, a wooden coffee table, and TV stand, as well as a desk and a side table next to my bed.
I watch Glacier as he moves over to the sliding glass doors across the room and pushes one open, glancing over the balcony at the small swath of grass that makes up our backyard, and the forest beyond it. Then he steps back, closes it, and turns to face me.
“You're beyond fucking beautiful,” I tell him as he wets his lips and waits for something from me. Ah. I think I know what it is. “I want my word to be regroup.”
“Regroup?” he echoes and then he sits down on the edge of my bed, leaning his elbows on his denim clad knees. “Why?”
I swallow hard, but it's not a word chosen at random, so it's easy to explain.
“Because in the heat of the moment, if I ever had to say something to get you to stop, I'd want it to have meaning, too. Regroup means to come back together, to pull your thoughts in and reevaluate. Because if it ever happened that I did need it, that's all it would be about, calming you down for a brief instant, not stopping you completely.”
“You think you have me all figured out, don't you?”
“How do you know I don't?” I ask and Glacier sits back, shrugging his shoulders loosely.
“I guess we'll find out, won't we?” he says and then tilts his head to the side in that way he does. “Come here.”
I pause for a second to kick off my boots and then I walk over to the bed, gasping as his hands come up and slide across my bare midsection. He pulls me over his legs so that I'm straddling him, and I sit down hard, already out of breath. It's risky to for us to have sex here. While my parents do spend most days at the compound, they don't exactly have ironclad schedules and have been known to pop in from time to time.
Looking into Glacier's face like this, I decide it's worth the risk.
His blue eyes stay half-lidded as he stares at me, sliding his hands down my lower back and dipping them inside the waistband of my jeans to cup my ass. The move makes me gasp and arch into him, my hands reflexively coming to rest on the back of his neck, fingers twining together.
“There are things I want to do to you that I can't even put words to,” he tells me and his breath flutters against my lips, fresh as mint. It makes me want to kiss him, so I do, leaning in and pressing our mouths together, feeling emboldened suddenly by our discussion, like maybe he really is mine now and I have this right to kiss him whenever I want.
My tongue breaks the barrier between our lips first, but very quickly, it becomes apparent that what Glacier needs right now is something entirely different altogether. He kisses me back, but he takes over completely, his tongue massaging mine, dominating my mouth. I can feel the metal of his lip rings brushing against my skin as he slides one hand out of my jeans and reaches for the button. He pops it with his thumb and then slides the zipper down carefully, slipping his hand inside and cupping my heat in a firm grip.
It's hard for me to believe that he's not experienced in this when he starts to rub my clit through the lace and I gasp against his mouth, a rare burst of sunshine streaming in the sliding glass doors to my left, making the silver rings in his ears wink, casting yellow beams of light across Saint's hair. It shimmers like gold, drawing my fingertips up and through it. It's so soft, I think as I hug Saint's head to my own, let him kiss me with wild lips, touch me with needy hands.
He readjusts his grip, slipping his fingers under my panties and instinctively, I lift myself off his lap, just enough so he can find the dripping hot heat of my opening and plunge his fingers inside. I break our kiss off with a sharp gasp as strange sensations ripple through my body, tearing me apart and bringing tears to my eyes.
This feels really, really good.
Incredible.
“It's so fucking wet down here,” he tells me, like this is as much a marvel to him as it is to me, “and so hot. Is this all for me?”
“It's for you,” I assure him and he seems to like that, pulling his hand away as I groan, and sliding his wet fingers across my hip. Glacier pushes me back and stands up, tearing his shirt over his head and tossing it aside, leaving me panting and aching, my eyes caught on his hardened nipples, the tattoos that cascade down his chest and tummy, all the way to the waistband of his jeans.
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“Take your clothes off,” he tells me, “all of them.”
I tear my shirt off, reach back and unclasp my bra. The lacy cups fall forward and I let them go, dropping the fabric to the floor, feeling my breasts in a way I've never quite felt them before, heavy and aching and desperate to be touched.
Glacier kicks his boots off next, sits down and pulls off his socks. It's all so very … tame. But I sense something brewing in him, a storm cloud that he's pushing back. When he rains, he'll pour.
I shove my jeans and panties down my hips and step out of them, standing naked and suddenly self-conscious in a pool of sunlight while Saint sits in the shadows on the end of my bed. Then he, too, stands up and sheds his jeans, leaving his entire body bare and open for me to stare at. And god, he's beautiful. Almost painfully so. I can barely look at him without having a physical reaction.
“Now what?” I ask, voice breathy and uncertain. Normally, I go into every situation confident as fuck, but right now, I just feel twisted up and all over the place. This is new territory for me.
Glacier crawls onto the bed and lays on his side, his cock hard and curved and painfully obvious. For one of a handful of times in my life, I think I'm actually embarrassed. I don't show it though, moving forward and climbing onto the bed next to him, letting him put his hand on my hip. His grip is firm.
“I was thinking,” he says as he slides the warm heat of his palm up my side, “about what you said last night, about being touched.”
“Oh?” I ask, hating the distance between us, wanting to close it up and feel his skin all over me. Apparently, that's exactly what Saint's thinking, too, because he sits up and grabs my hip with his opposite hand, tugging me closer, leaning his body over mine. Our mouths connect and heat shivers through me, my skin aching and vulnerable, my heart in my throat. I feel so exposed, completely naked like this, but then I remember that Saint is naked, too … Saint is inexperienced, too.
Only … it doesn't feel like that. Oh no. It feels like Saint knows exactly what he's doing with me, his left hand curled around my hip, the fingers of his right tracing their way through my hair. Without skipping a beat, he pulls my ponytail free and grabs a hold of my hair in an iron grip.
