Of course, he told me something different. Doctors asked too many questions. He didn’t want me talking to anyone but him.
Especially if somewhere hurt.
I shoved the towel too hard against the cut, but the sting cleared the darkness from my thoughts. I changed into a clean shirt and hopped onto the sink for a better view of the injury. It was red and ugly, but the sink’s cool tile helped center my stomach to the task. My hands shook as I removed the towel. A few bits of cotton fuzz stuck to the cut’s ragged edges. My stomach wimped out.
The bathroom door rattled with a hard knock. The nausea fled in fear of my anger.
“Go away!” I didn’t care which brother attempted contact. They deserved nothing but silence.
Thorne didn’t acknowledge my tone. “How bad are you hurt?”
“Oh, sorry, I thought...” My voice faded as I doubted he cared one way or another about the display downstairs. “I’ll be fine.”
“There’s blood on my floor.”
I winced. “Sorry, I’ll...I’ll clean it up when I’m done.”
The doorknob jerked. I yelped.
“I’m not dressed!”
Thorne grunted. “You think I haven’t seen a girl naked before?”
“You haven’t seen me naked before.”
“Do you want my help or not?”
I tucked the shirt lower, but the pink of my cotton panties peeked between my legs. I shifted the towel before the door lurched open and Thorne invaded the tiny bathroom.
He didn’t wear a shirt, and his chest glistened with rivulets of water still dripping from the dark hair licking at his broad shoulders. I didn’t know what was more impressive—the strength tensed beneath the aching muscles of his chest and abs, or the streaks of raging ink wrapping his arms, shoulders, and sides.
Black. Fierce. The same demon patched onto his cut bled through onto his back. The men in MC weren’t subtle. Anathema possessed each and every inch of them. Their minds. Their hearts. Their families. Their tempers. Even their flesh.
It should have frightened me. The tattoos weren’t beautiful images, and he didn’t sculpt them around his muscles. He scarred himself. Marked himself as someone more than a man and every bit the demon of Anathema. His jeans hung low on his hips. The tattoos disappeared under the denim.
I looked away before I wondered what else he hid under the jeans.
“You’re bleeding.”
Thorne stepped too close to my bare legs. I panicked and countered.
“You’re wet.”
“I jumped into Keep’s shower.” He reached for the towel. “Let me see.”
“No, really—”
He swore when he saw the cut, knocking my hands from the wound. I tucked them over my panties. Like that was any better.
“You’ll live,” he said. “Did you clean it?”
“I tried. I think there’s still glass in it though.”
“Shattered over top of you?”
My voice hollowed. “No. The scarred man rubbed my leg with a handful of the shards.”
“He try anything else?”
“There wasn’t time.”
The thick line of his jaw tensed. He exhaled before reaching under the sink for a first-aid kit.
“His name is Bounty,” Thorne said. “He’ll be the first to die.”
I didn’t answer, though the appropriate thing would be to refuse vengeance, plead to end the bloodshed, and be grateful I was finally safe.
Except Anathema stole my innocence and my excuse for naivety. When danger and safety were offered from both sides of the gun, life limited one’s choices. For as much as I begged, wished, and prayed to free myself from the club, I didn’t have a veil of ignorance to shield me from the violence. My name marked me as Anathema just like a cut. Just like any ink that might have colored my skin.
I’d never be safe if I left the club.
I had one option. One recourse. One desperate attempt to live another day, sing another song, and forget the past which shadowed my every movement.
I needed someone stronger, fiercer, more dangerous than the darkness that pursued me.
And that man was Thorne.
I lived my life fighting fire with fire but had no idea how to survive the brimstone cloaking Thorne. Or how to escape it.
Or if I even wanted to run from it.
“This might hurt,” Thorne warned.
If he only knew. I braced for pain for the last twenty-one years. Now I expected the final blow.
Instead, Thorne spilled some alcohol over a bit of gauze and pressed the cloth against my leg. I hissed, but his hand gripped just above my knee. Firm. Not unsympathetic though. He watched as I flinched, nodded when I sucked in a quick breath, and ignored me when it released in warm confusion.
He held up a sliver of gleaming glass and laid it against the sink. I pretended I didn’t see it, but the wound did feel better once the jabbing chunk slipped from my skin. The gash bled a bit more, but I pressed the gauze into my leg. Thorne ripped off a clean wrapping for my thigh.
“You don’t need stitches.” He gestured to the scars pebbling the rest of my leg. “It’ll blend right in.”
“Thanks.”
“That from falling off your dad’s bike?”
I nodded.
“He didn’t dress you in any gear?”
Dad rarely dressed me at all. My throat tightened like I swallowed the fistful of glass.
“It happens,” I said. “Live and learn.”
He didn’t answer. He gripped my hips with determined hands and pulled me closer to the edge of the sink. I blushed, but he pried apart my legs just enough to thread a bit of gauze, tape, and an ace bandage over my thigh. His fingers pressed against my skin as he wrapped. I wished it was just the injury that pulsed in time to his touch.
“I think you’ll survive.”
I avoided the steel in his gaze. “Wasn’t sure I would today.”
“Me either.”
My chest hurt from stifling the warbling cry I stuffed away. My eyes burned with tears that hadn’t fallen. My trembling fingers couldn’t hold a brush, and my exhausted mind pretended The Coup rattled the walls and hid in the shadows. I stared at the tattoos marking Thorne’s chest. They were beautiful. They were frightening. I wanted nothing more than to feel their strength under my fingertips.
Thorne towered over me. He offered strength for the both of us. The blood seeped through my bandage.
“When did you know you wouldn’t get out?” I whispered.
“Get out of what?”
“This life? This danger?”
I asked the warrior if he regretted the war and expected him to understand.
He didn’t.
“This is my life,” he said.
“But what kind of life is it?”
“It’s mine.”
“It’s dangerous.”
He smirked, though the amusement only hardened his features more. Impenetrable. As permanent as the ink and as unashamed as the darkness possessing his flesh with the insignia of his club.
“I like danger.” His hand brushed along my knee. I shivered. “You do too.”
“That’s not true.”
His hand moved up. “What got you hot tonight? Singing?”
I pretended not to count the goose bumps he created on my thigh. I hid my disappointment in a whisper.
“I think you were the only one who actually listened to the set.”
“Is that a yes?”
My throat tightened over every last note I sang. Thorne’s palm enveloped my inner thigh. His touch drifted inward. I flinched as if another layer of glass jammed into my flesh. It didn’t hurt. I wished it had.
“You escaped a kidnapping, almost died in a fire, and sped home on a stolen bike.” He took a searing breath that burned my lungs with a shared heat. “You liked that more than some gig.”
“It...wasn’t a good gig.”
“You’re lying if you say you want out of this life.”
I wished I hadn’t stared at his lips. Or concentrated on the baritone threat of his words. Or willed the twisted beat of my heart to slam against my chest.
“I’m not part of Anathema,” I said.
“No, but it’s part of you. And all the concerts and college loans and temper tantrums won’t get you out of the club. So what is it? Why are you so desperate to leave?”
His fingers teased along the too-pink lace of my panties. My cheeks flushed with the same innocence, but I didn’t let him scare me.
“Why are you so desperate to keep me here?”
He liked that challenge. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d go running to your big brothers.”
“We’re not talking at the moment.”
“Maybe you should be a good little girl and apologize.”
“And if I don’t?”
I stilled as he brushed my cheek. But Thorne wasn’t gentle. His calloused touch claimed when it should have caressed, and his forearm flexed with the rigid strength of a man barely containing the demon of lust corrupting his intentions. I gasped as his hand tangled in my wet hair and yanked.
“I don’t play nice, sweetheart.”
For the first time in my life, a raw, untainted, pure heat rushed within me. His hand gripped hard on my hair, and he pulled my head to expose the delicate hollow of my neck. To kiss. To bite. To slit. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. His hands rough, his touch unashamed, and his need completely, absolutely, unequivocally natural.
“I don’t want nice,” I whispered.
He tightened his hold. “What do you want?”
“To feel safe.”
He laughed. His hand jammed against my throat. He squeezed, just enough to frighten, just enough to threaten where I was most vulnerable, just enough to clear my mind of the lingering memories of the last time I was touched.
“Now do you feel safe?”
I’d rather fear one man than live the rest of my life afraid of the world. I shook my head as much as his grip would allow.
“You won’t hurt me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” He leaned in close, pushing my head back. My lips parted for him. I wished I understood why. He smirked. “Maybe I’d get off on that.”
“You don’t.”
“How do you know?”
Because I did.
“You don’t want to hurt me. All you want is to make sure you didn’t break your vow when you said you’d protect me.”
“You fucking talk too much.”
“You’re a man of your word,” I said. His fingers clenched against my throat. A warning. I ignored it. “And I trust you to keep me safe. Even if you don’t think you can keep that promise anymore.”
Thorne’s expression blazed with heat and the aching tension of unbridled rage. He threw himself at me, seizing my lips with a possessive, uncontrolled kiss that bit more than savored and frightened more than comforted.
And I welcomed it.
I needed it.
I kissed him with all the promise I could offer. My cheek bruised from the kidnapping. Thorne covered it with his hand. My thigh stung as I ground my legs together, offering a forsaken part of me its first teasing attention in my life. My insides clenched, hard, twisting against an urge I never thought would awaken and a need entirely too wild and new and uncontrolled to ever be tamed.
At least, untamed by me.
Thorne knew exactly what to do. How to do it. What he did to me.
My mouth parted for him, but he seized more than the demure pant of my puffy lips. He assaulted me. Thrust his tongue against mine with aggression, a duel for control. He didn’t need to fight me. I surrendered immediately against his harsh touch, the demands of his grip, the frenzy of his lips.
And, for the first time in my life, it didn’t feel wrong.
The crushing burden of that secret lifted.
In its place—warmth. Lust. Sensual need.
I surrendered to his passionate, angry kiss because he was a man. Because he was strong. Because he rescued me and kissed me and wanted me and pressed hard against my body with an unfailing desire that proved just how right it would be to seek my safety curled beneath his body.
I had never voluntarily touched a man before. My hands shook as I reached for his shoulders. I braced myself, like the tattoos streaking over his skin might have burned my palms. Only the hardened, perfect muscle warmed under my hands.
“You know what I want.” Thorne rasped against my lips. “Better fucking speak up before I do something we regret.”
I accidentally giggled. He frowned, but it didn’t chase away my smile. Or what I wanted. Or how desperate I was to fuel the warmth kindled within me. The heat destroyed the past and flaked the memories into forgotten bits of cinder and repression.
“I won’t regret this,” I whispered. “And neither will you.”
He didn’t expect my honesty, and he tensed as I shifted off the sink and sunk to my knees before him. The gun-metal gray of his eyes loaded and aimed, but he wouldn’t get a fight from me. Not even when the familiarity of cold tile on my knees bruised more than just my skin.
I waited. Still. Quiet. Pleading. As meek and mild as someone demanding to offer another’s satisfaction could appear.
This was what men liked, after all.
Right?
A willing woman. A soft mouth. Devoted attention above all else.
But I didn’t want to run. Thorne’s kiss, his aggression, the hardness of his body and the smooth jazz of his voice twisted everything inside me with such new and exciting and beautiful feelings. I reached for his jeans. That seemed to surprise him too. He hesitated only a moment before stepping closer.
I’d show my appreciation for the rescue. For listening to my set. For defending me.
For awakening me.
He probably expected so much more than I knew how to give. His guttural order shuddered within me, commanding me to do what I was meant to do. What I was taught to do.
And I wanted to do it.
I think I did.
The bruise again. This time harder. A haunted pain in my knees, an inevitable ache in my jaw.
It all twisted with heat and need. I tugged down the zipper. The tinny promise screamed in the silent bathroom.
Why did all zippers sound the same?
Thorne hardened before he shifted from his pants. Excited. Desperate. Without a shadow of guilt.
His hardness enthralled me. My hands shook as I reached for him. He brushed me away and pulled his jeans lower. He didn’t wear any boxers.
His cock jutted from his body.
Frustratingly Hard.
Pulsing with need.
Intimidating and beautiful.
Thick. The very epitome of masculine pleasure.
His hand gripped my hair once more. The memories returned like a deserved backhand. One for too much teeth or not enough enthusiasm. My desire shoved the thoughts away.
But Thorne’s hissed whisper wasn’t a punishment or a threat. His desire encouraged me. His need fulfilled me. The absolute perfection of his body deceived me. The offer of his protection promised everything to me.
Now wasn’t the time to think. Now was the time to act. To pleasure. To prove to Thorne how much I wanted him. To prove to myself the excitement was real. To ignore the prickling, suffocating bait of panic wiggling in my chest.
And so I swallowed his cock. Not like a virgin. Not like someone chaste and pure. Not like someone who had never before touched a man or pleased one.
I closed my eyes and took as much of his length as I could, and, like a good girl, I didn’t dare come back for air.
His choked gasp was my reward. As was the trail of savory promise which coated the head of his cock. And the salty, clean, masculine allure of his taste. His skin wove smooth over his rigidness. I ducked hard against his length.
He was bigger than I was used to.
As if I had ever been used to it.
His hands tighte
ned against my hair. He pulled too hard. I liked the burst of pain. I liked anything but pudgy, too-soft hands against my cheeks.
He grunted.
A deserved, honest, perfect reward. A sound I never thought I’d earn.
I sucked harder. It was all I knew how to do. I impaled myself on his body, swirled my tongue and tightened my lips. Hummed. A song every man would like.
Thorne’s body shuddered. Complete and powerful. His body primed. Tensed. Took every last bit of pleasure I offered and promised so much more.
“Jesus Christ, Rose.”
Thorne loomed over me. His hands tangled in his own hair before slamming on the sink behind me. He flexed his hips and shoved his cock deeper within my willing mouth. I fell against the cabinet. He followed. I took more of his length. I didn’t know what else to do. Or what else I wanted to do.
“Where the fuck did you learn to suck cock like this?”
I choked.
Gagged.
Pushed him away.
He didn’t want to know the answer to that. I didn’t want to admit it. But Dad had been right.
It was a good talent.
And men would be grateful I learned.
The tears came before I freed myself from the tangle of Thorne’s legs. I scrambled past him, but I had nowhere to hide. The bathroom door closed behind us, and I didn’t know what would collapse first—the walls or my screaming, straining lungs.
“Rose!” Thorne rustled his pants and tucked himself into his jeans.
He stared at me, wide-eyed, from across the bathroom. I backed up another step. My leg cracked against the tub. I stumbled, and he rushed to catch me before I fell, but I tangled in the shower curtain and held myself upright. He called my name as I blinked through the tears and pointed toward the door.
“All right.” He didn’t know how to soften his voice. The words bit the air, chewed against my panic, exposed every last bit of what I kept hidden.
He waved a hand and hurried from the room. I slammed the door behind him and shrunk against the cold tile floor.
He didn’t move far.
One sob escaped. A pained, horrible, breathy sob that ripped a path from my chest and up, scarring every bit of sweetness and melody I used to hide the ugly and broken. Thorne heard it. He allowed me only a moment after I tucked away my panic. His voice growled against his frustration. His rage.
Warlord (Anathema Book 1) Page 13
