by Addison Jane
Even when I held up my hands to try and stop him, he just captured my wrists and pulled me back to him, forcing my arms behind my back. “Don’t try and run from me, Meyah,” he growled, dipping his mouth to my ear as I struggled against his hold. “There’s no more fucking running. You’re mine.”
My heart skipped, and I felt my body temperature rise.
How did you fight your own memories?
The ones where I knew if I just let him touch me, how good it would feel, and how much I’d desperately missed him. The fights we had were always short, because once he got his hands on me, I knew I’d feel better. Like nothing else mattered. Like arguing was a pointless waste of time together when I could have his lips on me, or his hands, or even just be laying here listening to him tell me about things which were important to him. Like baseball, or what his parents were like when he was growing up, or how he failed when he tried to ride a motorcycle for the first time.
“Stop,” I demanded, trying to fight to gain some of my composure back, reminding myself of the hurt he’d caused me, and of all the times I’d lay in this room crying for those first few weeks I was here, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I had those memories too.
I fought against him, finally pulling my hands free and pushing at his chest, managing to gain a few feet between us.
“You don’t get to show up here like this and be an asshole. You hurt me.”
I was getting emotional now, but I didn’t care.
I’d done anger. I’d done silence. This was the point I was at.
Just plain fucking hurt.
“You know me, Meyah,” he argued, slamming his palm against his chest. “You need to think about that. I fucking love you.”
I threw my hands in the air. “What does that even mean?”
He rushed forward again, this time, he wasn’t giving up. He pressed his lips to mine, stealing the kiss I’d been fighting to keep to myself. My fight was leaving, he swallowed every pathetic protest I threw at him and soon I just gave up.
I was fucking weak.
He made me weak.
“Stop thinking,” he whispered, his mouth trailing down my neck, kissing and nipping at my skin. I held on tightly to him, my hands gripping his cut, the worn leather reminding me of home—of him. “Trust your heart. Trust what it’s telling you.”
“Just tell me,” I pleaded as his hands trailed up my naked legs, reaching under the long nightshirt I realized was probably the least sexy thing he’d ever seen, but hadn’t made one single comment about.
“I shouldn’t need to.”
He didn’t give me time to respond before he whipped my nightshirt over the top of my head and tossed it behind him. I gasped when he placed his hands on my hips and lifted me up onto the bed, the peculiar height not so irritating in that moment.
He hooked his fingers on either side of my panties, and I failed to protest as he drew them down my legs while his lips found my inner thigh. I was wet, embarrassingly so given I’d spent so much time fighting him and trying not to give in.
He told me to trust my heart.
And for me, that meant one thing.
Him.
Following my heart would always lead me back to him.
I gasped as his fingers rubbed across my clit, throwing myself back on the bed. My hips instantly rose up as if seeking more. “Good girl,” Ham praised, rubbing his thumb in circles around my clit. “Tell me you want to cum.”
“Ham…” I hummed as my body began to burn, the swipe of his thumb across my clit was teasing me, taunting me, making me want more.
“Give me those words. You know I like to hear you say them,” he growled, stopping his movements when I bit my lip. “Meyah…”
I groaned. “Please. Please make me cum.”
Two fingers drove deep inside me making my body bow off the bed, the blankets underneath me soon becoming a total mess as I writhed, unable to control my body’s response to him. “Oh God.”
He pushed his fingers in and out, slowly, torturing me and when he pressed his mouth to my clit and sucked it into his mouth, I almost exploded. He sucked hard, to the point it was almost painful, my hips had a mind of their own wiggling and grinding against his face.
There was just a light shadow of bristles across his jawline, they were prickly and rough against the insides of my legs, but I loved it.
It was a reminder he wasn’t some high school boy who didn’t know what he was doing.
He was a man—my man.
He pulled back, humming in satisfaction as he watched his fingers dip inside me, pushing them as deep as they could go. It felt fucking amazing, but I wanted more.
I wanted him.
It had been too long.
“You touched yourself since I’ve been gone?” he asked, instantly making my cheeks flush.
Ham was unashamed of the words that came out of his mouth, but I still needed a little prompting when it came to the kind of talk that he loved.
Can’t really escape that kind of stuff with bikers.
They tend to be the hard and rough, give no fucks, kind of men as opposed to the sweet, sensual, take it slow kind.
One of Ham’s hands reached up, and he plucked at my nipple, the slight pain sending a jolt of excitement down to my pussy, making it tighten just a little, right on the edge of an orgasm.
He pulled back, but I grabbed his wrist. “Please,” I pleaded, pouting, desperate to have some kind of relief.
“Can’t hear you,” he whispered with a dirty smirk, dipping his head and flicking his tongue over my clit just once.
“Fuck me. Touch me. Lick me. Do something, please!”
He pulled his fingers from my pussy, and just as I was about to whimper in disappointment, he started to rub back and forth against my clit.
My hands gripped the sheets, the slow build that had started was nothing now to the wave which was washing over me. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I cursed, feeling like I couldn’t breathe as I hit the high, my skin burning, my body electrified and off the charts.
“Meyah,” he whispered, but my eyes were still shut, and I was still riding the wave into shore. My hips were moving against his hand, my heart racing.
“Meyah.”
I moaned, not wanting for this to end, to have to face reality again.
Reality?
The banging was back.
“Meyah! Come on. Open up. I forgot my key.”
Dakota?
Oh, my fucking God.
I leaped up out of bed. My night-shirt was still on. I was wearing underwear, but I was strangely aware of how wet it was.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the door to find my best friend staring pointedly at me.
“I have been banging forever. Do you sleep like a rock or what?”
I forced a laugh, closing the door behind her as she strolled in, looking past her to see the time on the clock reading 11:00 a.m. “Sorry, I must have been tired.”
“You want to go get some coffee?” she asked, climbing up onto her bed and reaching over to pull the curtains open.
“Yeah, uh… can I just run and have a shower first?”
“Sure.”
I grabbed my shower caddy and towel and rushed out of the room and down the hall, taking a deep breath as I looked at my flushed cheeks in the bathroom mirror.
I missed him.
God, I fucking missed him.
It hurt my chest.
I wanted to yell and scream at him, but at the same time, I knew how good it would feel to just have his arms around me.
Why did it have to be so hard to be strong?
Tears started to burn at my eyes.
I was so fucking messed up.
Imagining him coming here. Touching me.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and turned on the shower—to cold.
“So, who is Eliza?” I asked, taking a seat at the edge of the porch next to Romeo. He was picking at the grass, one blade after another, tearing them to shreds a
nd then starting again with a new piece.
I wondered if he was even going to answer me because he continued to sit there, ripping and tearing silently, his eyes unfocused and sad.
“I’m not going to leave until you tell me,” I tried again. Refusing to back down. “If she’s important to you, she’s important to me. I want to help, but you have to give up this hard-ass, ‘I can do it on my own’ act that you have going on. It’s me. I have your fucking back. The club, too.”
Romeo finally snorted, the first show of emotion I’d managed to drag from him. “I don’t need anyone to have my back, Hamlet. I’ve done just fine so fucking far.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ve done fucking dandy, haven’t you? You know, got yourself buried so deep in this pile of shit that Meyah was attacked, then Leo and Hadley’s wedding was shot up, and I got shot protecting Harlyn. You know Harlyn? My president’s eight-year-old daughter?”
I wasn’t fucking around anymore. Things with Romeo were so fucking unpredictable constantly. One moment he was acting like he felt at home here with the club, and then suddenly, he would shut down.
“Oh, and let’s not forget the fact I went to fucking jail because your hot-headed dumb ass took a gun that I legally owned. And to top it all off, you fucked one of the girls in my bed, and now my Old Lady thinks I’m a fucking cheating bastard. How am I doing so far? Because I think we have a different definition of ‘just fine.’”
I wasn’t going to let him get away with downplaying the shit this club had done for him.
Yeah, I was waiting for his comeback about how this was all my fucking fault because if I’d fought harder, or if I hadn’t been such a goody-two-shoes than things with Visser would have never reached this level. But there comes a point where we all have to take responsibility for our own choices and our own actions.
“Fine. You want to be my fucking therapist? I’m confused okay,” he finally admitted, and for a moment, I saw a flash of that little boy I grew up with. When he was so young, he would follow me around and want to be just like me. The little boy that did a runner from his classroom on his first day at school and came and found me, refusing to leave my side for the entire day. The little boy that trusted me to look after him and protect him.
“Why are you confused?”
I was always so sure that Romeo knew exactly who he was. Yeah, things hadn’t been fucking easy for him. He’d been beaten down and broken for years, forced to do a lot of shit that I can’t even imagine having the stomach to go through, but to hear he was feeling lost, that twisted my gut.
He cleared his throat, finally turning his face to look at me. “You found your place. I get that. I’m you know… I’m fucking glad that you did. Phee, too. I see how happy she is over in Cali now she has a home where she’s safe. She’s going to school. She has friends that are solid.”
I nodded, hearing what he was saying. At least, I thought I was hearing what he was saying. “You feel like you haven’t found your place?”
He shook his head and my brow knitted together in confusion. “That’s just it. I think I have, but honestly, I don’t want you or Phee to think less of me for it.”
Now, I was finally hearing him.
I wasn’t stupid.
I knew there was a part of Romeo that thrived on the way he lived on the wrong side of the law. That wasn’t exactly a foreign concept to me. I knew he didn’t agree with everything he was made to do. But essentially, he was a big player, he was respected by criminal leaders that the club would even have second thoughts about working with or even being in the same room as.
He was powerful.
But he’d also spent a long time being controlled and manipulated at the same time.
I tried to sum it up. “You’re confused because as much as you hated Visser and how that motherfucker treated you and used you… you loved being a part of the darkness?”
His head instantly fell, hanging low as if he was ashamed and embarrassed. “He forced me to take jobs that seriously questioned my morals. It wasn’t as if I enjoyed every single part. And if I decide to go back, things would be different.”
Here I was thinking that maybe Romeo would join the club.
Actually, being completely honest, I knew he never would. But I guess I was holding out fucking hope. Having him here with me would make everything so damn complete.
Phee was happy.
Romeo would be a real part of the brotherhood.
And I’d have Meyah by my side.
Needed to work on that shit.
“You know everything the club does isn’t exactly above the fucking law,” I started, swiping my hair back from my face. “I’m not trying to make comparisons, but there’s been shit we’ve had to do that made me question whether I was a good person, whether I deserved to be fucking happy.”
Romeo’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “Yes, exactly.”
“And that’s how you know that you still are. Because if you were really a dead cold asshole, you wouldn’t even blink at that shit.”
He huffed out a laugh. “When did you get so smart?”
I smirked and reached over, slapping him on the back. “You know, you aren’t the first person to ask me that.”
“Because it’s so damn shocking when you say something of worth?” Romeo fired back, and my friendly pat quickly changed to a closed fist, which I drove straight into his arm. Romeo barely even flinched, the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth disappeared quickly, though, like it had never been there. “I thought you’d think I was completely fucking broken.”
“You not hear me when I said I’ve got your back?”
He would go back to Vegas when everything was said and done.
The place where he was a king.
The brotherhood was never a place for a man like Romeo. He didn’t want to rely on others. He didn’t want to have the pressure of feeling like there were times when their lives would be in his hands. For him, it was always going to be better for him to be alone, to make his own rules, and not try and live by anyone else’s.
In his own way, that was how he protected the people he loved.
Seclusion.
I knew, though, that this time he would make his own rules, be his own man, and there was no way in fucking hell anyone would make him do anything he didn’t want to.
He’d done his time here.
I was a little surprised he’d lasted so long.
With Visser gone, Romeo was free to do whatever the fuck he wanted without having to look over his shoulder. But he’d chosen to stay at the clubhouse for the few months I’d been locked up. He’d even taken on some of my work at X-Rated, and a couple security jobs when the club needed an extra hand. He wasn’t exactly an open book, but he made sure everyone knew how much he appreciated what the club had done for him.
And soon, he was going back to the shadows, a place where I would never be able to survive myself, but where it just so happened that some living things found their home. In the darkness. It was where they felt like they could be themselves. Where they felt in control of not just themselves, but of the world around them.
“So, we still haven’t covered this who is Eliza question,” I noted, turning the conversation away again.
“She was the one person who kept me sane the first few years in that house,” Romeo explained. “She had her own issues. She was damaged, she was broken, but she got me.”
“Foster kid?”
He shook his head, and I saw the sadness in his eyes. “Sheriff Visser’s actual daughter.”
I couldn’t stop myself from cringing, a cold shudder running from my toes straight up the back of my spine. The idea of that man having a child made me feel sad. But the fact he had a daughter made me feel sick because I instantly knew by the way Romeo had described her that it wasn’t as though Visser had treated her much better than he had treated Romeo.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, trying to get my head around that.
“Exactly,”
he replied through gritted teeth.
“Please tell me she got out.”
His hands squeezed into fists, his knuckles turning white and the veins all up his arms protruding to the point where I thought they could burst. “I fucking thought she had. I packed up all her shit one day while he was at work. Had a guy in the force owe me a favor for not fucking killing him when he tried to jack some shit. She was meant to be put in hiding. He swore he would. Somewhere even I wouldn’t be able to find her.”
“But apparently that never happened.”
“Visser must have found out. He must have taken her and…” he paused, and I could read the pain on his face. The way his brow pulled together and his nose scrunched up. “That was his parting fucking blow. That I’d thought for two years she was safe and making a life somewhere. Instead, he’d destroyed it.”
He really cared about this girl.
Whether it was romantic, or whether he was just protective of her like a brother would be of his sister, I couldn’t quite tell. But it didn’t matter.
I pulled my phone from my pocket.
Romeo watched curiously out of the corner of his eye as I found the contact I needed and his dial.
Ring. Ring.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, Wrench, I need your help.”
“Hey, Meyah!” Dakota called waving me over from behind the bar. I gathered the last few dirty glasses from the table I was at and headed over to her. The club was still reasonably empty, but within the next hour, I would be huffing and puffing as I tried to keep up. So I took the opportunity and perched my ass on a stool to rest my feet.
Dakota leaned forward so her breasts were sitting on the countertop, so she could talk to me over the pounding music which was vibrating through the air around us. I stifled a giggle and placed my tray down, sliding it down the bar so I could lean forward and hear what she had to say.
There was already sweat collecting between my breasts and at the small of my back, the short crop top and booty shorts doing absolutely nothing to make this place any cooler. Especially, when you’re not just running from one side of the club to the other, but also carrying and trying to balance drinks. At least I wouldn’t have to visit the gym to keep in shape.
