by Nicole James
He pulled her closer. The demons of his past retreated further with every stroke of his fingers through her hair. His future looked brighter for the first time in a long time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The door to the room opened, and AJ turned from the bed to see Undertaker walk in. He was dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. He was sweaty and breathing hard. He paused by the bed, drinking long swallows from a water bottle, his smiling eyes on her.
“Morning,” she murmured. “How was your run?”
“Not bad. You know… I’m finding a long run helps clear my mind.” He lifted the hem of his shirt and wiped his face, revealing his abs and the ink along his skin. She couldn’t stop her gaze from dropping to take it all in.
“I’ll take your word for it. I’m more of a yoga girl.”
His eyes swept over her as he tipped the water bottle up again. The corner of the sheet covered her torso, but her curves and long legs were revealed. “Well, whatever you’re doin’, it’s workin’.”
She grinned.
“How long you been awake?”
“For about five minutes. The first four and a half minutes I spent trying to figure out where I was and why the room was moving.”
“You don’t remember last night?” He pulled his shirt off and wiped the sweat from his chest and neck.
Her eyes followed the trail of hair that led teasingly into the top of his sweats. She remembered every minute, but she couldn’t help teasing him. “I remember parts of it.”
“Which parts?” He leaned over her, planting his hands on the mattress on either side of her and dipping his head to kiss her mouth then trail along her neck and lower. “You remember this part? How about this part?”
She giggled, leaning into his touch.
He drew back to search her eyes. “And now? Glad you’re here?”
She lifted her arms to loop them around his neck. “Very glad.”
“Good.”
“Derek, we talked about a lot last night, but we didn’t talk about what comes next. We just fell into bed before we could get to that.” She met his eyes. “What does come next?”
“Whatever we want. Whatever you want.”
“I have a successful practice, a life much different from the one you lead.”
“No, you have a safe, predictable, boring existence, filled completely with work. Is that really all you want, Allie? Are you that scared of what this could be?”
“I’m not scared.”
“Good. Come on. I’m not done with you yet.” He scooped her up and carried her to the shower.
***
Undertaker studied the wanton beauty in his shower. Could this be the same woman who had been so shy when he’d first led her to his room?
She tilted her head and moaned as hot water ran over her face and down her back. Undertaker’s eyes dropped to her glistening breasts. He poured body wash into his hands and rubbed them together until he had a lathering of suds, then he ordered her to turn around.
Her eyes met his, but she did as he asked. His soapy hands glided down her throat and arms and took their time with her breasts—soaping, squeezing, lifting… When he’d given them the attention they deserved, his hands drifted down her belly and finally between her legs. He loved how she leaned against him and melted in his touch. She widened her stance and let him run his fingers over the sensitive folds, bringing her up on her toes, moaning.
“You sore, baby?”
“Just a little tender.”
He turned her around.
While his hands roamed her body, she tangled her fingers in his hair. Then she did as he had, slowly and gently exploring his body. She started with his shoulders, sliding her hands over his wet skin, kissing his flesh where the water had rinsed the soap away.
His eyes followed her as she moved down his arms, his chest, tracing his tattoos, then down between his pecs to his abs, kissing her way down each side. He tensed, but she ignored his cock. Rising, she pressed her tits against him and cupped his ass.
“Are you glad you came with me last night?” he asked.
She grinned. “Very.”
“I’m glad, too. I know so much more about you.”
She frowned. “Like what?”
“I know the way you arch your back when I play with your nipples. I know the way your stomach trembles when I find your g-spot, and I know the little whimpering sounds you make when you come.”
She couldn’t deny any of it, and he was glad she didn’t try. The way she looked right now, with her hair in a wet tangle down her back and her eyes wide, made him instantly hard.
She flicked her tongue over her lower lip, and all he could picture were those lips wrapped around his cock and that tongue stroking him. He went rock hard at the thought. Pushing her down on the wooden shower bench, he cupped her chin and ordered, “Open for me, babe.”
She did, taking him deep. Her tongue stroked the underside as he fisted his hands in her hair and began thrusting in and out of her mouth. He couldn’t hold back the moans and grunting that rumbled up from his chest. She was good.
He loved the way she took him, looking up at him, holding back nothing, letting him take control.
It wasn’t long before she whimpered, and those sexy sounds pushed him right over the edge.
His heavy breathing escalated, and he ground out her name just before he pulled back from her lips, gripped his shaft, and pumped, spewing ejaculate onto her heaving chest.
“Fuck, baby.” He rested his palm on the tile, holding his body up as his energy left him.
She looked down at her chest, and he tugged her to her feet, laughing. “Guess I need to start over with the soap.
She wrapped her arms around him and rubbed it all over him. They tussled and wrestled until he pinned her to the tile and poured a squirt of body wash all over her chest as she shrieked, “It’s cold!”
When he finished washing her top to bottom again, she insisted. “I’ve got work. I’ve got to get dressed.”
He chuckled, drying her with a towel. “As if I’d let you put on clothes.”
***
“Hey, baby. What are you doing?” Undertaker sat on his parked bike, squinting up the street into the setting sun. Ten hours without AJ and he was already itching to see her.
“Just got home a little while ago.”
“Come outside.”
He could hear the happiness in her voice as she asked, “Are you here?” The curtain was tugged to the side, and she peered out the glass. The lace dropped back into place and then the door was opening. She jogged down the steps and across the walk to him.
He caught her against him as her arms slid around his shoulders and her lips pressed to his. The kiss was sweet, tinged with a barely concealed hunger. He recognized it, because since the day she’d walked into his clubhouse, he’d felt it, too.
Finally, she broke the kiss, pulling back to smile into his face. “What are you doing here?”
“Came for some more of that,” he admitted.
“Oh you have, have you?”
“That and to take you for a ride. Come on.”
“Where to?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No.”
He lifted his chin toward her place. “Go lock up.”
She did as he said, then joined him a minute later, climbing on the back of his bike. Her arms slid around him and it felt good. Pulling away from the curb with her holding tight to him felt right.
***
AJ hung on tight as Undertaker rode through the streets of Slidell, turning down Old Spanish Trail that cut through the Big Branch Marsh National Refuge with its long-leaf pine, gray cypress and tall wiregrass growing up from the brackish marsh. Then they turned left onto Chef Menteur Hwy and a less traveled road that led along a body of water, but AJ wasn’t sure which one.
As they rode out, the places got fewer and farther between until they came to what looked like the l
ast structure for as far as she could see down the road and across the tall grass. It was built up high on five rows of pylons. A covered porch encircled it. Hurricane shutters angled out on supports on the side. It was a muted tan color that blended with the surroundings.
They rolled off the black top, over the crushed shell shoulder and up the short drive of sandy dirt.
A flight of stairs climbed the right side of the structure.
He pulled beneath the house, between the pylons, parking the bike in the shade. There was a small bass boat on a trailer.
She gazed out over the water. “That’s not Lake Ponchartrain. What is it?”
“That’s Double Bayou Lagoon. You can take the canal through the marsh out to Lake Ponchartrain to the west or Lake Borgne to the east, and then out to the gulf beyond.
They moved up the stairs. She admired the view. “You can see for miles from up here. It’s lovely.”
A long dock led out into the bayou, a brown pelican perched at the end. The sun and humidity were intense out here, even in the fall.
“Is this place yours?”
“Yep.”
“I thought you lived at the clubhouse.”
“I do most days, but I keep this place for when I need to get away. It was my grandfather’s. Come on.”
She followed him in the door. The inside was simple—a living room with windows all around facing the water, a kitchen against the back wall, and a dining table between.
He barely gave her a moment to look around before he was pulling her into the bedroom.
***
Undertaker couldn’t keep the smile from his face. He’d wanted to show her the place since the moment he’d given her that first ride on his bike, but the timing hadn’t been right.
It felt right now.
Everything about her felt right.
He moved her to the bed and kissed her deeply. When he came up for air, he said, “I want to fuck you. Hard and fast and dirty. And I want to make you love every second of it. That sound good to you?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly.
He grinned and spun her around, bending her over the mattress. Then he yanked her jeans and panties down.
He slid his fingers between her legs and played with her until she was wet and as eager as he was to have his dick buried inside her.
She moaned.
“You like that, baby?”
“God, yes.”
When she rocked against him, urging him on, he held her still with a hand to the small of her back, keeping her pinned to the bed. He kept stroking on her clit, until her body trembled and her breath came in desperate little cries.
Tensing his muscles, he positioned at her entrance. She was hot and ready; her inner lips parted to receive him.
“Tell me you want me,” he ordered in a gravelly voice.
“I want you. Derek, please.”
He rewarded her by sliding deep in a tortuously slow drive.
Her inner muscles clenched, working along his length in a rhythmic caress that had him groaning in delight. “Yes, baby. Yes.”
“Harder, Derek. Please.”
He gave her what she wanted but soon had to bite his lip hard to keep from pounding into her too rough and fast.
Changing his angle slightly for better pleasure, he began a rhythm that sent them both climbing toward ecstasy through a cloud of harsh cries and smacking flesh. He fisted a hand in her hair and turned her head, bringing her mouth to his, and kissing her while he thrust into her again and again.
Far too soon, the fuse that lit his orgasm and began at the base of his spine ignited before he could try to hold it at bay.
Her inner muscles clenched, dragging every drop of pleasure from both of them and left them heaving together, uncaring that they were still almost fully dressed. All that mattered was the connection they shared.
When she’d dropped to the soft quilt that covered his iron bed, he bent and slowly undressed her, tenderly tucked her under the covers, then undressed and joined her. He stroked her skin and kissed her, enjoying her naked flesh pressed against his body.
She cuddled into him. “Do you come here often?”
“Not as often as I’d like. Never brought a woman here before, though, if that’s what you’re wonderin’ in that pretty head of yours.” He tapped his finger on the crown of her head.
“It’s good to know.”
He stroked his fingers lazily over the soft skin of her back.
“Tell me your biggest fear,” she whispered.
He frowned. “This some kind of psychology twenty questions?”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“Okay. You first.”
“I’m afraid of people I care about getting hurt because of what I do for a living,” she murmured softly.
He dipped his head. “The people you try to help get hurt because of things that have nothing to do with you.”
“Maybe.”
That had him puzzled. He knew there was something more there that she wasn’t telling him, but he knew in time she’d start to trust him, and she’d feel comfortable enough to tell him the rest.
“Your turn. What’s your biggest fear?”
“Alligators.”
“Be serious.”
“I am. Those suckers are sneaky.”
“Derek.”
He huffed out a breath.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Okay. I give. I guess it’d have to be going back to prison. I’d rather die than be sent back there again.”
“I can understand that.” She squeezed his waist. “That won’t happen. I won’t let it.”
He chuckled at the determination that sounded in her voice. “My little guardian angel.”
“What’s your biggest guilt?”
“I guess losing Skylar and her mom. It didn’t just affect me. It put them through hell, too. It all snowballed, and that snowball all started with me being sent to prison.”
“Doing the crime in the first place.”
“Right.”
“Or joining the MC.”
That comment got under his skin. He wanted her to understand how important the MC was to him, and he realized he needed to be careful with his choice of words when he explained it. “I wouldn’t go that far. The MC saved me in a lot of ways. The mistake I made that got me sent to prison—that was all my choice. Yeah, there was a chain of events that caused me to lose my ol’ lady and daughter, but the club didn’t make me do anything. And yes, I regret it. I always will. Maybe putting the club before those I loved caused it, but those boys will always be my brothers. Responsibility for them weighs heavy on me. I do what I have to, not always what I want to.”
“I didn’t mean to agitate you. I’m sorry.”
“Can we stop with the questions now?”
“Sure.”
“You hungry?”
“Starved.”
“Come on. There’s a place we can walk to from here. They make amazing Po’boys.”
***
They got dressed and walked down to a place called Remy’s Bait and Seafood. A sign painted on the outside of the building proclaimed minnows, worms, croakers, squid, pogies, mullet, and shrimp for sale. Next to it a menu advertised jumbo shrimp, crab, sandwiches, and ice cream. It also boasted an atm. The whole place was up on stilts, so they climbed the staircase.
The inside was a mishmash of displays, selling everything from canoe paddles, fishing rods, life preservers, sunglasses, coolers, chewing tobacco, and Slim Jims. Several ceiling fans twirled lazily overhead. An ancient, hip-height, faded red Coke machine sat next to a counter. It was the kind you had to slide the top open and bend over to reach inside to pull a Coke out.
Undertaker snagged them each one and led her to the back where there were a couple tiny tables and a window to order food. An old cook with a scruffy beard was visible through the opening, working in the kitchen. The menu was as ancient as the cook, items scrawled in pencil o
n a faded yellow piece of paper taped to the wall.
The old man came to the window. He had bright blue eyes, a sun burned face, white hair, and a beard that ran along his jawline. He wore a Circle C Charter T-shirt, and smiled a gapped-tooth grin when he saw Undertaker. “Well, lookie who’s here. Ain’t seen you in a moon. Where you been, D?”
“Been around, Remy. How you doin’?”
“Doin’ good. As long as the fish keep bitin’ we doin’ okay.”
“How’s Arnette?”
“She good, she good. What can I get you and da petite fil?”
“Two Po’boys. And I’ve been braggin’ on ya, so don’t let me down, man.”
The old man chuckled. “As if dat’d happen. See you got yo’ drink already. Sit a spell; dey be right out.”
AJ turned to the two tiny tables, but Undertaker headed toward a glass door in the back that she hadn’t noticed. He held it for her, and she stepped out onto a big wooden deck that overlooked the water. He led her to a picnic table by the railing, and they sat watching a fishing boat pull in and tie up.
It was a beautiful, but breezy day. She noticed Undertakers eyes on the storm clouds on the distant horizon.
“I hope we don’t get caught in the rain,” she murmured. It was about a mile walk back.
It wasn’t long before Remy came out, delivering their order on a tray. He set a red plastic basket lined with wax paper before each of them. Inside was French bread piled high with fried shrimp, shredded romaine, sliced tomatoes, and what Remy bragged was his special remoulade sauce.
The tray also had a plate piled high with crispy shoestring fries.
AJ picked up her sandwich and took a bite. The bread was crisp on the outside but pillow-y soft on the inside. The shrimp was fried with the perfect amount of breading, and the remoulade he’d replaced the standard mayo with had just the right amount of kick. It was delicious, and she moaned.
Undertaker grinned at her. “I think she likes it, Remy.”
“’Course she do.” The old man winked and walked away.
