MALICE (A HOUNDS OF HELL MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE)

by Nikki Wild

  I opened my mouth to protest, but a frustrated cry quickly turned into a breathy wail as he dipped his head down between my thighs, brushing his tongue up the seam of me.

  “We’re not kids anymore, Lu,” he murmured, hooking his arms up under me and reaching around to part me with two fingers. “We shouldn’t fuck like we are. Maybe we don’t have all the time in the world—who knows?—but we’ve got more than a couple minutes. And I intend to take every…”

  Here he licked my inner folds, stopping just short of my clit.

  “…last…”

  Another lick, coaxing my bud from beneath its hood.

  “…one of them…”

  Now he laid the flat of his tongue against that bundle of nerves, but infuriatingly, denied me the friction I so desired. Looking up at me from beneath his brow, he added with finality, “…for all they’re worth.”

  And then he flickered the tip of his tongue over that tortured pleasure center, enfolding it between his lips.

  I threw my head back and dug my nails into his scalp. Oh, this thick hair felt so good between my fingers, but what felt even better was the intensity of the sensation his mouth inflicted upon my nethers. I slipped my calves overs his shoulders, lifting my pelvis to saw along his tongue with each of his ravenous strokes. The way he moaned into me, like I was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted… it was all I could do not to give voice to my bliss.

  But if I had any hope of doing this with Leo again, I needed to make sure we didn’t get caught. I had to be a good girl for just a while longer. I resigned myself to a soft snarl and closed my eyes, squirming against the steady, staccato rhythm Leo’s tongue beat against me.

  He’d learned a few new tricks while he’d been away. Either that, or we’d just never had the opportunity to indulge in each other this way before and now he was pulling out all the stops. The first possibility threatened to make me a little jealous—I had had no one after he left me—but when I glanced down at him I could see this look of… pure worship on his face, clear as day and just as radiant. His slow, even breathing—the precision of his ministrations—this was supplication, an offering.

  This was divine servitude.

  A thready tingle manifested in the base of my spine, soon thrumming through to my core—pleasant pins and needles, a prelude to an orgasm. These strings grew taut, weaving together in thick braids that made the resonance inside me all the more intense. When Leo slotted two fingers into me, I pulsed around him to draw him in further, down to the knuckles, and his sudden intake of breath told me he could feel it. A full-body shudder rolled through him, and he vibrated against me.

  “Close,” I gasped, sinking my teeth into my lip so hard I could taste blood. “Leo… so close…”

  In response he surged against me, driving his digits in harder, breaching the barrier keeping me sane. When he curled his fingertips up against my sweet spot, while at the same time sucking tenderly on my clit, I rocked backward to escape the overwhelming pleasure. But Leo wouldn’t let me go. He held me in place, forcing me to endure the sensation, drowning me in inescapable rapture. My nerves sizzled like livewires and I turned my head to bite down on his pillow, stifling the series of harsh groans he pulled from me, getting louder and louder until…

  The rubber band within me pulled too tight and snapped, leaving me breathless and star struck.

  I bucked into Leo, dragging myself across his mouth, my thighs parted wide around his stubble. He never once came up for air, not even when I ground into him in my quest for satisfaction, or when I snapped my legs shut around his head and squeezed. I’d forgotten what it was like to orgasm at the beck and call of someone else, to put your release in their hands. It was so much more volatile than doing it myself, not just physically, but emotionally too. This was a communal experience. Knowing that he was responsible for it, in part, filled me with gratitude and a sense of closeness. For once, my climax wasn’t a reminder that I was so very alone.

  Leo lifted his head at last, coarse facial hair glistening wetly. Prowling over top of me, he bent to take my lips with his. I shuddered at the taste of my own desire, my intimate scent still clinging to him.

  Into his mouth, I murmured, “I thought… I thought you’d want me to wait.”

  His hardness slipped into the crease of my thigh and he pulled back to look down at me. “For what?”

  Pink seared my cheeks. “I just figured you’d want me to come while you were inside me.” I looked away from him then, down the lines of his body to the place where we were not yet joined. The path my eyes traveled was soon undertaken by my hands, smoothing the terrain of his flesh.

  I heard the grin in his voice, even though I didn’t look up to catch sight of it. “You will,” he said thickly. It sent an anticipatory shiver down my spine.

  Leo let out a long breath as my palm came to rest along his shaft, first tentatively, then with a deliberate hunger. The velvet texture gave way beneath my fingers, sliding with my motions as I stroked him from root to crown. A blurt of pre-come met me between my thumb and forefinger on the way up; it reminded me of an important question I hadn’t yet asked.

  “Protection?”

  Leo shook his head. “Not unless you’ve got something.” I squinted at him and he chuckled sheepishly. “It’s not like that. I had some condoms in my wallet, but it got pretty shredded when I wrecked…”

  So there would be nothing between me and Leo—nothing but skin. I took a deep breath and held it a moment, considering what this meant. We’d have to be careful. I wasn’t well-educated on sex, but I knew that much.

  “Your ribs,” I said softly. The last thing I wanted was for him to be in pain because of me.

  “Fuck ‘em,” he replied with a devastating smile.

  We were doing this. Really doing this. Just us—nothing in between. I wet my lips.

  “We’ll… we’ll be all right. Won’t we?” I asked him.

  “Better than,” he replied. The way he said it, I believed him.

  When he aligned with me—when I bracketed his hips with my thighs, and he pressed down into the mattress on his forearms and elbows—when the whole of him was stretched over me, casting shadows that made his eyes burn all the brighter—I felt the faintest flutter of fear. No, fear was too strong a word for it. Apprehension, perhaps. Anticipation. Would it hurt? The first time it had, but not nearly as much as I’d imagined. And what pain there had been, Leo had made worth it by virtue of all the pleasure that came after.

  “I got you, Lu,” he whispered to me. And then in one swift thrust, he breached the last of the barriers between us and seated deep inside of me.

  A spectacular array of stars burst before my eyes, born of agony and ecstasy both. It really had been a long time, and I was unprepared for the girth Leo’s desire boasted. The burning ache lasted only a moment, though—just until he began to move—at which point I found myself overwhelmed by the fullness, the completion, joining with him in this way brought me.

  “That’s…” I fumbled for words, but Leo’s low, skipping groan banished all coherent thought from my brain. “Oh, God…”

  I worked my hips with his, creating a tandem effort of perpetual motion. The way he slid into me was so familiar, even after all this time, as if a part of him had never pulled out. There was something different about it too. Maybe it was the fact that we were skin-to-skin that made everything feel like it was cast into sharper relief than before, or maybe it was just the perspective that came with distance and age. Something had changed between us… but I wasn’t sure that was a bad thing. It kind of felt like the start of something new.

  And after living in the past for so long, stepping over the threshold to the future evoked just as powerful a reaction from me as Leo’s body did.

  Hot tears pricked like needles at the corners of my eyes and I threw back my head in an effort to keep them from rolling down my cheeks. Leo’s mouth covered my exposed throat, teeth clasped lightly on either side of it, my pulse flu
ttering beneath his tongue. I felt like his prey. I felt every bit at the mercy of a predator, a wolf who would protect me rather than feed on me. A man who saw me as precious because of who I was, not who or what I could be for him.

  Carding my fingers over his scalp, I grasped a handful of locks at the base of his skull, pulling him up to capture his mouth with mine. If he was going to stake a claim on me like that, then I was going to plant a flag on him too.

  One of his hands left the mattress to bury in the thick of my hair, holding my lips against his own. It was like he was having trouble finding the air in the room, save for every breath I exhaled. He breathed me in, and I breathed him, until we filled the other’s lungs.

  I lifted my legs higher, cradling his ribs between my knees. That angle had him nearly bottoming out inside of me, and I snuffed a wail against his teeth. The rocking of his hips became frantic, driving into and through me, and with each of his plummeting strokes I felt him fucking me, fucking away the pain and the dirt, fucking away all the bad, fucking away all the years of my life that I’d wasted under this roof, with this man, a songbird trapped in a cage. Oh yes, I knew why the caged bird sings on the grave of dreams, shadow shouting on a nightmare scream…

  But with Leo inside of me, none of that mattered. My wings were no longer clipped. With him, I could fly.

  Rearing back onto his ankles, he dug his fingers into my hip and left a trail of forget-me-not bruises in his wake. Oh, how I loved those marks in my skin—and in a place where Father wouldn’t see. A place I alone would set eyes upon and cherish. With his other hand, he brushed callused fingers into my cleft and pressed. Rubbed. Tapped and circled the thrumming bud, half-hooded like an orchid. His thumb applied the pressure while the rest of his fingers spanned my mound, ensuring I could not draw away.

  He had full command of my pussy, inside and out. Heat surged through me at the thought; I spread my legs wider.

  “More,” I pleaded. And he delivered, the corners of his mouth quirking up in a grin. He had me exactly where he wanted me, and knew it. I hated myself just a little for how much I enjoyed the cocky glint in his eyes. That arrogant bad-boy gimmick of his had always turned me on, right from the start.

  I wasn’t a kid anymore. I should’ve known better. But just because my mind was aware of that fact didn’t mean that my body and heart were—or that they cared. All they wanted was to feel alive in a way only Leo could accomplish. All they wanted was another unbearable orgasm.

  I was a bundle of primitive needs in the shape of a girl, and the more Leo touched and teased and thrust into me, the more I felt like I was expanding—like I was an inferno, a back draft rippling through the room, consuming everything, including myself, in my ravening crawl toward conflagration.

  How quickly he brought me once more to that point no return. How deftly and skillfully he dangled me from its rocky outcropping, letting the dizzying pressure mount until I was hitching and scratching and begging before he dropped me into the tumultuous waves below. How completely they swallowed me, the riptide of Leo’s cock dragging me to dark, hot, unfathomable depths. And yet as I sank, I also soared, rising on a thermal of champagne ecstasy, all fizzy and rosy and bright. No longer caged, but free. That was the greatest rapture of all.

  The ripple and clench of my inner muscles pulled a groan from his chest, and a spasm resonated through him and into me. A few frenetic strokes later, he wrenched free of my still pulsing channel to fist his swollen cock to completion on my stomach. Thick, stark-white ropes spattered across my skin. I’d never actually seen a man come before. The look on his face—the shudder that ran through his forearm and hand—the hard throbbing of his shaft—it was all so… hot.

  I expected Leo to crash down next to me, for him to buckle and collapse the way he’d done when we were so much younger. Instead, he rolled his powerful shoulders forward and bent over me, brushing my bitten, puffy lips with his. After such a passionate display, his gentleness moved me. He wasn’t just an animal, rutting to completion. He was tender. Loving. This had meant something to him—maybe as much as it did to me.

  “Safe.” He breathed the word into my mouth, trembling. “Do you… feel safe?”

  I did. For the first time since Leo left me… I did. The realization was so powerful I couldn’t form the words to answer him. All I could do was cry—no, all I could do was weep. Sobs wracked my body with a magnitude I could not control. When was the last time this happened? When was the last time I was allowed to feel anything but emptiness and despair? And when was the last time I’d been able to let any of that out?

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped, clutching at him as I hid my face in his chest. “I’m—I’m so sorry, I don’t… I can’t stop…”

  “I got you, Lu,” Leo softly replied, slipping down on an elbow next to me and drawing my quivering frame into his arms. “I got you. You’ll never have to hold back. Not with me.” A rough kiss on my temple. “Not ever again.”

  And just like that, everything I had ever felt for Leo Richards came flooding back. All the pain. All the joy. All the bliss and the rage. The resentment and the confusion. The anger and the love. He’d told me not to hold back, hadn’t he? He’d said I wouldn’t have to. Not with him. Could I really believe that? Could I let myself hope it was true?

  On the back of a wet, skipping breath, I told him, “I love you.” All the broken parts of me expected him to stiffen in my arms, to retreat from me, to display in actions if not in words all the signs I needed to prove him a liar.

  But that didn’t happen. None of it. Instead, he buried his face in the disheveled waves of my hair and murmured, “I love you too, Lu. Always have. Always will.”

  That was when I realized I’d lied to Leo before. When he’d asked me if I’d felt safe in that moment with him, I’d said yes. I’d lied to him then, and I’d unwittingly lied to myself too.

  Because now, here, in this moment… that was when I truly felt safe. And it was a feeling I promised myself that, this time around, I wasn’t going to let go of.

  Thirteen

  Leo

  It was hard getting back to “normal” after that.

  One hit of Lucy, and I became a junkie for that girl all over again. My bed felt too empty without her in it, and I found myself sorely tempted to creep down the hall after Delfino went to bed for a midnight rendezvous. Sure, I knew we had to play it safer than that. I knew us getting out of here in one piece depended on it. But having her once, and then having to let her go all over again—even if it was just so she could get some sleep, and to keep up the charade that would save our skins—was utter torture.

  It made me restless, and not just for her—but for the open road. For the new lease on life I’d hoped to obtain by coming here and righting the wrong I’d committed years ago. I hated being in the condition I was in, separated from my bike, still hurting enough that I couldn’t properly ride it even if it wasn’t in dire need of repairs. And who could say if it was actually getting those repairs? I couldn’t trust Delfino to keep to his word, even though so far, that was exactly what he’d done.

  That didn’t sit right with me, either. Okay, so he’d done what he’d said he’d do. But something about that was even more unsettling than if he’d shown his colors as an outright liar. What the hell was he playing at here, encouraging Lucy and I to play house? Was he really so arrogant as to believe she wouldn’t disobey him the moment his back was turned? Or were our dalliances something he was counting on?

  And where was he going, anyway? From the way people treated him around town, I could only assume he had business with the people who made the rules, enforced the laws. Did he really have so much power Pleasant Lakes? If so… what the hell was it all for? What was he planning?

  It made me nervous. And I wasn’t the kind of guy who dealt with nervousness well. It made my trigger finger itchy.

  Yet at the same time… I felt like I had no right to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Delfino left every day aroun
d lunch, which meant Lucy and I got some quality alone time for several hours right in the middle of the afternoon. But even that didn’t satisfy me; I had begun to wonder just how brazen I could be without her “father” catching on to what I was doing while he was in the other room. Sometimes I’d run my hand over the curve of Lucy’s ass as she bent over the counter to reach for something, making her jump. She always glared at me something fierce, but I could see from the slight tilt of her lips that she enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too. I needed her to know that even with that maniac in the house, she was mine.

  The longer I had to stay here and compete for dominance with Delfino, the worse that compulsion became. Until one day, watching her as she went about her chores, I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a new drug. I was chasing the dragon.

  As Lucy carried a laundry basket out of the utility room, I pulled her out of Delfino’s sight, under the stairs, and slid my hand up her side to grope her pert little breasts. The way she gasped when I made contact with her nipples took me from half-hard to all the way in an instant, and I pressed the front of my slacks against her hip to show her what she did to me. We couldn’t afford to talk. Not here. We couldn’t afford to so much as make a sound.

  She looked up at me, her eyes wide with fear but glazed with lust. Her lips parted, but no words came out. When I ground against her a moment later, she sucked her lip into her mouth, closed her eyes, and squirmed. Any protest she might have had died right then and there. I could tell by the look on her face she was considering how dirty it would be to get away with fucking me right here, out in the open, with every chance of getting caught.

  Fuck, thinking about it myself got me even harder. I plucked one of her nipples like the string on a guitar, and the resulting rush of air through her nose was sinful.

  “Hike up your skirt,” I whispered. I knew it was a bad idea, but it just slipped out. I was used to putting words to what I wanted. I wasn’t much for subtlety. Never had been.