Haunt (Bayonet Scars #6)

by Jc Emery

  He is Forsaken and I’m his woman, and nothing will ever be able to end this shit. Because every ounce and every breath of me is in love with this bossy bastard. Every fiber of my being belongs to him. He’s my adolescence and my adulthood, and there is no Amber without Wyatt. The weight of the moment gets to me as tears flood my eyes and fall to the bed in front of me. Years of sorrow and loneliness wash away as he slides out of me and back in so hard and quick that more tears fall. And I know this is something new for us. This isn’t who we were when we first fell in love, and it’s not who we were the last time we were together. This is better.

  Unbreakable.

  Because if he tries to destroy us again, I’ll kill him myself. I’ve spent way too many years alone to let him leave me again.

  Wyatt stretches me, filling me with his hardness. Pressure builds in my core and spreads a glorious heat through my arms and legs. His hand at my shoulder pulls me against him roughly. Again and again. He’s rough and demanding. There is no softness in this. He grunts and moans and curses under his breath as the sound of skin hitting skin echo from behind me. His other hand is on my clit, rubbing in circles. Slow at first and then fast and unyielding. It’s all I can do to keep my body up, but then he withdraws completely. Cool air hits my wet, swollen pussy, leaving me throbbing and shaky and breathless. He roars back in so hard I think he might break me. My arms give out, but the arm at my shoulder bears my weight, keeping me in place. His fingers pinch at my clit, and I lose it completely. My pussy clamps down on him with such ferocity that I’m amazed he’s still able to move.

  “Milk my dick, baby,” he says breathlessly as he fucks me with his iron cock, never letting up and not pausing to make sure he’s not killing me in the process. My arms and legs tense up before shaking wildly as my orgasm rips through me. At the height of it, I can’t even breathe. My face reddens from lack of oxygen, and when I finally get my lungs working again, I’m pretty sure my face is flushed and purple. Sweat beads at my scalp and trails down my forehead, catching around my eyes and mixing with my tears. I’m not crying, not really anymore.

  My body just shakes and shivers, and I’m not in control of anything. One more thrust and he changes angles, removing his hand from my shoulder and shoving my face into the bed roughly. I can’t breathe, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t think my lungs work anyway. He hits me exactly where I need him and twists my clit with a shocking roughness that blankets me in nothingness. I lose time, and the only thing I feel is his warm seed filling me as a hot liquid blasts my thighs and the bed and my man. Wyatt grips me harder, taking everything I’ve got as I greedily demand everything he can give me.

  When we come down, he pulls out and flips me over. My heart sinks as he leaves the bed. He doesn’t go far—just to the en suite bathroom where he runs water over a washcloth and brings it back, cleaning me up like I’m something precious. When he’s done, he climbs back onto the bed and pulls me up against him. I wrap my arms over his on my belly, holding tightly to him, like if I don’t he might float away. We lie like that, not saying a word and holding on to one another, until exhaustion overtakes Wyatt and he’s on the verge of sleep.

  Just when I think he’s completely out, one hand grips my belly in a way that makes me nervous. My body’s changed after having kids— especially the second one— with my belly being softer and more rounded. He places a soft kiss just below my ear on my neck.

  “When you’re ready, I want another one.” My face heats and I have to beat back the excitement that flows through me. Before I got pregnant with Zander, he talked about wanting kids. It was always a someday, but then Baby Z came along and Wyatt was so fucking happy it scared me to death. I should be scared now, doubtful even. But in the depths of my soul, I can’t lie.

  I want another one, too.

  CHAPTER 18

  October 2015

  6 months to Mancuso’s downfall

  “Pass the chocolate.” I wave my hand at the arrangement of small paper plates with wedding cake samples on them. There were nine samples when we started, but now we’re down to five. Mindy Mercer— the bride-to-be— has already picked the one she wants, so I’m not sure why we’re sampling cakes like our opinion matters. The whole thing was very last minute, but I don’t turn down free cake. These bitches don’t let cake go to waste, either. They’re obviously my people.

  Alex, Ruby’s daughter, slides the plate over to me with a soft smile. I smile right back and then divert my attention to the little slice of heaven. Still, I notice the way she’s watching Piper intently. I barely get my fork into the slice before Piper’s chubby little hand lands right in the middle and grabs a gooey handful of cake.

  With a nod of appreciation, I watch my girl’s eyes light up when the cake hits her tongue. “Get it, baby.”

  She’s already a mess from the last piece we sampled, but I’m riding way too high on my dream come true to care. Eight weeks of early morning love making before we have breakfast with the kids. In our house. In the house Wyatt built for us. Every day has felt like a dream with few exceptions. Piper and I wave our boys off as Wyatt drives Zander to school. The first few days after we moved into the house, Wyatt would come home and we would try to get some alone time. It never worked. Piper would scream and cry her temperamental little head off until he gave up. The last time we tried for a post-breakfast fuck session, he was the one to stop it. Instead of crying for me like she normally does, she screamed out for her daddy. And fuck if I’ve never seen my man abandon pussy so quick before. After that he said we couldn’t let her cry it out anymore. And that morning he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I mean it. Love the kids we got, but I want another one. Not sure I’ll ever be done making babies with you.”

  I’m not ready and won’t be for a damn long time, so I said nothing. But fuck if those words didn’t make my entire week. I heard them when I’d fall asleep at night and thought of it every single time he’d make funny faces at our daughter. It wasn’t until a week ago that I realized how much I want another baby, but how awful the timing is, and how reckless we would be to get pregnant again at this point. So I shut it down and stopped letting myself fantasize about it.

  “You like kids?” I ask.

  Alex shakes her head in dismissal and avoids her mother’s curious gaze, but she answers quickly, saying, “I’m too young.”

  I look around the table at the women my man’s brothers have chosen. I was almost four years younger than Alex when I had Zander, but I keep that to myself. Ruby was even younger when she had Ian. Again though, it’s none of my business. I’m certainly not going to push her into procreating with her ass-hat boyfriend.

  “She’s just being awkward because Trigger keeps asking her to marry him,” Nic says bluntly. Nic Whelan is barely older than Alex. She’s not really one to talk since she’s been refusing to marry Duke until her dad, Butch, a Forsaken brother, is released from San Quentin. Eyeing Nic and then Holly, Grady’s woman, I spot a rather peculiar pattern when I look around the table.

  “Interestingly enough, Ian’s the only one here aside from good ol’ Jim who’s gotten his woman to agree to marry him,” I say with a raised eyebrow in Nic’s direction.

  “Hey,” Holly says, finally piping up. “Grady and I are getting married. Now’s just not the right time.” We’re doing this little wedding prep shindig in her and Grady’s house, but she’s been eerily silent the entire time. Mindy’s her cousin, I’d have expected her to be much more excited about this crap than she is.

  “What does that mean?” Mindy shoots Holly a dark look. It seems there’s some family tension here. I’m dying to know what’s going on. I could almost scream at Wyatt for leaving this out. I wouldn’t know any of the Forsaken family gossip if it weren’t for my man and his chatty post-coital ass. Even Elle, my best-fucking-friend minds her goddamn business, much to my chagrin. Speaking of Elle, I wish that bitch would show up to these things instead of busting her ass on whatever it is she’s been working on.
<
br />   “Don’t get an attitude with me,” Holly says. In the distance, Robin, Duke and Nic’s eight month old baby, starts crying. Nic quietly thanks god and heads off to fetch her daughter.

  “Not everything is about you.” Holly’s follow-up remark has Mindy dropping her plastic fork.

  “You think this is a bad time for us to get married? Well, what about you getting knocked up? On purpose?”

  Leaning across the table, I glare at Ruby and hiss, “Do something.”

  “Fuck that,” she says with a smirk. “You can handle this, Queen Bee.”

  I shoot Ruby a look that says this is anything but cool and try to figure out how to calm the Mercer women down. Mindy is one dark bitch who might actually have sicker than her man, but Holly is conniving and ballsy as all hell. On their own, neither woman is likely to back down.

  “I get why you’re upset, but you can’t keep taking it out on me,” Holly says with one hand slamming down on the table and the other rubbing her small bump. Mindy’s eyes shoot to Holly’s belly and soften just slightly. It’s only a second though, before they narrow again and turn cold.

  “It’s not my choice, okay?” Holly shouts frantically. Piper squirms in my lap and covers her ears with her chocolate covered little hands. I snap my fingers to catch Holly’s attention and point at Piper. The crazy pregnant lady softens immediately. “I told him this was a bad idea. Grady won’t marry me until the club gets back from New York, now just shut up.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” My voice is tight and the tension in the room rackets all the way up. Even Nic, who’s returning with Robin, is avoiding my eyes. Alex is looking at her mother, Nic is focusing way too intently on the wall behind my head, and Mindy is picking at her piece of cake. Holly’s covered her mouth with her hand and has lowered her head. Only Ruby has a straight face, way too even for her to not know what’s going on.

  “Somebody better start talking,” I order. Wyatt doesn’t talk about the club or whatever has got him so stressed. I keep hearing murmuring about New York, but it always dies down quick the second I walk into the room. The last time I asked ended with Wyatt telling me not to show up at the clubhouse without permission first. He gave me some bullshit about Segreti and safety, but I could tell he was full of crap. We fought about it, but the argument ended quickly when I noticed the bulge in his jeans that hadn’t been there a minute beforehand. It’s shameless how easily we fall back into the same patterns. Not this time though. I’m done letting him control the conversation.

  “All I know is Jim’s been evasive about the club since he stepped down,” Ruby says.

  “Ian doesn’t talk to me about it, but something is going on. He keeps preparing for a trip, securing the house and showing me where to hide when he’s gone if anybody shows up.” Mindy finally meets my eyes, worry overtaking her pale face.

  “Damn it,” Holly says more to herself than the rest of us. She scrubs at her face before lowering her hands to the table and staring at her hands, brows pulled together in deep thought. “The club took a vote. Once Mancuso is released, they’re taking the fight back to New York.”

  “How do you know this shit?” Holly’s silence speaks volumes. So do the looks from the rest of the old ladies. Ruby knew, judging from the look on her face, but the rest of them didn’t. Nic’s annoyed, Mindy looks like she finally understands what’s going on, but it’s Alex whose expression kills me. Her big brown eyes are filled with sadness, and her lower lip is jutted out.

  “I didn’t know,” she says and pauses before taking a deep breath. “Ryan told me they’d be leaving once my dad was released, but that was it. I begged him to talk to me, but he wouldn’t. I just assumed every one of us got the same speech. I’ve tried to talk to him, but he won’t listen to me.”

  “No, I didn’t get any fucking speech,” I say coldly. The wheels turn in my head as I piece the day together. Piper and I were chilling at home when Holly called, inviting me over for a cake testing. It was the first I’d heard of it, but since we live down the street now, I figured it wasn’t a big deal to pop over for free cake. Then Holly’s weird silence at the get-together she’s hosting, and the blow-up between she and Mindy…

  “Who did you tell this was a bad idea to?” The hairs on my arms stand straight up as I ask the question. Somehow, I already know the answer. The other day, Zander came home from school and said Wyatt had asked Holly for some kind of favor. At the time, I brushed it off. My boy has had a difficult time adjusting to his new school, and with Holly being a guidance counselor, I figured it had something to do with his grades or sometimes rather rough social skills.

  But I was wrong. I can see that now.

  “Nevermind,” I say when Holly’s eyes won’t meet mine. She sighs heavily, pushes back from the table, and leaves the room. The anger I expect to flood my vision never comes. Instead, an ice cold determination settles in my gut and spreads throughout my body. I stand and walk Piper over to Ruby. Handing her over wordlessly, I leave the house, trusting that my kid’s in good hands with Ruby.

  It doesn’t take long for me to get back to the house, hop in my SUV, and head to the clubhouse. That wasn’t a bonding session with the girls, it was a distraction to keep me out of club business. That’s the last fucking time I let Wyatt pull the wool over my eyes.

  When I get to the clubhouse, Jeremy doesn’t want to let me past the gate. It isn’t until I remind him that he can’t touch me, and slither past his muscular frame, that I make it through the gates.

  “You’re kind of an asshole,” he says, with his hands in the air and keeping as much space between us as he can. A smile finds its way to my face.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet, baby boy.” Jeremy smirks, all knowing and taunting, like the fucking kid has something on me. I shake my head and turn toward the clubhouse. Stopping dead in my tracks and surveying the parking lot, realization dawns on me. This is why Jeremy’s being so smug. The lot is full of sleek, black luxury cars and SUVs. Mafia black. These fuckers are so predictable. I turn back to Jeremy and decide that being nice might have its perks.

  “Friend or foe?” The kid stares at me blankly before blinking. Shaking my head and abandoning any pretense of being in a decent enough mood to socialize and study the clubhouse. I know the way Forsaken men think well enough to know that the front door is locked. The boys won’t risk any interruptions when they have visitors— especially not potentially unfriendly visitors.

  “You have keys,” I say to Jeremy. He stares at me blankly before a cocky grin appears on his face. He’s smart and determined. I can see the look on his face. He wants his top rocker more than he wants his next breath. I respect the kid even if he has suddenly come down with the inability to speak. “Cough ‘‘em up, prospect.”

  With narrowed eyes and a casually defiant expression that tells me he’s been fighting authority figures his entire life, he closes the distance between us. He’s just barely taller than Zander, but that won’t last for long. With the rate my boy’s growing, Zander will be dwarfing Jeremy within the year. Still, Jeremy Whelan has a muscular weight to him that Zander is lacking, so when he gets almost close enough to touching me, I jump back. I’m used to Zander getting in my face and me having to put him ass where it belongs, but this is different. There’s a danger that radiates off Jeremy that I don’t expect at his young age.

  “Got orders to keep you in the parking lot should you show up. Also got orders to tackle your ass and haul you back out should you find a way into the clubhouse. That shit comes from your old man, so if you don’t like it, talk to him.” He flashes his brilliant dark blue eyes and his large white smile. “Thanks for keeping me company, babe. It was getting boring out here.”

  I suck in a haughty breath and turn away from him. He’s going to make a damn good brother. I have no doubt they’ll patch his ass in when the time comes. Wyatt says he talks to Butch, Jeremy’s dad, regularly and the man couldn’t be prouder of his boy. From where I stand, he’s got a lot to be proud
of.

  We wait like that, in silence, for a damn long time. I don’t even know how much time passes. Only that the sun begins to set and the temperature drops enough to chill me to the bone. I want to ask Jeremy what’s going on and who’s inside. It seems that if the boys welcomed their visitors into the clubhouse, then they have to trust them on some level, so it can’t be Segreti. At least, I’d be damn surprised if it was, but I know better than to bet against these men. Forsaken men pride themselves on being crazy ass fucks who push limits at every turn. There’s no telling what kind of deal they’re cooking up in there. One thing I know for certain though, it’s about New York.

  The front door of the clubhouse swings open, the hinges squeaking under protest, and out walks Wyatt with a man— a mafia man— I’ve never seen before. The man at Wyatt’s side is wearing a slick black suit with a white shirt underneath. All perfectly normal and tailored with a dash of personality in the blood red tie at his neck. His ice blue eyes catch mine and a feral smile creeps to his lips. I narrow my eyes in response to the way his eyes rake up and down my body. This man doesn’t look Italian, but there is something uniquely European about the way he carries himself. With sandy brown hair, and defined cheekbones, and a long straight nose above a square jaw and thick neck, he’s attractive alright. Not my type, but attractive. I don’t like my men better groomed than me and save for the beard covering the lower half of his face, he’s as clean cut as a whistle. He’s all business, while still somehow all about pleasure. It unnerves me to my core to have him staring at me the way he is.