The way her lips parted when she glanced up at me had my dick twitching in my jeans. I led her down the stairs before the idea of peeling every layer of clothing from her soft body and having the honey between her legs for dinner became more appealing than it already was.
I climbed over my bike and brought it to life, then checked her helmet and waited for her to be seated snugly behind me. Her arms went around my waist and when we pulled away, I didn’t feel a hint of the cold.
It was a short ride to the steakhouse, and when we got there, the parking lot was nearly packed. There were more than a few bikes around, and I sent out a silent prayer that no one bothered me with club business tonight.
I took her hand as we walked in, nodding to a few people playing a game of pool in the waiting area before fastening my eyes on Naomi. This place was a favorite hangout of mine. I was interested in seeing it through her eyes instead.
A blushing hostess walked us to our seats, but she wasn’t even a blip on the map.
Naomi’s lips quirked at the corners when we started stepping over peanut shells. She took in the antlers and cowboy hats decorating the walls —along with the old-fashioned lanterns hanging from the ceiling—with a sort of curious amusement.
Mace was at the bar, shooting the shit with a few other guys. When he saw he, he made a point of looking at Naomi and letting his tongue hang out of his mouth. I subtly flipped him off while avoiding thinking too hard about the brief yet satisfying visual of breaking his beer over his head.
Instead of following through with that, I pulled out her chair for her when we got to our table. The hostess hovered beside me while Naomi sat, and I dismissed her with a tilt of my chin.
I claimed the spot beside her. “What are you thinking?”
“I love it,” she said earnestly, still looking around, and another one of those smiles I had little control over curved my lips. Naomi peeled out of her huge coat and hung it on the back of her chair before glancing at me. “Not gonna lie, I was halfway expecting chairs made out of motorcycle seats, but this is nice. We had something kind of like this in Raleigh for a while. My dad used to take my brother and I all the time…”
She paused, and I saw it again. The shadow passing through her eyes, dulling the sunshine in them before it rose again a moment later. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to know more.
The source of the shadow, or the source of her strength that pushed it into the background.
“Anyway,” she continued brightly. “As nice as it was, now that I’m seeing this place, I know why it always felt a little too commercial. The atmosphere here is just different.”
“The rest of your family is still in Raleigh?”
Her lips thinned so slightly I might’ve missed it if I wasn’t staring hard as fuck.
“Yeah.” She picked absently at the cotton napkin on the table. “To avoid boring you, the short story is that I wanted a fresh start somewhere without so much outside influence. My brother, Lawson, is kind of a big deal, and more than a little overbearing.”
The speed of her fidgeting increased.
“I needed to cut the cord and take a chance on being more than his baby sister, you know? If I’d stayed, he would’ve been looking over my shoulder every freaking step of the way. Telling me what I was doing wrong and stepping in when I didn’t need him to. And-” She shook her head, glancing up at the ceiling before shooting me a tight smirk. “And I just said I wasn’t going to bore you, so I’m stopping before I ramble more.”
I put my hand over hers on the table and she stilled. “You could never bore me.”
Not when I hang onto your every word like a lifeline.
Something warm flashed in her eyes and she licked her lips, staring at my mouth. “You’re only saying that because you haven’t had to sit through one of my rants on high-fructose corn syrup.”
“That’s specific.”
“You have no idea.”
“Enlighten me then.” I leaned forward, letting our breaths mingle. “I make for a surprisingly good listener.”
“I bet you do,” she said to my mouth, giving me the sexiest bedroom-eyes I’d ever seen without even trying.
Why were we here again instead of somewhere with a closed door?
Then Lynn made a noisy entrance, an entertained Mathias hot on her trail, and I remembered. Right. Date. Get it together. And I was on my way to reigning in my raging appetite when soft lips brushed against my cheek.
I whipped my head back towards Naomi fast enough for the room to blur, but she was busy spreading her napkin out over her lap, all classy and proper. Feeling my stare, she looked up, batting long, dark lashes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sweetly.
The chairs on the other side of the table slid out, saving her from her performance. But before she turned away, I shot her a look that should’ve been easy enough to interpret.
It said, This isn’t over. Not by a longshot.
***
“So then,” Lynn said, holding a hand over her mouth in a failed attempt to hide that she was talking with a mouthful of apple cobbler. “I figured, what the hell? I’d already come pretty far, and I wasn’t exactly a stranger to breaking and entering, thanks to my girl over there.”
Naomi laughed, a sound I was becoming very familiar with over the course of the evening. “Don’t bring me into this. That was one time and it was for a good cause.”
I raised a brow, glancing at her. “This, I have to hear.”
“You definitely don’t.”
Lynn grinned. “He totally does.”
“If you say anything else, I swear-”
“She found out her brother’s girlfriend had cheated on him, so we broke in and replaced her shampoo and conditioner with hair remover.”
“Lynn!”
“Shut up, it was epic and you know it. The way she ran outside in a towel screaming bloody murder is one of the highest points of my entire life.”
Naomi rolled her eyes, looking completely unrepentant. “She deserved it. No regrets.”
“See?” Lynn pointed. “I learned from the best. Plus, there was a classic Challenger just sitting in the open garage on the other side of the fence. How was I supposed to walk by without wanting a closer look?”
“Wait.” Matthias held up a hand. “You met Rain by breaking into his garage and he still gave you a job?”
“Are you even listening? The garage was open. So really it was more like trespassing than anything else. I didn’t find out until the next day whose car it was, but if it makes you sympathetic to my plight, you should know I didn’t sleep for like, two days afterwards.” Lynn widened her eyes in mock horror. “Every time I turned a corner, I was expecting to get snatched off the street. I figured the day had finally arrived when I rolled out from beneath a pickup and found tall, dark and handsome over there leaning against my toolbox in silence.”
Naomi cut her eyes towards me. Instead of the glare I expected, she shook her head and bumped her shoulder with mine. “Please tell me you didn’t threaten my best friend right when I’ve decided you aren’t as annoying as I thought.”
Matthias did glare, waiting to hear what was said. I ignored him. Sure, I was a criminal. Didn’t mean I had ever been or would ever be the type of guy who went after women.
Fuck that.
“He didn’t threaten me,” Lynn said. “He actually helped me finish putting together the truck I was working on. The Challenger was gone shortly afterwards though, so there’s that.”
Naomi put her hand on my thigh beneath the table and I almost knocked over the water I was reaching for. She didn’t do anything else, and she didn’t need to. The awareness was enough to have my jaw clenching while I searched for the depths of my restraint.
Whatever this was we were doing, I wasn’t sure shoving my tongue down her throat in public was the best way to go about things.
But goddamn I wanted to. Badly.
I shot her a heated look and she gave it right back, dru
mming her fingers against tense muscle.
Lynn stood suddenly, scooting her chair back. “Bathroom break,” she blurted, moving around the table to grab a surprised Naomi.
They disappeared towards the back, and I watched her go before facing a pensive looking Matthias. He reached for Lynn’s abandoned cobbler and took a bite, chewing slowly. I had no idea how he had any room considering the size of the steak he’d downed.
“What’s the deal with the rich shitheads roaming around?”
My easy mood vanished. “Are they giving you trouble?”
Axle, Mace, Slayer, and a few others, including me, were doing what we could to keep a close eye on Asher and his men, but it was a balancing act.
We could assert ourselves and push them on some things—like Caitlin's bar, Genesis, being completely off limits—but we couldn't exactly tie them up in a warehouse until they decided to go away.
None of us had time to follow them aimlessly around the city either.
The only criminals who thought crime was easy were the ones who ended up in jail.
Running and maintaining a club on the scale of the Seven Sinners took some serious time. There was always a new drug trying to make its way onto the streets. A new batch of real estate to keep track of. City councils and police forces to blackmail and bribe. Those were only the tip of the iceberg, and I wasn’t even going to get started on the frustratingly moral individuals who tended to get in the way.
“No trouble.” Matthias sucked his teeth. “But they were hanging around the mill last night.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“The problem,” he said carefully. “Is that when the businesses in this town agreed to pay the price of your protection, it came with an agreement that we would be left alone to continue as we had before. I might chop wood for a living, Tone, but mama didn’t raise no fool. Whoever those men are, they’re killers. I could almost smell the blood on them. I don’t want that shit anywhere near my guys or my business, you hear me?”
“I hear you.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a moment, mind spinning. A quick glance around us showed no one was listening as I leaned forward, dropping my voice low. “Tell me something else though, have we ever gone against our word?”
He was quiet for a moment, not wanting to answer. “No.”
“Exactly. We’ve kept the streets clean. Made sure that unfortunate souls either stayed out of jail or had steady work when they came out. Shut down any attempts big corporations made to put up stupid ass malls we don’t need and still managed to attract people from across the state to this town. So, how about this?” I flashed him a quick smile that held the warmth of an iceberg. “I appreciate you coming to me with your concerns, but stay the fuck out of our business and let us handle this.”
He sat back in his chair. “Do what you will. Y’all always do. Just keep in mind that you’ve got skin in the game this time.”
I frowned for a second, then comprehension dawned. Something hot and angry rose up in my chest, threatening to crash out of me in a wave that I barely choked down. Smoke should’ve billowed from my nostrils. “You think I would let something happen to her?”
He had no idea what I had been through.
What I had lost.
No one would ever slip through my fingers again.
Naomi was bright and vibrant and so alive it felt like she was resurrecting me with each interaction. I would be damned before I let someone so much as pluck a hair from her head.
“Careful there, Sinner,” he taunted. “You’re gonna scare some of the nice folks in here if you keep glaring like that. Even though I’m glad to see it.”
“Why?” I half-snarled before I caught myself.
“Same reason we’ve never gotten along while most of this town thinks you’re the nicest thing since sliced bread.”
“E-fucking-laborate.”
He shrugged. “It’s simple, really. The only thing I trust less than climbing a tree that’s rotten on the inside is a man who acts like there’s nothing he wants. Everyone wants something, that’s human nature. But you...you turned yourself into a tool. An influential one, but still a tool.”
My jaw was so tight I was bound to crack a tooth. “You think you know me now?”
“I don’t, and I don’t need to. You’ve got something you want. That makes you like the rest of us again. So, how about this?” he asked, using my words against me. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Stick around a while. Shit gets wild up here.”
Chapter Fourteen
Naomi
“You’re so gonna bang him tonight,” Lynn said, applying a fresh round of lip gloss in the mirror.
If her lips got any shinier, we were probably going to get a call from the space station about a disturbance on the surface. On anyone else, it would’ve been way too much. On her?
It was just the right amount of sexy and chic.
“I am not,” I lied blatantly, washing my hands in the sink. Looking at myself in the mirror.
How the hell did she know?
I didn’t see a flashing coin slot or anything above my head that said, insert here.
I was pretty sure I didn’t look dehydrated either.
“Oh my God, you so are.” She rolled her eyes. “Why are you even denying it when it’s so obvious?”
I flicked water her way, making her cry out and try to dodge me before drying my hands. “What gave me away?”
More importantly, was I so transparent that Tone had picked up on it?
“Girl, please.” Lynn popped her lips, once and then twice, sealing her lip gloss back in her clutch.
She ran her fingers through the waves of her hair, making sure they were perfect. Not that they were ever anything but. She could surface from a swimming pool and make it look like she was stepping straight from the cover of a magazine.
In all seriousness, if she could capture the how and write a book about it, I would expect to see her face on the next bestsellers list. I know I would be in line for it.
“We’ve been friends long enough that I can tell when you’re dying of thirst,” she continued, making me laugh. “Why do you think I pulled you back here when I did? After that last scorching look the two of you traded? I thought for sure someone was about to get fucked on the table.”
“Lynn!”
“Naomi!”
“There’s definitely not enough room on that table for the things I want to do with that man.”
Lynn spun to face me, a smile stretching her face from ear to ear. “There she is. I was wondering how long a dry spell could last before the animal part of the brain woke up and took over. We should document this.”
“No one is documenting anything.”
“Whoa now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I’m not saying we have to release our findings for the world to see but-” An older woman walked in behind us. Lynn didn’t miss a beat. “When you finally get him out of those jeans, I want all the details, you hear me? All of them. I’ll even make a bet right now that there’s no way you’re able to-”
“Will you stop?” I hissed, trying and failing to give the now wide-eyed woman an apologetic look.
Thankfully, that had actually been fairly tame for my best friend.
“Excuse us,” I said. “My friend here tends to not have much of a filter.”
“And my friend hasn’t had sex in like, two years,” Lynn supplied helpfully. “So, if you’ll excuse us, I’m trying to make sure she gets her back blown out before the night is over.”
“Lynn!” My cheeks flushed bright red.
They turned crimson when the woman released a soft chuckle. “The joys of youth. I remember those days.”
An awkward chuckle and a warning finger in front of Lynn’s face later, we were alone again.
“I want him bad,” I said softly, feeling that familiar warmth pool in my belly and drop towards my core.
Lynn frowned down at me. There should be rules against tall women wea
ring heels. “Stop doing that voice.”
“What voice?”
“The voice you do whenever you’re trying to convince yourself to not do something.”
“Isn’t it too soon?”
“Are we still talking about sex, or something else? Because you know my opinion on the former.”
I sighed. “Can you be serious for...I don’t know, two seconds?”
Lynn made a show of reaching behind her back and pretending like she was a windup toy. She mimed two slow rotations and then gave me a thumbs up. “Two seconds. Go.”
“I don’t know when, but at some point in this past week we flew right by the point where I could’ve had meaningless sex and went on my merry way.”
“Lucky.”
I blinked, staring at her. “Come again?”
She stepped closer to me, putting her hands on my shoulders. “I said you’re lucky. Don’t get me wrong, Nay-Nay. I love sex. Like, I absolutely love it. But if I had another option that wasn’t meaningless, I would take it in a heartbeat without looking back.”
“But what about you and Matthias? You two looked awfully cozy the last few days.”
A pensive frown creased her brow before she smoothed it away. “Things never change there. The sex is great, so we always end up gravitating towards each other for a while before we can’t stand the other one again. I figure we’ve got about a week before we get to that point. I’m planning on making the most of it.”
For emphasis, she grinded herself against my legs while I tried to push her away. That devolved into a laughing fit that took us both for a couple extra minutes.
“Okay,” she said, catching her breath. Lynn fanned at her eyes with one hand and I found myself doing the same. The guys would wonder what was up if we both came out looking like we’d been crying. “In all seriousness, I’m a little jelly of you right now.”
The last bit of giggles came to an abrupt stop. Does not compute. “You’re jealous of me?” I shook my head. “No freaking way.”
“Yes way. Come on, Naomi. In the short span of time that you’ve been here, you’ve already got a guy—and a really good guy at that, not some fucking pretender—staring at you like you’re the first thing he wants to see when he wakes up.”
Tempted by a Sinner (Seven Sinners Book 4) Page 14
