Blind Devotion (Steel Jackals MC Book 1)

by Nancy Haviland

  A jaw-cracking yawn interrupted her laugh. “If we went to Ernie’s right now, I wouldn’t bother with soup. I’d go for a burger and fries. With gravy. And maybe some onion rings. And a milkshake. Mmm.”

  “If they weren’t closed, I’d make a food run. But this fuckin’ town goes to sleep with the sun. Want me to make you something? Scrambled eggs?”

  He used to make her scrambled eggs and stand over her until she ate every morsel before walking her to school. Her heart overflowed. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry enough to let you move. But if you are, I’ll get up.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she squirmed and maneuvered until they were facing each other, their heads close together on the pillow. He looked at her, his expression somber as he laid his heavy leg over hers, effectively pinning her in place.

  “Are you hungry?”

  He shook his head and constricted his limbs so that she was pulled into an even snugger hold.

  “’Kay.” She kept things light and tried to bring him back up from this place he sometimes went that she didn’t understand. “I’m not going anywhere, you know?”

  “No?”

  “No, Josh. I’m exactly where I’ve always wanted to be.”

  He nodded without looking convinced. “I should warn you, I’ve always been greedy with my shit, but with you, now that I’ve had you like this, it’s gonna be bad.”

  He was still looking at her but appeared to be somewhere else in his mind.

  “Every time Nick came to see me, I’d sit across from him and wonder if he was going to fuck me up by mentioning you’d hooked up. On the one hand, I wanted you to find someone who treated you well and made you happy.” He sent a hand under the sheet and began a slow rub of his knuckles across her navel. “But on the other, I knew if I got out and had to watch some cocksucker swagger around because he was fucking you, I’d have gone after him. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from at least dishing him a good ass-kicking for daring to touch my stuff while I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  She brushed her fingertip across his shiner. “Your ‘stuff,’ huh?”

  “Yeah, babe.”

  He owned her, and it was a beautiful thing because she now understood owned just meant she was wanted, and being wanted meant she had some value. Feeling the darkness she’d lived under for the past three years finally clear out, Tish basked in her guardian’s light. She reached up and kissed him. “I love you, Master Josh,” she said against his lips. He was undoubtedly the master of her heart, and there was no reason she should deny him that knowledge.

  The kiss broke when he grinned. “Knew you’d come around.”

  She giggled. “Yeah, around five times.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So are you,” she said, sobering. “Whenever the mood strikes. I don’t ever want to feel what I felt when you said you were taking this to someone else to deal with.” She wrapped her fingers around his semi-hard shaft where it was laying on his thigh.

  “When I said I was going to take care of my dick, I meant I was getting out of your vicinity so it would calm the fuck down. I wasn’t gonna fuck anyone else. I haven’t done that in more than five years.”

  Around a feeling of sweet relief, she reached up and covered her ears. “Don’t tell me stuff like that because all I hear is that you were like this with other women before five years ago.”

  He pulled her hands down then went back to caressing her belly. She hadn’t missed the fact that he was concentrating on that expanse between her hip bones.

  “I’ve never been like this with other women. And I’m thirty-eight, how the fuck would I have gotten by without screwing around some?”

  She gave him a mock glare. “I don’t know, but you should have tried harder to abstain.”

  “I didn’t feel the need to abstain until you were old enough to start getting under my skin. Christ, Tish, you don’t know what I went through when I started seeing you differently.”

  Knowing him as she did, she could only imagine. “I’m sorry for that,” she said, genuinely feeling bad. “I never had any problems when my feelings for you changed. You were always my favorite thing, but then you became my very favorite thing.” Her tone left him in no doubt what she meant. “So, when you went away, you liked me already?” Loved knowing that.

  “Didn’t want to, but, yeah, I ‘liked’ you. Leaving you on that sidewalk in front of the clubhouse was rough. When you showed as Luke was bringing me to the cruiser, that’s when I wanted to kill your fuckin’ mother for what she’d done. The fear in your eyes was the only reason I let you visit for as long as I did.”

  “Then you made Nick stop bringing me because you thought I’d move on if I didn’t see you once a week?” Silly man.

  “Had to try something. That was another shit day; when I had to tell you not to come anymore. You thought you’d be back, I could see it in your face, but I knew it would be four years before I saw you again. Or, thought it would be. I was a fuckin’ cocksucker to be around for six months after that. Got tossed in the hole too many times for getting into it with anyone who’d take me on. So fuckin’ stupid,” he muttered, sounding annoyed with himself.

  “The hole?”

  “Solitary.”

  “Oh.” She snuggled closer. “I hate that you were alone in there for so long.”

  “I know.” He jostled them by reaching back and stuffing another fluffy pillow behind his head. “Fuckin’ pillows are the best thing ever. You know, I never understood it when the boys said thoughts of their old lady and kids were what got them through their time inside. I understand it now. Even without the promise of this,” he traveled down a few inches from where the back of his hand now rested and stroked a finger across the top of her mound, “coming out to you was the light at the end of my tunnel.”

  She sighed and couldn’t stop the happy smile that stretched her mouth. “You know this whole thing would have been so much easier if you hadn’t tried to fight it, right?”

  “Probably.”

  They were quiet for a stretch, and something that had been bugging her came to the surface again. He spoke before she could ask him about it.

  “You’re so fuckin’ young, Tish.”

  She pushed up onto her elbow to frown at him. “But I’m not. In my mind and heart, I feel old. I’m not almost twenty in there; I’m older than you. I’m surprised you would care what people will think about our age difference.”

  His brows went up. “And rightly so, because I don’t. I’m worried for you. People are cruel, and you won’t be able to let their stupid ass comments roll off your back. Me, on the other hand, I’ll have no trouble telling the nosy, judgmental cocksuckers to fuck off as I smile wide and remember how wet your little pink slit gets before I fuck it.” He lifted his chin when she went to cover his mouth with her palm.

  “You’re terrible.”

  He took her hand and bit her palm before tucking it into his neck. With his other, he guided her head back down to his chest. “Just because I don’t care what others think, doesn’t mean I’m cool with the eighteen fuckin’ years between us. Again, for your sake. You haven’t lived much of your life yet.”

  “That’s because you haven’t been here.”

  “And I don’t want you realizing that ten or fifteen years down the road,” he said as though she hadn’t spoken.

  “I won’t.”

  “You’re a stubborn little shit, aren’t you?”

  She looked up. “Yes.”

  He rolled his eyes. “How many guys have you kissed?”

  She blinked at the subject change but held onto her nagging question. “Uh, hang on. Before we go there, I wanted to ask you about your early release. How did that come about? Nina said they didn’t do stuff like that. So why did they let you out before your time was up?”

  A glint of steel entered his expression, and she couldn’t be positive because the light was dim, but she was quite sure his cheeks were flushing.

&nb
sp; “When the fuck did Nina become an expert on what they do or don’t do in the U.S. penal system?”

  “No one said she was an expert,” she soothed. What a cranky pants. “I’m just curious because I’ve never heard of them taking two entire years off someone’s sentence just because they were well behaved. And right now, you said you didn’t play well with the other kids for at least six months while you were there. What’s with that?”

  “Tish, do you think I wanna get into all the details of that shit right now?” Impatience came through the exhausted note in his voice, and something else. He was staring straight up at the ceiling, a tick in his jaw working. His cheeks were definitely rosy.

  “No, of course not,” she murmured, watching him. Why wouldn’t he look at her? An icy warning slithered down her spine, making her shiver. “Josh? Did you—? Did my uncle—? Are they—?”

  “Tish-Tosh.” He sighed bringing his gaze to her. “Give it a rest. There’s no story here. Now, answer me. How many have you kissed? Did you abstain completely?”

  Very aware he hadn’t answered any of the questions she’d almost asked, even though he had to know how she’d have finished them if she had the nerve. Did he break out of jail? Did Nick and the club have anything to do with his release? Were the authorities looking for him?

  “If I should know something—”

  “Then you’d know it,” he said over her.

  “Yes, but, if you’ve done—”

  “There is no but. And I haven’t done anything.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes; hers reflecting her fear, his cool and distant. The warning he’d injected into that last interruption had been loud and clear. And as an old lady should, she took notice of it by closing the subject.

  But not before she confirmed something. “You’re not leaving me again, right?”

  Within one blink of his gold eyes, warmth returned to his expression and her lover was back. “I’m not leaving you, babe,” he reassured her.

  “’Kay.” She tried to smile but couldn’t, so she laid her head down and forced her heartbeat to slow as she stared across the room into the darkened walk-in closet. Was it even possible for someone to break out of jail anymore?

  “Come on. Impress me with talk about what a good girl you were for me,” he cajoled. “I’m beginning to think you’re using that other shit as an out so you won’t have to admit to having swallowed someone else’s tongue.”

  She took a quiet breath and decided she couldn’t do much more than trust him. Well, she could turn on CNN the minute she was alone… “Er, I didn’t abstain completely, no.”

  He playfully tugged on a hunk of her hair. “Really. Tell me about that.” His voice now had an edge to it.

  “I wanted to learn how to kiss, so I tried it a few times before thoughts of you started ruling my life.”

  That hunk was pulled on until her head went back far enough for him to look into her face. Those lowered brows weren’t playful at all. “With who? When?” He wasn’t angry, but the mild reproach in his voice had her shrugging and trying to look away. He didn’t let her.

  Fine. “Ian Owens kissed me behind the photo booth at eighth-grade grad. Neil Pearson kissed me at the first football game I ever went to—it was my freshman year of high school. That same year, Paul Reardon and Evan Baker taught me how to French kiss. But those were four months apart, and I didn’t go back for more, not with either of them. I remember when you picked me up after school the day I kissed Evan, I saw you and wanted to die. I felt like I’d cheated on you. I never went near anyone else ever again.”

  “You were fourteen.”

  She nodded.

  “You were fourteen, and you let three different guys kiss you in one fucking year, Tish.”

  “I was trying to learn in case I ever got the chance to kiss you,” she said in her defense. “I didn’t want to be completely useless.”

  “I could have dealt with completely useless. Evan Baker still run the tire shop in town?”

  “Yes.”

  He released her hair but kept his fingers buried in it. “When I need some rubber, make sure I send Nick. I wouldn’t want to get stupid and pop the kid in the beak for something he did six years ago.”

  “Okay. Can we stop talking about this? I’m afraid you’re going to let the name of someone you were with slip out now just to spite me. What if I know her and have to live with the knowledge that you slept with her? It’s one thing to kiss someone, but to have sex with them is something else entirely.”

  He scooped her against him and rolled onto his back so she sprawled across his hard body. “I’d never do that to you.”

  “Good.” She rested her chin on her forearm and tried to get her happy back.

  “You’re so fuckin’ breakable,” he murmured after a little while. He was testing her hips with his big hands, his thumbs going under to caress her lower belly. Again. “Another drawback to me being so much older than you is—”

  “There is no drawback, Josh. When we’re on a date, men will want to high-five you and women will want to be me. So what?” She was further cheered by a thought. “Hey! I’ve never been on a date before. Where will you take me for our first?”

  Something began growing under her belly, and she squirmed when Josh’s long fingers went down to knead her ass, opening her pussy up from the back with every squeeze. “Do your nipples always stay hard for this long? Are they sensitive? Is that why you keep getting goosebumps? Oh, and I don’t do dates. But I am going to show you off first chance I get.”

  He could call it what he wanted, but if they went out together, it would be a date. She looked down at her beaded nipples. “If you must know, I’m not used to rubbing up against the hair on your chest and legs. Or a naked male body, for that matter. When my pussy is over your thigh, the hair tickles it. I’m trying not to think about it, but it’s making it difficult for me to settle down.”

  “How sore is this pussy I’m tickling?”

  She reached down and stroked his rigid shaft a few times before bringing him home. “Not too sore to take you.” She lined him up with her entrance and slid down while he pushed up. The glide into her warmth was easy because as she’d said, she couldn’t settle and had been growing wetter and wetter with every passing minute. “God, that feels so amazing.”

  “Fuck, yeah, it does.” He pushed her hips down and met her with a slow pump. “Look at me.”

  She raised her head from where she’d been about to lick his nipple. She’d noticed it pebble when she stroked her finger over it and was now wondering if the area was as much of an erogenous zone on a man’s body as it was on a woman’s.

  “We’re gonna go all the way, Tish. You’re the beginning of the family I’ve dreamed of having since mine was taken away from me when I was a kid. And that drawback I mentioned? That’s me being at an age where I’m dying to breed my woman. I want you with a round belly and swollen ankles caused by my kid growing inside your body. You open to expanding on this hot unit at some point?”

  She swallowed hard and tried not to panic as she dug her knees into the mattress. She clamped them together to still his hips. What to tackle first. “What do you mean ‘taken away?’ You never told me that. How was your family taken away?”

  His expression wiped clean, but not before she saw a staggering amount of sorrow devour the apprehension that had slowly spread through his eyes at her lack of an answer. “That isn’t something I talk about.” Grief dripped from his words, and trying not to feel concern that he didn’t want to share his history with her, she grabbed his face and dropped light kisses around his mouth and jaw.

  “Then you don’t have to.” She wanted the pain radiating from him gone. “But when you change your mind, just know I’m here, okay?” Assuming he would change his mind. “No pressure, though.” Her fingers itched to call her uncle and get the story. But she never would because that wouldn’t be right.

  Josh pushed at her knees and rolled her over. “Are you su
re this is what you want?” He withdrew his cock until just the tip was inside her. He fucked her with it. “This? Me? I have some baggage, Tish, and it’s going to cause me to be a fuckin’ pain in your ass. Even though we’re doing this right now, and I’d do you every chance I got for the rest of the week, I really would make one fuck of an effort to let you go if you think this might be a mistake.”

  “Really? You’d do that for me?” You jerk, she added silently. How could he say that after everything they’d talked about? Why couldn’t he just accept that she loved him and wanted him forever?

  “Yes. If you regret this, I’d try.”

  Big jerk. “Huh. So, you’d do me all week, just like this, and then when I got used to having sex whenever I wanted it, you’d cut me loose to feed my addiction elsewhere? What would happen to the jealous asshole you just said you were where I’m concerned? He’d disappear?” She narrowed her eyes and flicked her finger at his goateed chin. “I don’t buy it. Know why? Because I trust that you care about me, and I know it would affect you.” She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in sharply. She forced herself not to moan around the pleasure that brought her. “I think you’d be a wreck if you came into the Serpent for a beer and had to watch me ask my boss if I could leave early because some guy wanted to take me home. Could you picture letting me leave with him, knowing I’d be doing this exact thing thirty minutes later in his bed?” She rocked her hips and they heard the wet sound of his shaft working in and out of her pussy.

  He shook his head and kept shaking it as he moved down her body. His cock slipped free and was replaced by his mouth in the next second. His tongue pushed inside, so did two of his fingers which he continued licking around, making loud sucking noises. “It’s my cunt,” he said against her. “I’m a liar. Shouldn’t have offered something I could never follow through on. It would never happen. Can’t let you go. Not now. Not ever.”

  “That’s better,” she whispered through a tight jaw as he ate at her with such fervor.

  Her head went into the pillow, and her heels dug into the bed so she could raise her hips up. The action brought her knees together and, not appreciating it, Josh hooked his arm under her thigh and wrenched it down to open her again. He clamped his lips on her clit and batted the bud from side to side as he turned his wrist to angle his buried fingers up. He applied a firm pressure to massage the front wall of her pussy.