Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  His eyes were demanding. His voice and his body, too. And his fingers shook against her cheek. But she didn’t understand. “I don’t—”

  He gave her head a sharp shake, and Leah felt her lack of comprehension begin to shift into the kind of worry that could become fear. The sparkly world of the Molly dimmed a little, and she saw beastly shadows lurking at its edges.

  “Gunner. I’m Gunner.”

  Without understanding why he needed it, she gave him what he so obviously needed. “G-Gunner.”

  He grinned broadly and relaxed. As his mouth came down on hers, the world went bright and glittery again. Leah hooked her arms around his neck and threw her legs around his waist. His cock nudged against her, and she forgot what it was that had had her so worried.

  She tightened her body around his, lifting her hips off the bed, pressing herself as close as she could get to the hard length of him. “Please, please, please.”

  With a groan, he pushed in, sliding fast and deep, filling her, stretching her, until she felt consumed.

  But it wasn’t enough. She wanted more of him, all of him. His lip was in her mouth, and she bit down, sucking hard, tasting as much of him as she could, flesh and blood and beard. Reacting to her sudden force, he growled. His hips rocked backward, dragging his cock out, and he slammed in, so hard he shoved her up on the bed. The top of her head banged into the headboard. But he didn’t try to free his mouth from her clenched teeth. She’d bled him, she could taste it dripping over her tongue, down her throat, but he let her.

  He was fucking her so hard, so hard, harder than anything she’d ever felt. Their bodies came together again and again with brutal, bruising speed and power. All she could do was clamp around him at every possible point. Her mouth. Her arms. Her legs. Her core.

  Leah clamped down and held on, and he pummeled her, his exhales filling the room like he ran on fire and steam. She turned her ecstatic focus to all the amazing, shocking, exhilarating things he was making her feel. Each hair on his body made its own impression on her skin. The beads of his sweat slicked over her, and she felt each one distinctly. The sound of his breaths and of his panted, nearly incoherent utterances filled the air, telling her she was beautiful, that he’d never felt anything like her, that she tasted like candy, that he wanted to die inside her.

  She felt every part of his cock. She felt the rounded edge at the bottom of his tip, the way it pressed against her. She felt the veins of his shaft, especially as they pushed back and forth past her opening, and the slight, enticing sting of the stretch of her body making room for him. She felt the rough kiss of his balls slapping the same tempo against her body.

  She felt the end of him, pressing hard into a stunningly sensitive place inside her and then slamming against the deepest part of her, again and again.

  She felt the brilliant, beautiful need that swirled through her, filling her veins and her lungs and her brain, and the wonderful fire that charged up from her core to sate the need.

  Oh, she’d never felt anything so good in her whole life. For the first time, the first time ever, she’d found something important. This was crucial, what was happening. This was the answer to everything.

  The epiphany brought an explosion of such perfect joy, physical and emotional both at once, that she tore her mouth from Max’s and screamed. She screamed until her voice stopped, and then she sobbed. Tears and wails poured from her, but she was still coming, so hard she felt like she was going crazy.

  Max (No, that was wrong. Why was that wrong? This was Max. He was Max. He was the one she’d been looking for. She’d always been looking for him. He was The One.) howled. The sound seemed to ricochet around the room, but Leah couldn’t stop crying, even as waves and waves of bliss crashed over the shoreline of her sanity.

  Suddenly, he pulled out. Before she could understand why, he’d dragged her body downward on the bed and flipped her over. With one hand, he grabbed her hips and forced them high, and with the other hand he pressed down between her shoulder blades and held them low. Then he was inside her again, coming in even faster and harder than before, and she screamed again as she instantly crested yet another wave and slammed into an ocean of sensation.

  She was going to go insane and die. Die for love, die in her lover’s arms. Star-crossed lovers, swimming in stars. She was Juliet. She was Isolde. She was Maria. She was Bonnie.

  Oh God, please let me keep him, she prayed into the jumbled blankets, while wet sobs continued to rack her. Please, please let me.

  As if he’d heard her silent words, Max hooked his hands around her shoulders, pinning her firmly in his grasp, trapping her, and resumed the slamming tempo of his hips.

  She couldn’t stop coming, and she couldn’t stop crying.

  She wanted none of it to ever end, and she wanted everything to end. Right here. Just like this. In this moment, when she had everything she needed.

  ~oOo~

  Leah couldn’t get her eyes open. She felt paralyzed, but everything hurt, like the Jolly Green Giant had wadded her up and tossed her over his shoulder. Like someone had turned a rabid ferret loose inside her head. Oh, ow.

  And she couldn’t breathe. Something was sitting on her chest.

  With a strenuous effort, she peeled her eyelids from her corneas. There wasn’t much to see. Wherever she was, it was a dim, grey world.

  She tried again to take a breath and was thwarted. What?

  A glance down her body showed a large shoulder resting on her, just beside one boob. The other boob was crushed under the chest attached to that shoulder.

  Oh. She remembered. Blinking to clear her brain as much as her eyesight, Leah tried to pull all the pieces of the night back together. She was with Max. In the Brazen Bulls house.

  Oh, wow—what a night. No wonder she was so sore.

  At her side, he made a soft snore, just a single syllable, and was quiet again. Leah turned her head—ouch—to see him. She had to squint for focus; his head was on the same pillow as her own. He was deeply asleep, maybe even actually unconscious. His unruly curls were damp and plastered to his forehead. Even his beard was messy. His bottom lip was swollen, and Leah saw a short row of small, even cuts at the point where his beard met his lip. Marks from her teeth.

  Seeing his condition, Leah understood her own better. They’d fucked wildly for what had to have been hours. It had seemed at the time like forever, and also like only a moment. She’d bit him hard—in more places than just his lip—and he’d bit her, too. As if they’d been trying to devour each other.

  The room reeked of sex and exertion.

  She remembered, at least in part, every sexual encounter she’d ever had. Not always the external details—like the guy who’d come up behind her when she’d been with Max; she’d never seen him at all—but she remembered how she’d felt.

  What she and Max had done was nothing like anything she’d ever done before. What she’d felt here was completely new. Completely wonderful. Even as sore as she was, even as wild as they’d gotten, it had been real. Greater than the slamming together of bodies.

  She was in love. This had to be what love was, this achy fullness in her chest.

  Smiling at the sleeping face of the man at her side, Leah thought his name. Max.

  No, wait. He’d given her another name. What had it been? Gunner. He’d needed her to call him Gunner. Or Gunnar? Was that his middle name, maybe? In the clarity of the morning, with bright sun outlining the closed curtains, she still didn’t underst—

  Bright sun. Morning. Oh no!

  Leah shoved Max—Gun—Max’s shoulder up and surged off the bed. Her head rang like a dinner bell, and she stepped on something that crackled and stabbed at her foot. Grabbing her head against that pain, she looked down. She’d stepped on a broken light bulb—they’d knocked the lamp off the dresser during their acrobatics.

  When she tried to lift her foot to brush the glass away, she nearly fell. She dropped her foot, again in the broken glass, and sat carefully down
on the side of the bed. Next to a strip of unused condoms.

  Crap. She needed to remember to take her pill when she got home, and she hoped Max was healthy.

  With hands shaking from comedown and anxiety, in a dim room, she knocked the loose shards away and plucked the others out until she thought she had them all. When she stood up again, it was quickly clear that she’d missed a few, but she couldn’t worry about that. She grabbed her black dress and struggled into it, and then tracked down Ashley’s red—

  Ashley! She’d completely forgotten about Ashley! When had she last had any thought at all about her friend, whom she’d been charged with watching out for? Hours ago. Before she’d found Max.

  Ashley had gone up with one of the bikers. Was she still here?

  This was awful. Leah didn’t know where Ashley was, and it was daytime. She’d stayed out all night. Was her father awake? Did he know she wasn’t home? What time was it?

  She wasn’t wearing a watch, and there was no clock in this room. Max was wearing a watch, however. He remained sound asleep, undisturbed by her frantic fumbling. Leaning over and canting her head just so, she could read the time on the radium-infused dial.

  1:15. Seeing as the sun was shining around the edges of the curtains, it was 1:15pm, not am.

  Tears welled up behind Leah’s eyes. She was a terrible, horrible person. Her father would be awake by now, he’d know she wasn’t home, and he’d be frantic. All of her secrets would be exposed, and they’d taint him and break him. Everything was destroyed.

  Max slept on. His world hadn’t ended. Leah shoved her feet into Ashley’s Docs, grabbed her bag off the back of the door, and fled the room.

  ~oOo~

  She stopped short in the bar area, the main room of the first floor. A few women were cleaning up from the party, dumping overflowing ashtrays, empty beer bottles, and other smelly garbage into big black bags. Another woman noisily collected glasses in a plastic tub.

  Above the odor of stale smoke and used booze wafted a stronger, fresher aroma: coffee, recently brewed. One man, wearing a green uniform, stood behind the bar, filling three mismatched cups full. He was big, broad, and blond.

  The blond biker from last night. Ashley’s biker. Leah went up to him. A patch on his shirt indicated his name was Apollo.

  She pulled herself together. “Hi.”

  He looked up and smirked at her. His eyes dropped and came up, in the way nearly all men, even the men at church, had of checking out a woman before they spoke to her. “Hey, beauty. You doin’ the walk so late? Must’ve been a helluva time. Let’s see…who’d you bag?” He looked up at the ceiling like he was having a serious thought. “Must be Gun. He was supposed to be on shift this morning, but he was AWOL.” With a chuckle, he added, “Brother’s gonna get rung for that, no doubt.”

  She didn’t care about any of that. “You were with my friend last night. Ashley. Is she still here?”

  He frowned. “Ashley? You mean the little brunette with the butch hair?”

  As a description, it was close enough. “Is she still here?”

  “Nah, doll. I sent her home a long time ago. Don’t worry, she was good to drive.” His smirk grew wide. “I worked it out of her, don’t you fret.”

  Leah knew a little bit of relief; it sounded like Ashley was, at least, okay. But she was going to be so pissed off. And Leah didn’t have a ride home. Would a cab take her all the way to Grant? How much would that cost?

  “Leah?”

  Leah turned on her heel. Max, in nothing but a pair of jeans, dragging his hand through his hair, was crossing the room to her. Despite her turmoil, despite the cruel pounding in her head and the terrified beat of her heart, she was glad he was there. She wanted him to hold her.

  “You okay?”

  Chuckling some more, Apollo walked past them, babying his motley collection of full coffee mugs.

  “I need…I need to get home. I need to call my dad. He’s going to be so worried. I fucked up so bad!”

  He came close and took hold of her arm. With one gentle pull, he was holding her, just what she wanted, and she thought she’d cry—but no tears came. She was dried out, like the Sahara.

  “There’s a phone right behind you. You can call him from there. And I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “My car’s not here! I came with a friend! I was supposed to stay sober and watch over her and now she’s gone and I’m horrible.”

  “Hey, be cool. You’re not horrible. Call your dad, tell him you’re okay, and I’ll get you home. No sweat, okay?”

  If only it were as easy as that. But she nodded, because what other choice did she have?

  He turned her around and nodded at the phone at the end of the bar, a cordless model. With shaking hands, she picked it up from its base and dialed home.

  Her father answered on the first ring. “Hello?” Worry made his voice brittle.

  “Daddy, it’s me.”

  “Leah! Oh thank you, Lord! Are you okay, angel? What happened? Where are you?”

  “I’m okay. I’m in Tulsa. I’m sorry I worried you.”

  “Tulsa? How? But…why? Did someone take you? Did you escape?”

  “No, Daddy, nothing like that. I’m really fine. I’m with a friend.”

  “But Ashley said she wasn’t with you.”

  That was weird. Leah supposed Ashley was trying to keep her secrets, but leaving her dad to worry like this wasn’t good. And her secrets were already blown up anyway.

  “It’s not Ashley, Daddy. I’ll explain when I get home. I’m so sorry I worried you.”

  “If you’re safe, that’s all that matters, sweetheart.” An awkward pause, and a weird not-sound, like he’d covered the mouthpiece of the receiver. Then he was back. “Leah…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t know what happened. You were gone, and your car was here, and Ashley didn’t know where you were, and I was so worried. I called the sheriff. He’s here, with a couple of deputies. He’s going to want to talk to you, to see that you really are okay.”

  She glanced at Max, who’d brought her a bottle of water and was leaning against the bar, waiting for her call to end. Could she bring Max home to her father and to Sheriff Lucas?

  Did she have a choice?

  This was all such a huge, unmanageable mess.

  “Okay, Daddy. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “I love you, angel. Praise God you’re safe.”

  She didn’t feel safe at all.

  But as she set the phone on its base, Max came up. He gave her the bottle of water and set his hand at the small of her back, and she felt better. She caught a glimpse of a glimmer of hope. Maybe it would turn out okay. Maybe.

  “The sheriff is with my dad. They’re waiting for me.”

  Max went pale. “Fuck. For real?”

  Cool, amazing, restorative water was washing down her throat, and she swallowed before she nodded. “You don’t have to take me home. I’ll—I’ll call a cab.” She didn’t want to leave him, but she didn’t want to make him face what awaited her at home.

  “No, I got you. Makin’ a fucking great impression on your dad lately, though.”

  Was that something he worried about, something he was even aware of? “Why do you care about that?”

  He leveled a look at her, and she wondered what he’d say. Eventually he shrugged. “Just do.” His hand came up and brushed over her hair. “You look like you got fucked hard last night. Come back upstairs with me. You can take a quick shower, and I’ll scare up some sweats for you to wear. You can’t ride with me in that dress.”

  “Ride?”

  “Yeah. My bike. That’s how I’m getting you home.”

  His bike. His motorcycle, he meant. Well, yeah. He was a biker, duh. She was going to have the tongues of Grant wagging in every conceivable direction. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

  “Didn’t think you had. I’ll keep you safe, don’t worry.”

  “I know. I trust you
.”

  He twitched at that, but then he smiled. His bottom lip was puffy, bruised, and scabbing over, but it was a beautiful thing, that smile.

  ~oOo~

  As always, the shower helped improve Leah’s outlook. The situation was still dire and desperate, and she was still terrified of what she’d find when she got home and how this would ripple out through her life and her father’s, but she’d gotten hold of the truth that it was too late to undo the night. It had happened, there was no wishing it away, and she wouldn’t want to wish it away. She wanted to have all the feelings and experiences she’d had with Max. Every one of them.