by V. Theia
Well adapted to dusting off the disappointments, she was here now in a state far from the one she grew up in, with friends and people she cared about. She loved her simple life. It didn’t fulfil all her heart; she would always have those gaps she could never truly close.
But she was a glass half full kind of girl and wouldn’t dwell on the what ifs.
“You’re too good for this place anyway.” He remarked, bringing her head out of the clouds suddenly.
Paige blinked, feeling the rush of heat touching every part of her face. He’d never complimented her like that before.
He told her the food she cooked was nice and he liked her apartment, but that was as far as compliments went with Reaper.
Just as well. If he ever told her she was pretty or he thought she smelled nice, she didn’t think she could cope. She was trying to distance her feelings from the crush she had on him, not encourage the damn monster.
“Thank you,” she smiled. “It might be the push I need to really work harder for my little cupcake store one day.”
“You’ll do it,” he muttered huskily.
There he went again, saying nice things. Her skin shivered.
Instead of getting all girlie, she slid out of the booth and remembered she had a date tomorrow with a guy called Brody who was a high school football coach and liked NASCAR and action movies.
Reaper was her friend, end of story.
“Coffee?” She asked him and he nodded. Back to his usual mute self.
Paige smiled as she made her way back to the counter.
Unaware of the amber eyes burning into her back.
CHAPTER FOUR
“A mad man’s jealousy is never a good flavor.” -Reaper
“Where’s he gone, anyway?”
“Who knows with Lawless, man. He doesn’t just dance to his own drumbeat, that psycho-fucker has his own traveling band.” Laughed Snake in the background. The workshop was busy as always, vibrating power tools thrumming through Reaper’s body as he hunkered down to clean oil from the car part he was hoping to fix. He listened with half an ear to Snake and Capone talking about where Lawless had taken off to this week. He’d been doing it a lot the last few months.
“He gets a hair up his butt and he disappears for a few days.”
“Job for the prez?” Asked Capone.
“Not that I know of. Law just said not to burn the place down while he was gone, and he’d be back in a few days.”
“Sounds suspicious, even for Law.”
“Yo, quiet man. You wanna come to Otis’ later?” Whistled Snake and Reaper lifted his head to look over at the bodyguard working on a sweet as fuck Harley. Looked vintage, maybe from the 70’s. Reaper loved old shit. Music, cars, houses.
“Maybe.” He replied noncommittal.
He could do with a drink and not sit at home like a sad piece of shit, hanging out with the guys would be a welcome change. He was watching so much TV that Netflix didn’t even bother asking if he was still watching, just told him ‘I got you, buddy, grab another beer.’
On a run a few hours later, he parked his bike in a bay just outside a florist shop. Baskets and buckets decorated the outside on the sidewalk. To anyone else it looked like what it was. But Reaper wasn’t interested in flowers, even if his brain told him to send some to Paige, every single time he was here.
She liked daffodils, lilies and peonies. She liked anything pretty that would make her smile. Paige smiled a lot. It was one of the things he loved about her.
The bell above the door tinkled on entry and the elderly woman behind the counter looked up from assembling a bouquet of flowers.
She smiled, recognizing him. Reaper nodded and kept on walking through the back room, down a long corridor, he took a staircase of fourteen steps and knocked on the door at the very end.
The woman wouldn’t let anyone know he was there if she was asked, just like she wouldn’t ever mention what was behind the door. She was paid enough to not see a thing.
See, the florist was just a front. One of many shops owned by the RSMC and it was a legitimate business that brought in a good revenue, but the true purpose for the building was found underground in a large windowless room holding five tables only.
The six chairs around the table were occupied by businessmen and women despite it only being early afternoon. All of them feeding their gambling addiction.
No one looked over at Reaper, too intent on the cards they held and the chips in front of them. He wondered which of those dickheads were betting their house, their cars, their whole lives, to the pot in the middle.
He skirted around the edge of the room and found Marcel in the back on the phone. The smaller man looked up and told whoever he was talking to that he’d call back.
He’d orchestrated the gambling dens for the club for years but the only thing Reaper or any of the boys needed to know about the New Yorker, with his slicked-back black hair and gold chains hanging from his neck was, not to get too fucking close and definitely not stand down wind of him. The guy had wicked bad breath to the point Reaper wondered if he ever got laid. The woman would need a fucking hazmat suit if she went there.
“My man! Here again so soon.” The crinkles lofted sardonically high on his forehead. His power trip running all the illegal games was in full force. He sometimes rocked up to the RSMC parties like he was Snoop Dogg.
Reaper couldn’t fault him for his job though, he was damn good at it.
“Same time every day. What do you have for me?”
The guy walked over to the safe hidden behind a picture and punched in the combination and came out with a cloth bag he handed over. It felt heavier than yesterday.
“This everything?”
“For now, yeah. They’re still playing. You gonna sit at a table today, man? You never stick around.”
Without their treasurer, Texas, to keep a running tally of what was going in and out, it had landed on all of them to track the illegal earnings these past few months. Rider had yet to give the treasurer patch to anyone else. Reaper wondered if he ever would, or was the prez waiting for Texas to come back miraculously with his tarnished reputation and tattered loyalty intact again?
His absence was felt around the club.
Reaper knew more than most what it felt like to only realize how much you missed someone when they were no longer reachable.
It was like the guy had fallen off the face of the earth. No one had seen him around town. His loft, which the guy owned, was deserted and had been since he’d rode off from the club the very last time and his cell phone was no longer in service.
If anyone could find Texas, it would be Lawless or Grinder, but if either had tried then they weren’t saying.
Reaper felt bad about that whole situation. He’d meant to reach out to Texas after it all went south. He couldn’t say he understood what he’d done, but Reaper knew all about loyalty to people you loved. By the time he’d gone by Texas’ loft, he’d already disappeared.
Closing the cloth bag, Reaper shoved it into his jacket and zipped up to the chin. He didn’t bother answering Marcel seeing as how he never sat at the tables, that was Arson’s vice, not his.
Reaper’s addictions were not financial, they ran more towards the flesh.
“Catch you tomorrow,” he muttered on his way out. The job was boring and monotonous, but it kept his focus, gave Reaper something to do.
His life boiled down to then and now.
And some days he didn’t think he could cope with the now.
He wasn’t depressed but he was stuck, and it felt like his time was running out so damn quickly.
A woman in her middle forties on the far table caught Reaper’s eye as he strode through the gaming room, staring directly at him with her painted red lips curled at the edges and obvious hunger in the depths of those green eyes. Clear to anyone watching that she liked what she saw and would be down to fuck if he showed her the first hint of encouragement.
He felt nothing.
No curl of lust in his belly for a fast fuck. Nothing.
His dick worked. It worked too well since he had to beat off sometimes twice a day just to deal with the bombardment of memories he knew he shouldn’t think about, but there those little fuckers lived, front and center, tormenting Reaper.
On his way out he snapped off a flower … no clue of its name … and carefully pushed it into his jacket pocket.
He’d only just started up his bike when a mirage of pink caught his peripheral eye and each muscle turned to stone.
Paige was across the street with her two hands cupping her face as she peered through the pane of glass of an empty storefront window, but she wasn’t alone. Some guy in a long camel colored coat holding a satchel was standing far too close to her for Reaper’s liking.
He wasn’t a murderous man by nature, however, every violent thought he was experiencing contracted as he roared his bike to life and pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street and rode up alongside Paige who was looking at him dazed and a little flushed in the cheeks. It better be to do with the weather and nothing to do with whatever that dickhead had been saying to her or he’d bury the guy.
“Reaper. Hey! How are you?”
“What’s going on?”
Yeah, he knew he was acting like a surly bastard, glaring at the dude who wisely backed up a few feet.
“Oh. Nothing.” She smiled. His belly sloshed bile around because she still wasn’t telling him she wasn’t with that guy. “I was just looking at this store for rent. This is Lawrence, the realtor, he was kind enough to show me around without a formal appointment.”
I just bet he was. Fucker. Mr. kind realtor guy with his perfectly combed hair saw the glare on Reaper’s face and suddenly walked off to the corner of the block to take a phone call. Convenient. Good boy, Reaper thought, or he might have put the guy through the fucking window for even glancing at Paige.
“It’s kinda small inside, but I like it,” she beamed.
“Thinking of taking it?”
“I wish! Maybe in a few months’ time if it’s still available.” The longing was all over her unmasked face.
Reaper had to chew on his tongue, guessing the only reason she wasn’t signing a lease was lack of funds. He wanted to shove money at her, to give her everything he owned. His head bowed over his hands resting on the handlebars of his bike. This was one of those moments he wanted to say so much and chose to say nothing at all.
He could help her.
He could take care of her. So fucking easily.
Then what? Be happy for a short while and chance it crashing down around him?
Cowards stood back and did nothing, so maybe that was Reaper’s true role in life.
Grasping the stem of the flower he brought it out of his pocket, a little battered but still intact and he shoved it towards her.
Her eyes went wide.
“Here. Something to make your day better.”
“Reaper! It’s so pretty. Thank you. I didn’t get you anything,” she laughed a little. As she took it, the silver bracelet on her wrist jingled with the charms adorned on the thin chain. His heart seized every time he saw it because those were gifts from him.
His Paige was a magpie for shiny baubles. The charms meant something to her, he knew that because sometimes he caught her fingering each one, smiling to herself.
He cleared his throat, the bike idling under him reminded Reaper he had to get going.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?”
“No, I’m heading down to the library to spend the afternoon helping Winter restock the romances and murder mysteries.”
His mouth twitched. He once took a wander through her kindle she’d left on the counter in the diner while she served someone else. And it was rows and rows of book covers with guys in a semi state of undress.
Add in her intervention-worthy DVD collection of rom-com’s, Paige was a romance junkie.
She was the one woman he knew who would sit up until midnight when a new book from her favorite authors would release and binge read all night long.
He didn’t even know what binge reading meant until he met Paige.
It was hard leaving her there, with king dick realtor just hovering in the background. It was always hard leaving her, that wasn’t changing.
But he made himself ride off and he didn’t look back at her clutching the pink flower to her nose, wearing her little happy smile.
Of fucking course he looked back.
He always looked back at her, needing that last glimpse to keep him ticking through the day.
A headache brewed at the back of his neck just like clockwork. The dull throbbing spiked his urgency to get to the club. The Butcher had some good pain pills, better than those prescribed from the doctor he saw in Denver.
Stress, the doctor said. Fucking stress. Reaper carried enough to last him three lifetimes.
But he wouldn’t do anything differently.
He turned left on the road that would take him out of town and toward the compound near the base of the Colorado mountains and swept his eyes to the side and found her still standing there, all pretty in white with the hem of her skirt blowing gently at the same time the breeze whipped her hair around her face.
She was still clutching the damn flower like he’d given her gold.
Reaper’s heart stumbled and ached, it hurt so bad because every instinct told him to ride back, sweep her up, kiss the ever-loving fuck out of her and never let her go.
Taste her.
Own her.
Belong to her.
She lifted her hand to him, the one holding the flower and Reaper nodded in return. His pain increasing both in his chest and through his skull.
He’d be lucky to reach the compound in time to swallow some pills and pass out on the nearest couch.
Migraines he could deal with, he had for years now.
Being so close to Paige and not having her? That was killing him.
He was face planted on one of the couches in the MC compound a little over an hour later. With pills in his bloodstream he just had to wait the pain out, but it was hard to ignore the throbbing going through his skull.
Reaper groaned, pulling his skull cap down over his eyes and waited for death.
It was always in his weakest moments the dreams came for him.
Unguarded.
His defenses breached.
His body switched off and his memories took over.
She slipped into his head and smiled like she owned every inch of his mind.
It wasn’t as though his wife didn’t live there already.
She held the real estate of his subconscious.
Sneaking in through the cracks and deep holes left behind from her love.
In sleep, there was nowhere for Reaper to hide—he could only face his lost love and bask in just how perfect she was.
Then and now.
In sleep he breathed deeply, his body relaxing.
His eternal torment was about to begin a slide show of everything he’d missed.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Always, ladybug.” - Reaper
Then
“Ladybug, get the fuck down from there before you break your damn neck.”
It was hopeless. She wouldn’t listen to him. She never did and it was because she knew he’d be there to catch her, even if it meant he broke his own damn neck.
She dared laugh down at him from the lofty height of the beech tree she’d climbed when his back was turned. Her face dusted in slight glow from the sun and he worried she wasn’t wearing enough sun protection. The bottom of her skirt billowing in the wind gave him dirty glimpses of her inner thighs and like always when he saw his wife’s body, he felt the drive to take her to the nearest surface and taste her all over.
His whole body tightened with love. Every goddamn muscle clenched and released to grab her down and hold her tight so nothing could ever hurt her. She’d already had a lif
etime of neglect from family who didn’t deserve her kind of light, and miraculously their lack of affection hadn’t dimmed her personality at all.
Looking up, he sighed in a hearty gust.
This latest stunt was going to give him a coronary and he was too young to die yet.
His girl was a dare devil and a menace to his heart, and she loved pushing his buttons, making him react. It usually ended with them frantically fucking to cement their love for each other.
Jud swallowed around his goose egg sized worry and lust in equal proportions and shielded his eyes from the glaring sun, his stance meant business. Her smile said she was the boss in their marriage, and didn’t he just know it. He went for it anyway in hopes she’d listen. “Swear to god, bug.”
“You swear nothing, Judson Renner. You’re just jealous you can’t climb this high. I think I could fly if I tried.” She was gonna make him scale the fucking tree, he just knew it. And from the looks of the rickety branch she was balanced on, either he went up or she came down…soon.
His lips twitched at her happiness.
He couldn’t deny her anything, a fact of which she knew very well and tested him often. But it was a hard limit watching her break her neck.
He happened to love sucking on that neck and holding that neck when she took him into her mouth and hummed her favorite songs.
He changed his voice, made it sexy, just how she liked. “Climb down to me, baby.”
“What will you give me?” The little witch flaunted her bare legs by bunching her summer dress in one hand, trailing it up and up until it stopped before she got to her underwear. “What do I get, Jud, for leaving this beautiful scenery and coming back to earth?”
“You’ll come back to me, bug, and you know how much your man needs you.”
She beamed in that way that twisted his organs up and his hands itched to get on her.
It had always been that way.
The very second he’d seen her clowning around with two of her girlfriends. He’d been lost to those eyes, her young eighteen-year-old curves just coming out on her hips. He’d been so mesmerized in the strange girl uncaring who watched her antics, just so she could have fun.
