by V. Theia
“What you gonna do with me looking so fuckable, bug?”
His smirk warmed her belly. “I’m going to let you fuck me right here against this wall until I’m a panting wreck. Give me your best, baby.”
Maybe it was the excess of exhales letting him know how badly she needed him or the endearment, but she was lifted into the air and on an excited laugh she wrapped her legs around his lean waist, and nothing was left in her mind as Reaper’s smile blocked out the dirty money she transported to a Russian guy.
She blocked out the whole two-minute exchange. It faded away into the background as she crushed Reaper’s mouth and swallowed his grunt.
Feeling how he reacted to the slightest touch, this was all she craved to wash away her sins.
It was unbearably sexy the way he watched himself fix the crown of his cock to her opening in a move she now knew he must have been doing for years, notching just a little of the way in. Paige mewled, feeling lightheaded and impatient as she tried to make him get all the way in.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He groaned into her waiting lips. She sucked at his mouth like a starving baby cub, going this way and that way, her arms and legs so needy as they latched around him.
Water came from the square shower head above, dripping down their joined bodies. Wet and glistening, she couldn’t stand it a moment longer being separated from him.
“Hurt me,” she whined. She didn’t care if her body was bone dry—she was sopping wet—she wanted him inside her. “Make it hurt.” Paige was solely a heartbeat and full lungs when he grunted and shoved forward, knocking her butt into the wall, his hand at the back of her head protecting her.
But, oh…He was deep. So deep she cried out with joy.
“My love,” another rough slam. “What am I gonna do with you, huh?”
He fucked her like a monster and loved her like a king.
How lucky she was.
There was nothing but affection in her eyes as she held Reaper’s head on both sides while he railed her good and deep.
What kind of a man was he that he’d drop anything to do whatever she needed? She’d climbed into his shower without such much as a hello and demanded to be fucked and here he was, giving her the good pounding so perfectly the orgasm ran at full force through her veins like a hurricane.
It made him a very generous man.
And one she wanted to love for the rest of forever.
She might not have memories of their marriage, but it didn’t make the love she felt for Reaper any less now.
She worshipped the man and was only just learning how deep the well of love went.
As he sank his brilliant white teeth into his lower lip, pulled his hips back and then slammed their pleasure home, she curled all her fingers into his wet hair, she pulled and clawed, begged and pleaded. “Stay inside me forever, Reaper.”
It was an impossibility but oh, she craved it.
This golden bubble of theirs where nothing else mattered was her heaven and the real world could stay out. She didn’t care if the house crashed down around them to rubble, the need to provoke and tease and have him rough and tender in his Reaper way was a heady pulse inside of her.
In a parallel universe maybe their life was perfect, with perfect days and perfect memories but the strongest love, she thought, had to have a few dings to make it that much tougher. She wouldn’t exchange their life if it meant their love was less than solid.
Her heart spilled over as she cried out.
“Always, baby.” He grunted and when he opened his eyes they were like two twin flames. “Always, always.” Then he went about showing Paige how a generous king fucked her and left her more than satisfied.
Until they crawled into bed a bit later and it started all over again.
A mere seven hours later she was crawling out of their warm bed, and just narrowly was saved from Reaper seeing her reading a text from her father demanding her presence again today. She slammed her phone away just as he strolled into the kitchen.
Hair mussed. Stubble decorating his jawline. A pair of black sweatpants hanging so low on his hips and he came right for her, sweeping her mouth into a swoony kiss.
He did that a lot, made Paige his full focus.
The first touch of his tongue loosened her knees and she was grateful for his strong arms around her. When he wedged his knee between her legs, hiking her uniform higher she moaned into his mouth. He inhaled, changing angle and only for the grace of God was Paige able to detach their mouths before he had her bent over the kitchen island.
“Fuck, ladybug. This mouth is mine.” Sexy and primal, his declaration reached all corners of her body, especially her wide-open heart.
A kiss on her neck turned to a slow suck and bite.
She felt the pleasure shivering out of him. Would she ever get used to doing that to him? No, never. It felt amazing. Only when she was coming out of the lust filled kiss did Paige become aware of the rain knocking on the windows from outside. She’d love to stay cuddled up with him all day if not for reality nipping at her heels.
“You don’t have to get up this early with me.”
“Never gonna complain about spending time with my wife.”
She smiled and ruffled his already messy bed hair. “You just love saying that, don’t you?”
“Fucking A, it’s my favorite word, wife.”
They stayed like that all through breakfast, their skin reluctant to part.
It was a perfect way to begin what would be a shitty day.
She met her father in a parking lot.
“You said last night was the last time!” He thrust a brown package into her lap. How goddamn covert. She stared at it like it would sprout fangs and sink into her.
Never trust a criminal and not one who claimed to be her father.
“Tough shit, girl. It’s too late to back out now. I need you to get this to my guy again. He’ll give you more stock. You meet me at seven, don’t be fucking late, I gotta get home before tomorrow.”
Relief filled her eyes. “You’re going back to Tennessee?”
Her father smirked and rolled a hand through his salt and pepper hair. He was relatively still in good shape for a man of his deplorable morals.
“Don’t look too disheartened, Paige. I’ll be back. We got us a good thing goin’ here now I made contacts with some big guns who know what the fuck they’re doing.”
She didn’t know who the Russian people were he made her deliver back and forth to, she only knew they scared her. She could guess though they knew more than her father and most probably he was in over his stupid head.
“No. I said no more.”
“Do you want me to go to the cops and spill all the shit about your murderin’ husband? You wanna visit him for the next fifty years behind plexiglass?”
“Still going for father of the year, I see.” She accused weakly, the stab of his rejection hitting its mark as usual. Bad people were always going to be bad; she knew this and yet there was still a shred of hope in her that one day her family would do one decent act of kindness towards her, would show that they actually acknowledged her existence.
What was the definition of insanity? It was doing the same thing, but expecting different results
That was Paige in a nutshell with her family.
She felt her fists clench in her lap. Unmoored by fury. It was a little more powerful, more explosive than any other kind of anger she’d ever felt before. It drove a stake of coldness through her entire being. “You don’t even care what Sony did to me. He got what he deserved, you know how he followed me all the time, you probably know he came to my apartment that day to—” Paige was unaware of the hand swinging through the air until a meat-shovel palm connected with the side of her face and rattled her skull against the inside of the passenger door window.
Pain exploded, leaving behind a throbbing sting.
His eyes seethed and she saw no affection in them whatsoever. For all intents and purposes, this man
she’d grown up with was a stranger to her. Her enemy. “You’ll shut your damn mouth about my boy!”
“He wasn’t your damn boy! I’m your daughter. Your flesh and blood! For once act like my fucking father.”
His face mottled and for a second, a short second she was sure she’d gotten through to him until his lip curled and darkness entered his eyes. “Get the hell out, Paige, and do as you’re told, or you’ll be spending the next decade alone without the pretty boy, see how fucking far that gets you.”
She wouldn’t let her father see how hurt she was, how fucking smashed down she was under his threats. She took his stupid package, stuffed it into her purse and left to do his dirty work.
On the drive across town to that creepy-ass Russian house again, she passed two of the Renegade Souls bikers on the road and felt her throat choke with all that shame and guilt again.
She was doing it to save Reaper. The love of her life, the epicenter of her entire world. To save their marriage, as brand new as it felt to her, she’d found it shockingly easy to do anything.
She’d had nearly three decades of being used by her father and wouldn’t allow him to lay one finger on the man she loved.
Reaper had withstood their separation; she could do this to keep him unharmed.
An ache settled in her chest.
She’d endure this, she would. And they’d get their happily ever after.
There was one thing she knew she could do to make all this go away … though it sat heavily in her belly with clattering dread and put tears in her eyes…because it could mean she’d be apart from him.
Paige didn’t hit the turn to take her to work, she headed in the opposite direction.
This was going to end.
* * *
Reaper learned early on to listen to his gut feelings and what his gut was telling him now was that his girl was holding something back from him.
He thought they were doing good. She was happy, and more than satisfied. If he fucked her any more he was in danger of losing his dick.
No, he was right. This wasn’t relationship related, finally they were on the same page and he didn’t have to hide anything from her.
Yet the gut feeling continued while he worked that day.
When he couldn’t take it any longer he slammed down his cold cup of coffee on the tool bench, not like he’d worked at all that day anyway, garnering attention from Preacher who rose his brow curiously. Reaper ignored his friend in order to fish out his cell phone.
Did he feel remorseful he’d always had a GPS tracker app on Paige’s cell phone? Not even a little bit. It was his one saving grace to keeping his sanity knowing how far away from her he was, that if she were ever in trouble he would be able to find her at least.
The record log on the app for the last few days didn’t make a lick of fucking sense and his instincts all began to knit together, forming thoughts he didn’t want to have.
What in the hell was she doing all the way across town when she said she was going directly to work?
And last night before she came home to him and climbed into his shower, the tracker showed her way across town. He’d noticed something wasn’t right with her demeanor, but he’d let his dick do the talking because he was a weak fucking man.
“Bug, what are you up to?” He murmured to himself and didn’t like the answer he came up with.
Up on his feet, he didn’t stop to chat once he walked the distance across the forecourt into the club. Only briefly asking a prospect. “Where’s Rider?”
“Kitchen, I think.”
He was there holding his son in one arm and pouring coffee with the other. “Take Knox a minute, brother.” Before Reaper could protest, his arms were full of a baby in a black onesie with “Son of a badass” on the front. For a little one, the boy was alert like a hunter.
The punch of what if hit him in the belly. He thought of his own kid sometimes, wondered what he’d look like, would he be smart like Paige, boisterous like Reaper was as a kid? The possibilities of all they’d lost still had the ability to fill him with rage and while he held a baby in his arms he let that rage lead him because Reaper had a gut feeling it was all connected.
“I need your help, Prez.”
“I had a feeling when you flew in like your ass was on fire. Bring my boy, let’s go somewhere private.”
A while later, with Lawless’ help and Hawk standing by silently, they came to the end of a discussion on what Reaper wanted to do now they had Sargent’s location in an Airbnb not far from Reaper’s apartment.
That same gut feeling he’d felt years ago when Paige was lying to him lay like bricks in his chest.
He was right, he’d bet the house on it.
He wouldn’t see it happening again to her because he wasn’t the same man he was back then and if his hunch was right, he was gonna bury that motherfucker in the same way he did his pervert stepson, if it meant Paige was finally free of her family chains.
“Right,” Rider said from his chair. “I got Grinder to go and scope the place out, make sure the guy is actually there.”
“I know he is. He’s a slick bastard with blackmailing, especially with my girl.”
Her app tracker had moved again, and it still wasn’t where she said she was going to be. It only caused his fucking ulcers to burst and fire him alive with worry. After trying to call her and it dumping him to voicemail, that worry tripled.
It was when a call came through from Grinder, that Reaper’s blood iced over.
“Her last known position on the tracker? She was at the Russian flop, they’re in that old tycoons mansion.”
He wished it didn’t make sense.
He wished he was wrong, but every bone in his body told him the possibility of his girl doing some bad shit for her father was high.
He made to head to the door and Hawk barred his way.
“Get out of my way, VP.”
“Not so quick, hothead. If we’re gonna bury this guy, we do it right.”
Over speakerphone, Grinder spoke. “She’s definitely going back and forth from the Russian’s to the Airbnb apartment block.”
Reaper’s throat gurgled; his fists bunched. It was all the proof he needed.
This stopped today. Now. Right fucking now.
“What are the fuckin’ chances Grigori would be involved?” Added Rider. “Looks to me we got two birds with one stone.”
“We’re not using my fucking wife as a pawn!” Fumed Reaper, rounding on the room. “I want her out of this, not in the fucking center with a target on her back.”
The only reason Rider hadn’t taken Grigori out yet was the ramifications that would hit the club tenfold. It was why the club were taking the slow route to buckle the man and his crime organization from the toes up, starting and ending with the money. With men like the bratva, money was not only their currency, but more importantly, their status. You take that from them and they’re nothing.
Logically, Reaper understood it all and the boys could rip Grigori to shreds and scatter his innards across Denver, but he wanted his girl far away from that shit first.
Turns out no strategic planning was needed, not after the call he picked up from an unknown number minutes later.
“Reaper?”
His gut tightened. “Baby? Where’s your phone?”
“They took it from me. So, listen…”
Oh, fucking hell. He imagined her taken hostage by the fucking whole Russian bratva. His vision bled into murderous red. He’d slaughter all of them, whatever he had to do, Reaper had no ceiling where it came to Paige. He’d kill—
“I don’t want you to worry, but I’ve been arrested. Can you… can you come to the sheriff department, please? I need you.”
The bottom of his belly fell out.
Three pairs of eyes looked on as Reaper froze.
Arrested. Not kidnapped. Fucking arrested.
Dammit, ladybug. What did you do?
A swell of panic hit Reaper’s chest a
s he rushed out of the door.
She’d been taken from him again, was his only thought.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Once…twice in a lifetime.” - Paige
Reaper was a snarling demon of a man storming through the electronic double doors of the local sheriff’s department. His only objective was to get to Paige.
The guy at the reception desk eyed him warily.
“I’m here for my wife,” he all but bit out through his clenched teeth. “Paige Ren…Simmons. She called and told me she was here.” The little dipshit didn’t even look at the booking sheet to see who Reaper was talking about. He only had eyes for Reaper’s cut.
“Sir, if you’d just take a seat.”
“I don’t want to take a fucking seat. I want to see my fucking wife.” Regarding the younger guy in front of him in his tan uniform, all Reaper saw was the obstacle keeping him from his Paige and his insides chewed like glass.
“Sir, you need to calm down.” Was the absolute wrong thing to say to Reaper, who was on the knife edge of panic.
“Fuck calming down. Get me Charlie Timmons down here now.” He’d string the sheriff up by his boot laces if he didn’t do something. Reaper could give ten fucks if the guy was on friendly terms with the club.
Nothing mattered other than getting to Paige.
When a man had so much to lose it meant he was willing to do anything.
She must be so damn scared.
Right then, as the cop put a call through, hopefully to Charlie, maybe a pile of other inept cops to throw Reaper out, he heard an almighty roar outside from several bikes all parking at the same time.
“I want to see my fucking wife!” He snapped again, teeth bared, eyes wild.
“Sir… you’ll be removed if you don’t calm down.”
“That’s not going to be necessary.” A hand landed on Reaper’s shoulder, and as he turned to snap some fuckers fingers off, assuming it was another cop, he reined in his thunder seeing it was the club lawyer.
