by Aiden Bates
“Trust me.”
He lowered me to the floor gently. I disentangled myself from him and slipped into the bathroom.
Two months of recovery had treated me well. I looked healthy again, and the Goldschlager had left a rosy flush in my cheeks—or was that just the hot flush of knowledge that Blade was on the other side of the door waiting for me?
In the clubhouse, his gaze had followed me wherever I turned. Hungry. It set something inside me aflame. And now with his name on my back, and no secrets between us—I was his. Fully. I palmed my cock once through my jeans, hard, then shucked them off. I shrugged off the jacket just long enough to take off my shirt, then I pulled it back on, shivering as the soft leather dragged across my bare skin. I held the zipper in both hands for a long moment. I could zip it up, walk out that way. He wouldn’t see the scars across my abdomen—the ones he was familiar with, and the new one, the pink tender scar tissue of the gunshot like a thumbprint amongst them, deceptively small.
But he didn’t mind my scars.
I left the jacket open. I stepped out of the bathroom, hot with arousal and shyness, wearing just the jacket and my black boxer-briefs.
“Jesus, Logan,” Blade murmured reverently. He was lying back on the bed, propped against the headboard, stripped down to his shorts as well. His muscular legs were crossed at the ankle, and he had his hands folded over his belly. I could see the thick line of his cock hard in his underwear. And God, those eyes. His dark gaze traveled over me with a single-minded awe and adoration, a near-physical heaviness. “You look amazing.”
I crawled onto the bed and hovered over him, on all fours, the leather of the jacket hanging like a curtain off me, shielding us from the rest of the world. “I love you,” I said again, because I wanted to, and because it was true.
Blade reared up and kissed me hard. He tangled one hand into my hair and swept the other down my back. Then he cupped my ass and guided me so my ass pressed against his hard cock.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said. “I love you.”
I skimmed my hands over his chest, following the shape of his pecs, the divot in his abs. I wriggled in his lap, feeling his cock nestle in between my cheeks with just the two layers of cotton between us.
We kissed for a long few moments, until I was breathless with it, and Blade’s cock was a hot weight pressing into me. I was aching hot with it, desperate to get closer. “Want you,” I said. “Will you?”
“Use your words, babe.”
“Fuck me,” I said, and my flush spread to my ears. “Please. I need it.”
Blade growled, then gripped me tightly and flipped us so I was on my back, lying flat on the bed. Our lips met wet and sloppy. He moved down my body in a trail of burning kisses. I ran my hands over his shoulders, dragging the leather of the sleeves across his skin.
He paused at the gunshot scar. He smoothed a hand gently over it, then placed a kiss on the tender new flesh there. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” I said. “It did. It doesn’t now.”
“How does it feel?” He kissed the scar again.
“Like you need to get on with it.” I wound my fingers into his dark hair and then pushed, encouraging his head lower. My cock throbbed heavy between my legs.
“Love it when you boss me around.” Blade pressed his mouth to my cock in my underwear, just mouthing at it through the cotton. I tossed my head back and moaned, coiling both hands into his dark hair.
“Tell me how it feels,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “Good. Need it. Missed you.” My body thrummed and vibrated with need down to my bones. Something had been missing these two months. I needed him inside me. I needed to feel that wholeness again.
Blade hooked his fingers into the waistband of my shorts and slid them down my legs. My cock slapped against my abs, hard and leaking from the tip. I shifted on the bed, moving to take off the jacket.
“No.” Blade stopped me with a hand gentle on my chest. “Keep it on.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Blade ran his tongue over the length of my cock. He wrapped his hand firmly around the base and then sucked me down, sweet and impatient. The silken heat of his mouth overtook my senses and I arched my hips hard into his mouth. I lost myself in the warmth of it for a long few minutes, tossing my head on the pillow. When he pulled off, I barely had time to whine before he was back on me, one hand tilting my hips up, his mouth kissing the tip of my cock gently.
His fingers slid in between my cheeks, slick with lube.
“Byron,” I said. “Please.”
“Like this?” He sucked a bruising kiss onto my hipbone, then slid one long, muscular finger inside me.
I sucked in a sharp breath. The intrusion felt good, but it’d been so long that I was tight and aching. Blade soothed me, humming against my hip bone, then slowly began to move. He fucked me on his finger until I was thrashing on the bed, sweating into the leather. I tugged at his hair insistently, begging for more until he finally obliged and slid a second finger into me, then a third, and fucked me on his hand, deep and rough.
“Come on, Byron,” I said, and I tugged him up to kiss him hard on the mouth. His hand still inside me. I squirmed against him. “That’s enough. Please. Fuck me.”
He withdrew his hand slowly, slowly, and kissed me hard. “Anything you want,” he said.
A shiver ran through me.
Blade maneuvered me easily onto my side and pressed his chest to the length of my back. The leather between us was warm with my sweat. Blade pressed his teeth into the muscle of my shoulder as his bite claimed me through the leather.
“I love seeing you in this,” he growled into the back of my neck. “My name on you. My tattoo on you. And you choose to wear it.”
“I want to wear it.” His low, dark voice sent a thrill through me. “I want to be yours.”
“You are.” He slid one hand under my thigh and lifted it, and the head of his cock brushed against my hole. “You’re mine. I’m yours.”
He was my Old Man the same as I was his. I threw my head back, searching, and he rewarded me with a deep kiss. Twitching my hips backward, I begged wordlessly for his touch.
Blade growled my name into my mouth, then shifted his hips forward and slid into me in one long, hot thrust.
I pushed back against his chest, and his body was muscled and solid behind the barrier of the leather. Slowly and steadily, he drew his cock all the way out and then slid it deeply back in. Each thrust was a shot of heat through me. I matched his pace, tilting my hips backward to meet him, to take him even deeper.
“Good boy,” Blade murmured, as he fucked me harder and faster, daring me to keep up with his rhythm. “Is this what you need?”
“Yes,” I moaned. “Just you.”
Blade’s breath stuttered hard against the back of my neck. He pushed me forward, so I was belly-down flat on the bed with his cock still deep inside me. He rocked against me, his thrusts luxurious and pounding, his body flat against mine, pressing me hard into the mattress. The leather between us was marked with the sweat of our bodies. As I melted into the bed, my cock was trapped between my body and the mattress, and the strength of the thrusts created a sweet pressure of friction.
“Want you to come,” Blade said as we breathed into each other’s mouths. “Just from this.”
“I’m close,” I gasped, and he fucked me harder. I felt his hips stutter hard, then he slid a hand under my hips and gripped my cock. His thrusts pushed my body forward so I was fucking into the tight circle of his fist.
That was all it took. I cried out beneath him, against his mouth as my muscles tensed, and I tried to push into his hand and back against his body at the same time. I couldn’t get close enough. My eyes slammed shut. I came long and hot and shuddering as all the energy in my body converted suddenly to white-hot pleasure coursing through me. I collapsed beneath him with a sigh, tilted my hips up, and reveled in the rich pleasure of the last few deep strokes of his cock inside m
e and my name in his mouth when he came.
Blade collapsed on top of me in a sweaty heap.
We lay like that for a few minutes, breath heaving, the leather sticky between us.
Finally I wiggled beneath him. “You’re heavy.”
He hummed, and the vibration in his chest traveled through my bones. “You’re comfortable.”
Eventually Blade roused and rolled off me. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the jacket off with a relieved huff. I pressed my nose into the collar and inhaled deeply. The rich smell of sweat and sex didn’t overpower the simple scent of quality leather.
“I’m glad you like it.” Behind me, Blade was on his back in the bed, propped up on his elbows. The dark room was flooded with moonlight, accentuating the angles of his body.
“What would you have done if I didn’t?”
Blade shrugged. “Been embarrassed in front of the club. Gotten ribbed forever by Gunnar.”
“You’d still be with me?”
Blade raised his eyebrows at me. “Of course. I want you to be my Old Man. It’s not a requirement, though.” He softened slightly. “I wouldn’t force you to wear it.”
“I know.” I smoothed the leather in my hands and then laid it on the bed next to me. “I used to think it was stupid.”
Blade reached out and brushed his fingers over my lower back.
“The whole Old Man thing,” I clarified. “Wearing someone else’s name. I thought it was… I don’t know, contrived? And controlling. If you had told me a few months ago I’d be wearing one, I would’ve laughed in your face.”
“Remember that first morning at Elkhead?”
“When Coop called me a stray?” I glanced over my shoulder and smirked. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Actually, it was Gunnar,” Blade said through a laugh. “Coop was just snitching. And if you had told me that morning I’d have you in my bed wearing my patch, I would’ve thought you were concussed.”
“And now?”
“I feel concussed, sometimes,” Blade said. “Crazy. Like it’s too good to be true. That you’re here. Staying with me.”
“Yeah?” I lay back down next to Blade and snuggled close to him. “Get used to it, because you’re not getting rid of me now.”
Blade laughed again. He tripped his fingers down my side and then ran his hand over my new gunshot scar again. “You sure it’s all right? Not overexerted? Nothing feels weird?”
“Feels a little tight,” I said. “But not bad. Just a regular new-scar feeling.”
“I hate that you know what that feels like.”
I rested my head on his chest and listened to the steady, slow drum of his heart. “I don’t,” I said. “Makes me appreciate what I have now.”
Blade kissed the top of my head.
I was safe with Hell’s Ankhor. That knowledge fell on me like a heavy blanket. My father would never get his hands on me again, not while I wore Blade’s patch. And if Blade ever got his hands on Crave, he’d kill him. He’d do whatever it took to protect me. My chest twisted tight in love and awe. Blade wrapped his arm around my shoulders. His strong, callused hands rested against my skin—hands that would kill for me, if I asked.
I shivered slightly.
“You okay, Logan?”
“I’ll always be okay, as long as I’m with you, Byron.”
“How does forever sound?”
I tipped my head up and kissed his jaw gently. “Forever sounds perfect to me.”
28
“Cute, isn’t it?” Siren knocked her hip against mine. At the front of the clubhouse, Logan and Blade were wrapped up in a passionate kiss. Blade had Logan nearly flush against his body, and Logan kept his arms wrapped tight around Blade’s neck, his new club leather hanging from his hands. Blade had asked me to order it custom-embroidered for Logan—fancier than the one I got for my patching in, that’s for sure. I had to admit, it’d come out nicely. It was subtle, but assertive, like Logan himself.
Logan broke away from the kiss as Blade’s hands began to travel to his ass, much to the whoops and hollers of the club. Blade wouldn’t be opposed to just staking a physical claim on Logan in front of everyone. Logan would never let him do that, though. And as much as Blade thought he was the boss, Logan had him wrapped around his little finger. All of us in Hell’s Ankhor had known that since Logan walked into Ballast all those months ago. And now the rest of the world would know it, too, whenever Logan wore his club leather.
“Hello,” Siren said, and waved a hand in front of my face. “Earth to Raven.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was enjoying the show.”
“Your turn.” Siren nodded at the pool table. I scanned the table and found a clean shot. Pool always settled my mind, especially during the big parties where I was absolutely expected to make an appearance. Crowds made me a little itchy sometimes. But the game gave me something to focus on, something that didn’t require an immense amount of socialization, and it occupied my hands. The perfect game. I leaned over the table and lined the shot up, visualizing the angle I wanted: the solid five would strike against the side of the table and then rocket through a gap and straight into the corner pocket.
I struck the cue ball. The sound of the balls cracking together always satisfied me. The ball whipped into the corner pocket as expected.
“Nice,” Siren said. She paced around the table as she rubbed chalk on the tip of her pool cue. No one could reliably beat me in pool, but Siren often got close. “They’re cute, aren’t they?”
I glanced up. Blade was holding the jacket out for Logan. “If anyone deserves a little happiness, they do. They went through a hell of a lot.”
“Tell me about it.” Siren rubbed her shoulder.
“Is that still bothering you?”
“I think it’s psychosomatic. Twinges when I think about Vipers,” she said with a smirk. She paused, lined up a shot, then changed her mind about it. “So you knew about him?”
“Yeah.”
Pops wrapped Logan in a tight hug, then ruffled his hair affectionately. He caught my eye from across the room and threw me a wink. I rolled my eyes and turned back the pool table.
Siren was still lining up shots indecisively. “But you didn’t tell anyone.”
“Told Priest,” I said. I never called him Pops in front of club members. Not anymore. “He told me not to tell anyone. Take your enforcer-anger out on him, he outranks me.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes, you are.” I gestured at the table. “The second shot you looked at is the best one.”
She returned to the shot I suggested, arranged a complicated ricochet and almost sank it. “It’s a bad way to run a club,” she groused. “Keeping secrets.”
“Yeah.” I ran a hand through my hair. “When I found out that Logan had been kidnapped, I really thought—I fucked up big time. I love the guy, you know? He’s become one of my best friends. But it worked out okay, I guess.”
“If you ignore the whole bullet in the gut thing.”
“Right. But, you know. He’s been controlled a lot. I think Priest was right to let him keep control of his own story.”
“Easy for you to say,” Siren said. “You’re not the one who had to go pull a gun on a crazy-eyed Viper. Take your shot.”
I lined up another corner pocket shot and missed it deliberately. Siren gave me a knowing half smile and then sunk her previous attempt, then another after it.
“The Nest is still out there,” Siren said. “They’re going to keep causing problems. This was a botched attempt, sure, but it’s not going to stop them from trying to take this territory. If anything, they’ve discovered that Blade has a serious weakness.”
“I know.”
“And Crave won’t let up.”
“I know that, too,” I snapped. “You know I grew up with his turf war, right? I remember the threats, and the border skirmishes, and the slashed tires. And worse. I was young, not an idiot. I’m not going to let Crave and his lackeys get
their stench near my father’s legacy. I’ll bring the hammer down myself if that’s what it takes.”
Siren raised her eyebrows slightly.
I crossed my arms over my chest and met her gaze steadily.
“You’re right,” she said. “Didn’t mean to condescend. I know we can slip into the habit of treating you like you’re still that kid who used to pretend his bicycle was a hog.”
“Whatever.” I neatly sunk three more balls on the pool table.
“You were going easy on me!”
“A little.” I cleared the table.
“Cheeky bitch,” Siren said with a grin. “Quit selling yourself short. I’m getting a drink, you want one?”
I shook my head, lifting my mostly full beer. Siren got roped into the beer pong game as soon as she stepped near it. Gunnar stepped back from the table to let Siren take his place. He placed a hand on Siren’s shoulder in what I knew was a friendly way, but the touch lingered for a few moments, and then slid around to the center of her back.
Fucking asshole. Everyone in the club had their moments of treating me like a fourteen-year-old from time to time but Gunnar—Gunnar, he did it on purpose.
Gunnar glanced over his broad shoulders. He’d taken off his club jacket in the heat of the room, and his thin gray cotton tee stretched tight across his back. His blue eyes lingered on me briefly and then passed on like I didn’t exist.
I wanted him to touch me like he touched Siren.
But if he didn’t want to, fuck him. I re-racked the pool table then broke the balls with a sharp crack, though no one else was playing. I began to methodically work my way through it, sinking the balls in numerical order.
As I’d grown up, Gunnar had been kind, funny, good-natured around me. Even sweet, sometimes. But the moment I turned eighteen, a switch flipped. He stopped talking to me. Stopped interacting with me at all. It was like I turned eighteen and suddenly stopped existing. His interests went elsewhere—mainly, fucking anything with a pulse.
Nearly a decade I’d harbored this stupid crush. It was just part of the landscape of my life. I’d fucked it up, anyway, so it didn’t matter anymore. It just took time to get over a long-term crush like that. I had to be patient with myself.
