Apex Of The Curve (Sacred Hearts MC Pacific Northwest Book 3)

by A. J. Downey

  And the only way to do that? Patience. Consistent love, commitment, and care. Talking it out when shit like this went wrong. There were no shortcuts. There was no end run to be made around it. This was part of who she was, and none of the flaws she imagined she carried was in fact true.

  Being blind to her wonder and her worth? That was her greatest flaw, and a deeply ingrained one at that.

  “First of all,” I said gently, “your biggest mistake here is thinking I give a fuck what anyone else thinks. The only one you gotta impress is me, and you’ve already done that in spades.” I raised the back of her hand to my lips and pressed a kiss to it.

  “Second of all,” I continued, “the only person who thinks you can’t be trusted, or that you’re boring, or what the fuck ever, doesn’t even know you. To be honest, I don’t think he even deserves a chance. The flaw in the design here is that he didn’t give you one. He’s acting more like a citizen than you are being all judgy and shit. That ain’t supposed to be what we’re about.”

  She sat mutely, staring into my eyes, the wheels in that pretty little head of her’s turning, chewing through what I was saying.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said, and I barked a laugh.

  “I’m not the one who’s gonna be hurting,” I said. “Look, I’d be lying if I said this life didn’t come with its fair share of cuts, bumps, and bruises… but they heal. The kind of broken I’m faced with, you walking away from me, even now, even after so little time?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to hurt like that, baby. I honestly wouldn’t be able to sleep at night wondering, not knowing how you’re doing, scared you’d be out here getting steamrolled by life because let’s face it. It’s run over you more than a couple of times lately.”

  She nodded and gave a choked, bitter laugh.

  “You’re not lying about that,” she said and closed her eyes sighing.

  “I think it’s time you stopped thinking and worrying about everyone else,” I said and tried to keep my voice soothing, knowing how anathema to her that very statement was. A complete opposite to her entire being. “I think it’s time you took time to worry about yourself. To take care of you and find the things you love. Get back to some of that, move forward with something new… on your terms and nobody else’s.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” she whispered, crystalline tears falling from those emerald eyes of hers.

  “I do,” I said with a half-smile. “Can teach you what you need to know on that front easy.”

  “Yeah?” she asked softly, her gaze a little eager.

  “Yup. It’s all about the subtle art of not giving a fuck.”

  She laughed, an abrupt but good sound.

  A silence stretched between us and I took a cleansing breath and asked her, “So, what do you want? What do you really want?”

  “I want my divorce to be over,” she said. “I want Charles and all of his bullshit out of my life once and for all. For good.”

  “Could kill him for you, if you’d like,” I said casually, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.

  “Ha, ha,” she said and her voice was laden with sarcasm. Must have been the look I gave her, because it was like I’d stolen the very air she breathed from the room.

  “You’re not joking,” she said quietly, and I kept my gaze steady.

  “I’m only half joking,” I said, and she swallowed hard.

  “That scares me,” she admitted honestly.

  “Why should it?” I asked. “Club charter has a rule, no women and no children. No exceptions. You’re as safe as can be.”

  “It’s not that,” she said a little helplessly, and I cocked my head.

  “Then what?”

  “For as awful as things are right now, and as awful as he’s been… Charles didn’t mean for my mother or my brother to die. He didn’t mean for me to discover his cheating the day after my brother’s funeral. He’s just angry, wants to talk to me, and he thinks by pouring the pressure on, he’ll get me to crack… none of those things should be execution worthy.”

  I nodded slow. “Does make him a monumental asshole at least worth an ass whoopin’,” I said.

  “Okay,” she conceded. “I’ll give you that, but I don’t want that either.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Easy enough.”

  “Because that’s not the way I handle things!” she cried. “Everything Charles has done so far is on Charles, is a reflection of who Charles is. I don’t want or have to do bad things because that would just be a reflection of me and I don’t want to be that kind of ugly when I look into the mirror.”

  I bowed my head and nodded carefully, unsure how to bridge the gap here because I was the type of ugly she was talking about here. My soul was stained, I wasn’t above getting dirty, and I didn’t know what that meant for her.

  “Is it a dealbreaker that I am?” I asked.

  “That you’re what?” she asked, and the confusion was clear in her green eyes.

  “That I am that type of ugly. That I can look in the mirror just fine most days with the man I am.”

  Her mouth dropped open in a little ‘o’ of surprise and she protested, “You’re not, though.”

  “You don’t know the things I’ve done, baby. You can’t know.”

  She took her hands from mine with an inarticulate cry of frustration and covered her face with them.

  “What was the last bad thing you did?” she demanded firmly, taking her hands from her face and fixing me with a diamond hard look.

  “Broke a man’s arms,” I said, without any preamble.

  “Why?”

  “He broke into the club’s property and stole from us.”

  “I’m not even going to ask why you didn’t call the police,” she said and her face set into lines of grim resignation.

  “Yeah, pretty pointless. They’d take a report and fuck right off never to be seen or heard from again. They don’t care.” I gave a little shrug.

  “What did you hope to accomplish, hurting him?”

  “Well,” I said with a sigh. “He’ll never steal from us again, that’s for sure. By extension, we’ll get our shit back, and maybe he’ll be scared straight. Get himself clean.”

  She stared at me, eyes bouncing back and forth over my face. She sighed.

  “How do you know I won’t go to the police?” she asked.

  “I trust you,” I answered simply. “You go to the police; I’d probably be fucked. Likewise, you tell anyone in the club I told you club business? I’d get my ass royally handed to me and it might not be no pair of broken arms.”

  “Then where would your father be?” she asked softly. “With the farm?”

  “Royally disappointed in my ass, that’s for sure,” I said with a chuckle. “And not for breaking the dude’s arms.”

  She sighed and her shoulders dropped in defeat. “I understand it,” she said softly. “I just don’t know if it’s something I can ever condone.”

  “Not asking you to, baby. None of us really do, I don’t think. We all know it’s between us and our maker when the time comes. Every man among us has our demons. We all know what rejection feels like as we try to make our way through this life. Hell, some of us know rejection so hard that’s why we’re here. So we can know what it’s like to have one place where we belong.”

  “That breaks my heart,” she murmured.

  I nodded.

  “Mine too, since I’m being honest. That’s why I’m here. A part of the club, I mean. It’s a strange way to balance my scales, but it’s worked for me… They also accepted me when no one else would.”

  “There’s a good and a bad to everything, I suppose,” she said softly.

  “That’s the truth, Little Leaf,” I said.

  “We might be rough around the edges, we might be the kind of thing most normal people fear, but they only fear what they can’t understand and the thing most people could never understand about us? Is the depths of love, loyalty, and brotherho
od we’ll go to for one another.”

  She bit her lips together and regarded me and finally confessed, “I am so tired of being alone, and afraid, and of not having anyone I feel like I can trust. There’s none of that when I’m with you but…”

  I sniffed and nodded, “I’m right here, baby girl. You can trust me, and I’m telling you right now, any motherfucker tries? He’s going to have a lot more to worry about than a pair of broken arms. As for the rest? Tic is an outlier. Maybe some of the rest of the boys don’t trust you yet, but trust comes with time and unlike Tic? They’re willing to give you that.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, I just thought—”

  “I know, baby. I know. And you ain’t lost me. I’m right here.” I opened my arms, and she leaned forward, resting her head against my shoulder and crying softly, letting the last of whatever it was holding her back go… and I was here for it. Right here.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Aspen…

  Maybe it was foolish of me, I don’t know… maybe it was impulsive. Crazy. A bad idea… but I went home with him. I didn’t even take my car. I rode with him to his place, frozen to the bone after the chilly ride and shivering even despite the warm leather jacket.

  He took it from me, inside the back door, and hung it on the line of pegs in the mudroom before shucking out of his own.

  “Upstairs, babe. Let’s get you warm,” he murmured, and I nodded.

  We went up the stairs and I paused, unsure which direction. Bathroom or bedroom? He touched my shoulder gently and went past me to the bedroom, taking my hand to pull me after him, closing the door behind us.

  Wordlessly, he went and lit the candles and put on the deeply primitive yet healing Nordic music that he preferred and that I was growing to adore.

  He came back to me, reaching past me, clasping a hand on my hip and pulling me tight against his body, his mouth finding mine. I melted into the safe and familiar place of solitude that his kiss brought to me. The storm in my mind of mixed emotions falling silent. The surety that this is where I belonged, in the circle of his arms, crashing into me, sweeping over and through me, twisting me around and showing me that all my doubts were utter bullshit.

  God, I was like a trained damned monkey. Constantly trying to live up to the shifting expectations of a woman who was dead and my ex-husband who had very likely never even cared for me from the beginning… only for what he thought I could do for him.

  With Fenris, everything was different. All pretenses stripped away, no nonsense. No expectations, no more bullshit.

  Just, this is me and how I live my life and I hope you can accept me.

  Which wasn’t that what I wanted? To be loved, to be wanted, to be allowed to exist as I was?

  I held onto Fenris tightly and kissed him back fervently and with passion. His grip on me tightened, his other arm joining the first to wrap around me, and I had to think, his notion of warming me up was right on target. The fire of my desire stoked, the low burning coals sparking, flame licking up from low in my belly and tickling me just beneath my breastbone. Nipples tightening with my arousal, my breath stolen, my body responding to his touch like a night-blooming flower whose petals had been touched by the moon, unfurling and perfuming the air sweetly.

  Our hands worked without conscious thought, plucking at buttons, lifting fabric, and lowering zippers. Cold hands against warm skin, teeth nipping, tongues licking, fingers grasping and through it all the panting. The feral little grunts of need and frustration as we both tried to meet one solitary need – to be fitted to one another as intimately as possible in as short amount of time as possible.

  He picked me up, once we were both nude, and I put my arms around him. He laid me back on the bed and crawled up behind me, fitting himself between my legs, his mouth back to mine, his arms tenderly around me as we made out, ravenous for one another.

  He thrust his cock against me, rubbing against my pussy lips, not penetrating, not yet, but the sensation of his velvet length against my clit was amazing, driving me wild. I grasped his face between my hands, his beard rough against my palms

  He felt so good against me. Strong, capable, and fiercely protective. I gave in. I wanted to. I needed to. To feel this kind of savage love felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity and I didn’t want to cast that aside. Not when I had been desperate to feel this loved for so long.

  I wrapped myself around him like ivy. Holding onto him as fiercely as he held onto me. Crying out into his mouth when he found purchase and sank into me. I wasn’t quite ready, but my body quickly adjusted.

  He thrust deep inside me, and I clung to him. Both of us moving against each other in perfect synchronicity. I don’t know how long we were like that. How many songs passed through the shuffle of his playlist, or how far the candles burned down. I didn’t care. He didn’t care. It was just us. Both he and I existing, breathing hot and heavy the same air, the dew of sweat cooling our skins, his gods watching for all I cared as we loved each other deep into the night.

  I don’t know how many times I came – a gentle rolling ebb and flow of wave after wave of pleasure crashing onto my shore.

  Likewise, I didn’t know how many position changes he took us through. Always careful of me, that nothing grew too tired.

  My back, my knees, my stomach, on top of him. Each transition fluid and at the perfect time. Gazing down at him in the firelight from all those flickering candles… I didn’t know who was worshipped or who was doing the worshipping. Perhaps it was both of us. Perhaps neither. Perhaps, the old gods he sometimes spoke of watched.

  I had no doubt in my mind of their approval.

  We lay in the candle lit twilight. Close; me nestled into his side a leg over his and my head on his shoulder. He traced spirals on my back, his other hand a warm weight on my thigh as I stared unseeing and vacant, my mind barely lucid as I drifted in the calm waters of afterglow. He kissed the top of my head suddenly, as though he’d just woken from a dream himself and asked, “You doing alright?”

  “I’m good,” I said dreamily, and he chuckled and kissed my hair again, his hand trailing fingertips up my spine and burying in the back of my hair, massaging the base of my skull, causing me to groan in a completely different pleasure.

  “You ever think about what kind of life you want to live?” he asked.

  “A simple one,” I answered immediately. “One where I can make my pottery and glaze it. I wish I could go back to selling it at markets… I don’t want to close down my shop, but I do at the same time.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It feels like my old life. It’s not making money, and I really just want my divorce finalized. I hate giving Charles what he wants, but I just can’t do this anymore. I’m… I’m tired.”

  I let the defeat creep into my voice and I hated that, to some effect but that was what it was. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I couldn’t keep pretending that I was strong, or some kind of a badass. I wasn’t. I was just tired. Tired of Charles, tired of grieving, tired of struggling, and tired of having to be the one to make all of these complicated decisions.

  I took a deep breath. Fenris had trusted me implicitly earlier tonight, and I felt the least I could do was return the favor.

  I trusted him back and spilled my guts about all of it. About exactly how I felt, and he just squeezed me a little tighter and kissed the top of my head again. “What if I told you there might be a way to have your cake and eat it, too?” he asked.

  “How?” I asked, sniffling, an errant tear dripping down my nose.

  “You need to liquidate your assets in the business, yeah?” he asked. “To give him his half?”

  “Yeah, but they were all bought with my money, it’s hardly fair,” I said.

  “They’re yours, and ain’t nobody said you have to sell them for what they’re worth.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Sell the whole fuckin’ lot to me for a buck, then when your husband wants his half, give him a check for
fifty cents and tell him to fuck off. Of course, one of my boy’s suggested selling for even lower than that. He said do four cents, so that when it came to giving him his half, you could hand him your two cents.”

  I laughed. Oh, God. I actually liked the sound of that!

  “I mean, I don’t know… could I do that?”

  “Mav is the smart and devious mind when it comes to the law. Let me run it by him?”

  “Sure,” I said softly.

  “How much you got left on your lease?” he asked me and I hadn’t even thought that far ahead.

  “Um, I don’t know,” I answered. “I didn’t even think about that and I can’t remember dates and times for the life of me right now. I mean, if it’s not right in front of my face and on some sort of fire that needs putting out, I don’t seem to have a head for anything.

  “That’s okay, baby. That’s okay.”

  “There’s just so much…” I said. “Not just with Charles but with my brother’s widow and my nephew, Silver.”

  “What’s going on with them?” he asked.

  “I think they’re going to have to move in with me at my mom’s before too long. Christen can’t keep up with the house payments. My brother had life insurance, but the policy won’t cover the remainder owed on their house. Not even close.”

  “Not sure how that’s your problem, babe.”

  “My sister-in-law and I may have no love lost between us, but I can’t do that to my nephew. I would never do that to my brother’s son.”

  “That’s fair,” he said. “You’re a good woman, you do know that, don’t you?”

  “Eh, I’m alright,” I tried to joke, but he wouldn’t let me get away with it. He tipped my chin, and I looked up at him.

  “You’re a good woman, Aspen, and it’s only one of the many reasons why I love you.”

  I think I forgot to breathe. The sincerity in his eyes was something that I didn’t think could be matched.

  “We’re gonna get you all sorted out, baby. One complication at a time. You just tell me where to start.”