by Zahra Girard
“So, how’d you end up joining if you started off by pissing off the president of the club?”
“He liked my attitude. Liked that I had guts. Thought with a little guidance, I could do well for myself. We started hanging out with the club soon after, learning about cars and shit and, once I’d graduated, Ruby and Stone let me prospect. It gave me something I needed in my life: family. Not just one person, but a whole group of people that, even when they’re fighting with you, they’ve got nothing but love for you. Now, when I come up here to think, I don’t think about moving on — I just think about how much I love my home and about how I can keep Lone Mesa a good place to live.”
Sam looks down at the twinkling lights of Lone Mesa and then back at the small waterfall.
“It’s a beautiful spot.”
“Do you understand where I’m coming from?”
She bites her lip; I could watch her wrestle with doubt all day.
“I do.”
“You know I’ve done plenty of things in my past. Things that put me in no position to judge someone else. You can tell me how you’re connected to the Makris family and it won’t matter — the only thing I care about is keeping you and my family safe.”
She sighs and then worries her lip more. Fuck, if it isn’t the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I never would’ve thought such a simple, chaste act of indecision could turn me on more than anything a club girl could do; it all pales in comparison to the sight of Samantha Baker dealing with needling doubt.
She keeps her eyes on the town as she speaks.
“We moved around a lot when I was a kid. My dad was a project manager for an aerospace company, so they’d move him from one factory to another depending on what plane they were building and what factory needed help to get back on target. He was good at it, but it meant I had a hard time putting down roots. It was just me, my brother, my mom, and my dad. I didn’t have a lot of friends because we kept moving. So my brother was my best friend. We watched out for each other. When I got out of college, I kept moving — first volunteering and then bouncing around a bit as a nurse. I got even more rootless when my parents died. I didn’t originally even plan on coming to Lone Mesa, but then…”
She stops.
Her voice is choked with the kind of pain that draws me closer and the only thought that crosses my mind is that I need to comfort her. My arm slips around her shoulders and she presses her cheek against my chest. Out of all the emotions I’ve felt in this spot — this place that has been special and transformative for me for so many years — this feeling of being truly close to Samantha is better than all the rest.
“What is it?” I murmur. “You can talk to me. I just want to help you, Samantha.”
Her eyes explore the distance. Still searching for something. The truth, I hope.
She turns her focus upward. There’s an emerald storm in her eyes. She stops worrying her lip in that way that sets my blood on fire.
Then, after a soft sigh, she crushes her lips to mine.
To hell with making her talk — I’m going to make her moan.
Chapter Twelve
Samantha
Every one of my defenses crumbles and I feel the terrible truth starting to escape my lips. He’s breaking me down with his intensity, with the passion that he exudes, and I am seconds away from the truth spilling from my lips. So I panic. And I do what comes natural around a man as magnetic as him: I press my lips together and put them to his.
It’s an effective way to hide the truth.
And it feels wonderful beyond description.
He kisses me back in a way that makes my toes curl; any nagging thoughts of confession flee my mind to be replaced with one singular thought: how bad I want to ride him.
“I need you,” he whispers. “I want you.”
“Then take me.”
Forcefully, he puts his hands on my hips and presses me backwards until I’m resting against the hard rock wall of the mesa. Mist from the waterfall hits my body, the chill water raising goosebumps and drawing a gasp from my lips.
He kisses my neck, my chest, and his hands make short work of my shirt, ripping it off me and casting it to the dirt. There’s no stopping what I’ve set in motion, and my body thrills with intense satisfaction as he takes a step back from me and begins stripping off his own shirt.
Tattoos, muscles, danger — he’s everything I’ve never experienced and yet ached to get close to from the second I saw him. He smirks at me as my eyes devour every muscular inch of him.
“Something wrong with your tongue, nurse?”
Then it’s my turn to smile. I get on my knees in front of him and start undoing the buttons of his jeans.
“No, it works just fine. Let me show you.”
I tug his unbuttoned jeans down and, with hands that shake in anticipation, pull his thick cock free. His moans join the gentle murmur of the waterfall behind us as I gently kiss my way up the full length of his shaft. Then, opening wide, I take as much of him between my lips as I can.
He’s more than a mouthful.
“Holy shit, you’re fucking good,” he moans as he runs his fingers through my hair. The way he growls those words makes my cheeks flush. It’s primal, raw and, in the deepest part of me, makes me proud that I’ve outdone all the club girls he’s been with.
“That so?” I say, taking him out of my mouth and running my tongue from base to tip.
He shivers, and it’s not from the cold.
I tighten my grip on his cock and give him one slow tug. “What’s the matter? Something wrong with your tongue, Razor?”
“Not a chance.”
Reaching down, he grips me by my sides and hauls me to my feet. He’s so strong. Then he presses me face-first against the wall. Before I know what’s happening, he’s ripped my pants to my ankles and buried his face in my ass.
My eyes shut as his tongue explores me in ways I’ve never felt before. My knees wobble and the voice that comes out of my lips in deep, lustful moans is one I don’t even recognize.
Holy fuck, what in the hell is he doing to me?
For what feels like a blissful forever, he keeps me pressed against that wall in a state of torturous pleasure, his tongue taking me in ways that set my whole body on fire. This isn’t what I had in mind when I kissed him, but there’s not a single part of me that wants him to stop.
My hips rock, my skin tingles with a pleasure that builds and builds in my center, waiting to explode.
“Don’t stop,” I gasp through clenched teeth.
“Wouldn’t fucking dream of it.”
Then he does something with his tongue and his finger that makes me lean even further backward, pressing my ass against his face and losing my grip on the wall. I nearly collapse, my knees buckling, and I would fall except for his hands holding me up. I shiver and shake at the attention he gives me, my whole body is on fire, clenching and releasing reflexively as ecstasy overtakes every single one of my senses.
“God damn,” I mumble when my wits return and my legs can bear my own weight.
He rises to his feet and puts his hands on my hips.
“You taste good,” he growls in my ear.
I feel his hard cock resting against my ass. Tempting me. Calling to me. This started as a game — a distraction — but now I want to take it all the way.
“Are you clean?” I whisper. Without even thinking about it, my hand wraps around his cock again, just waiting for the go-ahead to guide it into my pussy. Holy shit, the things this man does to me.
“I am. I take that part of my health seriously, nurse,” he growls. His cock throbs in my grasp.
“Fuck me, Razor,” I moan.
He hardly needs the encouragement. It takes everything I have to hold myself upright when I feel him enter me. My body is an electrified mess of pleasure that explodes through every single neuron and synapse.
As he fucks me from behind — my body shaking with each thrust and my primal moans urging him to keep goi
ng, harder — I’m nothing but an animal. A base, pure, animal, free from any concerns and worries, with nothing more important on my mind than how good it feels to be fucking this man and how, though I tried to deny it for so long, I really want to know what it feels like when he climaxes inside me.
Want. Need. Desire.
“You are so fucking tight,” he moans. “God fucking damn.”
Time passes in a blur, nothing but his body joining mine and the sound of our gasping breaths mixing with the trickling of the waterfall as we fuck under the light of twinkling stars.
This was supposed to be a distraction, but it’s turned into something so much more. Because, fuck, I love having his hard cock inside me.
And love might just be an understatement.
I shake because of the things he does to me. My body is rolling and riding higher on a wave of pleasure that just keeps growing until it’s the kind of tsunami that would devastate an entire coastline. His dick is hitting me just right and threatening to ruin every single one of my senses.
Oh, how I want that ruin.
“Keep going. Fuck me harder. Harder,” I beg. He’s so close; I’m so close. Just a little more.
A hard crack against my ass tenses my body, then that same hand that spanked me wanders along lower back, circling and teasing at my asshole.
I want more, and now he’s about to give it to me.
I relax. Breathe out.
He slips a finger inside me.
And I break.
Moaning and clawing at the dirt like an animal, I come. Seconds later, I hear him groan behind me and feel him release. I fight for air like I’m underwater as waves of pleasure roll over me, drowning me beneath their suffocating heat.
What the fuck has he done to me?
And when can we do it again?
I stand and lean back into him, his dick still inside me, still twitching. He wraps me in his arms, his hands idly wandering over my body, sending aftershocks rippling throughout me.
I tilt my head. Look up into his eyes. They’re bright, piercing, intense. “Do you live far from here?”
“Not far,” he growls.
“Shall we?”
He grins.
* * * * *
I wake up in his bed and cast my eyes around his room. His place is a lot nicer than I would’ve expected. Heck, with a man like him, I wouldn’t be surprised to be waking up on a futon in a mechanic’s garage. Instead, I’m in a one-bedroom home that, while humble, is at least clean and comfortable.
Even though his house is clean, I still feel dirty being here; not just because of what we did the night before and throughout the early hours of the morning, but because, after all we’ve been through together, I’m still hiding things from him. Still lying. I fucked him because I couldn’t think of any other way to get out of his questions than to come up with a distraction that he couldn’t avoid.
The secrets he wants to pry from me are ones that aren’t mine to share. Secrets that would ruin me — ruin us — if they got out.
I slip out of bed and stand on my achy legs. Every part of me hurts in a good way. Even injured, Razor has an endurance and appetite that pushes me to my limits.
I walk out of the bedroom and head to the kitchen. I start a pot of coffee. Then, cup in hand, I look around and try to wrap my head around my situation.
I wish I could talk to Razor. As crazy as it sounds, I trust him. Well, as much as I can trust anyone that leads his kind of lifestyle. Even if his methods might be suspect, I still know he means well.
But there’s too much that will go wrong if I let him in on my secret and I’m playing with fire already just by getting close to him.
My phone rings. The ring is coming from the pile of clothes I left in the entryway — Razor and I hardly made it through the door before we were on each other — and, not wanting to wake him, I dig through the clothes like a burrowing gopher and extract my phone from the pile.
It’s my brother.
“Robbie, hey, what’s up?”
“Sam, what the hell are you up to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Kael Makris is on his way to Lone Mesa. I heard that he’s not able to get in touch with his brother, Nico. He left LA just yesterday, talking about how there’s some biker gang mixed up in all this, too. Kael is going to be on the warpath. This is bad, sis. It’s bad for me. It’s bad for you. It’s dangerous. What in the hell are you doing?”
I grit my teeth so tight my dentist would have a fit. My brother, as much as I love him, can be so thick sometimes.
“What am I doing? The best I can. I didn’t want to be mixed up in any of this. I don’t want to be here and I don’t want to be working for these fucking criminals. This isn’t my thing, Robbie. I’m a fucking nurse, not a drug dealer.”
“It’s our thing, sis. Or, what, are you just going to leave me hung out to dry? I thought you cared about me.”
“I do care about you. But you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I’m just asking one small thing so that, you know, I don’t get killed.”
I hold my phone away for a second — I need a break from his selfishness.
“You’re the one who got involved with them, Robbie. The only reason they’re after me is because of you. You and your debts. I can’t believe someone who is so smart — and you are fucking brilliant — can be so fucking stupid.”
“It’s just bad luck, sis.”
“Bad luck? How much money did you gamble? How much do you owe them?”
“That’s not the point.”
“How is it not the point?” My teeth are on the verge of cracking I’m biting so hard. How can someone smart enough ace their way through MIT and land themselves a job as a mechanical engineer for a major LA shipping company manage to be so dumb?
“What’s done is done. We need to focus on the immediate problem of getting ourselves out of this mess. Do you know what happened to Nico?”
“Nico’s dead.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the Makris family and the biker gang in town have been at each other’s throats. There was a shooting the other night and a fire at the gang’s trucking yard just yesterday — if Kael can’t reach Nico, that means he’s dead.”
“Shit. You know that means Kael will want to speed things up. You won’t just be gradually helping them steal drugs piecemeal; this will have to be big to pay off our debt.”
“It’s not our debt, Robbie. It’s your debt.”
“Sis, stop with the self-righteous bullshit. Please. It gives me a headache. If you don’t help and do exactly what Kael says, you know they will murder me. And you. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then do what they say. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to get back to work — there’s a meeting thing soon. I just wanted to do the nice thing and give you a heads up about Kael. Be careful, sis. I love you.”
“Love you, Robbie.”
Then he hangs up.
I’ve never felt as alone as I do in that moment. Standing in Razor’s kitchen, knowing that there will always be this secret between us, and realizing that the person I used to count on the most in this world — my own brother — is just a selfish, unreliable prick.
And here I am trapped in the middle.
My thoughts drift back to Razor. It hurts my heart to keep these secrets from him but, no matter what he might say, I’m beyond his help. I need to leave. I put my clothes on and write him a note that, to put it in generous terms, is brusque.
It’s foolish to spend any more time around him. I’m just setting myself up for further heartbreak. No matter what my heart or my body wants, I can’t forget that I’m here for a mission.
And if I don’t come through, Kael Makris and his family will kill me and everyone I love.
Chapter Thirteen
Razor
I wake up alone. Quiet house, coffee pot half full, and a note o
n my kitchen counter that just says, “Need space. Goodbye. Florence” and that’s it.
I’ve never been in this position before. I’m the one slinking for the door early in the morning or giving a reluctant woman the boot before she can get any stupid ideas about spending quality time together.
This is a weird place to be.
And it’s even stranger that, now that I’ve got this time to myself, I’d actually rather be spending it with her. Samantha’s an intriguing woman, and I mean that beyond the fact that she sure knows how to fuck and doesn’t mind a man taking a taste of her delicious ass while he eats her out.
God damn, I’m getting hard again just thinking about her curves.
Sipping my coffee, I make myself a half-hearted breakfast of some toast, bacon, and a shittily-fried egg; I hardly taste any of it; I’m too focused on remembering what she tastes like.
Then, even more surprising, I imagine what my day would be like if she were here to spend it with me. Another novel first — wanting to spend time with a hot piece of ass outside of the confines of a bedroom.
“What the fuck am I even doing?” I mutter out loud.
Am I whipped?
Is it possible to be whipped like this? Whipped in absentia?
Or am I feeling something else for her?
Fuck if I know.
But one thing I’m certain of is that, no matter what the reasons are, if I want to spend more time with Samantha I will have to get her out from under the thumb of the Makris family.
