Mom’s birthdays are usually awkward affairs.
And this year, instead of getting my toenails trimmed like a prize Pomeranian, I was fucking Rebel in a hallway. Literally. My mom was probably crying hysterically from the moment she woke up to the moment she went to sleep.
“Hey. Hey, what’s up?” Rebel reaches up slowly and trails blood-stained fingertips across the line of my jaw. His touch sends violent shivers chasing through my body. I don’t even want to mention where the sensation settles, growing and growing with an increasing sense of urgency. I take his hand and place it back on his chest.
“I’m fine. Just still…y’know. Dealing.”
“Yeah. Dealing’s pretty shitty.” He looks down at himself—he’s such a mess—and I want to laugh at how insufficient the statement is. I don’t think my body remembers how to laugh anymore, though. Screaming or total, terror-filled silence seem to be the only two functions my vocal chords are capable of.
“Your guys all saw me last night,” I say, trying to keep my eyes off Rebel’s bare chest. I’m morbidly fascinated by the angry red stitches that trail across his stomach and disappear over his side, toward his back. His blood has dried and cracked, turned so dark it’s almost black; it creates bizarre patterns all over the tightly packed muscle of his chest and stomach. “I say guys,” I continue, “but there were two women there, too. An older, really tall woman, and a younger one with pink hair.”
Rebel nods. “Yeah. Fee. Josephine. She’s the tall one. She was one of the first club members. And the one with the pink hair…” He shakes his head ruefully. “That one is the bane of my fucking life. The rest of the crew are guys, though. Did any of them look like they were going to lynch you?” he asks.
“They looked stunned actually. Seems like you did a really good job of keeping me a secret.”
Rebel purses his lips—god, I want to bite them. I can still remember how amazing they felt all over my body—and then he blinks up at the ceiling, like he’s weighing up what he wants to tell me. Eventually, he says, “They’re good guys. The Widow Makers isn’t like any other club, though, Soph. Everyone has a story here. There isn’t a single person here who joined because they think breaking the law is fun. We have a lot of vets here. Like me. Like Cade. After the corps chews you up and spits you out, you kinda feel like…like you’ve lost your family. Unless they’re ex-military too, your blood and bone relatives will never understand what you’ve been through. The bond you build with the other guys in your unit…they’re never just guys by the end. Even the guys you hate, the ones who drive you insane, the ones you wanna kill half the time—they’re your brothers too.” He laughs. “I mean, most brothers want to strangle each other half the time anyway, right? But if someone fucks with them…” Shaking his head, Rebel sighs. “Someone tries to fuck with them and it’s game on. Brothers will defend each other ‘til the death.
“And these guys who somehow found their way to me, they’re even more gung-ho about that stuff than the army. Ramirez has been screwing with me and my family for years now, screwing with our business. These men aren’t going to take that lying down. They’re going to skin the motherfucker alive, given half the chance. They’ll do it by any means necessary. They won’t let a girl they don’t know get in their way. And some of them haven’t exactly had the most stable female role models in their lives, either. A few of them…a few of them don’t see a reason for there to be women around the club at all, other than for the occasional receptacle to sink their dicks into.
“I didn’t want them getting confused about your purpose here, Soph. So, yeah. You were pretty much the most heavily guarded secret I had. That’s seriously saying something. And, no, I’m not sorry for it.”
FIVE
REBEL
The next five days are seriously fucking shitty.
Moving is a uphill struggle—even getting up to take a piss is a monumental effort—and when I do feel well enough to sit up in bed, I’m not even allowed to hold a goddamn book. Cade told Sophia not to let me lift anything and, boy, did the girl take him literally. She reads to me. She fucking reads to me, and it’s amazing. I don’t tell her that, though. I sit with my eyes closed, pretending I don’t notice her eyes are on me more often than they are on the pages of Catch 22.
Unlike the first night I was hurt, she doesn’t sleep with me in the bed anymore. She sleeps on the couch, arms and legs contorted in the most amusing positions, hair wild and crazy all over the cushions.
I can’t believe she’s never come properly. That in itself is a travesty. I mean, yes, she came with me in that hallway, but that was rushed, a spur of the moment thing. Definitely not my best work. I can make her come so much harder than that. I can make her feel like her whole body is being ripped apart at the seams if I want to. And I do. I want to open her eyes. I wanna be the guy to show her what sex can feel like if it’s done properly, by a real man and not by some pissy, soft college kid. I’m gonna turn her whole world on it’s head, and it is going to be so goddamn perfect.
In between what’s going down with Ramirez, Dela Vega, and the gigantic fucking hole in my side, I’m sure thinking about a girl is the most insane thing I could be doing right now, but as I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, Sophia is the only thing occupying my mind.
She may think she’s being smart by sleeping on the other side of the room, but she’s not as clever as she thinks she is. I’ve seen the way she looks at me. She’s the most transparent person on the face of the planet—every thought she has is usually displayed right there on her face for everyone to see. It’s actually quite dangerous, really. Tonight I witnessed her thinking very bad things about me at least three times before she said she was tired and decided to bundle herself up to sleep, and it took every last scrap of will power I possessed to not physically pin her to the mattress and fuck her stupid. If I weren’t in so much pain, I would have done it, too.
I think about that instead of the exposed wooden beams over my bed. I think about getting her on all fours so I can lick her pussy from behind. That quickly progresses into me sliding my fingers inside her as I lick and suck. Despite the burning pain lighting up my side, my cock begins to harden as I get a little more adventurous. By the time I’ve got her sitting on my face, my dick is rock solid and demanding I do something about the throbbing ache. I can’t believe I’m horny. I can’t believe I’m even still awake, considering the two healthy doses of morphine Cade shot me up with earlier. I’ve always burned off drugs really fast, though. And my cock’s never seemed to know when the hell it should be behaving itself.
I try to ignore the growing desire pulsing around my body. I try to sleep. Across the other side of the room, Sophia turns over, the oversized shirt hitching up to expose bare flesh across her stomach. And her panties.
Fuck.
For a Seattle girl, she’s rocking a killer tan. And a killer body to match it.
Go to sleep, Jamie. I try to talk myself into shutting her out, into letting unconsciousness slip over me, but the more I let go of the grip I’m holding on my thoughts, the more they wander to the half naked woman on the other side of the room.
“Jesus,” I whisper softly under my breath. “This is going to end badly.” I last another minute before I’ve had enough. I need to act, need to do something about this. I have to.
Getting up is really not fun. I have to tense my abs to hold everything in tight, which naturally hurts when you’ve just had minor surgery. I feel like if I cough, my intestines are going to burst right out of me all over the floor.