Cash (The Henchmen MC Book 2) (15 page)

Her eyes flashed for a second and I saw the guarded Lo trying to put her defenses back up. In response, I pushed my thumb into her tight pussy, feeling it quiver slightly, just seconds away from tightening and pulsating as she cried through a mind-numbing orgasm.

“B... baby...” she cried out.

“There it is,” I agreed with a smile, slipping the ice out and pressing it against her clit. But just for a split second before I cheeked it while simultaneously slipping my thumb out of her pussy. I pushed her leg off my shoulder and stood quickly. In a sick, unfair way, enjoying the look of utter shock and unfulfilled desire on her face. “Now you know what the fuck I am capable of, what my
reputation
with women has afforded me. Now you want my cock, Lo,” I said with an uncharacteristic cruel smirk, “you're gonna have to
ask for it.
I'm done with this shit,” I said, moving past her and taking off toward my basement to tear into the punching bag until I could think clearly again.

Because I meant what I said- I was so fucking done with that shit, with the 'one minute she wants me, the next she doesn't' shit, with the 'soft and sweet Lo making me dinner and letting me touch her sweet pussy as she cried out my name, then almost cried over the intensity turning into the guarded, snippy, she-wolf Lo with no explanation of the switch'.

I was done.

She wanted me? Well the ball was in her court.

I pounded into the bag until I quieted the voice inside that was praying she picked up a racket to play.

Because that shit just made no sense.

Fourteen

Lo

The second I heard the basement door close, I let my legs give out from under me, sliding down onto the floor, knees to my chest. I wrapped my arms around my legs and tried to deep-breathe through the desire that was no longer bordering on, but had firmly landed in, pain. It hurt. It literally hurt I was so turned on.

“Fuck,” I cursed quietly, closing my eyes tight against the memory of what I had done. I had given him what little power I had left. I had admitted he was good. I told him he was the best that I had ever had. I had said I wanted him to call me baby.

Then he had taken that power along with what had promised to be the orgasm of a lifetime... and walked away with it.

I expected the anger to start building, to flood my system with something familiar, something comfortable that I could latch onto, something I could wrap around myself with it's empty kind of security. But it didn't come. All I felt was the soul-crushing unfulfilled desire and a sadness that felt so deep, I could swear that I could drown in it.

It wasn't that it was new. The sadness, it was always there buried deep, wanting to be dealt with, wanting me to acknowledge it so it would finally go away. But I never did, so it never did.

Somehow, it felt worse than I remembered. It wasn't just a swirling, uncomfortable thing. No, it felt sore.
I
felt sore. I felt like every ounce of happiness, of grit and determination, of hardly won strength got ripped away and left in the wake nothing but pain. It was the kind of pain that started in your soul and heart and radiated outward until you felt it in your bones, in your muscles, in every exposed inch of skin, in every lifeless strand of hair. It was the kind of pain that made you feel like a giant open wound.

The tears stung at the back of my eyes and I didn't bother fighting them. What was the use? What had all the fighting actually gotten me over the years?

I felt my body jolt at those thoughts.

“Freedom,” I told myself quietly. That was what fighting had gotten me- free. It got me a life with colleagues who were like family to me. It got me the chance to build a life that I didn't wake up into every single day wishing to die. It got me security. It got me the confidence to stand up for myself. It got me respect.

And that, well, it was
everything.

I absolutely fucking refused to fall back into the sadness, to let it surround me until my arms were too tired to keep my head above water anymore. I wasn't that woman anymore. I was never going to be her again.

I was going to get the fuck off of his kitchen floor, dry my eyes, get my own god damn clothes on, and take my control back.

Fuck him and his games and his demands. Fuck him and his knee-weakening smile and his heart-pounding endearments. Fuck him and his unwanted attraction to me.

He wanted someone to hate?

Well... fucking... fine.

I would give him someone to hate.

It didn't matter.
He
didn't matter. Who was he anyway? Just a biker. A hard-drinking, casual-sex-having, takes-himself- too- casually, too-good-looking -for- his- own- good, child-man.

I stifled the voice that whispered that in just a couple days, he had elicited a bigger range of emotional responses from me than any man had since I was a teenager. That could easily be explained by the fact that I just got my ass handed to me and was achy and alone without my support system behind me.

Well, that was all about to get fixed.

I pulled myself up off of the floor, swatting my cheeks in what I could only call disgust and stomped over to my duffle bag, hefting it up and slamming it down on the dining table. I rifled inside, pushing three more paperback romances out of the way and grabbing a pair of thick, moss green cargo pants, a bra, and a tan tank top, leaving the thick matching moss green shirt hung off the back of a chair as I slipped newly sock-clad feet into boots. Standing, I felt almost like myself again. The smarting in my ribs was enough to have me wincing when I moved too fast, but that was getting better too. Another two days, I could get back to training.

Unable to do anything that physical, I hauled the laptop out of the bag along with the notebook and pen I stored away, and sat down to get to work. True, I couldn't be at Hailstorm, but that didn't mean I couldn't log into our systems and see what was going on, try to see if I could find any traces of Janie/Jstorm in the deep web. She liked to spend a lot of time in those murky, awful depths, looking for causes for us to champion or sometimes simply to release viruses into real scumbag's systems when she could. Always a maker of chaos and righter of wrongs. That was my strong, yet fragile Janie.

One floor beneath me, the chain to the punching bag was swinging mercilessly and I felt myself nodding as I searched through the internet. Good. I was glad he was in a mood. I hoped his balls felt like they were going to explode.

An hour later, hitting a dead end with Janie, I finally took a deep breath and typed in the name I didn't even want to think of: Damian Crane.

His face popped up along with a couple articles. No social media accounts, not that I had been expecting any. He was never the type of man to put his personal shit out there. His last known address was still the one I was familiar with. His registered car was the silver SUV he had bought new six years before.

Nothing, literally nothing to go on.

“Augh!” I growled at the screen, clicking out of one of the open internet tabs, leaving me staring at a picture of Damian in his black and red jacket with medals hanging off the left side of his chest, big golden buttons down the center, white and black hat on his head, typical Marine deadness to his eyes.

“A little... frustrated?” Cash's teasing voice asked and my head jerked up to where he was leaning in the kitchen doorway.

Christ. How hadn't I heard him climbing up the stairs?

He looked different. Sweaty, sure. The wetness was making his shirt cling to his chest and stomach and the long side of his hair was drenched and slicked slightly back from his face. It wasn't just the exercise-flushed skin or the sweat though. All the traces of genuine anger and confusion and challenge I had seen in his kitchen before were gone. It was the usual Cash standing in front of me- casual, easy-going, playful smirk on his lips.

“Don't flatter yourself. It has nothing to do with you,” I said in as hollow a tone as I could muster.

“Sure it doesn't,” he said, giving me the power of his full smile and I had to force one of my brows to lift. Unaffected, he twisted open the top of the water bottle he was holding and brought it to his lips. I did not... absolutely did not watch his Adam's apple as he swallowed. Nope. Not me. I was a strong, sexually experienced woman who did not go all ga-ga over a fucking Adam's apple. “What?” he asked, looking me up and down and waving a hand at my body, “no guns?”

“Do you really think it would be wise for me to have a weapon on me when I'm around you?” I shot back, giving him my own smirk.

He look down at his feet for a second, shaking his head. “I like this Lo, baby. But I think I like the vulnerable one better.”

“There's only one of me,” I said with force behind my words. I wanted it to be true. It
had
to be true.

“Honey,” he said, rounding the dining table and leaning back against it right beside my chair, “there's at least two of you. And the crazy part? I don't think anyone knows either one.”

God, he was so right. “What? Have you been going to night classes? Psych 101? You don't know what you're talking about.”

His smile got a little softer and his hand reached out, touching my chin gently. “I'm gonna figure you out sooner or later. Just so you know. And I'm sure you'll be pissed at me for getting under those shields, but too fuckin' bad.”

I swallowed hard because nothing about his words suggested there was anything but determination there. “What happened to hating me?”

His fingers stroked out over my cheek. “You know what I think?” he asked, almost as if waiting for an answer. I didn't and, well, I found myself wanting to know so I shook my head. “I think you want me to hate you. I think that's easier for you to accept. So I'm not going to do that anymore.” Oh, hell. Great. That was just great. And he wasn't done either. “I am going to give you something no one has ever given you before.”

I didn't want to ask. I really didn't. But I couldn't help myself. “What's that?”

“A chance.”

Thrown, my head jerked a little, his hand falling from my face. “A chance for what?”

“To show yourself to me.”

I closed my eyes against the rush of warmth at his words. I wanted that. I wanted that chance. I wanted someone who gave a shit enough to be patient, to let me slowly battle my comfort zones. God, how I wanted that.

But that person could not be Cash.

Because Cash would eventually fuck me and be done with me like every woman who came before. Unlike them, though, I would never fully recover. And I had enough damage stitched together with sheer power of will and a hefty thread of denial.

“That's not going to happen, Cash.” Why did my voice sound so sad?

“Maybe... maybe not. We'll see.”

I took a breath, shaking my head. “I'll be out of your hair as soon as my ribs feel better. Another day or two and I should be able to handle my own shit again.”

He shrugged my comment away like it changed nothing and pushed off the table. Before I could think to react, he was standing behind me, bent over my shoulder and looking at the picture open on my laptop.

“He looks like an asshole,” Cash said with a casual chuckle. “Did he drown a bunch of bunnies or something?” he went on, completely oblivious to how my body had tensed, how every cell in my body was poised to attack or run if he overstepped the invisible line I kept around the subject. “Who is Damian Crane, babe?”

Fifteen

Lo

I remembered my wedding night with what was the genuine definition of 'bittersweet'. I was eighteen and way too young to enter into that kind of arrangement, signing my future away to the boy next door. But that being said, it was my only way out. It was the only end in sight. It was the only way to get away from my father. So six weeks after the birthday finally making me legally able to no longer be the property of one man, I walked up to the Justice of the Peace and became the property of another.

I was young, idealistic, nose hopelessly buried in romance novels I bought at the drugstore with the money leftover from buying the groceries for the week- a thing my father allowed only because he felt they were a good way for me to learn to take care of my future husband.

My father liked my husband because, well, he was in the Marines. That was all it took for my dad- be a brother. It didn't matter where your stance was on political issues or social beliefs. If you were a fellow Devil Dog, you were alright in his book.

I had been a virgin, again... young and idealistic about what that meant. I had learned from my books that it would hurt, I would cry, I would bleed, but my partner would totally be able to make me break apart in ecstasy despite of all of that.

What a bitter disappointment to get back to his, then
our,
apartment, have him all but rip my pretty white summer dress off of me, leaving me too shell shocked, humiliated, and insecure to ask him to take it slow. So his big hands closed over my breasts, grabbing, pinching my nipples too hard, but I didn't object. He pressed me backward through the apartment until the backs of my legs hit the bed and I fell onto it. His big body climbed over mine, his lips trailing down my neck, taking my nipples into his mouth and sucking.