Hellbent (Four Horsemen MC Book 5) (22 page)

Heat rolled through him and the strength of the want coiling in his belly had him shaking. He turned his head, brushing his lips along the line of Shep's shoulders. He felt Shep's shudder and saw a flutter of his eyelids. The bastard was awake. Pretty Boy smirked and slowly pressed his palm against the head of Shep's cock.

A low growl raised the hair on the back of Pretty Boy's neck. The next second, he'd been flipped on his back, Shep poised above him, blue eyes wide open. "Morning."

"Morning." Pretty Boy gritted his teeth, trying not to grind his hips up. "Care to explain how you ended up in my bed?"

"I’m trying to remember." Shep lowered himself a little, his hair hanging in his face, free from the confines of fresh product. His eyes fixed on Pretty Boy's mouth.

Fuck it.

Pretty Boy rolled his hips up into Shep’s crotch, leveraging his weight back on his arms to save the strain on his ribs. Shep hissed, his back bowing as he closed his eyes and bit his lip. He repeated the move and Shep came crashing down on him, mouth on his, knee between his thighs, hands all up in his hair.

"Fuck me," Pretty Boy groaned.

Shep muttered something that might have been
don't tempt me
and ground against him in a rocking, swiveling rhythm that should not have gotten him that hot that fast. Pretty Boy gasped, desperately following Shep's movements as his heels dug into the mattress.

A knock sounded at the door.

"Hello? Everyone decent in there?" Lexi's bright alto sing-songed through the door.

"Definitely fucking not," Shep groaned. "Give us a minute!"

"I have coffee…and clean towels…and pants,” she called.

Pretty Boy glanced around. "Did she say pants?"

Shep grimaced. "She did."

The knock was more insistent this time. "Uh guys? Can you hurry it up? Coffeepot's a little heavy … and hot."

"Lexi, did you steal my pants?" Pretty Boy shouted through the door.

"Yes—and washed them. So, you're welcome. Now can I come in or what?"

Pretty Boy sighed and wriggled out from under Shep, who just collapsed. He yanked the thicker blanket up chest-high over both of them and shoved a pillow in his lap for good measure as he leaned against the headrest.

He looked at Shep for confirmation, but his head was still buried. "Come in."

"About time." She opened the door and froze on the threshold, eyes traveling over the rumpled bed, Pretty Boy's strategically positioned pillow and Shep hiding his face. "Sorry to interrupt."

Shep grumbled something that might have been a denial, but was too muffled to make out.

Lexi was dressed in a pair of Slytherin pajama pants and a spaghetti strap tank top, her hair shoved into a messy lump on her head. In one hand she held a steaming  travel mug, the lid piled high with sugar packets and creamers, there was a Dr. Pepper tucked in the bend of her elbow and a laundry basket balance on her opposite hip. She dropped the basket at the foot of the bed and set the drinks on the bedside stand.

She snuck another look at the two of them, grinned, covering her mouth. "Voo says he'll have breakfast on the table in ten. Hustle if you want to shower."

Lexi practically skipped out the door, her blond hair bouncing as she went.

Pretty Boy turned his back to give Shep a minute to pull his shit together. He took his time fixing his coffee, shaking out each sugar packet, draining every drop of creamer, stirring for twice as long as necessary. Finally, he leaned against the headboard and looked at Shep. The VP sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, fingers splayed through his hair.  His 'Think on Your Sins' tattoo stretched and contracted as he took a long, hitching breath.

Pretty Boy blinked away the sudden stinging from his eyes. Shep was falling apart in front of him. And it was his fault. It was humbling, exhilarating, terrifying. Guilt ate at his stomach. He knew he wasn't worth all this trouble.

But being able to shake a man as strong as Shep, the power of seeing it unfold in front of him was irresistible poison. It was killing him.

It was worth it.

"You alright, Shep?" he asked softly.

Shep stiffened, hands falling from his hair. He turned to face him and Pretty Boy gasped.  Shep's blue eyes were lit with pain and regret, something desperate and hungry flickering in them.

"What's going on?" Pretty Boy shifted closer. "Did something happen with Axel? About what I did?"

The sound Shep made could best be described as an anti-laugh. Whatever this shit was, it was serious. "What
you
did?"

Unraveling an enigma with a hangover was just not working for him today. And he was gettin' worried. "The fuck's going on?"

Shep climbed to his feet, the muscular lines of his tawny legs showing beneath his snug boxer briefs. He grabbed his jeans out of the basket and yanked them on, tossing the shirt over his shoulder. His low slung jeans framed the sharp V cut into his hips, the lean ridges of his abs tensing when he faced Pretty Boy. His hair stuck out in crazy angles, jaw covered with a fine shadow of scruff. Shep held his gaze as he crossed the room, standing beside the bed.

"Shep?" He asked softly, searching for some kind of answer through the fuzz in his brain.

Shep leaned down and pressed his lips to Pretty Boy's firmly for a minute. He pulled back, shaking his head, eyes hollow and ringed with self-loathing. He walked to the door, hesitating on the threshold and said without turning around, "Happy birthday, Noah."

Fuck.

The door shut firmly behind Shep. He could hear the sounds of the VP making excuses as he booked it for the closest exit.

He'd been so hungover, he'd forgotten the original reason he'd started getting so sauced. He hadn't even told the other prospects today was his birthday. People never understood not wanting to celebrate a thing.

But since his eighteenth, he only spent his birthdays with one person. And 'celebration' didn't quite cover it.

A gentle knock sounded and the door swooshed back open. Lexi stood in the doorway, clutching a cup of coffee. "You okay?"

"Can you say that quieter and also with more caffeine in my bloodstream?" He smiled tightly.

"Need a friend? And an aspirin?" She pulled a plastic bottle out of her pajama pocket.

Belatedly realizing he hadn't taken advantage of the opportunity to put on pants, he shifted the covers more fully across his lap. Then he patted the empty space next to him. Lexi settled against his side, her head tilted companionably on his shoulder. "I know your secret, bro."

"If you know it, then what makes you think it’s a secret?" he countered.

She took a long drink of coffee. "So the other day, I was talking with this girl named Tina. She and her boyfriend have this bizarre 'it's totally complicated' open relationship thing. And they're really big into the underground MMA-style fighting scene."

"The what now?" Pretty Boy poured a little more coffee into his cup to heat it up.

"Thing is—" her voice dropped to a slumber party whisper. "They both had this fantasy about banging the winner of some off-the-books barely-legal prizefight. Together. It was on their sex bucket list. And she was just telling me about how they crossed that one off this past summer."

His breath caught and he darted a look at her.

She grinned. “Relax. I have told no one. Nor will I.”

"So I'm bisexual." He shrugged. “It’s not really a secret, it’s just—from what I’ve heard ‘round the club room, the MC is a ‘hetero’ only type of organization. So I keep it on the down low. Or try, anyway.”

She gave him a look. “That was my lead up, not the secret.”

He squared his jaw. “You want to talk secrets, sweetie? I got two words for you—Voo. Doo."

"Shep. Herd." She stuck her tongue out at him.

He shrugged. "We’re old friends. That’s not a secret."

"Oh, I'm sorry – have you been telling everyone you're in love with the Four Horseman VP? Sorry, I overlooked that in the newsletter."  She pulled back to give him a look.

He sighed, closing his eyes. Cap's daughter was one of the sharpest in the shed. He should have known the gig was up the minute that little blond ponytail bounced on in here.

"So, you should know that when I shoved you two in a room together last night, I didn't think the morning-after would turn out like that."

He shook his head, a smile sneaking across his face. "You shoved us in a room together?"

"Guilty. But to be fair, I just put him in the room. He put himself in the bed." She shrugged.

"He's also the one that took outta here like the devil was on his heels."

Chapter Twenty-Three

We’ve all done shit we regret. Don’t judge your brothers.

~Four Horsemen Prospect Handbook

* * *

Shep's bike raced along the straightaways out of Hell. He gunned it, shoulders hunched and fuck the speed limit. He'd give anything to be on his way to the bar, but for the past seven years he'd manned up and faced this day stone cold sober. Today would be no different.

The memories of that night teased at the edges of his mind, daring his indulgence, begging to be viewed. His stomach clenched.

His entire life, everything he had known up that point had been shattered—
he
had been shattered. Pieced back together into whatever the fuck he was now. But this night ached in his bones, like a long-ago healed break in the rain.

His heart sped as he took a turn a hair too sharp, gravel spraying from his back wheel. He was losing focus. Time to find a spot to pull over and yank off the bandage. Every damn day, he lived with the choices he made that night.

But taking a good hard look at how he'd made them was something he could only stomach once a year. When he couldn't seem to think about anything else.

He pulled into a public rest stop, parked his ride in the last spot and his ass on the closest bench. Shep lit a smoke and let the memory roll through him.

The night he had hitched his fate to Noah's. He hadn't just turned his back on his father, his church, his fiancée and the whole picket fence dream, he'd burned it to the ground and salted the earth that night.

He'd been standing a heartbeat away from Noah, unable to move away. Noah’s breath fanned across Shep's face. In a second, their lips would touch and –

The door to Noah's trailer banged open and his father's angry voice followed. Noah's father—
Jerry
—busted out of the trailer, a sawed off in one hand and a beer can in the other. Shep sprang back from Noah like he'd been burned, feet sliding in the gravel.

Pretty Boy's father was roughly the size of a grizzly, and despite his massive beer gut, had arms thick as tree trunks. There was no doubt of the blood ties. His skin the same dark, olive tone; his glassy eyes gleaming the same bright green. His nose had been broken, one ear cauliflowered, something a little off in the way his teeth lined up—the face of a lifelong bruiser, making his way by his fists. But the same angular lines forming Noah's face could be seen underneath his father’s skin.

He leveled the shotgun at Shep's chest, squinting his eyes. "Don't I know you?"

Shep swallowed, mind blank and mouth uncooperative.

"Yeah, you're that druggie bitch's son. The one whose preacher husband run out on her," he sneered.

Shep barely managed not to flinch. His mom had overdosed on heroin a few years after his father died. He was pretty sure Jerry was the son of a bitch who’d sold the junk to her. But he’d never been able to prove it.

Noah's fists clenched at his sides. "Put the gun down, Jerry."

"I'll deal with you in a minute, asswipe." Jerry stepped forward. "What the fuck were you doing out here with my son?"

"Just making sure he made it back safe," Shep said, voice steadier than his nerves.

"You been getting my boy drunk, asshole? Trying to turn him into a faggot like you?" Jerry's face turned beat red, veins pulsing in his neck.

"You're just a fucking drunk, Jerry," Noah spat. "I don't know what sick, twisted shit you made up in your head, but we don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

Jerry dropped the beer and slammed his fist into the side of Noah's head before Shep had time to blink. Noah stumbled to the ground and Jerry kicked some dirt at his face as if for good measure. "Should've known you'd turn out like this, with as big of a fucking slut as your mother is. She likes it up the ass, too."

Shep's vision swam with red, echoes of the night he first saw his father hit his mother flashing in his mind. As if Cap stood right behind him, barking the commands, he fell into his fighting stance.

Jerry swung back around, leveling the gun back at Shep's chest. "Get the fuck out of here. Don't ever come near my boy again."

Biting back the 'or what' leaping to his lips, Shep glared at the man. "Maybe  you ought to rethink your position."

He spat on the ground and stared at Shep with a distinctly unimpressed sneer. "Why's that?"

Shep unfastened his watch, slipping it into his pocket. He turned his wrist into the light of the moon. Four horseshoes ringed with fire were inked across the blue lines of his veins. "You lay a hand on me, and you don't want to know what'll be coming for you."

Jerry must've already known because his face paled a little bit.

Once his parents had divorced and his mother had disintegrated into a hot mess, Eddie had brought Shep to stay at their house until shit got straightened out. Before his suitcases had touched the floor, she had dragged Shep into Brimstone Ink, the MC’s tattoo parlor and ordered him marked as immediate family. The ‘nephew’ thing was a bit of a grey area in the charter, but it didn’t expressly say no, so she got what she wanted. He’d been about to graduate high school, the future a yawning hole threatening to eat him. He’d spent so long focused on what his father wanted for him, he wasn’t sure what
he
wanted.

As the needle stung his skin, ink sliding beneath the flashing metal, Eddie had bitched about what a stupid, self-righteous fucking cock-up Joker's brother Abraham was and no she didn't give a damn right then that he was Shep's father. Then she'd shoved him into fighting lessons with Cap, “the only decent father figure she had to offer.”