Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (54 page)

He winced, so slightly that it was almost indiscernible, and then he squinted, his jaw twitched and his lips pressed together in a stubborn grimace.

“Yeah, we’ve gone over this already, Diana.  I know I don’t fucking own you, for fuck’s sake!” he exploded.

“Well then stop talking like you do!” I replied, raising my voice more than I meant to.  I got so fucking emotional around this man, I felt so out of control, and it scared me.  I was a control freak to the very core, and feeling like this went against every cell in my body.

The problem seemed to be that he was too.

“What do you want me to do?  Act like nothing happened between us? Just let you wander off into the world, when there’s some fuck out there just waiting to get you alone?”

“What happened?” I asked, my voice quiet and low now.  What had happened?  We had gone from me asking for a small favor to these complicated roles of victim and protector.  Is that what sex does?

“What do you mean what happened?” he asked.

“You asked if I thought you should pretend nothing happened.  What happened?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Diana!” His jaw twitched again as he looked at me, but the anger had faded.  “Do you need me to spell it out for you?”

“Yeah, maybe I do.”  I didn’t know why I was pressing the issue.   I should have just told him I was leaving, let him be pissed, and let that be the end of it.  Instead, I couldn’t resist digging in.

“Us, babe.  We happened.  I don’t know why, or how, or what any of it means.  I don’t know what the future holds.”  He reached down and grabbed my chin, grabbed my gaze and wouldn’t let go.  “All I know is that I would die if something happened to you.  All I know is that I want to spend every fucking moment with you, just to see your smile, and the way your eyes light up when you look at me.  Nobody looks at me like that.  You look at me like I’m a person, like I’m your equal.  Not just a pretty face with a hard cock, or someone to do a dirty job that nobody else wants to do.  Not a misfit, not a freak.”

“Slade…” my voice quivered as I said his name.

“No, Diana, listen!  When I’m with you, I’m just me.  Something about you allows me to relax.  When I’m with you, I’m finally at home.”

“Slade…”  I began again, the tears falling down my cheeks.

“Diana, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.  I can’t stop thinking about you, you’ve consumed me.  When I woke up in that hospital and saw you there, I knew it then.”

“Slade…I…”  I wanted to tell him I felt the same way, I wanted to tell him we’d find a way to make it all work out.  The tortured look in his eyes broke my heart and I wanted desperately to take it away.  But I didn’t know how.

His mouth captured mine before I could speak, and he kissed me passionately before breaking away.

“I love you, Diana.  I fucking love you, babe.”  His mouth came crashing down again, his kiss full of every ounce of passion and lust and love as his words.

He took me again, there on the forest floor, his mouth, his body, his soul searching for the connection we were both yearning for so deeply.  The connection we had finally found in each other’s arms.

The connection that seemed so logistically impossible that it felt like death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Slade

The day had flown by.  After being scared shitless that something had happened to Diana when she wasn’t in my room after the meeting, and then allowing all those fucking words to fall out of my mouth, way sooner than I had intended, had put me in a daze.

After Diana and I made love again in the woods, she was quiet the rest of the day.  She didn’t tell me she loved me back.

I felt like a fool, but fuck if I hadn’t meant every word.  I tried to tell myself she just needed time, or space, or whatever the fuck women wanted in situations like this, but the truth was I had no idea what the right thing to do was.

I had never been in love before.  If that was truly what this was.  But what I did know was that nobody had ever made me feel this way.  That no woman had ever made me feel like my chest was about to burst wide open just by looking at her.  That I had never wanted to cry just from the pure joy of touching someone’s skin.

Late that night, after Diana had gone to sleep, and I wasn’t even able to relax enough to close my eyes, I got up and found Riot sitting alone on the front porch smoking a joint. 

“Hey brother,” he said.  “Join me.”

I sat beside him, and looked up at the stars.  I’d sat here countless nights before, memorizing the dark shadow of the tree line, staring up into space and wondering about the world.

I knew my place here at the clubhouse.  I was good at my job, and life was simple.  I didn’t need anyone.   I enjoyed the company of various women and then they moved on.  Nothing ever got complicated.

Now, everything had changed.  Just from one fucking phone call.  If Diana hadn’t called me, I’d still be sitting here, staring up at these same stars, and I’d be able to sleep, I’d feel at home, I’d feel like I belonged.

Now I was starting to question everything.  I was starting to question who I was.  If I could let a woman turn my world upside down so easily, what did it mean about who I was? 

Maybe I was just a fucking fraud all along.

“You still believe in fate, man?” I asked Riot.

“I don’t know, man.  Why?”

“This whole Diana thing, brother.  It’s got me all fucked up.”

“How so?” he asked.

The stars sparkled above us, the moon low and bright, and almost full.  Always there, never wavering.

“I’m just…feeling shit.  Shit I never felt before, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it.  Nothing wrong with that, though.  Let’s you know your heart isn’t as dead as you thought it was, right?” he asked, half-grinning.

“Yeah, well, if it ain’t dead yet, then that means someone can still kill it.”

Riot nodded without replying.  He took a long draw on the joint, and held the smoke in his lungs for a long time, before slowly exhaling.  The cloud of smoke danced in the air around us, lit up by the moonlight streaming through the trees.

“It also means you’re alive, Slade.  Maybe you shouldn’t fight it, maybe you should live a little, you know?”

“I kinda thought I was, until now.”

“It was a different kind of living, brother.  When you got someone else to live for, it changes the game.”

“Being responsible for someone else has never been my game,” I said.

“Bullshit.  You’re a God.  We’re all fucking responsible for each other.  You’d kill for any one of us, right?”

“You fucking know it,” I replied.  It was true, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for one of my brothers.

“Well, just add Diana to the list.  It ain’t that much different.  We’re all family.”

Family, I thought, what a concept.  For someone like me, who never really knew what having a family was supposed to feel like…feeling it now just scared me, especially when I added Diana to the mix.

It was a wonderful feeling, but in the end, it just me with a whole lot left to lose.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Diana

The incessant chirping of birds, and Slade’s snoring, made it impossible for me to sleep once the sun had come up.  I lay there for an hour, thinking about Olivia.  Finally, I quietly got up and got dressed to go check on her.  Owls are normally nocturnal, but Slade told me he mostly spotted them at dusk or just after dawn.

Ever since Oliver had gotten hurt, because of Wyatt, the idiot, I couldn’t stop worrying about Olivia.  She hadn’t been spotted since poor Oliver had been taken away.

I was so pissed at Wyatt, and I couldn’t wait to get him alone and give him a piece of my mind.  Or, better yet, I couldn’t wait to get back to work, and blow him out of the competition for the promotion.  That would truly be the sweetest revenge.

Although, I knew Slade had other ideas of how he planned to exact revenge on Wyatt.

I still hadn’t told him I was leaving.  I had to go back to work, I had no choice.  I couldn’t just continue to live my life in hiding.  I never should have agreed to come, but it was just so damned hard to tell Slade no while he was laying there in that damned hospital bed.

Everyone was still sleeping.  I saw Ryder and Grace’s cabin just down the road when I stepped out onto the empty porch, looking peaceful and quiet.

For a place whose theme was chaos, this was one of the most peaceful spots I had ever visited.  Slade had explained that now that Ryder and Riot had both settled down with Grace and Lacey, things were a lot quieter around there now.  I could only imagine what was it like a year ago, before Grace had come into the picture.  Slade told me that the business side of things was dwindling down now, too, now that they were so busy with Solid Ground.

I walked quietly into the forest, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of Olivia.  I didn’t know what I could do for her, but maybe just a few words of encouragement could help, to let her know that Oliver was okay and would be coming back, maybe somehow she would understand.

I headed towards the creek, the crunch of fallen pine needles under my feet the only noise I made.  Birds sang in the trees above me, their calls clear and beautiful.  The sun streamed through the trees as the breeze made them sway overhead, creating a dancing shadow that followed me all the way to the creek.

I looked at the water rushing past me, spilling over rocks and fallen branches, creating foamy waves that splashed in the air.  I sat on the big rock where Slade had made love to me that first day, remembering the feel of his mouth, the heat of his kisses.

He was so passionate, and yet so gentle for such a rough and tumble kind of guy.  I smiled to myself, remembering how he didn’t let the cast on his arm get in the way of anything he wanted to do to me that day.   My body shuddered at the memory of his touch, of the way he made me explode with pleasure.

We would get through this.  Somehow.  And we would end up on the other side with our love still intact.  I did love him.  I hadn’t told him yet, mainly because he wouldn’t stop kissing me long enough for me to respond yesterday, and also because fear had reared its ugly head once more, confusing me, causing me to doubt myself, to doubt my feelings.

So, as I always did when I didn’t know what to say - I said nothing at all.

I would just have to explain everything to him.  I couldn’t just leave without telling him, I had decided.  That would have been so unfair and would have worried him like crazy.  I couldn’t hurt him like that.

And if he didn’t want me to go back to work alone, then he would just have to go with me.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want him with me, I just couldn’t stay here at the clubhouse.  I had to go back to work, and if that meant Slade went with me, then so be it.

I looked up and was shocked to see two huge yellow eyes staring down at me.

“Olivia!”  I waved slowly, saying her name quietly so I didn’t scare her away.

She was beautiful.  Her feathers were brown and grey and she had a big tuft of white hair on her chest.  Her ears were pointed and huge.  She sat regally on the branch, not moving anything but her huge, blinking eyes.

“Oliver is okay, Olivia!  He’ll be back soon, okay?”  I said to her, hoping if she couldn’t understand the words, she could at least interpret the feelings behind them.  “I’m so sorry he got hurt, but I promise he’ll be back!  Please be careful by yourself out here, okay?”

She blinked at me a few more times, and then, to my surprise, she began cooing at me.

“Hoo-HOO-hoo-hoo….hoo-HOO-hoo-hooooo!”

“Oh!” I exclaimed.  “That’s so pretty!”  I couldn’t remember ever having heard an owl up close and it was the coolest sound. I sighed and stood up, my mission completed.  Olivia looked just fine.

Now, it was time to go back and wake up Slade, and tell him I needed to leave. He wasn’t going to be happy, but it was the only thing I could do.

Slowly, I made my way back through the woods, stopping every now and then to take a closer look at a plant or bird in my path.  The trees were so tall, so dense, that when you were deep in the forest, you never knew how close you were to the road.  Everything was so quiet and yet the forest sounds were so loud and vibrant, it was almost as if you could hear the silence, too.