I smile weakly at him, taking the jacket. “Thanks.” Pulling in deep breaths, all while mentally slapping down the lustful side of me, I push open the door, wrapping the suit jacket around myself tighter. My eyes close as I turn and kick the door closed. His smell is going to kill me one day. I inhale long and deep, sucking up every little scent in the wood, musky smell, so much that I can almost taste the smell on the tip of my tongue before spinning around to face Raze, who is already rounding his side of the car and walking to the hood. I follow, rounding my side and leaning against the car. Popping a chicken nugget in my mouth, I ask, “Why are you doing it?”
“Why am I doing… what?” he asks, taking his eyes off the city and bringing them to me.
“Why are you marrying her?” I ask, handing him the nuggets.
He takes one out and drops it into his mouth. Shaking his head, he says, “I’m not.”
“What, so she lied?” I scoff.
He removes his hat and it’s the first time I can see his new hairdo, and I almost faint it looks that hot. His glistening golden skin shimmers off the city lights while his dark blond hair contrasts with it. The top is full of messy spikes, now. It looks ridiculously hot.
“No,” he says, pulling my brain out of its pervy state. “As far as she knows, we are. But we’re not.”
“Well,” I say, taking the bag of nuggets from him. “That’s not confusing at all.”
“Wait.” The palm of his rough hand connects with my arm and I feel that same electrical current. “I don’t want her. I’ve never fucking wanted her, Millie.”
“Coulda fooled me.” I pull my arm out of his intense hold and look towards the city, pretending that I’m not affected by his presence. My sister and I are much alike in some ways, but if a man makes me feel special, and I mean special like Raze did, there’s no wonder I got hurt. He had me sleep with him every night. We shared stuff between us. Maybe that’s my own fault for reading too much into his actions. Maybe I was being too naïve, or maybe I’m just dumb when it comes to him, but he still made me feel special and then ripped it away by sleeping with Cassia the morning after he made love to me.
That hurt, and I’ll be damned if I let him walk away from that decision with just a slap on the wrist. Not that he has said outright that he wants to be with me, but I can at least make this hard for him by one: not letting him kiss me, and two: by definitely not letting him make love to me again.
“I fucking told you, you had to trust what I was doing, Millie. The type of shit I do, which by the way you know a lot about, doesn’t have any room for error. I can’t have distractions.”
I whip my head towards him. “Is that what I was? A distraction?” I seethe. “You fucking bought me…”
“No, that’s not what I meant, so stop jumping to fucking conclusions and let me finish.” I raise my eyebrows, gesturing for him to continue. “What I’m saying is, there’s a plan and I still need to follow that.”
“Can you tell me about it?” I ask.
“I can tell you some of it, yes.”
“Okay.” I soften, not about what he’s done, but just towards him in general. “So, Shelby…”
He pauses. I can see in the corner of my eye how he’s watching me closely. “I know, Raze. I recognized her voice tonight when she came into the clubhouse.” I bite off some nugget and swallow. “I didn’t know what to do.” I turn to find him searching my eyes closely. “Gosh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t owe you shit but yet here I am, always having your back. Why is it that when my loyalty pieces fall, they fall to fit a puzzle of you?”
He exhales, a small smile coming onto his mouth before his jaw ticks under its flexing. “I don’t know, pet, ‘cause I sure as fuck don’t deserve it.”
“Anyway.” I change my tone. “I want to know about her.”
He watches me. “That’s probably one of the things I shouldn’t talk to you about.”
I roll my eyes. “Raze, I have no control over my actions when it comes to you. I fear who I would throw under the bus if it comes to protecting you and it’s fucking frustrating for me because I can’t help it!”
I drop my arms and grip onto the hood with my hands. He pushes off the car, walking directly in front of me until my beautiful sight of the city lights is a mere spotlight behind his form. His hand grips around my chin as his thumb caresses over my bottom lip. My eyes close as I exhale a shaky breath.
“I won’t give in, Raze. I can’t. You hurt me.” I pause, swallowing down the churn of emotions which are threatening to spill out of me. “I gave you the only part of me that could feel any emotions and you shattered it instead of taking care of it.” His caressing pauses so I slowly open my eyes and it’s then that I notice my eyes are wet, just as a single tear drops and trickles down my cheek.
“Fuck.” He brings both of his palms to each of my cheeks and drops his face down to mine. The tip of his nose glides over mine. “Millie, baby, look at me.” I keep my eyes on his lips, studying how his top lip dips sharply in the middle and his bottom lip has a small plump to it. “Fuck,” he repeats before the lips my eyes were staring at are pressing against mine softly. He kisses me until the warm salt of my tears is leaking between our lips. I clamp my mouth shut and it takes all of my will to refuse his kiss. Pulling away from me an inch, his hands remain on my cheeks but my eyes go back to his lips. “I need you to look at me before I say what I’m going to say to you, baby, please.”
“You slept with her.” I whisper. “After making love to me, you fucked her.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t. I swear to you over my own mother I didn’t.”
Slowly, inch by inch, studying every flawless part of his face, I finally bring my eyes to lock into his. At the very second my eyes find his, my stomach flips upside-down. His eyebrows draw together, a frown pulling on his beautiful face.
“I.” He kisses me. “Didn’t.” He kisses my lips again. “Fuck her.” He rubs the tip of his nose over mine before his lips glide over mine and he sucks my bottom one into his mouth. I suck in a breath and he inches back again, my eyes searching his. “I can’t tell you some story about how I love you or anything like that because I don’t know what love is, Millie, I really fucking don’t. I don’t even think I loved my own mother.”
My eyebrows cross. “That’s not very nice.”
He shrugs, unaffected. “I’m many things, Millie, but I’ll never lie to you. I may choose the way I use my words, but that’s a skill I’ve learned along the way and is almost a second language to me now. But this here…” His finger points between the two of us. “This, I can’t deny.”
He smiles, his body squeezing between my legs until I widen them for him. His hands finally drop from my face and come down to my thighs where he pulls my body towards him.
“I want you more than I’ve wanted any fucking thing in my entire life, pet.” He wraps his hand around the back of my neck as his thumb traces little circles. “Come home.”
Suddenly it’s like a bucket of ice cold water had been thrown over me. That ice cold bucket was labeled “Cassia” and “you stupid bitch”.
Pressing my palm to his rock hard chest, I push him back. Well, I attempt to push him back. “No. Are you kidding me?” I hiss, wrapping the suit jacket around me tightly. “You still have that slut living in your house. Actually!” I laugh sarcastically. “You have fucking two!”
“No,” he corrects me, inching closer. “I have one.”
“Two!”
“One,” he whispers harshly. “Ella is my sister.”
“What?” I nudge back.
He places both of his fists on either side of me. “Ella is my sister.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I ask, annoyed that he kept such a big secret for so long.
“Because no one knows her identity. No one at all.”
I pause. “Who’s her dad?”
“Kurr,” he replies, his hands gliding up my thighs.
“So he knows?”
“He knows he had a daughter, yes.”
“Had?” I say, cocking my head.
“Yes, had.” He dips his head into the crook of my neck. Pressing his lips to my neck softly, he says, “We had to say she was killed and change her whole identity to protect her from him. She’s been living at my place ever since under strict protection.”
“Stop.” I move my head out of his teasing licks and kisses. “I can’t just pretend all that stuff didn’t happen.”
He growls and the vibrations shake against the flesh of my neck. “I know. I need to tell you something, though,” he voices, his mouth still laying kisses on my collar bone. It’s a sweet gesture and it’s testing all my might to not give into what he’s doing, but I guess I’m just as stubborn.
“And what’s that?”
“I gave Beast a proposition.”
“Okay…”
“Well, rather a swap.”
“What did you do?” I ask flatly.
“I’m giving him Ella for you… until this war is over.”
“Wait, what war? And pardon?”
His palms press against the car, bringing his head back until his eyes are on mine. “Look, I need to keep you safe. I need you to be with me. Beast needed something to show he could trust me, and—”
“What about your sister?” I quickly interrupt.
“She’ll be fine.”
“You sure about that?” I tease. “There’s a whole lot of bikers in that clubhouse. Horny bikers. Hot horny bikers. Who ride motorcycles and—”
His lips smash down onto mine and I fight the urge to open for him again. His hand wraps around the back of my neck, his fingers flexing.
“Open,” he growls, vibrating over my mouth, and I smile, opening a small gap for him. Taking it, his tongue slides in. I slowly bring my hands up his arms as his tongue dances around with mine, the flick of his wet tongue sending shivers down my spine with each lick he caresses inside of my mouth. When he pulls back, his eyes search mine. “Say you’ll come back with me. You don’t have to fucking think about this shit yet, pet, but I need you back home. With me.”
“And Cassia?” I question, my eyes remaining on the glistening twinkle of the city lights.
He steps towards me again until his boot collides with the tip of my Chuck Taylor. Military versus civilian. Inside versus outside. The image alone holds a lot of meaning. He trails the tip of his fingertips over my ear and smiles lightly. “What do you want to happen to her?” His eyes search mine, his eyebrows drawing together.
“What kind of question is that?” I say.
“It’s a simple fucking question, baby. What. Do. You. Want. To. Happen. To. Her.” His eyes widen as he finishes off that sentence and his body presses against mine again, the deep perk of my nipples grazing across his taut chest.
“Are you seriously asking me to choose her life or death?” I ask, cocking my head. “Because had you asked me that the day I caught you both in bed, it would have been death. But now that I’ve had time to chill…” I hesitate. “I don’t want that burden over my head.”
Bringing my eyes back up to his face, I find a cocky grin spread across his beautiful features. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because you fucking care, pet.”
“I never said I didn’t, Raze.”
He pauses, his eyes softening for a brief second before bringing his hand up to my face, his rough knuckles brushing over my cheekbone. “Come home.”
“Take the trash out and then call me.” I hand him back the bag of now-cold nuggets and push off the hood of the car. “You better take me back to my sister before she sends out her whole crew.”
Raze smirks, rounding the car and popping open the driver’s side door. “Yeah? Well, my crew is scarier.”
I roll my eyes, slipping into the plush leather seat. “I think I know that. I’m well acquainted with your crew.”
I can’t stop the bitterness that falls off of those words, but it’s true. I still hate every single one of those men, and maybe there’s a little place still left in me that hates Raze too, but when he’s being all sweet, it makes it that much harder to hate him. Raze and sweet do not go together. Ever. So there’s another part of me, on the completely insane side, that secretly loves how someone so unattainable, so deadly, and so ruthless with not only his kills but his people too, could be so sweet to me.
After dropping me back off at Hella’s and Melissa’s, I sneak through the back door and into bed. I know that Hella would have known it was me coming through; nothing slips through that man’s eyes or ears.
It’s around midnight when the beep of my phone pulls me out of my deep sleep. I shove off my cover and blindly start reaching for my phone off the nightstand. Once I’m clutching the thin device, I slide it open and squint from the bright assault. Seeing an unknown number, I prop up onto my elbows and read the text:
Unknown –
Trash is gone. When do I pick you up?
Me –
Raze? Do you know what the time is?
Raze –
No. Answer my question.
Me –
What did you do?
Raze –
That wasn’t an answer.
Me –
Raze… please tell me you didn’t…
Raze –
I didn’t. She’s with someone else now, I moved her out.
Me –
Moved her where?
Raze –
stop fucking around, pet. I’m not a patient man.