Red Ink (Mad Jackals Brotherhood MC Book 2) (2 page)

Chapter Three

Ray had called Eli all manner of unprintable things. He’d seemed angry with his friend, or ex-friend she should say. He’d hinted that, perhaps, Eli isn’t the good person she thinks him to be. But Eli had said the same about Ray. Mia can’t help but feel like she’s being pulled in two different directions. One of the men is lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. But which one?

As she gets into her car she’s more confused than ever, questioning everything she thought she knew about the only two men who had ever been in her life. Mia’s cell buzzes insistently, reminding her that she’d left it in the car in her haste and nervousness to see Eli. Five missed calls from Cassie and an irate text message. Alongside Cassie’s perpetual lateness, she’s also about as patient as a hungry dog. Dutifully, Mia plugs the cell into the dashboard holder and sets up the hands-free Eli had insisted in installing in her car. She smiles as she thinks how he had always been so protective of her. But her smile fades as she remembers she’d just put an end to that.

“Mia, where the hell were you today? I missed my gym buddy!” Cassie’s voice is accusatory, but Mia knows not to take it to heart; it’s just the way that her friend talks, years of law school and then dealing with an asshole boss has given her good practice.

Shit, the gym
, she thinks to herself. She and Cassie had a long-standing Saturday gym date followed by lunch. For the first time in forever it had completely slipped her mind. “I’m sorry, Cass. It’s been kind of a crazy couple of days!” Mia bites her lip, not wanting to get into it right now, but Cassie has already noticed the wobble in her voice.

“Mia? What’s up? Is it this Ray thing?” She can almost hear the wheels in Cassie’s brain turning.

“Partly the Ray thing, partly the Eli thing.” She slows down, realizing she’d been speeding, almost unconsciously. She wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around her, too busy being buried in her own thoughts – not a good idea when you’re behind the wheel of a moving vehicle, she chastises herself.

“What’s the Eli thing? Is he being an asshole again? We exchanged a few choice words on the phone this morning. He was looking for you.” Cassie lets Mia infer the question.

“I’m sorry about that, Cass. He was worried. He hadn’t heard from me and you know how he gets.” Mia lets the car lead her towards the motel Ray is staying at, already feeling the butterflies in her stomach at the thought of seeing him.

“Uh-huh. And am I going to hear any more about that story? I’m your best friend, Mia. Stop holding out on me!” Cassie doesn’t even try to pretend to keep a reign on her impatience.

“I’m not holding out on you, Cass. It’s just that it’s not so easy to talk about. It’s all kind of fresh.” Mia shrugs, despite the fact that her friend can’t see her. She takes a deep breath and bites the bullet; after all she’s going to have to start telling people sometime. “I just broke up with Eli.” She rushes the words out and crosses her fingers, half-hoping that Cassie won’t grill her on the details.

Mia hears her friend blow out a long breath; clearly this had been the last thing that Cassie had expected her to say. “All right, and where are you now?” Cassie talks slower than her normal mile a minute pace, like she’s still processing what Mia has just told her.

“On my way to Ray’s motel.” She winces, knowing what she would be thinking in Cassie’s shoes. Mia had just broken things off with her long-term boyfriend, with the guy everyone – including him – was expecting her to marry, and now she’s heading towards the bedroom of her childhood sweetheart. It didn’t exactly make her look like she should be winning the monogamy prize of the year.

“Uh-huh.” Cassie’s response is short, non-judgmental and Mia waits for the onslaught of questions that she knows is coming. “Sounds like it really has been a busy couple of days for you.” She chuckles lightly. “Damn, Mia. I didn’t know you had it in you!”

Mia bristles at this, the frustration from her argument with Eli leaping out of her mouth before she has the chance to contain it. “What? That I didn’t have it in me to cheat? Yeah, well I guess I proved us both wrong! Go me!” Her voice drips with sarcasm.

She hears Cassie’s gasp on the other end of the line. Mia isn’t known for her quick temper, but it seems like there are a lot of things recently that weren’t as they should be.

“I’m sorry, that was out of line. I’m just a little wired, I guess.” She huffs a sigh, wishing she could stop her brain from spinning out into a million different directions at once.

“Wired about your breakup convo with Eli or wired about seeing Ray in his motel room?” Cassie’s laugh is wicked and contagious, making Mia forget her self-loathing and smile more broadly than she has in a while.

“Both.” She doesn’t even try to pretend otherwise. Cassie isn’t someone she’s ever had to lie to and, at the moment, she’s the only person Mia could trust not to lie to her and to tell her the complete God’s honest truth, no matter how much it hurt. “Cassie, am I a really shitty person?”

Cassie doesn’t pause for breath, like she doesn’t even need to think about her answer. “Don’t you dare say that, Mia! Don’t even think it! You are the best person I know. You’re the kind of person who helps abused women get their life back while earning virtually no money for the privilege. You’re the kind of person who gives bums on the street take-out food!”

“It was just the one time.” Mia remembers the night that Cassie’s talking about; they had ordered Chine food and were taking it back to the room they shared at school. Mia had seen a guy begging in the street, looking like he hadn’t had a decent meal in a long time and she’d given him her dinner. She remembers Cassie staring at her open-mouthed as if she were a crazy person.

“Right, and I’m the Queen of Sheba!” Cassie snorts, not believing Mia’s evasion for one second. “You’re a good person, Mia. Just because you fell out of love with Eli doesn’t make you a bad one, no matter how much you want to believe it.”

“I cheated on him, Cassie. That’s not something a good person does!” Mia feels the tears welling behind her eyes, disappointed tears at her own lack of impulse control. But she knows that if she could go back in time to the night before in Ray’s bedroom, she would have done exactly the same thing. She can’t deny that the electricity between them made it impossible to keep her body from responding to him. All he had to do was look at her to make her hot.

“So you made a mistake. Big friggin’ deal, Mia! That makes you human, not a bad person. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” It’s a statement more than a question and Mia doesn’t feel the need to answer it. It almost seems disrespectful to Eli, to the memory of what they had together to admit Ray had stolen her heart. But had he really stolen it or had it always been his? “So when do I get the full run-down and when do I get to meet the famous Ray?”

“You met him already,” Mia points out smiling at how easily her friend makes her feel lighter.

“A two minute conversation when all he’s trying to do is pump me for information about you doesn’t count.” Mia can almost hear Cassie waving away her protests. “Besides, I need to check out if this guy is deserving of my best friend. I know she has a tendency to go for guys who aren’t up to the job.”

Mia sighs theatrically, but can’t help smile at Cassie’s words. If anything, she’s more protective of Mia than Eli had ever been, but not in the sometimes-smothering way that Eli had. Cassie is a live and let live kind of a person, but she’ll give you a piece of her mind before she lets you make a decision that she doesn’t agree with.

“Just because you didn’t like Eli doesn’t mean he wasn’t good for me.” Mia shakes her head, wondering how many times she’d defended her boyfriend, or, as she should get used to saying, her ex-boyfriend, to Cassie. The two of them had never seen eye to eye.

“Well, the fact that you’ve just broken it off with Woody, means that I can’t have been all that wrong.” Cassie’s argument is difficult to ignore. “Anyway, stop avoiding my question. When do I get a proper introduction to the man that has you all tied in knots and hot and bothered?” Cassie giggles like a schoolgirl, enjoying this far too much.

“How do you know I’m all hot and bothered for Ray?” Mia catches herself but it’s too late. Don’t ask a question if you’re not sure you want to hear the answer.

“Because I know you, Mia, and I know that the breathlessness in your voice isn’t because you’ve just run a mile. It’s about time, too. Eli wasn’t getting the job done!” Cassie snorts making Mia wish she hadn’t been quite so open about her sex life. “So…when’s it gonna be? I’m free tonight.” Again, it was a statement, not a question. Cassie has no intention of taking anything but a positive response as an answer.

“All right, then I guess tonight!” Mia shakes her head, biting her cheek to keep from laughing at how easily her friend plays her. It makes Mia glad she’ll never have to come up against her in the courtroom. Cassie would have eaten her alive. “Come by Jacob’s place.” She waits until Cassie stops squealing with excitement. “But do me a favor, don’t grill him like he’s some kind of a criminal, okay?”

“Mia!” Cassie’s voice is all mock-shock. “It’s like you don’t even know me sometimes!”

Mia frowns as Cassie disconnects the call in her typically abrupt way. Yeah, Cass, that’s exactly what I’m afraid of, she thinks to herself and then wonders again how her friend managed to get her to agree to a meeting with Ray, tonight of all nights. She huffs a sigh, swinging into the first parking space she can find in front of the motel. She turns the motor off and just sits in the car for a few minutes, trying to analyze the situation and every action she’s taken in the past seventy-two hours. They all bring her right back to this moment, right back to Ray. And she would be lying if she said it weren’t exactly where she wants to be.

Chapter Four

“You scared me a little back there.” Ray breathes the words against her ear.

As soon as she’d walked through the door, he’d crossed the room in a couple of his long-legged strides and had taken her in his arms, holding her tight against his chest.

“When? I told you I’d come straight over after…after I’d talked to Eli.” Mia cranes her head up to look at him, wondering if there would ever be a time when the sheer gorgeousness of him wouldn’t take her breath away.

“No, I mean when you just sat in your car in the lot. I thought you might have changed your mind, that you thought you’d made a mistake.” The sincerity shining in Ray’s eyes makes her chest contract.

“You really do enjoy spying on me!” She laughs up at him playfully, sobering when she sees the seriousness of his expression. It was one of the things that made this Ray in her arms different from the boy she had known in high school. He didn’t smile as much, not nearly enough. She wanted to be the person to change that. “I wasn’t changing my mind. I was just thinking about how much I wanted to be here, with you.” She watches as his features relax and his blue eyes flash with a look that warms her all over.

He leans down and kisses her, hesitantly at first, as if he’s still testing her, making sure of the way she feels. She meets him kiss for kiss, trying to brush away all of his concerns with her lips. She opens her mouth to him, feeling the flick of his tongue against hers and the groan that comes from deep in his chest sends a tingle down her body.

Abruptly, Ray pulls back and looks at her questioningly. She frowns, frustrated, not wanting anything to stop them from doing what’s been on her mind since she’d left his bed that morning.

“How did it go? With Eli?” Ray’s mouth twists around the name, as if he can’t even say it without feeling angry.

But Mia just shakes her head, putting her index finger over his luscious lips. “It went.” She shrugs and shakes her head again as he goes to try to ask her another question. “I don’t want to talk about it right now, Ray. We can talk about it later. Now, all I want is this.” She uses his shoulders to lift herself up, pulling him down insistently towards her at the same time, kissing him hard.

Ray’s body responds instantly to her kiss, she can feel the hardness of his cock against her hip and the answering wetness between her legs. The heat from the kiss permeates through her entire body, warming her through and making her what Cassie had so eloquently described as ‘hot and bothered.’

The next few minutes pass in a flurry of hands pulling at clothing, undoing buttons and unhooking hooks. They don’t break the kiss for any longer than they have to allowing them to shed their clothes. There’s desperation to their movements, both frantic to be skin to skin, to feel the other’s body, to feel everything.

Ray plants his hands on Mia’s ass, only covered now by her lace panties, lifting her up to push his hardness against her pussy. She wraps her legs around his waist, clinging on to him and grinding her hips against his, needing more than just the friction between them. She kisses him, biting his lip hard, harder than she’d intended, and she tastes blood.

Ray rears his head back looking at her and she sees the bead of blood on his bottom lip. But there’s no anger in his eyes. His pupils are large, his eyes dilated and a darker blue than the sea. He’s as turned on as she is. She leans into him and licks the injured part of his lip slowly, deliberately and that breaks the last shred of control that Ray had over his lust.

In two strides he’s carried her over to the bed and laid her down. He looks at her in that way of his that makes her feel like the most desirable woman in the world, as if looking at her is the only thing he needs. He doesn’t break eye contact from her as he slips his jeans off, freeing his long, beautiful cock.

Mia licks her lips, wanting him more than she thought it was possible to want anything. But Ray doesn’t give her what she wants, not right away. He makes her wait and it’s a delicious pain the way that he draws out her desire, driving her wild.

He pulls aside her bra, virtually ripping it off to free her round breasts, the nipples already standing to attention. He rubs his thumb over them, making them so hard they’re almost sore and she moans against his mouth, lifting her hips to feel his cock against her.

“You’re so beautiful, Mimi.”

The reverence in her voice chokes her up, but she covers her emotion, needing to make light of the compliment. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She smiles up at him from behind her thick lashes. That was a pretty poor description of him; the man is the most perfect thing she had ever seen. He has the body of a swimmer, wide shoulders, and muscular arms, highlighted by the winding tattoos. His abs are hard as rock. In short, he has a killer body. That combined with the movie star looks is enough to make her never want to leave his bed.

Ray kisses a line along her jaw and down her neck, finding a spot to nuzzle and nip where her nerve endings meet, making her shiver against him at the sensation. But he’s not finished. He kisses his way down to her breasts, suckling one hardened tip and then the other, making her moan, making her yearn for more.

“Ray, I need you.” Her words come out in breathless gasps and she watches as he smiles up at her knowingly.

He knows how much she wants this and how crazy he’s driving her. “And I need to taste you. It’s all I’ve been thinking about all day.” His voice is low and husky and his words are enough to make her come right there and then.

He sinks farther down, kissing her flat belly and nipping at her hips. She runs her fingers through his golden hair, scraping her nails along his scalp, a move she’d learned from the night before that made him even more rigid. She smiles when she’s rewarded by a deep growl that only serves to turn her on more.

Ray reaches the tops of her panties and his hands take over, ripping at the material, his muscles bunching as he tears them off. It’s the hottest thing she’s ever seen and she moves up onto her elbows to get her fill of the insanely hot man between her thighs.

“You smell so fucking good, Mia.” He groans out the words, like he can hardly stand it.

Mia knows how he feels; she doesn’t know how much she can take before she explodes. She watches as he gives her a long look before diving down into her pussy, licking her swollen lips and kissing her, making her cry out in pleasure. His name is on her lips as he teases the silkiness of her most intimate parts, exploring her, making her his, leaving no doubt as to his possession of her. She’s all his. Mia rocks her hips against him, unable to keep still, filled with need. She digs her heels into the mattress as she feels her excitement build. She doesn’t want to come yet; it’s too soon. She wants to draw it out, to enjoy every moment, to kiss every part of his body.

Ray tightens his hold on her hips and looks up to her, looking at her like he knows exactly what she’s thinking. “Let go, baby. Come for me, Mia. I’m not going anywhere.”

Before she can say anything, he dives back into her, eating her out like a starving man and she loses all control. Her hips buck as fireworks explode in her brain and she comes hard against his mouth as he laps at her wetness, tasting her.

Sensation slowly filters back into her body and she opens her eyes to see Ray hovering over her, his eyes dark with desire. “I love watching you come, Mimi. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

She reaches for him, pulling him down towards her and kissing him deeply. She tastes herself on his lips and it’s so erotic she feels like she might climax again right then. But this time, she knows what she wants. She maneuvers herself to roll Ray to the side and finally underneath her. He’s about ten times stronger than her and she’s under no illusions that he could stop her at any moment. But he lets her take the lead, his eyes telling her how much it’s turning him on.

Never breaking eye contact, Mia straddles him, letting him cup her breasts and fondle her nipples. She reaches over him to the nightstand and he takes in her nipple, his teeth grazing the hard nub and making her gasp. She rips open the condom packet, watching him watch her as she expertly rolls it over his long, thick, perfect erection.

“Mia.” There’s a world of need in that one word and she notices that he’s gritting his teeth, fighting to keep control of his desire.

But Mia has no intention of letting him win the fight. She reaches between their bodies, gripping his shaft and squeezing just enough to illicit a growl of need in Ray’s throat. She rises up onto her knees, guiding him slowly inside of her. She’s so wet and slick that he slides in, pushing her open until he’s filling her up.

He lets out a low growl that vibrates through his body and into hers, making her tingle inside. That’s when she starts to move slowly, rolling her hips, burying him deeper inside of her and pulling him out so only the tip remains, only to let him fill her up again. They’re both panting hard, carried away by their own desire. The pulse at her neck throbs with her excitement and Ray reaches out to touch his fingers to it, so gently she feels her heart expanding.

Ray picks up the rhythm, lifting his hips to thrust into her harder and she cries out, pushing down onto him, grinding against him, feeling the heat between her legs build again. Her cheeks are flushed and she can feel the pleasure coiling deep inside her belly, spreading through her as he enters her again and again.

Mia moans hard as her body begs for a release and, as if Ray had read her mind, he reaches between them, stroking the nub of her clit, making her grind against him even harder. He caresses her, loving her with his cock and his fingers, pushing her over the edge. He thrusts into her again, watching the emotions play across her face as she comes again, crying out as her body is rocked by her orgasm.

“Fuck, baby.” She vaguely hears Ray’s husky voice over the white noise that’s roaring in her ears, the aftermath of her climax. She’s all soft sensation as he flips her over on her back, never pulling out of her pussy. And that’s when he goes to work on her. He grasps hold of her hips, thrusting into her again and again, harder and harder.

Ray pushes her knees back, opening her even more to him, entering her even deeper. He leans down and plants a long kiss on her sensitive lips, pushing harder into her and making her moan as she uses what’s left of her strength to push up against him, gathering him into her. She clenches her pussy, holding him inside of her and she smiles lazily at his gasp of pleasure as she tightens her hold on him and then releases him again.

“Come for me again, baby. I know you’re close. Let yourself go.” Ray’s eager words are enough to unravel her. The pleasure that’s been building in her pussy spreads through her belly and up and up until it fills her and she screams his name, throwing her head back in the throes of her release.

She feels Ray nip her shoulder, drawing a gasp from her as he growls, pounding into her and reaching his own quivering end, her name on his lips. He collapses on top of her and she enjoys the weight of him, wishing that they never had to move again. He nuzzles her neck, kissing the sensitive spot he’s found just at the line of her collarbone making her shiver again. She feels him move inside of her.

“Well I think that was the best ‘hello’ I’ve ever had.” Mia’s voice comes out throaty as she smiles lazily up at him.

Ray’s chuckle reverberates through his chest, sending vibrations across her nipples, which harden almost instantaneously. She looks up at him and licks her lips, watching as his eyes widen in surprise.

“You’re incorrigible; do you know that?” He shakes his head at her in mock despair but she feels him stirring between her legs already.

“So I’ve been told.” She reaches up and kisses the bottom lip that shows no sign of the blood she’d drawn.

Ray looks at down her with so much warmth that she almost feels like she might choke on it. But then his expression abruptly changes, his eyes narrowing, like he’s assessing her and she squirms under his focused gaze. “When are we going to talk about what happened with Eli?”

Mia rolls her eyes, frowning up at him. “I’d rather not get into it while you’re still inside me.” She raises an eyebrow at him, and watches as he gets the sweetest sheepish expression on his face.

“Point taken.” He covers her mouth with his, kissing her softly. “We’ve got all the time in the world, anyway.”

“Ummm…not exactly.” Mia inwardly curses Cassie’s powers of persuasion. “My friend wants to meet you. She wants to check that you’re not some kind of psychotic murderer that’s going to dump my body out in the boonies where no one would ever find it.”