VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance (17 page)

“I didn’t know that. I couldn’t risk my life on the chance that a man who’d known me for a week would betray the club he claimed to love so much for me.”

More of the anger dropped away and his taut body relaxed imperceptibly. Flash sat down next to me on the bed, letting go of my hand.
I must be two times the idiot I thought I was, because all I want is for him to touch my hand again.

“You didn’t leave because of me?”

“God, no,” I said, forgetting how angry I was at him for—what exactly? He’d done the job given to him by the club, the same way I did for my uncle. He hadn’t mistreated me, other than leaving me chained to the bed, yet rage still bubbled inside me, hot and acrid. I didn’t know why. But I owed him the truth. “That better future you talked about? I wanted that—with you. But I wouldn’t let the price of my happiness be someone else’s death.”

His face softened more and he leaned into me. “I missed you,” he said, so quiet it was almost beyond hearing.

“I missed you, too,” I told him. “Every single day. And I wanted you. Every single day.” His body was so close and the hunger was overwhelming. “I want you now.”

“You’re going to take what I give you,” he growled, his big body rising over mine, so freaking beautiful that I lost my breath. The cool metal of the cuffs against my wrists was a light pressure that kept them above my head and left my body splayed out under his. He ran his rough hands up my arms to my wrists, then smiled at me, predatory.

Oh fuck
.

His fingers went to the ties at the shoulders of my sundress and pulled, untying them so that the thin material went loose over my breasts. Flash raked his heated gaze over my body, then yanked on the dress hard so that my swollen mounds were revealed. With a dark look, he lowered his head and sucked a nipple into his mouth, then pulled off and blew on the heated tip. “You still taste fucking amazing,” he said.

All I could do was shiver when his head returned to my breasts.

I’d wanted him for the past year, dreamed about him at night. When I’d slide my hand down my torso in the darkest hours, it was his face I’d remember, tensed with pleasure as I took him into my mouth or bold and possessive when he slipped inside me. I’d wrangle each drop of pleasure from my body and bite my lip to keep from moaning his name, scared of how the sound might carry in the shadows. I’d wished for him. For this.

But his harsh face was stark above me and a tingle of fear broke through the arousal when he took hold of my dress and yanked it down farther. His seeking fingers pushed under the fabric, sliding down my stomach and running along the edge of my panties. I was so soaked, but not ashamed that he’d find me wet with wanting him. When they slipped down and stroked my swollen folds, I moaned and he lowered his head to take my mouth, his fingers still moving relentlessly against my clit.

Wanting to touch him, unable to touch him, I rocked my hips against his fingers, desperate for what only he could give me. But as soon as I moved, he lightened the pressure and his white teeth flashed.

“You don’t get to come yet.”

“What?” I said, outraged. I felt my skin flush with fury and desire, all rolling into one hot tidal wave of emotion. Flash just smiled and looked me in the eye while his hand skated too lightly over my skin and then pulled away when I jerked up. He moved off the bed and bent over me, removing my dress and my soaked panties before bending to lick the flat of his tongue up my slit.

“Oh god,” I shouted, shaking against the binds. “Again. Please.”

“You left me for a year,” he said, pinching my nipple lightly with his wet fingers. “I’m not in a hurry to make you come.”

“Flash…”

“Quiet,” he said and I closed my mouth. If I insisted that he let me up and out of the room, I knew he’d let me go—and I’d never have the climax I needed. The climax I’d been waiting for during the six months we were apart. He waited until he was sure that I’d acquiesced and then the grin returned to his face. “Good girl.”

Pushing my legs apart, he knelt between them and then his velvet tongue was there again, moving against my skin while I cried out and rattled the handcuffs in a fruitless attempt to reach for his head. Wanted to press him down against my skin
so hard
.

But he was having none of it. If I tried to move against him, he’d pull back and wait until I gained control of my melting body. His mouth on my skin was the best thing I’d ever felt, but he wouldn’t leave it, wouldn’t let me come. Every time my I got close, he’d pull back and I’d scream with frustration, uncaring that others might be able to hear me. Shame was gone and I was only nerves, skin and need.

I felt my body tense and my breathing ramped up, my chest straining.

His teasing continued and I thought I might die. Every time I approached the peak, he’d pull back and leave me soaked and bucking against him. Flash would press his warm hand against my belly and stroke the skin there, waiting as my blood slowed and the heat died down.

Then he’d take my ass in his hands and move my body so that my pussy was bared to him, spread out and open to his seeking tongue. I couldn’t even close my eyes, scared I’d miss a moment of his perfect muscled body against mine. When he darted a tongue inside me and groaned, I came so close that I screamed when he moved away.

“Not yet,” he insisted, but his voice was tighter now. I could see the thick bulge of his cock behind his pants and I wanted it so much.
So much
.

His fingers slid down my cleft. “I could keep you like this for hours,” he said, flicking his tongue against my swollen clit. “You wouldn’t make me stop.”

“No,” I said. “Please don’t stop.”

A finger teased my entrance, probing and withdrawing. “Do you want me to put it in?”

“Y-yes,” I gasped. “Please.” I wanted something else inside me more, but his finger would do for starters. When he pushed it in me, I felt my walls grasp it, squeezing it and I sucked air in through my teeth, each exhalation a moan.

“God, you’re so wet,” he said. “You’re so fucking
perfect
.” His mouth returned to my center and I was so close. So close. Almost—but he pulled back again and looked at me, still stroking that swollen place inside.

“F-Flash?”

“You’re mine now,” he said. “Say it.”

My eyebrows raised.
He still wants me like that
?

Another flick of his tongue. A thrust of his finger. “Say it.”

“I’m yours,” I bit out, ending on a scream when he sucked my clit into his mouth while stroking harder, pushing against me and he didn’t stop and my hips wouldn’t stay still, and then I convulsed around his finger, my body bowing with release.

“I need you now,” he said, stripping off his pants and throwing his shirt aside. I followed his movements with hungry eyes, admiring the taut muscles and his narrow waist. The man was pure perfection and I wanted to take all of it into myself.

His mouth pressed against mine, hard, and I opened my lips to him so that his tongue could gain entrance. Flash sucked on my tongue while his probing erection circled my opening and then, in a single thrust, he sheathed himself deep inside my body.

I gasped, rocked my hips up to him. It was like coming home.

Flash

Emily was so fucking tight that I thought I might lose my mind the second my swollen cock pressed into her pussy. Gritting my teeth to keep from blowing then and there, I dug my hands into the fabric as I slid deeper and she threw back her head and moaned. Every sound from her sexy pink mouth made me harder, more desperate to give her a climax she wouldn’t forget, to bind her to me with the kind of pleasure that no other man could give her.

“I-I wanted this for so long,” she said, opening her eyes when I was fully seated within her.

“Not enough,” I said, pulling back and then sliding in again, watching her pupils dilate as I fucked her. “Not enough to stay.”

“I couldn’t,” she said, her mouth trembling.
Fuck
. I didn’t want that. Never make her unhappy.

But she’d left me.

“You’re not going again,” I said, and she shook her head, the dark hair like rumpled silk behind her head. Her vibrant green eyes lock on mine. “Say it.”

She shook her head again, and I increased the speed of my strokes, driving into her harder while my thumb slipped between us to stroke her clit. When her breathing quickened, I

Never. I’d never let her leave again. The long months without her had dulled the memory of her flesh surrounding me, the way her walls stroked me as I drove into her. Her scent, her little gasps of pleasure—the enormity of them had evaporated, even while I’d been desperate to find her. Now that she was under me—surrounding me—I’d never let her go again.

I love her
.

The thought was such a blow that I stopped midstroke, staring down at her while she writhed and begged me to keep going. No matter who she was or what she’d done—even though she’d betrayed me and warned an enemy of the club that we were on his trail, hell, even if she was the very enemy I was supposed to destroy—I loved her.

Capturing her pink nipples between my fingers, I pinched them lightly and rocked my body back and forth, levering in and out of her tightness again. Her arms strained above her, her hands twitching as she tried to reach for me, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

Pressure built in my shaft while I fucked her, so close to the edge, but I wanted her to fall with me.

“I’m so close,” she said, her lashes dark fans against her cheeks. “Please. Right there. Right there.”

I wasn’t going to stop. Not until she was falling apart around me again.

Her breathing changed and I felt her pussy squeeze my cock. “Flash,” she said, throwing threw back her head on a scream. Her convulsions drove me over the edge and I pushed in and poured myself into her, gathering her body close to mine while the white-hot eruption ebbed.

Reaching up, I gently removed her wrists from the cuffs and chaffed them with my hands. When my fingers touched fabric, I looked—really looked—at her arms for the first time.

Frayed and faded, the bracelet I’d given her in Mexico was still around her wrists.

“Why?” I asked, tugging it gently with a single finger.

“Because leaving you was the worst, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she admitted. Her eyes met mine. “Because it was like having a little piece of you with me every single day.”

Pulling her close, I rubbed her back until Emily’s breathing was deep and even. Then I fell asleep, at peace for the first time in six months.

The next morning, Emily turned into me, her face against my shoulder. “Flash, did your mom tell you that I was adopted? Did you already know?” Her vulnerable face was easy to read and I could see the hurt behind the words, but I couldn’t push through my shock to care for her the way she deserved. Her words triggered a memory from when I was just a kid. Something that hadn’t mattered or even seemed remarkable at the time that was suddenly so much more.

I stared at her, the mystery finally unraveling. “No,” I told her. Then I kissed her forehead, covered her with a blanket and went to find my parents in their room. Mom excused herself to cook breakfast for the club, leaving me and Dad alone and staring at each other over the wooden floor.

“Was Emily the girl we took out of Mexico when I was a kid?”

Dad put a hand to his head and refused to meet my eyes, sighing. That was enough answer for me. My blood ran cold.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Dad? Because I’m starting to feel like this is adding up, and I don’t like the total.”

“I didn’t know her adopted parents were dead until your mother told me tonight.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, lost. I still remembered going to Mexico with him when I was eleven and picking up the little girl with dark ringlets in a white pinafore. We’d taken her from her Rosaline at a marketplace and driven through the dead of night back to California. I’d played games with her in the back of the van.

At home, Mom and Dad took her away while I stayed with some of Dad’s friends from The Fallen. I never saw her or thought about her again.

“Why does Manuel want her dead?”

“Rosaline and Rafael were lovers,” Dad said, and my entire body went hot and prickly. “Emily is Manuel’s niece. She’s Emily Deleon.”

“But as Rafael’s daughter…”

“She’s the true heir to the Deleon Cartel. Not Manuel.”

It was like a sucker punch to the gut.
No
.

“He’s not going to stop until she’s dead,” I said.

“No,” Dad agreed, shaking his head. “God, when I think of everything that little girl must have gone through…” His words made me imagine Emily as a child, forced to live with the drug addict that her uncle must have been. Back then, money would have been tight because she hadn’t yet learned to help him expand, which meant that she hadn’t had enough to eat. Clean clothes to wear. Anything a child deserves.

No wonder she was always hungry.

“Why didn’t you take her out of Dale’s when she was a kid?”

“I told you, we didn’t know her parents were dead until your mother spoke to her last night. We agreed the best way to get her away from Manuel was to go no contact. We never spoke a word to them again after the adoption was in order. If I’d known, I’d have gone back for her.”

“Did he know about the Deleons?” If Dale had known about them, I was surprised he hadn’t sold her out years ago.

“He must have found out,” Dad said, aging before my eyes. “It’s the only way to explain why he sent her to meet a contact so close to them, and then she happened to get kidnapped. I wonder what Manuel promised him for her life. Money? Territory?”

“I won’t let him have her.” Losing Emily again would break me, especially now that I knew she’d wanted me every bit as much as I’d wanted her in Mexico. Her hungry mouth under mine, the lean line of her body—I craved her.

I love her.

“No, son. I know that.”

“What do we do now?”

“You need to talk to Piston. If we’re going up against Manuel, we need strategy, otherwise we’re just walking corpses. He’s been running through his own supply and the rumors floating up from the border keep getting worse.” I shuddered to think what worse could be.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to talk to Emily.”