Wild Ones (The Lane) (7 page)

It was like slow motion. Jax’s horrified gaze turned to me and his hand slipped from my back just as Fury’s words sank in. I turned to Luke slack-jawed and slightly nauseated.

“You’re a fighter?” It was between a hiss and a whisper.

“Fighter, Bri-baby? Hell no,” Fury trilled. “Luke’s not just a fighter. He’s a boxer. Best damn boxer you’ve ever seen.”

Jax reached out for me and I jerked away before he could touch me. My blood, which just a moment ago had been like fire running through my veins, had frozen and was draining slowly, sluggishly, from my face.

“A boxer.” It was a stunned breath, maybe even a plea. And when he nodded, wary, I snapped.

I chucked my mostly full beer at his head. I didn’t stop to see if it hit its mark, though judging by the sound of glass shattering and Fury’s shocked yelp, I guessed it was close enough and he had ducked at the last minute. I was already whirling around and stalking through the throng of bodies, heading for the door. I could feel bewildered stares on my back and I was aware that to everyone other than Jax, it looked as though I’d lost my mind. I didn’t care.

A chill in the air, which I didn’t remember being there when we came in, slapped me in the face as I stomped across the short balcony toward the stairs. I was halfway down them, my heels on the metal ringing like thunder in my ears, when I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. I figured it was Jax, trying to catch up, intent on talking me down. I didn’t slow until I reached the bottom, where I took a deep breath. I wanted to be calm but I couldn’t. I couldn’t still the rage that was bubbling in my chest.

A fucking boxer. Of all the head fucks.

The footsteps were right behind me and a rough hand grabbed my arm, jerking me around. It wasn’t Jax’s clear blue eyes I was looking into, but the hard, dark brown of Luke’s.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he growled. I noted with pleasure that while my bottle of beer might not have connected with his forehead like I’d hoped, it had splattered on him. I pulled myself up to my full height.

“You are!” I jabbed a finger into a broad chest that was much too close. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a boxer?” I spat the word from my mouth, the foul taste of it lingering on my tongue.

“Never came up, sugar.”

I was glaring at him and there was a deep rumble in my throat that might have been a growl, because even though I could see his point, I was still pissed beyond reason.

“I don’t associate with boxers.” I went for haughty but it came out scathing, which worked just as well.

“Good. Because I don’t associate with bitchy little beer wenches.”

I slapped him. I didn’t know why. One minute I was standing there, shaking with outrage, one arm trapped in his grasp, and the next, my free palm was connecting with his cheek. He raised his hand, the one not holding my elbow, to rub at it. I couldn’t tell if he looked shocked or amused. I didn’t really care.

“Well, it looks like we’re done here then,” I said coolly, as if I hadn’t just struck him and his face wasn’t reddening under his fingers. I wasn’t pulling my arm free of his, though, and even when he agreed, a short clip of a word, his voice low and dangerous, he didn’t let me go.

We were standing there, staring at each other, our chests a breath away from touching and I knew, somehow, that we were posed on the brink of something. It was a knife’s edge, or maybe a cliff, and we could either step back, onto safer ground, or we could inch forward, though we’d probably be bloody when we landed. I was wondering which we were gonna do, if I should be the one who made the first move, which way I should go if I did, when the hand holding my elbow hauled me forward, closing the tiny gap between us.

I blinked in surprise, but before I could register that the decision had just been made for me, Luke was bending and his lips were crashing down on mine.

I think I gasped. Or moaned. Whatever sound it was, he was instantly swallowing it. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t gentle. It was violent and dominating. His hand fisted my hair, tugging at my scalp, and mine instantly followed suit, diving into his, sliding up to his crown and pulling.

The hand on my elbow slipped down till it was cupping my ass. With one swift movement, I was hoisted up against an unyielding body, the skirt of my dress riding up as my legs automatically wrapped around his waist. He was everywhere at once. My hair, my neck, gripping my thighs, my ass, back up to squeeze my face, then back down to my waist where his fingers cruelly dug into my hips. His skin was a sinful cologne, a medley of cigarettes and beer, aftershave and sex that filled my nose and overwhelmed the rest of my senses. His tongue battled mine, fighting for dominance, only to retreat and he sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, nipping it with his teeth. I think I tasted blood.

I wanted to tell him I didn’t kiss and I certainly didn’t kiss boxers, but then his tongue was back and I forgot why it was exactly that I didn’t kiss and what the big fucking deal was with boxers anyway.

I wasn’t aware that he was moving until my back came into sharp contact with the bricks behind the stairs, his hand at the back of my head cushioning the impact. My panties were shoved aside and I didn’t know who was doing the shoving, but both of our hands were fumbling and fighting for control of his button and zipper. And I was hoping, dear God, I was hoping, that he was going commando again, because the thought of anything else between us made me want to sink my nails in and drag them down his scalp to his neck.

But then he was inside me and I felt like I was going to burst with the fullness and the relief. We threw our heads back, hissing with pleasure, and I grabbed his shoulders when he started to pull back. I made a sound of protest, glaring at him, and he met it with an incensed look of his own before his hips surged forward again, turning my complaint into a groan. He moved furiously, thrusting violently against me, and I met him halfway, matching his pace, his intensity. His mouth found mine and we were fused together in two places but it wasn’t enough and too much all at once. I was overwhelmed and it was the most satisfyingly electric feeling I’d ever experienced.

Voices, not quite loud enough to be understood over the thumping bass of Fury’s stereo, drifted down from the balcony above us, and the thought of people being feet away from our dark corner turned me on further. Judging by the way Luke’s fingers were digging into my ass and the frantic slamming of his hips that I could no longer hope to keep up with, it was doing the same for him.

I was struggling not to make a sound, to bite back the emotions desperate to escape, when Luke gave one final thrust, burying himself deep, and I was tumbling, on fire, burning from the inside out, biting and clawing anything I could reach. His mouth was back on mine and it was punishing in its brutality, as one of his hands grabbed my hair and yanked hard.

When he finally broke away, we were both panting, breathing in precious oxygen that just moments before hadn’t mattered.

He pulled out slowly and I unhooked my legs, sliding down his body. As he stepped back, the nip in the air skimmed across my skin, making me miss his overpowering warmth, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“Not bad for a beer wench.” His mutter came out as ragged as my breathing as he adjusted my dress and panties.

I glanced up at him with a smug look I hoped didn’t look as fuzzy and drugged as my head felt. If it did, it’d match the one on his face.

“Not so bad yourself.”

He stared at me for a minute and there was something warring there in his eyes, indecision and something else. Then he sighed and it was a sound of surrender. I smiled, because for the moment, just that one, I was okay with surrendering.

“Fuck it,” he said, his voice strained and hard, like diamonds cutting glass, and my smile grew. He grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the spot behind the stairs, away from the Tap Room, away from Fury’s. Maybe away from my sanity. He led me toward the street, back toward Duke’s and I knew, deep down, to where his car was parked two blocks away near my own. “Your place or mine?”

Chapter Seven

“Bri, wake up.”

I mumbled something incoherent and tried to burrow deeper into the warm nest of blankets and pillows heaped around me. Something was shaking my shoulder roughly and I reached back to swat it away.

“Five minutes,” I heard myself slur. It barely sounded like me. “Just five more minutes.”

“No. Up. Let’s go.” The shaking persisted, harder now, and I buried my head under a pillow.

“Geroffme,” I said. “Too early.”

“It’s two. Get up.”

I grunted and batted behind me again. If I could just go back to sleep, my dream of Channing Tatum doing wicked things to me would pick up right where it left off. I could feel it in my bones. He was waiting for me just on the other side of consciousness, ready to finish what we’d started. This thought must have been voiced out loud because a split second later, the blankets were ripped away from around me and I gasped when cool air hit my naked back.

“Tatum can fuck off,” came a menacing growl from above me, and I sat up abruptly as the memories from the night before came flooding back to me.

A groping two-block walk to a black F-150. Being shoved up against its passenger door and kissed until I was breathless, then practically shoved inside. An agonizing fifteen-minute drive across town, hands roaming frantically, touching and grabbing anything they could reach over the console. The vague impression of a stone path and a front door before we were inside and clothes were pulled off and moans filled the air.

Parts of me I hadn’t known could beg tingled and tightened with need, almost weeping in their desperation. Being painfully and unforgivably empty only to be stretched and full and so fucking grateful for it that all I could do was mewl my appreciation. And sex. So much mind-blowing sex on every available surface in every possible position until we finally collapsed on the bed that I was currently sitting in.

A bundle of clothes landed in my lap with a soft thud, jerking me out of my thoughts.

“Put ’em on,” Luke ordered gruffly, adjusting the obvious bulge in his pants without even an ounce of shame. “Or I’m gonna be late, sugar.”

I could feel myself grinning, all cat-who-caught-the-canary-like. Stretching my arms up over my head, I made a show of working out kinks in my back that weren’t really there. I climbed off the bed and, with deliberate slowness, pulled on my panties then the boxers he’d tossed to me. When I was done, I straightened and feigned looking for my bra.

“Sugar.” It was a low threat, a warning, and I grinned wider, not bothering to hide it.

“You’re the devil,” he muttered, stepping forward to close the space between us. Without my heels, I was eye level with his chest. A patchwork of various-sized scars marred the otherwise smooth flesh and I frowned, reaching out to trace a particularly jagged one that zigzagged across his left pec.

“Occupational hazard,” he grunted before jerking a wifebeater over my head, effectively breaking the contact between my fingers and his skin.

My eyes flashed up to his as I slipped my arms through the holes of the tank, scowling at him.

“Boxing?” I asked and disgust laced the question.

“Yup.” It was a challenge, a dare, a push to charge if that was what I was going to do.

My nose wrinkled with distaste but I said nothing. We were a pair of untamed alpha wolves who banded together in the same den for a night. Guarded, tasting the slight hostility in the air, waiting for the other to make the first move, to attack now that the night was over and the sun was shining.

When I didn’t start chucking anything within reaching distance at his head, he switched gears.

“You work tonight?”

I stared at him blankly for a minute while his question sank in, then nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

I was still staring up at him and realized how close we were standing. Practically flush. I frowned, thinking of the night before and how we had subconsciously drifted down the darkened hallway at Fury’s. Every encounter I’d had with this boy, as few as there had been, this had happened. Like two magnets, we seemed to keep finding ourselves drawn to each other, responding to some unseen pull.

But hell if I was stepping back or away. Whatever it was about him that spoke to something in me, I wasn’t gonna fight it. Even if it was a sirenlike call, if sirens were hard-bodied, messy-haired men who reeked of sin and dangerous promises, leading me headfirst into a lake of fire.

“I gotta go. Training.” His voice was low and husky, his eyes dark. “Want a ride to your car?”

“Wasn’t planning on walking.” God, my voice was just as thick.

He grinned at me and it was a shock to my system, a bolt of electricity that traveled along my bones. The underlying aggression was still dancing between us, the lust, and that Machiavellian smile on his face. The combination was just as lethal as he was. It excited me.

I knew I should get the fuck away from him. Run to his truck, throw myself in and demand he break every traffic law until I was safely tucked behind the wheel of my own car. I needed to go because I still wanted him. The sex, yes, but specifically him. This boy I allowed to kiss me and take me back to his house. This boy who was what I hated but couldn’t seem to say no to.

Instead of fleeing like I should have, I stretched up on my toes, laced my fingers behind his neck and crashed my mouth onto his. It was a brutal assault, punishing in its force.

His hands shot out to grip my waist and against my lips I could feel, rather than hear, him mumble, “Fuck it. I’ll be late.”

* * *

We both ended up late, him more so than me. He was grumbling something about extra rounds in the ring when he dropped me off. He didn’t ask me out to dinner and I didn’t say I had a good time last night. He merely gave me a nod and a “See ya around,” and I told him, “if you’re lucky,” then I climbed into my car, threw my heels, dress and purse in the backseat and sped home. It was the drive of shame, if I had any shame to drive.

Jax was already gone when I got there and I flew through my shower, dressed and did my hair and makeup in record time. It was still fifteen minutes past the time I was supposed to be there when I walked into the back door of Duke’s, and despite just opening for the night, we were packed. It was usually that way on Mondays. Folks coming in for the hair of the dog that bit them over the weekend or because they had a case of the Mondays. Some didn’t even need a reason. It was just what they did.

I was halfway through the night when Miranda sidled up to me.

“Back eleven,” she said, referring to the table closest to the stairs, tucked into the corner. “That guy is back. Asking for you.”

I knew who she was talking about immediately. Of course, if I was honest with myself, I had kinda been expecting him to show up all night. Still my pulse quickened slightly and I wondered if this was how the still-MIA Preach felt when he could afford his dealer.

I felt eyes on me and I glanced toward the bar, catching Jax watching me. His mouth was set in a grim line and his gaze was full of something that looked like disappointment. I knew he had spotted Luke too and, for whatever reason, he wasn’t happy about it. I shot him a thumbs-up, smiling brightly. He returned a half-assed, generic version of it, more of a brief spasm of his lips than anything, then he turned away, fetching beers from the cooler, his movements stiff.

I was frowning when I turned toward Luke, who’d been watching the entire exchange. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did. Lounging back in his chair, arm hung over the back and drinking a beer, he looked both relaxed and feral, a predator posed to attack at any moment. Maybe it was the hardness in his eyes. Maybe it was the black hoodie and dark jeans he was wearing. The backward hat. The boots only half-laced. It was like looking at a modern-day mixture of James Dean and Marlon Brando with an even sharper edge.

I made my way toward him and for the first time since I hit puberty, I was hyper-aware of my every movement. The subtle, natural sway of my hips, the teasing brushes of my hair against my spine, the barely there muscles in my right biceps, where my tray was tucked under my arm. There was me and there was him and we were more than the others somehow and it didn’t make sense, yet I’d never been so sure of something in my life.

I slipped into the chair across from him, laying my tray on the table next to me. His eyes never flickered, they remained locked on mine even as he sat forward, putting his beer down in front of him. I was leaning forward too, responding to that undeniable pull I felt whenever I was near him.

Magnets.

“You stalking me, Turner?” I asked, my voice low, a purr. It was silk with sandpaper lining.

“You wanting me to?” he drawled back.

“Depends. Am I gonna have to worry about you sneaking into my bathroom while I’m in the shower?”

“Depends. You inviting me?”

“If you play your cards right, maybe.”

He laughed that dark chuckle of his that made me realize how painfully turned on I was again. Either by his presence or the almost-flirty bantering, I didn’t know.

“Never been much of a gambler,” he told me. “Like being sure of my odds.”

“Well, if you’re wanting to know if I’m easy, I guess it’ll depend on who you ask.” I winked at him, knowing how ridiculous I looked when I did it. Like a seizing emu, Jax once told me, which was probably the best description I’d ever heard.

Luke’s eyes suddenly hardened and narrowed to slits. The hand that had only a second ago been holding his bottle of beer loosely was now gripping it so tightly that I was kinda worried it would shatter under the pressure.

Just as abruptly his mood shifted back, so fluidly that I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing.

“You get a break anytime soon?” If he noticed the baffled look on my face, he pretended not to as he waited for me to answer.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the floor, deciding to ignore the weird moment if he was going to. We were still busy and technically this would be considered my break, but I thought I could get away with a cigarette. I stood and motioned for him to follow me.

I retrieved my cigarettes from my purse in the office while Luke waited near the stairs. Mike narrowed his eyes at us as I led Luke toward the back door and I smiled my most charming smile at him. He wasn’t happy about it, I could tell, but he granted me a terse nod and I knew he was gonna let it slide just that once.

Luke glanced around once we got outside before giving me a speculative look. “Am I supposed to be out here?”

“Not at all.” I moved around him to plop down on the steps and light up. His eyes immediately went to my legs and I bit back a smirk. I always liked knowing the effect I had on the male population. I found that I especially liked knowing the effect I had on this male in particular. There was power in it and I liked feeling powerful, especially when I felt the opposite for so much of my life.

Luke cleared his throat and jerked his gaze up. It lingered on my chest for a minute before finally coming to rest on my face.

“Needed to talk to you about something.”

A flash of anxiety ran through me. Nothing good ever accompanied those words and especially not when they were spoken with that tone of voice.

Quickly I wiped any emotion that might have been showing on my face, arranging my features into a mask of cool indifference.
Never let em see you sweat
,
kid.
Only worthwhile advice my da ever gave me. Except, of course, to not even think of speaking to him before four beers or after nine of them.

“Shoot.” I took a drag from my cigarette, then tipped my head back to blow it toward the stars.

“The fight? On Friday?”

My jaw clenched but I was fairly confident it was my only outward reaction. I nodded and took another long pull, the tip of my cigarette glowing bright amber in the gloom of the stairwell.

“Don’t talk about it.”

I looked sharply at him.

“And?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he echoed.

“Yeah. Okay.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “I’m serious. This isn’t a fucking joke.”

“Okay.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “That it?”

“Damn it, Bri,” he growled, stepping forward until he was towering over me where I sat. “I mean it.”

I gave him a droll stare and took another long drag, blowing it toward him on my exhale. “I get that,” I told him coldly. “And I said okay.”

“If you talk about it, you could get hurt,” he exploded, grabbing my arms with a crushing grip, yanking me up and causing me to drop my cigarette.

Now I was pissed.

“You threatening me, Charming?” The words burst out of my mouth in a snarl.

“It’s a fucking warning. Nicky shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It doesn’t matter what he said,” I snapped. I attempted to jerk my arms out of that ironlike grasp and failed, but I wouldn’t allow it to deter me. “I’m not gonna say shit about your fight. Or did you forget—I. Don’t. Like. Boxers. Which means I don’t give a shit about what you do.”

“Wasn’t your attitude last night.”

“I was horny.” Which was true, if only partially.

“I’ll remember that,” he shot back in an ominous vow. “Don’t think I fucking won’t.”

“You go right on ahead.”

We were glaring at each other, at eye level thanks to my heels and the step I was standing on. I could feel my palm throbbing, desperate to wipe that look off his face. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to fuck him. I wanted to merge the two acts and judging by the way he was looking at me and the hard bulge I could feel against the place begging for him, he felt the same.

“You’re such a bitch,” he fumed, and I grinned because damn if I didn’t like being called that.

“Likewise, Turner. Now why don’t you run along and fuck another beer wench. Try threatening her. See how far it gets you.”

“I’ll do that.” He shook me slightly before letting me go and pushing past me to stride up the stairs.

“Let me know how it works out for you,” I called after him. His only response was to throw up his middle finger, which I could barely see the farther he retreated into the shadows.