Yours: A Forever After Novella (4 page)

It took a while, but when I knew I was on the verge of losing my ever-loving fucking mind being without her, I came to the conclusion that nothing could be worse than this. The yearning, the ache in my heart that seeped into my bones made it impossible not to do everything in my power to convince my girl to come home. Not just because I need her to be able to take a deep breath, but because that’s where she belongs; with me.

So fuck Harleigh’s week. Fuck what people think. Fuck the fact we’ve kept secrets from everyone who loves us and each other. There are things I have to tell her; changes I’ve made to make sure she comes first from here on out. Big things. Things I should have done in the beginning but didn’t. But first, I’m going to take care of my wife, however she’ll let me.

CHAPTER SIX

~ Harleigh ~

He’s right; the years we’ve spent apart should have been more than enough to prepare me for today. Rationally, I always knew it would come, that Lyric would demand answers as to why I left him and why everything changed between us so quickly with little to no warning. And rationally, I know he deserves them. But my heart isn’t rational; far from it. Especially where my husband is concerned. The predatory gleam in his eyes as he stalks toward me confirms that.

Loving Lyric has never been the issue. I do, probably too much if I’m honest with myself. I love him enough to overlook almost anything. Almost. The one exception, however, is what relationships are built on; trust.

It might not be fair, actually, I know for a fact that it isn’t fair for me to hold Lyric accountable for somebody else’s sins, but I can’t help it. Moreover, I can’t stop it; I’ve tried. On top of that, every time I see my husband, I’m reminded of why we can’t be together; why it’s not safe for either of us.

“Don’t take another step, Harleigh,” Lyric warns. “Don’t run from me, baby. I’d do almost anything for you, but I can’t bear to watch you walk away without telling me why. I love you, Harleigh. I fucking love you so much, that it kills me to see you like this. Talk to me. Just talk. Please.”

The ultimatum Spike gave me rings in my head and has my blood freezing in my veins. My heart stutters at the memory of his coarse words and the way he gripped my upper arms so hard he left bruises behind that I had to hide from Lyric for days.

*****

Shaking me so hard my head snaps back, hitting the corner of the refrigerator, Spike’s hot, rancid breath washes over my bruised and battered skin.

“You’re going to keep your pretty little mouth shut about this, aren’t you precious?”

It’s not as if he’s giving me a choice in the matter, but Spike seems to need my agreement so I nod my head, hoping he’ll let me go and leave. He doesn’t, though. Instead, Spike digs his fingers into my biceps and dips his face close to mine as he studies me intently. No doubt he’s looking for any trace I’m lying, but I’m not. I won’t tell anyone. Not now. Not ever.

Apparently pleased with what he sees, Spike runs his nose down my cheek followed by his tongue. I shudder, disgusted that he’s touching me at all, but repulsed because there’s nothing I can do to fight him off.

I could scream and one of the brothers sitting in the main room of the clubhouse would come running in an instant, but I won’t do that either. The humiliation that another man other than my husband has touched me intimately, put his mouth on places Lyric has cherished so many times before, is overwhelming. I feel dirty, useless, and utterly helpless.

Ghosting his mouth over mine, Spike bites down on my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. The coppery tasting liquid fills my mouth as I swallow it along with the bile that has been clogging my throat since Spike first began his attack. But a little blood is the least of my concerns right now.

The skin on my inner thighs is rubbed raw from the coarse hair on his legs and the friction of his thrusts as he forced himself inside of me. My breasts hurt where he pinched and squeezed them over my bra. I know I have marks on my wrists, on the side of my neck, across my back, and most probably the backs of my thighs if the sting radiating from them is anything to go by, but I can’t bring myself to look. For that matter, I don’t know if I will ever be able to look in the mirror again without seeing what he did to me.

“Here’s how this is going to go down, precious. Your car’s parked around back which means there’s a good chance no one even knows you’re here,” he grins evilly. “I’m going to drive your car down to No Man’s Gap where unfortunately for you, your car’s going to have a little accident. Nothing major, just bad enough to explain where the bumps and bruises you’re sporting came from.”

Another shiver wracks my body at the depth of thought Spike’s put into this. It hadn’t occurred to me before now that he may have planned this. From cornering me alone, which I very rarely am, to knowing how to write my injuries off as an accident, Spike has considered everything.

“Why?” I rasp.

My throat is hoarse and dry from trying to contain my screams of desperation and pain, but I have to know. Why me? Why would he do this to his best friend’s wife? Why after all the years we’ve known each other, been friends, the things I’ve done to help his ailing mom would Spike turn on me like this?

For some reason, my question makes Spike chuckle. It isn’t a pleasant sound; it’s as dark and evil as he is.

“Because I saw you first,” he replies cryptically. “Me, not Lyric. Fucking me.”

Furrowing my brow at him, I try to make sense of his words. However, I’m no closer to understanding them before he clarifies them for me. And what he says sickens me to my core.

“He always looked at you like a friend. A good friend, but nothing more than that. Lyric’s been protecting you since the day you were born, everyone saying how cute it was, how fucking sweet that you followed after him like a little lost puppy dog. No one else existed when you were with him, least of all me. When you started looking at him differently, I saw it. I saw it the day you realized you were in love with him, and it made me sick,” Spike snarls, once again tightening his hold on my arms.

“When Lyric was out sticking his dick in anything that moved, completely fucking blind to your feeling for him, I was at home stroking my cock to the memories of you in your hot pink bikini bent over the edge of the pool. I’d get so hard it only took a few minutes of jacking myself to come all over the pictures of you I had in my room.” Bending to whisper in my ear, Spike admits, “I had hundreds, precious. A few you knew about, but plenty I took when you weren’t watching. Photos of you in your bedroom changing and ones getting in the shower when you forgot to close the window. Those were my favorite. I used to imagine how soft your skin would be, all wet and slippery, just waiting for me to touch you.”

I can’t help it, I gag a little, fighting off the urge to vomit all over the floor. At this point, the fact that Spike invaded my privacy, my private space that I thought was safe shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. I mean, how long had he been watching me for? How long had he been amassing a collection of photos so that he could use them as jerk off material for his sick, twisted fantasies?

Stepping back, Spike folds his arms over his chest and leers at me.

“Years,” he answers my unasked question, confirming my suspicions. “But that isn’t the half of it, precious.”

I stand frozen against the refrigerator because honestly, at the moment I think it’s the only thing keeping me upright.

“Every girl I’ve fucked, I imagined they were you. Went as far as to call out your name when I came all over them too. You ever wonder why I haven’t had a girlfriend?” He asks, not expecting me to answer. “Most women don’t take too kindly to being told I’ll only ever fuck them on their hands and knees and being called another woman’s name. If I didn’t have to look at their faces, it was easier to pretend they were you. Your hair. Your eyes. Your moans as I fucked your ass, pulled out and came all over your back. It was always you, precious. Always.”

Gathering up reserves of courage I didn’t know I had, I ask,

“Then why would you hurt me like this? If you claim to care about me, you wouldn’t do this. You couldn’t.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Spike snaps. “You told me once that you care about me, but you’ve been hurting me for fucking years, Harleigh. Every time you look past me to him, it burns in the pit of my gut. Every time I have to watch you kiss him when you think no one can see you, my heart breaks. And every goddamn time I see you after I know he’s just fucked you, another piece of my fucking soul dies. So you tell me; if you can’t hurt someone you care about, then how the fuck can you keep hurting me like this?”

“I-I, you never told me. You never said anything,” I stammer.

“Of course, I didn’t. It wouldn’t have changed shit if I had,” Spike laughs darkly. “Lyric thinks he owns you, that you belong to him. He’d lose his motherfucking mind if I told him I’ve wanted to fuck his girlfriend since I was a kid.”

Cocking an eyebrow at me, Spike looks almost charming as his lips tip up at the corners into a grin. Yeah right, I mutter to myself. As charming as a fucking shark. As deadly as one too.

“See, I figure that if I couldn’t have you forever, I’d see to it that you’d think of me as often as I think of you. Now every time Lyric puts his dick inside you, you’ll remember my hands on you, my cock, my mouth. It won’t be his lips kissing you, it’ll be mine. It won’t be his hands squeezing your tits, twisting your nipples, they’ll be mine. And it will be my goddamn cock thrusting into your tight, wet cunt you’ll have the memory of when you’re letting him take his pleasure from your beautiful body. Because mark my words, Harleigh, it will be all his pleasure, not yours.”

God, Spike is more screwed up than I ever gave him credit for, not to mention, cruel. Shaking my head, I try to find the words to deny his claim, but they never come because he’s one hundred percent right. It will be him I remember when I’m with Lyric, just not for the reasons Spike thinks.

My mind will turn to him because while what he did to me physically was horrible and the emotional turmoil I felt as he violated every inch of my body and soul horrific, making me question my faith in my husband’s ability to protect me was worse.

In his brutality, Spike managed to do the one thing I never thought possible; make me distrust Lyric. Why wasn’t he here? What was so important that he changed his plans without telling me? How could he not of known how dangerous his best friend is?

These weren’t the only questions I asked myself as Spike raped me. My mind wandered to all the times I recall, Lyric observing Spike with a strange look on his face, making me wonder what he saw there. Did Lyric see the darkness that lurks beneath Spike’s seemingly harmless exterior? Did my husband sense the evil running through Spike’s veins and keep it to himself? And if he did, why would Lyric put me at risk like that? Why would he jeopardize everything we are, everything we could have been? Does Spike mean that much to him? Is their brotherhood bond that much more important than Lyric’s marriage to me?

Spike’s grin widens as my lips start to quiver, and my eyes fill with unshed tears.

“I see you’re getting it, precious. And to clear it up for you, just in case you have any doubts, you will never come first. Not in this lifestyle. Not when he’s still a member of this MC. He loves you, sure, but just not enough to leave all this behind,” Spike says, gesturing to the clubhouse at large.

“Stop. Please, stop,” I cry softly.

Leaning against the countertop, Spike inhales sharply.

“I’m only going to say this once, so listen fucking closely, precious. You’ve got a choice to make. If you keep your mouth shut, keep what happened here today between us, and find a way to get the fuck out of town within the next six months, I won’t kill your boyfriend. But…” he smiles, drawing out the word, “if you decide to tell my bud that I fucked that pretty little cunt of yours raw, I’ll torture your boyfriend in front of you before I end him, and then I’ll put a bullet between your eyes for good measure.”

Not giving me a second to breathe, let alone think, Spike snarls,

“Now choose.”

Needless to say, I did what he said and chose. I chose Lyric’s life over my own sanity. I chose my husband’s life over my own, because as of the moment Spike walked out of the clubhouse kitchen to join his brothers, the last ounce of hope and redemption I had been holding onto died.