“I’ll tell ya when you kick the stranglers out,” Aaron said, pulling me back to the present.
He wore that somber face, brows pinched, stubble-shadowed jaw tight with strain.
I knew it wouldn’t be a good story.
But when I finally closed and locked the front doors behind Bruce, one of our local, friendly drunks, and went to sit on Aaron’s lap at the table, I realized nothing could’ve prepared me for the truth about Cleo’s history with The Prophet serial killer.
When he finished speaking, I sat mutely in his lap, eyes fixed unseeing on a neon sign over his shoulder that depicted a cupid with devil’s horns and a forked tail.
“She went through hell,” I murmured, finally, heartbroken for the sweet, brittle girl I hardly knew.
“Yeah.” Something in Aaron’s voice, a graveness I’d never heard before, drew my gaze to his. Those dark eyes seemed to be filled with the ink I needed to write out to the feelings battling inside my chest.
“Not one of you is without scars, are you?” I asked.
“No,” he agreed. “Curtains’s mum was killed on Christmas morning when he was eighteen. A serial killer murdered Bat’s wife, brutalized Cleo, and stalked Bea. Loulou’s fought and beat cancer twice, and she’s only twenty-three. Zeus’s been to jail twice, both times with two young kids at home, once for savin’ an innocent kid and the other ’cause he was set up by a corrupt cop. Cress’s been nailed to a chair and lived through believin’ her husband was dead for months just like the rest’a us. Lila’s dad killed her mum in front’a her when she was fuckin’ six years old. Wrath’s woman was killed by her father, and Harleigh Rose stabbed Lion in the fuckin’ chest to save his own life. There’s no shortage’a sad stories amongst The Fallen.”
“I guess it bonds you.” I thought about my brother Red, a total stranger to me now and even back then. Rooster’s differing forms of neglect and abuse had merely formed a wedge between us. If I saw him now, I wondered if I’d even recognize him.
“You could say that. All’a us have felt broken at some point in our lives, maybe even wondered if it’s worth it to go on. We’vebeen disillusioned and lost, and the club gives people a purpose to tether them and a long lead to give them the slack they need to recover on their own terms. No one here has to be any one way or one kinda person. The lines are blurred ’cause we all learned the hard way that life’s painted in shades’a grey instead’a black and white.”
I hummed my agreement as I processed his biker wisdom, stroking the owl on the strong column of his throat like a touchstone. So I was still a little lost in my thoughts when he jostled me in his lap to straddle him, his big hands palming either side of my face.
“I think it’s how we all know deep in our bones when we fall for the right person,” he murmured, eyes dark and intent on mine, expression almost harsh with sincerity. “They add colour back to our greyscale lives. Just like you added the colour blue to mine.”
“Bones,” I whispered because transforming his nickname felt as right as the taste of it on the back of my tongue. As right as the feeling he alchemized in my skin, blood, and bones. “I don’t understand how I got so lucky to have you in my life. I know being together in secret isn’t enough, but it’s better than anything I ever had before.”
“It’s enough,” he swore like an oath signed in his own blood. “It’s more than enough to spend any minute with you. We’ll get to it one day, the ever-after shit without the obstacles between us, but ’til then, Blue, I’m more than fuckin’ happy with what I got right now.”
There was a gasp of hot air between our mouths, and then he kissed me, and that felt like a promise too. Like a solemn pledge to love me and take me however I came for as long as I wanted to give myself to him. I ate it off his tongue and fed it back to him with all the near violent lust and yearning in my heart. My nails scratched the short hair at the back of his neck, then reachedup to tangle in the long, silken strands so I could pin him to my voracious mouth. He matched my hunger with a fierce growl that rumbled between my teeth as he stood suddenly, my weight perched in his arms, to stalk over to the pool table.
He lay me down slowly, the muscles in his torso and arms flexing around me like iron. It did something to me, knowing that all that strength was being used for tenderness and not violence. Under other circumstances, I might have cried, knowing that this outlaw, this man who had no doubt killed and beaten and potentially maimed, wouldneverlift a hand to me. Even more than that, he would use that Olympian strength and street-smart strategy to protect me against anything that came.
I tore my lips from his, suddenly overcome by the need to show him just how alive and fearless he made me feel.
“Sit down,” I murmured against his lips as he tried to kiss me again.
“Kinda have other plans goin’ right now, Blue.” His mouth moved to my ear, teeth nipping at my lobe, then down to the sensitive skin of my neck where he placed luscious, open-mouthed kisses.
I shivered, trying to hold on to my slippery willpower. “Trust me, you’ll like this. Just sit down for me.”
In the past, my orders had no weight in the bedroom with my husband. It was an authoritarian space with Hazard as the master and I the lowly servant.
But here, in the middle of a biker bar, Aaron proved that my voice would always matter to him.
Slowly, coiling that hard, lean body back from mine with infinite care, he stepped away from the pool table until his knees hit the chair behind him. Without tearing his heated gaze from me, he pulled it out and sat down.
Even in the dimmed lights, I could see the thick wedge of his erection tenting his jeans.
Power soared through me, lightening my bones until I felt like I could fly. A bird freed at least momentarily from its cage, all I wanted to do was preen my feathers and show off exactly who I was to the only man who had ever deserved it.
I tugged my phone out of my back pocket and secured it to the Bluetooth speakers in the bar. A moment later, “Caged Bird” by Myles Cameron spilled through the room. It was a song I listened to every day on my way to work because it reminded me so much of me, of us, and I’d been meaning to share it with him.
It was just sexy enough, the beat rich and erotic, to use it now to strip off the last of my shields.
Aaron watched with lowered brows, tongue touching the edge of his mouth as I sat on my knees, sliding on the felt until they were as wide as I could comfortably spread them. My hands found my breasts through my yellow floral sundress, plumping them in the structured cups so that they spilled dangerously over the fabric. The stained glass light above the pool table cast me in golden light, every inch illuminated so there was nothing to hide. Not the soft thickness of my spread thighs as I slowly teased the hem of my dress up over the pale skin or the swell of my hips and the slope of my trembling belly. There wasn’t a hard surface on me, all exaggerated curves and the slight dip of my waist between them.
But all the ugly voices that had taken residence in my head in the tone of my father, his brothers, my soon-to-be ex-husband were all crushed under the sheer intensity of Boner’s lust-filled, reverent gaze on every inch of my body.
