Blood Secrets: Fallen Motorcycle Club Read online

  “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.”

  Emily

  I’d just put my bloody sundress back on when a knock sounded on the door.

  “Come in,” I said, grabbing my sweater and pulling it over my chilled arms. The door opened to reveal a man with thick dark hair liberally peppered with gray. His arms were still strong and ropey and his face was enough like Flash’s that I knew immediately who he was.

  “I’m Bill,” he said, extending a hand to shake mine, which he did with a very soft grip, in deference to the bruises he saw on my face, I’m sure.

  “Emily.” I took his measure, studying his kind, worn face. He had smile lines and full cheeks.

  “I haven’t seen you in years,” he said, gesturing for me to take a seat. “You’ve grown into a very lovely young woman.”

  “Thank you,” I said. The urge to slam him with questions about my past was ever-present, but I had a feeling this was a man who got to things in his own time. Hurrying him wouldn’t get me anywhere. The only thing I could do was wait for him to tell me the truth of my own life.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I know?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, and then he started the story that broke up my life and put it together in a new pattern.

  “Rafael Deleon was Manuel’s brother, and he was the leader of the cartel after their father died. Manuel was always jealous, because he felt he was the better leader. He was reckless where Rafael was cautious, full of ideas that fizzled out, and always just a little off. My father worked with Rafael’s father, and it was only natural that his older son and I trusted each other as we got older. Rafael and I were business associates…and friends.

  Two decades ago, Rafael began to grow paranoid. He hired people to protect him, even at home. People tasted his food for him—and at the time, I thought he was going mad. Later I found out that he’d almost died from drinking drugged wine. The biggest surprise, though, was something he told me when he called me down to inspect new processing facilities with him.

  Rafael wasn’t the kind of drug lord you see in movies at all. His employees were well cared-for and he abhorred violence. He only sold to trusted sources who weren’t junkies themselves. While he didn’t make as much as some of the other cartels, his business slowly ramped up until he was generating an enormous amount of profit—without the relentless danger that plagued others. So I expected a tour of a new, clean place for his workers to do their jobs.

  Instead I was at a secret wedding. Rafael had fallen in love with one of his housekeepers and decided to marry her. Not willing to put her life on the line, he kept it secret. Rosaline—your mother—looked at him like he’d put the stars in the sky. It was the same for him.

  Then a year later, you were born.

  Rosaline put it about that you were the son of a laborer who’d gone to the United States, because Rafael knew that you would be his greatest weakness. But he loved you too much, and Manuel began to suspect.

  One night, someone broke into the nursery and tried to take you. Rafael killed the man, who he didn’t recognize, but he believed that it was Manuel that sent him. He couldn’t be sure—but if Manuel suspected that you were his child, it would be a death sentence.

  Rosaline couldn’t bear the idea of losing you, but Rafael wouldn’t walk away from the cartel. He knew that to remove a stable leader—the last in the bloodline, except Manuel or Santiago, who was already wrong in the head—would send the organization into chaos and warfare. Dismantling it was discussed, but ultimately rejected. It would take too long and by then you’d be old enough that you wouldn’t remember them if they sent you away. Rosaline would say that you died of a fever.

  He confided this to me so that I would help find you adoptive parents. Though he’d hoped to leave his child the cartel and his business, both your parents felt it was more important for you to have a life where you were safe and protected. So my wife, Flash and I drove to Mexico City on a fake vacation, took a detour, picked you up and brought you to your new parents.”

  “Rosaline is my mother.” Reeling from his story, I sat back. My stomach flipped as I remembered the sad-eyed women who’d tended me the night Santiago almost killed me. Santiago. My own cousin. I’d murdered my only cousin.

  “Flash told me you met her at Manuel’s villa.”

  “I didn’t know…”

  “She must have,” he said. “My wife says that she’d recognize Flash, even if she hadn’t seen him in seventeen years.”

  Remembering how I dismissed her from the room, I paled. I could feel the blood drain from my face. “I barely spoke to her.”

  “Seeing you probably was enough. Knowing you made it out alive with Flash was all she could want.”

  “Oh, god.” It was too much, too quickly. Bending forward, I started to cry in great, heaving gasps. Flash’s father moved to sit next to me. “I had a mother,” I said. “One who was still alive. And all these years with Dale, I thought no one wanted me. Loved me.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t save you,” Bill said, wrapping an arm around me. “We’d have come for you if we’d known. We thought disconnecting from you was an extra layer of protection between who you were and who you are now.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, trying to s
tifle my tears. “It’s just…I wish I knew them.”

  “You might still get a chance to know her,” he said.

  “How did Manuel know I was with Dale?”

  “The best we’ve been able to deduce is that Dale found out when he adopted you. Your paperwork was fake, but there were pictures of your parents and a letter from them that I gave your adoptive parents. He must have seen them, understood what it meant and contacted Manuel. Delivering the one person who could displace him would certainly make Manuel more inclined to give Dale whatever it was he wanted.”

  I remembered moving out to Malibu and how Dale started to ask me questions I didn’t have the answers to. It seemed like he was finally taking an interest in me, asking for my earliest memories. The only one I had that seemed out of place was of a strong man lifting me up so I could pick an apple. Was that my father?

  “But why sell me out to him?”

  “Maybe he wanted something only Manuel could give him. Wider distribution. Protection from Piston.”

  “He could have given me up years ago,” I pointed out.

  “You started turning a profit.”

  “Until I told him I was leaving for college.” Everything became startlingly, painfully clear. “Then my life wasn’t worth anything to him anymore, so he sold me out.”

  “I’m sorry, Emily.”

  “It’s not your fault. Will you tell me about my biological parents?”

  “Yes,” he said. Sitting back, he started to tell me about the man and woman who’d given me life and then given me up.

  Flash

  I didn’t like leaving Emily, even with my Dad. Not knowing what I knew now.

  But he could tell her what she needed to know, and my woman needed space to hear it. Restraining myself with promises that I’d hold her as soon as she walked out of the room, I sat back on the couch and drummed my fingers on my jeans. Waiting was fucking intolerable.

  “Things went well between you and Emily, I take it?” Jackson said, plopping down next to me. I glared at his cheerful tone.