Blood Secrets: Fallen Motorcycle Club Read online

“That I want you,” Flash said. “But I don’t want your gratitude.”

  “What do you mean?” It was ludicrous for him to think I wasn’t grateful for what he’d done—and even more ridiculous that he’d think I’d prostitute myself to thank him.

  “When you’re in my bed, I want you there because you want what I do to your body. Because you want my cock so deep inside you that it drives all those racing thoughts out of your head. Not because you’re thankful.”

  “Flash…”

  “I can’t wait to fuck you, Emmy, but that’s not what this is about.”

  “What’s it about then?”

  “I want you. All of you.”

  Time stopped and my limbs grew heavy. Shock? Desire? I wasn’t sure. “You barely know me.”

  “I know you’re brave. Strong. That you saved me as much as I saved you.” The reminder that I’d killed a man was unwelcome, but easier than it would have been a day ago. “I know you make me laugh and that I want to see you every day. That’s enough for me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To be with you. To take care of you. I want to know about your life before me and why you don’t talk about the people you’re going home to. I want you to be mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “I’ll protect you from everything, Emily, if you’ll trust me.”

  I looked at him and the truth was there in his eyes, written across his face. But I couldn’t accept that—too often love came with a price I couldn’t afford to pay. So I looked away, pulled a hand free and brushed my hair out of my eyes.

  “I think maybe we should get out for a few hours,” I said, taking the coward’s path. “What do you think?”

  Flash’s face was stoic, but I could see a grin lurking near his lips. The man understood me already, and it was both heady and nerve-wracking. “That’s fine. A few hours might be just what we need.”

  While he showered and put on clothes, I thought about what he’d promised. What he wanted.

  And part of me yearned.

  Flash

  Emily was nervous and that was just fine. I liked her nervous.

  Maybe it was because nerves meant she wasn’t indifferent to me. Scared I could handle. Indifferent might just kill me at this point.

  When I was 15, Dad took me to get my first bike. I’d been waiting years for a rat bike I could fix up and learn to ride, so when he came through the door and hollered for me to get ready, anticipation crackled over my skin like static electricity. We’d gone to a scrapyard—because no one respects a biker whose first bike is all shiny new chrome and metal, especially when that biker’s still a kid—and looked for hours, passing over bikes that were smashed and twisted up, all the metal dumped without a care.

  Then I saw it. Black and rusted and falling apart, it looked like a nightmare. But I could see the bones under the rot and knew right then it was mine. Dad was dubious, but nodded and we got a great deal on it.

  I’ve had other bikes since then, but that one still sits in my parents’ garage. I poured my sweat and blood in it for a year while I waited to get my motorcycle license. Can’t count the nights Mom would come out to the garage with dinner on a plate and leave it on the stool beside where I crouched, trying to fix some part of the damn bike.

  I was right, too. I never loved a bike more than that first one.

  Felt the same way the first time I really looked at Emily after we left the villa. Like she was more than just some girl. Like she was a necessity.

  Shrugged it off, of course, because high tension has a way of warping things so that they appear to be more than they are. But then she shot a man for me and clung tight to me and tried to make me laugh even when I knew Emily was bleeding inside. Raw. She still put on a smile and told a joke, then really grinned when I laughed.

  And that was it.

  If one of my brothers had fallen as hard, I’d have mocked the man and insisted that it was all a trick. Illusions playing against a lonely mind. But I was anything but lonely. I had my family and The Fallen. That was all I’d ever needed.

  Now I needed her, too, even if needing her made me weak.

  We asked the concierge for a place where we could buy some food and she directed us to a street festival a few blocks over. Bright music flew over the colorful awnings and Emily reached for my hand, pulling me along from one booth to the next. I went willingly, happy to see her relaxed. She wound through the crowd and my hackles rose, aware an attack could come from anyone. But a quick perusal of the gathered people helped loosen me up. No one was watching us. We were anonymous.

  Opening up to her about my desires might have been rushed, but I refused to believe it was a mistake. She wanted me as much as I wanted her. When I’d woken halfway through the night, she’d been curled against me again. Her body searched for me in sleep, even if her mind refused to acknowledge our connection.

  “Look at this, Flash,” she said, pointing to a street performer who was juggling knives. Her enthusiasm was contagious, even though knives are for self-defense, not to throw around like some kind of psychopath. After she’d tired of that, I bought her a fruity iced drink that was served in a coconut and she grinned at me in a way that lit up her whole face.

  Sipping drinks, we poked through the wares. When my hunger got the better of me, I dragged her to the food trucks and stalls, where we bought sticks of lamb and plates of rice and beans. Once I’d found her a place to sit, I went back for fruit and empanadas. Then I grabbed a blanket I spotted for sale and came back to her, arranging the blanket on the ground so that she had a nicer place to sit.

  “This is so wonderful,” she said, scooping up another mouthful of rice and following it with a bite of spiced lamb. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Street fairs are pretty common in California,” I pointed out. “Why don’t you go to one when you’re home?”

  “I work a lot.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Sales, mostly. My uncle runs a business and I work for him. Hey do you think that we could go swim in the ocean before we leave tomorrow?” I knew she was deflecting, but I let her. There was plenty of time for her to open up to me.

  “Is that something else you haven’t done before?”

  She laughed and my body tightened. “Of course I have. My parents used to take me out to the beach. We’d get those foam boards and try to catch waves together.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Car accident,” she said, her smile dimming. “They were good parents, though.”

  “You went to live with your uncle after they died?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, reaching for an empanada. “He took me in. I was lucky. We didn’t have any relatives and I know the California foster system is overloaded.”

  “Was he a good parent too?”

  She shrugged. The simple motion made it clear that not only had he been a crap parent, but that it wasn’t something she’d talk about. Wanting to restore the mood to what it was before I fucked it up with such a piss-poor question, I reached out and snagged the last bite of empanada from her hands, chewing it with relish when she protested.

  “Sorry, Emmy. You snooze, you lose.”

  “I wasn’t snoozing! It was in my hand.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t eat it.” She reached out and tickled my ribs and I laughed, choking on the bite I’d stolen. “Stop, stop.”

  “Well, I don’t want to give you the death penalty over some fried food,” she said. “But you’re lucky that it wasn’t chorri pollo you swiped.” The pain on her face was gone.

  Once we’d cleared off the food, I folded the blanket and we dove back into the crowd. It had thickened since we stopped to eat, a writhing mass of bodies that we had to push through to get anywhere. My eyes stayed sharp for anyone who seemed too focused on us, but no threats presented themselves.

  While I grabbed a few things for my brothers, Emily poured over woven bracelets. Watching her from the corner of my eye, I saw her
pick one up and run her fingers down it. It was dyed shades of deep purple and blue, with just a hint of a deep, rosy red in the middle. She draped it over her wrist and admired it, then nodded to the vendor and put it back down.

  Coming up to me, she laid a hand on my shoulder. “What did you get?”

  I held up my bag. “Some things for my brothers. A few shot glasses, some t-shirts. Just shit from the soujourn down here.”

  “Aren’t they going to be angry at you about what happened?” More than anything, I wanted her to let go of the guilt she was carrying over The Fallen.

  “That’s what the gifts are for. I’ll soften them up.” She smiled and I felt happiness invade my body. As good as my life had been, it was a new feeling. Something deeper. Something primal.

  “Want to go look at some of the performers?” she asked, threading her arm through mine. I liked the way she touched me more and more as she became used to me.

  “Actually, could you go ask the vendor whether he has more of the t-shirts in an extra-large? I’d ask again, but I bargained him down so low that he was glad to see the back of me.” Emily’s head tilted, but she smiled, nodded and headed over to the booth.

  Moving fast, I went to the booth that she’d been at before I’d come over. Grabbing the bracelet she admired, I shoved a fistful of cash at the woman, who smiled and offered me a bag. Shaking my head no, I pushed the bracelet into the pocket of my jacket, then turned and walked to Emily, who was speaking to the vendor.

  “There are three more,” she said.

  I didn’t need three more shirts, but I bought them anyway.

  That night, we went to dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the bay. I don’t usually go in for candles and linen tablecloths, but I wanted to treat her to something nice. When her eyes scanned the large, open room in pleased appreciation, I smiled.

  I drank beer from a sweating bottle and watched her sip her wine, her lips turning red as it washed over them and into her mouth. Wanting to lean over the table and lick them clean, I reached for another spoonful of the dessert we shared instead.

  “This is the nicest day I’ve ever had,” Emily said in a tone that made me want to give her a whole string of days like this. “I don’t know how I’m going to go back to my old life now.”

  “You’re not,” I said, filling her wine glass from the bottle. “You can have as many days like this as you want.”

  “Life doesn’t really work like that,” she said.

  “Why can’t it?”

  “I have a life, Flash. Don’t you have obligations?” She frowned, a line appearing between her brows as she contemplated a life she obviously didn’t enjoy.

  “Sure, I do.” I thought of The Fallen and our business. “But that’s not my whole life. You have to have something outside of your obligations. Besides, Emmy, you choose your own obligations, the same way I chose the club. The same way I want to choose you.”

  She blushed, then looked at me straight on. My girl wasn’t demure. “I don’t know if you could handle me.”

  “Believe me, sweetheart, I’m more than willing to handle you all you want.” Her blush burned brighter and I smirked. It was going to be fun to try to cure her blushing—though I had to admit, it was kind of sexy to look up and see her cheeks go pink when I licked her pussy.

  Yeah, I needed this woman bad.

  “When I was little, I used to dream of going out to sea,” she said, taking another sip and staring out at a ship that was leaving the bay to enter open waters. “I’d dream of stowing away.”

  “Where would you go?” I smiled, imagining a little girl with brown braids and big green eyes, looking at big ships dwarfed in the enormity of the ocean.

  “Anywhere. It wasn’t the destination, really. It was freedom. Pure freedom to do whatever I wanted. The captain would find me and agree to let me stay if I worked. So I’d get a wool cap and go out on deck in the morning and help clean the fish and get them ready for sale.”

  “But you didn’t care where the boat was going?”

  “No, I just wanted to be elsewhere,” she said, propping her head on her hand and looking at me with a soft smile. “What did you dream about when you were little?”

  “Riding,” I said. “I wanted to be like my old man. He rode, so I was going to ride.”

  “Seems like it worked out for you.”

  “Yeah. I guess it did. What about you? Ever make it onto the boat?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “It wasn’t in the cards.”

  “Still could be. You’re young.”

  “I feel old.” The weariness in her voice wounded me. My woman shouldn’t sound exhausted and frayed at the edges. Every instinct I had screamed for me to pick her up and carry her back to our room, to wrap her up in bed and protect her from everything that might make her sound like that.

  But she wasn’t mine yet.

  “Don’t miss out on the chance to do the things you want most, Emmy,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “I’ve always wanted to learn to make baked Alaska.”

  I smiled. That would be easy enough to give her. “When we get back to California, where will you go?”

  “Campus, probably.”

  “Cal Tech, right? Do you like it there?”

  “It’s a good place, but my heart wasn’t set on it. Any college would have done.”

  “You have three years left?”

  “Two.” I raised my eyebrow and she continued. “I took a lot of accelerated classes in high school and some night classes, too.”

  “Nice. I got good grades, but I just wanted to leave every day and get home. Why’d you take such a heavy load?” Most people in high school were more interested in scamming beer and screwing than taking extra classes.

  “Seemed better than being home,” she said, ending the sentence abruptly. It was the second time Emily had indicated that something was wrong at home.

  “Your uncle not a great guy?”

  “He’s fine,” she said, but I knew a lie when I heard one and that was a whopper. Choosing not to pursue it, I asked whether she wanted to head back to the hotel.

  “Sure,” she said, and I could hear the nerves in her voice.

  Outside, we walked down the sand together. The lights of our hotel were bright in the distance, but indistinguishable amongst all the other property lights. When Emily reached out to take my hand in her small one, I smiled and pulled her closer, keeping her warm against me from the cool winds that blew off the waves. Her shaking didn’t stop, though.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” I told her. “I’m not going to touch you unless you want it.” Keeping my hands off her was a struggle, but she’d been through a lot of shit in a short time. I wasn’t about to make things harder on her. Besides, I wouldn’t want her under me unless she was hot, excited, soaking wet and begging for more.

  “That’s not what I’m nervous about,” she said, stopping to look at me.

  “Then what’s wrong? You’re quiet.”

  “I’m worried that you won’t touch me,” she said, coming to a stop.

  “What?”

  “I practically strong-armed you into what we did the night we met. All I can think about is that I want to know what the rest is like with you, but you don’t want me.”

  “Don’t want you? I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.” I touched her face. “What did you think I meant by what I said on the balcony?”

  “Then why haven’t you touched me again?”

  “Fuck,” I growled, letting my shoes drop onto the sand. “That’s enough for me.”

  I seized her arms and pulled her close, my mouth devouring hers. I could still taste the smokiness of the wine on her tongue when I pulled it into my mouth. Her lush little body was curved against mine, soft and strong in all the right places. When she moaned, I pulled back to look at her wide eyes.

  “Can’t get enough of ki
ssing you,” she murmured, pulling away and placing her hand on my cheek.

  “Then don’t stop.” I dragged her mouth back to mine and kissed her trembling, swollen lips. Afraid of scaring her, I kept it soft until she nipped my bottom lip and dragged it out with a playful bite.

  Game on.

  I lost myself in her there in front of the crashing waves. Even knowing that people could look out and see us, I pushed things farther. I ran a hand up her leg in the skirt she was wearing, letting my fingers play against her thighs. Her silky skin made me want to come in my pants, but I focused on her, not my raging erection. She was perfection.

  “You’re wet,” I said, stroking the soft space between her thighs. “I can feel it.” She whimpered when I teased the crotch of her panties, and I swallowed the loud cry that erupted when I pushed past the elastic and stroked her swollen slit. She was so fucking hot, and the barbarian in my chest yelled in pleasure. She’s mine.

  “Oh, god, Flash.”

  “Not yet, baby. Don’t come yet.” I wanted her wet and wanting, needed to see everything she felt for me in the most primal way. Her silky wetness coated my fingers as I stroked her clit until she was moaning. Dipping down, I kissed the vulnerable skin at her neck, then moved to lick her nipples through the thin material of the cotton tank she wore. When I sucked on one—hard—her legs started shaking and I realized I had to pull back or I was going to lose control and take her right there in the sand.

  “Emmy, baby, let’s go back to the hotel.”

  “No, please,” she said, and I couldn’t deny her. So I slid a finger into her tight, wet channel and used my thumb to stroke her clit until her breathing changed and I felt her walls convulse around my finger. “Oh god, oh god,” she panted, her breath heavy against my ear. Her core shook, holding me tight, a preview of what it was going to be like to sink into her hot, wet depths.

  “That’s it, Emmy. Fuck yes, you feel so good.” I punctuated my words with another thrust of my finger and felt her shudders strengthen. It was all I could do to not lose it right then and there.

  “You’re perfect,” I said when her body stilled, rubbing a hand up and down her back to soothe her. Emily’s eyes were wide and vulnerable. “That was amazing.”