Four
Fourteen years ago
Ava was eight. She wasn’t supposed to be in the chapel. It was forbidden, actually. No women, no children. Certainly no children who would grow up to become women. But the room held an intolerable fascination for her, always had. Its cinderblock walls were cluttered with Lean Dogs flags, pennants, a tattered Old Glory, the Stars and Bars, countless photographs. A local artist had fashioned the club dog from welded steel scraps, and it ran behind the chair at the head of the table.
The table: it had been a dining room table once, a heavy relic of some pre-Civil War mansion with sturdy legs carved with intricate vines and bundles of grapes so round and shiny they looked edible. Ava thought she may have tried that once, when she was even smaller, during one of her other unforgiveable ventures into the chapel. Talk about forbidden fruit.
The table stretched from one end of the rectangular room to the other, a hulking mass of cherry that was kept oiled and buffed at all times. Beneath the stale clouds of lingering cigarette smoke, she could smell the furniture polish that the prospects worked into the wood with small slow circles of soft rags. Twenty chairs ringed it, each a solid, weighty work of art with engraved vines and knobby clawed arms and threadbare red velvet seats that had nearly been chafed away by the years and years of denim-covered asses.
There was a matching piece that went with the table, taken from that same antebellum mansion that had yielded up the table: a buffet cabinet, with green marble top, thick veins of white and black streaking through the stone. Instead of the grapes or the vines, its double doors were carved with an entire vineyard, an Italian hillside with its rolling dales of grape vines growing on their frames, a great house with three chimneys rising behind. It had always enthralled her, the way each tiny detail, each window, each grape leaf, was captured with stunning accuracy and realism. When she stared at it, it transformed from its true cherry tones: she saw the blue of the sky, the emerald of the vines, the rich brown of the earth, dusty between the rows, where the workers had trod. She was in a bad habit of sitting in front of the buffet and simply staring, letting her daydreams catch hold of her and pull her up from the chapel, spiral her through the ceiling, above the clubhouse, until she floated somewhere nameless and boundaryless, where her mind was all that limited her adventures.
She…
Someone was coming. Several someones, judging by the low thud of boots. She heard the male voice – “in here” – and her ears perked at the sound of her father’s familiar tenor. James was with him, she heard. And there was a third…that one she didn’t recognize. He had a deep voice, and a funny accent she’d never heard before.
Too late to escape, she realized they were coming into the chapel. She’d never been caught during one of her private sojourns into this special and forbidden place, but she wasn’t eager to find out what would happen if she was. In a series of practiced motions, she swung open the doors of the buffet, whisked herself inside, and pulled them shut again. She could sit sideways, with her legs drawn up, and a single thread of light seeped through the two doors, striking her across her thighs, giving her just enough of a glow to see the dim shapes of her small hands. She breathed slowly, shallowly, and went perfectly still, listening, as her father, James, and the stranger entered the chapel, closed the door behind them, and took seats at the table.
The thick clawed feet of the chairs scraped at the hardwood floor as they drew back and were scooted forward again. Someone coughed; James, she thought.
Then Ghost said, “Mercy, Justin filled you in on our situation?”
In a deep voice that cupped each word in soft hands, smoked and easy, the stranger, Mercy, said, “Yes, sir. It’s the Carpathians giving you trouble, right?”
That was a word she wasn’t supposed to know, the Carpathians. She didn’t know much, if she admitted it – no one told her things. But she was small and church-mouse-silent most of the time; she heard snatches of conversation. She knew the Carpathians were another club, and that they were no friends of Daddy’s.
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “It started out with them wanting a pissing contest. Let ‘em piss, I thought. But then there was that business with Laverne.”
Ava went cold inside at the mention of Laverne, her stomach knotting painfully like when she gorged herself on Tootsie Rolls each Halloween. Laverne was Pat’s old lady; she was thirty-two, dark-haired, and left bright red lipstick prints behind on Ava’s cheeks when she kissed her and fussed over what a “doll” she was. She smelled like thick smoky perfume and her high heels made click-click sounds when she walked through the clubhouse, or Maggie’s kitchen.
Two weeks ago, Pat had called the house and asked if Laverne had been by. Ava remembered the moment: Maggie toweling her damp hands on the tail of her shirt as she cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder and frowned at the wet stack of clean plates she’d left on the counter. “No, I haven’t seen her today. Have you tried the salon?” But Laverne hadn’t been at the salon; she hadn’t been anywhere that any of them could find. Three days later, Ava learned through an eavesdropping session as her mother talked on the phone to Nell, the police found Laverne’s body in the backseat of a Cadillac parked under the bridge. She was dead, badly beaten, and had been raped – a word Ava wouldn’t understand for a few more years.
Since the incident, after the black-curtained funeral, a pall had settled over the club. The Carpathians were on the tips of everyone’s tongues. Ava felt the churning in the atmosphere, the restless need for male action.
James said, “We heard what you’ve been doing in New Orleans,” in his crusty smoker’s voice. “Bob says you do good work.”
“Well…” the stranger said. “That’s nice o’ him.” His voice – there was such depth to it, layers of richness she’d never heard in Tennessee. It wasn’t merely Southern; it belonged to a special place, one that was a world unto itself.
“We’d like you to stay up here with us for a few weeks,” James said. “See if you can–”
“Hold up a sec,” Ghost said. His chair creaked as he rose from it; his boots thumped across the floor.
Ava gasped as she heard his hand on the cabinet door, but she had nowhere to go. She’d been caught. Her heart stuttered in her chest. All she could do now was pray the punishment wasn’t too severe.
The doors pulled wide, and there was her father, crouched down in front of her, his wallet chain dangling off one hip and coiling on the floor like a bright silver snake. His face, suntanned and lined around the eyes, was set off by his bright dancing eyes, the white glimmer of teeth as he flashed her a grin that told her she was in so much trouble, but she was his little girl, and he wouldn’t resort to blatant scolding.
She breathed the tiniest sigh of relief.
“What?” James asked, and coughed.
“We have a highly trained, black ops spy in the room, boys.” Ghost reached into the cabinet, palm held up for her to take, and Ava slid her little fingers against his and let him tow her out into the room, standing up with her head angled down toward the ground, long tangled hair falling across her face on either side, hiding her blush. Ghost set his hand on the top of her head as he straightened beside her.
“You want to tell us what you were doing in here?” he asked in that scary-calm voice of his. Mom was all about yelling and fit-pitching. Her disciplinary style was loud. But Daddy…Daddy just got quiet. One glance was usually enough to send grown men running. Ava had never tested him beyond “the look.” Not before, anyway; she was afraid she just had.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the toes of her sneakers. “I just…”
“Just what?” Ghost’s fingers tickled at her scalp.
Her fascination with the delicate carvings of the table and buffet seemed foolish now, considering she knew she should never have been in here in the first place. Besides, while the furniture was glorious, and the focal point of her staring, it wasn’t her main attraction to the room.
“I just like being in here,” she said in a miserable voice. “I’m sorry. I won’t come in again.”
“Hey, sweetheart,” James said, and she lifted her head. “You understand why you can’t be in here, right?”
She nodded, only dimly aware of what he was saying. Her gaze had been drawn away from his friendly, craggy face to the next chair over, to the stranger whose voice so captivated her ears.
He was tall; so much of him sprouted up above the glossy tabletop, his reflection in it seeming to lengthen him further. His arms were long, quite long, and rounded at the tops with muscle, bared by his sleeveless shirt, browned from the sun and dusted with coarse dark hair below the elbows. His hands seemed too large for comprehension, too large for his body, even, like he still needed to grow into them. And grow into them he would, most likely, because he was young, she noted, as her eyes traveled up his tan throat to his face. Older than Aidan, but younger than her father and James. He was old enough to wear the club colors. And his face…she was enchanted.
His nose was a little too large and sharp, his jaw narrow, his lips thin. His eyes were dark and deep-set, staring at her with rapt attention from beneath straight, black brows. His hair was black and fell in silky, straight hanks across his ears and forehead. His eyelashes, she noted when he blinked, were long and black and curled.
He was beautiful, in the way that a Doberman was beautiful: better looked at through a fence.
“Because we talk about club business in here,” James was telling her, “and we don’t want you to know any of that, because we want to keep you safe, right?”
Ava forced her eyes to the MC president, and nodded. “Yes, sir.” Though she didn’t understand, and never had. It was all so vague, this idea of club business and keeping safe.
And then, because she couldn’t seem to help herself, her eyes returned to the stranger.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile. His eyes, black in this dim interior light, sparkled.
Her chest tightened and she didn’t understand why.
“Ava,” Ghost said. “This is Mercy. He’s gonna be hanging around for a few weeks.”
Mercy.
“Hi, Ava,” he said, giving her a little two-fingered wave across the table.
“Hi,” she said, and felt her cheeks grow hot.
That was the moment, she would later reflect, when she first became achingly aware of her gender.
**
Present Day
“Is it always like this?” Ronnie asked. He had to lean in close, until their shoulders bumped into one another, to be heard above the roar of the music.
Ava sipped her red Solo cup of Budweiser and scanned the clubhouse parking lot set before them like a carnival. Makeshift steel tent poles mounted in buckets of Quikrete supported the dozens of interlacing strands of colored Christmas lights that draped the parking lot in brilliant, festive hues. White lights had been used beneath the porch canopy and around the potted evergreens. The effect was dazzling: brilliant pinpricks of red, blue, green, yellow, and white catching on jewelry, on amber beer bottles, on glittering motorcycles, in the slick convex curves of eyes. The air seemed filled with fireflies.
Outside, a portable stereo system blasted Jackyl. Beer-stocked galvanized tubs of ice were stationed at convenient intervals, chips and salsa and other munchies set out on gingham-draped outdoor dining tables. Dogs talked, laughed, and milled about, drinking and admiring one another’s bikes. Rottie was working the keg, filling cups; he’d winked at Ava when he’d handed her hers, a fast, questioning glance sent Ronnie’s way. Can your college boy handle this? his eyes had asked.
I hope, she’d said with an eyebrow shrug.
“Only for big blowout parties like this one,” she answered. “It’s usually more low key than this.”
“You should have seen the ones they had when we were in high school,” Leah said. “Now those were crazy.” She twirled the beer around in her Solo cup. “My parents forbid me to come to another one, actually.” She shrugged. “Oops.”
Ronnie shook his head, sipped his beer, and watched Collier and RJ fawn over a New Orleans member’s brand new Fat Boy.
Ava didn’t tell him that if he thought this was crazy, he should see the inside of the clubhouse. Ava knew the dancing girls would be doing their thing. Groupie girls would be doing their thing. There would be clouds of pot smoke. Someone would have busted out a little recreational coke, despite Ghost’s strict no-narcotics policy within the club.
Mercy must be inside, she thought, before she could clamp down on her self-control, and she kicked herself for taking note of his absence. He wasn’t her problem. He’d made that perfectly clear five years ago.
I’m not succumbing, she thought. Just experiencing a little setback.
An arm draped across her shoulder from the left, and she glanced over, already knowing it was her dad. She smiled automatically; she’d been smiling out of reflex since she’d reunited with him that afternoon, wanting him to see her as happy, so he wouldn’t give Ronnie such a hard time.
The meeting between the two had been a stilted affair, Ghost shaking Ronnie’s hand so hard that Ronnie winced; Ronnie stuttering and refusing to make eye contact. Ghost didn’t approve – that he’d made clear with a glance – but Ava wasn’t sure anyone would meet with his approval. He’d hated every boy who’d ever glanced at her in high school. He’d threatened to have Mercy publicly castrated. Though that threat had been made in private – bros before hos in the MC world. He would never strip a brother of his colors simply for an indiscretion committed with a female. The club was too important for that. The club…
She had to halt this train of thought before it went too far. She sure as hell didn’t fit into the rest of the world, she didn’t need to go hunting for things to dislike about her biker family.
“You doing alright?” Ghost asked, giving her shoulders a squeeze.
“It’s a big party,” she answered, after thinking it over. “James must be so excited to have such great turnout.”
He smiled. “That’s not what I asked.”
She smiled back, fleetingly. “I know.”
One last squeeze, and he stepped away, leaning in low a moment to whisper in her ear, “Don’t let your little boyfriend go inside; he couldn’t handle it.”
Ava rolled her eyes as he laughed and walked toward Maggie, who stood talking with Bonita. This wasn’t just a special night for the boys, Ava reminded herself, but for her mother too. Maggie was becoming queen tonight, a title long-awaited and well-earned.
As if clairvoyant, Maggie glanced over, smiled, and waved for Ava and Ronnie to join them. Ava started to comply…and then froze up on the inside, unable to step that direction. It was petty, childish, selfish, even, but she just couldn’t. Coming home was slowly eroding her maturity, maybe even her sanity. She’d thought plunging back into the circle of Lean Dogs women would feel like stepping into her favorite pair of boots. Turned out, those boots had shrunk a little bit over the years, and the fit wasn’t so comfortable anymore.
She drained her last swallow of beer. “I’m going to get a refill,” she told Ronnie. “You want anything?”
“Nah. But I can come with–”
“No, it’s fine.” She walked away before he could argue further, slipping between Collier and RJ, throwing herself into the shielding crowd so it would be hard for Ronnie to follow her.
God, what a bitch she was.
Inside the clubhouse, there was nothing visible of the floor. The impenetrable crush of bodies swayed from corner to corner to corner, in time to the trilling electric riffs of “Voo Doo Child.” The stink of all those sweating, shouting humans mingled with dangerous potency with the pot smoke; the haze was thick and choking, but not too dense to keep her from seeing the two topless girls working the pole. One blonde and one brunette, they’d paused their show so they could kiss and grope one another, to the screaming delight of the men around them. Ava spotted Aidan and Tango in the throng surrounding them, and turned her head away. She’d seen enough tits to last her a lifetime.
Plenty of the guys were simply drinking and shooting the shit, playing pool. But Andre looked high as a fucking kite, dancing by himself with a beer bottle pressed to his lips. Jace was sitting on one end of a crowded sofa, a girl straddling his lap, his hands shoved up under her halter top; given the way the girl writhed, the way her skirt was hiked up around her waist, it was clear his fly was undone and they were fucking right there in the open while he sat beside his brothers.
Ava put her head down and kept walking, forcing her slow way through the press of bikers and groupies, the blend of music and voices deafening. She passed flannel-shirted hangarounds who absorbed every blistering detail with rapt fascination, passion blazing in their faces. It was heady, it was arousing, this blatant display of sex and drink and revelry. The wannabes couldn’t contain their excitement. They were stupid enough to think that the life was all parties and titties and semi-public fucking. Stupid, so stupid, all of them, thinking they knew what it would be like to join this club.
When she reached one corner of the bar, a hand snaked out of the crowd, closed over her wrist, and pulled her through the open panel and into the safety of the horseshoe shaped bar. She caught her bearings, head reeling from the smoke and noise, and saw that it was Walsh who’d saved her.
Her smile was automatic. His was shot at her sideways, subdued and rather humorless, as always.
“What the fuck, huh?” he asked, his English accent making the words somehow elegant. “Guy can’t even breathe in here.”
That was Kingston Walsh for you: recluse, hermit, general grumpy-pants at all times, he liked his tiny house, his dog, the sound of passing trains, and he loathed parties of all kinds. He rarely attended Maggie or Bonita’s big club Sunday dinners. He was here, Ava didn’t doubt, only because he absolutely had to be.
Ava turned so they stood side-by-side, and mimicked his position leaned back against the liquor shelf. At five-seven, he was a scant two inches taller than she was. Blonde, perpetually stubbly in the chin department, he had narrow, eerie light eyes and a habit of seeming disinterested in everything and everyone. He had a brilliant head for numbers, though, and that had made him a living legend within the club.
“You’re not enjoying the show?” Ava asked, tipping her head in the direction of the strippers. They were grinding against one another now, lascivious, low-lidded smiles blooming for the men who cheered them.
Walsh glanced at them like he was inspecting a carpet stain, lip curling a fraction. “I’ve seen better.” No one had any idea of his sex practices; he never brought that sort of thing around the club. Hermits were private that way.
He took a sip of his Newcastle and glanced back at her. “Are you back for good? Or is this a visit?”
“Back for good.” She had to lean close to be heard. “I’m doing grad school at UT.”
He nodded. “Your mum must be happy about that.”
“Ecstatic.”
Another nod. He was already losing interest in talking to her, she knew.
She thrust her cup toward him. “Any chance a girl can get a vodka tonic?”
“A good chance, I’d say.” He fixed her drink with a deft hand, rinsing out her beer cup first, and passed it back with a rare, true smile. “Welcome back, love.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip, returned his smile, ducked back out of the bar…
And ran smack into someone’s broad chest.
Her drink slopped out of the cup, soaking her top, splattering across her shoes.
“Shit!” She shook the vodka off her hand, and glanced up…
To realize she hadn’t run into someone. She’d run into Mercy.
He loomed above her, black brows pulled tight together, expression one of open concern. “Shit, I’m sorry–” he said, and reached for her arms.
The sight of both those big hands coming toward her closed her throat up like a valve. Away, away – she had to get away!
With an inhuman sound of distress, she spun away from him and pawed her way through the crowd.
“Hey!” someone shouted.
“Watch it!”
“What the fuck?”
She stammered apologies, but didn’t stop moving. On and on she clawed past Lean Dogs patches and fragrant leather, until she reached the hallway. There were couples back here: pressed up against walls, groping, moans coming from behind closed doors. It was a goddamn orgy in this place tonight. She went all the way down the hall, to the last dorm on the left, before the hall jackknifed right and fed into a storage area and laundry room. Thankfully, the dorm was empty, and she darted inside, closing the door behind her, leaning back against it a moment as she caught her breath.
This was the nicest dorm, for the sole reason that it was the longest walk down the hall, and most of the guys picked another one before they got this far. Its hideous orange, short-napped carpet looked almost like new – though it hadn’t been pretty even then. A narrow bed – just big enough for two who weren’t interested in keeping any distance between them – anchored the far wall. An inexpensive pine dresser and bureau crowded the rest of the small space. There was a full en suite bath and a closet, a tiny frosted window above the bed that flared bright with the manmade light from outside.
The clubhouse boasted fifteen of these tiny rooms, places for stolen intimacy – the purpose they served tonight – or for members to crash if they were drunk, displaced, or visiting from out of town. In an emergency, the building could house the entire club and their families, a situation that hadn’t been tested in her memory.
Ava stood with her palms pressed to the cool wood of the door until her heart had slipped back inside her ribcage. She still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop shivering, but she didn’t think she’d have a stroke at this point if she tried to move.
“Dumbass,” she scolded herself aloud.
Some of the shivering, she decided, had to do with her wet shirt. She still wore the yellow skirt, white blouse and denim vest from before, and now it was all soaked with vodka.
Making a face, she doffed the vest and laid it across the foot of the bed, going into the bathroom to see about the shirt. The fluorescent tubes came on with a hiss and a hum; her reflection filled the medicine cabinet mirror, the pale light and the avocado tile on the wall behind bringing out all the ghastly, unnatural colors in her face. Her deep purple and gray eye shadow – a soft touch in the sunlight – made her look like she’d been punched in the face. Her cheeks were thin, sunken, sallow, her skin waxy and obviously pored. Her hair hung, two limp sheets, in front of her shoulders. She wanted to blame the lighting, but she knew the truth: this is what two-point-three seconds in front of Mercy did to her.
Her white linen blouse clung to her breasts, translucent, the cups of her white bra vivid, as were the sharp points of her nipples beneath as they strained against the satin.
“Great.”
There was nothing to do for it except try to blot away what moisture she could. She peeled her shirt away and laid it on the counter as she dug a towel from the cabinet below. The skin of her throat, chest, and stomach was zombie-pale under the fluorescent light, the blue pathways of veins flowing down between her breasts, goose bumps pebbling her flesh, shrinking it, until she felt tight and restless all over.
Just the drink, she reminded herself. And the excessive air conditioning.
She stood in the open doorway of the bathroom, dabbing at her shirt as she stretched it flat in one palm, knowing her efforts were futile, trying to keep her thoughts from wandering.
Then the door to the room opened, and her reaction was that of a prey animal. She went perfectly still, even her heart, which stalled for a full second as the door swept across the carpet and Mercy stepped in, closing them in together with a soft click of the latch finding its place.
In the moment before her pulse kicked in again, she allowed herself a pure reaction, a chance to clap eyes to him and miss him and want him. He was too big to be indoors like this – that’s what Maggie had said once. Whatever else was in the room, he dwarfed it, literally, and figuratively. In his presence, Ava felt everything fade to rosy kaleidoscope tones around her; he was her focal point, her north.
He turned to her, his black eyes narrow and unreadable, and then her reason kicked in. Ava clasped her wet shirt to her chest. “You – you can’t just come in here.”
He took a step toward her, one long stride that brought them within two feet of one another. “Relax.” He smirked. “Not like I haven’t seen it all already.”
Blood rushed into her face, flooding her skin with hot shame. Yes, he’d seen it all, and how did she stand up to him when his mouth had been on every inch of her?
She straightened to her full height, thrust out her chin, and said, “What do you want, Mercy?” Still holding the shirt over her breasts.
His eyes went to the damp linen, and what she sought to conceal with it. “Shit, I spilled that all over you. I’m sorry.” He shrugged and looked contrite, almost boyish, as his hands went in his pockets. Boyish in a way that involved being six-five, sporting tatted arms and sinister brows.
This was the lethal cocktail of Mercy Lécuyer: his baffling good humor, and his veiled fury. A wolf who chose to domesticate himself amongst Labradors, who pretended to be one, most of the time.
“What?” she repeated, agitation thickening her voice. “I need to get dressed.”
“You can’t even give me five minutes?”
“Five minutes for what?”
He shifted forward, and she tensed in reaction. But he didn’t move closer, only past her, as he lifted her vest, set it further up on the blankets, and sat on the end of the bed. The crappy old mattress dipped beneath his weight. His long legs stretched out before him, the soles of his black boots a few inches from her sandals, close enough for her to see the dried white blob of gum stuck between the treads of the right one. He folded his sun-bronzed hands together and let them hang between his knees, elbows bracing on his thighs as he leaned forward and pinned her with his most earnest, serious look.
“I talked to your dad today,” he said, his tone gentle, like he was speaking to a frightened child. “He asked me to think about transferring back here.”
She didn’t want the words to hurt like a gut-punch, but they did. She felt the breath leave her, felt the sharp pain at her breastbone. She didn’t owe this man anything, not even curiosity. But she said, “And what are you thinking?”
His face – his fierce, beloved face – warmed with a slow, sad smile. “I’m staying, Ava. Here in Knoxville. If my president needs me–”
She lifted a hand, halting him. “You don’t have to explain it to me. I know how it works.”
His smile turned up at the corners, a brightness coming into his eyes. “Yeah, you do.”
She didn’t want him to look at her like that and acknowledge her in any way. It made being this close to him too hard.
She was too cold, the wet linen of her shirt chilling her skin. She felt her eyelids twitching with anxiety. “So?” She shrugged. “So you’re back – what’s that to me?”
“I dunno, sweetheart. But I thought it was the right thing to tell you myself.”
“Right?” She knotted her hands in the shirt and felt it gathering, slipping down from the gentle slopes of her breasts. “Nothing about either of us has ever been right.”
His grin widened, white teeth flashing. “No, I guess not.”
“I’m glad this is all so funny to you,” she said through her teeth. Fuck him, at this point. She pulled her shirt down, shook it out, and struggled back into it, the wet fabric catching at her face and elbows. “What’d you do the last five years in Louisiana without any little girls to torture?”
Her bra was still plainly visible through the top, so she needed the vest. Which meant she would have to get even closer to Mercy, close enough to touch, to smell him, to see the thin gold filaments in his black eyes.
She pointed to the vest. “Hand me that.”
He sat back, hands braced behind him on the bed. The mattress groaned a protest. “Say pretty please.”
“Like hell.” She squared up her shoulders and stepped to the side of the bed. Keeping her eyes on the vest, refusing to look at him, she leaned forward, reached for it –
And his hand caught at the front of her shirt, holding her fast in this vulnerable, pitched-forward position. She was, appropriately, at his mercy.
Ava lifted her head, her pulse pattering in her ears, her stomach turning over and over. She looked at his face, which was much too close to hers now. His smile was a frozen, stiff thing, his lips parted, a thin wedge of teeth still visible. She was close enough to see the dark stubble on his chin and cheeks, the tiny pores in his nose, the few stray hairs at the fringes of his brows. His long lashes.
“Let go of me,” she whispered.
“I missed you.”
“You don’t get to miss me.” She trembled all over. She couldn’t keep staring at his eyes; she’d crumble if she did.
Her gaze darted down, to her shirt, where he clutched it. His big hand, so dark against the translucent linen, was pressed between her breasts. She felt its heat, remembered the rough skin of his palms and fingers. She took a shattered breath, and then another. “Let go.”
She risked a glance at his face, and realized he couldn’t let go. He stared at his hand, his smile gone, his brow creased with frown lines. The sudden intensity in him was startling. He’d made contact, and he didn’t want to break it.
Her eyes returned to his hand, and she watched it open, as if in a trance, and shift to cover her breast. The warmth of his body, even just this part of it, went straight to her head. She braced her hands on the mattress, gaze fixed as he rubbed the soft inside of her breast with his thumb, delving into the valley between the two mounds. The wet linen shifting against her flesh sent shivers chasing down her spine. He squeezed, weighed her. Through the shirt, flirted with the lace edging of her bra cup, and with his thumb, slipped beneath it, sliding the damp fabric down, closer and closer to her aching, pebbled nipple.
“You always liked this,” he said, just a murmur of low, rough sound. “When I played with you.”
“Stop.” But it was the weakest of protests. She leaned shamelessly into his touch, unable to help herself.
He worked her bra down, and then her breast was bare beneath the clinging shirt, its shape, and its dark coral center clearly visible. Her nipple was a hard button, tenting the fabric. When he took her in his hand, her nipple thrusting into his hot palm, she closed her eyes and made a disgraceful sound in the back of her throat.
She felt his breath feather across her lips the moment before he kissed her, and she opened her mouth to receive him.
There was no hesitancy, no uncertainty. In the five years since he’d last touched her, she’d relived every kiss they’d ever shared in her dreams, and their mouths came together with the heat and fervor she remembered. His lips pressed hers for entry; his tongue invaded her. He tasted like beer.
Ava was pliant as a doll when his hand left her breast and he picked her up around the waist, lifting her onto the bed, into his lap. Mercy ravaged her mouth and his hands were so blessedly warm against her cold skin. She twined her arms around his neck, wanting only to melt against him, to pretend that her heart had never been broken and that they hadn’t lost any time.
She was dimly aware of her shirt lifting, of the separation of their lips as it whisked over her head, the fast glimpse of his heavy-lidded eyes, his damp mouth, before his kisses were robbing her of oxygen again. Vaguely cognizant of her bra straps going down her arms. Then his rough, hot palms were on her naked breasts and she was lifting and grinding, undulating at the touch.
Against her lips, he whispered, “Do you get like this for him? Does your rich boyfriend make you this excited?”
A bucket of ice water couldn’t have brought her back to her senses faster.
Ava put her hands on his chest and shoved back, breaking the kiss with violence. Oh, God, what was she doing?
She was on her knees, straddling his lap, her yellow skirt a sunny puddle across his and her thighs. She was topless. His large hands clutched her breasts. And she had been grinding against the telltale bulge behind the fly of his jeans.
“Oh, Jesus!” She leapt away from him, jumping to her feet, covering herself with her arms.
Panic gripped her. Her skin was electrified; the tender place between her thighs throbbed. In a wild craze, her eyes darted, searching for her shirt, her bra.
Oh, how could she have let this happen? How could she not be alone with the man for five minutes without taking off her clothes?
“Here.” Mercy held up her bra by its strap with one finger. The damp shirt was at his feet. He wasn’t smiling; his face was harsh with an emotion she recognized on him: want. Blind physical need transformed his often-jovial face into a mask of anger and aggression.
There’d been a time when she would have allowed herself to regret putting those lines around his eyes and mouth, between his brows. There’d been a time when she was a stupid kid so smitten with him she couldn’t see any of the flashing hazard signals, the red lettering that marked their wrongness together.
But now, she snatched up bra and shirt and put her back to him, struggling back into her clothes with fast, jerky movements.
“You can’t tell anyone about this,” she said through chattering teeth as she tugged her shirt over her head and the wet fabric hit her heated skin with a shock. “Dad and Aidan would flip their shit.”
She spun to face him, searching for an argument, and realized he hadn’t heard anything she’d just said. His eyes burned her, the way they were fixed to every part of her at once.
He swallowed, his throat working. “You look good, Ava. Really good.” Like he hadn’t just had his hands on her; like he hadn’t meant to roll her onto this beat-up mattress and take her right there without even a proper hello. He said it like he’d missed her, like a broken boy standing on the other side of a chasm, longing for what they both knew could never happen again.
“I have a boyfriend,” she said, like an idiot.
“I know.” His smile was slow and wry. “I guess you love him, huh?”
Ava bit the tip of her tongue until she tasted blood. “Don’t tell anyone,” she repeated. “You can’t.”
“I won’t.” His eyes were the color of smoke, of water at night. The way they stroked her was more intimate than his hands or mouth had been. “I never did.”
She left him sitting there, on the edge of the bed, her self-control trailing behind her in tatters.