The haze of darkness from sleep cleared when I felt a warm heat pressed against my inner thighs.
My eyes half-opened, I grinned sleepily.
Ryker lifted his mouth from my thigh and returned the grin. “Good morning,” he murmured and returned to a teasingly slow assault on my skin. I squirmed beneath him, my body already beginning to pulse with need for him.
I never wanted to forget last night.
The way he held me, the way he made love to me, and the way he knew that I loved him.
I moved my hand to run it through his short black hair while he continued pressing his lips against my legs, coming close to my core, but avoiding it just enough to begin slowly driving me insane.
I gave his hair a small tug.
When he pulled his eyes to mine, his brow wrinkled with worry. “What is it?”
“We need to talk.”
One eyebrow rose. “Now?” He glanced down at my legs spread wide for him before he shot me a wry grin. “I was sort of busy.”
A silent laugh escaped my lips, but I yanked on his hair again, pulling him toward me. My jaw dropped while his muscular frame slowly climbed over my body. He braced himself above me, both elbows planted by my shoulders.
“All right, then.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, suddenly self-conscious and worried. “You didn’t use anything last night.”
He shifted his weight and played with my hair that was splayed out beneath me and all over my pillow. I loved it when he used to do this, gently dragging his fingers through my hair like he couldn’t help but touch me somewhere—anywhere.
“I know,” he finally said. His eyes stayed on his hands in my hair. “I didn’t want to.”
“But.” I opened my mouth to argue, but when Ryker dragged his eyes from my hair to my eyes, I closed my mouth.
“You’re on birth control?”
I nodded as I felt heat climb my neck at his sudden question.
“You’re clean?”
I nodded again. “But…”
He shook his head and brought his lips to my ear. I shivered beneath his breath and penetrating gaze, relishing the feeling of the weight of his body on mine. “Then we’re good, Faith. I wanted to feel you.”
My nose began to sting, and I blinked several times before my eyes dried.
I cupped his cheek with my hand and slowly dragged my thumb across his morning stubble. “It’s always been you, too, you know…” I stared at my thumbnail on his skin, too ashamed, too worried, what he would think. “When I was with them… I wished it was you.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, emotions that I had fought down to the pit of my stomach began swelling inside of me, wanting to finally burst forth.
“Hey,” Ryker said, his voice soft and still scratchy from the morning. “Look at me.”
I did. I had to. I loved staring into his black eyes and finding my reflection in them.
His lips spread into a tender smile. He looked at me patiently, as if he was waiting for me to come to some conclusion. But I couldn’t.
“It will always be me.”
His words caressed my fears and concerns. With one simple sentence, with one reverent look cast in my direction, Ryker was able to erase all of my worries.
Overwhelmed with emotion, with a feeling of love that grew so quickly inside of me I thought I might burst if I spoke, I simply nodded.
It was enough for Ryker.
“Now,” he said, glancing down at my still naked chest. He shifted his weight, leaned off of me slightly, and I watched his hand drag slowly across my abdomen, smiling when pleasure bumps prickled my skin trailing the path of his hand. “Can I finish what I was starting when you woke up?”
I licked my suddenly dry lips and raised a hand, giving him a small wave. “If you must.”
“We’re heading out today.”
I pretended like this didn’t concern me as Daemon spoke to Liv and me while we huddled over an enormous plate of nachos that Sloppy, a club member, had served up for us.
It was well past breakfast time, but neither Liv nor I had eaten.
But we had both looked like we’d had an energetic night—and morning—before we stumbled out of the men’s rooms in the clubhouse with our hair disheveled messes, our cheeks rosy pink, and our lips swollen. As soon as I saw Liv, she had thrown her arms around me and giggled like we were kids.
I had returned it easily, still slightly surprised when a laugh fell from my lips.
But now we were at one of the large dining tables in the main area of the clubhouse, stuffing our faces with a massive mound of seasoned beef, jalapenos, and enough cheese to clog our twenty-something-year-old arteries.
It was awesome.
Ryker’s warm, large palm squeezed my bare thigh at Daemon’s previous statement. I turned to him, my head cocked to the side, and raised a brow.
“I’m going with them.”
I shoved a soggy nacho chip into my mouth and chewed, moaning with delight. “I figured.”
He leaned toward me, one elbow on the table, blocking my view from Daemon on the other side of him. “I wasn’t kidding around when I told you what I’d do to him.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I told you to gut him,” I replied. Although the thought of that actually happening to someone, that I wanted something like that to happen to someone, sent a cold shiver down my spine.
He brought his face closer, nuzzled my cheek with his nose, and whispered, “I don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”
When he pulled back, a worried look danced across his eyes.
“I’ll be here,” I told him, hoping it would soothe whatever concern he had. It must have because he nodded once and looked to Liv.
“She’ll stay with you,” he said.
Liv, snarkier than I remembered her being, smiled. “Of course she will. And when you get back, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Ryker raised his eyebrows in question as Liv slid a key ring across the table. It held two identical keys.
“You can have my house.” She waved a hand dismissively as Ryker. I stared at her. Her eyes glanced from Ryker to me. “Well, my old one—my dad’s—whatever. Anyway, I don’t want it, so it’s yours.”
“You’re giving him a house?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes and smiled. Then she wiggled her finger between the two of us. “I’m giving you a house. Both of you.”
She fell back into her chair and crossed her arms, a pleased smile stretched from ear to ear on her smug, happy face.
“What?” I asked.
Ryker squeezed my thigh and then reached across the table for the keys. “Thanks,” he said, and pocketed the keys as he stood up. He said it as nonchalantly as if she’d slid him a candy bar.
I gaped up at him.
He smirked at me and leaned down, pulling my face to his. “It will always be you,” he said, repeating what he told me this morning. He planted a kiss on my lips so roughly that my eyes flew open, and even though I was seated, I had to grip onto his biceps so I didn’t fall over from the sudden rush of lust hitting my body.
“Get a fucking room,” Daemon growled. The screech of wooden chair legs scraping across the linoleum floor broke our kiss. When Ryker pulled away from me, Daemon pointed at him. “We leave in thirty minutes. Be ready.”
Ryker shot him a mock salute. “Aye-aye Captain.”
The rumble of the bikes pulling out of the parking lot thirty minutes later left an eerie silence in their wake.
I stood outside with my arms crossed protectively around my stomach for no reason except I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
The scorching kiss Ryker planted on my lips, the heat from his hands searing my cheeks as he cupped my face while he claimed me in front of the entire club, old ladies, and club bunnies, left my knees wobbling and mind reeling.
Women glanced at me. Their eyes raked my body from head to toe with a smirk on their lips that left me knowing exactly what they thought of me.
Not that I wasn’t used to it. I had been an escort in Jasper Bay for five years. A part of me had become immune to snap judgments and vicious looks from women on the streets. But seeing it in the Nordic Lords clubhouse, feeling it in every pore of my body from the club bunnies who I knew were thinking I was no better than them, left a cold and slimy feeling covering my skin as soon as I no longer had the protection or warmth of Ryker surrounding me.
Uncertainty began to sift into my mind and fill my veins, flooding my body from the tips of my toes and upward, rippling its way through my body, until my arms shook slightly from fear and the leftover shame of my life that I knew would never go away completely.
“Hey.”
I jostled to the side, wobbled on my feet, and replanted them to regain my balance from Liv’s friendly bump on my hips.
Her arm went around my waist and she tugged me to her. It wasn’t the same comfort as Ryker, but it was something.
I eyed her, not moving my face from the closed gates at the end of the parking lot.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?” she asked as her fingers dug slightly into my hip.
I ran a finger through my long and tangled dark locks, fidgeting with myself. Eventually, I shrugged. “I’m…” Hell, I didn’t know. So much had changed in such a short amount of time.
“Come on,” Liv said, removing her hand from my waist and grabbing onto one of my wrists. “I know just what you need.”
I followed her as she dragged me to the club’s firing range, not saying a single word as she prattled endlessly on about Daemon and how much she hated it when he left on a run or to do a job, but that she was slowly learning that the way to keep her mind off the worry was to keep herself busy.
“So you shoot something?” I asked, palming a small and comforting Beretta in my hands. It had been years since I’d held a gun. My dad and Liv’s dad, Bull, had taught us girls how to shoot when we were young, insisting that someday we might need to know how to use it. The cool metal chilled my sweaty palms—part from the humid summer air and part from nerves.
“It helps,” she said. Then she slid a clip into her own pink gun and aimed it at the target twenty-five yards out.
When I was younger, I had naively assumed my dad would keep me safe. Then I’d assumed Ryker would keep me safe.
But as I held the cool metal of the gun in my hand and loaded it, a strength came tumbling through me, replacing the uncertainty and fear from earlier.
It was time I learned how to take care of myself. It was time I no longer allowed myself to play victim to anyone.
I would never again let anyone take advantage of me the way Cain and the other members of Black Death had done to me.