14
~Lucy~
I rolled my eyes at Mason as he hauled open my door for me, then even stuck out his hand, intending to help me down from the truck. Given the fact that a bunch of his brothers were swarming around, I let him without making a fuss. I would never embarrass the man I loved.
He winked at me before leaning in and grasping my hips. As he swung me down to the asphalt of the clubhouse lot, he whispered reassuringly in my ear, “Partners, little darlin’.”
I grinned like a school girl with an obsessive crush. He’d truly meant it earlier. He wasn’t going back on it. From now on, he was determined to treat me as an equal, not as something to be protected and sheltered. It was what I’d craved for so long. I could barely believe it, barely contain my happiness.
I had the two things I’d always wanted. The man I’d loved for so long and the freedom to live my life the way I wanted to.
There was just one thing left to deal with.
And, as I felt Mason tense beside me, I knew the time had come.
I looked up to see his gorgeous whiskey-colored eyes almost disappear completely into such irate narrowed slits, zeroing on the sight up ahead. I grasped his arm as I heard a growl reverberate through him.
“Easy, baby.”
Following his line of sight, I watched as my brother strolled from the clubhouse with an arm wrapped loosely around troublemaker, Natasha Ireland.
Troublemaker was an understatement when it came to that woman.
When she and my brother had fallen hard and fast for one another, I’d been nothing but supportive of their relationship. I’d been happy for them. For my brother, especially, because I’d never seen him take a serious liking to a woman before. I’d become close with Natasha. Good friends. And then Nik Stone had come knocking, trying to track her down. We’d found out she’d been trying to escape him, to start a new life. I respected that. But what I didn’t respect was what she’d done in her panicked state when she’d learned he’d been searching for her whereabouts. She’d turned to Mason. Instead of her boyfriend, my brother, she’d attempted to go behind his back. I understood why. Mason was the better guy for that sort of thing. But, still. She known the way things worked by then. But she’d gone to Mason anyway and tried to work her feminine charms on him—the thing that’d obviously turned me off her right away, before I’d found out she’d then betrayed my brother too. When Mason had refused, she’d tried harder, intensifying those charms. Cole had caught her and all hell had broken loose. She’d taken off, leaving hell in her wake and not hours later, Nik Stone and the Strikers MC had come at us, tearing things up to get to her. What a mess.
The two of them were as muddied and soaked as the rest of us, having just ridden in, according to the talk I’d heard going back and forth in the transport truck on the way up here. The rain just made Natasha’s outfit look even more like it was painted onto her skin. Ridiculous and as trashy as ever. I mean, who wore baby-pink pants that clung so tightly to their legs that they restricted their movements? How could she ride like that? The answer was that she normally didn’t. She was just a poser, not a real rider like the rest of us. She just hung with and screwed MC members, but she didn’t get the life. It was a frigging joke. And that leather jacket, the same silly color, considering her and Cole were supposed to be riding covertly—and that meant black. She had it zipped down so low, to her waist revealing nothing underneath but far too much of her boobs. Urgh. She was clearly doing her usual thing of trying to manipulate the men around her with her sexuality, expecting all eyes to be on her, no doubt.
But as I looked around the lot at the guys, I saw that she wasn’t getting the reaction she wanted. No, they were all pissed. They all knew what she was capable of now. They weren’t going to fall for her shit. Well, none of them, except my brother, who had his arm wrapped around her and a hand I was pretty sure was squeezing her butt. Urgh.
That altered in the next moment when his eyes fell on Mason and I. Specifically, Mason’s hands on me and my fingers clutching his arm, continuing to calm him in the face of Cole’s close proximity. My brother’s face transformed into an expression I’d never seen projected at me or Mason before. Unadulterated rage. It was so pure that his face actually appeared twisted, like that of a monster’s and an icy shiver rolled down my spine, making me shudder outwardly.
“Everything will be okay,” Mason whispered, pressing a soft kiss to the top of my head, obviously feeling my reaction.
Seeing his tender action just infuriated my brother more though, and, while breaking from Natasha and storming towards us, he roared, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“We’re together,” I answered automatically.
Cole flinched, like he couldn’t bear to hear the words.
His fierce glare shot to Mason, ignoring my presence. “I’m gone two weeks and you fuck around with my sister?”
“We’re not fucking around. I made her mine.”
Cole shook his head like a wild man. “No. I don’t accept that.”
“Not for you to accept. It’s already done.”
Cole glanced around at the guys.
“The club accepted it,” Mason added. “She’s mine. Been a hell of a long time coming and you know it. Me and Luce are together. Get over it.”
Cole flashed him a nasty look as he stopped a couple of feet from us. “You broke a code, brother.”
Mason let go of me and eased me back a couple of steps. “Yeah, about that...” He stepped closer to Cole. At the same time, I was aware of the guys quietly forming a large circle around us. The several who had exited the transport trucks and cars were being directed by Liam and formed a semi-circle flanking Mason and me. Then several came out of the clubhouse with Slade mixed in, doing the same to Cole and Natasha.
It meant only one thing: they were preparing for a major throwdown. Oh God.
“You know me, Cole. I take our codes seriously.”
“Yet, here we are. With the great, honorable Mason Cross breaking a major one.”
“This was different.”
Cole scoffed.
“I was ready to let you deal out the punishment, beat me down, Cole. But we’re way beyond that now.” My breath caught in my throat as I watched Mason step right up to my brother. “After what you did.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Cole hissed back at him.
“Her!” he bellowed, gesturing angrily at Natasha now a ways behind and being blocked by several club members.
“You’ll get over it.”
Was he serious? That was my brother’s response? Could he possibly be any more disrespectful? To the man who’d stood by him and had his back more than anybody else, no less? To just basically dismiss Mason like that was despicable. What had happened to Cole? He’d clearly lost it, that much was obvious.
Mason shook his head, his voice taking on a dangerously low tone. “Nah. There’s no getting over it. Not this time. You and me? We’re done. And you continue to bring her up to the clubhouse and I’m done being around here too. I’ll only be up for Church from now on.”
“Look, Mason—” Cole started, worried now he realized how serious Mason was. He reached out to pull him back as Mason stepped back.
“No!” Mason yelled, shaking himself out of his grip. “It doesn’t bother me so much about the disrespect you’ve shown me. It’s the decision you made by going after Natasha. The choice you made by doing so.”
I watched realization flash in my brother’s eyes.
Oh my God. He’d known. He’d understood the consequences. A part of me had figured he hadn’t actually known, that he hadn’t put the pieces together. But that look just confirmed that he had.
“You don’t understand. There’s more to it,” he said.
Mason wasn’t willing to hear it. “You put your sister in danger. Right in Nik Stone’s line of fire. The second you made the decision to bring in Natasha, you made Luce a target. And you knew it. You chose Natasha’s wellbeing over Luce’s.”
“I—”
Cole didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence.
Mason’s hefty fist slammed into the side of his face like a frigging concrete block. I heard Cole hiss and then grunt in pain as his knees smashed against the asphalt when the sheer power of Mason’s hit drove him down instantly. Holy hell.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Natasha screamed for Cole, then started hurling curses at Mason. A couple of club members held her back, preventing her from making matters worse.
Mason spat on the floor beside my brother and told him, “I’ll never forgive you.”
Cole finally graced me with his eye contact once again and eke out my name, “Lucy?”
“Stay away from me. You’ve suffocated me for long enough.”
Mason’s hand slipped into mine and he gently pulled me away with him.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, little darlin’. You?”
“We’re finally together. I’ll always be okay.”
He grinned down at me and then wrapped me up tightly as we walked away together out of the clubhouse lot.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Into town. I need a drink. Plus, all that fucking worked up an appetite.”
“Preaching to the choir.”
We started making our way past the security gates when something occurred to me and I jerked my head up at Mason. “Hey, what about that list you mentioned? You know things like putting measures in place in case of reprisal from the Strikers MC?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Prez and Cole went behind my back and kept me out of the loop, causing all this shit. They can deal with it. I’m out on this one. Fuck it.”
“Wow.”
He squeezed me to him. “Time to enjoy us now. We waited long enough to be together. I’m not going to waste another minute, Luce.”
“I love you so much.”
He brushed his lips over the side of my neck, my ear, the top of my head. Adoringly. “I love you. Always have, Little Lucy Taylor. Always will.”