“Hi, my name is Nathan Frazier, and I’m a dumb, jealous motherfucker.” - Grinder

 

 

Diffusing the weird situation bouncing between the two men Luxe didn’t walk too far before she heard Nathan heavy on her heels. He rounded in front, stopping her in her tracks.

Talk about a visceral stare.

It was as intimate as a private caress slipping over bare skin, those dark eyes hooded with long black lashes pinned her in place. Her stomach tugged. Ay dios, he was so, so handsome with his tall swaggering gait and she really liked the dark gray coveralls hanging around his waist, giving her peeks of his hard belly, all the sculpted muscles on display for her own enjoyment, she thought.  A handsome working man with dirt under his nails. She’d forgotten the effect he had on her as air whooshed out of her lungs.

She might faint or do something equally mortifying and lick his face.

The energy coming off him was gasoline straight to her veins, his heat radiated all down one side of her body almost as if they were already touching.  That whole macho chest beating posturing was never her cup of sweet tea … usually. She’d be lying out of her ass if she said seeing Nathan with jealousy grating his rough voice box was something she didn’t enjoy.

He was either claiming her or he just did hate Jamie and enjoyed poking him.

“Hey, chico, how’s it going?” Now that was a great question, self-high five. Much better than the one swirling around her head. Will you get over here and let me smell your neck, you, sexy bastard. She followed it with; “What was that macho crap all about?”

He really did have the best smell.

Masculine and spicy with a hint of sugar in there somewhere. She’d rolled her nose up and down his throat for those glorious hours spent together moaning how gorgeous he smelled.

“How’s it going? How’s it going?” the repeat got slightly higher in his velvety baritone and Luxe’s brows shot up into her hair from the look of thunder crossing his expression.

Maybe she should have gone with asking to sniff him?

Behind her she heard. “Oh, fuck, the kids are about to have a domestic, this is gonna be good, Rider. Sit back and watch the pocket-rocket demolish your boy.” Chuckled Jamie helpfully and Luxe glared at him, shifting her whole body towards Nathan but his eyes weren’t on her now.

They were all about Jamie.

The stare was death all over with not even a chance of resuscitation. A shiver trickled down her spine, hot all over, it was instinct to move into his body and calm him, to ease whatever discomfort he was experiencing, laying both hands on his chest, he was breathing rapidly. “Don’t,” she said for his ears only. “Nathan. Don’t.” His head cranked down, their eyes meeting and holding, his nostrils flaring like he was a thoroughbred, his chest inflating harder until he took one gusty breath and exhaled slowly.

How extraordinary to calm a man like this, she thought. She felt it happen, the way his body relaxed under her stroking hands, shoulders that were tense dropped and he moved to rest their foreheads together. Luxe braced to have him closer, unconsciously leaning into him. She was drunk on this one intimate touch.

Oh, shit. Did that modest, animalistic observation of calming for her have to tickle every erogenous zone she had?

“Look at that. Our boy just got tamed.” She turned to see who owned the snide rusty voice. Luxe snapped out of her daydream of yanking his head down and licking straight into his mouth.

A guy with very little hair was their smirking heckler.

Just as if Grinder hadn’t wanted their connection severed she felt him all over her back pushing into her, keeping her close. Luxe was busy gaping because it was the most curious thing to see a man cradling two kittens in his shovel sized hands, one tiny kitten head caught between two fingers, it lazed on his palm. A man looking as he did with the humongous, frankly vulgar, tattoo across his neck, she blurted the first thing to come to mind. “Is he going to hurt those kittens?”

She wasn’t a member of PETA but she’d once clobbered two young boys for taunting a park squirrel with rocks, the little shits had thought it was funny. Luxe was six at the time. In that same protective vain she wouldn’t stand by if someone was about to be cruel to animals right in front of her, she took a step towards mister menacing who turned the coldest eyes on her, only to have Nathan’s hand sliding around her middle stopping her.  

The shiver goose bumped her flesh.

Dangerous was the first word to come to mind as she held the blue eyes of the kitten holder. “I’m more likely to hurt you than these.” He told her, voice like a train wreckage. All rust and granite.

“Oh. Well then. Bueno.” Not that she was pleased for his confession, but still, yay for saving kittens, she supposed.

He let one of the kittens crawl up his black shirt, it was mewling as it butted his little head against the guy’s chiseled jaw looking for affection, it barely appeared to be a few days old, the other one still cradled in his hand, he stroked a finger over the tiny head, all the while glaring empty-like at Luxe.

“Not very bright your girl, Grinder.”

“Shut your trap, Lawless. Come on, Luxe.” He told his buddy as he tried to direct Luxe out the way she’d come.

She held steadfast. “Not very bright?”

“Do you see a bucket of water? Do you see a plastic bag?” Saved from telling this douche-barrel to go fuck himself with a bucket of water, a young pretty girl bound through the door so noisily heads turned everywhere, followed by a pregnant woman telling her to slow down.

Wide eyes, long flowing dark braids on either side of her head, denim and converse. The young girl didn’t listen.

“Hey, guys! Hey, Rider! Hi Lawless. Oh kitties, so cute! I want one. Can I take one back with me, Zara, please, please?”

There was no other word for it, beneath Nathan’s overprotective arm she watched the bald guy -- Lawless -- bristle and then his face flattened out to the darkest nothing she’d ever witnessed before, almost as if he’d schooled his expression into not revealing anything he was thinking. It was fucking eerie. “What’s she doing here? Are we turning into a creche now? For fucks sake, Ri.”

There was one summer about six years ago, Luxe almost got trapped in a littoral cave on her way to Chesapeake Bay with a friend Cynthia from the old neighborhood. They’d gone swimming to flirt with a group of guys and the tide had turned suddenly, it had been the scariest time of her life. Seeing the wash of coldness on the kitten tamers face reminded Luxe she would rather be trapped in that littoral cave again rather than be on this guy’s bad side.

Mean came with a side order of purring pussies on his chest.

“Prez. I can’t work in these fucking conditions,” he muttered about too many kids hanging around. “I’m not changing diapers or doing burp up shit.” He called out to the guy standing with Jamie. The young girl huffed and flung her braid in a swipe over her shoulder, cocked out her non-existent hip and glared down at Lawless. Luxe bit back a grin at her sass. “I’m almost sixteen, jerk!”

Lawless ignored her completely. “Did she bring homework with her?” this to the pregnant woman. “Did you bring homework? Get to it, brat and don’t bother me. Get it done, I might let you feed one of these later.” This directed to the girl herself who scowled but shuffled her feet forward, inching closer to both man and animals. Luxe thought the girl was braver than most for putting herself in the cold orbit of that man, but it didn’t seem to bother her when she went down on her knees reached out and began petting the kitten gently, cooing to the baby. Lawless inhaled hard enough his T-shirt expanded over his chest, eyes hooded, and then he held out the kitten and gave the girl better access.

“He’s weird.” Luxe commented once she was out of earshot of everyone else.

“Yeah, he’s been told a time or two.” Grinder’s voice rushed through her, a forest fire, so much had happened in the last two minutes she’d almost forgotten she’d missed him. “What are you doing here, Luxe?”

“Hello to you, too, Nathan.”

The gleam in his eyes told her he didn’t mind what he saw, he hadn’t stopped sweeping her up and down since the minute he saw her standing with Jamie. Why he was all grump she didn’t know------

He swooped down and kissed her suddenly, stealing her breath and forcing all words out of her brain. Dios. He licked and sucked then set her back on earth. The guy was a sixty-proof tequila rose. One hand sank into her hair while his mouth punished her with searing wet kisses, an incessant pulse between her legs, boiling her from the inside, dampness spreading.

“Hello, love. What are you doing here? And careful if you tell me it was to track down Steele in there.”

Ordinarily, Luxe didn’t care for bossy men, especially not bossy men who had the tone of voice Nathan used. They had mutual satisfaction between then and nothing else… right? Right. She shoved unwanted emotions aside.  But there was no denying the flash of heat with his possessiveness.

Pressing her lips together to trap the taste of him and to also to stop from saying what he was obviously so butthurt grumpy over.

He asked again. “Well?”

She poked his chest. “You told me not to say why I was here if it was Jamie related! Dios. Make up your mind, chico, do I say it or not?”

Tightness appeared beside his mouth. “You’re here … at my club … because of Steele?”

“Sí.” She smiled, her heartbeat thudding. Teasing him just a bit. Because when he showed his jealousy Luxe grew warm and wet in warm and wet places.

“Why?”

Well that was easy, she thought. Grinning again. “He’s pregnant with my baby and I’m here to demand his hand in marriage immediately.”

A long silence ensued.

“Boy, you have zero humor today, did you lose it under a kitten butt? I’m here for work, I needed the key from Jamie to the apartment to drop off my things before I get my sticky fingers into things.”

“You need to stop seeing him.”

Luxe blinked. Sure, she’d heard wrong. “I---Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Came out as a growl.

“Are you insane right now? Have you actually gone insane? Dios mio, you must have, to even contemplate telling me what to do.”

Fingers reached out and cinched around her waist, her heart gave a little bump, if she forgot he was issuing her orders like a fucking Neanderthal she could enjoy those rough, work worn hands on her. Instead he made it worse. “Keep working that little mouth with me, Luxe, and I’ll put it somewhere you can’t talk.”

Warmth caressed her, she couldn’t help it, she saw that scene immediately, he’d push her down to her knees, reach into his pants and----

“Keep at it and you won’t get another filthy, belly-shaking fuck I gave you. The same one you can’t stop thinking about. I mean what I say, Luxe. I don’t want you around him.”

She scoffed in his handsome face, the flash of his eyes was something else. Lust jammed into every corner. “Pah. Think a lot about yourself, don’t you? I barely remember it.”

“Is that right?” he laughed swooping down taking her mouth fast again without warning knocking her off balance, his hands banded around her waist keeping Luxe on her feet, this time it was hard, unrelenting as he pried her lips open before she even realized he’d moved deeper into her space, lashing her with his tongue, his teeth raking her lip, punishing her for some mystery offense she highly approved of if it meant he kept licking against her tongue in that way.

Dios, he tasted so good.

When he took a step back his face was void of emotion and Luxe was left with his taste saturating her mouth and wondering what the fuck was wrong with the man to make him turn ice cold when he’d been nothing but a volcano the last she saw of him.

Idiota.

“You should have come to me first, Luxe. To me.” He rumbled against her mouth, biting her. “So, I could give you the sweet, little fuck you need.”

It was a miracle she wasn’t strangling him for all his pouting and chest beating and jealous outbursts, but she thought it was delicious. Syrup slid through her veins bringing out her smile, she reached up to cup his cheeks, pulling his head down, this time she kissed him first and she kissed him deeper.

“I’ll come to you first next time.” She modified, acknowledging there would be a next time and she was enjoying this demanding side of him, she nuzzled his beard and kissed him lightly again just because she needed to, to remind herself all her daydreaming she’d sunk to hadn’t been fantasies concocted in her dirty mind, he really did taste as good as she remembered. He smelled of clean sweat, and motor oil and something so masculine her head rushed. She allowed herself a moment to lean in and really inhale that scent, to cement Nathan to memory, basking in contact with a man she was feeling on some level she didn’t think possible. “I think I missed this face, kidnapper.”

She had to force down the protesting lusty howl when out of her peripheral she saw Jamie striding out of the entryway towards his bike.

She froze holding Nathan’s face, he was cupping hers, they were an inch apart. It wasn’t as though she was embarrassed to be caught this way, her and Jamie weren’t like that, and yet she felt a twinge of oh, my god. Like she was rubbing it in his face she was sucking face with someone from a different MC, her long friendship with Jamie meant she was loyal to that at least.

“Hey, Luxe, you have a Renegade on your face.” That asshat was laughing, and more than likely wanted Grinder to go off again, throwing his leg over his big black matte Harley, the engine roared when Jamie started it. “Might wanna get that seen to, you don’t want the infection to spread.”

The growl began in Nathan’s chest, this great big cat noise she felt thundering through her own chest, before he could charge after her friend and what---cause a scene with gorgeous hulk muscles flexing and popping and maybe manly grappling down on the floor? She did the only thing she could think of to halt him in his tracks before she fully registered she was absolutely declaring a side for both men and the entire MC to witness.

She picked Nathan by kissing him and didn’t stop until the sound of the engine grew distant, long after that she was still licking his tongue and swallowing Nathan’s grunts, his hands grabbing greedily on her waist.

The rules were changing under her, blood became a rolling boil as their tongues tangled lazily, and did a little fight sequence as if choreographed by Quentin Tarantino’s stunt coordinator.

And the kicker she’d laugh about, uh…sometime. She hadn’t set out any rules for this affair. She’d sort of just fell into it.

The hole was big and she didn’t want to climb out.

 

 

******

 

Ten kisses later. “I’ll knock the grin right off that pretty asshole face.”

“Aww, you think Jamie is pretty?” she teased him and didn’t you know Grinder’s knuckles tightened to hit the cocksucker even harder. Hands came up to rest on his chest that inflated to an impossible capacity filling his lungs until they felt they might burst open and scatter dust everywhere.

Her touch brought a rage and a calm. Covering those hands with his own, his eyelids dropped. “Stop doing that smiling shit at him. And while we’re at it, stop smiling at any man that isn’t me.”

Fingertips rubbed her inner wrist and he felt her pulse jump right along with the scowl marring her gorgeous face. “Is that so?”

He gruffed. “Yes.”

“Since when do you get off telling me what to do?”

“Since forever.” Wasn’t it obvious? Shit. He’d been clear, hadn’t he?

“Oh.” She puffed out air and the darkest eyes he loved looking out widened. “This is you being jealous? It really is. I wondered but I’ve never seen it over me, this is…” when her lips stretched in a sly, little gorgeous grin Grinder’s jaw cracked, he had no choice really, it was out of his hands now when his head anchored down and he crushed those smiling lips with his own much hungrier mouth.

Jealousy was as old as time and the one emotion that could cause a man to kill in cold blood.

“Jamie is comfortable.” The tiger in his chest growled ready to attack. Lucky for him Luxe went on. “There’s nothing about you that’s comfortable.” Their kiss lingered, chewing off the back of his head, making him think in terms of filthy only, urging him to take her down to the floor and rut into her through her clothes and here she was, calmness in her eyes whereas he only felt stormy, telling him he wasn’t comfortable. What did that even mean? Both of his brows fell over his darkening eyes, not entirely sure if he’d changed his mind about killing Steele, or at least pissing a circle around Luxe to tell the guy fuck off.

 “I’m gonna need more to go on, love. Steele is comfortable but I’m not?”

“No. You stir me up.”

Fuck, that’s more like it.

That he understood and he began to smile, his beard twitching as he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her in, crotch to crotch.

“I didn’t say it was a good thing.” She chastised wagging her finger in his face. “You get me mad when I shouldn’t be mad.”

“All I’m hearing is I get you wet and Steele is old worn slippers.” A smirk slid home. “I’m good with that.”

“You’re an impossible man.”

“I’m a hard man hard up for you.”

“I suppose you are. Huh. I like your jealousy.” She said it like it had never occurred to her before.

“If I could, I would keep you in a gilded cage. Captor and captive, love. Keep you for myself. And I don’t fucking understand it either. This is not me. I don’t do risky shit like tie a woman to a bed that hasn’t asked me to. But I look at you, smiling at another man and I want to lock you in a cage of my arms like a fucking caveman.”

Hearing her moan Grinder angled his face down to hers, eye to eye, he desperately wanted to touch her somewhere he wouldn’t have an audience and tell her how much he missed her, to cemented something between them. His buddies were incredibly nosy fuckers.

He was thinking like a man did about his old lady.

“While you sound surprisingly sweet, you need to rein it in, it’s ridiculous to act like that as though you saw me fooling around on the floor with Jamie. Even if I was …”

He growled from the back of his throat and he stepped into her space capturing her tightly with possessive hands, pressing their foreheads together, his voice turned sore sounding. “Don’t fucking finish that sentence, Luxe. For my sanity, please don’t.”

He tasted the panic on her tongue as she pushed against his chest, reluctantly he put the space she wanted between them.  "This has turned serious suddenly. I---it’s crazy. What you’re saying it’s ridiculous. What I do, where I go and with who is none of your business, Nathan."

He frowned. “Don’t say that, love. You know we have something.”

“Sex.”

“It’s more than that. Can you say it isn’t?”

“Don’t smile at any other man, Luxe.” He grinned at her imitation. Reaching for her, the rejection when she pulled back stung his chest.

“No, we’re not doing this, I have a job to do, with Jamie… so deal with that, maybe if I decide otherwise, you can see me later.”

Fire in the pit of his stomach, Grinder had the distinct realization he was about to lose this and couldn’t see, save for groveling, how to rewind and fix it.

“Goddammit, Luxe.” Throat working, looking up to the heavens. This wasn’t how he wanted it going the first time he saw her again. “Baby, stay a while…”

It was too late, she was already pissed as hell with him. He wanted that anger under him.

But she was already striding to her car. Scowling over her shoulder.

"Go sit in your gilded cage, kidnapper."

Grinder watched until her car disappeared, feeling the full weight of his foot in his mouth.

He heard slow clapping and caught the shit eating grin of his audience.

“Well you made a cock up of that, didn’t you? For a second I thought you were about to do it right there on the forecourt, even considered pulling up a chair.”

The way Preacher laughed made Grinder want to ball his thick fist and pop his best friend in the face, because he knew he was right. “You gotta get pathetic, man, if you wanna fix this. Like real down low groveling, it’s the only thing that works.”

“I hate you, you big fucking buzz kill.” He sighed with the sourest scowl on his face. “Are you serious, like for real with me right now, ‘cause I can’t take jokes.”

“As the Grim Reaper is my witness.” The jackass had the gall to grin at Grinder’s misery. It was okay for Preacher, he already won his woman, he’d already gone as pathetically low as a man could, and seemed happy as shit about it, you couldn’t turn around in the clubhouse now without bumping into moaning noises from either Rider and Zara or Preacher sucking face with his Ruby.

Big dumb sappy fucks.

And Grinder was jealous as hell.

There, he’d let himself admit it.

He was jealous of that closeness his buddies had with their bitches--- fuck, not bitches, the one time he referred to Ruby as one Preacher had about hit the roof AND Grinder into next week, he didn’t mean any disrespect, but fuck, his jaw ached for a full day.

His MC brethren had turned into pussies and had never looked happier.

Grinder was green about it.

Because the woman he was hard up for didn’t seem to be feeling what he was.

His man made clusterfuck just kept on coming.

Luxe wasn’t like any other chick he’d ever come across. Or come across, even though he wanted to splatter his mark from forehead to toes, god, did he.

She was a ball of contained anger he was attracted to and it made him say shit, do shit, that he wouldn’t ordinarily say or do. Some could say it was her fault, really.

He was pissing himself off.

Preacher slung a weighty arm around his shoulders. As big as Grinder was he still had to recalibrate his stance to accommodate it. “You got it bad, buddy.”

“I regret every time I fucked with you about Ruby.” His sigh could have blown over a small building. Preacher just laughed. “Why, ‘cause now you’re gonna catch it from me?”

He turned a vicious stare on Preacher who just grinned.

Grinder was so sunk.

At least he knew now there was nothing but slippers between Luxe and the Kingsmen prez. He felt the jealous weight of that lift.

Now he just had to win around his woman.

Grovelling. Fuck, he could do that.

Something unsettling had happened for Christ sake; he’d been caught in emotional monogamy and he knew he’d chase that dirty rotten thief across the country just to catch her and force her to feel this storm he had building in his chest. He was a damn brutal outlaw, a class A bounty tracker with an authentic case of the feels.