CHAPTER TWENTY
Harper
I’M SITTING OUTSIDE Vik’s place having a painful moment of personal reflection that Cosmo promises will bring 100 percent personal growth, but which makes me think the universe is one sadistic bitch. Yes, I’ve come looking for Vik. No, he didn’t ask me to be here. I’m torn between labeling this a gutsy all-in move on my part and recognizing that it smacks of desperation. I know he laid his father to rest today, or tried to. Not one but four bikers texted me. I want to be here for him in case he needs anything, but I’ve also been sitting outside long enough to realize a few things. The most important revelation is that I don’t have a key to his place. I have free access to his dick but not to his front door.
And if I need any confirmation that today’s been rough, he arrives in a truck. In the passenger-side seat. Vik hates letting anyone else drive, so he must be half-wasted. The biker doing the driving helps him out, shoving a broad shoulder underneath Vik’s arm so he can steer him toward the front door.
“I’m unavailable tonight,” Vik announces, bracing his forearm against the door. His voice is a liquid, drunken slur.
“You’re unavailable every night,” I point out.
Biker buddy just kind of shakes his head. He’s built like a mountain, which appears to be a requirement for joining the Hard Riders, and his long blond hair has been pulled back in a thick tail and braided. He’s got ink on his forearms, more on his throat, and I’m pretty sure that if I patted him down for weapons, I’d uncover a small arsenal. And yet despite the aura of danger he projects, he gives me a polite tip of his head.
“I’m taking over.” I squint (no glasses tonight) to read the patch on his vest. Romeo. I hope the story behind his road name is happier than the original.
Romeo doesn’t let go until he’s wrestled Vik inside and Vik’s not only heavy as a bear, but he’s also distinctly uncooperative. He bitches and mutters profanities while Romeo sort of accidentally elbows him in the stomach and then transfers him into my custody when we’re by the side of the couch. I score a head tip and then Romeo hightails it out the door. Smart man.
This is the point at which I run out of plan. My dress is a black-and-white-striped A-line number with a scoop neck. It stops an inch above my knee. I look cute—and all wrong. Black’s the color for funerals, and he doesn’t need cute. Not now.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“Holding you up.” To prove my point, I let go, and Vik promptly face-plants onto the sofa. “Or letting you go. Take your pick.”
He rolls over onto his back, glaring at me. “Did you come here for this?”
This is the monster dick he cups through his jeans.
“I came here for you. You’re more than just—we’re more than just—sex.” I drag my eyes back up to his face, needing him to understand. He looks so sad, and I want so badly to fix that.
“No. We’re not.” He yanks open his jeans and fists himself. He’s hard. I’m not sure if I should be flattered or concerned.
And it’s totally wrong, but I’m turned on. The adrenaline pumping through me from our almost-fight is heating me up in more ways than one. Or maybe it’s because the more I watch him treat his dick like it’s the world’s greatest plaything, the angrier I get. We may have started as a booty call, but we’ve moved on. We’re definitely something more, even if he doesn’t want to hear anything I’ve got to say. On a scale of one to ten, our emotions are running at twenty, but even if he won’t talk to me, maybe I can reach out to him this way. I know it sounds stupid, but that’s my plan. I step closer and lean toward him.
“You’re in my space,” he growls, his hand moving faster. He’s going to come without me, and I refuse to be left behind.
“Goddamned straight I am.”
I slide my hand up his arm and cup the back of his neck. He doesn’t pull away, so that’s a green light, right? Plus, his dick is all but stabbing me in the stomach as he continues to work himself with his palm. New plan. I’ll kiss that angry look right off his face. I yank his face to mine.
He tastes like the whiskey he’s poured down his throat tonight. He tastes like Vik. I kiss him with everything I have until he yanks his head back from mine.
“Leave.” The word comes out hoarse and rasping, like he’s fighting for air. My own breathing sounds like a freight train, a heavy, panting whine. I need him so badly.
“Bedroom,” I snap. “Now.”
He gives me a look I can’t interpret. Anger, need, rage, possibly homicidal intentions. And then he moves so fast I don’t see him coming. He jerks me off my feet, and I’m flying through the air, a completely undignified shriek leaving my mouth. I land hard on Vik’s shoulder with a loud whoosh.
“You don’t get to give me orders,” he snarls. “Not today, not ever. We clear on that?”
“Crystal,” I snap in my best Colonel Jessup imitation, jamming the heels of my hands into the small of his back. Don’t think Vik likes it because he smacks my butt with his palm. We’ve done dirty things together, but spanking isn’t one of them and I don’t think he’s playing tonight. How can this be the same man I’ve held and loved? The laughing man is gone, replaced by a surly-tempered giant with a raging hard-on.
At least the hard-on is familiar. He storms down the hallway to his bedroom, ignoring my attempts to spank his ass and see how he likes it. What happens next is equally familiar. He tosses me onto the bed and shoves his jeans down. Naked, pissed-off Vik is definitely worth looking at. This has to be why I’m not scrambling off the bed and sprinting for the door. The wide-open, not-locked, I-could-totally-leave-through-it door.
“Clothes off,” he says, voice hard. “Or get the hell out. Your choice.”
“Why?” I must have lost my ever-loving mind because now I’m just taunting him.
“Because I want to have sex with you.”
Definitely crystal clear.
“Never mind,” he says, and reaches for me. Arousal mixes with a sudden dose of adrenaline. He’s my Vik, and yet he’s not. He spins me around before I can figure it out and flips up my dress. Hooking a finger in my panties, he tugs them down.
I twist, trying to see his face, but his weight pressing against me on the bed like he’s done so many times before. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, but the wave of heat that tears through me drowns out everything else. I may moan. I’m entirely certain I moan. This isn’t what I planned but if it’s the only way he’ll let me get close, I’ll take it.
He rolls forward, his weight pushing me deeper into the bed. His dick slides between my butt cheeks and I tense. He’s huge, and while so far angry sex is checking all my boxes, other things remain firmly in my no-fly zone. Like butt sex. I make an embarrassing squeaking sound and he laughs.
“I could make you like it.”
He makes the dirtiest, most beautiful promises, but kink isn’t what I want right now.
“Not tonight.”
If I have my way, we’ll have plenty of tomorrows to explore what each of us likes or dislikes. Vik brushes a finger over my tight pucker. And he’s right. It does feel good, all that heat and need prickling through me as I grind my hips into his mattress.
I twist my head, pressing my lips against his. If he doesn’t want to talk, we won’t. His beautiful, sulky mouth has a fresh bruise at the corner. He’s been fighting, and he’s been hurt enough. I nip, harder than I should. He grunts, deepening both our kiss and his caress as his hand rubs my butt again, sliding back up between my cheeks and pressing against my pucker. Barely touching me, but I know what it feels like when the big, bad wolf comes knocking at my door.
Good.
It feels good.
“Do you like that?” He rubs his erection against my butt. That is a little vague, and we’re in unfamiliar territory, but I’ve always liked everything Vik has done to me. With me. For me. I nod enthusiastically and he taps the back of my thighs.
“Open up. I’ll make you feel better.”
My knees know who they trust. Unlike my head, they don’t need to think shit over or come up with a plan. They part slowly, but they hold nothing back. They let him have everything and anything.
A fingertip traces the seam of my folds, teasing. I whimper, trying to force him deeper. Vik’s such a gentleman, because he dips his finger deeper and then strokes slowly up. Down. Everywhere he touches me I’m hot and wet, my body aching, begging for more. The tension builds, my body taking over because I’m about to come and I’m right here, bent over Vik’s bed and on the edge of falling off into the world’s biggest orgasm ever and—
He stops.
“If you didn’t come here for sex, you don’t need this,” he growls.
Logically, I know I can’t die from not coming. Vik, however, is looking at a death sentence because I’m going to kill him.
“This night going according to plan, babe?”
He holds me still with an arm at the small of my back when I try to wriggle upright. He is such a bastard.
“I came here for you,” I hiss. “Not a hookup.”
“This is all I have to give you, babe.”
I hesitate. “I want everything you have to give.”
He’s wrong. He’s so much more than a talented set of fingers or a big dick. I need to tell him that, make him understand, but he grabs my hips and positions himself at my entrance.
God, he’s huge.
And impatient.
He shoves himself deep inside me, driving home, and fuck words. I scream, letting everything I’m feeling out. Being facedown on Vik’s bed helps with that—the sound’s muffled and it’s just him and me. It feels good and it feels raw and I don’t want him to stop. He pounds into me, creating a raw burn that becomes the brightest, strongest pleasure ever. It’s like the night we re-met and he inked me, the pain and discomfort becoming a doorway I step through to somewhere pleasurable. I’m making noises and he’s grunting, his hips slapping against my ass with each hard stroke. Right now, he’s all mine.
And like the pain when he inked me, my anger changes, becoming something else. It’s a connection, a feeling, a heated, pissed-off, burning, fucking fantastic sensation that I refuse to feel guilty about because it’s not PC. He pushes me open, slamming into me hard and with none of his usual finesse. It’s as if everything inside him has burst open, too, and now he can’t or won’t hold back. My head hits the mattress with each rough stroke, my thighs bowed wide, and it’s so impossibly good.
He comes first, holding me wide-open as he empties himself into me, stretching me so he can fill me up. I cry out because he can’t leave me behind, not this time, not when it matters so much that we go somewhere, anywhere together. But fuck him. I can take what I want, I can—
He pulls out, flips me over and covers me with his mouth. I’m dripping wet with his come and my own wetness, and I still want more. I ride his face and it’s fast and brutal. He pushes me toward my orgasm ruthlessly, tonguing and kissing and sucking me. I come apart in seconds, crying out and squeezing his head between my thighs.
“Harper.”
He says my name, and I’d like to think I hear other things in that one word. Things like I’m sorry and stay and be mine. But this is dirty hookup sex, not a box of candy hearts. I don’t get my choice of sweet messages. I don’t get his heart.
My dress is still up around my waist, and I’ve completely lost my panties. And my mind.
“This isn’t a booty call,” I whisper into the sheets. Then I say it again, louder, with different words. “This matters. We matter.”
He looks at me and time slows down. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him. Kick him hard in the balls because maybe then he’ll finally feel something for me. It’s so stupid, wanting more from a man who’s told me over and over that he can’t. That he won’t.
“I love you,” I say and wait.
There’s a long, painful moment of radio silence. I roll onto my side, and he lets me go.
“Fuck, Harper,” he says finally.
That is so not an I love you, too.
His hand comes up, like maybe he’s about to brush the hair back from my face, but I bare my teeth at him and he backs away before I bite his finger the fuck off. It’s obvious that can’t and won’t mean don’t and never fucking ever. So it makes no sense for me to stick around. To stick with him. He’s not in love with me.
I get up.
I get dressed.
And then I leave.