Honey pulled her close, amazed at the emotions flowing through him. Like pure, unfiltered sunlight washing away all the dark, shitty parts of his life. The way she melted against him, no resistance, no holding back. It was like he was seeing her for the first time, really, truly seeing her. And he liked what he saw. A lot. Elle Watson, the woman who had been haunting his dreams and waking hours for months, bared and open and wanting him just as much as he wanted her. Just as much as he needed her.
His mouth landed on hers once more, kissing her because he couldn’t stand to go another second without it. Without her touch. Without her sweet, addictive taste lingering on his tongue. He was shocked when he felt his body start to grow hard again already, just at her innocent kiss, and groaned deep and low into her mouth.
With more strength that he thought it would take, he pulled back just enough to stare down into her wild, warm dark eyes. He watched the bright crimson flush spread across her cheeks and the tiny freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose like stars. He’d never noticed them before.
Before the thought could form he was moving, his lips tangling with hers again as he pressed her hard against his body, reveling in the feel of her ample curves.
“Maybe we should, uh, go back. To my apartment,” Honey managed to murmur in between kisses, “It’s the coach house in the back. Just outside the club. It might be better than the office. More private. More–”
But he was kissing her again, and he didn’t hear Elle’s answer even if she had given one. One thing was sure though, he couldn’t keep his hands off her long enough to walk the short distance to the back of the clubhouse. And he sure as fuck wouldn’t be able to handle any one of those assholes seeing Elle like this. This moment was his, something sweet and precious and honest that he wanted to keep for his own. Just like this woman.
With a feral growl, he pulled her towards the big desk that dominated the center of the room, all the while their lips still fused together as he teased his tongue in and out of her mouth, feeling each of her moans of pleasure wash through him, soothing him. Healing him.
Honey slid his hands down her hips, slowing as he skimmed over her delectable backside before gripping each of her thighs and lifting her weightlessly against him. It amazed him just how small and delicate she was.He leaned her against the edge of the desk and laid her down.. Whenever she went toe to toe with him he felt like he was dealing with an Amazonian warrior, all bite and fury, but now, like this, he could see just how fragile she really was. How precious.
It made his chest tighten painfully with an unfamiliar emotion and he just looked down at her in awe. It might have been mere seconds, it might have been hours, as he stood there, one finger tracing a path from the hollow of her throat, between the valley of her breasts, across the dip of her waist and then the small swell of her stomach and finally, finally reaching that sweet haven nestled between her thighs.
Honey slowed his touch even more, loving the way she moved restlessly beneath him, spread out like a feast and making his mouth water for a taste. Always one more. Like no matter how many he got, he would always crave another, and another.
That realization made panic scratch somewhere in the back corners of his mind, but the crushing need in his body drowned it out. He had Elle laid out beneath him. He wasn’t about to spend one moment on anything but devoting every ounce of his attention on her.
The thought had barely passed through his lust-fragmented mind when he saw it. For a mere second his gaze was drawn to the mess of papers covering the top of the desk that he was busy shoving out of the way when something caught his eye. It was a hand written note in a scrawl that looked familiar. Very familiar. He knew that jagged writing. It was Viper’s.
“Fuck,” Honey spit out the curse, the single word low and rough and terse, trying desperately to reign in his out of control body. His muscles trembled with the effort to pull away from Elle’s nude body and he knew, in that moment, that it was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. But already his mind was racing, trying to solve the puzzle of the piece of paper.
It seemed so innocuous, but as he read the messy words written on the note, dread settled heavy and hard in his gut, warring with the desire and need that made him reach out for Elle again. But this time, it was just to lay a soft, sweet kiss against her reddened lips.
“Ho–Honey? What is it?” her breath whispered warm against his throat as he dropped his head next to hers with a sigh. “Honey?” Elle was staring at him now. He could feel her gaze boring into him, questions shining in her dark eyes, even if he couldn’t see them. His muscles were trembling in protest as he pushed back, stepping once away from her. His gaze dragged across her body, tracing every curve, the path to heaven. And he suddenly knew that once would never be enough.
“I, uh, I think something is–”
“Wrong?” Elle said, interrupting. Honey immediately shook his head, opened his mouth to correct her but she was already talking again, pushing herself up from the top of the desk, crossing her arms in front of herself to block her form his view. He hated it. He hated that he could feel her pulling away from him. That warm look in her eyes cooling as she drew back into herself.
Elle scrambled for her dress as he scrambled for the words to say. With a silent curse, he glanced down at the note still crumpled in his hand as his mind, body, and heart all warred against each other within.
“Please, Elle, don’t…” Honey trialed off as she hastily shimmied into the silky dress, once more making his mouth go dry at the sight of her, a bittersweet pang in his chest when she wouldn’t look at him. She used her golden blonde hair like a curtain, separating them, keeping her expression hidden from him. “Damn it Elle, just…just look at me,” Honey pleaded, throwing out the words in a desperate bid but she didn’t bite.She continued to look at the floor, at the ceiling, at anything but him. It tore his heart out, not being able to see her dark eyes, not being able to read the emotion in them. What was she feeling? What was the little minx thinking? Knowing Elle, it could be anything.
“It’s wrong. And that’s, you know what Honey, that’s okay. You don’t have to say anything else,” Elle muttered and Honey had to clench his teeth to hold his lust fueled temper in check.
“No. Not wrong, baby. You were the one who said that, not me.”
“You didn’t have to, Honey,” she hissed out, turning away from him and he reached out quickly before she could slide past him, drawing her back tight to his front just so there could be no mistake.
“Elle, you can feel for yourself just how right I think this is,” he growled against her ear and had to squeeze his eyes closed as he felt her shudder against him. “This isn’t about…us. This is something else. This is…” he shook his head, his fist tightening around the note, “I don’t know yet, to be honest, but, please,” Honey leaned close again, drawing his mouth in a sweeping kiss across as much of her delicate, swan-like neck as he could reach, “Please, believe me when I say this could never be wrong. Nothing between us could ever be wrong, Elle.”
“Honey, I–” Her words cut off as she turned in his arms and for one brief, shining moment her eyes were warm and open and inviting on his. But the next instant she pulled back again, drawing away from him. “I have to go. I’m sorry Honey, I just…I have to leave.”
Honey sighed, knowing that there would be no arguing with her. Not with that stubborn tilt to her chin that she got when she had her mind set on something. It would take a herd of elephants to get Elle Watson to move from her path once she’d decided on it. And God forbid if she’d made a promise. He’d be more worried about the elephants, then.
She started to leave, but he stopped her one last time, dropping his jacket around her bared shoulders.
“Don’t go out through the front,” he said gruffly, looking over her flushed cheeks, kiss-swollen lips, and tousled hair. Those pricks would take one look at her and fall all over themselves trying to get to her. Gently, Honey swept one stray lock of blond hair behind one ear as he struggled with all the things he wanted to say, but he was out of time. “Go through the back door and around to the parking lot. The side gate’s unlocked. You should be able to get through unseen.”
Elle’s expression softened at his words as she huffed out a sigh of relief.
“Thanks, Honey, I’ll see you…I’ll–” she paused, taking a deep breath, “Goodbye.”
“Bye, baby.”
She gave him one last look, barely more than a glance out of the corner of her sweet, dark eyes and then she was gone, slipping through the door to disappear as if she’d never been. But he could still smell her on him, could still feel the incredible softness of her skin under his fingertips. He could still taste her.
He stared at the spot Elle had just been for a long minute, his thoughts tumbling and turbulent, no end and no beginning to the argument that ran in circles through his head. What had just happened? Something had definitely just happened because he had walked into this office one man, the old Honey, and now he felt…different. In a way that he couldn’t explain, that he couldn’t put into words.
Honey could never remember feeling this way before. As if his whole world had been dark clouds and then suddenly a ray of sunshine had burst through, illuminating everything. His hands tightened into fists as he tried to make sense of it, make sense of the sudden lightness that filled him. And that’s when he felt it. The note. It was still crushed against his palm. Sitting there like a ticking bomb just waiting to go off.
Slowly, he held it up, carefully smoothing it out again on the top of the desk. He could still feel the heat from Elle’s body radiating from it and he cursed again, a string of low spoken words that he meat with all his heart. But if his suspicions were right, then he didn’t have time to wait. Honey re-read the hand scrawled not once, and then again, and then one final time. There was no other thing it could mean.
It hit him like a ton of bricks, like a dead weight falling on him from the top of a three story building. The Dirty Cruisers was his home, it was his family. It was his life and it had been for ten years. And he held proof in his hand that someone was trying to tear it all apart. And it what made it worse was that it was one of their own. Viper.
The note was proof that Viper was planning a coup to take down Joel and become the next president of the Dirty Cruisers himself. Honey snorted out loud at the thought. As if Viper, that snot nosed, nasal son of a bitch had the brains to run an operation like this. He thought everything was riding into the sunset with guns blazing. He would learn soon enough that there was a hell of a lot more to leading than that.
He had to tell Joel.
Fuck. Honey knew that his president, and friend, had his suspicions but this would be a blow to him. He loved this crew as much as Honey did and he knew how much it would hurt him. It would cut him to the bone. But he’d have to put a stop to it before it was too late.
A loud, clattering noise caught his attention and Honey jumped, before swearing at himself. He took a bare second to get himself back in order. Every time he moved, Elle’s scent reached him, filling his lungs with thoughts of her, memories of her lush curves and the breathy moans that had fallen out of her sweet mouth when he’d made her come.
“Come on Honey, get your shit together!” he growled at himself as he zipped and buttoned his dark denim jeans. He grabbed the note, once more clenching it in his fist, and rushed out to find Joel.
***
Elle looked back once at the door she’d just walked through but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Because if she stopped, she knew in the next instant she’d be back there, begging Honey not to stop. Begging him to– she shook her head vehemently, trying to dig her thoughts back out of the gutter but it seemed they’d taken up permanent residence there.
She could feel it happening, the waves of anxiety, the feeling of claustrophobia that always came before the panic attack hit. But it was different now, not as intense. And oddly enough, whenever her thoughts trailed back to Honey and what had just happened between them, the anxiety lessened, melting away to be replaced with lust and desire and need. A dizzying combination that she didn’t understand.
Elle still couldn’t believe that she had done that. That it had been her standing there in front of the mirror, begging him, saying those things. She shook her head again, but this time for a different reason. It had been…freeing. Liberating. For those too brief, wonderful moments, she had felt like someone else. Someone normal. Someone real. Someone who wasn’t afraid to see what they want and then take it.
She let out a soft, disbelieving laugh. But it had been her. She could still feel Honey’s touch, could still taste his kiss. Could still remember exactly the way it felt when he was inside her. Elle shuddered at the memory, in desire or embarrassment she wasn’t sure. Her emotions were so tangled up it was impossible for her to sort out where one started and the next began.
She was just nearing the back door when a noise stopped her. Voices. There were voices coming from the other side. Elle crept closer, pricking her ears to listen but the words were muffled and she couldn’t pick out more than one in every three of four. But that was enough to tell her that they were talking about Joel, Carla’s boyfriend and the president of the bikers. And the talk didn’t seem particularly friendly, either.
Without thought, she moved as close as she could, her ear nearly pressed against the door but its heavy steel blocked out most of the sound. She gasped as it started to open, her heart in her throat as she tried to back away but there was nowhere to hide. It was just an empty, open hallway.
The panic was back now in full force like a drug rushing through her veins, freezing her where she stood but then another noise sounded, loud and from the direction of the main bar at the front of the clubhouse.
“Shit! We’re missing all the action.”
“Come on, Buck. They’re starting without us!” The reason why the voices had sounded familiar hit her hard. It was that…that degenerate Buck and his sniveling crony. Elle closed her eyes as the door closed again, the sound of their hurried footsteps receding as they ran the other way around to the bar.
Elle didn’t know how long she stood there trembling uncontrollably, hours maybe, or mere minutes, but finally she forced her legs to move, first one and then the other. She gripped the handle for the door twice, her sweaty palms slipping off the cool metal, before she could pull it open and sneak through.
She didn’t stop at all, taking off like a shot as soon as she was outside, the dark night air falling around her like a blanket, turning everything into menacing shadows. By the time she made it to her car her heart was galloping like a herd of wild horses and it took her three tries to get the keys in the ignition and turn the engine over.
Finally, she pulled out of the driveway and out onto the highway that would lead her home, to safety, and away from Honey. And as she drove, the clubhouse receding quickly as she sped away, her thoughts kept coming back to him again and again, dread filling her stomach at the realization that she would see him the next day at the farm. The one man who had teased her and tormented her and kept her on edge for over six months, and now, he was with her. She could feel him, twinging around her heart no matter what she did to stop him.
“Damn it!” she cursed softly, fighting against him, fighting against herself. But it was no use. He was already there, burrowed deep. It would take a hell of an effort to get him back out again. Well, no one had ever said that Elle Watson gave up easily.