Willa

“Are you sure about this? Once I start I can’t stop.”

I grinned, hiding my nervousness as I lay on Spider’s bed. He had all of his tattoo supplies laid out ready to begin on the tattoo I had finally worn him down to ink onto me. The stencil was already in place across my left rib cage and just waiting for him to work his magic. “Don’t pussy out now, James,” I teased, seeing the indecision in his black eyes. “The sooner you get started the sooner it will be over and we can make love.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Willa. The spot you want this tattoo is going to hurt bad. Let me do it on your back.”

I rolled my eyes at him and turned so that I was able to watch The Beatnicks that was playing in the DVD player. “I want it here. Don’t worry about the pain. I have a high threshold for it.”

After a full minute filled with his inner struggle with himself, which only made me feel all kind of melted inside at how concerned he was, he finally turned on the tattoo gun and got to work on the tree of life I had watched him create for me over the previous few days. It was going to be in shades of black, gray, and some earthy browns.

The first sting of the needle made me grimace but I clenched my jaw and forced my eyes to stay focused on the flat screen hanging on the wall. For the next three hours he worked as if he had gone into some kind of trance, completely focused on the task at hand instead of who he was tattooing. His hand was steady and worked with obvious skill and talent. My body was torn between the sting of the pain and the burning of his hands on me.

I wanted him so badly, so obsessively. The room was full of our sexual tension because I could feel the same need that was raging inside of me pouring off of him, too. The way he kept sneaking me little looks under those long eyelashes. The erratic beat of the pulse at the base of his throat. But he kept his attention on what he was doing and I attempted to block out my pain and need.

I tried not to make a sound, but when he got to a particularly sensitive spot just under my left breast I couldn’t hold in the small whimper. He showed no signs of hearing it except for pausing long enough to give me a moment to take a few deep breaths while he added more ink.

By the time he was done I was in some serious pain. He had been right. The ribs were no laughing matter when it came to tattoos and I was starting to feel the burn. Badly. He cleaned me up and put some A&D ointment over the tattoo.

“Take a look before I wrap you up. Don’t let anything rub directly against it for a few days. Try not to do any running because the sweat isn’t going to feel so nice against freshly inked skin.” He was already cleaning up his mess, not looking at me.

I got slowly out of bed and went into his bathroom to take a look in the mirror. I gasped when I saw how beautiful he had made my body. With a slightly trembling finger I traced the image in the mirror. I loved the tattoo, how the branches spread out like a flower blooming in the sun yet enfolding around me like a hug.

“Well?” his raspy voice asked behind me and I turned to wrap my arms around his neck. That was when I felt him trembling.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned when his jaw just remained tightly clenched. I cupped his face in my hands. “Talk to me, James.”

“I don’t like hurting you,” he growled and buried his face in my chest.

I bit my lip. “You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine.” When he didn’t say anything I tried a different tactic. “Would you rather I have someone else doing my ink from now on?” He tensed even more and I knew that that idea held little appeal for him. “Besides, I thought tattoo artists didn’t consider it hurting people, but helping them with expressing themselves.”

He pulled back, giving me a hard glare. “Maybe it is like that with other people, but I can’t handle the fact of you hurting in any way. And no, I don’t want someone else doing your art work. I’d end up killing a man if he touched you. So if you ever want another tattoo, we will discuss it. Okay?”

Grinning, I wrapped my hands around his neck again, letting my nails trail over the back of his smoothly shaved scalp. I really did love the baldness. “Kiss me, dummy.”

--

The sun was shining through the window when I opened my eyes. Moaning at the sight, I turned over in bed. I knew that Spider wasn’t going to be there. I heard him leave me around three that morning.

I should have gotten up and gone back to my own room then. That was what I had normally been doing for the last two weeks. Make love with Spider until the early hours of the morning, fall asleep for about an hour with him, and then tiptoe my way back to my room. I knew Duke would burst a blood vessel if he found out I was sleeping with Spider. The one time I’d tried to talk to him about it, to see how badly he would react to me being with the Angel’s Halo biker, my father had gone through the roof at the hypothetical question.

Since then I’d made sure that the thing between me and Spider was completely on the down low. The only person who knew was Bash, who I’d found wasn’t all that scary when he was laughing with Spider. I suspected that Raider knew what was going on too, but wasn’t about to ask for fear of breaking some strange friendship that the two of us had developed. The thing about Raider was he didn’t have friends that were girls, but had plenty of girlfriends. One-night girlfriends.

This morning I hadn’t been able to find the energy to get out of bed when Spider had woken up to Bash knocking on his door. They had to go take care of some business, or at least that was the excuse Spider had given me as he had kissed me and promised to see me tonight. Even half asleep I’d seen the look on his face and it had scared the hell out of me.

He was leaving soon.

Their job was nearly over and he would go back to Creswell Springs, California. I only had two weeks left of my vacation here with Duke but that was going to feel like a lifetime without Spider here with me. I wanted to ask him to stay until I had to go home, but was too scared he would tell me no.

So I had snuggled up to his pillow and cried myself back to sleep.

It was a mistake because now I had to sneak my way back to my own room so I could shower and get ready for the day. At this time of day the compound was waking up and moving around downstairs. It wasn’t going to be easy and I had only myself to blame for it if I got caught.

Crawling out of bed, I pulled my clothes on: a baggy T-shirt and basketball shorts. I’d stopped wearing sexy nightgowns three nights after I’d started coming to Spider to make love. All he did was rip them off me within five minutes of seeing them on me. The baggy sleep clothes fared better. Mostly because I started taking them off as soon as the door was closed and locked behind me.

Cracking the door open a little I peeked my head out to glance around. No one was upstairs, but there were six Red Dragons downstairs shooting pool, three sheep in the kitchen cooking and my sister was sitting at the island eating as she glared off into space. She had been moodier than usual and had been sick for the last few mornings. I had my suspicions as to what was wrong with her.

The only question was… Who was the father?

I hoped it wasn’t Bash. I kind of liked that beast and didn’t want him to be tied to my batshit crazy sister for the rest of his life because of a kid. He hadn’t been with her since that first day I had arrived—at least not that I knew of. He’d been kind of keeping it in his pants from what I could see, but was constantly going through the pictures on his phone.

As quickly and quietly as I could I made a run for my room, keeping an eye on the people below to make sure they didn’t look too closely to what direction I had just come from. When I got to my room without so much as a look from anyone I breathed a sigh of relief and jumped into the shower.

For the rest of the day I tried to keep a low profile. It wasn’t all that hard to do. None of the guys in my father’s MC would look at me let alone talk to me. The club sheep always ignored me, thinking I was the kind of girl that thought I was better than they were. Apparently that had been how my mother had acted when she had lived here at the compound with my father before she had gotten pregnant with Tasha—something that had completely blown my mind when I had heard it from Cletus, the old man who constantly sat at the bar drinking and watching what went on around the compound.

I’d gotten a knowing look from Cletus when I had come downstairs for something to eat earlier, but the wink he had given me had silently promised me he wasn’t going to tell Duke about it. So I sat with my ally and kept my head low while I had eaten a turkey sandwich and drunk an entire two liter of Diet Coke.

Tasha kept snapping at me every time she walked past me and I was tempted to punch her in the face. The only thing that kept my hands to myself was the knowledge that she could be carrying my niece or nephew in her vile body. I wondered if she knew she could be pregnant or if she even cared. Would she get rid of it if she was? Have an abortion? I didn’t believe in it personally, but I was also pro-choice. A woman’s body was her own business and I wasn’t going to put my nose in it.

In Tasha’s case, however, I was pretty sure that whatever kid she had would be better off not having to deal with a psycho mother.

Now, as Tasha walked toward me with that evil smile on her face, I knew she had me in her sights. There wasn’t much I hadn’t heard from her. Everything from how much she hated our mother to the freckles on my right shoulder. She had a snide comment for everything. My sister wasn’t happy unless she was trying to make me feel bad. Mostly she succeeded but I wasn’t about to let her know that. It would just make her do it more.

“Saw you watching the Spider at dinner last night, little sis. Too bad he doesn’t like them tame. You don’t know what you’re missing with that one.” Did she really just refer to him as the Spider?

I had been determined to just sit there with Cletus and keep my mouth shut. I thought that there was nothing she could say that would set me off. I was wrong. So, so wrong. Spider was the only thing that could push my buttons. “How would you know?” I demanded before I had time or sense to stop myself.

Tasha’s eyes darkened with pleasure, knowing she had just scored a point off me, and knowing that she was about to score a hell of a lot more with whatever was about to fly out of her mouth. “Spider and I go way back, baby sis. He’s got a big appetite. Likes it all night and the dirtier the better.”

Bile rose in the back of my throat at the thought of Spider… I couldn’t finish the thought. No way. Spider wouldn’t touch Tasha. He was better than that. He was special. And he had never been dirty with me. Not once in the two weeks of all-night love making. Every time was more perfect than the last with him. He was gentle, even when he was wild in my arms. I knew he had a big appetite, though. Sometimes it took him three or four times before he was even tired. I’d been struggling to keep from walking like I had been fucked raw the last two weeks.

Cletus grumbled something under his breath but I didn’t hear it. I was too focused on my sister and the truth—for once—shining back at me. “When?” I thought that I had screamed the question from the way my throat felt so raw all of a sudden, but it came out barely a whisper.

“Oh, I haven’t had him in a while,” Tasha assured me. “But a few of the others have been all over the Spider lately. Right, Topaz?”

I glanced over Tasha’s shoulder to the female named Topaz. It wasn’t her real name, but her stripper name that she used at one of my father’s clubs. I knew because she always walked around the compound in nothing more than a G-string and a bikini top. When the guys got bored she would jump onto one of the pool tables and dance for them. She would have been beautiful if she wasn’t so sickeningly skinny and didn’t have so many wrinkles in her sun-weathered face. She was only in her late twenties but she looked close to forty. Not for the first time, I wondered if she had a drug problem.

Topaz shrugged her bony shoulders, making her expensive chest—courtesy of The Red Dragons—stand out even more on her narrow frame. “I don’t know about the other girls, but yeah I’ve played around with him a few times since he’s been here. It’s been a few weeks though.”

Did that mean he hadn’t been cheating on me?

I couldn’t think of anything else for the rest of the day. Tasha, having hit me hard with her latest verbal assault, was staying clear of me. I wasn’t sure if she was letting me lick my wounds or just waiting for me to crack before she went in for the kill. Most likely the latter, I was sure of it. It was then that I realized that not only was my sister a psycho but kind of an idiot too. Because she might have hit me hard in the chest with that last shot but she’d also gotten my blood boiling in a way that was nearly impossible to do. Blood would be shed when I finished with that crazy-ass bitch.

Cletus was still where I had left him when I came downstairs wearing my running gear. I had to go for a run or I was going to go insane.

I ran until I threw up. Even though it was getting late, as long as the sun was out it was always scorching hot outside. By the time I got back to my room to shower I had decided to just let it go. Spider deserved my trust and I wasn’t going to go all crazy on him like my sister had probably thought I would. Instead I showered, dressed in a pair of track shorts—yeah I had an endless supply—and a tank top before sneaking to Spider’s room.

He was already laid out on his bed. Exhausted from the looks of him. He was only in a pair of boxers, and a towel beside his head told me he had recently gotten out of the shower. Looking down at him, with his head on his pillow hiding his spider tattoo from me he looked almost like a fallen angel, with that almost pretty-boy face on a body that wet dreams were made of. Every inch of him was like a chiseled masterpiece that some god had created.

I wanted to run my tongue over every hard inch of him, something I had done countless times in the last two weeks. Instead I had to have patience because there was something I needed to do before I started something that wasn’t likely to stop until we were both half dead with exhaustion.

Double checking that the door was locked behind me I climbed up onto the bed beside Spider. He didn’t move as I lay down beside him and wrapped my arms around him from behind. I pressed my lips to his neck and he growled my name in his sleep. Fuck, I was such a coward, telling him this while he was sleeping. But I didn’t have the guts to tell it to his face.

“I love you, James,” I whispered against his ear.

His entire body seemed to tense and suddenly I was on my back with a wide awake Spider lying on top of me with wild eyes that were searching my own. “Say it again,” he commanded in a raspier than usual voice. “Tell me, Willa.”

I closed my eyes, feeling too exposed with the way he seemed to be dissecting my soul with his eyes. Swallowing hard, I gathered my courage and finally opened my eyes again. “I love you.”

His shoulders slumped in relief and his eyes closed as if savoring my confession. I was relieved myself. I’d been fighting with myself for days to keep those three words trapped inside. Now that they were out there and Spider knew how I felt I could breathe normally again.

If I was expecting to get those same words in return I was sadly mistaken, but his lips devouring mine distracted me from it. Spider was wild and spent little time getting me naked before he was thrusting deep inside of me. Maybe I was stupid for not making him wear a condom but I was on the shot so he couldn’t get me pregnant. My mother had taken me to get birth control the day I had come home at the age of fourteen and told her I had a crush on the senior class president. Her favorite I might be, but apparently she wanted all her bases covered. Or my bases, really.

After our first time together, Spider had told me that he had always worn a condom with other girls and assured me that he was clean. He’d been apologetic and white faced until I told him I was covered in the birth control department. I’d taken him at his word and told him that there was no need for them as long as he was clean. So even though he had at least two in his jeans pocket, he never reached for them.

It really was hours later before he dropped down onto the bed beside me and pulled me tightly against his sweat-soaked chest. “Mine,” he growled before closing his eyes.

Laughing, I kissed his chest and snuggled deeper against him. Mine. It wasn’t the ‘I love you’ I was hoping for, but coming from the man beside me it was just about the same thing. “I love you, James.”