Chapter Fourteen
Rebel
When Elle gave me her last orgasm, she’d shown me her soul, not just the glimpses I’d gotten before, but all of her inner beauty. Had she fallen asleep, passed out, as we came together? Whatever you called it, my sweet girl was out, exhausted from whatever trauma had sent her to me looking like her world collapsed.
I pulled out and cursed, no condom. Dammit, another rule broken. Tonight she’d stripped away every bit of armor I used to protect myself, leaving me exposed. When she’d bared herself to me, I had no choice but to do the same, and it had changed me.
Not wanting to think, I left her sleeping and headed for a shower, needing to clear my head and find perspective. You mean distance, coward.
Hell yes I did. Opening up only led to the worst kind of heartache. Sure she was special, but no one was special enough to make me risk my heart. I’d learned my lesson the first time, I mean, if my family couldn’t love me, no one could.
I pushed down all the feelings our lovemaking, because fuck me if that wasn’t what we’d done, opened up, but they wouldn’t stay down. I stepped out of the shower and stared into the fogged-over mirror. The ghost reflection reminded me I wasn’t capable of a real relationship, too much damage and too many scars. Wrapping the towel around my waist, I stepped out of the bathroom to find Elle awake, staring at the stained white ceiling. This crummy motel room, like a thousand others, was no place for someone as special as her.
“How are you?” I asked, though if she started crying I was seriously fucking someone up. I didn’t do tears.
She sat up and her soft blue eyes settled on me. “Much better, thanks to you. I’ve never been fucked unconscious before, so another first.” She gave me a small smile.
“Baby, I aim to please.” Comfortable with the familiar ground, I relaxed, dropping the towel before I climbed into bed next to her.
“You want to tell me?” I wished I could take back the words as soon as I said them.
“No, yes. I don’t know.” She sat up, fidgeting.
“Spill it, Blondie.” I knew if something ate at me I’d want to spit that shit out, not that I did, but I’d wanted to.
“The business meeting...” she turned toward me in bed, “...was with Chaz Carter. Dad offered him me and the company in some kind of merger.”
“Damn that had to sting.”
She snorted a laugh. “A bit. I told them both off and marched out of there.”
“Good job, he deserved a beat down for that level of stupid.” I hated to see her family hurt her because I understood too well what it was like.
“The part that sucks worse is I admitted to myself, I’m not going to make it.” She blew out a breath. “Leaves me marriage or I’ll be out in the cold.”
“What are you going to do?” I wanted to beat her father black and blue.
“I have no damn idea.” She pulled a sheet up before she sat back against the bed. Her tits were still on display, distracting me. But she didn’t need sex, she needed to talk.
“What do you have against marriage, besides the obvious shittiness of your dad making you get married?”
Elle glanced away and didn’t look back for a long time. I was sure she wasn’t going to answer. Besides, it wasn’t any of my business why she didn’t do the simplest thing to get the company.
“Part is pride.”
Damn that was honest.
“Part is fairy tales. Under all my protests, I always thought if I married, which I didn’t really plan to ever do, it’d be because I was so in love I had to get married.” She laughed. “That doesn’t even make sense to me.”
“I get it. You either wanted the real thing or nothing.” My parents had the real thing, right down to both agreeing to cut me out of their lives.
“I guess so, but if I walk away for pride and fairy tales, then maybe this isn’t my passion. Shouldn’t I be willing to sacrifice everything for what I’m passionate about?” She stared up at the ceiling for a long time.
I didn’t interrupt her. She had a lot to sift through.
“I never accepted, until tonight, this choice was real. My dad loves me in his own misguided way, so I was sure he’d back down because he loved me.” She turned her head to me and her expression stole my breath.
Her normally sunny expression was weighed down with sorrow. “Tonight, I finally understood no matter what happened with the business, I’ve lost my father because he’s pushed me too far, taken this too far. He might think he can come back from here, but he can’t.” She hit her fist against her chest. “He tore something deep in here tonight and nothing he says will ever fix that. You don’t do that to people you love.”
Her words drove me from the bed. Pissed off in a way I had no right to be, I prowled the room wanting to plant my fist in the white wall again and again until the fury faded.
“What’s got you so worked up?” she teased.
Her story wasn’t my own. This situation wasn’t mine, yet I craved to set shit right for her. She couldn’t have her family back any more than I could, but I had my brothers. She deserved to have something at the end of this fight, or what was the goddam point. She wanted the company, and I wanted to give it to her.
“Listen to me, okay.” I sat on the edge of the bed, her face cupped in my hands.
She tried to nod even though I held her face.
“All the way to the end.” I stood and paced again, unable to believe I was going to say this.
“You should marry me, now before the first deadline passes.”
She opened her mouth to speak but I held up a finger.
“You promised to wait.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
“I don’t want your company, we can have a lawyer draw up whatever papers you want. In Oklahoma, we can get married without waiting. We just need to purchase the license and reserve time with a judge.”
“You’re crazy,” she interrupted.
I put my finger to my lips to quiet her again. “This is a get-your-business-only kind of marriage. And when the requirements are met, we get divorced. Shove his terms down his fucking throat and get what’s yours.” I growled the last part when my anger got the best of me.
“Now you can speak,” I said when she was quiet for a long time.
“You’re serious?” She reached for her shirt.
“What are you doing?” I had no idea why she was dressing.
“Putting on clothes. I can’t have a serious conversation while you’re naked.” Her face turned pink.
I found my jeans. “Why not?”
“It distracts me.” She pulled on her underwear and pants before grabbing her phone.
I had to smile, we were discussing her future and she was distracted by me. I was so focused I hadn’t even thought about her delicious tits on display, well not much, anyway.
“Yes, I’m serious.”
“Aren’t there repercussions in the club for marrying me?” She bit her lip, making me want to bite it too.
“In my club, we have a ceremony to make a woman belong to us.” I picked my words carefully. “It’s the one that matters.” I pushed a hand through my hair. “Marriage means next to nothing in the club—in fact only a handful of my seventy-some brothers are married but maybe a third of them have an old lady, maybe even more.”
“An old lady?” She wrinkled her nose.
“It’s just words.” It wasn’t, but we were doing this to secure her company, not because of something real. The idea of Elle wearing my property patch made my pulse spike. I wasn’t sure if that was because of fear or excitement, either way, I wasn’t looking for an old lady, ever.
She scrolled through her phone before glancing up. “The worst condition—we have to live together from the time we’re married until at least September 1. He requires we live together sixty days after he signs over the company, and he doesn’t have to do that until June 30.”
The idea of Elle in my bed for the next four months didn’t send me running—it should have, but it didn’t.
“I can live with that. Some of the time here; some time in Ardmore works for me.”
“I wouldn’t work for him.” She shuddered. “I have some savings, but I’d need to work.”
“Work for Brotherhood Bonds. You probably already have an Oklahoma license.” We needed her experience even if it was only for a few months.
Excitement shone in her eyes then she scowled at me. “Not as your secretary, right? Even if you need one.”
I laughed. “No way, but how did you know I needed one?”
“I called your business number and no one answered.”
Cursing, I planned to rip JoJo a new asshole when I returned. He was in charge of the office which included forwarding the line when he was out.
“So this sounds like a go?” I needed her commitment before she overthought the deal.
“You’re good with the terms?”
“I need to add two.” I was crazy for doing this.
“First, I go with you when you deliver the marriage license to your father.”
She clapped her hands together. “Yes. I was afraid to ask you to go with me. Let’s say you’re the last guy he’d expect me to marry.” Her smile dropped away and her head bent. “You have to know something, even if you don’t want to know.”
Shit, no love words. Please no love words. I don’t know what would happen if she said she loved me.
“I wouldn’t trust anyone else to have my back, but not be after more. I considered this idea, but couldn’t think of anyone who wouldn’t try to take my company or take me. But, I trust you.”
Her words rocked my foundation. My brothers trusted me, but no one else had ever put total faith in me, not like she was. “Well, I still plan to do wicked things to your body, but that’s a totally separate deal between us.”
“Agreed, now what was the second thing?”
“We do this, it’s only me and you together while we’re doing this.” My skin crawled. Uncomfortable didn’t begin to describe the sensations roiling through me. I’d never proposed any kind of exclusivity to another person. However, I knew I didn’t want her in another man’s bed and I wasn’t stupid enough to believe she’d agree to a one-way exclusivity. Maybe after four months of her, I’d be ready to walk away.
She opened and closed her mouth. “You sure?” She squeaked the words out when she finally spoke. “I can live with it the way it was before.”
“You been screwing other guys?” Anger sparked inside me.
She rolled her eyes at me. “No, but I assumed you’d been, you know...”
“Fucking other women?”
Anger flashed across her face then was gone. “We never said otherwise.”
I was an asshole of epic proportions. I knelt in front of her. “Just you since we started this, and that’s the way it’s going to stay, yeah?”
“Yeah.” A sexy smile graced her face, making her look like her old self for the first time tonight.
Then she shot up almost knocking me on my ass. “Oh sorry, but I gotta go. I have stuff to do if we’re getting married the day after tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with tomorrow?” Confusion had me glancing her way again, but she only searched for her shoes. “Under the bed.”
She grinned at me before digging them out. “I want it on April 17, the day of the deal.”
My girl was ferocious and I liked it. “Got it. Be ready to head north with me tomorrow night.”
“I can meet you there.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed my lips with a quick peck.
I held her in place for a thorough kissing. If she hadn’t made me get dressed, I’d have had her again and again tonight. “You’ll be going up with me. Got it.” I swiped her nose.
“Fine. But only because I like your bike.” She stepped away and hurried out the door.
I stood in my empty room laughing. I was marrying the first girl I’d let on the back of my bike. Thinking about bikes brought me to the club. The marriage had nothing to do with the club, but I still picked up the phone to call my Prez.
“What?” Jericho growled into the phone.
“You got a minute.”
“I answered didn’t I?”
“Fine, just letting you know I’m getting married in Ardmore the day after tomorrow.” I hung up.
Fucking ass anyway. See how he liked the sarcasm.
My phone rang a second later.
“Explain.”
I told him about Elle, her father, and the deal.
“She going to be your old lady?”
“No.” She couldn’t be my old lady even if I wanted one.
“You’re protecting her like she will be.”
“Can’t ever happen.” Shit, why those words. Now Jericho would be all up in my business.
“Why? She too good for us?” Anger tinged his words.
“I don’t want a fucking old lady, and what’s the point of doing all this shit to get her the company with no strings, to put even bigger strings on her shit.”
“That made no sense.” Jericho spoke to someone on the other end and then shut a door. “Explain in a way I understand.”
“You get I don’t want her as an old lady.”
“I’ll agree to that for now, but if you did, what would stop you?”
“She’d be my property, meaning we’d own her business. Remember that shit?” I wasn’t pissed, and honestly it was one of the reasons I liked being with Elle. She’d never be a forever kind of girl because nothing was more important than Jackson Bonds. It gave me comfort knowing it was impossible.
“Good point, that’s a big chunk and we couldn’t just exclude it, but you know we’d only take a small percent.” Jericho was being lenient.
“One percent would be too much and that’s part of what I like, she’s not permanent. Get me yet?”
Jericho chuckled. “I get you, but you don’t get it, not yet.” He hung up. The bastard always liked having the last word.