FOUR MONTHS LATER
“What the fuck do you mean you were going to step down?” Ham demanded.
“Are you shitting me?” Daz tacked on.
Those two were the loudest, but there was a mess of the same shit coming at me from all sides.
“All right, shit.” I tried to shut them up, like that was going to work.
“You’ll be lucky if we even let your ass retire from that shit when you’re old as fuck like Doc,” Daz kept right on.
“Fuck you,” Doc shot back.
I banged the gavel hard, making my point a little clearer.
“Did any of you fuckers catch that I said ‘was?’ Shit.”
Tank asked the question that I knew was just going to incite them more. “How long were you thinkin’ that shit?”
Fuck. Here went nothing. “Four months.”
Only, I didn’t get a bunch of bullshit handed to me. I got silence. Everyone knew exactly what happened four months ago, what triggered that for me.
“What changed your mind?” Roadrunner, who knew I’d have nominated him for my job, asked.
“She did.”
Evie had made it her goddamn mission. I think she’d been more committed to that than her own fucking recovery. What really made it through wasn’t one of her attempts, though. It was about a month before. I’d woken in the middle of the night, images of her in that fucking chair hounding me, and my startling awake had jostled Evie.
“Honey?” she called, her voice heavy with sleep. Any other time, it’d make me hard hearing that. Right then, having just woken from a nightmare of being back in that factory, of my girl still in those cunts’ hands, all I could feel was the desire to trade my soul to bring one of those fuckers back and kill them again.
When I didn’t respond to her, Evie sat up gingerly and moved in close. Her delicate hand came to my sweat-soaked back, but she didn’t recoil.
“Talk to me.”
I promised her—promised myself—that there was no more keeping her out. Not out of my head, not out of my life. There may be times I’d have to keep club shit quiet, but never again if it even might involve her.
“Go back to that night a lot. In my sleep, but they aren’t normal nightmares. Nothing changes. It just plays in my head again, like I never got you out. Like I’m still just standing there wondering what the fuck I’m going to do to save you.”
Her silk lips kissed my shoulder, then her forehead rested there. Her hands wrapped around my arm, hugging it to her torso, and I brought my hand to her bare thigh. She didn’t say anything, just held onto me like she could absorb that shit out of my skin.
It was only then for the first time that I realized this situation hadn’t been reversed.
“You don’t dream about it?”
Her head jerked like she’d never thought of that either. “No,” she answered, her tone surprised.
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.” She kissed my shoulder again. “I don’t really remember it. I can remember when they took me, though even that’s a bit unclear. After that, it’s all just blank until I was in the hospital.”
I’d think that would make it worse, that the mind could think up all kinds of shit to fill in those blanks.
“I guess,” she went on, “I just have the very beginning and the end. I don’t have the horror of the story in the middle. All that’s there is knowing you saved me, so that’s what I focus on.”
That fucking simple. Her body was healing, and she was just letting that shit go, while I stayed in that room to fucking rot.
“I want to let it go.”
She gripped me tighter. “Then let it go, honey.”
“I don’t know how,” I admitted.
“I don’t either, not for you. You have to know why you’re holding onto it. If you can get past that, the rest will solve itself.”
That was it. Those words. Because I already knew why I was holding onto it. It was the guilt that kept me there. If I wanted to leave, if I wanted to keep from waking in the middle of the night and dragging her back there when she was leaving on her own, I had to acknowledge that it wasn’t in my power to control everything. I couldn’t control the fact that sick motherfuckers like that existed in the world. I couldn’t change that they pushed us until we had no choice but to take them on. If we hadn’t, worse could have happened to all of us eventually, including Evie. In time, they’d have pushed themselves right into Hoffman. Or even if they hadn’t, others would have seen the foothold they got and made the same moves. Fuck knows what might have gone down.
It wasn’t like that change happened overnight, but I grappled with it. Evie cheered me through. And after some time, the nightmares slowed. I had them occasionally, maybe I always would, but they weren’t controlling me like they had been at first.
“Fuckin’ knew I liked that girl,” Daz kept running his mouth.
“Anyway,” I pressed on, ignoring him. “I’m bringing that shit up because I decided not to, but only if no one else wants to take the gavel. Someone else wants it more, I’ll step aside.”
Not one of them even looked like they were considering it. Then, Roadrunner stood.
“All right,” I started to say that he could have it. He’d been a great VP and had handled everything while I’d been inside anyway.
He spoke over me. “All in favor of keeping our pres right where he is?”
Every brother voiced their “Aye” right away.
“Good. Then that’s the last of that shit,” he muttered, dropping into his chair again.
My club was a bunch of assholes, but I loved every one of those fuckers.
Evie was on the couch at the farmhouse when I got home. It was a shitty thing to think, but part of me missed those hours in bed. I didn’t miss for a fucking second the pain she’d have, but being able to escape to bed with her all day was just fucking fine, even if there was none of the good shit that happened in bed going on.
“How’d it go?” she asked, and I just gave her a look.
She’d had a doctor’s appointment, which she conveniently didn’t tell me was at the same time I’d called the brothers in for until after. This was so, she said, she’d have a different “babysitter” who wouldn’t be on her case so much.
I called it a bunch of bullshit.
“My appointment was fine.” She gave me what I was looking for. “He said I’m recovering remarkably well, and I’m free to resume all my normal activity as long as I’m aware of my body and take it easy if need be. He wants to wait another few weeks before I go calling the hospital to get back to work, try out being active for even half that long before going back to twelve-hour shifts, but otherwise, I’m good.”
I bent down, pressing a kiss to her upturned lips. “That’s good, bunny.”
“Mhm. Now, how did it go today?”
Kicking back on the couch beside her, I explained, “Good. Told them I’d considered stepping aside,” which I’d already told her I was planning to, “they were pissed. Roadrunner ended up calling a vote to keep me where I was.”
“And?” she asked it like I was about to tell her if the last number on her ticket won her the jackpot.
“Fucking unanimous.”
Her smile was big, fucking huge actually. The sweet girl she was, she didn’t even gloat.
She just leaned into me and gave me a kiss this time. “Mr. President,” she teased. “So it’s good news all around.”
“Yeah, babe.” It was starting to feel like every day would be that way with her.
“We should celebrate.”
There was a light in her eyes that made my cock stir. The all-too-familiar battle against that feeling against the constant desire she had boiling beneath my skin began to wage. Her wellbeing was more important than the fact that my cock ached, more important than shooting off in the shower every morning was dissatisfying. More than once—a fuck of a lot more than once—Evie had tried to ease the ache. I wouldn’t let her. One-sided shit with her would only make things worse, only make me want her more. Even besides that, my girl wasn’t going to service me without getting her own back.
Despite all that, my fucking mouth worked before my brain. “What did you have in mind?”
I had to dig my fingers into her soft thighs to keep my hands from wandering. It was pathetic, my complete loss of control with her.
“I think you’re more equipped to get creative than I am.” She batted her lashes, a seductive move that contrasted against the rose of her cheeks in a way that owned me.
“Evie.” It was a warning, the same one I’d been giving for weeks since she’d started feeling well enough to test me.
She leaned in, lining up her lips with my ear, her tits pressing into my chest. “The doctor said I can resume normal activity, honey. All normal activity.”
Not even a second ticked by after those words rocked through what felt like my whole body before I was on my feet, Evie in my arms. Her joyful giggle and the answering growl it brought out of whatever fucking beast I’d become trailed us as I took her upstairs.
I didn’t see the stairs, the hallway, even our room. The only thing that could hold my attention was my beautiful Evie, her brown eyes bright with mischief even as they darkened in a way that called right to my cock. It was instinct born of living in that house for years that led my feet where I needed them to take me, that I managed to shut the door behind us.
“I missed you.” Her words were like a confession as I lowered her to the bed. My dick throbbed his agreement in kind as if she’d said the words to him. Though, maybe she had. She’d had all of the rest of me over the months of her recovery.
There might have been words that a different man would give her in response, flowery shit to make her swoon, but I wasn’t that man. I was the man who needed her, down to the fucking marrow. Words were most of what I could give her for months, now they were bullshit. She owned me, and there was no better way to show her how much.
Mindful of her injury—recovered or not—I pulled her yoga pants off of her. Jeans had been too difficult, so my girl had taken to wearing those ass-hugging things all the time. I was convinced it was at least in part because she knew how much the sight tortured me. If I didn’t think she’d flip out right then, I’d have ripped right down that seam at her pussy and fucked her with the remains where they were. At least one pair would be toast then.
All thoughts of pants, or anything but this moment, fled when I saw the wet spot darkening the pink fabric cupping her pussy. Months I’d been without that sweet, and here she was, ready for me to take it again. Unceremoniously, I pressed my knuckles against that beacon, rubbing deep and firm, feeling the heat seeping through.
“You need it.” I needed it.
“Yes.” Her hips rolled, trying to get me deeper despite the barrier.
“What do you need? My fingers?”
She shook her head, eyes wide, mouth open to allow her panting breaths.
“My mouth?”
She started to shake her head on instinct but froze. Then, either without thought or in a coordinated move to decimate me, she licked her lips.
Mouth it fucking was then.
Her panties were gone in the work of one movement, and her hips were scarcely able to settle back onto the bed before I was bent between her legs, taking one long lick up her soaked pussy.
“Stone!”
Her hands were in my hair, gripping it to the point of pain, but I couldn’t give less of a shit. I worked her with my tongue, reveling in the feeling of having her sweet cunt back. It was building in her, her hips thrashing, her pussy clenching, her cries echoing in my ears. I was going to take her over the edge, and then I was going to bury myself inside her until I couldn’t get it up anymore.
Except, that didn’t happen.
“No,” she cried, the word more of a moan from the last roll of my tongue. “With you. I want it with you.”
There was no way I could deny her that.
“Shirt.”
She followed the growled command without hesitation, losing the top and her bra to boot as I ripped my own clothes off. The fucking things were just in the way.
Evie welcomed me back onto her with arms and legs open, letting me fall right into place where I belonged before wrapping me up. With her under and all around me, the scorching wet of her pussy kissing my aching cock, I found I did have words.
“This is heaven. Just this, with you. Not one fucking thing could ever top this.”
Anything she might have said was swallowed by her cry as I thrust in, sliding home until my whole cock was buried deep.
Home. That’s what it was. What anything with Evie to me was. My sweet bunny was home, was everything.
And just like her, just like she’d done every time I’d thought she couldn’t possibly top what she’d already given me, Evie gave more. In the midst of that cunt squeezing me tight, spasming as she came for me, right when the sensation of it was about to make me blow, Evie turned her head toward me. Months built of lust, of self-doubt, of guilt and sorrow and anger, disappeared as I came with her rasped “I love you” in my ear.