Ruin & Rule
My eyes flared. “Hey, you’re not supposed to agree with me.” Huffing, I added, “Plus, you don’t even know what I was thinking about.”
His face softened, his hands grabbing my waist and holding me close. “Don’t I? Don’t you think I’ve thought about it?”
“Thought about what?”
His eyes tightened. “About letting you go…”
My heart flopped in a faint. “Eight years, Art. I would’ve understood. The grief…”
I would never have understood. You’re mine.
He kissed me again, whispering against my mouth. “No matter how much I wished I could forget, I couldn’t. You stole my heart and soul, Cleo. There was nothing left to give anyone else. I gave up trying to forget you and focused on other things.”
I almost crumbled to the floor in a weird combination of thankfulness and guilt.
I asked, “Things like revenge?”
His jaw tightened.
“Who are you planning on—”
“Don’t. Not yet.” He stepped back, letting me go with a small shove. “It’s all wrapped up in the parts I can’t explain.” He ran an angry hand through his hair.
My palms turned sweaty with nerves. What was he hiding?
“Explain, Art. The sooner you begin, the sooner it’s over.”
“And the sooner you’ll run because you won’t understand,” he growled. Shaking his head, he snapped, “No. I can’t tell you—not in words. I need to show you.” His temper faded and he gave me a sheepish smile. “Today. I’ll show you today.”
His face lost the dark shadows of vendettas. He shoved his hand into a jeans pocket. Taking my fingers, he turned my wrist until it rested upside down and placed the Libra eraser in my palm. “I’ve carried this with me every day since you gave it to me. I hated it for a time because it was still here and you weren’t. But then I loved it.”
Dragging me into another kiss, his body shook, sending desire and pain through my system. Desire for this man who never let me die. And pain for his suffering—for everything he’d had to live through.
“I want you to have it, Cleo. It brought you back—it belongs to you.”
I shook my head, trying to untangle myself from his embrace. “I can’t. It’s yours.”
“I’ve got something so much better.”
I knew what he would say, but I smiled and asked anyway, “And what’s that?”
His lips whispered over mine. “My Buttercup.”
I surrendered to his taste, kissing him back. I wanted to turn around and go back home. I wanted to ignore the outside world and the endless questions for a bit longer. I was selfish—selfish for a boy who’d turned into a man without me.
His tongue tangled with mine, our bodies pressing harder and harder against each other—seeking release from the rapidly building lust.
Breathing hard, I ended the kiss. Something he’d said before niggled me. “You didn’t have it on you every day.”
He frowned, his lips wet and swollen. “What?”
“That day I arrived. It was in your room.” My mind skipped back to that night—the battle, the blood, his wound that almost made him die. More fear filled my heart. “Art, if I hadn’t arrived that night… you would’ve died.”
His jaw clenched as he looked away and I saw what he didn’t want me to see. He’d been reckless with his life. Reckless with safety and his health because he had nothing to live for.
I crashed against his chest, nuzzling my head into his body and wrapping my arms tight around his waist. “Please tell me you weren’t that stupid—that broken—to want to die?”
“No.” His baritone echoed in my ear from where I pressed against him. “I must admit some days I was weak. Some days I didn’t want to get out of fucking bed at the thought of not having anyone to live for. But vengeance is a fine thing. It kept me alive when nothing else could. I wouldn’t have let myself die that night. I would’ve stayed alive because I fucking refuse to die before they get what’s coming to them.”
I looked up, yet more confusion layering my overstretched brain. “Who?”
He brushed a thumb over the apple of my cheek. “You’ll find out. I promise. And when you do, you’ll understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
“Is it anything to do with the uprising—that rebellion when I arrived?”
Arthur frowned, looking over his shoulder at the empty Club room. “That wasn’t related to the Club—not directly, anyway.”
“If it wasn’t related to Pure Corruption, what was it, then?” I couldn’t understand the dynamics. Arthur had built an MC that obeyed its own laws—unlike others.
“Four years ago when I took over, I wasn’t exactly a lot of members’ first choice.”
I moved closer, placing the Libra eraser back in his pocket. He frowned. “That’s—”
“It’s yours. And anyway, I don’t have any pockets.” Standing on my tiptoes to distract him from giving me something that meant the world to him, I said, “You’d always be my first choice.”
He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes, absorbed with the past. “I came in, changed their patch, their oath—turned them from criminal to legit. I did everything he ever asked me to do.”
“He?”