Текст книги "Spike "

Автор книги: Amity Cross

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Nine

Ren

“I’m sorry.”

I glanced up from the pile of paperwork I was helping out with and found Ash standing in the doorway. The office was empty since everyone had gone home an hour ago, but I’d stuck around a little longer to avoid talking to him. I’d never dragged out a fight this long, or stayed over at Beat to avoid hashing it out, and he knew it.

He leaned against the wall and nudged the door closed with his foot. He had this sheepish look on his face like he’d been caught with his hand in the lolly jar.

I raised an eyebrow and turned back to the paperwork.

“Ren, look…” I glanced up at him, and he shrugged. “You know I’m bad at this shit.”

“It’s not an excuse,” I said, looking at the invoice so I didn’t have to look at him.

“I didn’t like not being with you last night.”

Best not tell him that Caleb was already staking a claim over our nonexistent break up.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“Beat.”

He sighed heavily. “I’m not keeping anything from you.”

I shook my head. “I can tell when you’re bullshitting me, Ash.”

“Look at me.”

I shook my head, stood, and walked over to the filing cabinet. He watched me put the bit of paper away as I stewed on his admission. He said nothing was on his mind, but I could feel it. Something heavy hung in the air, and it was killing me knowing that something was amiss, and I couldn’t help him. He wasn’t letting me in, and after all the work it took for us to get to this point—all the fucking heartbreak and the fighting—it hurt like hell.

“I trained with Caleb last night.” I don’t know why I said it because it was like slapping him in the face, but it came out and hung there like an elephant in the room.

I sensed Ash’s body stiffen as the words hit him, and I cast my gaze to the floor. Training at Beat in the dark was our thing. It brought us together when nothing else could’ve made a difference. It was our thing.

His fist hit the wall, and I jumped, my gaze finding his. His shoulders were tense, jealousy clearly written all over his face.

“Did he touch you?” he asked, his eyes smoldering with a mixture of rage and lust.

I shook my head. “No.”

His eyes narrowed, and he pressed forward, backing me against the wall. His caveman was out, and his hands raised to grasp any part of me he could. My back hit the plaster, and he was on me, shoving his thigh between my legs, his mouth covering mine. He showed no mercy as he told me with his touch what he couldn’t seem to vocalize. He was sorry, but what for?

The kiss deepened to unbearable levels, as I knew it inevitably would, and I wrapped my arms round his neck, tangling my fingers into his hair. As his tongue claimed mine in slow swirls, my nipples tightened against his chest. This was how he told me that he wanted me forever. No stupid ceremony could give us this unbelievable passion. We totally clicked in the physical sense, but we still had emotional things we needed to work through and solving those would only come with time.

“I want you,” Ash murmured, holding me tight against his chest. “I want you even though now I’m the one pissed at you.”

Feeling his erection against my leg, my body flared hotter in response.

“That time is ours,” he went on. “No one else’s.”

“When else am I going to learn from him?”

“In a class,” he shot back immediately.

“Ash, you’re blowing it out of proportion.”

His eyes darkened, and he raised his hands to cup my face. His thumbs stroked back and forth across my skin, his touch gentle even though his eyes betrayed his annoyance. “Now you know how I feel, Spitfire.”

“Can we forget we ever fought about…” I trailed off, not knowing exactly what I was getting pissed about anymore. I guess that’s what being aroused ninety percent of the time did to a woman. Scrambled her bloody brain beyond comprehension.

“We belong to one another, Ren,” he whispered, his gaze flickering to my lips. “I’d die without you.”

I swallowed hard and allowed his nearness to overwhelm me. Darting forward, I sucked his bottom lip into my mouth and shoved my hands up the back of his T-shirt. His muscles tensed as he took control of the kiss, his hands tightening around my face as he pinned me against the wall.

My body flared in response, and I rolled my hips forward, moaning as pleasure spiked through my clit and jackknifed through every nerve ending I possessed. He responded in kind by grinding harder against me, his hands running up and down my body like they didn’t know which part of me to pleasure first.

“Please,” I cried breathlessly, all of the pent up anger I’d had toward him well and truly gone.

His hands wrapped around my waist, moving upward before hitching my bra and T-shirt up over my breasts. The cool air of the office tickled on my exposed skin, but then the warmth of Ash’s mouth clamped over them, sending bolts of heat to where it mattered most…right between the legs.

He bit my nipple softly as his hands pushed my shorts and knickers down, his palms coming to rest on my ass as I kicked out of my bottoms. Then he was lifting me up into his arms, shoving me back against the wall, his crotch grinding against my exposed sex.

Wrapping my legs around him, I pulled his mouth to mine and we kissed desperately as he freed his cock from his shorts. My insides ached to be fucked hard, to be released from the pressure that had been sparked by our furious groping. I wanted to feel good, and Ash was the only one who could give me what I wanted…and what I needed. Release, completion, forever.

He thrust into me with a grunt, driving his cock into me possessively. Tightening my legs around him, I urged him to keep going, my hands holding his face to mine. His eyes were wild with desire as he fucked me against the wall because this was far from making love. If this was how it felt to have him after one night apart, I couldn’t even imagine the cataclysm two would do.

He pounded into me relentlessly, and all I could feel was the rising tsunami that was my orgasm. It would splinter everything in its path the moment it broke. I held onto Ash for dear life.

“Spitfire,” he muttered, his breathing sharp.

“Watch me,” I gasped, forcing his gaze to mine once more. “Watch me. I’m yours…always yours.”

I came hard, his onslaught only spurring me on further, and he wasn’t far behind me. He thrust, burying deep, and held, his eyes never leaving mine. I didn’t know how long we clutched one another before his lips came to rest on mine. We kissed softly, our breath mingling as our heartbeats began to slow.

“I don’t want to fight,” I murmured, running my hands through his hair.

Ash didn’t answer. He just brushed his lips against mine before setting me back onto my feet. Pulling my top into place, he sank to his knees and tugged my shorts and underwear back up before attending to his own state of disarray. I guessed we’d just well and truly christened the office. I wondered what surface was next?

“Why are you dressing me?” I muttered, leaning back against the wall. My legs were just about ready to give out on me.

“There’s still some stragglers downstairs,” he muttered. “All of this”—he rubbed his hands over my breasts—“is mine and not for other eyes. I’m not risking the dash down the hall, Spitfire.”

I rolled my eyes even as I felt a surge of ownership over him. “Ape.”

Not rising to the occasion, Ash scooped me up into his arms and just carried me from the office, down the hall and into our apartment. He didn’t let me go until we’d reached the bedroom, where he set me gently on top of the covers.

Lying beside me, he pulled my body flush against his, laying his arm down so I could curl around him.

“Are you ready to talk yet?” I murmured.

“I just want to lie with you a minute,” he replied. “I missed you last night.”

It was code for let me catch my breath so I can strip you naked and screw you again, but I was still wound up.

“I don’t like the thought of you keeping something from me.” I screwed my eyes shut, my fingers tightening around his waist.

“Ren, I told you…” He sighed, his chest rising and falling with his breath.

“Is that why you asked?” I murmured, resting my head against his shoulder. “Because you’re afraid I might leave?”

“No,” he whispered. He hesitated, his jaw grinding a moment before he added, “Because someone might take you.”

“Ash,” I said through a heavy sigh.

He’d stayed away from me for so long because he believed he would hurt me beyond repair, and he held on so tight because he was afraid he’d screw up so bad that I’d leave him. It wasn’t until Hammer had almost taken me from him that a new fear had come to the surface. The fear of someone taking me from him.

He’d survive without me, but he’d never be the same. I could sympathize with that because it was exactly the same for me—different circumstances with the same outcome.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I murmured, clutching onto him for dear life. “No one’s gunna take me. You think I’d let them?”

His body tensed, but I didn’t dare say anything else. I just raised my head and let my lips find his. Brushing the hair from his forehead, I closed my eyes tightly as we kissed. I poured all the reassurance and love I could muster into my touch and hoped to hell that it got through to him.

We’d been solid ever since the night of the Championship at The Underground. Nothing had stood in our way, not even during the crazy months it took to build Pulse from a shell to its current glory. Not even through the bullshit that was thrown at us both for turning down the contracts from the AUFC. We were solid…until something had gotten underneath his skin. Was it just the marriage thing that had been blown out of proportion? I wasn’t so sure anymore.

The more I let the idea roll around in my mind, the more I wanted to know what had triggered this reaction in the first place. Was it a symptom or the problem?

“Ash?” I asked, my lips brushing against his.

“Yeah?”

“You are okay, right?”

He nodded, his lips grazing against mine.

“You can tell me anything,” I whispered, my eyes searching the unknown depths of his.

“I know, Spitfire. I know.”

“You don’t have to do anything alone anymore.”

In that moment, it felt like his soul spoke to mine, that it reached out and coiled around my own, spreading warmth through my entire body. Together we could do anything, be anything and take on the entire world.

As his lips met mine once more, it seemed within our grasp. All he needed to do was to believe it just as much as I did.

Ten

Ash

I pulled my car into a spot along the leafy outer suburb street and killed the engine.

It clicked as it began to cool in the frosty Melbourne air, and I sat, looking at the typical housing development home a few doors down. It looked like it was straight out of one of those display home catalogues and made to order, but that’s what these places were. Everything looked the same—the facades, the gardens, the garages and the front lawns looking like they were laid with Astroturf. It was about as fake as the people who lived in them.

Cookie-cutter houses for cookie-cutter families.

When Violet and I were kids, we’d grown up in a little house out in Bundoora. Every house in the neighborhood was different, from the size and color to the people who lived in them. Now I lived above a gym, Violet lived in Sydney in a posh apartment with her boyfriend, and our parents lived in a flimsy cardboard housing development in Caroline Springs on Melbourne’s outer fringes.

Truthfully, I’d done a couple of turns around the block before I even had the courage to park the car. I was now familiar with the entire street and had multiple options when it came to escape routes.

What was I actually hoping to find here? Closure, I guess.

My parents had kicked me out when I turned eighteen, and the only time I’d seen them since was when Violet was attacked. Dad came around to my place threatening me for brainwashing his daughter, caused a scene, and a neighbor had called the cops to break it up. Vee had never stopped coming to see me train and fight after they’d disowned me, and I think that pissed them off more than anything—until the attack that was. Still, she’d never given up on me just like I never gave up on her.

In my dad’s eyes, I’d stopped being his son the day I fell off the rails. That’s why I respected Ren’s father so much. He’d taken me in when I was a young delinquent and had taught me discipline, but it never seemed to be enough for the man I came from. Then I went to prison, and all contact stopped. Even the threats fell to the wayside. Vee was cut loose in her greatest moment of darkness, and I did whatever I could to take care of her.

I had no idea why I was sitting in my car watching their house, and I had no idea why I felt like it was important to even see them, let alone try to talk to them. Did I want forgiveness? Closure? Approval to marry Ren? Maybe I just wanted clarification that I hadn’t turned out like my old man before I pledged the rest of my life to my Spitfire.

That was the thought that gave me the courage to get out of the car and walk up the front path. I wanted to know that I was nothing like him. That I was a good man, not a monster waiting for the day he’d finally explode.

I stood on the front porch and stared at the door, the frosted panes of glass set into the wood revealing nothing about what was on the inside. They were home because there were two cars in the driveway. A beat-up Ute, which meant my father was still working construction, and a Holden Astra, which looked pretty expensive. They must be doing well for themselves.

Before I could chicken out, I knocked on the door. There were footsteps inside and a shadow appeared through the frosted glass, then the door opened and there she was.

She hadn’t changed one bit, other than a few more lines on her face than I remembered. She’d changed her hair, too. It was shorter and her black locks were flecked with grey.

“Ashley?” She blinked hard as recognition flooded her features.

I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Hi, Mum.”

Her mouth fell open. “How…”

“How did I find you?” I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “You can find almost anyone if you look hard enough.” The last part came out full of accusations.

“Who’s at the door, Nance?”

I flinched at the sound of my father’s voice. The voice that had always been so full of bitter disappointment for the kid who could never seem to stay on the straight and narrow for more than five minutes at a time.

“No one,” Mum called out, watching me carefully.

No one. So that’s what they thought of me to this day. I was nothing and no one to them.

Narrowing my eyes, I said, “You don’t want him to know I’m here?”

“You know what your father’s like.”

I curled my lip in distaste. “I can see he knows how to keep old wounds open.”

Mum glanced down nervously before asking, “How is she?”

I scoffed and shook my head. She wanted to know how her daughter was after all these years? Would she have even looked her up if I hadn’t shown up at their door? Probably not, and wasn’t that a slap to the face.

“I took care of her,” I hissed. “I made sure she was looked after and wanted for nothing.” She glanced up at me with an unasked question in her eyes, and I snorted. “Yeah, Mum. Even when I was in prison for protecting her.”

“Nance.”

Mum flinched at the sound of my father’s more persistent voice, her eyes closing momentarily.

“If you don’t want to argue with him, you better leave,” she said, her shoulders tense. I could see nothing had changed in that area, too.

Movement from within the house drew my attention, and before I could make a decision either way, my father’s silhouette appeared in the hallway. He paused, and for a split second, I almost believed he was going to let it go, but then he moved toward us.

As he came into view, I almost gasped at how much he’d changed. He looked beat down by the world. His face was creased with lines, and his hair was sparse on the top of his head, but he still had all the anger I remembered him carrying sitting on his shoulders. Then, his gaze met mine, and something unknown but very dangerous, flashed through them. Seriously, if we were in a cartoon, steam would be billowing out of his ears.

Shoving roughly in front of Mum, his hand curled tightly around the door, his fingertips turning white. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

It was a good question because I actually didn’t know anymore.

“I’ve got my life together, Violet has hers back and I came—”

“You want money? Is that what this is?” he asked, fuming.

My mouth fell open at his accusation that I was still a drag on society. “I just opened a million dollar gym,” I spat. “I don’t need your fuckin’ money.”

“You want approval then?” he prodded. “You’re not going to get any of that here.”

I shook my head. I didn’t need his approval for anything. It was a huge fuckin’ mistake coming here.

“You were nothing but a disappointment to us,” Dad spat. “Dropping out of school, fighting, stealing and dragging your sister into it? You ruined her.”

I ruined her. There it was as plain as day. Instead of blaming the man who attacked Vee, they were still pinning it all on me. They’d never forgive me for something that was out of my control. Maybe I did want their forgiveness. Maybe that’s what this really was all about.

“She never deserved what happened to her, and she didn’t deserve you leaving,” I yelled. “How could you do that to her?” I turned my attention to Mum who, being the submissive housewife she’d always been, was hiding behind my father. “How could you leave your own daughter? She needed you, and you abandoned her!”

But it was Dad who spoke for her. “You only have yourself to blame for that.”

“Can you hear yourself right now?” I cried. “Putting the blame on me for your shitty parenting?”

“We should’ve cast you off sooner,” he retorted. “You were a lost cause the moment you went to that school.”

He was talking about the first high school they’d enrolled me in, the shithole full of lower-class kids whose parents didn’t have the money to send them any place decent. I was bullied from day one, and in a hole like that, the only way to get out of the cycle was to fight back with your fists. I was a bad kid, but I’d lacked the father I needed to get me back on the straight and narrow. Dad’s idea of helping me was a fist to the side of the head. It didn’t take much imagination to know what happened next—I didn’t come home. Instead, I stayed out drinking, got into fights, and talked back. Punching on a kid who fought to stay afloat was not the way to pull him into line.

Anger like that needed to be channeled. That’s why I took to MMA like I had.

“What I didn’t need was a slap around the head,” I snapped. “I needed—”

“To fight like a little shit-headed delinquent?”

I curled my shaking hands into tight fists. “Discipline, Dad. Fucking discipline. Coach Miller gave me what you never could.”

Yeah, that’s right asshole, I thought. Andrew Miller was more of a father to me than you ever were.

He narrowed his eyes, and I could spot all the telltale signs of a man about to explode. After all, I was the same.

“I’m a good man now,” I said quietly, poking the beast I’d come from. “No thanks to you.”

“What you are,” he said thinly, “is a monster. Don’t you think I can’t see what’s inside of you? Darkness, anger and rage. You might have all the money in the world, but deep down, you’re still a pathetic failure. The monster never goes away, boy. You’re just like me.”

My mouth fell open in shock at the poison that dripped from his words, and his lips curled in satisfaction. He’d hit the nail right on the head. Everything I was afraid of had been dragged up to the surface and had been laid bare in front of the man I despised.

I craved control because deep down, I was afraid of losing it and never being able to come back. All the anger that lived inside of me would one day overflow, and who would I hurt the most? Ren. Ren, who I loved more than anything in the world. Ren, who I wanted to be mine and mine alone.

Dad looked me up and down and shook his head, tutting like I was a piece of stinking trash on his immaculate porch. My gaze flickered to Mum’s, and she shook her head. He’d never touched her in anger, not that I could remember, but she’d always been under his thumb. I wouldn’t find any hope with her either. Maybe Violet would find a scrap, but not me.

“We don’t have children,” Dad spat, and like a full stop to his declaration, he slammed the door in my face.

I stood there for what felt like an age before I turned and strode down the path away from the house. I felt sick. The kinda sick where I had to pause by the gutter and puke.

Sliding into the car, I slammed the door closed, my hands curling around the steering wheel and squeezing. I felt like punching something, but that would only make my father’s words one hundred percent true. I didn’t want him to be right. I wanted him to be a liar and a fraud. I hated him. I hated myself for even thinking for one second he’d changed.

I wasn’t a man. I was a failure. I didn’t even have the courage to ask Ren to marry me.

My father was right. Deep down, I was a monster whether I liked it or not. That shit was genetic. I didn’t have enough fingers to count how many times I’d lost it over the years, and one of those times, Ren had to put herself into the firing line to drag me back. I’d almost murdered a man, not once but twice. Intentionally. I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt her.

Gunning the engine, I drove back to Pulse, seething the entire way. I’d gone to find answers, but all I got was a reality check.