Текст книги "Sinner's Steel"
Автор книги: Sarah Castille
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
“I didn’t know T-Rex that well, but from what I saw, he was a special person.”
Zane pulled her into his chest, wrapping his strong arms around her. “I’ll miss him,” he said softly. “But I’ll be grateful to him every day of my life for keeping you safe and giving me another chance. There hasn’t been a single day in the last nine years that I haven’t regretted leaving you the way I did. Every year, I spent the last week of summer riding in the mountains, thinking about you, and what I could have done differently. After I saw you and Mark together, I just imagined a different life where I made different choices.”
“Then you wouldn’t be you.” She reached up to stroke his bristly chin. You wouldn’t have found the Sinners. You wouldn’t be a biker. You wouldn’t be the man I love. And I have to admit, the whole badass biker thing is kinda hot. Every time I see you in that cut, or on your bike, I just want to jump your bones.”
“Anytime. Anywhere. Any way you want.”
“I’ll wait for you, Zane.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “As long as it takes. Five years. Ten. Twenty. I’ll be here for you. And when you’re free, I want to see you in that cut. I can make it work because I know in my heart you’re a good person, and I know I have the strength to survive in your world. Arianne showed me there is more than one way to live the life. I can still be me. I can run my shop, be a soccer mom, and give you heck when you put yourself in danger. It will be you and me and Ty and your MC. Together.” And then, because she could feel the tears welling in her eyes, she smiled. “Of course it won’t be that long. I believed you when you told me the truth about what happened that night. The judge will believe you, too.”
“Your faith means everything to me.” He rested his forehead against hers, closed his eyes. “Now that I’ve seen you and put T-Rex to rest, I’m gonna deal with Viper. Then I’m gonna take that faith back with me to Stanton, knowing that if it does go wrong, you’ll be safe until I see you again.”
Viper.
She had almost forgotten about him. But she was dead certain he hadn’t forgotten about her.
TWENTY-FOUR
Don’t get too cocky after your first successful repair. There are always hidden problems.
—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL
Evie awoke from a dream of being seduced by a man with dark hair and darker eyes, only to discover it was no dream at all; her seducer had one hand between her legs and the other on her breast.
“What the…”
“Shhhh,” Zane whispered. “You fell asleep at the party. Had to bring you home in a cage.”
Evie grimaced. Ah, yes. The party after the funeral. Part Irish, T-Rex had asked that his brothers throw an Irish wake if he died and the Sinners had gone all out to honor his wishes, renting out Banks Bar, where Arianne and Dawn worked part-time, and inviting as many Sinners as it could hold.
After standing outside for a full five minutes, Zane had decided there weren’t any felons in Banks Bar that he personally knew, and the Sinners weren’t really a criminal organization; they were just a bunch of guys who liked to ride bikes. Plus, he’d seen someone’s hand on Evie’s ass, and that was the end of his good behavior.
“Knees up, sweetheart. Curl up and bring them to your chest.” Zane’s deep voice slid over her like a warm blanket. The morning light was already streaming through the crack in the curtains, filling the master bedroom of her new rental with the soft rays of dawn.
Half asleep, her body languid and relaxed, she complied, curling up in front of him, half wondering what he was up to now.
His hand slid over her ass to cup her sex, now fully exposed to his questing fingers. “You’re so wet. That’s my fault. I couldn’t keep my hands off you all night.” He slicked a finger through her folds and brushed her wetness along her inner thigh. “I never saw you drunk before. You were very affectionate. Shooter should be out of the hospital this afternoon. I only hit him a coupla times. And Patches is … well, we can go visit him tomorrow.”
Evie groaned and turned her face into the pillow. “Don’t tell me anything else.”
“So you don’t want to hear the part where you tried to rip off my clothes?” His hand stroked down her body to caress her breast, then over her curves to touch her intimately once more. Evie gasped as pleasure surged through her. She released her knees, and Zane growled softly.
“Don’t move. Back in position.”
Evie bit back a smile. She liked this side of him, confident, dominant, unyielding. It was a side she hadn’t seen when they were young, but she had always suspected was there.
He kissed her neck, then bit her gently as his finger pressed against her wet entrance. “All ready for me. But then you were ready for me hours ago, weren’t you, sweetheart?” He licked the bite, wrapped one arm around her knees, and before she realized what he intended, he drove his cock into her hard and deep.
“Oh, God.” No teasing. No more foreplay. But she was more than ready for him.
Her body tensed at the intimate intrusion, but in the tight position she couldn’t move to relieve the pressure, or shift to accommodate him in any other way. The world narrowed to the slide of his cock into her pussy, the press of flesh on flesh, and the deep sensations as he pushed inside inch by inch, so slowly she wanted to scream, to rock her hips …
Zane ground against her until he was buried to the hilt. “Take me, Evie. Take all of me and let me take care of you.”
Her senses heightened: his scent of sex with a hint of cologne; his body warm around her and hard inside her; the taste of his last kiss before she fell asleep; and the sight of him moving gently behind her in the mirror across from the bed. So erotic.
He always wanted to take care of her. And yet, although she loved his protectiveness, she didn’t need it. Not anymore. Maybe, for once, she could take care of him in the bedroom; she could drive him crazy, the way he did to her. She could be in control.
Evie twisted away then quickly turned and gently pushed Zane to his back. She straddled him, his shaft nestled between her folds, grinning as his face registered surprise, then curiosity.
“How about I take care of you?” She rocked over him, and Zane’s corded throat tightened when he swallowed.
“How about you do that when I’m inside you?”
“Not yet.” Evie licked her lips. “I want to play.” She leaned up to kiss him, easing herself up until his swollen head brushed her entrance. Zane groaned, clamped his hands on her hips and tried to pull her down.
“If you’re naughty, you don’t get to be inside me at all.” She feathered kisses over the soft bristles on his jaw, down his neck, over his pecs, then licked her way along the ridges of his abdomen. Zane threaded his hands through her hair, his finger gripping her scalp.
“If I’d known you were planning to torture me, I would never have come back.”
“It’s a good kind of torture,” she said as she slid down between his legs. “The kind where you get to beg.”
She flicked her tongue over his crown and Zane growled. “You do that again, and I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
She licked.
He grabbed her shoulders, hauled her up, and settled her on top of his rock hard shaft. “You got two choices, sweetheart. We do this your way, with you on top, or my way, with you beneath me. But both of them involve me inside you by the time I finish talking.”
With a laugh, Evie lifted her hips and took him deep. His cock slid easily into her wet center, and she gasped with pleasure.
“My, what a big cock you have,” she teased.
“All the better to fuck you with.” He gripped her hips and filled her with slow, easy thrusts.
“Ah. Ah.” Evie gritted her teeth, trying to resist the urge to grind against him. “I’m doing the fucking. You’re doing the watching.” She cupped her breasts, rolled each nipple between her thumb and forefinger, the sensation all the more intense for Zane’s rapt attention, his taut muscles, and the jerk of his hips as he tried to entice her to give in to the passion burning between them.
She slid one hand down to her clit, and stroked gently around the sensitive bundle of nerves. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her heart pounded, as everything inside her clenched tight, making her tremble with pent-up desire.
“Evie.” Zane groaned. “Sweetheart. You’re too fucking sexy. Too hot. Too wet. I can’t take any more.”
“You want me to take care of you?”
“Fuck, yeah.” He shuddered as she rocked over his shaft.
“You want me to take care of you the way you take care of me?”
“Yes. God, Evie. Yes. Please.”
Falling forward, hands on his shoulders, she lifted her hips and took him inside as far as he could go. “Okay, baby.” She pulled up, slow and easy, then drove down hard and fast, grinding her clit against him in a steady rhythm until soft ragged whimpers escaped his lips, and her muscles ached. Zane cupped her ass and took over, driving her down as he thrust inside her, driving her to the edge, her muscles taut and trembling, her breaths coming in pants. She reached between them, brushed a finger over her clit. Her climax came without warning—a sharp burst of pleasure that ripped the breath from her lungs.
“Christ.” He came with a grunt and one last hard thrust, his arms tightening around her, his cock jerking with his release.
Evie collapsed over his chest, buried her face in his neck, felt the steady throb of his pulse against her cheek.
“Fuck, sweetheart,” he said. “It just gets better and better.”
Evie laughed. “I aim to please.”
“Actually, I think you aim to drive me crazy in all senses of the word.” He caressed her back, his hand gliding from her nape to her ass and back again. “If it goes wrong in Stanton, Jagger’s gonna bust me outta jail. I’ll have to go on the run…”
“We’ll deal with that problem if it comes up,” she murmured. “And whatever happens, we’ll find a way to be together. I don’t want to lose you again. All those years I woke up so lonely it hurt, so empty I didn’t think I could get out of bed … it was because I missed you. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
“We’ll make it through this.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re all I ever thought about, Evie, from the moment I left until I saw you again. And now I have you and Ty…”
She Evie heard footsteps in the hall outside the door and threw herself to the side, yanking the covers over them.
The door creaked open and Evie pushed herself up on one elbow. She could feel Zane tense behind her.
“Fuck. The door. I forgot.”
“Mom? How come you’re…” Ty froze in the doorway, stared at Zane. Then his face tightened.
“How come he’s here?”
“Zane brought me home late from the party.” Evie pulled the sheet up over her shoulder. “So he decided to sleep over.”
“But he’s on my side of the bed.” Ty’s voice wavered. “And he’s sleeping on my pillow.”
Damn. She fished around on the floor for her nightdress and then remembered Zane had put her to bed. Naked. “It was just for tonight, darling.”
“No. That’s where I sleep when I’m scared. That’s where I cuddle with you in the morning.” Tears glistened in Ty’s eyes and his shoulders trembled visibly beneath his superhero pajamas.
Evie’s stomach tightened. She’d never brought a man home after Mark, keeping her liaisons as discreet as possible. And Ty was already off balance after Zane’s recent disappearance. He needed a hug but she had nothing on and her nightdress was in the dresser. “You can climb in with us. Just give me a second to get dressed and I’ll find another pillow.”
But Ty had never dealt well with change and she hadn’t even thought about discussing the possibility about Zane sleeping over.
“That’s my place,” he shouted, the tears spilling down his cheeks. “And it’s Saturday. We’re supposed to cuddle and tell stories and then you’re supposed to make pancakes. That’s what we do. I don’t want it to be like how it was when Mark was here. I want it to just be you and me in the house and Zane stays at the clubhouse and we can visit him.”
“Hey, bud.” Zane pushed himself up. “Nothing’s gonna change.”
“It’s all changed. You changed it. Mom didn’t used to go out all the time. She didn’t leave me alone. No one slept in my place. We were happy and you ruined it all. You came back and then you went away. I want you to go home.”
“Ty.” Evie raised her voice. “We don’t talk to guests like that.”
“I thought he was my dad, not a guest,” he said bitterly.
“You’re right. And dads sometimes stay over so we can try and be a family.”
He hugged his stuffie to his chest, a blue bear her mother had given him when he was born, the only gift she had given him before she died. “No.” His little body shook. “I want it to be how it was. I want Zane gone. I don’t want a family. You’re mine. I don’t want to share.” He turned and ran from the room, his gut-wrenching sobs tearing through Evie’s heart.
“I’ll go talk to him.” Zane pushed aside the sheet, but Evie stopped him.
“Let me. This is my fault. I didn’t prepare him. I’ve never brought anyone home before, and it was hard with Mark. That’s all he knows about my relationships.” She slid out of bed and grabbed her jeans and underwear from the dresser.
“You want me to leave till he’s feeling better?”
“No.” She pulled on her clothes. “If we want to try to be a family, then we need to deal with this as a family.”
The front door opened and slammed shut and her pulse kicked up a notch. “I’d better go before he gets out of sight.”
Zane’s face creased with consternation. “I’ll be right behind you. It’s still not safe.”
Evie finished dressing and raced out the door. Ty was nowhere in sight, and the street was empty save for a white panel van just turning the corner toward the main road. Evie raced in the direction of the van. Ty had a new friend at the end of the block. He must have gone that way.
She made it half a block, before she saw the bear.
* * *
Zane heard her scream as he reached for the front door. And then he ran like he’d never run before, flying down the steps and along the sidewalk, his feet barely hitting the pavement until she slammed into him, Ty’s toy bear clutched in her hand.
“They have him. I found his bear. I saw the van.” She gasped for breath. “I have to call the police.”
Zane’s blood chilled and he scanned the street. “Are you sure he didn’t go to a friend’s house? Maybe he dropped the bear because he was upset? Did you check with the neighbors? How about out back? Did you look for him there?”
“I know him.” Her voice rose as she struggled in his grasp. “He would NEVER leave the bear behind, no matter how angry or upset he was. NEVER.”
“Has he been this upset before?”
“Zane!” She shrieked and pushed him away. “Viper has him. I KNOW it.”
“The police won’t be able to help you.” He grabbed her shoulders to hold her still. “Viper pays them off to look the other way, and the ones who aren’t on the take are too afraid to get involved. If he has Ty, then the Sinners will get him back. But Viper’s been quiet for weeks so I’m not sure if that’s what has happened. We need to make sure he’s not in the area before we set something in motion that could escalate the war. Does he have any friends on the street?”
“The blue house at the end of the road.”
“You check with them and I’ll ride around the area, and check the backyards, the park and the school. If we don’t find him in ten minutes, I’ll call the MC. I had Hacker put a GPS tracker in Ty’s watch the last time he was at the clubhouse.”
“You what?”
He cupped her face between his hands. “We’ll find him, Evie. I promise.”
Returning to Evie’s house ten minutes later, with still no sight of Ty, he began to suspect that Evie was right. And if Viper was prepared to victimize children to win the war, the MC would have some difficult decisions to make.
He called Jagger first. Then he called Benson and told him to get his damn deputy ass out to Evie’s house and issue a police alert, although it would do no good. Hacker claimed to be out of town, but said could be at the clubhouse in an hour. He gave Zane detailed instructions about how to work the computer and the tracking system. Zane asked what language he was speaking. He suggested if Hacker wasn’t at the clubhouse in twenty minutes, he could say good-bye to his face.
Unable to sit still, Zane went outside to meet Benson and the brothers who were coming to help with the search. Had the Jacks found Evie’s new house? Had they seen his bike parked outside? Was this about Viper’s obsession with Evie or was it directed at the MC? Not wanting to leave Evie alone, he headed back inside, and then he froze.
“What the hell?” He knew exactly what she was planning to do the moment he saw her dressed in that slinky black dress, her breasts barely covered by the plunging neckline, all legs in her black stilettoes. Her hair was loose and spread across her bare shoulders, and her face was barely recognizable beneath the thick layer of makeup.
“I’m going to see Viper. He had one of his minions call me on my landline. Stupid of me not to change the number when we moved. I’m supposed to go to a certain location, and after they make sure I’m alone, they’ll text me the address.” She pulled the contents from her bag and dropped the items one by one into a shiny black purse.
“No. Absolutely not.” Zane folded his arms and stood in front of the door, all his past fears coming to a head in an instant. She was distraught and emotionally unstable if she thought for a moment he would let her go to meet Viper.
“You can’t stop me. I’m not your wife, or your girlfriend, or your old lady. Not that it would make any difference.” She snapped her purse closed and he had to admit she appeared calm and rational despite the crazy words coming out of her mouth.
“I won’t let you go,” Zane said. “I won’t let you do this. You’re mine, Evie.”
“Yes. I am yours,” she whispered. “No matter what happens, in my heart I will always be yours. But this isn’t about you and me. It’s about Ty. And I will do anything to get him back.”
“Then wait. Trust me. The Sinners will handle this.”
“Trust me, Zane. Believe in me this time and how I feel about you. I love you. Nothing will ever change that. Even if I don’t see you again, I will never stop loving you.”
Even if I don’t see you again. Did she really think it would go that far?
He had no hesitation about what he had to do. Evie was his to love, his to protect, and he would keep her and Ty safe until he drew his last breath. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.” Her eyes glistened, her emotions belying her words, and it was that, more than anything, that gave him the strength to act.
“Gimme one minute before you leave.” He didn’t wait for an answer, but jogged down the street until he found Benson coming up the sidewalk toward him.
“Need your cuffs.”
Benson handed them over without question. “I probably won’t need them again. This is my last week on the job. I gave in my notice after escaping the fire.”
“You did a good job with that truck.”
“Yeah about that,” Benson said. “Maybe next time you want to blow up a building with a truck you should drive.”
Zane made his way back to the house where Evie was waiting and shrugged at her questioning glance. “Had to talk to Benson before he started his search.” He stepped to the side, giving her a clear path to the door, but as she reached for the handle, he yanked the cuffs from his pocket and snapped one around her wrist.
“What the…?” She stared at him aghast. Before she could react, he dragged her over to the radiator and snapped the second cuff to the metal frame. Thank fuck for old houses and old-fashioned heating systems.
“No!” She yanked against the radiator and her face contorted in fury. “You can’t do this. Let me go.”
Nausea roiled in his belly and he took a step back. “I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for Ty. I can’t let you give yourself to Viper. He will never let you go, Evie. You must know that.”
“It’s my choice,” she shouted. “You can’t take that from me.”
“I can. And I will.” He reached for the door. “I made a mistake, Evie. We don’t choose the biker life. It chooses us. I thought I could give it up, but it won’t let me go. This is my world, and I need to deal with it my way. It’s the only way to keep you and Ty safe. I’ll bring him back to you. I swear.”
“You bastard.” She yanked on the cuffs so hard blood welled up on her skin. “Take these off.”
Zane pulled open the door and looked back over his shoulder. “I lost you once. It won’t happen again. I love you, Evie, and I will never let you go.”
