Her eyes met his at those words, which he realized with a start could be misinterpreted. The green was nearly gone from her gaze, pushed out by a gaping black pupil. Her face was flushed and she looked different in the throes of desire: kind of lost but also curious and… What was that other thing? There was something hungry there, something that made his cock even harder, while his mouth watered and his mind went to a darker place. The image he’d gotten, looking at her just now, wasn’t one he’d pictured before.
Suddenly, he wanted to wreck her a little bit—to take her pristine, white shell and crack it.
It made him feel guilty, the image his sick mind had conjured of her. Guilty but hard, which was one hell of a fucking complication for a man who’d lived a double life for so long.
His mind went back to all those women who hung around the MC. He’d had to pretend he felt like the other guys, had to act like just another horny bastard. The guys who used them and threw them out. Women like his sister, Carly, whose suffering had just been par for the course in their fucked-up world. Not even collateral damage, since collateral had value. And he’d had to taint Carly’s memory by pretending to use women just like her. The memory made him sick.
Better to stay in the moment, here, with this woman—this woman who made him almost feel whole again.
He thrust once into George’s hand, and she got the picture, tightening and moving up, around the head of his dick, and back down. “Pull up your shirt,” he said, even as a part of him insisted this wasn’t the way to talk to this woman. “Let me see your tits.”
The thing about Dr. George Hadley was that she was a lady. Definitely a lady, except…except the look in her eye told him she liked it when he talked to her rough.
Unable to get the fabric up, she made as if to let his cock go for a second, but he reached down and held her there.
“No. Do it one-handed,” he ordered, understanding that something about this wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be with this woman. He was supposed to accept her tenderness; he wasn’t supposed to be this way anymore.
But that made him wonder what the fuck she was doing with a guy like him.
She was into tats. She had to be. The tats and the danger of a bad boy. She was responding to his rough edges. That was it, wasn’t it? He thrust into her hand again, aggressive, and jerked her bra down, hard.
“You like that?” he asked, feeling filthy, horrible, but also needing to know. Do you like that? Do you like this side of me I may never be able to get rid of?
He pinched George’s nipple, and she moaned, deep and low, so he pinched it again, harder. Her cry jostled free memories, shame. He didn’t deserve this—her. He didn’t deserve to have this kind of forgiveness, acceptance. The last time he’d done this…
There’d been a woman at the club… God, he didn’t want to think of her right now. Those girls who’d let the guys do anything. He shuddered, his brain fuzzy around the edges as another memory seeped in—
His face—the day he’d gotten this scar he’d wear for the rest of his life. He’d gotten sliced in service to the Sultans. An unfortunate occurrence, which had turned into the boon he needed and helped earn his status as Brother. A scar for a Sultan patch. Not so big a price to pay.
Another jagged scar, on his sister’s body, like the one on his head. She’d been cut. They’d cut her.
Clay blinked, feeling wrong, in the wrong place, mixed up, and fuzzy. He shook his head to clear it, brushed off a hand, tried to back off, said something. Slurring, panicked, his head full of a powdery fog, clogging him, breathing impossible, the buzz inside his ears a hive of bees or—
He was on the floor, seated, his back to the sofa, and a woman was on her knees beside him.
“The fuck?” he said, squinting, his voice raw. The room was a broken kaleidoscope, his heart pumping poison.
“You need a doctor,” she said.
“No.”
“What’s going on, Andrew?”
“Andrew?” he asked, trying to see past the gray honeycomb filling his vision. “Who the fuck is Andrew?” Her hand was on him again, and he pried it off. “Don’t.” Why was he slurring? Had they given him something? What the hell had they given him? He couldn’t think past the panic. “Where’s Handles? He know I’m here?”
“I’m, um…” The woman swallowed audibly. “I’m not sure. What’s your name?”
That cleared the clouds from his brain, just enough to know there was danger in this question, and he grabbed her hand, hard. Her tiny bones rubbed together in his fist. “Why—” He blinked. “George.”
“Yes, you seem to be having some kind of…”
Attack. Episode. Flashback. Something.
But it was over now. The fog was clearing.
“I’m fine.” He’d be fine when he left. He blinked, stood, tucked himself back into his clothes, and gave the place a bleary once-over before stumbling out the front door—running before he lost himself in memory again.
Because, after all the worrying and watching over her, he’d never forgive himself if he was the one to hurt her.
