“I’m not a whore, and I’m certainly not a child,” I snap. “You made me a promise up on that water tower. You saved my life, Steel.You. It’s that promise that I clung to. I’ve wanted you for three years. I’m here now. I’m not above begging you, if that’s what it’s going to take. I know you want me. I can see it. I know you’ve thought about me too, all this time. I know because I can see it in your eyes. You can lie to me with your words, but your body knows what it wants.”
My eyes track down to the erection straining in his jeans.
All Steel’s sharp edges appear to harden into an unreadable mask. I want to keep pushing at him. I want all of him. His feral wrath, his soft laughter, his body, his soul, his love. His lips—lips capable of offering me the sweetest benediction, of bruising my mouth with hungry kisses, of taking my body.
“What I feel is fucking annoyed since I’ve been delayed from sleep in the middle of the goddamn night to listen to more of this fucking shit from a woman who has a crush on me like a fucking teen. It’s insane. Get it through your head—thatshit I promised you up there wasn’t real. I was just saying what I thought you’d listen to.”
“No! You-you can’t just stand there and tell me what isn’t for me and what is! You can’t tell me how to think or write me off because I’m younger than you. You can’t call me a child when I know my own mind, and you’re just scared to fucking death of it.”
Steel sucks in a breath, and there is no mistaking the rage radiating off him.
“That’s a big accusation—accusing me of being scared. Now, get on that bike and get out of here fast, princess. Don’t come back.”
“Yeah?” I challenge because I can’t help myself. I’m grasping at straws. “What are you going to do? Punish me?”
“This? You think this is the behavior of someone who would ever be my queen?” Steel shakes his head.
When he turns and strides back towards the house, I know there isn’t anything in the world that’ll bring him back to me. Thebangof the door closing behind him echoes through the night with deafening finality.
Was it true what he said? That he didn’t mean any of it? That he’s never meant anything he ever said to me? I can’t believe that it’s true. It hurts too fucking much to consider that he wasn’t just trying to drive me away tonight by being an asshole.
I have no choice but to whirl my bike away in the opposite direction. I mount up and pedal fast. My chest feels like it’s going to implode, but still… still, that shred of hope clings like a stain, refusing to be washed away. It’s pervasive, that hope,like a virus. Hope isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes, hope is the worst thing.
Chapter Five
Steel
“You got a minute?”
I shove my chair back from the desk, tempering my annoyance because Edge doesn’t bug me when I’m locked away in my office, trying to figure club business out. By business, I mean the legal stuff we do, and the stuff that ain’t so on the right side of the law. Judging by the look on his face, though, like he just got ass-fucked by a lemon, and it puckered his entire body up, not just his face, he has something serious he needs to talk about.
Clearly, I don’t have a damn minute—since I’m drowning in goddamn bills and paperwork. Never thought I would be sitting at a desk pushing papers like an office clerk. I was raised rough, barely graduated high school because I didn’t give a shit that I was there, and my parents couldn’t care less. Never went to college. Worked hard my whole life doing mechanical jobs here and there because that was about the only thing I was good at. Loved bikes. Always did. Always will.
Running into Edge trying to jack my bike was just a stroke of luck. Right place, wrong time for him, but it turned into a hell of a lot more than that. Over a burger and fries that I paid for so that the asshat could explain to me why he was trying to steal my damn bike, Edge told me his life story. Couldn’t get work after he’d done time, so thought he might as well go on a good run before he got sent back to where he wouldn’t have to worry about it.
Turned out, he loved bikes too.
A match made in fucking heaven, or some corny shit like that.
Edge shuts the office door and turns the lock in place. I sit up a little straighter, the shitty accounting forgotten because whatever he is going to say, I am not going to like hearing it. God, I hate spreadsheets and trying to keep books and all that. If I trusted anyone, I would hire them to do it for me, but I haven’t yet met someone who could keep their mouth shut, and none of my brothers happen to be good with numbers.
“Donovan Harris just bought the land that Snake and his old lady and their three kids were living on. They were just renting the house, and this morning, the landlord called to tell them that they have to be packed up and out by the morning. The house was never put on the market, so obviously, our friend, Donny, got to them first just because he knows Snake’s one of us.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. That’s about right.”
“You got a place where they can crash for a few days until we find them something permanent?”
Edge frowns, and I already know the answer. “It’s real short notice. Some people here don’t like to rent to members of Steel Riders. Not because they think we’ll fuck shit up for them, because I’m sure they know that we’re not about that by now and cash is cash, but because someone else has instructed them not to.”
“Harris.”
“Of course. Or someone from his office.”
This time I run a hand through my hair, something I never do. I catch myself, seeing as that is Edge’s tell, and lower it to scrape down over the stubble I still haven’t shaved off.
“Fuck it all to hell. This is gonna keep happening. Snake’s not the first. Before him, it was Pops, and before that, Titan. They even got to Amanda, and she ain’t an old lady, technically.”
