“You know what’s kept me going? Kept me from climbing that stupid tower again and throwing myself off of it? You. You, Steel. You were my hope all these years. You were my everything. And just like everything and everyone else in my life, you were taken from me. I offered you myself, my heart, everything I am, and you told me you didn’t want me. So don’t you tell me that you’ll give me a family for the first time in my life and take that away too. Don’t you dare tell me—”
I grip her arms so tight that she lets out a little shriek. The callouses on my palms and fingers rasp against her white silk blouse. I know what it means to be unwanted. Unloved. A fucking outcast. It wasn’t always the life I wanted. I know what that kind of pain feels like and I might be a fuckton of things, but I’m not a selfish bastard. I can’t let her hurt like this. Because of me. Because of her asshole father blaming her for her brother’s death and because of everything that’s happened to her. I saved her once. I can save her again.
“I’ve wanted you. Fucking ached for you. I can’t afford to be just a man when my club fucking needs me. They don’t need me to be hung up over some woman, they want a leader. You’re a weakness.”
I can’t stand here and watch the pain break over her features. Her eyes are glistening and she looks destroyed.
I’m done fighting. Fighting for what is right and good and what should be. I’m done, and not just because my brothers and my club need me. It’s because she needs me.
And I fucking need her.
She reaches between us, planting her silky smooth fingers so tenderly against my cheek. She’s comforting me, a hardened man. She’s the one comforting me, though she’s almost half my age. She’s comforting me, like she’s seen the worst of life, the same as I have. Her tears flow unchecked.
“It’s okay, Steel. It’s all going to be okay. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours, and you’ve always been mine. Love isn’t a weakness. It’s just… how it was always supposed to be.”
Chapter Eight
Leah
Istare up at Steel, my heart bruised and overflowing, adrenaline making it kick hard. It knocks against my ribs painfully, sending blood soaring through my veins. I’ve broken down every single barrier he wanted and needed so desperately to slam up between us. Whatever he’s going to ask me to do, it’s bigger than both of us. I get that. I know it’s for his brothers, for the men he would give his life for a thousand times over. I know it’s not really about us at all, this thing that stands between us.
It’s him. Just him and me. Captured in the very moment that the lives we’ve lived already brought us to.
In the gloom, I watch his face change, the feral hunger in his eyes battling for control and reason, battling with something harder. I want him to lose that fight. I want him to take me. To truly claim me. To invade my body and make me his.
“I want to make you mine, darlin’. I want to teach you what it means to be a part of everything that I’ve built. But not yet. Not like this. I have to put this thing between us. It’s ugly. You’re gonna hate me. I have to ask you first. I can’t touch you ‘til you know.”
I don’t know what he’s going to ask me to do. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’ll say yes. “Never.” I shake my head so hard that it hurts. My breathing is heavy. “I couldneverhate you.” That much, at least, I know is the truth. “Tell me,” I beg. “Tell me because I need you. I’ve needed you foryears.”
Steel gives a deep sigh. I breathe him in, the scent of darkness and raw masculinity, and the throbbing that’s taken my body prisoner grows more intense. I don’t know how it is possible that he’s only gripping my arms because I feel him everywhere else.
“You’re a good man, Steel,” I whisper because he needs to hear it.
The years disappear between us—the hard living he’s done, the things he’s seen, the acts he’s committed. His violence and my innocence, all of it flee that tiny room, and it’s just us.
“I want to be,” he says huskily. “Wanted to for a long time, ever since Harley came along. I want to be for my brothers, so they can know peace, some of them for the first time in their lives. I always wanted to be a good leader, but for you, I want to be something else. Something I can’t be.”
“I just want you.” I blink hard, refusing to cry again.
I finally understand that he has everything to risk. For me, it’s no risk at all. I don’t care what my father thinks. What anyone thinks. I want him. I want his family to be my family. I want to be at his side. I need it more than I need to breathe. For him, though, I get that I’m not just a risk. He could lose everything. It’s not just him he has to think about. It’s his entire brotherhood and his daughter. They’re his family, and he can’t give them up.
“It’s your father,” he finally says, and I feel the ugliness like a living entity, twisting between us. “He’s got something against me. Against the club. He’s been trying to drive us out of Helena for years—buying up land the brothers live on so that they have to go somewhere else, trying to buy the clubhouse out from under us. But because I own that land and the building, he can’t force me to sell. He hates us, hates the club, hates thebrothers. I don’t know why, exactly. It’s not just the land. He could put up his buildings anywhere.”
“I… I know he hates your club. I’ve heard him say things, but I don’t know why. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
Steel shakes his head, and his raven-colored hair glistens even in the dark. The light leaching in from under the door is just enough to turn the near darkness into a shade of gray that our eyes have both adjusted to.
“I wish it was that simple. It’s not. The thing is, at church—”
“Church?”
He snorts. “Right. Forgot you don’t talk like a biker. ‘Church’ is what we call our club meetings. At the clubhouse. No actual church involved.”
“Oh.” I realize how much I have to learn, and my cheeks flush with embarrassment. Steel doesn’t comment on it, though, because my mortification and inexperience obviously aren’t important at the moment.
“A few weeks back, a few of the brothers brought up something I didn’t even consider. The Black County Sinners. They operate an hour away, on the other side of Jacksonville. They do all the shit we refuse to get involved with. The hard shit. Trafficking women, drugs, and guns. They don’t care. They were smalltime and never bothered any of us, but that’s changing. A few of the assholes have been spotted near our warehouses and grow ops this past week. So far, they haven’t done anything, but it’s only a matter of time. We’ve managed to stay out of each other’s way, but if someone wants us out of town badly enough, and they manage to get their hands on certain resources to expand their operations, which by all accounts, they seem tobe doing… if they’re promised certain things, by certain people, they might become a threat.”
I feel my eyes grow wide. “You mean… my father?”
