He drags his hands through his crow-black hair, mussing it. In the golden glow spilling from the bar, he looks every ounce the glorious god that he is. There isn’t anything human about him right now, and my entire body is on high alert. I am wet between my thighs, my shorts dampening. My pulse kicks up too, the carnal part of me responding to the rawness of him.
“M-me?” I stammer.
“You.” He nods hard. “You. Everything. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are? How incredibly sexy you are walking around with those skimpy little clothes on, your body on full display, all your fucking curves out there in the open? Half that bar was wondering what the hell you’d smell like if they got close enough to you and the other half were probably plotting how to grab you and fuck you senseless.”
“W-what?”
“You’ve been driving me crazy. The past three years, I haven’t thought… Fuck. You’re too young, Leah. I’m thirty-eight years old, you’re only a few years older than my daughter. You have your whole fucking life ahead of you. You deserve more than this. More than this fucking town. This fucking life. Why did you come back?”
My eyes cut straight to the ink swirling over his muscular arms. They catch on a jagged scar right above his elbow. The white, raised skin stands out from the ink. His world. My world. We don’t come from the same place. We haven’t walked the same road. We’ve known two entirely different lives.
Still. I wish he would stop saying that. Telling me that I deserve more. More than Helena. More than him. More than everything he stands for. He stands for it proudly. If it’s good enough for him and he takes pride in it, why the hell isn’t it good enough for me?
“I…” I open my mouth to try and tell him that he’s wrong, but he holds out a hand, cutting me off, and I have no choice but to clamp my lips shut.
“I’m not done yet.” Steel visibly swallows, and even though I might be young and naive, I can tell he’s struggling to hold it together. “I try to tell myself that, over and fuckin’ over again, but I just keep wondering what your lips taste like. I want to bite you. I want to fuck you so hard that you’re ruined for any other man after me. I’m not here to turn you into a rebel. I’m a man. A man who runs a fucking motorcycle club. You’re not built for this lifestyle. You need to turn your sweet ass around and go back home, back to your life. I’m not some hero. And you need to drop your fucking romantic illusions, I’m not your king, and you’ll never be my queen because you’re Leah Harris, daughter of the fucking mayor, and I’m an outlaw biker.”
I shake my head, refusing to let him command me. I refuse to let him break down my dreams like this because he is scared. Because that’s what this is about. The bulge in his pants tells me he wants this just as much as I do, so the only reason he’s not, is because he’s scared. He’s scared of how much he wants me and for a man who fears nothing, that must be truly terrifying.
“No.” Steel closes the space between us before I can get out another word. “You’re not saying anything. There isn’t anything you can say that is gonna change my mind.” He grips my arm again, his hand like a metal clamp at my wrist, so tight that this time it does hurt. He drags me across the parking lotand indicates to a huge bike, all leather and gleaming chrome. “Get on.”
It is obvious that it’s his and it’s beautiful. It takes my breath away. He doesn’t have a helmet, and I stumble back when his hand releases my wrist.
“I’m not getting on,” I protest, but my voice shakes. “I know you’re going to take me back home because no matter what you want me to say, you’re a good man and you’re worried that I’m out here alone and I’m not going to let you do that.”
He leans in, his huge body like a cage, closing on me, but I want this cage. I want to be imprisoned. I want him to hold me down and fuck me hard, teach me what true want means. Teach me how to love a man like him. I want to be a part of his world, a world where I matter to someone. A world where I’m cherished, where he would fight for me, where I stand and rule by his side. A world where I’m not a fuck up, blamed for an accident that I now realize was just that. A tragic accident.
I’m not ready to let that dream die, no matter how much he tries to intimidate me.
“Get on the bike, darlin’. This isn’t negotiable. You stay in your fucking world and I’ll stay in mine. You have a crush on me. That’s all it is. You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know half the things I’ve done. You’re just a kid. Ain’t no part of that world fit for you.”
“I’m not a kid.” I begin to pout before I realize that’s exactly what he wants. For me to prove him right by acting like a spoiled little brat.
It is not going to happen.
I unfold my arms and set them at my sides. I force a smile that I don’t feel because, on the inside, I’m frantic. He has noidea what it cost me to come here tonight. For years I’ve been waiting, until finally I got the courage to come and claim what’s mine.
“If you’re so worried about me, I’ll call a cab. I’m not getting on that bike with you until you admit you feel it too and you take me as your woman.”
Steel’s eyes widen, as though he’s just realizing that I can be as stubborn as he is. “Take you as my woman? Did you not just hear a thing I fucking said? I told you, we live different lives.”
I’ve fended for myself my whole life. I was an unwanted child, a firstborn who should never have been female. I’ve learned what true loneliness feels like and with my brother gone I’ve been drifting. Completely alone. I’m an island, drowning in the endless ocean around me.
Steel was supposed to be the one who took me away from it all. Thoughts of him kept me going, he was going to be my escape. Not from the town, but from my reality. Even though he doesn’t realize it, the night he saved my life, he made me his. He bound our fates together.
I don’t care if it’s magical thinking born of a woman on the edge, desperate for anything to cling on to. All I know is that he’s mine.
“I’ll go,” I hear myself say, “but I’m not staying away, I’m back for good. You said you want me. I want you too.”
“You don’t know the first thing about what that means,” he says.
The silence of the night blankets us, just like it did that night.
He continues, “You have a good name. You could be something. Don’t throw everything away on a stupid notion you don’t even understand.”
I shake my head hard. I want to lunge at him, claw him, make him bleed just to mark him. I want to draw first blood, attack his mouth afterward, fuck him out here on the crumbling asphalt parking lot like an animal. I want his cock inside of me, filling me. I’ve been waiting for him. I want him to be the first, the last. My always. I’m half ashamed at my primal thoughts. At the possessiveness I can’t let go of.
“I don’t care what other people think. I don’t care about what they say. I want you, Steel. I want you to claim me. I- I’ve never been with a man. I saved myself for you. You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted. Needed.”
