I grinned, breathless. “I want you inside me until the sun comes up.”
He sat up, folding me in his arms, and wrapped my legs tight around his hips. He fucked me that way, sitting, my back pressed to the metal shelving and his mouth at my shoulder. Every thrust was a promise of I’m here, I’m not leaving, not unless you make me. I bit his ear, then his neck, tasting the copper tang of a split from the earlier fight. Blood smeared onto my teeth, and it made me hotter, meaner, more sure of what I wanted.
I came with his name in my mouth, the sound echoing off liquor bottles and busted crates. He held me tight as he finished, his cock pulsing so deep I thought I’d never be empty again.
Afterward, he laid me out on his jacket, tucking it under my head like a pillow. We sprawled in the mess, bare legs tangled, our clothes scattered in a radius of about ten feet. For a long minute, we just listened to the silence, the calm before the coming shitstorm.
I propped myself up on one elbow and watched him watch the ceiling. He looked wrecked, but in a good way—hair stuck to his forehead, face gone soft in the blue-dark of the storage light.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me. “How to kill a man who doesn’t care if he dies.”
I traced circles on his chest, feeling the way his pulse jumped under my fingers. “You scared?”
He shrugged, but I could see the answer written in the tightness of his jaw. “Scared I won’t win. Scared I will.”
I rolled over, straddling his hips again, but this time with my weight flat on him, my head tucked under his chin. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He snorted. “You got any left?”
I laughed, but it was hollow. “When I was a kid, I used to dream about my funeral. Not in a sad way—just as an escape plan. If I was dead, nobody could make me do anything.” I paused, the words heavy in my throat. “I never pictured anyone showing up. Not my dad, not anyone from the club. Maybe a teacher. Maybe the janitor if there was leftover cake.”
Augustine didn’t say anything. He just wrapped his arms around me and let me talk.
“I don’t want to die anymore,” I whispered. “And I don’t want you to, either. But if tomorrow—” I trailed off, choking on it.
He rolled us over, pinning me with his weight, his eyes an inch from mine.
“If tomorrow I die, you keep living,” he said, voice a punch to the gut. “You raise that kid like it’s the only thing in the world that matters. You teach it to fight, to run, to never take shit from anyone. You promise me.”
I nodded, tears finally leaking out the sides of my eyes, hot and furious.
He wiped them away with his thumb, rough but careful. “That’s the only promise I want from you, Mel.”
I swallowed, then pushed his hand down, guiding it to my stomach. I pressed his palm flat against my skin, just under my navel, and covered it with both of mine.
He looked at me, really looked, and all the fight went out of his face. It was just him—raw, scared, hoping for the impossible.
“No matter what happens at Stone Lake,” I said, voice barely a whisper, “remember what we’re fighting for.”
He spread his fingers wide, splaying them over my belly. “For family.”
I laughed, wet and shaking. “Yeah. Our fucked-up little family.”
He held me like that, both hands on me, until the sounds of the club got louder—bottles breaking, a crash of laughter, someone yelling about a lost gun. But it felt far away, another planet.
We made love one more time, this time slow, like the world would wait. He moved inside me with a careful rhythm, his hands never leaving my skin. I came with his name in my mouth, and this time it sounded like a blessing.
20
Augustine
Dawn rode in on a bad moon, and the first thing I saw when I cracked my eyes open was the shadow of Melissa’s arm thrown across my chest. She was still asleep—mouth open, one leg draped over mine, her pulse visible in the hollow of her throat. I watched the way the faint morning light caught the edge of her jaw, the cut of her cheekbone bruised and beautiful, and I wanted to freeze the moment. I wanted to be the kind of person who could just stay there, listening to her breathe, never move, never break the spell. But that was a fairytale, and today was a fucking war.
I slipped out from under her, careful not to wake her, and got dressed in the dark. My body ached in places I’dforgotten, and the bruises from last night’s tune-up were already purpled and angry. I pulled on my jeans, then my cut, patched and stitched more times than my own heart. I checked the ammo in my boot holster, then double-checked the bandages on my ribs. Rituals, small and stupid, but they kept my hands from shaking.
Downstairs, the clubhouse was silent except for the snore of a prospect crashed on the couch and the faint hum of the fridge. I poured myself a slug of whatever bottle was open on the bar, choked it down, and let the burn remind me I was still alive.
