Greeley laughed at that. Not nicely. He ran a hand down the length of his black beard, shifting that dark and smoky gaze of his from hers while he did it, like he was gathering himself for his next attack. Merritt instantly wished he hadn’t looked away because once he did, once she wasn’t caught in that gunmetal tractor beam of his that left her near enough to paralyzed, there was nothing to do but look at him.
God help her.
All that desperate minimizing she’d done when it came to her memories of that damned summer made this worse. To say nothing of the fairy tales she’d told herself to make her behavior back then a little more palatable. She’d imagined Greeley might have gone to fat and ruin, like so many of the men around here did when they got older and still spent all their time doing their aggressive versions of nothing much. Or at the very least, she’d figured whatever had made him so beautiful to her for those three hot and sweaty months would have died. That it was a moment in time that wouldn’t make sense to her at all now that she’d moved on and up. And that, more to the point, he’d be leathery and seedy and have all the appeal of an overused ashtray or a day old beer.
Yeah, too bad.
Because if anything, Greeley was hotter than she remembered him.
His body was carved from unforgiving stone, hard and long and mouthwateringly packed with lean muscle. Everywhere. He wore the same battered jeans and scuffed boots she remembered as his basic uniform, the faded denim spread over him like one of the biker bitches she had no doubt plastered themselves to him at any opportunity. She certainly had, and that was before she’d known how completely unintimidated he was by a smart woman. He wore a lived-in looking black T-shirt touting an obscure band she was sure played only at an angry volume with his club cut on top, the worn yet obviously well-cared-for black leather covered in all those patches she knew he took very, very seriously. Bikers and boy scouts had that in common—an observation she wisely kept to herself.
It was bad enough that the T-shirt strained at his cut biceps, making the tattoos that snaked down both his arms seem more colorful and more fascinating than they should, wrapped around all that corded steel. But it was also much too tight over the flat, hard planes of his pectoral muscles, pulling taut there in a way that made her mouth go dry while her pussy got instantly, unmistakably wet. She couldn’t actually see his ridged abdomen, which meant it was tempting to pretend a beer gut could lurk there, softly marring his brutal perfection—but she doubted it. There wasn’t a single soft thing on this man’s body.
He shifted then, swinging his leg to get off that stripped down and starkly gorgeous bike, and she couldn’t tell if it was panic or something far more worrisome that surged through her then, making her flush much too hot. He ran his hands through his hair once more and that wasn’t any better. His hands looked tougher than she remembered, hard and scarred and covered with deliberately in your face rings, the kind a certain sort of man wore when he expected to use them to inflict damage.
Merritt’s tragedy was that she remembered exactly how he’d used them on her, and more than that, precisely what sort of damage it had done. And that was when he’d treated her like a fragile thing he was afraid he might break—something that hollow place in the pit of her gut told her wouldn’t be a factor tonight.
His hair was longer than she remembered it, thick and dark, making the cool gray of his eyes seem that much more lethal. He still had that beard that she’d felt on every inch of her skin—and remembering exactly how good he was with it and how he’d used it, particularly between her legs, made her head spin a little while her breath went shallow.
What she needed to do was slam the outside door shut and bar it with all the furniture she could drag there, then maybe crawl into the attic and barricade herself in the middle of all her father’s forgotten old clothes and mysterious boxes until Greeley gave up and went away.
But she didn’t move. It was as if her bare feet were cemented to the floor.
He finished shoving his hair back and then he was coming toward her, forbidding and fierce on long, lean legs, the lethal promise he carried with him seeming thicker and more dangerous than the bayou night. His face was hard with the same electric threat that was making her pussy clench, over and over, and his mouth was a tough, grim line that shouldn’t have made her breasts feel so heavy and sensitive.
“Your daddy’s funeral was three months ago.” His too much whiskey, too many late nights voice was quiet, but not at all soft. “Folks thought you might take a break from the big city to pay your respects. But you and me, we know respect isn’t your thing, isn’t that right?”
That hurt more coming from him than it should have. More than it would have if someone else in town said it, as Merritt knew very well they would. Of course they would. But Greeley had once known all about her strange, strained relationship with her father. It stunned her how much it bothered her that he’d either forgotten about that—or more likely, didn’t care. Not when he could get in a hit.
He wasn’t the Greeley she’d known that summer. She needed to remember that. He was the Greeley she’d met for the first time that terrible last night before law school. He wasn’t the man she’d run to, night after hot night. He was the man she’d walked away from.
Not that her body could tell the difference.
“I did pay my respects,” she made herself say with as little emotion as possible. “By staying the hell away, which would have made the old man deliriously happy, the same way it did while he was alive. But remind me, because this part is fuzzy—how is my family your business?”
“You got a lot of bravado for someone who should know better,” he pointed out, closing in on the porch, and he didn’t sound like he thought that was a positive development. “They teach you how to run your mouth like that in law school? Or is that a New York thing?”
He jumped up the back step with a little too much silken, athletic ease for Merritt’s peace of mind. Her stomach flipped over, and then he was right there. Right there on the other side of the screen door. Big and tough, blocking out the night and the bayou and the whole of the St. Germain Parish spread out behind him.
And Merritt stopped pretending she could breathe. Or that her nipples weren’t as hard and tight as her belly was taut and her pussy was wet, as if it had been five minutes since he’d last made her come instead of five years.
Five interminable years, a completely unhelpful voice inside of her chimed in.
Greeley stopped on the other side of the screen. Merritt was frozen solid again. Unable to move. Unable to try to ward him off somehow, with her mouth if necessary. Unable to back away from him and unable to run. She couldn’t seem to do anything except stand there like a statue while he leaned in, propping himself against the doorframe and getting his face near hers. Separated only by the damned screen.
Which did not one thing to lessen the sheer impact of him. Male and hard and visibly pissed and god help her, so much more beautiful than he should have been.
“You feel safe?” he asked her, low and taunting, a hard gleam she couldn’t quite name in his dark eyes. “You think I’m playing with you?”
“I haven’t felt safe since I turned eight and Marilee DuBois told me what the Devil’s Keepers MC really was and how often her mama had to wash blood out of her daddy’s clothes,” Merritt retorted. Marilee really had told her exactly that out on the swing set behind the elementary school. But it hadn’t made Merritt feel much of anything but annoyed at the other girl’s flair for melodrama. It sounded like the truth, however, and maybe that was close enough to count. “I didn’t realize feeling safe was on the menu down here.”
“Nice try.” He shook his head like she was being foolish. Or worse, like he knew perfectly well she was embellishing her upset at that story. “You didn’t have a problem with the club growing up. Is that the excuse you want to use? That’s the best you could dream up over five years?”
“You knew me for three months five years ago and pretty much a
ll we did was have sex.” That also wasn’t really true. If it had just been sex, surely she would have gotten over it faster. She made herself shrug as if there had been nothing between them but a random one-night stand. It was an act of extraordinary bravery given how the word “sex” seemed to spark and flare between them, then sink deep inside of her, where it shimmered into a brand-new flame. But she did it because it was better than the alternative, which might involve talking about all the time they’d spent together not having sex. “You don’t have any idea what I have a problem with.”
“Hate to break it to you, babe, but you’re not that complicated.” His voice was much too gruff. His gaze was much too hard. “Your whole thing? This? It’s called a princess complex.”
Merritt could react to the things he said to wound her or she could try to fight him, but not both. She chose to fight. She’d have to turn over the bruises he’d left later, when she had time to really explore how much it hurt to hear him say these things to her. Even all these years after he should have stopped mattering to her.
She forced out a laugh. “What does that even mean? You’re an outlaw biker. You’re almost certainly a criminal under any definition of that term, something you’re so proud of you walk around wearing patches that proclaim it on the off chance someone might otherwise miss that about you. What’s a princess to you? A girl who doesn’t flash her tits the minute you walk in a room?”
She probably shouldn’t have mentioned tits. Or his criminal activity, summed up in the 1%-er patch right there on his cut that shouted out the fact he set himself apart from regular folks. She wasn’t sure which part of what she’d said made him tense as he leaned there, filling up the entire screen door—and the whole damned world—with that searing temper she could feel surround her like a noose.
But then he started talking. And that was worse.
“You grew up about as high and mighty as it’s possible to be in this town. Your daddy was the only doctor for miles and he didn’t have to lord that over folks, it just was. You had outlaw biker, criminal protection since before you could walk. You were set apart and special, taken care of because of shit your daddy did, but all you ever did was turn your nose up at this town and the club that keeps it running. Then you took yourself off to your fancy fucking college and got that high opinion of yourself hardwired in deep. I see law school made it worse. But you can’t change who you are, darlin’, no matter how you try or how far away you go.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’ll tell you what it means. It turns out the only thing that really gets the doctor’s prissy daughter wet and crazy is a rough as shit biker and all the dirty things he can do to her.” Greeley’s gray eyes gleamed silver, menace and threat like the sharp edge of a terrible knife that he clearly had no compunction about shoving deep into her gut. Or her heart. Then he leaned in a little closer. “Guess what, babe. We get college girls just like you down at the clubhouse all the time. There’s a pack of sorority sisters in there right now, drunk and giggling about their chance to walk on the wild side and take as much biker cock as they can handle in one night. How are you any different?”
She would not react to that. She would not break down. It wasn’t as if she’d expected that any potential reunion with this man would be pleasant. And she’d handled a lot worse than this in New York—it just hadn’t hit her quite so hard.
Because she’d never imagined herself in love with Antony. She’d never been anything close. That had been part of the problem.
“Wow,” Merritt drawled, telling herself she’d rather die right there on the kitchen floor than let him see how he was getting to her. “You sure have me pegged.” She crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back on her heels, but she didn’t step away from the screen door or that look he was giving her. Because her heart was hammering at her and she knew, somehow, that if she moved so much as an inch she would lose. Everything. “Is that why you dropped by? To tell me what a dumb whore I am? I really appreciate it.”
His gaze flashed with something harsh she couldn’t quite read. She told herself she didn’t want to read him.
“I told you not to come back here.”
“Well, you know, I thought long and hard about giving a shit what some biker asshole told me five years ago when he was pissed I was taking his favorite toy away, but I decided against it.” She glared back at him like she thought she really could stand up to him. She almost believed she could, if she tried hard enough, and who cared if her knees felt weak? “What are you going to do? Try to insult me until I cry and run away again?”
“The first thing you need to realize is that this isn’t five years ago. Five years ago I gave a crap. Today I got zero reason to treat you like you’re anything but a dumb whore. Your words and your call, the way I remember it.”
They were her words. She’d literally just said them. But she really, really didn’t like hearing them in his mouth.
“Funny, what I remember is a controlling dick who thought I should throw away my shot at a great law school and the kind of future no one in Lagrange even dreams about to rot down here in the swamp with him.” Merritt leaned closer to the screen then, forgetting herself while her old twisted temper and all that forgotten heartbreak rose and washed through her like it was brand-new. “On the spot. At eleven o’clock on the night before I was supposed to leave. A subject he raised during sex.”
Greeley shook his head, his beautifully brutal mouth in that hard line again.
“Why am I not surprised you remember things only the way it’s most convenient for you?”
“Pot, meet kettle.” When his mouth flattened even farther at that, she let out a sigh, and wished it wasn’t quite as shaky. “I don’t understand why you’re here if you have a sorority to entertain. Isn’t that, like, your number one wet dream?”
“We can talk about wet dreams, darlin’.” His grin made her stomach flip over again, despite that hard steel in his gaze. “A little blond thing got down on her knees and sucked my dick already tonight. You want to lick her off?”
Merritt knew she should recoil at that. She should have been disgusted, at the very least. What was the matter with her that she wasn’t? That she was…something else entirely. Something she remembered from that long ago summer and didn’t want to. Like he was daring her to get as wild and dirty as only he’d ever seemed to know she was, something he’d discerned at a glance. Worse, that reckless, insane part of her that had wanted him from the moment she’d laid eyes on him in that strip club five years ago wanted nothing more than to take that dare.
Greeley was the one drug she hadn’t managed to avoid. And oh, the ways he’d made her need him. She’d done anything he’d asked back then. Anything at all to hit that high—except stay.
One more thing that should have revolted her. In New York, with time and distance, it had. Here, standing in bare feet at her father’s back door with the swamp night loud and insistent all around, what she felt wasn’t revolted. It was more like nostalgic and she knew that was going to get her in a hell of a lot more trouble.
“Oh, I would,” she murmured, as if she was truly gutted that she couldn’t accept his deliberately gross offer that she was sure he’d only made to be an asshole. To throw his whoring ways in her face, in case she’d imagined he’d spent the last five years laboring under a vow of celibacy. As if. The Greeley she’d known had considered fucking only twice a day a dry spell. “But I have a strict policy of not taking the sloppy seconds of drunk sorority girls.”
Greeley pushed back from the doorframe. Merritt’s stomach knotted up in what she told herself was foreboding. Fear, even. But the truth was it felt a lot more like anticipation instead.
“Babe. I’m never sloppy. That was all you. That was how you liked it. Sloppy and raunchy and fucking wild no matter what.”
That felt less like a dare—which was almost like some twisted kind of entertainment, no matter how dark and wrong, or it always had been when Gree
ley was involved—and more like a sucker punch.
“I’ll ask you again why you’re here,” Merritt said quietly. Carefully, so she wouldn’t accidentally break right here where he could see it. “All this catching up is delightful, but I’m tired. If all you want to do is hang around on the porch and insult me, with a few vague threats and a couple sexual innuendos thrown in for good measure, I’m going to have to take a pass.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“Guess what? I am a lawyer. That often happens after law school, though not so much around here, I grant you.”
“Good to know nothing stands between you and your ambitions, counselor.”
She didn’t like his tone, or the look in his eyes, dark and condemning. And she really didn’t like the way he said “counselor,” as if it was profanity.
“I’ll take that as a gentle compliment on my achievements.” She tipped her chin up in a way she knew was aggressive—and that wasn’t smart. This was a man who fed on aggression. Lived for it. But it was that or crumpling to the ground, and she couldn’t have that. “Thank you. I sure appreciate you stopping by.” She made her voice so dismissive it practically scalded her tongue. “It’s always great to catch up with old friends.”
Greeley didn’t exactly smile. His hard mouth curved, his fierce eyes glittered, and it was a whole lot harder and more deadly than a smile.
“This was a fun talk,” he agreed. And Greeley agreeable while all that menace came off him like smoke was enough to chill her blood—even as it heated up other, less discerning parts of her anatomy. “But we have better things to do, don’t we.”
It wasn’t a question and he didn’t wait for her to answer.
Merritt reached out to try to grab the metal handle of the screen door to keep it shut, but he was faster. He yanked the door open and she hadn’t realized how much she’d needed that psychological distance between them, and who cared how silly it was, until it was gone.