And Merritt was so close. So damned close. Riding that edge the way she was sure he wanted her to.
“Dripping wet and ready,” he muttered against her mouth, and she couldn’t tell if that was condemnation or admiration. The only thing she could think about were those blunt, hard fingers stroking her pussy, circling her clit, making her crazy. “You’re always wet as fuck for me, baby. Always.”
She couldn’t speak. She didn’t want to think. She wound herself around him and she opened herself up to him. Mouth. Pussy. Whatever he wanted.
It was always like this.
He kissed her again, that ferocious, greedy edge in him as he did it, and then he stopped playing. Two fingers thrust into her and his thumb found her clit, and he didn’t ease into it.
He fucked her with his hand, hard and intense.
And Merritt didn’t think. She couldn’t think. She rode his hand and she lost herself in his hard, demanding mouth. The wall at her back and the iron expanse of Greeley pressed against her front. Trapped and free and flying high again. At last. It was as brutal as it was beautiful and she was finally, finally home.
Home. The word burst in her head like another taste of the lightning that only Greeley had ever lit in her, and then she was coming.
It slammed into her like a fist. And then came the shaking apart.
And Greeley didn’t stop. He kept going, using his talented, terrible fingers to keep her bucking against him, his thumb pressing down on her clit while she sobbed into his neck, her helpless fists grabbing his T-shirt to keep from sliding to the floor as her orgasm rocked through her.
When she was finished falling apart, he pulled his hand out of her shorts and propped himself up against the wall at her back with the other one, caging her with his body as she fought to breathe. Her hair was a tangle all around her and she was a sweaty mess and probably broken and certainly fucked in the head, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the knife-edged tension that her orgasm only made worse. She could feel it rising between them as he stood there, crowding her into the wall and watching her in that very hungry, very lethal way that made her pussy clench as if she hadn’t just come all over his hand.
He lifted the hand in question and kept his gaze trained on hers as he licked her off him.
She watched his tongue, fascinated and greedy, as it moved over his blunt, hard fingers, and another ripple of sensation wound its way through her, spiked and searing.
And she didn’t need to look down to know he was hard and hot and more than ready. She could see exactly how hard he was, how much he wanted her, in the taut way he held his wide shoulders and that sharp, gleaming thing in his gaze.
She didn’t want to look away. Maybe she couldn’t. All the words she’d thrown at him earlier deserted her. There was nothing but the enveloping, glorious heat between them that put the steamy bayou weather to shame. The easy, almost matter-of-fact way he’d made her come as if he still knew her body much, much better than she did. The endless, dangerous, consuming fire that distance and absence had only seemed to feed.
The truth was, she’d never been able to help herself. She still couldn’t. Not where he was concerned.
Right there, in the hallway of her childhood home, she stopped trying.
Merritt reached down and tested the length of him through his jeans, her breath coming out in a puff that wasn’t quite a laugh when she found him as big as she remembered, thick and proud, and so damned hard it made her pussy melt all over again.
“What do you want?” His voice was so low and fierce it rubbed all over her like a pumice stone, making her tingle and glow, inside and out. He propped his other hand on the wall, trapping her there between his heavy arms. Not that she had the slightest desire to try to escape him. “You’re going to have to beg for it, baby, or you’re not getting it.”
“I want it,” she told him without blinking or breathing or even pausing, because she’d never wanted anything more. There was no escaping the brutal truth of that. Not here. Not now. She didn’t even care when his gaze lit up with what looked like far too much hard-edged triumph. That was a problem she’d have all the time in the world to deal with, later.
Right here, right now, she wanted his cock inside of her more than she wanted to breathe. More than she wanted to be safe. More than she wanted anything.
His dark eyes looked like a rainstorm. His gaze swept through her like thunder.
“Say it.”
“I want your cock.” She kept her gaze trained on his and she didn’t care that she was so bright red her cheeks ached with it. She didn’t care that she was begging or that she ought to have been humiliated. She didn’t care what she had to do—she just wanted him. Craved him. Needed him. “Please, Greeley. Please.”
She saw something wash over him then, fierce and wild, like the same delirious sort of thrill that slammed through her. His mouth was a tight line. His gaze was dark and hot and so arrogantly certain of her that it almost hurt.
But she liked the way it hurt. Wasn’t that the way things had always been with him? She wanted more, and who cared if it was bad for her. If it was, at the very least, deeply and profoundly foolish to put herself so fully into his hands. She always, always wanted more.
Five years had passed and she was still so desperate for him she couldn’t stop panting.
“Then you better get that ass naked, girl,” he ordered her. Quietly, but not at all softly. “I want to see you when I fuck you.”
And it was like she couldn’t do it fast enough. She stripped her cutoffs from her body and kicked them aside, grateful that she’d decided to go commando because she hadn’t felt like digging through her duffel bag to find fresh underwear when she’d changed out of her travel clothes. Because now she was naked and that was better. Faster.
Anything to get him inside her as soon as possible. Anything at all.
Greeley looked down at her and she watched his nostrils flare like he was inhaling her. He looked beautifully vicious, strung out on this same greedy hunger that gripped her. Fierce and dangerous, but she loved it. He had always made her feel small and sweet and his and tonight was no different. The tougher he was, the more deadly, the more she’d wanted him.
He moved then. At last. He hauled her up against him and then higher still, pulling her legs around his waist with that easy strength that made her stomach flip. She clung to his shoulders, already breathing too fast as he tilted her back to the wall and worked between them, yanking open his fly and pulling out his cock. She whimpered when she felt the blunt, smooth head move against the outside of her pussy, dipping between her folds as he hitched her higher against him—
But then, impossibly, he stopped.
She sucked in a breath to beg him to hurry, to beg him to do something or anything or everything—but that was when she heard the buzzing.
His phone.
And one thing she knew was that Greeley always answered his damned phone. Always. Because it could be the club and if it was the club, that took precedence over everything.
It always had and it always would.
It’s not my job, he’d told her five years ago when she’d expressed more than a little bit of frustration at that, and he hadn’t been smiling when he’d said it. It had been as close as they’d gotten to a fight that summer—though it hadn’t been a real fight, not really, because he hadn’t left her any room to argue. He’d stated facts, the end. It’s not a fucking social club. It’s who I am.
He lifted his head now, and his harsh gaze seared through her. His hands were on her ass, holding her up and open to him, and she could feel his fingers flex against her. He was breathing as heavily as she was, and he looked torn. Pissed. And still so fucking hungry it made her tremble. The buzzing stopped, but he still didn’t move, holding her propped up against him, the head of his cock still teasing her entrance.
Like he wanted to drive her insane.
Then the buzzing started again.
“Fuck.” Greeley
’s tone was vicious.
He pulled Merritt off him, setting her on her feet. She had to grab for the wall behind her to hold herself up. He tugged his jeans up just enough so they’d stay on his hips, then he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He didn’t move back. He didn’t look away from her. He just scowled as he put the phone to his ear.
“What.”
It was not a friendly greeting. It wasn’t even directed at her and it made her wince.
Merritt fought to get her breath under control. She was suddenly entirely too aware of the fact that she was naked while he stood there, basically fully dressed. Right there in the front hall. Behind him she could see the front table, set with framed photographs of her parents and grandparents—all staring back at her as she stood around butt naked and still shaking from a potent mixture of her last orgasm and too much frustrated desire.
She could feel all that shame and horror and self-loathing waiting for her, like it was a lamp someone had switched on in the next room and she was still standing in the dark, blinking in the shadows, getting ready to test her eyes on the sudden blast of light.
Greeley was listening to whoever was on the other end of the line, his expression closed down and forbidding, his gaze still trained on her.
“When?” he asked, short and hard. He listened some more. “That dumb fuck. I’m on my way.”
He hit the off button and then shoved the phone back in his pocket.
And then they were just standing there in her daddy’s front hall, surrounded by nothing but too much silence. Merritt thought she should have a lot to say, but she couldn’t seem to force anything past her lips.
Greeley studied her, looking pissed off and brutal and something far more complicated that she couldn’t identify—or maybe that she didn’t want to identify. He reached down and buttoned himself up without looking away from her. She felt pinned to the wall though he wasn’t touching her any longer. And Merritt had no idea if she was relieved or destroyed by the interruption.
Maybe both.
“No smartass remarks?” His voice was still too low. It shivered through her, kicking up new alarms. “No snotty little comments?”
“I’m sure that when the real self-loathing sets in I’ll think of a few.” She met his gaze and she kept her chin up, but she didn’t think she was fooling either one of them. Maybe because she was still clinging to the wall to stay upright. And was completely fucking naked. “Still have the same number? I’ll text you.”
He reached over and took her chin in his hand the way he had five years ago. She doubted the echo was lost on either one of them. For a moment he looked at her with an expression on his fiercely beautiful face that made her heart seem to swell, then flip over in her chest. Then he rubbed his thumb over her mouth, as if he was erasing…something. Or imprinting it. Either way, it wasn’t gentle. It was as sexy as it was tough, and she felt all of that wash through her as the pad of his thumb worked over her lips. Then back.
He didn’t announce that he was staking his claim. He didn’t have to.
“Tell you what,” he said, rough and hard, no give in him at all. “When you crawl into your twin bed upstairs and get your own hands in that hot little cunt to take the edge off, remember this. Right here. You climbed me like a fucking pole and were about to take my cock despite the fact another bitch was polishing it not even an hour ago.” His mouth kicked up in one corner then, hard and dark and so knowing it hurt. “Welcome home, Merritt. I’ll see you real soon.”
And then he left her there, naked and sliding down the wall because her legs couldn’t hold her up another second, to hate herself to her heart’s content.
—
By the time Greeley made it back to his house out by the bayou on the far side of town to drop off his bike, his raging fucking hard-on had finally started to subside.
Which was a good thing for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Roscoe was waiting for him on his front porch and much as Greeley respected the fucker, he didn’t want to give his VP the wrong impression about why he’d called him to meet out here.
And he definitely didn’t want to talk about Merritt. To Roscoe or anyone else. He barely wanted to think about her. He’d lost control like a little bitch, as if she hadn’t walked away from him five years ago and as if he’d never vowed that shit would not happen to him again, and he didn’t know how to come back from that. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him.
It was her, that was all. She’d always been his biggest fucking weakness. This time, he needed to figure out how to exploit it. How to make sure that when it all blew up in his face again—which it would because there was no denying the fact that Merritt fancied herself much better than this town or a dirtbag biker like him—he wouldn’t be the one picking up fucking pieces of himself in the aftermath. Not this time.
“If you dragged my shit away from a prime piece of obedient college girl pussy to whine at me about your goddamn feelings about Digger, I’m kicking your ass,” Roscoe growled, not bothering to stand up from where he sat sprawled out on the front step, looking pissed.
Greeley gave his VP the finger, which made Roscoe grin.
“It’s Whale,” he said, and watched Roscoe’s grin fade.
“How the fuck can it be Whale? That little shit is supposed to be out in Beaumont making himself useful for once.”
Whale—and his computer skills—had been sent over to the Beaumont, Texas, charter of the Devil’s Keepers to sort out some security issues that Digger was worried might give law enforcement an in. Chaser, one of Digger’s enforcers, had been sent along to babysit the whiny little bitch because if there was one thing Whale could be depended upon to do no matter what, it was get his ass in trouble.
“He was,” Greeley said shortly. “Chaser called. They wrapped up their shit early and were headed home when Whale decided he wanted to get liquored up in Lafayette. And there was no keeping his drunk ass off his bike once he did. They made it all the way into St. Germain Parish before Whale got nailed in a speed trap.”
“Who pulled him over?” Roscoe asked, already on his feet.
“Fulton.”
Roscoe raked his hands through his hair. “Shit.”
There wasn’t much to say after that. The Lagrange chief of police and his deputy were friends of the club. But the St. Germain Parish Sheriff’s Department was larger, in charge of all the towns in the parish, and only partially friendly to the club. Significantly less friendly now it had a new sheriff, in fact. Officer Danny Fulton was a new hire under Sheriff Archer. He was young and idealistic—and operated under the assumption that he could personally take down the criminal element in St. Germain Parish with his shiny, uncompromised moral code. It was usually kind of cute. But tonight it was nothing but a pain in the ass.
Whale was the son of the club’s president. And he was a whiny ass weak link that any one of their enemies could use to either leverage Digger or extract information about club activities. The last thing the club needed was Whale shooting his mouth off in jail, even if it was only for a few days, which was mandatory on a second DWI offense in the state of Louisiana. Because of course the little douche had already gotten picked up for drunk driving after a long weekend in Shreveport a few years back, just to keep everything complicated and annoying.
Greeley climbed into his truck and waited for Roscoe to swing in the passenger side. Then he headed out one of the bayou roads that sketched its way deeper into the countryside, cutting his way through the sugarcane fields and low swamps toward the speed trap that no other club member had been caught in for years because they all fucking knew it was there.
Just Whale. Again.
Next to him, Roscoe was on his phone, leaving a terse message on Digger’s voicemail.
That their president hadn’t answered—and was still unaccounted for—was something Greeley felt he didn’t need to get into. It was already taking up all the air in the cab of his truck, ugly and obvious. No need to poke at it.
/> “You find out who was messing around at Doc’s house?” Roscoe asked after he shoved his phone in his pocket. “More vagrants?”
Greeley didn’t like the black, pissed off thing inside him that rolled over at that, like he had to push back and warn his VP off his woman. None of that was happening. Merritt wasn’t his woman. He’d never offered the position to anyone else and she hadn’t wanted it when he’d offered it to her. There wasn’t going to be a second offer. But the woman lit his shit on fire and god knew, he needed to get in that pussy again.
He didn’t like how messy he felt when he was near her. He never had. But this time, he wasn’t going to surrender to it. Fuck through it, yes. Lose his shit over her again? Hell no.
“No vagrants,” Greeley muttered. “Just a couple ghosts.”
He could feel Roscoe’s sharp gaze on his face, but his VP didn’t say anything, and then he was bumping his way off the back road and onto the interstate. The police car lights were flashing on the other side of the highway, looking liquid against the thick, warm night. Roscoe sighed, deep and aggrieved, which didn’t bode well for Whale. Greeley headed west a ways so he could flip the truck around without setting off Fulton’s oversensitive cop radar, which was likely to already be going haywire now that he had a Devil’s Keeper in his clutches. Even if it was Whale, which was likely a disappointment. Whale always was. When they reached the cop car, Greeley pulled onto the shoulder a nice, long way back from where Fulton was in Whale’s face. So there could be no claims about club intimidation.
They both got out of the truck. Roscoe threw him a look and Greeley nodded, and that was all the conversation necessary about how they’d play this. When they walked up to where Chaser waited, leaning against his bike with his arms crossed over his chest and a black scowl on his face, Greeley stopped next to Chaser and Roscoe kept going.
“This is on me,” Chaser growled. He was a tall, solid bruiser of a man who didn’t have to advertise the fact that he was muscle for the Devil’s Keepers. It was written all over him, from the tattoos that crawled down one arm and wrapped around his throat to the patches that made note of his many and varied services to the club.