16. Lucrezia
Chapter 16
Lucrezia
N obody has ever spoken up for me - not my parents, not my friends, not a single soul in this miserable world. That’s what does it for me with Raiden. That’s what pushes me over the edge and makes a tiny piece of me begin to fall in love.
I’m sure it’s all the same for him. If you’ve kissed one pretty girl, you’ve kissed them all - that’s probably his motto, written in invisible ink across his perfectly chiseled jawline. I’m no more than a warm body to dump his load in, just another notch on his bedpost, and the crazy thing is, I’m okay with it. More than okay - I’m practically begging for it.
His tongue explores my mouth with all the fervor of a teenage boy, hungry and desperate like he’s been starving for this his whole life. The kiss is sloppy and urgent, lacking finesse but making up for it with raw enthusiasm. I return the urgency because I need him, too. I need him to fill this emptiness inside me, this gaping void that’s been growing wider with each passing year. I need him to make me feel whole again, to piece together all these broken fragments of myself that have been scattered like shards of glass. It doesn’t matter if it’s only temporary, if the feeling fades with the sunrise - right now, his touch is the only thing keeping me from floating away into nothingness.
Raiden’s hands waste no time reaching beneath my shirt to unhook my bra, his fingers cleverly slipping past the material to drag a rough thumb across my nipple. The sensation sends electric tingles down my spine, and I arch into his touch, desperate for more contact. His other hand splays possessively across my lower back, holding me steady against him as his calloused fingertips explore every inch of newly exposed skin with an almost reverent intensity.
In turn, I touch him everywhere, memorizing every scar, curve, and smooth surface beneath my palms. My hands trace the hard planes of his chest, lingering over the raised ridges of old wounds.
“I got that one in a knife fight,” he says against my lips, his breath warm and uneven. Raiden reaches up to press my fingers more firmly to the scar. “I brought product like requested. He brought a knife instead of what he owed me. Learned pretty quick not to trust a desperate man’s promises after that - though the bastard definitely came out worse in the end.” His voice carries a dangerous edge, but his touch remains gentle as he guides my hand across his skin.
When he stops at a spot just above his hip bone, I’m met with more puckered, twisted flesh. The scar tissue there spreads like a starburst across his skin, pale and rough beneath my fingertips. “This one was an accident. One morning, on the way to school, a drunk driver hit my mom. A hunk of metal scraped off a good chunk of skin, but it missed my organs. I was lucky - doctors said an inch deeper, and it would’ve been a different story.”
Raiden releases my hand a moment later, exchanging it for the hem of his shirt. He pulls it off in one fluid motion, discarding it carelessly on the couch. And in the light, I see a scar on his chest, just above his heart - impossible to miss against his bronze skin.
“What’s this one?” I frown, reaching out to feel it. The skin is jagged and ugly, twisted away from an obvious bullet hole that once adorned the skin.
He reaches up quickly, grabbing my fingers with more force than necessary. A flash of anger ignites in his gaze, turning his dark eyes to steel. His grip tightens for a heartbeat longer than comfortable, the tension in his jaw betraying some deeply buried emotion. “Don’t ever touch that one,” Raiden orders quietly.
“What happened?” I ask again, not backing down. The fact that he doesn’t let go of my hand says all I need to know. His fingers stay locked around mine, warm and unyielding, like he’s afraid I’ll reach for it again. “I told you my tragic backstory. Tell me yours.”
“It’s not like that,” he replies gruffly, his grip on my hand loosening slightly, though his thumb absently traces circles against my skin. “My best friend got shot when I was sixteen. The bullet wasn’t meant for her, but the man in the van was coked up and shootin’ wild. Didn’t even know what he was aiming at.” Raiden’s voice catches, and he swallows hard before continuing. “I was there when it happened. I watched her die right in front of me, couldn’t do anything but hold her hand while we waited for the ambulance that came too late.”
I stay quiet because his story doesn’t explain the scar. Though he pauses like that’s the end, I let him catch his breath, standing there with my bra undone beneath my shirt and the air filling with tension. Something tells me there’s more—the way his jaw clenches, how his fingers twitch against my skin.
“When I joined the Destroyers, Priest knew what I wanted. He knew I would never be happy until I got my revenge. So he put me to work in narcotics. He said eventually, whoever that guy was, he’d be back. The Destroyers have primo shit, and we shut down one-man operations every day. Priest turned out to be right. The guy eventually showed up. Needed another score. When I saw him, I lost it. It was like everything went red. Three years of rage and grief came flooding back in an instant, and all I could see was Becca’s face, the way she’d looked in those final moments. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold my piece, but I didn’t need steady hands for what came next.”
A cold chill washes over me when I realize what he means. My own experience with murder has never bothered me—it was always just business, clean and straightforward. But hearing Raiden talk about it in such a cavalier way, describing revenge like it was nothing more than scratching an itch, causes goosebumps to form on my arms.
“The guy didn’t die from the first shot. He had his own piece, and he pulled it on me. Shot me right here.” Raiden brushes my hand over the scar, my fingers still crushed in his grip. “But it didn’t matter. I was high on adrenaline and rage; I barely felt it. I pumped another three shots into the guy before I felt satisfied. It’ll never bring Becca back,” he frowns, swallowing past a lump that seems to have formed in his throat. “But I hope he’s burnin’ in hell for what he did to her. Every damn day, I hope he’s suffering just like she did in her final moments.”
A handful of revelations occur to me at the same time, each one fueled by the one preceding it. He loved this Becca girl, whoever she was - loved her with the kind of devotion that leaves scars on the soul when it’s ripped away. Her death drove him to the Destroyers, and Priest did for Raiden what he did for me: he saved him and gave him purpose when he was drowning in darkness. The ugly parts of Raiden’s past made him the man he is today, forged him in fire and pain until he emerged as something different altogether. It made him hard and untouchable, just the way my past made me hard and untouchable. We wear our trauma like armor.
Kristopher could never explain why he said Raiden was the scariest man he’d ever met within the motorcycle gang, but I get it now. It isn’t a facade or some tough-guy act he puts on; it’s who he became after everything that happened to him, after loss and vengeance rewrote his DNA.
“Do me a favor.”
Raiden doesn’t meet my gaze, afraid of seeing the same pity in my eyes that I saw in his when I admitted the horrible things that happened to me. “What?” The word comes out rough and guarded like he’s already prepared to reject whatever I might ask of him.
“Kiss me. Touch me. Make love to me.” His gaze shifts to me immediately, his brow furrowed in confusion. “For one night, let go of your anger toward the world. Let me in. Pretend I’m Becca if you have to. Just for tonight, let yourself feel something other than rage.”
His grip tightens again, as if he isn’t sure whether to be angry or not, his fingers pressing hard enough against my skin that I know they’ll leave marks. The war playing out across his face tells me he’s fighting an internal battle between what he wants and what he thinks he deserves.
But the fight goes out of him after a few moments. Raiden releases my hand and leans down to capture my lips in a kiss. There’s a different kind of desperation and urgency this time, fueled by vulnerability. When he starts to undress me, we leave a trail of clothes from the couch to his bedroom. My shirt tangles with his pants on the hardwood floor, boots kicked carelessly aside, each piece marking the path of our stumbling journey. When we finally tumble onto his bed, the mattress dipping beneath our combined weight, he positions himself carefully between my spread thighs. His dark eyes lock with mine as he aligns himself against me. I feel the hot, hard length of him pressing against my entrance, making my breath catch in anticipation.
I feel raw and exposed, somehow more naked than I’ve ever been in my entire life. My skin tingles everywhere his gaze touches. But before I can stop him, before I realize I’m diving in too deep with someone who was a complete stranger to me just two weeks ago, he’s pushing past my defenses and bottoming out inside me. The stretch and fullness make my toes curl against his sheets, my fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders. The pleasure conceals all my insecurities, drowning them in a fervor of passion that reconfigures my neural pathways, making me forget every reason this could be a mistake. It’s dangerous and intoxicating, and it fills the void inside me.