19. Raker
CHAPTER 19
Raker
B y the next day, I had Sunni under continuous monitoring.
I had to keep an eye on her while I figured out how to win her back. I also needed to be able to cross into Souls territory without starting a goddamn MC war.
Sunni behaved like a good girl all day. I didn’t see Leo around and it wasn’t until darkness fell over the desert that I began to worry.
That night, though, my monitoring showed me activity going on at the coffee shop long past the normal hours when it should have been closed.
What was going on there?
Behind the drawn windows, there were a few dim lights on.
I clicked over to the feed inside the coffee shop, and I saw Willow, Elise, and Sunni there.
Then Sunni got up and clasped her hands together.
It looked like she was going to lead the group in prayer, so it must be some sort of late-night religious meeting.
I relaxed a bit and let my eyes roam down her body.
It was pleasure and pain to look at her, and bitter gall to see her eyes light up when she saw her friends. I knew exactly what it felt like to have those luminous brown eyes turned up at me. How the fuck had I ever thought anything like ‘she’s not the most beautiful one here’? When there was something irresistible about her face that made me want keep looking at her? She was the only woman I had ever grown more interested in, found more things to appreciate about her.
But it was endless pain to drag my eyes down her body to see her swelling tits and beautiful round belly.
Goddamn it, I had been a fool
If I was a better man, I would step back, remove the cameras and tracking devices I had set up around her home, and let her enjoy the family she had always wanted with another man.
But I wasn’t a better man.
If anyone gave me shit about the pregnant woman in my bed, I was going to kick the shit out of them.
Then Sunni began to speak.
“Goddess below, goddess above. . .” she began, and my blood ran cold.
No
Sick fear filled my gut as she finished her heathen prayer in the sweetest voice known to man.
Goddamn it, Sunni!
Praying to any other gods or any other entities besides the Elders was a Class C felony.
And as the meeting continued, my anxiety for Sunni grew.
While this group of women looked innocent, sitting in a circle together with cups of tea cradled to their chests, they were illegally plotting.
Plotting how to get more water, how to undermine the dictates of the Holy Words, how to bypass the Elders’ sacred distribution of water.
And Sunni was there in the middle of it, trying to connect lines on a rolled-down map as Willow read from what looked like scavenged copies of older books.
What were they doing?
I strained to listen.
“If I’m right,” Willow was saying in a low voice. “These lines here represent underwater sources that the Elders have been keeping from us.”
“And if we can somehow get to them—” Elise broke in excitedly. “Imagine how much water that is!”
“Imagine being able to get as much water as you wanted, whenever you wanted,” Sunni added as they all nodded.
Oh, shit, what Sunni was doing with these people was goddamn foolish and illegal. If she got caught trying to find any of the ancient river ways, or tampering in any way with the Elders’ control of the water, she could be severely punished and her water rations lowered to almost unlivable levels.
My stomach clenched thinking about Sunni and her baby trying to thrive with low water ration levels.
And I realized something important.
Teacher had tried to warn me that I might lose status by bringing Sunni back, but I did not care.
I wanted her no matter what. I wanted her and the baby.
Even though it was another man’s.
Even though my stomach lurched with sick nausea at the knowledge that if I hadn’t let my temper go, I wouldn’t have gone to jail and Sunni wouldn’t have another man’s baby in her belly.
I would do everything in my power to protect them now. They were going to be watched, protected, and cared for. I wanted to leave every avenue open for her to forgive me, but if I had to, I would kidnap her and force her to live at the clubhouse to keep her from getting in trouble with her foolish dreams of a revolution.
Leo could be allowed to live. If he stayed the fuck away from her.
As the meeting stretched on, Leo eventually showed up.
Fuck
This fucker must be a slow learner.
I got up abruptly and stalked to my motorcycle. He absolutely was not allowed to be around her.
Since it was night, there would be checkpoints all along Souls territory, like there were along Saints territory.
So I rode my motorcycle partway, then left it at a safe location and went the rest of the way on foot, slipping between homes and past chain-link fence, cutting wire where I had to, to get into Souls territory.
By the time I arrived, the coffee shop was dark. The meeting must be over.
Then I looked up and that goddamn jackass was leaving her apartment.
Anger coiled in my gut.
It was 11 pm. How dare he be at her house at that hour?
Checking to make sure the door to her apartment was locked, I followed Leo silently down the street.
He was a fucking idiot in more ways than one, because he was literally taking his life in his hands by even being around my girl.
I could kill him easily, come up behind him and wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze, break his spine in a few angry motions.
But what if that distressed Sunni?
Goddamn it again
I wouldn’t kill him unless he really pissed me off.
But he clearly needed another warning.
So when I had closed the distance between us, I shoved him into the side of a car.
He fell down with weak yelp and I had to resist my urge to drive my knee into his forehead. Although he was a tall man, he was dwarfed by my height.
“I told you to stay away from Sunni,” I snarled, my boot on his back.
“R-Raker?” he choked out. “She doesn’t want you anymore.”
“I’m working on that,” I snarled. “Stay away from her or I’ll kill you.”
“I have friends in the Elders,” he said, twisting back and forth, but I only ground my boot in harder.
“I don’t give a shit,” I said. “ Leave .”
As he crawled away, looking furtively behind his shoulder as he got into his car, I walked up the steps to Sunni’s apartment and let myself in.
It was a small place, just a studio apartment with one combined room that had a bed, kitchen, and living area.
The walls were worn but clean, and as I moved soundlessly through the apartment I noticed that she had covered them with all kinds of things. A row of geodes sparkling with crystals. Canvas paintings full of bright splashes of cover. And then, on the little kitchen window sill, a few tiny plants, wilted and parched.
I looked closer. There was a little dropper beside each one with plant food.
Knowing Sunni and her gentle heart, these were probably plants other people had trashed that she was refusing to give up.
A board creaked as I stepped past the fridge.
“Raker, I know it’s you. Get out .”
My body stilled with the sound of her voice, and I turned toward the bed, my lust pounding through me at the throaty, sleepy note in her voice.
“ Did you just fuck him ?”
It wasn’t at all what I intended to say, but I couldn’t stop the bitter regret laced through my voice.
“Yes,” she said coldly. “He’s my fiancé, Raker. Of course I fucked him.”
Jealousy writhed through my body like a venomous serpent, and I closed my fist to fight down the urge to follow Leo again, give in to my darkest urges and fucking kill him this time.
Sunni was lying on her side in the moonlight, a pillow between her thighs, and it fucking burned to feel her contempt and indifference.
“You said you didn’t want to touch any other man but me.”
Agony scraped raw and painful down my throat.
“I changed my mind. Now the thought of touching you disgusts me.”
I tried to force my untamed jealousy of Leo from my mind, his hands touching my Sunni, his seed swelling her belly.
It should have been mine , I realize with a start. It should by all rights have been me making her a mama.
She’s lying there so beautifully in the moonlight, the heavy swell of her belly perfectly framed in that silvery light like an angel.
Fuck, I want her so badly.
“Sunni, I know you love me.”
I moved closer to her on the bed, smelling that intoxicating scent of her skin.
My cock was fucking weeping down my jeans at the smell and sight of her.
“You were the first man I fucked. That’s not love.”
There were shadows across her face and she raised herself on one elbow to glare at me, her eyes glittering in the darkness.
“Why are you still here?”
I kicked off my boots and put a knee on the bed, then extended an arm carefully below her breasts and dragged her body so it was flush against mine.
“You’re a goddamn liar, Sunni. It was love. It is love. I love you.”
Her startled gasp was a fucking primal judgment on me.
“Stop—don’t—don’t say things like that to me.”
Her heartbeat was thrumming through her throat now, her hands down to my wrists to pry them off.
“Why shouldn’t I say what’s true?” I demanded harshly.
“How dare you say that to me now ! Now that I’m engaged to another man. . .pregnant with his baby!”
My arm was still firmly around her breasts and the heavy weight made my cock so achey and lusty with need.
“Why would you want me now that I’m pregnant?” she said, almost breathlessly.
“I’ll always want you, Sunni. How far along are you?”
“6 months.”
Her heartbeat fluttered into my arms.
“We were nothing but physical,” she insisted, hands still trying to pry me off of her, but I didn’t want to let her go.
“It was more than physical. It was everything about you. Come back with me. If you don’t want to stay at the clubhouse, I will get you your own apartment. You and the baby can stay there. You’ll never have to worry about money or water again.”
“No,” Sunni said. “That’s not enough anymore.”
My cock was so goddamn hard it was fucking seeping through my pants.
“What do you goddamn want? It’s fucking torture being next to you like this. I’m offering you something I’ve never offered another woman before. A lifetime of security. An abundance of water. My care and protection even with another man’s child in your belly. What more could you possibly want?”
“ Marriage , Raker. I don’t want to be your whore . I found a man who wants to marry me. Not keep me as one bitch in a rotation. And you can’t ever give me that.”
The realization burned in my gut.
“How the fuck am I supposed to marry you? The Elders would never approve that marriage.”
“You can’t. That’s why you just need to leave me alone. I have everything I want, without you.”
It was like a punch in the gut, a kick in the balls, but it only made me tighten my hold on her until she squeaked, my mouth descending ravenously to her flesh.
“Your body gives you away. Every gasp you make, every goosebump on your skin, every wet part of your cunt. It’s all mine. I can make your body sing for me, Sunni. Whenever I want.”
“No!” she insisted, a note of panic in her voice. “Do not touch me!”
“I won’t touch you unless you want it,” I promised, raising my mouth from her throat. “I just want to protect you, goddamn it! I know what you’ve been doing. I know what your meetings are about.”
“What? How do you know?”
She trembled in my arms and drool was fucking pooling in my mouth at how I was inches from her skin.
“I won’t let you endanger yourself with this goddess worship group.”
“Are you going to turn me in then?”
“Of course I’m not going to turn you in! What do you take me for?”
“I don’t know who you are anymore,” she almost whispered, and her small voice hit me fucking deeper than anything else she’d thrown at me, anything else she’d shot at me. “I know you’re, like, beloved of the Elders.”
“The Elders keep our land safe. They make sure we have enough water to drink.”
Sunni laughed scornfully. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Raker. There’s plenty of water under the ground. They just want to use it to control.”
“That’s a fairy tale,” I said, one hand brushing down her arm, my fingers sizzling with each inch of her flesh I touched.
How could I have taken this for granted, assumed she would always be there for me?
The covered name on her arm was an unending torment of rebuke.
She said nothing for a moment, then shrugged her slim shoulders.
“I don’t care enough to convince you. You are set in your ways. Now let me up. I’m pregnant and I have to pee. I also have to go to work in the morning.”
Reluctantly, I got out of bed, then took her hand and gently supported her lower back so she could get up.
Her movements were so damn adorable, the way she held her belly with one arm, made these cute little puffing sounds as she hoisted herself from the bed.
I want that with her
I looked again at the art on the walls, the collections of rocks, the tiny, struggling plants she was nursing back to health, probably using drops of her water ration.
This place meant so much to her because she had made it her home. It was a place she felt safe enough to put down roots.
“I fucked up with you, Sunni. I was a damn fool and I’m sorry. But you aren’t one woman in a rotation. If you were, I’d be able to let you go. But I can’t. I can’t and won’t live without you, and I’m going to prove it to you.”