18. LINK
The tiniest of moans woke me.
It wasn’t a good moan which, in my defense, was the kind of moan I was used to hearing. It was a bad moan.
It was Lily.
Who was sleeping at my side.
In the too-small bed in the bunkhouse that was really meant for one person and not two, but somehow, we were making it work.
She was half on, half off me, her body angled off mine to the side. My hands were on her ass, and her thighs clasped one of mine, meaning her pussy brushed my skin.
We were close in a way I’d never really experienced before with another woman, and I wasn’t sure why.
A man like me, with my lifestyle, with the pussy all around me, I was used to being with a woman in bed. But shit was different with Lily. Shit was better.
Fuck, shit wasn’t shit.
Which said a lot.
It surprised me that her tiny moan awoke me, but the second I realized where I was, everything fell into place.
Subconsciously, I wasn’t questioning who I was in bed with. I didn’t wonder, in my sleepy daze, who had made that noise.
I knew.
It was like something in my fucking soul knew who was with me, and as goddamn weird as that was, it also felt right.
“Babe,” I whispered, voice gruff from sleep because, yeah, I found that I slept better when I was being used as a prop for her too. “Wake up.”
She twisted her head to the side like she was trying to ignore my command, and I reached over, touched her shoulder, absorbed the hit when she flinched, and blew it out on a deep exhalation that was meant to cleanse me of my anger.
Her fucking father.
That bastard brother.
If I could slice their throats, I would. I’d have bathed in their fucking blood if that was a possibility.
Because she was still sleeping, I rubbed her shoulder, not disconnecting the touch, and murmured, “Sweetheart, it’s me. Link. Please, wake up.”
A drowsy sigh escaped her. “Link? What’s wrong?”
She was slurring too, and that kind of rammed home the intimacy between us.
Weirdly enough, it was like a bridge of trust because Lily had been bred to be perfect. At all times. She’d been punished if she wasn’t.
So to hear her like that, to see her less than perfect and sleeping in one of my Sinners’ tees was like a golden handshake.
“Nothing, sugar tits.” I reached down and patted her on the tush. “Go back to sleep.”
I was willing to go the extra mile for her, I was willing to do whatever I had to to keep her safe, but there was no way I could keep my hands off that perfect ass of hers.
Which, I knew, meant slow conditioning. Getting her used to my touch there, because fuck, I couldn’t not touch the perfection of that butt. It would be cruel to deny an ass man like me that beautiful behind so, slowly, surely, I was touching it but with no other intent. All in the vain hope that I’d gentle her to being caressed there.
Though she tensed for a second when I squeezed, she immediately crumpled into me and began snoozing a second later.
I angled my head down and pressed a kiss to her temple, enjoying the way she snuggled into me.
What was this?
Really?
She was too good for me, and our lives in no way meshed, but I liked this. Liked her. I liked her in my arms, my bed. I wanted her hands on my body. I wanted mine on hers.
More, I wanted that virgin pussy around my dick. Christ, more than I probably wanted to play with that ass of hers.
Blowing out a breath as I tried to make sense out of my muddled thoughts, I muttered, “You’re playing with my head, Lily Lancaster.”
She hummed and rubbed her nose down the ball of my shoulder. “This isn’t a game, Link. Nothing about this is fun.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted by that or not.
“You could hurt me too. Do you know that?” she whispered.
“I don’t want to.”
I hadn’t expected this conversation. I thought she was asleep.
Apparently, I’d been wrong.
“You might not want to, but that doesn’t mean you won’t.” She placed her hand on my hip and patted it. “Don’t worry about it.”
Don’t worry about not hurting her?
“What do you want from me, Lily?” I asked cautiously.
“Things you won’t want to give me, and things you probably can’t.”
She sounded less and less drowsy, and while I hadn’t aimed for this chat, maybe it was for the best. Maybe we needed to get things straightened out.
All of this had been forged on a few conversations and dozens of texts. Then a couple of dates that had evolved into fumblings which, I had to admit, were hot as fuck.
Nothing about this had progressed in a way things like this did with me.
I was all about sex. I didn’t date. I didn’t want a virgin. I didn’t text bitches. My mind was on business and my brothers and keeping shit in line in my position as Road Captain and head mechanic and manager of the garage that was owned by the Sinners.
I didn’t make out on couches.
I didn’t sneak into bedrooms to sleep with country club princesses.
Which meant, all in all, that Lily was different.
But I knew that already.
“What do you want from me?” I repeated, needing an answer.
“What can you give me?” she countered. “Know what I saw when I went to the bathroom earlier?”
My brow puckered. “When?”
“Before we went to sleep.” She yawned.
“What?” That yawn had felt relaxed, enough to make me lower my guard.
“Two guys fucking someone against the wall outside.”
My eyes widened. “Who?”
She snorted. “How would I know? They were twins, I think.”
That had me rolling my eyes. “Fucking Prospects. They ain’t supposed to be fucking anyone.”
She tensed. “Huh?”
Grumbling because this was going to take us off topic, I explained quickly, “Prospects are like trainees. They want to become full brothers. You can’t do that without becoming a Prospect and going through the ropes. Part of that means not having sex with the?—”
She laughed. “Yeah. Good time to go speechless, Link.”
I winced. “It isn’t like you think.”
“Isn’t it? You have women to fuck and to, what, clean the place?”
It didn’t surprise me that she knew what a clubwhore was. Still, I wished she didn’t.
Not that she wouldn’t have found out soon enough.
Hell, she’d already seen North and Hawk fucking someone they shouldn’t around the back of the clubhouse.
God damn them.
With my free hand, the hand that wasn’t curved around her, I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose. Then she surprised me by patting me on the hip again.
“Link, it’s okay.”
Was it?
Warily, I peered down at her, and the sadness on her face made me wonder what was going on in her head.
It didn’t help that I knew how the men in her family treated women, and knowing that she might draw parallels between us and them pissed me off.
Royally.
But why wouldn’t she?
We did have women hanging around the place with free board and lodging, so long as they fucked whichever brother asked them to bend over. It wasn’t like I could escape that fact.
“You told me about Storm and Keira, Link,” she reminded me softly. “I already figured out how it rolls.”
“If you figured that out, then why did you want to meet up with me, Lily? Why did you want me to fuck you?”
“Because I like you.”
“That’s it?” I arched a brow. “You like me, and so you thought it was only natural that I might be willing to fuck you?”
“Don’t twist this around, Link. You don’t understand what I mean.” She twisted around, then jerked upright and hunched over in a sitting position before glaring at me.
“Why don’t you explain it to me, Lily?” I attempted to soothe.
There was very little light coming in from the window at my back, but there was enough for me to see her scowl.
“Do you know how many men I’ve liked in my life?”
I scowled at her. “No. Why the fuck would you ask me that?”
“Because, dumbass, I’ve liked one. You. That’s it. That’s why I wanted more from you. That’s why I… It was my birthday the night before Luke died.”
I stilled. “It was? Shit.” With a wince, I muttered, “Happy Birthday?”
“Thanks. Know what my birthday present from my father was? Know what had me snooping around my brother’s office when he’d died?”
“No. What?”
“Father announced my future husband would be coming for dinner when he was out of jail.”
Whatever I’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me right. My husband is currently in jail.”
“You’re not married yet,” I snapped, enraged at the thought of her belonging to someone else.
Fuck, I was even madder at the thought she’d withheld this from me. We’d talked about this, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about the fucker being in jail.
“I’m as good as married in my father’s eyes. Probably in Fieri’s eyes too.”
My mouth rounded because I knew that name… Famiglia. “Gianni Fieri is your fiancé?”
“Fiancé isn’t the right word, Link,” she retorted, folding her arms over her chest. “I told you, remember, that my pussy was for sale. Well, he’s the buyer.
“I didn’t want him to be my first. That’s why I wanted you. Because you’re the first man I’ve seen who I’ve chosen, who, when I look at you, makes me warm inside.
“You make me laugh, and your eyes are calming, and when you?—”
I surged upright, unable to stop myself from sliding my hands around her throat and up to cup her cheeks.
Within seconds, my mouth was on hers and I was thrusting my tongue between her lips.
She moaned the second we connected, and for a little while, she let me play.
I sucked and flicked, teased and enticed, loving that she let me sup from her, adoring the way she arched her head back to give me full access.
I tasted everything she had to give.
But I gave her more than I took.
So many men in her life had taken from her, but I didn’t want to be like that. I really fucking didn’t.
And that was why I pulled back.
I wasn’t like them.
So, even though it pained me, I stopped making goddamn love to her mouth, I stopped teasing her by sliding my tongue against hers—even though I knew she liked it because she dug her nails into my shoulders with each parry—and I drew away.
It hurt.
Fuck, it hurt.
But shit.
A woman tells you that you’re her first crush? That she likes you when she’s been raped and psychologically abused?
That was the biggest goddamn compliment I thought I’d ever received.
When I pulled back, we were both panting, and I pressed my forehead to hers, needing to retain the connection.
The heat between us was off the charts, and I’d only fanned the flames.
“Why did you stop?” she bit off, each word punctuated by a heavy gulp of air.
“Because I won’t take from you.”
“It was freely given.”
“I know, but I’m different. You just said so yourself.”
She froze for a second, then whispered, “I-I could love you, Link. That scares me.”
“You think that doesn’t scare me? Never loved anyone except my momma, my grandmother, and then a dumb bitch who was only using me.” Another breath escaped me. “I feel the same way.”
“We’re not right for each other. We’ve got different paths.”
“We do, but that doesn’t mean those paths can’t cross over along the way.
“Just because we were heading in one direction doesn’t mean we can’t change destinations.”
“Would you want to?” she asked sadly.
“For you? For this?” I squeezed her waist. “Yeah. I would.” When she shook her head, I sighed and squeezed her waist again. “I have a question.”
She bowed her head and pressed it to my shoulder and cemented herself in my memory like no other ever had.
The trust inherent in that move, the affection and intimacy…I’d experienced nothing like it in my almost forty years of fucking living.
“What did you hope to find when you went looking in Luke’s office?”
“A way out.”
“Of marrying Fieri?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t find it.”
“No.”
“Do you know who he is?”
“A businessman? Obviously, my father and he want to cement ties?—”
“Why would your father want to tie you to a criminal?”
She waved a hand. “My father was a banker, Link. Before my mother, that was his trade. Lots of bankers and investment gurus go to jail.”
“There’s being friends with someone in jail, there’s even being associated with someone in jail, but marrying them to your daughter? Bringing them into the family? Isn’t that something else entirely?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t care. I was hoping?—”
“What? What were you hoping for?”
“That things would change with Luke gone.”
“You had the chance of becoming the heiress.”
“Yes. It put a deadline on things.”
“You mean, you were wanting to kill your father before Fieri was released?”
“Yes. I don’t want to marry him,” she whispered. “He’s creepy.”
“He’s more than creepy,” I muttered, and I squeezed her again, this time to comfort myself as well as her.
Fuck. Fieri?
What in God’s name was Lancaster thinking? Tying his daughter to that goddamn monster? He made Nyx look like a fucking saint!
His rep preceded him in certain circles all over the country, for fuck’s sake.
“Babe, you know who he is, don’t you?”
“Just one of Father’s friends.”
“No, love. He’s the son of Benito Fieri.” When she didn’t react, made no other response than a shrug, I had to sigh. “Benito is the head of the Fieri crime family. He’s La Famiglia, babe. He’s mafia.”
A long, slow breath escaped her. “He’s mafia?”
“Yeah. Your dad’s obviously more fucked up than—” An explosive breath escaped me. “Sweet fuck, of course.”
She jerked back. “What is it?”
“Of fucking course. The Famiglia are involved in the skin trade. That’s how your father and Luke bought the women.”
“The skin trade? Bought? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The women in the videos, the women here, they were bought, Lily. And the Famiglia are known for trafficking women and…” My voice waned. “Kids.”
“No. No way!” She started off squeaking, then she burst into a shriek that had my ear drums ringing even as she tunneled into my arms, trying to escape what I was telling her.
I hugged her tightly, held her close in a vain attempt at making her feel better.
The more she huddled into me, the more I knew she was trying to overcome what I’d just told her about the kind of man her father wanted her tied to.
I closed my eyes, surprised by the path my thoughts took me down. I wasn’t frightened, wasn’t even freaked. This was right.
What I was going to do was how it was supposed to be.
“Babe, this changes everything. You know that, right?”
She quivered in my embrace before she whispered, “I need to run away.”
The prospect of her leaving had me holding her tighter and, furthermore, it cemented the rightness of my actions.
“No. You’re not going anywhere,” I told her. “You’re going to stay here. With me.”
“No, Link, you don’t mean that. Your world would…” She pushed her face into my throat and I felt her tears. “I don’t want to share my partner.”
“And you won’t. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
I meant it too.
Even though the offer stunned the fuck out of me.
“It’s a part of your world. Storm didn’t stop sleeping with those women for Keira,” she pointed out sadly, making me regret sharing that fucking story with her.
“I’m not Storm. I’m not a dumbass. I know what I’ve got in my arms.”
She quieted down, like she was listening, willing to absorb what I had to say.
“You can’t run from the Fieris, babe. They’ll find you. Wherever you go. The only place you’re safe is here. With me. With the MC at your back.”
She argued, “I can’t bring this to your door.”
“I’m asking you to. You mean something to me, Lily. I’m not good with words,” I said shakily. “I-I just know that I’ve never felt this way before, and I don’t think I will again.
“Maybe it’s nuts, maybe it’s been too short a time to really know what either of us wants, and that’s good. That’s fine. But I want to know you’re safe. That’s what matters to me.”
“W-We might be incompatible,” she whispered, the words tickling the tender skin of my throat.
“Of all the stuff you’ve said tonight, that’s the craziest. Baby, we’re so beyond compatible my dick is aching from that kiss alone.” I squeezed her waist once again. “But we’ll take this slow. We’ll take this however you need to go.”
“That isn’t fair to you,” she argued, but I heard the yearning in her voice, and fuck me, if that didn’t make my dick harder than it already was, I didn’t know what could.
“Let me decide what’s fair for me, okay?”
“If I stay here, Fieri isn’t going to let this drop. He’ll come for me.”
“Let him,” I ground out. “You know those Five Points you mentioned before? When you were trying to keep us in the loop?”
“You mean when I was trying to be your informant and failing?” she countered drolly.
“Yeah, then,” I retorted, amused. “Well, they’re the Fieris’ natural fucking enemies.
“With me at your back, we have a battalion of the Devil’s soldiers ready to roll into battle the second you become my woman. And through them, you have the Five Points.”
She shifted her head back, her brow furrowed as she stared at me. “What do you mean?”
“Which part? About the Five Points?”
“No. You say ‘becoming your woman’ like there’s a ceremony.” She gulped. “You want to get married?”
I had a feeling that one day, sometime soon, I’d wife this woman and tie her to me in all the fucking ways I could, but no. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for that, and neither was I.
“There’s a process. To come under the club’s protection, you’ve got to be recognized as my Old Lady.” I ran my hands up and down her arms.
“Does it involve hazing?” she questioned warily.
My lips twitched. “No. Nothing like that. That’s for shit with the Prospects.”
Her eyes flared wide. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Best not to ask. And,” I released a gusty sigh, “while we’re talking about that, there will always be some shit I can’t tell you. Shit that you don’t want to know because I don’t want you to get into trouble.”
“I know how that works,” she rumbled. “More than I’d like.”
“You need to know that I get involved in some shit that no woman would be happy with?—”
“Do you sell women and children to men like my father and brother?” she demanded rawly.
“No. I defend them. Avenge them. Well, help avenge them,” I whispered back at her.
“Then that’s all I need to know. My father is the biggest criminal going. He has his hands in more pies than a baker. I don’t even want to know how dirty he is, but because he hides behind companies and umbrella corporations and only God knows what else, he’s considered legitimate.
“Well, that’s bullshit.” She swallowed, and I wasn’t surprised when she reached up, her hands cupping my biceps as she dug her nails into my arms, and whispered, “Promise me, Link, that if one day I want to go, you won’t trap me here.”
The idea that she’d want to leave me didn’t sit well with me. I was, by nature, a positive person. I liked to start shit off the right way, with the right frame of mind.
That wasn’t what she was asking of me at the moment.
But because of her past, a past I didn’t understand but could empathize with, I got it. I really did.
“I promise to do everything in my power to make you want to stay,” I conceded, unable to give her the vow she wanted, but giving her an oath I’d stand by.
For as long as I lived.
She bit her lip. “That’s a caveat.”
“And that’s a fancy word.”
“I’m an economist and I went to finishing school. What do you expect?”
“True.” She was so fucking smart and too good for me. I knew that. “Finishing school, huh?”
“Father insisted.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you stopped calling him that? You won’t ever be seeing that fucker again.”
She nibbled harder on her lip. “You think?”
“That’s a fucking promise.”
Her nod was resolute. “Okay. Donavan, then. He insisted I be finished.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It wasn’t actually. But I had to walk around with a book on my head and learn where to set cutlery on the table.
“There’s also a whole damn protocol about where to sit a prince next to an oligarch—tedious as fuck.”
My lips curved as I got, more than ever, a sense of the yawning gap between us.
Oligarchs and princes, after all, were not a part of my world.
“Babe, you become my woman, my Old Lady, you’ll be safe. I will never let anyone harm you.
“I will make sure that you’re safe from that cunt of a father, and I’ll go to war with the Famiglia to keep you out of their paws but…”
When my voice waned because she was looking at me like I’d set the planets in the sky, I didn’t want to finish my sentence.
I really fucking didn’t.
I wanted her to look at me that way.
I wanted this princess, this fucking queen, to look at me, trailer trash, like I was capable of anything. Like I was her knight in goddamn shining armor.
But I wasn’t.
My armor was tarnished, and it had been for a helluva long time.
She needed to know that. Lily might think she didn’t, but I needed to ram that home because I wasn’t doing this with an expiration date in mind, even if she was.
I was going with a gut feeling here.
A feeling that appeared whenever she lay asleep on my chest, whenever she cuddled into me at night.
When she moaned from a nightmare and it pierced my fucking heart like she’d used a goddamn dagger to stab me.
I was going from the smiles she earned whenever she sent me something funny via text, to thinking about how right it would feel when she rode bitch on the back of my bike…
No, this wasn’t temporary.
This was, in my mind, permanent.
The fact that I was willing to wait until she was ready, until she wanted me as much as I wanted her, until she was begging for my touch and not tensing up at it, spoke wonders.
“What is it?” she whispered when I didn’t continue, when I just looked at her, staring into her starry eyes.
The abused woman finally able to see the broken pieces of herself come together again.
“I’m not a prince. I’m not an oligarch. I don’t go to the opera and I don’t have a pass to Crosskeys. I used to work there, for God’s sake. I don’t wear Prada, and my hair? I usually cut it in the bathroom. Nothing about me is fancy, and everything about you is?—”
Before I could say more, she raised her hand and pressed a finger to my lips. “Do you know how many guys have tried to pick me up at Crosskeys?”
Irritation flashed through me like a tidal wave. “I can imagine,” I rumbled.
She snorted. “Don’t get jealous?—”
Fuck. I was.
Me.
Jealous!
Holy.
Shit.
If I needed proof that this woman was different, I had it.
“I didn’t want a single one of them. Dressed in tennis whites, golf vests, Armani suits, or designer casual. I didn’t want any of them.
“It was a biker who made me feel safe. One who cuts his hair in the bathroom, one who wears Henleys and ripped jeans and has engine oil in the tiniest creases in his nails.
“You, Link. You. You made me feel safe, you made me feel like I wasn’t alone, and when you touch me, I’m not Donavan Lancaster’s daughter, I’m Lily. I’m me. And I like me around you.”
“I like you around me too,” I replied huskily, liking her answer so fucking much I thought I’d burst.
“What do I have to do to become your Old Lady?”
“You get a tattoo.”
“Is that it?” She released a breath that I realized was relieved.
A laugh escaped me. “What did you think you’d have to do?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t sure. I mean, when you join frat houses and sororities they all make you do weird stuff?—”
“Well, this is weird enough.”
“I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” she mused.
“This one will tell the fucking world what you are to me. What you mean to this club. It’s a brand, babe. A stamp of protection that will keep you safe forever. You have my word on that.”
Her big blue eyes grew hazy. “You really mean it, don’t you? You want me like that. Even though I…”
“Even though you, what? Haven’t put out?” I arched a brow. “Don’t you realize that’s half of what makes me know I need you in my life, sugar tits?” As her eyes widened, I told her, “And don’t think that just because I’m taking shit slow, I’m not going to touch you. ‘Cause I am.
“I already told you I’m going to glut myself on your fucking taste and give you so many fucking orgasms that you’re never going to want to leave me.”
A choked cry escaped her as she plunged into my arms, clinging to me as tightly as a fucking spider clung to its web.
And that was exactly where I wanted her.
Cleaved to me.
Body and soul.