3. TIFFANY
With the big shades on, the scarf, and topped by the helmet, I didn’t look like me.
And I was glad for that as I strode into the pharmacy, marching the walk of shame as I muttered, “Morning after pill, please.”
When the old bitch behind the counter glowered at me, but fulfilled my request after insisting I remove the helmet, I longed for the days of anonymity that came with living in the city.
New York was wonderful in times like these. Pharmacy clerks didn’t give a fuck if you bought a million condoms as well as a million carrots to stuff inside them, so long as your credit card was working, you didn’t give them any shit, oh, and you didn’t stick a gun in their face while you did it.
Here?
I felt like every purchase you made was being judged by a clerk.
It pissed me off, but not enough to drive fifty minutes into the city to grab the morning after pill when I could get it here.
Sue me, I was lazy.
And I knew Sin had work to do, so riding on his bike wasn’t something I did often, and this was my excuse to ride bitch as he so charmingly phrased it.
The second the old cow gave me the bag once my payment was verified, I retrieved it from the paper, gave her a false smile, and said, “Let’s save the earth, no?” before shoving the bag back in her face.
As I walked out of the store, I unpacked the pill, tossed the trash in a can by the door, and, making sure Sin was watching, I popped it in my mouth.
The first time this had happened a week ago, he’d bought the pill himself, and had practically watched me gulp the thing down.
Hell, he’d been more intent than when I sucked him off. You’d think I was deep throating the pill for all the focus he gave me.
But I got it.
I did.
He didn’t trust me then.
Now?
Different matter entirely.
After that first pill, I’d sworn never to do it again. I’d felt like death warmed over, but here I was, another mistake notched up, and I felt bad.
So fucking bad.
This wasn’t why the pill existed, and I needed to make better choices.
Of course, it wasn’t just on me.
When I settled on the back of his bike, my legs clinging to the sides of his, my body molding against his, I sighed, loving the freedom that came with riding bitch.
I sometimes wasn’t all that easy with showing public displays of affection, even if we were at home.
It wasn’t something that came naturally to me, to be honest.
Why sit holding someone’s hand when you were watching a movie when you could sprawl across the sofa in comfort?
My brain wasn’t wired to be clingy. But where riding bitch was concerned, I either clung, or I’d be tossed off the bike and be left on the highway—I liked those odds.
The second my arms were around his waist, my head on his shoulder, he kicked the ignition.
The throb that lit me up from the inside out made me want to fling my head back and holler.
But that’d draw attention to us.
I didn’t need that right now.
So I contained it with difficulty, then twisted my head down when, as we drove down Main Street, I saw Lily walking into the new diner.
I wasn’t sure if Sin noticed, but I hoped he didn’t. We’d been keeping things on the downlow since that first night, but we were spending more and more time together at his place.
Because I didn’t work, I usually waited for him at his home, to which he’d given me a frickin’ key.
Crazy that I had the key to his house, right?
It kinda messed with my head. That meant something, didn’t it?
I knew Sin wasn’t the kind of guy who trusted easily, but he trusted me with his home.
Even while that made me feel all squirmy inside, it also made me nervous. And happy. A little, befuddling cocktail that I’d swallowed down with a load of cum the night before.
Just thinking about what we’d done last night made every part of me twitchy.
Damn.
What he could do with his dick should be illegal.
I’d even hazard a guess and say that it was.
Entirely.
In some prudish states, that is.
Just remembering him sliding into my butt was enough to make my eyes cross. It was why we were here. He’d torn two condoms getting into my ass, and with the third, the last in the pack, we had a winner.
But that had screwed us over for when he’d fucked me after.
Boy, was it worth it.
I’d never had anal sex before, but fuck, I wanted to break all the boundaries with Sin. Break all my inbuilt rules, and he made it so goddamn fun.
It was like... God, it was stupid, I knew, but because I couldn’t give him all of me, I wanted to give him access to every part of my body.
Just not my heart.
Because in that way lay danger.
I mean, I was already in danger, so I didn’t need him tugging at my heartstrings too.
Something about him got to me.
What started off as a hookup turned into friendly booty calls, turned into us spending his free time at his house, chilling out, sometimes in the yard, sometimes watching TV. Him grilling outside, me watching and shooting the shit with him after I’d made a simple potato salad—he wasn’t to know my housekeeper had made it, and I wasn’t about to tell him.
He bought a double wide hammock that we enjoyed together—don’t have sex in hammocks, kids.
Don’t.
Do.
It.
Then he gave me his key so I could wait there for him after he pulled a long shift at work.
I knew something was happening. His shifts had changed, and he never told me exactly what he did anyway.
I mean, I didn’t really want to know, considering he was a biker, and I’d Googled the Sinners.
I knew they were one-percenters, which meant they did all the bad stuff. But Sin wasn’t bad. Even though his name kind of implied it.
Lately, he’d been gone for longer periods of time, and when he got back, his eyes were gritty—I’d even watched him put eyedrops in.
That, to me, was so crazy intimate that I still couldn’t get over it.
Watching a man in the hall light, opposite the vanity in the bathroom, tipping his head back to put in drops? It felt pretty much like I was watching my man, not just a man.
I squeezed him around the waist, and his hand came to my thigh. He loosely gripped it with a casual possessiveness that both thrilled me and unnerved me as we drove down the back roads toward his property.
We were at the top end of the town line when we were at his place, and I loved how much open space he had.
My yard was bigger, my house better, but somehow, I preferred his.
With its wild yard that he had a guy called ‘Green-Fingered Gary’ fix—I’d met him one day—which was so beautifully done it was like wandering into the woods, I’d fallen for it, him, and the house itself.
Though simple, plain, even, it was clean and just beautiful with some vintage touches that came from an old property.
It was from the forties, at least, and the floors were from that era.
The kitchen he’d had restored so the cabinets, which were detailed, had been returned to their former glory.
He’d put in a marble counter, replacing what he’d told me had been scarred Formica, but that and new appliances made the room inviting, which was fitting as the living room opened up into the kitchen.
His bedroom was empty except for a bed, a rug, and two nightstands with simple lamps on them, and I loved that too.
I liked how little fuss there was anywhere. It was the opposite of my place, where antiques rubbed shoulders with works of art to expose just how rich we were to anyone who came to visit.
It made me realize how much of a showplace Mom had made the house rather than a home, and while I was grateful for what we had, I appreciated the simple things at Sin’s more.
When we slowed down on the drive up, he tapped something on his hog, and as we rolled down the hill toward the house, the gates to the driveway slowly opened.
Only when they were closed again, at my back, did I truly relax.
This house?
With this man?
It felt like the only place I could be myself.
It was making me question who I was.
Rich kid. Spoiled. College dropout.
I was living at home permanently because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after making a mess of a delicate situation in college.
I currently spent my days with Sin, waiting on Lily to go and have another pedicure, or…fuck, that was pretty much it. Talk about wasting myself.
When he parked, I jumped off the bike and dragged the helmet off my head, eager to escape such thoughts. Tugging off the scarf, I let my hair flow behind me, all while he sorted out the bike and got to his feet.
I didn’t bother to wait for him, just headed for the house.
Unlocking the door, I trailed into the kitchen where I started some coffee.
I needed it.
It had been a helluva morning thus far.
When I opened the fridge to grab the bag of stuff I brought with me, I felt him enter the kitchen and wasn’t surprised when he tugged me into him from behind.
His arms came around my waist, his head dropped to my shoulder, and somehow, that move right there hit me square in the ovaries.
I wanted to melt, I wanted to tense up, but he gave me no choice.
“Need to stop making a habit of this, Lex,” he rumbled, making me laugh at his use of my middle name.
He was a clever shit.
He knew I wasn’t comfortable with being held like this, so he disarmed me, as per usual, by calling me that when he knew I didn’t particularly like it.
That was when I rolled out the big guns and called him Padraig—his real name.
Yup, he’d told me it.
“Lex-ee, Sin. It’s an extra syllable, Padraig.”
His lips twisted. “I don’t know what that fancy word means.”
I narrowed my eyes at nothing, then twisted my head to glare at him. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” he inquired, brow arched.
“Act like you’re dumb. You’re not.”
“Just wondered if you’d figured that out yet or not.”
Instantly, my shoulders hunched up. “Sorry.”
I knew what he meant.
He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
No. It wasn’t.
Quite clearly, it wasn’t.
He’d felt my reaction when I’d spotted Lily.
Shit.
I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to tell her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she might tell my dad.”
“So?”
He was so beautiful, and I totally didn’t think he knew it. Sure, he was cocky, but around me? With time? That faded away.
But his pitch-dark hair was glossy in the early morning light, and because we hadn’t done anything other than roll out of bed to get on his hog, it was soft rather than crispy with gel.
His face was worn from lack of sleep—not just because of our escapades, but because of whatever the club had him doing—and his eyes were…crap, stormy.
He was getting ready to fight.
I didn’t want that.
So I spun in his arms, didn’t let him move away by slinging mine around his neck, and admitted, “When someone’s nice to you, do you find it hard to say no?”
“Tiff—”
“I don’t mean me and you. I’m not manipulating you. I’m trying to make you understand. When someone is a bastard to you, you can be rebellious. It’s easy to say no. It’s easy to think ‘fuck you.’
“But when someone’s nice? When they reason with you, when they turn your world on its head to make you think you’re wrong, and they use everything you’ve done as a weapon against you, all while saying it’s in your best interests, and all while doing it because they love you? It’s harder to say, ‘fuck you,’ isn’t it?”
He scowled at me, but it softened as he read how earnest I was being.
This was no bullshit.
This was my life.
“I guess.”
“That’s my dad,” I whispered. “I love him. I do. But he’s definitely old school. He gives me more freedom than most daughters who still live at home, who still buy shit on his card, and who dropped out of college, get from their father, but that’s because I live like my mother.
“He understands that. He molded her a certain way, and as long as I live in her image, that’s fine.”
There’d been a time when he’d wanted to bring me into the business but, of late, that had changed, and that just made me feel even more worthless.
Useless.
Like my mom.
A pretty butterfly whose only role in this world was to look beautiful and to make men smile.
“But you’re not boning a dude from the country club. You’re boning a biker,” Sin said softly.
“Exactly. If he thought you were on the up and up, if we’d make an advantageous match, he’d have no problem with this. But I know him.
“He’ll… He’ll kill me with kindness until I find it hard to say no. He’ll learn stuff about you that I don’t know, and he’ll use that as ammunition to break us apart.
“I know there are things about your life that no sane father would approve of. I’m not an idiot.
“I know you have a past, and I’m sure your present isn’t squeaky clean, but I don’t need him pushing his nose into it. Can you get that?”
He didn’t answer that, instead, asked, “You think Lily would tell him?” He knew how I felt about her. Knew I considered her to be a sister from another mister.
“I don’t know. You’re a Sinner,” I said drolly, reaching up and running my fingers through his hair.
When his eyes fell to half-mast, I almost smiled at his visceral response to my touch.
“No way,” he mocked. “I’m not, am I?”
My smile morphed into a grin. “She might think telling him is in my best interest. I don’t know that I wouldn’t do the same if I thought she was dating a Sinner too.”
His eyes popped open at that. “We’re dating?”
I froze, then when there was only amusement in his eyes, muttered, “Jerk.”
He grinned at me, his entire face lighting up as he squeezed my waist. “We’re dating, angel,” he rumbled, dipping his chin and letting his scratchy stubble scrape down my nose like the jerk he was.
When I pinched his butt in payback, he snorted out a laugh, then hauled me high so I could wrap my legs around his hips.
He pushed me back into the fridge, and I didn’t even mind that a magnet was digging into my hip.
I was just more focused on the look in his eyes, on that intense stare that made me melt and tense at the same time.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I get your reticence, I do. I even understand why you don’t want your friends and family to know, but this, what we have, it’s not going nowhere. You get me?”
I bit my bottom lip but nodded.
He was right.
“Okay,” he muttered, blowing out a breath. “So long as we both know that.”
“Yeah. We do.”
His eyes darkened. “Good. With that in mind, I want to fuck you with no condoms. I’m clean. You’re clean.
“I don’t need us rolling out of bed at the asscrack of dawn to grab the morning after pill because we had too much fun the night before.”
My lips hitched up in a grin, and I squeezed my arms around his neck.
“Aww, poor baby,” I retorted, then squealed when he darted forward and nipped my chin.
“You know precisely what I’m saying.”
The intensity in his words and on his face? God, it hit me hard. In places that I couldn’t afford to respond to him like this. Places like my goddamn heart.
“I do,” I breathed.
“I want you raw, babe. Never experienced anything like it. Don’t think I ever will again?—”
Before he could say another word, another terrifying word, I whispered quickly, “I’ll get the shot.”
I mean, I’d been intending on having this conversation with him anyway. It was to my benefit that he brought it up first.
He dipped his chin. “Good.” Then, “When?”
Snorting, I muttered, “I’ll get an appointment with the doctor today. So whenever they can fit me in.”
“Even better.”
He let me down at that, evidently no longer worrying I was going to run off and faint, or go screaming for the woods at this conversation.
But I got it.
We weren’t that great at talking.
Doing? Being? Yeah. We rocked at that.
Especially when we were together.
Now that I was on my feet again, I grabbed the coconut milk from the fridge, and the regular stuff for him, then began making us coffee.
I was well aware that I moved around his kitchen like it was mine.
Even more aware that he hadn’t said anything when I rearranged his cupboards so I could fit some of my things in there.
As I doctored our cups, he slung himself onto a counter stool and asked, “What are your plans for the day?”
“Talking with the doctor is one of them,” I answered dryly, and since my back was to him, I shot him a sassy grin over my shoulder when he just grunted. “Tonight, I won’t be here until late.”
“Me either. After eleven, at least.”
I nodded.
Work.
It went without saying.
It also went without saying that I couldn’t ask what he was doing. Which technically sucked, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to frickin’ know.
He didn’t ask either, but I could see he wanted to. It amused me that he could be fair though.
This big, badass biker who liked to grill and sit in a hammock, and who maybe killed people for a living or delivered drugs—dear God, I could just hear the conversation with my father if he ever discovered what was going on here—being fair.
Because I couldn’t ask him what he was doing, his logic was why should he be able to ask me? Feminists didn’t all come with burned bras, it seemed. They wore cuts too.
Because he didn’t, because he let it go, even though he was curious, I explained, “Meal with Lily and her dad and brother tonight.”
Tension hit him. “Yeah?”
I frowned, but hummed too. “It was Lily’s birthday yesterday. They have a family meal thing on the day itself, but then I get invited the day after to a more ‘relaxed’ meal. You okay?”
“I don’t like that Luke Lancaster fucker. He came into the bar and?—”
“And what?” My eyes lit up. “Oh man, please tell me you were the one to break his nose? He’s been bitching about that ever since it happened.”
“No, but I wish I was.”
I grinned. “But a biker did it?” I hooted. “Love it. Bet he didn’t tell his dad that.”
As I snickered when I handed him his coffee, he gripped his hand around my wrist and stated, “Don’t trust that Luke fucker, Tiffany.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a command or him telling me that he didn’t trust him.
Frowning, I stared at his tight grip on my wrist, and muttered, “Don’t worry, I don’t even like Luke.”
I’d had a crush on the pretty boy back when I was younger, but there was something weird about him that gave me the creeps now.
He relaxed some. “Good. Keep your guard up tonight.”
My brow puckered, because I wasn’t sure why he thought that was necessary.
I ate at Lily’s place a few times a week, maybe once a month with both her brother and father in attendance.
“Okay,” I agreed slowly, knowing something was happening here that he couldn’t explain.
I just wished I’d heeded his warning.
Maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently.