32. Piper #2
I started to move with him, holding onto his shoulders as I rode his hand.
Faster and faster.
Unable to stop the rush of sounds that barely breached the air as they fell from my tongue.
The need and the pleasure and the awe of this man who was stealing a part of me I never thought I’d let go.
His left hand slipped up the side of my neck, his palm leaving a trail of fire, before he was weaving his fingers through the locks of my hair, holding on tight at the side of my head.
“Look at you.” His voice was gruff. As rough as his movements. “Fucking my hand. Needing it the way I know you do.”
“Yes. I need it. I need you.” The confession tumbled out without permission.
Theo grunted, and his eyes flashed with lust. Barely hanging onto whatever control he had remaining.
And I wanted us to lose it.
Lose all control and sanity and logic.
Just for a moment.
Because he was right.
The breaking would feel so nice.
I went for the fly of his jeans, attempting to rip the button free so I could expose him the way he had me. I could see the outline of his huge cock pressing against the fabric, and my stomach twisted with the reckless need to feel him that way.
Wholly and completely.
“I want to feel you. All of you.”
He groaned a pained sound. “No, Piper. This is for you. Only you.”
He thrust his fingers deeper, his thumb rubbing and rolling and inciting, so intense that I couldn’t get my fingers to cooperate and instead they were clutching at his hair again.
Pleasure rushed and rose, gathering to a pinpoint that I couldn’t resist.
His touch my gravity.
“Let go, Pipes. Let me see you light up this room.”
I cracked at his command. Body breaking apart in a bliss that shattered through every reserve.
And I no longer wanted to be separated. I no longer wanted to keep the barriers between us. I was the fool who wanted to give him every single one of my secrets.
I quietly chanted his name as I soared, as if it might encompass every single one of those things.
“Theo, Theo, Theo.”
Gushes of air raked from my lungs as pleasure spun through every molecule of my body.
Wave after rapturous wave.
Theo pressed his face to my throat. “Way this pussy feels clamping around my fingers. Throbbing and dripping into my palm. Your ecstasy in my hands. Want it, Piper. Want it all.”
“Then take it.” I was still shaking from the aftershocks as the words quivered out.
A groan of pain worked through him as he clung to me tighter. No question, he was searching for restraint.
“Piper.”
It was a moan.
A prayer.
Hands trembling, I went back for the button of his jeans, knowing I was pushing into a place that I shouldn’t go.
But I didn’t care.
I didn’t care.
“You make me feel alive, Theo. Alive for the first time in years. Maybe truly for the first time in my life. Like maybe the loneliness might not get to rule me forever.”
“Baby.” It sounded close to pain. He heaved a breath as his massive hands smoothed down my back, palms back to gripping my bare bottom.
His phone suddenly lit up from where it sat face-up on the cushion next to him, a blip of sound that broke into the frantic fantasy that had kept us surrounded.
We both looked that way, and I barely glanced at the group message that flashed on the screen.
Cash
New intel. I’m heading to the club. Everyone get there ASAP.
It came from a group thread that was labeled S S.
That was all it took for Theo’s demeanor to flip.
Ice dumped on the flames that had roared between us.
The lust obliterated by the same aggression I’d felt oozing from him earlier.
I turned back to look down at him.
The wings of the moth tattooed on his neck rippled as he swallowed heavily.
His eyes were the darkest they’d ever been. Black diamonds that sparked with something he both wanted to keep hidden and begged me to see.
My mind went to the tattoo that he had on the back of his hand. The two stacked Ss with the dagger running through and the eye in the middle.
The skull sitting on top.
It was almost identical to the one that Kane had, though his had a wilting rose at the top.
The same as River, Cash, and Otto each did, though with slight variations.
Awareness spun.
It felt as if I might be able to reach out and run my fingers through the truth that spun in the periphery of my understanding.
My throat thickened as Theo slowly pulled my sleep pants back around my waist.
Regret and apology and something so much fiercer was seeded in the taut, ferocious angles of his hauntingly beautiful face.
A frown pinched my brow as I tried to decipher everything.
The fact that Cash was talking about intel and whatever Emery had been implying earlier and the bare fact that I’d known from the beginning that Theo was dangerous.
His whole group was.
His family, as he claimed them.
Which was hard to entertain when Kane was so easy and kind and funny. But I knew that sometimes malice could be scored underneath.
“Looks like I need to go.” Theo’s words scraped through the dense air that had become too stagnant to breathe.
“Why?” It was clearly a challenge.
Theo’s hands quivered where he had them wrapped around my waist. “Meet with my crew at Kane’s every Saturday night.”
He attempted to keep it casual, but I felt the severity woven in the words.
“You’re going to leave like this to have drinks with your friends?” That challenge only deepened as I dropped my attention to his cock that still strained against his jeans, the button popped but the zipper still closed.
“That interruption was probably for the best, don’t you think?”
Probably.
Okay, definitely with the way I was feeling right then.
But sometimes what was for the best didn’t come close to what we wanted most.
And I realized it then.
That’s what Theo had become.
What I wanted most.
When I didn’t answer him, he let go of a weighty exhale. “Not leaving you for drinks, Piper. We have…business.”
It was only the fragment of an explanation.
“What kind of business?” I felt desperate to know.
I watched his expression morph and rage.
A clash of ghosts and demons.
“Penance.”
I blinked, caught off guard by his answer. “Penance?”
His hand came to my cheek, and he brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “Warned you that I’m not a good man.”
“You aren’t or you weren’t?” It came out an appeal.
Begging him to be the man he’d shown me that he was.
Generous. Kind. Caring.
And we all made mistakes. We all did things we would do anything to take back.
“I’m not even close to being a good man,” he rumbled.
He hesitated, looking away for a beat, as if he were contemplating how far he could let me in. Finally, he returned his gaze to me. Black diamonds striking in the night. “Used to be a part of a brutal MC. We were bad, Piper. In the worst way.”
Surprised by his admission, I reared back a fraction, though my fingers were still burrowed into his shoulders.
I shouldn’t be shocked, should I? When I saw his motorcycles in his garage, I immediately knew they represented something far seedier than a simple love of riding.
“How bad?”
“I’ve done things that I couldn’t even begin to admit to you.”
Dangerous.
I knew.
So how had I never felt so safe?
“But it’s in the past?” I urged it. Begging him to confirm it was true.
“The affiliation with the MC? Yeah. But my sins continue.”
His expression tweaked. “Seems my worst ones are touching you like this. Having you this way. Wanting you as desperately as I do.”
I watched his features twist in agony when he admitted it.
Slammed by a rogue wave of guilt and grief.
My brow pinched, and my fingers sank deeper into his shoulders.
Holding on.
This time to keep him from floating away from me.
“What does that mean?” I whispered into the muted silence of the dim room.
Those black eyes darkened to pitch. An endless night sky that sucked me down into a bottomless abyss.
“It means I want you in a way that breaks the most important oath I’ve ever made.”
My spirit clutched with the misery that poured out of him.
“What oath?” I was a fool for asking it.
Begging for the pain.
Wanting him to give me access into who he was and the phantoms that howled underneath.
Theo warred, and the fingers of his left hand burrowed deeper into my waist, like he was trying to hold on. “I hurt the ones I’m supposed to love most, Piper. I’m…”
His jaw clenched, and I could hear his teeth grind through the pain. “I ruin everything because I’m not capable of truly loving that way. Not capable of truly giving myself that way.”
He uttered it like a confession.
Every line on his face contorted in agony as he traced his thumb over the apple of my cheek.
I wondered how he’d been convinced of it because I couldn’t begin to believe that about him.
“How can you think that?”
Black flames of misery burned in the depths of his eyes. “I was supposed to love her. Take care of her. And I failed her in the worst way.”
Grief squeezed my chest. My care for him was close to overwhelming.
Part of me wanted to beg him, “ Who ”.
The other part was sure I’d be crushed.
Thinking of him with someone else.
The way grief splintered through me, knowing this man had suffered so severely.
Stricken by gutting guilt over whatever secret he kept.
And I saw where the guilt lie right then.
It was guilt that his heart was tilting in my direction.
I was pretty sure mine was already there.
Begging him to meet with me.
My hand slipped to the side of his face. His trim beard scratched against my palm. “And I don’t believe you could ever let anyone down.”
His hand slid over the top of mine. “But you don’t know the things I’ve done.” Shame crawled through the coarse words.
“Maybe I want you to show me.”
Horror and disbelief rolled through him before his expression shifted in severity. “And that’s what I want from you, Piper. I want you to show me everything you’re hiding. Want you to let me hold it. Want you to understand the lengths I would go for you.”
“And I won’t put you in danger.” It was out before I could stop it.
Theo flinched, and every muscle in his body went rigid. “I need you to tell me what that means.”
My head shook at my stupidity. At the reckless words I had released.
I tried to retract it with a rushed, “It’s nothing.”
Theo’s hand tightened over mine. “It’s not nothing to me if it means something to you. I told you I’m strong enough to protect you. I know something is going on with you.”
A battle waged inside me. The terror I’d run from for so long against the promise in Theo’s unrelenting gaze.
“Tell me.” It was a soft demand.
One I shouldn’t heed but it was dropping off my tongue anyway. “I got involved with someone I shouldn’t have.”
Fury twitched through Theo’s body, yet he waited.
I tried to swallow around the ball of razors in my throat. “I’ve been running from him ever since.”
“Is he looking for you?”
My head shook. “I…I haven’t seen him in years.”
Not since I tried to settle three years ago. To lay down roots the way Nelly had been begging me to do again. Not since he’d caught up to me and…
Nausea spun in my stomach, and I knew Theo could feel me faltering.
The terror that wound through me.
“Tell me who, Piper. All I need is a name.”
Theo’s phone flashed again, and we both glanced at it.
River
En route.
My tongue stroked over my dried lips. “You should go.”
“Piper—”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure I can give you that, Theo. Not yet.” Maybe not ever. “I’m trying to move on from it. I just want…”
Peace.
I just wanted peace.
He hesitated, wanting to push for more, but I climbed off his lap and onto my feet.
My knees felt weak as I watched him push to standing.
A dark fortress in the night.
Body tall and foreboding and rippling with that stealthy strength.
He snagged his phone from the couch and stuffed it into his back pocket.
There were so many things I wanted to ask him. For details and reasons.
What made him dangerous.
If I should be afraid.
Who he’d obviously cared for so much and how he’d lost her.
If he’d really hold all of this for me.
If he ached for me the way I had come to ache for him.
I wondered if he heard the last one spiral through my brain because he shifted around to tower over me. He reached out and palmed the side of my neck, and he pushed his thumb under my chin to tip my head back.
“If I had a heart to give, I’d give it to you.”
Then he turned and strode out the door, clicking it softly shut behind him.