CHAPTER TWELVE
Layla
“How can you tell something hurts?” he asks, setting his glass down after taking a long drink.
I shrug as I take a sip. God that’s good, after being out in that heat.
I must take too big a mouthful because a tiny bit spills from my glass and lands on my chest. One lone droplet of water trickles its way into my white tank top between my breasts.
I use my middle finger to scoop it up before it falls any further and move to wipe it on the napkin, but Sean is faster.
He reaches out and swipes my hand up to his lips, bringing my middle finger into his mouth.
His hot tongue pulses against the underside, and I clench my thighs together as my breathing increases with his simple yet barbaric action.
“We’re in the middle of a restaurant, for God’s sake,” I whisper, checking to see if anyone is looking.
He just smirks at me, before pulling my finger from his mouth with a slight pop.
It’s insanely erotic. Absolutely overbearing.
Yet I have to physically hold in a moan—and the worst part is, I didn’t even try to stop him.
When he places my hand back down on the table, I blink rapidly, trying to regain my composure, wondering if I’m hallucinating again.
He isn’t even shaken. Alarm bells fire off in my head. This is not normal.
“Well?” he says.
“Well?” I ask, totally out of it.
“How do you know something hurts?” he asks. I blink again.
“Oh, um … I could tell by the way you tensed up on your bike, and the face you made just now when you changed positions.” I lower my eyes. “I’m assuming from the scar on your back that’s where the pain is?” I add, still feeling a little self-conscious about what happened last night.
Sean takes a sip of his own drink. “Yeah, my back bothers me sometimes.”
I look at him expectantly.
“I was an active-duty Marine,” he starts.
I nod, having gathered something like that from the dog tags.
“I was injured during my last tour, and I suffered from a slipped disc among other things. The scar isn’t from that though. When our Humvee went end over end, glass broke and it cut me. It cut me here too.” He holds his t-shirt up and shows me another large scar across his abs.
My mouth falls slack for a full second because holy shit, those abs. I close it and look back up to meet his eyes, momentarily stunned stupid by his body.
“Oh …” I mutter, forcing myself into professional mode. “What kind of treatment have you had?”
The server comes back with our meals and places them in front of us.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asks Sean.
“No, we’re all good,” he says, sending her on her way, again without taking his eyes off me.
He takes a big bite of the delicious-looking burger and I follow suit. Damn. So good.
“Months of physio after I got home,” he says around chewing. “I fucked up my arm pretty good too. Broke it in two places and cut it to shit, so I was sort of limited on what I could do. It’s fine now but my back still bothers me from time to time, and I tweaked it last week.”
“What’d you do to it last week?” I ask, popping a fry into my mouth.
He just takes another bite, his eyes housing an evil sort of glint.
“We don’t know each other that well yet,” he says simply.
A chill runs down the length of my spine, and I’m reminded of my Google search in class this morning—What is the job of a Sergeant at Arms?
—which told me that Sean has to be willing to do anything to protect his club, but especially his president, so I know this man in front of me is very much capable of violence.
Yet in this setting, he seems more calm and controlled than any man I think I’ve ever met.
“Did they offer you meds?” I ask, dodging the visions of him as that violent persona.
He shakes his head. “I don’t take that sorta shit, not even Tylenol.”
I nod again. Noted, no drugs.
“Have you ever tried a deep tissue massage?” I ask, dipping another one of my thick-cut fries into the really good house-made sauce.
Sean looks up. “I don’t like people’s hands on me, so no,” he mutters, taking another bite. I watch him closely, thinking of the times he’s let me touch him.
“There are stretches, daily yoga practices, even foods and natural things you can take that promote healing.”
He looks at me in silence while he chews, and I realize that when he focuses like this and watches my expression, it makes my palms sweat.
“It can really help. It’s what I study, but something tells me you already know that,” I offer nervously.
He leans back. “Mmm-hmm,” he answers noncommittally. “Why haven’t you accepted your offer yet for Kinesiology?”
“I swear …” I mutter, shaking my head. “How do you—?”
Sean leans a little closer. “To be clear right now so there’s no guessing involved … I know everything about you.”
I hate the rush that courses through my veins with those words and how much I like the idea that he wants to know everything about me.
“How?” I ask.
“We have someone who gathers information for us,” he says simply as he eats.
“Most vague answer ever,” I comment, with a half-smirk. Sean shrugs.
“Before I decided I wanted to … spend more time with you, I had to know about you, and now I know,” he states, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I can’t afford it,” I blurt, returning his honesty. “Kinesiology, I can’t afford it.”
I expect to see the same look of pity my parents’ church friends offer me, but instead Sean’s face contorts in confusion.
“You live in the nicest part of town, your father earned a strong six-figure salary. So, poor? That just doesn’t add up,” he retorts. It’s not a judgment, it’s simply an assessment.
I push down years of bottled-up anger at the image my parents portrayed.
“Your investigator didn’t find out everything then, did they?” I fold my arms over my chest as he looks at me questioningly.
He just takes another bite, waiting for me to continue.
“My parents’ life was a lie. They died and I inherited nothing but my father’s financial problems and the grief of losing my mother, who was my best friend.
I can barely cover my tuition for my last semester so I can graduate, and I’m working as many hours as I can,” I bite out with a sigh.
“All because a man wearing a cut, most likely from a club just like yours, robbed me of my parents and left me with my father’s sham of a life.
” I force myself to soften my tone, trying not to sound so hostile.
If nothing else, I’m fairly certain Sean wasn’t my parents’ killer.
“According to the police, it was all for a measly four hundred and eighty-three dollars,” I add. “They died for nothing.”
Sean takes me by surprise and leans in, placing his heavy, warm hand over mine, I inadvertently take a deeper, more settled breath. “I didn’t dig into their finances, but I saw the address of your home. There are no poor families in that part of town.”
He’s just assuming what everyone else does and I can’t fault him for that, but suddenly I’m no longer hungry. I don’t talk about my mother or how much I miss her every single day with anyone, and yet here I am, talking about my parents to a total stranger.
“You were close.” He says it like a statement, and I feel the sting of tears in my eyes, because I can’t actually remember the last time someone spoke about them. My brother Dell rarely does.
A tear spills over my cheek, and I pull my hand free to swipe it away.
“To my mother, yes. She was my best friend, but she … wasn’t strong enough to leave until it was too late,” I tell him, struggling to hold back the tears that so desperately want to come.
“I can assure you that it wasn’t a member of our club who took the lives of your parents.”
We sit in an oddly comfortable silence for a beat. “We don’t rob public places, and we don’t kill innocents. It’s not our MO.”
I look away from his direct gaze, but for some reason I believe him.
A few more moments of silence pass. Sean leans back again, and as I eat a few more fries, I can feel his eyes on me. Like the wheels in his head are turning.
“You’re going to work for me.” It’s not a question; he states it like a command. “You need help with your tuition and this works perfectly.”
My eyes flick to his. “I will not be working for your club.” A million thoughts flood my mind, but Sean just calmly shakes his head.
“I said you’re going to work for me. Not my club. You need the money, and I would just give it to you, but in my experience, people feel better about taking money if they feel they’ve earned it.”
“I would never take it anyway,” I say defiantly. “There’s no such thing as free money.”
He nods. “Smart girl. But this will be a job, and if it helps with the cost of your schooling, then it’s a win-win.”
“What could I possibly do for you?” I say. I am the slightest bit curious, and as much as I want to fight it, the idea of seeing him again is too appealing to turn down.
“I need help healing my back, as you pointed out.”
“I thought you didn’t like hands on you,” I retort.
Sean watches me carefully. “I’d allow your hands on me, little dove.”
I eye him up. “Is this just your way of getting me to spend time with you?” I ask, glad to be free of the heavier conversation about my parents. “Because, I’ll be honest, all I have time for is work and school. I don’t even have time to do my laundry or clean my house.”
“I can work around your schedule.” He pops the last bit of his burger into his mouth.
“And what about your schedule? Do you work?” I bite my lip. “Aside from what you do with your club?”
He nods. “I do, but it’s very … flexible.”
I can’t for the life of me guess what he would do for a living.
Bodyguard?
Contract killer?
“I do want to spend time with you, and you’ll learn very quickly, Layla … I always get what I want.”
I shrink a little with his words because they’re so commanding.