Chapter 4
Gage
I don’t know much about Ami at all, but I know it’s only a matter of time before she shows up at my door with a fresh set of papers. I know that she’ll piss me off, because she seems to do that naturally, and that I’ll piss her off, because she’s always had a hate on for me, even before she met me.
It’s been two days since I watered her last set of papers like they were seeds needing a good dousing. I know she’s staying at Wraith and Leena’s. He was kind enough to text me to fill me in on the fact that she’d received a fax from her lawyer that afternoon.
Normally I’m done work by five or six. I’m a janitor, and while it’s not glamorous, it’s an important part of our club and I take pride in it.
I clean up our warehouses in Jacksonville on rotation as well.
Help with inventory and accounting for product.
It’s not just some boring ass janitor job where I have to scrub toilets all day.
Steel and Edge gave me a purpose when I joined The Riders, and even if I did have to scrub toilets all day, every day, I would happily do it.
Even though I could have finished early, I linger for hours at the clubhouse, doing jobs that are overkill. I scrub the grout on the floor tiles, wash down walls, take my time inspecting furniture and tightening screws and getting to a chair that I’ve been putting off forever that was all wobbly.
It stands straight and proud when I’m done with it.
After I peel out of my coveralls and leave the clubhouse, it’s past seven.
The night is warm and sticky, like most evenings are in Florida.
It’s the perfect night for a ride. I’ve never enjoyed the open road more.
I take my time at that too, letting the rushing air clear my mind.
I inhale it into my lungs, filling them full over and over again, just thankful to fucking be alive.
I haven’t always been. Thankful. Or really alive. But tonight I am.
I let the pleasure of the fresh air, the growling power of my bike between my legs, and the freedom that comes with riding. I enjoy it so much that when I pull up to the house and I find Ami perched on the steps again, like I knew she would be, I’m not even that pissed off.
I am ready to spar, though. She wants me to sign those papers? I’m not going down easy. I’m going to make her work for it. Pay for it. Suffer through this like I’ve suffered for the year since she’s been gone. And then? After it’s all said and done? I’m still not gonna sign those fucking things.
She stands when she sees me park the bike. She has the nerve to cross her arms, and it makes her look bossy as fuck. Her face looks pissed off as fuck too—her features all puckered and screwed up like she ate a truckload of lemons for dinner.
My cock jumps at the sight of her. She might be prissy and pissed, but red rides high on her cheeks, flushing her face prettily. Her eyes are wide, her lips lacquered in a scarlet hue, and the way she has her arms crossed over her chest, she’s pushing her lush tits sky high.
I wonder if she knows how fucking hot she is at the moment.
I also wonder how that shade of scarlet would look wrapped around my cock.
I don’t hate myself for thinking it. If I could, I’d fuck the shit out of her, right there on the porch, like I wanted to do the last time she was standing there.
I want all the neighbors to know that my wife is back.
I want her to scream my name while she claws deep trenches in my back.
I want everyone to know that this time, she’s not getting away so easily.
Fuck, she’s not going to get away at all.
“Wraith said you’d be off at five,” she hisses, ever the feral wildcat.
“Yeah.” I run a hand through my hair, and she watches me do it, her eyes narrowing to tiny slits. “Normally I am. I had some extra special shit to get done, just for tonight. Thought I’d make an exception.”
Of course she catches my drift, and when her top teeth sink into her lower lip and she practically vibrates with the need to restrain herself from screaming at me, my balls ache.
Yeah. I might be a fucked up prick, but I’d like to see her steaming and out of control.
I’d love a photo of her taken while she’s in the throes of passion, or after, when the knife-like sharpness of her features has softened into something akin to tenderness. She’d be even more beautiful then.
“Since you seem to have a hate on for me,” Ami snarls, nostrils flaring. “Why don’t you just sign the damn papers?”
“Papers?” I shrug, purposely obtuse. I don’t miss how her teeth sink down into her lower lip again as she battles not to fling insults at me. “I thought that when I pissed on them that was that.”
She chews her lip harder, making it swollen and even more lush. “I got another set.”
“Of course you did. How much does that lawyer cost you, Ami? You know, you could have talked to me first. Picked up the phone. Tried calling or even sent a text. Came back once in a fucking while. It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper. Or maybe The Riders are paying for that lawyer too?”
She’s finally reached her breaking point and it’s a thing to behold.
She releases her lip and swollen or not, her mouth flattens out into a thin line.
Her brows draw together in an angry knit.
Her nostrils go on flaring and her eyes burn, the flames of rage licking up her irises and blowing her pupils.
Fuck. Me.
If only she knew how fucking hot she was trying not to be fucking hot.
My cock hardens to the point of granite, and I force a grin instead of a grimace, glad that I’m wearing denim and it goes a long way to hiding inappropriate erections popped for my beautiful, bitchy, feral wife.
“You obviously don’t want me around. We have nothing to say to each other.
” She whips a stack of papers out from her side, her hand clutched around them like a claw, the knuckles white with the force.
She’s actually made a dent in that thick stack with the strength of her grip, which is nothing short of impressive. “So sign the fucking papers, Gage.”
I stride across the lawn, eating it up in a few short seconds. Ami doesn’t wilt at the big brute coming her way. She stands up to me, squaring her jaw and tilting her little chin to look up the extra foot separating us. She’s like a warrior goddess ready for battle.
I’d like to tear her jeans and her purple tank off and do battle with her, alright.
I want to spar with her while I bite into her lips. Have her scream and rage at me while I take her nipples into my mouth and palm her pretty tits. Want her to yell and rage at me as I fuck up into her and she rakes her nails down my back in retribution.
She stares up at me, unblinking, but a flush spreads across her pretty pale skin, painting her cheekbones and nose and when she blinks, finally, I realize that she’s not as unaffected as she pretends to be.
She’s no robot. No machine. She’s flesh and blood and she’s my wife and damn me, despite everything she’s done, everything that happened, I fucking want her.
“No.”
“No, what?” she spits, furious. “No, fucking what?”
“No. No, I’m not signing the papers. No, I’m not letting you go back to Tampa.
No you don’t just get to do whatever the hell you want anymore and expect my club to pay for it.
No, I won’t let you go on living your life however you choose without ever once looking back.
No, I’ll never forgive you for how you left.
Yes, yes, I fucking hate you sometimes. Yes, there are parts of me that want to destroy you.
Yes, you’re the bitch who tried to ruin my life, and yes, I’m a goddamn idiot because yes, I still fucking want you. ”
“W-want me?” she pants, taking a step back. She keeps backing up, until her shoulders slam into the siding of the house. The pulse point at her neck throbs like it’s going to tear out of her skin. “We were married for all of five seconds. You can’t want me.”
I advance on her, all two hundred and fifty pounds of bulk.
I know I must look like a devil, my black hair mussed and wild from my ride, my features hard and sharp, my eyes burning into her like I could reach right through her and steal her soul and keep it with me for eternity.
Not as punishment for her sins, but because I fucking want it.
I want all of her. Her body. Her soul. Her spirit.
Ever since the second I saw her.
Her actions, the betrayal, the passing of time—it only made it worse. All of it. The gnawing ache sawing at my bones, the raw wounds that she tore open in my chest, the festering sickness that my desire for her brews in the pit of my stomach.
I shouldn’t want her, but I do.
I shouldn’t ache for her, burn for her, spend sleepless nights tossing and turning, wondering what the fuck she’s doing and who she’s doing it with, but I do, and I have.
It’s pathetic, and a part of my black soul wants her to pay for it.
For the torture she’s caused me. For the hell she’s put me through these past years.
For fucking leaving me like I was the one who wronged her.
“I do,” I breathe, my body mere inches from hers.
Her chest heaves with every breath, so very close to mine, only a few inches away.
She’s so close that I know she can feel the heat radiating off my body.
She doesn’t cower, even though I can tell she wants to.
She just presses herself even flatter against the house and stares back at me, her eyes black pits.
I want to own that anger. Bridle that rage. Possess her. Make her truly mine, not just by law, but by everything, in every fucking way.
“If you’re asking me to apologize, I’m not sorry,” she spits, venom dripping from every lethal word. “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry that I lied. I’m not sorry that I left. I’m not sorry that I chose to live my life on my own terms. Finally. I’m not sorry for any of it. For. One. Single. Second.”
There’s a strange shuffle, like the wind picked up and is blowing discarded trash on the street behind me, but then I give my head a shake, erase her honeyed scent from my nose and her wild, blazing eyes from my heat addled, desire fogged brain, I realize it’s those damn papers.
I’ve spent years of my life telling myself I’m not a monster.
That I’ll never fucking be him, but in that instant, when my eyes flick down to those motherfucking papers clenched like a lifeline in her hand, a shield from me and everything I stand for, everything I’ve tried so hard to be and never, ever to be or repeat, I just lose it.
I snap, letting out an inhuman roar of rage that causes Ami to turn her face and shrink back against the house in fear.
She presses her cheek up against the cold siding as if it could shield her from me.
Fucking good. I want her to be afraid of me.
Of what I can do to her. Of all the ways I could destroy her the same way she’s destroyed the parts of myself that I still haven’t managed to piece back together after she bust the dam and all the shit came flooding out of the careful confines I’d packed it so neatly into over the past decade.
I tear those papers from her hand and storm away, my anger like the black cloud of a thunderstorm. The kind with hail, torrential rains, and winds that come with the fury of an angry god to sweep away all that lies so foolishly in its path.
I stomp off to the backyard, grabbing a can of gas from beside the house on my way back. It’s the reserves for my bike, just a small can, but it’ll fucking do.
I have a lighter in my pocket. Even though I don’t smoke much of anything anymore, I find it handy to keep it there, a harmless souvenir from my past that I stow along with the pocketknife I’ve had for years, my wallet, and my phone.
“What are you doing?” Ami rounds the corner, screaming, as I soak her precious papers in gas. I pour on far too much and I keep going, emptying the can out.
She has enough sense to understand that I’m not messing around and jumps back with a choked scream strangled in her pretty little throat.
I don’t watch her as I pull the lighter from my pocket.
I don’t step back or use common sense. I don’t give a fuck about my own safety or the fact that I look like a deranged demon out there.
I flick the lighter and all it takes is a single spark and those godforsaken papers ignite with a roar that steals my breath.
Literally, because my face is basically in the damn flames.
I’m sure that Ami would say it’s an improvement, but unfortunately for her, I jump back, getting the hell out of the way before those flames consume not just her request for a divorce, but me as well.
I watch with sadistic pleasure as the pages curl and dance in the red-orange flames. Within a few seconds, they’re completely consumed, a great ball of angry fire, an inferno that transforms them, renders them to little more than ash.
When I whirl, I find Ami wide eyed, her mouth hanging open. She gapes at me like she can’t really believe I just acted like a totally crazed pyro. She shakes her head from side to side, as if that’s enough to deny me, deny what she’s starting to figure out.
Just in case she hasn’t quite got there yet, and because I’ve always prided myself in being a gentleman, I give her a helping hand.
“I will never sign that shit. Ever. I don’t care that you’ve been gone for a year. It could have been a hundred, a thousand, and it wouldn’t have changed anything. You. Belong. With. Me.”