Chapter 12
Gage
“Please don’t!” Ami wails as I round the corner to the small kitchen.
Tears streak down her cheeks, painting her skin a blotchy, ashen gray.
Her eyes are wide and wild. She looks like an animal, caught in a trap and lashing out at the one who came to set her free.
“Please don’t touch me.” She thrusts the papers out like a shield, warding me off.
They crinkle in her death grip. “Please just sign them and go!”
I stand there, completely fucking mystified.
I have no idea what the fuck just happened.
One minute, she’s into it. Enjoying it. Taking as much pleasure from it as I am.
One minute I’m tasting the sweetest fucking pussy known to man, feasting on her like she’s my first and last meal, the only meal I’ve ever truly wanted, bringing us that much closer to pure fucking bliss, and the next, I’m nearly flat on my ass and she’s going apeshit, running at me like I just produced a cleaver from my back pocket and threatened to lob her limbs off.
She’s crying, sobbing, nearly hysterical, white-knuckling those papers like it’s all that stands between her and certain death, her shoulders shaking, her breaths heavy, her eyes wide and fearful, and I have no fucking clue what I’ve done.
I put out my hands in a gesture of peace, trying to talk her down, since it’s the only thing I can think to even fucking do at the moment.
“Ami…” I make sure my tone is gentle and soft. “Ami, come on. Put the papers down and let’s just talk.” I realize that sounds ridiculous. Like those papers aren’t papers at all, like she’s holding a loaded gun, pointing it straight at my chest.
“Talk?” she sobs. “No. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want… please.” Her lips press into a thin, hard line. “Please, just sign them. Sign them and go. You can forget about me then. About all of this. Please.” Her lips wobble all wrong and fresh tears pour down her ashen cheeks. “Please…”
I hate how small her voice is. How lost. How fucking broken. I hate looking at her looking at me like I’m the devil come to claim her soul.
“Yeah. Talk.” I don’t lower my hands, but I take a step closer.
She shrinks back up against the wall beside the table and the kitchen cabinets, not realizing that she’s literally backed herself into a corner.
Her eyes don’t dart around to take that fact in.
It doesn’t register. Instead, they stay locked on me.
“I- I don’t know what happened back there, but I never meant to hurt you.
Ever. I’m sorry. Please. Just try and calm down.
Take a deep breath. I’m not going to hurt you, Ami.
Never. I thought you were enjoying it. That you wanted it. I would never…” Fuck.
I raise my hand to my hair and run my hand roughly through it, enjoying the pinpricks of pain that burst over my scalp. It’s a welcome distraction, but it also reminds me of how glorious her fingers felt there, entwined in my hair, just a few short fucking minutes ago.
Before everything went to hell.
I rake my hand through my hair again, fisting the strands, and sigh in frustration.
It doesn’t help that I can still taste her juices on my lips and in my mouth.
Still taste her sweet perfection. That when I stare at her I can see her, her legs on my shoulders, her perfect, cunt pressed up against my mouth.
It was probably as close to heaven as I’m ever gonna get.
And now, a minute later, she’s staring at me wide eyed like a wild banshee. Like I’m the enemy.
“I’m not signing those damn papers until you tell me what the hell is going on,” I finally force myself to say.
I know that I’m a bastard. I’m going to hell already, so why not speed my way there?
“You were fine. You were into it. I didn’t force you to do any of that.
You kissed me back. I know what a woman looks like when she’s enjoying herself and you were definitely enjoying the living fuck out of yourself.
” I don’t want to get angry, but I can’t keep the pissed off tone out of my voice.
The death grip on those papers loosens just a little and Ami eyes me like I’m going to take a bite out of her. I want to, but not in the way she probably thinks. Okay, maybe in the way she thinks… but I swear she’d enjoy it.
Slowly, she tips her chin up defiantly, finding her spirit once again. Transforming from the fearful, timid creature backed into a corner to the wild, furious, spitfire I knew she could be.
And fuck me.
My cock really enjoys watching the transformation. Watching her come to life. Watching the fire spark in her eyes like lightning streaking across a black sky.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” she snarls, crinkling the papers when she flaps them at me.
“You came here to sign them. So sign. I’ll get you a pen.
That—what happened back there—wasn’t part of the plan.
What happened at your place was not part of the plan.
There isn’t any room for that between us. Not before. Not now.”
I bite down so hard on the inside of my cheek to keep a growl locked in my throat that I taste a flood of copper.
I swallow it down, but tasting my blood only makes me crave hers.
It makes me want to brutalize her mouth again, nip her lips and devour her until she’s begging for me to take her somewhere else, just to ease the pain and the pressure.
I want to take her to her bed, spread her wide, and feast on her cunt until we’re both exhausted from the countless orgasms. It makes me want to fuck up into her, to find out how tight and hot she’d feel around my cock.
To feel the tremors and the gasps of her muscles as she comes, milking my dick inside of her.
Fuck.
I give my head a shake and she stares at me, her expression guarded, like she knows exactly what I’m thinking. Of course she knows that I’m thinking. I’m sure my face is advertising it like a damn billboard with a set of flashing neon lights.
“Not until you tell me what the hell just happened.”
She lets out an exasperated sigh. She pushes off the wall, but she’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to let her get away from me. Not until she answers me. Because no one goes from nearly orgasming one second to looking like they’ve seen the ghost of their dead grandmother the next.
“Nothing happened,” Ami insists. She looks like she wants to plant her hands on my chest and shove me out of the way, but I’m not gonna let that happen. I’m not budging this time. I’m not letting her run out on me. I’m not tracking her down for a second time.
“Something happened. I’m not signing those papers until you tell me what made you go batshit crazy, not once, but twice.”
“Nothing.” Her eyes dart around the room like she’s looking for her white knight to ride in and save her.
Also spoiler alert. There isn’t one coming.
I might not be a knight. I might be more like a villain, especially in this story, in my own story, in any story, but she doesn’t need saving from me.
“It was something. Are you gonna tell me or do I have to walk out of here without signing and have you come all the way back to Helena, your tail tucked between your legs, to get the closure you obviously need?”
I love watching those flames devour her eyes. Her beautiful face crumples, her nostrils flaring.
“Me? This isn’t just about me!” She darts forward and slams the stack of papers to my chest like she’s pinning them to the wall.
Her eyelid ticks and a vein jumps on her forehead.
“This is about you! It’s about getting us both out of a mess that your club and my father got us into!
It’s about not having a choice then, unless we wanted our clubs to go to war, but having one now.
It’s about taking back everything that was stolen from us.
You should want to sign this as badly as I do. ”
I blink at her, and I can tell how infuriating it is. “I don’t, though.”
That vein on her forehead throbs angrily. “Why did you even come here then? You said you wanted to sign. You made me think that you were going to act like a decent human being and do what was right. The only thing that actually makes sense.”
“That was before I kissed you.”
“What?” Her eyes go so wide they’re like to saucers in her head.
“I kissed you. Or rather, you kissed me. You might try to stand there and lie to me, but I know you felt it. What I felt.”
“And what was that?”
“I don’t know. I know that I fucking liked it though. I know that you did too. So I want you to tell me now, and don’t fucking lie to me, Ami, is there someone else?”
Her eyes flick away, and it’s the only tell that I need. I know that whatever she’s going to say to me next is going to be a bald-ass lie, and I can’t stand to hear that shit, so I don’t give her the chance.
“There isn’t. There isn’t anyone, but you made me think there was.”
“I never made you think anything. I never said there was. What you chose to believe isn’t my problem.”
“No?” I arch a brow. “Has there been anyone since you left? I asked you before, but I didn’t ask you the right way, and that damn well is my problem, but I’m asking you now, the right way.
I’m not asking you as a prick or a piece of shit.
I’m not asking you to piss you off. I just want to know.
Have you been with anyone else since that day? ”
“Since what day?”
“Since the wedding.”
“What wedding? Because the last time I checked, that day was just us being thrust together by two opposing forces. We were like prisoners there. It wasn’t a wedding.”
“That’s just semantics. I want you to tell me. Tell me and I’ll sign your papers. Tell me honestly and I’ll sign them and leave, and you won’t hear from me again.”
Ami squares her shoulders, looking more confident by the second.
“Tell me why you want to know so badly. What does it matter? I wouldn’t care if you were with someone else?
” The weird sheen in her eyes, and the way they flick over my shoulder again, refusing to focus on me, tell me that she’s a liar. And a terrible one at that.
“Fine. No. No, I haven’t been with anyone, but it wasn’t because you meant anything. It was just that I was busy. With school and work. I didn’t have time for any of that bullshit.”
“And you just happened to outgrow random hook ups?”
Her face pales and I regret the jab. I watch her bite down on her bottom lip. “You said that you’d sign and leave if I told you. So sign. And leave.”
“Not until you tell me what the hell happened back in the living room. And at my house. Then I’ll go.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” she snaps as her head cranks up.
“We didn’t have a deal. We didn’t fucking shake or pinkie promise or any of that bullshit.
” I grab the papers away from her and throw them onto the table.
“Tell me. Tell me and I’m gone. I’ll swear it to you this time.
You tell me. You tell me honestly and I’m out the door.
You won’t have to see me again. We’ll call it even.
I won’t blame you for not thinking twice about leaving.
I’ll give you that absolution and you can get on with your life. Move on.”
What I don’t say is see other people, because that shit is never going to happen. Not if I have anything to say about it. And I’m a liar. I’m a fucking liar. Obviously, my word means shit because I don’t plan on leaving her alone. I’m not gonna leave her alone. I’m not gonna let her go.
The silence that fills up the kitchen is thick and brutal. Choking and cloying. Ami’s eyes finally swivel back to mine and the trust there feels like someone just ripped my heart out and shit-kicked it all over the ground.
The fresh tears shock the hell out of me.
It takes all my strength to keep my hands at my sides and not grip Ami’s face.
I want to kiss those tears away when she blinks and they fall, tracking down her cheeks in wet, silvery tracks.
Her lips quiver and I want to kiss them, to ease the ache that I see mirrored in her eyes and the pain blanketing her face.
I want my touch to banish her agony, but I know that it isn’t possible.
I realize that if I reach out, she’ll run.
That she’ll just keep putting distance between us, because she needs it.
I half expect her to lie.
So I’m shocked as fuck when she grips the hem of her dress in her palms, her knuckles white again as she balls them in the dark fabric. She closes her eyes, like she can’t bear to look at me. Or like she can’t bear to look at me looking at her.
I have no idea what she’s doing. Why she suddenly feels the need to disrobe when every single time I’ve tried to go there, she’s run from me like I’ve just revealed that I’m some kind of sick as fuck killer with a penchant for hiding bodies under the floorboards.
I suck in a breath and wait. Say nothing. If she wants to take her damn dress off to explain this shit to me, then I’ll fucking stand here like a tree and listen.
The hem of her cotton dress rises above her knees, brushes her thighs, slides past, baring herself to me.
I try really fucking hard not to focus on her sex, which is still glistening and swollen.
I try extremely hard not to ask her what the devil game she’s playing with me, because if it’s about control and I’m supposed to resist, it sure as fuck is going to backfire right into her face in a matter of seconds.
She keeps going though, keeps lifting that dress past her hips and then I see it.
The black that isn’t supposed to be there.
The letters. Thick. Blocky. Crude. Inked into the porcelain fine skin of her stomach by a lilting hand belonging to a madman because only a goddamn lunatic would do something like that. Would fucking dare.
As my eyes focus on the letters, as they make out the word, I have one single thought and one single thought only.
Whoever did that to her is a dead fucking man.