Chapter Twenty
I was losing control. My dick painful against my jeans as I pushed up between her legs, her pussy naked and wet underneath me.
Her frame was rounder now, no ribs sticking out like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.
And those tits had filled deliciously into something so curvy I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Round, full, natural, and still perky.
She closed her eyes again as I ground my hips into her swollen pussy, pressing the denim-covered erection into her. A leg crooked around my back, pulling me closer, and now I could almost feel the heat from between her legs against my covered cock.
Breathing slowly, I steadied myself. Fighting the need to rip my pants off and plunge straight inside her. But the urge was getting real. Uncontrollable.
I sat back on my haunches, watching the slight frown on her mouth as I pulled away from her and she pushed up onto her elbows, following me.
Her tits moved, dropping with a little bob and a fresh surge of blood hit my groin hard.
She’d always been incredible to look at.
In every way. But she wore thirteen years so well, and womanhood really fucking suited her.
My mouth watered like a starving man looking at a feast. Fuck it.
I popped the button open on my jeans, easing the material off my waist. Sophie’s eyes tracked my hands as I pushed the denim down my hips.
As my cock sprang free, her expression changed, her mouth pulling into an ‘O’ but no sound escaping, and her eyes fixed on me, hard as a fucking rock and as pierced as my right ear.
“Ry,” she whispered, the hint of a waiver just there in her words.
“Told you I’d changed, Soph,” I mumbled, watching the shock spread across her face. “Everywhere.”
She swallowed, her throat bobbing like there was a golf ball in there, her eyes not moving.
“Why?” she breathed.
“Because I needed to feel. Started with one. Made a collection,” I shrugged.
“And those help?” Her eyes still hadn’t made it to my face.
“They do.”
“They look…extreme.” Still, her gaze didn’t move.
“Guess so. Easier than admitting sex never felt good until I started adding these.”
“Really?” I detected a note in her voice.
“Not since you. Nothing felt the same again. I just felt numb. Going through the motions. These help me concentrate on the feeling, keep my mind anchored.”
“Did they hurt?”
“Yes, when I got them done. I liked the pain. Something to hold onto. Focus on.”
Now she looked at me, her face snapping up to mine, her head tilted. Thank fuck she was an emergency doctor and not a fucking shrink, but I still felt like she was analysing me all the same.
“Will they hurt me?” she asked suddenly, her voice steady, but I saw the uncertainty in those grey eyes.
“They can do. If you’re not wet enough. Or you want it to.”
She opened her mouth, something sitting on her tongue but not coming out. I wrapped my fingers round the base of my shaft, just below the last rung.
“Shit, Ryan,” she said, her eyes dropping to where my hand clasped my shaft.
I reached forward, dragging at her wrist, moving it towards my cock but not forcing her to touch me.
She didn’t move back. But she didn’t relax her fingers from the fist they were clenched in.
Like she was scared to move in case she touched one of the barbells slicing through the skin on the underside of my shaft.
“They don’t bite,” I mumbled, pulling her gaze to me. “But I might.”
Sophie didn’t smile, just looked at me with wide eyes. Fuck.
“You can touch me,” I urged.
She shook her head, and when she looked up at me again, she let go of her lip.
I knew that look. I’d seen it so many times.
Anxiety. Uncertainty. Although she wouldn’t show it in her eyes.
She was too conditioned. But I knew her too well.
Remembered her too much. Remembered how she used to touch me all those years ago.
And now she was hesitant. Not pliant and eager like she’d been moments ago.
“I…err…” she started.
Behind me, a noise started. Shrill and loud, the vibrations travelling across the old floorboards under the thick carpet. I knew the ringtone.
Saved by my brothers. Even though they didn’t know it.
“Sorry, Soph. I need to get that.” But I wasn’t sorry. I was saved from having to stare into the eyes of the woman I loved and see her recoil at looking at me.
I stepped over my clothes and dug out the mobile from the leather jacket dumped on the floor, pushing the handset to my ear.
“Yeah, Indie. On my way.”
I scooped my hoodie off the floor, pulling it over me, my dick still hard, the Jacobs’ Ladder still on display. Sophie’s eyes tracked every movement from the sofa.
“I have to go, Soph.” My voice grumbled low in the charged silence around us.
She nodded silently.
I stepped into my jeans, feeling her eyes move with me as I pulled the material up my legs before tucking myself back into my trousers.
My cock rubbed against the denim, the piercings pulling at the skin, and I tried to ignore the sensation and the woman sitting naked on the couch in front of me.
Fucking club business. But that’s what it was, and I was needed elsewhere.
“Can I see you again?”
For a moment, she didn’t respond. Then, slowly, she nodded, and relief flooded through me. I clicked open the screen on my mobile and pushed it towards her.
“Stick your number in there, Grey,” I instructed, trying to keep the elation out of my voice and not look like a little boy getting excited over his first girlfriend, even if that’s all I still was.
Sophie didn’t move.
“It’s still the same, Ry,” she said quietly. “I never changed it. Just like you didn’t. Just in case you tried to find me again.”
Emotions hit me like a psychotic event. My chest swelling with happiness that she’d always thought about me.
Then pressure as guilt kicked me in the ribs, that I should have fought harder than sending letters I knew she wasn’t getting.
And now dread. Dread that I’d changed too much for her.
That every new thing she learned about me took her too far away from the memories of what we had and stopped her making new.
I saw the uncertainty in her eyes at the piercings in my cock.
At the ink that stained my skin. At the hole in my earlobe and the little silver ring in my lip.
“I remember it,” I said eventually, watching her reaction.
A faint smile. A little breath like she had been tense. I remembered, and now she knew. Now I only hoped she remembered how good we were together.
*****
The crumbling car park in the run-down industrial estate was as abandoned as half the buildings.
Heavy industries that had slowly dwindled.
Shipbuilding, iron, steel, and all the smaller trades that had clung on in their shadow.
Fabrication shops. Marine engineers. Old print works with faded signage still clinging to brick like they hadn’t realised they were dead yet.
Rollers pulled down and never lifted again, some hanging crooked where the tracks had given up.
Rust had eaten through doors and fencing, creeping over everything like it had claimed the place for itself.
And here three of us sat on our bikes waiting right in the middle of an industrial graveyard.
We spotted his headlights before we could see or hear him, pinpricks of light swelling as he got closer.
Eventually, the engine whined, high and thin, and sharp like nails down a fucking blackboard.
It was stark in the early hours, nothing like a proper engine.
No weight to it. No presence. Just a frantic, overworked scream like it had something to prove.
I rolled my shoulders slightly, the deep, steady thrum of the Triumph Rocket sitting solid beneath me, and I almost felt sorry for the thing the Viking rode. Almost.
Then, without a nod or any other communication, the bikes all shut off simultaneously, and silence descended on us like an oppression.
The Viking pulled his helmet off, the visor on the full-face lid as black as night, hiding the man underneath who worked in the shadows.
He shook his hair free from where he’d tucked it under the black leather bike jacket, pale blond catching under the dullest streetlight on the industrial estate.
It gave off an almost orange glow. Stubborn and sedentary, the only survivor.
But it lit the Viking up like he was made of gold.
I concentrated hard on not rolling my eyes right into the very back of my skull.
The man was as tattooed as me. Every inch of skin covered apart from our faces.
But that was our only similarity. He was slim and shorter.
I had nearly five inches on him at least, and more in width.
He’d been a King too, at one point. Indie’s cousin.
Son of a founding member. And they were the two reasons why he wasn’t dead, only exiled.
But even that was in question. I’d seen the fucker more times over the last year than I’d fucking needed. And here we were again.
“What you got for me, V?” Indie grunted into the cold, still air around us.
“Couple of bits of intel.”
“Jazz?” Fury asked.
“Her later.”
“Police know too much,” the Viking continued.
“We have a leak,” Indie acknowledged.
“Yeah. You told me. But this is more than a leak. Someone in your club is selling you fuckers out.”
I glanced at Indie, but he didn’t look in my direction, only at the man head to toe in leather with his blond hair hanging loose around his shoulders.
“This one knows too much. I was tailed. Took a whole lot of fucking fuel to lose them,” V continued. “Unmarked cars. Professional looking stuff. This isn’t some one-force operation. This is bigger. National Crime Agency sort of big.”
The Viking’s gaze changed, moving to Fury.
“Jake got close to the club again, didn’t he?”
Fury said nothing, just stared at the exiled member like he wasn’t sure whether to kill him on the spot. I knew that look. I’d seen it many times before.
“Could it be Jake, Fury?” Indie asked.
For a moment the air between us stilled like we’d suddenly been sucked into a vacuum. No background noise. No movement. All I could hear was the sound of my own heart and even that wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate to beat right now.
“I’ll kill him.” The words came out loud in that vacuum. “If we find out it’s him. I’ll kill him.” Softer this time. Now it wasn’t anger. Just resignation.
“He’s your brother, Fury,” Indie cautioned.
“Only by blood. Not by patch. If he’s the leak. If somehow, he’s responsible. I will be the one to kill him.” Then he turned to our president. “But I need to be sure, Indie.”
Indie nodded, moving his attention back to the Viking.
“Can you be sure?”
“Not yet. But I’ll get the confirmation you need.”
The Viking’s face had tightened. A solemnity replacing the smugness of before. He'd been out of the club years, but he hadn’t forgotten what this all meant.
“I found Jazz,” he said quietly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing just yet.” Indie’s voice was quiet. “Keep eyes on her if you can. I want to know what that Rat is up to. The rest of them have gone to ground. If he’s in contact with them, I want to know about it.”
The Viking nodded, his hair moving with him.
Beside me, Fury was quiet, and I could almost feel the weight that had descended onto his shoulders.
He looked so like his mother right then.
Mamma Dot. As true a member as the rest of us.
Who’d lost more than any of us, and still she stood by the club. Us. Bile rose in my throat.