Chapter Twenty-Two
Dixon
“Not that I don’t appreciate the way your ass fills those jeans, princess, but we have a job to do.”
“You think this is about sex?”
Now I’m even more suspicious. She’s using that tone that I’ve only heard warnings about from other brothers who have ol’ ladies, and it means one thing: tread real fucking lightly. Has she decided to throw away our plan, and instead she’s going to kill me? I don’t know, but there is one thing I know for sure: she looks damn fine in those jeans and it’s jarring as hell having an erection while wondering if she’s going to kill me.
“It’s not? You literally just said you wanted to fuck me.”
“Metaphorically. This is about something else entirely. See, I know what you said to Reggie. Did you mean it?”
“What are you talking about? I told him I was going to teach those guys a lesson. That’s it.”
She reaches inside her shirt and slips the door key into her bra. “Don’t lie to me.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m keeping only key right in here until I get the truth. You want out, you cut the bullshit.”
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Reggie. He told me what you said. Exactly what you said. Now, if you want to deny it, I suppose I could call him up and tell him you think he’s a liar. I have his number. He doesn’t live far. He’d be more than happy to come back here and correct you.”
I’ve seen Reggie fight and felt the earth quake when he stomped his feet. The man is like a furious volcano; I may not be the smartest man on earth, but I sure as fuck know not to fight a volcano.
I shake my head. “No need to call him.”
She takes a step toward me. “So, you’ll be honest?”
“This is ridiculous. Give me the key, Alexandra.”
Another step. Another spicy-sweet smile.
“The only way you get this key is by giving me what I want. Though, I suppose you could try to take it. Just reach down my shirt and grab it. Of course, there’s no guarantee that I don’t snatch your wrist and make what I did to that drunk asshole look like two kids playing at recess. I’ll break your wrist so bad you’ll never ride again. Now, are you going to tell me the truth?”
I’d rather go another round, solo, naked, with both hands tied behind my back, against Reggie than tell Alexandra what I said. That’d be crossing a line that could put everything at risk. We’ve gotten close enough as it is. What happens if the search for the truth about Lucas’s killer leads back to me?
“You already know. Reggie told you, remember?”
“You don’t know what exactly he told me. He could’ve said anything. He could’ve said you love to get into bar fights because it is the closest you can get to primal intimacy and you’re addicted to the sensation of dominating another man, making him submit to the will of your body. Plus, that it’s a random man absolves you of any desire to commit or express how you truly feel.”
“Very specific. Also, accurate. I get off on getting intimately close with strange men, beating the shit out of them, and then never having to see them again.”
“Don’t fuck with me. He told me you said you’d take on the world for me,” she says. Something changes in her eyes. The fire softens, cools, becomes something warm and vulnerable. “Is it true?”
“That’s not—”
“No. Dixon, don’t even try it. Stop fighting. Give me the truth.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
I feel the heat of her gaze like a physical touch, stripping away layers of defenses I didn”t even know I had. There’s a war raging in me, my heart and head at each other”s throats like rabid dogs.
I throw my hands out, at a loss for words. “I don”t know what you want me to say.”
She”s close enough now that I can count the freckles dusting across her nose.
”The truth.”
Truth.
That word is dangerous.
What if it turns out I’m still responsible for this entire nightmare? What kind of monster would I be to get close to her, only to make her choose between killing her brother’s murderer or accepting him as the man she has feelings for?
”I saw how that asshole treated you and something inside me snapped. There was no way I could stand there and watch you be disrespected like that. I had to act.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
She raises her hand and places a single finger on my chest, right above my heart.
“Why did you feel you had to defend me?”
A long moment passes. I’d like to think that I’m fighting to keep from falling off that precipice, but with the way she’s looking at me, there’s nothing I can do but fall.
”Seeing him treat you like you weren”t worth a damn made my blood boil because... because you deserve better, Alexandra. Because you deserve so much more than life’s given you. And I would move heaven and hell to give you even a portion of that.”
There it is — the truth.
But she doesn’t relent.
That finger taps me again, right over the heart, like that blood-pumping organ is beating outside my chest.
“Why, Dixon?”
“I just told you.”
“No, you told me I deserve better than to be called a cunt by a drunk asshole. That’s a cop-out, and you know it. You heard him say something hurtful to me, and you wanted to go out there and punish him. Why?”
No matter how strong my resistance is, it’s not strong enough to resist the force behind the look in her eyes.
“Why, Dixon?” She says again.
Another tap, a plaintive look, and my resistance breaks. The words spill out of me.
”Because I care about you, Alexandra. More than I should, more than I ever planned to. There”s something about you that gets under my skin, something that has from the moment we met. And I can”t stand the thought of anyone making you feel less than what you are.”
Her expression softens further.
The intensity in her eyes doesn”t wane, but it transforms into something less accusatory and more open, more searching.
”That feeling scares the hell out of me,” I whisper.
She doesn’t understand how much I mean that. Years of experience have taught me I always hurt the ones I love. With my old club, the Road Kings, who were broken and destroyed soon after that meeting that ended in Lucas Reyes’s death; with Striker’s sister, Natalie, a woman too kind for her own good, who put up with me when I was at my worst; with my closest friend, Striker, who saw the chaos I put his sister through, and who I nearly lost as a friend because of it. Everyone I’ve gotten close to, I’ve hurt.
And hurt deeply.
Now, there’s Alexandra.
What happens if I hurt her again?
How deep will that wound go? What I did to her already ruined her life. The next wound may take it.
I can’t bear the thought of that happening.
Yet I can’t fight how I feel about her, either.
She steps closer until there’s no space for anything between us except the raw truth.
”Scared can be good,” she whispers. ”It means it”s real, Dixon. It means it matters.” Her eyes hold mine captive, daring me to look away, but I can”t. “I need to tell you something: I’m scared, too. Scared by the way I feel about you. It’s intense, it’s raw, it’s wrong. But I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think there’s only one thing we can do about it.”
“Which is?” I say. Hope rises in my chest. Maybe there’s a way out. A way to stop this runaway relationship in its tracks before it ruins everything.
“Give in to it.”
Then her lips meet mine.
And I give in.