Chapter Two
Leah
It has been three years since I last felt the heat of his eyes.
I’ve dreamed of those eyes, wolf-like and predatory.
After that fateful night on the tower, I did what he suggested.
I got the hell out of Helena and went to college.
I tried to forget my life for a while, not having my father glaring at me like I was the devil himself was good for my soul.
But my mom needed me, and this town has a way of getting under your skin.
That, and memories of Steel’s words. I spent many nights wondering if I made it up in my head, if I was remembering things wrong.
But I know the second his gaze lands on me that he felt it too.
My skin heats up like I’m wearing full-on winter gear and not the skimpy outfit that I donned around the corner of the house as soon as I was out of view.
His gaze weighs me down. It’s heavy, but I welcome it like I’d welcome anything from him.
After three years, I’m starving for any scraps of his attention.
God, the last time I saw him, I was a different person entirely.
It feels like another lifetime, pages that I’ve kept turning until that story that night at the water tower feels like it’s a thousand novels back.
He stands over me, so close I can feel the heat of his body. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. There must be something wrong with me because he’s looking at me with a scowl on his face like he wants to commit murder and it’s sexy in a way that it shouldn’t be. It thrills me.
I glance around the bar. Everyone is looking at us, but somehow, it’s like they don’t exist.
Like it’s just him and me. Together.
Steel’s gaze darkens, and a shiver traces up my spine. His big hand comes out and grips my arm. I love those hands. Rough hands. The hands of a man.
I want those hands on the rest of my body, playing me like an instrument.
His fingers tighten just to the point of pain.
I let out a gasp, but not because it hurts.
My nipples harden into tight buds under the lace of my bra, and I know by the way his stare tracks down that he’s noticed.
I want to glance down at him, to his waist, to see if his body’s betrayed him like mine.
Though I’m perfectly okay with my reaction, I can’t find the courage.
“We’re gonna talk, darlin’, but not fucking here. Not with an audience.”
I square my shoulders because I’m not intimidated by him or by the other bikers watching us. I don’t care about the cheap women in the place, or the greasy looking bartender gaping at me from across the room.
“I’m good here.”
“Hell no, we’re not. You’re underage.”
“I’m twenty-one next —”
Before I can argue, that rough hand tugs me. I let out a shriek of surprise as I’m picked up ass over end. The world tilts as my midsection hits a rock-hard shoulder. He’s picked me up like a sack of fucking potatoes in front of everyone, and I’m too mortified to react.
He carries me away from the bar, through the door, and out into the dark night.
It’s hot and the air’s clammy. My skin is instantly soaked with a wet sheen, and my body bounces over the jerk’s shoulder.
He carts me around like that for so long that the blood rushes to my head, causing strange spots to dance in front of my eyes.
Finally, I ball my hands into fists and beat uselessly against his back. A back that might as well be concrete, it’s so hard.
“Stop that!” A big hand comes down hard on my ass, smacking me, catching me completely off guard.
A second later, I’m swung down onto my feet again and so stunned that it takes me a second to get my bearings. After I tug my shorts down, adjusting them back to a point of decency, I face him, breathing harder than I want to.
I am shocked to find that I’m not the only one.
“Why—What’s going on?” I ask, completely baffled by the man in front of me.
He looks… wild, with his lips parted. He drags in huge draws of air like my weight was a burden to him, but I know it wasn’t.
His eyes are so intense that I actually take a step back.
We’re in the bar parking lot, on the far end, where a line of spindly trees stand guard.
They’re not much taller than ten feet. The night is so dark that it feels like a black sludge around us, no moon or stars to provide any light.
The only glow spills from the bar’s windows.
It glints off the rows and rows of bikes, the chrome glistening.
“You! That’s what’s going on!”
My eyes slowly filter downward, more by accident than any amount of bravery I summon.
Holy shit. The bulge in his worn jeans is just as impressive as the rest of him.
I’ve never seen black look better on anyone before, and there’s a lot of it.
Steel’s T-shirt shows off every bulging muscle in his arms. A black leather vest with his club patch on the back stretches across his broad chest. His jeans hug every single chunky muscle in his powerful legs, which end in huge, shit-kicker boots.
Yep, impressive is one hell of an understatement.
He drags his hands through his crow-black hair, mussing it.
In the golden glow spilling from the bar, he looks every ounce the glorious god that he is.
There isn’t anything human about him right now, and my entire body is on high alert.
I am wet between my thighs, my shorts dampening.
My pulse kicks up too, the carnal part of me responding to the rawness of him.
“M-me?” I stammer.
“You.” He nods hard. “You. Everything. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are? How incredibly sexy you are walking around with those skimpy little clothes on, your body on full display, all your fucking curves out there in the open? Half that bar was wondering what the hell you’d smell like if they got close enough to you and the other half were probably plotting how to grab you and fuck you senseless. ”
“W-what?”
“You’ve been driving me crazy. The past three years, I haven’t thought…
Fuck. You’re too young, Leah. I’m thirty-eight years old, you’re only a few years older than my daughter.
You have your whole fucking life ahead of you.
You deserve more than this. More than this fucking town.
This fucking life. Why did you come back? ”
My eyes cut straight to the ink swirling over his muscular arms. They catch on a jagged scar right above his elbow. The white, raised skin stands out from the ink. His world. My world. We don’t come from the same place. We haven’t walked the same road. We’ve known two entirely different lives.
Still. I wish he would stop saying that. Telling me that I deserve more. More than Helena. More than him. More than everything he stands for. He stands for it proudly. If it’s good enough for him and he takes pride in it, why the hell isn’t it good enough for me?
“I…” I open my mouth to try and tell him that he’s wrong, but he holds out a hand, cutting me off, and I have no choice but to clamp my lips shut.
“I’m not done yet.” Steel visibly swallows, and even though I might be young and naive, I can tell he’s struggling to hold it together.
“I try to tell myself that, over and fuckin’ over again, but I just keep wondering what your lips taste like.
I want to bite you. I want to fuck you so hard that you’re ruined for any other man after me.
I’m not here to turn you into a rebel. I’m a man.
A man who runs a fucking motorcycle club.
You’re not built for this lifestyle. You need to turn your sweet ass around and go back home, back to your life.
I’m not some hero. And you need to drop your fucking romantic illusions, I’m not your king, and you’ll never be my queen because you’re Leah Harris, daughter of the fucking mayor, and I’m an outlaw biker. ”
I shake my head, refusing to let him command me.
I refuse to let him break down my dreams like this because he is scared.
Because that’s what this is about. The bulge in his pants tells me he wants this just as much as I do, so the only reason he’s not, is because he’s scared.
He’s scared of how much he wants me and for a man who fears nothing, that must be truly terrifying.
“No.” Steel closes the space between us before I can get out another word.
“You’re not saying anything. There isn’t anything you can say that is gonna change my mind.
” He grips my arm again, his hand like a metal clamp at my wrist, so tight that this time it does hurt.
He drags me across the parking lot and indicates to a huge bike, all leather and gleaming chrome. “Get on.”
It is obvious that it’s his and it’s beautiful. It takes my breath away. He doesn’t have a helmet, and I stumble back when his hand releases my wrist.
“I’m not getting on,” I protest, but my voice shakes. “I know you’re going to take me back home because no matter what you want me to say, you’re a good man and you’re worried that I’m out here alone and I’m not going to let you do that.”
He leans in, his huge body like a cage, closing on me, but I want this cage.
I want to be imprisoned. I want him to hold me down and fuck me hard, teach me what true want means.
Teach me how to love a man like him. I want to be a part of his world, a world where I matter to someone.
A world where I’m cherished, where he would fight for me, where I stand and rule by his side.
A world where I’m not a fuck up, blamed for an accident that I now realize was just that. A tragic accident.
I’m not ready to let that dream die, no matter how much he tries to intimidate me.
“Get on the bike, darlin’. This isn’t negotiable. You stay in your fucking world and I’ll stay in mine. You have a crush on me. That’s all it is. You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know half the things I’ve done. You’re just a kid. Ain’t no part of that world fit for you.”
“I’m not a kid.” I begin to pout before I realize that’s exactly what he wants. For me to prove him right by acting like a spoiled little brat.
It is not going to happen.
I unfold my arms and set them at my sides. I force a smile that I don’t feel because, on the inside, I’m frantic. He has no idea what it cost me to come here tonight. For years I’ve been waiting, until finally I got the courage to come and claim what’s mine.
“If you’re so worried about me, I’ll call a cab. I’m not getting on that bike with you until you admit you feel it too and you take me as your woman.”
Steel’s eyes widen, as though he’s just realizing that I can be as stubborn as he is. “Take you as my woman? Did you not just hear a thing I fucking said? I told you, we live different lives.”
I’ve fended for myself my whole life. I was an unwanted child, a firstborn who should never have been female. I’ve learned what true loneliness feels like and with my brother gone I’ve been drifting. Completely alone. I’m an island, drowning in the endless ocean around me.
Steel was supposed to be the one who took me away from it all. Thoughts of him kept me going, he was going to be my escape. Not from the town, but from my reality. Even though he doesn’t realize it, the night he saved my life, he made me his. He bound our fates together.
I don’t care if it’s magical thinking born of a woman on the edge, desperate for anything to cling on to. All I know is that he’s mine.
“I’ll go,” I hear myself say, “but I’m not staying away, I’m back for good. You said you want me. I want you too.”
“You don’t know the first thing about what that means,” he says.
The silence of the night blankets us, just like it did that night.
He continues, “You have a good name. You could be something. Don’t throw everything away on a stupid notion you don’t even understand.”
I shake my head hard. I want to lunge at him, claw him, make him bleed just to mark him.
I want to draw first blood, attack his mouth afterward, fuck him out here on the crumbling asphalt parking lot like an animal.
I want his cock inside of me, filling me.
I’ve been waiting for him. I want him to be the first, the last. My always.
I’m half ashamed at my primal thoughts. At the possessiveness I can’t let go of.
“I don’t care what other people think. I don’t care about what they say. I want you, Steel. I want you to claim me. I- I’ve never been with a man. I saved myself for you. You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted. Needed.”
“Fucking hell,” he mutters.
He glances towards the bar, but I watch the way every single muscle in his body tenses, and it gives me a sense of satisfaction so pure that I almost cry out in triumph.
“So no, I’m not going to stay away. We’re not as different as you think we are.
I don’t care about the life you lead. I know what you’ve done for this town.
I know how many people the club has helped.
You did it for everyone, all of us. You are this town.
You’re the heart and soul of this place, and I’m not going to stop.
I’m not going to stop until you’ve claimed me. ”
A dark chuckle, the last thing I expect, drifts over the parking lot. It spirals out into the black night between us, thick and alive.
“Darlin’, you have no idea what being claimed by me means.
For starters, your father would like nothing better than to see me ruined.
He wants to drive this club out of Helena for more than one reason.
You think he’d ever let his baby girl fuck his enemies?
I don’t think so. It doesn’t fucking matter what I want.
As Prez, it’s not about me. It’s about what’s best for the club.
For my brothers. And getting involved with someone like you is the last thing me or my club needs. ”
“I don’t care what my father thinks.”
“No? That might be, but I do. I have enough problems. My club has enough problems. Don’t need to make life worse for anyone.”
“Steel—”
“No. I’m heading back into that bar, and you’re gonna call a cab. I’ll watch until you’re safe inside and you’re not gonna do anything so stupid as come around here again.”
Steel turns and strides back into the bar, his heavy boots scraping over the pavement. If he feels half of what I do, his whole body aches with the weight of walking away.
I thought it was painful before, but now… now I know what true torture is.
Even as I take my phone out to call for a ride back home, I keep my head held high. It’s not in my nature to back down. Not now. Not ever.
I won’t stop until Steel is mine.