Chapter Nineteen
Steel
I can’t sit around and just hope that Leah’s alright. I do more than hope, of course; I use Tracker, one of my men who’s good at finding people and not being seen.
Of course, Leah isn’t hiding. Her father would never want to lose face.
She works downtown for some government office.
I was surprised she didn’t work for her father, but after what she told me about him, it’s clear he expects her to make her own way in life.
She has so much more potential, but in a small town like this there’s not a lot of choice. She should never have come back.
Tracker was able to catch her near an alley by the building as she left for the day. He delivered my message. I was fucking relieved when he reported back to me that she looked well. That she hadn’t been harmed.
I wanted to go to her. Of course I wanted to fucking go to her. I felt like a caged wild animal. I stayed put because I had to.
Now, it’s Monday and five is just around the corner. I’m hidden in that same alley that Leah always walks by on her way home after work.
Since the buildings are tall on either side of the alley, I can’t see her office.
Everything is blocked out save for a small section of street.
If I edged closer, I might be able to see more, but I can’t do that.
I can’t risk being seen myself. So I wait.
I nearly lose my fucking mind with the waiting.
And then, suddenly, she’s there.
I have no time to drink her in. To savor her sweet scent or the sight of her honeyed hair and cornflower blue eyes. I thrust a bundle into her surprised arms. “Here. These are Harley’s. Put them on.”
She looks at me in confusion. “Change your clothes. We can’t be seen together.”
She scrambles to obey. And soon she’s standing there in the black, ripped jeans, black sweater, and a leather jacket.
I hand her the full face helmet, saying, “Tuck your hair into your sweater and put this on.”
She does as I say, but finally asks, “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere where we can talk,” I say.
I don’t wait around for anyone to stumble into the alley and find us there.
I swing my massive leg over my bike and mount up.
Leah does the same, getting on behind me.
Her arms wrap around my chest instantly and fuck me, those arms feel so good, so small and dainty and just so fucking right that I have to take a second to steady myself before I fire up the bike. I don’t have to tell Leah to hold on.
As we race down the street, I have never felt so free. I don’t just love the way Leah’s curves slam into my back, her heat leaching through her clothes, her sweet smell wrapped up all around me even though the wind isn’t coming from the right direction; I fucking crave it.
God, I’ve missed her.
I hate that neither of us can say a word until I have ridden my bike to the edge of town, to the tiny white house that I bought at the same time as I bought the building we use as our clubhouse.
Edge lives down the road a few miles. The house isn’t much, but it’s pretty enough, with two rooms, a decent sized living area, and a kitchen.
It’s got a stretch of swampy marshland behind that surprisingly makes for good fishing.
We never get any big gators back there, just small things that Harley has loved discovering since she was a little kid.
The huge trees lining the yard offer ample shade, dripping their moss near to the ground.
I step off the bike and offer Leah a hand. She pops the helmet off and shakes her hair free. When her glorious golden hair spills over her shoulders, I want to groan. My cock leaps to life while the rest of me follows suit.
“Fuck,” I say, my voice deep and pained as I cart her up against my chest.
She lets the helmet fall to the ground. She stares at me, a foot away, but it might as well be an eternity.
“Did he hurt you?” I breathe through the rage clogging up my chest. I want to go after Harris, wrap my fingers around his throat, and squeeze until he does the world a favor and stops fucking breathing.
Leah’s eyes are a raging storm, gray and cloudy.
“No,” she finally replies. “Not really. Since he’s all about what we look like to the outside world and this kind of thing is bad for his image so he’d rather keep it under wraps and that includes not leaving marks on me where anyone can see.
” She blinks furiously, clearly fighting back the tears.
“I’m not going to stop seeing you. Being with you.
I’m yours, and what they say doesn’t matter.
I’ll sneak out. Meet you in secret for as long as I have to.
Whatever it takes.” Her shoulders heave.
“I’m sorry, Steel. I didn’t listen to you. I acted so stupidly.”
That pain glistening in her eyes almost breaks me.
“I should’ve been there for you, darlin’.
” I growl, though the words want to come out like an enraged roar.
“Fucking cuts me up that you’re all alone up there in that goddamn ivory tower and I can’t get to you without making everything so much worse.
I’m caught between you and my brothers and I—”
“Don’t choose,” she implores me, the ferocity in her words surprising me, though it shouldn’t. She’s like an angel, furious and holy in her wrath. “Don’t make it a choice between them and me. I don’t want you to do that. I know they’re everything to you. I know that you’d die for them.”
I can’t smother the groan that escapes from the recess of my throat, pulled from a much darker place.
I hold her against my chest harder because I can’t wait a moment longer to unite us.
To have her heart pounding up against mine.
Whatever thread joined us, sewed us up, there’s no unraveling it now.
No tearing away without ripping us both to shreds.
My hand sweeps away her hair until I find the back of her neck. My fingers curl there protectively, tilting her face up. God, she’s so beautiful that it practically knocks me over like a bullet to the chest.
“I would have burned down the entire fucking town to get to you. Didn’t want to hurt you though. Never. I swore an oath to my brothers to die for them if I had to, but the truth is, I’d die for you as well.”
She can’t blink away the tears this time. “Don’t say that. I’ll only be your downfall.”
Seeing those tears cuts through me worse than anything I have ever done in my life, and I’ve done a fuckload of shit. Seen enough grief and blood for ten lifetimes, but those tears, they bring me to my knees.
I keep my hand at her neck, and with the other, I cup her cheek, stroking along her jawline with my thumb. I trail the pad of my thumb over her full bottom lip.
“I want to look at you,” I hear myself say like the damn romantic I’m not. “Take my time with you.”
“My mom won’t notice I’m gone,” Leah whispers. “She stays in her room all day. My father won’t be back until seven. He always works late. We have time.”
“Time,” I echo the word, the one thing that everyone wants and needs so much more of. The one thing often so cruelly denied to us.
Her eyes dart towards the house. “Where’s Harley?”
“Not here. She won’t be back for hours.”
“She knows then?”
“She knows. I had to tell her. I’ve always had someone watching you. They heard you and your father arguing, heard him read the letter… I had to come clean. To her. To my club.”
“Fuck,” Leah breathes.
“It’s gonna be alright.” I sound certain, even though I’m not. I’ll make my words true. I’ll carve them into granite with my bare fucking hands if that’s what it takes to make them true.
She hesitates for just a second before she breathes out hard. “I want to look at you too. To look at you and see you. And I want you to see me—in case we don’t get another chance.”
“We’ll have a thousand chances,” I promise her. “I want you by my side. Always.”
Her eyes seem to search my face before her hands come up and wrap around my neck. She slams herself against me, leg to leg, chest to chest.
“You make everything that should be unholy into something good and right and true. If you hear anything from me ever, and choose to believe it, know that I love you. That you saved my life that night and that we’ll always be bound together. I’ve never been anything, never felt whole… until you.”
“Fuck.” It’s all there is to say. I’ve got nothing else in my arsenal. In a few sentences, filled up with all the sincerity in the world, she’s completely disarmed me.
I’d planned to steer her inside, have a serious conversation about her fucking parents, about getting her an apartment if she needs to leave, about telling her that she’s my woman now and the consequences be damned, about if she’ll have me, I’ll open up my home, my bed, my heart to her.
Instead of all that sweetness, that conversation I’d been rehearsing over and over in my head, my animal instincts roar on strong, and I need to claim her. I need to fuck her hard. Make her mine all over again.
I cart her up into my arms, my hands gripping her hips as she wraps her legs around my waist, already grinding her denim-clad core down hard over my straining erection.
If she’s gonna be my downfall, it’ll be the sweetest fucking fall that the world has ever seen.