Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
RAFE
Andie’s hand falls away from my open fly, and my dick calls me every curse word in history for ruining his chance to get balls deep inside her.
I don’t like that she backs up a few feet, putting distance between us. There’s been too much fucking distance between us the last five years. An ocean’s worth. I’ll never let that happen again. Even if it means watching her marry Keane and not me. Take his last name and not mine.
Keane originally came up with the idea of marrying Andie to stop the deal Max had made where she was to be given to my brother. That’s what Keane claimed was his intent at the time, but he was lying. He wanted her—wants her—just as badly as I do.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. And I am.
The guys and I keep messing up with her. Well, me and Keane more so than Liam and Jax. I know the marriage to Keane doesn’t change how she feels about me. The whole concept is new for me, but I can accept that to be a part of her life again, to be with her again, means I’m sharing her with three other men.
Andie has lived a hell that none of us will ever be able to fully understand or relate to. Not only lived it but survived it. She’s so much stronger than all of us combined. And yeah, what happened today with Mika was disturbing in some ways to see, but how is what she did different than me bashing his head in like a squished grape with the car door? Or Jax when he goes on one of his happy murder sprees and walks around the house afterward, naked and covered in blood? Or Keane when he shoots someone in the head like he did in front of Andie at the warehouse where she was being held?
“Me too,” she says softly.
I look at her like a man dying of thirst, and she’s my oasis. A few wavy wisps of her hair lift in the wind and kiss her face before floating back down. My perusal drops to her bare feet and baby-blue painted toenails before roving back up her body. I hadn’t noticed what she was wearing before. A men’s shirt. I can tell it’s Keane’s from the Randy’s Custom Auto logo emblazoned on the front. I tell the flicker of jealousy that rises at seeing her wearing his clothes to fuck off.
She wipes her hair off her face and pushes the thick mass to one side and over her shoulder. “Keane and I haven’t really talked much about what our marriage will entail and what comes after or how it’s going to affect you, Jax, or Liam. It’s something we should all sit down and discuss. You will always be my first and forever love, Rafael.”
I’m man enough to let her see the sappy emotions that fill my eyes when I hear her say that.
Her head tilts back, soaking up the small sliver of sunlight that shines around her, the light playing over her face and pinking her cheeks.
“I had this crazy idea.” She lifts her right hand and turns it over, flipping it front to back to front again. “I was planning on getting your name tattooed here.” She points to her ring finger on her right hand, and my damn chest constricts. “Jax’s name would go on my middle finger.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.” She smiles. “Liam’s would go on my index finger. Keane’s on my pinkie finger. Then, when my broken finger heals, I’d get all your names inked around it like a wedding band. I’d belong to all of you. Committed to all of you.”
I take her hand and kiss the finger that will soon bear my mark. “I like that idea. Jax and Liam will too.”
“Maybe. It was just an idea. I was going to talk to you guys about it when we got to Bastard Ink. Guess it’ll have to wait a little longer.” She tries to shrug it off, but I can see the disappointment behind it.
“Nothing on your thumb?” I’m only teasing, but her answer has my dick hard and throbbing in an instant.
“Maybe our children’s names?” She says it so softly, so quietly.
The neanderthal in me wants to throw her down and rip off her clothes. Fuck her and fill her with my cum. Give her as many babies as she wants.
I need to touch her. I grab her and pull her to me.
“You want children?” I ask in a calm I don’t feel because I’m about to have a heart attack at the thought of her pregnant.
She touches my mouth, staring at it, and licks her lips. “I do, but it scares me. I don’t want to mess my kid up. I don’t want them growing up around violence and accepting it as a normal way of life. Or even worse, turn out like me.”
Hearing her fears breaks my damn heart. “Any kid would be fucking lucky to have you as their mama.”
“That’s what Tessa said.”
I’m sure she can feel the violent thud behind my chest. “You talked to Tessa about it?” She nods yes. “Baby, our kids would know nothing but love because they’d have you, mi dulce rosa . I want a little girl,” I blurt, getting it out there. “A little girl with your violet eyes.”
Her breath catches as she pictures it. Then she says, “Rafe, if you don’t make love to me right now, I’ll die.”
With fucking pleasure. My hands grab her ass, and I pick her up. Her legs wrap around me like a vise, and her lips attack my neck, biting and sucking the skin like she’s ravenous. My dick is so hard, the tip pokes out from where Andie left my fly unzipped, a divining rod pointing straight at her pussy. She wiggles in my arms, and the friction caused by her jeans over the exposed, sensitive tip has me almost coming. I need inside her right flipping now.
“Wall?” she pants, her tongue swirling in my ear and driving me out of my mind.
“Too hot.”
Her back would get first-degree burns if I fucked her up against the wall. The few times we had sex up here were at night when the temperatures were cool.
“Floor?” She bites the fleshy lobe of my ear, and my dick jerks excitedly.
I turn my head and capture her lips, licking inside her sweet mouth. She takes over and sucks my tongue like the cherry lollipop she had earlier.
“Too hot.”
She growls in frustration. “Bend me over the goddamn roof then.”
“Baby, you’d burn your hands.”
She bites my lower lip and pulls. The jolt it creates travels through my entire body like it’s one giant exposed wire.
“Fine.” Unlocking her ankles, she drops to her feet, picks up the book she was reading, shoves it in the waistband of her jeans, and starts climbing down the ladder.
“You coming?”
I blow out a breath laced with sexual discontent. “Wrong thing to ask me right now.”
Her smile is luminous. “Don’t pout. You’re about to get very lucky in the storage closet.”
Well, fuck. Can’t argue with that.
I follow her like an eager puppy, making sure to close the hatch door before carefully descending. The light spilling in from the closet below helps dispel the darkness enough for me to see. There are so many more secret passages like this one throughout the house. Max may have been a paranoid son of a bitch, but I do have to admit he was also a smart one.
By the time I come through the opening into the storage closet, secure the metal grate back into place, and stand up, Andie is naked and waiting. I don’t waste any time. I toe off my boots and reach behind me to tug at my shirt, tossing it to the floor. She helps shed my jeans, and I kick them off. She cups me through my underwear and rubs the length of my cock a few times before pushing down my briefs to join my jeans in a pile at our feet.
Her eyes travel over me in appreciation. She wets her lips with her tongue. “You’re… bigger,” she says breathily, and my ego does a fist pump in celebration.
I give her the same inspection. When I took her from behind against the window, it was fast and over way too quickly. This time around, we take a moment to eye-fuck each other. Andie as a woman is curvier, more voluptuous at the hips and chest. Her contours have more muscle definition and are a testament to her strength. She’s a fucking sex goddess with her tussled hair falling down over her chest and her gorgeous purple eyes shining bright.
Something in the way she’s looking at me has my heart trying to pound through my rib cage. Heat. Fire. Lust. Desire. Want. Need. The tension between us pulls tauter and tauter, until it finally breaks like an overstretched rubber band.
We crash together, mouths fused and tongues tangling, my cock in her hand and her breast in mine. We’ve devolved into two horny teenagers trying their best to get to third base as fast as they can. Our bodies stumble and crash into the cleaning cart. A few towels fall off.
“You okay?”
“Yep,” she says, taking my nipple in her mouth. She fondles and pinches the other one with her fingers.
Men’s nipples are just as sensitive as women’s, and I love that she remembers how much I like to have mine sucked and played with.
“I love touching you. Tasting you,” she whispers across my skin as her mouth roams my chest.
My head falls back on a moan and hits the wall when she takes my cock and pumps it a few times, then swirls the precum around the bulbous head with her thumb. The handle of a mop careens sideways and clatters to the floor.
She giggles, then says, “ Shh ,” bringing her thumb up and sucking it into her mouth.
I go feral at the sight and push her back until her spine flattens on the wall. I cup her breast and roughly knead it, enjoying how it fills my hand perfectly. Her bruises are faded although still visible, but all I can think is how fucking soft her skin is. I stroke her all over like a cat, and she literally purrs like one as my hands map her every curve.
Her chest is flushed with arousal, her lips are bee-stung, her nipples both swollen and red. The scent of her infuses the air around us and fills the small space of the closet. Roses and the sweet, delicious smell of Andie’s arousal.
I kiss her, stealing the breath from her lungs.
“Now, Rafe. Please,” she begs, gripping my hair and pulling.
“Need to make sure you’re ready.” I slide a finger through her soaking wet folds, and her legs tremble. She’s more than ready.
I want her to come on my tongue first, but my cock has other ideas. He won’t be made to wait any longer. Andie feels the same way. She lifts her leg and hooks it around my hip, then grabs my cock and guides it to her entrance.
“Trust me, I’m ready.”
“I love you,” I tell her, thrusting into her at the same time my tongue thrusts into her mouth.
The entire closet seems to shake as I hammer into her, the sound of skin slapping and our grunts and moans getting louder and louder. She grabs on to the ledge of the shelf above her head and holds on. Her tits bounce as I drive into her again and again. It’s too much of a temptation. I bury my face between them.
I bite her. Staking my claim. Mine .
“ Oh, God .” Her nails score my back, marking me just like I marked her.
“Who do you belong to?” I demand.
“You, Rafe!” she cries.
Damn straight.
Her walls convulse around me, and I groan, pounding into her harder, faster, deeper.
I wait until I can’t hold back my orgasm any longer, then slide my hand between us and pinch her clit in the way I know will have her chanting my name and flying apart. She does, and I explode along with her.
Mine .
On a sultry, sated sigh, she goes limp in my arms. I don’t pull out, my dick happy as can be right where it is.
Sweat glistens our skin, our lungs sawing in air. She buries her face in my neck, and I do the same in hers. I never thought I’d have this again. Hold her like this again. For the first time in five years, I can breathe. The profound happiness I’m feeling right now with Andie in my arms, her lips swollen from my kisses, my cock buried deep inside her, and my cum dripping down her legs, is painfully intense.
She hums. “I don’t want to move. I want to stay here just like this.”
Me too.
I kiss her thoroughly, tenderly, taking my time to reacquaint myself with the taste and feel of her mouth.
“Can I make a suggestion?”
She nods.
“How about we take a nice, long shower, get something from the kitchen to eat?—”
“A hot fudge brownie sundae with extra whipped cream,” she says.
“—and find the guys so we can have that talk.”
Her smile falls. Keane’s going to have a lot of groveling to do. Is it bad that I’m looking forward to seeing that?
“Okay.”
I use one of the freshly laundered washcloths from the maid’s cart to clean Andie. We unhurriedly put our clothes on and walk hand-in-hand out of the storage closet. Just as we get to my room, Keane appears at the end of the hallway.
“Where the hell have you been?” he says when he sees her, and I’m tempted to throw him down the stairs he just walked up.
Andie arches her eyebrows at him.
“Well?” he says.
She rolls her eyes, opens the door to my room, and disappears inside.
It takes him all of a second to eat up the length of the hallway from the stairs to where I’m standing.
“Where was she?” he asks, and I block him to stop him from barging into the room.
“On the roof.” I take a quick glance into the room. Andie is sitting on the bed, the book she was carrying open in her hand.
The jackass actually sniffs me. “You fucked her?”
“Why? You jealous?”
His nostrils flare, and his fists clench. “No.”
Andie looks over at us, but the daggers her eyes are throwing are directed at him.
“Liar.” I cross my arms over my chest. “If all you’re going to do is yell at her again, I’d strongly reconsider.”
His head hangs, chin to chest, and he tugs on the short ends of his hair. “She pissed?”
“You think?”
He cranes his neck to look past me, and I swear his face blanches of all color right before I’m tossed to the side, and he rushes into the room.
“Keane, what the hell?!” Andie shouts when he almost tackles her on the bed.
He makes a grab for the book, but she goes ass over end and rolls off the side of the bed with the book still clutched tightly in her hand.
She gets back on her feet, her hair a tousled mess. “What is your problem?”
Keane gets off the bed and thrusts his arm out. “Give it to me.”
She hides the book behind her back.
“Give me the goddamn journal,” he snarls.
Her mouth turns down, and her eyes go deadly. “Fuck you.”
I have no clue what’s going on, but I dart around the foot of the bed and stand next to Andie.
“Are you high?”
He pins me with wild eyes. “She can’t read that.”
I slide in front of Andie so she’s half behind me. “She’s not allowed to read a book?”
Keane shifts, like he’s preparing to leap across the bed. “It’s not a book. It’s Kellan’s journal.”
“So?”
“She can’t know what’s in it!” he yells, a mixture of anger, desperation, and fear rolling off him.
“I think it’s way past time I know what’s in it,” Andie tells him.
“Keane, if it’s Kellan’s journal, she has a right to read it.”
She says to me, “It’s written in some kind of code. Keane and Jax were able to read it, but they refused to tell me what it said. Maybe you can figure out what it all means.”
I know I’m missing a huge chunk of backstory, but I go with my gut which is firmly on Team Andie.
When she places the journal in my hand, Keane’s eyes fly to mine, pleading with me.
“Tinker Bell, please trust me.”
“Trust goes both ways, and clearly, you don’t trust me at all.”
He comes forward, but this time, Andie pushes me behind her and takes a protective stance, ready to go to battle with him.
I stare at the book in my hand. The leather binding is old and faded.
Keane closes his eyes and swallows thickly. “All it will do is bring her more pain.”
I hesitate, the uncertainty killing me. On the one hand, I’m curious to know what Kellan wrote down and how it could be that bad that Keane is literally freaking the fuck out. On the other hand, I believe Keane. Jesus, Kellan, what did you do now?
Andie has been lied to enough. Whatever secrets are contained inside the journal, she deserves to know.
I pull the leather cord and open it.
“Rafe, man, don’t.”
“Get out,” Andie tells him, the tone of her voice cold and just… dead.
I’ve seen Andie angry before, but this is something else. Anger is born of fire. But the way Andie is looking at Keane is nothing short of downright glacial.
Keane goes from shocked to livid to resigned in a space of three seconds. He must see it too, because for the first time in his life, Keane backs down from a fight and walks out of the room without saying another word.