Chapter 12 #2
I tried not to react to that, but I knew he’d felt me stiffen when his arms tightened around me. I couldn’t imagine not being able to talk about the people I loved most in the world. Then again, I wasn’t even sure they had been close. Did Drew consider it a loss?
“Bear with me. I have so many questions. If I hit something you’d rather not answer, I’ll honor that. Just tell me.” I sucked in a breath, nibbling on my bottom lip for a moment before I asked the first question. “Were the two of you close, before he left, I mean?”
“In this life, you look up to those you’re told to look up to when you’re young.
My dad was the president of The Hounds of Babylon.
He was busy. His life was… it was like me trying to live the life I lived before prison, but with a kid and a wife in tow.
The guy had his arms full and was up to his eyeballs in responsibility.
Did he love me? Yeah. He loved me. Did I love him?
Yeah. I loved my old man. Were we close?
” Drew took a moment, inhaling slowly again before he pressed his cheek against my head and blew out.
“He would have taken a bullet for me in a heartbeat, and I would have done the same for him, but if you’d have asked him what my favorite color was, or whether or not I liked whiskey at fourteen, he wouldn’t have known.
He didn’t have time to know. That’s why he had me.
I was born to take some of the weight from his shoulders.
I was born to be the VP who would become the president. ”
“That’s a lot of weight to put on a kid’s shoulders,” I said quietly, lifting my eyes, but only catching the underside of his chin. “If he had it all planned out, though, what went wrong? Why is his life on the line? He obviously planned to be around a lot longer than he was.”
“You can’t plan properly when you’re at the front of a group of men.
All you can do is put shit in place and hope for the best. A leader lives a lot of his life in isolation, even when he’s surrounded by men.
You know what you’ve got to do. It just doesn’t always fall in line with what the rest of the club wants you to do.
Dad hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble, but then…
like things went wrong for me, things went wrong for him.
Do you want to know the worst part of it all? ”
I shook my head, knowing he would feel my response.
It was much safer to let him just talk. Sometimes just having someone listen to what you were saying was needed more than words of advice or encouragement.
The airing worked to get that mental weight out in the open so the burden was off your shoulders for at least a little while.
His train of thought was on such a definitive track I wasn't willing to derail him, so I squeezed his leg, encouraging him to go on.
“He may as well have been dead all these years,” Drew said calmly.
“Because you haven’t spoken to him?”
“Haven’t spoken to him. Haven’t spoken about him. Have no idea where he is, if he is, in fact, still alive. I can’t remember what he looks like, sounds like…” He trailed off, taking a breath. “He’s not here anymore. He’s not where he was born to be. For a man like Eric, that’s worse than death.”
I frowned out at the night. I knew how he felt in some ways because I felt the very same way about my parents sometimes.
Those expressions they wore when they were dancing with one another in the kitchen.
The way Dad would look at Tate when he was talking about football.
Every little thing that had been so familiar to me was slowly slipping away through my fingers until I was left with impressions.
I was so scared of forgetting, but I couldn’t imagine feeling that way knowing my family was still out there.
“Do you know what he’s running from? Why he’s running? Being gone as long as he has, it has to be something substantial.”
“The less I knew the more chance we both had of staying alive. I know he’s gone.
I know some shit went down. I know he had to make the decision to run and that would have been the last decision he wanted to make.
Ayda, the reason I never talk about him is because I don’t have anything to say.
He’s a ghost now. All that’s left are memories. ”
Dropping my hands to his thighs, I rubbed gently, my head falling back so my lips reached his Adam’s apple, brushing over it reverently.
My mind was churning, full of thoughts, but I understood that he couldn’t give me much more than he already had because he didn’t know much more.
From the way he’d described it, the transition had moved quickly, and that was that.
“Sometimes memories are better. At least we have those to look back on.” I rubbed my cheek against his shoulder like a cat and smiled. “Thank you for talking about this with me, and I really am sorry that I said what I did.”
“If you say sorry one more time, I’m going to flip you over, push you against this tree and do some very unsavory things to you, Hanagan.
Quit it.” He pressed his smirking lips to my head and held me in place.
“Damn. Now I’ve put those thoughts in my head, I’ve forgotten what the hell we were even talking about. ”
I smiled again, this time one corner of my mouth lifting as the imagery came to my mind. He had such a way with words and they never failed to make my own imagination rise to the challenge.
“I can fix that for you if you like,” I teased, wriggling my ass against him. Angling my body away from his, I met his eyes and let him know what was going through my mind. Licking my lips, I smiled right at him and said, “Sorry.”
His eyes held mine, darkening as he narrowed them and studied my face.
There was nothing more intimidating yet exciting than when he looked at me that way.
I could see the thoughts in his eyes. I could hear the low growl rumble in the back of his throat as his hands slid down beneath my ass cheeks, squeezing hard and slow as he gritted his teeth and worked his jaw.
“Don’t make me fuck you in front of Pete.”
The excitement of the shift in mood had pulled deeper anticipatory breaths from me, and as I rolled to my knees to face him, I placed my hands on his shoulders, feeding him back the smirk he so often gave me. “Weren’t you just saying I could blow you in front of an audience?”
Drew raised a single brow, working his jaw hard as he gazed at me. “Demon,” he whispered through tight lips.
“You love this demon.” I grinned. “If you don’t want to give Pete a show, maybe you should take me to the van because I don’t think I want to wait to get back to The Hut.”
I pushed to my feet and bent to grip both sides of his cut, tugging gently.
He continued to stare at me through wide eyes until his hands reached out to grab me, and before I could even tell what was happening, he was pulling me back down to the ground, pressing my back against the grass and rolling on top of me in one swift movement.
I kicked out and laughed roughly, but Drew’s body had me pinned, and so did his hands as they pushed the stray strands of hair away from my face.
His lips hovered over mine. His hips rotated against me.
His nostrils flared as he inhaled and then slowly, ever so dreamily, exhaled and tilted his head to one side.
“So, to sum up…” he moaned, low and deep.
“Dad isn’t here. I don’t know where he is.
Shit isn’t always easy in this MC life. I’ve suddenly quit giving a shit what Pete sees.
” He paused, his eyes falling to my lips as he trailed a hand down my cheek, my neck, across my shoulders and back again, bringing a trail of goosebumps to life. “And you aren’t going anywhere, lady.”
“Where else would I want to be?” I asked, lifting my hands to cup his neck.
My eyes searched his for the longest time.
My smile froze impossibly on my lips as my love for this man made my chest ache.
I wrapped my legs around his hips in one swift and unusually graceful movement and unleashed that overwhelming feeling on him. “Let’s make our own memory tonight.”
“I even brought blankets.” He winked, driving his hips into me.
That small thoughtfulness was all it took for me to lose any shred of control I had.
Drew and I always enjoyed our fast, animalistic and impulsive lovemaking—that driving need to be closer and under one another’s skin was encouraged by our mutual hunger for one another.
But under the stars and Pete’s tree that night, Drew took his time.
He tasted every inch of my skin, running his fingers over the most sensitive spots on my body, driving me wild enough to orgasm before he’d even so much as glanced at the apex of my thighs.
He took his time as he drove me higher and higher, and only pulled back when I ran headlong for the edge of my sanity.
When he finally thrust deeply into me, he took his time there, too.
I felt every stroke, every twitch, and every inch as he took and took until neither of us had anything left to give, and I screamed his name in reverence.