5. Jayne
JAYNE
By late afternoon the compound feels both exactly as I remember it and nothing like the place where I grew up.
The clubhouse still smells faintly of coffee, leather and whatever somebody cooked hours ago.
Motorcycles come and go beyond the windows, and men I've known most of my life cross the yard in cuts that used to make me feel as though I belonged somewhere simply because my father did.
Now conversations lower when I come near.
Nobody is rude. Nobody tells me to leave a room or acts as though I might steal something if they look away, but I notice the pauses.
I notice men waiting until I pass before continuing a conversation, and the meeting-room door closing while Kane, Judge and Colt are inside.
I understand every bit of it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
My father did this. He spent thirty years teaching these men that brotherhood meant something, then used everything he knew about them to take Wilder's wife through their own gate and deliver her to the enemy.
Now every memory I have in this place comes with his name attached to it, and I'm the one standing here carrying that name whether I want it or not.
I pour coffee I don't particularly want and turn from the bar. Griz is sitting at the nearest table. For a moment I consider taking the cup back to Colt's room, but that feels too much like hiding, so I stay where I am.
“Mind if I sit?”
His eyes lift to mine. “Free country.” It isn't warm, but it isn't a rejection either, so I sit opposite him.
Griz looks older than he did the last time I saw him. There's more gray in his beard and deeper lines beside his eyes, but I can still see the man who taught me to shuffle cards when I was eight and slipped me fifty dollars on my sixteenth birthday to get tickets to a band I wanted to see.
“You called me Uncle Griz yesterday,” he says while looking down into his mug.
“I've always called you Uncle Griz.”
His thumb moves once around the handle of his mug. “Been a while since I heard it.”
“I know.”
The quiet that follows isn't comfortable, but I don't try to fill it with an apology for something I didn't do. Eventually I say, “I didn't know what Dad was doing.” Griz's gaze finally meets mine. “I know.” The answer catches me off guard.
“You do?”
“I know you didn't know about Lucy.”
Something inside my chest loosens, although not completely. “But you still don't know what else I might know.” He doesn't insult me by pretending otherwise.
“I knew your daddy.” There is so much pain packed into those four words that any irritation I might have felt disappears.
“I know you did.”
“Thought I knew every damn thing there was to know about him.” Griz looks down at his coffee. “Turns out I didn't.”
I could tell him I'm different. I could remind him that I left this life years ago and haven't spent my adulthood sitting around listening to my father's club business.
None of it would change what happened. Instead I say, “I'm sorry he did that to you.” Griz's jaw tightens. “He did it to all of us.”
“I know. But you were his best friend.”
That gets his eyes back on me. For a second I see the man I remember without all the distance around him. Then he reaches across the table and squeezes my shoulder once.
“You eaten, kid?”
My throat closes unexpectedly. “Not since breakfast.”
“Then find something before Colt starts blaming the rest of us for starving you.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “There he is.”
“Don't get used to it.”
I smile as I stand. It isn't forgiveness because I did nothing wrong, and it isn't blind acceptance either. It's just Uncle Griz calling me kid again and for today, I'll take it.
By the time Colt comes back to his room, I've seen three motorcycles leave the compound separately and another two men disappear through the rear of the clubhouse carrying helmets.
Nobody tells me where they're going, and I don't ask.
Colt closes the door behind him and looks tired in the particular way he gets when his body is still running even though his head hasn't stopped for hours.
“Well?”
He takes off his cut and hangs it over the chair before answering. “Blackwater checks out enough that we're acting on it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you were right.”
“And?”
“And that's all I'm telling you.”
I look at him for a second, then nod. “All right.” He watches me as though he expected more resistance. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You thought I'd argue.”
“A little.”
“You have club business. I grew up here, Colt. I know the difference between wanting to know you're going to be okay and thinking I'm entitled to hear everything Kane plans.”
His expression softens only briefly, and that's when I notice the gun.
He isn't waving it around or making a production out of it.
He's checking it with the same familiarity another man might use checking his wallet before leaving the house.
I stop breathing normally and the fear arrives so quickly that for a second I'm nineteen again.
Colt notices my face before I can hide it.
“Are you okay?”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “I'm scared.” He puts the gun down immediately and comes to me. There's no lie about everything being fine and no promise that nobody will get hurt, because we both know he can't make one. He stands between my knees and rests his hands on my shoulders.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
I look up at him. “Every part of me wants to ask you not to go.” His hands tighten slightly.
“But I won't.”
Something changes in his face.
“Kane and Judge are riding into it. Your brothers are already out there doing whatever they're doing, and if I asked you to stay here with me while they went without you, you'd hate yourself for saying yes.”
“I wouldn't say yes.”
“I know.”
The truth should make the fear worse, but somehow it doesn't. Because this is who he is, and twelve years ago I thought loving Colt meant finding a way to separate the man from everything that frightened me about his life. But there isn't a separate version. There's only Colt.
He crouches in front of me until we're eye level. “Kane thinks your dad may have expected you to pull me off where I'm supposed to be.” Anger sparks through the fear. “My father doesn't get to decide what I am to you.”
“He doesn't.”
“I didn't call you to do my father's dirty work. I did it because I was scared for both of us.”
Colt's hand moves to the back of my neck.
“You have any idea what that does to me? Knowing that some prick made you scared.”
“Probably about the same thing watching you load a gun does to me.”
His mouth curves, although there isn't much humor in it. “I let you walk away once.” I start to answer, but he shakes his head. “I'm not talking about the breakup again. We know what happened. I'm telling you what happens now.”
His thumb moves slowly beneath my ear. “If you decide you don't want this life around you after this, you tell me.
If you decide you need space, you tell me that too.
But I'm not going to stand there pretending I don't give a shit because I think that's the noble thing to do.” My heart starts beating harder for a reason that has nothing to do with this mess.
“What if I don't want space?”
His eyes darken. “That'd be my preferred option.” I put my hands on his shoulders and push.
Colt allows me to move him backward until his legs hit the chair.
He sits because I make him, watching me the entire time.
This is nothing like earlier. That had been twelve years exploding all at once, both of us trying to get close enough to make up for time with sheer force.
Now I know exactly what I'm doing and I straddle him.
His hands settle automatically on my hips, but he doesn't move me.
I lean down and kiss him slowly, taking my time with the mouth I've thought about for years.
Colt lets me lead for all of thirty seconds before his restraint starts showing in the tension under my hands.
I smile against his lips. “Having trouble?”
“You're sitting on my dick.”
“Very observant.” I kiss him again.
His fingers flex against my hips. I take my time opening his belt, then his jeans, and Colt's head falls back against the chair when my hand closes around him.
“Fuck.”
“That seems to be your favorite word.”
“You keep giving me reasons.”
I stroke him slowly until his breathing changes, then stand just long enough to pull off my jeans and underwear.
Colt's gaze follows every inch of bare skin.
I leave my top on. For some reason that makes this feel dirtier.
When I settle over him again, he slides one hand between my thighs.
I close my eyes, but Colt's voice stops me.
“No, look at me.”
I do, and the expression on his face nearly undoes every advantage I thought I had. His fingers move with slow certainty, nothing rushed about the way he touches me. He watches each reaction until I'm rocking against his hand and the chair beneath us creaks.
“You planned on being in charge?”
“I was.”
“Still are.”
The roughness in his voice makes it obvious how much that is costing him.
I reach between us and guide him to me and Colt's hands grip my hips harder as I lower myself onto him.
The stretch makes my breath catch and he doesn't move.
He lets me take him at my pace until I'm sitting fully against him, both of us breathing harder than we were a minute ago.
I kiss him once, then start to move and Colt swears into my neck.
His hands slide beneath my top, palms moving up my back as I rise and sink over him again.
There is something unbearably intimate about being able to see every change in his expression from this close.
There's no frantic rush, just the man in front of me now.
I roll my hips more slowly and watch his control fray.
“You going to keep letting me do all the work?” I smile, enjoying the effect I'm having on him.
His eyes narrow. “That what you want?”
“I haven't decided.”
That is all the invitation Colt needs and he stands with me still wrapped around him.
I gasp and grab his shoulders. He turns us and lays me back on the bed, then follows me down.
The pace changes. Not frantic, but harder.
His hand catches one of mine and presses it into the mattress beside my head while his mouth moves over my throat. I wrap my legs around his waist.
“This what you wanted?” he asks against my skin.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The next thrust drives the word out of me as a moan.
Colt knows my body better after one day than men I've spent months with ever did, but this doesn't feel like memory anymore.
He is paying attention to the woman underneath him now, the small changes in my breathing and the way my hips meet his when he gets exactly the pressure I need.
My free hand slides over his back and I feel the muscles shift beneath my palm every time he moves.
“Colt.”
“I've got you.”
The words nearly break me and not because they mean I'm helpless.
It's because I know he does. I pull his mouth back to mine and kiss him as the pressure builds.
His rhythm gets rougher as my body tightens around him, but he doesn't look away.
When I come, I say his name against his mouth.
Colt follows seconds later, forehead pressed to mine as his whole body goes rigid.
For a while he stays above me, breathing hard, then rolls carefully to one side and pulls me against his chest and I listen to his heartbeat slow.
“This isn't goodbye sex,” I tell him.
His arm tightens around me. “Wasn't planning on it being.”
“Good.”
He kisses the top of my head and I don't ask him to promise anything. Neither of us needs a lie before he rides out.
The compound has changed again when we step outside. There are fewer bikes and fewer men. The ones still here move with purpose, helmets in hands and engines already starting around us. Nobody explains where the others went, and I don't need them to.
Kane comes out of the clubhouse with Judge.
Colt is beside me and the gun hidden where I don't have to look at it.
I hate how much this feels like twelve years ago.
The difference this time is that I'm still standing here.
Colt turns to me. For a second neither of us says anything.
Then he cups my face and kisses me hard enough that I feel it everywhere.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.
“I'll see you when I get back.” There are a hundred things fear wants me to say: don't go, be careful, promise me.
Instead I put my hand against his chest. “Come back.” His eyes hold mine.
“I will.” Colt walks to his bike and Kane looks across the three of them as Judge swings onto his motorcycle.
“Ready for this, brothers?” Colt starts his engine.
Kane's mouth curves without humor. “Let's roll. Let's make this look good.” Three motorcycles turn toward the gate and I stand where Colt left me and watch them ride out. Loving him still scares the hell out of me, but this time I don't run from it.