Chapter 4 #2
I slide my hand down, lower, over the curve of her hip, to the top of her jeans. I hook my thumb into her waistband and tug her closer.
Harder against my cock.
She gasps.
Her body betrays her, hips rolling toward me like it remembers before her pride does.
I press my mouth to the bruise at her collarbone, right on the edge of it, and the growl that rips out of me is not pretend.
I do not kiss it sweet.
I kiss it like an oath. Like a punishment. Like worship.
She shudders, eyes squeezing shut, and when she opens them again there is wet shine there, she refuses to let fall.
“Whoever did that,” I say, voice low, filthy with promise, “I’m going to make him beg for mercy in Spanish and English.”
“Rico,” she says, like she’s reminding me.
My nostrils flare. “I don’t ever want his name on your lips again.”
“You can’t fix me by breaking him,” she whispers, breath shaking.
“I’m not fixing you,” I answer. “I’m taking back what’s mine, carino.”
She flinches like the words hit someplace soft, someplace private.
“I’m not yours,” she snaps, but her knees are still pressed open around my thigh.
“Then why are you soaking my leg right now?” I ask, quiet and brutal, and her face goes hot with fury.
She jerks at her wrists again, not to escape, but to reach.
To touch.
To claw.
I let her.
I loosen my hold just enough for her to slide one hand up my chest, fingers digging into my cut like she wants to hurt me for wanting her. She grabs fistfuls of leather and pulls me closer.
“You think you can say mine and it makes it true?” she whispers.
I lick along the side of her throat, slow, tasting her, and her breath catches like she hates how good it feels.
“It ain’t the word that makes it true,” I murmur. “It’s the way you react when I get close, mi carino.”
I grind again, slower this time, and she bites down on a sound like she refuses to give it to me.
I pull back, just enough to look her in the eye.
“Tell me to stop,” I say again.
Her lips tremble with it.
She does not say it.
Instead she whispers, “You’re engaged.”
“Say you want me to walk away,” I say, and my voice is a knife. “Say it and I do.”
Her eyes flash. Her throat works.
She cannot.
That is the only truth that matters.
Before I can take it further, a new wave of noise erupts downstairs. Someone shouts my name across the floor.
I freeze.
She freezes.
Her chest heaves. My hands are still on her. My thigh is still between hers. Her coconut scent is all over me like a confession.
I force myself to step back.
The move is physical pain.
Darling’s eyes stay locked on mine, wild and furious and wanting. I drag my thumb across her lower lip, slow, and watch her mouth part on instinct. Then I drop my hand.
I glance toward the balcony window.
And standing above the crowd on the other side is Carmen. She leans against the railing with perfect posture, dark hair catching neon like a crown. Calm. Observant. Watching. Of course she is. She doesn’t look jealous. She looks like she’s doing math.
That’s worse.
“She knows,” Darling says quietly behind me, and there’s something bitter in it now, something old.
I drag my attention away from the balcony and back to her.
“She knows what?” Carmen can’t see in here.
“That you still want me.”
I stare at her.
“Want ain’t the word.”
“Then what is?”
Mine.
The answer sits on my tongue, heavy and dangerous.
Instead I step forward and grab her hips again. This time it is not just desire. It is a message.
My hands fit there like they’ve always belonged there.
She inhales sharply when my fingers tighten.
“You think I didn’t hate myself for sending you away?” I ask. “You think I didn’t walk through every damn bar in Little Havana looking for you, like a desperate idiot, asking the wrong people, risking my patch just to see if you were alive?”
Her eyes flicker.
“You told me there was no us.”
“I lied.”
She swallows hard, and I see the war in her. The want. The damage. The pride.
Outside the door someone yells for tequila shots. Glass breaks. Laughter explodes like fireworks.
Inside the office the air feels thick enough to choke on.
“You should leave Miami. Go to your sister’s. Until we find who did this to you.” I don’t even want his name on my lips.
“I’m staying,” she says again. “And on my terms.”
“What terms?”
“You don’t control where I live. You don’t lock me in rooms. You don’t decide my life.”
My grip tightens without meaning to.
“You don’t get to tell me where I live,” she adds.
The words sting because she earned them.
I lean down until our foreheads almost touch. I keep my hands on the desk this time, not her, because she asked for terms and I am trying to respect them with my whole damn body.
“You don’t understand what this city does to people like you,” I say quietly.
Her eyes flash.
“People like me?”
“Soft,” I say, and it comes out harsh, then immediately wrong.
She laughs right in my face.
“You think I’m soft?” she says. “I survived you.”
That shuts me up.
The music outside surges again, bass vibrating through the office walls. I hear Magic’s voice through the door, a low command. I hear Vice laugh once, sharp and ugly.
Darling glances toward the door.
“I’m not hiding in your office while she plays queen out there.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say.
She turns back toward me with fire in her eyes.
“Watch me.”
She moves for the door.
I step in front of it automatically. Old instincts. Club instincts. Control the room. Control the threat.
“You’re not allowed to leave.”
The words land wrong the moment they leave my mouth.
Her expression shifts instantly.
“Not allowed?” she repeats slowly.
Shit.
I rake a hand through my hair, breathing hard, trying to put my hands somewhere safe.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It sounded like it.”
I grip the door handle but don’t open it yet.
“Rico’s still breathing,” I say quietly, telling her my terms. “Until he’s not, you stay where I can see you. That’s not me owning you. That’s me making sure nobody gets close enough to put hands on you again.”
She crosses her arms.
“I don’t need your permission to exist.”
“No,” I agree. “But you need my protection.”
She studies me like she’s trying to decide whether those words come from control or concern.
Maybe it’s both.
Outside someone starts chanting my name, drunk and loyal.
“Diablo. Diablo. Diablo.”
The Saints Outlaws don’t wait long for their president.
I open the door.
Music slams into the room like a wave. Heat, sweat, liquor, chrome reflecting from motorcycles parked inside like trophies.
The humid Miami night presses through open doors and broken windows.
Somebody’s cologne fights with gasoline and loses.
Neon flickers. A prospect hustles past with a tray of shots, eyes down, moving fast.
When I descend the stairs and step out, the room shifts. It always does. The club reads the air. They read my face. They read Darling at my side.
Carmen’s eyes find us immediately from the balcony above.
She smiles.
Not sweet.
Strategic.
And then she makes it worse.
She lifts her hand, slow, deliberate, so the diamond on her finger catches the colored lights and throws them back into the room like a signal flare. A reminder. A claim.
My claim.
Darling’s gaze snaps to it.
Carmen’s voice drifts down, smooth as silk and sharp as glass. “Prez,” she calls, like she owns the right to summon me. “We need a word.”
The room goes quiet in pockets. Not silent, never silent, but attentive. That MC attention. That respect that turns bodies into statues.
Darling steps forward beside me instead of behind me.
Good.
If this turns into war she won’t be a ghost.
Carmen starts descending the staircase slowly, her posture perfect, her expression calm and calculating, like she’s walking into a courtroom she already won.
She stops on the last step. Not close enough to touch me. Close enough to be seen.
Her eyes slide to Darling, and the smile she gives her is polite, pretty, and cruel.
“So,” Carmen says softly, like it’s nothing. Like it’s small talk. “She’s back.”
Darling’s spine goes straight.
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
Carmen tilts her head, studying Darling like a purchase, like a problem. Then she looks at me again, and her smile tightens.
“Club business,” she says, and the words are a gunshot. “Or are you too distracted to remember your duties tonight?”
Carmen’s shoulder brushes mine as she moves into the crowd.
I lean close enough that only Darling can hear me over the music, my mouth at her ear, my hand sliding to the small of her back in a way the whole club will understand.
“Stay put,” I say, not wanting her to slip out while I’m tending to Carmen.
“You don’t get to own me,” she mutters under her breath.
“Oficial o no,” I murmur, voice rough, “you’re under my protection. That means nobody touches you. That means nobody takes you. That means you don’t walk out of my sight.”
Her pulse jumps beneath my palm.
“And you?” she whispers, bitter and hot. “Do I get to decide what you do?”
I smile once, sharp.
“Dale,” I murmur. “Try.”
Her breath catches, and I feel her body betray her for half a second.
I lower my voice even more.
“You’re mine,” I tell her, simple and vicious. “Not because I say so. Because you already were, carino.”
On the stairs, waiting for me to follow her, Carmen stops smiling.
And the whole damn room feels the temperature change.