Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Doom
Nova's sitting on a barstool looking at me like I'm a ghost, and every word I've carried across eight hundred miles of desert is jammed in my throat refusing to come out.
The Vegas clubhouse hums around us.
A card game is still going. Music is still playing. Beer cans, laughter, and the low murmur of men who don't know or care that the ground just shifted under this barstool.
Her eyes are red. She's thinner than she was a week ago, her cheekbones sharper, the shadows under her eyes darker.
She's been sleeping about as well as I have, which is to say she hasn't.
I want to touch her.
I want to put my hands on her face and pull her into me and hold on until the shaking in her fingers stops.
But we're in the middle of a clubhouse full of people I don't know, in a charter that isn't mine, and the things I need to say to this woman aren't for an audience.
"Can we talk?" My voice sounds like gravel. Eight hours on a bike in desert wind will do that.
She nods and slides off the stool.
Her Topo Chico stays on the bar, sweating a ring into the wood.
I follow her through the back of the clubhouse and out the rear door.
The pool sits in the middle of a concrete patio, lit from underneath, the water glowing blue-green in the dark.
The pool house is off to the right—a low stucco building with a door that Nova pushes open without turning on the lights.
It's small inside.
A counter along one wall with pool supplies, folded towels, a stack of foam kickboards nobody's touched in years.
A window lets in enough light from the pool to see by.
Everything washed in that blue-green glow, shadows moving on the walls like water.
Nova leans against the counter and crosses her arms. Not defensive. Bracing.
"Say what you came to say," she tells me, and her voice is steady, but I can see her pulse hammering in the side of her neck.
I stand in the doorway for a second. Looking at her.
This woman who turned my world inside out, reported me to my president, and then got on a plane to Vegas because she couldn't stand to be in the same building as the damage she'd done.
"I'm not angry," I say.
She blinks. Whatever she expected me to open with, that wasn't it.
"I rode eight hundred miles, and I need you to hear this before anything else.
" I step into the pool house and let the door close behind me.
"I'm not angry at you. I'm not here because I'm pissed.
I'm here because you did the right thing and it's eating you alive, and I'm not going to let you sit in Vegas and destroy yourself over a decision that proves exactly who you are. "
Her arms tighten across her chest. Her eyes are wet.
"You heard an Enforcer from an enemy MC show up at the gate and claim me," I continue.
I keep my voice low, steady, giving her every word I've got because she's earned them.
"You didn't know what I said back. You didn't know if I refused.
All you knew was that the man you'd been sleeping with had a Kodiak connection he never told you about, and you went to your president.
Nova, it shows how loyal you are to the club.
That's exactly what I would have done, if the roles were reversed. "
A tear slides down her cheek. She wipes it with the back of her hand, hard, like she's mad at herself for letting it fall.
"Most men would hate me for what I did," she says, and her voice is barely holding.
I close the distance between us.
Two steps.
I'm standing in front of her now, close enough to see the tear tracks on her skin, the way her lower lip is trembling, and the freckle below her left ear that I've kissed a hundred times.
"I don't hate you," I tell her. I lift my hand and brush the wet off her cheek with my thumb.
Her breath catches. "I love you. That's what I came here to say.
I love you, and I'm not running from my problems because running from my problems means running from you, and I won't do that.
Not for Kodiak, not for my father, not for anyone. "
She stares at me. Her arms uncross slowly, falling to her sides.
"You love me," she repeats. Not a question. Testing the words, seeing how they feel in her mouth.
"Yeah." I keep my hand on her jaw. Her skin is warm under my palm. "I love you. And I should’ve told you about my father. I should’ve told the club. I kept it behind my silence because that's what I do with everything, and it blew up, and you got caught in it. That's on me. Not on you."
She's crying now. Not the controlled, quiet tears from a minute ago—real crying, her face crumpling, her hands coming up to grip the front of my shirt.
"I thought you'd hate me," she says into my chest. "I sat in that guest room for days waiting for you to hate me."
I wrap both arms around her and pull her against me.
She fits under my chin the way she always does, her forehead against my collarbone, her fists balled in my shirt.
"I could never hate you," I tell her. My mouth is against her hair. "You chose the club over me, and that's exactly what I would've done. How could I hate you for being the woman I love?"
She makes a sound against my chest—half laugh, half sob—as her hands slide up to my neck to pull my face down to hers and kiss me.
It's not gentle.
It's a week of silence, guilt, eight hundred miles of highway, and the taste of salt from her tears.
Her mouth is desperate against mine, her fingers digging into the back of my neck, and I kiss her back with everything I've been holding since the day they took my cut and locked me in a room and the woman I love walked away without looking back.
I lift her onto the counter.
Pool supplies scatter—a bottle of chlorine tablets hits the floor, towels slide off the edge, a plastic bin of goggles crashes against the wall. Neither of us stops.
Her legs wrap around my waist and she pulls me between her thighs, her hands yanking at my cut and shirt.
My cut slides off my shoulders and I toss it on the counter next to us, my shirt following behind it.
Her palms are flat on my chest, sliding over the ink, her nails dragging down my ribs.
"Emiliano." She says my name against my mouth, and I groan.
I pull her shirt over her head.
She's wearing a black bra underneath, simple, nothing fancy, and I've never wanted anyone this badly in my life.
I unhook it, drag it down her arms, and then my mouth is on her breast, her nipple hard against my tongue. She gasps and arches into me, her fingers gripping the curls at the back of my head.
This is different from the first couple of times we’ve been together.
The first time was tension breaking. The second was tender, learning each other.
This is anger, love, fear, and relief all tangled together, feeding off each other, and I can't tell where one ends and the next begins.
All I know is that I almost lost her and she's here. I need her to feel what I can't say in full sentences even now.
So I say it in pieces.
"You're mine," I say it against her throat. Not asking. Telling. My teeth graze her pulse point and she whimpers.
"Say it again," she breathes.
I pull back and look at her. Her eyes are dark, her lips swollen from my mouth, her hair falling around her face. The blue-green light from the pool makes her skin glow.
"You're mine, Nova." I grip her hips and pull her to the edge of the counter.
"You were mine before I got on that bike.
You were mine when you walked into Amara's office.
You were mine in that main room when you couldn't look at me.
You've been mine since the first time you said my name and I forgot how to fucking breathe. "
She grabs my belt.
Her fingers work the buckle, pull the leather free, pop the button on my jeans.
She shoves them down my hips, wraps her hand around my cock, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder because the feel of her fingers on me after a week of nothing is almost more than I can take.
"I need you inside me," she says.
No hesitation. No shyness.
That's Nova—direct, vocal, telling me exactly what she wants, and it wrecks me every goddamn time.
I drag her leggings down her legs.
She kicks them free and I push her underwear to the side because I can't wait long enough to take them off.
I notch myself at her entrance, grip the back of her neck, and tilt her face up so she's looking at me.
"Eyes on me," I tell her. "Don't look away."
She holds my gaze and her lips part. Her breath comes fast and shallow.
I push into her, and we both groan.
She's tight, wet, and hot. I seat myself to the hilt in one slow thrust that makes her nails bite into my shoulders.
"Fuck," I breathe against her mouth. "Nova. Fuck."
I pull back and drive in again and she cries out, her legs locking tighter around my waist.
The counter rattles against the wall behind her.
Something else falls and crashes on the tile, and neither of us flinches.
"Don't stop," she gasps, pulling me closer by the chain around my neck. "Don't you dare stop."
I don't stop.
I fuck her on that counter with the pool light moving on the walls and her voice in my ear telling me harder, faster, right there, and I give her everything.
Every mile I rode. Every night in that locked room. Every hour I spent staring at a ceiling thinking about her.
"You're mine," I growl against her neck, and my hand slides between us, my thumb finding her clit, pressing in tight circles. "Say it. Tell me you're mine."
"I'm yours." Her voice is wrecked. She's shaking under me, her body clenching tight around my cock, her nails raking down my back hard enough to draw blood. "Emiliano—I'm yours, I'm yours—"
She comes hard, her whole body locking up, her teeth sinking into my shoulder to muffle the scream.
The bite sends a bolt of heat straight through me and I bury myself deep and let go, spilling inside her with a groan that I couldn't hold back even if I wanted to.