Chapter 16
Mia
“Fuck…” Ricky starts to cry as he puts his shaky hands on the frame of the trunk.
“Please… I’m sorry,” he begs. “Please, I—”
Aiden doesn’t even hesitate. He holds Ricky’s body steady with the weight of his own, then slams the trunk door.
No remorse. No sympathy.
The sound of Ricky’s anguished scream fills the air as the trunk door pops back up. He collapses to the ground, sobs racking his body. My thoughts run wild as a deep, delicious energy settles in my lower belly at this man’s savage display of conviction.
“Oh my God, he’s gonna kill me,” Cara whimpers, dropping to her knees in the filthy alley, shivering even though the air isn’t cool at all.
I shiver for an entirely different reason, not saying a word, standing with my arms folded over my chest so Aiden doesn’t see my pebbled nipples through my dress.
He picks Ricky up and places his mutilated hands on the frame again. They’re bleeding, but the gore of it doesn’t faze me. I enjoy it.
“You see, Ricky…” Aiden starts as Ricky vomits beside the cab.
“You know the rule. You don’t fuck the women in my clubs.
I don’t care if they fucking beg you… I don’t care if they drug you and climb up onto your tiny, inconsequential fucking dick.
You will always be at fault, and your answer is always no.
” Aiden holds Ricky’s sagging body in place against the open trunk of the cab, moving ruthlessly.
He has no fear of being caught, no fear of being stopped as Ricky cries out, bracing himself.
“Please…” he trails off.
Aiden grips Ricky by the hair, turning his head to face me. “And you never, ever fucking put your hands on a woman! Apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” Ricky cries. “I’m so fucking sorry, please—”
Aiden slams the trunk again.
Where his eyes were cool and void before, they’re now vivid and alive, and so am I.
I’m almost lightheaded, and my pussy throbs. I find myself holding back a fucking moan as he picks Ricky up, gripping his limp frame in one hand, and his face with the other.
“If I ever see your face here again, it will be your fucking skull that takes this beating, not your hands.” He lets him go and Ricky slumps, bleeding, into the back seat of the cab.
“Fucking cocksucker,” Aiden bites out as he slams the cab door closed.
The driver rolls the window down, and I realize he’s the same driver who picked me up from the clubhouse. He doesn’t even flinch at the scene that’s unfolded around him, which tells me this isn’t his first time seeing something like this.
Aiden hands him a roll of bills. “For your trouble only. This prick can pay you for the ride to the hospital,” he says.
The cab hasn’t even started to drive off before Aiden is making his way back to us. Even in the dark, his eyes gleam. They’re the eyes of a beast.
Without thinking, I move to stand in front of Cara. I don’t care what he does to Ricky, but he isn’t going to hurt a woman in front of me.
“No,” I say, shielding her and looking up at him with as much confidence as I can muster. If I have to fight him, I may not win. But I’ll go down fucking swinging.
Aiden looks down at me in shock for a moment and then leans in. “I’m not going to hurt her. Move.” Those eyes that only moments ago belonged to a beast are now so full of conviction that I have no choice but to believe him and obey.
“You’re fucking fired,” he says to Cara. “Get the fuck outta my sight.”
Cara stands, but her knees almost buckle as she whimpers and starts to run, then stops, turning back. “Will they hurt me?”
Aiden looks at her questioningly, then realizes she means whoever he called “his men” at the end of the alley.
“There’s no one there,” he admits. “And Cara—” She freezes. “Look at me,” he orders, and she turns around, looking down at her feet. “I said, look at me,” Aiden commands with a voice that leaves no room for disobedience.
She looks up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“But be fucking better. You’re worth more.”
She looks at him with guilt in her eyes, then at me, just once, before she turns and runs without looking back.
I’m still watching her disappear into the dark, distracted by everything that’s happened and this strange, budding desire I can’t quite make sense of, when out of nowhere, a hand wraps tightly around my throat, and I’m pinned against the brick wall.
“Now, Rhiannon, you and me are gonna have our own little chat.”
I reach for his hand, loosening it from around my throat.
“You could’ve been hurt. You should’ve come to get me,” Aiden grits out.
My head reels. That’s what he’s angry about?
He lets up just enough that I’m able to take a deep inhale. His hard body is pressed into mine, his presence all-consuming.
“It was a gut reaction…” I manage, looking up at his eyes.
Everything about him should repel me, but I hate that it doesn’t.
In fact, being this close to him does just the opposite.
It’s as though there are two equal parts to me.
A part that wants to hate him, and a part that feels absolutely desperate for him.
Right now, the part that wants him is winning as I breathe him in and feel the strength of his sculpted hand wrapped around my throat.
“I thought she was hurt,” I add in a whisper. “I was trying to help her.”
“Well, it was fucking dangerous,” he barks as I grip his hand.
“Fuck you!” I say, and before I can stop myself, I slap him with my other hand and look him right in the eye, lifting my chin as best I can.
We’re so close, we’re sharing air as my eyes trace the planes of his face. His wide jaw hardens, and his pupils are blown wide.
“You should know better than to try and assault your boss.” He’s pure ice, and I read between the lines. Try, because he didn’t even feel it.
“I don’t have a boss. I fucking quit, remember?” I retort.
Aiden shutters any emotion as he tilts my head back into the brick, exposing my throat, then brings his lips down to my racing pulse point.
“Strong words. A goddess who fights, just as I thought.” He kisses my throat, just once, and I quiver, rocking into him involuntarily. “Mmm… But look how sweetly your body begs.”
The scruff of his jaw and the feel of his lips meeting my sensitive skin cause a throbbing heat to pulse wildly downward to my core. “And fuck me if I can’t resist it.”
I feel everything… His words against my skin, the unbearably hot air of the sticky, humid night, the fabric of my dress teasing my pebbled nipples, his massive cock as it presses against me, and the pulsing ache of my clit.
Everything about him draws me in when it shouldn’t, even the scent of smoke from his leather cut. A fucking Disciple’s cut.
“You aren’t quitting.” His gravel voice is a whisper. My own breath is a shallow panting as my eyes flutter closed. I’m in over my head, and contrary to this facade I’m putting on, I’m not Mia Crawford, the girl in this alley with no ties to this man’s rival club.
I’m Emilia Tyler, the girl who ditched her sister to go to a frat party and make out with some stupid boy. I’m from a family of Hounds.
“I’m not?” I challenge, struggling with every bit of strength I have as this ruthless outlaw presses his hard body against me.
I fight because right now, all I want is to be the girl from nowhere who lets herself give in to this Viking god as he touches her.
As he offers her a kind of pleasure she’s never known.
Right now, just being Mia seems so much easier.
“No. You’re going to start doing what you’re fucking told.”
His lips slide down my neck, and my eyes roll back. His chest rumbles against mine as he lets out a low growl when he reaches my collarbone. Taking a deep inhale, Aiden runs his nose back up my throat, as if memorizing my scent.
Visions of him hiking my dress up, my legs wrapped around his waist, his body against mine, overcome me. I imagine my back scraping against the brick while he fucks me. Thoughts of the fantasy men I’ve only ever dreamed about now have a face, his face.
I remember why I’m here in the first place, and it isn’t to have him touch me in some back fucking alley. “Get your fucking hands off me,” I say breathlessly into his ear.
I feel Aiden smirk into my neck.
“I’m not the one holding you, Mia.” I look down and realize he’s right. I’m holding him. His hands circle my waist now, but lazily, with no force. It’s me who’s gripping desperately to his cut, holding him close, as close as I possibly can.
“I fucking hate you,” I tell him, letting him go with a small shove.
“You don’t hate me, Mia. In fact, I bet your tight little cunt is soaked for me right now.” He grazes my waist through my dress with his thumb. “You can’t resist me any more than I can you. I bet you were fucking aching as you watched me, weren’t you?”
“No,” I lie, as he braces his hands against the wall on either side of me, caging me in.
“You’re a bad liar, Mia. Maybe I should punish you, hmm? Tie you up exactly how I want, so your throat, your cunt, and that perfect fucking ass are all available for me to fuck until my cum is dripping out of every hole you have.”
Oh God.
“But then again, something tells me you’d want that too, wouldn’t you?” His voice is a deep rasp. “Something tells me you’d want a man to violate you just like that.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I lie, just to piss him off. I have no idea why I do it, other than I don’t want him to think I’m some inexperienced virgin that he can scare with his words.
His eyebrow arches in surprise. “When I hurt Ricky, you weren’t even sorry.”
“No,” I confirm. “He got what he deserved.” I stay calm even though my heart is pounding and my pulse is racing.
“And you weren’t afraid of me,” he states as his fingers glide over my ponytail.
“No,” I repeat, and that much is true. Other things, yes. But afraid, no.
Aiden’s gaze drops to my lips.
I lick them, and his eyes darken.
“Instead, you wondered what it would feel like if my tongue met you here.” His knuckle ghosts my bottom lip before he slides it down, over the scar on my chin, to my neck, past my collarbone, like he’s moving in slow motion, until it skates over the hardened peak of my nipple. “Or here…”
He softly tugs on my ponytail, and I bite my lip to keep from moaning. My breathing speeds up and fury consumes me, not because what he’s saying isn’t true, but because it is.
I’m powerless to stop it as he slides just his middle finger down my body, past my belly, and then presses through my dress directly on the place I want him most.
“Especially here.” Aiden moves like he knows my body better than I do.
I keep my eyes on him, tears threatening as I fight the anger and lust that are surging together, and then everything becomes blurry. My dress creeps up my thighs as he presses his cock harder against me, and my legs almost give out.
“We grow in the things we focus on. Love, loathing, need…” His voice is thick as his middle finger slowly circles my swollen, aching clit through my soaked panties. I’ve never been spoken to like this before. Everything is heightened, and it feels like I’m wearing nothing at all under his touch.
I bite my bottom lip so hard to keep from whimpering that I taste my own blood.
His finger never stops sweeping my clit, and although he’s barely touching me, I’m on fire. My pussy tightens as he parts my legs farther with his heavy boot, and heat rushes through me.
“You aren’t quitting,” he repeats confidently.
I hear him, but I’m spiraling. I feel like I have no control over my own body as the heat intensifies and coils.
Pleasure. Pure, overwhelming pleasure takes over as I relax and rock my hips forward to meet him, holding in my moans with everything in me.
“Make no mistake, my little goddess… That which you loathe, you end up weaving into the very fabric of your soul…until you can’t loathe it any longer. You begin to crave it.”
I grab onto his strong arms, and my lips open on a soundless cry. What he’s doing is such an assertion of power, and it’s so humiliating to have my body beg for him like this.
“Soon, very soon, you’ll crave me.”
The coil of heat suddenly explodes within me, and a wave of pleasure hits me so relentlessly that I come apart against his fingers.
I’m free-falling as I let out a moan I can’t contain, breathlessly trying to keep my composure as a tear slides down my cheek.
I open my eyes for a sliver of a moment to find his devoid of emotion.
He’s pure ice, studying me intently while I come for him.
“Just as I thought,” he muses, and just like that, the lust fades and I’m right back to hating what happens to my convictions when he touches me.
Aiden pushes away from the wall, biting his lower lip as he drinks me in, a total mess for him. It makes me want to both stab him and beg him for more. Hate mixed with a desire I can’t make sense of.
“I knew that dress would look fucking incredible on you. It was even prettier watching you come for me in it.”
And then he’s gone through the door to the club, leaving me wanting and confused after the first orgasm I’ve ever had at the hands of a man.
Staring up at the sky, all I have is guilt and shame for letting him touch me. Who have I become, and where does my judgment go the moment Aiden Foxx touches me?