Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JESS
A woman’s intuition is her superpower, but when she ignores it, she makes a fool of herself. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing until it was too late, or maybe I was just too overly sexed to truly give a flying fuck.
But the signs were all there.
Lucifer fucked me senseless, told me I was his, covered me in every part of himself, and then he walked out the door like he hadn’t completely upended my world the night before.
It was supposed to be just sex. A release of tension that had been building between us for weeks.
More like months if I really think about it, because even before the fire and the forgery, that man was on my mind.
It was just easy to push him out of my head back then because he was still an enigma.
A man whose entire existence was woven together by secrets and sins.
Now, I could lie and say that somewhere between his tongue between my thighs and his cum dripping down my stomach, it became more than sex for me. But the sex was just the icing on the cake. It cemented everything I already knew but was too afraid to admit.
I got a taste of what life could be like as his wife, and it bled into more. I wanted a future with him, one where I fit into his life as his ol’ lady.
It was delusional for me to want that, though.
I could sense something was off when I kissed him and he pulled away.
No part of me wanted to believe it. I know he had club business—that much wasn’t a lie.
I mean, the entire club took off. Half of them hadn’t even slept, so whatever was going on had to be serious, and as the president of the club, I’m sure it all weighed heavily on his shoulders.
I excused his coldness and clung to the scraps he threw my way by offering me his bed while he was gone, figuring I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. He could handle whatever was going on with the club, and when he got back, we’d either pick up where we left or decide where we’d go from there.
Thinking about it now, it sounds kind of grim, but I really did have hope. Until that bitch, Ginger, got in my head and set things straight for me. I don’t want to give her credit because I know deep down she said everything to me with malicious intent.
Call it mean-girl energy or whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that she had a point or that she opened my eyes to things I allowed myself to forget.
After Lucifer left, I fell back asleep. Months of self-created insomnia had finally caught up to me, and I felt safe in his bed even though he wasn’t there.
When I woke up, it was much later in the afternoon.
The scent of him still clung to the sheets, and my hand subconsciously stretched across the mattress, my fingers trailing over the indentation of where his body laid beside mine all night.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I helped myself to one of his T-shirts and made my way to the bathroom so I could shower.
I didn’t have any clothes at the clubhouse, so I had to dress in the same clothes as I wore to the party—minus my panties because those were still in the pocket of Lucifer’s cut.
I thought about having Homeboy give me a ride to my apartment so I could pick up some clothes, but he was nowhere to be found.
In fact, the clubhouse was eerily quiet.
Silence had replaced the bass that thumped through the walls all night, but the carnage from Nightmare’s birthday party was everywhere.
Empty bottles littered every surface. Sticky rings of spilled liquor stained the bar.
A pair of stilettos sat abandoned on the pool table, and clothes lay scattered around the room.
I knew right then and there it was going to take me all day to clean the clubhouse, and I dreaded finding out what the state of each individual member’s rooms was like.
Before I got started cleaning, I went behind the bar and grabbed my purse. I figured I’d call Tori and see if she was around. Maybe if it wasn’t too much trouble, she could drop off a change of clothes for me. But my phone was dead, so I threw it on the charger and got to work.
I was elbow-deep in a trash bag, stuffing it with empty bottles, when the front door swung open.
The redhead who hung all over Lucifer, the one he admitted to fucking, strode in wearing a short black dress that clung to every curve, the hem barely reaching mid-thigh, and a pair of fire-engine red stilettos.
Her hair wasn’t a matted mess like mine—no, her fucking hair was perfectly styled.
Another reason to hate her—you know, just in case knowing she fucked my husband wasn’t enough.
Her eyes swept around the room before they landed on me, and her lips pursed. I wanted so badly to tell her to leave, but I knew I had no right.
“Forget something?” I asked.
“Is Dread here?”
“No.” I tied off the garbage bag and set it by the door. When I turned around, I found her sitting on one of the stools.
“What about Lucifer?”
“No one,” I clipped.
Her red lips formed a pout. “Shame.” Then she flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I barely got to see him last night.”
I wanted to tell her the reason she didn’t see him was because he was too busy fucking me, but I refused to stoop to her level. Turns out I didn’t have to rub any of that in her face, though.
“You hogged all his attention,” she said before she slid off the stool.
Her sky-high heels clicked against the floor as she made her way toward me.
When she came to a stop in front of me, her eyes trailed the length of me before they settled on my neck, where I knew a trail of Lucifer’s marks bruised his skin.
“You shouldn’t get used to it. You’re just a shiny toy for him to play with.
He’ll get bored of you, like he does all the other saddle bunnies, and come back to me.
” She grinned, revealing a streak of lipstick on stained teeth.
“He knows I’m a sure bet, and I know just how to please him.
Why do you think he gives me free rein of that trailer behind the clubhouse? ”
“I’m not a saddle bunny,” I ground out.
That stupid grin of hers widened, and she stepped closer to me, causing her cheap perfume to invade my senses.
“That’s cute. What are you going to tell me next?
That you’re special and that he loves you?
That you’re different? You’re cleaning the fucking bathrooms, pouring drinks, and spreading your legs just like the rest of us, sweetheart.
Last night it was Lucifer, soon it will be Dread or maybe Nightmare. ” She paused.
“That’s never going to happen,” I spat.
She laughed at me. “It’s cute you think that.” Then she turned and strutted toward the hallway. Something snapped inside me, and I charged forward. My hand wrapped around her arm, and she came to a stop.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She snatched her arm free, and I stumbled back a step. A cruel reminder that my balance was still shotty. She noticed and sneered at me.
“I left something in Dread’s room last night.” Then she stepped toward me once again. “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to stop her. No one had mentioned any rules about saddle bunnies wandering into club members’ rooms uninvited.
Homeboy appeared just then.
“Everything okay here?”
“Yeah, baby. I left something in Dread’s room last night. I was just going to get it.”
Homeboy nodded. “Be quick, Ginger.”
She walked over to him and ran her fingers up his bare chest. “You know I don’t do anything too quickly.”
Then she disappeared down the hallway. Homeboy followed her, and I went into the kitchen, not wanting to interact with her anymore.
I waited for her to leave the clubhouse before I went back to the common room.
I wasn’t sure where Homeboy had disappeared to, but I really didn’t care too much either.
Ginger’s words played on a consistent loop inside my head, and I felt the fresh sting of tears fill my eyes. My whole life I didn’t want to be like my mother, and in that moment, I realized that maybe I had failed. That all my fears had come true.
I wasn’t being passed around from man to man, but did that really matter? My situation wasn’t much different from Ginger’s. Yeah, I had Lucifer’s last name on my insurance card, but no one knew I was his wife. He didn’t claim me to his brothers or call me his ol’ lady.
He gave me a job and offered me his bed. Allowed me to pour drinks so I’d feel useful. But he gave Ginger a trailer and authority to walk through these doors as if she owned them.
He couldn’t even look me in the eye after he’d been inside me.
Maybe he regrets it. Maybe he realized we crossed too many lines—that fucking his wife was one thing, but claiming her, marking her, telling her she’s his—that’s something else entirely.
Something real. Something that can’t be undone with a forged marriage certificate and a convenient lie.
Or maybe I’m just another body to him.
My stomach turns at the thought, and I press my palm against it, willing the nausea to pass.
But it doesn’t. It’s been three days since I called Tori and had her pick me up from the clubhouse, and I’m no better than I was when I left.
I’m heartbroken, and so fucking mad at myself.
I let my fucking guard down. I ignored my intuition, and now I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do.
Tori appears in the doorway of the living room, a plate in her hand. She crosses the room and sets it on the coffee table in front of me.
“I made you a sandwich,” she said.
I glance up at her. “Thanks.”
Sighing, she takes a seat next to me and tucks one leg beneath her.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head. I love Tori, but I don’t think I can stand hearing her tell me she told me so.
“Okay, well, I have to get Poppy from school in an hour.” She lays a hand on my knee, her fingers warm through the fabric of the sweatpants. “I just thought you should know that Lucifer keeps calling my phone.”