CHAPTER 7
MAYHEM
This woman. She’s gutting me. Her pain and fear makes the air around us thicken. I want to take it all away from her, but I can’t.
“You won’t forget,” I admit to her, the need to never keep anything from her outweighing the need to protect her. For now. Just for now. Just with words, never with her life. “I wish I could tell you something else, Tempest, but I won’t lie to you.”
A tear crests the edge of her lower lashes, but my thumb is there to wipe it away before a track can leave evidence of what she thinks is a weakness, but I know it is an unrivaled strength.
“It shouldn’t be easy, living with this,” I tell her.
“Kendra’s life was taken from her, and she did nothing to warrant her death.
Nothing. It was the actions of a man who could have and should have made a different decision.
He didn’t have to cheat. He didn’t have to be a shitty husband or cop.
He could have been clean and taken a different path.
What drove him to kill her doesn’t matter when the end result is the loss of an innocent life. ”
“I should have connected the dots sooner. It was right there. I poured over every article, and I knew her estranged husband, even though the papers didn’t mention that part, is a cop. Still, it never occurred to me he was the one who killed her.”
“Addyson,” I murmur, my tone heavy with admonishment, “it’s not your job to think like a crooked cop. You did what you were supposed to do in a situation you should have never been in. Still, you couldn’t let it go,” I point out.
She nods, a look of sadness on her beautiful face. “Yeah,” she grumbles, “and look where it’s gotten me. I’ve now brought danger to your clubhouse and it’s not fair. Everything else was out of my control, but if anything happens because I’m here then that’s on me now. I couldn’t live with it.”
Fucking hell.
“Wow, Addy,” my voice cracks and I clear my throat, “you’re not at all what I was prepared for.”
I couldn’t have dreamed up a better woman to stand by my side. It’s wild how I convinced myself that having someone, an Old Lady at my back, wasn’t in the cards for me. Maybe what I was afraid of all along was falling short of the love I’ve grown up seeing between my mom and dad.
That doesn’t mean it was always easy between them. Life takes turns and there are times when you have to fight for each other, and alone. I watched it happen, but when they really needed it, they had each other’s backs. Those are the moments forged in grit, steel, and love.
“What does that mean?” Addy blinks up at me, and I can see how she’s trying to bank some of her hope instead of getting lost in it.
My fingers sweep across the soft skin of her cheeks, and I marvel at how a woman like her, one who is all light, could let a man like me touch her. If only I was capable of letting her go, but I know I’m not. Not now.
“I’m not a good man,” the words, ones I know to be true, slip past my lips.
She doesn’t flinch. Almost as if she expected it, as if she could see me.
I don’t know how I feel about it, but it changes nothing.
“I have blood on my hands. I’m nothing like that piece of shit cop who hides his dirty actions behind a badge.
I don’t hide who I am and I’m not going to start now. ”
“I might have gotten myself in a pretty stupid situation, but I’m not usually as na?ve as the circumstances would suggest. I’m aware there are things I’ll never know. There are things Tallulah will never know. She’s given me the whole rundown on life in a clubhouse. I can handle it for a few days.”
My body stiffens and Addy doesn’t miss it. A few days?
My chest starts to rapidly rise and fall as I try to get myself under control. Her fingers dig into my chest, as if her will is enough to calm me down, and it centers me in a way I need.
“You don’t get it yet, my little Tempest,” I murmur the words, hoping to cover them in honey enough for her to accept them without question. She’s not ready for the answers. But I can’t help but warn her, “I’m not letting you go.”
She narrows her eyes at me and shakes her head like I’m an errant child who simply hasn’t learned how to share. That’s not what is going on at all.
“You don’t know me, Mayhem,” she points out as if it’ll make a difference. It won’t.
“Briggs,” I remind her, my voice pleading because I want to hear my name on her lips.
“Briggs,” she says it so softly, like it’s delicate. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s as close to acceptance as I’m going to get tonight.
It takes everything in me, but I slowly let my hands fall away from her face. They hover over her shoulders waiting to see if she still needs me. Knowing she did, knowing she let me in enough to break in front of me, is a gift.
Fuck if I know whether I’ll be able to honor it. I hope so. I’m going to do my fucking best.
Because she’s worth it and I can’t imagine a life without her in it now.
Addy’s brown eyes move around the room, taking it in again. She’s going to try to keep fighting me on the sleeping arrangements. I’m not budging and that’s all there is to it. She’ll figure it out.
I’m not going to argue with her about it. Just like I’m not going to argue about me knowing that she’s mine and that I’ll be holding onto her. Forever sounds like it might be long enough, but I fucking doubt it.
Why argue with the woman when I’m just going to show her? It’ll be easier anyway. I already know she has a stubborn streak which is going to keep me on my toes.
Maybe Anchor can get me a tracker for her. Something to think about for sure.
When I open my door, her bag is sitting there with her key on top. I grab them and then stride across the room to my dresser, putting her bag down on top of it.
“I’m glad I went ahead and packed all my skincare stuff. I never feel clean if I don’t do the whole routine,” she chatters while reaching for her bag.
I grip her hands and she looks up at me, startled. “You’re sleeping in my shirt tonight, Tempest.”
Her eyebrows pull together and it’s damn cute. “But I have pajamas in my bag?”
“I figured, but you’ll still be sleeping in my shirt tonight. My shirt. My bed. That’s just how it is, Addyson.”
She stares up at me, studying me in a way that has me standing taller. I’m going to pass every single one of her tests because there isn’t another option. Letting her go isn’t happening.
I don’t look away from her as I slide my cut off and put it on the dresser before reaching back and pulling my t-shirt off, the fabric the only thing that cuts our connection but for less than a second. “You do have a choice here,” the words rumble out of my chest as I hold my shirt out for her.
With an arched eyebrow, her words drip with challenge, “Oh? And what is the choice here? You’ve said I’m sleeping in your shirt, the one you just pulled off.” She swallows hard and waves her hand like the situation is a gnat and not my shirtless chest. Again, cute. “That’s not the point.”
I step closer, unable to help myself. “I think it might be the point.”
She eyes my chest, taking in the tattoos she can see on my arm and wrapping around my ribs. When she licks her lips, I have to bite back a groan.
“I’m pretty sure you’re a side quest that doesn’t end well,” she mutters the words, but they sound like lies.
“No, Tempest, that’s not what I am.”
She looks at me and then I see it—the fear. It’s not the same fear as when I first met her, when she was running from danger and right into my arms, without even knowing it. No, this is fear for herself, for her heart.
What she doesn’t know and can’t trust, not yet at least, is that I’ll protect her heart just as fiercely as I’ll protect her life.
“Would you rather,” my voice is curious, teasing, “take my shirt and put it on in the bathroom or would you like me to undress you and then slip my shirt down over your body.”
Addyson rears back, her face wide with surprise and then she smiles. But it gets better. She laughs.
I watch her, lapping up the sound of her joy.
“Thanks,” she wheezes slightly, “I needed to laugh.”
She blindly reaches out to pat my chest. The moment she touches me, everything freezes. Her eyes snap up to mine and then I’m crowding her.
“I wasn’t kidding. You choose Addy.”
Just when I think she’s going to step around me and take my shirt into the bathroom, which I pointed out when I gave it to her as an option, she squares her shoulders. Her arms go up and she looks at me like she doesn’t quite believe I’ll follow through.
But I’m the fucking president of a motorcycle club.
There’s no way I’m backing down or out.
As she stares at me, I almost back out.
Then my hands shoot out and I grip the hem of her pink sweater. It’s up and off in moments. The sight of her tits encased in pink satin has my knees going weak.
“Fucking hell,” I growl, the words low and full of warning.
Before her sweater even hits the floor, I’m unbuttoning her jeans and sliding down the zipper. I look down at the boots she’s wearing and curse under my breath because those are going to have to come off first.
I drop to my knees, not giving a single fuck about the impact. I’ve already been hit center mass. And I’m not only walking away clean, but I’m also walking away with an Old Lady on my arm.
“Briggs,” Addyson shrieks, her hands gripping my shoulders.
I bury my face against her abdomen, my nose running along the waistband of her jeans where pink satin is peeking out at me. “Say it again,” the words whisper against her skin and I breathe her in.
She smells like toffee and almonds, like a sweet treat I have to sink my teeth into. When my tongue comes out and glides along her skin, Addyson sucks in a breath and her fingers skate along the short hairs at the nape of my neck.
“Briggs,” she moans my name and my eyes roll back in my head. Never has my name sounded so good.