8. Char
CHAR
THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF ME.
I had confirmation of that now. I slammed the door closed behind me, hoping that it would abate the anger rising up the back of my throat.
But as I swallowed the harsh taste of bile down, I clenched my fists at my sides.
They were in trouble because of me. Because this woman felt like she had to come back into my world and fix it all up again.
So long as I was at their clubhouse, all of them were at risk.
“Come on,” I murmured to myself as I paced around the room, “don’t do this. It’s not your fault.”
My mind kept swirling, however. For all I knew, they weren’t even targeted until that woman came across me in that bar.
For all I knew, none of them were in a lick of trouble until she passed through one day and found me slinging drinks at Bottle Grounds.
Had I kept my fucking nose to myself and stayed out of their way like they asked, maybe that woman never would’ve attached me to them.
If I just kept my wits about me and accepted my fate instead of fighting against it, they’d be safe.
“If I would’ve just kept my fucking nose out of it,” I hissed to myself.
The galloping of the men downstairs made me hold my breath.
The stress they were all under was palpable.
It was all so much, and all roads seemed to point back to me so much that I was their star worm.
The fattest, juiciest bait for them to slide onto their hook before they tossed me into the shark-infested waters.
The knock at my door was soft. Not Gauge—Gauge didn’t knock soft. Not Dallas—Dallas didn’t knock at all, he just materialized and waited until you noticed him.
I already knew who it was before the door opened.
Deac filled the frame. He leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb and looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes for a long moment. Taking inventory. That was what he did. Catalogued everything before he committed to a single move.
“You’re spiraling,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
He crossed the room without another word and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. Close enough that his thigh pressed against mine. The silence between us changed shape.
“When we get back,” he said quietly. “I meant it.”
I kept my eyes on the floor. “Deac.”
“Look at me.”
When I did, his gaze was already on mine. Steady and dark and so direct it was hard to hold.
“I’m not gonna let you sit in here and swallow yourself whole,” he said. “Not tonight.”
He kissed me before I could talk myself out of wanting him to. Slow and deliberate and so deep that my hands found his chest and grabbed on just to have something solid. He kissed me like he had all the time in the world, and when he finally pulled back I was breathless.
He stood and turned to face me, and the look on his face made my stomach drop straight to the floor.
He reached back and grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled it over his head and I sat there on the edge of the bed with my heart hammering as I took him in.
The ink mapping his chest and shoulders.
The broad planes of him. The way he looked at me like I was the only thing in the room worth paying attention to.
“Lie back,” he said.
I did.
He reached for the hem of my shirt and dragged it up and over my head.
Unclasped my bra and set it aside. His hands moved over my tits with a thoroughness that made my back arch, his thumbs rolling over my nipples until they hardened beneath his touch and a soft moan slipped out of me against my will.
He lowered his head and drew one into his mouth, his tongue working the peak as I grabbed a fistful of his hair and held on.
“Deac,” I breathed. “God.”
He kissed across my sternum to the other side and gave it the same attention.
He worked his way down my stomach, his mouth dragging a trail of heat across my skin as his fingers hooked into the waistband of my jeans and dragged them down my legs.
My panties went with them. He left me bare and spread his palms wide across my inner thighs and just looked at me.
I felt the heat of his stare like a physical thing.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, low and matter-of-fact, like it wasn’t even a compliment. Just a fact he was recording for his own use. His eyes moved over me the way they moved over everything, unhurried, thorough, like he was deciding exactly what he intended to do with what he found.
Then he dropped his head between my thighs and my hips came off the bed.
He licked a slow, devastating stripe up my entire slit and I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from making too much noise.
He did it again. And again. His tongue circling my clit in tight, unhurried strokes while I twisted the sheets in my fists and tried to remember how breathing worked.
He slid two fingers inside me and curled them forward and I saw stars behind my eyelids.
“Deac,” I choked out. “Deac, please. I’m so close.”
He sealed his lips around my clit and sucked.
My orgasm crashed over me hard and fast, my thighs locking around his head as my back came off the mattress. He worked me through every last second of it, his tongue relentless until I was shaking and oversensitive and tugging at his hair just to get him to come up.
He rose over me and stripped his jeans off. I reached for him before I even thought about it, wrapping my hand around his cock and stroking upward. He exhaled through his teeth, his jaw tight, his eyes dropping closed for just a second.
“Don’t push it,” he gritted out.
I smirked. “Or what?”
He wrapped his hand around my wrist and pinned it to the mattress above my head. “Or I make you wait.”
The threat in his voice made my pussy clench. “Deac.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”
He lined himself up at my entrance and pushed in slow, his eyes locked on my face the whole way. I felt every inch of him stretching me open and my mouth fell open on a silent cry. He bottomed out against me and held there, his thumb tracing the inside of my wrist where he had me pinned.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Move,” I managed. “Please. Deac, move.”
He didn’t. Not yet. He held himself there, buried deep, his eyes on my face, and I understood then that this was also something he did. Watched. Waited until he had the full picture. Until he saw exactly what he was doing to me.
Then he drew back and drove into me and every thought I had dissolved completely.
He fucked me with the same focused intensity he brought to everything else.
Deep and deliberate, his hips rolling against mine, hitting something inside me that made my toes curl on every stroke.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper and heard him grunt against my throat.
His free hand slid under the small of my back and tilted my hips and I cried out at the angle.
“Quiet, little one,” he murmured against my ear. “Not yet.”
I buried my face in his shoulder and let the sounds get swallowed there instead. He reached between our bodies and pressed his thumb to my clit and I dug my nails into his back hard enough to leave marks.
“Deac,” I whimpered. “God. Don’t stop. Right there. Don’t you dare?—”
He ground his thumb in slow circles and thrust into me hard and I shattered all over again. My pussy clamped down around him and I felt him follow seconds later, his hips slamming into mine as he spilled deep inside me with a low, controlled sound against the side of my neck.
We stayed tangled together after. His weight heavy and warm over me. Both of us breathing hard into the quiet of the room.
He pressed his lips to my temple. Held them there.
“Stop blaming yourself,” he said. Low. Firm. Final.
I closed my eyes. “Deac?—”
“Stop.”
The door was open.
I didn’t register it at first. I was too far gone, too loose-limbed and wrung out to notice anything beyond the weight of him and the slow return of my own breath. But then the air in the room shifted. A current of it. Like someone let the hallway in.
My eyes opened.
Dallas stood in the doorframe.
He hadn’t knocked. He never knocked. He’d just materialized there the way he always did, shoulder against the wood, arms crossed over his chest, watching us with those unreadable green eyes.
He looked at me the same way he always did — like he was deciding something.
Like he’d already decided and was just waiting for me to catch up.
My whole body went still.
Deac’s thumb was still moving in slow circles at my wrist. He hadn’t tensed. Hadn’t moved. Which meant he already knew Dallas was there. Had known, maybe, from the moment he walked in.
“Deac,” I said quietly.
“I know,” he said, just as quiet.
Dallas didn’t move from the door.
Something about that — the fact that he stayed, the fact that neither of them seemed surprised or bothered, the fact that Deac’s hand hadn’t stopped moving against my skin — sent heat crawling up the back of my neck that had nothing to do with embarrassment.
“You going to say something?” I asked. I didn’t know which one of them I was asking.
Dallas’s mouth curved. Not a full smile. Just the edge of one. “No.”
Deac pressed his mouth to the corner of my jaw. “You have about ten seconds to decide if that door stays open or closes,” he murmured against my skin. “Either way’s fine with me.”
My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
Dallas waited. He didn’t push. Didn’t move. Just held my stare across the room with that patient, devastating stillness of his. Giving me the choice. Giving me all of it.
I held his gaze for a long moment.
Then I looked back at the door.
And I didn’t say close it.
The breath that moved through Dallas’s chest was almost imperceptible. Almost. He stayed where he was — didn’t come in, didn’t make a move, just settled against the doorframe like he intended to be there all night — and something loosened in my chest that I didn’t have a name for.