8. Margot
Chapter Eight
MARGOT
Day eight and I make a decision.
Not the one he expects. Not to leave. The opposite.
I decide to stay. Not as a hostage maintaining composure, not as a witness waiting out a threat, not as a woman caught in circumstances beyond her control.
I decide to stay as someone choosing this man and this life with clear eyes and a steady pulse.
The clubhouse is on high alert. I can feel it in the air.
The increased foot traffic, the tension in shoulders and jaws, the way conversations stop when I walk into a room.
Something happened, something Rogue hasn't told me fully.
He said they know about me. He said he'd handle it.
But the extra men around the building, the bike patrols that go out every few hours. Those tell me more than his words.
I'm in the kitchen, a surprisingly functional space off the main room, making coffee.
Learning this room's rhythms too. Where the mugs live, which burner runs hot, the way the morning light comes in through the high window and turns the concrete floor golden.
I've made myself useful here over the past few days.
Cooking for whoever's around. Nobody asked me to.
I just did it because doing nothing makes me insane and because feeding people is a language I speak.
Rogue appears in the doorway. He's dressed for something. Dark jeans, black shirt, his cut. His boots are the heavy ones, not the everyday pair. He's got a look on his face that I've learned to read. Controlled intensity. He's going somewhere and it's not social.
"Church is in an hour," he says. “Then, I’ll be gone most of today."
"Where?"
He hesitates. The old instinct. Club business, need-to-know, civilians stay out. But then his eyes move over my face and something softens at the edges.
"Meeting with an ally. Working on the Crest problem."
"Be careful."
"Always am."
"Liar," I say, for the second time in as many days.
He crosses the kitchen, cups my face, and kisses me. Hard. Possessive. A stamp of ownership that I should resent and instead lean into. His tongue sweeps against mine and I taste coffee and want and something fierce.
"Tonight," he says against my mouth. "Wait for me."
Then he's gone. Boots down the hallway. The rumble of his Road King outside, then the sound of multiple engines. He's not going alone. Good.
The day passes slowly. I read. I cook. A massive pot of chili that feeds whoever wanders through the kitchen.
I sit on the river deck and watch barges slide past. Colt checks on me every few hours, casual but consistent.
Sully nods at me from across the room and once, around noon, brings me a glass of sweet tea without comment.
I think about my life before this. The apartment on Cooper Street with the tabby cat and the mismatched dishes and the bedroom that always felt too quiet after a shift.
The rhythm of work. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, the constant adrenaline of the ER that made everything else feel flat.
The men I dated who were nice and appropriate and who bored me to the point of cruelty.
I think about what it means that I feel more alive in a MC’s clubhouse than I ever did in my own home.
By ten PM he's not back and I'm not worried. He told me it would be most of the day. But I'm restless. Keyed up. The kind of physical agitation that comes from waiting and wanting and not knowing.
I shower. Put on the clothes Colt got for me. Real clothes now, things that fit. A tank top, soft sleep pants. I leave my hair down because Rogue likes it down, and I catch myself in that thought and don't correct it.
I'm in his room when I hear the bikes. Multiple engines cutting off. Voices. Low, tight. The sound of men who've done something and come home from it.
His footsteps in the hall. The door opens.
He's intact. That's the first thing I assess. No blood, no injury, no favoring one side. He's wired, though. I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands flex at his sides. Adrenaline without release. The aftermath of action.
"Hey," I say from the bed.
He looks at me. Takes me in. Clean, waiting, in his bed by choice. His eyes darken. Hunger. The kind that's been building all day under the surface of whatever work he was doing.
He closes the door. Locks it. Pulls off his cut and hangs it on the hook by the door with a precision that's almost ceremonial. Then his shirt. Then his boots. He moves toward the bed with intent and I feel my pulse kick up. The way it does when I know exactly what's coming and want it.
"How'd it go?" I ask.
"Handled." He stops at the edge of the bed. Looks down at me. "I don't want to talk about it."
"What do you want?"
"You." One word. No qualification. "On top of me again. Taking whatever you want."
Something hot and liquid moves through my belly. I rise up on my knees and pull him down by his belt loops. He comes willingly. A big man made pliant by want. And I push him back on the mattress and straddle him.
He's hard already. I can feel it beneath me when I settle my weight on his hips. His hands come to my waist. Steadying, not controlling. His thumbs find the bare skin between my tank top and pants and trace slow lines back and forth.
I pull my tank top off. His eyes rake over me, lingering on my breasts, and his hands move up to cover them. Palms flat, fingers spread, my nipples pressing into the callused rough of his skin. I arch into it and grind down against the hard ridge in his jeans.
"Pants," I say.
He lifts his hips and I work his belt open, his zipper down. Push his jeans and boxers down together until his cock springs free. Hard, thick, already leaking at the tip. I wrap my hand around him and stroke once, twice, and his abs clench, his breath hissing out.
"My pace," I remind him. The same words from the other morning. I feel him twitch in my hand.
I push my own pants down. Kick them off. Naked above him, nothing between us.
His jaw is iron. His pupils are blown wide.
I position myself over him. Sink down in one slow, slick drop.
We groan together. I'm so wet, have been since I heard his bike, that there's nothing but smooth, full, perfect pressure as he fills me. I sit flush against him, take him all the way, and just breathe. Feel the stretch, the pulse of him inside me. His hands land on my thighs, gripping.
"You feel so good," he says. Rough. Strained. "Every goddamn time, you..."
I move. Rise up slow and drop back down hard.
Find a rhythm that's all mine. Deep and rolling and relentless.
I plant my hands on his chest and ride him the way I want to, taking my pleasure from the angle, from the friction, from the way his body responds beneath me.
Every time I sink down he makes a sound.
A low, bitten-off grunt that I'm becoming addicted to.
"Yeah," he breathes. "Like that. Just like that."
I lean forward. Change the angle so my clit drags against him with every roll of my hips.
The pressure builds, hot and tight in my belly, and I chase it, grinding harder, using him shamelessly.
His hands slide to my ass, grabbing, spreading, and the obscenity of it, the raw reality of flesh and friction and want, drives me higher.
"Look at you," he says. His voice is wrecked. "Taking what you need. Using me."
"You love it." I reply.
“Yeah, I fucking love it."
I sit up straight. Brace my hands on his thighs behind me and ride him with my head thrown back, completely exposed, completely in control.
He can see everything. My breasts bouncing, my stomach clenching, the place where he disappears inside me.
His thumb finds my clit and rubs in tight circles and I'm gone.
The orgasm hits like a wave breaking. I cry out, his name, maybe, or nothing, and my body locks around him, clenching, pulsing.
I ride through it, don't stop moving, and beneath me he groans and his hips snap up hard once, twice, three times, and he comes with his hands gripping my hips so hard I know there will be more fingerprint bruises tomorrow.
I collapse forward onto his chest. His arms come around me. Tight, possessive, secure. His heart hammers against my ear and his chest heaves beneath me and his cock twitches inside me with the aftershocks.
"Stay," he says into my hair. The word means more than tonight. We both know it.
I press my lips to his chest. Over his heart. "I'm staying."
"Not because I'm scared. Not because I can't leave. Because I want to be here." I lift my head. Look at him. "Because I want you."
He looks at me for a long time. And then something in his expression, something that's been held tight and guarded since the first night, eases. An acceptance.
"When this is done," he says. "When The Crest is handled and the threat is gone and you could walk away clean with no consequences..."
"Ask me then," I say. "Ask me when there's no reason to stay except wanting to. And I'll give you the same answer."
His hand comes up. Cups the back of my head. Pulls me down into a kiss that's slow and thorough and says everything neither of us is ready to put into sentences yet.
I fall asleep on his chest. His hand moves up and down my spine in that unconscious rhythm. And I know, the way you know things in your body before your mind catches up, that I'm not going back to the apartment on Cooper Street. Not to the empty bed and the quiet rooms and the life that was fine.
This is where I belong.
Terrifying. True.