Chapter 9 #2
He walks to his truck. His engine fires up, and his headlights go on. He pulls out of the lot without hurry, lifting two fingers off the steering wheel in a wave as he passes.
The second the taillights clear the road, Rookie turns to me. His face is white around the lips. Controlled, held together with wire and will, but the fury is visible in the tendons of his neck.
"Get in my truck." His voice is rough. "You're not going home tonight."
I don't argue.
* * *
Once we get back to the clubhouse, we head straight to his room.
His laptop is closed on the desk for once.
He's pacing. Wall to wall, raking through his hair until it stands up in every direction. The parking lot calmness is gone.
"He was right there." He stops at the wall. His forearms press against the concrete. "While Beats was inside. While I was twenty feet away."
I sit on his bed and watch him burn.
The anger radiating off him fills the small room. It's different from my father's anger. My father's anger was selfish, inward, the fury of a man who couldn't control the world, so he controlled the people in it.
Rookie's anger is aimed outward. At Creedy. At the smiling man who stood in a dark parking lot and said my daddy's name like a password. At the threat he couldn't eliminate with a conversation and a cold stare.
He's angry because someone he cares about was in danger. Not angry at me. Not angry because of me.
Angry for me.
The difference is everything.
"Rookie," I say it to his spine.
He doesn't turn.
I stand, cross the room, and press my palms flat against the bare skin of his lower back. His muscles are coiled so tight under my touch they vibrate.
"You were there," I say it between his shoulder blades.
He drops his arms. Turns. His expression is fractured.
Anger and fear, something raw and hungry, and barely leashed.
"He was close enough to touch you. He could’ve put his hands on you. He could’ve—" His voice is a jagged scrape, raw with a possessiveness that makes my skin prickle.
I slide my palms up his chest, feeling the hard muscle bunch under my touch, moving over his collarbone to the sides of his neck.
His pulse is a violent hammer against my thumbs, erratic and demanding.
"He didn't," I whisper, locking my eyes onto his. "You were there. You're here now."
I don't wait for him to respond.
I hook my fingers into his hair and yank his mouth down to mine.
The kiss doesn't just happen—it detonates.
It’s a collision of teeth and tongue, a desperate war for air.
His grip locks around my waist, his fingers digging into my flesh with a bruising force that makes me gasp into his mouth.
I crave it. I want those marks. I want the purple blooms of his fingerprints on my hips as permanent proof that I belong to a man who claims me because I’m his, not because I am a prize to be owned.
He doesn't lead me to the bed. He doesn't have the patience for it.
With a guttural growl, he hoists me up. I wrap my legs tight around his waist, my heels digging into his glutes as he carries me across the room.
He slams me back onto the heavy wooden surface of his dresser.
The impact jars my spine, sending a shock of adrenaline through me as cologne bottles rattle and slide, some crashing to the floor, but neither of us flinches.
He’s between my legs in an instant, his massive frame pinning me against the wood.
He doesn't ask; he takes.
His mouth crashes onto my throat, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin of my collarbone, marking me with a hunger that borders on feral.
He rips my shirt over my head in one violent motion, tossing it blindly across the room.
He stops for a fraction of a second, his chest heaving, eyes dark and blown wide as he surveys me.
"Tell me if it's too much," he rasps, his voice barely held together, the alpha dominance warring with a desperate need to protect me.
I reach up, grabbing the nape of his neck and pulling him back down. "It's not enough. Give me everything."
The sound that leaves his chest is a low, predatory growl that vibrates through my sternum and settles as a heavy heat between my thighs.
He doesn't go slow.
He lunges, his tongue dragging across my nipple with a wet, demanding pressure that makes my back arch off the dresser.
He pins my hip down with one palm, his grip iron-tight, holding me still while he sucks and bites at the peak of my breast until I'm sobbing, my fingers clawing at the polished wood beneath me.
His free hand doesn't fumble.
He tears at the button of my jeans, the zipper shrieking as he forces the denim down my legs. He strips me bare, leaving me exposed and shivering under his intense gaze.
He dives down, his mouth searing a path across my stomach, past my navel, and deep into the crease of my hip.
When his hot breath hits the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, I let out a wrecked, high-pitched moan that echoes in the quiet room.
He’s methodical, reading every shiver, every desperate tilt of my pelvis.
He uses his tongue and fingers to drive me toward the edge, pushing me higher and higher until I'm begging, my heels digging into his shoulders.
Just as the tension becomes unbearable, he pulls away, leaving me aching and empty.
"Please," I choke out, my hips lifting instinctively, searching for him. "Please, fuck me."
He doesn't make me wait any longer.
He sheds his clothes in a blur of motion and looms over me, his cock thick and pulsing, leaking pre-cum that glistens in the dim light.
He grabs my thighs, shoving them wide, and drives into me in one singular, devastating thrust.
We both stop breathing.
The air leaves my lungs in a sharp gasp as he fills me completely, stretching me to my limit.
We stay there for a heartbeat, foreheads pressed together, his breath ragged and hot against my lips.
Then the rhythm starts.
It isn't a dance. It's more like a conquest.
He hammers into me with a furious, desperate intensity, his hips colliding with mine with a wet, slapping sound that fills the room.
The dresser groans under our combined weight, sliding an inch across the floor with every powerful drive. There is nothing careful about this.
It’s raw, urgent, and primal.
"Look at me," he commands, his voice a low rumble.
I open my eyes.
The vulnerability staring back at me is staggering.
Behind the dominance and the strength, he is terrified—terrified of the world, of the men who want me, of the possibility that he isn't enough.
I grip his jaw, forcing him to stay present, to see me. "I'm here. I'm yours. I'm not going anywhere."
That's the breaking point. The last thread of his control snaps.
He buries himself deeper, his movements becoming frantic, his breath coming in jagged hitches.
I wrap my legs tighter around his waist, locking him in, pulling him over the edge with me.
We shatter together.
He lets out a raw, guttural roar, the sound torn from the depths of his soul as he pumps his seed deep inside me.
My nails rake down his sides, carving red lines into his skin as my own orgasm crashes over me in violent, rhythmic waves.
Silence falls, heavy and thick.
He collapses onto me, his weight crushing me into the dresser, his heart hammering against my ribs.
The room smells of sex, sweat, and that metallic, motor-oil scent that has become my only definition of safety.
As his breathing evens out, I trace the welts my nails left along his ribs.
I don't apologize. I want him to carry the marks of my desperation just as I carry the bruises of his grip.
He eventually pulls me off the dresser, carries me over to the bed, and lays us both down.
He presses his lips to the knob at the top of my spine and holds them there, like he's sealing something shut.
"I'm calling Ruger in the morning." He says it into my skin. "If Creedy shows up again, it won't end with him walking to his truck."
I close my eyes and press into his warmth.
I should be afraid of what those words mean. A week ago, I would have been.
But a week ago, Dale Creedy hadn't stood in a dark parking lot and looked at me like I was something his friend had promised him.
I press my cheek against the pillow. "Okay."
His arm tightens around me and we sleep.