13. Rex
Mickey.
That fuckin’ little shit was on the top of my list already, and now it just became personal.
After rooting around in Nag’s cabin for what felt like hours, I’d dug up some old leather-bound journals. The hand writing was surprisingly neat and perfectly formed, but in true Nag style, he’d written in half sentences and jumbled words. It was gonna take a little while to decipher the thing.
The one thing that stood out in Nag’s journals was the repeated initials ‘MP’. Mickey Piers. That fucking loser had been a thorn in my side for a while, but he’d never really stepped out of line enough to warrant a fuckin’ beating. But now… oh man, he was gonna see why I was the sarge, and why people gave me a wide berth. But first, I had to fuckin’ find him and he was being particularly hard to track down, someone must have tipped him off that I was looking for him. And didn’t that just stink to high heaven.
After dropping it all off to Sly and showering, then dumping my muddy shit off with Ryan, I’d ventured into town to get something to eat. I hadn’t intended on spending my night alone once my belly was full. I was planning on heading back to the bar and emptying my load into one of the club pussies, but then of course, chance had landed in my lap—or rather on the stool next to me.
The fact that we had problems with the same snake was just a twist of fate, and it gave me a chance to dig into Mia’s mind and figure her out. The mark on her face though… damn. The rage simmered beneath the surface, only years of training kept a smile on my face for her, because if I’d learned anything in my years in the MC, civilians didn’t like to see the monster lurking beneath the skin. They wanted the gentleman, they wanted to see that we were human, when in actual fact, we’d lost our humanity a long fuckin’ time ago. I was a devil of circumstance, raised into a life of flames and fury that no one but a brother could ever understand. Sure, an old lady was closer than most, but they were there to keep the fire at bay and offer peace where there was normally chaos. Cal and Jenna were like that, and sometimes I envied that. Sometimes.
As Mia sat beside me, my hand still gripping her knee as if I was keeping her next to me, I couldn’t see the resemblance between this exquisite woman and the mousy flower girl. It’s why I’d never linked the two together. When I’d first seen her in the hospital, and that she was here to see her sister, I didn”t make the connection until just now. Fucking stupid. But no one would say shit if they were standing next to each other and they mentioned their relationship. They were as different as night and day.
“I didn’t realize you two were sisters.” She grew quiet beside me, her gaze quizzical as I continued. “I’ve met her a couple of times, you’re more?—”
“Louder?” she threw back with a cocky grin. The smile caught me off guard, and I chuckled at how relaxed she was. Whacked across the face by a stranger this morning, and here she was, seeming without a care in the world. Not many women could put something like that aside and sit in public with a shiner on full display. Not many women would be laughing and joking with another strange man mere hours after her attack.
“I was gonna say confident.”
Her smile grew soft as she spoke of her sister. “Yes, Millie is a sweety… and painfully shy. Which is why we were all super shocked when she packed up and moved here.” She sighed as if dissatisfied with her sister taking charge of her life. “Now she’s… staying.” She swiped a stray hair from her cheek that had come loose, brushing against her cheek and I envied the tendril its freedom to touch her so intimately. “Permanently.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, princess.” I swigged the cold soda, the ice clinking against the glass.
“What?” she startled.
“She’s settled in nicely, the locals love her, and she’s been helping out old Margot in the flower shop for a while now. The thing about this place is, the minute them old folks accept you, you’re part of the town. Especially if Margot gets her claws in ya, her shop’s built from the dust of our ancestors.” We didn’t often get people moving here, a lot of the younger families were moving to the bigger cities, which suited us just fine. Didn’t need strangers moving in and sticking their noses in our business.
She got that same expression on her face as when I first saw her sitting here, her perfect brows furrowed, a V forming between her navy-blue eyes. “I just… thought she’d come home, you know.” Sadness laced her voice, I couldn’t help with the loss she was feeling, I’d never had any siblings growing up, just an alcoholic father and a weak mother. Thank God they only reproduced once.
“You can visit each other, it’s not the end of the world.” She slid her venomous eyes my way, and if I’d been a lesser man, I may have cowered at the murderous look. But I wasn’t a lesser man, that sharp gaze had my pants tightening around my dick, the blood rushing to the cock that was currently tucked to the left and becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Of course, I would get a fuckin hard-on in public by a woman who had shown me no ounce of attention. Normally, the club sluts just begged for any scrap I would throw them, and practically hung off my dick. “I bet that resting bitch face scares those pansy assed English boys.” Red arced across her cheeks, and the narrowed eyed glare became even more poison, but riling the pretty woman up was sending all kinds of signals to my dick, that had it twitching and begging for release. Shifting on the stool, I tried to get comfortable, but when you have a cock as big as mine, it wasn’t the easiest thing to hide.
“I can’t just hop on a plane whenever I want to see her,” she spat. “I don’t have that kind of money, I’m just a nurse. The audacity to think I can flit about whenever I want, ugh.”
“Well then why can’t you be a nurse here? People in your profession get paid far more over here than in your country.” I actually couldn’t believe that nurses worked for such shit pay there. “And then that solves your problems, doesn’t it.”
She didn’t seem impressed with my option, the stink eye came with an eye roll that belied her age. “I’m not leaving everything behind to move here just because my sister enjoys the small-town life.”
I shrugged. “Well then, suck it up, buttercup.”
I tossed a couple of twenties on the counter enough to cover both our meals, before adjusting the crotch of my jeans to stand up without poking someone’s eye out. Fuck. “Let me walk you back to the motel.” I watched her ass walk in front of me, the tight cheeks encased in her own jeans were just big enough to fit my hands. I shoved them into my pockets to keep them from reaching out with a mind of their own and possibly ending up with my own shiner from the feisty woman for touching her inappropriately.
The night had fallen quickly, most of the shops were closed up, except the lights from the bar up ahead. The raucous noise from inside spilled out into the street and she looked at the swinging doors longingly. I knew what she was going to say before she said it, but I still got a jolt of pleasure the minute the words spilled from her pretty lips. “Do you want a drink first?”
The proposal was a temptation and an invitation if the spark in her eyes was anything to go by. She’d hidden that heat behind her sharp tongue, and I wanted to take her up on that offer. Fuck, my dick was begging me to.
But when a woman asked me for a drink, my mind immediately twisted those words into ‘come and fuck me’—which is what it normally translated to. Though I don’t think Mia, standing there with her long hair almost white under the light of the moon, understood what she was getting into when she propositioned me. Especially with that mark on her face. I was an absolute cunt, but I wasn’t without my morals, and she didn’t need my raging hard-on pounding her face into the pillow tonight.
Scratching the underside of my chin, I gave into the urge that I’d had in the diner, and pulled a lock of her hair from behind her ear. It felt like silk wrapped around my finger and I twirled it round without giving into the additional urge to smell it. I wasn’t a fuckin’ creeper. “Not tonight, princess.” I slid the tendril back behind her ear, sliding my hand down the length of her neck and, without even thinking about being in the middle of a dark street, I wrapped my hand around the back of her neck, gripping her loosely.
Her breath hitched, the delicate feel of her beneath my hand was like pulling the trigger on a loaded gun, I was ready to explode imagining holding her down just like this and sliding my dick across those plump lips. As if she could read my mind, the tip of her tongue poked out, sliding across her bottom lip like she wanted the same thing. Jeez, this woman could do to me with a look what some of the club sluts have to work hard for.
“You need rest after the shit day you’ve had.”
“It’s just a drink, Rex,” she replied breathlessly.
Squeezing gently, her pupils blown wide, the black almost overtaking the blue. “You know it won’t be just a drink, Mia.”
“That’s the first time you’ve said my name,” she murmured, throwing my earlier words back at me.
I couldn’t keep the laugh from breaking free, this woman was a firecracker, and if I wasn’t careful, she could become a problem.
A hot, sexy, infuriating problem that tested my boundaries and unknowingly went up against the rules I’d put in place for myself when it came to women.
Pulling her with me, we crossed the road to the motel, my hand firmly wrapped around her nape the whole way, though it seemed more of a way of keeping her away from me rather than close. This way, I had control over what parts touched what, and I wasn’t in a place for her to put her hands on me tonight.
Desire raged inside me, and I needed to get a grip on it before I lost what little control I had at the moment.
“Make sure you lock the door behind you.” She stood in front of the door, the heat missing now I’d turned her down. “And, Mia, remember what I said about Mickey.” She merely nodded before closing the door in my face. “I’m waiting to hear the turn of the lock. Oh and, Mia,” I called through the door knowing she stood right behind it, a wooden barrier separating me from the woman that haunted my lust-filled thoughts, “…that’s twice now… I win.” I smirked when the latch fell heavily, locking the door from the outside world.