Chapter 7
SHELBY
The yelling wakes me up. It’s the middle of the night. Or maybe it’s morning, but the sun still hasn’t come up.
The voice is male and angry. There are words I can’t make out from up here, but the cadence is unmistakable.
Somebody is pissed.
I sit up in bed. My door is locked, lamp off, and the clock on my phone says eleven-forty. I pull Saber’s t-shirt down over my thighs and press my ear to the floor.
“—just sitting here while they ride through our territory as if they own it!”
Another voice. It’s lower and controlled.
Saber.
I can’t hear his words, but I know the rhythm. He’s a man who doesn’t need to raise his voice to fill a room.
The first voice comes back louder. “You want to wait? Wait for what? For them to roll up to this building and put a bullet through the front door?”
Saber’s response is short. One sentence, maybe two.
“Bullshit.” The word cracks through the floor. “You’re not protecting the club. You’re protecting her. And that makes you weak. You’ve got your head so far up that girl’s ass you can’t see what Nitro is doing right in front of you.”
Silence. Long enough that my breath stalls.
Then another voice. Joker, I think. “Sit the fuck down, before we make you sit down.”
A chair scrapes. More voices, lower, overlapping. Then Saber, and this time I catch the words because he’s not keeping them down anymore.
“We move when I say we move. Anyone who has a problem with that can turn in his cut and walk. Right now. The door is right there.”
Nothing. No one speaks. No chair moves.
Then a door slams hard enough to rattle the lamp on my dresser.
Then there are heavy, fast boots on the stairs. Saber’s door opens and shuts with enough force that the wall between our rooms shudders.
I sit in the dark with my knees pulled to my chest.
Someone is mad because he is protecting me.
I stay in bed for five minutes. Ten. The clubhouse goes quiet. The men downstairs either left or dropped to murmurs, and behind the wall, Saber’s room is silent.
I get up. I unlock my door and step into the hallway.
His door is closed, and there’s no light underneath. I lift my hand and knock twice.
The door opens fast. He’s in jeans and nothing else.
No shirt. No cut. No boots.
Tattoos cover his chest, his ribs, his shoulders, crawling up his neck and down his arms. His hair is wrecked from his hands, and his jaw is tight.
His eyes land on me, and the anger drains into something worse. Exhaustion.
“You heard that.”
I nod. “Enough of it.”
He steps back and leaves the door open.
I walk in and close the door behind me.
His room is bigger than mine. Darker. A bed shoved against the far wall, sheets tangled. A desk with paperwork and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. His cut is draped over the back of a chair.
I turn to face him. He’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with hooded eyes.
“I should go.” It’s hard to say those words out loud, but I mean them. “I don’t want to be the reason your club falls apart.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Saber, I can’t stay here.”
“You can, and you will stay here.” He pushes off the wall. One step toward me. “In this club, we protect our Old Ladies. That’s not negotiable. That’s not up for a vote. It’s how this works.”
My heart is slamming. “Is that what I am?”
He’s close now. Close enough that I have to tip my chin back to hold his eyes, and the height difference puts my mouth level with his collarbone.
“If you want to be.”
“What does that mean? Being your Old Lady.”
“It means you’re mine. Not the club’s. Mine.” That last word comes out in a growl. “It means every man who wears this patch treats you with respect, or he answers to me. It means nobody touches you. Nobody threatens you. You are under my protection, and that protection doesn’t expire.”
“And what do I give up?”
“Nothing.” His jaw loosens. “You’re not giving anything up, Shelby. This isn’t a cage. It’s a claim. And a claim only works if you want it.”
I hold his eyes. Saber is standing here, telling me I have a choice.
Nobody has ever let me choose.
“I already told you,” I say. “I like that I’m yours.”
His hand comes up. Fingers slide along my jaw, tilting my head back, and this time he doesn’t pull back. His mouth finds mine, and the kiss isn’t careful.
He kisses me like the argument is still burning in his blood, and I’m the only thing that makes sense.
His other hand finds my hip, pulling me flush against him, and the heat of his bare chest burns through the thin cotton of his shirt on my body.
My hands land on his stomach, feeling hard muscle and warm skin.
And they travel up. Over his ribs. Over tattoos. Over scars I’ll ask about later.
His tongue drags across my lower lip. I open for him, and his mouth swallows the sound I make. He walks me backward until my shoulders hit the wall, and his body holds me there.
His hand fists in my hair. Pulls my head back. His mouth breaks from mine and drags down the side of my neck, open and hot, teeth grazing the tendon below my ear. My back arches off the wall, pressing into him, and the hardness between his legs is thick against my stomach.
“Do you want this?” His mouth is on my throat. “I need to hear you say it.”
“Yes. I want this. I want you.”
He makes a sound against my skin—low, rough, like I’ve ripped something loose inside him. His hands find the hem of the t-shirt and pull it over my head in one motion. I’m in underwear and nothing else, and the air hits my bare skin.
He looks at me, taking in every inch. My breasts, my waist, the curve of my hips. His eyes go dark, and his hands flex at his sides, and he’s holding himself back with a restraint that’s cracking at the edges.
“Fuck.” And that’s all he says.
I reach for him, but he drops to his knees.
Both knees. On the floor in front of me. The President of the Hellborn Kings, on his knees before me, his hands sliding up the outside of my thighs.
He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and pulls them down. I step out of them. He lifts my left leg over his shoulder, and his lips are on the inside of my thigh, and my head falls back.
He doesn’t tease. He drags his tongue up my inner thigh, and when he reaches where I’m aching for him, his mouth closes over me, and my knees buckle.
His hands catch my hips, and he presses me against the wall. He licks and sucks, and the sound that tears out of me is loud enough that anyone in the hallway would hear it.
I don’t care.
His tongue is flat against my clit, and he’s working me with a patience that makes my vision blur.
My fingers dig into his hair. Black strands tangled between my knuckles, and I’m gripping hard enough to pull, and every time I tug, his tongue presses harder.
He adds a finger. One, pushing inside me while his tongue flicks my clit, and my hips buck against his face. He growls, a vibration against my skin that shoots straight through me.
I push my center against his face, seeking more friction, and he adds a second finger, curling them, finding the spot that makes my thighs clamp around his head.
“Saber. Oh my god. I’m—”
He doesn’t ease up. He pushes harder. His fingers curl inside me while his tongue glides over my clit, and the pressure builds at the base of my spine, climbing, climbing, a coil winding so tight my body shakes with it.
It breaks.
The orgasm crashes through me in waves.
Not gentle. Not gradual. A full-body sensation that locks my spine and rips the air from my lungs.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. His name, maybe. Or nothing. My fingers are white-knuckled in his hair, and my leg is shaking on his shoulder, and he doesn’t stop. He works me through it, his mouth relentless, until I’m gasping and pulling at his hair, because it’s too much.
He pulls back. Presses his forehead against my hip bone. Both of us breathing hard.
Then he stands.
He rises in one fluid motion, kissing me hard before I can catch my breath. I taste myself on his lips and the filthiness of it, the rawness, makes my hips roll against him. His hands grip my waist, and he lifts me.
My legs wrap around him. His back muscles bunch under my hands. He pins me against the hard surface, and his hips press between my thighs, and the rough denim of his jeans drags against where I’m swollen and slick.
“I need you inside me.” I say it against his mouth, and his entire body tightens.
He shifts me higher with one arm. His other hand drops between us. The sound of his belt, the zipper, and then he’s free, and the head of his cock drags through my wetness.
We both stop breathing.
He pushes in.
Slow. One inch, then another, stretching me open around him.
He’s big. Long and thick. My body resists his size before it gives, and the burn of it pulls a moan from somewhere deep in my chest.
His breath comes out ragged, shattered, but his arms are strong, keeping me in place.
“Fuck, Shelby.”
He pulls out, and then pushes in, harder, filling me completely. I’m held between the wall and his body, impaled on his cock, and neither of us moves.
I roll my hips, telling him to move.
He pulls back and drives into me again, and the wall takes the impact. My shoulder blades slam against the plaster, and the sound I make is raw and desperate.
He fucks me with deep, grinding strokes that make every nerve ending come alive.
His lips are on my neck, my collarbone, the swell of my breast. One hand braces the wall beside my head.
The other grips my hip, angling me so every thrust drags his cock across the spot inside me that makes my toes curl.
My nails rake down his back. He hisses against my throat, and his hips snap harder. The rhythm builds. Faster. Rougher.
“Look at me.” His hand grips my jaw. His blue eyes bore into mine, and I’m exposed. Cracked open. He’s inside my body and inside my head, and there’s nowhere to hide from how much I want him.
My second orgasm builds. Not a slow climb, but an inferno spreading from where he’s buried in me, up my spine, across my ribs, into my throat. His thumb finds my clit, pressing circles against it while he thrusts, and my body snaps taut.
“Come for me.”
Three words, and I’m gone.
This one is deeper. Harder. It starts at my center and radiates outward until every muscle in my body locks down. I clench around him so tight that his rhythm falters. His guttural, broken groan almost sends me over again.
He carries me to the bed.
I don’t know how his legs work. He’s hard inside me, and I’m still trembling with aftershocks.
He crosses the room and lowers me onto the mattress without pulling out.
The sheets are cool against my burning skin.
He follows me down, his body covering mine, and the new angle with him above me allows gravity to pull his hips deeper into mine.
He moves. Slower now. Long, dragging strokes that pull him almost all the way out before he sinks back in, and each thrust bottoms out with a pressure that makes my eyes roll upward.
He kisses me. His hand tangles in my hair, cradling the back of my head, and the tenderness of it against the filthy rhythm of his hips is so contradictory it makes my chest ache.
I wrap my legs around his waist. Hook my ankles at the small of his back. He groans into my mouth and drives deeper.
I arch off the mattress. “More.”
He gives me more. His pace builds again, and his control erodes with every thrust. His forearms cage my head, and his breath is hot against my neck.
He’s close. The rhythm is losing its precision, going ragged, desperate.
I want him to lose it. I want the President of the Hellborn Kings, the man who controls everything, to lose every shred of composure inside me.
I tighten around him. Deliberately.
He swears against my throat. A broken, filthy string of profanity that sends heat flooding through me. His hips slam forward, fast and erratic.
“Fuck, Shelby!”
He buries himself to the hilt. His body goes rigid above me. Every muscle is locked, every tendon in his neck standing out. His cock pulses inside me while his hips grind against mine.
He comes with a sound that pushes me over one last time. A third orgasm, quieter than the others but deeper, rolling through me in slow, heavy waves while he’s buried in my pussy and trembling.
He collapses. Not all his weight, because he catches himself on one elbow. But enough that I’m pressed into the mattress beneath him, and the solidity of his body on mine is the safest and best thing I’ve ever known.
We don’t speak. His face is in the curve of my neck, and his breath is slowing, and one hand traces the line of my ribs with a laziness that doesn’t match the man who just fucked me senseless.
He rolls to his side and pulls me with him. My back against his chest, his arm across my waist, his mouth pressed to my shoulder. My head tucks under his chin, and his heartbeat knocks against my spine.
I trace the tattoo on his forearm. A crown, the same one on the patch. My finger follows the lines, and his arm tightens around me.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand.
He doesn’t move.
It buzzes again.
His chin lifts from my shoulder. He reaches over me, picks up the phone, and the screen lights his face blue-white in the dark. I’m watching his jaw. The way it goes from loose to locked in the space between one breath and the next.
He puts the phone back on the nightstand and pulls me closer. His arm tightens across my ribs, no longer lazy.
“What is it?”
“Nothing that can’t wait until later,” he tells me.
But his body has changed. The man pressed against my back two seconds ago was warm and heavy and half-asleep. This man is coiled. His jaw is set, and the arm around me isn’t holding—it’s keeping.
I close my eyes. Press back against his chest. Not because I believe that whatever is wrong can wait until later. Because I want one more minute of this before whatever comes next.
It’s already morning. So I want to keep him here for as long as possible.
His arm tightens more. His mouth finds my shoulder again.
And the phone sits on the nightstand, screen dark.