CHAPTER 13
GRAYCIE
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whisper the words with far too much honesty.
Turner’s gray eyes take me in and when he sees the tear stains on my cheeks, his eyes flash with a rage that is pure. But I have no doubt about being the one who can wield his rage. He looks at me like he’s my sword. It should scare me, but it doesn’t.
I shift on his lap, straddling his hips, unable to help myself and wanting to be able to look at him. Feeling like a raw, open wound isn’t something I’m used to anymore.
When I was with Sylvester, I learned to hide everything. How I was feeling. My opinions. Who I was. While hiding all of these things, I forgot some of them.
Turner watches me like he’s waiting for me to show him who I am. He’s not leading me or putting expectations on me. He’s simply watching with genuine curiosity.
“How is that you make no sense to me and make perfect sense at the same time?” I wrap my arms around his neck as his hands land on my hips.
I’m tempted to grind down on him, just to see. To test. To tease?
When was the last time I teased anyone?
I used to be fun.
I used to know that feeling, to embrace it. Laughter. Smiles which aren’t forced. Looking for the sunshine instead of wishing for rain.
Turner’s grin is rakish. His eyes bouncing back and forth between mine.
“I don’t know, Angel,” his voice is rough and it makes my nipples pebble.
“You make me feel the same way. Like I’ve always known you, but I also can’t wait to learn everything about you before experiencing how you change, how you grow. ”
My fingers slide up the back of his head and he shivers. I can’t help but smile because he doesn’t try and hide what I do to him. It’s refreshing.
Can I trust it?
He leans forward and nips at my bottom lip. “I’m proud of you,” his words are filled with sincerity as he pulls back while his hands start to glide up and down my spine.
“I don’t,” I swallow hard and shake my head before starting again, “I don’t understand.”
“That took a lot of guts,” he tells me while nodding toward the door as if the movement encompasses the entire path which brought us to here. “Being vulnerable, trusting us with your past.”
I duck my head, my eyes skipping over the way his shirt stretches across his chest. My man isn’t as buff as some of the guys around here, but I can still feel his strength.
“I don’t know whether it was brave or if it was just a survival instinct.
Even if I can’t stick around, you should know what I’ve brought to your door.
” My lips close and words get lodged in my throat.
“I hate this. I hate him,” the words are strained.
“I hate myself because I allowed him to trap me. I allowed him to use me and manipulate me.”
“Graycie,” he growls my name as he grips my hair in his fist, holding me steady, his touch firm, but not painful.
“I never want to hear you say that ever again. You don’t get to hate yourself because you sought out love.
Love should be pure. It shouldn’t be used by anyone else.
That’s on your parents and that asshole. ”
His eyes slide closed while he takes a few steadying breaths. When he opens them again, there is a fire blazing in his eyes.
“You can hate him. You should. And, as far as I’m concerned, you’ll never speak to your parents again. They threw you at a man without any concern for you,” he snarls. “It says a lot that you didn’t think you could go to them for help.”
“They probably would have called him to come and get me. If they were even home,” I huff out the words, hating how true they are.
“You don’t owe them a damn thing, Angel,” his fingers tighten in my hair, and my breathing starts to turn choppy.
Not with fear.
“You left. That’s all that matters.”
His words have a finality to them, like he’s closing the door on the possibility of it being any other way. And I want to cling to his surety. Maybe I can.
“Give me the past,” his words are a balm, “my shoulders are strong. I can carry it. You don’t need to anymore.”
I lean forward, my lips ghosting over his. So close. Not nearly close enough.
“I won’t be able to forgive myself if anything bad happens because of me,” I whisper my fears, the words are puffs of air against his lips.
“Oh Angel,” he sighs, “you don’t get it. There isn’t a man in the club who hasn’t shed blood at some point in his life. I’m included in that.” He tilts his head to the side. “Do you feel any differently about me? Knowing that my hands have caused destruction and I’ve brought violence.”
“No.” I murmur, “I’m not scared of you. I don’t see you differently.”
He makes a humming sound, his nose sliding over my cheek, replacing the tear tracks with the touch of his lips, and then down along my jaw. He takes a deep breath and his fingers flex in my hair. The way he’s holding me is possessive, but there’s a softness there.
Affection?
Attraction?
Something else?
“You’ll never need to fear me, Graycie-girl,” he rumbles against my skin. He sighs, his words landing somewhere between right and desire, “You should get some sleep.”
My hips twitch. Seeking. Wanting.
“I’m not tired,” my words are breathy.
And a lie. Because I am tired. Exhausted really.
I’m also wired and I don’t think I can sleep. Not with the memory of his touch on my skin. The way he touched the scar on my torso. Reverence.
I don’t think I’ve ever been touched like that. For him to touch my shame in such a way? I want to feel it again.
“I need you, Turner,” my words are like a gong in the quiet of the room.
My man goes completely solid underneath me, every muscle in his body readying. Preparing. Coiling.
His fingers tighten and he yanks me just far enough away from him to look into my eyes. The movement is jarring and my scalp stings slightly, but I welcome the sensation. It reminds me that I’m alive. That I’m here.
In Turner’s arms. Where no one and nothing can touch me.
“Graycie,” he growls, the sound rattling my chest like windowpanes, “you better be careful what you ask for. I’ve wanted to bury myself in you since the moment you stepped out the backdoor of the clubhouse.
I’ve imagined it in a thousand different ways.
And I’m pissed at the bastard who thought he could hurt you.
” His voice drops to a pained whisper, “I never want to hurt you.”
“I trust you.”
His eyes change with my words. They intensify. They focus like they can see so much more. Everything.
“You won’t hurt me, Turner,” my words seal out the world around us; it disappears like vapor. “You touch me like I matter. Like you care. With a reverence I’ve never felt before.”
I tug against his hold, my head dropping back slightly. He cradles my movements while holding me steady, keeping me safe. My hips grind against him and a moan slips past my lips when I feel him.
He’s hard and ready. For me. He wants me.
This badass biker who could have any woman he wants. He took one look at me, someone who has been hiding, who has been praying to be forgotten.
But he saw me.
I gasp and rock my hips down harder. “Please,” I plea, the word broken with the need pumping through my body.
My surprised yelp becomes light laughter as he flips us over and settles between my thighs before I even know what’s happened. Wanting to feel more of him, I arch my back and press my body against him while pulling him down to settle more of his weight over me.
“Graycie,” his voice is strained as I lazily open my eyes and meet his, “you need to be sure. If I slide inside of you, I’m claiming you. This becomes very real. For you. For me. For the club. It’s forever. You’ll be my Old Lady, and I’ll always, and only, be yours.”
It feels like my heart bursts in my chest. Not with hurt or pain, but with a hope so fucking profound that it takes my breath away. “Don’t make empty promises, Snake,” I gasp out the words, needing to know, needing to see.
Turner closes the distance between us, our noses touching, his lip curling up as he bares his teeth at me. “I will always worship you. I’ll never lie to you. But don’t push me, Angel, and don’t test me.”
My belly flips with his words as my pussy clenches around nothing. That shouldn’t be hot, but it is. I shouldn’t be turned on, but I am.
“I want you, I want this,” my voice is steady even as I curl my fingers tighter around the edge of his cut. How are we still dressed right now?
Turner smirks and then he starts slowly undressing me. I sigh into the feeling of his hands roaming over my body. And my mind doesn’t drift.
Even when he kisses one of my scars. It feels like penance instead of pity. I twitch every time his mouth makes contact with my body, something in me craving it more and more, like an obsession, like a drug.
“Turner,” his name becomes a song that speaks to him as it falls from my lips.
A charm.
A token.
“Stop teasing me,” I beg.
His lips skim over my skin as the clothing falls away. When he tugs down my leggings, I hear one of the seams ripping, but I’m so fucking wet that I don’t care. I need him inside me.
I reach for him when I’m naked underneath him because I’m bracing for something to feel wrong, for me to second guess what I want. It’s what I feared the most, that I would constantly second guess myself.
I’m not second guessing anything.
“Why are you still wearing clothing?” I groan the question when I try to pull him closer to me, wanting to feel his skin on mine. I feel drunk even though I haven’t had anything to drink.
It’s him.
“I need you inside of me,” my thighs hike up higher on his waist, and my hips seek the friction I need, “please. Turner, make me forget,” my words come out as a whispered secret as if written in a diary with a lost key.
My nipples harden when I lose the heat of him after he stands at the edge of the bed. His gray eyes darken and remind me of nighttime storms as he takes me in. All of me.
I can’t remember the last time I was naked in front of anyone. Not like this.
He looks at me like I’m art.
“Fucking beautiful,” he rasps as he kicks his jeans and boxer briefs away. Finally.
His fist wraps around his cock and I spread my legs wider, needing him, wanting to entice him. I watch as pre-cum beads on the crown of his cock and my mouth waters.
Just as I’m about to reach for him, Turner starts to crawl up the bed. Slowly. His hands and lips move over my skin. Way too slowly.
Goosebumps follow behind his touch as he trails up my body. Nothing is left untouched. Every part of me is offered a benediction.
When he slides between my thighs and his nose skims up my neck, he ends his journey with a nip of my earlobe. “You’re a tease,” I sass him.
“I’m savoring you,” he tells me without hesitation. “But as much as I really want to savor you, taste you, I can’t wait any longer to be buried inside you.”
“I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard,” my words are dancing with amusement.
And it hits me like a bolt of lightning. I’m having fun.
While naked.
With a man I hardly know but yearn for.
A smile lights up my face and Turner blinks at me a few times before his lips sip against mine, like he’s tasting my joy. His hips rock against mine and his length slides between the slick lips of my pussy and against my clit which makes me grip his shoulders.
Or else I’ll float away.
The feeling of him, the heat, has me gasping, “Condom?”
I hate the word as soon as it leaves my mouth.
Turner narrows his eyes. “No.”
My lips part, even though I have no idea what I’m going to say, but I don’t get the chance. Because the tip of his dick finds my entrance and he sinks inside of me, taking my words, my thoughts, and everything else.
The walls of my pussy stretch around him and when he’s buried to the hilt, my nails sink into his shoulders and I arch my back, needing him to move.
“Please,” I moan.
But he doesn’t move. He’s holding me in place with the weight of his body, and I have nowhere to go.
“Give me your eyes, Angel,” he grits the words out through his teeth. My eyes snap open and he’s looking down at me with forever written all over his face. “There’s my Graycie-girl,” he rasps. “Eyes on me; don’t look away,” he commands.
And I listen.
Every glide of his length inside of me.
As he starts moving faster.
When his hips punch forward harder.
Our eyes stay locked.
And I can see the promises. The way he’ll protect me. The way he’ll support me.
I can feel it in the way his hands find my skin, skimming and claiming, reminding and relearning. His touch feels familiar in the best of ways, but it’s exciting. New.
“Turner,” his name becomes a chant on my lips.
Moaned into the space surrounding us, where nothing can touch us, where nothing else matters. We move together, meeting and parting, finding each other again and again. As it should be.
As it will always be.
When he kisses me, it’s to swallow my sounds because he wants to know how they taste.
“I can feel how close you are,” he growls. “You’re pretty pussy is telling me you just need a little more.”
Turner reaches between us, his thumb finding my clit. He touches me like he already knows my body.
All while not looking way.
When I come, his name is on my lips and he watches me closely. Cataloging. Remembering.
He fucks me right through my orgasm, watching and waiting. And then he lets out a sound from deep in his chest.
Primal.
Claiming.
A roar that resonates and tells all who can hear that this is forever.
My name. His promises.
They whisper around us and hide in our ragged breathing. And I let myself believe. In him. In the family he’s offering me. In a home, even though I have no idea what that means beyond a dream of what could be.
I feel him pulling out of me as my eyes flutter closed. But now I’m tired and my brain can shut off.
Because of him.
Turner cleans me up and then gently gets me under his comforter, which is surprisingly fluffy. He slides in behind me and pulls me back against his chest, wrapping me up in his warmth. Along with something else which has been left unsaid.
Silence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just that it hasn’t been given voice.
“You’re safe here, Graycie-girl,” Turner whispers against my neck, his head tucked against me as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
I won’t.
Not now.
Not when I need to know if I can really charm the beautiful biker into a forever that looks a lot like love.
The last thing I hear is Turner murmuring, “I’ve got you.”