Chapter 3
three
. . .
Arrow
I wake before she does. Always do. Twenty years of sleeping with one eye open doesn’t fade because a tiny barista with trembling lips is curled in my bed.
I lie on the floor and watch her—the rise and fall of her chest, the dark hair fanned across my pillow, the way her fingers clutch the blanket like even in sleep she’s afraid of falling.
She’s still wearing that coffee-stained uniform.
Apron strings digging into her back. I should have made her change.
Should have given her one of my shirts. But the thought of stripping her, even just to comfort her, had my cock so hard it hurt, and the floor was punishment enough for a man who’d just met a girl and already decided she was his.
She stirs. Eyes flutter open. Finds me watching her from the floor and a flush spreads across her cheeks, dark and sweet.
“Morning,” she whispers.
My chest does something stupid. Tightens. Warms. I push up to sitting, rolling my shoulders to work out the kinks from the hardwood. “Sleep okay?”
She nods. Sits up slowly, pulling the blanket to her chest like a shield. “Where are my shoes?”
“By the door.” I stand. Tower over her. She has to tilt her head back to look at me and the sight of her—rumpled, sleep-soft, vulnerable—makes my hands itch to touch. “We need to talk.”
Her brows draw together. “About what?”
“About the fact that I’ve had two brothers watching your apartment since last night.
” The words come out flat. Matter-of-fact.
Like it’s the most reasonable thing in the world to have men stationed outside a girl’s home less than an hour after meeting her.
“About the fact that if those drunks show their faces near that coffee shop again, I’m burning it to the ground. ”
She goes still. Perfectly, utterly still.
Her eyes widen, lips parting on a shallow breath, and for a second I think I’ve scared her too far.
Pushed too hard too fast. Then something shifts in her expression—fear, yes, but underneath it, something warmer.
Something that looks dangerously close to relief.
“You can’t—” she starts.
“I can.” I step closer. Crowd her. My hand comes up, fingers tracing the line of her jaw, and she leans into the touch without seeming to realize it. “Those men touched you. They don’t get to walk away from that. Nobody touches what’s mine and walks away.”
What’s mine. The words hang between us. Heavy. Final. Her throat works on a swallow and her pupils dilate, black bleeding into brown, and fuck me, she likes it. This tiny, wide-eyed barista likes being claimed by a man twice her size who breaks jaws for breakfast.
“You don’t know me,” she whispers.
“I know enough.” My thumb brushes her bottom lip. It’s soft. Full. Trembling. “I know you tremble when I get close. I know your heart is beating so fast I can see it in your throat.” I lean down, my mouth hovering near her ear. “I know you got wet when I called you little dove. I could smell it.”
She gasps. Sharp. Mortified. Her hands come up to push against my chest but there’s no strength in it, just the press of small palms against leather, and I catch her wrists.
Not hard. Gentle. Holding her there while my other hand slides up her thigh, beneath the hem of that stupid apron, and finds exactly what I’m looking for—heat.
Damp cotton. Her whole body jerks, a broken sound escaping her throat, and my cock throbs so hard I see spots.
“Tell me to stop,” I growl against her ear. “Right now. Or I’m going to put my mouth on you and you’re going to come so hard you forget your own name.”
She doesn’t tell me to stop.
What comes out of her mouth is a whimper. Small. Desperate. Honest.
I move fast. Too fast. She yelps as I lift her, blanket and all, and lay her back on the bed.
Her uniform is in the way—that fucking apron, those coffee-stained pants—and I strip them off her with hands that aren’t as steady as they should be.
She’s underneath in seconds, wearing nothing but thin cotton panties and a bra that barely contains her small, perfect tits, and the sight of her—pale skin, flushed cheeks, thighs pressed together like she’s trying to hide—nearly undoes me.
“Spread your legs,” I rasp.
She does. Slowly. Shaking. Her thighs fall open and I kneel between them, pushing them wider, and the smell of her hits me—sweet, musky, aroused—and I groan like I’ve been gutted.
“Fuck, little dove.” My voice is wrecked. I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, biting gently, and she jumps. “You smell like heaven. Like something I want to ruin.”
I hook my fingers in her panties and drag them down her legs. She’s bare underneath. Pink. Wet. Her clit is swollen, begging for attention, and when I spread her folds with my thumbs and blow a warm breath across her, she arches off the bed with a cry that goes straight to my dick.
“Please,” she whimpers. “Arrow, please?—”
“Shhh.” I lick her. One long, flat stroke from her entrance to her clit, and her thighs clamp around my head like a vise.
She’s shaking. Trembling. Making sounds I’ve never heard from a woman’s mouth—broken, hungry, needy.
I work her slow, building her up, tongue circling her clit while my fingers find her entrance and push inside.
One finger. Then two. She’s tight. Hot. Gripping me like a fist, and when I curl my fingers and find that spot inside her, she screams.
“That’s it,” I murmur against her pussy, my voice rough with praise. “Take it. Daddy’s got you. Daddy’s gonna make you come so good on his tongue, then he’s gonna fill this sweet cunt with his cock until you’re dripping, until you’re round and full with my baby?—”
She comes. Violently. Her back arches off the bed, her thighs shaking around my head, her pussy clenching on my fingers as she pulses around my tongue. I work her through it, gentle now, lapping at her until the tremors subside and she collapses back to the mattress, breathing ragged, eyes glazed.
I crawl up her body. My cock is a steel bar in my jeans, painful, leaking, but I ignore it. This isn’t about me. Not yet. I gather her against my chest, her small body fitting against mine like she was shaped for the space, and stroke her hair while she trembles in the aftershocks.
“You’re okay,” I murmur. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
She nuzzles into my neck. Her lips brush my skin and something in my chest cracks open, raw and tender and fucking terrifying.
I’ve killed men. I’ve broken bones. I’ve walked through fire without flinching.
And here I am, holding a girl half my size like she’s made of glass, stroking her hair, whispering comforts I didn’t know I had in me.
Outside this room, I’m a monster. I’m the president of a motorcycle club that runs guns and settles scores with its fists. I’m the man who put a guy in the dirt with one swing and didn’t blink. I’m ice. I’m violence. I’m the thing mothers warn their daughters about.
With her, I’m something else. Something I didn’t know I could be. Something that terries me more than any gun ever pointed at my head.
She looks up at me, eyes soft, lips swollen from biting them, and her hand comes to rest on my chest. Right over my heart. Like she can feel it hammering behind my ribs, like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me.
“Arrow,” she whispers.
I kiss her forehead. Gentle. Chaste. A kiss that belongs to a better man than me.
“The rest of the world can go to hell,” I tell her, my voice rough with something I’m not ready to name. “As long as you’re safe in my arms.”
She believes me. And Christ help us both, so do I.