4. Shadow
SHADOW
I’m kissing Prez’s sister.
That thought should stop me. Should hit like a bucket of ice water, make me pull back, apologize, get the fuck out of here before I ruin everything I’ve worked for.
It doesn’t stop me. Nothing could stop me right now.
Her mouth is hot and demanding and she’s making these soft sounds against my lips — little gasps, half-formed words that might be my name. Her hands are under my shirt, palms flat against my stomach, dragging up over my ribs like she’s trying to memorize me by touch. Every place she touches burns.
I’ve got her pinned against the counter, my hips pressed to hers, and I can feel the heat of her through our clothes. Feel how much she wants this. How much she wants me.
I should stop.
I can’t stop.
“Bedroom,” she breathes against my lips. Not a question. A demand.
I don’t argue. I grab her hips and lift her, and she wraps her legs around my waist like she was made to fit there. Her mouth finds my neck, teeth grazing, tongue soothing, and I nearly walk us into a wall because I can’t fucking think when she does that.
Her bedroom is small. Dark. I notice nothing about it except the bed — unmade, sheets tangled, smelling faintly of her — and then we’re falling onto it together.
The mattress dips under our weight. She pulls at my shirt and I yank it over my head, tossing it somewhere I don’t care about.
Her hands are on my chest immediately, my shoulders, my back, everywhere she can reach.
Her touch is hungry, almost frantic, and her nails scrape lightly over my skin in a way that makes me shudder.
I go for her top next, dragging it up and off, and then she’s underneath me in a black bra and those jeans that have been driving me crazy for days. Her skin is warm under my hands, soft, and I can feel her pulse racing when I kiss the curve of her neck.
“You’re sure?” I ask. “We’re going to regret this.”
“If you stop, I’ll kill you.”
Good enough.
I kiss my way down her throat, tasting salt and something sweet underneath.
Her collarbone. The swell of her breasts above the lace.
She arches into me, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks, and the sound she makes when I drag the bra down and take her nipple into my mouth — fuck.
Low and broken, somewhere between a gasp and a moan. I could listen to that sound forever.
I take my time with her. Not because I’m patient — I’m not, not right now, not with her — but because I want to learn her. I want to know what makes her gasp, what makes her moan, what makes her grip my hair and pull, hard, like she needs more and she’s not afraid to take it.
I learn that she likes it when I use my teeth, just a little. That she shivers when I kiss the soft skin below her ribs. That her breath catches when I drag my tongue across her hipbone.
By the time I get her jeans off, she’s already wet. I can feel it through her underwear, and the knowledge that she’s this turned on — for me, because of me — makes something primal roar to life in my chest.
I hook my fingers in the lace and drag it down her legs. She’s bare underneath me now, spread out on the sheets, and I have to stop for a second just to look at her. The streetlight through the blinds paints stripes across her body — shadow and gold, curves and hollows.
“Shadow.” Her voice is ragged. Desperate. “If you don’t—”
“I’ve got you.”
I settle between her thighs and drag my tongue through her folds, slow and deliberate, and she comes off the bed with a cry.
She’s sensitive, responsive, every stroke of my tongue making her shake.
I grip her hips to hold her still and eat her like I’ve been starving for it.
Like she’s the only thing I’ve wanted in years.
Maybe she is.
She tastes sharp and sweet, and the sounds she’s making are wrecking me — breathy moans, my name on repeat, her thighs trembling against my shoulders.
I find her clit and work it with my tongue, my fingers sliding inside her, curling to find the spot that makes her cry out.
She’s close. I can feel it in the way her body tightens, the way her hips rock against my face.
She comes on my mouth with her fingers twisted in my hair, her thighs clamped around my head, my name spilling from her lips like she can’t hold it back. I work her through it, gentling as she comes down, pressing soft kisses to her inner thighs while she catches her breath.
“Fuck,” she pants. “Fuck, that was—”
I crawl back up her body and kiss her, letting her taste herself on my tongue. She moans into my mouth and reaches for my belt.
“Off,” she demands. “Now.”
I stand long enough to strip — belt, jeans, everything — and when I come back to her, she’s looking at me like she wants to devour me. Her eyes track down my body where I’m hard and aching for her.
My whole body is thrumming, desperate, barely under control.
I settle over her, bracing myself on one arm, and line up at her entrance. She’s slick and hot and when I push inside her, just the tip, we both groan. The sound she makes — relief and want and finally — undoes something in me.
“More,” she says.
I give her more. Inch by inch, slow and relentless, until I’m buried to the hilt.
She’s so tight around me, so perfect, and I have to hold still for a moment just to keep from losing it completely.
I press my face to her neck and breathe her in, feeling her pulse against my lips, feeling her body adjust to mine.
“You okay?”
“Move.” She rolls her hips, taking me deeper, and I see stars. “Shadow, move.”
It’s not gentle. Not slow. I fuck her hard, the way I’ve been wanting to since the parking lot, since that first smirk, since she looked at me like I was nothing and made me want to be everything.
She matches me stroke for stroke, hips rising to meet mine, nails raking down my back hard enough to sting.
The bed frame hits the wall with every thrust. I don’t care. She doesn’t care. The only thing that matters is this — her body under mine, the sounds she’s making, the way she’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world.
“Yes,” she gasps. “God, yes, just like that—”
I hitch her leg higher on my hip, changing the angle, and she cries out. There it is. That’s the spot. I hit it again. Again. Watch her face as she starts to come apart beneath me — her eyes glazing, her lips parting, her whole body tensing around me.
“Come for me,” I growl against her ear. “Let me feel you.”
She shatters. Her whole body clamps down on me, pulsing, squeezing, and I follow her over the edge with a groan that comes from somewhere deep. I bury myself as deep as I can go and let it take me, let everything else fall away until there’s nothing but her.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I’m collapsed on top of her, trying to remember how to breathe, and she’s got her arms wrapped around me like she doesn’t want me to leave.
I don’t want to leave either.
That’s the problem.
Afterward, we lie tangled together in her sheets.
The room is dark, and outside, I can hear traffic. Someone’s TV a few apartments over. Normal sounds. The world going on like nothing happened.
I should go. I know I should go. The longer I stay, the worse this gets — the harder it’ll be to walk away, the more I’ll want to come back. Every minute I spend in this bed is another nail in my coffin.
But she’s stroking my chest with her fingers, her head on my shoulder, and I can’t make myself move.
Her finger finds the scar on my ribs. The long one, raised and pale, curving from my side toward my stomach. She’s been avoiding it, I think. Circling around it. Now she stops, her touch featherlight.
“This one looks old,” she says.
“It is.”
“What happened?”
I could lie. Could brush it off, give her some bullshit story about a bike accident or a bar fight. That’s what I’d usually do. Keep people out, keep the walls up, don’t let anyone see the kid I used to be.
But I’m too wrung out to lie. Too raw. She just took me apart and put me back together, and I don’t have any defenses left.
“Got jumped when I was seventeen,” I say. “Couple guys I owed money to. They made their point.”
Her fingers stop moving on my skin. “Before King?”
“Before King. Before the club. Before I was anybody.” I stare at the ceiling, watching the stripes of light shift when a car passes outside.
“I was living on couches, running with the wrong people, doing whatever I had to do to survive. That’s what I thought, anyway.
That I was surviving. Really, I was just waiting to die in some alley and not caring much if it happened. ”
She doesn’t say anything. Just listens. Her hand finds mine, fingers threading together.
“King gave me a way out,” I continue. “A reason to be better. The club’s the first place I ever belonged. The first time anyone ever looked at me and saw something worth saving.”
The words hung in the air between us. I’ve never told anyone that before. Not the brothers, not anyone. It feels dangerous, like I’ve handed her a weapon.
“You’re more than what you owe him, you know,” she whispers.
I want to believe that. I’m not sure I can.
“King saved my life,” I say. “Everything I have, everything I am — it’s because of him. I owe him everything.”
“And what does that mean for this?” She gestures between us. “For us?”
I don’t have an answer. So I kiss her instead.
Days blur into weeks.
I keep “checking on her” — reporting to King every few days that she’s fine, settled, staying out of trouble. He nods, doesn’t ask questions. Trusts me to do the job he gave me. Why wouldn’t he? I’ve been solid for two years. I’ve never given him a reason to doubt me.
Until now.
Then I go back to her apartment and stay the night.
It becomes routine. Dangerous, addictive routine. I show up after dark and We eat dinner. We talk. We fuck. I hold her while she sleeps and leave before the sun comes up, slipping back to the clubhouse like nothing happened.
Some nights we don’t even make it to the bedroom.
Some nights I barely get through the door before she’s on me, and we end up on the kitchen counter or the couch or the floor.
Other nights it’s slow, lazy, the kind of sex where we take our time and learn each other’s bodies until I know every sound she makes, every spot that makes her gasp.
I’m falling. I know I’m falling. And I can’t do a damn thing to stop it.
The double life is eating me alive.
Every time I look at King, the guilt twists deeper. Every time he claps me on the shoulder or gives me a nod of approval, I want to confess everything. But I don’t. I can’t. Because confessing means losing her, and I’m not ready for that.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for that.
“Shadow.” King’s voice catches me in the garage one afternoon. I’m working on a bike — actually working, for once, not just pretending while I think about her. My hands are covered in grease and I’m halfway through a brake job that’s been giving me trouble all week.
“Yeah, Prez?”
He leans against the workbench, arms crossed. Studies me for a moment with those eyes that see too much. I keep my face neutral, my body relaxed, even though my heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I’m sure he must be able to hear it.
“You’ve been solid lately,” he says. “Reliable. Showing up early and staying late. The brothers have noticed.”
My stomach drops. “Just doing my job.”
“You’re doing more than that.” He nods slowly, and there’s something in his expression that might be approval. Might even be pride. “The way you’ve handled watching out for Naomi. Keeping me updated without making a thing of it. That’s exactly what I needed.”
The guilt is a knife between my ribs. I can barely breathe around it.
“Keep it up, kid. You’re getting close.”
Close to the patch. Close to everything I’ve been working toward for two years. Close to becoming a full brother, earning my place, finally belonging somewhere for real.
And all I can think about is how I’m betraying him every single night.
“Thanks, Prez,” I manage. The words taste like ash in my mouth.
He pushes off the workbench and heads for the door. Stops. Looks back.
“My sister,” he says. “She doing okay?”
My heart slams against my ribs. “Yeah. She’s good. Got a job at that coffee shop downtown. Seems to be settling in.”
“Good.” He nods once. “That’s good.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m left standing in the garage with my hands shaking and bile rising in my throat.
I’m going to hell for this.
The first time I notice the car, I don’t think much of it.
Silver sedan, tinted windows, parked across from Naomi’s building. Could be anybody. Could be a neighbor, a visitor, someone waiting for a friend. Tucson’s not exactly a small town. Cars park on streets. It’s not suspicious.
The second time, I start paying attention.
Same car. Same spot. Different day. Same tinted windows. The driver doesn’t get out. Just sits there, engine running, like he’s watching the building. Like he’s waiting for something.
The third time, I’m sure.
Someone is watching her.
I’m parked down the block, waiting for Naomi to get home from work, when the sedan pulls up.
I watch the driver — I can’t see his face through the tinted glass, but I can see the silhouette.
Male. Big. Sitting very still, very patient, like a man who’s used to waiting. Like a man who’s done this before.
He stays for twenty minutes. Doesn’t move, doesn’t get out, doesn’t make a call. Just watches. Before he eventually drives away.
My gut screams at me. Something is wrong. Something is very fucking wrong.
But I don’t have proof. At least nothing concrete. Just a feeling. And if I go to King with a feeling, the first thing he’s going to ask for is more details.
So I tell myself I’ll watch. I’ll gather more information. I’ll figure out who this guy is and what he wants, and then I’ll tell King. When I have something real.
That’s what I tell myself.
But as I watch the sedan’s taillights disappear around the corner, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m running out of time.