Chapter 8
Colt
The text comes in at eight-fourteen while I'm staring at the club's accounts receivable like the numbers might rearrange themselves into answers.
Jess texted me two hours ago. Ellie showed up at the clubhouse after the board meeting, shaken. The old ladies had her on the couch with bourbon and opinions. I stayed home with the ledger because Ellie didn't come for me and I wasn't going to insert myself into something she needed from them.
Can you come over. Tonight. Is it too soon to say that I need you? If you can get a sitter.
I read it twice. Put the phone down. Pick it up and read it a third time because the words don't change and I need to confirm they mean what I think they mean. Ellie Frost texting me at eight o'clock at night.
I call Knox.
"I need a favor." I don't dress it up. Knox can smell bullshit through the phone, so I don't bother. "Sorry for the short notice but I was wondering if you and Sarah can take Lily tonight?"
"The librarian?"
"Knox." I sigh.
"I'll come get her. Give me twenty minutes." A beat. "You good, brother?"
"I don't know yet."
Lily packs her backpack with two books and her pajamas before Knox's truck pulls into the driveway. She doesn't ask why. My twelve-year-old figured this out before I did. Knox comes to the door. I hand him her bag and he gives me a look I haven't seen from him in years.
The house goes quiet. I think about driving to Ellie's apartment, but her scent faded from the kitchen days ago and I want it back. I want her here.
I call her.
"Hey," I say, when she picks up. "Knox just picked up Lily. Do you want to come here? I can put coffee on and we can talk." I lean against the counter. "Or I can come to you, if you'd rather."
"There," she says. "I'll come to you."
I hang up and stand in my kitchen with the phone face-down on the counter.
I put coffee on. Pull two mugs from the cabinet, set them on the counter.
Open the fridge and find the leftover chicken from last night, slice bread, put a plate together because she probably hasn't eaten and Ellie runs on cereal and toast on a good day.
The coffee finishes. I pour one cup and leave the other empty because I don't know how she takes it and I've never asked, which feels like something I should have asked by now.
Headlights sweep across the front windows. I open the door before she knocks.
The salt hits me first. Tears. I can scent the wet mineral edge before I see her face, layered over exhaustion, over a fury so compressed it reads like heat against my sinuses.
She stands on the porch in the rain with her jacket zipped to her chin, hair damp, mascara smudged under her left eye. Shaking.
I pull her inside. My arms go around her, she presses into my chest, and I hold her in the hallway with the door still open, rain blowing in.
My scenting opens all the way. Fear, anger, the bone-deep tiredness of a woman who spent the day defending her right to exist. Underneath all of it, warm and strong enough to make my hands tighten on her back: arousal.
Even now. Even crying and shaking and furious, her body responds to mine.
Mine has been responding to hers for months. I'm done pretending otherwise.
"It's okay, sweet girl. I've got you."
I close the door and guide her to the couch. She sits with her knees pulled up and I sit next to her and wait.
"The board called a meeting," she says. "Three parents complained. About the programming, about the workshops, about—" She stops. Breathes. "About me and you. They asked me directly. In front of the whole board. 'Are you in a personal relationship with a member of the Feral Sons MC?'"
"What did you say?"
"Yes." Her voice cracks on the word. "I said yes and I meant it and then I walked to my car and cried in the parking lot because I told a room full of strangers I'm yours and you don't even know I said it. I don't know what we are? I'm sorry if I overstepped."
My hand finds the back of her neck. I hold it there, thumb against her pulse, and she leans into the touch.
"Derek told me I'm playing a role," she says.
"The quirky librarian who dates the monster.
He said it's a story I'm telling myself.
" She looks at her hands. "And there are notes in my desk at the library.
Someone pushed them through the mail slot.
'Monster whore.' 'Orc lover.' I didn't tell you because I thought I could handle it alone. "
"How long?"
"Since the night I came for dinner. Someone saw my car."
My grip on her neck tightens before I ease it.
"I'm getting those notes from you," I say. "And I'm finding out who wrote them."
She starts to shake her head and I rub my thumb against her pulse until she stops.
"Ellie. Someone is watching you. That's not just a few pieces of paper. They are threats." I hold her eyes until she nods. "Now tell me what you said to the board. The exact words."
"I said—." Her voice cracks. "I said that I'm in a relationship with a member of the Feral Sons. And I meant it. And you didn't even know I—"
"I want to be with you." It comes out before I've planned it.
"I've wanted this for a long time, Ellie.
I held back because I didn't want you to feel rushed.
Because you got out of a marriage where someone made every decision for you, and I wasn't going to be the next man who didn't give you space to choose. "
She goes still against me.
"Maren would've wanted this." My throat tightens on her name but I push through it. "She made me promise I wouldn't spend the rest of my life alone. And Lily—" I almost laugh. "Lily loves you to bits. She picked you before I let myself."
"You feel guilty," she says.
"Some days. Less than I used to." I run my thumb across the back of her neck. "Maren would've liked you though. She would've sat at your desk and argued about book recommendations until you kicked her out at closing. And she would've told me to stop being an idiot and kiss the librarian."
Ellie's mouth twitches through the tears. "Did she actually talk like that?"
"Worse. She had no filter."
Ellie laughs. It's short, wet and catches in her throat, but it's real, and I realize she's the first person I've talked about Maren with who doesn't go quiet or change the subject. She just asked. Like Maren was a person worth knowing, not a wound she had to tiptoe around.
I look at her sitting on my couch with mascara smudged under her eyes and tears drying on her jaw, and the only thing in my head is: there you are.
She kisses me.
Both hands on my face, fingers against my jaw, her mouth pressing into mine.
She tastes like salt and rain and she kisses me like she's done asking permission.
I kiss her back. I grip her waist and pull her into me, she climbs onto my lap, knees bracketing my hips, and the sound she makes into my mouth sends a growl rolling through my chest before I can stop it.
Her hips shift against mine and my cock hardens under her, pressing against the seam of my jeans. She feels it. Her breath catches and her hips roll again, grinding down against the length of me, and my hands tighten on her waist hard enough to leave marks.
I stand with her. One arm under her thighs, the other across her back. She wraps around me, face in my neck. I carry her down the hall to my bedroom.
I lay her on the bed. She looks up at me, and I can scent every shift in her body. The nervousness running low under the arousal, the pulse hammering in her throat, the wetness pooling between her thighs. Her scent is so thick with wanting that my vision blurs at the edges.
I pull my shirt over my head. Her eyes travel the breadth of my chest, the green-grey skin, the scars across my ribs from a fight at nineteen when three men decided to prove an orc bleeds.
Her hand reaches up and presses flat against my chest. Her fingers barely span half the width. I cover her hand with mine and her whole fist disappears under my palm.
"Colt." My name in her mouth, quiet and steady.
I kneel on the bed and start at her wrists.
The scenting takes over. I press my nose to the inside of her wrist and breathe.
Cedar-vanilla concentrates there, rich and warm, her pulse jumping under my lips.
I trace up her arm, push the sleeve back, drag my mouth across the soft bend of her elbow.
She shivers. I'm not rushing this. I spent years not touching anyone, now I have her in my bed and I want to touch every inch of her skin.
I unbutton her blouse one button at a time until she arches toward me by the fourth one, and when I spread the fabric open and press my mouth to her stomach she gasps and grips the sheets.
I scent her ribs. The hollow of her hip.
The soft curve of her belly where her skin runs warm and clean.
Each place smells different. The crease below her breasts holds heat, concentrated sweetness.
The dip of her navel carries soap and underneath it something that's just her, a note I've never found on anyone else.
I press my mouth to the curve of her breast, drag my nose along the underside where her scent pools, and the sound she makes when my tusks graze her nipple goes straight to my cock.
I close my lips around the peak, sucking slow, her back lifts off the mattress.
I give the other breast the same attention, my tongue circling while my hand spans her ribs, and she's gripping fistfuls of sheet by the time I move lower.
I peel her jeans down her thighs and her underwear with them, and the scent of her arousal hits me so hard a growl tears out of me, low, rough and vibrating through the mattress. The wet heat between her thighs is overwhelming, sharp and sweet, every orc instinct I have zeroes in on that scent.