Relent (Sydney Storm MC 1)

I moaned and his arm around my waist tightened, and he pulled me closer, pushing his erection into me. Lust shot through me and I knew this was it.

This was the moment I was giving myself back to him.

Kick was mine.

I was Kick’s.

He ended the kiss and leant his forehead against mine. “Fuck, Evie... you’ve got no idea what you fuckin’ do to me.” He lifted his head so he could look me in the eyes. “You give me hope I can be a better man, that I’m not just the sum of all the bad shit I’ve done in my life.”

I frowned. “You’re not a bad person, Kick.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, the desolation I saw there pierced my heart. “Yeah, I am, baby,” he whispered, cracking my heart a little more.

I opened my mouth to argue with him some more, but his phone rang and interrupted us.

He pulled it out and checked who it was. “Sorry, I’ve gotta get this,” he said with regret, and walked away from me to take the call.

I waited for him to return, doing my best to recover from our kiss and my realisations. He wasn’t gone long, but when he came back to me, the Kick who’d been with me a minute ago was gone, and in his place was the guy who looked at me through hard eyes. This was the Kick I didn’t know so well but so desperately wanted to know and understand.

“I’ve got something I’ve gotta take care of,” he said, his voice as hard as his eyes.

“Will you be back?”

“I don’t know, but Braden will finish the gutters.”

“I’m not worried about the gutters, Kick. What I want to know is when will I see you again? We were kind of in the middle of something there.”

“I’ll call you,” he said, and I felt like I was being dismissed.

What the hell?

He’d already started to leave before I could get my wits together and challenge him. However, he stopped and turned back to me. “Don’t go to see your father. I’m gonna sort that out, okay?”

“What the hell is going on?” I demanded, growing more frustrated.

His hard look intensified and he stalked back to me. “Promise me you won’t go to your father, that you won’t try to fix his shit for him. I went to see him and I told him I would help him with it.”

I stared at him in shock. A minute ago he’d been telling me he loved me and now he was talking to me as if none of that had been said.

“Promise me, Evie,” he barked.

I jumped, and was instantly pissed off. “You better go and sort your shit out, Kick, and then you’d better come find me and explain to me what the fuck is going on! Because something has happened here that I don’t know about, and I’ll be damned if I’ll put up with this shit.”

His eyes bore into mine for another moment and then he nodded. “I’ll see you later,” he promised, and turned and left.

I stood completely stunned and didn’t hear Braden come up behind me. “He needs you, you know.”

I jumped again and turned to face him. “Fuck, Braden...” I muttered.

He held his hands up. “Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“What do you mean, he needs me?”

“I don’t know exactly what shit Kick’s involved in with his club, but he’s struggling. Actually, I think he’s drowning in it, whatever it is. He doesn’t spend much time with us anymore and when we do see him, he’s this moody, angry fuck who none of us really want to be around.”

“Really? ‘Cause he hasn’t really been that moody with me.”

“See? He needs you because you take it away for him. He’s never stopped loving you, Evie. He hasn’t even dated anyone since you two broke up.”