WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

“You built a dream house for me, but you’re okay with it if I never let you inside?” I ask, my head spinning.

He dips his chin with a frank look. “Let’s get clear here, angel. You don’t ever have to let me inside that house, but I wouldn’t be fine with it. I’m goddamn crazy about you—literally. That much is obvious. I’m dying to spend a whole lot of time fucking you right and teaching you how to belong to me. But if you want me to come in there and do that. You're going to have to say it.”

His tone is light, but his eyes blaze as he makes his final decree. “If you want me, if you want me to fulfill my soul’s purpose and give you what I know your body needs, then you’re going to have to submit. You’re going to have to admit you belong to me.”

CHAPTER 35

If you want me, if you want me to fulfill my soul’s purpose and give you what I know your body needs, then you’re going to have to submit. You’re going to have to admit you belong to me.

Here we are again. Except now Waylon’s telling me it’s up to me to decide in front of the dream house he says I can claim as my own, without ever inviting him inside.

I swallow. It's strange. He calls his way easy.

But saying no was the easiest thing I could’ve done that night. Not exploring the boundaries of my comfort zone. Dismissing him as crazy. Never agreeing to his lessons back in Delaware—that was the easiest road I could’ve taken with him.

But now the choice is up to me. And though I want the answer to be obvious, all the ones that go in the Should column stick in my throat.

You’re the should’ve person…I’m the guy who trusts his gut. I can teach you how to trust yours. If you’re willing, I got more lessons waiting for you.

More lessons. My brain…my poor overworked brain immediately shouts no. But my heart and gut…

The parts of me I’m always trying to tamp down. The parts of me Waylon says I’m too afraid of, unlike him. Those parts of me are saying something else. Asking for something else. Daring to wonder about all the wicked things I was too scared to consider before. Before Waylon.

I think on his demand—his requirement to come inside. And a question squeezes through, weak and small.

“What if…what if I'm afraid?” I asked him.

Waylon stills. Like a predator who’s scented blood.

“You afraid of me, angel?”

I nod. But this time, I add, “Of you…. And of myself.”

“You want me to make you?” he asks softly.

His eyes, so flat when he told his story, are back to glittering now. “You want me to make you go inside? Make you tell me the words I need to hear?”

It's a reprise of the same question he asked me outside the trailer. But not the same, I realize.

The question had been a derisive read of my cowardly character outside the trailer.

Here on the back porch of my dream house, it became a serious question. A genuine question.

A question that scratched at a dark itch I’ve never dared to acknowledge.

I listen. I listen to the words coming from my gut and my chest. And then I…

Then I nod.

I give my consent. I give my consent to the crazy devil.

But Waylon doesn’t move. Doesn’t surge forward to grab me like he did in the church library.

“Nodding worked before when the lesson was simple,” he tells me instead, his voice quiet but stern. “But this is something else, angel. I'm going to need you to say it out loud. Give me a yes, let me know this is what you want.”

Oh, God…Oh, God…

I’m sitting down, but my heart is beating like I've just run a sprint as I work up the courage to, for once in my adult life, say it. Say what I want.

“Yes,” I whisper after many, many moments. “I know it's wrong. You shouldn't…I shouldn't…maybe, we shouldn't be like this. But yes, that's what I want.”

“Aw, angel.” He raises a hand to my face and cups it, his calloused thumb scraping over my cheek. “We're the ones who had shit done to us. So we’re the ones who get to decide what's right and what's wrong for us. That’s the first rule for this new set of lessons. You got that?”

Strangely, I do. A weight I didn't know was sitting on my chest suddenly lifts as I realize the truth of his words.

“But before we go in, we're going to need a safe word that will let me know immediately to stop if a lesson is too much for you,” he says, all business. However, this is the opposite of commerce. It’s something I don’t have to do. Something I want to do.