Griffin (Ruthless MC 3)

I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart right in front of him, but all he says is, “Red…”

“Just let me by!” I scream.

“No!” he bellows back. Then he grabs me and pulls me into his arms.

“Let me talk,” he says into my weave. His voice walks a thin line between plea and command. “You have to let me explain. You're wondering why I treated you like crap. Why I accused you of shady shit. It’s because that's who I needed you to be. I needed you to be some trick with a long game. I wanted you to be manipulating me all along because then I could explain it.”

“Explain what?” I ask, pushing against his chest.

He eases up his hold, but only so he can look me in the eye when he answers. “Why I feel this way about you!”

I stop fighting. I’m so confused. “What?”

He shakes his head. “You said it yourself. We’ve only known each other for two weeks. So, if you weren’t manipulating me all along, why do I feel like this for you? Why can't I stop with you? Why can't I let you go even though you’re begging me to? If you were playing me like I thought, maybe these feelings wouldn’t be real. Maybe I wouldn’t have to be scared as hell of you….”

Griff shakes his head mournfully. “You’re not mindfucking me. I can see that now. But you’re trying to leave, and I don’t know what to do with all this shit in my chest.”

He finally releases me. But only to cup my face.

“Am I insane?” he asks, his voice a hoarse plea. “Tell me I’m stupid, and this is crazy. Hit me. Punch me in the gut. Say the safeword. Do whatever you have to do to get away from me. Just make me stop, Red. Make me stop.”

Make him stop? How? All my defenses come crumbling down, and I’m left shaken and confused. Because as angry as I was at him…

“I understand,” I whisper, reaching up to clasp his wrists. “I understand exactly how you feel. I don’t know why a guy like you is happening to me, of all people. Why I couldn’t leave….Why I still don’t want to leave. But I understand. I understand exactly how you feel.”

Griff’s entire face lights up at my words.

“You understand?” he says in the same tone of voice people use on TV to confirm good news. Like hearing they won the lotto.

“I understand,” I repeat, feeling like a winner myself.

We stare at each other with tender awe. Then suddenly we’re kissing.

I guess the condom was a good idea after all. No more games. No more rules. Griff strips me out of the shorts he wasn’t allowed to go beneath when we first met at the roadhouse. Then he hitches me up, and my back hits the wall as he wraps my legs around his waist.

The condom does get put on this time, but other than that, we’re primal. He reclaims me with a hard upward shove, and his thick steel fills me up so precisely…as if he were made for me.

“Like you were made for me,” he says, echoing my thoughts. He bites at my lip, hard enough to draw pain…smear blood over our kissing and licking mouths…as he ruts me into the wall.

In this position, he reaches a place he hasn’t before. He hits it over and over again, and soon I begin to tremble and shake. This is going to be bad. I can already sense it. If the other orgasms made me explode. This one is going to obliterate me. And I don’t want to get destroyed alone.

“Griff…Griff…” I moan, holding onto him for dear life. “Come with me, please.”

I’m making no sense, but somehow, by some sweet miracle, he understands what I’m asking for.

His hips jackhammer faster, catching up to me until we’re exactly where we need to be. He withdraws, and one final thrust blasts us into oblivion. Together.

“Griff…” I cry out, my voice a faraway star shattering in the sky.

“Red…” he rasps, his heavy body shuddering between my legs.

The pleasure is so intense it locks us together, and we scrabble at each other, holding on…trying never to come down.

But eventually, the last of the aftershocks fade, and reality begins to creep into our bubble of bliss.

“We can’t stay here,” I tell him. “I have to go, and you do too.”

He presses his forehead into mine. “I know. I've got my performance, and you’ve got your cousin’s party.”

We grieve those truths as one, breathing parting kisses into each other’s mouths.

But then he says, “Meet me…meet me later in Nashville. Spend New Year's Eve with me. And I promise you, we’ll figure everything out.”

CHAPTER 19

BERNICE

“Meet me…meet me later in Nashville. Spend New Year's Eve with me. And I promise you, we’ll figure everything out.”