But I came down on my side, on my arm, the pain exploding through my shoulder, whiting out my vision for a long moment.
It was shattered.
I would be lucky if I could ever lift it up over my head again.
But pain meant one thing.
I was still alive.
"Fuck," I hissed, throwing myself onto my stomach, pulling my legs in, my forehead resting on the concrete for a long moment as I tried to focus through the pain.
It felt like hours that I sat there before I pushed my legs to stand, and my body straightened as much as possible.
I shrugged out of the chains and made my way to the door, listening for a moment before using my good arm to pull it open.
I'd been right.
About the area of town.
Way off on the outskirts of Navesink Bank off the highway.
But that was good.
The highway meant people.
Someone would stop.
With that in mind, I made my way through the darkness and into the road.
Almost there.
I was almost there.
Back home.
To my kids.
To Summer.
Nothing else mattered.NINEColsonI should have made her go.
I had no business inviting a woman to stay at the clubhouse. Especially one who wasn't related to us, while all the other women were stuck up at Hailstorm feeling useless, while their men needed comforting and went to bed alone, bodies sore, spirits deflated.
But there I was.
In bed.
Eva fast asleep on my chest, warm and soft and way too fucking tempting.
I didn't realize how much self-control I had until she was writhing against me, until I was nearly mindless with my need to ease inside her, to feel her walls clench around me as she came, until I let her take her orgasm, then didn't allow things to escalate any further.
Sex was great.
But sex with a woman who was overwrought with emotions was manipulative at best. I didn't want to be the man she woke up next to with regret.
So I let her take.
And I beat down my need for release.
I lay there awake hours after she passed out, my cock throbbing, my mind racing.
I should have been thinking about Reign, about his wife and kids, about the club.
But all my thoughts were on other things instead.
What it would be like for things to calm down, to be able to take Eva out somewhere, to just be two normal fucking people trying to get to know each other. How the kids would get along once they met. How Jacob would react to me being in his life as something more than a neighbor who thwarted his efforts to fuck his life up.
Eventually, though, exhaustion claimed me as deeply as it had claimed Eva.I woke up to fingers tracing over my chest, down my arm.
I was barely awake, but I could feel my cock getting hard as her fingers moved back to my chest, then down my stomach.
"Eva," I grumbled, my hand grabbing her at the wrist, dragging it back up to the center of my chest.
"You sleep like the dead," she declared. "I actually flicked your nose and you just grumbled something about a feather duster?" she said, pressing up to look down at me, her brows drawn together. "I am going to need an explanation for that one."
"My aunt," I said, snorting. Christ, I had forgotten all about that shit. Or so I thought. "She took us in when we were kids. Not," I clarified, "out of the goodness of her heart. I think she did it more as virtue signaling, really. She wanted everyone else to think she was so good for taking in her screw-up sister's kids after she couldn't take care of us anymore. She was, ah, she was a hard woman. And I don't like saying that. But you can be strong without being hard, if you know what I mean. This club has a ton of strong women, but there's some softness there too, even if they struggle to show it at times. It's there. My aunt? She didn't have that shit. I didn't think she was equipped to care for a cat, let alone three children."
"I'm sorry about your mom," Eva said, eyes sad. "And that your aunt was so miserable. But we haven't gotten to the feather duster part," she told me. "I'm not letting you get away with not telling me.
"My aunt decided when we were in the picture that she wasn't going to lift a finger anymore. That it was our job to clean the house. To earn our keep, I guess. Saturday mornings were our cleaning day. Thad, my brother, was always the first one up. I think he did it on purpose. Got up first, dealt with the wrath of our aunt for us before she left the house. Thad has always been better about letting things slide off his back like that. He's gay," I told her, "and he's always been out. So I think he was used to getting shit from people, even at a young age. Anyway, he would deal with her, then he would come up and wake up me and Freddie. With a fucking feather duster over the nose. Shit," I said, shaking my head. "I practically forgot about that," I told her, smiling a bit.