“Clara, honey, I was nineteen, I just lost my dad, a year later I lost my mom and my sister. I cut my brother out of my life. I was away from my people. She had a great ass, she gave great head, I was young, stupid and my brain was in my dick half the time. And when she’s happy, gettin’ what she wants, she’s not a bitch. It’s only when she doesn’t get her way that she is.”
“Still,” I muttered, and he chuckled.
I looked down at him and felt the warmth from his body, sensed the power of it and realized, belatedly, that he’d been worried about what I would think about him and the life he’d led. And this was likely the reason he didn’t share it with me.
I wasn’t a risk taker. I made my moves cautiously, every step measured and filled with anxiety (until recently).
But I knew then—lying in Buck’s bed in Buck’s room in Buck’s MC’s hangout—that some risks were worth taking.
So I didn’t measure my next step, and I didn’t move cautiously.
I let go and prayed life would take me where I needed to be.
Doing this, I dropped my head and kissed his throat.
Leaving my lips there, I whispered, “Nothing you do, nothing you’ve done and nothing you’ll ever do will make me look at you differently.”
I felt his body turn to stone, but I still slid on top of it, running my lips down to his chest as his hands came up and sifted into my hair.
While this happened, I kept talking.
“I was as low as I could go with no way out, and you taught me to play pool, you gave me a hamburger, you made me laugh, and then you offered me a way out.”
“Baby,” he murmured, doing an ab curl, lifting us both up so I was straddling him and looking down at him.
His eyes were heated, but they closed when I pushed a hand between us and wrapped it around his cock.
“I know the kind of man you are, West Hardy,” I whispered, and his eyes opened. Blazing now, they locked on mine. “Or I know who you are to me.”
I stroked as I spoke and felt him harden in my hand. His hands glided along my skin and he dropped his head so his lips could do the same at my chest.
I kept stroking but slid the tip through the wetness between my legs, and I felt his growl against my skin as he cupped my breasts, the rough pads of his thumbs sliding across my nipples and that felt nice.
I wrapped my other arm around his shoulders and kept whispering, “And that man is my man, West.”
He tipped his head back and looked at me.
“You about to fuck your man, baby?”
“Oh yeah,” I whispered, grinning.
“Do me a favor, Toots.”
“Anything.”
One of his hands left my breast to cup the back of my head, bringing my lips to his.
“Do it hard,” he ordered low, then his mouth opened under mine, and as his tongue thrust between my lips, my hand between us moved away, and I impaled myself on his cock.
I commenced doing the favor he asked for, doing myself a favor in return.
It was after I’d come, and he’d come. I was holding tight with my arms around him. I was still seated on him, and he was still hard and seated deep inside me. His hands were at my hips but back, his fingers pressing into the flesh of my behind. My breaths were heavy against his neck where I’d shoved my face and I could feel his against mine.
And I realized that despair I’d carried in my belly all my life was gone—gone completely—and my world was just as I wanted it to be.
There were issues. There were worries. And some of them were huge.
But life was life.
There always would be.
But my life. My real. My now. My world.
Was solid.
For the first time ever.
Because Buck made it that way.
Because Buck gave that to me.
I was about to tell him that, thank him for it, and lastly, and most importantly, tell him I loved him, when the door opened suddenly, crashing against the wall.
Buck’s head snapped up, and my neck twisted.
And I stared in shocked disbelief mixed with no small amount of embarrassment, despair, and last, anger, at Nails standing in the door.
26
I Like It Like That
“Get the fuck outta here,” Buck growled as I tensed to move away.
He didn’t let me.
The fingers of one of his hands dug into my hip, putting pressure on, keeping me where I was, sitting astride and filled with him.
But his other hand moved out and swept the sheet up to my waist and his torso pressed against mine even as his eyes skewered Nails.
She ignored his order and listed into the room.