Atonement (Angel's Halo MC 5)

I popped my neck, trying to ease some of the tension in my muscles. “Been called worse.”

“I bet,” she said with a snort, crossing her arms over her chest.

She looked delectable the way she was lying on my bed, sulking. Delectable and hot as sin.

I walked toward the bed, noticing the effects of her encounter with the prospect. Her shirt was wrinkled

and halfway up her waist, showing me how creamy her belly was, along with a hint of metal. A belly button ring? Sexy. Then my eyes caught the sight of her jeans and saw that the button was undone, along with the zipper.

My rage, which had started to cool, doubled. Had that motherfucker had his hands in her pants? Had he touched that sweet, little pussy?

Goddammit. I wanted to punch something. This wasn’t the first time I had experienced jealousy where Quinn was concerned, but it had never been this strong before. The urge to maim and murder held me in place as I fought my caveman instincts that were demanding I butcher the prospect.

“You’re such a buzzkill, you know that?” She sat halfway up and leaned back on her elbows as she looked up at me, a defiant glare in her eyes. Her lips were still swollen from Boomer’s kisses, making them even more pouty than usual.

Something painful burned through my chest. Not so much rage or even jealousy this time.

It was hurt.

That she would try to hook up with some guy who was more or less a stranger to the area. Hell, I would have felt like that if it was someone she had known all her life.

I had no right. Fuck, I had pushed her away for so many years, and I didn’t deserve to get to feel even an iota of hurt over her screwing around with other guys. It still stung like a red wasp.

I leaned over her, pressing my hands into the mattress on either side of her head and getting in her face. “This isn’t you, Quinn. You don’t drink, and you sure as hell don’t go around hooking up with random guys.”

She rolled her eyes at me, and I had the sudden urge to bend her over my knee and spank the ever-loving shit out of her perfect little ass.

“You know nothing about me, Raider Hannigan.”

I knew more about this female than any other female on the planet. Like how she always nibbled on her thumbnail when she was thinking hard. Or how she had one lock of hair that was always longer than the rest, and when she wore her hair down, it curled perfectly down her back. I knew that she hummed soft rock music when she was working, and that her favorite thing to eat was Aggie’s crack brownies. I even knew that her left brow arched higher than the right when she was surprised or pissed.

Hell, I didn’t know half of that about the girls I fucked on a regular basis. I didn’t normally notice shit like that about anyone.

But if I told her how wrong she was, she would have never believed me.

Fuck, I wasn’t sure I would have believed me, either.

She tipped her head back until it was lying on her shoulders, her messy ponytail drooping to one side. Fuck, she was still sinfully hot as she looked up at me with those bloodshot blue eyes and that mouth that I was dying to taste.

“I promised myself tonight that I was going to get over you,” she informed me with fire dancing in her amazing baby blues. “You just messed up my chance to lose my V to the one guy who doesn’t know that Colt and the uncles would use his skull as a mug for their beer.”

“He doesn’t know that yet,” I agreed. “But once he fucked you, my brother would have torn him apart.” That motherfucking prospect would have been scattered from here to Chicago before anyone missed him. There wouldn’t have ever been any putting him back together once Colt was done with him.

And I would have helped him.

“I’m sick and tired of wearing my heart out over you when you don’t give a shit if you hurt me or not.” She said it with a sass that I rarely saw in her, but I had to admit it was sexy as hell. Her words, though, they were like a hundred stings of those damn red wasps that were attacking my chest.

I had always known there would come a day when she would get over whatever crush she had on me and move on. Have a husband and kids, and maybe even move away from Creswell Springs. It was what I had always wanted for her. She deserved those things. To be happy and away from all the bullshit of the club life.

Quinn was too sweet and innocent for the jaded life of an old lady. She needed a man who would be faithful to her, who would worship the ground she walked on.

That guy wasn’t me.

“I don’t like hurting you, sweet girl,” I found myself confessing as I leaned in closer and rubbed my nose against her cheek. This close, I couldn’t help breathing in the floral scent of her lotion. Honeysuckle and sunshine, that was what I pictured as I closed my eyes and breathed her in deeply.

“Bullshit,” she muttered, and my eyes snapped open again. “I think you take a sick kind of pleasure out of breaking my heart any chance you get.”

If she had been sober, I knew she wouldn’t have said any of the things that were leaving her lips. For the moment, I was glad she was drunk. She needed to say these things to me, and honestly, I needed to hear them.