Thumper (Cerberus MC)

“I wanted to apologize for yesterday.”

She blinks up at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language.

“I shouldn’t have—”

“Javi, stop.”

My jaw snaps closed.

She stands, the ropes around her feet making it impossible for her to walk.

“You have a job to do, and so do I. I know you know I liked what happened yesterday. I know I don’t have to say the words. You felt how my body responded to you, how it always responds to you.”

“Stop.”

“Do you know how hard it was to keep crying while I was coming on your cock last night outside? I’ve missed you.”

“It was wrong.”

“It’s not something we haven’t done before.”

“This isn’t Quantico,” I hiss, my hands scraping over the top of my head as I turn away.

I can’t look at her continuing to do so only makes this harder for me.

“You’re a better lover now than you were—”

“I raped you!” I roar, spinning around to face her. “I was never that man!”

She digs her teeth into her bottom lip. “I enjoyed—”

“Enough!” I snap. “Just stop. Please, just stop.”

I feel like I’m at my fucking breaking point. “I’ve killed men for doing what I did last night. I’ve killed men for less.”

“You fucked a girl who you’ve fucked a hundred times before, Javi.”

“That reasoning doesn’t hold water, Laur—Lola. I didn’t give you a choice, didn’t give you a chance to say no.”

“I wouldn’t have. You know how I like things.”

“And you know I tried to give you what you wanted even though we weren’t as compatible as you seem to think we were.”

“I’m well aware of why we broke up, Javier.”

I start to pace the room. My skin feels like it’s on fire. “Why are you here?”

“I’m working my way down to Costa Rica. There’s a compound there that—”

“And where were you picked up at?”

“Seattle. I think—”

“You know how fucking dangerous these guys are. What person in their right mind would put themselves in—”

“I’m not interested in having this conversation with you again. It got old years ago. I know what I’m doing. Berto and his band of assholes didn’t just happen upon me. My handler had intel that put me purposely in their path. I do have to say that finding you here is a surprise. Last I heard, you joined a biker gang. Actually, I also heard—”

“That was a job,” I explain, but just saying it makes my stomach knot.

Cerberus was more than a job, and although it started out that way, it was one of the first assignments that I actually hated when it ended.

“And this is a job. Are you going to be able to get out of whatever bullshit you have swimming around in that handsome head of yours long enough to see it through?”

“How can you be so blasé about what’s happening? About what I did to you?”

“We fucked.”

“I rap—”

“You fucked a girl who you fucked before. That’s all it was. And don’t even question why I see it that way. I didn’t take one for the team which I thought I was going to have to do if you weren’t here and it was another piece of shit having to prove himself to that piece of shit Berto. You know as well as I do that I would’ve stepped forward so none of those other women would’ve been hurt.”

“That’s so fucked up,” I mutter.

She shrugs. I knew Lauren Vos was a wildcat the first time I laid eyes on her during our FBI intake at Quantico and learned very quickly that she was into some things my twenty-one-year-old ass had only ever seen in online porn. We were wild together, but when light ass smacking and a little dirty talk turned into her demanding to be choked and slapped across the face to get off, I knew I was in over my head. We split amicably as friends because Lauren didn’t do serious relationships. Her heart was never on the line because she doesn’t have the ability to love.

She told me so from the beginning, and it became evident when I sat her down to talk one night, telling her I just couldn’t be that man for her any longer. She just said okay and moved on like we hadn’t been together for months.

I didn’t love her. That’s not what it was about, but you don’t spend nearly every waking minute with someone and not form an attachment, that is, unless you’re Lauren Vos.

“Jesus,” she sighs. “Really? You put more value in my pussy than I ever have. Just drop it, Agent Sosa.”

I watch her, her face a mask of irritation as she glares at me.

So, I let the subject drop. I can warn her about ending up in the wrong place and getting seriously hurt until I’m blue in the face and it won’t matter. She won’t listen. She’s as reckless as she is brilliant, only her luck is going to run out one day.