Atonement (Angel's Halo MC 5)

Only when she was safely inside the car did I release her hand. She was so tiny compared to me that I had to remind myself that she wasn’t nearly as delicate as she looked.

Closing the door, I went around to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel after pushing the seat back as far as I could. Still, my knees touched the steering wheel and I had to shift around for a few moments before I could find a position that allowed me to drive without continuing to knock my knees into the wheel. She had the keys in her purse, but it had a push start.

I didn’t drive a cage often. They were too confining, making me feel like I was trapped inside a metal box. Quinn’s little car was enough to make anyone over the height of five-foot-five feel claustrophobic.

“Did that just happen?” she muttered half under her breath, as if she were talking to herself.

“Did what happen, sweetheart?” I asked as I pulled out into traffic.

She turned her head, blinking those baby blues at me like an owl. “My sisters. Aggie. You.” She shook her head, as if she needed to clear it. “I’m so confused right now.”

“Okay, let’s reexamine what just went down. Maybe that will help you.” I glanced at her for a moment before turning my gaze back to the road. “I walked in and saw Whitney try to attack you. That dumbass bitch better watch herself. If she had touched you, she wouldn’t have been welcome back at the clubhouse. You know I wouldn’t hit a woman, sweetheart, but if she had hurt you, I would have laid her ass out on the floor.”

Her blue eyes only widened more, driving home to me yet again what a complete idiot I had been over the years where this female was concerned. If I could go back and rewrite our history, I would have gone back to the first time I had seen her as more than my little brother’s best friend. Fuck, that had been when she was little more than seventeen, but damn, I would have made sure that nothing bad every happened to her. That she wouldn’t have to question every little thing I did or said now. I would have made her mine at the stroke of midnight on her eighteenth birthday and spent every day of those wasted years worshipping the very ground she walked on.

“Why did you pick me up from work?”

I reached over and took one of her hands, bringing it to my lips. “Because I missed you like hell, baby.”

“Since last night?” she asked skeptically.

“No,” I assured her, giving her my eyes for a second. I saw a flash of hurt that made her face twist. “No, Quinn. I missed you from the moment I left you the night of my brother’s engagement party.”

“O-oh,” she breathed, lowering her eyes to her lap.

Less than five minutes later, I was pulling into her driveway. I noticed that my brother wasn’t there, but Kelli’s car was right where it had been when I had left the night before. Hoping that she was still in bed so I would have a little privacy with my female, I turned the car off and hurried around to the passenger side to open the door before she could do it herself.

Her baby blues only widened more, if that was possible, as I took her hand and linked our fingers together once again, pulling her toward the house. Something as simple as holding a woman’s hand was new to me, but I was getting the appeal of it. I got to touch her, got to hold on to her, and pull her close if I wanted … and I wanted.

The heat of her small hand packed a powerful punch, bringing me a kind of peace that I was starting to realize I had been missing for most of my life.

At the front door, Quinn pulled her hand free to get the house key out of her purse, and I missed the warmth of her fingers around mine.

I wasn’t blind to the fact her fingers were shaking, making it difficult for her to fish around to find the keys.

I calmly took the purse from her and opened the thing myself. My hands were considerably bigger than the actual purse itself, so instead of helping, I only made the situation worse.

I heard her snicker and couldn’t help grinning as I handed the purse back. I was glad that shocked look was starting to fade from her beautiful face. Now a half-smile teased at her lips as she took the purse from me, making her luscious lips look so damn kissable.

Temptation was too hard to resist. Cupping my hand around her neck, I used my thumb to tip her chin up then dipped down to steal a kiss. Her body went completely still, but I didn’t let that stop me. She tasted too damn good to pull back.

I licked her full bottom lip, teasing her mouth open so I could dive deep. A kiss had never tasted so good. Then again, I wasn’t much into kissing. Kissing wasn’t part of what I did with the females I had fucked in the past. It was too personal, too intimate. I hadn’t kissed anyone in years, but right then, it felt like it was the most natural thing to do in the world.

Her shy tongue brushed against mine, as if silently asking me for more. I pulled her closer, moving my hand around her waist and sliding it down to cup her ass. Then I moved the hand at her neck so I could wrap her ponytail around my wrist, holding her head at the exact angle I needed to explore her mouth deeper.

Neither of us noticed when she dropped her purse; all I cared about was that her hands were now on me, touching my chest under my leather cut. She moaned softly, just the barest of a sound that could have easily been mistaken for a kitten’s purr.

She pressed one of her hands to the center of my chest, right over my pounding heart. There was no way she could miss how crazy it was beating, no more than she could miss how my dick flexed against her waist, demanding attention. But this kiss was too good for me to care about that part of my anatomy right then.

If she were any other female, I would have pressed her up against the front door and fucked her then and there. She wasn’t just any female, though.

She was mine.

And I wasn’t about to let anyone see what my female looked like when I was inside her.

She moved her hands from my chest to the back of my neck, holding on as I kissed the breath out of her. Those soft, little moans were getting louder, more insistent. All I wanted was just a few more minutes of savoring the taste of her wicked little mouth …

The sound of a car idling pulled me back from the edge of madness. I carefully lifted my head, and Quinn buried her face in my chest, her body trembling with a need that only made me ache ten times worse.