Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (11 page)

He wasn’t burly like her father. He was broad-shouldered and lean, and his muscles made sharp planes across his torso that were the visual definition of the term ‘chiseled.’ A light dust of dark hair covered his pecs, and a narrow trail led from his navel into his low-slung jeans, disappearing behind a plain, brushed-silver belt buckle. The denim of his jeans bulged under his belt.

Cripes.

He had a lot less ink than her dad or most of the Horde, as far as she knew. On his left forearm, in the meat below his elbow, he had three black, interlocking triangles. That one was familiar to her—on Nolan’s arm and just in general. She recognized the symbol as something significant to the Horde; she’d seen the same thing on headstones when she’d joined her father on days he’d wanted to pay his respects to fallen brothers. She didn’t know what it meant, though. It had never occurred to her to ask.

On his chest, above his heart, he had a simple, solid-black star, no bigger than a poker chip.

Hanging on a leather cord around his neck, dangling near that black star, was a sparkling silver star.

Iris put the pieces together and understood what the stars meant. She lifted the silver one from his chest. He flinched hard and yanked it away from her. For a few seconds, he stood there with the star closed in his fist, and they stared at each other.

Then he started to pull the cord over his head. Iris stopped him, curling her hands around his arms. “You don’t need to take it off.”

“Yeah, I do.” He pulled his arms free of her and took the cord off. Then he froze again, staring at the star dangling in his hand.

“Was it hers?” She didn’t know whether it was an imposition to ask, but this night had begun to slide sideways, and she didn’t really have her bearings anymore.

But he nodded and didn’t seem to have taken offense that she’d asked. “I’ve never taken it off before.”

Iris wondered if she should have felt jealous. She didn’t. She hurt, enough that she thought she might cry, but not for herself. “You don’t have to take it off, Nolan. It’s okay.”

He turned away from her and went to his chest of drawers. She saw more ink on his beautiful back: his club ink, which was the word HORDE, across the back of his right shoulder. The name HAVOC shared the ‘H’ and went down along his spine. Inside the right angle the words made was the Flaming Mane of the Horde patch.

On his right triceps was a Norse compass.

Iris had only one tattoo: a little bouquet on her ankle: a daisy, a rose, and an iris. But she knew a lot about ink. Almost every man in her life had ink, and most were covered with it. Most of the women were the same, though not as covered. In her experience, ink meant something. It told a story. It told the story of the person who wore it.

Nolan didn’t have much, but what he had seemed to tell the story of a man who had lost, and who was lost.

“I need to take it off,” he said with his back to her. “It would be like she…was with us.” He sighed, and his shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry. I’ll take you home if you want.”

Iris went to him and stood behind him. Looping her arms around his waist, she kissed his back. “If that’s what you want. This doesn’t freak me out, though.”

“How can it not?”

She thought of the last words the girl had said on the video. Her last words to Nolan, said to the world:
Don’t be sad for long. I want you to have a life of love and good things.
“You love her. I saw the video she made, and I saw that she loved you and you loved her. I think it’s beautiful. If you’re not ready to move on—”

“I am,” he interrupted. “That’s why this hurts.” His shoulders shook with a sad laugh. “I guess that probably sounds as fucked up as it feels.”

It wasn’t jealousy Iris felt. It was compassion. And maybe even love. Rather than being threatened by his turmoil, she was heartened. He’d never taken that star off in four years. She knew well that he hadn’t been celibate for that whole time.

No other encounter had meant enough to him that he’d needed to take it off. But he’d taken it off now. With her.

“What do you want, Nolan?”

She heard the light
tink
of metal settling on wood. He’d put the star down. Then he turned in her embrace. His eyes shone with sorrow.

“I want you.”

She pulled her sweater and her unfastened bra over her head and tossed them away. “I’m here.”

He wrapped her up in his arms and folded over to drop his head to her shoulder. When his chest pressed to hers, he sighed heavily. Iris closed her arms around his head and held on. If this was all he wanted, she’d be okay with it. It felt good to give him comfort.

After they’d hovered long in that timeless moment, he began to caress her back, his hands smoothing up and down from her shoulders to her waist. Then he turned his face and kissed her throat. The kiss changed, and he sucked at her skin. She fed her fingers into his hair and pressed her lips to the side of his face.

With a guttural groan, he released her, and his hands grabbed at the fastening of her jeans. At the same time, she went for his belt. Then they were lost in the frantic fumble of undressing, themselves and each other.

As Iris finally wrangled her second boot off and grabbed her open jeans to get rid of them, too, she looked up and saw Nolan standing naked, watching her. His cock was beautiful and rock hard. For her.

She wanted to taste him.

Following that impulse, she left her jeans on and went to her knees. She took him in her hands and pressed her lips to his tip, tasting the need that wept from him. He made a sound that was too soft to be a groan and too harsh to be a sigh. When she sucked him into her mouth, his hips rocked toward her.

“Fuck,” he muttered, rocking his hips back. He cupped her chin in one hand. “No, Iris.”

“I want to.” She loved giving head, being so in control of what a guy felt. It was even more than that with Nolan.

But he shook his head. “Not on your knees. That’s not who you are.”

Understanding, she let him help her to her feet. He brushed his thumb over her lips and came down and kissed her.

Then he grasped her hips, lifted her off her feet, and carried her to his bed.

CHAPTER NINE

When Iris had said the words
I’m here
, she’d ripped something away inside him. Why those two words had done it, what they’d even meant, Nolan didn’t know. But fuck, he hurt. He was so fucking tired of feeling nothing but pain and anger. He worked so hard all the time to contain it, to be patient, to think beyond his restless need and do the right thing, to give people what they needed, to be what they needed, and now it was all just loose inside him, roaring through his blood, burning like acid.

He wanted to feel good. He wanted to feel love—to feel somebody love him, to be loved. To
feel
it. On his skin, in his arms. He needed it. God, he needed it so bad.

Iris was in his arms, her warm, soft, small body tucked within his. She wanted him. He could feel it in her every touch, see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice, in her breath. More than that, she cared. She wanted to give him what he wanted. What he needed.

She kissed him eagerly, leading as much as following, sucking on his lip, swirling her tongue with his. When he lifted her from the floor, she tightened her arms around his neck, bringing their bodies as tightly together as they could be.

It was exactly what he needed.

He walked her to his bed and laid her down, resting his knee on the mattress so he could follow her down. Her jeans were still on, and he wanted nothing between them, so he pulled away, but not too far, keeping as much contact as he could while he moved down, kissing her throat, her chest, taking a beautiful, firm, full breast into his mouth, feeling her nipple pucker on his tongue as her body arched into his.

She let go of him and raised her arms over her head, making more of her sweet body available, and he tasted his fill, moving his mouth, teeth, and tongue back and forth between her breasts, then trailing downward, over the curve of her ribs, over her soft but nearly flat belly, which twitched frantically under his tongue.

Taking the waistband of her jeans in his fists, catching her underwear, too, he tugged, and she lifted her hips so he could free her from the last of her clothes. The jeans were snug down the full length of her legs, and he ended up kneeling on the floor at the side of the bed as he worked them and her socks—little pink socks—off.

She had a small, colorful tattoo on her ankle. He lifted her leg and kissed the pretty flowers before he understood what they were. A daisy, a rose, and an iris. Three sisters. The daisy was more softly rendered than the others, as if its edges had blurred. Daisy, her dead sister.

Nolan paused, kneeling on the floor, holding her ankle, his thumb rubbing almost absently over her ink. He knew the story. It had been a major part of that movie they’d made, and it was an important part of Horde history. The beginning of the worst period in that history. A period that had ended with Isaac and Len going inside. A period that had included Havoc’s death. It was all related, and it had started with what had happened to Daisy Ryan.

Iris had lost her sister, and Nolan knew how. God—she had been there. Iris had been witness to it. She’d been just a little girl. Until this moment, seeing the flowers on her leg, he didn’t know if he’d ever made that truth real in his mind.

It made him feel more deeply connected to her. And the acidic cyclone inside him slowed a little.

He kissed the flowers again, and then he moved from there, easing his lips over the arch of her foot, up the inside of her ankle, up her calf. He paused at her knee and traced his tongue over the sensitive curve of skin there until she writhed and moaned and grabbed at his hair—which she was too short and he yet too far away for her to quite reach.

Her whole body trembled under his touch. He slid his tongue up the inside of her thigh, pulling her legs until her hips were at the edge of the bed and he was at her pussy, which glistened with readiness.

Such a pretty pussy it was, too. Sleek and pink. She was natural, with a wedge of light brown curls.

Club girls shaved. Not a single girl he’d been with since Ani had had more than a tiny strip of hair, or maybe a little shape like a heart. Most were completely bare. He liked this, the way it made Iris different. She was different. She was more. She was real. This was real.

Nolan pressed his mouth to her mound. The curls were soft, and he nuzzled his face against her, savoring the sensation.

Her body went stiff. Her hands, which could reach him now, clenched in his hair. She’d stopped breathing.

He chuckled and pulled his mouth from her, just a fraction of an inch. “Breathe, babe.”

At that soft command, she inhaled shakily. As she let it out, he put his mouth on her again and rubbed his tongue over her clit, and her exhale became a wail. Wanting to make her feel good, Nolan closed his eyes, hooked his arms around her thighs, and ate his fill.

Jesus, she was responsive. Once he settled in, her body moved freely, and he could tell she was moving not only in reaction but in participation—maximizing the experience for them both. She was vocal without being talky or screamy. She simply uttered her pleasure, with moans and whimpers, and Nolan ached more for her with every sound.

He’d expected her to be different. She was so sweet, and, though he was only a few years older, he thought of her as young and naïve. Her response now spoke of experience. More than that, he felt her empathy. She was
with
him.

Nolan hadn’t been racked with need like this for a long time. He could feel sense sliding over in his head and letting sensation take the controls.

He brought a hand between her legs and slid a finger into her while he laved and sucked on her clit. The tremors of her body under his hands and mouth, and the squeeze of her pussy around his finger, told him that she was close. But he wanted to see her come. He needed to see it, to feel it, to have her all around him when it happened.

He shoved his arm under her waist and dragged her with him until they were fully on the bed. While her eyes were still wide with that surprise, he pushed into her, sliding easily into her snug sheath.

“I’ll pull out, I’ll pull out,” he gritted while his gut cramped with the perfect ache of her body holding his. “I promise.”

“You don’t have to,” she gasped. “I’m covered. Please”—she gasped again as he drove into her—“come inside me.” Her legs came up and hooked around his waist, and her arms snaked around his back, and he was truly held. She surrounded him. Sheltered him.

He curled his hand around her slender neck and kissed her, plunging his tongue into her mouth. As he thrust again, going as deep as he could, her neck arched, and she broke the kiss with a long, sensuous cry.

She had been close before, and now, as he held her as tightly as he could and thrust all of his own need into her, again and again, she came, hard and loud, her nails dragging down his back. Her pussy tightened around him, pulsing, and he thought he’d go mad.

Spinning in a riotous clamor of emotion and need, Nolan indeed lost control. He pounded into her, his knees and hips aching from the force of his thrusts, his hand tangling in her hair and clutching so hard he could feel the strands cutting into his fingers, his other hand pulling the sheets loose from the bed, and it wasn’t enough. He felt all that from far away. And he was seeking, seeking, seeking.

He finally came, and it barreled through him painfully until he thought he’d have a hernia before it was over. Just at the moment that he returned fully to reason, before he could relax, he realized that Iris was silent and wrapped tightly around him, her body almost entirely off the bed, like she’d had no choice but to hang on for the ride.

Rather than fall forward onto her, he sat back on his knees, taking her with him, and held her. He brushed her hair from her face. His breath wasn’t back yet, but he managed to ask, “Did I hurt you?”

She loosened her hold on him and met his eyes. “No. I just…wasn’t ready for that to be so intense, I guess. I wasn’t sure you knew I was there.”

He was an asshole. “Iris, I knew. I don’t know where all that came from, but I was with you. It was you I needed. It
is
you I need. And you felt so good. You make me feel so good.”

“Okay.” She smiled. “I thought it felt pretty great, too.”

Looking into Iris’s sweet, open face, her bright, warm blue eyes, Nolan knew he’d been right not twenty-four hours ago, when he’d sat on Ani’s hill and wondered where she’d gone.

She’d stepped into the background of his heart. She’d made room. Because he was in love again.

Feeling the seesaw of loss and gain, sadness and hope, he let his head fall forward onto Iris’s shoulder. She rested her head on his. Still connected, they held each other.

After a while, without ever leaving her body, Nolan went hard again. He laid her down and loved her gently, the way she deserved to be loved.

~oOo~

Nolan was awake when morning lightened the room. He had dark curtains, and they were drawn, so sunlight didn’t make its way in, but he could tell from the glow around the rim of the window that the sun was shining. He wondered if anything had come of the flurries last night.

He’d been lying there, on his back, staring at the dark ceiling, watching it get lighter until he could see the old water stains. Iris was curled at his side, her head tucked against his ribs. She slept as if she were praying, with her hands folded together under her chin.

He was raw. It had been years since he’d felt such an onslaught of emotion. He’d thought, in trying to keep the rage at bay, that he’d strangled every other kind of feeling into nothingness. But he hadn’t. Last night, it had all surged free, and now he was an exposed nerve.

He didn’t know how to live like that anymore, feeling everything. The rage was still there, boiling with everything else; he’d lived with it almost his whole life. Every hit he’d taken had made it swell, until he’d had to tamp everything down to hold it back. Even then, rage had leaked out and simmered. Loose, it would bury him.

It had been easier, much easier, when he was in SoCal, with a club doing outlaw work. That seemed wack, but it was true. The violence had given him a way to bleed his line. He’d killed and felt no remorse, no turmoil, except in wondering if that lack of remorse meant he was inherently bad. All his rage had gone into the violence, outward, and left him alone. He’d been calmer. He’d even been happy. He’d fallen in love, and he hadn’t known if he were capable.

Since he’d lost Ani and come home, to this quiet town and this quiet club, the rage returned and had nowhere to go, and it simmered. Since the summer and David Vega’s resurgence, it boiled.

That bastard was alive. Nolan felt a certainty: as long as Vega lived, so would his rage. But the club had voted. There was nothing he could do but live with this septic brew churning inside him. He didn’t know how.

Iris sighed in her sleep. The sweet little sound pulled his attention outward, and he shifted and hugged her close. Immediately, his dark thoughts faded and the throbbing of his pulse in his ears settled.

He knew how he’d live. Iris kept him calm. With her, he’d be okay.

Her blonde hair lay over his arm in a tangle. He saw goose bumps on her shoulder and pulled the blankets up and tucked her in. She stirred, making another cozy sigh, and her hand slid low over his belly. His body reacted fully and instantly to her touch.

She lifted her head, and Nolan could see her trying to orient herself. When she turned her eyes his way, she saw that she had little dark smudges under them, where her makeup had worn off.

“Hey. Morning,” he said and slid his hand into her hair. It was a bright, light yellow, like Marilyn Monroe. She changed it a lot. He thought he preferred it darker, but she was pretty whatever color her hair was.

She smiled, and that was beautiful. “Good morning. You okay this morning?”

There was no point in telling her about his predawn thoughts. With her, they were irrelevant. “I am. I liked watching you sleep.”