Bound to the Bad Boy (16 page)

Safe with Matt.

****

Matt squinted at the road ahead
of him. What was that?

A figure was racing towards them.
Arms waving madly.
Bare feet
pounding the dust.
Red hair whipped around her head by the breeze.

Megan…

He
accelerated,
keen to reach her as soon as possible.

Something off to her left caught
his eye.
Who the hell…it was Gil Creedy.
Hot on
Megan’s heels. A bike roared up alongside him and Moonshine waved at the figure
pursuing Megan. Matt nodded and Moonshine waved a few of their crew to branch
off with him.

Creedy must have realized that he
was in trouble because he suddenly changed direction and started running away
from the road, off into a field. But Matt focused on getting to Megan. His
charter would take care of the murdering rapist.

Matt slowed down as he reached
Megan and pulled in to the side of the road. He jumped off the bike and opened
his arms. She fell into them, sobbing into his leather jacket. He held her, his
own heart beating as quickly as hers, his mind racing with the possibilities of
what could have occurred if Gil had caught her.

He rocked her, stroking her hair
gently until she calmed down.

“Megan?”

She nodded, sniffing.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.” Her bottom lip trembled and
Matt’s heart was filled with love. All he wanted to do was to protect Megan and
to love her for the rest of his life.

“Are you okay?” He kissed her
forehead, her cheeks and her lips, tasting her salty tears and fighting the
black anger that surged in his gut, yearning to punish Gil Creedy for daring to
try to mess with his woman.
His Megan.
His sub.

“Let me take you on up to the
house, sweetheart. You’re in shock. You need to rest.”

She looked up at him with her big
tearful eyes like green pools after a rainstorm and shook her head.

“No, Matt.”

“What do you mean? You’re shaking
like a jelly, sweetheart. You need to sit down.”

 
“I can’t come home with you, Matt.”

His heart plummeted.

“But, Megan…”

She held up a hand.

 
“I need to collect my things, yes. But I can’t
do this. This…” She shrugged her shoulders and gestured towards his house then
towards his friends who now headed their way with Gil Creedy draped across the
back of Moonshine’s bike. “I just can’t sign up for all of this again.”

Matt took a deep breath as his
world came crashing down around him. His heart ached with the fierce pain of
loss and his throat burned with constricting grief.

He had thought that he might be able
to win her back. To prove how much he loved her and that he could offer a good
life. But yet again, Gil Creedy had come along and taken all that he had and
scattered it like ashes across what now seemed like a barren future. But perhaps
Megan was right. Maybe she couldn’t do it all again. She had sampled a very
different kind of life and perhaps being his old lady, his lover, his sub, was
no longer what she wanted.

Though it wrenched him apart and
his limbs now shook as if he was being drawn on the rack, he knew that he had
to let her go. It wasn’t right to force her into a life that she no longer
wanted and perhaps he had to accept that it really was time to let her go.

Chapter Eleven

Megan had extended her stay at the
hotel. She had phoned the library and spoken to her boss, citing personal
reasons and asked to use up her holiday allowance for that year. The older
woman had been understanding and told her to take as long as she needed. They
weren’t exactly rushed off their feet. It had been a huge relief. Megan just
wasn’t up to going back to the city just yet. She had a few things left that
she needed to do in Cherub.

The two extra weeks of vacation
time had passed in a blur of sleeping, walking and crying. She had visited her
old childhood haunts and spent a lot of time thinking about what her youth had
been like, what she had wanted then and what she wanted now. No one had ever
said that life would be easy. Her parents were good people but not traditional
in their childrearing techniques. They had often left her to her own devices,
believing that children should grow and experience the world as it really was
without the hindrance of overprotective parenting. She had often wished that
they had been more traditional, set her some boundaries and spent more time
showing her that they cared. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have been so needy for
Matt. Perhaps she could have enjoyed their young love without becoming so
intense about it.

She could see it clearly now. She
had been obsessed with him.
Needy for him in a way that
suffocated her.
Being away at college had made her heady with a sense of
liberty. But that freedom had not been all it had initially seemed, and life
without Matt’s love and protection had actually been quite empty.
Lonely.
Miserable.

Being with him again had been
amazing. They were obviously older and wiser but it was still just as exciting
and stimulating as it had always been. But better.
Because
she had felt more in control.
Ironic really, as she had surrendered control
to Matt, but that had been her choice and she knew that it was safe. She had
always been safe with him.

He had always treasured her and
cherished her heart.

Her real fears lay back in her
youth. Being so consumed by love and passion was something that she found
daunting, but it was, in all honesty, the only time she had felt truly alive.
And she wanted to feel alive.
Again.

Matt had the ability to bring her
to awareness of herself, and of the world around them. She wanted to take that bright
state of consciousness and to hold it tight for the rest of her life.
To see the world in all of its vivid clarity.

But guilt and concern gnawed at
her. She had seen his hurt expression when she had told him she could no longer
be with him. She had heard his heart breaking in two when he had dropped her at
the hotel and kissed her gently goodbye. The warmth and tenderness of that
final kiss had nearly driven her insane.

In the following fortnight, he
had stayed away. He must have known that she was still there but he hadn’t
tried to approach her. Or contact her. Or even just see her from a distance.

It made her heart heavy and she
found that she sighed repeatedly, as if trying to fill her lungs with the
oxygen they so badly needed. As if she couldn’t breathe without Matt because
the pain of her loss crushed her chest like a heavy boulder.

Is he as important to me as oxygen, then?

Will he even want me now?

Had he given up on her? Was his
distance a sign that she had blown it completely with him?

Is it finally over?

She sat on the bed and pulled on
her hiking boots. Before she left, she had one place she still needed to visit.
She had to go up to the old cabin where she had spent so much of her childhood.
It was a special place and she had a lot of good memories from her time there.

She had waited until now to go
there because she needed to feel strong enough to confront her grief. If she
had lost Matt forever, then she would have to deal with it, but returning to
the place where they’d first made love would be tough, if she wasn’t fully prepared.

So today was the day.

She’d asked the hotel manager for
a picnic lunch, which she now stuffed into a backpack with her waterproof
jacket. She pulled her hair up into a high ponytail and applied some sunscreen
to her face and a dash of lip-balm.

She was ready.

Ready to say
goodbye to her past and, if she really had no other choice, then to her bad
boy.

****

Megan peered up through the
trees. The sunlight fell through the gaps in the lush green like golden laser
beams. The woodland was alive with birdsong and it lifted her heart, making her
feel the old joy of her youth. She breathed deeply, enjoying the fresh air with
its earthy yet invigorating aromas. Why had she stayed away from here for so
long when it was such a good place to be?

She blinked away the tears that
made a sudden arrival and strode onwards. She was nearly at the old cabin. It
wouldn’t take long to get there then she could sit in her old spot, eat her
picnic lunch and clear her head. Focus on letting the past go.

She could have taken the old road
that led up to the retreat but she had wanted to walk. Living in the city meant
that she didn’t get the kind of natural exercise that she had always enjoyed.
Rambling through the woods, observing nature at its best was her favorite way
to keep fit.
Taking care not to disturb any hormonal bears,
of course.
But she hadn’t been afraid of the big black creatures.
Growing up around them and seeing her parents’ enthusiasm for all animals,
especially bears, had taught her respect and admiration for all living things.
Their philosophy had stayed with her and, of course, they had taught her a few
tricks to help her to deal with bumping into any wildlife that may react with
hostility.

Not going to be a problem today, I hope…

She rounded the last bend and the
small clearing with its log cabin came into view. The giant trees she had
stared at for hours on end still dwarfed the clearing. The tree swing her
father had made for her out of a length of rope and an old tire still swayed in
the gentle breeze. The rickety picnic bench where she had completed her
schoolwork on so many hot afternoons still stood in the shadows.

Her heart leapt and the tears blurred
her vision again.

Damn all this emotion.

It’s your own fault. You decided to come up here.

I did.

She could almost hear her
childish laughter as her father pointed out a bear cub in the undergrowth, its
protective mother nearby. She could almost see her mother clad in khaki, her
long red hair tucked under a baseball cap as she used her treasured camera to
photograph her beloved bears. She could almost feel their love.

So it wasn’t really a bad childhood. They taught you a lot. And being
here, with them, was their way of showing you what mattered to them. They
weren’t weird, just different from other parents. They taught you values. They
just didn’t have the time for things your friends’ mothers and fathers did.

She wobbled for a moment. The
realization washed over her like cleansing rain. They had loved her in their
own way. She didn’t have to worry. She had been loved. So they didn’t take her
to elaborate restaurants and mother-daughter pedicures. They refused to run her
from one sporting or social event to another every evening. And they didn’t
push her to try for prom queen.

But she was loved.

By them and
also by Matt.

She approached the cabin. In
spite of the passing years, it didn’t seem to have altered much. Its thick
wooden beams still stood strong and firm. The windows still held their panes of
recycled glass and even the small chimney remained in its place.

It was beautiful.

But the door hung open.

Would the weather have destroyed
the interior? Had the wind blown thousands of wet leaves into the cozy rooms,
battering their eclectic furniture and eroding the few possessions her parents
had left behind?

Or would the wild beasts have
taken over and claimed the cabin for themselves? Would she find a nest of
beetles beneath the rag rug on the lounge floor and the horsehair sofa housing
a family of moths?

She gasped.

She froze.

She trembled.

What is that?

****

Matt had heard footsteps
approaching and he ducked into the cabin to wait. Three days he’d been hanging
around, convinced that Megan would soon arrive. He had been about to give up
hope and return into town when Moonshine had sent him a text message to say
that Megan was on her way. The club had kept her in their sights, making sure
that she was safe and letting Matt know her every move.

They were just looking out for
her. It was his duty to take care of her. After Gil Creedy’s appearance at his
place, Matt wasn’t taking any chances. Megan needed protecting, even if she
didn’t realize it. The club hadn’t buried Creedy, as most of them would have
liked and may well have done readily back in his father’s younger days, but
they had taught him a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Wherever he went,
Gil Creedy had tabs kept on him and he knew it. For the last two weeks, Creedy
had been camped out in a highway motel. Their sister charter club’s members were
watching him and he’d be watched all the way to New Mexico. He sure as hell
wasn’t getting past the Night Warriors again.

No one ever did that twice. He’d
been let off this time but a repeat performance might mean he wasn’t so lucky.
He might be cleaned up if he tried anything again. Make that
would
be cleaned up… Matt’s jaw twitched
at the finality of the words. It had taken a lot for him to fight giving that
order. He’d like nothing better than to hear that the rapist weasel had taken
his final breath but he knew that he couldn’t lie to Megan’s face. Not if they
could have any chance of salvaging anything between them.

Despite the fact there were eyes
on Creedy, Matt still needed to know that Megan was
safe.
He had waited for a few days to see if she’d return to the city but she hadn’t.
She had hung around.
Making his need to see her grow into an
almighty ache that sat leaden in his gut and made his movements slow and heavy.
Grief shadowed him, threatening to drag him six feet under at any moment and he
began to believe that he would welcome the release if something didn’t happen
soon.