Break Me In (4 page)

I know it well.

I’d thought my past was dragging me down, but it was all me. Unable and unwilling to let go until this moment. I brace for the burn. Nothing matters but now. The next fifteen minutes. And living to see the fifteen after that.

We’re both in the quiet place together. Surviving.

We’ll get out of here alive, but we won’t be the same. I’ll be whole, and Noah will be irrevocably broken.

He’s not my self-destruct button. I’m his.

I
go somewhere
in my mind. A place with soft grass instead of corrugated metal, a place that smells like honeysuckle instead of dank sweat. I stay there for a long time. There’s a green field beside a lake, and Noah is rising up out of the water naked. His body is beautiful, the hard planes covered with wildflower colors. The stars are out and the sun is shining and nothing hurts. He reaches for me again and again. When he does, I dance to music only we can hear.

The lake is my tears. The switch, cutting through the air, is our song.

My body is awkward, jerking and swaying in the darkness. Every sharp crack tries to pull me back to the present, forces me to pay attention. I squeeze my eyes shut so we can be alone in that place where pain is pleasure. Where everything he does to me feels good because he’s the one doing it.

All my moans belong to him.

I don’t know how many strikes it takes for Harry to cave—five lashes? Fifty? I just know that he does.

“The Bloody Jokers. They didn’t give me a choice either.” Harry cries.

The rival club name is strange and none of his sobbing confession makes sense to me, but Dev is satisfied. He leaves Harry in a heap on the floor and stalks over to us. Fresh adrenaline spikes my bloodstream, and my heart stutters back to a racing gallop. I try to slow my breathing, to hide my fear from this monster, but I can’t. I feel my nostrils flaring, see Dev’s satisfied smirk. His gaze rakes over me, and it’s like salt in every wound. He’s cold, assessing, and so fucking pleased with himself. I hold my cry in my throat, trap it there, because he wants it more than anything. He wants my anguish and the anguish it will cause Noah. I refuse to give that to him too.

Whatever he wants, I’m going to make him fight for it if I can.

He smiles. “You were a very good girl. The club owes you a favor.”

There’s a heat in that smile that makes my stomach turn even as I’m relieved that this nightmare is ending. Having Dev owe me anything feels wrong, dangerous in a way climbing onto the back of Noah’s bike never did. I think maybe the only thing Dev owes people is terror and chaos. “Then let me go.”

“That’s not up to me, sweetheart. You’re his problem. And if he’s anything like me, after that performance you aren’t going anywhere.”

My mouth floods with saliva, and I want to spit right in Dev’s smug face. I’m reminded of snakes that swallow their prey whole and then don’t eat for a month. That’s the look on Dev’s face. Like he’ll be digesting tonight’s entertainment for a long time. I pray that I’m right, because if he touches me again, I’m pretty sure Noah will lose his mind and we’ll all end up dead.

I don’t know much, but everything I know so far tells me Noah is nothing like him. Beneath the rough exterior, Noah has honor and kindness. Dev has none.

Noah stands frozen in front of me, and I mentally cheer for him. He’s not taking what is so obviously bait. He stays like that—eyes forward, fists clenched—until all of Dev’s men file out the door. The last of them drag Harry from the room, like it’s a dark parade and he’s the banner stretched between them. Maybe that’s exactly what it is.

I imagine there’s still coleslaw clinging to the bottom of his boots. I imagine him singing like it’s closing time. Is it still Harry? Or just a body?

As soon as the door closes behind them, Noah drops the switch and picks up some of the rope they’d cut away from Harry’s body.

“You went too far, Dev. I think maybe you’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

Smug, self-satisfied, Dev doesn’t move. “Too far? I decide what’s too far. I draw the damn line.”

Noah shakes his head and coils rope around his hands. “I’ve seen power break a man before. I’ve seen it twist a man until all that’s left is greed and hollow cruelty. You may get to draw the line, but it’s my job to hold it. Now I’m going to do my job.”

“Good.”

And then that angry wall of muscle is in motion again. The tiger unleashed. The cage broken. Dev doesn’t have five men at his side anymore. He realizes that far too late. I watch the understanding and surprise break over his face and then I watch his eyes bulge.

“I’m going to hold the fucking line to your throat and choke you with it.”

“Y
ou killed him
for me.” My voice cracks. My throat is dry and aching from all the crying out I’ve done and also from holding back. Exhaustion sinks deep into my bones, and I can hardly hold my head up.

Noah flicks open a pocketknife and attacks the knot at my wrists. “I killed him for a lot of reasons. What he did to you—what he made me do to you—that was an act of war. He knew I’d claimed you, and he made me hurt you anyway. For the club. It’s not supposed to be that way. Twisted like that. We may be criminals, but there’s a code of fucking conduct. Unspoken. And spoken. This shit broke all of the rules. And those fuckers just stood by and let it happen. No, they helped him do it. I can’t let it stand.”

Those fuckers? He meant the other men in the room. The ones who grabbed him when I fell, the ones who made sure he did what needed to be done. Is he going after them now? My mind spins on war, though. They certainly have enough guns and men, but all of them against Noah? Is he as crazy as Dev?

The knot at my wrist gives, and I slump into Noah’s arms.

Noah cradles me like a handful of broken glass swept off the floor—light and careful, like I might cut him or shatter further. I want his solid arms to squeeze me, to remind me that I am flesh and bone and pumping blood. I feel insubstantial, shivering and floating above the horror of this dark little room.

I worry that he feels insubstantial too.

“Hold me tighter.” I ask because it will do us both good.

“It’ll hurt.”

“I don’t care.”

He gathers me close and traces the curves of my face with the rough edge of his thumb—over my nose, my cheeks, brushing my hair from my forehead. “You gotta start caring, Star. Because I’m caring too much right now. It’s tearing me up inside how much I care.”

I can hardly look at him. His touch and voice and eyes are all so soft right now it’s almost scary. I knew what to do with his hardness, but this? His tenderness rains down on me like the sweetest hail. Pinging against my defenses.

“What about Harry? Where’d they take his…?” I can’t bring myself to say the word body…”

He traces soothing circles into my scalp. “You can’t worry about that. He may not have chosen his life, but he chose his death. He knew the penalty for throwing in with the Bloody Jokers, the price of betrayal.”

“And Kristi? Her shop?”

“I’ll deal with it.”

I curl my arm around his neck and press my face into his shoulder, hiding from betrayal and prices and everything awful. “Can’t we just leave?”

He skims his hand over my back and upper arms. I wince when he hits a sore spot, but he doesn’t stop touching. Jesus, he’s not avoiding my injuries. He’s checking me, methodically. “This is my whole life here. My brothers. My family. My job. I can’t walk away and let them destroy it all unchecked.”

I’d walked away from my whole life.

Twice.

That this one had such a hold on him, that he thought it was worth staying for—dying for—was confusing and intriguing. I wanted that for myself. “You have a family?”

Noah nods. “My old man had to quit riding a few years back. Got a sister too. Jules. She’s nineteen and a handful.” He presses a kiss to the corner of my lips that lights a fire inside me, inside both of us.

His hungry mouth claims mine, gentle at first but then fierce, until it’s all wet heat and teeth.

His tongue slides against mine and his fingers dig into my ass while I’m cradled in his arms, and it’s like I can finally breathe again. I’m not just a problem to be dealt with or collateral to be protected. I’m his. I’m wanted.

“I can’t hurt you again. Not one fucking hair on your head.”

For the first time in my life, in this horrible place, with this man who does horrible things, I feel cherished. “When you hurt me, it felt like love.”

“That’s fucked-up, Star. And it’s why I need to get you the hell out of here. Get you safe.”

“I don’t want to be protected, though. Not like that. I want to be with you. Does what I want count at all?”

“No.” Half growl, half smile—he nips my bottom lip, and another flood of warmth spreads through my body, chasing away the chill and fear. “What I just did? That was a bloody fucking coup. I have to deal with the aftermath, we don’t have a chance in hell if I don’t.”

Hope swells in my chest. “But we do have a chance?”

“I guess we’ve got a chance. Maybe. If I survive the blood feud Dev started with the Jokers. If I survive cleaning up the mess he made of our club while I wasn’t paying attention. If I survive the way my fucking cock gets hard every time you so much as blink in my direction. There’s a lot of fucking ifs. Even then I still won’t deserve you, but I’m a selfish fucker so I’ll take you anyway. If.”

All those ifs, and the only one I can think about is attached to his cock. It’s the only one I can do anything about. “Is it hard now?”

“Are you blinking?”

“Fuck me, Noah.” The request is a sigh, a plea, an involuntary response. Totally inappropriate, one hundred percent ridiculous, but I don’t care. We might never have another chance. “If everything is about to go to shit, let’s at least have that before it does. I want you inside me.”

“Here?” He means this awful room where terrible things happened. To Harry. To me. To him.

“Make it go away. Make us both forget. For now.”

He sets me down, and I wobble on my feet for the first time in what feels like hours. He shoves a wooden chair under the doorknob, and then I’m spinning. My hands are against the wall, and Noah is behind me, yanking down my jeans. Two tugs and my ass is bare. His belt buckle clinks, and I know his jeans are down too. The crinkle of a wrapper. His sharp inhale as he rolls on a condom.

My body melts, sore and tired but wound so damn tight waiting for him to touch me. He gathers my hair into his fist and presses a kiss to the back of my neck. “This is what you want?”

“Yes,” I hiss as his other hand slips down the front of my body, pinching my nipples, teasing my belly, then finally dipping between my legs to torment my clit. Fast. Hard. Painful. It’s what I want. What I need. Especially after all that slow torture. I need it to burn.

“If I were a good man, I wouldn’t do this.”

I’m so wet, but there’s no embarrassment in this moment. Not after all we’ve done tonight. “Would a good man touch my pussy like that, feel how ready I am, and walk away? No. You’re good, Noah; I know you are.”

He whips me around to face him. There’s nothing soft in his eyes now, only violence and hard lust. I reach for him, and he lifts me up. Finally, finally his cock is at my entrance, the blunt head spreading me open, filling me up.

Noah is holding me in his arms so tight and filling me so full. Our eyes are locked, dark with something more than lust. We are needful in this moment. We need each other. I’m soft where he is hard. Light where he is dark. I’m not broken glass. I’m unbreakable. I bend and bend. I take everything he gives me, every angry thrust, and shudder around him.

Claimed and claiming.

The orgasm rips through us both like a battle cry.