Devil May Care: Boxed Set (32 page)

“Why would you say that?”

“Because what happened tonight is my fault.”

Rome

And that was the truth. If I had known that my interest in Olivia was going to drag her into this kind of mess, I would have passed on her that first night in the bar.

Are you sure?
A small part of my mind whispered to me.

I frowned. No, I wasn’t sure. I thought of her ex-boyfriend, Tom, and what an asshole he was. I thought of how dangerous he might really be, the things Olivia might not have been telling me. Things that he could have done to her.

I wasn’t sure I could just leave her to deal with that on her own, but I wasn’t sure that this was much better. In fact, I was starting to think me in her life was much,
much
worse.

My blood boiled at the thought of what they might have had the chance to do to her. It infuriated me to think of
anyone
hurting her, but like that? There was little they could do to her that was worse.

I looked down at Olivia, twisted there in my arms, to find her staring up at me with a surprised, slightly horrified expression on her face.

“W-what do you mean?” she asked, clearly shaken.

Of course she was shaken. After what happened tonight, I wasn’t sure that most women would have been as okay as she was in the first place.

Taking a deep breath, I clarified as best I could. “It was my fault that those men were after you,” I told her, though it pained me to say how bad of an effect I was already having on her life.

“I don’t understand. Why…why would they come after me?”

I drew in a ragged breath and sparred one hand to run through my blond hair, shoving it back away from my face only for it to fall in front of my eyes again. I let out a heavy sigh, then answered. “Because I showed interest.”

She still looked confused. “I don’t get it. Who
were
they?”

I didn’t want to tell her. She seemed like the nice, girl next door type and they usually didn’t like to keep company with the likes of me. But as I held her in my arms I acknowledged two things. First, I’d already dragged her into this whether she liked it or not. Two, I didn’t regret it as much as I should.

So I told her. “They belong to a motorcycle club called the Renegades.”

“Why would a motorcycle club—” she began, but I interrupted quickly.

“Because I’m part of the same club.” She didn’t say anything. I felt her tense, but she didn’t pull away or tell me that I was a terrible, horrible excuse for a human being, so I counted that as a small victory. “Our leader, Axel, is in prison. He did the deed, no one’s questioning that, but they think someone ratted him out. And they think that someone is me. Up to this point, Axel’s been in my corner…I think tonight that changed.”

For the next three hours, silence reigned. Olivia didn’t seem to know what to say and I’d said all I could. Now we were left with the question of whether or not she could get over tonight and who I was, or whether we were both wasting our time.

I didn’t think I had been, but she was clearly on the fence. Especially since she’d been hesitant to start anything with me in the first place. I was pretty sure that tonight hadn’t eased her earlier worries as far as that was concerned.

Eventually, though, after several more cups of coffee she came around. When the tension in her shoulders eased a little and she still didn’t kick me out, I finally spoke again.

“They’ll try again.”

She clenched her eyes shut and tried to keep her breathing even.

“You won’t be safe. They’ll find out where you live. They probably already know. If you want to be safe, you’re going to have to come with me.”

At this, she looked at me curiously. “Come with you?”

I nodded. I’d been running through this crazy plan ever since I told her what was going on. Now that I’d had the time to think about it, I knew it was nuts, but there was also the increasingly strong urge to do it. Now that I’d blurted it out, there was no turning back.

“You need to get out of town. Between your crazy ex and my crazy boys, you need some space and a little safety. I can give you that. And I need to do some research. I need to figure out who the real rat is before it all falls on my shoulders and they do something no one can take back.”

She was tense again, but she didn’t yell at me to get the hell away from her. In fact, she seemed to be considering it. “Where…where would we go?”

I shook my head. Gathering her up into my arms again, I held her close, enjoying the feel of her body as it pressed against mine, full breasts and wide hips and long, silky hair. I tilted her chin up and leaned down. When our lips touched, I’d meant it to be a soft, quick kiss, but I couldn’t leave it that way. As soon as our mouths made contact, I felt the all too familiar need to devour as much of her as I could.

By the time I broke the kiss, we were both panting and the bulge in my pants was growing.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she had lost interest in talking. She was the one to instigate the kiss this time and when her tongue slid into my mouth, I thought I was going to lose my mind. I jerked her up so that she was in my lap. Automatically, her legs went to either side of me, her skirt hiking up high onto her thighs, and this time I could feel the underside of her ass as my hands went to cup her rear. I felt her soft nether region slide along the rough crotch of my jeans and instinctively tried to buck up into her.

It was killing me that we were wearing so many clothes.

My hands gave her ass a tight squeeze, which made her moan into my mouth. I swallowed the sound hungrily. My touch moved upwards then, sliding over her hips and her tiny waist until my hands found the swell of her breasts. She gasped when I got a hold of them, squeezing the soft, full orbs, pleased to find that her bra didn’t have much padding.

It meant she just had some large, firm breasts, and I wanted desperately to see them.

One hand made it around to her front, slipping into her shirt, popping open several buttons in the process. When that same hand slipped inside her bra to touch bare flesh, Olivia broke the kiss to groan, arching her back to push her chest farther into my hand.

I brushed my fingers over her nipple a little roughly, pleased when it hardened beneath them. I wanted to suck on it and worry my teeth against it—I wanted to put my mouth on every inch of her body, as a matter of fact—and pulled the fabric aside to do just that. My eyes raked over the exposed tit, better than I’d imagined, and the straining of my cock against my pants was almost too much.

I couldn’t help but buck up to her, sliding against her covered crotch, wishing that the fabrics separating us weren’t there. I was about to lean forward and start sucking on that one bare tit, but before I got the chance she slid off my lap. She was heaving and gasping and her tit hung out from her shirt, her nipple hard. Her skirt was rucked up and I could see that her panties were a deep purple color with lacy trim and what might have been the tails of a bow hanging down from the top.

“I…we should…” She didn’t even seem to know what she was trying to say and looked half tempted to come back to me—but with less clothing.

Before she could decide to do that, I cleared my throat and forced myself to focus. In a low, growling voice I said, “Go pack. We’re leaving tonight.”

She didn’t argue. Her eyes flashed with heat and I debated leaving in the morning if only to finish what we’d started. I still wanted to see what was really beneath the rest of those clothes and to see if I couldn’t make that flush trail over her entire body.

I wanted to do a lot of things to her. But I let her go pack, keeping in mind that it was too dangerous to stay.

I’d have to make up for this lost moment later.

Olivia

We drove the bike to his place, but didn’t linger there for long. He just needed to switch to his car and put his bike into storage.

As soon as I got into the car, I slept. At first it was only pretending to be asleep so that I could hide the intensity with which I reacted to Rome and our heavy petting session in my living room, but I quickly discovered how exhausted I truly was. I didn’t wake until we came to a stop.

At a chapel.

I was more than a little startled and honestly speechless. Where in the hell was
this
going? Sure I’d had a good time, too, but this was moving awfully fast. I didn’t think physical attraction was enough to warrant
marriage
.

Turning to Rome, I found him already staring at me.

“We’d better get this taken care of before we go any further.”

I stared at him, wide-eyed.
Did he mean…? Was he suggesting that we get married before we have sex?
That hardly seemed plausible considering how intensely he’d been trying to get into my pants recently, and I certainly wasn’t the type to tie the knot before jumping into the sack. I didn’t necessarily get hot and heavy with every guy I met, but I didn’t need a ring or god to tell me it was okay either.

“Um, I don’t…” I didn’t even know what to say to him.

His full lips kicked up into a smirk and he clarified. “We’re heading into some dangerous territory. I’d leave you out of it if I could, but the Renegades have already decided you’re part of this whole mess. If something happens to me, I want to make sure you get what’s mine.”

This didn’t really clear things up for me. “What? Why would you…I mean, don’t you have other family or something?”

The skin around his eyes tightened, his eyes darkening. “No. I don’t. And I don’t want the Renegades ending up with it just because they offed me. Hardly seems fair, does it?”

“Okay, but marriage? Why not just change your will or something?”

I had to admit that this all sounded absolutely ridiculous. And impossible. And downright unreasonable. Marriage? Really?

He shook his head. “No time. Marriage is instant and binding. Produce that marriage license and there won’t be a soul to contradict your claim.”

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, worrying it between my teeth. This was absolutely crazy. I didn’t think I deserved his assets and I didn’t want him to die in the first place. Shouldn’t we just go to the police? I was about to ask this very question when he pushed yet again.

“Olivia, this is important. They aren’t going to go away and they won’t leave you alone either. That’s my fault. Let me do this to make it up to you—it’ll be worth it, I promise.”

He looked at me so sincerely, so earnestly that I felt myself begin to cave. I still felt it was ridiculous, but I also felt that there would be opportunity later to fix all of this if things went south—which they most certainly would. If this would put him at ease, what was the harm? And I didn’t want to start off this crazy road trip to wherever to do whatever with a fight. He clearly felt strongly about this and I didn’t want to jerk back too harshly.

I wanted things to go smoothly between us. At least, as smoothly as possible.

“Okay. Fine. But when this is all over, we get an annulment or divorce or whatever. I don’t think this is your fault.”

He smiled at me and nodded. “Deal.”

I felt relieved that he agreed to my terms but I suddenly had the strange feeling that there was another reason for this whole mess. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the wild idea that he was doing this to hold on to me, but I quickly dismissed it. There was definitely another motive, but I didn’t think it was that. I just didn’t know what it was.

We got out of the car and when I hesitated outside the chapel, Rome took my hand and led me inside. I didn’t protest. It thankfully wasn’t one of those super cheesy chapels, though it was hardly traditional. The outside looked like a warehouse or something while the inside was set up to look like part restaurant, part church. It wasn’t bad, just not exactly how I would have pictured my wedding.

We didn’t bother changing clothing, though they offered rental tuxes and wedding dresses. I did get a bouquet of purple and white flowers and a veil, though I wasn’t even sure why. We bought rings, which were nice if very plain; silver, not gold. Before I could think twice about this or really process what was happening, I was saying “I do.” And then Rome was kissing me and I forgot everything else.