Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC (40 page)

"Did you, um..." I stopped to clear my throat. "Did you think any more about what we talked about last night? About what you said to me?"

"I remember sayin’ alota shit to you, babe. You might need to be more specific about what."

"The part about me not being your 'type'," I said. "I don't think you really believe that."

"No?"

"No. I think that you might want to believe it, and for a bunch of stupid different reasons you’re trying to force yourself into believing it, but I don't think that you really do." I stepped closer to him and wrapped both of my hands around his. I could see in his face that he was trying hard as hell to resist me, but in no way, shape or form had he attempted to pull away. "Anyone who says what you did to me last night can't possibly feel how he claims to. It's contradictory at best."

"I never said I was a simple motherfucker," he told me.

"And I don't ever want you to be. But just because you're not 'simple' doesn't mean you can't be honest. And what you said to me last night about that, wasn’t."

I released his hand, though he seemed somewhat reluctant to let me go, and took a step back. And I stared up into his eyes again as he stared down into mine. And God, I'm not even sure how long we stood staring at each other, unmoving and just breathing and taking each other in, but it was worth every wasted minute.

"Anyway, I should go and call Meghan," I finally told him.

He broke eye contact with me and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, take care of that shit, doll."

After leaving him alone in the kitchen, I rushed back into my bedroom and closed the door. And I leaned back against it and slid straight down to the floor. There was no way in hell I was going to continue to allow that man to get away with lying to me or himself about how he felt. Not with the way he looked at me, spoke to me, even stood near me so close that I could feel his breath coating every part of my skin; not when I knew that we could be so much better together rather than apart.

Chapter Thirty-One

Around seven-thirty that night, I arrived at the overly crowded, smoke and booze filled clubhouse with a reluctant and pissed off Jolene at my side. Before even making it in and shoving our way pasts 'club bitches' and members from the Orlando and Miami charters of the club, she had grumbled in my ear about having to cancel a date with her 'banker friend', and mentioned more than a few times once we were finally able to move past at least some of the smoke filling the room that she was planning to bail out at some point, hoping that River would be too distracted with keeping the boys occupied and their minds off of Eightball to notice that she was even missing.

While she did her best to try and avoid Verna, who had just come out of the back of the club with a happy-go-lucky Wolf at her side, I waved to a few of the girls across the room, namely Miranda and Candy, and moved straight over to the bar. If I was going to be forced to get through this shit, I was going to need a hell of a lot more help than what I had in doing it.

Once the crowd parted and moved across the room to dance to whatever the hell was playing on the radio, I found Styx sitting alone at the other end. Though he was partially slumped over, and in spite of what was bound to be a mind splitting headache by the morning, he seemed to be having more fun knocking back shot after shot of what I assumed to be tequila than anyone else in the entire place.

When he noticed me staring, he tipped his head toward me and grinned. I made my way down to him and bumped his arm.

"How the hell did you manage to get out of your babysitting duties tonight?" I asked, bending over the bar and swinging my hair back and over my shoulder.

He looked up at me and grinned even wider. "Ask and you shall receive, babe." He laughed and threw back yet another shot. "Wolf put another motherfucker in charge of watchin' her tonight. VP didn't seem to like that shit too much, though."

"Hm. Any reason as to why?" I asked. He shook his head and grabbed a handful of peanuts from a bowl sitting on the other side of him. He offered me what was in his hand, but I smiled and shook my head. "Anyway, speaking of River..." I reached over the bar for an unopened bottle of beer and cracked the lid. "Have you seen him around here at all tonight?" I spun around on my heels and tried my best to pick him out somewhere in the land of milk and pussy, but gave up after a few minutes when I realized he was nowhere to be found. "I tried calling him earlier to let him know I was on my way with his mother, but--"

"He's around here someplace," mumbled Styx. "Saw him with a bit of pussy earlier--"

"What?"

"One of the regulars who's been trying to get at his cock for the last few good years now. Guess he finally gave that bitch a whirl." He poured himself another shot and stuffed his mouth full of peanuts.

"
Thanks
." Within a matter of seconds, my overinflated ego had been deflated like the tip of a needle being shoved inside a balloon with that unfortunate bit of information.

After about an hour and a half or so of crap rock music, warm beer, a passed out Styx at my side and River still on the loose someplace (
not to mention an absentee Jolene who had bailed out at least thirty minutes before
), I contemplated asking one of the other, more sober brothers to drive me home so that I could at least sleep off the growing anger that had been building up inside of me from the moment I first sat down. It was clear that not a single person here, not even a piss drunk Tiny, gave enough of a damn to ask about Eightball or why he hadn't shown his face tonight. No one mentioned anything about Slim missing either, who I hadn’t seen or heard from since yesterday. It was as if neither one of them were nearly as important as River had made them out to be, making the party seem like more or less an excuse for him and his brothers to get openly drunk more than usual and get laid, and not necessarily by the women they had come with.

After downing my third or fourth tasteless beer, I finally spotted River on the opposite side of the room, emerging through a cloud of smoke. He had come around the corner, from the back of the club, and was sucking down a beer of his own while staring out at everyone else in the room. God, even in my anger at him, I still couldn't deny just how freaking beautiful he was as a man. Between his chiseled, rustic looking face, that three-quarter tight white tee and those jeans that seemed to wrap around his thighs so perfectly that it almost looked as if they were painted on, no wonder women had practically lined up to get a taste of him; and not just tonight, but any night of the freaking week.

When he turned his head at a certain angle and spotted me sitting at the bar next to Styx, he shoved his way through the every growing crowd and immediately made it over to me.

He leaned into my ear and wrapped his hand around my back. "Hey," he said. And I melted, I just freaking melted like a bowl of ice cream that had been left out in the sun for too long. When he pulled back from me, the whiskers around his jaw brushed against my cheek; it was in that second I realized just how close he had been to me, and what he had maybe been hoping to expect out of it as a result. He eyed me up and down while taking another swig of beer and nodded. "You been sittin' here with this motherfucker the entire goddamn time?" he asked me. His tone was hard, and I smirked at the twinge of jealousy in his voice.

I peeked over him at Styx, who remained passed out, and bobbed my head. "He's not such terrible company, even when he can't speak or doesn't have much to say."

"Yeah, he seems like a real chatty motherfucker in this state, babe. No wonder you two are so goddamn friendly." He moved his eyes around the club again, then after a few seconds turned back to me. "Where the hell's my mother?" he asked.

I knew in telling him the truth about her leaving to meet up with her new man that he would flip his shit, so I avoided. "She's around here somewhere, I don't know."

"When's the last time you saw her--?"

"How long have you been in the back?" I asked, attempting to change the subject entirely. "I mean, have you been back there since you got here, or--"

"How long you been sittin' here with this asshole, babe?" he retorted.

"I don't know, I haven't actually been counting the minutes."

"Neither have I." He grinned. I sneered.

"Well, he said he saw you take off with somebody earlier," I informed him. "One of the regulars around here that I'm assuming isn't a wife or an Old Lady."

He scrunched his brows. "He sure
I'm
the motherfucker he saw?"

"It's what he said."

"And it sure as fuck looks like you can trust the shit he's sayin' givin his goddamn current state of mind."

"He wasn't drunk when he told me," I snapped back.

River leaned against the bar and tilted his head back to roam his eyes across the ceiling. "You know we've got cameras inside this place?" he told me. "Wolf's got monitors behind a door inside his goddamn office showin' just what the fuck goes on out here and around it."

I shrugged. “So?"

"So, his office is where I've been this entire goddamn time, doll. What's around your neck can only give me so much info. And I
was
with a club bitch," he confessed. He eyed me up and down and ticked up the corner of his mouth while staring. "But I wasn't lookin' to fuck."

"I don't exactly know what they told you in school, but oral sex is sex too," I said.

He tipped his chin down and laughed aloud while pointing at my beer. "How many of those have you had so far tonight?"

I stared down at the bottle and shrugged. "Not very many."

"You eat this evenin'?"

"Enough," I replied. "Why?"

"Never a good thing to drink on an empty fuckin' stomach."

"I don't remember you eating anything before you left to come down here, and you seem fine."

"That's 'cause I had my fair share of
food
, doll. In the kitchen back there." He sucked back more of his beer.

I placed my empty bottle on top of the bar and spun around in my chair to fully stare up into his face. "Let me ask you something," I said. "This woman that you were with before I showed up, if you weren't looking to screw her and you weren't seeking her out so that she could get on her knees in front of you, what the hell were you doing with her?"

He pulled the beer back from between his lips and leaned forward. "Truth?"

"Yes, truth. Always."

He clamped his teeth together and closed his eyes, and I got a strange feeling inside my stomach that he hated what he was about to say to me a hell of a lot more than I was going to hate in hearing it.

"I needed to know if my cock could respond to another bitch in the same goddamn way it's been respondin' to you as of late."

The minute those words came out of him, I laughed. I actually, genuinely looked up into those steel blue eyes of his and laughed as hard as I could without actually falling over. "Are you're serious?"

"As a goddamn, motherfuckin' heart attack, babe--"

"And?"

"And what?"

"What were the results?" I asked him.

He exhaled sharply and brought his eyes down to my skirt. "
Shit
."

I knew the answer. Right then and there I knew, and he didn't have to say another damn word to me about it.

"Come on." I wrapped my hand around the beer in his hand and sat it down on top of the bar. "I want you to come out here and dance with me."

"I don't fuckin' know how," he told me. A smile spread across my lips and I threw my arms around his neck. When I slid my fingers back and forth across his nape and up into his hair, he grunted and bent his head down to my face. "
Baby
--"

"I can teach you." I tilted my head and stared directly at his lips as his eyes went across every inch of my body. "Or, you can just come out here and watch me."

"Babe--" he growled.

"Come on." I dragged him away from the bar with my arms still around his neck and moved us out into the middle of the floor. When another song that I was familiar with started playing on the radio, I dropped my hands from around him and swayed my hips to the beat of it. He remained completely still with his eyes still on me. "You have to actually move," I said.

"I've got no problem just standin' here and watchin' you like you said I could, doll. I don't even know where the fuck to put my hands on a woman when I'm right side up like this."

"Maybe it's time that you finally learned." I reached out for his rough and rugged hands, hands that despite being worn with callouses and scars were still more beautiful to me than any other pair I had ever seen on another man before, and placed them on either side of my waist. As his long, thick fingers brushed the skin beneath my shirt, I felt a chill travel up my spine and into the back of my hair; my skin instantly became hot at his touch, and though it burned like hell to be this close to him, there was no way I could even think of letting go, not when I finally had him -- not when I was at least close enough to it.

After a few minutes, he dropped his eyes down between us and dragged me close enough to feel his cock as it lengthened and expanded inside his jeans. And then he dipped himself beneath me just a little, almost forcing me to feel it against my pelvis, between my thighs.... And he started moving to the beat of the music, albeit slowly, much more slowly than he should have, more like grinding against me as if we were in bed together.