Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC (41 page)

When the song stopped and another one played, he didn't even skip a beat, he just kept going, kept moving, kept holding me, pulling me closer, kept grinding and even let out a few grunts in between.

God
.

"River?" I asked, breathless thanks to my heart rate pounding at what felt like over one-thousand miles per second.

He tightened his jaw and gulped. "Hm?"

I slid my hands up the muscles in his arms and wrapped them tight around his neck again. I dipped my head back and sucked on my bottom lip. It was the one thing that finally got him to look me in the eyes again. "Don't you think this is nice?" I said.

"Nice?"

"Mm-hm. Just... you holding me close like this and the music just playing throughout the room. It's like we're the only two people in here."

"Darlin', if we were the only two people in here, my hands sure as fuck wouldn't still be just around your goddamn waist."

"Where would they be instead?"

He pulled his head back from me and contorted his features into a scowl. "You are playin' with
fuckin' fire
here, babe. A goddamn, motherfuckin' ball of flames and you're bound to get burned."

"So let me burn." I swung my hair over my shoulder and smiled up at him. "Just let me burn with you."

“
Shit
.”

I lifted up to my toes and pulled him closer to me. "Every touch from you to me is like a lit match to lighter fluid. You’re like a liquid flame and I just want to take every part of you inside every part of me and--”

"Fuck." He yanked me even closer and bowed his head to brush the tip of his nose across mine, then he moved down to my lips and swiped his mouth back and forth across them. "
Jesus, baby. Goddamn
. The thought of finally tastin' you is just...
fuck
." His hands tightened around me as they moved even further up inside my shirt, and a soft moan escaped his lips, forcing me to tremble. "You've got no goddamn idea how much I wanna sink my cock right inside that sweet as fuck pussy, baby. Deep inside that cunt ‘til you feel nothin’ else, and sink it somethin' fierce."

I almost fell over and into his arms right there. "After last night," I said, gulping in between my words, "I think I've got a pretty damn good idea of just how much you want to sink yourself inside me."

"Shit, babe," he replied. "Fuckin', shit. My heart's never gonna catch up to my goddamn cock when it comes to you, darlin'. Not like you're wantin'."

"I think it already has," I told him. "I think it was close to being there already eight years ago, no matter what you might've thought or how you might've felt about it. And as much as you keep trying to ignore it and tell me otherwise, I think it's there now." I dropped my hands from around his neck and attempted to pull back from him, but he kept his arms tight around my waist, dug his fingers into my skin, shoved his cock against me and nodded. I whimpered.

"Song's not over yet, doll," he said.

His hands dipped to the rim of my skirt. He knew that I would've given just about anything for them to move lower and up inside and between my thighs.

But....

"It's over for me," I breathed, just barely managing to get out the words.

Hesitantly, I wrapped my hands around his wrists and removed them from around my waist. I wanted to stay in that moment with him, I wanted to feel him, I wanted him to feel me, but I knew that I couldn't. I knew that I couldn't stay and give him what he wanted until he gave me what I needed, and that was to finally hear the truth.

Chapter Thirty-Two

While propped up on the picnic table outside the club and hunched over his knees as he blew out the smoke from a freshly lit joint, River thought back to those few minutes Mia had spent in his arms as they danced inside to that piece of shit called music that was blasting over the radio. And Jesus, did he want that shit back, all of it, right down to the goddamn shit music, to the look in her eyes as she stared up at him and the feeling that built up inside his chest all over again as her fingers caressed him while it played. He had realized in that moment, right when he thought it might've been too goddamn fucking late to even make a difference to her now, that more than any other thing in the entire goddamn world, more than Ricky's head on a silver fucking platter, more than even his own goddamn dignity, pride and every other motherfucking thing he had ever believed in before now, he wanted that fucking feeling back, and he wanted that shit back with nobody but her.

As he took another hit of the joint and dropped his feet to the bench, a warm hand slid across his back, forcing him to flinch. When he turned to see Verna standing right beside him and smiling, slight disappointment overcame him.

"Why are you sitting out here all alone?" she asked him. He flicked the ashes of his joint to the ground and shrugged. "Ever since you were little, you've always hated being alone."

"I just needed some time to think about alota shit," he replied. "Shit I can't think about with a bunch of other motherfuckers and booze floatin' around."

She nodded and climbed on top of the table and sat down right beside him. "Are you thinking about something in particular?" she asked him. "Maybe even some
one
in particular?" He looked over at her and grimaced. She turned her eyes ahead and sat up straight. "You are gonna let every single one of your biases lead you away from a damn good thing with a damn good woman, Jacob Hawkins."

"She ain't my kinda woman, Vern."

"No she's not, which not only makes her a better alternative to anything you've ever had or could get in the future, but it makes her a better alternative for
you
," she said. He glowered. She placed a hand on his knee and looked straight up into his eyes. "This woman is smart, she's
beautiful
and she sees past that surly, angry, son of a bitch demeanor you've been carrying around inside you since you were a child. She embraces the man that you are entirely, right inside of here." She placed a hand on his chest and pointed directly at his heart. "She makes you see things, River, not just as they are, but how they could be, and better. And she does something I've never even seen another woman do for you before, and that's make you smile for longer than a few minutes at a time without even needing to mutter a single goddamn word to you first."

"
Madison
makes me smile all the goddamn time," he said.

"She should as your child, but you know that's not what I meant," she replied. He leaned back and smoked down his joint to the tip before crushing the end and tossing it across the parking lot. "You can keep denying how you feel about this woman, and pretending you're out here thinking of ways to try and get her out of your system when you know damn well that if she left tomorrow, you'd search out every way you could in trying to drag her back here, with or without her consent." She dipped her head and smiled. "Or you can admit that you might be falling in love with her, and that you have been for a long time now. At the very least, you can admit that you might already be there."

"At the very least, Vern, I can admit that you're absolutely crazy as fuck." He jumped down from the table and moved across the lot.

"River," she called out.

He stopped in place, shook his head and dropped his hands inside his pockets. "I don't even fuckin' know this bitch."

"Yes you do," she said. He peeked at her over his shoulder and remained completely still as she got up from the table and moved in behind him. She placed her hands against his back and he shut his eyes at that stark feeling of comfort, one he had almost forgotten how to react to. "You know her better than you're willing to admit because you know that if you do, it opens up a whole new world for you that you're not sure you're ready to be a part of just yet, and that's okay. It'll take some time for you to get there and I understand that, and I know why. But if you take too damn long, that world just might close up with you in it, swallowing you whole and leaving her on the outside to be the sun in somebody else's sky." He turned around completely and stared down at her. She placed her hands on either side of his face and watched with complete fascination as the whites in his eyes slowly began turning red. "Don't let the idea of what you think life should be cloud how it should actually be for both you and her."

He tightened his jaw and slightly nodded his head. As she backed away from him and headed back toward the club, he swiped his hand back and forth across the tip of his nose, and exhaled the moment he got a glimpse of Mia again. She was leaning against the bar, drinking yet another beer and already staring right back at him.

He thought about going back inside to her, about taking her in the back, telling her just what the fuck he felt and finally
owning
every goddamn piece of her that he knew even a motherfucker like him didn't deserve.

But instead he walked away. Instead he went over to his bike, hopped on top, revved up the engine and hightailed it the fuck out of there before he could. She deserved better than a worthless motherfucker like him. She deserved the very fucking best and that asshole knew that it would never be him.

Chapter Thirty-Three

"Well, what do you think?" Madison threw her hands behind her back and stared up at the freshly painted, fifteen by twenty foot portrait of two cats playing poker with a dog that graced the front wall of her brand new dorm room at Columbia University. Aside from the portrait, which took up space from the ceiling to the floor, everything else in the room was bright pink and dark purple, just as she liked it.

It had been about a week and a half since she had settled in with her new roommate Corinna, and River, who had spent every night since the minute they flew into New York in a nearby hotel, was just about as enthused with that painting in her living room as he was in leaving her behind to return home later that night. Though he had his people, including a few Shadow Riders from the Manhattan charter that he had kept in touch with, set in place to watch her every move the moment he hopped back on that plane, knowing that Fontaine was still on the loose and that his daughter was still vulnerable to the son of a bitch didn't make him feel any better about going.

"Daddy," she said to him, pulling him out of the apparent daze he had fallen into. He turned to look her in the eyes and frowned. "I asked you what you thought of this painting."

River turned back to the painting and leaned his head. He scrunched his brows, wrinkled his nose and folded his arms. "How much is it,
exactly
, that I'm supposed to be payin' for this shit, Madison?"

She shrugged. "It's only a few thousand dollars, like I told you. Corinna said her parents are already paying for the other half."

"Your goddamn roommate's got a mayor for a daddy, baby girl," he said. "Son of a bitch should be payin' for
both
ends for this thing with no questions asked, and no need for a motherfucker like
me
to help pitch in for it." He dropped his hands and crossed the room. Madison spun around on the balls of her feet to face him as he moved over to the window and stared down at the street, watching as people raced back and forth across sidewalks and carelessly crossed the busy roadways. He wondered where the fuck so many people could be so anxious to go on a Saturday morning that didn't include a job or a warm bed that was already occupied by the person they loved waiting for them on the other side. "It's busy as fuck in this goddamn city," he said. "Even on a goddamn day like this. No matter what time of day, shit's constantly moving all the goddamn time."

"That's what's so great about it," she squealed. "Nothing ever stays still, which means it doesn't stay the same. It's why I love being out here." He glanced back at her before returning to the window. She walked over and stood beside him. And as she looked up into his hard face, she grinned, forcing him to do the same. "I think you'd like it out here too if you didn't already have so much waiting for you back at home."

"No, baby girl, I think a week and a few days is enough for me out here," he replied. "I can't take much more of the city smog, all these motherfuckers bumpin' into each other on the goddamn streets. Shit's too fuckin' crowded and there's an overflow of assholes runnin' rampant on every goddamn corner." She laughed. "I'm fuckin' proud of you, though, makin' up your mind in wantin' to come out here, takin' on a big ass change like this--"

"Even though you were against it."

"I still am," he said. "Doesn't mean I ain't proud as shit that you still did it. Doin' shit I never thought about doin' which is gettin' the fuck outta Florida and tryin' to make a better life for yourself. You're makin' better decisions than I ever did at your age." He chuckled. "Shit, you're makin' better decisions than I'm makin' for myself right the fuck now."

"I learned everything that I know from you."

"You learned it from your grandmother."

"I learned it from her too," she said. "But you're the one I've always looked up to. I wouldn't be where I am, I wouldn't have made any of these decisions in my life right now if it weren't for your influence. You raised me as you, and you took the place of my mother too, and I know that was a lot for you to have to deal with back then."