Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (96 page)

I fling my feet out of bed and reach into my bedside table for the gun my dad helped me pick out on my eighteenth birthday, the day I moved out of his house and into my first place. It's not loaded, but there is a full magazine in the drawer on the
other
side of my bed. Without any kids around, I figured this setup was safe enough to prevent accidents but handy enough to use if I really needed it.

Right now, with the slow beat of footsteps moving down my hallway, I'm not so sure.

I roll back across the bed and wrench open the drawer, grabbing the magazine and sliding it into the base of the Glock. I feel ridiculous doing it, but at least I
do
know how to handle myself properly. Having a hardcore republican father that worships the second amendment can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. Honestly, the shooting range used to be my favorite place as a teen. It was pretty much the only time my dad looked at me like a human being, spoke to me like an adult and trusted me to make my own decisions.

I stand up, turning to face the door and switching the safety off. My eyes scan around for my phone, but I can't remember where I left it. It's probably dead anyway since I didn't bother to charge it.

I take a deep breath, tensing up as the footsteps near my bedroom door and then pause. It swings inward and then … there's Royal, standing there in the shadows of my bedroom, his tall, wide frame easily recognizable even in the dark.

It takes him a moment to spy me, standing there in the corner with my gun raised.

“You going to shoot me, Pint-Size?” he asks, but there's no humor in his voice at all, just an empty coldness that does nothing to make me want to put the gun down. I take a few steps closer to him, my heart pounding in my chest.
He came back to see me? Why?
I hate that I even have to wonder if he's here to hurt me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, edging my way closer. When I hit the end of the bed, he closes the distance between us, coming up on me fast. The smell of leather and motor oil surrounds him, but so does something else.
Is that … blood?
I swallow hard as he presses his chest into the muzzle of the gun, leather vest crinkling.

“Well?” he asks, his voice subdued and his breathing heavy. “You've already knocked a few holes in my heart, so why not make it bloody official?”

“Are you …” I begin as my eyes adjust to the darkness and I see that he's wearing that vest and nothing else on top. A faint metallic whiff burns my nose as I try to look and see if he's hurt. Of course, if my sleep addled brain was thinking clearly, my first thought wouldn't be to wonder if
he
was the one that was hurting. “Is that blood that I smell?”

Royal knocks my dominant hand aside and grabs my wrist, squeezing hard until the gun falls from my fingers and hits the floor. Before I can even think to scream or fight, he's dragging me to him, crushing my body up against his.

Our mouths meet with a violent clash, his right arm encircling my waist so tightly I feel like I'll never be able to catch my breath again. For a split second there, I almost push him away, demand that we talk about everything that's happened, what I've done, what he's done, but then Royal's tongue dives deep and the urge is gone, replaced with something more primal.

My body relaxes into his grip as he angles us back towards the bed and then pushes me down, climbing on top of me, denting the mattress, his lips and teeth at my throat, his hands roaming under my robe and finding my breasts.

I cry out at his rough grip, at his frenzied kisses, at the harsh way he handles me. Something's not right, I know that, but I can't stop.

“Royal,” I groan, loving the way his name slips from my lips, gasping and threading my fingers through his hair as his teeth find my nipple. He bites and nips and kisses his way down, shoving my robe out of his way until he finds my already throbbing clit, the stubble on his face scraping against the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.

“Fuck,” he growls, like he knows he shouldn't be here, like this is a big mistake that he can't stop myself him from making. “Fucking fuck.” Royal shoves his fingers into my wet cunt without mercy, knuckles slamming against me as I bite my lower lip and buck my hips, struggling against the sudden invasion, against the rush of unexpected pleasure. “You're killing me, Pint-Size.”

“S-slow down,” I gasp, but I don't mean it. I want more, him, all of it. My body betrays my words by arching into his touch as his tongue flicks out and tastes my clit. Royal's left hand slides down the inside of my thigh as he tastes me like I'm his favorite dessert, a delicacy made for him and only him.

Nobody else gets a taste.

That's the message I get as his tongue drives me towards the edge and then stops, like he can feel my fingers clutched around the edge of that precipice, about to fall. But not yet. He won't let me fall yet.

When Royal lifts his head up and looks at me, his eyes are shadowed in darkness, mouth downturned, muscles thrumming with need and desperation and … violence. That's the sharp edge I'm getting from him. That's what's wrong. But Royal doesn't release any of that on me, keeping it carefully pinned under his frenzy as he slides his tongue up my belly and then rests an arm above my head.

We stare at each other as he undoes his pants with the opposite hand and then mounts me with one, long, hard thrust.

I see stars as Royal fucks me into the mattress, pinning me there with his gaze and the words that are written all over his face, etched into every hard muscle, hidden in the swirling colors of his tattoos.
You're mine, but I can't have you. You're mine, but you betrayed me. You're mine, but this will never happen again. You're mine. You're mine. Mine.

I throw my arms around his neck and bite down on his shoulder as the pressure becomes too much, the feeling of fullness almost an ache as I wait for that sweet, horrible release that'll tell us both that this is it, we're done, it's over.

Royal grunts a few more times, spilling himself inside of me even though he shouldn't because we haven't had any of the adult conversations we should've had yet. That's our relationship right there in a single word. Irresponsible. Or stupid. Or reckless. Dangerous, painful, brief, raw, new, intense, untried, broken, battered.

My lashes flutter as I come hard around him, bearing down with every muscle in my body, sighing against the bite mark on his shoulder. As soon as I relax, as I let go, he slides out of me and stands up, jerking his pants back into place.

“Wait,” I say as I stand up and try to tuck my robe back around me. My legs feel weak and shaky and my head is spinning. “Royal, please.”

He ignores me, his leather vest hanging teasingly over those gorgeous muscles of his, those rock hard pecs, those perfect abs. I can see his tattoos in the muted darkness, and they're brutally beautiful. Almost as brutally beautiful as the expression on his face.

“I realized after I left that I forgot to say goodbye,” Royal says, sliding a cigarette from his pocket and putting it between his lips. “So, goodbye Pint-Size. Cheers. Hope you have a nice life.”

He turns and walks away, boots loud against the wood floors.

I think about following after him, calling out, saying the thing I'm thinking but that I shouldn't be.

I love you. Maybe. Or I could, one day. I don't know.

Instead I sit down hard on the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands.

CHAPTER TWENTY
Royal

Leaving Lyric is the hardest thing I've ever done. How fucked is that?

“And we stopped here, why?” Glacier asks, leaning back on his bike and giving me a look like he knows I'm up to something I shouldn't be. I ignore him and straddle my own ride, a five hundred pound beast in black and red and chrome, all of the factory extras stripped off and tossed aside until I'm left with nothing but a sixteen inch front wheel, a leather seat, and the machine's wicked metal soul.

My hands are shaking as I light up and pretend I'm not still thinking about Lyric's warm, wet heat wrapped around my cock, her fingers in my hair, the soft, supple smoothness of her breasts—or the gentle yield of her body beneath me as she gave in and gave me everything I asked for.

Mine,
I said when I walked in there.

Yours.

That's the only word I needed to hear.

If she wasn't the mayor's daughter, if she hadn't called the FBI on the club, if I was a braver, stronger, better man, she really would be mine.

“Goddamn it!” I flick my cigarette across the yard and grab my helmet, jamming it onto my head as my pulse pounds in my skull. I can't think straight right now. There's too much shit going on. But yet, when we passed by her house, I stopped. Just stopped and climbed the fuck off my bike, walked in there and found her goddamn door unlocked. “Wait here.”

I stand back up as Glacier rolls his eyes and shakes his head at me, watching as I move across the lawn, open the front door and reach in to twist the lock on the front of the knob. When I pause for a second, the sound of Lyric's crying reaches my ears and I almost go ballistic.

Thank God we're on our way to see Brent.

I grit my teeth against the sound and slam the door.

“Did you really just do that?” Glacier asks as I pause in front of him and seriously consider breaking his bloody fucking face. “Did we really just stop here so you could bang the mayor's daughter?”

“You want to do something about it?” I ask him, realizing that starting a fight with my brother is the last thing I need to be doing right now. Glacier narrows his eyes, but doesn't push the matter, shaking his head and waiting for me to climb back on my bike.

“You really shouldn't be here,” he says, which is true. The president isn't supposed to get his hands dirty. It's not my job, none of this is. Finding Landon, dealing with Sully, heading over to the hotel to find Brent. At this point, my hands are filthy when they should be squeaky fucking clean. But I don't know what Brent might say about Lyric, and I'm not taking any chances. “Why don't you head back to the clubhouse and play with a club whore? There's a new girl that's been hanging around lately, big tits and legs for days.”

“If you don't shut your goddamn mouth right now, I'll shut it for you.” I glance up just in time to see Lyric peeking at me from her bedroom window.
Shit.
My brain is all arse backwards right now. I need to get the hell out of here.

“Smoky's gonna be pissed.”

“Let him be,” I say, starting my bike and peeling out of there before I can change my mind.

If I do, if I go back in there, I'm never letting Lyric go.

“I don't fucking believe this
shit,
” I snarl, kicking a toy truck across the living room. It's one of a very few things left in Rebecca and Landon's house, and it's almost as empty as Brent's recently vacated hotel room. “How the hell did this happen?”

“She was gone when we got here,” Smoky says, standing at the front door, a hand on either side of the doorjamb. “Came as fast as we could after our guy called us and said Brent had checked out of his hotel room. I sent a few guys over there and came here myself.” A chill crawls down my spine. If the boys had gotten here before me, I'd be babysitting Rebecca's kids while the boys took her on a little coastal tour of Trinidad Head and sent her for an icy swim. Wouldn't have been a damn thing I could do about it. The Wolves don't make a habit of hurting women, but a rat's a rat. I already saved one woman tonight, saved her life or at the very least saved her from a good, long, painful hurting. There's no way I can put the club on the line for another, even my best friend's wife.

What the hell has happened to my life?

“Find her,” I say, lighting up a cigarette. Two of my prospects, the ones I had stationed here to watch Rebecca, they're gone. Chances of them being alive? Almost zero. There's nothing I can do for her now. “Figure out what happened. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say Mile Wide's in town.”

“Maybe they just forgot to pay us a visit?” Glacier asks, smiling wide, his teeth too white and his enthusiasm too real. This is what he lives for, the chase.

“Maybe they're all too familiar with the sort of welcome you like to give,” Smoky says, running his fingers through his red hair as he looks around, his face holding that same tired melancholy that's reflected in my own. Glacier, he lives for drama and bullshit and pain. Me and Smoky, we prefer a smooth ride, a cold beer and a beautiful woman. Why any asshole would get off on this shit is beyond me.

“Wipe that fucking smile off your face, boy,” Dober says, appearing in the archway to the kitchen, his dark glare narrowed in and focused on Glacier's face. “Our brother is dead and his wife's just cost us
two
more people. You think that's funny? You have a hell of a lot to learn.”

Glacier's smile fades and he tucks his fingers into his front pockets. Landon was his friend, too, our friend. The three of us went to high school together, so why the fuck did things end up like this?