Mad Delights (11 page)

He and Bizerk lounged around, both their dicks still out. Vicious looked at the bookshelf, wishing the vodka wasn’t so far away. He was so relaxed he didn’t want to move.

“We’re all set for tomorrow night, right?” Bizerk asked.

Vicious nodded. “Just after midnight, our man on the inside will kill the lights. We’ll get in, rip apart Romeo and Boone then the Men of Hell will be ours.”

“Awesome,” Bizerk murmured. He yawned. “A great orgasm always tires me.”

Reluctantly, Vicious stood. He pulled off the used condom and tossed it into the trash before stuffing his spent cock back into his pants. “I’ll let you get to bed.”

“Yeah,” Bizerk mumbled as he crawled up the bed to his pillow. He hadn’t bothered to zip up his jeans. “See ya in the morning.”

Vicious grabbed his bottle of vodka, got one last glimpse of Bizerk and closed the door behind him. He wished he could stay, but he’d freak the man out if they ended up spooning. So he did what he always did—he walked away and quickly pushed his feelings aside.

Shantel waited for him in the hallway, her arms crossed over her chest as she glared at him. He so didn’t have the stomach for her theatrics.

“You hurt me, asshole,” she said. “I don’t like getting hurt.”

In a flash, he shot out his fist and punched her across the jaw. She collapsed in a heap on the floor, cradling her face. She let out a painful cry as tears poured down her cheeks. Shantel stared up at him in horror.

“I am the fucking boss of this club,” he told her. “You are club pussy. You disrespect me again and I’ll put a bullet between those pretty eyes of yours. Got it?”

She nodded shakily. He spat on her then took another swallow of vodka as he walked toward his room.

Chapter Eleven

Chloe sat for a long time watching Romeo sleep. It was difficult to take her eyes off him. Happiness and contentment infused every cell of her body and she could’ve stayed for days just looking at him. She’d done it. She’d managed to find a way into his bed. Granted, he was currently passed out, hopefully dreaming sexy things about her, but still, here she was. Reclining next to him. Touching his face. His body. Surprisingly, he was almost tattoo free. His club symbol rested on his left pectoral muscle and the word ‘Freedom’ ran down his right side, from his armpit to his hip, in gothic script. The rest of his skin remained bare. A tan line separated his well-fitted jeans from his lower portion. She spread her fingers through the soft dusting of hair on his chest.

She’d never been as glad of her shooting skills as she was this evening. It hadn’t been her intention to kill anyone, but a bullet in the right place had certainly maimed the Shanks enough to stop their attack. The idiots may have had the advantage, but they hadn’t been very smart about hiding. It’d been easy to find them in the moonlight and protect Romeo.

And Dax.

Why did the club enforcer always creep into her thoughts?

She’d come to Bair for one man, not two, but she couldn’t deny that every time she was around Dax her body tingled. With a large sigh, she flopped onto her back and stared up at the dark ceiling. She should sleep. It was more than late and the clubhouse had settled down a long time ago, but restlessness surged through her. She was aroused, and with Romeo passed out beside her, there really wasn’t anything she could do. Her vibrator was back in her apartment and she didn’t feel like using her fingers when such a fine man lay next to her.

Chloe gave the sleeping man one more peck on the lips before rising. She picked up his clothes, intending to fold them, when his cell slipped out of his pocket. Setting his pants and shirt on the top of a dresser, she scooped it up and dialed her phone number. Her own buzzed in her pocket and she took it out to save the number into her contacts. Happiness flared inside her heart as she laid Romeo’s phone on the nightstand, more than pleased that she’d gotten another part of him. Then she left the confines of the room. If she couldn’t fuck then she was going to drink. Perhaps a few shots of whiskey would put her out like a light.

The clubhouse was dark. Quiet. Somehow, she figured it was because the wives and children had come visiting. Not all the members were married, of course, and perhaps most of them weren’t even faithful to their vows with the club pussy around. But for now, the bar was deserted, so she made her way carefully to it and searched for a glass. Grabbing a bottle of whiskey, she sat on a stool and thought about getting buzzed enough so she wouldn’t remember how horny she was.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

The voice was like a grenade in the silence, and Chloe almost fell off her bar stool as she gasped and whirled around.

“Shit! You scared me.” She covered her frantically beating heart with her hand.

“Sorry,” Dax said, although he didn’t sound sorry.

The room was too dark to make out his features properly, but his presence was a force of nature sweeping through her. Chloe poured herself a shot and downed it, needing the liquid fortification. It burned all the way to her gut.

“You never answered my question,” he said.

“Uh,” she managed to gasp once the fire in her throat dimmed. “What question?”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

He sat next to her, not talking. Not doing anything, really, and soon the silence between them twisted into something tangible. Every move, every breath he took, every shift of his body had the butterflies in her belly swarming and her heart pounding with excitement, even though she shouldn’t want him like this. It was enough to make her take another drink. The fire wasn’t so intense this time, but the alcohol did nothing to quell the anticipation brewing inside her. It had to be fate that was drawing them together like this.

“Who are you, Chloe?”

The question caught her off guard. Who was she? She was a glutton for punishment, that’s who she was. A giggle bubbled up, threatening to spill out, and she sent a glower to the damn whiskey.
Traitor
.

“You were right about me, you know,” she said.

“About what?”

Chloe drank a little more and the whiskey fumes wrinkled her nose. Really, the stuff wasn’t that tasteful nor was it growing on her. “I’m not normal.”

He snorted. “I think we’ve established none of us is normal.”

She mulled that over. No, her life hadn’t been, nor ever would be, like the house in the suburbs with kids. Maybe it was the drink, but all the walls she’d built over the years suddenly seemed harder to lock into place. She looked over at Dax. Would it be so terrible to open up to him? Talk to him? Help him understand that she wasn’t the psychotic girl the doctors had told her she was? The darkness, combined with the whiskey, helped lower her guard and before she knew what she was doing, the words tumbled out.

“I killed my mother.”

Silence—open-mouthed, holy shit silence. She had effectively shocked him into muteness. Sometimes her mouth seemed to work independently from her brain.

“My grandfather is old-school Japanese,” she continued, hoping to salvage something from the situation, even if it was just a thread of understanding. “He had a son and a daughter and was determined to make decent, if not profitable, marriages for both. My aunt turned out to have a pretty good arranged marriage. She had one daughter.”

“Um,” Dax replied, shaking his head. “Kaiya, right?”

She nodded in surprise. “You remembered.”

He shrugged. “I was on a run to North Dakota when that whole thing with Shepard went down. Missed it. But I remember Romeo talking about it.”

“Kaiya is one of the gentlest people I know,” she murmured. “My own parents, however, weren’t so besotted with each other as my aunt and uncle seemed to be. My mother was in love with someone else, had planned to marry this other man, until she was forced to marry my father.”

“And I take it things didn’t go well.”

Chloe shook her head. “My mother hated my father. Hated my grandfather. And eventually, she hated me for trapping her.”

“She hurt you?”

What her mother did to her was beyond a word as tame as
hurt
, but Chloe had learned how to cope as best as she could. “In ways that wouldn’t leave outward scars, but a sadist is skillful at hiding the evidence.”

Chloe now wished she hadn’t started this conversation. Wished she could sweep the memories under the rug like she usually did, but it seemed like the ghost of her past wasn’t finished yet. Now out in the open, it seemed like she couldn’t shut up until everything was expunged from her soul.

“I was thirteen when it happened,” she said quietly.

He turned his head, and although she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt his piercing stare.

“My mother thought of different ways to hurt me the most, and one of those ways was denying me my father. I grew up knowing that my father loved me, but his need for peace outweighed everything else. He stayed away—until that day.”

“The day you killed her?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say anything. She didn’t blame him. Sometimes even she didn’t have words for what had happened. But she had survived it. Been hospitalized for it.

“My father visited unexpectedly,” she whispered. That day came rushing back to her like a freight train. “He and my mother argued. They were both bitter. She went to the bedroom, grabbed her gun and shot him. Right in front of me. Blood was everywhere. He was on the floor, and I knew I was next, so I jumped her. We fought. I got my hands on the gun. Turned it around. Fired. I killed her.”

This time she didn’t even bother with the glass, chugging the whiskey like it was water. The amount took away her breath. It felt like it burned away her esophagus but Chloe welcomed the pain. It kept the tears at bay.

“Sounds like self-defense,” Dax murmured.

“There was a moment when it was. Then I hesitated and she pleaded, but I still pulled the trigger. I didn’t trust her.” It took her a moment for the fire in her belly to settle. “My father died in my arms. He needed me but I just… There was nothing I could do.”

She fell silent again and the quietness of the club surrounded her and made her skin itch. Sometimes she hated the quiet. It had been deafening after the gun had gone off and her mother’s lifeless eyes stared through her. It was a memory that haunted her, so to deal, Chloe pushed it away with all her might.

“What happened after that?”

She took a deep, calming breath. “My grandfather kept me in the psychiatric ward for years, until I learned what to say and how to act. When I was eighteen, I got out and that’s when I developed my first tangent.”

“Your first what?”

“Tangent,” she repeated. “I…developed a fixation on one of the men who worked for my grandfather—my bodyguard. He’s the one who taught me to shoot. I wanted to please him so much I slept, lived and breathed my Sig Sauer Mosquito.”

“By the tone in your voice, something happened.”

“Something always happens.” She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it off her forehead. “I get things confused. I mistake friendship for desire. Some doctors labeled it relationship obsessive compulsive disorder. Others said it was called limerence.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s common among people who experience attachment issues. Basically, I want the obsessive love I feel to be reciprocated. It’s a conscious expression of sexual incentive motivation, or so the books say.”

He nodded. “Oh. I get it. You think if you fuck Romeo, it’ll cure your problem.”

She nodded. “Fantasy masturbation only carries you so far, you know?”

“Why him?” he asked. “Romeo, I mean. Was it because he saved your cousin?”

“That’s how he got on my radar. My grandfather collected intel on him and the Men of Hell. That’s where I first read of the club.”

“So this feeling you have for him, it’s not real,” he surmised.

“It is real,” she insisted.

“No, it’s not. It’s a crush. Simple infatuation. You don’t know the first thing about him. In your mind, he’s some type of mythical hero you’ve put on a pedestal. Someone you want to fuck. Possess.”

She jumped from her chair to punch his shoulder. “Shut up!”

“No,” he said and surged to his feet. He loomed over her, trapping her against the bar. “Romeo is just an ordinary man. His real name is Beau. He pisses and takes a shit just like any other person.”

“Stop this,” she ordered. She pushed against his chest. Too late, she realized just how big and strong Daxton Squire really was. Then that zing that existed between them, that succulent little desire that wove between them surged to life and all she could do was fist his shirt.

“You don’t really want me to stop,” he whispered. Dax shifted until one of his legs parted her thighs. “You want this too much. I can feel that hot little pussy grinding down.”

She lifted her chin. “I’ve said no. What are you gonna do? Rape me?”

“Oh, honey, it wouldn’t be rape,” he said. He leaned down and nuzzled his nose on the top of her head. “Would it?”

He gripped her hips, holding her in place. She tried not to show how much his touch affected her, even when he slid his hands up to cup her breast. He brushed a thumb across a turgid nipple, and the spark shot straight to her core. She couldn’t stop her back from arching in pleasure, which thrust her chest further into his hands.

Dax brushed his lips across hers. “Would it, Chloe?”

“No,” she breathed.

God, she wanted nothing more than to have his steel-hard cock sink into her wet cunt and pump her until they both splintered apart. But whatever sanity she had left raised a red flag. The timing was a little too soon, her emotions a little too raw. She knew she would have regrets if he fucked her.

But damned if she wanted to stop.

He trailed his fingers down her body to slide under the waistband of her jeans, the touch a little ticklish. Her stomach muscles rippled in protest until his fingers brushed across the part of her panties covering her pussy.

“Oh, honey, you’re so fucking wet,” he murmured against her mouth.

He brushed over her slit. The cotton-wrapped finger rubbed little circles over her clit. She moaned and jerked her hips upward, bumping against him.