Making Choices (Black Shamrocks MC Book 2) (33 page)

Resting my head on his chest, I pull him to me. He places kiss after kiss on top of my head as I cry, still not understanding why I’m crying, but crying nonetheless.

“Shhh, it’s okay. This has been coming. You’ve been too fucking calm.”

Rubbing my back, he holds me while I let it all out.

The fear that’s been lodged in me since I first saw the masked man in my house.

The pressure of trying to deal with the danger that seems to come with his Club.

The apprehension of not knowing what’s going to happen next.

My inability to accept the dark, violent side to the man I love.

As my crying dies down, I mumble an apology. The front of his T-shirt is saturated, my hands gripping his leather so tightly it’s groaning under the strain.

“Don’t say sorry, Doll. This is our life. I know it’s scary, but it is what it is. You’re the only one who can help us right now. If you do, just know that once you patch them up, we’re letting them go.”

His words shouldn’t calm me further, but they do. I decide there and then that I can come to grips with his depravity if I’m able to fix some of it. It’s stupid, but it feels right to me.

Is this our compromise?

Our way of making our different values fit together. He can hurt people, justifying it with his need to protect us, and I can heal as many as I can in order to clear my heavy conscience from knowing what he does?

Pulling back from him once I have myself under control, I wipe my face.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Fix them up enough for us to send them back to their Club. Except Connor. His time is nearly up.”

Uncertainty grips Lucas as he waits for my response to his request. His body is tense. He doesn’t take a breath until I answer him.

“Okay. I’m going to need everything you have, though. You’ve made a mess.”

Filling his lungs in relief, his chest expands against me. He squeezes me tight, saying thank you without words.

“Thank fuck.” Mad Dog breathes a sigh of relief, running his hands through his hair before he starts rummaging through one of the cupboards. Pulling out an assortment of medical supplies, he points at them. “This is everything we have. I can get more if you need it.”

Lucas lifts me off the bench, placing me on my feet in front of the kits.

Making a mental inventory, I grimace. “We should have enough of everything for now. You’re obviously prepared for this sort of stuff.”

Turning to the hanging men, deliberately keeping my eyes away from the dead body as I do, I ask, “Which one goes first? You’ll need to take them down. Put them on the floor for me.”

After shooting me a grateful smile, Mad Dog looks at Lucas, who shrugs in response to his unspoken question. “It doesn’t matter, so I guess you can start with Cam.”

Together the two men unhook the guy I haven’t met before and lie him down on the blanket I spread out to stop him from freezing on the cold, cement floor. Ranking his injuries in order of need, I get to work fixing the damage they inflicted.

Apart from the occasional request for assistance, I work doggedly, first on Cam and then the other two. Connor is left swinging, sporadic rasping the only indication that he’s still alive. I turn a deaf ear to his suffering, intent on doing my best for the three men who’ll be let go once I’m finished.

“Done,” I declare after hours. The three men have been cleaned, stitched up, and sedated. I’ve administered as much pain relief as I could find for them in the Shamrocks mini-hospital setup.

They’ll survive—badly scarred, but alive.

Lucas winks at me, appreciation in his gaze. Mad Dog mutters his thanks.

Wiping my brow, I wrinkle my nose when I take in my bloodstained hands and clothing.

“I need to clean up before we go back up there.”

“I know. Strip off, and I’ll clean you up. We’ll burn our clothes.”

“What?” I look between Lucas and Mad Dog. I’m not stripping in front of his best friend.

Mad Dog chuckles at my hesitation. Pulling his clothes off until he’s left standing in just his tight boxer briefs, he throws the clothes into a pile. I’m left staring when he strides over to wash his hands, face, and neck at the low sink that runs down one of the walls. I shouldn’t notice how built he is, it’s neither the time nor the place, but I can’t help it.

Maddi is one lucky girl.

Winking at me as he heads for the stairs, I close my gaping mouth, mortified at being busted. I can’t meet Lucas’s eyes, so with red cheeks I stare at the floor, waiting for him to say something.

“Probably deserved that,” he mumbles. I don’t know what he means by that comment, so I don’t answer him. I’m simply thankful that he didn’t call me out on my blatant ogling.

Closing the distance between us, he grips the bottom of my shirt with equally bloodstained hands and pulls it over my head. I don’t have a bra on, so I’m left bare. The cold air in the bunker makes my nipples harden straight away. They tighten further when he drops to his knees in front of me, and runs his tongue down my cleavage to the waistband of my yoga pants.

Goose bumps break out over my entire body from his tongue, and he pulls my pants down my legs, nudging them so I’ll step out of them for him. He throws my clothes on the pile Mad Dog made, his own quickly joining them when he undresses himself.

Picking me up, he carries me to the sink. Setting me down on a fluffy towel next to it, he fills the sink with warm, soapy water.

Washing me down until I’m clean, he pats me dry with the towel. It’s wrong—I know it’s wrong—yet my body responds to his touch as if we are alone in his room, instead of in what is essentially a dungeon with a dead body, a slowly dying man, and three others we’ve just patched up after they’ve been tortured by the hands that are currently arousing me. Even as my body vibrates with need, I refuse to acknowledge it. My shame is
just
strong enough to overrule my hormones.

Taking the wet cloth from his hands when he begins to wipe himself clean, I return the favor. I clean every trace of blood from him, concentrating on removing the evidence of his violent tendencies. When Lucas’s breathing begins to speed up, I glance down and watch his cock as it thickens and lengthens. Lifting my eyes to his, my heart skips a beat at his lust-filled gaze.

He’s as turned on by this as I am.

Opening my legs, I wrap one around his hip and use it to lead him between them. Gripping his erection with two hands, I guide him into me, sliding my ass closer to the edge of the countertop as I watch him disappear into my body.

Pulling his mouth to mine, I wrap my hands around his neck and kiss him. Our tongues tease each other for a few moments until Lucas takes charge, plunging his tongue into my mouth in sync with the thrusting of his cock.

I hold tight, arms around his neck, legs hugging his hips when he stands straight and lifts me into the air. His hands gripping my ass, he lifts me up and down over his cock, my wet heat engulfing him as he drives as far into me as he can.

My climax approaches at an embarrassing pace and I try to tamp down on it.

I want to wait for Lucas to get close, so we can orgasm together but my arousal refuses to subside.

“Don’t you dare,” Lucas grunts. “Let it happen, Doll.”

Throwing me back onto the bench, he grabs my hips with one hand and thrusts into me harder. Pinching my left nipple between his fingertips, he groans when I clench around his cock in response to the lick of pain his touch elicits.

“That’s it, Doll. Go with it.”

Shifting his hips so he can watch his cock vanish into my pussy with each stroke, I’m mesmerized by the desire I find in his darkening eyes. My orgasm hits me when he brings his fingers down on my clit, not once, not twice, but three times with a stinging slap that sends me over the edge.

“Oh, Timber.” My pulsing inner muscles grip him tight, my thighs shaking as I ride the crest. Seconds later he pounds into me, the cadence of his strokes lost as his own release consumes him.

Arms holding him to me as tight as I can, I pant as I come down from my high. His erratic breathing slows as he finishes coming. I giggle when he sucks the ticklish spot on my neck, burying his face into it shortly after.

“Never gonna get used to that,” he rasps. “Fucking devil woman with a magic pussy.”

I laugh at him. “My pussy has nothing on your brilliant cock, Lucas.”

Grinning at me, he grabs the discarded wet cloth and cleans us both again—throwing it on the pile of clothes waiting to be burned when he’s done. Opening the cupboard under the stairwell, he tosses me a Black Shamrocks T-shirt. I slide it over my head, and watch as he follows suit with a second T-shirt as well as a pair of jeans. I don’t want to acknowledge why he has clean clothes stored down here, the thought not sitting well with me that he does what he did to those other men today often enough to make it worthwhile to keep a second wardrobe in easy reach.

“You ready to get out of here?” Lucas holds out his hand.

“More than ready.”

LUCAS

Present Day

P
ushing the door to my room shut with my booted foot, I check to make sure I haven’t woken JJ. She was asleep when I left to take care of Club business hours ago. I hope like fuck she doesn’t even know I was gone. Maddi’s questions have been hard enough to evade, without dragging JJ into the shit as well.

It was fucking close with her today in the bunker.
Too fucking close if I’m honest with myself
. I thought she was going to walk when she saw what I’d done to the fuckers down there. Mad Dog had warned me about bringing her into it, but with the cops watching Doc, we didn’t have much of a choice. We needed to hand the other motherfuckers back alive.

I have no remorse for anything I’ve done—I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You don’t fuck with my Club, my woman, and my best friends’ without expecting bloody repercussions. Like I told her when she lost it—that’s how our world is run.

Tit for fucking tat.

I may lack remorse, and be unwilling to apologize for any of my actions, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t kill me watching part of her soul die this afternoon when she realized she’s in love with a killer.

When she realized that she’s okay with me being a killer.

Hanging my cut on the back of the door, I pull my shirt over my head and kick off my jeans and boots. Every muscle aches; my body is close to collapsing. I need some serious fucking sleep before it’s time to get back into crisis mode.

Delivering Cam and his men back to the Mavericks took longer than expected. Wizard’s death has left lingering bad blood, but they know as well as we do, that an alliance between the Clubs’ is better than war. They can’t declare war over the murder of a President who kidnapped two Old Ladies and attempted to rape one of them. If they want back in the outlaw fold, they need to start following the governing covenants.

We hold the final say regarding their return, and they know it. It’s a good position for the Shamrocks to be in.

Once he’s healed, Cam will step up as President of the Mavericks of Mayhem, just like Wizard wanted. He knows we have him where we want him—they’ll kill him if we ever let it be known that he spilled his guts about Wizard and Beast’s under-the-table deal
and
the location of the body. Doesn’t matter how much pain was inflicted before he opened his mouth, he’ll still be branded a rat, and dealt with according to their Club law.

One problem down, three big fuckers still to go.

With the Mavericks sorted, we still need to dig up Brendan’s body and get rid of it without the ever-present eyes of the cops watching us. Then we need to get his politician father off our back. Problem number three is the easiest to deal with. I fully expect that fucking Connor will be meeting the reaper tomorrow after a vote in Chapel. The Black Shamrocks don’t take rats too kindly—something Beast will be learning in the near future if this plays out like I think it will. 

Expelling all thoughts of Beast and his fuck-ups from my head since I’m sick of thinking about them, I crawl into bed behind JJ. Pulling her back to my chest, I lay my hands on her belly, cradling its slight roundness in my hands—the fullness I hadn’t even noticed until Maddi told me she might be pregnant.

The little sigh she makes at my touch hits me right in the chest. Even in her sleep, she gives me more affection than I’m capable of giving her.

Fuck.
I’m gonna be a dad.

In five short months, if the test her friend yesterday is accurate.

And the ultrasound later today?

Fuck knows if I’ll even be able to make it with all of the shit going down.

I’m of two minds about it. It’s already making me pick at the edge of the scabs left by Amy and her shit.

Another ultrasound, another kid to fall in love with.

And if it turns to shit?
Another kid I won’t get to know.

Thoughts of Amy and the kid we were going to have choke me. My eyes prick, so I bury my face in the sweet-smelling spot on JJ’s neck.

Breathing deeply, I remind myself that she’s not Amy. She’s already stood up to her parents—which is more than Amy ever did.