Steel My Soul (Motorcycle Club Romance) (Sons of Steel Motorcycle Club Book 4) (14 page)

Gabriela

I had my pajamas on, ready to put myself and this incredibly long day to bed.

When the doorbell rang, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

When I peered through the peephole and saw Crash standing there, shuffling nervously, that surprise faded and a million other feelings rushed in to replace it. So many at once, that I didn't know which one to choose. So I opened the door instead.

He looked everywhere but at my eyes as he lifted his hand and held out his offering.

"I've never picked flowers for a chick before," he said ruefully, holding up an odd assortment for me to see. Clumps of dirt still clung to the root balls. "Wasn't really even sure how to do it. Some of these little flowery bastards really held on tight." He shook his head and extended the handful to me.

"You...picked me flowers?"

"Looked like a real asshole doing it in the dark, too," he chuckled. "But I saw this pretty field full of them up by the reservoir when I was pulled over to think and..., well fuck it, Gabi." I could see the dim outline of his Adam's apple as it bobbed up and down.  "I've never even considered doing something like this before. " He chuckled arrogantly, "Never felt like I had to."

He finally turned and looked at me. He stood one step lower than me, but our eyes were the exact same height, so I could see the strange softness around them.   I held my breath as he went on. "But you," he swallowed. "You make me want to do all the corny shit." He shook the flowers. "If I can make you smile, then it's worth it."

I stared at the flowers and I pictured him, bent over in the half dark in his leathers, carefully plucking flowers to bring to me, and I couldn't help it.

I smiled.

He grinned back. "Totally worth it then."

I took the cluster of weeds from his hand. "I'll go get some water for them, come in."

He stood awkwardly in the doorway, watching me as I located an old cheap vase and cleared a space for it on the kitchen table. Something heavy was hanging in the air, like he and I were in a stand-off, and I didn't want to be the one to speak first.

But he didn't move or speak, only watched me, and eventually I lost my patience. "Go sit down, you're freaking me out looking at me like that."

"Where should I sit?"

"The bed, asshole."

His grin was so quick I almost missed it. "I deserved that."

"Yeah, you did, asshole."

He sat down on the bed and let his head sink into his hands, looking like the weight of the whole world rested on his shoulders. I felt a spark of pity and went to sit next to him, carefully placing my hand on his strong, warm shoulder. I tried to ignore my body's immediately reaction to touching him. I was still pissed.

"That call," he started. "I wasn't prepared for it to be bad."

"How bad was it?"

"Bad," he said gruffly, staring off into the middle distance for a moment. I shifted on the bed and he startled, and looked at me, hard. His eyes darted back and forth, like he was reading me. Gently, he reached out and cupped his hand to my face for a moment, his lips moving silently. Like he was rehearsing what he was going to say next.

When he let go, I wanted to grab his hand and put it back. But instead I closed my fists tightly, digging my nails into my palm.
Too many feelings to feel them all at once.

He took a deep breath and looked away from me again. "This whole, thing, you and I have going on? This," he opened his palms out, searching for a words to describe it and failing, "thing?"

He took another deep breath and tried again.  "It started out the same way it always does. No wait, that sounds shitty too." He shook his head.

He looked too big for my bed, leaning forward, most of his weight on the balls of his toes, lightly resting there as if he wasn't sure he had permission to take up space. ""What I'm trying to say is, you snuck up on me, Gabs. We fucked, and it was fun. You liked it, I liked it, we were damn good at it too. I liked hanging out with you, I liked watching your ass.  All that was the same...until it wasn't. I'd be lying if I said there weren't other girls out there who I liked fucking and who liked fucking me back. But this?" He reached back and clutched my hand, and I felt the electricity from his touch zing up my spine. I shivered and he nodded when he saw it. "It does that to me too.
You
do that to me. And that's something I've never felt before. And I'm not good at this shit, and I'm fucking it up left and right when I try to say it, so I'm just going to say it before I fuck it up any further. I fucking love you, Gabriela."

I had been waiting to say them so long the words nearly erupted out of me. "I fucking love you too, dammit."

He turned and settled back on my bed, no longer afraid to be there. His big hand under my chin was holding me fast while he searched my eyes. "I'm gonna say it nice, now," he murmured, and I couldn't keep my eyes off of his lips. "Seems like you deserve to have it said to you nice." He moved closer. "I love you, Gabi."

"I love...,,"

His mouth swallowed my words.

There is fucking, there is making love, and then there is fucking the person that you love. I never knew the distinction between the three until that night. The intimacy, the connection, the shared heartbeat and the thrill when I saw his own face contort in pleasure above my own. When I saw what it did to him to do these things to me.

When I shuddered to a halt, clutching tightly to his glistening back, I felt the tears at the edges of my eyes. Something inside of me had broken wide open when I came that last time, throwing open the closed doors in my mind and letting the cool breeze blow away the bad old hurts. The closets and darkened corners in my mind saw sunlight for the first time when I saw myself through Crash's eyes. Through the eyes of the man I loved.  I closed my eyes, feeling brand new.

I was reborn.

*****

"It hasn't stopped."

Crash's naked body was stretched against mine, and I gradually swam up to consciousness in confusion. "What hasn't stopped?" I asked, trying to stifle a yawn and only half succeeding.

His fingers traced along my side, from the curve of my hip up to my waist and across my back to close gently, but firmly around my neck. That little gesture of possession. I arched my back, pressing my ass against him and those little springy hairs that surrounded his cock. I felt it stir as he spoke into my ear. "The wanting you," he breathed. "From the moment I met you, I didn't want anything else, I just wanted you. Again, and again and...."

His words were lost as he moved in between my legs.  "You're going to kill me!" I complained, even as his tongue flicked across the soaked rim of my pussy.

"You're going to kill me," he retorted, looking up at me from between my legs with that devastating crooked smile. "And I'm gonna die right here, a happy man."

Declan

My pulse was racing in my throat before I even opened my eyes, and when I saw the dark of the bunk, it didn't slow. Something was wrong.

Just a dream, asshole,
I chided myself,
you're turning into a fucking sap.
It was true. That call from Crash had fucking rattled me for an entire week now, getting all tangled up in my dreams like the scratchy, sweat-soaked sheets tangled around my legs. Tonight I had dreamed about the boy dying,  far away from me, able to see it but to do nothing about it. It was stupid, he was fine from the sound of him, and I was fine except for the being stuck in this fucking safehouse part. Everything was fucking fine so why were my senses on high alert?

I recognized the sound from my dream, a high whine, like a far off car on a distant highway. Right at the edge of hearing, but I honed it on it like a laser guided missile. "Mac?" I whispered in the dark. "You hear that shit?"

The grizzled old vet didn't say anything, surprise surprise, but I heard him sit bolt upright in his bunk. The shadow of his lanky frame was tense, and I saw his hand trail down to find the gun that never left his side.

I swore and reached for my piece.

"Fuck is that?" Case growled, shifting on his bunk, the springs groaning and protesting.

"Sounds like a hive of angry bees or something," hissed Thorn, still a country boy at heart.

J., the heaviest sleeper out of all of us, murmured something and collapsed over with a snore. 

I heaved myself over to the side of my bunk and pulled on my boots, holding my breath. It was the sound of cars, a whole lot of them, and a few cheap ass rice-burner motorcycles on top of it. Whoever it was, they weren't trying to be subtle. They wanted us to know they were coming.

I slipped my knife into my boot, my heart racing still faster. The stinky sweat of fear began to bead up on my forehead.

"Fuck. They found us," Case exhaled heavily.

"Get the
fuck down!
" I cried, as the front of the house exploded in a hail of gunfire.

Shouts of alarm rang through the house as everyone scrambled to their weapons.  The
ratatat
assault of automatic fire made my blood run cold.  "Fucking sounds like Baghdad in this shit," growled Mac, and I could hear the steel in the Gulf War vet's voice. He was going into commando mode instinctually, crawling forward on his elbows with his prized Sig Sauer P229 .40 caliber in his hands.  Case and the other young guys weren't so careful, rushing towards the fight brandishing their Glocks like a bunch of gangstas. Teach and the guards on duty were already firing back, the loud reports of their AR-15s cracking like the pop of thunder before the storm rolls through.

I hauled my fat ass to my feet, cursing my knees, my back and the world around me as I rushed blindly into the dark.  There was a strange elation, an electricity whirring in the air around me. After five weeks of sitting on our asses, waiting for something to happen, it finally was. The world narrowed down to a crystal clear pinpoint, and everything moved in slow motion as I rushed into battle. My heart rate slowed down, my senses crystallized and I recognized the adrenaline that came with working my rotation in the emergency room. You move without conscious thought; brain and body in perfect synchronicity.  Decisions come quickly and easily with no second-guessing. I knew what was going to happen before it did.

And that was why I turned and rushed to the side door.

When they started shouting for me, I was only a few feet away. I sank to my knees in the mud and was already feeling for Thorn's pulse before Case stopped bellowing for me. "Where was he hit?" I demanded. The pulse was there, weak, but steady, and I began to feel for the wound.

"I don't know, fuck, he was in front of me the stupid kid. He just fucking dropped like a rock." Case was right behind me, practically shouting in my ear. "I dragged him around here, get him out of the way. Those fucking bastards, I'm going to kill..." his words faded into an incoherent growl, and I heard him tear off back into the fray.

"Fuck kid, you got a target on your back or something?" I hissed as I located the wound. A clean shot, straight through his side. Entrance wound in front, exit wound in back, no major organs. Between this and the bullet that had grazed his cheek over the winter, this kid was amassing an impressive array of scars at a young age.

"Must be," he croaked out in the dark. "How bad is it, Doc?"

"You're going to live," I told him. "It's just going to hurt like fuck for a while."

"Hurts like fuck right now," he grimaced. "Fucking cold."

The full moon peeked out from behind a cloud and suddenly the lawn was illuminated in a blue glow. I could see Thorn's face, ghostly in the moonlight, pale with shock, glimmering with sweat. All around us were the sounds of gunfire and yelling. "We need to get you off the damn lawn," I muttered. "Can you walk?"

Thorn lifted his head and I saw the dark blood spurt from the wound. "Stop it," I commanded.

His head fell back, his eyes unfocused. "Oh fuck me," I whispered.

I bent carefully, my knees screaming, my lower back in agony. I lifted the kid around the armpits right as the moon disappeared behind another fucking cloud. "Shit." I growled. The door was only about ten feet away, but in the pitch dark of the Pine Barrens, it may as well have been on the wayward moon. "I got you," I told Thorn as a moan escaped the kid's lips.

Then I began to drag him in the direction of the door. Slowly, so fucking slowly, how did I ever get so goddamned fat in the first place? How did this shit happen? I yanked on the kid, pissed at myself, and drew another moan from him. "Shit
fire,"
I bellowed, resolving to start a weight loss regimen, healthy eating, weights with the young guys all of that shit I should be doing just as soon as this hellish moment was over. Just a few more fucking steps and we'd both be to safety.

There was a sudden, stabbing pain in my lower back, worse than any pain I had ever felt. My legs would no longer hold me and the boy and I both tumbled down into the mud.

It was cool down there, felt good on my sweaty body.  I could feel the cool mud against the skin of my arms, soaking through my already dirty T-shirt. But there was warmth too. A warmth spreading along the skin of my back. It spread down and down and then suddenly stopped.  It was strange how I just couldn't feel it spreading any lower.

With a start, I realized that was because I couldn't feel my legs.

"Help!" I screamed into the pitch-black night. I waited for the moon to come out, for someone to see us lying there, for someone to come. "Help!" I yelled again, as I felt the warmth become cold.

There was a shout and some voices. As if it knew I needed it, the moon came out above us and suddenly there was a face peering down. It was asking me something, yelling at me for some reason, but all I wanted to do was float away to that big, beautiful moon. I was so damn tired.

So I closed my eyes.