Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Did I really want this anymore?
That was what it all boiled down to.
I mean, yes, I wanted Roach gone. I wanted my girls free, recovered, and healthy.
But did I want that life?
Did I want to run rackets and live in the middle of nowhere?
A year ago, that answer would have been an easy ‘hell yes.’
Things were different now.
I was different now.
And not just because my health had changed.
Getting booted from the club meant I had to go out into the world and live like a normal person for the first time in my life. My world growing up and into adulthood had been so narrow, so contained. Leaving the clubhouse was typically just for grocery shopping or blackmail schemes. I never experienced actually living near other people, being able to walk to stores, the convenience of a more city-type life.
And… I think I started to like it more than I realized.
“You okay?” Colter asked as my mind continued to race.
“Yeah,” I lied.
I sucked in a deep breath and stepped away from the comfort of his touch. Right toward the trees.
Then I looked out at the place that had been my whole life.
I expected that feeling of relief, nostalgia, of home. And while there was familiarity, nothing else came.
The clubhouse was the same unique structure it had always been. It was a long, low building made out of a mix of wood and metal shipping containers. Each section was painted different shades: red wood, gray, dark wood, green. It was something that shouldn’t have worked. Maybe it wouldn’t have anywhere else. But butted up against all the greenery around it and in the shadow of the mountains, it did. It looked a little rundown, but warm, almost welcoming. If you didn’t know about the dozen assholes inside.
Colter moved up behind me, likely looking over my head to see what I was seeing.
Some part of me wanted to know what he was thinking. The other part was way too distracted by the hard lines of him behind me, of the warmth of him slipping in under my skin. Even with my father’s old leather jacket on, it felt chilly out there at night.
That was the only reason I didn’t move away.
The heat.
Nothing else.
Then his arm lifted, going over my shoulder to hold out his phone and snap a few pictures, though I couldn’t imagine they would turn out well without being able to use the flash.
I hoped he was distracted enough not to notice the way I kind of turned in toward his arm a little, feeling myself tucked into the cradle of it and his chest.
Eventually, he stopped taking pictures.
But instead of his arm dropping down at his side, it curled around the upper part of my chest, pulling me flush against him.
I knew I needed to pull away.
Yet all I could do was let myself be held.
His other hand reached up, grabbing the phone and tucking it away before it, too, curled around my stomach.
“I don’t think you’re as okay as you’re trying to seem,” he said, his lips right up against my ear to keep the sound from carrying. It also made his breath tease over me, made his beard tickle my skin.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. There was a hollowness to my voice that betrayed the truth.
“It’s okay to be conflicted,” he said, like he was reading my mind.
“This is my home.”
“This was your home,” he clarified. “But people move all the time, make different choices, forge different paths. You don’t have to stay just because it’s what you’ve always known.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“There are things that need to happen,” he agreed. “But once they do, you have choices. What good does it do to close your mind to them?”
He wasn’t wrong.
Even if I didn’t say that.
I just stood there, just let him keep holding me.
His hand slid up, covering my mouth, and I didn’t know the reason until his hand drifted down from my belly to press between my thighs.
I gasped against his palm, surprised by just how quickly desire spread through me.
His club brothers couldn’t be far away.
A whole clubhouse full of enemies was just a few yards off.
We could be seen, heard, discovered.
I couldn’t care less as his fingers pressed in, the friction of my jeans and panties only managing to drive me up faster.
“Couldn’t think about anything else but getting my hands on you when I saw you on that bike,” he murmured, the words making my chest swoop. “Wanted to climb on with you, turn you around to straddle me, and fuck you until you were screaming.”
I whimpered against his palm at the mental image, at being wrapped around him on my bike, his thick cock buried deep inside of me, and riding him until we were both shattered.
Colter’s face shifted, kissing down my ear, then the side of my neck.