“It’s not safe.” And then finally. “Look behind you.”
I wasn’t fast enough. Just as I turned around, large hands clasped around my throat, turning me back facing the mirror. He squeezed, crushing my neck, closing my airway. I struggled and kicked and bucked, but it was no use. I watched in the mirror in horror as the whites of Mr. Carson’s eyes bulged out of his head as I struggled for air. I tried prying his fingers apart with my own but he didn’t move. “Night, night, you fucking cunt,” he whispered in my ear. With my vision rimmed in static like snow that grew larger and larger, I felt my body go limp. I fell sideways onto the floor and although he’d released me, my airway wouldn’t open. I couldn’t draw breath into my lungs.
The last thing I saw was a laughing Mr. Carson, standing over me, as he faded further and further away until he was gone and the only thing I was left looking at was the broken blade on the ceiling fan. Some sort of commotion was taking place out of the corner of my eye.
Someone screamed.
But it was too late.
It all went away.
Everything.
I was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thia
Lights. Sounds.
Barking?
I woke up with a start like I’d been launched into consciousness from one world to the next. I sat up so quickly it was like an involuntary knee-jerk reaction to be able to pass air into my lungs again. Opening and closing my mouth I gulped for more air, which came much slower than I wanted.
But at least it came. My breaths were short and staccato.
I’d gone from the land of nothingness into a flurry of commotion. The room spun around me as each of my senses was shocked back to life like they’d just been struck by lightning.
My brief death had taken a toll on me. My neck was sore. My head throbbed. I reached for my throat. I swallowed and it felt as if I’d gargled with sand or broken glass, or a cocktail of both.
There was a crash.
Surprised by the sudden noise I stupidly craned my damaged neck around the side of the bed to see where the noise had come from, and was immediately rewarded with a severe stabbing sensation in and around my throat.
I pushed through the pain, dragging myself on the floor instead of causing further injury to my neck. When I’d moved far enough to see around the bed, my eyes landed on the scene playing out in front of me.
* * *
The spinning room began to slow until it thankfully came to a stop. When I was finally able to take a deep breath I coughed on the exhale, drawing the attention of Mr. Carson, who was on his knees beside the bed. His white shirt torn around his right arm, revealing an open and bloodied gash across his bicep. He pursed his lips and although he was the one on his knees he looked smug, like he’d somehow still won.
The Bear from that morning was not the same Bear who was now in that room, standing behind Mr. Carson with a gun to the back of his head.
Bear looked possessed. A vein throbbed in his temple. His chest heaving up and down. Even the veins running down his defined abdomen, disappearing into his low-slung jeans, looked as though they were pulsing with anger.
“Ti,” Bear said, calling me even further back to the land of the living. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice hoarse and scratchy. It hurt to speak, but it was nowhere near the pain I’d felt just minutes before. I grabbed onto the bedpost, hoisting myself into a standing position. “Do you know who he is?” I asked, looking at the man on his knees.
Bear nodded, pushing the barrel of his gun against the back of the man’s head. “His name is Tretch. He’s a nomad Chop uses on occasion to carry out his dirty work. He’s less known than the crew at Logan’s Beach and when he’s not wearing a cut he looks like a fucking pussy so he’s believable as a civilian.”
“He’s Mr. Carson to me. The guy I shot. The Sunnlandio guy.” Bear laughed wickedly and smacked the butt of his gun against the back of Tretch’s head, who winced and swayed, but didn’t fall.
“This motherfucker is going to wish you killed him,” Bear seethed.
“Bear,” I started, leaning on the bed for support.
“No, Ti. Don’t try and talk me out of it,” Bear said, fire dancing in his eyes. He paced the floor, two steps one way and then two steps the other. His eyes didn’t meet mine. “This fucker laid his hands on you, Ti. His life ends now. The last fucker got away with a broken arm.” Bear leaned down next to Tretch and spoke directly into his ear. “Unfortunately for you, I’m all out of broken arms today.”
“Bear,” I said again, trying to get his attention.
“Ti, it’s not an option, he’s—”
“Bear!” I shouted past the pain, possibly tearing something in my throat. Bear’s eyes finally snapped to mine as if I’d temporarily brought him out of his murderous trance. “I’m not trying to stop you,” I coughed out. “I just don’t want you to shoot him.” I could see the light go off in Bear’s eyes. He knew what I meant, just like he always seemed to know what I meant without me having to explain it. “Tretch wrapped his hands around my throat and tried to choke the life from me. I think you need to repay the favor.” I pulled myself onto the bed, crawling up to where I could be closer to Bear and look down at the piece of shit who almost killed me.
Tretch may have never worked for the Sunnlandio Corporation, but it didn’t matter. The man on his knees in my parents’ old bedroom might as well have worked for them, because to me represented the evil of that company, the evil of the MC who’d tried at every turn to bring death to our doorstep, to rip Bear from me and me from Bear. The idea so absurd, I tossed my head back and started to laugh.
I was manic.
I was insane.
Maybe I’d inherited some of my mother’s crazy after all.
I wasn’t laughing because I was asking the man I love to strangle someone to death, but because I honestly didn’t think that even death could separate us.
“You sure?” Bear asked me warily. I abruptly stopped laughing.
Bear was a biker who didn’t need a scared little girl, he may not have been in a club anymore but he still needed an old lady.
He needed me.
I nodded, and not just because I thought that’s what Bear wanted from me, but because I’d never been so sure of anything before.
“No! No! Let’s talk about this!” Trench shouted. He tried to stand but Bear kicked out the back of his legs and sent him back down to the floor.
“Like this, baby?” Bear asked. There was a quiet reverence in his voice. He handed me his gun and I took over the job of keeping it aimed at Tretch. Bear wrapped his big strong hands around Tretch’s throat and started to squeeze, just as Tretch had done to me.
Tretch struggled, his legs kicked out from underneath him. The muscles in Bear’s forearms flexed and strained while he held tight to the man dying between his hands. My own hands automatically went to my neck, tracing the swollen fingerprints Tretch had left behind.
Bear’s eyes found mine and didn’t leave. The whites of his eyes turned to red. He gritted his teeth.
Tretch looked to me with bulging eyes, one final plea for his life, knowing I was the only one who could grant it to him.
I didn’t want to.
With one last angry roar Bear squeezed the last of the life from Tretch, his eyes rolling back in his head. His chin fell to his chest.
Bear released his hold on Tretch, shoving his lifeless body sideways onto the floor. Bear reached into his boot and pulled something out. He flipped it open, a serrated blade sprang out. I was sure Tretch was already dead, but for whatever reason Bear had, he crouched down and gashed Tretch’s throat wide open.
As a former member of Future Farmer’s Daughters of America, we’d taken a trip to the slaughterhouse, and the way the blood poured from Tretch’s neck reminded me of watching the pigs get slaughtered one by one.
Only this animal happened to be human.
WAS human.
I shifted off the bed and stood on unsteady legs, holding on to the end table for support.
Bear’s boots crunched over shards of ceramic from a vase broken in their struggle. He made his way over to the now empty vase stand and picked up a lace doily. He wiped the dark red from his knife before shoving it back into his pocket and threw the bloodied scrap of lace at Tretch’s feet.
Tretch might have been dead, but Bear’s anger was alive and well.
So much so the room was thick with it.
Bear stood there, silently, for what felt like hours. Finally, he looked down to his hands and stepped toward me, bringing his hands up to my face. I covered his hands with mine.
“He could have killed you,” he said, his voice unsteady. His eyes unfocused. I left his hands on my face and reached up for his, rubbing my thumbs over the freckles underneath his deep blue eyes.
“He didn’t,” I said, my voice sounding more like normal, the pain in my neck subsiding to a dull ache.
“Ti, he tried—” he started again, but I wouldn’t let him go there. I couldn’t.
“But he didn’t,” I repeated. “He didn’t.” I locked my hands around his neck. I stood on my tiptoes and planted a small kiss to the corner of his mouth. His beard tickled my lips.
Bear’s eyes locked onto mine and turned darker than I’d ever seen them. He was searching my face. Searching my soul, but I had no clue what it was he was looking for. He craned his neck down and pressed a tender kiss against the swollen and injured flesh on my neck.
Suddenly the air shifted and it was no longer thick with anger, but something else entirely.
Something even more powerful.
Lust. Need.
Bear’s chest was damp with sweat. He smelled like pure man and looked like pure muscle. Every bit of him invaded my senses.
Bear forced me backwards onto the mattress. Our lips connected but only for a brief second. He lifted me up by my waist and tossed me further back onto the bed.
The thrumming of my erratically beating heart and the sounds of us coming together filled the silent space. The creak of the bed springs. The smack of our lips. His boots falling to the ground.
His zipper.
Bear grabbed onto the waistband of my shorts, yanking them down to my feet, tossing them over Tretch’s body, which laid across the open doorway. He pulled off my panties with one hand and crawled on top of me, pushing his jeans down over his ass until I could feel him. Large, hot, hard, pressed right up against my core. I closed my eyes and moaned, the contact too much and yet nowhere near enough.
I needed more.
So much more.
I reached for the hem of my shirt and Bear lifted up off of me, just enough to allow me to pull it off and chuck it to the side.
Then we were skin to skin.
My softness against his hardness.
Tortured soul against tortured soul.
The feeling of him between my legs, his weight on top of me, the need for him to be inside of me had me shamelessly spreading my legs as wide as they could go, inviting him into the place I needed him most.
Bear kissed the spot where my neck met my shoulder, over the bite mark he’d made the night before and I saw stars. Maybe I was dying again. Except this was a death I wouldn’t fight. This was a death I’d go to gladly.
Bear’s tongue licking behind my ear, sucking at my skin, kissing, teasing. His hands kneading my breasts and pinching my nipples. I grabbed on to the globes of his glorious ass, pressing him in closer, needing him to close the torturous gap between us.
“You were made for me,” Bear said before his lips met mine, and I was lost in the sensation of his tongue dancing with mine. Tangling with one another.
He groaned and I lifted my hips, again searching for more.
Begging.
A few minutes earlier I’d thought I was dead, and now I’d never felt so alive.
Bear rocked against me, running his hard length through my wetness, and I relentlessly ground against him like I couldn’t get enough.
Because I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to.
Not then.
Not ever.
I didn’t care about the corpse in the corner or the blood on the floor. Both old and new.
All I cared about was Bear.
He reached between us and ran his fingers over my clit. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t even that nice. He was downright rude to it. Pushing hard and circling it like he was punishing it. Punishing me.
“You want me, baby?” he asked, pulling back and searching my eyes. “You want this?”
I reached out and brushed away the hair that had fallen into his face. I knew he wasn’t just asking if I wanted his cock, he was asking if I wanted this life.
“Fuck me,” I said, answering his question in a language I knew Bear was fluent in.
He didn’t need anything more than those words because he grabbed the base of his shaft and lined it up with my entrance, pushing inside of me like he was answering a question I’d never asked. He was hot and hard and every inch of access he gained made me only want more of him.
All of him.
When Bear met resistance, it was like all of his resistance fell apart. He groaned. “I love how fucking tight you are. I love how I have to fight your fucking pussy to push my cock all the way inside you.”
He pushed in again and again until he was so far inside of me, body, heart, and soul, that I was almost afraid of how deep our connection was. It was about more than sex. It was about us, and we were a lot like our sex in a way. It hurt. It felt amazing.
I never wanted it to end.
Bear pushed my knees apart, spreading me as far as I could go, opening me up as much as I could give him. He thrust wildly. “Look at me, baby. I want you to look at me when you fucking come,” he ordered. His voice was strained, his hair falling into his face all over again. The muscles in his forearms and shoulders flexing as he held himself over me, bracing himself on the mattress with both elbows beside my head.
I glanced over his shoulder as the pressure started to build, catching our reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Bear’s body blocked most of mine except my legs, which I lifted up and wrapped around his waist. The muscles in his back were taut and straining. His colorful tattoos looked as if they were dancing as he fucked and fucked me.
And fucked me some more.
I watched us in the mirror as the pressure in my lower stomach tightened. With each push in and pull out, Bear touched a spot inside of me that had my mouth falling open and my entire body clenching around his relentless and massive cock.
Faster and faster.
Harder and harder.
Oh my god and holy shit.
My pussy clenched around him. I was close. So very close. I lifted my hips to grant him as much access as possible. “Aaaahhhh,” he groaned, “I fucking love it when you do that,” he said, his forehead beading with sweat. I lifted my head off the mattress and lightly bit his nipple. My neck injury, although still there, temporarily forgotten as the pleasure portion of my brain temporarily sent the pain portion packing.
“Fuck, Ti.” Bear thrust harder, angling himself so that his shaft rubbed against my clit with every stroke of his cock. I closed my eyes, about to be taken over the edge. About to come.