A Sinful Vow: Inked Angels MC (25 page)

Chapter 16: Epilogue, Part I
Blaze

A Few Weeks Later

We were all gathered in the courtyard, looking at the scarred bastard standing in front of us. The weeds had started to shrivel in the heat of another blazing Texas summer. Luke Morris stood framed by the gate that separated the clubhouse from the rest of the world.

His cuts hadn’t fully healed, so bandages crisscrossed his face and torso. He couldn’t walk without some kind of support, and I doubted he’d ever run again in his life. He sure as hell wasn’t gonna be riding a motorcycle. The Diablos had done some serious work to his kneecaps when he was being held hostage, enough that it looked like the future for Mr. Morris didn’t contain anything that moved faster than a couple miles per hour.

I studied his face as he prepared to talk. He was hunched over, leaning heavily on his crutches. I wondered what the son of a bitch was thinking. I cast my eyes around the circle.

There were a lot of men standing here that he’d put in harm’s way. A few men hadn’t made it out, and even the ones who did survive wouldn’t ever be quite the same.

I saw Steezy limp in to join the circle. His side was swaddled in gauze, but he was gonna make it. That shit-eating grin he always had plastered on his face wasn’t going anywhere as he turned and flashed a toothy smile at me. It would take a hell of a lot more than one lousy bullet to get rid of that one.

Ember walked up, looking somber. He’d grown up a lot since the first time I’d seen him, evolving from a runny nosed prospect into a real man, a real Angel, one I was proud to have as my brother. He crossed his hands over his chest and stood silent, waiting for Luke to speak his piece.

“There ain’t much to say,” Luke said. It was hard just listening to him. This was a broken man. There wasn’t any fight left in him. It had all been bled out of him, beaten senseless, and left to burn. He owed a lot of remorse to a lot of people—more than he would ever be able to pay back in this lifetime. But it was still hard not to feel for him.

“There ain’t much to say at all,” he repeated, “so I’m just gonna say a quick little bit and move on. Most of you, if not all of you, I won’t ever see again. That probably ain’t such a bad thing.” He stopped to suck in a breath. I didn’t know whether the pain that racked him was physical or psychological, but it clearly agonized him either way.

Sometimes a manhurt himself more than anyone else could.

“If it meant anything, I would say that I’m sorry for all the pain I caused. And I am sorry. But I just don’t think my apologies mean much right now. I don’t think it will ever mean much.” He paused, readjusted his grip on the crutches, and resumed. “A man who lies to his brothers isn’t fit to lead them anymore. I lied, and I’m man enough to know I was wrong. This…” he pointed to the president’s patch he held in his hand, “…this doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

Luke turned and offered the ragged piece of fabric to Croak, who stood by his side. Croak looked him in the eye as he took it without a word.

“If anything good comes out of this, I hope that it’s all of you loving your old ladies and your brothers just a bit more. I don’t mean to sound all soft; that’s just my advice. Do whatever you want with it.”

No man had moved a muscle. The courtyard was spooky quiet, except for the crickets that chirped in the bushes.

Luke opened his mouth to say more, but then fell silent. He shook his head sadly. “That’s all,” he concluded. “I’ll be going now.”

He turned and began to trudge out of the yard, headed for what, I had no clue. I was the last man at the gate. He started to pass me, then stopped and looked up at my face.

I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that this was the man who’d thrown me down in his backyard and fired a shell into my leg. This man had kicked me out of my hometown, sent me running like an unwanted pet. This was the man my woman had lied to me about in order to protect him. This was the man who’d unleashed unholy hell on our whole club. He deserved to suffer for what he did—everything on his face told me that he had suffered, that he was suffering, that he would continue to suffer.

“Treat her well,” he told me. I said nothing. And then he left, climbing into a taxi and shutting the door behind him. His face disappeared behind the tinted window. I watched the car pull out and disappear in the hazy distance.

Some people might be inclined to pray for him. I wouldn’t be praying, though.

Angels didn’t go to church.

* * *

“Come in, sit your ass down,” said Croak, waving me into his office. I sat down in the chair in front of his desk, still favoring the shoulder that Lobo had put a bullet through.

“You still look like a sack of shit.” Croak laughed.

“Your wife sure don’t think so,” I fired back. He just laughed again and shook his head.

“Always the smart ass.” He chuckled to himself. “Always got somethin’ to say.”

“Life’s too short to keep the good ones to myself, Prez.”

His face turned serious. “Life’s short, indeed, brother. Too short for a lot of people.”

“Why so serious?” I prodded.

“A man in charge has to be serious sometimes, Blaze.”

“Don’t use that wise old man voice on me, Croak,” I said. “What’s the deal? What’d you bring me in here for?”

He pointed to an object on the desk in front of me. I leaned forward to take a look. What I saw took me by surprise.

“What the hell is that doing there?” I asked him.

“It’s yours if you want it,” he replied. “I’m offering you the presidency of the Austin charter. Luke left it, so it’s mine to give to whoever I think is the right man for the job.”

“And you picked me? You must really be getting old.”

Croak leaned forward and tented his hands. “The last time you were sitting in this chair, I told you you were getting married. I know you went through hell and back, but now that you’re sittin’ on the other side, things are working out pretty well for you, eh?”

I hated when he was right. If I didn’t respect the man so much, I would’ve swung at him.

“What’s your point, old man?” I asked cautiously.

“My point is,” he said, “that I know what’s good for you. So here’s what you're gonna do: take the patch, give me a big, cheery ‘Thanks, Croak,’ and take that old lady of yours back to Austin.”

* * *

I stepped out of the office, rubbing the back of my head, wondering how I let that crafty old fucker get the best of me yet again.

The boys were sitting in the bar, drinking casually and shooting the shit. A few of them had old ladies perched on their laps, Steezy included. Ember, I saw, was restraining himself to just one woman at a time these days. Maturity at its finest.

Steezy looked up at me and whistled when he saw the bright red badge sewn onto my cut. “Never thought I’d see the day!” He grinned.

I couldn’t help but smile back.

“So, boys,” I said. “Who wants to go to Austin?”

Chapter 17: Epilogue, Part II
Olivia

I woke up panting and sat straight up in bed. A cold sweat covered my body in a sheen. My chest was heaving like I’d just run for miles. I put my hands to my throat, but there was nothing there. The image of jet black eyes staring straight into mine was seared on the backs of my eyelids.

I felt a warm, familiar pair of hands wrap themselves around me and pull me close. Blaze squeezed my head against his chest. I let the rhythm of his heart soothe me and bring me back down to reality.

“Sh, baby,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m right here. Nothing’s gonna hurt you.”

I believed him, of course I did. But I couldn’t shake those eyes out of my head.

Blaze’s chest was broad and warm. I traced my fingertips around the lines of his tattoos. I’d seen them all before, but it felt good to touch him, to feel my heat mingle with his and his skin against my own. He ran a hand through my hair, tugging lightly.

“Him again, huh?” he said, voice rumbling.

I nodded.

Suddenly, Blaze grabbed me fiercely by the shoulders. I looked into his eyes and, for the first time since I’d been woken up by the nightmare, felt calm rush back over me. There was no denying the strength, the fire, the love in those eyes. How could I look at him and be scared? How could I look at him and do anything but love him back? Anything but be his?

Impossible.

He smoothed my hair back with one wide palm. “Listen to me right now, Liv. You’re out of that hell. You’re here with me. Touch me. Feel me.” I did what he said, laying my hand on his brawny biceps. I liked feeling his muscles move as he shifted.

“That son of a bitch is nothing more than some motherfucking ash blowing around that godforsaken piece of land right now, you understand? He’s gone. He’s never gonna touch you again. Matter of fact, no one is. You’re my old lady, and that means you’re mine in every way. I swore I’d protect you from everything in this world. I killed that bastard who tried to take you, and I’ll kill anyone else who ever even thinks about trying something similar.”

I pressed my lips against Blaze’s hand where he held it cupping my chin. He pulled me in and spun me around so that I sat with my bare back to his naked chest as he whispered in my ear.

“Now, it’s time we got rid of him once and for all. I’m gonna fuck that devil right out of you. Do you hear me?”

His fingertips danced down to my hip, barely touching me, just grazing along the skin.

“I’m gonna make you come so many times you forget his name, my name, your name, every name you’ve ever heard. You aren’t even gonna be able to talk by the time I’m done with you, much less walk. Hell, you aren’t even gonna need to eat, ’cause I’m gonna put so much come in you that it’ll feed you and our future baby for months.”

The black eyes had almost completely faded away. I giggled, smacking my hand against Blaze’s thigh. I could sense his cocky grin even without seeing it.

“You’re crazy,” I told him. “You don’t want a baby with me.”

“Oh, hell yes, I do,” he said solemnly. “You don’t have any choice at all. I’m gonna put a little one right in there, and there ain’t a thing you can do to stop me.” He slid his hand from my hip to my stomach. I felt a rising quiver start to stir deep below where his fingertips touched me.

“Is that so?” I challenged.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” he shot back.

I sighed and leaned my head back against his shoulder. He moved his mouth to my neck and began suckling at the tender skin below my ear. “Tell me more,” I said. “What else don’t I have a choice about?”

He laughed. “You don’t have a choice about this,” he said, as he began to walk his hand down from my belly button to the lace edge of my sheer panties. I offered a soft moan as the quiver picked up at his approach.

“You don’t have a choice about my fingers slipping below here,” he whispered, close enough that his lips brushed my ear. He took his free hand and began to massage my breasts, coaxing my nipples into hard peaks that shivered under his touch. My legs began to push against the blankets.

His fingers reached the lace and toyed with it, stealing just under and back again. The teasing stoked my shaky tremors, which had begun to ripple outward from just below his hand towards where my legs met. I could feel myself beginning to get wet.

He teased and teased until, finally, he took the dive below the fabric, sliding his fingertips over my mound. “Ohh,” I groaned as he extended a lone fingertip and touched delicately against my clit. “Do I have a choice about this?” I murmured.

He sucked my earlobe into his mouth before letting it loose and giving my breast a firm squeeze.

“No.”

I leaned back further and brought his mouth to mine. My tongue sought out his and moved carefully all around it, leaving nothing untouched. He responded in kind, twisting and mixing our lips open and closed, parry and thrust. I stirred more, kicking myself farther back into his embrace.

Below my hips, Blaze’s hand had started to wind circles around my clit, pulsing gently with each full rotation. Slowly, waves built where he touched me, shimmying down my legs and up my torso to connect with where he continued to rub my nipples against the pad of his thumb.

I kissed him deeper and harder, letting every exhale escape into his mouth. My breathing grew faster at the same pace as his finger on my button did. I wrapped one arm around his neck to pull his tongue farther into my mouth, and with the other, I gripped his thigh to ride out the storm that I knew was coming.

Blaze’s hand that had been feeling my tits slipped down to join the one stimulating my clit. He put a soft fingertip against the opening of my pussy. By now I was dripping wet for him.

“You don’t have a choice about this, either,” he said to me between moist, lashing kisses. “You don’t have a choice about how I’m going to finger you until you draw scratches down my chest and arch your back to stick those pretty little tits of yours straight up in the air.”

My breathing was fast and labored now, while Blaze continued to strum my clit relentlessly. He probed my pussy with just a knuckle’s depth of one finger, then quickly withdrew, leaving me greedily sucking for more.

“More,” I told him. “More.”

He resisted for a moment, letting me push my hips forward to try and force his finger further inside me. He laughed at my impatience as he drew it back out just as suddenly. I was going to have to work for it.

Pressure was mounting in the heart of my clit, where his finger had not stopped working tight spirals that pushed more and more waves over my skin. The addition of his finger, now gyrating slowly in and out of me, sped up the pace with which I was hurtling towards a serious orgasm.

Every twist of his finger in me drew another quiet moan from my lungs. Every circle on my clit made my skin shiver again.

Without me even thinking about it, my whole body had begun to ride in motion with him, desperate to climb towards coming. I wanted Blaze to see me come; I wanted to come for him. My hips drove into his hands. Now another finger joined the fray, so that he pistoned two in and out of me, pushing all the way in and all the way out. My juices were shiny on his fingers.

I brought one hand down from his neck to my own nipple, pinching hard to accelerate the growing force that zoomed over my body. The other stayed clinging to Blaze’s thigh next to me. I leaned back even harder, loving the expanse of his chest against my back.

Both of Blaze’s hands were moving as fast as possible now. He wound my clit like a clock, changing pressure constantly, up and back and round and round. The fingers in my pussy delved and stroked every sensitive part deep within me. I could feel myself closing around them, trying to keep them there, but they slipped out, such frustrating teases.

I was circling higher and higher, getting so close to exploding like I wanted to—like he wanted me to.

“You’re going to come right in my hands,” Blaze ordered in my ear.

“Yes,” I panted. “Yes. Don’t stop.”

His hands worked faster, playing me like an instrument, plucking every string at the exact right moment to push me to the peak of a crescendo.

He stopped.

“No!” I cried out. “Please, don’t stop!” My whole body seized up, shaking on the edge of unleashing. I needed his hands. I needed Blaze.

Blaze grinned and let me suffer for one long second.

Then his hands pushed back hard against my soaking pussy, resuming with intensity.

I fell over the edge, squeezing his hands between my legs and digging my nails into his thigh where I held him. My back arched and my head fell back against his shoulder as wordless gasping escaped into the air. Lightning bolts shot from my cunt to the top of my scalp and went scorching through my toes, which curled and spasmed. The pressure of his hand on my mound was the only thing that kept me sane while I bore the twitching sensations flooding me.

They soon eased, but I wasn’t satisfied. Turning to face him, I pushed my hands against his shoulders. He fell back laughing as I straddled my legs across his torso and leaned down to kiss him as hard as I could. I pushed my tongue past his lips while I pulled his hands onto my breasts. He kneaded the skin as I kissed him, trying to share the electricity of my orgasm through my mouth.

He seized my wrists in his grasp and sat up. I fell back onto my heels, dripping wet, wanting every piece of him to touch every piece of me.

He growled and, with a sudden motion, tossed me onto my back. I bounced on the bed as he flipped himself on top of me and ripped my panties from my body in a single motion.

Blaze tossed the torn fabric off the bed. He knelt over me, muscles stark and inked. I ran my hands down his neck, over the bulk of his shoulders, down the mountains of his arms. Encircling his wrist, I brought his juice-soaked fingers to my lips. One knuckle at a time, I slipped them into my mouth, tasting myself off of him. I did the same with the other hand, not blinking once as I stared at him and licked his fingers clean.

Satisfied there, I moved my hands to the boxers that clung around his muscular thighs. I ran my palms over the engorged bulk that lay beneath them, feeling it thicken as I touched. Sliding my fingertips between the fabric and his skin, I tugged them down gently.

His member emerged, half-erect and massive. I wrapped one hand around the base while I skimmed the fingers of the other along the length of his shaft. Bringing both hands together, I started to make long, slow pumps, keeping my grip light and soft.

I watched his face the whole time.

“Fuck yes, baby,” he growled as I stroked faster, a little bit at a time. “It’s yours.”

I sat up and leaned forward to bring my mouth to the tip of his cock. At first, I only licked gingerly at the head, soft little touches on every side. Slowly, I began to use more of my tongue, lingering and sliding up and down the length. I worked my way down to where I held him firm.

His manhood had reached full hardness. It jutted into the night, ready and eager to slide into me and make me come—to put a baby in my womb, if he was serious.

The thought alone was enough to make my spine tingle.

I took the first few inches of him into my mouth. I couldn’t resist the temptation to move one hand from his shaft to my own cunt, which continued to get wetter as I sucked him. I touched myself and brought the whole of his dick between my lips, fastening them around the base while my tongue spun spirals around its girth.

As I started to flow my mouth up and down his length, I slipped two fingers inside myself and rode my hand. The motion of both increased. My free hand cupped his balls while I continued to suck, up, down, up, down, shuttling my fingers in and out of myself until, without warning, a sneaky, unexpected orgasm raced through me before I could stop myself. I tried to bite it in, to hide it from him, but I couldn’t help the whimper that shot from my core.