Grounds for Divorce (6 page)

That left her two options.

She kicked off the sheets and fetched her cell from the nightstand. Zach should be at the club, still. Maybe they could agree to meet at his place within the hour. Maybe he’d be willing to give her what she needed so she could get some sleep. She hovered her thumb over the call button.

Ever since she’d been with Booker, things had gone from bad to worse with Zach. They’d spent a week trying to squeeze profit margins for another ten grand. The Hounds paid them nightly visits—purportedly to enjoy the show and avail themselves of the girls on payroll, but according to Zach, they were there as a reminder.

Kayla had seen blood stains on the tarmac a few nights in a row. She didn’t ask questions.

She tossed her cell to the bed and put her head in her hands. She didn’t want to go to Zach just so she could blow him while he pretended to pull her hair. She didn’t want to fake gagging just so he’d hurry up and finish.

“
Fuck
.” Sleeping with Booker had done a number on her.

Maybe the only way to excise the memory of his hands on her was to prove that he wasn’t
that
good, that she’d only enjoyed herself because it had been so long since she’d been with anyone other than Zach.

Kayla grabbed her cell phone and keys, and tore out of the house in her sleep clothes. She was lucky that Tamra was sleeping over at a friend’s two doors down.

Her body remembered the way. Her pulse sped at the sight of all those bikes lined up outside, but it was late and odds were that Booker had already skipped town. She could still go inside, look around. Maybe ask someone.

She wasn’t counting on slamming her foot down on the brake right outside the bar, heart leaping into her throat. The hazy glare of headlights brought into sharp relief in the oil streaks on Booker’s hands even as they elongated his shadow.

“Kayla?” He squinted, bemusement writ on his rugged features. “What’re you doin’ here?”

She had no memory of shoving the car door open. Her legs didn’t seem like her own as they carried her across the parking lot. But those
were
her hands on his cheeks and those
were
her lips against his, clinging to the dying embers of a flame that had long been snuffed out.

Proof lay in the stiff shelf of Booker’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Kayla panted, sinking to the balls of her feet. “Fuck, I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”

The rest of her half-baked apology died, suffocated beneath the force of Booker’s lips on hers. He backed her up onto the hood of the Mercedes, hoisting her legs around his waist.

Metal groaned beneath them, but Kayla barely heard it. Blood pounded against her eardrums, a staggered beat permeated only by the echo of Booker’s moans. He sank a hand into her hair, pulling her back when she would’ve happily gone on licking into his mouth.

He smelled of engine grease and metal, the night like a shroud around them, headlights splashing their shadows onto the tarmac.

“What do you need?” Booker gritted out thickly.

Kayla let out a shuddering breath. “I—I don’t know.” Shame gripped her. What was she doing, throwing herself at a man like Booker? She had a boyfriend. Zach would chew her ass for this when he found out.

And he
would
find out. Secrets didn’t stay buried in this town.

Booker slid an arm around her waist and spun her around.

Kayla gasped as she slammed her hands against the warm hood, humiliation morphing into sudden, selfish
want
. “What are you doing?”

Booker hauled her up with one hand in her hair, all trace of hesitation gone, and cupped Kayla’s pussy with the other. His hot breaths fanned against her cheek.

“What do you need?”

Kayla couldn’t think, her mouth a desert, eagerness ballooning in her belly. It was at once a relief and a surprise to feel Booker scrabble to insinuate his hand into her pajama bottoms.

“Fuck, look at you… So wet.”

He filled her with a thick finger, easily parting her inner lips. They were outside, in full view of the clubhouse and the road beyond. Anyone alerted by the noise could happen upon them.

Apprehension only made the pleasure sweeter.

There was little room for Kayla to rock her hips down, but that didn’t keep her from trying. She craved this. She had come to Booker just for this—his skillful touch, no matter how complicated once the flurry of lust washed away, unlocked something at her core. Pandora’s Box refused to be shut again.

Kayla bucked in his arms, riding his fingers like the slut she was. Moans built in her throat despite her best efforts to smother them.

Booker raked his teeth over the slope of her neck, a warning she couldn’t seem to process. She only knew she wanted more.

“Please,” Kayla bit out, softer and more plaintive than she wanted to be. Zach always took a little prompting, a little groveling. She saw no reason why Booker would be any different.

“Shut up,” he shot back.

Kayla flinched, heat rushing to her face. “I don’t—”

He abruptly released his grip on her and covered her mouth with a warm palm instead. “If you can’t be quiet, I’ll gag you.”

A flash of dread flared in Kayla’s chest. He wouldn’t…would he?

She wasn’t sure. She didn’t know much about Booker or the caliber of his threats. What she did know was that his hand was spurring her toward the edge and she wasn’t going to last much longer if he kept that up.

“You close?” Booker grunted, husky and rough.

Kayla nodded shakily, trapped between his shoulder and the press of his fingers over her mouth. She was teetering on the brink, sopping folds splayed wide in the palm of his hand. Each burst of friction triggered another spike of pleasure. She didn’t know how much more she could take.

“Yeah? Reckon you deserve to come?”

She had kept Booker at arm’s length for a week, always avoiding him when he came by the Grounds, always wary that Zach would tell her to go with him again. She was too much of a coward to explain why she’d given him the slip in the first place. It wasn’t fear.

It was nothing so simple.

Breaths knifing in and out of her lungs, Kayla shook her head. Her eyes stung with bitter tears. She didn’t deserve her orgasm no matter how desperately she might have craved it. She hadn’t earned it.

Booker must’ve agreed, because in the next moment he was retrieving his hands and pushing her down to the hood of the Mercedes. He could have slammed her down if he wanted to hurt her for real. His callowness was perfectly controlled.

It took Kayla a moment to realize that he was yanking her pants down, and by then it was too late to stop. She darted a glance over her shoulder, enough for a brief glimpse of Booker rolling a condom onto his rock-hard dick. He didn’t give her any warning before he thrust into her.

Kayla rose up on tiptoes, her thighs shaking with the sudden, delicious stretch. She groped for purchase on the shiny chassis, but there was none to be found. Booker seized her hips in a merciless grip, arresting her movements before she could retreat.

He wasn’t going to let her drive this. He wasn’t about to make her do all the work.

Kayla bit her fist to smother a cry. She was too far gone to resist. She came within a couple of hard thrusts, the sound of skin slapping skin ringing in her ears as Booker fucked her to completion.

Tremors lashed her in agonizing, delightful waves. She resisted the urge to scream, much less plead, for Booker to slow down. Her patience was rewarded a moment later. Booker climaxed with a shuddering moan, digging his fingertips into her flanks as he buried his cock deep into her pulsing sex.

Little tooth-sized dents marred Kayla’s knuckles when she pried her fist out of her mouth. They didn’t ache half as much as her heart once Booker eased out, wincing, and stripped off the condom.

Kayla followed the movement of Booker’s arm as he pitched it into the underbrush. She didn’t care to see where it landed.

Without the frenzy of desire to numb her senses, she felt suddenly exposed. What kind of woman fucked strangers in parking lots?

Booker zipped up nonchalantly, as though he did this all the time. The headlights cast shadows into the hollows of his collarbones, over the delectable curve of his biceps. It was enough to make Kayla want to reach out and touch. She curbed the instinct.

“You okay to drive home?”

Kayla nodded. She pulled up her pants. The worst thing was feeling the delicious throb of afterglow between her legs and knowing that this was the last time.
I can’t keep doing this. I can’t go back to—that.

“Do you want to stay?” Booker wondered.

“Is that allowed?”

He smirked with half a mouth. Pleasure had softened his features, the scar on his cheek notwithstanding. “Kayla. Do you want to stay?”

Home was a warm shower and the privacy of a good cry where no one would hear. It was an empty house and a cold bed, the knowledge that tomorrow she had to face Zach and tell him they were through.

Kayla filled her lungs with breath. “Yes.”

She tilted up her chin when Booker framed her face with his big hands and kissed her lips. It lacked the flavor of a goodbye.

Chapter
Five

For a pack of outlaw drunks, Booker’s brothers were exceptionally early risers. Kayla froze in the clubhouse doorway when she saw them. They were a motley bunch, as young and old as they were scarred and rough, most of them in various states of dishevelment. Some still had sloe-eyed women draped across their laps.

They saw her, too, in her borrowed, baggy T-shirt and unlaced sneakers, legs bare to mid-thigh.

Kayla considered retreating back to bed and telling Booker she hadn’t been able to work the coffeemaker when one of the men spoke up.

“You’re Book’s girl, right?” He was fair and freckled, with a lopsided jaw.

“And you’re…” Kayla searched her memory. “Nolan?”

“That’s right.”

“You were itching to rearrange Zach’s face a few days ago.”

Nolan leaned back in his seat, smirking. “Offer’s still on the table. Book up yet?”

“Depends on your definition of up,” Kayla answered over her shoulder. There was no real kitchen in the clubhouse, but the coffeemaker was behind the bar, the pot sweating with condensation.

She heard the screech of chair legs before she noticed Nolan shambling over to lean against the counter, his meaty arms folded across his chest.

“He takes it black, two sugars.”

Kayla hesitated. A joke or a lie?
Maybe just an olive branch?
She flashed Nolan an uncertain smile. “Thanks…” It didn’t take much rummaging through the cupboards to find two clean mugs. She fixed up Booker’s coffee before she did her own—no sugar, no milk. She needed the caffeine injection to be as rousing as possible.

Nolan was still watching her when she turned.

“You have something to say, say it,” Kayla challenged.

For a long, tenuous beat, she feared Nolan might take her up on the offer. He had a head on her in height and arms laddered with ink. He could probably flatten her with a blow. Instead, he shrugged, peeling his lips back into a smirk.

“It’s Kayla, right?”

She turned in the doorway. “What’s it to you?”

“Just curious. Tell Book we’re seein’ the colonel off in an hour.”

“He doesn’t know?” Kayla asked, frowning.

Nolan shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. “Think he might lose track of time.”
Thanks to you.

It didn’t need to be said. Kayla spun around, willing the flare of discord in her chest to sputter and die. Whatever Nolan thought of her privately couldn’t be worse of what other men had called her to her face.

She shammed a smile as she nudged open the bedroom door.

Booker flashed her a drowsy grin. “Hey, babe.”

“Morning.” Kayla placed both steaming mugs on the bedside table, between his cell phone and the stack of paperbacks she had only briefly glimpsed last night. Booker didn’t need to pull her into his arms this time. She was already straddling his hips before he’d hooked his hands around her thin wrists. “Ran into your buddies out front.”

“Yeah?” Booker dipped his head to kiss her sternum.

“Nolan said to let you know they’re seeing the colonel off.”

You didn’t mention he was leaving.
The urge to press him with questions shot through her like a spike of adrenaline. Kayla pushed it back down again. Booker didn’t owe her explanations. They didn’t have that kind of relationship.

They didn’t have
any
relationship.

He fell back against the mattress, sighing. “Fuck. Forgot about that.”

“Nolan said you might.”

“Nolan,” Booker ruled with a fierce look, “needs to shut his mouth.”

Kayla snorted and slid to the mattress, reaching over Booker’s chest to grab her cup. “Or you’ll shut him up…same way you did me?” The memory of his hands on her lived on in the bruises on her hips, the sweet tingling ache between her legs. She was too sore for another round and would’ve told Booker as much if he’d asked. So far, nothing.

He seemed content to lie there, sprawled naked with a half-hard dick in his hand, and drink his coffee. His silence was impossible to decipher.

“I didn’t mean…” Kayla started awkwardly. “Last night was good.”

“I know.”

“If I talk too much—”

“You don’t,” Booker said, abrupt but not cruel. He sat up slowly, headboard creaking when he leaned his broad shoulders against the wooden frame.

Kayla slanted a quick, measuring glance at his profile. “I’m not trying to piss you off.”

“Is that what Zach tells you?”

The timid blush of morning became a sudden, blinding glare. Kayla’s throat clamped shut. She didn’t want to talk about other men with Booker—that way lay jealousy and broken furniture. Sawdust in her hair.

Booker sighed when she didn’t answer. “Why do you need Zach?”

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t earn. He doesn’t do the books. I didn’t see bouncers at the Grounds, but I’m guessing there must be some lurking around to protect the girls… So why do you need
him
?”