Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC (59 page)

"Not if I cut those shoulders in half, son."

"After what the fuck I just did to your boy back here, I sure as fuck would like to see you try," he told him. "Sure as fuck would." He whirled back around to Blue. "By the way, Slim's fine, physically speakin’," he said. "Son of a bitch just won't be a goddamn member of this club anymore. Not for the shit stunt he pulled in sendin' that asshole Eightball in his place to stay with Mia." He stared down Wolf, who didn't make another move or speak another word to him in response, and shook his head just before exiting the club and slamming that door behind him.

Chapter Forty-Eight

When I walked through the front door of River's house, everything about it felt completely different, almost empty. It was as if nothing was the same, and not just because of what I had seen at the club earlier in the night, not just because of what he and the other brothers had done to the Dragons or because of what happened to Courtney. It was everything all at once and so much of nothing all at the same damn time. I hated that in that moment, his house no longer felt like a home, no longer felt like that comforting place of solace and refuge for me and my child; and it wasn't because I didn't want it to feel that way; it was because after tonight, I didn't think it could anymore.

After closing the door and tossing my keys on the couch, I spotted River's jacket draped across the chair in the kitchen. I removed my sweater and headed inside to see if he was in there, and when I realized that he wasn't, I headed back down to his bedroom and pushed back on the partially opened door.

"River?" I called out. When he didn't answer, I stepped inside and immediately heard the water flowing from the shower. My eyes searched the room for any semblance of recognition and when they fell to the floor, I saw his bloodstained shoes, shirt and pants. Hesitantly, I walked over and bent down to grab the shirt; and as I held it in my hand and stared at the blood soaked into literally every inch of the fabric, I wondered if it had belonged to just one person or to every single member who was probably still laying dead on the floor of the clubhouse.

"Babe?"

I turned to the bathroom and nearly choked on the air I had sucked in when I saw River standing there, dripping wet from his hair straight down to his feet. He was leaning against the frame of the door with his large hand pressed hard against it as the other rested alongside his waist. And to top it all off, he was completely naked. The minute my eyes fell down to his cock, my breathing became all but inaudible. Everything about him was as glorious as ever, just like I knew it always would be. But in spite of that, I was still so determined not to let it overrule my way of thinking, or take away from what I felt I needed to say to him and what I was sure he needed to hear from me tonight.

"Um." I turned from him and dropped his shirt back down to the floor.

I heard his bare feet move across the carpet and felt the air shift behind me as he bent down to pick up his clothes and tossed them into the hamper. And then I felt him as he slid his strong, muscled arms around my waist and pressed his wet body against mine.

I stopped breathing completely.

"Baby," he murmured. My heart ached. It was squeezing so tight inside my chest and pressing so damn hard against my ribs that I thought it might actually burst right through them. "
Babe
." He grunted and flattened his hands against my stomach, then slid one of them underneath my shirt. Once his skin was on mine, burning and nearly slicing me in half, it felt as if I had almost lost all self-control. "You saw Avery tonight?" he asked me, his low voice rough, yet tender all at the same damn time. God, this was the man I loved. This was the man I knew had my heart in his hands, and even as I tried to steal it back from him, he'd never let it go without a fight. "Babe," he said again.

I turned my head at an angle and nodded. "Yes. She's not all that happy about going up to a 'safe house' in Montana of all places. Or having to leave without me, but--"

"You told her it wouldn't be for long, right?" he said. He drew his lips around the edge of my ear, lightly sucked on my skin, and I gulped. My sex reacted to him, becoming slick and heavy, and I hated myself for being so vulnerable to it, and to him, so damn easily. "Tell her that'd we'd come and get her as soon as we could -- that this shit's only temporary?"

We. We. We.

The more he said it like that, as if there was no other way around it, the more nervous I became.

"That's what..." I swallowed again as his fingers dipped even harder into my skin, squeezing me so hard that if I wasn't fully aroused would probably cause me intense pain over pleasure. It was becoming more and more difficult to concentrate on the reason I had even come back to him in the first place; it was becoming more and more difficult to let myself say 'no'. "It's what I really want to talk to you about, Jacob." I tried like hell to steady my voice despite it shaking like crazy the more he shoved himself against me.

He moved his face into my hair and inhaled. "Shit, you smell good. Just like fuckin' always."

"It's the shampoo I used while I was in the shower," I told him.

"What kind is it?" he asked me. "What flavor?"

God
.

"I don't know," I replied. I inhaled, then exhaled as slowly as I could to keep from quivering against him. "Strawberry or cherry or something."

"Sweet fuckin' flavors, baby." He moved his hand even further up inside my shirt and brushed his fingers across my nipple through my bra. I almost fell back into him as the sensation of it made me heady, but he held me up. "Babe." He dropped his other hand to the front of my skirt and wrapped his fingers around my thigh, pressing them so hard into my flesh again that I flinched.

"River, I..." I stopped when I felt his fingers sliding up between my legs. God, I wanted him there, I wanted him there so badly even though I knew,
I knew
what his being there again would actually mean for the both of us. "I..." Using his middle finger, he slid my panties to the side and stroked my opening. My head dipped back and fell to his shoulder as he finally slid it up inside of me.

"Jesus," he said, his voice gruff as he shoved his mouth against my ear again. "I was hopin' like shit but wasn't actually expectin' you to be so goddamn wet for me already, baby." He slid another finger in, and then another, and moved them in and out of me until my muscles clinched around them.

"
River
." I started rocking against his hand despite my mind telling me to stop. My body wouldn't listen, my heart didn't want to. "Oh, God, River." The pull to him was so terribly strong that breaking it almost felt like going against every law of gravity and nature that God Himself had put forth in front of us.

"Fuck, baby, yeah." He groaned. And before I knew what the hell was even happening, he removed my panties and shoved them down to the floor. And then he spun me around and dipped his hands beneath my skirt to wrap them around my behind. As quickly as he could do anything, he lifted me up from the floor and carried me over to his bed.

"River--"

"Baby." He placed me down on my back and wagged the tip of his cock against my opening -- stroking it up and down, and up and down, knowing how much the feel of it made me absolutely crazy.

God, I wanted him inside me. So damn deep inside me so much that suddenly what happened at the club seemed to no longer matter or even exist; suddenly what I saw in his eyes and felt in his hands as he caressed every inch of my body was something I no longer feared.

Until...

"I need to feel you swellin' around my cock again, babe," he told me. "After every goddamn thing that went down tonight, I need to fuckin' know that you're still mine."

And despite still being so heavily aroused by him, so heavily attracted and entranced... so completely and deliciously in love with this man, I pulled back and lowered my legs to the bed. I stared up into his face and gently stroked his hair, then tilted my head and flashed a soft but sad smile. "That's just it," I told him. "I don't think I can be anymore." I paused and watched his face harden. "I don't think I can be yours anymore."

I closed my legs to him and sat up on the bed. He took a few steps back from me and stared into my face with deep confusion. I got up from the bed and crossed over to the bathroom, reached inside and pulled out a large towel for him to wrap around himself. He stared down at my hand for a few seconds before finally taking it and covering himself.

"I don't think I belong here with you," I said. "Not anymore." He glared. "And I'm not..." I stopped and placed a hand over my chest to keep from hyperventilating. "I realized that after what happened tonight, that what I saw and what I've done prior to it... I'm not as strong as I thought I was, or as strong as you thought I was. And I'm sure as hell not as strong as you need me to be in order to be at your side like the rest of those women." I tucked my hair behind my ears and lifted my head. He crossed his arms and stared even harder at me, as if through his eyes he was trying to get even the tiniest peek into my soul to see if I was telling him the entire truth about how I felt. And when he finally saw it and realized, he peered. "When you pointed around the room and told them all without saying a single word that they needed to search the club for bugs, Candy and Miranda and even your mother knew exactly what the hell to do and where to search. And they knew exactly how to react the minute those bullets started flying across the room. Had it not been for Courtney falling on top of me, I would've probably just stood there, stupid and frozen like a damn block of ice."

His breaths shortened as he pushed his brows together; he dropped his arms and tightened his grip around his towel. "What the fuck are you tryin' to say?"

I pressed my hands together and raised them to my face, resting them against my mouth to keep my lips from trembling. "I'm saying that I don't think I can be in your world anymore, River," I whispered. "I thought I could even before all of this started and when you were so damn stubborn to even tell me how you felt, but it's been clear since then that I just don't fit. Not a single part of me fits inside what you've got here. I'm... I'm like a square peg you're trying to force inside of a circle and I just don't think that I can be forced fit into it anymore."

He moved closer to me, glowering and shaking his head. "I don't give a fuck if you don't think that you fit into my world, not when I know that your place in life is right the fuck at my side--"

"That's just it," I told him as I backed even further away from him. Being too close to him meant even further doom for me and we both knew it which is why he couldn't seem to stay away. "I don't belong at your side. I don't belong with a man like you, I'm not -- I'm not a biker bitch or old lady material. I can talk the talk, but I can't walk that line for shit. And you knew it the minute you saw me. I could see it in your eyes when I made that remark about your shower being covered in cum the day I came to you for help. Something like that coming from someone like me wasn't the norm and you knew it even if you wanted me then." I moved over to his door and turned my eyes up to keep any and every tear from escaping this time. "I thought that I could make it work, that I could just suck it all up and be this woman that you want and need me to be for you, but the truth is that I can't."

"The truth is that you don't fuckin' want to."

I spun back around to him and soured. "All I've been doing from the beginning is trying to do just that," I shot back. "I've been trying and here for you and for myself and for my child--"

"Then you should KEEP fuckin' tryin!" he snapped back. "Nobody ever said this shit with me and with us was gonna be fuckin' easy, darlin'. But even so, I never fuckin' asked you to be anybody but who the fuck you already are. Never once since you been here, babe, have I asked you to be any goddamn body else."

"Maybe that's the problem," I said. "Maybe being who I am is still just too much. Or in this case and this life here with you, maybe it's not even enough."

"Goddamnit, Mia! It's enough for me, shit's been enough for me for a long fuckin' time now! Since the goddamn beginnin' of it all!"

"But it's not enough for me," I said. "Not like I was hoping it would be, or like I thought it should be--"

He made a face and growled and grunted while reaching out his hands. He lurched forward to wrap them around my arms and forcefully moved me into the corner across the room. I wiggled in his arms, but as much as I hated it, I didn't exactly try to escape his strong grip either.

He bent his face down to mine and tightened his jaw. His heavy breathing had slowed, but it did nothing for the intensity on his face, or in his eyes as he clinched his teeth. "Do you know what the fuck kinda life I'd have without you in it?" His voice was low, dark and thick with anger. "The kinda goddamn life not worth livin! And if you think you can just walk the fuck outta here and away from me, away from this shit that we've built together over the last few goddamn months, then you've got another fuckin’ thing comin' for ya."

"Is that a threat?" I asked him.

Almost immediately, he released my arms and backed off. He moved across the room and shook his head at me. "No, doll," he said, his voice softening. "I'd never make a goddamn threat to you like that, ever. But I
will
make a fuckin' promise, and I can fuckin' promise you that I ain't lettin' you go no other place without me."