Riding the Wind: A Motorcycle Club Erotic Romance (4 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cole was so excited that Sarah was staying at the apartment that he begged for a sleepover. The air mattress was more comfortable than the lumpy second hand couch anyway, so they set that up in his room. Sarah crashed as soon as her head hit the pillow, and Cole was asleep in his own bed not long after that.

Danni changed into an old t-shirt and pajama pants, then took a beer out of the fridge and settled on the couch for a one-woman pity party. Her eyes were stinging from tears that she refused to shed, and she thought a single long-neck might make it easier to go to sleep without sobbing.

There was no excuse for her being like this. He was just a guy. She’d avoided most guys since Cole was born. It was hard enough, being a single mom, without bringing all the drama of relationships into the picture. The occasional one night stand kept her happy enough, and she could focus on giving her son what he needed. It would get better as he got older, and she’d reclaim bits and pieces of the life she’d had before - though with some seriously better choices -- and everything would get easier. But she had to get him off to a solid start. He had to have a better life than she did. That was what she was working for. She couldn’t afford to get distracted. At least, not right now. When he was older.

And then the gentle tap on her door sent her heart to racing. She was up on her feet too fast, peering through the peephole. The odds of Ryan coming to her place, first of all, and knocking politely, second, were astronomical. But she didn’t want to get excited, didn’t want to think about how much she wanted to see Derek there. She looked like crap, though, like a tired mother. She didn’t even have a bra on. But she couldn’t very well open the door and tell him to wait while she put makeup on. Screw that. He could deal with her as she was or not at all.

Besides, he looked exhausted and more than exhausted. She pulled the door open, but he just looked at her for a moment, his eyes faded and soft around the edges. “Hi,” she said, leaning on the doorframe. “Are you okay?”

Derek’s expression seemed to wake slightly, and he found a smile. “Hi. I’m sorry I didn’t come by earlier. After...this morning, I went with Walt to see his kid, and things got kind of...and I didn’t have your number to call, and if you don’t want me to come in, I get it.”

The hesitation lasted only a moment. “Come in, of course, come in. But my son’s asleep in his room, so keep your voice low.”

He nodded, and she stepped back to let him move past her.

The way he moved was different. Slower, softer. Older. She’d put him in his late 20s, same as her, based on his face and his hands, but tonight, he looked almost like an old man.

“Have you eaten?” Danni found herself asking. “Or would you like some coffee?”

“I’m fine,” he said. His eyes wandered towards the beer she’d left on the coffee table. “Unless you’ve got a spare one of those.”

He followed her into the kitchen and sat on a stool as she pulled another beer from the fridge and popped the top. “Want to talk about it?”

Derek shook his head no, and then started to talk. “Walt, he’s...I’ve been running with him for years. He’s a good man. His kid...he hasn’t had a lot to do with the boy since he hit the road. It was a hard situation. And now the boy, who’s my age, is sick. Really sick. And his mom is gone. The doctors got in touch with Walt, and he’s here.”

“And you were up with him to see his son?”

Derek nodded. “He’s got a lot of guilt. About how things happened, what he should have done differently. He needed someone to talk to.”

The disappointment and upset melted away. “It’s good that you were there for him.” She touched his thigh, and stifled the intense rush that warmed her.

He stared off at the wall as he took a pull from the beer. “Is it okay that I’m here? With your boy and all?”

“Cole,” Danni said. “His name is Cole.” She took Derek’s beer out of his hand and set it on the counter, then slipped between his open thighs and rested her hands on his cheeks. His eyes watched hers for a long moment, calm and warm and waiting to see what she was doing.

The night before, everything had been fire, heat and burning, rushing to push through before the night went up in smoke. As she leaned forward now, she felt cooler. Not cold, anything but cold, but unrushed. Patient. She kept her eyes open as she leaned towards him, pressing her lips against his almost delicately, and her eyes fluttering shut only when his did. His breath caressed her cheek as his hands slid down from her shoulders to her waist, swaying her slightly to a song that she couldn’t quite hear. Her own hands eased back, tangling in his soft, dark curls, moving with him to find an angle that gave them both better access. His tongue flirted at her lower lips, teasing her, and she opened for him, soft and easy.

The pressure built between them and she molded it with her hands, with her hips pressing into him, with the increasing movements of her tongue against his. She kissed the stubble on his jaw, nipped his earlobe with her teeth, and then came back to his mouth again, finding him breathing faster, his pupils wide and dark. “Danni, Danni, Danni,” he murmured against her skin. “Are you sure? I know last night was just because he was somewhere else, we don’t have to--I just wanted to see you.”

CHAPTER NINE

What blew Derek’s mind was that he was telling the utter truth. It had been exhausting to sit with Walt in the waiting room for hours, just holding on to see if they could actually go in and see the boy. Alex. His name was Alex, but Walt called him 'the boy' so often and 'Alex' so rarely that it felt weird to call him by his name, even in his own head. Alex had not been practicing clean living, was the way Walt had phrased it, and he’d gotten Hepatitis. Didn't bother to deal with the treatment. And now, they weren’t sure whether or not the boy was going to make it at all.

“It’s not your fault,” Derek had said, over and over. “You aren’t responsible for the choices that he made. You weren’t even here.”

“I could have been here,” Walt had said, and Derek hadn’t had a counter for that. “I should have been here.”

They’d sat in silence after each go-round. The doctors had eventually let them in to see Alex, and Derek had never seen anyone in real life hooked up to that many machines, skin so very highlighter yellow, and still alive. Walt had stood still, watching him, for a bit, and then turned and walked out of the room. Derek had followed him back out to the waiting room and studied a painting on the wall until Walt’s mouth stopped working and his eyes stopped glistening. “Go see your woman,” Walt had said.

“She’s not--”

Walt had turned a gaze on Derek that would have peeled the paint off the walls of his soul, if he still believed in souls. “Go,” he’d said. “Indulge an old man.”

And so he had. So he had.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I want this.” She kissed him again, and then drew back. “Don’t you? It’s okay if you’re too wiped out, we can just--” and she cut herself off. Just go to bed and cuddle? Hold her while they slept? That wasn’t supposed to be on the menu. If she didn’t want Cole to know that she was screwing someone, she sure as hell didn’t want him to know that a random guy was spending the night. But the idea of walking out of his warm arms and lying down in her cold bed alone made her stomach twist.

He laughed quietly. “No, I very much want this. I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

She pressed against him again, and watched his eyes flutter closed as she pressed against his growing hardness. “I’m already uncomfortable. I’m asking you to make it better.”

His eyes opened again, and that banked heat was back, controlled and contained, but present. He lifted her up easily, and she buried her squeak of surprise in his neck as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her to the bedroom easily, shutting the door quietly behind him before tossing her on the bed. She laughed as she bounced, and then he was over her, pressing a finger into her lips.

“I noticed last night,” he said, as he turned his attention to her neck, “that you’re something of a screamer. And of course we can’t let that happen tonight.”

“No,” she sighed, lifting her hips as his fingers went to the waistband of her stretchy pants.

“You’ll have to be very, very quiet.”

“Yes.” She helped him lift off his own t-shirt, then sat up so he could pull hers off as well. He still had his jeans on, kneeling on the floor at the foot of her bed, and he tugged her up so that she stood before him. Wetness and heat moved through her, dampening her darkest curls and making her knees weak.

“What that means, of course, is that if you make a sound,” his finger parted her curls, pressing softly up against her most intimate flesh, “even a single moan, I’m going to have to stop. Understand?”

She hadn’t known how very wet she was until his finger slid over her, parting her lower lips and circling her clit. She nodded her agreement, and then almost ruined everything right away as he brought her hips forward to his mouth and licked into her, swirling his tongue over her, drinking her down. Her knees would have given out if not for his hands on her hips, supporting her, and she clamped her lips together and tried to focus on breathing.

He teased her with his tongue, opening her, caressing her, delving into her. She held still as much as she could, but her hips were possessed, sliding against his tongue and driving her further towards him. He responded eagerly, picking up speed and intensity, nipping up at her clit as his fingers entered her, not far, just enough to give her something to move against. Ripples of energy sparkled through her hips, her thighs, her entire being, and she felt it circling down into her, channeling her down into a pinpoint of energy that was going to burst and sprinkle the known universe with stars. But the explosion was a fingertip distance away, and Danni couldn’t quite relax enough to reach it.

Her knees buckled, and he guided her into his lap, kissing at her belly, her breasts, and her mouth as she tumbled to him. He tasted of her, and of him, as he kissed her, urgent and intense.

“Please tell me,” he said, “that I’m remembering right, and there’s one more condom?”

“What would you do if I told you that there wasn’t?”

He slid his fingers between them again, and she was full of him, gasping and driving herself down onto his hand, the orgasm that had been fingertips away suddenly swamping her. “This,” he murmured as he fucked her, “as many times as you wanted.”

“And you?” she gasped, the waves washing through her as she tightened around his hand, “What would you--for you?”

“This,” he said, slipping a third finger inside of her as she bit into his shoulder to keep from screaming. “As many times as you wanted.”

She woke up when the mattress shifted. It was still dark outside; when Danni jabbed at her phone, the display read 2:37. She rolled over, enjoying the slide of cotton over her skin, and looked at Derek, pulling on his jeans in the dark. “Sneaking out in the middle of the night?”

He turned around, smiling in the dark. He leaned down on the bed, stroking a finger down her cheek and kissing her lightly. “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

The pit of her stomach ran cold. “Oh no? Why not?”

He sighed and caught her chin in his hand, moving until her eyes met his. “I’m not going to just disappear, Danni. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I’m not going to just vanish.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what Cole’s father said, too. You see him around?”

Something in his eyes slammed shut. “I was trying to do you a favor,” he said, “Clear out so that you didn’t have to explain something awkward to your kid in the morning. But hey, if you want to treat me like a dirtbag, we can do that instead.”

“Who are you, anyway,” she asked, an icy rage freezing her, from her toes to her eyes. The top of her head felt squeezed, tight and hard. “Who are you to breeze into my life, upset everything I have going on, act like you’re God’s own gift to me?”

“I’m no one,” he said, his voice so quiet that she almost didn’t hear him. “I’m no one at all.” His mouth bore down on hers, suddenly, hard and almost vicious. His tongue pressed her mouth open, and one hand caught both of hers, pressing her hands down into the mattress. She moaned softly, a fresh wave of heat roiling through her, pushing the anger away. She wanted to get rid of him before he screwed things up, but she wanted to take the way he made her feel and wear it like a winter coat.

He stopped, laying a finger across her lips with his free hand. “I thought I said for you to be quiet.”

She could feel him, hard and ready against her thigh, and she was incredibly grateful that they’d found other ways to enjoy themselves earlier, and that last condom was still in the nightstand. She nodded, her eyes locked on his.

“How hard can I be, Danni?” He bit at her nipple, dragging it in his teeth in a way that should have hurt, that should have been too much, but instead made her gasp and arch beneath him. The tip of him brushed against her, and she choked back the urge to pull him forward. “How much can I put you through? How much do you want me to pinch and pull and spank?”

“If it’s too much, I’ll say. Please.” He bit at her again, and she had to stifle the noises in her throat.

“You don’t know me,” he said, his fingers digging into her flesh, his weight pressing her down into the mattress. He fumbled for the condom, and she wanted to beg him to let her help, to let her use her mouth to put it on, to do anything for him, anything if he’d make her come again. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.” He sheathed himself in her, and groaned openly into her shoulder, hovering there for a moment before he ground into her, slowly and deliberately, making her hips rise up against him. Everywhere he touched was hard, pain, sensory overload, and she loved it, loved the way he was taking her, molding her, making this part of her belong to him, showing her a longing she’d never even known that she had. “Don’t act like I’m like your ex, or like the asshole you blew when he rode through town, or like anyone else. You don’t know me. Jesus, woman, how do you feel so gorgeous around me?”

He released her hands, and brought his to her hips, pulling her tight against him as he rolled into her, shaking and trembling. She clung to his shoulders, quivering, sensing his rage was at something she didn’t really understand, a voracious and wild thing, like a third lover in her small bed.

“You think we’re all the same, that no one cares, and that you should use us before you get used. Except you’re better than that. You hear me? You and me both, we’re better than that.” His words broke up as he neared his peak, his rhythm stuttering, pressing deeply into her with each thrust. “Give it a chance. Feel me. Feel this. Feel us. See what happens if you feel.” His rhythm slowed suddenly, and he brought his forehead to hers so that she couldn’t look away. “I’m here with you, Danni. I don’t know what happens next, I don’t know if I’ll stay or go, but I’m not...I’m not going to disappear. If I go, I’ll say so. You won’t wonder where I went, wonder if you’ll ever see me again.”

Her head was swirling through a million emotions. Fear, need, wonder, anger, all spilling into a melting pot of white-hot flame that made her throat close. She set her nails on his shoulder blades and then dug them in hard, watching his eyes roll back as he started to tremble. He muttered a string of curses, his hips shifting into shallow, deep thrusts. Danni took the chance to drive her hips up into his, reaching up for that perfect spot that made her gasp and want to scream. He moved with her, reaching urgently for what they both needed, and when they came, it was one after another, though she couldn’t remember later who came first.

He sagged against her, thoroughly worn out in a way she hadn’t seen from him yet. She stroked his back, hearing the muffled sounds,the quiet sobs he hid in her pillow and her shoulder, and softly soothing him.

“Sorry,” he said, after a while. “That was...intense.” 

The right answer came to her easily. “Intense can be good.”

He pushed himself down to the side, watching her carefully. “Was it this time?”

She nodded, and satisfied her urge to touch him by reaching out and running her hands over his still sweaty skin.

“I still should go,” he said. “I know you don’t want to confuse your son--Cole--and I don’t want to put you in an awkward situation.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, and took a very deep breath. “But maybe you could meet us for dinner. If you’re going to be in town for a few weeks, and all.”

He was so still that she worried he was frozen. “Are you sure?” he said, finally. “I’m not looking to pressure you or force you into anything.”

“I’m not going to introduce you as my fiancé or something, not even my boyfriend. Just a friend who’s in town. And if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I just...I’m not going so far as to say you’re right, but maybe you’re not entirely wrong.”

He kissed her again, then, as kind and soft and patient as he’d been at the beginning of the evening. “Are you working today?”

She shook her head.

“Do you have plans? Or can I come back once you’ve gotten Cole off to school?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and he laughed. “Not what I meant. I--if you’re going to introduce me to your family, you should meet mine.”