Black Dagger (Mad Jackals Brotherhood MC Book 1) (7 page)

“Where, Mia? Where do you want me?” He leans down whispering the words against her mouth and pulling her bottom lip, sucking hard. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

She wriggles underneath him, her fingers closing over his shaft and squeezing lightly, watching in awe as his eyes become hooded and dark with lust. “I want you inside me, Ray. I want to feel you.” She guides him towards her entrance but he stills her hand.

“Wait.” He says the word as if it’s the last thing he wants to do and Mia makes a pretty little sound of frustration. He reaches over to the drawer of his nightstand and pulls out a condom, slipping it over himself with practiced ease. Ray looks down at her, watching her, guarded again. “Be sure, Mia.”

She reaches up without having to think twice, pulling him down to her and opening her legs to him. “I want you, Ray. It’s always been you.” The last word is a strangled cry as he plunges inside of her, filling her up and making her forget everything else.

He presses deep inside of her, sighing as her muscles contract around him. “You’re so tight, Mia.” He clenches his teeth, struggling to keep himself in check, to give her all the pleasure he can.

“Don’t stop.” She lifts her hips, tilting so he can go even deeper and she cries out as he picks up the rhythm, driving into her. “Harder.” She needs to feel him, to feel everything, she wants more, more of him, just more, like she’ll never be able to take everything she wants.

Ray plunges harder into her, faster as she wraps her legs around his waist. Her breath comes in short, sharp pants as he drives into her again and again and she feels her pleasure overflow. Her pussy contracts around him, shuddering with the force of her orgasm as she comes harder than she ever has before. She hears Ray’s growl only seconds later as he reaches his climax, her name a husky whisper on his lips and then he’s lying on top of her, hot and hard and all hers.

He tries to roll off of her, but she holds him in place. “No, stay.” His heart clenches in his chest at her words. “I’m not ready for you to go yet.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Mia. But I’m too heavy for you.” He slowly pulls out of her and she suddenly feels empty. But he settles himself beside her, reaching over and laying her against him.

Her head is on his chest and she hears the hammering of his heart, beating like a racehorse. “That’s how I feel, too.” She lays her hand over his chest.

“It’s been doing that since yesterday, since I left you that note.” Ray’s admission surprises her. It’s the first time he’s volunteered information.

“Why did you come back, Ray?” She holds her breath, scared of what he might say.

“I told you. I came back for you. It was always you, Mia.” He repeats her own words back to her and kisses the end of her nose, so sweetly it makes her want to cry. “Now go to sleep. You’re going to need your strength.”

“Why?” She looks up at him coquettishly, enjoying the way his blue eyes darken with intent.

“Because I don’t plan on letting you out of my bed anytime soon. We’ve got a lot of time to make up for.” He strokes her side, making her shiver against him.

Sleepiness threatens to overcome her, the events of the night building on her lack of sleep. Ray plants a series of kisses on her forehead and tucks her in closer to him, smelling her hair. “You smell so good, like coconut.”

“Mmmmm.” It’s more a purr of contentment than a response and Ray chuckles quietly, letting her sleep, but not before he’s said what he’s been wanting to tell her for years, since the day that he left her, since before that even. His words are a whisper, only loud enough for Mia to hear. But her even breath tells him it’s too late; she’s already dropped off to sleep. She hasn’t heard any of it.

Chapter Ten

Ray hadn’t skimped on his promise of Mia needing her sleep. He’d woken her in the night, his hand on her breast, his cock already hard and oh so ready for her. If their first time together had rocked her world then the second time had set a new precedent. In the morning she’d been the one to take control, waking him up with a kiss, but not on the mouth, on something substantially harder and she’d been rewarded with yet another orgasm for her trouble.

As her eyes struggle open again to register the time, she feels a strange mix of being completely exhausted and totally rejuvenated. This is what sex was supposed to be like; this is what she’d been missing all this time. It was a revelation to her. But it didn’t stop her feeling like an awful person for what she’d done to Eli. She was a cheater, something she had never thought she would ever be. She’d betrayed the trust of a good man. She’d done a bad thing.

“What are you thinking about so loudly?” Ray’s voice startles her out of her thoughts as he looks over at her sleepily, looking all sexy and rumpled.

“How do you do that?” She shakes her head at him.

“Do what?” He frowns at her and she reaches out to smooth the lines on his forehead, knowing that she doesn’t need to hold back anymore. She’d touched him in far more private places, but there was something intimate, symbolic even, in her trying to erase his worries, his pain.

“Look all hot and sexy first thing in the morning. I probably look like something the cat dragged in!” She runs her fingers through her hair and finds what she had expected, a mass of tangles.

“You’re beautiful, Mimi. Don’t fish.” Ray kisses the tip of her nose, making her giggle, but the thoughts pressing down on her turn her sober all too quickly and Ray reads the change in her expression like a book. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, Mia.”

She shakes her head, pushing away from him but he keeps his hold on her. “You can’t say that. I’ve cheated on Eli. I’ve done a terrible thing to a good man. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“You don’t know that.” Ray’s expression hardens before her eyes and she looks at him sharply.

“How can you say that?” She pushes away from him again but this time Ray lets her go.

“Forget it.” Ray rubs his forehead, his expression of frustration. “You’re right. The sooner you tell him, the sooner we can get out of here.”

“What do you mean?” She looks at him quizzically, confused.

“I know you’ll still have to tie up some things with your work. But other than that…” Ray shrugs as if to say that things are that simple.

“Why do you think I’m going anywhere?” She looks over at the man she had completely given herself to the night before and wonders how it’s possible to feel like she hardly knows him.

“I told you I’m not staying, Mia, that I can’t stay here.” Ray reaches out to her, his hand covering hers and squeezes.

“But…I thought…” She doesn’t say she thought things would be different now that they were together again; she thought she could make him stay. It sounds too trite, even in her own mind. She’d believed what she’d wanted to believe the night before, believed what she’d needed to in order for her brain to make it okay for her to fall into bed with Ray. “And what if I say that I don’t want to go, that I want to stay? What happens then?” She bites her lip as she watches the walls go up again around him.

“I can’t stay here, Mia.” Ray’s words are a plea, a plea for her to understand but he hasn’t given her anything that will help her solve the puzzle.

“Tell me why, Ray. If you expect me to just pack up my life and follow you wherever it is you want to go, at least tell me why.” She looks searchingly at him, trying to find something in his blue eyes that will tell her what she needs to know.

“You’ll have to trust me, Mia. One day I’ll explain it all to you, but not now.” Ray sets his jaw and she knows from experience that she’s not going to get any more out of him, not until he’s ready. Ray does things on his own terms or he doesn’t do them at all. It was something she’d always known about him, something he’d shown her time and time again, something he’d shown her when he left without a word only to reappear eight years later, without any kind of an explanation.

“Well, that doesn’t work for me, Ray. I’m not some little sixteen-year-old girl anymore. I have a life, a job that I love. I’m finishing my Master’s, my dad is here, my friends are here. You can’t ask me to just pack up and leave all of that because you say so.” She holds the sheet to her body, suddenly feeling exposed and not a little ridiculous, having one of the most important conversations of her life while she’s naked.

“That’s all I can give you right now, Mia.” Ray tightens his hold on her hand, as if he can sense that she’s slipping away from him and he doesn’t know how to stop it.

Mia swallows the lump in her throat, trying to push the tears back down, refusing to cry in front of him for the third time in as many days. “I slept with you because I believed you really had come back for me, because I really believed you cared, that all these years you’d felt the same way about me as I did about you. I was ready to break things off with Eli, a man who wants to marry me, a good, kind man who has only ever wanted the best for me. I was ready to do that for you, because I thought what this was…something else.”

She pulls her hand away from him and stands up, wrapping the sheet around her, not wanting to be any more vulnerable than she already is. She had made herself believe Ray was here for her, but he’s only here for himself. He’s here to get what he wanted; he doesn’t care about what she needs.

“Mia, don’t do this. Just because I can’t tell you everything you want to know doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you.” The frustration in Ray’s voice is clear, but he still hasn’t said the words that she needs to hear.

“Don’t you get it, Ray? This isn’t just about what
you
want. I know already that you’re good at going after that. You left eight years ago because it’s what
you
wanted. You’re back now because
you
want to be. You had sex with me because
you
missed out the first time round.” Her voice is bitter and she knows she’s being harsh, but she’s too hurt to care.

“Don’t do that, Mia. Don’t make it ugly, don’t turn it into something cheap and tacky just to score a point.” The pain in Ray’s voice makes her heart twist inside her chest like a wet towel.

“And now you’re going to leave because it’s what
you
want to do, what
you
need to do and to hell with anyone else. To hell with what I want, to hell with what I need, to hell with everyone but you.” She chokes back the tears that are threatening to spill over her eyes. “Eli always said you were selfish, that you only looked out for number one.”

“And because Eli said it, it must be true.” Ray’s voice has taken that patronizing tone it had before when he’d mentioned Eli.

“At least he talks to me. At least he tells me what’s going on. All you do is shut me out or give me cryptic answers!” She watches as a host of emotions plays out over his face, before he schools himself back to a neutral expression. “Just give me something, Ray.” She clenches her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. “Tell me what’s happened to you, why you’re so guarded with me now, why you won’t give me a straight answer about anything. Just give me something, Ray, anything.” She hates the pleading in her voice, but she has to give him another opportunity, her heart won’t allow her not to.

Ray clenches and unclenches his fists, looking like he’s fighting with himself, battling between whatever’s trying to get close to her and whatever’s trying to keep her at a distance. She watches as his resolve strengthens along with his jaw-line and she knows she’s not going to like what she’s going to hear before the words are even out of his mouth.

“I can’t, not right now.” Ray looks like he wants nothing more than to take it back, but wanting it isn’t enough. It’s not going to give her what she needs from him.

The silence stretches out between them, neither able to say what the other is so desperate to hear. Eventually, Mia looks at him sadly, knowing she needs more, more from him than he’s willing or able to give. She’d let him break her heart once before. She doesn’t think she could take it again. This has to be the end. But first, there’s something she has to say.

“Yes.” She whispers it, making it seem more like a curse than an affirmation.

“Yes what?” Ray frowns at her, reaching out to touch her again, but she takes another step away from him.

“The answer to the question that you asked me last night is yes. Yes, I did love you.” She meets his eyes and sees a flicker of something she can’t identify – hope or relief or sadness; whatever it is it doesn’t matter anymore.

“And now?” Ray’s jaw hardens and she has to stop herself from reaching out to smooth the frown line on his forehead.

“Now I have to take a shower and go tell Eli what I’ve done and hope he forgives me.” Mia walks towards the bathroom, keeping her head held high, forcing herself not to cry.

“Is that you want? Is he what you want?” Ray’s voice is hard and when she looks over at him there’s a challenge in his eyes.

“I want someone who will trust me with their secrets. I want someone who’s going to stick around, Ray. I want someone who cares enough about me to be what I need them to be.” Mia bites her lip as she feels the tears welling behind her eyes.

“And what do you need, Mia? Do you even know?” Ray throws the questions at her like missiles.

She swallows the words that are on the tip of her tongue.
You, I need you.
Instead she takes a deep breath, “I think you’ve had more answers than you deserve, Ray. And I still have a lot more questions than you’re willing to answer.” She waits for a few beats, desperately hoping he’ll surprise her, that he’ll cross the distance between them and take her in his arms and tell her everything she needs to know. But he doesn’t. So she does the only thing she can do. She takes a shower.