Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (24 page)

She kissed the notch at the bottom of his throat, then trailed up, her lips and tongue dancing lightly over his skin, her nose nuzzling his beard. He groaned quietly and tipped his head down, closer. Holding his head in her hands, her fingers tangling in his hair, Juliana brushed her cheek over his. She sucked lightly on his earlobe, pulling his earring into her mouth. Then she drew kisses across his cheek again and kissed the corner of his closed eye.

He put his hand on her face and pushed her back. “What are you doing, Jules?”

“Loving you.”

A spasm of something dark—regret?—crossed his face, and his eyes dropped from her face to her chest. He shoved his hand around to the back of her head, took a fistful of hair in his grip, and dragged her head to the side. Then, his brow creased as if his effort took all his concentration, he brought his other hand to her exposed shoulder and hooked his fingers around the thin strap of her black halter top. Leaning in, he placed a kiss above her collarbone, his tongue laving at the hollow there.

As he kissed her, his hand moved over her shoulder, bringing the strap of her top along. Then he laid his palm on her chest and leaned back to study his hand as he drew it down, pushing her top away, exposing her breast. She watched him, saw his intent gaze on her as he traced circles around her nipple. As that touch made her shiver and her tender skin tighten, she leaned forward and up, and she kissed his creased forehead.

At her touch, as her lips still lingered on his furrowed skin, he froze.

“Trick?”

“I’m so fucked up.”

“Shhh.” She released his hair and cupped his face in her hands. “If you can’t talk, then just feel.” He closed his eyes again, and Juliana brushed her lips over his, nuzzling her nose into his beard. “I love you, Trick. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. I love who you are.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“I do. I know who you are to me. And to Lucie. I’ve seen who you are to Connor, and your family. I know all I need to know. You’re a good people.”

Again, he shook his head, and Juliana grabbed his beard.

“Yes. What can I do, Trick? You hurt too much.”

He stared, and then she saw it—he gave up. Whatever battle he’d been waging in his head, he’d lost. And she was glad, because his arms went around her, and he brought her close. With his mouth at her chin, her cheek, her jaw, he slid his hands under her top and up her back.

Reaching back, she untied the laces of the halter top, and lifted her arms so that he could pull it up and off of her. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he quickly bent to take a nipple into his mouth. As he sucked, drawing it sharply against his teeth, Juliana cried out and buried her hands in his hair again, this time to hold him close. Her nerves and muscles danced in time with the rhythm of his mouth on her.

He fell to his knees before her, his hands and mouth still lavishing her breasts and belly. Breathless and quivering, she curled forward, keeping as close as she could, and plucked at his t-shirt. She wanted to see him, touch him.

He ignored that for a moment, his attention devoted to his mouth on her body, but then he tore himself away from her and stood up again. He pulled his shirt off and dropped it in a wad to the floor. Before she could put her arms out to reach for him, he grabbed her and turned her briskly around to face the counter and cabinets.

His hands slid over her hips and up her sides, and then lifted her arms up over her head, pushing her forward until her hands were flat on the upper cabinet doors. Covering her hands with his, he leaned against her, his bare chest over her back, and tucked his face into the crook of her shoulder. For a moment, he was still, his breath heavy, his chest moving her body with every inhale.

Then, his face still nestled against her neck, he eased his hands down her arms, over her shoulders, down her back, his coarse fingertips light over her skin. When he reached her waist, he traced the edge of her jeans to the front and then unfastened her fly. He pushed a hand into her open fly, under her panties, and between her legs. Fingering her clit, sending whip-lashes of pleasure through her body, he flexed his hips, rocking their bodies together in time to the movement of his fingers on her, inside her.

“Trick, God!”

All at once, he was gone, his hand torn from between her legs, his body touching hers no longer. Before she could protest, he put his hands on her again, this time around her calf, and Juliana realized that he had crouched behind her. He unzipped one boot and pulled it off, then the other. And then he jerked her jeans and panties down from her hips and helped her step out of them.

As he stood back up, she tried to turn around, but again, he put his hands over hers and pushed them high, flat on the cabinet doors. Once assured of her compliance, he let his hands fall, caressing her body on the way down again. She felt him open his jeans, and she felt his knee between her legs, widening her stance.

Trick hadn’t spoken since before this encounter had become sexual, and Juliana understood that he needed the silence. She didn’t understand why, but she knew it was true. So she bit her lip and stayed quiet, too. Even when she felt the metal ball of his piercing slide between her cheeks, even when Trick placed a firm, warm hand on her lower back, encouraging her to bend over more, she took a breath and quieted the needy moan that clawed at her throat.

He slid his cock back and forth, wetting himself with her arousal, letting his piercing flick over her clit again and again until her eyes rolled up, and then he drove into her with an animal grunt. His entry was forceful and abrupt, balls deep all at once, and she prepared herself for a rough fuck.

Trick had never yet been rough with her. He’d been passionate and enthusiastic, but he’d been gentle and attentive, too. Tonight, though, after so many strange moments for him and between them, Juliana grew worried.

She reminded herself that she trusted him, and she made herself relax.

But after that first push, Trick became still. Deep inside her, he stood behind her, bent over her back, and held her. She felt his forehead on her shoulder blade; she felt his hot breath over her skin. He wrapped his arms around her and simply held her, like he was holding on for dear life.

Unable to hold him, but needing to connect with him in a way deeper than his body inside hers, Juliana whispered, “I love you.”

In response, Trick began to move. And he wasn’t rough. He was slow and gentle, rocking quietly inside her, back and forth, his arms holding her, his hands moving over her breasts and belly, his mouth sucking on her shoulder.

Though he was gentle, there was something deeper between them this time. Something so deep it was painful, a sharp blade of need, more than physical, more than sexual. As his body brought her greater pleasure, his flesh sunk in hers, his piercing striking deeply, pushing again and again over the one intimately buried spot in her body where feeling was so profound that pleasure and pain became one and the same, Juliana’s throat thickened with welling tears.

God, she was going to cry.

Her climax opened up inside her, unfurling a heartbreaking ecstasy that reached everywhere. Needing to touch him, too, as her body arched stiffly in its release, she stretched her arms back and grabbed his head, her hands fists in his hair. His laboring breath strafed her ear; his beard scuffed her neck. His hands clutched at her, digging into her breast, her hip.

“Trick, please!” Her climax was ebbing; she didn’t know what she was begging him for. But yes, she was crying.

He folded forward, driving her chest down to the counter. The pace of his thrusts increased and finally became the rough assault she’d first expected. Still reeling from her own finish, she felt raw and exposed as he stabbed his body into hers. Then an anguished roar ripped from his throat and he slammed once more into her and went still.

It seemed an eternity that they remained like that, heaving harsh breaths, Juliana’s head and chest on the tile counter, Trick’s damp chest pressing down on her back, his nipple ring imprinting into her skin. There was something oddly comfortable in it, and she was in no rush to move.

She felt his cock shift inside her as it softened, and then he stood up and eased himself gently out of her. She stood, too, and turned around.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she grabbed his beard and lifted his head. “I don’t understand what’s wrong, Trick. Please tell me that much, at least. Why are you pulling away?”

She was naked, and he was still in his jeans and boots, but when his eyes met hers, he was the one who was vulnerable.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Can’t talk? Can’t be with me? What?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you love me?”

He nodded.

She picked up his t-shirt from the floor and pulled it over her head. “Okay. Then you can. Whatever it is, you can.” She took his hand and led him out of his kitchen, to his living room. He followed without resistance, and he let her push him to sit on his futon. Sitting next to him, one foot tucked under her ass, she faced him. “I know you can tell me something. Like what happened today. Tell me that, at least.”

He was quiet so long, staring at his hands in his lap, that she didn’t think he was going to tell her, after all. But then his eyes came up. They were beautiful eyes, that gold-edged blue, and Juliana could read so much of him in them. So much struggle.

“Who was that woman, Trick?”

He sighed. “A threat.”

“What? What do you mean? To us? Were you involved with her?”

He laughed darkly. “No. Never. She’s powerful, though, and not very happy with me.”

“The way she looked at you, I thought…I thought she was an ex. Or not totally ex yet, maybe.”

“No. Not that. I can’t tell you more, Jules, I mean it. I just can’t.”

Her curiosity was not nearly as important as his increasing anguish. Every day lately, he seemed more on edge. “You need somebody to talk to.”

“Maybe. But I can’t.”

“Not maybe. Definitely. You’re…you’re crumbling. I can see it. Why can’t you talk to me?”

“Because there’s risk to you if you know what’s in here.” He tapped his head. “And to me, and the club.”

“You don’t trust me with your secrets.”

He looked up and studied her face, his eyes scanning back and forth as if he were literally reading her. “Tell me this: if somebody made you choose between keeping your daughter or keeping my secrets, would it be much of a choice?”

No, it wouldn’t. A painful choice, but not a difficult one. “Who would make me make a choice like that?”

“Any number of people. Law, enemies of the club. And it shouldn’t be a choice. You should serve me up on a plate to keep Lucie safe, no question. So I can’t talk to you, not about this. I shouldn’t be in your life at all.”

“Stop saying that. It’s too late for that.”

“Are you sure? You want all this? You want Lucie near all of this?”

Now Juliana was angry, and she stood up. “Dammit, Trick! Every time you ask about Lucie, it’s like you think I’ve forgotten about her. I haven’t, trust me. If you don’t want me—us—then say so. But I
have
thought about it. I’ve thought about what’s best for my little girl and what’s best for me. What’s best for us. You act like everybody but you and your club are living some kind of perfect life, like because you’re an ‘outlaw’ you live in a different world. That’s a huge mountain of crap. You live in
this
world, same place I do, and this world
sucks
.”

Pacing his living room, she felt outrage fill her veins and knot her throat. “I spend all day working on cases of people whose families are being torn apart by stupid, inhuman, inhumane laws that treat the US like an exclusive golf club. People who’ve worked hard for decades, who’ve paid taxes and built stable lives and been good neighbors. People who’ve fled horrible circumstances, or who just wanted something more, something good for their children. The government doesn’t give a damn about them. The government raided my
graduation party
and took my parents away in
handcuffs
. Because they didn’t have the right piece of paper. And it’s not just ICE. It’s everywhere. The world only works for people with power. Lucie’s father beat me into a hospital and nothing happened to him. His friends got him out of it. He volunteered to take an anger management class, and the judge acted like it was the most magnanimous gesture anyone had ever made. Nobody cares about the victims because the victims don’t have power. So you think your ‘world’ is so dangerous? You think there’s only threat there? That’s bullshit. There’s threat anywhere there’s power, to anyone who doesn’t have it.”

She took a breath and turned again to face him. He sat there, staring, looking surprised to the point of shock. “Jules—”

“No! I’m not done. You once gave me this beautiful speech about how you’re an outlaw and not a criminal because the reason you do what you do is moral. Because you’re trying to live a truer life. Okay. Good. I admire that. I trust it. What I want for Lucie is a family she can depend on. That’s security, knowing that there are people who will be stalwart and stand with you, through the bad or the good. I had a vision of something else, like a postcard in my head, but it never really filled in because it wasn’t real.”

Sitting down at his side again, she picked up his hands. “What I’ve seen since I’ve been with you is real. I want it. I want you. I want you for Lucie, too. I’m not being reckless. I’m making a choice. I want a true life. I think we can have that with you. If you want us, I at least want to try.”