Redemption (5 page)

Chapter Five

In your wildest dreams

Jessa

It was a warehouse, with high ceilings and reinforced metal and small windows that were shuttered against the storm. When the music that had been playing came to a stop, I heard hail hit the metal and it sounded like bullets. I cringed the first twenty times or so and then my senses got used to the dull pings.

At some point, Bishop had disappeared, but Mathias was here with me. I can’t say I wasn’t happy about that. I knew there must be some kind of underground bunker, like we’d had in D.C., and the thought of all the people I’d have to meet frightened me. At that point, I was ready to pray that the storm continued indefinitely, if it meant I’d just stay here with Mathias.

I rubbed my bare arms and shivered. The warehouse was heated, but the ceilings were so high, it was hard for it to stay very warm. It didn’t help that my feet were bare.

It didn’t help that I knew Mathias was watching me—watching me in the way a man watches a woman he wants. Finally, I turned toward him.

I was sure he was armed, but in the blur of the fighting, I hadn’t seen him pull a weapon. And he hadn’t pulled one on me after I’d stabbed him. He hadn’t, at any point I’d seen, taken time to dress, or even look at the wound. I couldn’t see anything through the jacket though, and I thought better of reminding him what I’d done.

I looked down just then and realized I was covered in dirt and blood and dust. Self-consciously, I touched my hair, which must’ve been the rat’s nest it felt like. It had been forever since I’d had a proper shower, which is probably why that man had studied me so hard today before agreeing to buy me.

Maybe I should be grateful I looked like hell. That hesitation allowed Mathias and Bishop time to save me.

I stared at my hands, the blood caked under my nails, and then Mathias’s hand was in front of mine. I looked up and he was right there—I hadn’t heard him move or seen him, but he was holding out his hand to take mine.

I stuck my palm against his and he gave no indication of his feelings, instead gave a light tug and I was following him across the large floor, weaving through motorcycles until we got into a large bathroom area. There was an empty four-stall community shower in here.

“Is there water?” I asked, and he turned it on in the closest stall, put my hand under the cold water, pointed to the hot and shook his head. When I told him, “I don’t care,” he turned, grabbed a few towels and placed them on a bench outside the shower. And then he took off his shorts and disappeared...into the next shower.

I didn’t look but I heard the water turn on. There was a five-foot wall between the two, and the showers faced in opposite directions. It took everything I had not to blatantly stare at him, and after the experiences with men I’d had recently, you’d think I’d want nothing to do with any of them. But my body felt differently about Mathias, and the sensation was nerve-racking, to say the least.

“Idiot,” I told myself as I stripped my dirty clothes off and turned the shower on. He hadn’t been kidding about no hot water, and I stood under spray that was so cold it burned and I didn’t care. I rinsed and scrubbed the LoV and Charlie and the entire past weeks off me, rinsed my entire damned life away as fast as I could. I forced myself to rinse the shampoo fully from my hair. My teeth were literally chattering by that point.

I turned the water off. Mathias’s shower was still running. I wrapped a towel around me and dried off my arms and legs, wrapped my hair and rubbed some of the water out of it. And then I finally got the courage to look over at Mathias. There wasn’t a curtain. His back was to me, and he stood with his face under the spray. His shoulders were wide, his back muscled, narrowing to a cut waist—and he was heavily tattooed. The soap ran down the ridges in rivulets, between his ass cheeks, down his muscled thighs and calves.

He wasn’t shivering. I’d stopped too, and now my cheeks were heated. I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or not that he appeared not to have tried to look at me. Which was ridiculous after all I’d been through.

Then again, Charlie and I had barely consummated our marriage.

Mathias was signing something, with his back still to me. Of course, I had no real idea of what he was saying but he obviously knew I was looking and that was the point.

I turned away and noted he’d left me sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I put both on hurriedly, ducking out of his sight when I heard the shower shut off. I was back at the van, sitting inside, my bare feet tucked up under me when he strode out with a towel around his waist, rubbing his hair dry with a second one.

He was completely comfortable with his nudity. I could see why. I wouldn’t have minded if he stayed naked, and my cheeks flushed again for feeling that way.

Where was this coming from? Before today, I might not have fit into my other world, but I’d never have thought that being in this one would make me feel so free. Not after what happened with the Lords of Vengeance. But that, like my time in the bunker, my time with my family and Charlie, seemed like a lifetime ago, and I was ready to live in the here and now, where I was safe.

Besides, Mathias was going to think I was an idiot if I sat here, silently staring at him for much longer.

“I’m sorry.” I pointed to his arm and he shrugged. He’d wrapped a big piece of cloth he’d torn from his T-shirt around it. It was black, so I couldn’t see the blood but I knew I’d hit my mark. I picked up the first-aid kit that had been on the seat next to me. “Will you let me clean it? It’s the least I can do.”

He nodded. But he didn’t move closer to me. He let me move nearer to him and I wondered if they even made gentlemen anymore these days. The world around me had sunk into such a barbaric level that to even see a man who actually still respected women—or did a good job of pretending—was a rare thing.

I pushed my hair behind my ears and dug into the box, grabbing the gauze and peroxide and triple antibiotic cream.

When I looked up at him, he shook his head. “You’re trying to tell me I don’t have to do this.”

He nodded.

“Yes, I do. It’s the least I can do, after you saved me. Twice.”

He pondered that for a second, then typed,
And to think
,
at one point
,
you hadn’t even known if you’d wanted to live.

As I read, he reached out to brush my scars lightly with his thumbs. He wasn’t ignoring them, choosing instead to acknowledge my pain. Whether or not he understood it didn’t matter. He accepted it as a part of me.

“I don’t...I can’t talk about it. Not yet, okay?” But I wanted to, felt like letting it all spill out.

He didn’t push, simply mouthed,
Okay.

“I’ll bet people tell you things all the time—secret things—because they think it’s safe. That you’re safe.”

What do you think?

“That you’re the most dangerous person I’ve ever met. That anyone who thinks you’re safe is stupid.”

You don’t seem to mind.

“I never realized that dangerous might be exactly what I’ve been missing.”

And that scares you
,
that you might like it.

“Maybe. And maybe there’s such a thing as too much safety.” I paused. “I will tell you why I tried to kill myself.”

You think that will drive me away?

“Fair warning.”

Let’s just say I don’t scare easily.

“I don’t think I do either. Not anymore.” With that, I untied the cloth from his arm. And then I stared for a long moment, then blinked and looked harder.

I’d stabbed him right in the middle of a snake tattoo, a tattoo along his biceps tat seemed to undulate with the muscles of his arm. The snake looked exactly like the one he’d killed today. When I touched the tattoo, he jumped a little and I swore, for just a second, the snake was alive. Which was ridiculous. “How...”

He shrugged. Typed,
I
knew.

“That you’d meet me?”

Something like that.
Signs were all there.

“You really believe in signs.”

I’m waiting for you to tell me you don’t.

I stared between the tattoo and his hands. He was threading a needle, and then he motioned for me to clean the wound and pat it.

When I did so, he hissed—silent, but I knew it was a hiss of pain—while I irrigated the wound. And then, as I watched, he stitched himself up, tied it off and showed me where to cut the thread. The thin black line was perfectly done and I cleaned it once more and then repacked the box while he got rid of the bloody trash.

He stopped me, though, pulled out two pills—showing me they were aspirin and an icepack he had to punch to fill—and he placed it on my head. I gulped down the pills with the water he gave me. I hadn’t realized the pain I was in from that asshole.

He was signing. I guessed it was so ingrained in him that he’d always sign first, no matter if someone couldn’t understand. But his eyes were so expressive that I knew what he was saying. “You’re angry Charlie hit me.”

He nodded.

“He never did before. I just can’t believe he’d sell me out to save himself.”

Mathias grabbed the alphasmart and typed,
Sorry you had to find out this way.
You’re better off.

“I think so too.” I let my gaze drift over his mostly naked body again. There were tattoos all the way down his arm, covering the backs of his hands, along with the heavy silver rings. I saw more ink on his neck and wondered if he was completely covered.

I’d spent weeks with heavily tattooed men and thought I’d have nightmares anytime I was in the presence of anyone like them. Instead, I was fighting an urge to take off my clothes.

“What’s happening to me?”

Mathias smiled, like he knew but wouldn’t share. I hadn’t taken any drugs in hours and I actually felt more clearheaded than I ever had. And when a giant blast of thunder shook the warehouse—and the ground underneath my bare feet—I jumped and Mathias ushered me into the van. He’d set up a bed back there, and he motioned between me and him and the doors. Then he signed something.

He was asking me if it was okay to close the doors, to close us both in here together. I nodded and he did so, which immediately made me feel more secure. If nothing else, it blocked out the sounds of the storm a little, and he helped that along with music he blasted.

It was Bad Company’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” He joined me in the back and I said, “A little obvious?” and he smiled, that wickedly dirty smile that made my stomach all fluttery. I was like...a girl. A silly schoolgirl who didn’t have to worry about anything, who could let the big, strong man take care of her. And I loved it.

I moved into his arms, onto his lap. All he did was watch me carefully, his dark eyes lazy-lidded and telling me everything I needed to know. I felt like nothing could touch me here with him and he was communicating that to me silently, but somehow more strongly than I’d ever thought possible. I’d never thought that not being able to communicate to someone would actually bring me closer to them. But that’s exactly what was happening.

Chapter Six

It just may be a lunatic you’re lookin’ for

Mathias

Jessa was trembling a little. I didn’t want to freak her out so I waited her out, but I couldn’t do anything about my cock pressing against her belly. Not when she sat in my lap.

Finally, she dropped her arms to her sides and took my hands in hers. She brought them up between us and leaned back so she could look at them. Her scars showed when she did that and she made no attempt to hide them. I think even if I hadn’t already felt them, she wouldn’t have had a problem letting me see them. But she was busy studying my hands, turning them over, running her fingers down mine.

They were just hands, big and strong and calloused, but for me, they were everything—the way I talked, the way I communicated, by sign or by touch. They sometimes took the brunt of my fights, which was inevitable. Because they were also deadly hands, and she knew that now, but she didn’t know everything.

They were weapons that could create a charmed tattoo or strum a guitar or take over a woman’s body and give her enough voice for the both of us. And even though she didn’t understand anything I signed yet, it didn’t matter. She definitely understood my hands.

The music pounded and I reached out to lock the van doors from the inside. I’d become oddly protective of someone I was pretty sure was just using me to prove to herself that she was most definitely still alive.

I didn’t need the reassurance, but she was in my lap, half sure but still trembling. And when I slid my hands up under her shirt and against the bare skin of her back, she arched against me. Ground herself against my cock and her eyes widened, like she didn’t recognize herself or her response.

I wasn’t playing around. Music thumped above the beat of the wind and hail. Everything rolled and the van shook the way I planned to shake her. But first, I grabbed the alphasmart and typed,
You don’t have to sleep with me for protection.

Maybe it was too soon for her to believe me, but sooner or later, she’d make her decisions and we’d know one way or the other. But she nodded and brought her lips down on mine. That sweet lick of her tongue in my mouth, hesitant but willing, made it even better. Her hands shook a little as they slid into my hair, holding me there, keeping my mouth on hers. It was the sweetest thing I’d had in a while and I didn’t want it to end.

How anyone could be so sweet in all this shit amazed the fuck out of me.

She pulled back. “Don’t treat me like glass.”

The words went straight to my dick. I pushed the alphasmart out of the way as I laid her down on the mattress, because we didn’t need talk for this. I could use my mouth and my hands for other, more important things, and I set about doing just that.

Hey now, all you sinners

Jessa

When he lay me down, I reached up and ran my fingertips over his arms and chest, like I could feel the outlines of the tattoos. My body sparked as my hands connected with his skin and he remained patiently hovering above me as I traced the muscles in his arms. Finally, I nodded and tugged him and he put his weight on me and pulled my sweats down. I wound my legs around him, let his cock touch my sex as we kissed.

I was “Yellow” and “Hypnotize” and “Wanted Dead or Alive”—none of them seeming the most romantic songs, but at that moment they were, and I knew that I’d never be able to listen to them again without thinking of Mathias, of his hands on me, parting my legs, making me come. Making me understand what all the songs about sex were talking about when they praised it endlessly, dissected it, discussed it, flaunted it.

This deserved to be praised, dissected, flaunted, shouted from the rooftops.

Coming into this moment, I’d wanted to understand him more than I’d ever wanted to understand anyone in my life, and in some small way, I already did. The beat he’d put on was inside of him, inside of me—drawing me out, making me forget and remember. Rolling around in the back of his van, we might’ve been at the lake on a summer’s day or at a lover’s lane at midnight, but all of it long before the Chaos, when things were normal.

But if it hadn’t been for the Chaos, I knew I never would’ve been here, in Defiance, in this van, this warehouse, this kind of trouble. And that was the most comforting thing the Chaos had ever given me. And in the back of his van, on clean sheets with music blasting and a storm rolling through—and rolling through me as well—I gave everything to Mathias. He’d seen me at my worst, or maybe it was my best, and he didn’t seem bothered or threatened. He didn’t seem anything but turned on and his mouth on my body was like nothing I’d ever thought or experienced. There was a tingle to his touch, as if he was full of magic and he was transferring it to my body, sharing it with me.

I’d been through hell, so the fact that I was wanted—no, needed—surprised me. After thinking about what almost happened out there, a part of me should want to crawl under a rock and hide, never wanting to be touched again.

But no, I shook that off because this was my liberation. My body and no one got to tell me who to give it up to, except me.

I wasn’t going to sleep with Mathias because he’d saved me. I would screw him because it had turned me on that he did save me, that he’d stepped directly in the middle of all that brute force and simply took charge.

Even now I shivered, thinking about his hands, hands that could take a life easily and were instead now bringing me to life.

He grinned and I gasped as he played with my nipples. Rolled them between his fingers and thumbs, flicked the end with his nail until I gasped with pleasure and pain. And he smiled, an all-knowing
oh yeah
,
there’s more where that came from
smile that made me wetter than before. And he knew, and that made it even more intoxicating.

I hadn’t been a virgin when I’d met Charlie, but my experience up to that point had been fumbling boarding-school boys. I’d thought Charlie was a real man and although I hadn’t agreed with his politics, after the Chaos hit, everyone’s politics seemed to switch to staying alive.

I thought about Charlie and his lies, how we’d whispered our plans to one another, how I’d trusted him with the secrets I knew. How he’d completely betrayed me. Now, with Mathias’s body on mine, I wanted to erase every memory of Charlie’s hands or mouth or cock from me. I wanted new memories. And I’d never have expected them to be like this.

I could tell him, “I never do this,” but what was the point? This wasn’t D.C. circa pre-Chaos and I was no longer a good little politician’s daughter. I was a kidnap victim, a betrayed wife. And I was about to bed a biker with tattoos covering his skin and hands that played me like an instrument.

He’d made it clear I didn’t have to do anything in order to stay in Defiance and be kept safe. Whether I believed him or not wasn’t something I was ready to ponder. Maybe I wanted to offset some of the responsibility anyway. Maybe that made it easier to strip naked and offer myself to Mathias.

Not that kissing him was any hardship. He looked good, smelled good, like soap and the earth combined. He was all male too, with big, rough hands that were clean and squared nails—capable hands. He could change a tire, make love to me...he could kill for me with those hands too, and he had.

I’d never even dreamed about being with a man like this, and what was happening was no dream.

Oh, but I am bad company

Mathias

She was thinking too hard, and I needed to stop that shit. I slid a finger inside of her while my thumb circled her clit and she stiffened, like she was going to come right there. And dammit all, I wanted that. Didn’t know when the hell I’d gotten all possessive of her, or why, but it was here and I was damned certain she wasn’t going to think about anyone but me right now.

I twisted my fingers, rubbed my thumb against the tight bundle of nerves and watched her break apart in front of me. She clutched my arms as she lost control, her orgasm making her moan loudly. And she looked surprised too, and, no, it couldn’t be her first orgasm.

As she contracted around my finger, I sucked hard on the side of her neck, the primal urge to mark her too fierce to ignore. I wasn’t a biker, didn’t grow up in an MC but I finally understood why these men got so damned twisted up over their women. It had taken me all of four hours and I was fucking lost.

I could ignore everything else, all the warning bells, because the storm might not ever let up. And if there was one thing I did right, it was living for that moment, that second, because you never knew what the hell would happen next.

I’d claim her and make sure she could only see me whenever she came. I bent down and put her legs over my shoulders. She shook her head, tried to prop herself on her elbows, like she wanted to stop me, but that was more from embarrassment.

No one’s ever licked you
,
pretty lady?

She couldn’t understand my hand, but she knew my meaning because her blush deepened as she said, “I’ve never...”

Then you’re missing out
,
Jessa
, I signed before I buried my face between her legs and tasted her. I wanted to erase the entire day, the entire time she’d been kidnapped and, most of all, I wanted to erase whatever the hell made her scar herself the way she had. I took her until she came again, until I knew I had to be inside of her. She spread her legs for me again and I entered her. I went too fast at first and she cried out. I cursed silently and slowed down and her eyes turned liquid again.

She wasn’t a virgin, I didn’t think, but she hadn’t had sex in a long time, and good sex? Probably never.

I whispered silently against her neck, all the promises that I couldn’t embarrass myself with. She might’ve thought I was just kissing her neck but she’d never know that I’d fallen in the space of an afternoon. That I might never be the goddamned same if she left. That I’d always have the damned scar on my biceps to remind me.

The Chaos was nothing if not intense. I’d been born intense so me in a post-Chaos world was intensity times infinity. It brought out all my natural instincts in a ferocious sort of way, and I’d been careful to bite that back, not show my hand. Mainly because I’d never found anyone to show it to.

And now you’ve found the vice president of the United States’ daughter.

Hell, no one said life was easy, but fate did have a damned good sense of humor.

My parents had met because the fates aligned. Same for their parents and their parents before that. Everything love is fate, Mama used to say, and judging by the way Dad fell apart after she died, they’d been two halves that made a whole.

I was probably the most unromantic guy on the planet. I’d rather plan ambushes post-sex than chat or cuddle or shit like that, but Mama always worried that this love shit would hit me hard. I’d figured that once the Chaos hit, all bets were off.

Suddenly, Jessa’s legs wrapped tight around my waist, locking me to her. Locking me inside. Music swam in my head, mixing with her moans, making me crazy. I flipped to my back, taking her along for the ride, and letting her take control.

She looked a little shocked and then she smiled and purred. And then she started to rock, smiling and purring and murmuring my name.

I wanted it louder. I drove my hips up, pushing into her, filling her harder and faster until I felt her release and contract around my cock.

I wasn’t going to last, no matter how badly I wanted to. A silent howl escaped my lips, but in my mind, it was a fucking through-the-roof, vibrating echo. It ran through me into her and we were connected in ways that far exceeded sex.