Wild Child: A Skull Kings MC Novella (7 page)

“Why don’t you ask your brother?”

Gabriel rolled back onto his heels, his face pale. My own mind whirred to chase down its own conclusions. Dash was in Vegas because of Jameson. Perhaps he’d ordered him here, for some reason. Perhaps he’d been Gloria’s killer.

And now, Gabriel was realizing the same thing I was. He could see for himself how deep Laughlin had gotten in with True North.

* * *

G
abriel stared numbly after Dash as he disappeared into the crowd. I steered him back toward the casino doors. We simply had nowhere else to go.

“Come on,” I said gently, tugging on his thick arms.

Gabriel seemed to float in my hands. We plunged back into the glittering casino, feeling enclosed as if in a fishbowl. When I asked if he’d like to just head back up to our room, he nodded.

“I can see why you left Laughlin,” I said in the elevator to make conversation. “Those guys don’t exactly come off as friendly.”

Gabriel shook his head. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. The elevator finally dinged on our floor, and we wandered through the hallways to our room without saying another word. This whole time, I’d been wanting to bring up Anna. Perhaps, we could help her somehow. But it just wasn’t the right time to say anything about that.

“There was a girl.”

“Huh?”

Gabriel sat down on a bed. “There was this girl,” he said again. “Jessie. I met her my senior year of high school. I liked her.”

I frowned, concerned. I sat down beside him. “Okay. And?”

Gabriel chuckled. “I guess we were in love? I don’t know. I was ready to get serious with her. But Jameson was pressuring me to patch in at the same time. Said it was my birthright. Riding was all I ever wanted to do from the moment I could stand, but then I met Jessie.”

“And everything changed,” I finished for him. I knew the feeling, definitely. For me, it had been the call of the open road, the burning curiosity to experience what was beyond the canyon walls of my hometown. Liam’s club was the only family I’d ever known, and that’s why I always came home eventually. But it wouldn’t be long before I heard the call again.

Gabriel opened his hands and stared at his palms. “I had this idea. I never told anyone, but I thought maybe I could skip town with her, settle somewhere else. Have an adventure. But before I could even hash it out, Jameson got a crew together and went to the girl’s house.”

I felt sick. I could feel what was coming next.

“Her parents weren’t home.” He paused to swallow. “They...they hurt her.”

A cold chill passed over my body.
They hurt her.
Maybe they’d been the same guys who held me in that van. I suppressed a shudder of disgust.

“Her family sent her away. I never saw her again. After that, I had no choice.”

No choice but to join Jameson at his side.
He’d probably spent the next few years paying his dues before he became a nomad.

So, that was why he was like he was.

I touched his knee. “They have to be stopped. You know that, right?”

Gabriel closed his eyes.

“Anna’s gone to the FBI already. If we help her, we
could
stop them.”

“I know,” Gabriel whispered.

“But you don’t sound like it’s something you want to do.”

Gabriel stood up suddenly and paced a short length of the floor for a few seconds, breathing heavily. I jumped back in my seat, alarmed.

“You know why I don’t want to help her?” Gabriel finally asked. “Because I don’t trust her. You know why I don’t trust her? She hurt you. Sure, she’s a friend. But. She. Hurt. You. Just like Jameson and his boys hurt Jessie.”

I felt as if a hammer had fallen on my head. “That’s completely diff—”

“Would you do that to somebody? Tell me the truth. Would you trick an innocent girl into joining a gang? Forcing her to sell her body to pay off some drug debt? Would you?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Of course, I wouldn’t have. But was that the truth? Trying to remember my time with True North was like staring into a black hole. I saw nothing but darkness. All I’d cared about was surviving, and that made people do some awful things.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

“You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know me, Gabriel.” I turned away from him.

Gabriel’s hand whipped out and caught my wrist, spinning me back to face him. “I do know you, Lisbeth.”

The last thing I saw was his eyes, dark brown infused with honey, before his mouth engulfed mine. This was the third time he’d kissed me today, but somehow it felt like the first. Like a hook plunging into my soul. I wasn’t afraid of it this time around. I let my hands wander wherever they pleased, feeling his muscled arms, the tightness of his shoulders, his soft, short hair.

I do know you, Lisbeth,
his words echoed as we kissed.

He put me on my back across the bed. His body fit comfortingly between my thighs, warm, imposing, and somehow protective. Colors burst wildly against my closed eyelids as he probed my mouth with his tongue, connecting deeply with me. A hard knot in his pants brushed against the center of me down there, and I gasped into his mouth.

Gabriel pushed himself off of me, falling over to the side. I remained still and stared at the ceiling. My heart hammered painfully.

I knew Gabriel was about to apologize. I didn’t blame him. He’d seen his former brothers taking what they wanted from an innocent girl. He’d witnessed a woman being shot to death on camera. He was careful, with himself and with others.

But I didn’t want him to apologize, and I didn’t want him to stop. I reached over for his hand.

––––––––

I
want this. I deserve this,
I couldn’t help but chant to myself as I slipped my hands under Gabriel’s shirt. I felt a rush of pleasure as my fingers brushed over his abs, his wide chest. I showed him how badly I wanted him with a kiss.

He turned his face away. “Lisbeth, please.”

“It’s okay,” I whispered.

Gabriel sighed and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me on top of him. I straddled him and felt him getting hard against me. I rocked my hips, making him groan. He began playing with the edge of my shirt and pulled it off of me.

I slipped his off next. For a few moments, we sat still, staring at each other. I really saw Gabriel’s tattoos for the first time. My eyes bounced around his body, racing over the black script on his ribs to the skull on the inside of his forearm. But the most noticeable one of all was a set of stylized wings over his chest.

Like an angel.

I kissed him there and once again on his left pectoral, right above his heart. Our bodies slid together, alternating between cool and hot, tingling and fevered. His mouth came to rest on my collarbone and fell down to my cleavage, licking a wet trail along my skin. I slid my breasts out of my bra just enough for his tongue to lash against my nipples, making me gasp and shiver.

“I want you,” he said so gently it was like a breath.

Part of me felt like I was slipping away, floating above my own body as I unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them off leg-by-leg. But there was a different part, a larger part, that was more awake than I’d ever been, more alive, and seeking to go diving and sucking and licking into everything that Gabriel was giving me.

Somehow, he got on top of me again, pinning me against the bed. My bra and panties joined his crumpled jeans and boxers on the floor. My face burned, and I was afraid to look at him, but I could feel him throbbing between my legs.

“Is this okay?” he whispered, brushing the tip against my wet slit.

I reached down and gripped his shaft. My stomach heaved, my surprise at how large and hard he was. I gave my answer in a kiss and guided him into my pussy.

He made a growling sound in his throat the moment his cock plunged into my cavity. “Oh, god,” I heard him say. Then, he was fucking me, his body moving like the pistons of his motorcycle engines. I let him pound away at me, obliterating all of my senses except for the ones reacting to him. Pain, pleasure, heat. Each thrust was interjected with a deep, probing kiss that left me breathless and wanting more.

I raked my nails lightly across his back. It had been so long since I’d been with a man, and a man I might’ve had feelings for on top of that. Hearing his voice in my ear made something in my chest swell up. I locked my arms around his neck.

“Give it to me, Gabriel,” I whispered. I laced my fingers through his hair, held his head to my neck as he lost himself, fucking me.

Finally, he jerked himself out of me and came. I raised myself on my elbows and watched his seed spread itself across my stomach. There was a thin sheen of sweat on both of our bodies when he collapsed at my side, heaving.

I turned my head to the side to see him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew we didn’t have a lot of time. There was Anna and True North to deal with. Dash. The FBI. A storm was looming in the distance.

But right now, all I could think about was Gabriel.

* * *

W
e checked out the next morning. Gabriel was mostly silent on the way down the elevator. I waited in a corner of the vast marble lobby.

If I concentrated, I could still smell traces of him on my skin. It gave me a strange feeling. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t angry either.
Confused.
I just settled on the fact that I was confused.

I watched Gabriel strolling toward me after he finished checking out. His eyes were averted. He didn’t even look at me until he slid on his sunglasses. “Ready?” his emotionless mouth said to me.

I jerked back to life. “Yeah.” Finally, I realized Gabriel was just like me. I understood him. People like us couldn’t afford to feel, to be vulnerable. Then
and
now. Not with this mess hanging over our heads.

I made sure to give him a wide berth as I followed him to where his bike was parked.

“What the fuck?”

I strained to look around him at the parking spot. The first thing I noticed was that his Harley was lying on its side, opposite of the kickstand. My stomach soured. That was not a good sign.

Gabriel rushed to his bike and struggled to right it. One of his mirrors was missing. I found it yards away just to the side of another parking spot. I picked it up and walked it back to him.

“There’s no way this ended up all the way over there from the bike falling over. Someone must’ve knocked it off with a baseball bat,” he said.

“Or by pistol-whipping it.”

Gabriel gave me a curious look.

I knelt down by his rear tire. It was flat.

Gabriel released an aggravated, lion-like roar that startled me. He spun around and gripped his hair. “What the fuck!”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. There aren’t a lot of things that can do damage like this.” A gun was one of them. I watched him carefully. “You know who has one.”

Gabriel stopped pacing. A look of hardened resolve passed over his face. He nodded firmly, turning his hands into fists. “Adrian.”

I did a double-take. “W-what?”

“I’m going to kill that fucker.”

I hurried over to his side. “I was talking about Dash!”

Gabriel snorted. “Dash would never do this.”

I gaped at him. “After what he did to Gloria?”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

I coughed, at a loss for words. After a moment, the only thing that came to mind was, “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Look.” Gabriel planted both feet on the pavement. “I don’t know how they do things in Nowhere, Arizona, but out here? We don’t mess with another brother’s bike, no matter how bad things get. It’s our code. It’s our
law
.”

My entire body shook. I was seething.
How dare you?
I thought at him. He’d sneered the words “Nowhere, Arizona,” like it was nothing but a dog turd scraped against his shoe. But he didn’t know
anything
about where I came from,
who
I came from. Noah, Liam, and the rest of the Canyon City Skull Kings could’ve kicked his ass from here to Timbuktu,
easily.

But before I could say any of that, Gabriel muttered something about catching a cab and stalked off.

I’m going to kill that fucker,
his voice echoed in my mind. He’d been talking about Adrian. Suddenly, my pulse was pounding through my veins. I was afraid of what Gabriel might do. He didn’t seem like a violent guy, but you never knew what could happen if someone messed with a Skull King’s Harley.

––––––––

I
found Gabriel smoking a cigarette by the casino entrance. His dark eyes watched the crawling line of taxis, but he stayed leaned against the wall.

“I thought you were getting a cab,” I said.

Gabriel shrugged. “Can’t leave my bike here. I’m trying to figure out what to do.”

It figured. Biker boys were predictable. Luckily, I’d managed to find someone willing to help us out, and he chose that exact moment to pull up to the curb in his pick-up truck.

Gabriel tossed his cigarette aside and jumped up when he realized who it was. “You!” His eyes flashed wildly, passing from him, to me, and back.

Adrian rolled down the window and strained to look at us. “So where’s this motorcycle, huh?” His face fell when Gabriel began walking toward him with the slow intent of a man on a mission to kill. “Oh, shit—”

Gabriel wrenched the passenger side door open. “What did you do to my ride, man?” he asked.

“What?”

I rushed over and placed a hand on Gabriel’s back.

“It wasn’t me! How could I when I didn’t even know where you fucking were?”

“He’s right, Gabriel.” I felt his heart pounding in his back, but its pace was slowing down. “Let’s just get the bike in the truck. Okay?”

Gabriel turned to look at me, surprising me. The fire was still in his eyes, but it was down to a smolder. For a brief second, I glimpsed the same Gabriel who had been with me upstairs in the hotel room. I shook the image out of my mind. It had only been last night, but it was like a dream.