Outlaw's Vow: Grizzlies MC Romance(57)

Familiar voices started screaming. Someone pounded at the door, and I watched it pull aside on its rusty hinges. The love of my life stepped inside, obliterating the doubt and the mean words we'd exchanged at the park.

I knew I'd be saved. Asphalt won my heart, my body, and a piece of my soul.

Then I woke up.

I should've relished being safe and sound, alive with my man. Part of me did, certainly, but it wasn't over.

God Almighty. It wasn't fucking over.

I had to crawl out of my cot and find out what happened to my father before I'd ever have a peaceful night's sleep again.

A shower sounded like a good start. I walked into the tiny, grimy bathroom attached to the club room and stripped. Compared to the small, dirty space where I'd spent the last few days, it seemed like a five star hotel's bathroom. Even in the run down shower stall, it was a relief to have the filth stripped off my body by cold water.

At one point halfway through, I slapped the cracked wall tile with both hands and held myself there, crying out at everything.

If it hadn't been for Asphalt, I would've been a goner.

Beaten. Raped. Dead.

I couldn't forget the insane explosion that ripped through the old warehouse while we raced away. Easily big enough to incinerate me and my would-be rapist, assuming he didn't fight through the blinding pain I'd inflicted on his balls and kill me first.

I turned off the water and stepped out. My reflection drew my eyes, and I hated it. I couldn't stop staring at the screwed up girl in the mirror, one who'd finally been bit by the life she'd tried to escape after all these years.

Sure, I desperately wanted to see my father alive again, but only so I could slap him across the face.

I didn't deserve this. Nobody did. He'd put me in mortal danger, gotten his men killed, and almost got the love of my life murdered on top of it.

Something changed when I was locked in that dirty, claustrophobic box. I reached up and touched the faded scratch on my cheek, one left by Zee that first evening, when he'd gotten up in my face, rough and menacing.

What the hell have I become?

There wasn't time to ponder. A loud knock on the little door nearly caused me to jump out of my skin.

“What?!”

“Babe? You awake?” Asphalt's voice had that concerned edge in it that turned my heart to butter.

Pausing to wrap a towel around myself, I flung it open, and his arms were instantly around me.

Warm. Loving. Reassuring in all the right ways.

“Fuck. I'm sorry I had to be gone so long. We were talking, me and the boys, figuring out how we're gonna hash out this shit with the Chinese.”

“Kill them,” I said. “Every last one. I don't care how, as long as you come home alive, and bring daddy back too.”

“I'll bring him home, Ell-Bell. Me and the boys are real interested in dealing with his sorry ass for what he's done. We'll –“

I couldn't take the animosity. Not right now. I stood on the tips of my toes and shut him up, pushing my lips against his, hot and eager.

Asphalt growled into my mouth. His hands stiffened, caressing their way down my body. He grabbed the towel and pushed it down to the floor, then shifted his hands to my bare ass.

One fierce squeeze of those hands made me forget everything.

Sex wouldn't be the answer forever, but today, I really needed to be fucked.

He could take me away from everything – the killers I'd just escaped, all the ways I imagined they were torturing my father, the near certainty that the Redding charter would end up destroying him if the Chinese didn't do it first.

“God, I missed you,” I hissed, dragging my fingers along his back. I scratched at his cut, straight across the bear patch and his bottom rocker, the symbol I'd come to love and hate in my sick, twisted life.

“Babe, you don't know the half of it. Get back in the cot, and I'll hold you 'til you sleep.”

“No!” I put one hand on the back of his huge neck and held it, forcing him to look at me. “Don't leave me this time. Not tonight. I need you, and I need it so fucking bad.”

His dark green eyes flickered. They moved in the whites of his eyes like jade pendulums, drinking me in, battling his vow to me against his oath to the club.

“Fuck.” One word and a hand on my wrist told me who'd won.

He practically carried me to the flimsy cot and threw me down. He pushed me onto it, holding me down with his weight, tearing off his clothes.

His lips, tongue, and teeth teased down my shoulder, my back, stopping near the spot where I'd had his name inked on me forever. Asphalt pulled me up, and I moaned when I felt his naked torso on my back, the hardness he had between his legs, raging when he rubbed it against my ass cheeks.

“You're ready to give me your full attention, Elle Jo? Tonight, it's just you and me. Nothing else. You need it? I need to know I'm the only fucking thing on your mind. Nothing else deserves a shred of your attention except my dick. Nobody else is gonna give you this.”