He ignores me, his leather vest hanging teasingly over those gorgeous muscles of his, those rock hard pecs, those perfect abs. I can see his tattoos in the muted darkness, and they're brutally beautiful. Almost as brutally beautiful as the expression on his face.
“I realized after I left that I forgot to say goodbye,” Royal says, sliding a cigarette from his pocket and putting it between his lips. “So, goodbye Pint-Size. Cheers. Hope you have a nice life.”
He turns and walks away, boots loud against the wood floors.
I think about following after him, calling out, saying the thing I'm thinking but that I shouldn't be.
I love you. Maybe. Or I could, one day. I don't know.
Instead I sit down hard on the edge of the bed and bury my face in my hands.
Leaving Lyric is the hardest thing I've ever done. How fucked is that?
“And we stopped here, why?” Glacier asks, leaning back on his bike and giving me a look like he knows I'm up to something I shouldn't be. I ignore him and straddle my own ride, a five hundred pound beast in black and red and chrome, all of the factory extras stripped off and tossed aside until I'm left with nothing but a sixteen inch front wheel, a leather seat, and the machine's wicked metal soul.
My hands are shaking as I light up and pretend I'm not still thinking about Lyric's warm, wet heat wrapped around my cock, her fingers in my hair, the soft, supple smoothness of her breasts—or the gentle yield of her body beneath me as she gave in and gave me everything I asked for.
Mine, I said when I walked in there.
Yours.
That's the only word I needed to hear.
If she wasn't the mayor's daughter, if she hadn't called the FBI on the club, if I was a braver, stronger, better man, she really would be mine.
“Goddamn it!” I flick my cigarette across the yard and grab my helmet, jamming it onto my head as my pulse pounds in my skull. I can't think straight right now. There's too much shit going on. But yet, when we passed by her house, I stopped. Just stopped and climbed the fuck off my bike, walked in there and found her goddamn door unlocked. “Wait here.”
I stand back up as Glacier rolls his eyes and shakes his head at me, watching as I move across the lawn, open the front door and reach in to twist the lock on the front of the knob. When I pause for a second, the sound of Lyric's crying reaches my ears and I almost go ballistic.
Thank God we're on our way to see Brent.
I grit my teeth against the sound and slam the door.
“Did you really just do that?” Glacier asks as I pause in front of him and seriously consider breaking his bloody fucking face. “Did we really just stop here so you could bang the mayor's daughter?”
“You want to do something about it?” I ask him, realizing that starting a fight with my brother is the last thing I need to be doing right now. Glacier narrows his eyes, but doesn't push the matter, shaking his head and waiting for me to climb back on my bike.
“You really shouldn't be here,” he says, which is true. The president isn't supposed to get his hands dirty. It's not my job, none of this is. Finding Landon, dealing with Sully, heading over to the hotel to find Brent. At this point, my hands are filthy when they should be squeaky fucking clean. But I don't know what Brent might say about Lyric, and I'm not taking any chances. “Why don't you head back to the clubhouse and play with a club whore? There's a new girl that's been hanging around lately, big tits and legs for days.”
“If you don't shut your goddamn mouth right now, I'll shut it for you.” I glance up just in time to see Lyric peeking at me from her bedroom window. Shit. My brain is all arse backwards right now. I need to get the hell out of here.
“Smoky's gonna be pissed.”
“Let him be,” I say, starting my bike and peeling out of there before I can change my mind.
If I do, if I go back in there, I'm never letting Lyric go.
“I don't fucking believe this shit,” I snarl, kicking a toy truck across the living room. It's one of a very few things left in Rebecca and Landon's house, and it's almost as empty as Brent's recently vacated hotel room. “How the hell did this happen?”
“She was gone when we got here,” Smoky says, standing at the front door, a hand on either side of the doorjamb. “Came as fast as we could after our guy called us and said Brent had checked out of his hotel room. I sent a few guys over there and came here myself.” A chill crawls down my spine. If the boys had gotten here before me, I'd be babysitting Rebecca's kids while the boys took her on a little coastal tour of Trinidad Head and sent her for an icy swim. Wouldn't have been a damn thing I could do about it. The Wolves don't make a habit of hurting women, but a rat's a rat. I already saved one woman tonight, saved her life or at the very least saved her from a good, long, painful hurting. There's no way I can put the club on the line for another, even my best friend's wife.