Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
My mind went to the tattoo that he had on the back of his hand. The two stacked Ss with the dagger running through and the eye in the middle.
The skull sitting on top.
It was almost identical to the one that Kane had, though his had a wilting rose at the top.
The same as River, Cash, and Otto each did, though with slight variations.
Awareness spun.
It felt as if I might be able to reach out and run my fingers through the truth that spun in the periphery of my understanding.
My throat thickened as Theo slowly pulled my sleep pants back around my waist.
Regret and apology and something so much fiercer was seeded in the taut, ferocious angles of his hauntingly beautiful face.
A frown pinched my brow as I tried to decipher everything.
The fact that Cash was talking about intel and whatever Emery had been implying earlier and the bare fact that I’d known from the beginning that Theo was dangerous.
His whole group was.
His family, as he claimed them.
Which was hard to entertain when Kane was so easy and kind and funny. But I knew that sometimes malice could be scored underneath.
“Looks like I need to go.” Theo’s words scraped through the dense air that had become too stagnant to breathe.
“Why?” It was clearly a challenge.
Theo’s hands quivered where he had them wrapped around my waist. “Meet with my crew at Kane’s every Saturday night.”
He attempted to keep it casual, but I felt the severity woven in the words.
“You’re going to leave like this to have drinks with your friends?” That challenge only deepened as I dropped my attention to his cock that still strained against his jeans, the button popped but the zipper still closed.
“That interruption was probably for the best, don’t you think?”
Probably.
Okay, definitely with the way I was feeling right then.
But sometimes what was for the best didn’t come close to what we wanted most.
And I realized it then.
That’s what Theo had become.
What I wanted most.
When I didn’t answer him, he let go of a weighty exhale. “Not leaving you for drinks, Piper. We have…business.”
It was only the fragment of an explanation.
“What kind of business?” I felt desperate to know.
I watched his expression morph and rage.
A clash of ghosts and demons.
“Penance.”
I blinked, caught off guard by his answer. “Penance?”
His hand came to my cheek, and he brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “Warned you that I’m not a good man.”
“You aren’t or you weren’t?” It came out an appeal.
Begging him to be the man he’d shown me that he was.
Generous. Kind. Caring.
And we all made mistakes. We all did things we would do anything to take back.
“I’m not even close to being a good man,” he rumbled.
He hesitated, looking away for a beat, as if he were contemplating how far he could let me in. Finally, he returned his gaze to me. Black diamonds striking in the night. “Used to be a part of a brutal MC. We were bad, Piper. In the worst way.”
Surprised by his admission, I reared back a fraction, though my fingers were still burrowed into his shoulders.
I shouldn’t be shocked, should I? When I saw his motorcycles in his garage, I immediately knew they represented something far seedier than a simple love of riding.
“How bad?”
“I’ve done things that I couldn’t even begin to admit to you.”
Dangerous.
I knew.
So how had I never felt so safe?
“But it’s in the past?” I urged it. Begging him to confirm it was true.
“The affiliation with the MC? Yeah. But my sins continue.”
His expression tweaked. “Seems my worst ones are touching you like this. Having you this way. Wanting you as desperately as I do.”
I watched his features twist in agony when he admitted it.
Slammed by a rogue wave of guilt and grief.
My brow pinched, and my fingers sank deeper into his shoulders.
Holding on.
This time to keep him from floating away from me.
“What does that mean?” I whispered into the muted silence of the dim room.
Those black eyes darkened to pitch. An endless night sky that sucked me down into a bottomless abyss.
“It means I want you in a way that breaks the most important oath I’ve ever made.”
My spirit clutched with the misery that poured out of him.
“What oath?” I was a fool for asking it.
Begging for the pain.
Wanting him to give me access into who he was and the phantoms that howled underneath.
Theo warred, and the fingers of his left hand burrowed deeper into my waist, like he was trying to hold on. “I hurt the ones I’m supposed to love most, Piper. I’m…”
His jaw clenched, and I could hear his teeth grind through the pain. “I ruin everything because I’m not capable of truly loving that way. Not capable of truly giving myself that way.”
He uttered it like a confession.
Every line on his face contorted in agony as he traced his thumb over the apple of my cheek.