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  Hayden lay curled on her side, a pillow hugged to her chest, just weeping her heart out. Again I was struck by that odd twisting feeling in my chest and the desire to stop her pain mixed with that stirring in my pants, the extreme lust that I just about always had for her unfurling at my center. It wasn’t fair. She was just so fucking beautiful when she cried.

  I toed out of my adidas and took off my jacket and cut, hanging them on the back of the desk chair and got onto the bed behind her. She startled, giving a little shriek when the bed dipped and oh God that flipped my switch. I took her wrists gently in my hands and turned her onto her back. She calmed some when she saw me and I asked her.

  “Do you trust me Hayden?” and I could see the relief wash over her, the relief and something else entirely. She sagged and let me pin her wrists to the mattress.

  “Yes,” she said and I settled between her thighs. She wore the satin I bought her in Florida, the purple just darker against the already dark coverlet. The two narrow windows to either side of the bed not letting in much light. I ran the tip of my nose along her tear slicked cheek and licked the salt from her skin. She sucked in a startled gasp.

  “Why you cryin’ Doll?” I asked her in a low murmur.

  “Just giving into the despair I guess,” she whispered brokenly.

  “See I don’t like that Baby,” I said, “I mean I love to see you cry but not over that douchebag or anything that his douchebaggy little friends did. No, if you’re gonna cry I want it to be because I make you cry,” I told her. I kissed her gently and she made a little startled noise of surprise.

  “You’re so fucking pretty when you cry, and it’s been a really shitty day,” I pressed my forehead to hers and I sighed out, drinking in her sorrow and her light edge of fear.

  “What do you need?” she asked me and I felt terrible that I was making this about me when it so clearly needed to be about her but I couldn’t help myself.

  “I need to fuck you,” I whispered next to her ear, then switched sides and whispered into her other ear, “What do you need?”

  “I… I think I need that too,” she said with a trembling sigh. I let go of her wrists and placed my palms flat to either side of her head.

  “Undo my pants,” I ordered coldly and she immediately moved to comply, her fingers deft in the dark. I sprang free of my jeans immediately.

  “Can I touch you?” she asked.

  “Baby,” I growled, “You never have to ask me that.” Her hands cupped my face gently and her light green eyes, made colorless by the diffuse light searched my face.

  “What are you waiting for Reaver? I thought you needed to fuck me,” she murmured and I felt a cold, nasty smile curve my lips. She needed to be fucked as much as I needed to fuck her, well alright!

  I let myself collapse onto her, my lips grinding harshly over hers. She wasn’t wearing panties under the nightgown and while she was growing aroused she wasn’t quite wet or ready for me. I didn’t care. I needed to be inside of her with such a savage intensity I fit myself into her anyways and thrust hard and deep. She cried out in pain and I swallowed it, striking up a rhythm that wasn’t exactly punishing but wasn’t easy for her either. Her hands wound into my hair and her legs around my hips. She used her whole fucking body to pull me into her and I was lost.

  Lost in her kiss, lost in her eyes, lost in her ragged breathing and drowning in her delicate smell. She’d found whatever it was that she used, soap, perfume, or whatever and so she smelled like she always did, fresh and clean like a salty sweet ocean breeze overlaid by a delicate tropical flower smell and I couldn’t get enough of her. She ripped my shirt over my head and I let her. Her small hands smoothing up and down my ribs, my back and my chest, just touching me wherever she could reach.

  Her body had caught up with the program and she was sliding slick and hot and wet around my cock. Her body opening up a little more but still so damned tight, gripping me with surety and a need to have me there. I palmed the outside of one of her thighs and hauled her leg up higher on my body, changing the angle making my thrusts go deeper. She cried out her pleasure in the change in tactic and broke our kiss to do it. I nipped her lower lip and she pressed her forehead to my shoulder.

  “Harder!” she cried and I was honestly thinking the same thing. I pounded the shit out of that pussy! Drawing back as far as I could without leaving her body all together before letting my body weight drive me back in to the hilt. I could feel her tightening up around me and I knew she was close. So was I, which saddened me a little, I mean this was going to be way faster than I wanted it to be but that was okay. I had a pretty quick recovery and the next time I would savor it, drive her nuts, make her cry her beautiful tears for me for a whole different reason, a much better reason.

  Her breathing became more ragged, took on that desperate frenzied cadence that told me she was about to sail over the edge and I wanted it, I wanted it so fucking bad! I needed her to feel good, I needed to feel good, my God she made it so fucking hard to think she felt so damned amazing. I bowed my head over her and thrust once, twice and she came apart beneath me, I was dimly aware of her nails biting into my ass as I drove into her violently one last time. Her body convulsed underneath me, squeezing down around me so sweetly it took everything I had to ride her orgasm out without coming myself. Her body went lax beneath mine and I thrust a few more times, drawing out her aftershocks before I pulled out to come myself. Hayden lay gasping beneath me and laughed a little into the dark.

  “You know that method doesn’t work right?” she asked, and I smiled that all trace of sadness had been whisked away.

  “I know just something incredibly hot about watching myself spill up over a woman’s hip. Doing it up over yours is just out of this fucking world.”

  I lay beside her and she stayed on her back, trying to keep from staining the comforter if I had to hazard a guess. I whisked my tee shirt off the bed beside us and cleaned her up. I could borrow one of Trig’s, it wasn’t a big fucking deal.

  “Let’s get the rest of this crap off,” I suggested and tugged on her nightgown. She slipped it up off over her head and I sucked in a breath as her silky skin was revealed. She positively glowed in the night and I couldn’t move for a second while I drank the image in. I shoved my pants and socks off and kicked them off the bed, pulling her against my body.

  “What had you so upset Baby?” I asked.

  “I don’t know… I guess it was the fact that I didn’t ask for this, any of this to happen. I did everything right, I forgave him, I loved him no matter what and still, someone felt the need to write something so horrible on my wall your boss or whoever felt the need to cover it up and wouldn’t tell me what it said. It just all came crashing down, became real, you know? Whatever wall was holding everything back just crumbled and I sort of lost it,” she sounded a little miserable, embarrassed may be the better word.

  “Hey,” I said and tipped her chin with my finger, forcing her to look at me, “None of this is your fault, none of this should be happening and I’m amazed at how well you’ve weathered the storm, not only from what these ass clowns have been putting you through but me too.” She searched my face and pushed herself up into a sitting position. I raised an eyebrow and she made an exasperated noise and threw a leg over my hips, straddling me.

  “What is your middle name?” she asked me, and I laughed and told her the truth.

  “Kinnicutt,” she opened her mouth and then frowned, closing it.

  “Wait, seriously?” she asked.

  “Just like the character,” I affirmed. She wrinkled her cute little nose at me.

  “Well that ruins it,” she complained then shrugged and slapped my bare chest.

  “Oh ow!” I said and putting up my arms and rising off the bed, I was laughing though.

  “Rhett Kinnicutt Butler!” she exclaimed anyways, “Don’t you fucking get it?” she demanded, hands on her hips, the image of an irate housewife, except, you know, nude and perfect and fuck! Even ma
d she was getting my dick hard.

  “Get what?” I asked genuinely confused.

  “Being here, like this, in your arms, just in your presence is the only time I feel like myself any more. Like its okay to be me; the ‘me’ I used to be. I don’t know what you do to me half the time. You turn me upside down, inside out and confuse the hell out of me but so far I like it. You feel good,” and she slipped me inside of her as if to prove her point. She bent at the waist still riding me and put her lips against mine.

  “I have a hard time saying it, but I believe you. That you…” she faltered.

  “That I love you?” I supplied for her, letting my arms go around her, cradling her against my chest.

  “Yes,” she said and bowed her head, resting it against my shoulder as I lazily thrust myself up inside her with some long slow strokes.

  “I’m glad you believe me Baby,” I murmured and turned my head to kiss her ear. She drew in a shuddering breath and pushed herself off my chest, I groaned as it seated me deep inside her and was a little frustrated it stopped me from moving.

  “Stop, I’m trying to tell you something important,” she said and her tone made me go stock still. Whatever it was, it was important, at least to her, and if it was important to her then it meant the world to me so I listened with rapt attention.

  “Go ahead Babe,” I said when she didn’t immediately speak.

  “I figured something out, after Andy, in Florida, with you,” she said quietly.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That there’s something even more important than love, that if you can’t trust someone, you can’t love them completely,” she said and I watched her, my face carefully neutral. I nodded carefully and I thought I knew what she was about, but then she leaned forward again, oh so carefully.

  “What I had with Andy wasn’t love, at least not completely because I couldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,” she said, a little sadness in her voice. “What I’m trying to say is I trust you Reaver,” and she kissed me, long and slow, our tongues mingling and dumb ox that I am, I got it. She’d said the words ‘I love you’ to that sod countless times and when he’d said them back they were nothing but hollow empty lies.

  Hayden was telling me in her own way that she not only loved me, she trusted me and her choice of words was something stronger, truer than anything she had ever felt before. If I were head over heels in love with the woman before I was ass over teakettle drowning in my love for her now. I crushed her to me and flipped us so I was riding between her lovely legs. I thrust into her slowly, drawing out our mutual pleasure.

  “God I love you Hayden.”

  “I trust you, with my life and with my heart,” she whispered back and it was the sweetest, truest most amazing thing any woman had ever said to me in the history of, well, fucking ever!

  I made love to her until we both saw stars, then after a short rest I did it again for good measure. Partly because I didn’t know when I would get to see her again and partly because I just needed to.

  She slept soundly against me and with great reluctance I had to let her go. I tucked her safe and sound into the blankets and kissed her softly. She didn’t so much as stir while I got dressed and slipped out. I went into Trigger and Ashton’s room where they were busy doing it and asked Trig for a shirt.

  “Help yourself!” he said with a grin and made Ashton cry out with his thumb on her clit. I laughed under my breath and shook my head ruefully. It wasn’t a regular occurrence walking in on them having random sex but the few times it did happen, they didn’t bother stopping on account of me, or anyone else if it was their own house or the club, if anything it added to it for them. I pulled a shirt from the drawer and shut the door behind me. I heard Trig’s deep voice, muffled and indistinct through the door and heard Ashton’s high musical laugh in response. I found myself chuckling the whole way down the stairs.

  Chapter 18

  Hayden…

  I woke alone the next morning, Reaver’s scent lingering on my skin. I smiled to myself and stretched luxuriously before starting my day. I met with six clients and was basically fired by three on the grounds that they wanted to ‘distance’ themselves from the scandal my wedding had caused. I wasn’t exactly devastated, more pissed off, and I hurriedly made notes to black list them. I would rather die than work for one of them in the future. I wish I could say that there were three or four more right there to take their place but, unfortunately, this was the really real world and shit just didn’t work that way.

  My day went from bad to worse when I met with John Gibson and the electrician that he contracted with. The repairs to my townhome were going to be far more costly than I had imagined and I may make my own money, I may be really good at what I did, but not to the extent the repairs to my home were going to be. I was forced to call my dad and I hated calling my dad for money. It felt like I couldn’t handle myself and I really, really loathed that.

  “Pumpkin?” he answered the phone.

  “Hey daddy,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked and I told him. He laughed.

  “Oh Baby, you get what you want. You remember what I used to tell you when you were little?” he asked.

  “Out of everything negative there’s at least one positive…” I recited.

  “That’s right,” he said, “What would one be out of this one?” he asked and even though he was talking to me like I was eight again I humored him.

  “I can redo this place however I want, the lay out will be the same but everything else can be different, new, my own and not ‘ours’ anymore. A fresh start,” I said when really all I could think about was Reaver, and his hands on my body, the feel of him as he moved inside of me. Reaver was the real positive out of all of this.

  “Oh Hayden,” my father said, “I am so proud of you.” I hugged myself and smiled. That meant a lot to me, it really did.

  “I love you too daddy,” I said and meant it. I trusted him too but that would just be awkward to say. We chatted for a little bit, discussed what needed to happen for the lawyers and some other matters pertaining to my home that was simply just ruined around me. The contractors waited patiently outside while I made my call and when I stepped out into the summer sun I felt marginally better about things. Especially after talking about the lawyers. When you grew up in an affluent home, it really was just money but I hated being that way. More now, than I ever had before, since spending so much time with the hard working men and women of the Sacred Hearts MC.

  Still, talking about the lawyers and documenting the damage, and receipts and figuring out how much everything I had owned and lost had been worth etc. made me realize I wasn’t really spending my daddy’s money, more like just borrowing it until we sued the pants off the bastard who’d done this. I was suddenly ever so grateful I had the insurance company appraise and document all of the antiques. I had a record of just about everything that had been lost and that was a very good thing. It was integral to getting my revenge in the long run.

  “Ms. Michaels,” John greeted me as I approached them.

  “When can you start?” I asked.

  “Tonight I reckon,” John said.

  “Can you please start with the master bedroom and master bath?” I asked, “I can’t live with my best friend for the duration of the repairs. I love them dearly but I don’t want to impose,” the men exchanged looks.

  “You want to live here while the repairs are being done?” the electrician asked.

  “You won’t even know I’m here,” I said calmly.

  That had been a week and a half ago. I had new everything picked out and the men had it all installed and the room painted to my specifications. Ashton and I went furniture and linen shopping and my bedroom and master bathroom were livable again. What wasn’t livable was that I had to spend all of it away from Reaver except for stolen phone calls late at night and the occasional day time text. He worked, but it was late at night when Shelly could watch Connor.
When I came home the first night that my room was livable I had caught the faint whiff of his cologne in my entry way and had quickly gone through the house greeting the men who worked hoping against hope that he was there, but he wasn’t.

  So imagine my surprise when I dragged myself through my front door, my feet absolutely aching in my heels, and saw him, his back to me as he smeared mud on a seam in the drywall in the living room. He had headphones in his ears and I simply stood there and watched him for long moments, my pulse quickening, my blood zinging through my veins. I set down my laptop case and slipped off the shoes which were hurting me so badly and I straightened, half afraid he were a figment of my imagination.

  I wanted to go to him but I didn’t want to startle him. Something told me that would be bad. I shifted from foot to foot and watched his long fingered hands smooth over the wall with the metal bladelike tool and it made me smile.

  “Yo! Reaver!” someone called from behind me and I jumped, smoothing my gray pencil skirt. I turned and cool blue eyes the hue of a winter’s sky were locked on me. His face was somber, unsmiling and my heart dropped. He set the trough of mud and blade aside on a temporary table made of plywood over two saw horse and I looked him over concerned.

  “Hey,” he said and pulled the headphones out of his ears. Why was this so awkward all of a sudden?

  “Hi,” I echoed back.

  “Reaver!?” Someone called from my kitchen.

  “In a minute Buck!” Reaver called out harshly.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked softly.

  “Had to take Connor back to his mom’s,” he muttered and I felt my shoulders drop, I went to him and wrapped my arms around him. His curved around my shoulders and he held me tight to his body.

  “Stay with me tonight,” I whispered and felt rather than saw him nod.

  “I got three more hours. I’ll come up when I’m done,” he murmured against my hair.