CUT (New Adult Dark Romance) (8 page)

Jude moved forward into the room again disregarding the men inside. His fist came up, swinging down into my side and crushing my bruised ribs. Acre stepped forward from the side to come to my aid. I screamed out as Jude’s hand wrapped round my wrist.

“Back the fuck off, I’m leaving with my woman.”

Jude’s head swiveled, realizing someone very important was missing from the group of bikers. He looked left in time to lock eyes with Marcus Black’s fist as he crashed into him. His arm swung round too late to block it as Black followed through in a series of devastating blows. Jude fell backward, his hand releasing me as Black’s boot connected hard with his knee, causing him to crash to the floor. My stomach turned as I fell away, but Acre’s rough hands caught me in midair.

“Don’t look,” Acre said as I fell into him. I stared at the door, at Jude.

“Get out of this fucking building. Get out of this fucking city. Think you need to hit women to feel like a big man? I want you to fucking crawl out of here. If I ever see your face again I’ll blow it the fuck off and send you straight to hell.”

Jude started crawling, Black’s foot crashing down into his side. Something about his movements said more than any words could. He was hurt, but more than that, he was angry. Jude was murderously angry.

“Leave your shit. Leave your car. That’s mine now,” Marcus shouted after him, adding insult to injury. He stared out as Jude stopped in the middle of the floor. There was a moment of silence, his body shaking, but he didn’t say a word. He kept right on walking.

“Meeting’s over. I need to make a few calls. Get your asses out on the streets, if the Kings want to come visit I want to know before they’re knocking on the door.”

Marcus walked toward the back of the meeting room, pulling a key out and opening a door that led off into a separate interior space. Acre let me go, my knees shaking as I stood in front of the men.

“You’d better go after him,” Acre said, his face stern.

“I already told you, I’m not going with Jude.”

“I’m not talking about Jude.”

I looked up, the door Marcus walked through was still cracked open.

“I don’t understand…”

“Oh yes you do. I’d be in there before someone else claims you. That asshole’s gonna hunt you down if you leave here, and if you want our protection, you know how to get it. You’d look fucking good on my cock you little kitty kat, but I’m not the one you need to be winning over.”

“But…”

“No buts. Your man isn’t a Rampant anymore. Only two kinds of ladies are allowed in this clubhouse, and you don’t look like a whore.”

The rest of the men were staring, as if a gang of jackals had started circling their prey. I stepped through them, heading for the door… Hoots and hollers followed me, a band of brothers trying to cope with grief and loss in the only way they could.

“Tonight, we drink for Marlo,” Acre shouted behind me. I trembled inside and out. The men left me alone in the room, and I stood there almost twenty minutes before finally reaching for the door.

☼
   
 ☼
   
 ☼
   
 ☼
   
 ☼
   
 
☼

“I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

The door clicked shut behind me, and Black rose from his leather chair, walking across the room and drawing the deadbolt and chains to secure the door. I could feel the warmth of his body as he stepped back around me, his eyes inspecting me like a prized possession. I watched as he finished wiping away the blood from his face with a wet cloth, dropping it in a small sink.

“Thank you, Marcus…”

“For what sweetheart?”

“For stopping him…”

Black stared at me, breathing heavily, his body still rippling beneath his clothing.

“Come here,” Black said, his eyes deep pools of icy blue.

I didn’t answer, and Black didn’t seem interested in waiting. He reached out, grabbing my wrist much like Jude had. The difference was, Marcus’s hand was gentler. Insistent, firm, but not aiming to inflict pain. It was a strange feeling, and I found myself whimpering as my body grew hot beneath his touch.

“No,” I whispered, trying to draw my hand away. Black leaned in, sweeping me up by my waist and pulling my body into his. He carried me across the room toward the darkened areas near the corner. My heart raced. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. Jude was gone, Black was here, my body was confused with emotions both excited and terrified. Before I knew it, his hand had swept upward brushing against the painful lines I’d drawn on my arm, the skin still healing.

“I knew it the minute I first saw you…”

His voice was soft on my ear, breath warm against my cheek.

“I don’t understand,” I replied, trying to hide my pain as he squeezed my arm.

“You’re like me… You’re damaged.”

The words slapped me upside the face almost as hard as a hand would have. Without warning, he pulled his jacket off, tearing his undershirt free and exposing his body. I found myself staring, but it wasn’t his impressive physique that had me captivated.

It was the lines. Old scars, thin and tanned. They ran down his arm, remnants of old memories. Almost faded enough to forget, but still with him. How long had it been since he put a knife to his skin? A year? Two?

“You don’t deserve what’s happening to you. You can beat this.”

Somehow, I took strength in his words. I’d always been damaged. Looking for the next thrill, seeking out the next dangerous moment. I lived my life in the fear and the excitement that being damaged brought me…

“I’m not what you think I am,” I whispered, hesitant. Black stayed close, breathing deeply.

“You’re hurt,” I said, looking at the gash on his forehead. It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought, and it had already stopped bleeding, but it was definitely going to add another scar to his face. Another line to join all the others, only this one wasn’t self inflicted... My fingertip reached up, touching a few of the lines that traveled across his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Black replied, moving in closer. His lips pressed against the skin of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.

“You’re the least perfect creature I’ve ever seen, and I want you more than fucking life.”

“We can’t do this…” I said, my voice shaking.

“I know you want to.”

“It’s too soon.”

I pulled away from his grasp, my heart racing even as wicked desire filled my mind. I didn’t want Black to wait… I wanted him to take me. I wanted him to fuck me right here and take away all the pain. I wanted him to make me forget Jude ever existed, to teach me to forget about the damage I’d inflicted. If only he knew how I really felt. If only he knew how much I’d needed him from the moment I first saw him…

I tried to turn from him and hide my desire, but he used my movement against me, spinning my body and folding me over the side of a tall bed that was hidden away in the corner of the space. I made a soft whimper as he pressed my face against the blankets, the heat of his flesh held against me like a burning torch.

I wanted to buck against him, to push him off, but where I expected the roughness of Jude’s fists, I met only with tender firmness of Marcus’s touch. His hands ran up my sides, holding me, guiding me, but not hurting me. My body quivered as his hand trailed up along the side of my ribcage, reaching beneath me along the silken blouse to cup my bra-free breast.

There are moments where you lose control of your body, where every ounce of you wants something despite all rhyme or reason. Feeling Marcus against me, his heat, his strength… Pleasure radiated out from my core.

“You saved me,” I whispered, no longer fighting him. “But Jude will come back.”

Black pulled away, leaving me silent against the bed.

“And now I’m just as fucking bad as he is…” Black said, a sound of pain in his voice. “I’m sorry Kat. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

I stared back at him, my eyes pleading in ways my body couldn’t. Black stood silhouetted in the space between light and dark. His body was muscular but roughly hewn, like a masterpiece carved from rock and left unfinished. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, marveled at the way his jaw sat ever so square, gazed at the lines now so evident down each of his arms.

“I’m not like this sweetheart… You’re bringing something out in me I haven’t felt in a long time. I had to fight myself to leave your room that first night you showed up in my fucking club. You’re in my head. You should run away from here. Run away and never come back because I don’t think I can control myself around you. I don’t want you mixed up in this shit.”

There it was, the pain in his eyes I knew so well. I’d seen it in my own, day in, day out.

“What happened to you Marcus?”

Black collapsed backward against a wall, holding himself upright as I moved to sit on the bed.

“My old man happened. Started this little fight club, beat my mother, beat me, started bringing drugs into the warehouse. Man was an asshole. Never even got the chance to step to him, he crashed a car on the westside and the men sent him out like some kind of fucking war hero.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry, that asshole deserved worse.”

“I meant, I’m sorry for you. Is that why you…” I asked, looking at his arm. He seemed to draw away into his own skin.

“No. The reason for that is even worse, sweetheart.”

“Black…”

“Yes?”

“Come here…”

He sat there as my body quivered with need. Every square inch of my skin was crying out for his heat against it. Black stepped away from the wall, tentatively, slowly, as he crossed the room.

“Breathe for me,” I whispered as I reached out and grabbed his hips, pulling him closer. He towered over my petite body, his hulking mass every bit as fearsome as Jude ever was. Without so much as a whisper I stood before him, my fingertips running over his shoulders. The scars were deep. I could feel each of them like rings in a tree trunk. They were a history of pain, a journal of horror. I let y hands slide downward, running them forward across his chest and down his rippling abs. My eyes traced from his chin and followed my fingertips.

Desire, slick and hot, was coursing through my body and propelling my touch. Somehow, I’d lost myself. I wasn’t Kattlyn, I wasn’t the damaged little girl who thought love should hurt… The bad girl inside me was taking over. It knew what I wanted and it knew how to get it.