Monster (36 page)

He was right.

Wherever we ended up,
top priority was getting some birth control. We were beyond condoms.
Once I felt him inside me raw, I never wanted to go back. I never
wanted there to be anything in between us again. And I wanted to know
what it felt like to have him come inside me. I never experienced
that before. But as he was growling into my ear about wanting to
watch his come drip out of me down my leg... well... yeah... I wanted
that too.

Breaker moved off the
bed to the bathroom, soaping up a washcloth and coming back to clean
me off before he tugged on a pair of sweatpants and handed me one of
his tees and a pair of pants.

“Pants?” I
asked, brows drawing together.

“Doll, as much as
I want to stare at those long legs all the time, no fuckin' way is
Shoot gonna get that same privilege.”

I laughed, shaking my
head as I slipped into my pants. “You know... if we end up
somewhere warm and sunny... I'll be in a bathing suit all the time...
everyone would be looking at my legs.”

Breaker
got into bed beside me, hauling me to his side so my face was on his
chest. “We're going somewhere cold and snowy,” he
decided, but I could hear the humor in his voice. “With you in
lots of layers. Long johns, jeans, snow
pants...”

I laughed, shaking my
head, as he pulled the blankets up over us.

There was a knock at
the door before Shooter's voice called through it. “Everyone
decent? Not that I would mind seeing all your flawless curves, Alex
honey, but Break yeah... don't want to know you that well.”

“Come in,”
I called, lifting my head off of Breaker's chest to see Shoot walk
in, a coffee tray in one hand and a brown bag in the other.

“Coffee and
bagels,” he offered, putting the items down on the nightstand
between our beds as he kicked off his shoes, removed his belt, and
walked over to the bags to rummage for some clothes.

He lifted his shirt
and I got a full view of his body. And it wasn't like Breaker's
endless ridges of chiseled muscle. But it was long and lean with a
altogether way sexy strength evident underneath all of his colorful
tattoos. And I mean... all. He was covered- waistband of his jeans to
the eagle on his neck.

“Any word?”
Breaker asked, snapping me out of my little inspection with a guilty
jerk.

Shooter moved to the
bathroom as he unbuttoned his pants, closing the door briefly, and
coming out in a pair of black basketball shorts slung low on his
hips. “All over the news. Seems they're focusing on some new
player in town idea seeing as so many 'criminal operations' were hit.
Lex's place that survived that last blast was taken out by a fire. No
word on him. Hailstorm has minimal damage,” he said, reaching
for a coffee as he sat at the side of his bed facing us, his eyes
sliding over our intimate position with some curiosity, but mostly a
strange sort of satisfaction. Like he was glad for it. “But
that place is practically fireproof with all the shipping containers
and shit.”

“The Henchmen?”
Breaker asked.

Shoot shrugged. “That
place was locked down tight too. No one was around. Reign, Cash, and
Wolf were all off at some kind of dinner party Summer got a bug up
her ass about.”

“Reign, Cash,
Wolf, and Summer?” I asked, my brows raising. I knew of them
from my research. Reign was the MC president. Cash was his brother
and vice. Wolf was the road captain. And Summer was Reign's 'old
lady' or whatever bikers called their women. It wasn't the names that
I was questioning, it was the intimacy with which Shooter said them.

“Done some jobs
with them in the past, darlin',” he said, shrugging. “Something
like friends to me. Did some checking around to make sure they got
out alright. They're good.”

“Any theories?”

Shooter shook his head.
“I didn't talk to any of them direct. Just overheard one of
their probates talking.”

“What
about the Mallicks?” I found myself asking, thinking of Shane
and his girlfriend Lea. I didn't
know them
know them, but I still hoped they were all alive and well.

“Bar was closed,”
Shoot said, a strange edge to his voice.

“Chaz's is never
closed,” Breaker said, sitting up slightly, me going with him.

Shooter nodded like he
agreed. “I know. But it was.”

“You guys don't
think the Mallicks did this, do you?” I asked, looking between
them.

“Not their
style,” Breaker answered.

“Then what's with
the weird non-verbal conversation you two are having right now?”
I asked, raising my brows at him.

“It just seems
like,” Shooter started, grabbing my attention, “maybe
they were tipped off about the explosions.”

“What? Why?”

“Because Janie is
smart,” Breaker said, grabbing my attention. I sat up fully,
moving off his chest so I could look at him.

“Explain,”
I demanded.

“She had some
kind of plan. Fuck if I know what it is because this shit she pulled?
Not good. You don't fuck with four of the biggest players in town.
That shit is suicidal. Especially fucking with the people who took
you in and trained you,” he said, meaning the people at
Hailstorm, the survivalist camp she lived at and worked in. “She's
stupid as fuck for doing any of this. But she's smart for making sure
there were no casualties anywhere but at Lex's.”

“But why blow up
the other places at all?”

“To create chaos.
Maybe give herself a chance to get away,” Shooter said, drawing
my attention. “Like Break said, Janie is smart. She has some
sort of plan. I'm guessing the extra explosions were to throw
everyone off. No one knows where to point the blame. Which gives her
the chance to get away or clear her name. Who knows. We'll have to
keep an eye from a distance.”

I nodded. “Breaker
says we're going somewhere cold and snowy where I have to wear lots
of layers,” I informed him.

“Like fuck we
are,” Shooter said, giving me a dazzling smile. “I have a
week worth of skirt chasin' to catch up on. I ain't chasing around
some fucking Eskimos. I want easy access. So we're doing warm and
sunny and Breaker is just going to have to fucking live with it.
Right, darlin'?”

I smiled at him, then
turned to Breaker who gave me a look that very much implied he wasn't
too happy with the idea of the two of us teaming up on him. And also,
knowing it was likely to happen a lot in the future.

“Right,”
I agreed, squealing when Breaker reached for me, but he was
smiling.

Epilogue

Breaker

We didn't end up in a
ski resort in Canada.

No.

We ended up on a beach
in Mexico.

And Alex bought the
fuckin' skimpiest bikini she could find.

To prove a point.

Which we fought about.

And I, apparently,
lost.

Because there she was,
sitting her pretty little ass on a huge red and white striped beach
blanket, in the red bikini that showed off almost half her ass and
barely covered her tits.

It wasn't that she
didn't look good.

She looked good.

Way too fuckin' good.

And other men noticed.

And those other men
noticing made me want to gouge their fuckin' eyes out for looking at
what was mine.

It was stupid that I
still felt angry at seeing it. We had been south of the border for
nearly six months. And she had worn the god damn thing every single
day for six months. Beneath the red barely-there swatches of fabric,
I knew her skin was the pale, flawless white it had been before.
Outside of the material though, she had surprised me by tanning to a
shade of flawless copper that gave her, with her dark hair and dark
eyes, an almost exotic look.

I couldn't decide which
look I liked more.

But I was pretty
fuckin' happy with either.

“Six months,
man,” Shoot said, coming up to my side, holding out a bottle of
cold beer to me.

“What?” I
asked, taking a swig.

“Been with her
six months. Day and night. Fightin' like an old fuckin' married
couple about everything then fuckin' like newlyweds. Every day for
six months,” he went on.

“The fuck you
trying to say here?” I asked, looking away from Alex and at
Shooter.

“I'm saying you
love her. She loves you. Can't fucking imagine why you haven't told
her that yet.”

My eyes slanted back to
Alex. Her hair whipped to the side in a breeze, her profile in full
view, smiling off at something further down the beach.

He wasn't wrong.

I did love her.

It took me longer than
it would take a normal person to figure that out. Maybe because I
didn't know much about the emotion. Because the only person who had
showed me what it was died when I was barely old enough to remember.

There was the love I
felt for Shoot and him for me. But it wasn't the same.

But he was right.

I loved her.

And I was pretty sure I
had since the moment she asked me what kind of twisted porn I was
into. And every single moment after that.

Sometimes love didn't
spring up on you in a moment of blinding clarity. Sometimes it crept
up on you on a Tuesday night while you were standing at the sink
doing dishes, the feeling settling into your soul in a way that made
it too heavy to ignore anymore.

That was how it was.

I had been fuckin'
washing dishes on a Tuesday night. And Alex was in the other room
singing her smiling song. But she wasn't doing it in the soft, sweet,
melodic way she usually did. She was doing it loud, out of key, and
obnoxious. Because she was pissed at me and she thought it would be
ironic to sing a song about smiling when what she really wanted to do
was charge back into the kitchen and hit me over the head with a
frying pan because I told her that she was not, under any
circumstances, making contact with Janie/Jstorm again. I didn't give
a fuck how much she kept trying to reach out.

What can I say?

Alex was still
stubborn.

I was still bossy.

And we weren't ever
gonna' fuckin' change.

And I didn't want
either of us to.

Because the only thing
better than Alex being soft and sweet was Alex being loud and angry,
spitting fire at me, then letting me fuck her hard and fast until we
burned through the urge to fight.

We weren't traditional.

We
weren't the couple next door with two-point-five kids, a dog, and a
meet-cute
story they liked to drag out at dinner parties.

We were dark and rough
around the edges.

We fucked as hard as we
fought.

We challenged and
supported one another.

We loved with a love
that was half-possession and half never wanting to tame the wildness
in the other.

Shoot was right.

I couldn't imagine why
I hadn't told her yet either.

–

Alex

I was getting really
freaking sick of the beach.

Sure, it was nice for a
while. Getting a tan. Sipping margaritas. Catching up on some books I
had been meaning to read.

But it was getting
boring.

And
on top of that, I fucking
hated
the red bikini I had bought to spite Breaker.

Six months of slipping
into it every day when I knew all it was going to do was ride up my
ass and chafe my tits all damn day. But, well, it was the principle
of the thing. He didn't like it. He told me not to wear it. I didn't
like it either. But he sure as hell wasn't going to tell me what to
wear. So I wore it. Despite the angry red burns it gave me under my
boobs at night. Despite having to keep discreetly moving the
waistband every few minutes so it would stop giving me a wedgie.