Retribution: A Motorcycle Club Romance (10 page)

Jase shook his head and stared down
into what was left of his beer. “Dude, I can’t even imagine the pain you’re
feeling about what happened. I get that. But how is this the MC’s fault? You
got your retribution—”

“Did I?” said Will, startled by the
loudness of his own voice. “You know what real retribution would be? Taking
down every single one of the fuckers who had anything to do with that fire, and
then severing ties forever with that piece of shit cartel. Instead, Henry asks
me to smile and shake their hands as they drive through my fucking town every
day.”

“Will…”

“No, shut the fuck up, Jase,” said
Will. “You wanted to know what my problem was, so now you’re going to hear it.”

Surprisingly, Jase remained silent,
but his expression darkened.

Will leaned down close to Jase’s
face. “You didn’t feel the heat of that fire on my skin as it burned everything
I’ve ever loved down,” Will whispered bitterly. “You didn’t feel the emptiness
that was supposed to be relief when I blew away the men who set that fire. And
you didn’t feel the betrayal when the other family in my life asked me to put
down my sword and swallow my pain.”

Will thought he saw Jase’s eyes
growing wet, but the look on his face was pure anger. Somehow, though, it
wasn’t at Will.

“I’ve given the club everything I
had, and in the end it meant nothing.” Will could barely believe the venom in
his own voice. He turned away from Jase and stared at the bottles lining the
bar wall, trying to quiet the adrenaline rushing through his veins.

“It didn’t mean nothing,” said Jase.
“And it’s shitty of you to blame all of this on Henry. We all tried to do what
we thought was best for everyone—for the town.”

“We were all fucking wrong.”

“You voted for diplomacy too, Will,
plenty of times,” said Jase. “You backed Henry’s decision every step of the
way, or do you not remember that?”

Will felt a new darkness erupt from
his gut. He turned to Jase with fire in his eyes. “Are you about to deliver the
most ill-advised
I told you so
in history?”

“What am I, a fucking fortune-teller?
I don’t know what would have worked. I’m only saying it’s bullshit for you to
play this solo martyr act when the club followed the plan you yourself propped
up all along. Blame the club, fine—but you were a part of it too, Will. You
can’t just make us villains in your personal story.”

“Oh, don’t you fucking worry, Jase, I
have plenty of blame for the club and myself,” said Will. “We can all burn
together.”

Jase stood up from his stool in an
angry huff. “You know what? Fuck this. I’m so goddamn tired of trying to pull
you up out of the gutter and getting stabbed for my effort.” He pulled a
handful of crimped dollar bills from his pocket and threw them carelessly on
the bar. “You are on thin ice with Henry. You need to figure out what the fuck
you want to do—man up and do something useful with your pain, or sit here and
drink yourself to death on top of your grandmother’s funeral pyre. It’s your
call.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Will growled.

Jase didn’t say another word to him,
only grumbled underneath his breath and pulled his sunglasses from his cut. He
stalked out of the bar, and Will heard the reckless revving of Jase’s bike as
he pulled onto the highway.

Will stared down at his bruised and
cut hands sitting on the bar, surprised to see them trembling with adrenaline.
He thought he felt a panic rising in his throat.

Taking a long and steadying breath,
he looked up to see Eva, standing and staring at him, half-out from behind the
back room wall. The look on her face told him that his conversation with Jase
wasn’t quite as private as he would have preferred. But exactly how much did
she overhear?

~
TEN ~

Eva sighed heavily and tossed onto her back on the
lumpy mattress. White lace curtains drifted in the cool night breeze, dancing
in the dark.

I don’t even know why I
came to bed
, she thought to herself as she
stared at the ceiling.
I’m not even tired.
The last couple days had been
nothing but an adrenaline rush, something Eva had very little experience with. She
also felt a lustful stirring that was unlike anything she had ever experienced,
either. Together, the two sensations did an outstanding job of keeping her
tossing and turning until she finally gave up and threw her feet over the side
of the bed.

After that tall, dark-haired man in the
biker vest had left the bar earlier in the day, Will had become very distant.
She knew he sent her to the back room to keep her from hearing too much, but
Eva couldn’t help herself and tried to listen anyway. She told herself it was
practical—after all, Will clearly had secrets he wasn’t telling her. They
didn’t know him at all, despite his offer to help them in a dangerous
situation, an act which was suspicious itself. She still felt guilty, though.
Especially when she saw the look on his face at spotting her.

He avoided her the entire rest of the
afternoon.

Eva could barely keep her thoughts
away from him: his gorgeous face, his lean and taut body. He was unlike any man
she had ever met. Even though she knew deep down he was dangerous, more
dangerous even than Rick had been, she also felt a strange intuition that the
sharpened teeth Will bared were not truly his own. The softness in his eyes
when he looked at her betrayed as much, and she felt drawn to it. And she
couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had touched her in the kitchen.

Eva stood up and stretched her back
as she looked out the bedroom window and into the meadow. Trees rustled lightly
in the night air. Across the way, she could see a faint yellow light glowing in
the blocky shadows of the bar. Will offered to take the night shift at the bar—to
“keep watch,” he’d said. She thought about him in there, probably drinking by
himself and staring at the wall, and her heart ached.

Eva grabbed her short bathrobe from
the back of the bedroom door and threw it over her silk nightie before stepping
into her slippers and creeping her way through the dark house. Charlie was snoring
away in the smaller bedroom, but she had no wish to wake him and face his
questions.

Outside, the night brushed the skin
on her legs and face with dewy kisses. The smell on the air was divine and
alive with singing crickets and the faraway rumble of bullfrogs near the river
in the deep forest.

She picked her way slowly through the
forest meadow path, her arms wrapped around her waist.

What are you doing,
girly? You’re going to check on this man your nightie? You skank.
The voice in her head sounded very much like Laura.

“Hush,” she muttered to herself as
she approached the back door of the bar. Will had propped it open with a heavy
round rock, so she moved soundlessly through the doorway. From the barroom she
could hear the aching, lo-fi voice of Muddy Waters playing on the jukebox. A
hazy veil of cigarette smoke floated softly through the air, parting around her
as she passed.

Eva came slowly around the back room
wall. Will sat at the bar, a bottle of whiskey near his right hand, and a
cigarette burning over an ashtray in his left. His head was bent, hanging over
one of her books that he had spread on the counter in front of him.

She watched him silently for a few
minutes. There wasn’t a shred of hardness to him in that moment; just a
painfully handsome man, enjoying a book and a drink like he didn’t have a care
in the world. He seemed lost in it, the way he didn’t even hear her approach.
She understood that feeling well.

Will jolted when he realized she was
there, his eyes widening, but his smooth face barely registered the surprise.
“I...” His words got caught in his mouth as he ran his gaze up and down her
body, lingering at the bare skin on her thighs exposed by the short robe. Eva flushed.
“It’s a good book,” he said instead, his voice cracking just a bit. He closed
the hard cover as if he was self-conscious and took a drink of whiskey.

“I can leave you alone, if you’d
prefer to read,” she said, thumbing toward the back door.

Will shook his head immediately and
took a drag from his smoke. Eva could see his gaze devouring her body, like he
couldn’t help himself. She felt warmth and wetness building between her legs,
wondering what he was thinking about.

“It’s your place,” he said.

Eva nodded and walked behind the bar.
She grabbed a glass and poured herself a double-shot of whiskey. Will watched
her drink it down, interested. “Can’t sleep?”

“Happens sometimes,” she said.
“Especially considering the situation.”

Will took the bottle and poured her
another drink. “It will pass, once this is over.”

Eva drank the second pour a little
slower. Sitting at the bar reminded her of the bits of conversation she’d heard
earlier, when Will was speaking to his friend. She wanted to broach the topic
with him, try and dig at him a little bit. She wanted to understand her
attraction to him. Eva wasn’t typically interested in men who seemed so
violent, who acted so gruff. Especially after Rick. But she couldn’t stop
herself from being drawn to Will. Why? It was driving her crazy.

She thought about playing nice, but
just decided to come right out with it. “You wanna tell me what that was,
earlier?”

“What?” asked Will, his voice low,
half somewhere else.

“That ugly conversation you got into
with your friend,” she said.

Will didn’t answer. He took a long
drag of his cigarette and blew out the smoke. “That was private.”

“You almost had your hands on my ass
this morning,” she shot back. Eva felt surprised by herself.

Will looked up with a glint in his
eye and a smile on his full, soft lips. “Touché.”

A bit of pride radiated out into her
blood. She shrugged. “So, talk,” she said.

“My friend and I are in a bit of a…
rough patch,” he said carefully, pouring himself another whiskey. “He was
coming here to give me a hard time.”

“Sounded like he was worried about
you,” she said.

Will drank the whiskey down in one
gulp without wincing like Eva did when she drank it. “He can worry all he
wants, so long as he does it somewhere far away from me.”

Eva paused a beat, took a sip of her
own whiskey, then said, “What did he mean when he mentioned the pain you’d been
through?”

Will seemed to hold his breath after
she asked the question. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “Earlier, when
we were talking about
Coriolanus
, you said your grandpa read to you
while your grandma baked.” She licked her lips. “My uncle told me the place
that used to be here before was a bakery. It was completely torn down two years
ago. He got the land at a steal.”

With every word she said, she watched
Will’s face get tighter, harder to read. The cigarette burned forgotten in the
ash tray.

“Do you know anything about that?” she
asked.

He seemed like he was wrestling with
his own thoughts for a moment before he responded. His voice was almost too
quiet to hear. “It was her bakery. There was a fire… she died in it.”

Eva felt her heart break. She had had
her suspicions, but to hear them confirmed was both a disappointment and a
relief. “Christ, Will… I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “It was years
ago.” He picked up the cigarette, took a final drag, then tamped it out in the
ash tray.

There was silence as the jukebox
switched between songs in the Muddy Waters catalogue. Eva got the sensation she
had prodded at him more than enough for the moment, so she changed the subject.
“Did you pick this?”

“Either that, or you have some blues-loving
ghosts around here.”

“Always loved this music,” she said
with a dreamy smile. “Something about it always makes me feel safe.”

Will laughed, but it was more from
amusement than anything mean. “You’re an interesting woman, Eva.”

She shrugged, blushing. “Thanks, I
guess.”

“You got to ask me a question. Is it
my turn now?” Will straightened in his stool, fire sparking in his eyes. Eva’s
breathing came in tighter bursts.

“Sure.” She shrugged again and
laughed to hide her nervousness. “Actually, I’m not sure at all, but… I need to
be more adventurous.”

Will quirked an eyebrow at her as he
slipped off his stool. “Oh?”

Eva nodded, surprised at her own
admission. Something about Will made her want to spill all her secrets to him.
She poured herself another whiskey, drinking it down in one quick swallow this time
and immediately regretting it as the burn traveled down her throat. She
was
starting to feel a little fuzzy and warm on the edges, though. “Yes. I’ve been
a little too… vanilla… lately.”

Will slowly moved around the end of
the bar, coming toward her. His gaze ran up and down her body with abandon. He
wasn’t even trying to hide it as he licked his lips, drinking her in. Her knees
felt suddenly weaker than they should.
Must be the whiskey,
she
reasoned, but it wasn’t even a believable lie in her half-drunk state.

“And you want to be a little wild, is
that it?” said Will in a gruff half-whisper, his voice thick with desire. He
stepped toward her until he hovered in front of her face, the warmth of his
body nearly pressed against hers.

Eva took a deep breath, staring into
his eyes. “Maybe.”

“I’ll ask you my question, then, and
we’ll see,” said Will. He moved down until his lips were inches from hers.
“Deal?”

“Deal,” she whispered.

Will wrapped one strong arm around
her waist and pulled her hips into his. The other came around her shoulders.
His lips brushed against her gently as they formed the words: “Do you taste as
good as you look?”

Eva let out a breathless gasp against
his lips that then melted and reformed into a passionate kiss as she hungrily
connected with them. Will answered by crushing her body with his, and she could
feel the hardness of his erect cock pressing through the denim of his pants. Their
kiss deepened, a moan escaping her mouth into his.

Strong, manly hands roamed up and
down her body for the first time in what felt like ages and she didn’t shy away
from them, even as he ripped open her terrycloth bathrobe and shoved it roughly
from her shoulders. As soon as it hit the floor, Will’s pulled away and leaned
back to devour the sight of her tiny silk nighty. The soft fabric was her
favorite shade of tiffany blue, and barely covered the length of her ass.

Holding her head steady, he kissed
her again, this time only starting at her lips. The next one hit her chin
before forging a hot trail down her neck and chest. Each pause against her
heated skin was followed by a suck, lick, or gentle bite. Before Eva knew it,
Will was on his knees in front of her and, hands on her ass, pulling her body
against his face. His rust-colored scruff scratched against the silk before he nuzzled
his way underneath the hem, landing right above her panty covered pussy.

Eva gasped and grabbed Will’s hair in
surprise, but he swung her around in response, maneuvering her until she was
leaning back against the bar. He held her body close to his face, rubbing his
scruff against her panties right before ducking down between her legs to run
his tongue along the outside of the silk. Already she was wet enough to have
soaked through them, and the feel of his tongue even against the fabric on her
pussy lips made her moan. Her fingers grasped and clutched at the long curls on
his head.