Unattainable (19 page)

“
FINE!” he roared, and
then his weight was gone and he was on his feet.

The second he was off me, I rolled to
my left and jumped to my feet. Snatching up my clothing, I quickly
began to dress.

“
Tegen.”

I didn’t turn around.
“What?”

“
Don’t do this,” he said
quietly. “Don’t keep leavin’ like this. I can’t fuckin’ stand
it.”

My heart began to pound.

“
Why do you care?” I
whispered. “You don’t even know me anymore.”

When he didn’t respond, my heart nearly
seized. I hadn’t realized until the actual words had come from my
mouth, how badly I wished they weren’t true.

“
I know you,” he said.
“Did you think I forgot all those damn tea parties? Or you forcing
me to listen to all your stories, all those crazy ideas you told me
you were goin’ to turn into books someday?”

My heartbeat took a hard right into
overdrive. He remembered my stories?

“
But now,” he continued.
“Every time you come home, you treat me like shit on your fuckin’
shoe and, babe, I can’t fuckin’ stand it. Now, this shit with us
happens, and even though you and my dad love callin’ me stupid, I
ain’t fuckin stupid. I know when a bitch is gettin’ her rocks off
and you were doin’ triple that.”

I spun on him. “No one ever said you
were stupid when it came to sex, Cage! You excel at sex! Every
female on the planet knows that!”

“
Teacup,” he said slowly,
staring straight into my eyes. “You gotta know how straight-up
jealous you sound.”

It was a double whammy straight to my
heart. In one short sentence, he’d shattered my carefully
constructed glass house. Oooh, I hated him, or rather, I wanted to
hate him. Standing there naked, his long blond hair a mess, his
perfectly sculpted features serious, knowing how beautiful he was
without one iota of self-consciousness, I wanted to despise
him…only I couldn’t.

“
I get it, babe, I do,” he
continued. “You were just a kid and I did you wrong, but you’re
forgettin’ I was a kid too. I was a brand new brother, only a year
patched in, and I had bitches throwin’ themselves at me left and
fuckin’ right, and, Tegen, you know I was drunk more often than
not.”

He sighed. “It’s no excuse either, it’s
just the God’s honest truth, but that didn’t mean I didn’t give a
fuck about you. Or what went down between us. I gave a fuck, babe,
I just didn’t know what the fuck to do about it.”

Cage paused and bent down to grab his
leathers. After slipping them on, he began digging through his
pockets. Pulling out a pack of smokes and his lighter, he shook two
out, lit them both and held one out for me. I hesitated at first,
but in the end realized I wasn’t going anywhere unless either Cage
felt like letting me leave or I felt like walking through the
Montana wilderness for hours. So I took the damn cigarette and when
I did, Cage grinned.

His dimples popped out and it was a
trillion times worse.

So. Not. Fair.

“
You were never a club
slut, Tegen,” he said. “Not once did I ever fuckin’ think that. To
me, you were always D’s little girl. You were family and, Teacup,
you were my best friend.”

My breath shuddered from my lungs. I
was done for. There was no way I was walking away from this weekend
intact.

Blindly, I reached out behind me,
seeking one of the chairs I knew was back there at his table. At
any second I was going to collapse.

Cage had just ruined me for the third
time in my life. In the span of a day, he’d ruined me.
Again.

The first time had been the day I met
him; the second time was the morning after he’d taken my virginity
and told me he didn’t love me; and right here, right now, was the
third time.

• • •

Cage was getting to her; he could see
it on her face. It was the single most vulnerable expression he’d
seen on Tegen’s face in the past ten years. And he liked it. She
looked softer, more feminine. She looked like his
Teacup.

So he kept going. He fired one memory
after another her way until he was no longer remembering for her,
but for him, or rather he was realizing something that had never
really made much sense to him in the past.

Then it wasn’t just Tegen’s feelings
for him coinciding with all her bad behavior over the years making
sense, but it was his reactions to her as well. Why he’d felt so
damn miserable every time she’d come home and treat him like
garbage.

“
Cage!” Tegen shrieked,
hot on his heels. “Give it back!”

Laughing, he kept running
through the clubhouse, Tegen’s purple backpack held high over his
head. He made a quick left out of the main room and hooked an
immediate right through the double swinging doors into the kitchen.
The four occupants of the kitchen all turned to stare at
him.

“
Asshole!” Tegen screamed
from behind him. “Give it back!”

“
Language!” Dorothy
chastised.

Still holding her backpack
over his head, Cage grinned down at her. “Aw, Teacup, what’s the
matter?”

“
Don’t call me that!” she
yelled, jumping up and down, trying to reach her bag. “I’m not a
little kid anymore!”

“
No?” He laughed. “You
finally grow outta that trainin’ bra?”

“
Cage!” Dorothy snapped.
“Inappropriate!”

Tegen’s pale, freckled face
turned bright red with rage, an expression Cage knew well. She was
ten seconds from slugging him in the balls so he faked left and
then went right, darting around Tegen, and headed right back into
the hallway.

From back inside the
kitchen, he heard Tegen scream. Grinning, he kept
running.

“
You’ll never catch me,
Teacup!” he yelled over his shoulder.

And yeah, he’d been wanting to fuck her
for a handful of years now. But still, he missed his
friend.

Cage’s thoughts swam. He vehemently
didn’t want her to leave with a chip on her shoulder this time. He
wanted her to spend the weekend with him and he damn sure wanted
back inside of her.

“
This is infinitely
unfair,” Tegen whispered, trailing off as she stared up at him with
those seriously sexy eyes of hers. Glancing down, she stubbed her
cigarette out on the table ashtray and gestured with her hand for
another.

He tossed her the pack and watched as
she placed a fresh cigarette between her trembling lips and, with
shaking hands, lit it up.

“
What’s unfair?” he
asked.

Snorting, she shook her head. “You,”
she said. “You are un-fucking-fair.”

Cage watched her take another drag off
her smoke, ash it, take another drag.

Crossing the kitchen, he took the seat
opposite her, reached across the table, and slid the cigarette out
from between her fingers. Tegen watched him bring it up to his
mouth and take a drag. Handing it back, he smiled at
her.

“
Spend the weekend with
me,” he said quietly. “You say I don’t know you anymore, then spend
the fuckin’ weekend with me, Teacup, and show me who the fuck you
are now.”

Staring at him, she shook her head.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why does it even matter to you?”

“
I don’t know,” he
answered truthfully. “It just does.”

“
I can’t just leave my mom
all alone,” she said, but judging by the look on her face she’d
already made her decision.

“
Then let’s go pick her
up,” he suggested. “And we’ll go out for lunch.”

Tegen’s mouth dropped open. “What? Like
on a fucking date or something?”

Uh. Cage thought about that for a split
second. Was this like a date? He wouldn’t know; he’d never been on
a date. He wasn’t sure whether showing up for someone’s lunch break
to get a blow job counted or not.

Whatever.

He shrugged. “Sure. Why the fuck
not?”

Dirty stared at his reflection in the
mirror. Stared and stared and stared. He didn’t even recognize
himself. Without his full beard or his hair, he looked…

Well, he didn’t look anything like he’d
thought he’d look. He’d expected to see the teenage boy he’d been.
The face his foster mother had loved, the face she’d made sure to
never harm even when his body had been fair game. The face she’d
called beautiful. Angelic.

That face was gone. He blew out a
breath of relief.

Time hadn’t been kind to him. He may
have taken a good ten years off his looks by shaving his head and
his face, but it did nothing to hide the lines around his eyes and
mouth or the tired look in his eyes.

He wasn’t ugly. But he was no longer
beautiful. In fact, he liked what he saw. He was just…him. A
man.

Hearing his cell phone ringing in the
other room, Dirty hurriedly slipped into his leathers and exited
the bathroom. He snatched the phone off his bed.

“
Wat up, Prez?”

“
We got a
problem.”

So? They always had a
problem.

“
What?”

“
One of the grunts heard
over the police scanner that Ellie’s been reported as missin’. Had
one of our contacts look into it and it turns out motherfuckin’
Mooresville wrote up a report sayin’ he’d seen Ellie at Hank’s
place, and next thing he knew he found her fuckin’ purse in the
alleyway by the bar. Then the fuckin’ asshole took it one step
further, went to her parents’ place, told ’em she’d come back home,
told ’em about her job interview, told ’em everything.”

Dirty’s jaw locked. “What’s his game?
Why the fuck would he want her found after what
happened?”

“
Fuck if I know,” Deuce
said. “Only thing I could think of is he knows we got her. And he
wants to use her as leverage or some shit tryin’ to milk us dry.
Either that or he’s gonna come for her, take her out, and try to
pin it on us.”

Fuck, he hated that fucker.

“
What’s the
plan?”

“
You’re not gonna stand a
chance if Mooresville decides to storm your place with his boys,”
Deuce growled. “So cover her the fuck up, put her on the back of
your bike, and get her fat ass to the club. We’re goin’ on
lockdown. This motherfucker thinks he can fuck with my club, he’s
about to get a heavy fuckin’ dose of motherfuckin’
reality.”

Deuce hung up.

Dirty frowned at his phone. Ellie’s ass
wasn’t that fat. But he was less concerned with how Deuce felt
about Ellie’s ass than he was about Ellie being on the back of his
bike. Behind him. Where he couldn’t see her.

Worse. She’d be touching him. Not just
touching him, her whole damn body would be pressed up against him.
He’d never let anyone ride bitch before. He couldn’t stand it, the
thought of not being able to control what was happening behind him;
the thought of someone being able to restrain him, push him down,
and do whatever they wanted to do to him.

“
Dirty?”

Startled, he spun around and found
Ellie standing in his bedroom doorway. Her eyes grew wide, giving
her a bug-eyed appearance, and her lips parted.

“
Dirty?” she repeated,
sounding shocked.

He said nothing, just watched her take
him in, his shaved head, his facial hair gone. He’d actually gone
so far as to put on a clean white T-shirt. He’d figured if he were
going to be clean, he might as well take that last step. His
leathers, however, were still filthy and he had no immediate plans
to rectify that.

“
Oh my God,” Ellie
breathed. “You look…you look…” She trailed off, shaking her
head.

Dirty didn’t like the way she was
looking at him. At all.

“
Your parents know,” he
said tersely. “Moorseville’s lookin’ for you.” That seemed to snap
her out of her stupor.

“
Got no choice,” he
continued. “You gotta go to the club. We’re goin’ on
lockdown.”

“
My mother,” she
whispered. “She’s really sick; she needs to know I’m all
right.”

Dirty held out his cell phone. “Call
her,” he said. “Explain what happened, but you gotta make sure they
ain’t gonna say shit to the cops. Shit’s about to go down between
the Horsemen and the law, and you’re bein’ put in the
middle.”

Ellie stared at him, probably trying to
figure out what he meant by “shit’s about to go down,” but he
wasn’t going to elaborate. She may be in the middle of this fucking
mess, but that didn’t mean she had the right to know what the mess
was.

Ellie took the phone from him and while
she called her parents, he began rummaging through his closet
looking for something for her to wear. When she was off the phone
and wiping tears off her bruised cheeks, he handed her a pair of
leathers, a belt, a white tee, and his old leather
jacket.

“
Put my helmet on before
we leave the apartment,” he told her as he pointed to it, and left
her to get ready.

A few minutes later Ellie emerged from
his bedroom. The T-shirt was tight around her breasts and the
leathers were formfitting.