Page 24 of Snake (Road Rebels MC 3)
I could hold my answers for her until she gave me the answers I sought.
I pulled up to my house and unlocked the door. Laiken wasn’t there yet and it gave me time to think. I sat in one of the kitchen chairs as my mind raced, and slowly I started to second-guess myself. Should I come clean to her about everything? Or should I feed her lies to throw the cops off our tracks? Should I give her answers? Or should I continue to push her away? I knew I needed to keep pushing. To keep her away from all this shit. Gemma was already caught up in it, and I didn’t need another woman I loved getting caught up in the storm that was building over all of our heads.
But before I could settle on a decision, I heard a car pull up into the driveway.
I sat with my back straight as Laiken came through the door. She was dressed in her uniform, blue from head-to-toe. She looked phenomenal in it, with her wide hips and her broad shoulders. She made that shit look like a fucking fantasy, and I knew then and there what I had to do.
I had to keep pushing her away. It was the best thing I could do for her.
Even if she did have information on the case, I didn’t want her involved. If I fed her the wrong information and she went back to her captain with it, it would get her in trouble. Possibly thrown off the case altogether. That meant someone in her precinct would be clocking her every move to make sure she stayed off this shit. Between that and pushing her away from my end, she wouldn’t have any connection to any of this bullshit when it blew up in all of our faces.
And it would. It was just a matter of time.
She stood in front of me like she was sizing me up. I continued to sit in my chair as my eyes settled on her belt. She had a taser, a gun, some mase, and handcuffs. There were a few other things I couldn’t identify, but she was fucking packing. My eyes rode down her thighs, taking in their luscious girth as I searched for any hidden weapons on her person.
She had a gun sitting in an ankle holster and a knife in her right pocket.
“Ready?” she asked.
My eyes darted back up to hers as she held out her arms. She was asking me if I was ready to pat her down. She was serious about that? I felt a smirk tug on my cheeks as I rose up, my body looming over hers as our eyes connected. I knelt down in front of her and took the gun from her ankle. I leaned in and kissed it, and I could hear her scoff. I ran my hands up the insides of her thighs, taking in her warmth before she spread them for me.
“Get it over with, Snake,” she said.
My eyes locked hard on hers as my hand drifted over her pussy. She kept her breathing even, and her lips pulled into a thin line, but it was her eyes that betrayed her. That little twitch she got in her left eye every time I brushed against that perfect little spot.
I reached into her pocket and pulled out the knife before I tossed it onto my couch.
I wrapped my arms around her and gazed down her shirt. I could tell she was about to smack me, but I threw her stern gaze. She stopped her movements as I unclasped her belt, then tossed the entirety of it onto my couch.
“Are you wired?” I asked.
“Fuck no,” she said.
“Then you won’t mind if I check.”
I ran my hands up her back, and her eye twitched again. The warmth of her body was running away with me. I moved her body closer to mine and looked down her shirt again, admiring her luscious tits before she bucked into me. My hands slid to her stomach and pressed into her, slowly rising up her torso before I reached her tits. I squeezed them delicately, tenderly, and for a moment Laiken lost herself in the feeling as well.
Before she smacked my hands away.
“I don’t know, I thought I felt something,” I said as I reached for the buttons on her uniform.
“Enough of the games. Is that why they call you ‘Snake’?” she asked.
I took a step back from her and immediately threw up my guard. She was coming for blood when I had come with my armor off. She was ready to fight while I was ready to fall to my knees in front of her. But if a fight is what she was looking for, then a fight was what I was willing to give her.
It would be easier to push her away if I was angry with her anyway.
“Is that the question you want to start with?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But this one is. Why the fuck is your picture posted at the police department under the name ‘Snake’?”
I studied her body fully, and it had been a while since I’d done that. There were moments during the times we dated where I had to read her like I did rival clubs. I took in the flare of her nostrils and the widening of her pupils. I took in the erect nipples that were poking just slightly through her shirt. I saw the way her chest was taking shallow breaths and how her fists were balled at her sides. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, and her knees weren’t quite locked out.
Laiken was readying herself not just for a verbal fight, but a physical one. She was poised just in case I attacked her. Just in case some precinct animal came jumping out at her, and she had to defend herself. It was confusing and new, for her to be this guarded with me.
But mostly, it hurt.
It hurt a place in my soul I hadn’t even thought about since my mother died.
“Do you think I’m going to hurt you?” I asked.
“You don’t get to be cryptic, and you don’t get to ask me questions. For months, I tried to get the truth out of you. For months, I tried to figure out what the fuck was going on. My obsession with you and what you were doing bordered on clinical, and now you’re going to give me the one thing I’ve been asking you for.”
“Answers,” I said.
“You’re damn fucking straight,” she spat.
“I actually think your prior question’s a good one to start with,” I said.
“I’m not playing games with you anymore, Jace,” she said.
“And neither am I. Now, are you ready for your answers or not?”
My entire plan was tossed out the window the moment I watched Laiken relax. Her body uncurled, and her fists unclenched. Her face softened, and her tits receded back into her body. She was no longer on high-alert. She was no longer afraid for her safety. She was simply standing there, vulnerable and hurt and betrayed.
And it was never my intention to make her feel that way.
I knew at that moment; I would tell her everything. No matter the consequence to me. I couldn’t hold my answers from her because that was going to get us nowhere. If I wanted Laiken’s trust and respect, I had to earn it. And if giving her the answers she sought was how I was going to get it, then I needed to come to terms with that.
I wasn’t in control of this situation. And in some ways, I don’t think I ever was. Maybe that was why I loved Laiken so much. Maybe that was why she stayed at the forefront of my dreams.
Because she was the only woman, I’d ever come across who wouldn’t allow me control.
Chapter 22
Laiken
The entire ride over made me more and more pissed. Who the fuck did this man think he was? Was he leading some sort of double life? Did he just lure me into his fucking web of deceit and bullshit when I was younger? I fell in love with this asshole. I wanted to spend my life with this mangy little fucker. Just knowing I’d slept with him and allowed him to have my body made me want to deep fry my vagina just to get my mind off the disgusting shit I’d let him to do me. With my own fucking permission.
I fell in love with him. Hell, I still loved him. But he wasn’t Jace. Or maybe he wasn’t Snake. I didn’t even know which one was him, but I knew one thing for sure. If he lived the life of a criminal, the only fucking thing I could do was put him in jail. In my world, there wasn’t another option. If someone did a crime and I could prove it, then they did their fucking time for it. I believed in the prison system, and I believed in our justice system. I believed in the way things worked. Had I seen it fail? Yes. No institution is perfect. Hell, our fucking education system was fucked beyond belief. But I’d also seen our prison system c
hurn out good men and women who did their time and got their acts cleaned up, and I had faith that it would get better.
With every road I passed, I threw up another wall. It was time for me to tuck away my emotional disposition and go in with a centered head. Logical Laiken needed to take over. Not emotional, needy, clingy-as-hell Laiken. No matter how much he looked like Jace or talked like Jace or smelled like Jace… this man wasn’t fucking Jace.
My fear was… maybe he never was.
Maybe Jace never really existed. Maybe ‘Jace’ was just his way of keeping me at arm’s length. Maybe I never really stood a long-term shot with the man I’d fallen in love with. I started questioning everything. Who he was. What he liked. What he enjoyed and the things he did in his spare time. Did he really like that one movie we went to go see where he wasn’t all over me? Did he actually hate sushi? Was his favorite color really orange and did he really have better-than-perfect vision? There were so many things I attributed to Jace. So many things that were so innately him. There were memories ingrained into my psyche whose foundation had been shaken. Memories I lost myself in at night and never admitted to myself were things I still craved.
Holy fuck… did he ever love me?
That was the truth that would destroy me. Whoever this man was, if he had lied to me about that, I would be over. Done for. There would never be another man I would trust or open up to. There would never be another man I would ever give myself over to. If this man had come into my life, manipulated me, and faked his love for me… it would end me.
He might as well stick a fucking fork in my ass… because I’d be done.
