Page 15 of Shade

“You’re mine, Mya,” I told her. “Mine.”

I hooked her top leg up over my hip and pushed into her, slow, one inch at a time, and watched her mouth fall open.

“Fuck,” I breathed against her lips. “Look at you taking me.”

I didn’t hurry. I’d already had her fast and quiet on my floor. This time I wanted to feel every bit of it.

I wound my hand into her wet hair and held her there, right where I wanted her, with her face an inch from mine. Then I started to move. Long, deep and slow, all the way out and all the way back in, until she was shaking and her nails were digging into my shoulder.

I put my mouth on her throat. I bit the freckle on her shoulder that I’d been thinking about since the first time I stitched her up, and she cried out and pulled me in harder with her leg.

“I’ve been hard for you since the minute I put that gun away.”

She made a sound I’d never heard from anybody, low and broken. I felt it all the way down my spine.

I rolled her onto her back, careful, and set her bad arm up on the pillow above her head. Then I came down over her with my weight on my forearms and drove into her deeper than before. Her heel dug into the back of my thigh. Her good hand fisted in my hair and dragged my mouth down to hers.

“Nobody else ever touches you like this again. Nobody.”

I felt her start to go. I didn’t slow down this time. I gave her more, harder and deeper, until she came apart under me with my name on her lips and her whole body arching up off the bed.

It dragged me right over with her. I buried my face in her neck and let go, groaning her name into her skin, deeper inside her than I’d ever been inside anybody.

When I could breathe again I didn’t move. I stayed right where I was, with her heart going wild under mine.

“Mine,” I said into her hair. “Always mine.”

She fell asleep in my arms with her bad arm across my chest.

I didn’t sleep on the floor that night. I didn’t sleep much at all. I lay there and listened to her breathe and wondered how long I’d get to keep her.

My phone rang in the dead of the night. I slid my arm out from under her and answered it and it woke her up.

It was Pete, the prospect. He was breathing hard.

“It’s Lock,” he said. “He sent Marco home an hour ago, said he didn’t need a babysitter. I was heading out to swap with him. His bike’s in the ditch out on the mine road, and he’s lying beside it. Shade, it’s bad. Somebody ran him off the road.”

I was already out of the bed and pulling my jeans on.

“Fuck. Okay, bring him in,” I said. “Don’t wait for me. Put him in the truck and get him here quick.”

Behind me, Mya was getting dressed too.

CHAPTER 5

MYA

They brought Lock in through the gate in the back of the club truck, and that was the night I saw what Shade really was.

Four of them carried him into the main room and laid him on the pool table that had been covered over with plastic. There was blood everywhere. His face was a mess, one eye already swollen shut, and his jeans were black and soaked down one leg.

“They ran him into the ditch,” Pete said. I noticed he was shaking. “From the look of him, they got out and went to work on him where he lay.”

Shade didn’t say anything to that. He was already at the table with his kit open, and when he spoke, the whole room moved.

“Cut his jeans off. Get me every light in this place. Towels. Now.”

Nobody even blinked. Men who’d spent four days laughing at me behind the bar ran to do what he told them.