Blood & Rust (Lock & Key #4) (50 page)

“And it did.”

“And it did.” She met my gaze. “I shut it down.”

“You backed away from the edge of the cliff.”

“And I irritated you, of course,” she continued. “I made you angry, and suddenly, you saw me in that same negative way that I saw myself—the ice queen who, deep down inside, was just a ball of fear. The little girl who couldn’t step up, couldn’t let go. I was embarrassed, horrified, with myself. All my little insecurities were cemented in place. I wanted to run and hide, and I did.”

I planted my hands on my hips. “I figured you were playing games, and I wasn’t doing it for you after all. That you wanted to kick my ass for the hell of it.”

“No, it wasn’t that. Not at all,” she said. “Weeks later, when I met Finger, it was an opportunity to erase all of that. To step up, to be that wild and free person. To finally take that risk. To set that ball of fear on fire and toss it away and really do something different, something wild, and, yes, even something dangerous. To take it as far as I could.”

“Jesus.” There was a question I had to ask. “With Finger, was it only then?”

The dreaded answer glimmered in her liquid eyes.

She shook her head. “No. We stayed in touch.”

“You stayed in touch?” I breathed.

“Whenever our paths crossed, we would meet up.”

My pulse pounded in my neck. I could barely believe what I was hearing. But there she was, in my apartment, her lips moving, going on and on and on.

“How long did it last?”

She swallowed. “Until I met Kyle and things got serious. Almost ten years.”

“Ten years? Ten years of you and Finger hooking up?”

“Yes. Off and on.” Her eyes held mine. “When I saw him in Nebraska at his clubhouse with Grace, when we saw you there, that was the first time I’d seen him or talked to him since we’d stopped a decade before.”

“Were you in love with him? Are you? I mean, is that the real reason why you and your husband didn’t work out?”

“No. I’ve never cheated on Kyle.”

“That’s not what I asked, Tania. Were you in love with Finger?” I searched her eyes, desperate to see any hints of her hiding, lying. “Are you now, after seeing him again, him now being a part of your life through your brother, through the Jacks?”

“No, I’ve never been in love with him, and I’m not. It wasn’t like that between us. It was very clear from the beginning what it was. I was attracted to him, obviously.”

I gritted my teeth. “Obviously.”

“Neither of us wanted a relationship. There was never any question. Our lives were and are so different. It was…”

“Your walk on the wild side.”

“Yes. My secret life. I didn’t have to fake it with him. There weren’t any expectations or disappointments.”

“Just what? Fun?”

She let out a breath. “More of a relief, actually, something of my own that I did purely for me. A high. That’s how I saw it, that’s how I see it, and I’m not apologizing for it.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

We stared at each other across the room in silence.

“I’d fallen in love for the first time in college,” she said. “I was so in love with him, but it didn’t last, and it took me a long, long time to get over it. That gutting, that sudden void was a shock; a whole new level of loneliness. After that, I hated dating; it seemed so phony to me, and I avoided it. I liked flirting. I liked…I didn’t know what I liked. But I knew I hated the messiness of emotions, the confusion, the crossed wires, and on and on. I hated wanting things that the other person didn’t want, the not being sure they were being honest with me.”

“You can never be sure,” I said.

“Do you remember how happy Grace and Dig were together? Remember that?”

“I remember,” I muttered. “I remember how it changed him.”

Tania’s eyes watered. “I’d watched her give up all her dreams of going away to school, getting out of Meager to be with him, to live that love. I saw it as her giving things up, but she saw it as gaining something wonderful. She created a new life with him. They did that, and it was…fantastic.” She took in a breath, her eyes piercing mine. “And then it blew up in their faces.

“At school and after I graduated, I was surrounded by so many mediocre relationships. Ones of convenience, ones based on superficial crap, on ambition, on money. But Grace and Dig? My mom and dad?” Her voice cracked. “No, those, the good ones, the really good ones, the ones on my altar?
They
were destroyed.

“After Daddy died, I’d listen to my mother cry every night for over a year, Drew curled up beside me in my bed, and Penny in her teen dream denial. And then, the next morning, my mom would be smiling brightly at the neighbors, carrying on for them, for us. I remember the sudden quiet in the house, and my mother’s new abruptness. That’s what I remember most about the aftereffects of losing dad.

“Then, there was Dig dead, their baby gone, Grace tied to a hospital bed after trying to kill herself, Ruby screaming in the hospital hallway the next morning. Grace leaving town on her own and trying to lose herself.
Literally
lose herself. Boner was desperate to find her. He tracked me down in Chicago, threatening me, so sure I was hiding her, lying to him. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know.”

“And Finger was always there if you wanted,” I said.

“Yes. Yes, he was.”

My pulse slugged through wet cement all over again. “Shit, who can compete with that?”

“I’m not asking you to compete. There’s nothing to compete with anyway.”

“You two haven’t been—”

“No.” She took in a breath and leveled her dark eyes with mine. “That night at the Jacks’ clubhouse—when Nina and Catch had been caught, and I called Finger, and he and I spent the night together? You were with Nina, upset she’d been having an affair but hanging on to her. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know it was all fake.”

“You were watching me, trying to crack my code.”

A small smile lifted her lips. “I was. And there was Finger, pulling on me. It would’ve been very easy to do, to go there with him again. But we didn’t. Almost but no. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.”

I went to the kitchen sink and jammed the cold water knob to the right. I leaned over and drank from the faucet, like I’d just gotten off my bike after a run through the Salt Flats of Utah. I splashed water on my face and wiped at it with a paper towel.

“Tonight was not about me and Finger,” Tania said. “He’s not hung up on me or making excuses to see me. He needed my help; it was real.”

“Why? Why did he need your help? With his gun-running deals? With his meth factory?”

“No, of course not. I can’t say right now.”

“Of course you can’t.”

“You have your club business; this is mine. How’s that? Now, can you please trust me?”

“And then what? Every time something crawls up Finger’s ass, I’ve got to move to the left and step back, so he can have direct access to you anytime, day or night? I don’t fucking think so.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It was tonight!”

“Can’t you believe in me?” She swallowed. “I want to be with you, Butler. I like what we have, what’s happening between us.”

“So did I.”

Her eyes winced at my use of the past tense. She bit at her lip, her shoulders sinking.

“There’s more to this than what you’re telling me, Tania.”

“There is. I’m not denying it. But I can’t tell you any more right now. I’ve been keeping a secret all these years, protecting it, like a frame on a painting. I need to keep it safe a little while longer. I’m asking you to trust me.”

“I haven’t been able to trust anyone for years, baby. Especially myself. Now, this? This is all kinds of no. And I don’t want to be in Finger’s crosshairs personally as well as professionally.”

“I’m not worth it?”

“Goddamn it! You’re worth everything!” I yelled.

Her eyes blazed, her lips parted, under the force of those words, the emotion in my voice.

I took in a breath. “But you not being able to share with me, you putting Finger and his club over me and my club? I can’t have that. I can’t live with that, and you can’t expect me to either.”

“You’re right, but I’m asking anyhow. Because I think what we have is special, and I don’t want to lose it.”

“You have a funny way of showing it, Tania.” I shook my head. I knew I was right. I was. Everything I’d said to her was logical, practical. “Go home. Get some sleep. It’s late.”

Her lower lip quivered. “I don’t want to go home.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I want to be with you,” she whispered. “I want you.”

“You just want to prove something now.”

She stepped toward me, her dark eyes flaring. “You and I drove back into the club together that day, and then I heard the words ‘your old lady.’ I swallowed them down and shoved it
all
away, sealed it up tight—everything I felt, everything I thought, the memories of your every touch, every kiss, every hot breath, every word you whispered on my skin.”

My heart thudded in my chest.

“I wanted more,” she continued. “But, suddenly, you were taken. You hadn’t been honest with me. The night before that, you’d had your hand between my legs, your mouth on mine, and suddenly, you were off-limits. You belonged to someone else. Any possibilities were crushed.” Her voice shook, her words burning a hole right through me. “So, I was respectful. I kept away. But, now, you’re free, and so am I. Can’t we just start again?” She swallowed hard, her eyes searching mine.

Tania emotional, Tania needy, Tania vulnerable.

Tania wanting me like I wanted her.

“Butler,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m trying to claw my way into your heart here.”

I grabbed her and crashed my mouth down over hers. She shuddered in my tight hold, and I fucking liked it.

I ripped off her wet coat and tossed it to the floor. I quickly unfastened her jeans and shoved them down her hips. “Off. Now.”

Our breathing grew harder and shorter.

She toed off her high heeled sandals. She pushed her jeans down her legs and yanked them off her body, losing her balance as she went. I gripped her arm, and she glanced up at me.

Fear of the unknown, and challenge accepted.

That’s right.

She lifted her blouse, her hair flying around her face, through my hands.

I whipped her around in my arms and pressed her back against me. I ripped down her panties and sank my hand in between her legs. She jumped forward like a skittish deer, gasping loudly. I gripped her hips and shoved her back against my dick.

“What’s this pussy gonna feel like, taking my cock?” I whispered. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about since I first touched it.” I dragged my fingers through her wet heat. “You’re gonna fucking take it now.”

“Am I?”

“Hell yes.”

“Give me your best, blondie.”

“Your sweet talk is only making me harder, Scarlett.”

“I fucking hope so.”

I shoved her facedown on the sofa and got rid of my jeans. I nabbed a condom from the drawer in my coffee table, put it on, and grabbed her again, adjusting her back at an angle. I slicked her wetness over the tip of my cock, and her whimpers and squirming at my touch drove my lust higher. I thrust inside her, keeping it short and shallow. She gasped.

“This is just the beginning. Can you take it?” I said.

“Fuck you!”

I pounded into her, thrusting deep this time.

Her body tensed around me, her sobs satisfying the animal in me.

Yes
.

Her head rose up, her neck straining, her shoulders tightening under my onslaught.

“That’s it,” I spit out through gritted teeth, clenching her incredible ass.

She flinched in my hold, and I shoved her back down and rammed into her, my fingers clamping on her flesh. She grunted loudly, gasping, with every hard thrust. I smacked an ass cheek and stroked it, her skin hot under my hand.

“Your husband give it to you like this?”

“No-no—”

But I bet Finger did. Motherfucker.

I did battle to get images of him fucking Tania every which way from Sunday out from behind my eyes. I wanted to annihilate them forever from her memory.

I fucked her harder, faster, and she let out a low cry.

Tilting my hips, I hit her from a different angle, grunting with the effort. Her cunt fisted around my cock.

“Oh, damn, oh, damn!”

“Got you right where I want you,” I said.

“Under you?”

“Yes.” I let out a hiss. “And all fucking mine.”

I leaned over her and burrowed deeper, rolling my hips, screwing into her. She moaned loudly, and I slowed my pace, dragging out my dick.

“What are you—ah!” Her back arched as I rocked back in, feeling her settle and tighten around me once again. Her back relaxed.

“Don’t get comfortable, Scarlett.”

I licked my thumb and gently teased her asshole, and it puckered, tensed.

“You like that, don’t you? You want that?”

Her muscles relaxed with my words, and she pushed back against me. Her gasps and whimpers made me high, the sound of our fucking sending me soaring. I let go of her ass, dug my hands into her hips, and jackhammered inside her pussy.

No fucking prisoners.

The need to see her, to experience her coming apart in my hands, surged inside me. I pulled out and flipped her over on her back. With one knee on the sofa, holding her legs apart, I drove inside her again, leaning over her.

Her dark eyes were wild now, pulling me in.

“I see you”—my voice was all rough edges—“Fuck, baby.”

“Yes, yes.” She clutched my arms, her back arching. She shouted something unintelligible, shuddering in my tight grip, throbbing around my cock.

“Tania!” I exploded.

Everything blanked.

Everything.

My resentment, my petty jealousy, my fear.

And only Tania remained.

I collapsed onto her on the couch. She moved to the side and curled into me.

My hand slid over her hip. “For all your bitch sass, you like me taking the lead, don’t you, Scarlett?”

Her tongue flicked out to swipe the side of her mouth, her chest rising and falling quickly. “That was cathartic.”