Devil's Angels Boxed Set: Bikers and Alpha Bad Boy Erotic Romance (45 page)

When one too many of them glares at us, we get up and stroll through the stacks of books. The sound of the door opening and closing dwindles into dusty silence as we walk. We wind around corners and down long aisles until even our breath is ringing loudly through the empty rooms.

Garret makes a joke as we round a corner and I start to laugh, almost a guffaw, actually. My hands fly up to my mouth to stifle the hideous noise. He looks at me sideways, half-laughing but with his eyes wrinkled curiously.

“What’re you covering your mouth for?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t know…” I reply immediately. The flush in my cheek rises.

“C’mon.” He elbows me. “What gives? Why so shy?”

“No reason,” I say again. “Nothin’.”

Garret squares up ahead of me, stopping me in my tracks. His hands come to rest on my shoulders. He pins me gently against the shelf as his eyes roam across mine.

“What are you afraid of, Jodie?” The words drop quietly from between his lips.

I look down at my shoes and say nothing. I can feel his gaze still on me, powerful and penetrating.

He repeats his question. “What are you afraid of? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

I want to tell him how wrong he is, how many things there are that scare me. There is Bellamy and tuition and the murky miasma of Garret’s own intentions.
What do you want from me?
roars my mind.

Green eyes flick left, right, left. My left shoe is untied, I notice.

“Look, Jodie…” he says. “I know I’ve already told you a lot about how I think about things, about love and people, so if you’ve had enough, just tell me.”

He continues, “But if you ask me, we don’t have enough time in our lives to live scared. We can’t hedge all our bets; we can’t play everything safe. Sometimes you have to just jump, you know?”

His fingers tap on my shoulder gently, pulling at the fabric of my cardigan. My thoughts have fallen silent. I raise my eyes to look into his, quivering, scared, wondering.

“It’s not that easy,” I say quietly.

Garret smiles, though a kind of concerned sadness tugs at the corners of his mouth.

“You just have to let it be that easy,” he says. “Just close your eyes and sing, you know? Who cares what it sounds like? Who cares what other people think? If you wait on them to give you permission, you’re never going to make it.”

A tear snakes down my cheek. Garret smiles sadly again. He wipes the drop away with one broad thumb.

“You can sing, Jodie, I know it. I can see it in you,” he says. “You don’t want to admit it and you’re scared to try it. But you can. Just let it out. Close your eyes and let it out.”

I let my head fall against Garret’s shoulder. He wraps me close. His smell is different now than I remember it being. There is less of an edge, more of a warmth. Less of a musk, more of a heady scent that rises and settles around me.

He rocks me back and forth and murmurs “Let it out, let it out, let it out.” His chest vibrates with every word. Eventually, the flow of my tears slacks and ceases.

I lean back against the bookshelf and wipe my red-rimmed eyes.

Above us, the clock hands writhe excitedly and the light streaming through the curtains gradually diminishes.

“Oh, shit, is it that time already?” he asks, glancing around the room for a clock. “I guess I better get going. Shit to do. You know how it is.” Part of me wants to say that he sounds reluctant to be leaving. He slowly starts to gather his weight under him.

A sudden urge rises in me.

“Hey, Garret, can I ask you something?” I say.

He laughs at my enthusiasm and the immediately ensuing embarrassment. I consider changing my mind, but his confidence is infectious. I push onwards.

“Those girls who came up earlier…”

“What about them?”

“Why didn’t you go with them? They were pretty obvious about wanting to hang out with you. And they were gorgeous.”

He scoffs.

I have never heard such a beautiful, comprehensive sound before. There is so much in that sneer, that dismissal, that makes my insides hum with satisfaction. It contains so many things I want to hear from him. It is fuller and deeper and richer than any words he could have said. My heartbeat surges happily.

“I was having a good time talking to you.” He grins, stands, and shoulders his backpack.

He leans forward and brushes his lips against mine.

“You’re way more interesting than them, anyhow.”

“Sh!” says the man behind the desk. “For God’s sake, this is a library!”

Garret walks out. The door swings shut behind him. I stay rooted where I stand, smiling like a fool.

CHAPTER TEN

Garret and I stumble out of the movie theater, bent over in laughter and holding our sides to help ease the breathless pain of cackling so hard. I raise a hand to shield my eyes from the mid-afternoon sun splicing between skyscrapers.

“St-stop, please, I’m begging you,” I heave between giggles. I grab his forearm for support. He screws his eyes up into a ratty sneer and pitches his voice high.

“If I have to tell you one more time, Miss Jodie…!” he warns mockingly, wagging a playful finger in my direction. I double over again, laughing hysterically. He joins in, his chuckling rich and velvety. I love the way his throat rises and falls with every breath.

Garret tosses an arm around my shoulder.

“C’mon, doll, shall we?” He jokes. Reluctantly, I peel away from underneath his embrace.

“I can’t,” I plead. “I have to go to work.” My demeanor immediately droops. I am dreading the thought of stepping into the frigid hostility of Bellamy’s office, loathing the prospect of hours spent slicing my fingers on the corners of long-ignored manila folders.

“Work?” he exclaims. “Fuck work!” He spins away from me and bellows it across the street.

“Fuck work! Fuck it all!” Of the myriad swarms of pedestrians milling around the block, only the tourists stop to look at him. The locals keep their gaze trained firmly on the sidewalk, ignoring the crazy rock star hollering nonsense from the street corner. I grab his arm again, still laughing.

“Stop it! You’re crazy!” I say. “Cut it out! People are looking!” Garret whirls back towards me, grinning. He lunges forward and wraps his hands around my hips, presses his face close to mine.

“What’s wrong?” he says, concerned. His breath is minty as it billows in my face. I inhale deeply and savor it.

“Nothing, nothing,” I say quickly, too quickly.

He grabs my hand. “No, really, Jodie, what’s wrong? You seem… cloudy.”

I bite my lip and look at the ground. An old newspaper flutters by, caught in the wind. A picture of Bellamy graces the front page. The shot captures him as he is accepting an award from the New York Chamber of Commerce. His grimace looks vicious, as do the sharp teeth barely obscured by his thin, drawn lips. The hand with which he is grasping the plaque is lined with rigid tendons that protrude like the edge of a razor blade.

I look back to Garret. His eyes are dancing green. Flecks of grey flicker within. I gnaw my lower lip again.

“I just … I don’t like it there,” I say. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s a good place, I guess. Ah, I don’t know what I’m saying.” I tug on one dark bang drooping in front of my face, frustrated.

His eyes darken. “Tell me what’s so bad about it,” Garret says.

I don’t know how to tell him about Bellamy. I can’t. I can’t. “I don’t really know,” I repeat. “I don’t know.”

Garret steps forward and pulls me into a hug. I sigh and soften into his arms, my chin coming to rest against his chest. His smell is all around me.

Garret’s throat rumbles against the crown of my head when he speaks. “You could go home for a bit, you know. Get out of the city for a while,” he suggests.

My breath seizes in my throat.

I haven’t thought about Mother in months, but at the mention of the word
home
, I feel the edges of everything curl and darken. My heartbeat crescendos rapidly, pounding timpani drums sending blood coursing through my veins. Fat tears leak down my cheeks and I start to sob, deep racking hiccups that start in my abdomen and rise up, dragging bile and shivers along.

Home. I can’t go home.

Garret looks down at me, worried. When he sees the torrential stream of tears rippling from my eyes, he holds me at arms’ length for a second, eyes searching, trying to understand. He must see something he recognizes, something that answers his questions, because he pulls me back into a tighter hug.

“It’s okay, Jodie,” he whispers. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He repeats it like a mantra, rocking me back and forth while he does. His arms are strong and safe around me. His scent blots out the city. I close my eyes against the tears and wrap my arms around his waist, squeezing hard when the sobs wind through me.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. You don’t ever have to go back there if you don’t want to. You’re safe here. You’re
safe
here.”

Safe. Safe with him. Safe in his arms. Safe. We stand and rock on the street corner for a while. The sun hides behind buildings.

“It’s getting dark,” Garret says at last. “Come stay with me tonight. It’s not the Ritz, but I’ve got a nice place for you to sleep. At least for tonight, crash at my place, no questions asked.”

I smile, bleary-eyed.

“Okay,” I say. “I need that.” I let him keep stroking my hand.

***

Sarah sits next to me, crumbling a piece of bread between her manicured fingertips. She chucks it at the pigeons gathered around our feet, hissing “Rats with fucking wings, all of you” as they peck and caw at the morsel. She twists to face me again.

“Listen, Jodie, all I’m doing is repeating what you told me a long time ago. Remember your priorities. You’ve got school to take care of, and I mean, you haven’t been to class in, what, two weeks?”

I purse my lips, annoyed. “Yeah, well, those professors suck, and I can learn better on my own, anyways,” I respond. “Besides, I’ve been studying better ever since I started sleeping at Garret’s.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “Are you just gonna ignore the things you have to do? They’re not gonna go away, you know. All you do anymore is hang out at Garret’s. What’s the deal?” Her tone is prodding, insistent.

I snap back, “Nothing. Nothing is the deal. I’m sick and tired of being told what to do. My whole life I’ve had to do things for other people. This is for me. I’m doing what
I
want for a change.”

Sarah stares me down. A worried wrinkle snakes across her forehead. “I’m just worried about you, girl. Be careful, you know? It’s easy to get lost, or to lose yourself, or whatever bullshit it is that they say. Don’t get in over your head.” She rests her palm on my shoulder, massaging gently as she looks at me.

I brush her off. “I gotta get going,” I say. “Lots of
studying
to do.” I snort and stand up to hug Sarah goodbye. Her eyes linger on mine.

I stroll away in the direction of Garret’s apartment. She calls across the park to me. “Be careful!”

***

I jam my copy of the key into the lock, twist it, and shoulder the door open. “Honey, I’m home!” I yell laughingly into the depths of the apartment. I hear a rustling from the back, followed by Garret emerging from his bedroom.

He is shirtless, hair slightly mussed, ragged jeans unbuttoned and hanging precariously around his waist. My eyes trace the sinews of his arm from shoulder to elbow to wrist, lovingly caressing every contour with my gaze. I look into his eyes.

Something there glints fiercely.

“You are home, aren’t you?” he says. His words are strained, choked with a murky emotion I can’t quite decipher but that nonetheless provokes an icy flood to course through my veins. I feel a gear ratchet in my stomach, tightening the nerves in every corner of my body.

“I suppose I am,” I mumble. I drop my purse to the ground. It thumps, but neither of us makes a noise or moves.

Garret takes one step forward. “You’ve kind of moved in, haven’t you?” he says. His words are pitched low and they rumble towards me on shadowy wheels, slipping down my throat and into my stomach, descending lower and lower, then nestling with finality into the crook of my hips. There, they purr.

“I suppose I have.”

He steps forward once more, halving the distance between us. If we both reached out, our fingers would touch. I can smell him.

He crooks his head to the side in that way that he does, but this time he does not smile. The strain of something overwhelming is tugging at the corners of his mouth, like he can barely handle the intensity of whatever is raging in his rib cage.

He speaks, but it enhances the silence rather than breaks it. “That seems like the kind of thing that deserves a celebration, doesn’t it?” he asks. The stillness of the room and its myriad murmurs weighs down on either side of his sentence. It presses on us.

The coughing heater. The whisk of fabric on fabric. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead. I can hear and feel everything, am aware of every thread of my clothing rubbing against my skin. I can feel my nipples pucker against the inside of the shirt I am wearing. I can feel a dampness spread at the tops of my thighs.

He steps forward again. He is in front of me now, inches away. His breath ripples in my nostrils. His eyes are locked on mine.

“We haven’t properly celebrated it yet, though, have we?” He whispers in my ear. His lips brush against my earlobe deliciously.

“No,” I hush back. “No, we haven’t.” Tension vibrates like dense cables between us.

His teeth clamp lightly on my ear. Unable to stop it, a moan escapes my throat. Garret’s hand makes contact with a valley of exposed skin spilling from the top of my jeans. He probes downward, slipping below the hem of the fabric where it squeezes my waist, past the lace-lined panties I am wearing below.

He touches my moist heat. I bite my cheek to stop from crying out. The silence of the room still lays dormant on my neck and shoulders, stifling, like an oppressive blanket that I never want to be without.

The tiniest tip of his finger presses into me ever so slightly. I moan again, this time loud and evocative and primal and my head empties of thought and my spine arches and my hands wrap around the back of his neck to pull his warm mouth closer against my bare neck where he licks and sucks teasingly and all I can hear is the refrigerator humming and my heart going
boom, boom, boom,
sending blood to throb between my legs where his fingers have begun to pulse, pulse, pulse, in and out of me, in and out of me.

He crooks a long, skinny finger inside me and beckons towards him and as it strokes against the most sensitive piece of me, I moan one more time, louder, louder, louder. His tongue is flicking against my collarbone and my hand is scrabbling now at the bulge of his jeans beneath the straining zipper.

I free his stiffening manhood from the zipper. Its metal teeth sigh and wheeze as they give it up, almost jealously. I want to laugh out loud and proclaim that this is mine, he is mine, to want and touch as I please! My hand wraps around his cock gingerly like I am handling an antique, something of incalculable value. It flexes in my grasp and I lick my lips eagerly.

Garret gathers a fistful of denim and yanks down my jeans until they pool around my ankles. The flesh of my thickened thighs wobbles as I quiver from head to toe, my whole body, every roll of corpulent skin, roiling and shivering with a gross animal desire.

I squeeze and release, over and over again, savoring the way his manhood springs back into my hand every time. He probes me deep into the recesses of my dripping wet pussy, me bucking my hips into his reach so that he can find the unexplored spots that give so willingly and beautifully to his touch. His mouth continues to canter over my shoulders, my neck, and now down into the mountainous range of my breasts where he has torn buttons from my shirt so that they hang out in the open air and he can fasten his lips over my nipples and tease.

He whispers as he explores me, soft murmuring sentences that never seem to start or end but just roll over me like cloud banks. “Your skin is so smooth, so soft, so creamy, I can’t let it go, I can’t not touch it, I can’t not touch you…”

I whimper as his expertly plunging fingers find a soft region of my wetness and lock in. Pressure builds in the core of my hips, behind the cleave where my legs swoop together, as Garret fingers me. With every mellow scrape of his calluses over my tingling nerves, the tension mounts until it