Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (16 page)

“Yeah, I did,” he said.

“Why would that make me not want to be with you?” 

“I’m not normal, Sam, haven’t you figured that out yet? I live in this fucking clubhouse with a bunch of overgrown, immature, chaotic men who are just as much of an outsider as I am.  A woman like you would never have anything to do with a man like me.  I get that, okay?  You didn’t ask to be here, it’s just how it turned out.  And yeah, I’ve been gentle with you, baby.  But I’m not a gentle man with everyone.”

“Well, the man that I was with,” I wasn’t about to say Dice’s name out loud.  He didn’t deserve to have his name uttered ever again, “he deserved it, Ryder.”

“Yes, that’s for sure,” he said, his jaw twitching.  “And I’d do it again, goddammit. But a woman like you has no business being with a man like me.”

I looked at Ryder and realized what he was thinking.  He had kept it from me because he thought I would look at him badly. He thought I wouldn’t accept him. I thought it was awesome.  But he didn’t know I was a cop.

A cop.

If he knew I was a cop, he wouldn’t be here telling me he loved me.

“I love you, Ryder,” I whispered. “Thank you for protecting me.”

There were a few words missing there, and I knew it.  But I kept my secret, unable to utter those three stupid words that would surely destroy us.  I’m a cop.

Relief flooded his face, and I smiled as he kissed me again.  I kissed him back, harder, and then again and again until he was groaning into my mouth, and lifting his body over me, his cock hard against me as he pushed his throbbing hardness against me, our clothes once again in the way of the only thing we cared about.

I couldn’t get enough of him.  I couldn’t get close enough. The rough stubble on his chin rubbed my face raw as he kissed me hungrily.  His hand slid down, unbuttoning my jeans, and then sliding his fingers inside of my folds as I pressed my hips up to meet his caress.

I moaned into his kiss, his mouth devouring me as he moved his fingers expertly, pushing in and out of me until I was writhing under him, squirming against him until I came, clenching onto his slick fingers as his kiss turned hungry and hard as my juices flowed over his hand.

Our clothes slid off, landing in a pile of denim and leather on the floor, as we wrapped ourselves around each other.  My lips tasted the salty ambrosia of the skin on his neck, the smell of leather still lingering as his hair fell across my cheek.  My fingers tangled in his hair, as his mouth found mine again, our embrace turning into a dance of pulling and pushing against each other, an effort to touch each and every inch of skin we could reach.

And just like that, I was gone.  Transported.  He was like a time-machine that I never wanted to get out of.  Everything I had been trying to forget, all of the pain, all of the trauma, the heartache, the empty sadness that I never seemed to be able to shake, it melted away like ice under his intense heat.

The hunger for that escape had ruled my life.  I may not have known it in the last few days consciously, but underneath everything? I had been starving for it for years.  Ryder’s touch burned away the memories of the past, replacing it with love.  Replacing it with trust. Replacing it with something I had been searching for for all my life.

I just never imagined it would come in this package.  Ryder.

I sighed into him, opening to him more, spreading my limbs and pushing up as he sank into me.  His hardness was smooth and full as he moved inside me, his breath quickening, his mouth devouring mine.  I twirled my tongue around his, wrapped my thighs around his hips as they hammered into me, over and over, his deep strokes taking me to that one beautiful place that existed.

No past.  No future.

Just right now, in this moment, with nothing to think about but Ryder’s touch on my skin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ryder

The couple sitting in the car in the parking lot of the Rodeo Roadhouse stared at me as I parked my bike.  I noticed them right away, and immediately pegged them for cops.  My bike and my cut always brought attention.  I was used to it.  I ignored them, and walked inside.

I had left Sam in bed.  I had business to take care of in Seaside today, and it was a long drive there and back.  

I had decided to stop in for a beer on my way back to the clubhouse.  I needed some time alone.  Some time to think.  To figure out what the hell I was going to do about Sam, or Grace, or whoever she was.

Why was there no trace of her after the trial?  It didn’t make sense. She had disappeared completely.  Riot had stopped me in the hallway this morning to tell me he had searched far and wide and still came up empty.  She simply vanished into the world without a trace.  It didn’t make any sense.

I didn’t mind it, though.  It just meant I had more time with her before she had to go back to her life.  And if time with her meant spending time together like we had last night, then that was just fucking fine with me.  She was the sexiest woman I had ever known, and my body couldn’t get enough of her.  On top of that, she was smart, brave, and not to mention her beauty had a way of striking me right in the heart every time I looked at her.

What the fuck had happened to me?
I wondered, as I sat there at the bar, drinking my beer and eating my burger.  She had done it.  There was no doubt.  She had gotten under my skin.  She had touched my big, stupid, untouchable heart.  So much for the armor I had built up around it.

With one glance of her huge green eyes, she had penetrated what I had worked so hard to protect all these years.  But, fuck, if I couldn’t help it.

And it was time to admit I didn’t want to, either.

Maybe there was a way to work it all out.  Maybe she could stay.  Maybe she didn’t have anywhere in particular to go back to, after all.  Maybe she had just disappeared off the radar and lived a quiet, peaceful life and got mixed up with the wrong dude.  And now, he was gone.

And she didn’t seem to be disturbed at all by the fact that I had killed him.

I was relieved, and that relief had allowed me to start thinking about the future.  A future with Sam.  

Maybe it was possible.  Maybe it was time.  It had been so long since I had lost Julie.

Julie. When she died in that car accident, I thought my life was over.  And now, I was living an entirely new life.  Maybe it was time it included the love a woman.  

A damn fine woman that I couldn’t wait to get home to and sink right back into.

“Excuse me?”  A voice to my right interrupted my thoughts, just as I was about to adjust the growing erection straining against my jeans.  I looked over and saw the couple from the car outside.  Cops. 

They weren’t in uniform, but their neat little suits screamed law enforcement. 

I grunted in response. I was used to getting harassed by the cops, but they were usually in uniform and in a gang.  

“I’m Detective Judd Jeffries,” the man said, and then gestured to the woman at his side.  She was a busty, petite woman, with frizzy red hair.  “This is Dawn Andrews.”

I grunted again, ignoring their outstretched hands.

The bartender walked up to us.

“Can I help you guys?”  he asked.  John was an old friend of mine, who only still worked here a few days a week.  He knew I wasn’t about to be friendly with a couple of cops.

“Hi, sure, sure,” the man said. “We’re just going around the area, looking for a missing person, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” John said.  “How can I help?”

I watched as the woman shoved a picture in John’s face.  

“This woman.  Have you seen her?” she asked.

John whistled, and then gave the picture back to her.  I glanced at the picture and I knew right away it was Sam.

“Nope, but she sure is pretty.  If I had seen her, I’d remember.  Here, give me that back, let me ask my waitress,” John said, taking the picture again and disappearing into the kitchen. 

John wasn’t working the day I brought Sam here, but I knew his waitress was.

The woman pulled another copy of the picture of Sam out of her pocket and pushed it over to me.

“What about you?” she asked.  “Have you seen her?”

I looked down at the picture, the green eyes I had grown to love staring back at me.  

“Nope.”

She took the photo back, and putting it back in her pocket.  John came back, and handed the picture back to her.

“My waitress doesn’t remember her either,” he said.  I looked through the doorway into the kitchen and saw Susie, the waitress, staring back at me.  “She in some sort of trouble or something?” John asked.

“No, she’s an officer. Disappeared on an assignment, we’re just trying to find her.”

My heart dropped when I heard that.
A cop? A fucking cop?

How could that be?  I sat there, stunned into silence, paralyzed by disbelief.

The two cops walked out after leaving their card.  I looked down at it, and read it - Portland Police Bureau.

So, that was it.  She was a fucking cop. Fuck me!  

What the hell did this mean? What was I supposed to do now?  Hell, I had just confessed to her that I had killed someone!  

“John, I need some whiskey.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Grace

I woke up feeling like a complete fraud.  I had to tell him the truth.  When I realized I was alone in his bed, I sighed a sigh a relief.  I didn’t want to face him in the daylight, my lie written across my face.  I knew he was going to be so upset.  

Cops and outlaws don’t mix.  That’s an obvious fact.  Sure, I wasn’t the kind of cop that was all about following the letter of the law to a ’t’ but I was still a cop.  I had become a cop for one specific reason and that was to fight the abuse of women and children.  I didn’t give a shit if someone did drugs, or anything else they wanted to do.  As long as it didn’t hurt anyone, I didn’t care.

And because of that, the fact that Ryder was a God didn’t faze me one bit.  I knew a lot of cops that were a lot less moral than him.  Ryder was a good man, and that patched vest didn’t make that any less the truth.

It didn’t matter, though, what I thought.  It didn’t even matter what Ryder would think once I told him.  What mattered was what society thought, what the precinct thought, what my partners would think and what my captain would think.  

I knew there was no way I could continue my job and continue spending time with Ryder.

Our lives were like oil and water.

I might have had a taste of what happiness might be like with him, but that was all that was meant to be.

Long-lasting, healthy relationships had never been a part of my life.  And there was no sense in fooling myself that it could be now.

I had slept in, and just as I was getting out of the shower, wondering if I should just start walking and call the precinct to send a car for me, Ryder walked in the door.

I was wearing his robe, my hair wet and dripping onto his bathroom floor.  He walked in, his eyes on fire with desire, and without saying a word he kissed me so hard I would have sunk to my knees if he hadn’t held me up.  Electricity shot right through my core, melting every thought of leaving right out of my head.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Ryder

A cop.  A fucking cop.

Over and over, the words played in my head as I raced back to the clubhouse.  I had to tell her what I had learned.  But maybe she already knew?  I can’t believe I had brought a cop into the clubhouse, the Sons of Chaos MC fucking clubhouse!  I never, in a million years, would have guessed the answer to the question we had been searching for was this.

Was I being set up?  No, that couldn’t be.  There was no way she faked being unconscious for three days.  No way that scene at her house in Lincoln City wasn’t real.  Fuck.  I still felt horrible for her, but this fucking changed everything.

What now?

And why in the hell was my cock still raging hard?  I couldn’t think of her without my body telling me to forget everything else and just be with her.  But my prick apparently had no regard for reality.

I couldn’t just bring a cop into my life and expect anything to work out.