Reckless Temptations (The Tempted Series Book 4) (15 page)

“Christ, Kitten,” I ground out, pumping her until she took everything I had to give.

I was balls deep in Lauren, her bare back against the brick wall and I made a list of things I hoped I’d remember come morning.

1. My Kitten was a screamer.
   
2. She came here tonight for me.
   
3. She wore that dress for me.
   
4. And when she came around my cock she owned me.
   

That last one was a scary thought, and I scratched it from the list. It must have been all the hype of the night, all the alcohol, the post orgasm was responsible for my temporary madness.

No one owned me.

I pulled out, setting her down on her feet before tucking my swollen cock back into my jeans. Lauren repositioned her dress, tugging the hem down her legs and shoved her breasts back in place. I looked down at her bare feet then lifted my eyes to hers as she pushed her glasses onto her nose.

She looked shocked, as if she had just woken up from a bad dream and didn’t know where she was. I bent down, picked up one shoe and glanced around for the other. Then I remembered when and where she threw it at me. I stepped around the corner of the building into the parking lot and recovered the lost heel.

“Riggs! There you are,” Wolf shouted across the lot. “Pops is looking for you. He found you a match in the ring,” he hollered.

Oh fuck! I forgot about that.

“I’ll be right there!” I yelled as I picked up Lauren’s shoe. I straightened up and turned around. Lauren took the shoe from my hand and slipped it on her bare foot.

“Lauren,” I started, not really knowing what to say.

“I’ve got to go,” she interrupted, closing her eyes before pointing her finger toward the Dog Pound. “Mia is inside,” she said in a whisper, looking all around the parking lot but not at me. “Can you please tell her I’m leaving? I don’t want to go back inside,” she pleaded softly.

I cupped her chin, turning her head so that her eyes were forced to lock with mine.

“Take a deep breath,” I ordered.

She inhaled sharply, slowly releasing a deep breath.

“Very good,” I encouraged. “We’re good. It’s just sex. We’re still Kitten and Tiger,” I reassured.

Lauren was a good girl. She’s probably never had a fling, much less a cheap one on the side of a building. She was a girl you spooned not one you walked away from to go win a fight. She deserved more, but I wasn’t the guy to give it to her so I did the right thing and calmed her down.

I lied to her.

We weren’t still Kitten and Tiger.

We were nothing.

“Kitten and Tiger,” she repeated, taking another breath before a smile worked her swollen lips. “Still friends,” she affirmed.

“Still friends,” I lied.

What a fucking night.

Join an MC,
they said.

It will be fun,
they said.

They
were fucking liars.

So much for being the smart girl.

I was the biggest fool to ever walk the face of the Earth, or possibly the most inexperienced one. As much as I hated to admit it, my brother was right. In not so many words, he warned me that this would happen. But that’s what you get when a girl like me plays with the big dogs. I should never have gone to Riggs’ patch party. I should have been smarter. I should have realized I was way out of my league setting my sights on a guy like him.

But I wasn’t thinking.

Riggs robbed me of my sanity that first night I laid eyes on him. He made me want things I had no business wanting someone like him. I was so jaded that I actually believe he liked me. Imagine that? A sexy guy like him, a patched member of a motorcycle club, a man who had women dropping to their knees with the snap of his fingers.

I didn’t attract guys like Riggs, and even if I did, there was no way he’d stick. I was so angry with myself because I knew all of this, and still; I set myself up for the way I was now feeling. I just couldn’t resist him despite the warning bells signaling he was all wrong for me.

Believing him when he said nothing would change, that we were still just Kitten and Tiger—that took the cake, labeling me the dumbest girl ever.

Stupid, stupid girl.

Sex changes things.

Sex in a parking lot, against a wall, destroys things.

And still, knowing that, I tried to analyze why things changed. He claimed it was just sex, making it sound so casual, like it was nothing. I went home that night and drilled those things into my head, making light of it because he promised we’d still be friends. I pushed the memories of him inside of me away, forgetting the way I felt alive, and for the first time I came with hardly any effort from my partner.

The next morning, I texted him like I usually did asking him how his first day with a patch felt. Corny? Maybe, but at least I didn’t meow again. I still can’t believe I did that.

Riggs never answered my text that morning, and I made an excuse, telling myself he was too hung over and probably had slept in.

So, I sent him another text later that night, securing the end of Kitten and Tiger, by declaring him my Prince Charming because he found my other shoe after I threw it.

Guess what?

Prince Charming didn’t answer that one either.

I didn’t text him after that for two days—every time I felt the urge Mia came through with a tub of tiramisu gelato. I think the first few days were just as rough on her but she redeemed herself as my best friend. She made a dartboard and taped a picture of a tiger to the bullseye. That was fun for a while.

Until it wasn’t.

I lost my job at The Pink Pussycat and he was the first person I wanted to tell. And not because he and Mia were the only people who knew where I really worked, but because I knew he’d make me feel better about being laid off on top of everything else.

And so I called him.

It went to voicemail.

I hung up.

I called back and left a message, and did the number one move every girl does when she’s been shunted—I lied through my teeth.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you.”

He would know it was a lie.

How many
Tigers
can one person have stored in their phone? I changed his name in my phone to dickhead after that.

Two more weeks went by and still not a word. One would think that I would’ve gotten the hint by now, but nope, I still stared at my phone hoping he’d have a change of heart. Things got progressively worse on my end and Mia and I needed to vacate our apartment.

The jig was up.

No job.

No place to live.

Mia was moving back home with her parents, and why not? She wasn’t pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Me? I had to come clean, once and for all. I had no other choice.

Anthony and Adrianna had asked my mother and I to come home for the weekend. This brought on my anxiety about bumping into Riggs. What would I do? What would I say? Then I drove myself crazy thinking about what he would do. Would he ignore me? Would he smile at me? Would he be with someone else?

I didn’t have a broken heart, but I had a broken ego—I think that hurt just as much. The more I thought about it, the more my sadness turned to anger. I shouldn’t care about seeing him, and I shouldn’t give a shit if he was with another girl. I had bigger fish to fry. I should be concerned about telling my family about nursing school and the fact my ass was broke with no place to live. Instead, I was mulling over some douche bag who probably didn’t even give me a second thought. A douche bag who stuck his dick inside any girl who would let him.

Stupid girl! You let him!
      
Yeah, I did, even after I saw him with some other girl five minutes before. I dropped my head into my hands and fought back the tears that threatened to spill.

Don’t cry.

Don’t give that bastard that kind of power.

He doesn’t deserve your tears.

But it was no use, they poured from my eyes, three, almost four weeks of unshed tears.

Being the fool sucked.

I cried and cried, letting it all out as I sat alone in my empty apartment waiting for my mother. I cried because I lost my way. I cried because I thought Riggs would help me find it. I cried because I felt like an idiot. I cried because I lost my Tiger and I was no longer Kitten. Again, I was back to being plain old Lauren.

I used to like being plain old me.

What happened to that?

You wanted more, that’s what happened,
my conscience reminded me.

The doorbell rang, and I tried to pull myself together. It didn’t do me any good because when you shut your feelings off for so long you become helpless to the emotions.

My emotions owned me.

I wiped at my tears, giving up on hiding my pain from whoever was on the other end of that door and opened it.

My mother’s eyes widened as she took me in. Like so many times before, I saw my pain reflected in her eyes. I wonder if every mother and daughter had that kind of relationship. If they had a mom like mine, the type of mother that owned her daughter’s pain as her own.

She dropped her bag onto the floor, opened her arms wide and I sobbed as I stepped into her embrace.

“Oh, my girl, it’s okay,” she whispered, hugging me tightly as she walked me back into the apartment.

My mother was always my hero and not because my father wasn’t around and she had to be both our mother and our father, but because she knew all the right things to say. She knew how to heal and how to make me feel better. I was blessed with the best mom out there, one who loved fiercely and gave wholeheartedly. I don’t think I will ever be too old, or there will ever come a time when I don’t need her in my life. When the day comes that I have children of my own, I can only hope I’m half the mother to my children she is to me and my brother. One of the best gifts I’ll ever be able to give my children is the gift of her as their grandmother.

She sat us on the couch and went to work on drying my eyes. She didn’t ask questions or try to figure out why I was upset. She didn’t tell me to stop crying but handed me tissues and told me to let it all out. We sat like that for a few minutes, me crying until there were no tears left, and her holding my hand as I sobbed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, blowing my nose into the tissue before turning toward her.

“Are you ready?” She asked, with love and concern etched in her eyes, the eyes of a worried mom. The eyes of a mother that would always love her children unconditionally. I felt the familiar pang of guilt surface as I realized I should have never doubted my mother in the first place. She would always love me even if she didn’t agree with me. She’d always be my biggest fan, my number one supporter.

“I’m ready,” I whispered.

“Let’s hear it,” she said, squeezing my hand reassuringly.

“I don’t want to be a nurse and I quit the program months ago,” I blurted, blowing out a deep breath. I lifted my eyes back to hers and saw the confusion and shock settle in.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean you don’t want to be a nurse anymore? What happened?” She questioned.

“I can’t do it, mom. It was one thing to memorize a text book and know the ins and outs of the human body, but it was another staring at a body trying to remember every single thing I’ve learned so I could help that person. It was too much responsibility, and it was too heartbreaking to lose my first patient on my very first day,” I explained sadly. “Please don’t try to change my mind,” I started.

“Hold it, Lauren, right there,” she interrupted me. “I would never,
ever
, try to sway you a different way,” she declared. “You’ve made a decision about your life, and I, as your mother, need to respect your decision. It is not up to me to tell you what to do, you’re a grown woman, and I made peace with that,” she said.

“You’re not going to tell me I made a mistake?” I asked.

“No, sweetheart, I’m not. Maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t but that is for you to figure out, no one else,” she stated, as she leaned forward and pressed her lips to my forehead.

“I’m out of school, forfeited the scholarship. I have been working in a bar until recently, but now I have no job and Mia and I have to move,” I confessed, dropping the rest of the bomb and waited for her to explode with fury.

“Wow,” she said, exasperated. “How long has this all been going on?”

“Four months,” I admitted. “I’ve been lying to everyone. I tell myself it’s because I didn’t want to disappoint you but I think it’s more that—I’m ashamed more than anything else.

“Lauren, I’m not disappointed in you,” she objected.

“But you were so disappointed in Anthony—”

“Because I blamed myself for Anthony’s choices,” she interrupted “I thought your brother chose Victor’s lifestyle because I was failing as a single mom and he figured he needed to step up to the plate. It killed me that your brother gave up on himself at such a young age. He could’ve been anything, he could’ve been a goddamn garbage man and I would’ve been proud of him,” she paused, her eyes shimmering with tears. “I am proud of the man your brother became,” she amended.

“I wish he would have valued his life more. Wish he hadn’t lost three years rotting in a cell. Nobody wants that life for their child, Lauren. One day you’ll have children and you’ll understand. You will want them to have the best, you will want them to reach for the stars and be everything you never could. You’ll watch them grow and you’ll wish they were little, still clinging to your leg. You’ll want to protect them from the world but you won’t be able to. You’ll learn to make peace with that too. You won’t ever stop worrying about your children and you’ll always want to take their pain away. You’ll forever want to make their dreams come true and you’ll hold their hand when their dream changes,” she whispered, glancing down at my hand held tightly by hers.