Welcome to Sugartown (22 page)

“
I told you
to stop!”

“
And I would
have, if I thought for even one second that you really wanted me
to.”

I don’t have
any response for that because it’s true, I didn’t want him to stop,
not really. When it comes to the way Elijah touches me, I never
want him to stop. But that was the kind of thinking that had led me
into this cluster-fuck in the first place, so I simply shake my
head and close my eyes, wishing I could walk away. Wishing I didn’t
let him get to me. Wishing I didn’t still love him so
much.

“
This shit
between you and me isn’t over, Ana. No matter what you and I do
it’s never gonna be over, you got that?”

“
You’re
wrong. This
shit
between us was over the minute you decided to start lying
about your past.”

I wrench
myself out of his grasp and walk away, and this time he lets me.
I’m maybe fifteen feet away when he says, “Ask yourself why you
care so much, Ana. When you lay your head down tonight, ask
yourself why you’re so mad at me for fucking another girl, when
you’re the one that let me go. Ask yourself if you still love
me.”

“
Of course I
still love you, arsehole.” I stomp back toward him and shove him
again. This time he stumbles a little, but manages to trap my hand
to his chest so I can feel the harried beating of his
heart.

“
Then stop
fucking torturing me, baby girl. Please … Just stop torturing
me.”

Tears roll
down my cheeks. He lifts his hand to wipe them away but I wrench
out of his grasp and start running toward the house. He doesn’t
follow me, and I’m both thankful and torn up about it. It doesn’t
matter whether or not I still love him. Nothing matters but
forgetting this whole mess ever happened, including hearing those
three little words I’d waited so long to hear from him.

Chapter Nineteen

Elijah

I pull up
outside her house. It’s near dark on a Sunday so I know exactly
where to find her, though as I stare at the light coming from the
back door of the shop it occurs to me that she might not be alone.
I never thought to ask if she’d needed help baking her pies when
her arm ended up in a cast—I think I just took it for granted that
she was doing fine. Our argument last night proved that I don’t
know shit.

I think back
again through the alcohol haze of last night and, to be honest, I
have no idea what I’m doing here, other than that I miss her like
I’d miss the fucking air to breathe if it was taken from me. I
fucked up. Bad. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, doing
Nicole. Sometimes you just need to fuck a woman, you know. To
forget? To remember? Hell, if I knew, but there’s a base instinct
to burrow yourself inside a woman when both your heart and head
can’t take any more fucking misery. It’s a stupid as fuck excuse,
but there it is.

I walk over
to the open door and lean against the jamb. Holly and Ana are
inside, some hugely popular R&B band is blasting from the
stereo, Mackerel More something or other, and Holly’s talking
animatedly about getting lucky on the bar at the Sugartown Hotel
after hours. I’m not darkening the door for long before Ana turns
and sees me standing there. Her good mood falters, she frowns and
she lets out a sigh. I shove down the hurt I feel, and smile, even
though it’s the last thing I feel like doing.

Holly stops
midsentence and swivels toward me. “The fuck?”

I ignore the
tiny, scary redhead and speak only to Ana, “You got a
minute?”

“
Are you
fucking serious?” Holly demands, then stalks toward me and starts
ranting and raving about how I should leave Ana alone and how I’m
turning into the worst kind of stalker and that, if I’m not
careful, I’ll find myself up shit creek without a paddle because
there may suddenly be a witness emerge to give their story on the
events of that night with my biker brothers. I let her go on, even
as my heart hammers in my chest with fear because someone other
than Ana and Kick has the ability to put me away for a very long
time with a simple phone call. Even as I think about throwing the
ranga midget over my shoulder and depositing her on her arse
outside, I don’t, because I deserve everything she’s saying and
more.

“
Holly,” Ana
says, “it’s okay.”

“
Yeah? For
how long, Ana? Til he runs his mouth again and you decide to lash
out with your injured arm, forcing me to drive you to the hospital
to have your cast refitted again?” I glance at Ana in confusion and
see that she’s sporting a brand new fluoro pink cast. I’d known
she’d hit me pretty hard last night, I was still wearing the
evidence of that, but I hadn’t realised she’d done more damage to
her arm. “Or maybe this time you’ll run your mouth and he’ll hit
you—”

“
Now hold on
just a goddamn minute,” I begin.

At the same
time Ana says, “Holly!”

“
You know
what? Fine. Duke it out, scream and yell and blue until you tear
one another apart and get this shit out of your system for good.
You don’t belong together. And this may be hard to hear, Elijah,
but Ana is way too good for you and you’re all kinds of wrong for
her. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from one another, because
this little thing between you is toxic and it’s going to tear both
your lives apart.” Holly unties her apron and throws it down on the
counter. She looks only at Ana when she says, “Call me when he’s
gone and I’ll come back and help you finish up.”

She doesn’t
say a thing as she passes me. She doesn’t have to, because all the
hatred she feels for me is as clear as day in her eyes.

The squeaky
screen door bangs back on its hinges and then closes with an
audible slap. Outside, I hear the roar of an engine and breathe a
sigh of relief once I hear it drive away.

“
You really
hurt your arm?”

“
Yep. Another
four to six weeks in this crappy cast. At least the last one was
white and I didn’t have to worry about what the hell was going to
clash with it, but this fluoro pink thing? Yuck!”

“
You’re
rambling.”

“
Yep, I guess
I do that when I’m nervous—”

“
I know,” I
say, both because it’s a trait of hers that I’d always found
adorable and because I want her to know that I know all of her
idiosyncrasies, even the ones she wasn’t aware of. “I’m sorry I
hurt your hand.”

“
Well, to be
fair, I didn’t have to punch you in the face.”

“
Yeah, you
did. I was a complete dickhead.”

“
Yeah, you
were,” she whispers and then swallows hard before glancing out the
shopfront window. “You broke my heart, Elijah.”

Tears spill
down her cheeks. I move to wipe one away with my thumb and she
flinches and moves out of reach. I’ve never had a woman push me
away before and I’m certainly-as-fuck not about to let it start now
with the only woman who’s ever mattered. So I follow her to the
other side of the kitchen and corner her until I’m close enough to
be her shadow.

I place my
hands on her waist and she lets herself be lifted onto the bench,
and then I ease myself between her legs and cradle her face in my
hands. She closes her eyes. I don’t know whether she’s savouring
the moment or wishing she wasn’t in it, but I hope to fuck it’s not
that last one.

“
I fucked up,
baby girl,” I whisper. She nods and more tears roll down her face.
I smooth them from her skin with my thumbs. “Tell me how to fix
it.”

Ana gently
shakes her head. “I don’t think you can.”

“
Yes I can. I
can fix this,” I say resolutely. “I’ll put us back together with my
bare hands, just don’t walk away. No more secrets, no more
mistakes.”

“
Elijah.” She
grasps my hand and gently pulls it from her cheek. “Holly was
right. We can’t go five minutes without fighting or trying to tear
one another’s clothes off.”

“
That’s
normal—”

“
That’s not
healthy. For either of us.”

“
Don’t do
this, Ana,” I warn, but my words fall on deaf ears. It’s written
all over her face; she has no intention of backing down this time.
I shake my head and send her a pleading glance. I’m not above
getting on my knees and begging her to give me another chance, but
I can see in her eyes that the time for grovelling came and went,
and I was buried balls-deep in another woman instead of falling to
my knees in worship.

“
Ah, fuck!” I
rub at my chest to ease the burn in my heart. “This is bullshit,
baby girl. The way I feel about you, the way you feel about me,
that shit doesn’t just up and go away. I know I’m not worthy of
someone as fucking spectacular as you. I know it. This whole
fucking town knows it. But I’ll be a better man. I’ll change. I’ll
do fucking anything you ask of me, just don’t do this.”

Ana presses
her hand to the centre of my chest and I capture it with my own the
way I did last night, only now I bring it to my lips and kiss it
all over. I feel her defences melt a little so I decide to knock
them over completely, until there’s nothing but the dust of her
resolve left. I cup her face and force my lips down upon hers. I
watch surprise flit across her face and then I close my eyes and
throw myself into proving that she’s wrong, that though we’re not
fine right now, one day soon, we will be.

She kisses me
back, tentatively at first, and then, as I fist my hands in her
hair and push myself further into the space between us, her legs
wrap around my hips and I pull her off the bench in order to feel
her small body wrapped around me. She tastes of salt and need and
damn, if I don’t want to fulfil every single one of hers. She lifts
her t-shirt over her head and throws it to the floor, and then she
claws at mine until I’m no longer wearing one either. I slam her up
against the refrigerator and she arches into me, her big beautiful
tits at the perfect height for sucking. I claim a nipple with my
mouth and gently bite down until it peaks against my teeth and
tongue. Ana cries out so I do it again, harder this time. The end
result is a thing of beauty; she pushes herself against me and
reclaims my mouth with her own. There’s nothing tender or tentative
in this kiss; she’s a squirming, clawing wildcat, and I’m revelling
in every second of her newfound confidence.

“
You’re so
fucking perfect,” I say as I rock my hips into hers. My cock
strains against my jeans as I push into the soft fabric of her yoga
pants and I feel her lips part around me.

Fuck
me!
I almost blow my load right there.
She’s soft and soaking wet and so completely fucking all-woman that
I feel like I could just melt into her warmth.

I rock into
her again, harder this time, until I’m certain she can feel just
how fucking hard I am and how much I want her. The fabric barrier
between us is driving me insane; I want to tear off her pants and
push myself so deep inside that her pussy won’t ever forget how
good we are together, even if her heart’s determined to.

Ana moans.
Her breath comes out in hot little pants against my cheek and I
know that, just like me, she’s close to coming.

“
God, you
feel so fucking good,” I mutter as I drive myself faster, pushing
as deep as our clothes will allow, but she doesn’t react the way I
expect her to. Instead, she’s completely frozen. And then tears
spill down her cheeks, and I have no choice but to gently set her
down on her feet.

I don’t have
the foggiest idea of what’s going on but something tells me,
without even knowing what went wrong, I’ve fucked this up
royally.

“
Hey, come
here.” I cradle her head to my chest and wince as her tears spill
onto my stomach because I don’t know what the hell they
mean.

We stand like
that, with her head cradled to my chest and her arms flung around
my waist for too long, and then, when not a sound can be heard but
our breathing and the gentle hum of the fridge, Ana wrenches
herself out of my arms, dries her eyes with the back of her hands
and says, “Go home, Elijah.”

“
You’re my
home, baby. Don’t take that away from me. Please?”

“
No. I’m not.
If I were, you would have told me the truth. And you certainly
wouldn’t have fucked another woman right before you told me you
loved me.”

“
Ana—”

She swipes at
her eyes, turns to face the bench and goes back to awkwardly
rolling out a lump of pastry with her left hand. “We can’t do this
anymore. We need a clean break or we’ll just end up hurting one
another.”

Is she
fucking kidding me?

When it
becomes apparent that she’s not and that she’s done beating a dead
horse I press a kiss into her hair, taking one last chance to
breathe in her sweet, vanilla scent.

“
We’re
already hurting, baby girl,” I say and leave the kitchen a fucked
up, heartbroken mess.

Chapter Twenty

Ana

An entire
month after my break up with Elijah, I’m still just as miserable as
I was the minute he walked out of my kitchen for good. After he’d
left that day I’d cried until Dad came home from a club meet and
found me passed out on the floor. He’d picked me up, carried me to
my room and that’s where I’d stayed for two days before Holly came
a calling to kick my lazy, heartbroken arse out of bed.