Cross Fire (Padre Knights MC Book 3) (5 page)

“Baby,” he whispered, and the threads of need were choking him, she could hear it. “Baby, please.”

The wall came crashing down, exploding over her in all of its white-capped glory. She writhed with it, driving herself back into him, letting him split her open as she burst again and again. She felt him release, yanking her hips back into him so hard that it wanted to hurt, but danced just the slightest sliver away from actual pain. As the aftershocks washed over her, she was clutching the pillow to her face again to bury her cries.

Alejandro was totally silent as he tumbled down to the bed with her, wrapping her gently in his arms and placing delicate kisses on her neck.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When she woke up, the bed was empty next to her. Ali stretched, feeling the soft ache in her thighs and belly from their strenuous love-making the night before. By the way the sun cut in the window, she was pretty sure she’d overslept. Tip would be rattling at his feedbox by now. But Alejandro was standing in the window, the sunlight playing over the plains and seams of his incredibly cut body, and his skin shone like burnished gold, his tattoos standing out like shadows over his heart and arms. She slipped out of bed and padded over to him, naked, wrapping her arms around his abdomen.

He didn’t respond right away. His arms were folded, strong and hard, over his midsection, and she could feel tension vibrating through him, turning him into a live wire. She knew this mood of his. If she wasn’t careful, it’d be her that got snapped by his electric fury. “Couldn’t sleep?” She kept her voice light, soft, easy.

He shook his head. “I heard something in the night. It sounded like a gunshot. I cleared both floors, but after that? No. No more sleep for me.”

She felt her brow tighten and forced herself to smooth it out. Letting her worry vibrate down into her voice would be the wrong way to manage him just now. “How long have you been standing here?”

He shrugged, a smooth motion that told her he didn’t know and didn’t care. That he’d stand there as long as it took.

“Do you understand what I have to do?” he asked, after a long time.

She couldn’t help the sigh that escaped. It tightened his body still further, and she hated that. She stepped away from him and sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to wrap herself in a sheet, hide away from him, but she had an idea how that would go. It wasn’t what she wanted, not deep down. Not where it mattered. “You have to pay them back, I imagine.”

His eyes were bright with rage when he turned back to her. “This isn’t some schoolyard squabble, Ali. There’s no teacher I can go to, no authority figure who will make the Diablos back down. I’m all the Padres have, and they matter to me.”

“Sheriff Hennesy?”

He snorted. “The Diablos are supplying him with underage girls now. He’ll do anything they want. He’s useless to me.”

“They— Excuse me, now, they’re doing
what?
”

“You heard me,” he said. “There’s a reason we come through Arroyo Flats. It’s not just the scenery.” His eyes flashed down to her breasts, and she suspected that his gaze was lingering on the rather lurid bruise he’d left just under her left nipple. A smile broke through his control, for just a moment. “Though I must admit, the scenery is gorgeous.”

“Okay. We’ll deal with what the hell the Sheriff thinks he can get away with later. What are you going to do to deal with the Diablos?”

He opened his mouth, started to speak, and then shook his head violently. “No, Ali. No. You’re not part of the war council.”

“Why not? Because I’m not your ‘old lady’?”

“No.”

“Because I’m a girl?”

“No!” His hands came down on her arms, hard, incredibly hard, and she was afraid then, afraid all the way down through her heart. Not because she thought he would hurt her—she was sure he’d never hurt her on purpose, but anything that provoked this intense of a reaction from him made her afraid. Petrified. Scared, through and through. “Don’t you get it, Ali? I’m trying to protect you because I love you. Because I want you— I
need
you to be safe. I can’t go without you again, baby, it broke my heart so badly that I thought that carving it out with a tattoo needle would hurt less.”

She wanted to run, to hide, to give in, but she took a deep breath. She brought her hands up to cup his cheeks, staring into his eyes. She could feel tears sliding down her face, and she let them fall as they might. “I know. Baby, I know. I understand. This isn’t something I want to be involved in. It’s nothing I ever wanted, but you knew it last night. They know where I live. They know they can get to me through you. Whether we like it or not, I’m a part of this now. I’m not safe, and because I’m not safe, I have to be ready. I have to plan, I have to help you fix this. Because I can’t sit back and knit and wait for the menfolk to make it all better. I’ve never done it in my life, and I won’t start now.”

He tried to pull back, pull away, and she moved with him, standing, following him. “And what happens next?” he asked. “We deal with the Diablos, and then the Padres leave town, and— What? I give up everything I know and love to stay here with you? You abandon your grandmother’s ranch and your dream of a business to follow me? Neither one of us want that.”

“There’s a solution,” she said. “We’ll find it. If we don’t give up on each other.”

She waited while he teetered in the balance. She watched as he warred with himself, as he fought between what he thought was right, and what he wanted. Right had won before, over and over. She saw the moment when the balance tipped her way. “Fuck it all,” he murmured, and his hands on her arms were pushing her back onto the bed, savagely pressing her down into the mattress. He was hard in moments, and his fingers were between her legs. She cried out at his roughness, and he paused, searching her eyes.

“It’s okay,” she said, spreading her thighs just a little wider. “It’s okay.”

He spared a moment to open her with his fingers, and then he was surging into her. She was wet, but not soaked, and he seemed to recognize it with just a corner of his mind. He pressed forward as far as he could, slipped back, and then pressed forward again, moving deeper. She moved her hips with him, giving over to him, letting him set the rhythm. She trusted him, she trusted him not to hurt her, or to stop if she said. That fine edge of pain, that sense of knowing that he was taking her, ready or not, was thrilling through her fingertips.

Fully sheathed inside of her, he reached down, planting his hands on her ass and angling her hips up. His movements were hard, rapid, almost jerking. He made a sound, again and again, and it took her a moment to understand his words. Or word, really. “Mine,” he said, again and again as he slammed into her. “Mine. Mine.”

“Yours,” she said, and on a whim, dug her fingernails fiercely into his shoulders.

He came in a rush, so fast and hard she wasn’t even sure that he knew it was going to happen. He roared with it, a vicious, needy howl as he pushed himself just a little bit deeper into her with every pulse of his body. It had been only a few minutes since he’d entered her.

She held him, rocking him softly, and he panted into her skin. When he could speak, he said only, “Sorry,
mi amor
. I didn’t mean that to be quite so… abrupt.”

Ali felt her heart still beneath the words. She didn’t know if he realized he’d said them, and it wasn’t the moment to make him pause, to make him explain. “It’s all right,” she said. “I pushed you to go faster.”

“Mmm,” he murmured against her skin, planting a delicate kiss on her collarbone. “You didn’t seem to complain in the moment, that’s true.”

Another kiss, slightly slower, and she sighed, shifting gently. Her clit was still thrumming with the electric shock of him taking her so roughly, and the sudden switch to the silk and satin of his lips moving over her skin was a delicious tease.

“It just didn’t seem like you quite got everything you wanted from that moment,” he said.

His tongue traced a path down the curve of her breast, finding the crease underneath where it met her chest, and she shifted harder. His naked thigh came between her legs and pressed into her, and she gasped, surprised at the urgent need to thrust down onto him again. He raised an eyebrow and muttered something in Spanish again, then laughed at himself.

“Still hungry?” he asked. His tongue made an agonizingly heated trip up the swell of her breast until he could flick just the tip of it against her nipple, which rose eagerly into his mouth.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, her hands clenching at the sheets.

He moved fast then, sliding down the bed, leaving kisses in his wake, but not pausing anywhere until his face was between her thighs. He lifted her hips to the angle he seemed to love, and his tongue came down on her clit, sliding through her cleft and pouring into her like lust made molten.

She groaned, her body grinding into his mouth as he fucked her with his tongue, just as urgent and hard as he’d thrust into her a few moments before. She felt naked, exposed, sure she’d fly to pieces, and she clung to the bed with her hands.

He moaned into her, devouring her, his pleasure and delight at tasting her—at tasting the both of them, mixed together—coursing through her with every movement of her body. She fought for words, to tell him that she loved it, that it felt amazing, that she wanted more, but she couldn’t find more than pants and whimpers and cries of delight.

She lost track of how many little, delicate, shuddering orgasms there were. They blended into each other, one plateau leading to the next as she gasped in each breath, coursing a little higher each time. He didn’t stop, didn’t let her rest, just suckled her clit a little harder, moved down and thrust his tongue a little bit deeper, his noises meeting hers, promising her that he loved what he was doing, that he’d do it all day if he needed to.

She wanted to come for him, she wanted to burst for him, spill into his mouth and let him lick her clean, but each time she thought she was done, she was sure this plateau would send her tumbling down, the sensations pushed just a little higher, a little faster, a little more electric.

Just before she came, the world went entirely silent. Her hips arced up into his mouth as though they’d been shocked, and she ground against him, feeling his fingertips dig into her skin, feeling her entire soul vibrate with the energy he’d pulled from her.

And then she did come. The world slammed back into her with a violent burst of sound and light. She bucked, wild and crazy, as the waves of pleasure rocked through her, and he seemed to know just when she’d had too much, when she was finally done, as he moved from the fierce suckling on her body to a soft press of the flat of his tongue against her body, soothing her, settling her. His hand on her stomach grounded her, let her fall back into her body, gasping and panting. He moved back up her body, landing on his side next to her, his head up on his hand. He wore a goofy grin, and when she had energy enough, she slapped his arm.

He laughed, pinning her hand up above her head. “What was that for?” He pressed a kiss against her lips.

“For being entirely too satisfied with yourself,” Ali said, but she couldn’t keep the smile from playing over her lips.

Alejandro cocked and eyebrow and laughed, kissing her again. “Maybe you didn’t notice. I lost track of how many times you came just then. That’s probably a record, even for me.”

“Were there a lot of girls?” She asked, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.

His face shut down immediately, the wall that they’d worked so hard to banish slamming into place between them again. He sat up, and began rooting around on the floor for his jeans.

“Alejandro—”

“No,” he said. “If you’re asking if I’m clean, I am. I got tested every six months. All the guys did. Piss tests, too, when we could. We didn’t allow guys to use heavy shit in the club, and if someone was sick, they needed to get healthy. We had too much going down to be messing with that. But if you’re just asking because you want to feel bad, or you want me to feel bad, about what happened when we weren’t together— Ali, I won’t play that game.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting up, wrapping the sheet around herself. “For me, it was just Bobby.”

“I don’t want to know this.”

“I need you to know it,” she said. She saw his shoulders stiffen, saw him fight and give in. He sat down on the edge of the bed again, but he didn’t turn to face her. “I was broken for a while. And he pulled me out of it. And I told myself that I loved him. Hell, I think I could have loved him if Kip hadn’t died, if everything hadn’t changed. But I always wished he was you. I would close my eyes sometimes, and hope that when I opened them, he’d be gone, and it’d be you leaning over me.”

“And then it was,” Alejandro said, still staring out the window.