RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (42 page)

Levi’s eyes grew dark, almost black, and he leaned forward until his face was mere inches from mine. His lips came close to my ear. “I want to do things for you,” he repeated, but this time it meant something else entirely. His breath caressed my neck and the sensation almost made me gasp, it felt so intimate. Levi was touching me without laying a finger on me.

“Levi,” I whispered. I was absolutely frozen to the spot, from fear mixed with so much desire that it paralyzed me. I had never wanted to be touched so badly in my life. I didn’t have any idea how to react, or what to do, but I knew that if Levi kissed me or touched me in any way I might just explode. Whatever he did, I knew I would be helpless to resist anything. What was more, I realized dimly, I didn’t
want
to resist. I wanted him to do something, anything. I needed, more than anything, for him relieve the terrible ache between my legs.

“Levi,” I whispered again, his name now a kind of plea.

He moved just a fraction of an inch closer now, until his lips were so close to my skin that if I moved at all they would be touching me. “You’re fucking gorgeous, Cherish,” he murmured into my ear. “It’s all I can do not to take you right here.” My eyes closed at the exquisite torture, my lips parted, waiting. And then, with a low groan that was almost a growl, he moved away.

I opened my eyes, confused, to find him looking down on me, almost glowering. “You can stay here as long as you want, Cherish,” he said, his voice tense, almost angry. “The other men will leave you alone. But you need to stay away from me.”

Then he turned and strode to the door, closing it behind him.

I stood there, stupefied, my body fairly vibrating with need. I had no idea what had just happened. For a moment I just stood dumbly, and then all of the tensions of the past few minutes seemed to break over me like a wave. I sank to the couch and began to cry, confusion and frustration pulled out of me with every sob. I had thought Levi hated me, then that maybe he could at least tolerate me, and now… what was I to make of all that had just happened?

My sobs continued as tried to push away the image of what I had been waiting for Levi to do to me. I had never felt pleasure from a man before, but somehow I knew that what I wanted from him was for him to take me to bed, to push his hard length inside me. It was astonishing to realize that this was something a woman could want, and the fact that I had just understood it at the precise moment that Levi had decided to walk away from me was almost more than I could bear.

I didn’t know if he was trying to torture me or just to warn me by being so cruel, but he could hardly have hurt me more if he’d tried. I realized that I felt more alone at this moment than I had at any point since I’d left the Ranch. Levi had warned me to stay away from him, and his cruel lesson had taught me exactly that. I didn’t know how much longer I would have to stay at the Stone Kings clubhouse, but I would avoid Levi like the plague until I was able to leave.

I
t had been almost
two weeks since the night I almost lost control and took Cherish to bed.

Since then, we had seen each other in passing almost every day, but she would only say the most superficial greetings to me, and she refused to meet my eye.

It was exactly what I had told her she needed to do. So why did it feel like I was in some sort of self-imposed hell?

I hadn’t had any intentions of anything sexual happening between us that night. Hell, I’d just gone up to the apartment to reassure her I was fine with her staying for a while. But the second she opened the door I was a goner. I didn’t know why it was that every single time I saw her, she somehow got more beautiful and fucking sexier than she had been the last time. She had just returned from a day out shopping with Seton, and apparently one of Seton’s friends who was a hairdresser had given Cherish a haircut. The new style was shorter, not radically different, but the cut had made her hair fuller and brought out a natural wave that made it cascade thick and full around her face. She had a little makeup on, too, just a little, and the added blush to her lips drew my eyes to them, and accentuated their fullness until I could barely look at them without imagining what they would feel like wrapped around my cock.

I thought I had steeled myself against my desire for Cherish before I walked into the apartment, but seeing her like that pretty much ambushed me, so I found myself there in the middle of the living room with a raging hard-on, with barely enough self-control to say what I had come to say and get out. I had to keep my hands fisted in my pockets to resist the urge to touch her. Even worse, it felt like she was feeling some of the same things, because her skin flushed a bit as I looked at her, her eyes dilating until I couldn’t even see the pupils anymore.

My desire to fuck her senseless was just barely under control when she started to apologize again for inconveniencing me and promise up and down she wouldn’t stay long. And I don’t know, I just snapped a little at her. I had been thinking about what she had told me concerning her escape all day, and suddenly I couldn’t stand to have her think I was mad at her for using me as a life line out of that place. So, I found myself telling her that I was glad she had come to find me, and that I admired her for having the courage to get out. In spite of all my resolve, somehow telling her that put a little crack in my armor before I even noticed it happening.

“Thank you, Levi,” she said with a little laugh. “It seems like all I do is thank you for things.”

Jesus, there was something about the breathy way she said my name.
Levi
… It went straight to my dick. “Cherish,” I replied before I could stop myself, “I want to do things for you.”

Then, fuck if I didn’t move toward her and almost take her in my arms before I could stop myself. And frankly, if it had been anyone but her, I probably would have just gone for it. But it was Cherish. She had just escaped a life where sex had been something that was expected to be an unpleasant duty for women. From the way she was acting, I thought she wanted me — hell, I was almost sure of it. The way she looked at me, her lips parted like they were waiting for me to kiss her, the way her breath sped up when I got closer — her entire body was sending mine signals like a fucking beacon.

But I couldn’t do it. She had to be off limits. I couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman as instantly or as much as I wanted Cherish Holmes. I was pretty sure I had never wanted any woman this much in my life. Just my fucking ridiculous luck that it had to be her. But I didn’t want to take advantage of someone like Cherish. I didn’t want to do something that would scar her for life, even more than her husband had probably scarred her. Cherish needed time to adjust to life in the outside world. As much as I hated to admit it, I cared about her. I couldn’t do something that would make it harder for her. I shouldn’t even have done as much as I did. I needed to stay away from her.

That didn’t mean that I was able to keep her completely out of my mind. Far from it. In the last couple of weeks, I woke up to thoughts of Cherish. I went to bed with thoughts of Cherish. I dreamed about her every goddamn night. And more times than I cared to admit, I found myself jacking off furiously to the thought of her. In the shower, or in bed, I would lean back against the tiles or the mattress and imagine pushing myself inside her hot, wet center as she wrapped her legs around me. I would stroke myself as slowly as I could to make it last, but I could never manage it for long, and soon I was coming with a loud groan, my orgasm so strong that I would see stars.

You would think that bringing myself off a few times to the image of her in my head would eventually do the trick and get my mind off of her.

You’d think fucking wrong.

Like I said, Cherish and I had exchanged little other than pleasantries in the two weeks or so since that night in the apartment. But I did manage to learn a few things about how she was progressing from what other people said. Seton and her friend Andi had managed to get Cherish an interview for a hostess position at the bar/restaurant where Andi worked, and I heard from Seton that she would be starting that job soon. I was happy for her, and broke my code of silence to stop Cherish one day as she passed by to tell her so.

“Thank you,” she said simply, avoiding my eyes. “It’s a relief to have a start at things.”

Seton had also enlisted her brother Cal’s help in giving Cherish driving lessons. Apparently, Cherish knew more or less how to drive, but hadn’t done it much, so Cal took one of our cars out a few times and helped her practice. I would see them coming back together from their sessions, Cherish laughing more and more easily at Cal’s flirtatious comments, and my hands would curl into angry fists. I liked Cal, and I knew I had no right to be jealous, but damned if at those moments I didn’t want to push him back against the wall and pound his face in for him. I wondered if something would develop between them, and had to resist the urge to take Cal aside and tell him that Cherish was a non-starter. More than once, my stomach dropped to the floor at the realization that I might have forced myself to stay away from her, only for her to start something up with another MC brother.

One day, I was out in the garage with Frankenstein giving my bike an oil change. It was an abnormally humid day for that part of Colorado, and sweat was dripping from my forehead as I worked. As I bent over the task and tried to ignore the sting of it falling into my eyes, I heard a female voice from the other side of the bay.

“Hey, Frank,” Seton called out easily. Frankenstein answered with a ‘hey’ back, which is more than he usually managed for anyone. Next to Frank, I pass for one loquacious motherfucker.

I looked up to see Seton approaching me. “Hey, Levi, can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure, what’s up?” I asked, straightening.

“Well, I’ve been trying to help Cherish figure out some legal stuff, to get her started. Like, she has to fill out a W-2 for her new job at Hammie’s, but in talking to her, she said she’s actually not sure whether she is actually legally married to her husband.”

At the mention of Cherish’s name, my heart started thudding in my chest, but I kept my face a careful mask of indifference. “She doesn’t know whether she’s married?” I asked.

“Not really.” Seton shook her head. “She said she wasn’t ever legally married to her first husband — did you know she was married once before? It’s so weird! Anyway, she was, but apparently it wasn’t actually an official marriage because she wasn’t of legal age at the time. But she doesn’t have any recollection of whether the Ranch made the second one legal.” Seton looked up at me with a guarded expression. “I know you grew up there, too,” she said carefully. “Would you have any idea whether marriages there are legally binding?”

A surge of anger ran through me as she spoke the words, but I tamped it down. I fucking hated anyone knowing anything about my past, but it wasn’t Seton’s fault. Keeping my voice neutral, I replied. “No, I don’t know anything about that stuff. I left before anyone started talking about me getting married. Although,” I continued, “I remember Cherish said that she was Isaiah’s
second
wife.” What she had told me about his first wife not liking her came back to me. “If that’s the case, and he’s legally married to the first one, then Cherish can’t be legally married to him, too. Southern Arizona looks the other way on a lot of shit the FLDS sects do, but they still have bigamy laws.”

Seton nodded as she took it all in. “Huh. Okay. Well, that’s probably good news, in the grand scheme of things, but we need to know for sure, for purposes of filling out the paperwork for her job. She needs to know what her legal name is. And also,” she said quietly, “I suggested that she should find out so that, if she is legally married, she should start divorce proceedings as soon as possible. So that her husband doesn’t have any legal rights to anything while she’s setting herself up.”

I swore softly. That hadn’t occurred to me. As an adult, Cherish had a legal right to come and go as she pleased, but until we knew for sure she wasn’t legally bound to anyone at the Ranch, we didn’t know how difficult they could make her life if they wanted to. “Yeah, good point, Seton. Thanks for thinking of that.”

“No problem.” She smiled. “But here’s the favor I need to ask. Cherish needs to get going on this stuff, and she needs to go over to the county courthouse and make a request to look up a marriage license, and also to see if she has a social security number. It being Thursday, she should try to get the requests filled out before the weekend, but I have to go to work soon, so I can’t take her. Could you?”

It was the last goddamn thing in the world I wanted to do. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Seton if she could find someone else to take Cherish, but then the thought of her asking Cal to do it stopped me. Cursing myself for being such a jealous bastard, I said, “Sure. I can do it. When does she want to go?”

Seton smiled. “Thanks, Levi! You’re the best. I think she’s ready to go any time, actually. You want me to let her know?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I’ll just finish up here and clean up. Have her come down in about half an hour.”

Fuck
.

C
herish came
into the garage a while later wearing a simple blue-and-white striped camisole top, cut off jean shorts and flip flops. It was the first time I’d ever seen her wearing shorts, and the sight of her legs, which I’d imagined wrapped around me so many times in my fantasies, was almost more than I could take.

I had worked myself into a piss-poor mood anyway at the thought of having to spend the next couple of hours with her, and unfortunately I was on edge enough that I wasn’t able to keep myself from lashing out at her.

“You can’t wear those goddamn flip flops on the bike,” I growled at her, nodding toward her sandals. “Go change into some other shoes.”

Startled, she looked down, then back up at me. “We’re taking your motorcycle?” she asked.

“What the hell else did you think we were gonna take?” I barked.

Her surprise shifted to anger at my harsh words. “Okay, you don’t need to bite my head off,” she retorted. “I’ll go change.” She turned in a huff and marched back toward the clubhouse without another word. Unfortunately, her going to change meant that I had to watch her ass as she retreated. I ran through every swear word I could think of as I went to wash off my hands and splash cold water over my face.

She came back a few minutes later wearing a pair of tennis shoes, her jaw set angrily. She avoided my eyes as I handed her my helmet and showed her how to put it on. When I reached forward to help her attach it under her chin, she pulled back. “I can do it,” she muttered. I watched her in irritated silence as she fumbled clumsily with the straps until she finally managed to snap them together.

I straddled the bike and motioned with my head for her to get on. She paused for a moment, obviously reluctant, and I resisted the urge to bark at her. Above and beyond this being her first time on a motorcycle, I knew she had rarely had physical contact with a member of the opposite sex. Finally, after a few moments, she awkwardly got on behind me.

“Put your feet on those pedals there,” I instructed, “and wrap your arms around me.” Again, she hesitated, and I waited until she tentatively did as I told her. My chest tightened at the feel of her pressed up against me, but I fought it off and continued. “When we turn, the bike’s gonna lean. You want to lean into the turn with me, not against it. That’s important. Just follow my lead. Think you can do that?”

I felt her nod. “Yes.”

“Good.” I started up the bike, and we were off. As soon as I put the bike in gear and we began to move forward, Cherish’s arms tightened around me in fear. I made sure to drive as smoothly as I could, with no sudden moves, and after a couple of minutes I could feel her relax a bit. I took the first few turns slowly, to give her time to get used to the bike leaning, and to her credit, it didn’t take her long to get the hang of it. By the time we arrived at the county courthouse, I could tell her body had relaxed almost completely. I was impressed.

Pulling into a parking space toward the front of the building, I cut the engine and told Cherish to get off first. When she removed her helmet, I saw that she was smiling. “That was fun,” she said, giving me a sheepish grin.

It was sort of cute that her mood had changed so quickly just from a short ride, and I felt my irritation at her begin to melt away. “Glad you liked it,” I said in a tone that didn’t come out as gruff as I wanted it to.

We headed into the courthouse, which luckily also had a Social Security Administration office, so we went there first. Cherish gave her full name and date of birth to the woman behind the counter. I realized that her twenty-second birthday would be in just a few weeks, and that, like anyone who had grown up in the WFZ community, she had probably never celebrated it. I wasn’t big on birthdays myself, but remembering that made me kind of sad for her, anyway.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Cherish had never been issued a social security number. In order to get one, the office was asking for the original of her birth certificate and a second form of ID like a driver’s license, neither of which Cherish had. The woman behind the counter suggested that Cherish could bring in an employee ID card or a school ID instead of the license, but she didn’t have those, either. After a few minutes of going around and around with the woman behind the counter, it was clear that Cherish’s first encounter with government bureaucracy was taking its toll on her. She walked out of that office in a daze, looking up at me with a bewildered expression.