Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (39 page)

“Every day I spent with you just made
it clearer,” she said softly.

I slid closer to her, close enough to
wrap her legs in mine. Laurel’s eyes welled up with tears the closer I came,
and when we touched began to cry in earnest. I took her free hand in both of
mine.

“Did you tell the truth when you were
with me?” I asked. “Is the Laurel I’ve fallen in love with the real woman?”

Laurel looked up into my eyes,
amazed. I lifted a hand to wipe the tears from under cheek.

“Yes,” she said in a desperate
exhale. “Yes, Noah. You didn’t know me from Eve. I had no reason to lie about
all of that. And from the second you sat down next to me at the bar and
complimented my shirt, I wanted you to know everything about me. I don’t know
why… but I did.” She placed her hand over mine as I caressed her face. “I never
lied about any of it. And I never lied about how much I care about you.”

“After you told me who you were, I
was so afraid I had trusted the wrong woman again,” I said, pressing my
forehead against hers. “But then all I could think about was… was that you had
given up your story for me. This was huge for you, and you just walked away
from it. I tried to imagine a single time in my life I’ve ever done that for
someone, and I couldn’t fucking do it. You’re an incredible woman, Laurel.”

“Noah…” she whimpered, tearing up
again.

“You proved you cared for me. You
sacrificed to protect me, Laurel. I can count on one hand the number of people
that have ever done that for me before.”

“And I can count the same number of
times I’ve sacrificed,” she said. “I don’t know why you think I’m incredible,
Noah. I’ve never sacrificed for anyone before. I’ve always been focused on my
own career, my own plans… and I’ve never felt guilty for any of it. But with
you, I couldn’t. After I got the video, all I could think about was… asshole
tourists overwhelming the Graveyard Club and driving Kevin insane or turning
his baby into something horrible… you, having to move out of your hometown or
duck around getting harassed all the time, having no peace to find your new
path… I saw everything I was about to destroy, even though I thought I was
doing something good. And I couldn’t do it to you, Noah. You deserve nothing
but peace in this world. You’ve sacrificed for everyone and asked for nothing.”

Every word she spoke felt like it was
shattering the cold, dark walls I had built around my heart for so many lonely
years. I enfolded Laurel in my arms and drew her softly into my chest. She threw
her arms around me and dug her face into my shoulder, crying.

“Noah, I love you,” she said against
my neck. “I love you.”

I closed my eyes, overwhelmed. My
muscles shook inside me at the sound of her words, and I grasped her close to
me. “I love you too, Laurel. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”

“Can you ever really forgive me?” she
sobbed. “I want you to believe me.”

“I do. I believe you,” I said and
dropped a kiss on her lips. She returned it hungrily, pulling my face down to
meet hers.

After a few minutes of tender
kissing, Laurel realized her phone was still recording, dangling in her left
hand behind my neck, and she laughed and brought it forward. “I should probably
not include the making out in the write-up.”

“I don’t know, it might be just what
Slipstream
is lacking,” I said with a wink. “Sex sells, right?”

She turned the recording off and
looked up at me. “I’m going to have to go back to New York, at least for a bit,
and finish this up.”

“And then what?”

Laurel smiled shyly. “And then… then
I’m coming right back here. For a long while.”

“I think I might know someone who can
show you around,” I said.

She kissed me again and didn’t stop
until her phone was chiming, the call of an incoming message. Laurel pulled
away from my mouth and looked at her phone with an annoyed grunt.

“Just one sec, it’s my partner from
the magazine.” A few finger swipes later, she pulled up his message and let out
a laugh with a shake of her head.

She held up the phone to me, and
displayed a photo of a fit dude with short-cropped hair sitting in a cozy dark
blue first class airline seat. In each hand, he held a full mimosa, and grinned
at the camera behind sunglasses like he had won the lottery.

“I guess I missed my flight,” she
said, stuffing the phone in her pocket. She looked up at me with lustful,
curious eyes.

As I ran my hands up her thighs, I
said, “Well, what’s to be done about that?”

~
EPILOGUE ~

Laurel

THREE MONTHS LATER

“Seriously, man, it’s still not centered!” I laughed,
waving my hands from side to side. The workers on the scaffolding above the
doorway to the Graveyard Club followed my directions with only a little
frustration, until I hollered and put up the okay sign with both hands.
“Perfect, there! Perfect. I’ll have beers waiting for you boys when you’re
done.”

The workers made their notes about
the location, and then carefully lowered the brand-new, but old school-looking,
neon sign for the club that had just been delivered. I wiggled around the
scaffolding with care and went back inside.

Things had moved fast after the story
hit the presses. It became the best-selling issue of
Slipstream
in the
past fifteen years, and generated a ton of new revenue for the magazine. Noah’s
reputation had recovered—and then some. Shows and reporters had lined up the
first few weeks, trying to get some face time with him, but he turned them all
down. He had said everything he wanted to say in my story, and he only wanted
to focus on the future.

Domino was upset, but she understood
when I stepped down from the magazine. She called it going out on a high note,
but the truth was just that I didn’t want to sneak around my scene anymore,
trying to uncover its dirt—I wanted to get back to helping it thrive,
supporting the local acts, and writing culture pieces. Deathshead, one of
Seattle’s oldest underground magazines, was all too happy to hire me, and I
intended to take over as editor one day.

I found a house in Thornwood only a
short drive from Noah’s, which I only bought after I insisted it was the right
thing to do for a lifelong commitment-phobe. He understood my need for freedom;
it wasn’t like we were apart for long periods, anyway. Noah was spending his
time on low-key things after the stress of the festival, and most of his days,
he was working the Graveyard Club with Kevin, slowly edging him into the
present one upgrade at a time.

Behind the bar, Kevin was drying
glasses. “Get it all okay?”

“Yeah, it’s going to look fucking
amazing,” I told him. “They should have it finished in an hour or so.”

“Don’t forget to ask them to hang up
some of the bug zappers we got, too. That neon light is gonna pull all the
skeeters to the smokers at night,” he said, gesturing to the lamps gathered
under one of the tables.

“Will do,” I promised and took a
drink of water from the glass on the bar.

“Babe,” came Noah’s muffled voice
from the stage. “Are you busy? Can you help me out here?”

I hurried over to find him trying to
hold up one of the overhead PA speakers while he simultaneously tried to
maneuver a dolly that had tipped onto its side.

“Geez, tough guy, what gives!” I
teased, picking up the dolly and rolling it right underneath him. Noah lowered
the speaker carefully onto the platform and stood up with an exhale. He
straightened his shirt and pulled me close for a kiss.

“Thanks for helping out today,” he
said. “Are you sure the mag didn’t mind?”

“Nah,” I said. “This new place is way
more low-key than
Slipstream
. Besides, that was the point, remember?
That I
don’t
work my ass off all the time anymore?”

“So what do you call helping fix up
the Graveyard Club—a vacation?” he laughed, slapping my ass playfully.

“Ooh,” I said. “We should probably
take a real one of those soon. I’m getting a little travel thirsty.”

Noah’s eyes lit up. “You too, huh? I
bitched about every tour, but man… it always gave me something to look forward
to.”

“Well… maybe we should plan one,” I
said.

“Maybe we should!” he said, hands on
his hips.

“Why are you saying that all
defiantly? I’m agreeing with you,” I laughed, poking him in the ribs.

“I don’t know. You get my blood all
boiled up.” He pulled me close by the waist and kissed me deeply until Kevin
began cat-calling us from behind the bar.

“Back to work, you fuckin’ horn
dogs!” Kevin laughed. “If I don’t get any, neither do you!”

Noah and I laughed as we parted, and
I hopped off the stage to go check on the sign workers. They were still on
track, and the sign already improved the curb appeal of the club. I gave them a
thumbs up and returned inside, but the room was empty.

“Hey, Noah, I had this idea,” I said
as I came around the corner to the back room.

I found Noah and Kevin huddled up
near the sink, looking down at something Noah was holding in his hand.
Something small, and something glittery. It was only a split second before they
realized I was in the room, and Noah scrambled to shove his hands in his
pockets while Kevin made a surprised noise and waved his towel around.

They stared at me like deer caught in
headlights, not even bothering to try and explain their strange behavior. I
looked to one, and then the other, my smile growing as I waited and waited for
one of them to try and cover.

“You guys are…
really
bad at
this,” I laughed.

Noah’s face twisted in a playful
glare. Kevin started huffing and walked past me, slapping me a few times with
the towel. “Hey, why don’t you mind your own business?”

Noah followed him, walking up close
to me. He leaned down and in heated whisper said, “Yeah, why don’t you mind
your own business, babe?”

“Why don’t you make me?”

Noah smiled and gave an evil little
laugh before he dropped a kiss on my forehead and moved past me into the bar.

As I watched him go with a smile, I
wondered if he realized it didn’t take an investigative journalist to figure
out what a ring box in the pocket of a pair of jeans looks like.

Keep
reading for bonus book 2

Slade:
A Stepbrother Romance

~ PROLOGUE ~

Slade

“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin.”

That’s what Iris said to me two
months ago, when we were in the same position then—only that first time, her
ass wasn’t on the kitchen counter of her parents’ pool house. Our parents’ pool
house.

The first time we’d fucked had been
in her bed, still made up in frilly comforters and pillows and being watched by
the stuffed animals on her shelves. You would’ve never guessed Iris Walker was
eighteen years old. Not by the way she still clung to her innocence like it was
her very own lifeboat.

Maybe that was what lust was to her—a
deep, dark ocean just waiting to swallow her up. Maybe I was the shark circling
her little raft, and she’d been chumming the waters with her creamy thighs, her
raven hair, but most of all, those smoking-hot lips of hers.

Whenever she wrapped ‘em around a
straw and puckered, I damn near saw God. They were so full, so succulent, like
ripe peach flesh just dying for me to take a bite. She’d sweep her tongue
across them every so often, a little pink dart of motion that always drew my
attention, always beckoned me to steal a glance at her big, innocent brown eyes
and sultry pout.

She was sex on two very long legs,
and she didn’t even know it. She was also my stepsister.

And that was exactly why I had to get
inside her.

It took months. Months of teasing.
Months of half-joking innuendos and smoldering glares as I passed her in the
halls of the house we both shared. Ever since my father had married her whore
mother, Iris and I had been trapped together like two animals in the same cage.
Proximity could be dangerous, and I was going to make damn sure Iris felt every
ounce of the danger she was in the longer she shared my cage.

I was leaving soon. I was headed to
Harvard at twenty-one, young, dumb, and full of cum, but also a goddamn genius.
That was what everyone had always called me, anyway. Especially my mom, the
saint of a woman my father had promptly forgotten all about the moment he
caught sight of Ms. Evelyn Walker.

Call me Evie, she’d said the first
time we’d met, when my father brought her to the same house Mom died in and
wanted me to shake this strange woman—this homewrecker’s hand. Call me Evie.
Yeah, right. Like I was ever gonna call her anything other than Evelyn, the
Harpy, Evelyn, the Interloper, Evelyn, the Bitch Who Stuck Her Nose Where It
Didn’t Belong.

How Iris had come out of that was
beyond me. Kellan, too, her little brother—thirteen and all smiles and smart as
a whip—he was a good kid. He was always looking at me, watching what I did. I
liked basketball, so now he’d started to play. I was good at Call of Duty, so
he’d begged his mom to get him the game so he could be just as good as me. I
tried to set a good example for him, praising his good grades and making a big
deal out of how great it was to go to medical school. “Don’t let any assholes
ever tell you A’s are for nerds,” I’d say, and he’d nod, eyes bright as I
helped him with his homework. That kid was going places, and I wanted to make
sure he had someone he could look to for how to get there.

Which was why I kind of felt bad
about leading my stepsister on.

Because what I told her was that it
was love. That I couldn’t get her off my mind in a romantic sort of way. That
ever since I’d lain eyes on my eighteen-year-old stepsister with the body of a
twenty-five-year-old supermodel, I’d been smitten.

And poor Iris, with her stuffed
teddies and her never-been-touched, blushing cheeks—she’d believed me. She’d
bought the fantasy I was selling. Hook, line, and sinker.

But it was for the greater good. I
just couldn’t tell her that.

Not then, when she’d looked at me
with wide eyes and her heart in her throat, telling me she was a virgin and to
take it slow, and we’d fumbled with each other’s clothes and knocked teeth when
we kissed.

And not now, either, with her up on
the kitchen counter, her legs spread, toned thighs quivering, her bikini bottom
on the floor and her tits pulled out of her top.

“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin,” she’d
said two months ago.

Today, all she said was, “Hurry up
and cum for me, Slade, before Mom and Dad get home.”

I pushed up inside her in one long,
pulsating stroke, perfectly content to take my time. Iris was more than just a
hot body now. She’d learned a lot in the past couple months, and I’d learned
that I was a damn good teacher. I’d seen her plump lips wrapped around my tip
more times than I could count, and now when I plunged to fruition inside of
her, she knew how to roll those hips and make me groan.

She was doing that now, urging me to
finish, to leave all evidence of our forbidden lust inside her. Sweet, innocent
Iris was on birth control now—I’d convinced her it was easier for both of us
that way. No condoms to hide. Just my stepsister strutting around with a warm,
creamy center.

That thought alone almost made me
pop. Christ, I had to chill. I had to make it last. Because if everything went
according to plan, then this would be the last time I got to fuck her.

Goddamn, some part of me was gonna
miss this.

“I’m almost there,” I assured her
through gritted teeth, leaning back a little to watch my dick speed in and out
of her. I was covered in her desire. Iris had a hair-trigger, and she’d already
gotten off multiple times, soaking the counter and me in the process. When my
tip left the clinging wetness of her core, it made this popping sound I just
couldn’t resist. Normally I’d have lost it right then and there, but the way my
stepsister was digging her nails into my chest was killing me.

“Watch the tattoos,” I whispered.
They were new and they were sore, and when Iris grasped them, they burned like
hellfire. Which, given what we were doing, was awfully fitting.

“Sorry,” she moaned, leaning her head
back so the damp curtain of her hair tumbled down her shoulders. I kissed the
swan-like curve of her throat and she panted for me, her tits bouncing with the
effort.
Keep it cool, Slade. You can’t finish yet. Still got a few minutes…

“You’re close, Slade. I can feel it.”
I drew back and her gaze met mine, hazy from her most recent orgasm. Her lips
were swollen too, puffy and red, first from sucking my cock, then from my mouth
on hers, stifling her moans and screams. “Cum inside me, baby. Please.
Someone’s gonna catch us…”

Of course they are.
That’s the point, Iris.
But if she’d known
that—if she knew this was all just a way to piss off my dad and put my brand
new stepmom in her place—she never would’ve let me inside her. And that would’ve
been a shame, because then I wouldn’t have known that turning a virgin into a
succubus was a
very
worthwhile pursuit.

I couldn’t tell her the plan.
Instead, I reached down between us and jiggled my thumb against that little bud
I knew would send her over the edge again in no time.

Iris’ eyes widened. Her breath
caught. “Oh, Slade. I can’t take it…” She raked her nails over me again and I
just barely twitched out of range before she drew blood from my tattoo again.
“I’m gonna…”

“Scream,” I told her, pumping in
harder, faster, pushing her limits as well as my own. God, she was tight, and
the way she writhed all over me was making my toes curl. “It’s our last time
together, Iris. At least, for a while. I wanna hear you, baby. C’mon.” I turned
the movement of my thumb into something more urgent, a tapping that made her
wail. “That’s it. Louder, Iris. Scream for big brother.”

Yeah, that was nasty. But isn’t all
sex, at twenty-one? And anyway, it worked. Shamefully, it turned us both on.

Iris began to shriek, spreading her
legs wider to take the pounding I inflicted. She’d forgotten all about our
parents, about what we were doing, about
where
we were doing it. She
forgot how bold we were and how we were damn near out in the open. I could see
it in her eyes when she looked up at me, her teeth embedded so deep into her
lip that she’d broken the skin: all Iris Walker was thinking about, right at
that moment, was cumming on my cock.

Shit, I was thinking about it, too.

Right up until the moment the pool
house door opened.

The sounds that followed are ones
I’ll never forget. The high-pitched cry of Iris helplessly surrendering to her
orgasm, almost drowning out the sharp
click
of the doorknob turning.
Then the little whine of the hinges as the door swung in, flooding the room
with daylight and a single shadow, one that looked an awful lot like my dad’s.

Sweet vindication filled me as I
filled Iris right in front of him. I couldn’t tell which was better: revenge,
or my orgasm.

I expected a whole lot of yelling next.
I thought Iris, for sure, was gonna start to scream. And my dad had always had
a temper, albeit only a verbal one. I could almost taste his bellow on the back
of my throat as I swallowed, turning toward him, following Iris’ horrified
gaze.

His face was ashen. There were deep,
dark lines where none had been before. His eyes, cold as ice, made my skin
prickle with pins, needles, and goosebumps. There was anger in him, all right,
but it wasn’t the hot, explosive kind I’d anticipated. This was the silent kind,
with a warning vibration that made the hairs on my nape stand on end.

Iris was the one who spoke first,
only it wasn’t really a word that escaped her lips so much as a strangled sob.
The smirk on my face faltered for a fraction of an instant. I hadn’t been
expecting that, either—that the sound of Iris’ grief would put a little crack
in my stone heart.

“Is this what you texted me for,
Slade?” my father said. Disgust shimmered in his eyes, pulled taut at his lips.
“You wanted me to see this, didn’t you? That’s why you said your mother and I
needed to come home so
urgently.
” He shook his head. “Thank God she’s
still in the main house.”

“You did this?” Iris whispered, lip
curled, brow furrowed tight. There was a note of disbelief in her voice at
first, but the longer she searched my face, the more her denial abated and
turned to rage. Disgust. “You bastard. You… did this. Used me.” Then she lost
all expression, staring blankly at the floor. “Oh, my God. Everything you said
was a lie…”

I knew what she meant. I knew she
wasn’t talking about the little stuff. Not about how I’d told her she was
pretty, or that she had the best rack I’d ever seen. She was talking about
those three little words I’d said. The ones I’d lost sleep over, thinking maybe
I’d pushed it too far.

I love you,
I’d told her once, just to get her legs open. Or that’s what I told myself.
Because thinking any other way, entertaining
any
other possibility,
might make me back out. Might change my mind. Might fuck up all my plans to get
even with the man who’d used my mother until she was dead, and then traded in
her memory for a younger model.

My father inspired a rage so strong
in me that sometimes, I couldn’t see straight. Feeling anything for Iris,
anything at all, was a threat to that. Because every time I even
thought
about the
idea
of those feelings, my vision got blurry in an entirely
different way.

And that just wouldn’t do.

“Get out,” my father said. Despite
how low his voice was, it seemed to shake the room. “Get out of here, Slade. And
don’t you dare come back.”

Iris withered as I withdrew, covering
herself with her arms and legs while I pulled up my swim trunks. I risked a
look in her direction and my stomach sank. Those eyes were wide again, but not
with pleasure or sweet naiveté or even shock. They were wide with pain. Wide
with rage.

How could you?
her gaze said to me. I just gave her a shrug and watched her eyes get wet.

It didn’t matter how hurt she was.
The fact of the matter was that Iris was better off without me. I would have
told her as much, if she’d have listened. If my father would’ve let me stay in
the same room with her for one second more. But I knew neither of those things
were going to happen now, so I’d just have to say it to myself:
Come on,
Iris. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Years from now,
you’ll look back and see. Splitting our parents up was something I had to do.
For me. For my mother. And in some ways, for you.