Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (41 page)

What
can I say? I guess we’re all addicts, in one way or another. Mr. Velasquez had
his heroin, and I had my ego.

Without
warning, I was knocked to the side and damn near crashed into the wall. At
first I didn’t realize what had happened, or what had hit me, but as I gave my
head a shake to get my bearings, I realized that it wasn’t a what, but a
who
.

“Oh,
God, I’m sorry,” said the young woman who’d barreled into me, kneeling down as
she picked up the contents of her purse that had scattered in her unwitting
assault on my person. She was probably no more than twenty-five, with gorgeous,
dark hair that covered any hint of her face.

But
I was less concerned with her face and more concerned with her flawless set of
tits that I’d love to get a hold of. She was wearing a form-fitting,
button-down blouse and skinny jeans combo that showed off her figure so
perfectly, flaunting her hips and the pert little ass of hers.

“I
didn’t see you coming,” she said. “I was looking at my phone.”

“It’s
all right,” I assured her, regaining my balance and offering her a hand as she
picked up the last item she’d lost in our head-on collision. “I don’t think
either of us are going to need to call the insurance company, and it
definitely
doesn’t look like I dented that killer body of yours in the crash.”

She
chuckled as she put her purse back onto her shoulder, shaking her loose mane of
dark hair as she stood once again. Something in my stomach clenched, though at
the moment, I couldn’t understand why—everything about this girl seemed so
horrifyingly familiar. I heard a slew of warning klaxons going off inside my
head; I just couldn’t figure out what they meant.

Until
I looked into her familiar brown eyes.

“You
never change, do you, Slade?”

A
pit opened up right in the bottom of my stomach as I watched her push her dark
locks aside, revealing a face I hadn’t seen outside of my dreams in over seven
years. My breath caught and I felt my face drain of its color. I couldn’t
believe it. How did she find me?

My
head spun as I tried to come up with something to say, words that would put
into context the sheer amount of emotion I was feeling as I looked down into
her eyes. What in the world does a person even say after all this time? After
everything I’d done?

“Hi,
Iris.”

~
THREE ~

Iris

My name leaving my stepbrother’s lips
was like the slow drip of honey, sweet and almost musical. I bit my lip on
instinct and felt a throb from down low as I raked my gaze over the man who’d
almost ruined my life a mere seven years ago.

He’d gotten taller. Christ, I thought
guys stopped growing at eighteen, but Slade towered over me more now than he
ever had before. He was an imposing figure with broad shoulders, a thick, solid
chest, and arms that bulged with lean muscle beneath his scrubs. He’d certainly
filled out. Even his face was different, more chiseled, his eyes more intense.
Gone was the boy I’d gotten into so much trouble with, and in his place was a
man.

A man whose help I needed.
Right.
Kellan.
I felt awful that I’d almost forgot.

I cleared my throat, evading my
stepbrother’s piercing gaze. “Good to see you’re hot-blooded as ever,” I said,
nodding to the two nurses he’d been checking out.

“Iris Walker,” he said again, like
even the sound of my name defied belief. He looked me over from head to toe,
and for a second, his tongue darted out across his lips. When he ran his teeth
over the bottom one and pulled it into his mouth, that throb between my thighs
returned full-force.

Down, girl.

“Yeah. Iris Walker. Your
stepsister.
”
At this point, I was reminding him as much as I was reminding myself. “I need a
favor.”

I should’ve asked him how he’d been,
should’ve made small talk. That would’ve been the polite thing to do. But I was
in a rush. I wanted to get this over with. I wanted the feelings flooding
me—both good and bad—to dissipate and leave me the hell alone, and the only way
to do that was to get in, get out, and never look back again.

With how fantastic Slade looked, that
wouldn’t exactly be easy.

As soon as the word “favor” left my
mouth, my stepbrother’s expression darkened. He took a quick look around the
hall and said, “Well, it’s going to have to wait. I’m making rounds.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “In the
cafeteria?” There weren’t any patient rooms on this floor.

Slade shrugged. “Just taking a
shortcut to the elevators. Point is, I really don’t have time. You in town
long? You should call me sometime. We can figure out a rain check.”

He was already moving past me before
I could answer. I fell into step beside him. “I get it. You’re busy. We’ll walk
and talk.”

Slade laughed, but there was no joy
in it. “Please. I can’t bring my little sister with me on my rounds.”

“
Step
sister,” I said again and
caught the look he flashed me. It was a quick one, just out of the corner of
his eye, but I could see it, feel it,
taste
it. There was an electric
charge in the air and I could practically hear the gears in Slade’s head
turning. He remembered what we’d done, and he knew why I was making the
distinction.

Still, he shrugged it off. “Whatever.
Stepsister, then. Still, you can’t come with me on my rounds. This stuff is
confidential information.”

I shrugged too. “Better stop and talk
to me, then, I guess.”

Slade did stop, right in the middle
of the cafeteria where everyone could see us. He tilted his head toward the
ceiling and shut his eyes like when he opened them, I might have disappeared.
When I didn’t, he looked disappointed. He lowered his voice.

“There are things more important than
us having a little tête-à-tête right now, Iris,” he said through his teeth.
“People’s lives are at stake. And believe it or not, you dropping in here
unannounced after… how many years has it been? Five? Ten?”

I stared at him. He knew exactly how long.
“Seven.”

“Right.” He snapped his fingers.
“Lucky number seven. So after seven years, you show up at my work in the middle
of the day and expect me to take a timeout to chat about old times? To ask me
for a favor?” His eyes smoldered as he drew an inch closer. “You could’ve used
a phone for that, sweetheart. But you’re here in the flesh. Why’s that?”

My jaw sagged. He couldn’t possibly
be implying that I was here to fuck him…

Oh, wait. This was Slade Jarvis.
Of
course
that’s what he was saying.

“Because nobody has your number,” I
snapped, recoiling from Slade like I’d been burned. He chuckled, stoking my
fury. “And anyway, I called this hospital—several times—and left you three
messages, none of which you ever returned.”

“I’m a busy man,” Slade said, rolling
his eyes and starting to walk again. He gestured to the nurses, patients, and
doctors littering the cafeteria. “As you can probably see, I’m a doctor. I save
lives. You’re gonna have to wait to get a piece of me, Iris, just like everyone
else.”

I could read the subtext as clearly
as if he’d written it in the air with a Sharpie:
You’re not special.
Somehow, my stepbrother had turned into an even bigger asshole than he’d been
at twenty-one. He was a hotshot doctor now, the cock of the walk, holding pride
of place in a henhouse full of young nurses and impressionable interns. No
doubt he was screwing every one of them that came within spitting distance.
He’d gone off to Harvard for a doctorate and left with a swollen ego, instead.
I tried not to think about the implications of what else of Slade’s might be
swollen as I stopped walking and clenched my fists.

Somebody needed to take him down a
notch.

“Slade!” I barked, and it seemed like
the whole cafeteria put down their sporks and stared at me all at once. Slade
stopped so short I heard his sneakers screech across the floor and turned to
me, eyes narrowed. Defiantly, I met his gaze. “You don’t get to walk away from
me, Slade Jarvis. I don’t care if you’re a doctor, a unicorn, or God
Himself—you
will
get your ass back here and talk to me, because we’re
family,
and right now
I need you.
”

My stepbrother looked at me for a
long time. Even from a distance, I could feel his heat, his anger irradiating
me right into my bones. He cocked an eyebrow and glanced around the room,
noting the silence, the weight of all eyes focused on him and me. My knees
turned to jelly and my stomach flopped, but I never wavered. If I did, he’d
walk away again, right after he laughed in my face.

Poor Iris,
he’d say.
You really haven’t changed, have you? You’re still the naïve
little teenager in way over her head with a man you can’t handle, much less
control.

I couldn’t back down. Not with what
was at stake. But when Slade crossed the distance between us in three great
strides, it was all I could do not to shrink away.

“This way,” he said, a grin on his
face that was less like a smile and more like a baring of teeth. As he gestured
to the opposite end of the room, he added, “
Sis.
”

I followed Slade out the cafeteria
doors to a long hallway with too-bright lights and floors that reeked of
sanitizer. Wordlessly, my stepbrother swiped his ID badge over a scanner near
another set of doors and held one open for me to walk through. I had to duck
under his arm to do so, and the way he glared at me made the hairs on my nape
stand on end.

The rest of this wing was under
construction. There were plenty of signs denoting this, but Slade ignored them,
jiggling the handle on one of the doors and then kicking the bottom of it to
spring the lock. This one he pushed open, letting me see myself in, and once I
heard that door close behind us, my guts tied themselves into knots.

I turned and looked at Slade. The air
was thick with tension, though of what kind, I wasn’t sure. He looked angry—his
brow was deeply creased and I could see the muscle in his jaw twitching. Slade
never did like being called out like that, especially in front of friends. And
I’d gone and done it in front of his
colleagues.
No wonder he was
looking at me like he’d just love to break me in half.

I wasn’t sure that was all he wanted
to do to me, though. Or at least, I wasn’t sure if he wanted to break me with
his hands, or with his body while he bent me over his bed. It was always hard
to tell with Slade. For him, there was a fine line between rage and desire.

“Look,” I began, “I know you’ve got a
lot going on here, and I know we haven’t exactly kept in touch. And trust me,
if I had any other options…”

Slade was moving toward me, stalking
like a panther, the muscles beneath his blue scrubs rippling and stretching
taut with each of his slow, methodical steps. I tried to hold my ground, but my
heart was already in my throat by the time he grazed a fingertip down my
blouse, letting it come to rest right at the center above my breast.

“You’re not wearing your visitor’s
badge,” he said. “You could get in a lot of trouble for that, Iris. Since when
do you break the rules?”

Since you put your dick
in me,
I thought, but didn’t answer.
Your
big, amazingly thick dick…

“It’s in my purse,” I said, finally
taking a step backward. Slade grinned. He knew he had me now. “Like you’re such
a stickler for hospital protocol.”

“Aw,
sis.
You really didn’t
forget all about me,” he chuckled, tracing one of the buttons keeping my
breasts shielded from his view. Heat rushed to my neck and face. I knew I was
blushing, and I knew, even in the dim light, that Slade could see it.

How could I have forgotten about him,
after the things he’d done to me, the way he’d made my body sing? Then again,
it wasn’t like I wanted to remember all that, either—not on most days. Most
days, I wanted to forget the way Slade made me feel—how big his cock was, how
talented those hands of his were when it came to the human body. Slade had
always been a master of anatomy, only now, here, as a doctor, he had an
entirely different reason for utilizing those skills.

Well,
I thought, remembering how he’d been checking out those nurses in the hallway,
mostly.

As if reading my mind, Slade’s lips
quirked. “Is that why you’re here?” he asked. “Because you haven’t forgotten
me—because you can’t stop thinking about everything we did together, and you
needed another taste?”

“Please,” I said, though my voice
cracked, “shut the fuck up for one second, would you, Slade? That’s not why I’m
here.” My knees were quaking.
No, not why I’m here at all…

“Is that so?” His eyes darted around
the room momentarily. “You know how many nurses I’ve fucked in here,
sweetheart?” he said, his breath hot on my cheek. There was a dark note to
it—coffee, rich and savory, with just a hint of cream, plus Slade’s own
masculine spice. I wanted to look away from the heat in his eyes, from the low
flames burning there, but I couldn’t. I was trapped in his gaze, in that same
desirous stare he’d ensnared me with so long ago. And some deep, primal part of
me—the one that made my thighs clench and my lips tremble—was loving it.

Slade brought his lips to my ear. In
a sound somewhere between a groan and a purr, he told me, “A lot, Iris. I’ve
fucked a lot of nurses in here. Right where you’re standing now. Right up
against this wall. So if you
were
here because of my dick, you sure as
hell picked the right place and the right time to…”

“It’s Kellan,” I blurted, pushing my
back against the wall in a last, desperate bid to put space between my
stepbrother and I. “Kellan’s missing, Slade. Has been for over a week now. And
I think you’re the only one who stands any chance of bringing him back.”

The burning in Slade’s eyes faded,
replaced by a cold glare that gave me chills. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the
only reason I was shivering. But I had to keep my head in the game. I couldn’t
let my stepbrother, this cocky ass, get the better of me. Not when Kellan’s
well-being was on the line.

Still, it was so damn hot when he
growled, “What the hell?”