“I’m not throwing sass,” I snapped. “I’m acting like a normal, pissed off woman at some man who has walked into her house like he has the right too.”
Kace was transitioning into pissed, his eyes narrowing into tiny slits. And why did I like seeing that side of him?
“I’m not just some fuckin’ man. At least I wasn’t last night. As much as you want this to be secret sex, it’s not. I don’t work that way. And it’s my business if the woman I’m fucking has decided to go and strip at the place my club owns. Beyond that, it’s on me and the club if someone who has sacrificed as much for the Sons as you have is at the point of needing to sell her fucking body in order to feed her goddamn kids.”
Yeah. He was pissed off.
In the way any member would be if they knew the widow of a long-time member was doing this shit. Some maybe even a little more.
“I don’t need to sell my body in order to feed my goddamn kids,” I snapped. “I need to figure out how to stand without the club. I need to be my own person apart from all this. Be able to provide for my children.”
Kace’s eyes gentled, his body doing the same. “You want to be an island,” he deduced.
“No, I want to be a peninsula,” I corrected. “I want my friends, family, the club to be involved, to be accessible, but I want some version of my own life, my own identity. My own sense of security. I’ve spent most of my adult life as an Old Lady, wrapped up in the life of the MC. It’s been a hard life. A beautiful one too. But that’s over now. I’m not an Old Lady anymore. I know I will always have a place with the Sons. I know they will never abandon me or my kids. But I know I have to be something more than that. For my own sanity.”
“And a jewelry thief is where you see yourself going?” Kace asked after a beat, amusement coating his words.
I was thankful he hadn’t latched on to all the truths I hadn’t meant to spill. Not calling me on them, not trying to talk me out of it. Not trying to make this deeper, more intense than it already was.
I folded my arms. “I’m just brainstorming. Not all ideas are great. This is a process. One that does not need your input, so you should leave.”
I wanted to mean that. I really did. But after last night, with the tenderness between my legs, I wanted him to stay. I wanted him. Hopefully that didn’t show in my voice or my face.
His lips curled . “I’m not saying your ideas aren’t great. I’m definitely intrigued at what kind of moves you’d have for a lap dance.”
My stomach dipped deliciously. “You don’t get to flirt your way out of this.”
He moved then. Quickly. Too quickly. He didn’t give me time to retreat, to brace for impact. Kace obviously didn’t want that. He wanted to catch me off guard. To have the upper hand.
One of his strong hands went to my ass, yanking me close to him, the other to the back of my neck, pressing our faces inches apart. “I don’t need to flirt with you, Lizzie.” His hand moved inside the waistband of my pants then underneath my panties, cupping my bare ass. “We’re well past that.” His lips moved to my neck, grazing the skin with his teeth. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I wanted to. More than anything. Wanted to push him away and at least show myself that I had some semblance of control over this.
Instead of speaking I stayed silent. Which was just as bad as admitting he was right.
“That’s what I thought,” he snickered, moving his hands from my panties and lifting me.
My legs wrapped around his hips on reflex, a hiss escaping me when I met the hardness of his crotch.
“Yeah, baby,” he murmured, carrying me to the bedroom.
That’s where he proved just how much control he had. How fucked I was. In many more ways than one.“Don’t answer it,” Kace murmured, hands tightening around me. Someone had just knocked at the door.
We were in the bed now.
There’d been no avoiding it. We’d fucking more and more often, the sex getting dirtier and more carnal. The words between the sex getting more personal. So it didn’t much matter whether we were in the bed or not. It was just a mattress and set of sheets. It no longer smelled of my husband. It smelled of us now. Me and Kace.
His voice was thick and throaty and full of sex. As was the air in my bedroom.
It was the middle of the day. Someone could’ve stopped by for coffee. To haul me on some shopping trip. Call me to come and bail her and her boys from mall jail—that one was Mia. Or worse still, my kids could come home sick. I had become an addict. First it was just sex, the escape that he gave me. The awakening he made me feel. Like my body was something more than a collection of scars.