That discomfort between my legs should’ve been enough to stop me.
It wasn’t.
Because of Elden’s stare. Because of the electricity between us that shouldn’t have existed under the current circumstances. Because of the booze and the weed divesting me of my inhibitions.
I stepped forward, and he went stock still. My hands clutched the sides of his cut, and I reveled in the worn leather of the vest.
He went stock still, but he didn’t push me away.
“Kiss me,” I demanded, my mouth inches from his. “I need to taste something other than cheap whisky and regret.”
His eyes flared in surprise and something else... The attraction that had been crackling between us since the moment we met.
The attraction he’d been fighting for a number of reasons. Because he was in an outlaw biker club where they took honor and brotherhood very seriously. And his ‘brother’ was going to be my stepdad. My very protective, over the top, stepdad. Technically, myonlydad since my biological father was a man who had beat my mother my entire life, without me knowing, and had recently almost killed her.
He was dead to me now.
Which was neither here nor there, but I supposed it could’ve been one of the reasons why Elden was fighting the very obvious attraction to me. Or since he waschronologicallyold enough to be my father—only because my father had been a teenager when my mother had me.
I didn’t think I was so predictable as to be into the bad boy, but there I was, on a roof at a biker compound, smoking a joint, dangling a bottle of Jack between my fingers and asking a man almost twice my age to kiss me.
Elden—who had made it his mission to not be alone with me but who also lingered, presumably to make sure no other member was alone with me—didn’t move. It seemed like he didn’t breathe for a handful of moments. His eyes were glued to mine, and I watched thoughts rush through his mind.
It was reasonable that he was weighing how responsible it was to kiss the eighteen—almost nineteen—year old who was almost the stepdaughter of one of his best friends/brothers who would likely kill him if he found out about aforementioned kiss.
Worry and dread clutched my stomach then, at the thought that he might deny me—which of course, he was well within his rights to do—and I’d have to sit here on the roof feeling rejected on top of everything else.
I should’ve taken the words back, blamed them on the booze, my emotions, whatever.
But I didn’t.
I stared at him and waited for him to make the decision that would change both of our lives.
ChapterTwo
I didn’t breatheuntil he grabbed the back of my neck, roughly, with all of the hunger and primal need he was communicating with his eyes. He yanked me so our mouths meshed together, both of us desperate, ravenous to make it last longer, make it deeper. It marked me, that kiss. In ways I wouldn’t understand until much, much later.
Because it wasn’t just the best kiss of my life—although it was that too—but it was both of us knowing that giving in to this attraction would be disastrous yet doing it anyway. It was both of us giving in to the most carnal parts of ourselves, knowing we couldn’t go back, regardless of whatever happened from here.
The kiss lasted a lifetime, yet also felt like it was over in a second. Over much too quickly for my liking. It was proof that whatever it was between us was something chemical, something outside of our control, and something even someone as badass as Elden couldn’t fight against.
“I’ve never been kissed like that before,” I murmured breathlessly, swaying on my feet.
Elden’s hands found my hips, steadying me, tethering me to this earth.
He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t said anything except barking about Colby. Maybe I should’ve taken note of his silence and mimicked it with silence of my own.
But I was never good at being silent. Especially not in that moment.
“If only I’d met you before I went to France,” I said, still floating on a cloud, my troubles thousands of feet below me. “If I’d met you, I wouldn’t have been distracted by some smooth skinned, manicured, tanned, snobby Frenchman who got me pregnant and then punched me,” I rambled. Then I screwed up my nose. “Or maybe he punched methengot me pregnant, but I don’t think so because I left pretty much the morning after he punched me.”
My joint was smoldering on the ashtray, I reached down to swipe the bottle of whisky, thankful for something else to do with my hands, because I wanted to continue the kiss, turn it into something more. Though I obviously couldn’t turn it into something more because of what was happening with my body. Then, despite the high of the kiss and the actual high of drugs and alcohol, the self-hatred returned.
Because I was so caught up in my own shit, I barely noticed that Elden had turned into a statue, his hand no longer gentle on my hip. Actually, his grip was tight enough to hurt, but I enjoyed that. I’d been feeling numb for so long, the pain was good.
“It’s funny,” I whispered, staring into eyes that had been liquid moments ago yet were now gemstones of glittering fury. “They say that the cycle of abuse can repeat. That more often than not, it does repeat. A young woman who sees her father beat on her mother, no matter how despicable, terrifying and heartbreaking she might find it, will somehow find herself in a similar situation as a grown woman.”
I took a long pull of the whisky.