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I pushed his tank top up and he yanked it off over his head. The ink ran from his right shoulder all the way down to his wrist, dark and twisting, with a skull high on his arm worked right into the pattern. I put my mouth on it. He swore.

He was all hard muscle and heat under me, with a scar low on his side and another one across his ribs that I wanted to ask about and didn’t. I ran my hand down his chest and over his stomach, and felt it jump under my palm. His breath hissed out between his teeth.

He got my shirt up and over my head without catching the stitches once. Then he sat up under me with one arm around my back, pulled me in tight and put his mouth on my breast through my bra. I had to grab his hair. He dragged the cup down with his teeth and took my nipple into his mouth, hot and rough, and his beard scraped my skin, and I forgot all about being quiet.

Out in the hall somebody walked past laughing, boots heavy on the concrete. Music was thumping through the wall from the main room.

“Quiet,” he breathed into my ear. “Or the whole club’s going to hear you.”

Then he unzipped my jeans, pushed his hand inside and made it impossible.

His fingers found me already wet, and he groaned like it hurt him. He stroked me, slow and then not slow at all, until my hips were moving against his hand and I had to bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out. He didn’t stop. He made it worse. Every time I got loud, he slowed down until I quieted, and then he started all over again.

“Shade.” It came out shaky and desperate. “I swear to God.”

I got my jeans and underwear off one-handed, kicking and swearing, and he helped. I fumbled at his belt. He shoved his jeans down his hips, and then he was hard and hot in my hand, and he dropped his head back on the blankets and said my name through his teeth.

I sank down onto him slow. All the way.

For a second we both froze. He was big, I was full of him, and his hands were locked on my hips. His eyes were open, and everything he’d been hiding behind that scowl was right there on his face for me to see.

He lay back down slowly, never taking his eyes off me.

“Fuck, Mya.”

Then I started to move, and he let me.

I set the pace. I rode him hard and fast with my good hand flat on his chest and my bad arm tucked against my side, and he watched me do it like he couldn’t believe I was real. The blankets bunched under my knees. The floor was hard and I didn’t care.

He got his hands on my breasts, and then his thumb was between my legs again, rubbing tight circles, and I lost my rhythm completely.

I came hard, with my whole body clenching down around him, and the sound I made would have brought every man in that clubhouse running if he hadn’t caught it with his mouth on mine.

He followed me a few strokes later. He grabbed my hips and held me down on him and came with his teeth gritted and a groan he had to choke back, and I felt every bit of it.

I collapsed onto his chest. His heart was pounding under my ear. Somewhere out in the main room somebody sank a shot and the whole room cheered.

He laughed at the absurd timing.

It was short and rough, and it came out of him like he’d forgotten it was in there. I lifted my head and stared at him.

He tried to put the scowl back on. It lasted about two seconds.

“I saw that,” I said.

“You didn’t see shit.”

I did.

CHAPTER 4

SHADE

Iwoke up with her teeth marks in my shoulder and her hair all over my face, and I didn’t move for a long time.

I’d known how attracted to her I was since the airstrip, with my gun in her face. Last night had just wrecked any chance I had of pretending otherwise. And the whole damn clubhouse was about to find out.

She got up first and was out of my room while I was still in the shower. She was behind the bar when I came out in the morning, pouring coffee for anybody who held out a mug. Her hair was down and she was humming.