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He chuckled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
He nuzzled the skin just beneath her ear, and she gave herself a mental high-five for putting her hair in a ponytail today. His beard felt fantastic against her neck and made every one of her nerve endings stand up tall and salute.
“You okay?” he asked again. “You’ve been slamming around in here.”
She hadn’t realized her hurt feelings had been noisy. “I’m okay,” she answered and was more or less telling the truth. With his hands on her, his beard and lips and breath caressing her, the evening had improved significantly.
“Why are you cleaning the kitchen? It’s not your job, remember?”
It was difficult to think of words when he was right there, looming over her, touching her, smelling like pure sex appeal and making her libido sing. She turned off the tap and closed her eyes, preferring to feel him and leave speaking for later.
Why was she cleaning the kitchen, anyway?
He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, biting down on the stud there and giving it a gentle tug, and Lyra could not have cared less about dirty kitchens—or overstepping fathers, for that matter. She moaned and sagged back to lean on Zach’s broad chest.
Hooking a hand around her arm, he turned her to face him, then leaned in, pressing her against the edge of the counter.
“You are fucking gorgeous. You feel perfect in my hands.” Hot desire turned his voice to a rasp as he covered her mouth with his own.
It was hard to think of anything but the feel of him. Lyra’s entire existence shrank to this one moment, this one small space. She put her hands on his chest and closed her fists, getting hold of hunks of soft, thick leather. His kutte.
The feel of that leather brought a bit of the world back, and she closed her mouth. Zach leaned back a little and asked, “You sure you’re okay?”
Caught in the beam of his attention, Lyra made herself say a truth. “I don’t like getting cast aside like that.”
“I get that. It was just club shit. Nothing big, just deets about the property, but club shit isn’t for anybody else.”
“Pop and Reed aren’t in your club yet, and nobody kicked them out.”
“They’re gonna be, though. Might as well be, at this point.”
She thought about Reed and wondered if the Bulls knew yet that he was gay. If they did, and didn’t care, that was ... surprising, but also excellent. She supposed. Right now, she didn’t feel especially enthusiastic about the whole motorcycle club thing, even if they weren’t homophobes.
His kutte was still caught in her fists. She released them and smoothed the leather. When her fingers brushed his ‘Righteous Fist’ patch, she lingered there, thinking of her father’s old kutte, and how he’d explained a similar patch there.
“Have you killed anybody, Zach?”
He stood suddenly straight and went completely rigid. “Why would you ask that?”
In his change of posture and the evasion of his non-answer, she guessed at the truth—and also realized that she didn’t know him as well as she’d thought. They’d talked about so much over so many hours, but it had never occurred to her to ask about the workings of the club. The kinds of things they’d spoken of, the kinds of questions she’d asked even as she was trying to understand what the club would mean for her and her family, were family questions. Not what they did. She’d figured they were running some kind of illegal product, probably guns or drugs, which didn’t thrill her but wasn’t a deal-breaker, either.
But obviously they’d killed people. Ofcoursethey had. She’d even brushed up against the thought the first time she’d really thought about the patch her fingers were on now. She simply hadn’t really dug into what it meant until now.
Running guns and/or drugs was dangerous, violent business. The people who sold them, bought them, ran them were dangerous, violent people. People like Zach. And her father. And, apparently, her brother.
Probably she should have apologized for asking the question. But her feelings were raw, and now that there was distance between her and Zach, she’d remembered that, so she didn’t apologize. Instead, she dug in. “You’re not going to tell me, right? I guess that’s club shit, too?”
He brushed her hands off him and stepped back, all the way to the opposite counter. “It sounds like the club is a problem for you. If it is, say so now.”
“Because if I do have a problem, we’re breaking up?” One day after they finally got together in the same place?
The thought iced her blood, and she wasn’t even sure she did have a problem beyond being pissed at her dad and brother for the business thing, but she was also realizing how little she understood about this life Zach had, this life Pop and Reed apparently wanted.
“The Bulls are my family, Lyra. I was born into this club. Iamthis club. I bleed fucking orange. So yeah, if you have a problem withwho I am, then there’s no point in us.”
“I don’t know if I do! Does it mean I’m never going to know where you are, or what you’re doing, or what you’ve done? Does it mean you’re going to be nothing but secrets and evasions and expect me to just befinewith that? Because I won’t be fine living my whole life in the fucking dark! And you still haven’t answered my fucking question that started this whole thing!”
“Hey. Hey. What’s goin’ on?” Caleb was at the doorway, frowning at them both, and Lyra realized she’d been shouting. “Maybe you two should take this someplace private.”
