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“What makes him good? And what does he need to do to be upgraded to amazing?”
I stand and move over to the guardrail, looking down at the busy street below. We’re so high that the people rushing around look like ants. “Is your relationship strained? Perhaps you blame her for this role you’re in when it’s not what you want.”
Anton rushes me from behind and pins me hard against the rail. I inhale sharply as the air is knocked from my lungs. “Make no mistake, Piper. I’m a good capo. I enjoy what I do. I don’t answer questions because it’s none of your business. You’re not my woman, and even if you were, you’d have to be a pretty good lay before I started telling you bedtime stories about my relationship with my mother.”
My breathing comes in short bursts. I’m not sure if I’m still in shock or turned-on. My hands grip tightly onto the rail, turning my knuckles white, just in case he has any crazy thoughts of tipping me over the edge. “It’s a real shame,” he whispers, carefully running a finger over my cheek.
“What is?”
“That you’ll only ever know whatgoodis like. I could show you amazing.” He sighs and then steps away from me and disappears back into the room. I wipe my sweating hands on a napkin and take a deep, shaky breath. Something about Anton lures me in, even though I know I shouldn’t go there.
I feel like Beauty, compelled to follow the beast and rescue him. It’s a dangerous game that thrills me as much as it excites me.
ANTON
I sit on the edge of the king-sized bed and pull out my mobile. I need business to take my mind off this woman who is somehow getting inside my head. She asks too many questions, and the scary thing is, I want to answer every one of them. I want to confess that I can’t look at my mother because she’s playing the victim when it was Ella who suffered. I want to tell her that I hate my mother for sitting in her bedroom day after day, staring out the window, refusing to speak to anyone.
Deep down, I know she misses him. She misses the man who preferred to have sex with his young daughter over her, and I wonder if that makes her jealous. Jealous over her innocent daughter who kept his secret to stop our family falling apart. I shake the thoughts from my mind and open the emails on my phone.
Minutes later, I feel Piper step into the room. I continue to scroll through my emails, not actually reading any of them. “I was about thirteen years old when I first thought about Hulk in that way. Mae and I were sitting out back of the clubhouse sunbathing, and he was out there fixing up an old bike. One of the club whores was pawing all over him and it pissed me off. From that day forward, I never really looked at anyone else.”
I’m not interested in the love story of Piper and Hulk, but I want to hear her voice, so I tuck my mobile away and ask, “Did you tell him?”
She smiles and jumps onto the bed. She sits dead in the centre and folds her legs, and it reminds me of how teachers used to make us sit at school. “Yes. Well, Mae did. Typical teenage girl style. She marched right up to him and said, ‘Piper fancies you,’ and he laughed.”
I shake off my suit jacket and throw it over to the chair. “Why’d he laugh?”
“He said I was a kid. There wasn’t much of an age gap, but being a teenage boy in an MC is the same as being a man. He was already having sex with just about every club girl, and there was no way I was gonna have sex with him at thirteen.”
I smirk. “You were a good girl?” I ask with doubt lacing my words.
Piper holds her hand to her chest. “Of course,” she says defensively. “I had all kinds of ideas about being a virgin bride. I wanted to wait until my wedding night, and I wanted rose petals on the bed and candles everywhere.” Her face falls serious. “I had it all planned out.”
“So, what happened? Cos, if you tell me you’re still a virgin, I’m taking you to the chapel right now and we’re marrying.” I laugh, and she smiles.
“On my sixteenth birthday, Hulk convinced me to have sex with him.” She doesn’t look happy when she tells me this snippet of news, and my fists automatically curl by my sides as anger seeps into my blood sending it pumping around my body. What kind of man talks a girl into giving away her virginity like that, knowing she wanted to wait? Piper notices my mood change and shakes her head. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, he didn’t force me or anything. I wanted to sleep with him . . . I think.”
“You think?” I repeat.
“I was sixteen. Does any girl of that age really know what they want? All I knew is I wanted him to love me the way I loved him. I thought by sleeping with him, that would happen.”
“But it didn’t?”
“He didn’t light candles or put rose petals on my bed. He didn’t even stay the night.” She gives a weak smile. “He’s never actually stayed the night.”
“He’s an arse, Piper. You deserve so much more.”
“The heart wants what it wants. According to Emily Dickinson, anyway.”
I stand. “Fuck Emily Dickinson, and fuck Hulk. What do they know?”
“She knew quite a lot, actually, being a famous poet and all.” Piper grins.
I reach into the wardrobe, pull out a fresh white shirt, and throw it to the bed. “You can take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
“You live here?”
“I stay often.”
