“You think this is cute?” he says with a nod to the handcuffs.
“Yeah, don’t you?” The sarcasm in my voice can’t hide the shakiness. There are a few things I don’t doubt—that the two best people on this planet call me mom, and that this flawed man loves me, the kind of true, deep love that consumes you, and that I love him impossibly more than that. Except now, in this moment, I’m questioning that second one. We don’t engage in small talk. Actually, we don’t really talk at all. We’ve never needed to. We were always better at showing how we feel through touch.
“What do you want? I got shit to do,” he says without an ounce of emotion in his voice. I have to swallow all the love and hate and fear that threatens to spill out of my mouth while he’s so . . . blank.
“Well, uncuffing me would be a solid start.” I nod my head at the table where Diesel left the key. “Your guy Darius seems to think I don’t uphold my end of a bargain.”
“Diesel cuffed you?” A smile graces his face, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it since we conceived Piper. I miss his smiles. Truth is I miss everything about him except his not-so-fucking-little chemical dependence problem.
“No, asshole. I cuffed myself. Thought it’d be fun to hang out in your cum stains for the evening.”
He moves one foot in front of the other so quickly that I don’t realize he’s thrown himself on the bed. He’s hunched over, his fists and knees planted in the mattress. Wyatt is every bit a predator with his narrowed eyes, calm, even breaths, and taut muscles that would intimidate most men and excite every woman on the planet.
“In this clubhouse, with this club, you are my property. I don’t give a fuck where you go or what you do, but goddamn it, woman, when you’re here, you’re gonna act right.”
Oh. Fuck. No. My heart rate speeds up and a thin sheen of sweat covers my forehead. I feel gross having been stuck here for hours, but more than that, I just feel pissed off.
“I may be your property, but you represent me, and no man of mine fucks some whore in my bed.”
He inches closer, his fists flanking my legs. His eyes have a laser focus that sends a shiver down my spine. It doesn’t matter how much of a jackass he is—he still affects me the way he always has.
“Bitch, you need to watch yourself.” His words are laced with an angry warning that might scare other women, but I was raised by a man far less loving than Wyatt, so they fall short with me. My man knows how to fight, but I think he’s forgotten who taught him how.
He continues to crawl up my body. I purse my lips and wait until my knee is perfectly aligned with his amazing dick. I fight the urge to tell him what I’m about to do is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt him. I don’t make a habit out of lying to people, so I’m not about to start now. In all honesty, I’ve been fantasizing about this for years.
I take a deep breath and clear my mind of every reservation I have about sending his ball sack up his ass and throw my knee straight into his dick, but he’s picked up on the move. In the last second before I make contact, he shoves his huge-ass arm in between my legs, forcing my knee to the side and into his hip instead. He palms my ass, giving it a rough squeeze, and settles his undamaged family jewels in between my legs. His lips hover just an inch above mine, and his hair falls in my face. My wrists ache under the strain of my position—half sitting up and half lying down without a meaningful grip of the headboard railings—but I refuse to ask to be let up.
“That’s no way to treat your old man.” His warm breath washes over my face. He smells of whiskey and cigarettes but nothing else. He can’t have had much to drink yet, because his eyes aren’t bloodshot and he’s not slurring promises of love and devotion that he has no idea how to keep.
God, I just want to stab him with tweezers or something. One day I’d like someone to explain to me how I can love this man so much that my body physically aches to be near him but still want to force him to swallow his own tongue. He’s annoying, insufferable, and by far the absolute most difficult man I’ve ever met. He’s going to make me gray early, and that’s just going to piss me off even more. Of all the dysfunction in my life, Wyatt Strand takes the cake.
It’s on the tip of my tongue—the confession that I’m here to make.
“You teach people how to treat you,” I say. In my head, I’m telling him right now about Zander. In my head, he’s losing his shit on me because I’m still handcuffed and can’t get away. And I chicken out.
“Good thing I taught my son to treat women better than you treat his mother.”