Page 40 of Tyrant

“Good,” she tosses it over her shoulder. “Think about that when you’re touching yourself and thinking about me.”

I cage her in, moving so abruptly she drops the cloth. I’m breathing harder than she is even though she’s the one who just came. “I’ve thought of very little else. You were the only woman I wanted. I never lost that stupid hope that one day, you’d come back. I haven’t been with anyone else. At first, I wanted to do anything and everything I could to forget you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it I’m not into faceless fucking.”

Her jaw literally goes slack. “Are you- you… for five years?”

“No one. Not since you.”

She doesn’t know what to do with that. She’s been pushed as far as she can go. She gulps and dodges away, breaking free of me and grabbing the cloth to dump it in the washer. When she returns, she has her arms crossed over her chest.

Some of her fire has wilted. I knew it couldn’t last, but at least she doesn’t look so pale anymore. It gives me hope that she’ll come back from this.

“Will you take me back now please? My family needs me. Penny needs me.” I don’t have to tell her it’s killing me not to be there for them. She knows. “You can stay, you know. No one is against you being there.”

It feels like more of an invitation into her life, that first gentle step.

It guts me that I have to refuse.

“Anyone would take one look at me looking at you and they’d know everything. I shouldn’t…”

She drops her eyes, lashes still starred and damp from all the tears she’s cried. “Okay.”

I want to hold her, but it’s not my right. Not yet. I can’t make things harder for her before they get even a little bit better. There’s a limit to how much she can handle.

I just hope she comes back to me the same way she came back to Hart.

And soon, because I’m bleeding out over here.

Chapter 16

Lark

The dark is so absolute in the bedroom. I know it’s past midnight because I checked my phone not long ago, the light washing over the room before I set it back down on the nightstand. Penny’s breaths right beside me are soothing. I reach out and stroke her silky hair.

The house has been so quiet the last few days. Wrong in every way.

No one has touched my mom’s things. We can’t even think about what we might want to save or donate. My dad hasn’t moved out of their room or anything, but he walks the place like a glassy-eyed ghost.

As much as I’ve been suspended in the painful amber of a new reality without my mom in the world and my inability to truly grasp that or think about moving forward, I’ve thought about Gray.

Jesus, I’ve thought about him.

Endlessly.

There’s not always time to be brave. I don’t know what I’ll be getting into if I agree to step into his world. I know it’s not the way some other clubs operate. There isn’t that level of depravity and evil or danger. Hart isn’t New York, LA, or Miami. His life is still rough, dangerous, and dark, but Gray has worked tirelessly to build a world that is as free of violence as it can be. It’s becauseof the club’s power and ownership over the city that they can take a breath.

Gray’s life still scares the shit out of me, but I don’t want to spend another five years, let alone five minutes, denying what I truly want.

I’ve trusted myself to protect Penny in a world far larger and scarier and more unpredictable than Hart, and I could learn to trust myself to do it here too.

I want to believe that I could dig down and find the queen in me. Maybe that queen isn’t a biker babe and maybe she won’t live the life hard, maybe she isn’t even close to knowing what it means to be the president’s old woman, but I’d have Gray with me, by my side, teaching me.

We’d have to get everyone to accept us and that’s going to be a hard road, but the last few days have proved to me that I can’t just assume we’ll have time to walk it, let alone step onto it.

Something bangs downstairs suddenly. I realize that Raiden hasn’t gone to bed yet. He was so quiet down there for hours that I assumed he had. He was either sitting quietly or he’s up making a midnight snack.

I reach for it and type in Gray’s number with shaking fingers. The bright light scalds my eyes.

Me:Are you at the club?

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