Page 6 of Under an Endless Moon

“It’s decided,Otto. I’m going to find me one of those bikers tonight.” I winked at my brother’s best friend as I swiveled my hips to the dark beat that thrummed in the club. Lights strobed in time, colored flashes striking over the throbbing crowd packed on the dance floor.

My claim was hysterical considering I couldn’t look at a single other person right then.

Could anyone blame me, though?

Otto Hudson was so hot it was unfair.

So hot it was physically painful.

Staring at him was like standing in the sun and knowing you were going to get burned, but you did it anyway because it felt so good while you baked in the blistering rays.

The man was a mountain hewn of rugged stone.

A beast barely contained.

My burly bear covered in tats.

There was no questioning it with the way the ground shook with every step he took. A rolling thunder that moved through me in battering waves.

He’d cut his hair, one side cropped short and the other a little longer, and a day of scruff covered his strong, brutal jaw.

But what made my insides quake were his eyes. A piercing, entrancing blue that always made me feel as if I’d been speared to the spot. As if they could carve and cut and see right down to the depths of me.

The man would be wholly terrifying if it wasn’t for the constant smirk he wore at the edge of his mouth and the tease that was never far from his tongue, though I knew well enough he was as deadly as the rest of my brother’s crew.

Only I was pretty sure the smirk currently sitting on his striking face was forged right then. “Ah, playin’ with fire tonight, are we?” he grumbled, his voice coarse and just loud enough to be heard over the deafening decibel of the music.

Otto stepped forward and snaked an arm around my waist, moving in time the way we always did.

Fire raced beneath the surface of my skin.

I’d been almost nineteen when he’d taught me to dance. It was after he’d been sent away to prison and then had been released. When everything had changed for me. When the feelings I’d always felt for him had amassed into something bigger, and I’d fully understood what they meant.

I knew for him, it had been innocent, but it’d never felt that way for me. It’d felt salacious. Like stolen touches that weren’t meant for me, but I wanted to take them for myself, anyway.

He dragged me closer and leaned in close to my ear. “You keep it up, and I’m going to have to haul you out of here over my shoulder.”

My spirit throbbed against his threat.

A very foolish part of me begged him to do it.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I told him instead.

“Try me, darlin’.” His smirk spread. “It seems you’re looking for a whole lot of trouble…dressed like that. Every man here has to be losing his damned mind.”

God, he was impossible. Warning me over the truths that I gave him, as if I didn’t have the right to my own needs—to my own desires—and then turning around and drawing me right back into them.

But it’d always been like that with him. Since I was eighteen and I’d been ignorant enough to believe there was a chance that he would look at me the same way I’d always looked at him. The only thing I’d ever wanted was for him tolookat me, and when he did, for the void I knew lived inside him to pulse and glow. For him to feel it. For him to know I was supposed to be something so much more than his friend.

So much more than his baby sister.

Just the thought of that title icked me out.

But this was the relationship we’d slipped into. This man who felt like a piece of my fabric, but our stitching had never quite come together.

“I’m here to blow a few minds.” I twisted my voice into a tease, my belly trembled at his proximity.

“Just like I thought. Nothing but trouble,” he murmured. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

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