Page 39 of Savage Devotion
“Don’t ever think you don’t belong here. I’m weakandI’m strong with you, baby. I hope you see you have a place here. With me. With the Savages.”
“Why didn’t you come to find me when I came to town?”
He pauses a moment, and for the first time I see him look sheepish.
“I couldn’t bring myself to go looking for you. What if you didn’t want to see me? What if you only wanted that one night and I served my purpose?” His words are raw and brimming with so much emotion I feel them to my core.
It’s my turn to cup his face. “Is my big, badass biker turning soft? Were you afraid I would reject you? Oh, Reaper. We were both scared. Why did you think I came here?” I peer up at him expectantly. His gentle-sloping smirk falters like he’s going to speak, but he doesn’t answer with words after all.
His lips are on mine, devouring, taking, and saying all the words we both need to hear without a sound between us. He moves to the side of my neck and leaves behind a trail of molten heat in the wake of his hungry mouth.
My fingers are in his hair. “I picked a terrible night to wear jeans, didn’t I?”
His laugh is rough, and the rumbling of his chest against mine makes me feel whole. “We’ll make it work.” He bites down on my lower lip and he might as well have found the control buttons for my libido.
I moan into his mouth, wet heat soaking my panties.
A jingle goes off on my phone that I recognize as my security camera. “Just a sec.” I pull it out of my back pocket and bring up the feed.
Panic shoots through me.
Reaper goes on high alert at the way I freeze.
“What is it?” he demands.
My heart lurches and I nearly collapse at the site of my life going up in smoke and flames.
15
ARABELLE
Nausea rushes up. I take several deep breaths as I fight to keep Charli’s book club cake in my stomach. I jump off the back of Reaper’s bike the second he roars up outside of the Broken Chapter Asylum, ready to puke.
Reaper is beside me, holding my hair back, but nothing comes up.
“It’s okay, baby.”
I hear what he is saying, but my heart screams the exact opposite, drowning out his words of comfort.
Once I gather myself and stand, he passes me off to Charli and are off giving orders to his crew to help fight back the flames from overpowering the neighbors.
Angel passes me water and I swish it around in my mouth, hoping it will help calm my revolting stomach. It does. But nothing can help my aching heart.
Whirling sirens and horns push the gathering crowd to the sidewalks so they can get in to fight the flames.
“Dios, ¿por qué?” I whisper, clutching my hand to my throat. Invisible steel fingers grip my heart and my lungs. No matter how hard I fight for them, I can’t seem to catch my breath or my balance. Everything I’ve built here is on fire, my life is turning to ash and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.
Tears blur my vision, but I can feel every page wrinkling and turning to ash under the hungry flames consuming my life to my bones.
“I have to see what I can save.” Call it a moment of madness, but I dash for the front door that’s no longer a door but a blown-out metal frame with no glass to be seen. Shattered remnants crunch under my feet as I try to get into my bookstore.
“No, you don’t. It’s nothing that can’t be replaced.”
Various sets of hands grab onto my shoulders and arms, holding me back. “This is exactly what I didn’t want,” I scream into the cold autumn night. “This life of disaster, chaos, and violence.”
I whirl on Charli. “I can’t do this. I walked away from this and came here thinking I could find a quiet life. I was wrong.”
The older, wiser woman takes my shoulders and gives me a stiff shake. “No, honey, you came here to find the other half of your soul. We all see it. Now it’s up to you to fight for it, fight for him. Or not. It’s your choice.”
