Raiden (Satan’s Angels MC #2)

Chapter 7

Raiden

A s I kept watch, the night went from black to a bruised navy blue. It finally gave way to grey and then to a watery yellow.

I don’t like being out here like this. Helpless.

I don’t like any of this, least of all the thoughts that plagued me all night while I was awake, keeping watch.

Maybe Gray sent me up here for more than just Widow. I’ve never voiced the shit in my head to anyone, but prison fucks a guy up and it doesn’t take too much imagination to see how institutionalization is a real thing. I’m used to hard beds, sometimes barely sleeping, but above all, bars, floors, and ceilings. Small contained spaces. Food at regular intervals.

Everything routine.

Being out here with nothing around me in the wide-open pricks at my panic and that makes me want to panic more, the fact that I’m nothing more than a pathetic statistic. I get up, stretch out the aching stiffness that the cold and the damp spread into my joints, and brush all the earth off my arm. I thump my chest hard with my fist, right over my heart. It does fuck all to stop the bastard from pumping out more adrenaline. All this shit is in my head, but I can’t exactly bash open my skull.

This? This is reason number one hundred and eighty-five thousand that I want to put Zale Grand in the ground.

I try to take a breath and get myself under control, but there’s no breath there to take. My lungs are constricted. They’re filled with lead instead of air, molten shit that’s leaking through. I know what this is and it’s happening. I can’t do anything except stand here and heave and gulp like in the black depths of the deepest water.

I guess I’m making enough noise to raise the dead because Widow wakes up violently.

She’s immediately tuned in to threats. There are none. It’s just me out here, my own body betraying me.

She scans the trees behind me and then pushes up from the ground and walks over. Calmly , as if I’m not heaving and drowning in my own body. I hate that she’s here seeing this, but what I am going to do about it when my lungs are stones?

She has moss and leaves in her hair. Dark smudges under her eyes from the shit sleep. She’s rumpled, her clothes damp from the damp night air. She’s still an angel, misty and ethereal.

I expect that she’s going to offer some stimulating intellectual thoughts, maybe point out that I’m having a panic attack and try and talk me through breathing.

Shows how much I know of my wife. When did Widow ever do anything that was expected of her?

She says nothing, but steps into my space, pushes my leather aside, and shoves her palms up under my t-shirt, reaching all the way up my chest to my burning lungs.

It’s the fastest way I’ve ever had a panic attack stop. I guess my brain is diverted from the holy fuck we’re dying straight to what the fuck is happening?

Her palms are freezing against my skin. The breath barrels up from my belly and explodes out. The air I suck back down is clean and fresh. All that shit in my head that wouldn’t fuck off all night clears like the sun in the distance banishing the rest of that gray dawn, lighting the sky up in fiery, fierce oranges and reds.

It’s just Widow and me out here. No one else. No one else is coming for me. Out here, I’m free. There’s not too much space. I’m fine. I’m going to survive this. I can breathe.

Her touch is a thousand times more intimate than it is sexual, at least for a minute.

The longer we stand like this, the hotter her hands get, soaking up my heat, acclimating to me, becoming one.

I’m not sure how it happens, but suddenly, my hand is on her hip. She starts, a shiver vibrating down her body. The slow pink flush that ignites over the bridge of her nose like a reflection of the sky above us, has my heart beating hard. Desire flares up over my skin. Her hands are hot as brands now, burning through me. I sweep my eyes over her heaving breasts under her leather jacket. Her soft, ripped up jeans are molded to her long, shapely legs.

I grasp her by the wrists, closing my strong hands around them like shackles. I tug her off balance, pulling her into me. She should shove back, fight, struggle, but she goes completely still, but not like an animal paralyzed by fear.

Pressed up against me, her breasts crush against my chest. A spark shower explodes inside of me. The night scraped me raw. The panic lowered my defenses. My hands release her wrists and sweep around to her ass. Legally, she’s mine, but right now, I hate that she’s not mine in the ways that count.

Lust explodes in my bloodstream as my hands cup her round ass through her jeans. I haul her up and she wraps her legs around my waist. A few steps and I crush her roughly against the first tree I see. I make sure my hand flies up, protecting the soft, delicate skin of her neck and scalp from the rough bark.

Widow squirms against the hard length of me trapping her. She’s not fighting to be free, but still, I groan her name. “Widow…”

It’s permission I’m asking. Permission to start what should never be started. I need to know if I’m taking something, it’s being freely given in equal fucking measure.

She slams our foreheads together so hard it stings. “Everything you think I am? I’m so much more than that.” It sounds more like she’s saying the same thing about me.

Her back presses into the tree, giving her leverage against me. She rocks her pelvis into my cock, which is like a weapon in my jeans. I’m so hard that I snarl back at her in a hiss of air. I fist my hand in her hair and tug her face back. She tilts it, parting her lips and licking along the lower one in a slow, sensual challenge.

I intend to plunder her mouth, to bite and suck and brutalize her lips, but when our mouths meet, the fire is gentle instead of brutal. She’s the one who leads. I’m not tentative, but she’s the one who uses her teeth first, gently, a soft whimper and a slow, sensual sweep of her tongue that nearly makes me explode in my jeans.

She shows me how she wants to be kissed, and I’m no gentleman. I’m fucked up in ways I probably haven’t even analyzed, but I don’t kiss her like a beast. I don’t take it out on her. I let her fill me with her heat as I kiss her back. It feels like I’m being remade, reshaped by her. The most fucked up part is how much I don’t hate it.

I love the way she tastes. Honey sweet, a little like cherries and strawberries, all the fresh summer fruits I’d never admit to loving as much as I do.

The club came and planted flowers for my mom because it was her dying wish that her flower gardens, which had gone to shit because she was too ill to make them thrive, be revitalized. My club brothers had our yard looking like a floral conservatory in one hard day of work. I let them know how much it meant to me that they’d do that for my family, especially after my parents called me as good as dead to them, but I’d never let on just how much I liked all that beauty and color after the bleak years of prison. Things you never noticed before are so vibrant after.

Widow smells earthy like those gardens. I know I’m imagining it, but tasting her, drinking her in, is like basking in the combined glory of all those flowers, so heady that they overwhelm a man.

There’s a noise, sudden and sharp in the distance. Not a twig snap and not made by a human, but it breaks us apart all the same. I instantly shield her body with mine, curling around her until I throw my head over my shoulder and ensure there truly isn’t any danger coming for us. The morning is silent and still. There’s nothing. No one.

Nothing but the bleak reality of our situation.

I’m not sorry. I don’t feel regret. I’m still burning and bristling under my skin, but here and now isn’t the time or the place. The reality of this situation is that we can’t waste daylight hours on anything other than finding our way back to our bikes. We’re both tired. Hungry. We’ll soon run out of water. Things could get serious if I can’t find my way back.

I’m going to find my fucking way.

Not because I’m worried about my fucking masculinity being called into question—this is already embarrassingly past living down—but because I won’t let anything happen to Widow. I’m already sorry for the discomfort she’s already feeling.

I sweep her away from the tree and let her down slowly. My dick is going to be a lead pipe for the rest of the morning, looking at her tousled and flushed, eyes dilated with lust and pulse jumping all over the place.

As soon as she hits the ground, she looks pointedly at crotch. My jeans do little to hide the hard, thick outline trapped against my leg. I’m fucking going to be finding my way out of here, walking stiff and uncomfortable with an erection for the rest of the goddamn day.

“We should go,” she whispers, but keeps staring at my dick.

It takes everything in me to turn and nod. It’s nearly impossible to even think about getting my bearings and picking a path when she’s looking at me like she wants to take me out and swallow me down her throat right here. My brain is stuck on the image, my whole body resisting the rational decision to ignore that base impulse and chase the relief it would bring.

“Which way?”

Her soft question doesn’t grate on me. It’s full of trust and a quiet, gentle faith that wasn’t there before. I want to confess that I don’t have a fucking idea.

“It’s okay if we pick the wrong path. I’ll follow you anyway.” That pierces through me and she must realize what it sounds like because she quickly adds with far more sass, “I’m not letting you leave me out here. Even if we go the wrong way, it’s better than splitting up and causing a double disaster.”

I take out the compass. Find north. Look around at the unfamiliar terrain. Wish for bird wings or a fucking drone to show me the way. I know approximately what direction the cabin was from Hart, where the highways lie. Even if it takes us days to reach them, it might be our best and safest bet.

After a minute of considering what kinds of fuckery could go wrong with that idea, I shake my head, snap the compass closed, and take the first steps west.