Tyrant (Satan’s Angels MC #1)

Chapter 15

Tyrant

M abel’s funeral is small. The ceremony at the church was larger, but the actual gathering to lower the casket into the ground is just immediate family. Most of them have flown in, aunts and uncles I almost recognize, cousins of Raiden and Lark probably. There are a few little kids, three boys and two girls, dressed solemnly all in black and looking uncomfortable beside their parents. If I don’t know any of these people on a first name basis then these kids have never even met the woman they’re helping bury.

Biker funerals aren’t like this.

Bikers know how to live. They know how to die. I attended more than a few with my old man back when I was a kid, and I buried more brothers and friends than I’d like, as an adult. Some folks might consider it irreverent, the partying and celebrating that we do when a brother passes, but that’s our way of honoring a man that lived life to the fullest.

Thank fuck, I haven’t had to bury anyone’s old lady or god forbid, a child. We’re getting older. Life happens. It’s unfair. I don’t want to think about what that would be like. Fucking painful. Just like this.

I was the only one from the club at the ceremony and I’m the only one here in Hart’s small cemetery on the west side, standing on the periphery by a row of huge trees out of respect for Henry and Mabel. It doesn’t matter that they might have made their peace with how they felt about the club at the end, or at least with Raiden. I don’t want to be a bastard by trying to force my presence on anyone. The rest of Hart knows that I’m not here as the president of Satan’s Angels MC. I’m here as Gray Grand.

Just like the day I took Lark to prom, I got myself into a suit and cleaned myself up. Slicked my hair back, did the shiny shoes and tie and all, even though I hate the things. They’re little more than a noose, but maybe concentrating on getting choked out by your damn wardrobe is more fun than thinking about the pain everywhere else.

My bike is parked far, far down the block, out of sight of the family, but I also didn’t want to disturb the quiet peace.

I’ve studied my daughter for quite some time, drinking her up, looking for myself in her features. She’s too young to fully understand grief. I think she’s more afraid of her mom’s silent tears and the obvious distress around her than she is of anything else. She might not even understand that her grandma is gone now and that she’ll never see her again.

Fuck . I want to turn around and ram my fist into the rough bark of the tree at my back. I don’t want this for her. Don’t want it for Lark or Raiden or even Henry. Living the life we live, we expect that we might not grow old. In most clubs, that’s the way it works. Men make enemies and having enemies means living with threats and danger. We live hard every single day because longevity isn’t in our vocabulary. But Mabel? She should have lived a long life yet. I know no one is owed it, but watching my best friend struggling to hold it together, seeing Lark pale and broken, watching my daughter who I can’t even go over and hold, makes me wish I could fight against the universe and win.

Lark is so pale that she looks like a living corpse standing beside that open grave. I don’t like the color of her skin, worse than chalk. A warning inside me sparks and my heavy boots are already making their way across grass still damp from the sprinklers that morning, before Lark’s legs buckle.

Penny muffles her scream behind her hand and Raiden moves fast, putting his arm in front of her to shield her and reaching for his sister. He looks around for danger and realizes that there’s nothing external at the same time my arms close around Lark’s waist. I haul her against me lifting her up into my arms.

She looks up at me, dazed and unfocused with those swollen, red-rimmed eyes. Her cheeks are puffy from all the tears.

Seeing her like this is a hammer straight to my glass heart.

“Taking her home,” I grunt like a beast.

Raiden nods. He gets down in front of Penny, while the rest of the guests shuffle uneasily, looking at each other. Henry is blank. He probably doesn’t even realize what day or time it is. Raiden slips his keys into my palm. I dip into my pocket and pull out the ones for my bike. We don’t exchange a word because we don’t need to.

He’s already assuring Penny that her mom is okay. Telling her that she hasn’t eaten or slept for a few days because she was missing Grandma so much and she just needs to sit down, have some juice and have a nap.

Raiden’s amazing with my daughter. He knows what to say when I would have stood there like an imbecile, anger flowing through me, wanting to murder the world, sick at the fact that I could ultimately do nothing to make anything better.

Raiden had given me an idea of what had been going on while I purposely stayed away, burying myself in planning for our upcoming ride, the party after, our next cookout, meeting with the city council again about low-income housing, and checking with my brothers about all the regular club stuff. He had dropped in over the past few days to give updates about the club’s books and finances, even though I told him not to bother. I knew he wouldn’t listen. He needed to be busy the same way I did.

Every second of my day had been spent wishing I could be with Lark and Penny, checking on them, providing for them, supporting them. Just being there, even if it meant being silent and just holding them. It wasn’t my place and I kept away to respect the family’s grief, but as I open the door of Raiden’s ancient fucker of a truck and slip Lark inside, it feels like something has snapped inside me.

I’m done staying away. I’m done not taking care of my woman. Only an idiot lets a good woman slip away. Twice . I’m not going to pressure Lark into anything, but I am going to take care of her and when she’s ready, I’m going to make my intentions clear again.

Lark stares straight ahead on the way home. She’s recovered enough that she doesn’t look like she’s going to faint again, but she stares straight ahead like a zombie. I don’t even see her blink, but I’m also focused on grinding the gears just enough to get us back to her parents’ house.

Parent . Jesus Christ.

When I open her door, I try to get her on her feet just because I don’t think she’ll appreciate being carried again and I want to respect her and her dignity, but she wraps her arms around my neck, digging her nails in like she’s afraid I’ll leave her again.

She melts against me as I pick her up, but it’s me melting on the inside. All the hard parts of me are soft.

The door’s unlocked, which I didn’t think to even ask Raiden about, so I take Lark straight to the kitchen. I set her down on the counter where I can support her with one hand and make fast work of getting her a glass of orange juice. Raiden was right. Getting some sugar into her is a must. Some food too.

There’s a loaf of bread on the counter. I take two slices out and pop them into the toaster.

Her hand trembles as she sips at the juice, she still hasn’t said a word and just seems numb.

The toaster pops. I spread margarine on thick followed by peanut butter and jelly and pass the slice over before it has time to get cold. Lark always hated that, when it was cold and crisp and frigid.

I don’t like the way she eats, like she’s not even aware of her surroundings or what she’s doing. She chews and swallows methodically, but at least it’s getting down.

I eat the other slice myself when she shakes her head.

I think that she’s not aware of me cleaning up and putting things back, but when I come to stand in front of her dangling knees, she parts her legs for me, making space. Not in a sexual way, though my dick is a fucking asshole and immediately gets hard at the proximity. It makes me feel like a cunt.

Her lips tremble into a smile and she lets out a small laugh that startles the hell out of me. At first I’m worried she noticed my cock straining against the front of my pants, but her eyes are locked on my face and then she brushes a few crumbs out of my beard.

If I knew that could make her laugh and bring her back, I would have slathered the whole thing over my face. Got up on the counter and done a stupid dance, told her the corniest jokes, twerked in this goddamn suit. Anything for her.

“I’m such a terrible bitch,” she whispers in her choked and broken voice.

I tuck my finger under her chin even though she’s already looking at me. “Don’t say that. You’re a queen, Lark. A fucking queen.”

A faint blush paints her cheeks, giving her a little bit of color. “I took your daughter away from you. I hurt you. You were my Gray, the man I loved more than anything in the world, but that’s just words. I left you. Actions talk a big game, and my actions say that I’m a selfish, judgmental bitch.”

“Your actions say that you’re a strong woman, you were trying to do best by your daughter. Our daughter.”

She curls her fingers into my beard, drawing me even closer, shaking her head so hard that the tremor passes through the rest of her. “I was so stupid. I didn’t want to lose you, and I didn’t want her to have to lose you—because with the way you live, I knew that would happen eventually. I didn’t want her to ever be in danger, but we could have lost you anyway and we were always going to be connected to the club through Raiden, even if no one knew about us. You should hate me.”

My hands find her waist and my fingers curl in there. I shouldn’t be touching her, shouldn’t be grounding either of us, but I can’t help myself.

“All I’ve been is mean to you,” she continues in that trembling voice. “Chasing you away and trying to keep you at bay, and all you did was promise me time, bring your whole club here to plant flowers, and support me. Literally. You picked me off the ground. You’re here now, taking care of me. I said I hate the person you became, but it’s the other way around. I hate myself. So, so much.”

“No.” The world rumbles out of my chest, loud as my bike firing up. She tries to look away, but I force her chin back up. “Look at me.” She forces her swollen eyes back to mine. “You need to forgive yourself for leaving. It was hell for me when you left, but it was worse for you, out there on your own, having to raise a kid without family or friends. I wanted to find the prick who left you alone like that and murder him. wanted to find the cunt ass doctor Raiden told me about, and carve out his eyes, but my promise stopped me. I should have come for you. Should have known that words are one thing, but what I felt was a far more sacred oath. There hasn’t been a day since you left that I haven’t loved you. You want my forgiveness? You have it. You don’t have to ask.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Hey.” I press the pad of my thumb roughly into her bottom lip. A sigh of breath spools over it and trails up my hand. It’s all I can do not to bend her back on that counter, wrap her legs around my hips, and fuck my forgiveness into her. “You’re having a rough time and going through something like this, this much grief, would break anyone, so I’m going to give you a pass on telling me what’s possible and what’s not. I never said it wasn’t complicated. I might have changed, we both might be different, but you know me.”

She stares and stares at me, but at least she’s trying to breathe now. Slower. One shaky inhale after another.

She curls her fingers closed around my hand and surprises the hell out of me by bringing it to her mouth. She turns it over, my calloused palm, and brushes her lips over my knuckles. She should be cried out by now, but fresh tears spill down her cheeks. I twist my hand and press my fingers into the right side of her cheek, gathering them up.

I don’t crave to control her, and I swear that I’d die before I ever caused her another second of pain, but I have to move my hand, brush away her soft hair, and trace a path to her neck. She sighs, arching her head back into my touch.

“Gray…”

It’s hard, hearing her say my name like that. It sounds like a plea full of wicked, breathy desire. A plea to take her and make it all disappear, to make it all better. To be buried to the hilt in her until there’s no more death and no more world and no more hurt. No more aching for five years. No more separation or anger or anxiety over tomorrow.

Only us, fitting together perfectly, like we’re only here and only breathing this air and living in these bodies, sewn together of blood and flesh, shaped like clay and kilned into vessels made just for the other.

She feels it too. She freezes, sensing the danger and excitement.

“No, Birdie.” I need to detach. Give us time to think. I take her face gently, but firmly. “You’ve had a hell of a week. You looked like you wanted to crawl right into that grave and get buried too and I couldn’t handle it. Seeing you in so much pain tore the soul clean out of me. I’m not thinking about the past. I want you by my side, but it has to be your decision. I won’t settle for anything less than you as my queen and that comes with a lot of responsibility and obligations.”

She moans low in her throat, testing me as her eyes become velvet pools, as tears gather and star her lashes. The flush on her cheeks darkens.

“It bears more than a day of thinking, especially on a day like this.” I need to let her go. I need to…

“What if I need you right now?” She grasps my beard with surprising strength and slips her hand beneath, to my throat, like she wants to feel the denial I’m trying to work myself up to.

“Lark…” She trembles at the dark warning in that, and just seeing the way her eyes dark and watching her head tip to the side, her hair spilling out of the way to reveal her neck to me like he wants to be bitten, taken, fucked hard right there on the kitchen counter, owned by me, crowned the queen to my motorcycle king with my dick coronating her, sends desire coursing through me so hot and hard that I know I’m finished. Grief affects people differently, maybe she needs to feel alive again.

Anything she asks me for, I will give her.

I’ve always belonged to her, even when I didn’t know it, but I’ve done a lot of knowing it and I am half feral for it.

“Funerals make you feel that way. Death makes you want to live,” she says, echoing my thoughts.

She calls my half-assed attempt at denial, calls it, and raises by spreading her legs further apart then curling her knees and wrapping them around me, digging one of her heels into my ass and pulling me close.

“I want to be a good man for you,” I groan as all her naked longing is revealed to me by her expression, magnified by her silence.

Her hand drops to my waist, flips up my suit jacket, and tries to find my waistband. I push it away, shaking my head. “Not going to be with you like that again until I can do it without hiding and I know where your mind’s at.” She hisses at me like a feral cat as I clutch her fingers together in a tight grip. I might have had blue balls for half a decade, but I’m just glad to see some of her spirit come rushing back. “What you need is a release, and I can give that to you.”

“But not with your cock?” she sasses, looking like she wants to dick punch me in revenge.

“With my fingers.” I push her dress up her thighs with both hands, spreading my rough palms over skin soft and smooth as silk.

She whimpers when I lean in, getting up in her space, my hands pinning her legs down onto the counter.

She grabs onto the stupid tie that’s been half choking me all morning, arching into me so hard that her breasts mash against my chest.

I force her to release it, untangling her fingers. I swipe my hand over her jaw, turning her face down and away from me. “Lark…”

“Please, Gray.”

“I want to be gentle with you. Need to be.”

“What if I don’t need gentle?”

I kiss her temple. “You do.”

“I just want you. It’s such a mess.”

“I should go.”

“No!” She grasps my tie again. The thing is a goddamn noose. It’s utterly ridiculous, trying to be respectable. “Don’t go. Please. I need you. I need you so badly.”

I won’t give her what she wants, but I’ll give her what she needs. Right now, that’s tenderness all mixed up with fire. It’s more than just grief clouding her mind. I’ve tried to be a good man, but good is a relative fucking word. She’s always been my weakness, especially when she looks at me with those huge, tear-stained eyes.

“Gray,” she hisses, nearly killing me.

I grasp the hem of her dress and drag it thoroughly up to her hips, wrenching it out from under her ass.

She’s wearing a plain little thong. Black, like her dress, the fabric darker where she’s soaked through. I force myself to be a gentleman and shove the fabric aside instead of tearing it off her. I sigh with satisfaction when the treasure of her glistening, smooth pussy is revealed.

I slip two fingers inside of her to the first knuckle. Fuck, she’s tight. Call me crude, but I thought that childbirth was possibly supposed to have an effect on that. Lark was probably the most beautiful pregnant woman. I imagine her with a gently rounded bump, her hand on top of mine, guiding me to feel our baby’s kicks.

I want it so damn bad, that picture for our future, that my jaw audibly creaks when I grind my teeth together.

I remove my fingers and drag them through her wet slit. Getting down on my knees and lapping up her sweetness would be better than wasting it on the counter, but I know I won’t keep myself in control if I taste her.

She can taste herself instead.

I roll my fingers in her wetness, soaking them to my knuckles, brushing them over her sensitive clit until she whimpers, and then I swipe them over her lips, painting them. The sunlight is coming in through windows just right to illuminate the new sheen on them.

“I’ve been starving for you, Birdie,” I tell her honestly. I should shut the fuck up. I know that. I can’t. “You want me, you’ll have every bit of me.” I’m not trying to sway her decision. I shouldn’t be here at all, but all I can do is trace the perfect detail of her lips and then bring my hand lower, teasing her clit and sweeping to her entrance.

She spreads her legs wide, but she doesn’t throw her head back again. She watches me line my fingers up with her hole and push them inside. I don’t stop this time. I fill her just because I know she’s watching. I make her take it all to the knuckles and then I curl them. She starts to pant, but she keeps watching as I thrust them slowly, filling her while she weeps all over my hand. I spread her open with my other hand and my woman doesn’t make a sound of protest. All she does is whimper and pant. I reward her with gentle circles to her clit while I finger fuck her nice and slow, hitting all those delicious spots inside of her.

She squirms against me, trying to get closer. Finally, she takes my wrist and holds on as I fuck her. “Please,” she whimpers. “Please, Gray, I need more.”

“No.” I’m not here to tease her or deny her, but I’m firm on this.

I’m giving her a release and then I’m leaving and she’s coming with me, going straight to that lunch that the family is hosting at the town hall not far from the graveyard. They’re probably there already. I’m a sick fuck for thinking it, but having her walk into that room, upright and flushed and okay because I took care of her, fills me with pride and wonder.

“No, darlin’,” I say, softening my tone. “But I will let you come.” I fuck her harder, reaching higher inside of her, curling at the end. I work her clit her in beautiful circles, winding her closer and closer. “Come on my fingers like a good girl.”

“Stop bossing me around,” she mutters, but the words are muffled and wrecked through her clenched teeth.

I double my efforts. She can’t hold out. The house is perfectly air conditioned, but she’s sweating. I break my own rules and give myself a taste. I dive in, slant my mouth over hers, and kiss her brutally. She parts her lips for me immediately, kissing me fiercely in response. Her tongue strokes mine and I taste the tang of peanuts and grape jelly. And her, from when I painted her lips earlier.

“This isn’t you, touching yourself in the dead of night, thinking about me. This is me. I’m real. This life can be sweet, even if it’s bitter too. I’ll always give you the best of everything I have. Always put your first. Always make you come so good and hard that you feel me for days.” I split my fingers apart, giving Lark all she can handle, press them into a wicked hook, and make her come so hard she screams loud enough for half the block to hear.

“Love that sass,” I whisper low in her ear while I’m still pumping in and out of her and she’s still moaning, riding my hand, and soaking both of us.

I withdraw my fingers when she’s coming down and cup her pussy because I just can’t help myself. Mine. Mine forever. Let me be the only man who ever gets to see you, touch you, taste you, love you, do life with you.

She opens her eyes so slowly, blinking at me, then staring straight at my cock. It’s more than obvious in this stupid suit just how badly she’s got me twisted inside out with need.

“Does that hurt?”

“Yes.”

She grins at me wickedly, readjusts her panties, pulls down her dress, and slides off the counter. I didn’t think she could get hotter, but when she grabs the dishcloth from the sink, pours soap into it, wets it, and washes off the counter, I know I was wrong.

“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.