Tyrant (Satan’s Angels MC #1)

Chapter 20

Lark

“A re you sure she’s okay?”

“Yeah, Lark. She’s fine. Settled right down with Dad.”

I crush the phone tight to my ear. I wasn’t willing to let Penny out of my sight, but Raiden finally convinced me that the small basement clinic with its antiseptic smells and all the equipment and surgical tools wasn’t any place for a child.

When we got there, I tried for hours to calm her, but as soon as we left the clubhouse, she refused to stop crying. She clung to me and whimpered on and off. Sometimes it was full-on sobbing. I tried my best not to join her, because her seeing me lose it would only make her more hysterical.

When the men changed over guarding the clinic, Raiden tried to convince me to go back to the clubhouse, but I wouldn’t leave Gray. Not for anything, not ever again. He did appeal to what little reason I had left and got me to let him take Penny with him. There are a few old ladies and kids at the clubhouse. Those who had passports left for Canada. Others went to stay with friends or family, the ones left had nowhere else to go.

“Okay. I—”

“She needs to rest and so do you. You’re too stubborn, but I’ve got Penny settled here and I promise Dad will be with her the whole time. says, his voice sounding far sterner than usual, “you want to help Gray and Penny then you look after yourself. If you can’t sleep, our club doc might be able to give you something.”

I open my mouth to argue, but I can just see my brother, already anticipating it. He cuts me off. “I’ll bring Penny the second Gray wakes up.”

I’m using a burner phone now, since as soon as they got to Gray, Raiden destroyed my old one. The call came through on it, with the coordinates of that old trapper’s cabin. My phone, not any of the brothers or the phone at the clubhouse.

Raiden’s confidence replaces some of my pain and doubt. Hours ago, the doctor who cancelled all his appointments and took over Gray’s care—who is actually a fucking plastic surgeon—told Raiden and the men here with him, that he’d be okay. He’d be awake within a few hours, as soon as some of the stronger painkillers and whatever sedative he’d given wore off.

“Thank you.”

I hang up and fold my hands between my knees, clutching the shitty little phone. It’s just me and Gray here in this room. The basement is divided up between an operating and surgery area, a room with machines for tests, anther for supplies, and two recovery areas. There is no waiting room or anything else you’d usually expect in a doctor’s office. The regular shit is upstairs. This? It was made just for the club, for patching up the kind of injuries that they couldn’t turn up at the ER with.

That terrible night Gray was taken turned into a terrible morning. The men met in their church while I helped Seer organize the women and children. I helped anyone who needed help with the packing, trying to keep myself calm. Even in all the chaos, fear, and confusion, every single person still had time to sit with Penny. It helped that some of the kids played with her. Doing something normal with other children, even for just a few minutes, helped her forget her mother’s screams and the shadowy demons, the smells of ash and blood.

My dad, who had never been a strong man, shocked us all by finding his spine at the club. We had been staying in those two guest rooms. After all the women and children were taken care of and the club made the decision to stand behind their president, all we could do was wait for news. I used that time to explain to Penny who Gray really was.

I tried my best, over and over, for hours.

She had a thousand questions about her dad. She wanted to know if he was okay. What was going to happen. Where we’d live. She wanted to know if he was going to go to be in the sky with her grandma.

The days were hellish, the nights even worse. All I could do was keep Penny close to me. I was a shadow that barely functioned until finally my phone rang with those coordinates given by a gravelly voice. It was Raiden who took my phone from me when I frantically ran to him. He had mobilized the men and rode out in his truck at the back of the long armada of bikes, just so he could be the one to bring Gray back with him.

The whole time, Gray was only a few hours away. Far too close for any sort of comfort when it came to Zale Grand and his men, but so far away that my heart wept with every moment. I wasn’t the only one. The women and children at the clubhouse were shells of themselves. Living ghosts afraid of an uncertain future, afraid for their men who were on the road, fighting a brand-new enemy none of us really knew anything about.

Raiden had brought Gray here to this clinic and then came back for me and Penny. We sat together for hours, men guarding the building upstairs while Archer operated in a private room in the basement. I say operated, but really, he was just cleaning and patching wounds, putting back together what could be healed with a surgeon’s hands, giving antibiotics, painkillers, and hydration. The guard changed over before it was all done, and Raiden came for Penny to take her back to the clubhouse.

I’ve just been waiting here beside Gray in the bed that doesn’t look anything like a regular hospital bed, but with a few of those same machines beeping steadily, an IV plugged into his arm. All I can do is sit and hope and relive the nightmare, burnt to nothing by pain and rage and a new depth of hate I’ll never be able to dig out of myself.

A horrible gurgle snaps my attention to the bed. Gray’s one eye is swollen shut, but the other is open and fixated on me. The pupil is dilated from the drugs he’s been given, but I know he’s with me. He’s trying to say something, opening his mouth and making an awful, damaged sound like he can’t figure out why the words won’t come.

I fly out of the hard wooden chair I’m in as soon as he chokes and grunts.

“Uhn. Arhhhhh.”

“Shh.” I know he’s been beaten and tortured. They fucking burned him and used pincers, nipped his flesh off and cut him, abused his body with fists and kicks and brass knuckles. He’s sore, stitched, and bandaged, but I don’t hesitate for a second to get on that bed beside him and wrap my arms around his neck.

I’m careful as I hold him, kneeling beside his legs even though there’s hardly room, but he’s not having any of it. He surges upright and clings to me, the strength in his hands astounding given everything that he’s gone through. He doesn’t care about the wires and the IV. The blanket slips away. There’s no hospital gowns here, not for men like Gray. After cleaning him up, Archer put him into a black t-shirt and a fresh pair of boxers. They aren’t Gray’s and it seems so fucking weird that this kind of thing would be kept on hand here, but nothing about this clinic is normal.

I touch his face, frantically committing him to memory. My fingertips tell me he’s warm and alive. “Gray,” I breathe through tears. They run down my face and coat my lips, ending up in my mouth in a salty rush. “I can’t imagine what you went through up there.”

He stares back at me like he can’t comprehend the hell that I’ve lived. Penny too. All of the men, not knowing where he was or what was happening. I see it all in the shimmering tears in his one open eye. When one falls, I sweep it away with my thumb. There’s despair at the pit of him. I know that the weight of his father and everything he now represents, weigh heavier on him and hurt far more than anything he endured over the days he was captive.

He grasps my chin so tight in his fingers that it hurts. He hisses air through his nose and makes an animal sound. The sound of a dying man.

I know what he’s trying to say.

“No.” I clap my hands on his face, digging my fingers in harder than he’s holding me, but still so careful to avoid the cuts and bruises and swelling. “I’m never leaving you again. No matter how much it hurts or how much horror there is in this life, I’m here. I fucking swear it, Gray, I’m going nowhere.”

He tries to get his mouth working. Tries, and fails and tries again.

Finally, he rasps out a few words I have to strain to hear. “Thought you wouldn’t want me like this.”

“Like what?” He won’t look at me, so I ask him again. “Like what, Gray? Your father wanted to take away everything, but we’re not letting that happen. You will never lose me and Penny. Raiden fought for you and your brothers are still yours. Your club is still yours. Your father might have burned your house and brought war to our doorstep, but we’re behind you. Me, Raiden, and all your club brothers. They’re your real family. The second they know that you’re awake, they’re going to be in here, demanding that you tell them what you want done. The clubhouse is under lockdown, some of the women and children have left Hart, but your brothers want to fight. If it’s war your father wants, it’s war he’ll have, but they won’t do a thing until you give the order. Some of them are upstairs, but the door to this room is locked from the inside. I’m not going to let anyone in here until you tell me that you’re up to it.”

His whole body shudders with a deep breath. I know he’s in pain, but he’s like a predatory animal, hiding it so well that you’d never know.

“That night changed all of us.”

I nod, taking his good hand in my own. “Yes. I didn’t need help finding the warrior in me. She’s here and she’s going to fight just as hard as any of your brothers. I’d do anything to protect you.” He jams a finger into his chest, a furious frown crushing his brow. “I know you think it’s supposed to be the other way around, but not when your queen loves you like I do. We’re both fierce and we’re both going to be raising a tiger of a daughter because you’re alive and you’re going to heal. Burning down a building and making threats isn’t going to break us or this club. We are going nowhere .”

Beat up, bruised, stitched, swollen, hooked to machines, Gray still doesn’t look the least bit vulnerable. Even in this bed, he’s huge and powerful. He’s a lethal being in a momentary pause, gathering his breath before he unleashes the full fury of his wrath.

“I might sound like an avenging angel, but all that time you were gone, I was trying not to fall apart. I kept thinking I’d wasted all those years, and our time was up. My worst fear has always been losing you. I just want to hold you and let our hearts beat together because we’re still here, still alive, and you are so fucking precious and beautiful and mine.”

Gray’s face hardens. He was so tender before, but it’s lost to his sharp determination. He holds out his arms and my heart bleeds as I lean in against him. I tuck my face into the crook of his neck and manage not to sob until his hand comes down behind my hair and presses me to him so hard that I have to be hurting him in multiple places.

He arranges my hand on his chest and smooths it down with his huge one. Even in this bed, he completely dwarfs me. I haven’t ever asked him how he got that scar that twists his lips at the corner, but I wonder now if it was from his father that night he let him go. A promise of what was to come?

For every scar that Zale Grand put on the man I love, I will repay double.

I don’t know if he can sense the rage and need for vengeance emanating from me, but he runs his finger down mine. Over and over. I don’t raise my head and look until he circles it and leaves his fingers there, fit snugly around mine.

I realize what finger it is, and what hand.

“Gray!” I snap back to look at him.

He nods, his good eye bright and fierce with love. I wonder if he thought about that when he was taken away. If visions of Penny and I were enough to get him through. I see the quick flash of doubt when I go silent. I bring his hand up, still holding mine, and kiss it. Every single finger. I do the same to his other hand, reaching over for it and cradling it. The gap where his index finger should be is bandaged, but he acts like he can’t even feel it.

“I’ll marry you. Whenever and however, you want. If you’re going to tell me that you don’t have much to offer, you have everything because you’re here. Everything else will sort itself out. You have a legion of men at your back, my brother fighting for you above all. We have our beautiful, sweet, amazing daughter. She’ll heal too. She didn’t see anything that night except the house on fire. We’ll be okay, we’ll get through this, we’ll rebuild, and we’ll have a beautiful life.”

I drag my lips over his, frantic to taste him, to inhale his scent. He smells like the soap Archer used to clean him up, a little bit of disinfectant, but it’s Gray there too, underneath it all. I wept the most when I was finally allowed to see Gray in this bed. Archer worked miracles. He gave Gray back to me, not the bloody, broken, battered, barely alive shell I feared, but a peacefully sleeping, carefully tended, carefully washed man who resembled my Gray in every way.

“You were going to ask me that, weren’t you?” Maybe I didn’t catch his meaning. I flush backtracking.

“Should have got down on one knee,” he rasps. “Made it traditional with a big fancy ring. Should have asked your dad and Raiden too.”

“We can keep it our secret for now. Even if you went down on your knees for the next century, it wouldn’t change how much I love you. My answer will forever be yes.” I don’t want to give up my time with him, but I know that the club is waiting. There are women and children who have been displaced from their homes. Men worrying over their families and lives just as fervently as I’ve worried for Gray and for Penny, for my dad and Raiden. “I’m always going to be yours, even when I have to share. Do you want me to go tell them you’re awake?”

“Wait.”

“I can wait as long as you need.”

His mouth works so hard to shape the words. “What I need is you.”

“Gray… I don’t think- I- you need to heal.”

“No, Birdie, what I need is you. Always.”

“Only if you let me do most of this myself but there’s no way that I’m—”

His hands are on my hips, cutting me off. His fingers bite into my skin, before one travels lower. He cups my pussy over the thin fabric. I’m not wearing anything underneath. He isn’t well enough for this, but I sit back further, letting him palm me possessively. His message is clear. My cunt is his. I’m his. He studies me, still hooked up to all those machines. I can see his heartrate elevate on the screen. The door is locked, and no one is monitoring him but me right now.

I know that if I unhook that finger clip then alarms will probably sound. Gray turns his head pointedly to the monitor and then looks down to the floor.

It feels daring to get off the bed and unplug hospital equipment, but this is what Gray wants. He’s okay. Even Archer said with time and careful, patient healing, he’d be okay. That’s probably the most messed up part of the whole thing. Zale wanted his son to suffer the way he did, but honestly, he doesn’t appear to have suffered much. He went and found himself another club and wasted no time getting to the top.

All that’s left after the machines is the IV. Gray has pulled everything else off. He sits up in the bed, peels the tape off his wrist, and slowly works out the needle. He’s methodical and blood doesn’t go squirting all over like when people do it forcefully.

“I know you think I need to heal, and I do. I’m not a superhuman, but that doctor on my father’s payroll took care of me for every bruise and cut and beating and burn. I’ll bet all Archer had to do was clean me up and give me painkillers.”

“Painkillers that are making you not think and feel right.”

“I can’t feel the pain. Pretty sure I’ll feel the pleasure just fine.”

“Gray… you have to let me do this for you. Let me be the one who loves you. I know you won’t get hurt then. You refused me once and this isn’t payback. It’s me taking care of you, giving you what you need. I get that you need me more than anything right now because we came so close to- to…” I can’t even finish that. I will never, ever finish that because I won’t let it happen.

“Just watch. Please.”

He leans back in the bed and takes a long breath. I was right about the painkillers. He probably can’t even properly feel his body right now.

I shift to the end of the bed. It’s large and plenty big enough for me there. His eyes follow my every move, every action.

I pull my hoodie over my head. Raiden went back to the house to grab a bag of clothing and a few pairs of shoes for all of us. I have a tank top underneath, a tight one, so I’m not wearing a bra either.

Gray studies my leggings like he wants to tear them in half. He’s proven that he’s capable of doing just that, so I get them off in a hurry. I scramble up on the bed, kneeling at the end, but it’s the wrong position. He can’t see anything from here. I readjust, putting my legs out in front of me and spreading them wide, opening myself almost obscenely. My face heats, but the way Gray’s air rattles down into his lungs in a gulp makes me bolder.

“Normally, you’d be saying dirty things right now. Telling me what to do to please you, but really, pleasing myself does please you. Let me do it for you. I’ll give you a show and I’ll narrate it myself. If it’s too much, shut me up.”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t think it’s too much.

I start at my knees, running my hands up, splaying my fingers and pressing into the pale skin there hard enough to leave bright red marks in my wake.

“My leggings are soaking on the floor. They must be because my thighs are already wet and slippery. Can you see it?”

Gray groans, the sound coming from his throat and rumbling up and out.

“You can see how wet I am for you. You want me to put my finger in my slit and gather all that cream and taste it?”

His breathing gets louder. So does mine. I’m hot all over. If I touch myself until I’m soaking this bed.” My fingers dip between my lips. I part myself for him and slide two fingers through my wetness, inching towards my entrance. I stray away from it to smear my arousal over the insides of my thighs before I coat my fingers again and skim them over my belly. I paint a glistening strip there where my tank top ends before I bring them to my mouth and suck them clean.

I hum my approval. “Delicious. Musky and sweet, just for you.” I lick my lips to gather every last drop into my mouth and hold myself open with one hand while I churn my fingers through my wetness again. “Look at how pink and swollen I am.”

If those machines were still on, I know Gray’s heart would be slamming wildly. I’m still afraid this is far too much. I’m scared that I’m going to hurt him. He’s severely injured. A regular hospital probably wouldn’t release him for weeks, but I know that in a few hours, he’s going to get up and walk out of here because he has to.

He stares at me so intently that my blood rushes, hammering through arteries. I skim my finger over my clit, pressing lightly, and moan at how good it feels.

I circle my entrance, pushing two fingers inside. I keep my eyes on Gray’s face, watching him watch me. His gaze is scalding hot. His hands fist in the blanket still covering him.

“Don’t go too far, Lark,” he warns me, like he’s still planning on grabbing me and fucking me senseless. “

You want me to beg for the right to fuck myself? Please, Gray? Please, may I shove my fingers into my own pussy?”

He shakes his head. His hand uncurls and traces the line of his cock under the blanket.

“Right. This is your pussy. Only yours. I’m not allowed to pleasure it without your saying so.” Neither of us believe that for a second, but I like saying the filthy words. It makes my heart beat even faster. It’s in danger of exploding and I’ve just started.

He throws back a corner of the blanket and I scramble up to get out of the way. I pull it straight off the bed, my mouth watering at the unobstructed view of Gray’s muscled body. He might be bruised and stitched up, but he’ll always be beautiful.

I want to be his natural painkiller, the highest high he’s ever ridden. I know he’s never done anything past marijuana, which makes him unique in the club. I’ll get into his blood like something much harder. I want him to crave me, to possess me, to unwind all that I am and weave me back into a tapestry of his design. I want him to own me fully.

Gray’s downward gaze slices through me, understanding and hearing everything I didn’t speak out loud. I push two fingers inside of me, my walls clenching around them. It’s so vastly unsatisfying, but the way Gray watches me and strokes his own cock through his boxers is so fucking hot.

I said no before, but he pulls down the elastic and his cock springs free. He’s long and hard, veiny and swollen. He wraps his hand around his shaft and my pulse pounds like the deafening bass line at a club, echoing between my legs. My nipples are beaded hard under my tank.

I bend forward, letting my hard, bare nipples scrape along the ridge of Gray’s dick. I hold him between them, so he smears my chest with precum. He paints me with silky, silver glowing strands before I move and press the tip of him to my nipple, circling it, getting it wet. I bend and lift my breast to my mouth, licking him off my own nipple, circling it with my tongue.

I hear words I don’t think I’ll ever hear him say. “Please, Lark.”

Gray. Begging me.

He’s begged me before, but not like this.

My mouth waters to taste him. I can’t deny him. He won’t let me. I guide his cock to my lips, teasing along the head, taking my time to paint my lips and savor the musk of him before I open my mouth and take him fully. I go as far as I can, swirling my tongue along the underside of his head before taking his shaft. I try to swallow so I won’t gag, but the angle is wrong, and I have to back off and try again. I still gag, but even as tears from in the corners of my eyes from it, I love the way it feels to have most of him in my mouth. I suck his cock, hollowing out my cheeks, while the rest of me is empty and aching. I’m slippery and wet between my thighs. If I even so much as tapped my clit or played with my entrance, I know that I’d explode. It hurts, but I torture myself further by thinking of him one day filling my asshole with his dick. I’d be a good girl and take all of him there too, no matter how much it burned and hurt. I’d come on his fingers while he fucked me hard there, so full that I could die.

I pop his cock out of my mouth and look up at him with tears still gathered in my eyes from all the time I choked on him. The taste of him coats my tongue and lips. I can’t stop. His huge palm covers mine at the base of his dick. I suck him, harder and faster. He can’t hold out. I make sure. He tries to move my face out of the way, but there’s no way I’m letting him do that.

His cum coats my tongue, hot and salty and I swallow him down. I live for the taste of him, for the feral noise that he makes as he comes.

After, he lifts me up and groans, mashing his forehead to mine. His hand guides mine straight down to my clit. He lets me do it, like I asked him to earlier. He watches as I circle the swollen bud. I’m so wet that it looks like I’ve already come. Beads of moisture slick down my thighs and when I move.

“Gray,” I pant. “Oh my god.”

It’s my fingers on my clit, but his hand hovers over mine. My other hand traces his arm and then his shoulder. I run my fingertips over the bunched muscles, committing the stark wonder of him to memory in a new way. I’ll never take a single detail about him for granted again.

“Come, my Birdie.”

I do. Hard. Harder than I should for just touching myself. He pants against the side of my face, and I imagine that low rumble of his, commanding my orgasm, pulling it from his body. This is my king and at last, I’m his queen. I cry out as pleasure cuts through me like bits of hot metal scoring me apart.

We’re both half-soaked, sweaty and breathing like animals. He keeps his hand splayed over my thighs while I have my palms flattered against his shoulders. We come down from the adrenaline and the dopamine together.

I press a kiss to the side of his jaw above his beard, kiss along his cheekbone and up to his temple. “I love you, my king. For this life and whatever comes next. I’ll fight any one to keep you at my side.”

I don’t want to pull away from him, but I force myself to help him get the sheet back in order and then I pull my own clothing back on. I lean over the bed and kiss his forehead again. My hands cry to be on him, and so I give in and run them through his hair.

“I’m not ready to share you yet, but I know I have to. Raiden will bring Penny and even though I’m not ready to let the outside world in here, I’m more than ready to be a family again.”

Gray’s worry and confusion is immediately evident in the way he shoves back the blanket I just arranged back in place over his lap. I quickly fill him in on everything, which I should have done immediately. I should and shouldn’t have done a lot of things, but the way he’s looking at me, he doesn’t regret anything. We needed this.

I need to get the burner phone and then I’m going to have to unlock that door, but before I can do any of it, Gray takes my hand and flattens it on top of his heart. He holds me there for just a few seconds longer. I close my eyes and savor it until he has to let me go.