“It’s a closed club. I’m not in it, but I’m expected to live with it, with the rules, and to help all of you whenever you need it.”
He turned her answer over and over in his mind. There was some truth to that. Torpedo Ink was closed off in some ways. All right, if he was honest, in all ways. They let their women in by loving and protecting them, but it wasn’t the same. No one had gone through the things they had together. They’d been torn apart. Shredded. They weren’t whole, not unless they were together. One didn’t survive without the others. It was difficult to explain to anyone else. So, yeah, he got it. She wasn’t exactly wrong. Still, she was his woman, and the club accepted her as such, which meant she was theirs to protect.
“That’s not exactly right, Seychelle. Every member of Torpedo Ink would lay down their life for you.”
“Maybe. I don’t want them laying down their life for me. I want, for once in my life, to be someone’s first.”
He frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Her lashes fluttered. “It isn’t your turn. It’s my turn.”
“Then get on with it.” He ran his palm over her hip and down her thigh possessively, because really? What the fuck did she mean by that?
“Did you always want to belong to a motorcycle club?”
“I didn’t know what a club was until I saw the worst of them. We rode with the Swords, one of the nastiest clubs on the planet. They ran a huge human trafficking ring and treated women and children like shit. I loved the brotherhood I shared with my people, and riding on my Harley, but didn’t want anything to do with the Swords. I didn’t want to be like them. We came into contact with other clubs, and over the five years we rode with the Swords, we learned not all clubs were like the Swords. Czar set the rules for us, and we knew it was our best way to function in society.”
Her hand moved to his scalp, fingers beginning that slow massage he had come to love. From the first time she’d ever done that, she’d made him feel cared for.
“So, what the fuck did you mean when you said for once in your life you wanted to be someone’s first?”
Seychelle shifted her weight from her bottom to her hip. He turned his head slightly so he could look up at her face. There was no pain there, none in her eyes, but there was some other emotion that had his gut knotting. She looked almost haunted. Those teal-blue eyes looked sad. Deep sorrow. The kind that didn’t just go away easily.
“Baby.” He gentled his voice. “What did you mean by that? Tell me. This is our honesty time. We always talk to each other right here in the safety of this room.”
Deliberately, he wanted to point out they were in her safe place. Her sacred spot—their sacred place. He had to acknowledge that even for him, this cottage and this bed had become that. Maybe he didn’t want to give up the cottage either. He rubbed his palm up and down her thigh and then found the scars on her leg that she’d gotten saving his life, tracing them gently with the pads of his fingers.
She turned her face away from him, staring out the window to look at her beloved sea. He gave her that, not forcing her to face him. It mattered more that she gather the courage and tell him what she meant. Whatever it was, it was too damned important for him to insist on controlling how she told him.
“For you, your brothers and sisters in Torpedo Ink are a part of who you are, Savage. You kind of said that to me, right? That somehow, to survive, you’re all woven together, and you wouldn’t make it apart.”
He nodded, afraid to speak aloud. Instead, he rubbed his chin along her belly and then kissed the faint abrasive red marks he’d put there. All the while he continued to trace those scars to soothe her. She was used to his touch. He willed her to continue.
“Everything you do, you do for the club. You have secrets with the club, things you share with them you don’t share with me. They dictate your life to you. They come first for you, and they always will.”
He saw where she was going with her statement, and his first reaction was to protest, but what exactly was she saying that was incorrect? The club was his life. He did share things with the club he couldn’t share with her. His life did revolve around the club. He wouldn’t say he put them first before her, but it would seem that way to her. He could understand that.
“My parents really loved one another, and when my father realized my mother was going to die, he couldn’t see me, only her. At first, I had Mom, but then when Dad developed the heart condition, she began to focus more and more on his illness, and I was the odd man out. I didn’t blame them. I really didn’t. I had so much to do all the time, and they couldn’t do much at all, so they spent their time with each other. Don’t get me wrong, we spent time together as a family, just as I know I’ll spend time with you and your family. But I always thought I’d be first in someone’s life. That’s the dream, right? At least my dream.”
“You’re my world, Seychelle. I don’t want you to doubt that.”
“What’s your dream?”
She hadn’t replied to his statement. When she asked her question, there was the slightest tremble to her voice, but when he looked up at her, there were no tears. Her lower lip trembled for just a moment, just as her voice had, but she bit down and stilled it.
“Keeping you happy for the rest of your life,” he answered sincerely, without hesitation. “Finding a way that allows you to see and love the real me so that you want to stay with me. That’s the dream for me, Seychelle. The real man. The monster and the man.”
A wall of water thundered toward the shore, the waves crashing against the bluffs and sea stacks in a wild display of nature in turmoil. His heart beat faster, while his blood seemed to match the rhythm of the tumultuous sea.
Her fingers massaged his scalp, the one thing that kept him believing she was hanging in there with him. Why did she feel as if she was so damn elusive? They had a problem. A real problem. This was much bigger than getting her body to accept pain with pleasure.
“I laid out everything for you—how I was, what I was—Seychelle, before you agreed to our relationship. That I had to have things a certain way. That I’d be in control. That I’d want to punish you when you broke the rules. That I’d train your body to enjoy pain with pleasure so you would better be able to enjoy sex with me. You agreed to all those terms. Have you changed your mind?”
“No.”
She hadn’t hesitated.
“Do you really believe men can be faithful to one woman?” she asked.
“The right man can, yes.” He didn’t wait to hear what she had to say about that. “Do you believe you can love the real me?”
“Only if you actually share the real you with me.”
There was a challenge in her voice. That deep sorrow was back. That haunting note that broke his heart. Damn it, this was about his club. About the fact that she felt she wasn’t first in his life. She was—and she wasn’t. She was. She was his fucking world. The center of it. The heart of it.
“Do you think I’m not in love with you?”
She hesitated. His entire body froze. He didn’t know the first thing about relationships. He didn’t. He only knew that he believed she was his. Every cell in his body knew she was right for him. There was no one else, and there never would be. He had to be right for her. He might be rough and too controlling, but he would move the world for her, if she needed it moved. He just needed her to give him a little direction.