Page 50 of Beyond the Cut
She sighed and melted against him. And then everything changed. All his anger and tension, even the pain in his back, just faded away. She just felt so… right—perfect—like they were meant to be together and the world had gotten in the way.
“We never danced before,” she said softly. Her breath was sweet, citrusy, and he was tempted to lick that sugar from her lips, but uncertainty held him back.
“We never did a whole lot of anything before except fuck.” Exactly what he wanted to do now. And afterward, maybe they could talk, or do what couples did, although never having really been part of a couple, he didn’t know what that would be. Watch TV? Go for a ride? Fuck some more?
“Maybe that’s ’cause that’s all we’re good for together.”
That gave him pause. Yes, he enjoyed sex with Dawn, but he genuinely liked her. She was smart, sweet, sensitive, and funny. She had more grit and determination than anyone he’d met, working three jobs, putting up with Shelly-Ann, never giving up hope she’d get her girls back. He wanted to spend more time with her, but she was always running away.
“Well, we gotta have something together, because now you’re wearing my cut and there’s no turning back.” He brushed his fingers through her beautiful long, blond hair. They had that in common. But Dawn was soft, where he was hard. Curved where he was straight. Sweet where he was bitter.
“If you’d told me three weeks ago I’d be in a biker bar, dancing with a biker and wearing a cut, I’d never have believed you. This was the last thing I ever thought I wanted. Me. A biker’s old lady again.”
His old lady. He liked the sound of it. He liked watching the words on her lips, tumbling over the silky softness and into his heart. Three weeks ago, sitting in his booth at Peelers with Delilah in his lap, he never would have believed he’d have an old lady. “Say it again.”
She licked her lips, and the sight of her little pink tongue made him hard.
“Old lady.”
“My old lady. Say it.”
Dawn studied him for a minute, considering. “Yours.” She leaned up and kissed him and he lost the last threads of his control.
His fingers convulsed, digging into her flesh, pulling her hips against his until he could feel the softness of her belly against the hard length of his cock. He didn’t know if she was teasing or torturing or where this was going to go, but right now, if he didn’t get her out of here, Jagger was going to get more of a show than he had bargained for.
“Let’s go.” He pulled away just as the DJ spun Preacher Stone’s “Not Today.”
“I want to dance.” Dawn slid her arms over his shoulders, dropping her hands to his back. Cade winced and bit back a hiss.
She stilled and dropped her arms. “Does it still hurt?”
“No. It’s fine.” He couldn’t feel the pain except when she touched him, overshadowed as it was by the pain down below.
Dawn pressed her lips together. “Doc Hegel is here. If there’s something wrong, he can fix it.”
“The only fixing I need involves you, me, and a bed.”
“Cade, honey.” She slid her arms around his hips and then cupped his ass, just as he had done to her, little fingers digging into his flesh as she ground her hips against his painfully hard shaft. “Don’t you want to have sex on the night you got hitched?”
Arousal pounded through his veins, a thunder so loud he couldn’t think straight. Or was it Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some” coming through the speakers? Seemed like everyone was getting some except him. Unable to get words past the lump in his throat, he grunted.
“I bought something special for my first night as your old lady.” She pressed a soft kiss to his throat. “Under my dress. You can have a little taste.”
He smoothed his hand over the curve of her hip, skimming his fingers along the bottom of her dress, his mouth watering in delicious anticipation. But it wasn’t the promise of what lay beneath her golden dress that tightened his throat; it was the fact that she’d bought something for him. For tonight. To celebrate being his old lady. As if it was real. “I thought you were pissed at me.”
“I am.” She licked her lips. “Using sex to get your way is not on. But I’m willing to forgive you and give you your present if…”
“If what?”
The music segued into Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and she swayed to the beat.
“If you show me your back.”
***
“The wounds are infected. You need to go to a hospital.” Dawn grimaced as she patted an antiseptic cloth over the angry red streaks marring the Sinner’s Tribe tattoo on Cade’s back. Although she tried to stay calm, her voice wavered. His back was in worse shape than she’d thought, the cuts obscuring most of the tattoo and forming wheals on his back. Jimmy must have used a rusty knife or coated it with something before he went out. She’d seen him do it before and it had sickened her then as it sickened her now. There was no honor in poison or tainted blades, but then Jimmy was far from an honorable man.
“No hospital.” He shifted in the chair, his elbow hitting the desk with a loud thunk. Riders’ manager had let them use his office, a small, windowless room with faux-wood paneling, a cheap metal desk, and a credenza covered in papers and empty beer bottles; it smelled almost as bad as Cade’s room before she tidied it up the night after the fire, worried she might suffocate in her sleep.
