Page 37 of Mischief

Looking at her is like pressing on the broken ribs, a pain so total it steals the air out of me.

"If I speak to you," I say, low, keeping my voice under the sleeping building, "I lose everything. You heard the ruling. The nextkirkjadoesn't end with me walking out. That's not a threat, Tindra. That's a promise. I speak to you, I touch you, I so much aslookat you too long, and they end me."

"So, the club is more important than me." Her voice is a furious whisper, tears standing in her eyes and refusing to fall. "That's what you're telling me. After everything. After nine months and your blood on my father's floor. The club is more important than me."

"Tindra—"

"No. Fuck you, Bodul!" The tears break loose now, hot and furious down her cheeks, and she swipes them away like shehates them. "Fuck you for making me the fool who fell for a man who'd choose his position over her the second it got hard?—"

I move before I decide to.

Nearly a week of restraint, days of holding a line that's slowly killing me, and it all snaps at once.

I close the space between us in one stride, my boots heavy on the tile.

The only light in here is the dull red glow of the exit sign over the back door, painting her skin the color of a warning.

She's backed against the stainless steel counter, that defiant chin tilted up at me, but I catch the tremor in her lips, the way her chest rises and falls too fast.

"You shouldn't have come," I growl, my voice scraping out of my throat like gravel.

My hands find her hips, fingers digging into the denim hard enough to bruise.

The clean floral scent of her floods me, wrong for this place, wrong for a man like me, and my cock twitches behind my fly.

"I had to." Her voice comes out breathy, that streak of stubbornness I adore and hate at the same time.

She presses her palms flat against my cut, the leather creaking under her hands. "You know I had to."

I lean in until my mouth hovers a hair from hers.

Not kissing her. Not yet.

Only letting her feel the heat coming off me, the barely leashed thing coiled in every muscle.

"You get what happens if they walk in," I breathe against her lips. "Theyendme, Tindra. That's the ruling. I touch you, they put me in the fuckin’ ground."

"Then don't let them hear us." Her fingers curl into my shirt and tug me closer, until her soft curves are molded to every hard angle of me. "I don't care about the ruling. I care about right here. Right now."

Something snaps inside me, the last thread of six days of restraint breaking clean through.

I crash my mouth against hers, no finesse, no softness, only raw and desperate hunger.

My tongue plunges past her lips, and I taste the coffee and the salt of her tears and the want, all of it mixed together.

She moans into me and I swallow it, catch the sound before it can carry, because a sound in this building is a bullet with my name on it.

I bite her bottom lip and drag it between my teeth, and she arches into me, silent, shaking.

"You have to be quiet," I rasp against her mouth, even as my hand slides up her ribcage, thumb brushing the underside of her breast through her shirt. "You scream in here and I'm a dead man. You understand me? Not a sound."

Her answer is a shake of her head, her fingers threading into my hair and hauling me back down.

"Then keep me quiet," she whispers. "Don't you fucking dare stop."

That's all the permission I need.

I hoist her up onto the cold steel, her legs wrapping around my waist, the shock of the metal against the backs of her thighs making her gasp into my shoulder.