CRASH (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) by Daphne Loveling Page A

my shirt and paced a little as I smoked it.
    The story that Cherish told me had opened up some very old wounds that I’d thought had finally healed. Her version of why she finally decided to leave the Ranch was so similar in some ways to my own that it almost defied belief. It was a story I’d never told anybody, and I had tried so hard to forget it over the years that it felt as though I had just reopened a deep cut and exposed the raw nerves underneath.
    I saw how hard it had been for Cherish to hold back her tears as she told me her story. She had been scarred by her life at the Ranch in many of the same ways I had been. I had been a fool not to realize that from the beginning. Just the mere fact that she had had the guts to pack up and leave everything she knew should have told me that, without her having to open up her heart and spill it out right in front of me.
    When I got tired of pacing, I straddled the bike, leaned back, and lit another smoke. Gone were any traces of my initial anger at Cherish showing up unannounced at the clubhouse. I still knew she would eventually have to leave, but I was glad that she had chosen to take a chance by coming to Lupine. I figured that she was probably right when she said she might not have had the courage to get out otherwise.
    I was happy she had somehow heard my name, that knowing someone else had made it out had somehow given her some hope. The only trouble was, there was something about her that kept me thinking inappropriate thoughts about all sorts of things I wanted to do to her.
    I didn’t know what it was; she had a basic innocence about her that told me she’d probably never had a man give her pleasure before. But at the same time, somehow she had this effortless sexiness about her that drove me wild just to be around her. The way her hips naturally swayed when she walked, just begging your eyes to watch… My hands frankly itched to reach out and cup her ass, pulling her against my hard cock. I fairly itched to hear her start whimpering and pressing her wet, hot need against me…
    Fuck. Just like that, I was hard as a rock. It felt like I had been pretty much constantly since she emerged for the first time yesterday in the clothes she’d gotten from Seton. Hell, if she could make just jeans and a simple tank top look that good, imagine what she’d look like with a tight little dress that showed off all her curves and left nothing to the imagination. The video running in my head switched to her in a little black mini-dress with sky-high heels, lying on my bed as I slid the skirt up around her thighs. I could hear her breath, shallow and rapid, as she parted her legs slightly and I found the hot, wet center of her and began to stroke her clit…
    Goddamn . Okay. I needed to stop thinking about her. I was isolated enough here to get away with jacking off and being done with it, but I needed to stop entertaining thoughts of fucking Cherish. At least until she was gone and safely out of my life.
    I sat looking at the pines and brush in silence and thinking about how fucked up life could be. I stayed out there for a couple of hours, fighting off dueling impulses to either drive to the WFZ Ranch and bomb the place to kingdom come, or just chuck everything and go build myself a cabin somewhere up in the mountains so I wouldn’t have to deal with people and their complicated, fucked up lives anymore.
    Eventually, when I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer, I sat up, pointed my bike in the opposite direction, and headed back to the clubhouse. We had the meet with the leader of the Aztec cartel this afternoon, and as much as club business was the last thing on my mind right now, I couldn’t let down my brothers. I needed to be there to see how Lalo reacted to Grey telling him the Cannibals were probably responsible for the attacks on our club.
    The meet didn’t go well. Lalo Hernandez, the leader of the Aztecs cartel, was a short, stocky man about fifty years old, with