Page 18 of Desert Rose

“I’m not worried. We’ve wanted the Bastards off our turf for years. It’s our turn now. Their time’s up.”

I saunter to the bar to grab a beer trying not to feel the weight of defeat sit on my heart. My room inside the Club still smells of her. I rub the back of my hand across my face. I’m gonna explode if I don’t get out of here. I grab my cut and my Glock. I need to ride; need to feel the freedom of the night air and the stars. My chest is so tight I feel like my lungs are gonna burst.

“You heading out?” I nod, walking past the few men still up, drinking and playing cards. “Want company?”

“No. Some things a man needs to do alone,” I reply to Rage.

“Be safe, brother.”

“Always.”

There’s no lights in the desert. You don’t need them along the highway when the sky is so clear the stars are all the light you need. When I was a boy, I used to stare at them, thinking my destiny was written there, like some kind of a celestial roadmap. Little did I know, my destiny was fucked. Like always loving and losing the wrong girl. On my chrome horse, dressed in my armor of leather, I charge.

Fuck Tarak.

First, he took Mandy, then he won over Amber. I wish I could just let it go. But I can’t. He took so much more from me then he’ll ever know.

The final war is brewing. I feel it in my gut. The Bloody Scorpions and The Royal Bastard MC use to be allies but that went to shit when Razor, the Sergeant in Arms of The RB’s, decided to cut the Scorpions out of our cut from the Mexico deal. We’ve been running drugs and guns for as long as I can remember. You see, out here in the desert there’s no other way to make a living. There’s no companies, no slick cities with skyscrapers full of suits and skirts. Out here it’s nothing but desert dust and endless sky. Occasionally though, you’ll find a desert rose.

REAGAN

9

My senses are on high alert. The air is still. Silent and yet it’s full; heavy. I know he’s here. I feel him. I always felt his energy swirling around me like clouds of fire. The blind is tight around my eyes. My wrists sting from the cut of the rope. On my knees, I wait with hands bound behind my back. It takes everything I have not to smirk. You see, he thinks I’m the one at his mercy. But I’m exactly where I want to be. I’ve wanted him for years, ever since that fateful night. I’ve tried to find a man I could want who wasn’t forbidden. But I couldn’t. Edge is a drug. A fucking fantasy that now maybe could be my reality. I don’t even know if he knows, it was me that night long ago. But I knew who he was and whose hands felt like fire on my skin.

“What are you waiting for,” I rasp. “I’m not afraid.” I throw down the gauntlet, taunting the man circling me in the dark.

He doesn’t reply with words. I feel a presence in front of me, seconds before the cold tip of a metal blade brush across my cheek, down my neck then circles both my nipples, erect and straining against my black tank.

“In case you haven’t figured me out yet, this shit doesn’t scare me. Instead, it turns me the fuck on.” I lick my lips as he presses the blade back and forth against my nipple. “Feel me, big guy. I dare you to touch between my legs and feel how wet I am… I dare you—”

The rest of my words are cut off as his lips fuse on mine. The knife falls to the floor with a clang as I’m lifted up and pressed against a stone wall. It cuts into my back, but I don’t care as the brute of a man I’ve always craved, hooks my legs around his hips and juts his thick cock between my legs. Our tongues duel and dance. I’m 100% in. Dying for more. He growls against my skin, rips my shirt in half, before fastening those hot lips around a nipple. Back and forth he goes. I thrust my hips forward needing relief. Needing to come.

“Edge! Fuck! I need you. Cut me loose.”

His large hand palms my mound, grips it hard and I see stars, I’m so close. Instead of reaching them. I’m dropped on the cold floor, dumbfounded. An angry cry bounces across the walls. He has me below his club in a cell. I’m sure of it now.

“How did you know who I was?”

I smirk in the dark. “Your scent is still the same. Your kiss, too.”

“The fuck?”

“Confused? It was me… back in the 2014. The summer solstice bonfire on the Res? Before the Bastards and the Scorpions second war? I was buzzed on Smirnoff Ice and you were there sitting on the cliff smoking a joint and drinking whiskey. Then months later you saved me from being trafficked…”

He’s silent. The wheels turning… we shared a night. That was more than a night. We shared an eternity in five hours of soul-shattering kisses and wandering hands. “All this time you thought it was her, didn’t you? Mandy… the saint who could do no wrong. Newsflash: it wasn’t her. She wasn’t your soulmate. The one who trembled for your touch. The one whose heart is tied to yours. She lied to you. Fucked with your head. It’s me. It was always me.”

He moves behind me, my hands are cut loose. The blind is yanked off. He takes me by the arm, dragging me across the floor. A door is kicked open. Light from the star-spackled sky shines in. His face is stoic in the moonlight. But his cheek is taunt. The vein pops as his eyes full of disdain rake over my body. “You want me,” I hiss.

He shrugs. “Changed my mind. You’re free to go.”

“Are you fucking serious? You kidnapped me. Ripped my shirt of and now you’re sending me out into the middle of the desert at night?”

“You’re a smart girl, Reagan. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

My eyes narrow. “This is fucking war,” my index finger jabs into his pec.

“It always was.”

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