Page 21 of Kick

I let go of her throat, grab hold of her hips and smash into her body, impaling her on the end of my dick before sliding all the way out of her. She whimpers with the loss of my heat but I spin her around and shove her back until she has nowhere else to go, and then I plunge right back into her. Ivy wraps her long legs around my hips. I slam her up against the wall in time with my thrusts. Her hands slip under my cut, under my shirt, and rake my flesh, drawing blood. I quicken the pace, moving past long deep thrusts and just pushing in as far as I can get, until I’m hitting the end of her.

She’s not even trying to contain her cries now; we’ve gone way beyond that. The two of us are nothing more than animals, scratching, and thrusting, grunting, clawing and using one another. Every second of it is perfection. It’s the reason we work so fucking well together, because in this moment I own her, and in the most rudimentary way Ivy owns me too, or at least she owns my body, because I never have and I never will again give my heart to another woman but Lauren.

Lauren. I hate her so fucking much.

I hate her for loving me, despite my sick, twisted mind. I hate her for stealing my heart, for making me betray my club, but most of all I hate her for dying.

I thrust harder, punishing her, striving to make her hurt and bleed, and feel the pain she put me through from the second we met. I want to wound her. I want her heart to be the one rending open, not mine. With a growl, I let go. I fuck her mindlessly, brutally. I thrust into her body and switch off my mind, allowing my cock to do what it was built for. My orgasm rips through me. Hot cum jets out of my body and into hers, and for a brief second the bliss is so complete that I let go of the anger, but when I open my eyes and look into a pair of wounded grey-green ones instead of chocolate-brown, all the emotion, the pain, the betrayal is back, worse than ever.

“You called me Lauren,” she whispers as tears slide unchecked down her cheeks.

Ordinarily, I’d watch her tears fall with a morbid sort of fascination. I’d want to know exactly what was in her head, why she fell apart every time I took her body to the brink and pushed her over the edge, but today those tears are mine. They’re caused by me, and for perhaps the first time ever I’m not okay with that.

What the fuck is happening to me? Since when do I give a shit about making Ivy cry?

I lift her from the end of my cock and set her down on her feet. “What did she do to you, Daniel?” she asks and her throat is thick with the struggle of holding back her tears.

“She died,” I whisper, and then my eyes widen when I realise that this is more information than I have ever given her. Ivy clasps a hand over her mouth, holding back her sobs. She reaches up to touch my face. There’s pity in her eyes. I feel hatred, and rage, and yes, even betrayal that she would try to pull this shit from me. We don’t talk about Lauren. I can’t talk about Lauren. Not with her.

“I’m so sorry, Daniel,” she says through her tears, taking my face between her hands.

“Don’t,” I snap and shove her away, stalking off to my room, pushing the key into the lock and turning it hard, booting it with my foot when it won’t open. I can feel Ivy behind me but I slip inside and slam the door. I press my forehead into the cool painted wood and just breathe.

Instantly, the acrid stench of vomit turns my stomach and I spin around to find Indie sprawled across the comforter, covered in the shit. The bottle of Morphine is open, and what few pills she didn’t swallow and chuck up decorate the sheet beside her head.

Fucking hell. Tank was right; from one crazy-arsed bitch to another.

I take what should be a few paces to the bed in one hurried stride, leaning over her and slapping her face hard. She’s completely unresponsive. Placing two fingers over her throat, I feel for a pulse. It’s faint, but her chest isn’t rising and falling with a cycle of inhalation and exhalation.Indie isn’t breathing.

Time slows—at least it feels that way. Panic fires through my chest as I stare down at her. I think I hear shrieking in the hall, but that doesn’t make sense. There’s a pounding on my door, and Tank’s voice on the other side.

“What the fuck did you do, Kick?” he demands, and my eyes roll to the door shaking on its hinges, and back again to Indie’s inert body.

What did I do?

What haven’t I done?

What have I ever done that’s been good for anyone?

“Open this fuckin’ door, or I’m gonna bust it open.”

I move on autopilot and unlock the deadbolt. Tank grabs my shoulders and shakes me, hard. “Ivy’s out there in the hall shrieking like a fuckin’ banshee. You just ripped the heart right out of her fuckin’ chest. What the hell did you do to her? What did you say?”

I don’t have an answer for him. It wasn’t me telling Ivy that Lauren was dead; she wouldn’t be catatonic over that. No, it wasn’t Lauren’s death that upset her, it’s that she saw the end as plainly as I did. She saw that this is it for us. She saw too far inside, and it’s a chance I won’t ever give her again.

Tank shakes me again, expecting an answer, but I have nothing for him. I have nothing for anyone. I see the moment when he looks beyond me to the bed, to Indie. Tank releases me and hurries to her side. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, did you do this?”

He has every right to ask, because more than anyone, Tank knows me. He knows the depths of my tarnished soul, and he knows how deep my betrayal runs. After all, how can you really trust a brother who betrays their club? Several times? Tank scoops her from the bed, carefully placing her on the floor. He wipes the traces of vomit off her mouth and starts performing CPR.

He’s too rough. Her ribs are bruised, or broken; he’s going to kill her.

All at once I snap to. The world ceases to move as if it’s in slow motion and my heart begins pounding, beating out a furious rhythm against my organs.

Sinking to my knees beside her, I shove Tank out of the way and take over, yelling for him to call an ambulance, then I push past the taste of vomit on her lips and breathe air into her inert lungs, willing her to accept it, to take it and live, though her actions proved to me she’d rather take the out the pills offered than stay here with me.

I’m an arsehole, it’s all I’ve ever been. A biker brat born into the arms of a junkie bitch who only cared about where her next fix was coming from, and a father who’d wished he hadn’t forgotten the fucking condom. I’ve always been trash. I’ve always been nothing. I don’t blame her for choosing to check out, but like I said:I am an arsehole. And she might fight against it, she might want it more than anything she’s felt before in her life, but I’m not letting her take that way out.

In the hall, over the shrill cry of another of Ivy’s mental breakdowns, I hear the rush of booted feet over worn carpet.

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