Beyond the Cut (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #2)(53)

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.

“Well, then let me go get Doc Hegel. He’s on call tonight so he hasn’t had anything to drink.”

“Fine. I’ll give you this one ’cause I want that present and I want it soon.”

She found Doc Hegel by the bar. A solidly built redhead with a small goatee and a big stomach, he helped club members with injuries that would ordinarily draw police attention at a hospital, and in return he had been granted nomad status at the club. No voting rights, but he was allowed to ride and participate in most club functions, save for church meetings.

“What he did to your tat is unforgivable,” Hegel said as he tended to Cade’s back. “And because of the infection, you’ll have scars. It will never be the same.”

“I know.” Cade looked up to where Dawn perched on the desk. She saw more than anger in the depths of his eyes. Pain. Confusion. Betrayal. She understood why the Sinners hadn’t avenged Cade right away, but it had clearly affected him deeply.

Hegel gave Cade a shot of antibiotic, and instructions about caring for and dressing the wound, and then Dawn walked him to the door.

“Do you think he knows how bad it is?” he said quietly.

Dawn looked back over her shoulder. “They defiled it the second they touched it. Doesn’t get worse than that.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Dawn asked after Doc Hegel left to rejoin the party.

“Yeah. A few cuts aren’t gonna slow me down.”

“Even if they’re here?” She placed her hand over his heart. Cade jerked back and her hand fell. What had she been thinking? After Doc Hegel’s treatment he was probably hurting. “Sorry.”

Cade clasped her hand and brought it back to his chest. “I like your hands on me. It was just what you said … like you knew what I was feeling.”