Rough Justice (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #1)(75)
Her pulse quickened and she glared. “So what? I’m supposed to be grateful that he respects me? In the civilian world, women get that kind of respect every day, and they don’t have to shoot someone to earn it.”
Jagger took a step toward her and she backed away. Not because she was afraid, but because she didn’t know what she would do if he touched her. She was too wound up after the shoot-out. Too angry. Too excited. And too goddamned confused.
“You won’t be happy in the civilian world.” He kept coming, forcing her to back across the living room and through her bedroom door. Why wouldn’t he respect her space? Her need to be alone? Why wouldn’t he just go so she could start forgetting about him and move on with her life?
“You can’t carry a gun in your purse or strapped to your leg in their world. You can’t speed down the highway at one hundred miles per hour. You will struggle just as hard to earn respect from men when you try to get a job in a mechanic’s shop. But this world, you know. You have power here. The kind of power Viper fears and can’t control.”
She forced a laugh when her legs hit the wall. “Viper’s not afraid of me.”
“You defy him over and over again,” Jagger said, stopping only a foot away. “No matter what he does, he can’t break you the way he’s broken Jeff. He can’t scare you or beat you or threaten you into obedience. He can’t control you, and he’s a man who needs control.”
“Like you.” Her heart pounded as his heat soaked into her body, making her nipples stiffen so much they ached.
“Like me.” He cupped the back of her head with one hand and pulled her forward for a long, deep kiss.
And then he released her and walked away. “But not tonight.”
Her brows drew together as she watched him stretch out on her bed, wrinkling her soft pink duvet.
“What?”
He looked around the room—its soft pastels, white antique furniture, and pink sheer curtains—and smiled. “I knew there had to be pink and girly somewhere in your place. You hide it in the bedroom just like you hide it under your leathers.” He gestured to her shelves, filled with pictures of Jeff and their mom, her friends, and happier times. “You hide your heart here. These are Jeff’s paintings around the room, aren’t they?”
“He made the furniture for me, too.” Still confused by Jagger’s sudden withdrawal, she didn’t move. “He bought it used and then spent months refinishing it. He said he was happy to do it and he wouldn’t take any money from me. It wasn’t that long ago.” She gestured to the door. “I thought you wanted to get going.”
“I want you,” he said softly. “Here. Where your heart is. But not the way you think. Watching you in that bar, holding your own against Leo and a roomful of bikers, so f*cking cool and confident … turned me on like nothing else. Nothing sexier than a girl with a gun except my girl with a gun.” He patted the bed beside him. “You controlled that room, sweetheart, and I’m not taking that away from you.”
“I don’t understand.”
His smile faded. “I’m a man who needs control. Always have. Always will. I need it to lead the Sinners, and I need it in the bedroom. But tonight, I’m giving it to you. I’m not saying it will ever happen again—because knowing myself as I do, I suspect it won’t—but right now I want my girl to run the show.” He folded his arms behind his head. “Do what you want with me.”
*
A slow, sensual smile spread across Arianne’s face as she walked over to the bed, working that goddamn skin-tight dress like there was no tomorrow. Lust soared inside him, and with it the instinctive, almost primal urge to pin his female to the bed and take her in the most primitive way to prove his dominance. But not tonight. This night he would gift her with his trust. He would rein in his need to take control. He could only hope she would understand what he was trying to say.
She stopped at the foot of the bed, and her gaze raked down his body, lingering on the bulge in his jeans. He was already hard. Hell, he’d been hard since he walked into the bar and she’d shimmied her way through the crowd. His woman. Coming to him. With the kind of confidence that could bring a man to his knees. And when she faced down Leo, squeezed that trigger, he knew he’d found the woman he’d been waiting for all his life.
He reached for his belt, and Arianne held up her hand. “No one touches what’s mine.”
Jagger growled, his cock throbbing beneath his fly. This had seemed like a good idea at the time but if she didn’t tie him to the bed, he didn’t know how long he would last.
Without taking her gaze off him, she unzipped her dress, sliding it off one arm and then the other, drawing it slowly over her curves. Blood rushed to his shaft and he shifted on the bed. When she was down to a lacy red bra and a matching pair of panties, she posed for him and twisted her lips to the side. “Hmmm. A Jagger in my bed. What shall I do?”
“You should get up here, is what you should do.”
“Bossy.” She turned and bent over, giving him a perfect view of the round globes of her ass and the dark shadow of her * swathed in red lace. “Maybe I’ll just tidy up my room. There are a lot of clothes on the floor.”
Jagger’s body began to quake as he imagined holding her in that position, her hands on the dresser, his cock pressed against her ass. He wanted to rip those lace panties off and bury himself deep inside her. Fuck her until she came, screaming his name.