Unbeloved (Undeniable #4)(4)

Reaching my truck, I tossed my purchases inside the open window, and was about to open the door when I felt a touch on my left shoulder. Startled, I spun around and came face-to-face with . . . Jason Brady.

“You forgot your change,” he said.

When I tore my gaze from his grin and looked down to his outstretched hand, I found three wrinkled dollar bills. But my focus wasn’t on my change, it was on the man standing in front of me. He was so close to me, too close, and watching me too intently for me to feel at all comfortable.

And yes, dammit. He did smell good. An understated, yet softly spicy bouquet wafted off his skin, and along with it, the faint odor of sweat and the crisp scent of leather.

Swallowing hard and with a slightly trembling hand, I reached for my money and when I did, his free hand came down on top, his hands caging mine, his touch freezing me in place.

“You should stop by the club and see me sometime,” he said, his eyes lazy, his smile filled with less-than-honorable intent. A smile that had my stomach flip-flopping.

I cleared my throat and managed to choke out, “I . . . I’m married.”

Jase’s smile never wavered. “Baby, I ain’t tryin’ to marry you.”

Releasing me, he held up his left hand and wiggled his ring finger back and forth. His wedding band, a thin band of platinum, glinted menacingly in the sunlight. “Got the battle scars to prove it too.”

I stared up at him as foreign thoughts infiltrated my brain, thoughts of him and me naked, sweaty, our bodies colliding. I saw heated kisses and furious groping and— Instantly disgusted, more so with myself than at his audacity, I had spun back around and quickly jerked open the driver’s side door. Yanking it closed behind me, I’d thrust the key into the engine, slammed the truck into reverse, and hit the gas. As I had burned rubber out of the parking lot, I could see him in my rearview mirror, still standing where I’d left him.

Laughing.

What an absolute scumbag.

What an absolutely, perfectly sculpted, beautifully smelling . . . scumbag.

? ? ?

Since I was young and unhappy in my marriage, it had only taken Jase a few months of pursuing me before I’d succumbed, and an even shorter period of time before I’d fallen head over heels in love with him. A love I’d chosen above all else—my marriage had ended and my family was lost to me, viewing me as an adulterer; the utmost disgrace.

And my dignity, I’d sacrificed that as well.

And for what? To be a club whore?

I might be off-limits to the other boys, belonging only to Jase, but the painful truth was that he’d never be mine. All these years later he was still married, still armed with a litany of excuses as to why he couldn’t yet leave his wife, and still promising that he someday would.

It was a promise I’d recently given up on.

I could either accept my fate and status in Jase’s life—always a club whore, never an old lady, forever waiting for what little crumbs he would toss my way—or I could leave him.

But how could I leave him? After all I’d given up, all I’d sacrificed for him, the sheer lengths I’d gone to ensure that someday I would be his one and only, how could I simply walk away?

The truth was that I couldn’t.

Leaving him meant losing the security he provided me. I’d lose the apartment he paid for in town, and my only source of income: my position at the clubhouse.

So as I made nice at a barbeque I had no interest in attending, I matched his happy expression, hoping from this distance that it would appear genuine, and that unlike Eva, he wouldn’t see through my facade.

I shouldn’t have been worried. As usual, Jase was oblivious to my wants and needs, only ever focused on his own. So much so that he was unaware of my biggest secret yet.

The secret I carried inside my belly.

Unbeknownst to Jase or to anyone other than myself, the life growing inside me was not a product of my relationship with Jase. It was the result of an affair with another member of the Hell’s Horsemen. It had begun as a drunken slipup, a night of much-needed comfort spent in the arms of another, but over time had become something else entirely. Even years later, it was still something I’d never quite known how to process, could never truly comprehend, but at the same time . . . I’d eventually begun to depend on it. Need it, even.

The other man provided me with an outlet nothing else in my life allowed me. When I was with him, I was never consumed with feelings of inadequacy, fearing that every move I made was being compared to another woman. With him, I felt almost free.

Turning away from Jase, I squeezed my eyes shut, easily envisioning him, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, as stoic and as silent as ever.

The dark to Jase’s light, James “Hawk” Young’s skin held a duskier undertone, his features were more striking, almost otherworldly. Even without the additional height of his Mohawk, he was taller than Jase, larger with bulky muscles and an overall stature that could very easily be construed as intimidating.

At first, I too had been intimidated by Hawk. After our first night together he’d come to me again, wanting more. When I’d refused him, he’d threatened to tell Jase what we’d done. Terrified of losing the only man I’d ever loved, I’d agreed.

And in the end, I’d been the furthest thing from intimidated.

In the end . . . I’d been in love with two men.