Ride Steady(170)

“Okay, Joker,” I whispered.

“And what I didn’t give you a coupla nights ago,” he carried on, “was somethin’ I knew would freak you and somethin’ I knew the Club would have in hand. That bein’ an informant for Chaos, a woman, a former prostitute, was murdered. She was not killed by the guy who has an issue with the Club. She was killed by a weasel with a grudge. It shits me to have to tell you this because I wanted to protect you from it, but you gotta have it all just in case that jackhole gets it. She had words carved in her skin, one was Chaos and the other was my name because she was my snitch.”

“Oh my gosh,” I breathed, feeling my eyes grow round.

“She wasn’t a good woman but she tried to do good by the Club, even if in doin’ it, she got paid for it. That was her world and that’s the way it needed to be. But she’s dead and she’ll be avenged. The Club will see to that, but they won’t see to it directly. The way it’s done will never color the Club.”

I turned to him, putting a hand to his stomach, feeling all he was giving me, why he was giving it to me, warm me with a heat that sunk straight into my bones.

“Joker—”

“That’s it,” he stated. “That’s all of me. Or all of me that could hurt you and Travis. Now, straight up, if you needed me to leave the Club ’cause you think that would make your case stronger, I’ll tell you, I’d consider it. But that’d say somethin’ about you. Somethin’ about what you think of my brothers, who are me. And in the end, I know it would f*ck with me, which would f*ck with us. So I can’t give that to you, Carrie.”

“I—”

“But I will walk away.”

My body locked.

He kept talking.

“It’ll kill me. I want you in my life. I want your son in my life. I like what we got, and I like the idea of where we’re going, what we’re building. Never dreamed in my life. But now I dream of that. Givin’ it to you. Givin’ you your Candy. And more. Havin’ that for me. But for you and your boy, you need me to, I’ll walk away.”

No.

No, no, no!

“You were a fighter?” I asked hoarsely, emotion clogging my throat, needing to ask that because I couldn’t even think of how he finished all he had to give me.

“Had a father beat on me,” he answered and I fought my flinch. “Had to let that go. Had to get it out. So I did.”

“A woman was murdered?” I went on.

“Yeah. And I won’t know who or how or when, but if the man responsible bites it, I’ll know why.”

I fell silent.

His hand left me.

I felt bereft.

“Carissa, if this has to happen, it’s gotta happen now,” he declared. “You need this done, I gotta walk out the door. You give me more of you, more of Trav, make that decision later, you’ll strip somethin’ off of me that’ll never heal.”

“If you walk away from me, you’d kill me.”

His head jerked.

But I wasn’t done.

“And if you ever turn your back on the Club, I’d never forgive you, Carson Steele.”

Joker stood there, completely still, and stared at me.

“Aaron is going to do everything he can to ruin everything,” I told him. “And he might succeed. That frightens me. No, it terrifies me, because I don’t want to go through it again. But this time, I don’t want to put you or anyone else I care about through it. That said, whatever he takes, wherever I land the next time, and the next, and maybe even the next, I’ll survive, just as long as I still have Travis and just as long as I still have you.”

I got my last word out and then I had my back to the floor and Joker was on me.

He was tugging at my clothes.

I returned the gesture.

Desperate, breathing heavily, clothes flying, lips dragging, mouths connecting, tongues tasting, hands roaming, nails scratching, fingers tangling, we went at each other, Joker on top, me on top, and back, and again, until I could take no more.

“Condom, baby,” I breathed my plea.

He reached out and dragged his jeans our way.

“Back, spread, hold for me, Carrie,” he ordered.

I rolled off him to my back and did as he asked.

He rolled on the condom and wasted no time covering me.

But as frantic as it was getting to that point, right then, his body on mine, my legs circling his hips, my arms curved up his back, hands splayed on his shoulder blades, his eyes locked to mine, his weight in one forearm, the other arm under me, wrapped around my waist, I felt the tip and then he slid in slowly.