Page 17 of Savage Devotion (Savage Reign #1)

REAPER

“ D oes she know you claimed her when you gave her that ring? I mean, you guys might as well be married.”

The next evening, Ash passes me a cold beer and I take it with a tip of the neck in his direction as thanks.

The smell of damp leaves and woodsmoke rolls over me.

Bayou water lingers in the air, thick, brackish and faintly metallic, cut with the scent of Charli’s spicy gumbo and cornbread fresh from a cast iron skillet.

The Savage crew is all out in the large barn opposite the main house.

It wasn’t much at one time, but my grandfather converted it fairly early on into a large party space with small studio apartments up top so people could crash.

With a few modifications over the years, it’s now big enough to fit everyone.

My best friend pulls up a chair beside mine and throws his substantial frame into it, feeling the weight of the last few days like I have, no doubt.

“Is the parish quiet?” I ask, ignoring his question about Arabelle with one of my own.

Ash thinks we should go guns blazing and take down the Vultures once and for all.

Yesterday I agreed with him. But after sleeping on it, I know a little patience is in order.

They are just testing the lines and last night Péril’s shitty MC learned where the line in the sand is drawn.

Besides, I want to dig deeper into Euphoria and I can’t ask dead men questions.

Ash nods. “It’s all good.”

I take a hit of my beer and welcome the cool liquid hitting the back of my dry throat.

I’ve had about as much vodka as I can take after riding with the Savages for a few weeks.

It feels damn good to be back home, my favorite beer in hand and with my people around me.

Friends are good to have, but family is better.

I take a deep swallow of my drink and watch Arabelle with Charli. In the short time Arabelle has been in Harlon, they have become good friends, it seems. Which doesn’t surprise me. Arabelle is the kindest person I’ve met in a long time.

Gritting my teeth, I try not to focus on how I can still feel her possessive grip around my cock hours after last coming inside her.

More than that, I can’t believe the woman is carrying my child. I’m going to be a father.

Her rapid heartbeat against my tongue, her supple skin beneath my roughened fingertips. I keep looking at her in the barn’s soft lighting and I suddenly want to know what she looks like spread out on my bike taking my cock while the sun plays in her hair.

She’s so delicate, yet so strong. I can’t honestly say I know her life’s story, but all of me wants to peel back the layers until every minute of her life lives in my brain.

She’s at a table about ten paces from me, talking about some book, smelling of jasmine and honey. A lesser man would already have dragged her away from her book club and demanded she service him.

If I try that, she'd probably kick me in my balls and in the same breath get right back to talking about her books. I can’t make out what she is saying, but every few minutes her hand tucks an invisible strand of hair behind her ear as if she can sense me listening in.

Or maybe she can hear the erratic tap of my heart.

She’s had it in a constant state of either panic or arousal since I rode up on her taking on the Vulture crew in the middle of Main Street.

The woman doesn’t know when to back down. She’s mentioned a hard life and I want to wrap my fingers around whoever it is that put the fear in her eyes and turned such a wonderful person into someone so jaded.

“You grip that beer bottle any harder, and you’ll regret it.”

“Uhu?”

“Look, man, go over to her and sit with her. Shit, how hard can it be to talk about romance and shit?”

He’s right.

“Harder than you think. I go over there and they say the wrong thing, I’ll He-Man her over my shoulder and you guys won’t see us for days. We have too much on the table.”

Ash works on keeping his cocky grin to himself. “Fair enough. How about I scope out what they are talking about? I’ll signal you if the coast is clear.”

I narrow my eyes on him. “Like we are in grade school again? Hard fucking pass.”

He shrugs, not saying anything else.

It’s been less than a day since I had her wrapped around my cock and I’m dying to scoop her up, take her back to the main house, and lock her in my room.

I recognize in the depths of those pretty green eyes, she wants to run away one minute and run to me the next.

I lost her once, but if she runs again, I won’t come back to Harlon until I find her…

and our baby. Even if it means bringing her back kicking and screaming.

I smirk at the mental picture of my Arabelle tied up and fighting me. I’m a sadistic son-of-a-bitch at times. But I’d make sure she’d love every fucking minute of it.

Club members and candy mull around with cold drinks in their hands and good music coming over the sound system.

Someone is manning the grill and there’s a cake around here somewhere.

Charli practically pushed me onto my bike this afternoon to go pick Arabelle up for a little book club get-together.

It was supposed to take place at the bookstore, but Charli is trying to play matchmaker, I think.

She keeps shooting me with what-the-fuck glares over Arabelle’s shoulder and I keep staring right back.

“Well? If you’re not going over there, at least tell me she knows she’s wearing the club mark on her finger, claiming her as Savage blood. The Vultures see that and you might as well put a neon sign on her head that says “Good as Dead”.”

“Back in N’ Orleans, I didn’t exactly give it to her. She took it.”

And then I took it off her neck and put it on her finger.

Knowing she’s been wearing it all this time has my cock ready to jump out of my pants.

I’ve told Ash just about everything I’ve gone through with my nomad life. He knows about the deals I’ve brokered, the people I’ve made disappear and the night I realized I found the one.

“She probably doesn’t understand what wearing the ring means. Not to the extent of what you and I know, but she’s not stupid. She knows the MC life, brother.”

“But does she know what that ring means to us? Thinking she knows and knowing she knows are two different worlds to a woman, man. Don’t fuck shit up with your arrogance. And I can say that because I’m your best fucking friend.”

“Fuck you, Ash.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

He claps me on the back, but I take it for what it is.

A reminder. It’s all too easy to lose what you love most. Arabelle isn’t the first woman I’ve fallen in love with.

But she is the last one. I lost the woman I loved in my early twenties to inexperience.

She didn’t want to wait for a man going off to war.

I didn’t want her sitting around wondering if I would come back.

So I let her go. Arabelle is not getting away from me that easily.

“Come on. Let’s see if you still remember how to read.”

There’s a bit of growling and rumbling, but Ash follows me to the ladies’ table. We take a seat next to Arabelle and she shoves a book in my hands before I get a word out of my mouth.

“To be part of the book club, you need a book.”

I look down at the book. “I know this author.”

Arabelle

A ll the giggling and smut talk dries up, and I know why without even looking behind me. Angel’s and Jinx’s cheeks turn a bright red and their eyes dart back to the pages of their dark mafia romance book.

Reaper is walking up behind me. I can feel his energy draw closer and closer until the scent of his cologne overtakes me and he’s the only thing running through my mind.

Instead of begging him to whisk me away to the part of the house that belongs to him, I shove a book in his hands.

“You know her?”

“Let’s just say she’s the reason I am breathing today. I got into some trouble in New York. She got me out of the corner I was painted into.”

I can sense an air of friendship as he talks about her. Instead of feeling jealous, I feel measures of gratitude.

“What happened?”

That’s Angel. She’s as sweet as her name. Her invisible wings are tattered but not broken by the shit life can throw at a person. It’s what I like most about her.

Reaper looks up at the girl he gave a home to when no one else would and gives her a placating smile.

I’ve learned a lot about the people around this table, just talking about the taste we share in books.

The triggers we avoid. Some don’t even know what makes them happy or what makes them pass on a book.

But I like noting all those tiny details.

The girl across the table loves emotional connection.

“She wanted some insight on biker life in exchange for helping me get a bullet out of my shoulder,” he chuckles lightly. “I had no idea someone who wrote books for a living knew so much about cleaning bullet wounds.”

He settles back in his chair and looks relaxed. “After that, I think I must have read five hundred romances in the span of a summer.”

He cocks a grin that drips with memories of good times and some hell-raising. There’s not a dry eye at the table, including mine. Damn him. I lean in until I know it’s only me he can hear. He does the same as if hearing what I have to say is the most important thing to him.

And my heart falls for him just like in a book.

It’s imperceptible at first. I mistake it for lust or desire.

But the more I think about it the more I realize it’s neither.

The whirl of emotions and fluttering of my heart when he is near is because of something deeper and more connected to a part of my soul.

A part no one has control over. Not even me.

Mierda.

Everyone continues talking around me, unaware of my tiny life epiphany.

The spike of heat and the rapid heartbeats aren’t only because I want him to shove me up against the nearest wall or shelf. It’s because I’m falling in love with a Savage. Untamed, raw. Uncontrollable. A man I can’t save.

Am I coming at this all wrong? Could it be me who is on the wrong side of all this chaos?

I gather the inside of my lips between my teeth and gnaw at it lightly. What if he doesn’t need saving? Am I standing at the cusp of the abyss, the flames of change and choices licking at my feet with nowhere to go but through the fire?

Would I burn myself for him?

He’s already proven he will for me.

I try to hate the motorcycle life and everyone in it, but the more time I spend with the Savage Reign crew, the more I see the disaster my stepdad and the Vultures bring to the people around them is worlds apart from Reaper’s.

What Reaper and his family built for their crew and the people of Harlon is meant to help those in need.

To give a family to anyone willing to have their backs.

Reaper settles a hand on my knee as he recounts a few road stories to the ladies. Why he feels the need to lay a possessive hand on me as he talks I don’t know, but it feels good.

I wrap my fingers around his for the rest of the hour. When the club candy starts to bicker about a name for the book club, I pull Reaper to his feet.

“I kinda like the Naughty Riders,” I quip teasingly as he leads me from the old, cozy barn.

He grabs the bridge of his nose and pinches. “Please, God, no.”

I press my lips to the back of his hand and kiss him lightly before looking up at him. Instead of watching where we are walking, his eyes are on me.

“Take me somewhere private,” I whisper in his ear seductively.