Free Risking It All: A Hellfire Riders MC Romance (The Motorcycle Clubs Book 14) by Kati Wilde

beautiful, his short hair sticking up and his chest bare. All those demons. Maybe I should do the same. Put all the shit that hurts on my left side. My mom, my dad. But they’d be small. This is the moment that would be inked across every other inch.
    My fingers grip the edge of the counter painfully tight. Holding myself up, just in case I can’t get through this.
    Hoarsely I tell him, “I’m pulling out of our bet.”
    He was already standing quietly, watching me, but as I speak his entire body seems to still.
    “You’re doing what?”
    The gravel in his voice scrapes right over my heart. “This is our last night. Just now, in my bedroom—that was our last time.”
    I see him move and my neck tenses, but he’s only looking right and left, like a man waking from a dream and who doesn’t know where he is. “Why?”
    God, what can I tell him? I love you and I need more than this ? Hooking up for five nights will shred my fucking heart?
    Because this was never just a hookup. Even I can’t turn it into one. I tried.
    Hot tears slip over my lashes as I close my eyes. “I just can’t anymore.”
    And I shouldn’t have looked away. Because he’s so quiet, and so fast, and I’m not prepared when he swings me around and crowds in, his hands sliding up and fisting in my hair like he’s just going to take—
    Jack freezes against me, his face ashen. “You’re crying?”
    Throat a burning knot, I can’t reply. Bleak torment flattens his dark gaze.
    “Did I hurt you again?”
    Not like he thinks. This wasn’t his fault. It was mine.
    I shake my head and whisper, “Just go.”
    His throat works before he nods. His fingers slide forward, cupping my face, sweeping his thumbs across my wet cheeks. “I’ll give you space. But we’re not done.”
    Because he’ll want the five nights still owed him. A painful breath shudders through my chest. “I told you I’m backing out—”
    “Not the bet.” His head lowers, his firm mouth tasting my trembling lips. “You and me. Not done.”
    “We are,” I say but it’s like shooting at a steel wall. Nothing gets through.
    Jack kisses me again. Then he goes, and tears out another piece. The biggest piece. Leaving me so empty, I can’t even cry.
    And there’s not a fucking drop to drink in this whole damn place.

Chapter Five
    Jack
    About a year after I killed my father, the shrink at the children’s home sat me down. My eye was throbbing, as I was sporting a hell of a shiner. My lip had been split the day before and I could taste the blood every time I ran my tongue over the swelling. I don’t remember who laid into me that time. A lot of the boys did. I was already bigger than most of them, but I didn’t fight back. I figured I was just getting what was coming to me—and a busted lip felt a hell of a lot better than the rotted shit in my chest.
    Not that I ever thought of it like that. Not until the shrink sat me down and told me I was using one pain to deal with another—and that I needed to find a different way to deal before I destroyed myself. His solution was for me to focus on one task at a time. Sometimes that task was just getting from one class to the next. And if someone tried to stop me from completing my task, maybe by jumping me in the showers, I needed to shove that obstacle out of the way and keep on going. I just had to be careful about how hard I shoved.
    That shrink’s way of dealing helped. Helped until I found other ways to deal.
    I haven’t needed to deal at all in a while. There’s hurt inked all over my skin, but putting it there helped me put it away. I don’t hate myself or brood over the past. I don’t fucking cry over my shitty childhood. It made me who I am—a fucked up bastard who kills too easily and who takes what he gets. Either I started out wired wrong or something in me broke along the way, I don’t know. Don’t much care, either.
    But now the rotted shit is back in my chest, and I’m dealing in that old way: focusing on