Free Uncontrollable Temptations (The Tempted Series Book 3) by Janine Infante Bosco Page B

judgements.
    “I had responsibilities I needed to take care of…got my girl pregnant, married her, and she gave me my daughter and my son. The club, those men, they became my family, provided me a way to take care of my responsibilities, to give my family a good life. Connie was never about the club life,” I said, cocking my head and staring at her. “Like you, the ugliness blinded her and she was too jaded to see the brotherhood. Lost her and thought I lost a part of myself but realized I never truly would feel loss until I held my lifeless baby boy in my arms in the middle of the street with my little girl sobbing at the curb. I prayed to any fucking God that would listen to a no good bastard like me. I prayed for a miracle that would breathe life back into the two-year old that I had lost and had died on my watch.”
    “You ever lose somebody, Reina?” I questioned, stepping toward her, high on that scared look that reappeared in her eyes. “Ever lose someone you created? Someone you loved more than anything? I doubt it, because a bitch like you wouldn’t survive it. It changes you. I was fucked from birth, but losing my son, fucked me harder. And that glimpse of the Satan’s Knight’s you saw tonight, that family you frowned upon, they pulled me out of the darkness before it consumed me and swallowed me whole. They are the reason I’m standing here in front of you because I would have taken purchase next to my son, right there in the cold earth for all of eternity, beside the boy I created,” I growled with a ragged breath. “So bitch, don’t look at me with those judgmental eyes because you wouldn’t survive all the shit I have.”
    “You think you know me? You think you have me all figured out? You don’t know a goddamn thing. I know loss, maybe not as deeply as you. I never lost a child, never had one to lose, but I lost myself,” she cried, tears escaping from the corners of her eyes. “I survived,” she shouted through her tears. “I survived,” she repeated, this time the words a whisper. She wiped angrily at the tears that stained her cheeks but the words that came next were soft. “And I learned that surviving is worse than dying. It’s hell in its purest form.”
    Her words twisted inside me and for the first time in thirteen years someone got it, someone got me. Her words were my truth.
    I realized then, Reina, the woman I barely knew, knew me.
    There were no words left to say. She had said them all.
    It took my mind a moment to catch up to my body as I stalked toward her. The fear in her eyes vanished, replaced with a dull ache I know reflected in my own eyes.
    I glanced at the counter dusted in flour and cluttered with dirty dishes. Spotting a mixing bowl, I leaned over and saw the remnants of the cherry filling and remembered the pie she had baked for me. Bringing my eyes back to her, I watched as she studied my every move, eyes glued to my hands as I lifted the bowl, holding it between us. I shifted it to one of my palms and scraped my thumb around the inside of the bowl, scooping leftover filling onto the pad of my finger.
    Our eyes lifted simultaneously, glued to one another’s, uncertainty and anticipation pouring from our irises.
    “You made me cherry pie,” I spoke huskily. “Really wanted a taste.”
    She swallowed hard, visibly pushing down the lump lodged in her throat.
    “Gonna have that taste now,” I warned, lifting my thumb and smearing the cherry filling across her mouth. Her lips were soft as they parted—just barely, a soft gasp escaping past them as my thumb worked back and forth. She lifted her hand to my wrist and pulled it away from her mouth. I sensed the change in tides, saw the storm roll over in her eyes and knew she was about to push me away—but before she did, I took that fucking taste I came here for.
    My mouth crashed over hers, my tongue lapping at her lips, licking all the filling off her. Reina remained perfectly still, holding my wrist as my