Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

My heartbeat took a hard right into overdrive. He remembered my stories?

“But now,” he continued. “Every time you come home, you treat me like shit on your fuckin’ shoe and, babe, I can’t fuckin’ stand it. Now, this shit with us happens, and even though you and my dad love callin’ me stupid, I ain’t fuckin stupid. I know when a bitch is gettin’ her rocks off and you were doin’ triple that.”

I spun on him. “No one ever said you were stupid when it came to sex, Cage! You excel at sex! Every female on the planet knows that!”

“Teacup,” he said slowly, staring straight into my eyes. “You gotta know how straight-up jealous you sound.”

It was a double whammy straight to my heart. In one short sentence, he’d shattered my carefully constructed glass house. Oooh, I hated him, or rather, I wanted to hate him. Standing there naked, his long blond hair a mess, his perfectly sculpted features serious, knowing how beautiful he was without one iota of self-consciousness, I wanted to despise him…only I couldn’t.

“I get it, babe, I do,” he continued. “You were just a kid and I did you wrong, but you’re forgettin’ I was a kid too. I was a brand new brother, only a year patched in, and I had bitches throwin’ themselves at me left and fuckin’ right, and, Tegen, you know I was drunk more often than not.”

He sighed. “It’s no excuse either, it’s just the God’s honest truth, but that didn’t mean I didn’t give a fuck about you. Or what went down between us. I gave a fuck, babe, I just didn’t know what the fuck to do about it.”

Cage paused and bent down to grab his leathers. After slipping them on, he began digging through his pockets. Pulling out a pack of smokes and his lighter, he shook two out, lit them both and held one out for me. I hesitated at first, but in the end realized I wasn’t going anywhere unless either Cage felt like letting me leave or I felt like walking through the Montana wilderness for hours. So I took the damn cigarette and when I did, Cage grinned.

His dimples popped out and it was a trillion times worse.

So. Not. Fair.

“You were never a club slut, Tegen,” he said. “Not once did I ever fuckin’ think that. To me, you were always D’s little girl. You were family and, Teacup, you were my best friend.”

My breath shuddered from my lungs. I was done for. There was no way I was walking away from this weekend intact.

Blindly, I reached out behind me, seeking one of the chairs I knew was back there at his table. At any second I was going to collapse.

Cage had just ruined me for the third time in my life. In the span of a day, he’d ruined me. Again.

The first time had been the day I met him; the second time was the morning after he’d taken my virginity and told me he didn’t love me; and right here, right now, was the third time.

• • •

Cage was getting to her; he could see it on her face. It was the single most vulnerable expression he’d seen on Tegen’s face in the past ten years. And he liked it. She looked softer, more feminine. She looked like his Teacup.

So he kept going. He fired one memory after another her way until he was no longer remembering for her, but for him, or rather he was realizing something that had never really made much sense to him in the past.

Then it wasn’t just Tegen’s feelings for him coinciding with all her bad behavior over the years making sense, but it was his reactions to her as well. Why he’d felt so damn miserable every time she’d come home and treat him like garbage.

“Cage!” Tegen shrieked, hot on his heels. “Give it back!”

Laughing, he kept running through the clubhouse, Tegen’s purple backpack held high over his head. He made a quick left out of the main room and hooked an immediate right through the double swinging doors into the kitchen. The four occupants of the kitchen all turned to stare at him.

“Asshole!” Tegen screamed from behind him. “Give it back!”

“Language!” Dorothy chastised.

Still holding her backpack over his head, Cage grinned down at her. “Aw, Teacup, what’s the matter?”

“Don’t call me that!” she yelled, jumping up and down, trying to reach her bag. “I’m not a little kid anymore!”

“No?” He laughed. “You finally grow outta that trainin’ bra?”

“Cage!” Dorothy snapped. “Inappropriate!”

Tegen’s pale, freckled face turned bright red with rage, an expression Cage knew well. She was ten seconds from slugging him in the balls so he faked left and then went right, darting around Tegen, and headed right back into the hallway.

From back inside the kitchen, he heard Tegen scream. Grinning, he kept running.

“You’ll never catch me, Teacup!” he yelled over his shoulder.

And yeah, he’d been wanting to fuck her for a handful of years now. But still, he missed his friend.

Cage’s thoughts swam. He vehemently didn’t want her to leave with a chip on her shoulder this time. He wanted her to spend the weekend with him and he damn sure wanted back inside of her.

“This is infinitely unfair,” Tegen whispered, trailing off as she stared up at him with those seriously sexy eyes of hers. Glancing down, she stubbed her cigarette out on the table ashtray and gestured with her hand for another.

He tossed her the pack and watched as she placed a fresh cigarette between her trembling lips and, with shaking hands, lit it up.

“What’s unfair?” he asked.

Snorting, she shook her head. “You,” she said. “You are un-fucking-fair.”

Cage watched her take another drag off her smoke, ash it, take another drag.

Crossing the kitchen, he took the seat opposite her, reached across the table, and slid the cigarette out from between her fingers. Tegen watched him bring it up to his mouth and take a drag. Handing it back, he smiled at her.

“Spend the weekend with me,” he said quietly. “You say I don’t know you anymore, then spend the fuckin’ weekend with me, Teacup, and show me who the fuck you are now.”

Staring at him, she shook her head. “Why?” she whispered. “Why does it even matter to you?”

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “It just does.”

“I can’t just leave my mom all alone,” she said, but judging by the look on her face she’d already made her decision.

“Then let’s go pick her up,” he suggested. “And we’ll go out for lunch.”

Tegen’s mouth dropped open. “What? Like on a fucking date or something?”

Uh. Cage thought about that for a split second. Was this like a date? He wouldn’t know; he’d never been on a date. He wasn’t sure whether showing up for someone’s lunch break to get a blow job counted or not.

Whatever.

He shrugged. “Sure. Why the fuck not?”

Dirty stared at his reflection in the mirror. Stared and stared and stared. He didn’t even recognize himself. Without his full beard or his hair, he looked…

Well, he didn’t look anything like he’d thought he’d look. He’d expected to see the teenage boy he’d been. The face his foster mother had loved, the face she’d made sure to never harm even when his body had been fair game. The face she’d called beautiful. Angelic.

That face was gone. He blew out a breath of relief.

Time hadn’t been kind to him. He may have taken a good ten years off his looks by shaving his head and his face, but it did nothing to hide the lines around his eyes and mouth or the tired look in his eyes.

He wasn’t ugly. But he was no longer beautiful. In fact, he liked what he saw. He was just…him. A man.

Hearing his cell phone ringing in the other room, Dirty hurriedly slipped into his leathers and exited the bathroom. He snatched the phone off his bed.

“Wat up, Prez?”

“We got a problem.”

So? They always had a problem.

“What?”

“One of the grunts heard over the police scanner that Ellie’s been reported as missin’. Had one of our contacts look into it and it turns out motherfuckin’ Mooresville wrote up a report sayin’ he’d seen Ellie at Hank’s place, and next thing he knew he found her fuckin’ purse in the alleyway by the bar. Then the fuckin’ asshole took it one step further, went to her parents’ place, told ’em she’d come back home, told ’em about her job interview, told ’em everything.”

Dirty’s jaw locked. “What’s his game? Why the fuck would he want her found after what happened?”

“Fuck if I know,” Deuce said. “Only thing I could think of is he knows we got her. And he wants to use her as leverage or some shit tryin’ to milk us dry. Either that or he’s gonna come for her, take her out, and try to pin it on us.”

Fuck, he hated that fucker.

“What’s the plan?”

“You’re not gonna stand a chance if Mooresville decides to storm your place with his boys,” Deuce growled. “So cover her the fuck up, put her on the back of your bike, and get her fat ass to the club. We’re goin’ on lockdown. This motherfucker thinks he can fuck with my club, he’s about to get a heavy fuckin’ dose of motherfuckin’ reality.”

Deuce hung up.

Dirty frowned at his phone. Ellie’s ass wasn’t that fat. But he was less concerned with how Deuce felt about Ellie’s ass than he was about Ellie being on the back of his bike. Behind him. Where he couldn’t see her.

Worse. She’d be touching him. Not just touching him, her whole damn body would be pressed up against him. He’d never let anyone ride bitch before. He couldn’t stand it, the thought of not being able to control what was happening behind him; the thought of someone being able to restrain him, push him down, and do whatever they wanted to do to him.

“Dirty?”

Startled, he spun around and found Ellie standing in his bedroom doorway. Her eyes grew wide, giving her a bug-eyed appearance, and her lips parted.

“Dirty?” she repeated, sounding shocked.

He said nothing, just watched her take him in, his shaved head, his facial hair gone. He’d actually gone so far as to put on a clean white T-shirt. He’d figured if he were going to be clean, he might as well take that last step. His leathers, however, were still filthy and he had no immediate plans to rectify that.

“Oh my God,” Ellie breathed. “You look…you look…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

Dirty didn’t like the way she was looking at him. At all.

“Your parents know,” he said tersely. “Moorseville’s lookin’ for you.” That seemed to snap her out of her stupor.

“Got no choice,” he continued. “You gotta go to the club. We’re goin’ on lockdown.”

“My mother,” she whispered. “She’s really sick; she needs to know I’m all right.”

Dirty held out his cell phone. “Call her,” he said. “Explain what happened, but you gotta make sure they ain’t gonna say shit to the cops. Shit’s about to go down between the Horsemen and the law, and you’re bein’ put in the middle.”

Ellie stared at him, probably trying to figure out what he meant by “shit’s about to go down,” but he wasn’t going to elaborate. She may be in the middle of this fucking mess, but that didn’t mean she had the right to know what the mess was.

Ellie took the phone from him and while she called her parents, he began rummaging through his closet looking for something for her to wear. When she was off the phone and wiping tears off her bruised cheeks, he handed her a pair of leathers, a belt, a white tee, and his old leather jacket.

“Put my helmet on before we leave the apartment,” he told her as he pointed to it, and left her to get ready.

A few minutes later Ellie emerged from his bedroom. The T-shirt was tight around her breasts and the leathers were formfitting.

She looked damn hot. But it was the jacket he couldn’t stop staring at.

Dirty couldn’t explain it, neither did he understand it, why seeing a woman wearing something of his, his very first leather jacket, the very first thing he’d bought for himself after Deuce had brought him back to Montana, made him feel like…

Like…

He swallowed hard.

Like a man. He felt like a goddamn man. It was the weirdest fucking feeling.

“Are you ready?” Ellie asked, sniffling as she wiped the back of her hand under her nose.

“Yeah,” he muttered, turning away. Suddenly he didn’t want to take her to the club. He didn’t want her around the boys; he wanted to keep her here. With him. Well, not with him, but near him, a room or two away, so every once in a while he could hear her laughing. Or something.