Lion Read online

  Madison laughed. Reaching up and putting her hands on either side of his face she said, “If you want this to happen, that’ll be the last I hear about my father.”

  “Point taken,” he said with a sexy grin. The thong disappeared quickly then and as he stood up, he let out another groan. She watched as he took off his boots and then slipped off his jeans. Her eyes widened when he slid off his boxers. His cock was thick, and hard, and visibly pulsing.

  “Um…you have a condom?”

  He grinned again. “You are one romantic chick, you know that?”

  “Please, you brought up my father.”

  He was chuckling as he pulled the condom out of his wallet and then tossed it all aside. Then he knelt down beside her and let his hands…both of them…explore the contours of her body. She gasped when he cupped one of her breasts with both hands, and he held onto it while he bent down and took it into his mouth. The licking and kissing and sucking caused sensations she’d never felt before to flood her system. The fire in her core went from a spark to an inferno and she felt like she was burning up from the inside out. She was soaking wet and arching her back up off the ground, silently begging him to enter her.

  Lion wasn’t ready yet. He spent more time on her other breast and then licked and kissed his way across her belly, until his face was between her thighs. He pushed them apart and suddenly his face was pressed against the most sensitive part of her body. His tongue exploring, his lips caressing…if she died right then and there, she wouldn’t have to go to heaven…she was already there. The added sensations that his beard was throwing in were off the charts as well and she realized she’d never been given oral sex by a man with a beard. Truth was, she’d never been with anyone as sexy as Lion and the whole thing was somewhat surreal. She gripped his shoulders and when he wouldn’t budge, she wrapped her fingers in his hair and pulled on that to get him to move back up her body. When his face was once again above hers, she kissed him again and lifted her hips up to rub her body against his hot, hard cock. “Please…” she whispered. Lion didn’t ask “please what.” He lifted himself up and she was treated to the sight of him rolling the condom on and then suddenly he was between her legs and she could feel him pressing against her. She raised her hips again and he slid into her, slowly opening her up. He was big, and she hadn’t had sex in a long time…so it took some doing. But once he was filling her up completely, Madison wouldn’t have been able to recite her own name. It was everything. It was the only thing.

  She reached up and put her hands on his broad shoulders and held on. Lion slid an arm underneath her and lifted her butt up off the ground…and then he began to pound into her. Madison was loudly gasping and moaning and she was almost embarrassed about that…but there was no way she could lie silently while this was happening. She’d heard about sex that changed your life, but she didn’t believe it existed. This was life-changing…it had to be. It felt so perfect, like they were built to fit together like precisely cut puzzle pieces. She had an orgasm just minutes into it, but Lion kept going. Once he lowered her back to the ground, one of his hands stayed busy, tweaking her nipples and caressing her skin. It was when he reached down between them and pinched her swollen clit that she cried out in her second orgasm…and then she felt Lion’s body tense, and heard him groan out her name before his entire being began to shake and his own orgasm ripped through him simultaneously.

  Lion worked them both through the orgasm gently and slowly, before pulling out of her and rolling over to lie next to her. They lay there silently for a while, catching their breath. Madison was of course wondering…What comes next? Lion answered the question as if he’d read her mind…and she was pretty sure it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “I usually move on after I do this…just so you know, it probably won’t happen again.”

  8

  Three Days Later

  It was Tuesday morning and so far Lion had followed Hawk to his favorite diner where he sat and had breakfast alone…and drank coffee and used his phone for two hours. Who fucking talks on the phone for two hours…to Hawk? From there, he followed him downtown to the bank. He almost lost him there because morning traffic was a bitch and Hawk drove like a fucking maniac, in and out of traffic. If Madison was wrong and he wasn’t sick, the old fucker was going to kill himself on that Harley yet.

  Hawk went inside the bank and was gone for almost an hour. When he came out, he stood on the curb and looked up and down the street on both sides. He checked out the building and the cars across the street and then turned and checked out the buildings on both sides of the bank. If Lion didn’t know him so well, he’d think maybe someone was after the old man, or he was onto him. But Hawk had lived one hell of a life and that life had made him paranoid. Once he was satisfied no one was watching him, and there wasn’t a sniper on top of any of the buildings, he made his way back to where he’d parked his bike. From there, Lion followed him to some strange-looking building even further downtown. It looked like a medical clinic and once Hawk parked and went inside, Lion parked his in a narrow alley and jogged over to read the sign on the door. It said, “Boston Metro Dialysis Clinic.” Lion didn’t know what a dialysis clinic was…exactly. He knew it had something to do with kidneys, but that was it. He went back to where he left his bike and pulled out his phone. He Googled “dialysis” and read the definition. It said, “The clinical purification of blood, as a substitute for normal function of the kidney.” He got that same feeling in his chest again…the one he’d got the first time Madison suggested the old man might be sick. It pissed him off. There were years when he wished Hawk dead, and then years when he didn’t care either way. He thought he was still there, until Madison came around, causing old memories to come to the surface.

  He sat down on his bike and waited. An hour went by…and then another…and a third. He was pacing, smoking, cussing…thinking about all the things he could be doing at home…and then pacing some more. He was on the verge of leaving a dozen times, every time the door to the clinic opened and someone other than Hawk came out. Then just after hour four, the old bastard strolled out. Again, he scoped out the entire area around him. Lion stayed against the wall in the alley across the street until he heard Hawk’s Harley leaving the lot. He brought his own bike out from behind the dumpster where he’d parked it so that Hawk’s eagle eyes couldn’t see it, and just as he was pulling out of the alleyway, Hawk’s big Harley skidded to a stop in front of him, blocking his way. Lion had to skid sideways to keep from hitting the crazy old fucker and he bumped his bike into the wall before stopping it.

  “You crazy bastard!” He yelled once he killed the engine and jumped off the bike. “My fucking chrome pipe is dented—look at that. What the fuck were you trying to do?” While Lion was yelling at him, Hawk sat casually on his bike, arms folded, and those piercing black eyes focused on Lion’s face. “Well?”

  “I might tell Dax not to send you in on any covert jobs. You suck at that shit.”

  “Right, old man, I’ve been following you for two days.”

  Hawk laughed. “Yep. Let’s see…you thought you were hiding behind that UPS truck across from the diner, this morning, and yesterday at the post office you thought that garbage truck was doing the trick. This morning across from the bank it was an SUV…but you know what? I never saw the bike. What I saw was all that fucking hair, shining like a damned beacon.” He laughed again. Lion narrowed his eyes and said:

  “Okay, fine. You’re the fucking hide and seek champ. What are you doing at a dialysis clinic?”

  “Since when do you poke your nose into my business? I’ve always thought you were pretty damned good at keeping your oars in your own boat. What’s this all about?”

  “I don’t give a shit about your business.”

  Hawk laughed again. “So you say.”

  “Why not just answer the question?”

  “Business,” Hawk said. “We good now? I was thinking about going over to Roxbury and seeing if I can g
et my dick sucked. You wanna follow me over there too?”

  Lion ignored his crude question and said, “What kind of business?”

  “Club business, but none of yours. Besides, when I showed up at the house to talk to you a couple weeks ago, you told me to fuck off. Why all of a sudden are you interested in what I’m doing?” Lion wasn’t about to tell him he was worried. Once Madison planted the seed in his head, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Hawk’s mortality. He hated the old man…at least he thought he did…but Hawk was the only thing permanent in his life, ever. Even when he’d left him, Lion never really believed that he wouldn’t come back. If he died…he’d have nothing permanent in his life. None of that made any sense to himself, and he sure wasn’t going to say it out loud. Instead he said:

  “I don’t give a fuck, but your daughter is worried. That’s why she won’t leave. It’s not about me at all. She’s fucking worried about you.”

  At the mention of Madison, Hawk’s features changed. They softened and he didn’t look like such a hateful old son of a bitch for just a second. Lion wanted to kick himself for the tickle of jealousy that sent through him. The old bastard wasn’t his father, and he didn’t want him to be. “Maddie asked you to follow me?”

  Lion hadn’t thought that through too well. He hadn’t spoken to Madison since the night of Dax’s party when they had sex in the shed. After he told her he wasn’t one to stick around, she’d gotten up, dressed, and quietly left. He followed her back to the clubhouse to make sure she was safe, and then like a coward, he’d slipped out into the night. He liked Madison…and even on the ground in an old shed, that had been the best sex he’d ever had. But he honestly had no clue where to go from that point with a woman, so it was just easier to walk away. It was especially easier since she was Hawk’s daughter. Even if he was thinking about trying to have some kind of “normal” relationship, Hawk’s kid wouldn’t be the person he’d want to have it with. But now he’d opened his damned big mouth and if Hawk told her that he’d caught Lion following him around, she might just tell Hawk what Lion had done to her. Not that he was afraid of the old man, he just didn’t want the drama.

  “No. She has no idea I followed you. I was doing it more so that I could tell her there was fucking nothing wrong with you and she’d leave. I’m tired of her following me around, asking questions about you. You need to talk to your kid, and not about me…about your fucking self. Tell her whatever will satisfy her so she’ll leave, Hawk, or she’s going to find someone that will tell her the truth about you…is that what you want? You want her to know who her father really is?” The pain in Hawk’s black eyes said what he didn’t. Lion started up his bike, looked at Hawk again, and said, “Talk to her, and send her away. Now get that old fucking dinosaur of a bike out of my way.”

  Madison was out in the community garden, pulling weeds with some of the kids when Hawk found her. She looked up and he was standing by the fence, watching her. His face looked pale under the sun and his long, dark hair. “Hey, Dad.” Standing up and wiping her dirty hands on her jeans, she went over closer.

  “Hi, baby girl. I talked to Jace this morning. He said he’d put an offer in on that house for us today.”

  Madison raised an eyebrow and then said, “I never agreed to going back to Phoenix, Dad.”

  “Okay, then Vegas? I’m sure you can stay with your mom for a while…”

  “Stop it, Dad. Please, just stop.” Madison walked over and let herself out the gate. Hawk met her there and said:

  “Maddie, why are you so reluctant to leave here? This place is not for you, this lifestyle…it’s not you.”

  “What’s wrong with it here? This place is so peaceful and everyone’s been good to me. I’m really thinking about settling down here, looking for a job in Boston…”

  “No. Madison, what you see here, what you’ve seen since you’ve been here…this is not what it’s always like, okay? It’s like this grand illusion, some beautiful shared delusion that all we do here is take care of kids and grow vegetables. Go home, baby, please. I worked hard to keep you from this place your entire life. I never should have brought you here in the first place. I should have gone to you.”

  “Why didn’t you?” It was a question she’d wanted to ask from the start. Why didn’t he just come see her? Why send Lion and have her brought to a place he didn’t want her?

  Hawk started walking and Maddie fell into step alongside him. “I tried,” he said at last. “But, when it comes to you and your safety, I lose my shit. I got myself into some trouble out in Jersey, going after friends of those assholes who were trying to hurt you. The Feds threatened to arrest me, and Dax threatened to lock me up in one of his tunnels.”

  “He wouldn’t really do that? Imprison you against your will?”

  Hawk laughed and said, “I told you, baby…this place, these people, it’s all an illusion. But Dax is not a bad kid. He’s actually a really good one, and he knew I was going to lose it if I couldn’t lay eyes on you myself. So he said he’d have Cody and Jimmy go pick you up.”

  “But you had him send Lion instead. Why?”

  “Because he’s the best we’ve got. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Cody and Jimmy with my life and the life of anyone else around here…but when it came to your life…”

  “It had to be Lion. What is it about him, Dad? What is it between you two?”

  “We have a lot of history, Maddie. His mother was a friend of mine and I’ve known him since he was born.”

  “So when did it go bad between you and him?”

  Hawk chuckled and said, “The kid was right, you do ask a lot a questions. Maybe you should have been a lawyer or a journalist instead of a botanist.”

  Maddie stopped walking and frowned. “The kid? Are you talking about Lion? He talked to you about me?”

  “Not really. He just told me I should talk to you.”

  “When was this?”

  “Earlier today.” Hawk chuckled again. “He said you’re driving him crazy with all your questions and I should talk you into going home.” Madison’s heart felt like someone had reached into her chest and squeezed it. She’d spent the rest of the night after having sex with Lion in her room, sobbing. The experience had been so incredible, or so she thought. Then the first thing he’d said to her afterwards was that she shouldn’t expect it to happen again. It made her feel cheap, and the whole thing suddenly went from romantic and passionate to something dirty and tawdry. She’d had one-night stands before…but she’d never had a man come right out and tell her that’s what it was…as soon as he’d finished with her. It was demeaning. Now she’d found out he actually sought her father out in the hopes that he’d send her away. He didn’t even want to chance running into her again. She was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t realize Hawk had been watching her face the entire time. “Is there something you need to tell me, about Lion?”

  “No,” she said, hoping her hurt feelings weren’t showing on her face. “Where I go is just none of his business and I’m not sure why he would think it was. Dad, the reason I don’t want to leave is you. You talk to me about everything else, but not you.”

  “What do you want to know, Maddie?”

  “Are you sick?”

  A line formed between his eyes as he frowned. “Sick? Why would you think that? Did Lion tell you that?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “No…why would he? Does he know something I don’t?”

  “No.” He laughed out loud and said, “Baby girl, if that’s why you’re hanging around here, well then, you’ve really been wasting your time. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let me know by the end of the week if home is going to be Phoenix, or if you want to go back to Vegas, and I’ll arrange for you to get there.” He kissed her on the cheek then and walked away. Madison stood there watching him and he was out of her sight before she realized he had managed to not really answer any of her questions, and he’d ended the conversation by telling her she was leaving…whether sh
e wanted to or not. First Lion, and now her own father didn’t want her around. Her self-esteem was really taking a beating this week.

  9

  Lion had been surprised that day when he was sixteen and he’d ridden from his meeting with Hawk to the Skulls ranch, and Doc Marshall had agreed to see him. He couldn’t remember ever being so intimidated by anyone in his life. Hawk had told him a lot about Doc, and the man was a legend in the neighborhood while Lion was growing up. To be sitting in front of him was almost surreal, but the excitement of it helped to ease the pain he was still reeling from after his talk with Hawk.

  “What can I do for you?” Doc asked him. Lion suddenly knew how the characters from The Wizard of Oz had felt, the day they got their audience with the wizard.

  “I’m…my name is Ridge Lawson, but people call me Lion.”

  Doc smiled at him and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Lion. It’s good to finally meet you.”

  “Hawk told you about me?” Lion was surprised. Hawk kept his life in the club separate from everything else. But then again, Doc had been his best friend. At least that’s what Hawk always told Lion. After their conversation earlier, however, he had to wonder.

  “Yes,” Doc said. “Hawk and the guys at the gym. Harvey says you’ve got real potential if you ever want to become a fighter someday.”

  “Really? He never says anything nice to me.”

  Doc laughed. “That’s Harvey. So why are you here, son?”

  “Um…well, I was wondering about being a prospect.”

  Doc raised both of his eyebrows. His blue eyes were locked into Lion’s and they were almost hypnotizing as he looked into them. “Have you talked to Hawk about this?”