His Young Queen: (Steel Jackals MC #1) (4 page)

She changed the subject to prove she was indeed capable of doing as she was told. “So, they let you out early. That’s pretty amazing. I’m so grateful.”

He was glowering at her. Because he hated her? Maybe his abrasive attitude was actually about her being Rachel’s daughter. The woman
had
stolen three years of his life.

“Er, Josh?” She nibbled on her lip, not sure what to say now that she finally had the opportunity to offer an apology. Years too late, perhaps, but she would offer it anyway. “Because they never let me speak to you alone, but even if they had, Nick would have been there, I guess.” She swallowed around the nerves swirling through her belly. “I’m sure he’s already done this, and I know it’s much too late, but, I’m so, so sorry for what my mom did to you. I’m so sorry it was you who went to that awful place and not her. And, I’ll, uh, understand if your animosity towards her extends to me.”
But please don’t let it
, she prayed.

He finally looked away and swung his gaze around the kitchen. He prowled over, his boots thudding, to peer down at her school and work schedules stuck to the fridge with magnets. His forehead wrinkled briefly when he saw the grouping of photographs in the one corner. They were of him. All of them. “Apologies are pointless, Tish. Especially when the one making them is as innocent of the sitch as I was. And to be clear, the last thing I’m feeling toward you at this moment is animosity.” He straightened and motioned to the papers. “When do you live your goddamn life? Going by this, all you do in your spare time is jam in a few hours of sleep.”

Seemed she’d stressed for nothing over how to say she was sorry. He genuinely appeared not to care. “I don’t have much of a social life, and Nina and the girls come to see me at the bar all the time. We all go out the odd night.” She shrugged. “I don’t need much more than that.”
Except for you.

“Uh-huh.” He gave her body a cursory glance before turning to grab the electric kettle off the counter. He stomped over to the sink. “You still drink tea?” Before she could answer, he went on. “Why don’t you get some fuckin’ clothes on and I’ll make you a cup? What time is your first class tomorrow?”

Her teeth ground together just a little. Maybe he was bitchy because he was…fuck, she didn’t know. Tired? Maybe he needed to veg for a while. She tore her eyes away from his broad back that displayed his cut so well. Steel Jackals was loud and proud, and Tish wanted to touch it. She wanted to touch him.

She looked down at her shorts and T-shirt again. “I’m dressed all right, and it’s Friday,” she said distractedly. “We can catch up all night and then sleep in tomorrow.” God, she sounded so hopeful it was pathetic. But they used to do that all the time before he left.

“I don’t fuckin’ think so.”

She felt her face fall. “What?” She pushed off from the stove and went to him. Screw his jitters. “You can’t stay? Why?” The alarm in her voice didn’t even faze her. He couldn’t leave her again. She gripped his thick forearms when he came around to face her. “Please don’t go. You just got here and…and…I don’t want you to go again.” She shook her head for good measure.

Something was wrong with him. His lip curled, and he was breaking out in a sweat.

Concerned, she reached up to swipe at a droplet of moisture beading over his furrowed brow. “Are you okay? Tell me what’s wrong, Josh. Maybe I can help.”

“I think it would be wise to get your half-naked ass the fuck away from me, Tish.”

She couldn’t have been more surprised had he slapped her. She let go of him, drawing her hands to her chest and curling her fingers around her damp thumb. Taking step after step back, she didn’t stop until the wall met her back and the push-pin anchoring the calendar poked into the back of her head.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your personal space. I know how uncomfortable that can be.”

“How’s that?”

“Pardon?” She was fighting not to acknowledge his rejection. If it wormed its way into her and became a permanent memory, she’d never have any peace.

“Who’s been invading your personal space?”

“Oh, uh, no one in particular. It just happens.” Her gaze bounced around. She couldn’t look at him anymore, was too embarrassed. She glanced at her clothes again. Why did he keep mentioning what she was wearing?

Her eyes went to skip past his body, but they didn’t make it. Her breath whooshed out in a hot rush as her focus locked like a laser on something she couldn’t mistake for anything other than what it was. A solid bulge in the front of his jeans. Unless he’d smuggled something long and thick out of the prison when he’d left, he was hard.

“Ignore that, Tish-Tosh.” He’d clearly seen where her attention had landed. “I just spent three years in a cell. That would happen if I saw a chicken crossing the fuckin’ road.”

The pain in her chest flared, layering over his previous dismissal like a punch. It opened her up and allowed his rejection entry. Did he not think she was attractive? Did he not like the way she turned out? Deep down she knew she’d fared well in the looks department. She had nice blue eyes, long, shiny blonde hair, and a perky ass. But Josh obviously found her lacking. And wasn’t that just her luck? She couldn’t give the only man she’d ever found attractive a simple hard-on. Tears burned her throat, but she swallowed them down and schooled her features before he saw how he was making her bleed.

“I gotta go,” he muttered.

“Where?” She slapped a hand over her mouth, appalled that she’d done it again. If you weren’t their old lady or their birth mother, you didn’t question a Steel Jackal.

Another glower came her way. “Not that I owe you an explanation,” he said bluntly, “but I’m going to take care of this fuckin’ dick. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He went for the door, and as a ferocious jealousy smashed into her, the strength of it nearly making her vomit, Tish’s mouth was going again, offering things her brain hadn’t authorized.

“I’ll help you with it.”

His heavy boots stopped dead on the clean tile. She held her breath as his head swiveled her way. “What the fuck did you just say, little girl?”

She placed a hand on her roiling stomach and followed through. Yes, because she’d started this, but more because she so badly wanted to be the one he turned to when he needed relief. “I’ll take care of you. I’d…I’d like to be the one to take care of you.”

“You. Take care of me. I thought our deal was the other way around. You fucking things up, Tish?”

She nodded because she was pretty sure she was. What if she ruined them with this? By revealing she wanted him in her bed, was she killing their relationship?

“I don’t want you to go to the clubhouse and use one of those girls,” she admitted without wincing or allowing her hands to form claws as images of the many sexy girls who liked to hang out with the guys drifted through her mind. “Use me.”

“Use you how?” His voice was thin and tight. She’d never seen him appear so forbidding.

“However you want,” she whispered.

He nodded, antipathy curling his lip. “So, this is what you’ve turned into while I’ve been gone. A whore who offers her pussy to a guy just because she sees his cock is hard. Jesus Christ, Tish. I expected so much better from you.”

With a loud slam of the door, Josh stormed from the house. And her pride shattered to pieces.

Tish wasn’t sure how long she stood against the wall in her kitchen, but by the time she went across to lock the door, her muscles were stiff, and her back ached. Oddly, her eyes were bone dry, and not so oddly, her heart felt like it was in pieces.

She shuffled down the hallway and went straight to the bathroom to shed her clothes and have the hottest shower on record. She was a virgin who’d never even had her breasts touched by a guy, yet she now felt as if she’d taken on every man in town.

Shutting off the water, she got out and dried herself, and continued to towel dry her hair as she made her way across the hall to her room. She threw on underwear, shorts, and a tank top, then sat on the edge of her bed and tried to figure out where she’d gone wrong. How had she fucked herself so thoroughly? Within minutes of his unexpected homecoming, she’d driven him away. Why had she opened her big, slutty-sounding mouth? But then, he’d been acting strangely long before she’d offered herself to him.

She rubbed at her eyes, utterly confused, and terrified. Would he cut her off for good this time?

For almost a year after he’d gone away, she’d weaseled her way into visiting him with her uncle. She’d lived for those Sundays when they went to Phoenix, and she was able to sit across from Josh, touch his hand when she told him a story, look into his face and enjoy his rare smiles. Then, one day, he’d told her she wouldn’t see him again until it was outside the walls of the prison.
“You’re better than this, Tish-Tosh. Don’t come back here anymore.”
She’d smiled and nodded, and hugged him goodbye as she did at the end of every other visit. The following Sunday, she’d shown up at the clubhouse and stood next to Nick’s truck, waiting for him to bring her to her love.

When he didn’t come out, she’d gone in search of him and had fought like hell to remain calm when he told her he’d promised Josh he wouldn’t bring her to see him anymore.
“He can’t keep me away,”
she’d said quietly.
“I thought he was in a mood. I thought he was testing me to see if I’d be relieved not to have to go back to that horrible place. But we can’t leave him, Uncle Nick. He’s alone in there!”

Nick had tried to tell her Josh was tough, and he’d be fine, but she’d known better and had eventually walked out. She’d gone straight to her best friend’s house, and Nina had happily led her to the Samson family’s auto shop, scooped a set of keys to a random customer’s car, and driven them to the prison in Phoenix. Where an older man at the desk had firmly told her,
“Mr. Sylvan will not see you.”

She was embarrassed to admit that she and Nina had risked their asses for two months by illegally swiping a car from the shop to make that trip. And for two months, Tish was told the same thing.
“Go home, Ms. O’Malley. Mr. Sylvan is no longer seeing visitors.”

He’d seen visitors. Just not her. Tish swallowed hard. That had been two years ago. She’d been so angry, had felt that same choking panic she’d felt the day they’d put him in the back of that police car. Once she’d calmed down—it had taken only about a week—she’d started sending him letters. One every two months. She’d never received a response and hadn’t cared, she’d written to him anyway. He knew about her dreams, her fears, her accomplishments, her disappointments. She’d wanted to send him a picture of herself so he wouldn’t forget what she looked like, but her pride had prevented that.

Now he wasn’t only shutting her out; it seemed as if he was attempting to cut their ties completely. And again, she didn’t know why.

Or maybe she did.

Rachel.

And how could Tish blame him? She couldn’t, she realized with a sinking heart.

The same heart that nearly burst from her chest when the sound of the front door crashing open reached her all the way in the back of the house. She surged to her feet when it slammed shut hard enough to shake the walls, and the bricks and mortar continued to shudder with every pounding step that hit as the owner of those heavy biker boots got closer and closer to her room. By the time Josh threw her door open, Tish was breathing heavy from a mixture of fear and anticipation. Her stupid body reacted to the sight of him by readying for sex. She felt moisture pool between her legs and her muscles warmed and loosened. Simply because it was him.

But all that did now was make her want to hide. She should have put on a robe, she thought, embarrassed to feel how sensitive her nipples were when the material of her tank scraped across them.

“Where
the fuck
do you get off offering yourself to me?” he demanded as he stormed into the room, shrinking it with his size. “
To me!
How many other cocksuckers have had the pleasure?
How many?
”

“None,” she whispered. Even though she knew he’d never hurt her—physically—she wanted to take a step away. He was big and intimidating, and she wasn’t comfortable with confrontations. But with the backs of her knees already flush with her mattress, she had nowhere to go.

“Aw, come on, Tish!” He swiped a hand through the air, his expression turning thunderous. “Give me some goddamn honesty! That’s what you and me are about. Don’t start bullshitting me now just because you turned out like
this
.”

Like
‘this’
? She looked down and tried so hard to see what awful thing he was seeing. Normal-looking feet, toenails painted pink, nice legs, flat stomach, a pair of nice breasts. Her head snapped up as anger ripped through her. She wasn’t going to allow him to do this to her.

She whipped aside the towel she was still holding and barely refrained from stamping her foot. “What the hell is wrong with the way I turned out?” She’d wanted to scream the demand, but she hated yelling. Being this mad was a feat in itself for her.

He looked at her as though she’d just popped another head out of her neck. “You fucking with me?”

She stamped her foot after all. “No! What’s wrong with me?”

In a matter of seconds, his lids got lazy and went low over his eyes as they traveled the length of her body. “Not one goddamn thing,” he said slowly, clearly enunciating each word.

Her anger ceased to exist with a quiet pop, leaving her floundering and more confused than ever. “But, you said I turned out like
‘this.’
As if
‘this’
was gross or something.”

He made a face. “Yeah. Gross,” he muttered sardonically. “I meant you’ve filled in.”

She ignored the excited jump in her pulse and flipped her hair back. She quickly dropped her hand when it felt as if she were scratching her head because she was too blond to keep up. Which she was just then. “I filled in,” she repeated.

“Uh-huh. You filled in real good, Tish-Tosh.” His voice went as low as his lids. “Long legs, prime hips, itty-bitty waist, fuckin’ sweet rack. And that face. Jesus Christ, that face is killer. You should have left the makeup on. Fresh and clean like this you’re a goddamn ex-con’s wet dream.”