Three Ruthless Bikers : One Temptation

Chapter four

LENA'S POV

Three days in the compound and I was starting to learn the rhythms of it.

Mornings were loud. Engines, voices, the smell of coffee and cigarettes drifting up through the floorboards. Afternoons were quieter, most of the men out on runs or whatever business Ghost never explained. Evenings were when the three of them were all in the same room at the same time, and that was when the air got complicated.

I was learning them too, slowly, the way you learn a language by just living inside it.

Axel was noise and movement. Always talking, always grinning, always finding a reason to be close to wherever I was standing. He made everything feel lighter than it was.

Rook was silence and stillness. He watched more than he spoke and when he did speak it landed heavy, like every word had been considered before it was released.

Ghost was something else entirely. Something I hadn't figured out yet and couldn't stop trying to.

I found the library by accident.

It was a small room off the back hallway that I'd assumed was storage. But when I pushed the door open I found floor to ceiling shelves, mismatched books crammed in sideways and upside down, a cracked leather armchair in the corner, and a lamp that actually worked.

I stood in the doorway staring at it like I'd found something sacred.

"Ghost's room," Axel said from behind me.

I spun around. He was leaning against the opposite wall, watching me with that easy grin.

"This is his personal room?"

"His reading room. Nobody comes in here without permission." He tilted his head. "You want me to ask him?"

"No," I said quickly, stepping back. "No, it's fine. I didn't know."

"Relax." Axel pushed off the wall and walked past me into the room like permission didn't apply to him. He ran a finger along the spines on the nearest shelf. "He won't care. Ghost's strict about club business. Everything else he's surprisingly unbothered."

"Surprisingly?"

"He looks like he'd bite your head off for breathing wrong." Axel glanced back at me. "He's not actually like that."

"Could've fooled me."

"Give him time." He pulled a book off the shelf and tossed it to me. I caught it. A worn paperback, the cover barely holding on. "He's worth figuring out."

I looked down at the book. Then back up at Axel. "Is that what you did? Figured him out?"

Something passed through his expression. Deeper than the usual easy charm. "Took me two years," he said. "But yeah."

I was in the armchair an hour later, legs tucked under me, book open in my lap, when the door pushed open and Ghost walked in.

He stopped when he saw me.

I scrambled to get up. "I'm sorry, Axel said...."

"Sit down," he said.

I sat.

He looked at the book in my hands. Something moved through his expression that I couldn't read. He crossed the room without another word and lowered himself into the chair across from mine, stretching his legs out, and picked up a book from the small table beside him like I wasn't there.

We sat in silence.

It should have been uncomfortable. It wasn't.

Five minutes passed. Maybe ten. The compound sounds were muffled in here, distant, like the room existed slightly outside of everything else.

"You read a lot?" I asked.

He didn't look up. "When I can."

"What kind of books?"

A pause. "History mostly. Sometimes fiction."

"You don't seem like a fiction person."

He looked up then. "What do I seem like?"

I considered him. The hard jaw, the tattoos, the grey-green eyes that gave nothing away for free. "Someone who only deals in facts," I said.

Something shifted in his face. "Fiction is just someone else's truth," he said. "Told slant."

I stared at him. "That's a Emily Dickinson reference."

He held my gaze. "Is it."

It wasn't a question. He knew exactly what it was.

I felt something rearrange itself quietly in my chest.

That evening I helped Axel cook.

I say helped. Mostly I stood at the counter chopping onions while he moved around the kitchen like a man who genuinely enjoyed feeding people, which was not what I expected from someone with IRON GRAVE tattooed across his knuckles.

"You're crying," he said, appearing beside me.

"Onions," I said.

"Sure." He reached past me to grab the pan, his arm brushing mine, and neither of us moved away from the contact. He stayed close, shoulder almost touching mine, stirring something on the stove. "You okay? Really."

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I keep waiting to feel scared."

"And?"

"And mostly I just feel..." I searched for the word. "Here. Like I'm actually here for the first time in a long time."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he set the spoon down and turned to face me, leaning back against the counter. His eyes were serious in a way I wasn't used to from him. "You were disappearing before, weren't you. Before you ran."

It wasn't a question.

My throat tightened. "Yeah," I said quietly. "I think I was."

He reached out and tucked a strand of hair back from my face. Slow. Deliberate. His fingers stayed at my jaw for just a second longer than they needed to.

"You're not disappearing here," he said.

I looked up at him. At the scar and the dark eyes and all that warmth he kept pretending was just casual. My heart was doing something loud and inconvenient.

"Axel...."

He kissed me.

Soft at first, like a question. Then I answered it without thinking, my hand coming up to his chest, and it became something else entirely. Warm and slow and consuming, his hand cradling my jaw like I was something worth being careful with.

Then he pulled back.

He pressed his forehead against mine, both of us breathing unevenly, and laughed quietly under his breath. A short, almost pained sound.

"That was a mistake," he murmured.

I pulled back enough to look at his face.

His eyes told a completely different story.

"Was it," I said.

He straightened up. Picked up the spoon. Went back to stirring like his hands weren't slightly unsteady. "Food's almost ready," he said. "Go tell Ghost and Rook."

I stood there for a moment looking at the back of his head.

Then I walked out of the kitchen with my lips still warm and my heart completely unsteady.

In the hallway I almost walked straight into Rook.

He caught me by the shoulders. Looked at my face. His eyes dropped to my mouth for just a fraction of a second before coming back up.

His jaw tightened.

He let go of me without a word and walked into the kitchen.

I heard Axel say something low. Heard Rook's silence in response.

I stood in the hallway between the two of them and the rest of this compound and pressed my fingers against my lips.

Three days. That was all it had taken.

I was in so much trouble.