CLAIMED BY THE TRIPLET BIKER ALPHAS: A STEAMY MC ROMANCE

CHAPTER 6 – THE OATH

RAFE’S POV

Layla Rowan hasn’t left my mind since I was fifteen years old and she was fourteen and we were playing a game of who can make her scared the most. Colt obviously won, and she said she hated us, but when she laughed after, a part of my soul remained in her hands from that day until now.

And right now, she's underneath me and I'm about to go inside her, and all I can think of is how long I’ve waited for this moment.

I pull my fingers out of her tight p***y and unbuckle my trouser as she shivers in anticipation and begs me to put it in her.

“Look at me.”

I’m losing control, but that’s currently the least of my problems because I’m pushing into her slowly and the sounds coming from her is bringing out my wolf without my call.

I place my forehead on hers and take a deep breath because I need my wolf to stay in line. Her hands are fisted in the sheets, and her eyes are dark and wide and looking up at me with an expression that is dismantling something deep in my chest. I have wanted this woman with a patient, specific, six-year desperation that I kept contained through distance and silence and being cruel to her so she'd stay away from me. Because of the oath. Because of my promise to Brandon. But I’m here now because wanting her is the one thing I can't control.

I can’t go feral right now. Not this first time.

‘But that’s what I want. Mark her.’

I ignore my wolf and shut him away because he is not making any sense, but I know that a part of him has already bled into me.

“I just want you to know that I do care for you.”

She nods while still looking at me with the same expression that is undoing me steadily.

“Good. Because I am about to f**k you like I don’t.”

I pull back and pound into her without hesitation. Over and over again as she gasps and digs her nails into my back as her hips rise to meet mine, and I have to close my eyes for a second because if I look at her face right now I'm going to say something I can't take back.

"Rafe–"

"I'm here." I angle deeper and her whole body arches. "I'm right here."

I don't rush, but I use enough force to satisfy my wolf for a little bit. To satisfy her enough for tonight. I set the pace and I hold it even though every muscle in my body wants to let go, because making her feel every second of this matters more than my own release.

"Don't slow down – please–"

"Didn’t I tell you to look at me?" I tap her face twice and her eyes open. I hold her gaze and drive into her harder and the sound she makes goes straight through me like a blade.

"There it is." I keep that angle. "Stay with me, softie."

She's close. I can feel it in the way her body tightens around me, in the way her breathing fractures, in the specific trembling of her thighs against my hips. I press my thumb against her c**t and work it in time with my strokes and her back arches off the bed completely.

"Rafe – I can't – I'm–"

"Let go. I've got you."

She comes apart underneath me and the sound she makes breaks something clean inside my chest. I follow her over the edge and I stay completely still and breathe through it, because if I move, I'm going to tell her something stupid and she'll run and I can't watch her run from me. Not tonight.

Afterward, her breathing slows against my chest as my fingers trace a line along her shoulder.

I felt it. Through the closeness – the way she responded, the way her body reacted to mine like it was discovering something brand new. Her husband had her for two years. He had her and he never once cared enough to figure out what she needed. The thought makes something hot and angry settle behind my ribs. He never learned her – and I had her figured out in an hour.

"You should sleep." It comes out gruffer than I want it to.

She nods. Her eyes are already heavy.

I make myself get up. Pull my jeans on in the dark. Walk to the door. Then I stop with my hand on the handle because there are words stacked in my throat and if I look back at her I'll say every single one.

But I don't look back. I walk away and let the door click shut behind me.

Back in my own bed, I lie on my back in the dark and take in her scent on my skin as I think about what I've done.

I was sixteen when Jack Rowan pressed his thumb against my inner left wrist and made me swear. The oath was simple – protect her and never touch her. I agreed and the magic settled into my skin like something being written into my bones. Blood oaths in our world aren't ceremony. They're law. And Jack was not a man who did anything without meaning every syllable.

I swore. I meant it. I meant it for six years. And every night I lay in the dark in this same building and listened to her on the other side of a wall and didn't move.

But tonight, I moved. I touched her. I broke the oath with my hands and my mouth and every part of me, and I knew the price before I walked to her door.

But it wasn't just Jack's oath.

Brandon made us promise too – all three of us. He looked at me and Colt and Eli with an expression that was too old for a fifteen-year-old and said: "Stay away from my sister. All of you. She's off limits."

No magic. No ceremony. Just a boy drawing a line for the people he trusted most. And we agreed, because Brandon is our brother in everything that matters and you don't cross your brother.

I crossed him tonight.

The oath will punish me supernaturally. I can already feel it – a low heat building in my wrist that I know will be worse by morning. But Brandon finding out... that's the price with no ceiling.

But I'd pay both willingly. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every night she lets me.

I sleep.

***

The burning wakes me before my eyes open. My left wrist feels like someone is pressing a lit match to the inside of my skin. I sit up, pull my sleeve back, and notice that the mark is there. Dark. Spreading from the exact point where Jack's thumb was. It looks like a bruise forming from the inside out – like something being written under my skin in a language I can't read.

I stare at it.

I pull my sleeve down. I tell no one.

The common room is half-full when I walk in. She's already there – hair down, coffee in both hands. Our eyes meet across the room, and something moves through the air between us that is complicated and loaded and mutual.

We both look away.

Colt, who has never been in a room without immediately identifying everything happening in it, looks between us.

"What's with you two?"

Nobody answers.

I pour my coffee. My sleeve stays down. The mark pulses against the ceramic of the mug – deliberate, like a reminder.

I look at her across the room. She's talking to Harper now, and she's almost smiling, and the almost is doing something to my chest that I don't have a name for.

The oath can take whatever it wants. I'd break it again tonight. I'd break it a hundred times. Whatever it costs, she's worth more.