Tempted by the Devil: Highway Titans MC Page 3

  Ben shrugged again and turned his head to look out the window.

  Okay, this strategy isn’t going to work, Charlotte thought. Let’s try a different angle. “So when did you first ride a motorcycle?” she asked, putting her pen down. Maybe a casual vibe would work better.

  “Long time ago,” Ben muttered, still not looking at her.

  Charlotte started to feel her back muscles tense up in anxiety. She expected him to be difficult, but there was something about the flat, deflated way he was sitting in the chair, like he was a puddle instead of a person. It was like his brain had detached from his body and left.

  Charlotte cleared her throat and tried again, pivoting back to a direct approach. “Are you upset with your uncle for setting this up?”

  Ben’s eyebrows twitched a little at that, but he still refused to say anything substantial. “It’s whatever,” he grunted.

  Charlotte tapped her knees thoughtfully. Maybe he was just nervous about opening up. In her experience, anxious clients tend to clam up if they feel like the meeting is an interrogation rather than a conversation. Maybe she just needed to talk more. “So. Perhaps you’d like to know more about my goals and objectives being here.”

  “Cash?” Ben suggested, his voice cold and low.

  Charlotte laughed at that, too loudly for the awkward tension in the room. “Well, aside from monetary compensation. I want to help you self-actualize, Ben. Do you know what that means?”

  He stared at her, offering nothing in the way of response.

  “It means being able to achieve your full potential. Being all that you can be. Knowing yourself and what you want, and finding a path to get there. Doesn’t that sound appealing?”

  Ben shrugged again. “I’m fine right now.”

  Yeah, you’re just peachy fucking keen, Charlotte thought. “Of course,” she lied. “Of course you are. But wouldn’t you like to be more than fine? Wouldn’t you like to be doing well? Doing as well as you can?”

  “I think I’m there already, thanks,” Ben said. This time his voice had an edge to it, like he was getting pissed off just listening to her.

  That set something off inside Charlotte. He was sitting there barely contributing a single spot of help and he had the audacity to get annoyed with her? Time to take the gloves off. “Do you have any interest in contributing to this conversation?” she asked.

  His expression changed, finally. Now his brows were pushed together and his nose scrunched up in disgust. “Depends,” he spat, “are you gonna talk like a human being or just throw around psychobabble for the rest of the afternoon?”

  Charlotte had to suppress the groan of frustration that threatened to leave her throat. This was getting ridiculous. She felt like she was trying to climb a rope slicked with butter, just slipping down every time she tried to get a single inch higher.

  “I’m just here to help you, Ben,” she said, keeping her voice steady and calm. “That’s all I’m here to do. But unless you’re willing to help yourself, all you’ll be doing is wasting your uncle’s money.”

  “He’s got plenty of it to throw around,” Ben argued, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Want one?”

  “No, thank you, I don’t smoke.” Outside of bars, Charlotte added silently.

  “Suit yourself,” Ben muttered as he lit up and took a long, slow drag.

  Charlotte waited, expecting him to say something else, something about Wally, something about the club— Anything, really. But nothing came. “So is this what it’s going to be like for the next few months? I stare at you and you stare back at me and nothing gets accomplished?”

  “Months?” Ben asked around his cigarette.

  “Well, your uncle didn’t give me a timeline. But he paid me more than I make in a year, so I’m willing to stick around for as long as it takes.”

  Ben frowned again, his whole face turning hard and cold. “Until what?”

  Until you surrender to me, fucker. “Until you come around and start contributing to our conversations.” They just stared at each other for a long moment, neither moving an inch, before Charlotte spoke again. “The sooner you talk, really talk, the sooner I’ll be out of your life.”

  Ben blew out a slow, steady stream of smoke. “All right.”

  “All right?” Charlotte repeated. Did that really work? Was she finally getting somewhere with this little asshole? Fuck. She inwardly berated herself for thinking of her client poorly. She was supposed to be objective. Neutral. A trusted authority figure. She couldn’t very well do that if she was letting herself get annoyed with a troubled young man.

  “I’ll fucking talk,” Ben said. “But I ain’t gonna say shit you want to hear.”

  Charlotte straightened up in her seat and clenched her pen tighter. Maybe she cracked him open. “That’s fine. There are no rules here.”

  “Okay, look,” Ben began, pausing to suck on his cigarette. “You’re not gonna be happy with whatever this is. It’s just not going to happen. You’re better off leaving now and never coming back because it’s just a waste of your time. I’m okay with where I am and how I am right now, and I don’t need to fucking change.”

  She looked at him a moment, watching how he sat, how his muscles moved, how his fingers twitched around his cigarette. “Hmm.”

  Ben looked up from his lap to glare at her. “What’s that for? What you fucking humming about?”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” she lied, turning to her pad of paper to scrawl some gibberish down, just to cultivate the image that she’d just made a great breakthrough.

  “Now, what the fuck are you writing? What? Come on, what?”

  Charlotte sighed. “Oh, it’s just— You know, another silly psychobabble term. You wouldn’t like it.”

  “What is it?” Ben demanded. There was an edge of urgency to his voice this time.

  “In my profession, we call it ‘denial.’ When the brain literally can’t accept what’s plain as day. That’s all,” she said, a casual tone to her voice, before turning back to her papers to pretend to write something highly important.

  “Oh, yeah?” Ben said, standing up from his chair. Charlotte looked up to see him with clenched fists. “And what the hell am I ‘denying,’ exactly, doc? Tell me.”

  Charlotte tapped her pen against her legs, a little too roughly. A pink spot started to form on her knees, but she liked the stinging sensation. She liked that little edge of pain. “You claim to be happy with where you are in life. But you’re smoking and drinking constantly, filling up every spare moment with something to distract you.”

  Ben scoffed. “Everyone in the club does that. You’re gonna have to reach harder if you’re gonna diagnose me as fucked up.”

  “The fighting, Ben. Constantly hitting your own men. What’s that about?” Charlotte asked.

  “I fucking feel like it!” Ben half-yelled. “That’s a good enough fucking reason.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “No, it’s not, Ben. It’s not good enough. You’re hurting people. You’re hurting yourself. That’s not okay.”

  “Yeah, yeah, save me the sermon, okay?” Ben shot back. “I’ll live my life my way. It’s none of your concern.”

  She tapped her feet in thought for a second, watching him as he walked closer to the couch, clearly fuming. Charlotte wondered, distantly, if she should have been scared, if he would hurt her. Her heart was pumping, but it wasn’t out of fear. She felt like her blood was going crazy inside her veins, begging her to do something. She got to her feet and walked to the center of the room, mere inches away from Ben. “You’re right, you know,” she said, and her voice was surprisingly low, barely above a whisper. “It’s not my problem. I’m here to get paid. I really shouldn’t care if you get better or not.”

  Ben glared at her, his jaw clenched tight.

  “I do care, though. Maybe it makes me unprofessional, but I do. I’m not going to stop caring. And I’m not going to stop trying until you get your life together. So get used to me, budd
y.”

  “You’re fucking psychotic,” Ben laughed, walking away. For a second, Charlotte thought he was going to go downstairs and get away from her, and she prepared to break into a run to stop him, but instead he just went over to an ashtray on a counter and put out his cigarette. “You’re out of your goddamned mind.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, it’s not about me. It’s about you.”

  Ben marched back over to her. “Nah, no, come on. I found a topic I wanna talk about. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about what kinda fucking psycho comes to a motorcycle club to help a guy run drugs better. I mean, what the fuck?”

  Charlotte stepped closer to him and stared up into his eyes. “Sure. Sure, we can talk about that. But you know the difference between you and me? I know what I’m doing. I might not be okay with it, but I’m aware. You’re stumbling around in the dark.”

  “Oh, and what, you’re gonna shine a fucking nightlight in my direction??”

  Charlotte stepped a little closer. “If that’s what it takes.”

  Ben’s eyes were full of something that Charlotte couldn’t read. Something beyond anger, beyond irritation. Again, she wondered if he was about to hit her, if this is what it looked like when a man decided that you were a piece of shit. No. No, he won’t hurt me, she thought to herself, and she was surprised at how certain she felt. “You’re a fucking piece of work,” Ben murmured, putting a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m very determined,” Charlotte whispered. Her heart pounded like a ticking bomb in her chest.

  Ben slammed his mouth against hers, lips hard and unrelenting. His tongue slipped against the crack between her lips, not quite dipping inside but slicking along both lips. Charlotte moaned at the sensation, opening her mouth to let him in. What am I doing? What am I doing? Charlotte asked herself. I don’t care, she answered. I’m doing what I want. For once in my life, I’m doing what I want.

  Neither of them talked. They didn’t have to. Both of them grasped at each other’s bodies, nails digging into bare skin painfully. Charlotte felt so desperate, she felt like she was starving, like she was being denied the oxygen that she needed to survive, and the only way to keep going was to suck on Ben’s lips, lick his tongue, drop wet kisses all over his chin and cheeks and ears. “God,” she grunted out into his ear. “God, fuck, damn.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said into her mouth, his hand coming up to wrap around her neck. “Fuck, yeah.”

  Charlotte pushed Ben’s shirt up, clawing at his stomach and chest and clavicle. His abs were so hard, so solid. She wanted to dig in and never let go. Instead, she pushed her hands around to claw at his back, scratching up between his shoulder-blades and down into the dimples above his ass. God. He was so fucking firm. Pure muscle.

  Ben pushed her skirt up, scratching along the insides of her thighs and then up to her stomach and hips. He squeezed her waistline, hard, hard enough that Charlotte squealed like a little girl. But one hand traveled north, pushing up over her bra and clenching over it like he was grabbing a baseball. Charlotte gasped into Ben’s mouth, accidentally dragging her tooth along his bottom lip, but he groaned, deep and long, and Charlotte took the hint and sucked his lips between her teeth.

  He pushed one hand into her bra, grabbing at her bare breast, kneading it in his palm. Charlotte moaned and leaned forward into his touch. She wanted him to take more and more of her flesh. She pulled her hands out of Ben’s shirt, ignoring his groan of annoyance, to reach back under her dress and unclasp her bra. Ben took the hint and yanked the bra away, throwing it halfway across the room.

  Charlotte pushed her hands along his shoulders and collarbone, digging her nails in hard enough to leave long red streaks behind every stroke of her fingers. She dug her nails past his neckline, down across his chest, before resurfacing to tear his shirt over his head and off his body. God, he looked so gorgeous, so fucking perfect without a shirt on.

  Meanwhile, Ben’s hand found her zipper and tugged it down, pushing her dress aside and leaving her in just her black panties. Charlotte moaned quietly as she was stripped bare, her hands coming up to hide her nipples as Ben pulled the fabric away.

  Ben bent his head down and licked along her neck, biting down on her veins, the rhythm of his tongue matching her pulse. Charlotte arched up into his touch, bending her neck to give him better access. He licked to her ear, nibbling her lobe and then moving to the sensitive top corner of her ear. He pulled it into his mouth, scraping with his teeth, rubbing little circles with his tongue. “God!” she yelled out, smacking against his ass just to hold on.

  “Careful,” Ben warned her as he licked his way back down her neck. “You don’t want anyone downstairs to hear what a bad little girl you are.”

  “Ahh!” Charlotte squealed, wrapping her arms around Ben’s waist. “Fuck.”

  “Shh, shh, shh,” Ben whispered in her ear before biting down on it gently, sending sparks shattering down Charlotte’s spine until she convulsed in his arms like she’d been electrocuted.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry, shit,” she whispered, rubbing her hand through his hair, turning it into a wavy, sweaty mess.

  “No, no,” Ben rushed to say, pressing his mouth against hers again. “I like it. I like hearing you want me.”

  “I do,” Charlotte admitted. “I want you.”

  “Yeah?” Ben said, pushing his hand up her neck and tangling into her hair. “You fucking want me, baby? You want me to fuck you?”

  Charlotte moaned weakly into Ben’s neck and ran her nails down his bare back. “I want it.”

  Ben’s hands drifted down past her waist and over her hips, down to the band of her underwear. “You want me to fuck you? You want me inside you? You want my fucking cock?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Charlotte moaned, biting lightly into the flesh of Ben’s neck, tasting the precious salt of his skin. “I want you. I fucking want you.”

  “I’m gonna give it to you, baby. I’m gonna give it you hard,” Ben promised before biting the edge of Charlotte’s chin, sucking so hard that he definitely left a mark. Oh, fuck, no, Charlotte thought to herself. He’s not going to mark me without suffering the same punishment. She latched her mouth onto his collarbone, sucking hard onto the bone before pulling back and smiling at the sight of the purple mark she left behind.

  “Everyone’s gonna know you’re mine,” she whispered, sliding her tongue along the vein that dropped down between his nipples.

  Ben growled and pushed her forward, backing her up until she hit the couch. “No. You’re mine.”

  Charlotte wrapped her legs around Ben’s bare waist and reached up to yank on his pants. She groaned when they didn’t fall to the ground immediately. He was wearing a belt, so Charlotte had to loop her fingers in the waistband of the pants and tug hard, groaning with impatience. “Take. These. Off.”

  Ben grunted and shoved his hips forward, pushing them into her pelvis. Charlotte groaned weakly, feeling small and weak in comparison to the force of Ben’s muscles. Her fingers were shaking, but they still found their way to the front of his pants, fumbling with the button and zipper. Then she moved to the belt, pulling at it slowly until it came out of the straps and fell to the floor.

  “You want me naked?” Ben whispered, leaning down to kiss along Charlotte’s face, down her forehead and cheek and over to her lips.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Charlotte rushed to say. “I need it.”

  Ben shoved his pants to the ground and stepped out of them to lay Charlotte on the couch, pressing her down into the cushions. “You fucking like that? You like my cock pressing against you?”

  Charlotte struggled to get a hand between their bodies, slinking down to his crotch to pet his cock over his underwear. “I’d like it more if you’d lose the boxers,” she said.

  Ben grunted in response before shoving his boxers to his feet and pressing his bare cock against her underwear. Charlotte groaned at the feeling, sensing how much he wanted her. She glanced downwards to see what she was
dealing with and inhaled shakily, trying to calm herself down. She’d never seen a bigger cock in her entire life.

  “You’re gonna have to prepare me first,” Charlotte whispered before dropping a gentle kiss on Ben’s lips. “I’m not ready for you yet.”

  Ben growled again, and for a second Charlotte worried that she angered him, made him too impatient, but he pressed his mouth against hers again, softly this time, almost gently. Charlotte relaxed in his arms, all her muscles going loose at the same time, but Ben was ready to catch her, his hands holding tightly onto her shoulders.

  “I can’t—I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Charlotte whispered, pressing her mouth lightly against his neck.