So Steady: Silver Daughters Ink, Book Two (Silver Daughters Ink Book Two) Read online

“They’re just holes,” the author wrote. “They hang around because of the money or the drugs, or to piss off their parents. Some just want a good fuck. Most holes get what they came for.”

  Nicole made a face. That was the grossest thing she’d ever read, and she’d finished American Psycho. She remembered Noah, his fist in her hair, his mouth inches from hers. “I’ll fuck you in every hole you have.”

  It wasn’t the same. He hadn’t been calling her a hole, he’d just been referring to the parts of her that were—

  “Urgh!” She wasn’t sure what was more embarrassing, her rationalizations or the fact she wanted to rationalize Noah calling parts of her body…that. Did he see her the way the author saw the women who hung around the club?

  The thought should have been repulsive; but all she could think about was how Noah watched her across the bar, hungrily, disrespectfully. She closed her eyes and was back in his van, her lips stinging from his bite.

  You let me into that little pussy, I’ll fuck you until it hurts.

  Nicole actually shivered. Her shoulders shook and goosebumps raced along her arms. Was this her fault for rejecting sex and danger? Was she now doomed to crave sex with bikers and the biker adjacent? She didn’t know. What she did know was that she needed to orgasm or risk insanity, but she couldn’t. Not now she knew Noah’s secret...

  Her lower body throbbed, and she brushed a hand over her sex. Just that slight touch sent another ripple of energy along her skin, making her whimper. She looked around the room but none of her silent possessions offered any assistance.

  Resistance is futile, Tabby said. Get down to business.

  Sam laughed. The business of giving yourself the business.

  Nicole screwed up her nose. She did not need her sisters anywhere near her sexuality.

  As though to assist her, their voices dissolved, and a fantasy began to play. She was standing outside The Rangers clubhouse, in jean shorts and her cowboy boots—they didn’t pinch her toes like they usually did, and her makeup was natural-perfect. Her hair looked great, too, thick and lightly curled.

  Nicole settled back with a smile. This was a fantasy she could get behind. Now why was she going anywhere near a biker gang? Maybe she wanted drugs? No, that was spooky. Maybe she needed money? Yes, maybe her dad had cancer and couldn’t pay for chemotherapy, so she’d hired herself out as a—

  Tabby’s laughter resounded in her head. ‘This isn’t America, toolbox. We have universal healthcare. No one needs to suck biker dick for cancer.’

  “Shut up,” Nicole told her. “This is my fantasy.”

  Deciding to forgo the reason, she closed her eyes and imagined herself walking inside the clubhouse. It would be dark and crowded, full of faceless men. The music was loud, and she wandered the rooms, feeling uncomfortable. Red-faced men like Noah’s father and Chopper Reed were looking at her, closing in around her, their mouths slack with hunger, and it made her want to put on more clothes. She was just about to leave when a door opened and Noah strode in. His face was set and he was head and shoulders bigger than anyone else. His gaze fell on her and she lit up inside, the way she had last night.

  “Get away from her,” he told the other men. He strode up to her, grasping her arm. “Why’d you come here?”

  No, that would lead to the same ‘sucking penis for cancer’ problem as before. Besides, Noah wouldn’t ask. He never asked anything. He’d look at her with his electric green eyes then steer her into a room with nothing but a lamp and a mattress. “Lie down with legs wide.”

  She’d twist her hands together, wanting him, but not wanting to show it. I’ve never done this.

  Fantasy Noah wove his fist through her hair, the way he had in the van, and forced her onto the mattress. You’ll get used to it.

  He knelt over her, licking a hot line down her neck. Pull your shorts down. Show me your pussy.

  She unbuckled her jean shorts and they melted away, no awkward shuffling required, then she spread her legs, feeling her cunt separate beneath her cotton panties. She was soaking, aching. Her face was pressed into the scratchy mattress, but she didn’t care, she needed him inside her. Please? Can we…?

  Shut your fucking mouth. Noah pressed his knees between her legs, spreading them wide. Then he gripped her panties and—

  A door slammed open. “Nix! We’re home!”

  Nicole sat up so quickly, Tabby’s iPad went flying. “Hiiiiii!”

  “Are you okay?” Sam called. “You sound weird.”

  “I’m fine!” She pulled her hand from her underwear. “How’s…how’s it going?”

  “Good! Scott’s here!”

  “Hello, Nicole,” Scott said in his clipped British accent. “We got Chinese takeaway if you’d like some?”

  Nicole tugged at her sundress, trying to cover everything up. Her nipples were still rock hard, and her heart was racing. God, what even was her life?

  “Nix?”

  “That’s great,” she shrieked. “I love Chinese takeaway! I’ll be out in a second!”

  “Um, okay,” Sam said. “Can you hurry up? We’ve got the puppies, we could use some spare hands!”

  “I could use some spare hands,” she muttered. But that wasn’t true. She needed fewer hands, that way she couldn’t keep touching herself. Yes, she needed fewer hands and more information about Noah. Or failing that, a time machine back to last year, when her life made sense. She got up to wash her hands and help her sister.

  Chapter 6

  The next day Nicole was sitting at her dad’s desk when something hit her in the back of her head. She turned to see Tabby leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. “About time! I’ve been calling your name for ages.”

  Nicole rubbed the back of her head. “You don’t have to throw things at me.”

  “That was a highlighter I took out of your pencil cup thing, and you didn’t even notice! Do you have Mondayitis?”

  “Maybe,” she lied. Mondayitis wasn’t her problem. Noah Newcomb was her problem. She doubted two waking minutes had passed without her thinking about Noah, The Rangers or sex. She wasn’t sure which topic was the most distressing. When she was reading Blood in the Gears, it was the knowledge she’d lived her whole life without considering the subgroups of men cooking meth, breaking legs and shooting each other. When she was in bed, it was the rough, filthy sex she hadn’t had. Now she was at work, it was Noah acting like he hadn’t made her feel his cock through his jeans.

  She’d made sure she was standing at reception this morning, talking to Gil. Her lipstick was fresh, her hair blow-dried, and she’d worn a new pencil dress so tight it required skipping breakfast. A fat lot of good it did her. When Noah showed up, he barely looked at her, just grunted hello and headed down the hall.

  “How was your weekend?” Gil called after him. “Do anything fun?”

  Noah didn’t even turn around. “Nope.”

  Then he vanished into tattoo room two and shouty rock music started playing four seconds later.

  Nicole wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t to be brushed aside like an irritating cat. Especially since at the sight of him, her heart started banging against her rib cage. He was so big. Somehow that always surprised her, as though the Noah in her head was just a cardboard cutout of the man himself. When he walked past her, smelling of soap and cigarettes, she’d had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from calling out and demanding to know…what?

  If his father was really the boss of The Rangers? If he was dangerous? If he’d spent the last twenty-four hours thinking about her, too?

  “Nix! What the fuck, man?”

  Nicole refocused on her sister. “Sorry, I…what were you saying?”

  Tabby opened her mouth and Nicole knew what was coming. “Don’t tell me to take a break! I’m too busy.”

  “But you’re super stressed! Why don’t you take a half day?”

  “Because I’ve got a tonne of work to do!”

  “Like what?”

  L
ike trying to work out if Noah’s a bikie, she thought. And whether he’s gotten better-looking overnight or I’m losing my actual mind.

  “Nicole?” Tabby cupped her hands around her mouth. “Earth to Nicole, come in, Nicole. Nicole, can you read me?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “I can’t take a freaking break. There’s a delivery coming and we’re getting our pay system upgraded this afternoon, then I have a Skype call with Francine—”

  “Your Adelaide boss?”

  “Yes. I need to explain why I’m still in Melbourne instead of at my desk in head office. Then I need to continue to try and figure out why this business almost collapsed three months ago.”

  Tabby rolled her eyes. “God, who cares? We’re fine now.”

  “That’s not the point! If we don’t know why Silver Daughters almost went under, then it might happen again!”

  “Fine, but just lay off the green teas, okay?”

  Nicole looked at her mug where a Jasmine teabag was idling. “What’s wrong with green tea?”

  “I read somewhere it’s like nature’s heroin.”

  “Wouldn’t heroin be nature’s heroin?”

  Tabby shrugged. “Maybe there’s more than one kind of heroin. Wow, that’s deep. I should tattoo it on someone. Anyway, I’ll leave you to Type A behavior. Give me a heads up when the ink gets here. I need to restock.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Type A behaviour,” Nicole shouted at her sister’s retreating back. “You should try it sometime!”

  Tabby gave her the finger.

  Nicole glared after her sister for a second, then her thoughts boomeranged back to Noah. She knew she should talk to him about the biker thing. The question was could she even say ‘biker’ to him after spending last night screwing herself to the thought of him being one?

  She hadn’t wanted to do it. She’d tried thinking about grandma DaSilva, about Aaron cheating. She’d even wheeled out that awful trip to the doctors when she was nineteen. It hadn’t worked. She’d let fantasy biker Noah say and do disgusting things to her. Then she’d let him do them to her in front of the other bikers. By 4am she was so miserable and horny and confused, she cried in her bed like a baby. How was she supposed to talk to Noah without any of that mess coming out?

  She stood up, mug in hand. She was getting another green tea, and screw what Tabby said. She pushed open the door and saw Noah coming out of tattoo room two, cigarettes in hand. They froze, as if being a man and a woman in a hallway was against the law. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound normal. “Having a break?”

  “Yeah.”

  She tried and failed to block the fantasy of him spreading her legs in front of the other bikers and going down on her. Not because he wanted her to feel good, but because he knew coming in front of all those men would humiliate her. He’d wanted to humiliate her. To fuck her into a thousand remorseful orgasms.

  “Nikki?”

  Nicole raised a hand to her cheek. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

  “Tired?” Noah’s eyes glinted like two chips of jade. He looked like he knew what she was thinking, though he couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking. That was not a skill he possessed.

  “A little.” She raised her mug to distract him from her face. “Cup of tea?”

  “No thanks.” His gaze fell to her lower-than-professional neckline. “New dress?”

  Warmth fluttered in her chest. “Newish. I haven’t worn it here before.”

  “I like it.”

  “Really?”

  A glance at her tightly belted midsection. “I like you in it.”

  He might as well have said ‘I’d like you out of it.’ They both knew that’s what he meant. Nicole inhaled and her breath felt like it was coming in through a straw. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.” Noah leaned in, eyes gleaming. “What are you doing for lunch?”

  Okay, she needed to breathe. Dizziness was making her think Noah was about to ask her out, which he wasn’t because dating wasn’t his thing. Letting her touch his dick in his van and being weird about it afterward was his thing.

  “Nikki?” A line had appeared between Noah’s eyes. She wanted to touch it. She swallowed, trying to focus. “Um, I’m not doing anything for lunch. I mean, I’m thinking of skipping it. Doing some intermittent fasting. It’s good for your metabolism.”

  Noah rubbed the back of his neck, exposing a tattoo of a tree with a trunk shaped like a naked woman. Was it stupid to be jealous of a tree woman tattoo? It felt stupid, but she was doing it. Did that make her stupid?

  “Let’s go to Greens,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s go to Greens and get a burger. Fuck this fasting thing.”

  Nicole’s heart pulsed into her mouth. He was asking her on a date. Or something like a date. At the very least, he was asking her something. “I…”

  The door to tattoo room four banged open. “Hey, did I hear something about Greens?” Gil called. “I’m fucking starving.”

  The intimacy between her and Noah burst like a bubble. Nicole shrank back into her dad’s office. “I think I’ll just stay here for lunch.”

  Noah took a step away from her, his face impassive. “Okay.”

  “Let’s go to Greens, big guy,” Gil said. “I’m almost done with Kurtis. Wait fifteen?”

  “Nah,” Noah said, his gaze locked on hers. “Got stuff to do.”

  “Fuck ya, then.” Gil’s door slammed shut.

  Nicole compressed the mug between her fingers. “He shouldn’t leave his client alone in the chair to ask about burgers.”

  Noah shrugged. “Happens.”

  And just like she was a square. A buzzkill. She was always a buzzkill here. In Adelaide, her colleagues followed her on Instagram and asked her advice on tricky consultancy projects. Here everyone thought she was an anal-retentive weirdo for updating the waiting room magazines and investigating missing money.

  Because why be professional when you could just swear and lose thousands of dollars and be covered in tattoos and—

  “Nikki?” Noah’s forehead creased. “You okay?”

  Nicole gripped her mug tighter. “You know what? No. I work two jobs and I just got dumped and I can’t figure out where eighty thousand dollars went, and my dad has been missing for almost a year and no one cares what I do, even though they always ask for my help and I’m so tired.”

  Noah looked up at the ceiling, clearly at a loss for what to say.

  “Exactly!” she snapped. “You don’t really want to know, so please stop asking. I’ve got work to do.”

  She closed her dad’s office door, relieved to put something solid between her and Noah.

  Two hours later, her stomach hurt with hunger, but it was good. It felt like focus. Her Skype call with Francine had gone okay. Her boss wanted her back in Adelaide, but she was happy with the work she was sending in remotely.

  “This is good preparation for when you go on maternity leave,” Francine teased.

  Nicole smiled, though her words felt like a punch in the uterus. How was she supposed to tell her boss that her sparkly future had been cancelled? How was she supposed to tell anyone? This wasn’t supposed to be her life.

  But getting depressed about being single and living in her childhood bedroom wouldn’t help. She needed to focus on fixing her problems—starting with the suspected bikie tattooing in the room across from hers. She needed to confront him about The Rangers. She checked the staff e-roster and saw his break was over and he was tattooing a twenty-two-year-old, Daniella Bright.

  She hated the burst of jealousy that went through her when she read that name. Tattooing required seeing and touching a lot of skin. Her sisters worked hard to be taken seriously despite that and she owed Noah the same respect. Only… she couldn’t stop her insides from twisting up like eels. Daniella Bright was a pretty girl name and when she opened the door, she heard happy, girlish laughter coming from Noah’s room.

  What do you want? she asked h
erself, but no answers came, just nausea. Her phone rang and, eager for distraction, she picked up without looking at the name.

  “When are you going to wake the fuck up and come home?”

  Aaron’s voice was so loud, so unexpectedly mean, she almost dropped her phone. “I…what?”

  “I just got an email from Francine telling me you’re doing such a great job in Melbourne and she’s so excited for the wedding. You haven’t told her you fucked up our engagement; you haven’t told anyone.”

  “I don’t know what to say!”

  “Bullshit!” Aaron’s voice was so loud, it was like he was on speakerphone. “You don’t want to work at your dad’s shitbox studio. You don’t want to live with your batshit sisters. Wake the fuck up and come home.”

  Maybe it was the stress, maybe it was an excess of green tea antioxidants, but she burst into tears. Big gulping toddler sobs. She cried and Aaron shouted, neither of them listening to each other until Sam burst through the door, her tattooing gloves still on, and snatched up her phone.

  “Fuck off, you useless cuntlord,” she snarled, before hanging up. “Jesus, Nix…”

  She wiped her tears away from her cheeks. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” Sam pointed at the ceiling. “Upstairs.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’m keeping your phone and Tabby’s changing the Wi-Fi password. You’re done working for today, so go relax or I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Nicole knew better than to protest. She gathered up her things and headed for the door. As she passed Noah’s room, she heard him say something in his rumbly baritone and Daniella Bright giggled. A stick of jealousy speared her right through the middle and she hurried out of the studio feeling like a failure.

  Alone in the apartment, she considered and discarded taking a bath. Instead she collected the rubber gloves from under the sink and started pulling the Tupperware and expired jars of mustard out of the fridge. Once it was scrubbed clean and reorganized, she moved onto the cupboards, then the laundry. She wiped and stacked and rearranged. Then she started on dinner. Tabby came upstairs just as she was browning chicken for a stir fry. “I thought you were supposed to be relaxing.”