“Do you want to talk about it?” It felt silly to ask such a question when she stood next to his bed wearing nothing but ink. Normally she wasn’t shy about her body, but, well, once again—nothing around this man was normal.
“An old lady crashed into the service station I run. Took down two pumps and damn near tore the building down. She died, and a good friend of mine got hurt bad.”
It didn’t matter that she was naked, or what she’d been expecting when he got back, or whether anything between them was normal. She went to him and set her hands on his chest. His skin was hot from the shower, and the hair on his chest was soft and damp. “I’m sorry. Is your friend gonna be okay?”
His eyes landed on hers and his hand came up. He brushed her hair back, and she felt his fingertips at her temple, a light caress over her lilies. “I don’t know. They operated on his head, and he’s in intensive care now. They said they’ll know more when he wakes up. I need to sleep for a couple hours and get back to it.”
“Okay. I’ll go.” At this hour, she’d do better to sneak in the window again rather than use the door and risk waking Denny and putting an early end to his peaceable mood.
She hoped leaving wouldn’t put an early end to the mood between her and Becker. Before he’d gotten that call, he’d given up his objections and resistance, and they’d been on the way to something fantastic. There was at least an even chance he’d remember all his bullshit reasons not to get close if she went away before they actually got close.
But what else could she do? He had other things on his mind. More important things, like a friend in the hospital, a damaged business, and an old lady dead.
“No,” he murmured, and Sage was too lost in her head to understand what he was negating.
“What?”
“I don’t want you to go.”
She looked up at him, into eyes that were just so incredibly blue, the color even deeper now with weary solemnity. Leaning in, she kissed his chest. When her lips touched his skin, he sucked in a quiet breath, and at that slight stimulus, a scant suggestion of what he might feel for her, an impulse flared through her.
Without trying to grab hold of the impulse and consider it, she followed it and went down to her knees before him, catching the towel in her fingers as she did, pulling it free and dropping it on the floor beside her.
“Sage ...”
In the way he said her name, she heard his misgivings, reluctance or guilt or maybe just exhaustion, but she ignored him. If he really didn’t want this, he could do more to stop her than mutter her name. A few inches from her face was his cock, swelling as she watched, and that said plenty about what he really wanted.
It was huge, bigger than any she’d had before. Fully erect, it was big enough to scare her a little. She wrapped both hands around him and felt his hips shift, only slightly, but toward her. Looking up, she saw Becker watching her. He met her eyes, and she tried to read his thoughts in them, but all she saw was the same fatigue.
Still looking up, she leaned in and opened her mouth, taking him in, and then his eyes closed. She knew right then, the way he gave in without a flinch, that he was done, really done, trying to push her away.
With that knowledge came a rush of relief so strong tears sprang up, and she closed her eyes before they could fall. It didn’t make sense that she would care so much, so fast, but she did.
Maybe it did make sense. In less than three days’ time, Becker had done more for her, taken more care of her, made her feel safer and more comfortable, than her mother had in years.
Yeah, she was falling for this man, and the thought that he might let it happen, might join her in the fall, was strong enough for tears.
With that in mind, Sage got down to the business of giving him the best head she knew how to give.
She’d given plenty of blow jobs and knew what she was doing, but there were some logistical issues to work out with Becker. There was no way she could fit all of him into her mouth, but with her hands around him—her fingers and thumbs didn’t touch—she could take most of the rest of him.
When she did, surrounding him with her hands and her mouth, he groaned and put his hands on her head. She swirled her tongue around his glans, and his fingers twisted in her hair. He widened his stance, stabling his balance, and canted his hips toward her again, clutching her head. Sage tightened her grip around his shaft and was rewarded with another, more strained groan.
She sucked and bobbed, swirled and flicked, explored every part of him. He had a thick underside ridge she found fascinating, and when she flicked her tongue along its edges, his legs shook.
For a long time, he stood silently as she worked him, letting the tension in his hands and legs tell her what she was doing to him. Then, as her knees began to complain about being on the wood floor and taking most of her weight, and her jaw muscles were beginning to cramp, he muttered, “Fuck,” barely more than a breath, and went as rigid as iron. All at once, his fingers were so tight in her hair that she felt strands pop free of her scalp. Sage had just that much notice to prepare before he came, filling her mouth almost faster than she could swallow.
Swallowing was something she saved for guys who mattered. He’d held her so tightly she couldn’t have backed off if she’d wanted to, but she hadn’t tried. Becker mattered. It was scary to know that, to understand what she was feeling but not what he was, but Sage didn’t run away from things that scared her, including big feelings. Denial was nothing but danger.
When he was done, when his body relaxed and his cock softened a little, she backed off, let him go, and looked up. Again, he was watching her, inscrutably. His hands eased their clench on her head, his fingers untangled from her hair, and he held a hand down, offering it to her. She took it and let him help her back to her feet.
“My life’s not easy,” he said, and Sage knew it was more than an observation. He was warning her. But she didn’t need the warning; she knew. She lived in the same world, or one like it.
“Neither is mine.”
A smile as faint as an old memory lifted one corner of his fascinating mouth. “It’s not the same, shortcake.”
“Does it have to be?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed and brushed her bangs back, tracing her tattoo with one finger. “I guess we’ll find out.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Becker stared up at the ceiling, watching the sharper shadows of morning move over the swirled white paint, and guessed the time to be about six-thirty or so. In the couple of hours since he’d picked Sage up from the floor and carried her to bed, he hadn’t slept, but he felt a bit more rested nonetheless.
She was sound asleep, wound into a fetal curl with her back against his chest and her head pillowed on his bicep. That arm had lost all feeling long ago, but he’d barely noticed. He’d been wandering around inside his head, trying to organize a month’s worth of shit that had gone down in the space of six or seven hours.
He needed to get up and moving. There was shit to do at the station, with the cops, and the insurance company, and at the clubhouse, scrounging for work to keep the Bulls busy and paid while the station was closed. He needed to talk to Mrs. Greeley’s family, let them know they were square with the club and wouldn’t be held responsible for what she’d done. That old lady had been a mainstay at Delaney’s Sinclair for as long as the station had been open. They all loved her, with her careful schoolmarm bun on the top of her head, her wild purple and gold eyeglasses, and her sweet little one-dollar tips, always neatly folded in the same way.
They all knew she shouldn’t have been driving anymore; the whole neighborhood knew. They all talked—laughed—about her rolling that big sedan down the street like a Sherman tank. But she’d been militant about keeping her independence, and they’d all enabled her.
It was everybody’s fault. Maybe least of all the old lady who didn’t know what she couldn’t do and had never been made to face it.
He needed to get all that shit out of his way so
he could get back to the hospital. When he’d left, Fitz had been out of surgery and recovery, just moved to the ICU.
Becker had been outside the waiting room, pacing the corridor, when they’d moved him. If Fitz weren’t such a big guy, he probably wouldn’t have recognized him. They’d shaved his head, all that mess of reddish-brown hair gone, and most of his head was wrapped in thick bandages. They’d taken his beard, too. His face was a mottled, swollen mess. But the worse thing was the contraption he was bolted into, like a box around his head. Screws straight into his skull.
Kari, Fitz’s old lady, had walked along with the gurney, holding his slack hand, the epitome of exhausted anxiety.
Becker had followed, ignoring the nurses trying to convince him that the ICU was for families only. The Bulls were his family. Fitz had told Becker once, over a lot of whiskey, that he was the closest thing he’d ever had to a father. That bar was low, but Becker had cleared it. He was family, dammit.
Kari hadn’t objected to Becker being present while the doctor talked to her. She was new to the club, but she’d slid right in, making friends with the old ladies and understanding intuitively where the club belonged in Fitz’s life, and where she belonged in the club. So Becker got the full report with her, straight from the doctor.
Fitz’s skull was fractured in two places. Severe swelling in his brain. A ruptured disc in his neck. Dislocated shoulder, fractured ribs, broken hip. All because a cute little old lady took a turn too wide, panicked, and stomped on the gas, driving her nearly indestructible old tank into a building. That was their best guess about how it had gone down.
When the doctor reported that, despite all his injuries, Fitz was in serious but stable condition and already showing remarkable strength, Becker had rounded up the Bulls—the whole club was in the waiting room—and worked out vigil shifts. Unless a Bull was facing imminent death, in surgery, or they didn’t know his status yet, or an old lady was giving birth, the club made an effort not to overwhelm a waiting room. Their presence tended to intimidate the other families.
The club asked a lot of hospital staff, mainly in the form of looking the other way while they broke all kinds of policy, so they tried to be respectful and keep goodwill on their side. But they never left a Bull alone, either. So they took shifts, in twos and threes, and kept watch over their brother.
Gargoyle and Caleb were standing vigil now, and Becker hadn’t gotten a call since he’d left. At this point, no news was probably good news. But he needed to get back there and see for himself.
But Sage slept peacefully in his arms, and that was a whole other mountain of complicated thoughts and feelings. When he’d come home, he’d been exhausted and depressed. Totally fried. Seeing her car still in his driveway, knowing she was inside waiting for him, had eased him before he’d swung off his Softail. Going to his room and seeing her asleep under the glow of his bedside lamp, her black hair fanned over the pillow, had made his home seem homier than it had ever been.
He hadn’t fucked her last night. After that shocking and brilliant blow job, he’d carried her to bed intending to do exactly that, but once he was horizontal, he’d been just too damn tired to see it through. All he’d wanted was comfort and peace, and she’d been there offering it to him. So he’d turned out the lamp, curled up with her, and closed his eyes.
Sleep had never come for him, but rest had. Just holding her in the quiet room, under the covers, had lightened his load. Listening to her sleeping breath, feeling it move through her body, had put him in something like a trance, and that alone had been enough to give him some new energy. With a cup of coffee or two, he thought he could get through the day.
But what to do about this little girl? She thought she was so tough, had such a hard life—and she was, she did. But she wasn’t prepared for his toughness, his life.
He’d had girlfriends before; he’d even been in love a couple of times. The sign of its seed, the way he felt when he was with someone he could grow to love, was always the same, and tonight, he’d recognized it with Sage. That was why he’d been trying not to fuck her. Not only her age—for a quick fuck, her age didn’t matter, so long as it was legal. But it wouldn’t be as simple as that, not for either of them.
His relationships had never lasted, and it had always been his fault. The balance between his club and his woman had eluded him, and the woman had always felt slighted. Rather than hurt and be hurt anymore, he’d given it up. It was one thing, though, when two people of similar age and maturity parted ways. It hurt, but everybody knew they’d survive it and move on. He didn’t want to hurt this little girl, who’d lived a life full of hurt already.
He wanted her; that was the thing. The trust she put in him so readily, it closed the window on a draft that blew through him. When it came right down to it, maybe all his reasons for pushing her away didn’t make much sense. He was trying to treat her like a child, but she came at him like a woman. Young, yes, but not immature, not ignorant or innocent of life’s dark corners. As she’d pointed out more than once.
The Bulls family was full of women Becker would have thought wholly incompatible with their world. Shit, Gunner’s old lady, Leah, an actual preacher’s daughter, had come into the club at about Sage’s age, and she’d made herself right at home. She’d stood strong through the trouble in ’98, when she’d been taken and hurt, and her life before the Bulls had been far easier than Sage’s. Not easy, but definitely easier.
Gunner was much closer to Leah’s age, though.
Did that matter? It felt like it should. Nearly a quarter-century between him and Sage. A whole generation.
But it clearly didn’t matter to her. Here she was, lying next to him, naked and sleek, and he couldn’t think of anything really solid why her age should matter to him.
She sighed in her sleep and squirmed, and Becker’s cock, already hard just from thinking of her, strained forward. He needed to get moving, the day would be long and fraught as it was, but it was early, too early for much business to get done yet. He stroked a hand over her shoulder, down her arm, over her hand, her hip. At her thigh, he lifted, pulling it gently back, setting it on his leg, opening her up. Sliding his hand between her thighs, he pushed his fingers through her folds. She trimmed, instead of shaving, and her hair was soft and sparse, a tickle over his fingertips.
Another soft sigh, and she tried to roll to her back, but he held her in place on her side. “Shhh, be still,” he breathed over her cheek. “You awake?”
“Mmm. Mm-hm.”
“Do you know where you are?”
Again, she tried to turn toward him, and again, he held her. So she turned her head. Her makeup was smeared around her eyes, but she still managed to be cute as all hell. “Hi.”
“Hey there, shortcake.” He moved his fingers, grazing her clit, and she shuddered and went wet. Chuckling, he brushed his nose over her cheek. “I want to fuck you now.”
Her smile was brighter than the morning sun. “’Bout fuckin’ time!”
Yet again she tried to roll and he stopped her, this time using more obvious force. “Uh-uh. Like this. Okay?”
She nodded. “But you need a condom.”
He tilted his head toward the nightstand before her. “In the drawer.”
Stretching her arm out, she opened the drawer and found the box. Becker was impressed to watch her manage to extricate a packet with one hand while he ran his tongue along her shoulder and neck and played his fingers between her thighs. She moaned and fluttered but still got a packet and opened it.
He took it from her and moved back, took his arm out from under her—still totally dead, but it returned quickly and uncomfortably to life—and rolled the condom on. Taking his direction, she stayed on her side and watched him over her shoulder.
When he was ready, he got his arm under her again, this time so he could wrap it around her and get hold of a pierced little nipple. Her tits were absolutely perfect, and the feel of one in his hand, that nipple tight with need, watered hi
s mouth. He resettled her leg on his and guided his cock into her pussy.
He felt her resistance at once, and her moan had an edge of wary surprise. Without pushing more, he lifted his gaze and found her eyes wide with worry.
“I’m scared of that beast,” she said on a shy chuckle. “Go slow.”
He was pretty well endowed and had been fucking regularly since he’d gotten out of prison, so it wasn’t the first time he’d been bigger than the slot he was going for. He knew what to do—because he wasn’t bigger than she could take, not girth-wise, at least. She just wasn’t ready.
“I won’t hurt you.” Only his tip was inside her so far. That kind of restraint was not easy, the most sensitive part of his cock so close to what it wanted, held just on the quivering edge of satisfaction, but it would be worth it. “Okay, easy,” he whispered at her ear. “Close your eyes and feel my hands.” She obeyed at once, tucking her head against his. He played with her tit, tugging lightly at the barbell, twisting it, extending it. At the same time, he teased her clit, and pushed down to stroke her folds where they gripped him. He nosed her hair away and kissed her neck, laving his tongue over her hot skin. He took his time, driving himself crazy with unmet need at its maximum endurance, driving her up to the same place, where she would be ready for all he would give her. Where she’d crave it.
She responded like a champ, soon writhing and moaning, gasping, quaking, her hands flailing. Becker thought he’d go mad with the effort of holding back while every move and sound she made was like an electric shock straight to his cock. Finally, she was wild and begging, entirely focused on the pleasure he gave her. While she wasn’t paying attention, he pushed in a couple of inches past his tip. She cried out, but not in pain. He tugged a little harder on that perfect nipple and pushed in another couple inches. And then, suddenly, she took over, rocketing her hips back, taking the remaining half of him in all at once.
She was tight and hot and so fucking free in his arms, and he was so stretched to his limits that he nearly shouted as he filled her up. For a few seconds, they both went still, shocked by the feel of it, this first moment of complete connection.
Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8) Page 9
