He set me on the counter.
I had not recovered from the Groom and Bride Maneuver when, for the first time, he got out a washcloth, wet it with warm water, pressed it between my legs and cleaned me.
Rinse, and I watched as he cleaned me from him.
Another rinse, and he draped it neatly over the sink (exactly what I would do).
And in another surprise move, he caught me under the arm with a swing and I was on his back.
On.
His.
Back.
Playful and sweet.
Oh my God.
This man.
I tucked my thighs to his hips, wrapped my arms around his neck, and he flipped the light switch as he carried me out and dropped me down beside the bed.
He handed me my shorts, panties and cami, reached to grab his pajama pants, we dressed and Axl pulled me into bed.
He yanked the covers up and this time he wound himself up in me, front to front.
“I don’t think, ever in my life, I’ve initiated sex,” I admitted.
“Time for me to buy a diary. Though, no heart stickers, but definitely a thick black Sharpie to record how fuckin’ thrilled I am I was your first.”
I started giggling.
He touched his mouth to mine while I did it, again when I was done, then tucked my face in his throat.
“Go to sleep, Hattie.”
“Okay, Axl.”
“Thanks for the fantastic head and the ride of a lifetime.”
I was giggling again.
Through it I said, “I can’t go to sleep if you’re being sweet and funny.”
“I’ll shut up.”
I didn’t want him to, but I did want him to sleep. He’d had a trying day.
So I didn’t say anything.
Not much time passed before a certain feline made her way up our bodies.
Cleo stopped with a pair of paws on me at my upper arm, and the way I felt them, the other pair was on Axl.
I felt her censure through the dark as she stared down at us.
She then jumped clear and I suspected she was done with us and had gone to sulk somewhere free of the humans until Axl said super quietly, “She’s at my feet.”
“She still loves her daddy.”
He gave me a squeeze.
And with the gang all there, settled in and safe, finally, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tripped
AXL
It wasn’t the time.
He wasn’t ready for it.
He wasn’t sure Hattie was ready for it.
But it happened.
The next morning.
After a quick fuck, a quick shower, and Hattie launching into getting ready for Lottie’s brunch bridal shower at Jet Chavez’s, Axl made some calls.
First, they had to hit Hattie’s place to get her present, then he was going to drop her at the party, and with all the women there, the men were going to meet.
It was time to go, but when he went to the bathroom to hustle her ass up, she wasn’t there.
She wasn’t in the bedroom either.
He used that door to the living room to see if somehow she got past him and went to the deck, when he saw her in the living room, the handle of a cat toy with a feather on the end of it in her hand.
Cleo was nowhere to be seen, and he was about to tease Hattie about her ongoing efforts to steal his cat’s affections when he noticed why Cleo wasn’t playing (if there was one thing his cat loved, she loved to play).
Hattie had lost focus on the toy and was staring with not a small amount of interest at the piece on the chest in his front window.
He felt a clutch in his chest, and it wasn’t the first time.
He shouldn’t have bought it.
He should sell it.
He just couldn’t.
“Babe, we gotta go,” he called, and he hadn’t managed to hide that clutch sounding in his voice.
She started, and her head turned his way.
“You okay?” she asked.
Yep.
She heard it.
“Yeah, but we gotta get on the road.”
Her study of him became acute. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” he repeated his lie. “Ready to go?”
She nodded.
And she was.
That day, it was the red dress day, he saw, and unfortunately, no matter how gorgeous she looked in it, he had to agree it was a good call she didn’t wear it to his parents’.
Because it had a short, flirty skirt, a halter-like top with a straight edge under her collarbone and slender straps, and those straps crossed over her bare back. She wore her big gold hoops with it and a less-dressy pair of gold high-heeled sandals.
And unlike the yellow dress she’d worn to meet his folks—which his mom was right, was effortless and chic—the red dress said she was an adorable, but hot fuck.
And she was.
But his father would have torn that apart like a vulture.
Due to the way that night went, the discussion of what Hattie did for a living didn’t come up.
That red dress would have pushed it in that direction, and it would have been Hattie in the firing line and Axl blowing his stack.
So yeah.
It was good they avoided that.
They got in his Jeep and she picked Supreme Queen Grayfur to call out good-bye to Cleo so he was smiling when he got behind the wheel.
But that smile didn’t last long.
Hattie didn’t miss it.
“You’re not okay,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
“I’m sorry this stuff is hanging over all you guys’ heads.”
That wasn’t what he was thinking about.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Like you said, it’ll all be okay,” she assured him.
Shit.
“I know. That’s all good. I’m not worried about that, Hattie.”
“Okay,” she said hesitantly.
Shit.
She did not need to think he was worried about that, because she was being super chill about all that was going down. She hadn’t freaked once.
But if she thought he was worried about it, she might start worrying about it.
“That piece is titled ‘Tripped.’ ”
“Pardon?”
“The one in the window. It’s titled ‘Tripped.’ ”
She said nothing, but he felt her gaze keen on him.
“I had a buddy in the service. We were tight. He stepped on a land mine.”
She gasped.
Yeah.
That was not even close to it.
“Axl,” she said gently, her fingers curling on his thigh.
“He was in front of me. I saw it.”
“Oh my God, Axl.” Her fingers squeezed tight and didn’t let up.
“So,” he cleared his throat, “yeah.”
“So that piece … called ‘Tripped’ …is a representation of a land mine exploding?”
Yep.
She got it.
“Yeah.”
“Why …I …it’s …” She pulled it together. “It’s an amazing piece, but why do you have it?”
“A vet who’s a friend of another buddy of mine, also from the army, got into art when he got out. That’s his thing. Making stuff like that into what you see in my living room.”
“Making an instrument of death beautiful?”
She sounded horrified.
“Fucking with your head that an instrument of death could be beautiful. It’s not. It’s hideous and destructive. It’s a political statement that the men who sit at desks, never in danger, never even under imminent threat, should be very clear in making decisions about when and why they send men and women into that. The cause should be just. It should be to protect our loved ones and our way of life. Not protect their financial interests.”
“Although I hope it goes without saying that I agree with all of that
, I hate to say this, but I didn’t get that from that piece,” she said carefully.
“That’s the point. You’ll never get it, Hattie, not really. And I thank fuck for that. They won’t either.”
She fell silent.
He spoke into it.
“I went to a show of his. I was in a mood. In a mood to support a fellow vet, because that piece cost a fuckin’ fortune. And in the mood to be confronted with that reality in my living room.”
“Axl—”
Christ, he’d started.
Now it didn’t seem like he could stop.
“The flag on my dresser came from his casket. He was a foster kid. He had no one else for them to give it to. No one but me. He fought hard not to get caught up in bad shit growing up. And part of that fight was to enlist and have a job that was good and right and far from all that in a way, even when he was out, he could go to school and stay away from it forever. He didn’t get that shot.”
She was rhythmically squeezing his thigh now.
But when he was done, she said, “Maybe we should talk about this when we have time and you’re not driving.”
“I don’t talk about it.”
“What?” she whispered, and there was a thread to it, worry, maybe even fear.
“To the guys … yeah.” That was a grunt. “To you, this is all there’s gonna be.”
“Honey—”
“That’s what it looked like, except in the middle of it, flying apart, there was a big Black man that had a huge smile, a sense of humor so wicked good, he could have been a standup comedian, and he was such a solid guy to his core, he never had anyone give it to him his entire life, but his sense of loyalty was second to none. That piece is what a land mine looks like when it’s triggered. Exactly.”
She didn’t say anything.
And he knew why.
“So that, Hattie, is why we won’t talk about it. Because now you have some small sense of how hideous and destructive it is, and outside this, I’m not gonna lay that on you.”
She slid her hand from his thigh.
He glanced at her.
Maybe for the first time since he met her, he couldn’t read her face, and it wasn’t because it was in profile.
And he did not like that at all.
“Babe, it’s too much. If I need to, I talk to the guys. If they need to, they talk to me. That doesn’t touch you.”
“What was his name?”
“Jordan.”
“First or last?”
“First. Full name Jordan Bridges.”
Then … nothing.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he muttered. “You got a shower to have fun at and—”
“I’m shy, and there are things about me that are messed up, but I’m not weak,” she declared.
“I know you’re not,” he said fast. “I know that, honey. You’re tougher than you think.”
“No,” she stated, and he knew she was looking at him. “I’m tougher than you think.”
Shit.
Now he was getting pissed.
“It’s not about that, and not to be a dick, babe, but it’s also not about you.”
She grew quiet again.
He drove.
They didn’t speak all the way to her house, and because they didn’t, because she didn’t set shit straight, he got more pissed.
So they also didn’t speak as they went in the back door and she grabbed her present.
And they didn’t speak all the way to Jet and Eddie’s.
He stopped, idling at the front, and looked to her.
“Text when you’re done,” he said shortly.
“All right,” she replied.
She turned to the door.
Then she turned back.
And laid him out.
“You’re right. It isn’t about me. It’s yours to give if you want, to withhold if you don’t. But something to think on, Axl, my situation with my father is mine. It isn’t yours. In a certain sense, it’s none of your business at all. But in what we’re building, it’s totally your business. If you let me struggle with that on my own, you’d be the shittiest boyfriend in history. You lost someone you obviously cared about deeply, and I cannot even imagine how it felt watching him die. I hate that for you. I hate it. But I need to know Jordan Bridges, not just because, with every passing minute I spend with you, you mean more to me, so I need to know you. But more importantly, I get the strong sense Jordan deserves to be known. I love how protective you are of me. But this isn’t going to work if you protect me from you.”
And with that highly successful speech, she turned from him and threw open her door.
Then, with a ballerina’s grace, she jumped down from his Jeep in her high heels, slammed the door, and holding Mac’s present to her chest, the gift bag with a bottle of champagne in it dangling from her other hand, she skip-ran up Jet’s front walk.
He watched the whole show.
And then he muttered, “Fuck.”
* * *
Mo was waiting for the elevator on the parking level and Axl would learn he was continuing to do a piss-poor job of hiding what he was feeling when Mo turned as Axl walked up to him and his big, bald head twitched.
Fantastic.
“Everything good?” Mo asked.
They had a deal.
They did not keep shit from each other.
Not ever.
And when this kind of thing came up, stuff that surfaced about when they served, absolutely, one hundred percent not ever.
“Hattie knows about Jordan,” he said as the elevator doors opened.
They walked in, Mo tagged the button, and turned to Axl.
“And?”
“I gave her the brief, and it was brief, and told her that was all she’d ever get. We won’t talk about it again.”
“Axe,” Mo said low.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Not a good call.”
“You gotta be ready to talk about this shit,” Mo stated. “I don’t know how this started, but you obviously weren’t ready to talk about it. Just tell her that. She’ll get it.”
“She reminded me that the fallout of her having a dad like she has isn’t mine unless she makes it mine, but I made it mine before she gave that to me.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
Mo didn’t reply.
“And she said if I let her deal with that on her own, I’m the shittiest boyfriend in history. And she’s right. She also said we won’t work if I protect her from me.”
“She’s right about that too,” Mo said carefully.
“How do you deal with it with Lottie?” he asked as the elevator doors opened.
They stepped out.
But they didn’t go to the office.
They stood in the hall and Mo answered, “I don’t, she does.”
“What?”
“She does,” he repeated. “To use the correlation Hattie’s making, you told me you laid it out for her dad. She didn’t have that conversation with him, you did. She wasn’t dealing with that, you were. Shit gets real for me, you guys aren’t close, Lottie rolls in. I feel it, she absorbs it. We all know there’s a never-ending well of it. She just wrings herself out so, when it comes again, she can suck it up.”
He hated that for Mo.
And he hated that for Mac.
And he didn’t want that for Hattie.
“And that doesn’t gut you?” he asked.
“I fuckin’ hate it. But she doesn’t. She loves me and that’s a part of me and she has all the patience in the world for it, all the time I need, because she has both of those for me in everything, and this is part of that everything.”
Shit.
With Hattie’s last speech she was telling him she was that kind of woman.
More.
She needed to be that woman for him.
“I fucked this up,” Axl stated the obvious.
“Listen to this, brother. If she is w
ho she needs to be for you, she would hate with everything she’s got that you feel that way. Text her. Tell her you’ll talk later. And I’ll bet you a thousand dollars standing here right now, you’ll get a text back in less than a minute.”
He pulled out his phone, saying, “I won’t take that bet.”
Mo grinned at him, it was slight, imperceptible to the untrained eye, but he did it.
He then slapped a hand on Axl’s shoulder that nearly sent him two inches into the floor.
Mo went to the office.
Axl stayed in the hall to text Hattie.
That didn’t go well. I was unprepared.
So fucking sorry I acted like an ass.
We’ll talk about it later, baby.
Enjoy the shower.
And he was barely inside the door to the office when his phone chimed.
You didn’t act like an ass.
We were both unprepared. I didn’t
handle it great either.
We’ll talk, but only when you’re
ready.
Now you badasses are only
allowed to plan an end to
whatever is going on.
Not take over the world.
xxx♥♥♥xxx♥♥♥
He grinned at her quip, but more, her indication they were okay.
So when he lifted his head and saw Mo’s eyes sharp on him, he jutted his chin.
Mo jutted his back.
He entered the conference room and noted immediately this business was getting crowded.
Their crew: Hawk, Mo, Boone, Aug, Mag, Jorge and Axl.
Nightingale’s team: Lee, his right-hand man Luke Stark, and his stealth guy, Vance Crowe.
Chaos: Rush Allen, their president, Tack Allen, their past president, also Shy Cage, Joker Steele and Dutch Black.
Sebring: Knight, and his first lieutenant, Rhashan.
Cisco: Brett and his driver, bodyguard and general Man Friday, Joe.
The cops: Eddie, Hank, Malik and Hawk’s two other best buds outside Tack, Mitch and Brock.
And last, a free agent, Ally Zano, sister to Hank and Lee, resident badass with a pussy.
Chairs had been brought in, but Mag, Vance, Joker, Dutch, Joe, Rhashan and Eddie had all opted to hold up various walls.
As Mo took his seat, Axl moved to stand by Mag.
“Right, let’s get this shit out of the way so we can all have a Saturday,” Hawk started it and then looked to him. “Axe, break down what you told me this morning.”
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 28
