by Lynn Burke
“I’m a fucked up, callous bastard, Pia,” I said, still unmoving on her couch, my focus once more on my hands.
“I wondered over your childhood,” she finally said. “I’ve seen a lot of kids experience similar things you did. Makes it easier for me to spot.”
A dry huff of laughter moved my lips as she shifted, her knee close as fuck to my leg. “Even in an old fuck like me?”
“You’re not old.”
“I’m forty-three,” I said, finally meeting her gaze again after spilling my baggage in a vomit of bad memories.
“Oh.” She smirked, her gaze caressing my face and settling on my lips.
“What?”
“I’m thirty-three.”
A once pure, wholesome woman of thirty-three who’d allowed a criminal, a murderer, between her thighs without a single touch of foreplay.
“How’d I entice a good woman like you to bend over a goddamn couch?” I grumbled, although thankful as fuck.
She lifted her hand and feathered a fingertip over my lower lip before I could react.
My breath caught, and I jerked backward from the sear of energy racing over my entire face.
“Sorry!” She clasped her hands on her lap and swallowed, her eyes wide. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated, “I didn’t mean to, but I really like you … you make me feel … alive.”
“That was the bike ride.” I tossed the words out, hoping to ease the tension crushing my chest.
Pia laughed, the sound doing more to soothe the anxiety that had rushed over me at her touch than my flippant remark had done.
“I’ll take you for a ride whenever the fuck you want, little lamb,” I heard myself say—and I meant every fucking word, fragile heart in my chest I didn’t know I still owned be damned.
Chapter Ten
Pia
Holy wow.
Ryker hadn’t touched me with more than his cock and groin area—and I’d never had better. I yearned for more with a deep ache beyond lust. That moth to flame crap hadn’t ever been truer in my mind.
I wanted to curl in his lap and listen to his heartbeat. I wanted to cuddle in bed, our limbs entwined, lips touching and tasting. Needed both like my hands and heart needed to offer the affection he obviously still craved but shielded himself from.
He claimed he couldn’t give me what I needed, but we’d made progress, though, and I wasn’t one to give up easily.
For two hours, we talked, late into the night. Knowing Dasia lay safe in a bed far away from her foster father eased my mind and allowed me freedom I hadn’t realized I’d been missing out on.
For years.
I managed to brush against a clothed part of Ryker a few times in those hours, and he didn’t shy away like he had when I’d instinctively touched his soft lips.
“Is it just skin on skin?” I finally asked after about the third time I bumped his leg with my knee while rearranging myself on the couch.
“It’s easier to ignore the PTSD when there’s something between my skin and another person, yeah,” he said with a shrug.
He pretended nonchalance about quite a bit, but I wasn’t fooled by his feigned bravery or hardened heart.
I wondered over the sleeping teddy bear inside him, the one his father had smothered and laid to rest thirty-some years earlier. With the way his gaze lingered on my lips and my chest, I expected he longed to touch—just couldn’t get over his fear of rejection.
“Can we try?” I asked, the side of my head rested against the back of the couch as I faced him.
He gave me a side eye but without a trace of annoyance. “Try what?”
“Me touching you—through your clothes.”
The tension rolled off him like fog off a can of dry ice, shivering over my skin.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, hating the disappointment stinging my heart. “I can do without.”
For now.
A yawn cracked my jaw, tearing up my eyes, and I glanced at the clock on the wall. Two in the morning. I giggled. “I haven’t been up this late since college. You’re a bad influence on me, Ryker McGrath.”
“Don’t I know it.” Ryker exhaled and stretched his neck side to side. “I ought to get going.”
“Stay.” The offer flew from my lips without thought, but I knew as I said the single word, I didn’t want anything more. The thought of being alone in the apartment I’d spent over two years in nearly choked off my air.
He hesitated, giving me hope. “I’ve never slept in bed with a woman.”
“My bed is plenty big for both of us,” I rushed to spew, grasping at straws. “One side for you, one side for me. The pillow on the opposite side of mine is always unruffled when I wake every morning. Promise.”
We studied one another in the soft lamplight I’d turned on in place of the overhead lights.
“I’ve always wondered—” Ryker snapped his jaw shut, his eyes taking on that shut-off glaze I didn’t like.
“So, let’s go find out.” I hopped up and strode back down the hallway before he could argue or make excuses, hoping he’d follow me like he’d done when I’d invited him into my apartment.
I plumped the unused pillows and pulled back the blankets on the left side of my bed, keeping focus on the bedroom doorway in my periphery.
Ryker filled it as I moved around the foot of my king sized bed to ready my own side.
“That’s a big fucking bed.”
“I like my space,” I stated, pulling back my covers, not about to tell him I moved around a lot in my sleep even if I didn’t touch the extra pillow. That would definitely send him out the door.
I slid off my shorts, and bit back a smirk as he groaned when I lifted my tank off overhead. My breasts swayed as I leaned down to crawl into bed, and he cursed under his breath.
“Hit the lights before you crawl in here,” I told him, closing my eyes and scooting down a bit into the soft mattress cradling my body.
Silence.
Another curse.
The light switch flicked off.
A minute later, my ears strained in the darkness as clothing rustled. My bed dipped, the tension in the body on the far side radiating over toward me.
“Ryker.”
“Hmm?” he grunted.
“Are you naked?”
“Yeah.”
Warmth grew between my thighs, and I breathed in the clean scent of his soap wafting off his body a mere two feet or so away. “Too hot?” I asked.
“I’m good.”
I sighed, telling myself to sleep, but I couldn’t think about anything but his naked body, and how good he’d felt thrusting deep inside mine. My nipples ached as the warmth turned to wetness, coating my panties.
“Ryker?”
“Hmm?” he grunted again.
I sighed again, knowing that pushing could very well mess up the progress we’d made. “Thank you for today.”
“My pleasure, little lamb.”
Hoping we could pick up where we’d left off in the morning, I rolled to face the wall, giving him the space he needed. After maybe ten minutes of tense silence while I replayed his bending over my couch, I still couldn’t sleep.
“Ryker?” I said, rolling onto my back again.
“Hmm?” he questioned, not sounding tired in the least or annoyed I bugged him.
“Turn on the light.”
The bed shifted as he rolled toward the bed stand and my lone lamp. A click brightened the room, and I blinked my eyes to adjust.
He rolled back toward me, and we studied one another from the short distance separating us.
I wanted to spew out the words about being horny, wanting his cock, the wetness between my thighs, but bit my tongue. Never in my life had I been such a forward, randy woman, desperate for a man’s touch.
“What’s on your mind, little lamb?”
“You.”
“And?”
“Me.”
A smirk lifted the corner of his lips, and I nearly swooned at the rush of ar
ousal swelling through me.
“Use your words like a big girl,” Ryker said, heat growing in his steady gaze.
“I want you to fuck me again.”
“Goddamn.” He groaned and eyed my headboard. “Think you can grab hold and not let go?”
I shimmied off my panties fast as a cop chasing down a criminal and shoved down the blankets to bare myself, fully intending to roll onto my knees and stick my ass into the air for his taking.
“No.”
I paused on one knee, my brow furrowing as he rolled on a condom he’d fished from his pants on the floor.
Ryker swallowed, his focus unwavering from my face. “I want to watch you when you come around my dick, Pia.”
A rush of tenderness and absolute delicious need rolled over me and stole my breath.
I laid back and grasped the headboard’s bars, hoping like hell—praying even—I could keep my hands firmly locked in place. Not seeing his face while bent over the couch had made it easier to keep from reaching out. Touching. Feeling warmth and familiarizing my hands with every dip and ridge of his body.
He rose to his knees, focus slipping down over my prone, shivering form, and I drank in my fill of hard muscle, pecs, and abs I hadn’t expected for his age, silly me and my lack of knowledge concerning the male body. Tattoos scattered across his torso. The shaft already swollen between his powerful looking thighs.
He moved in close, and I didn’t dare twitch a muscle, didn’t even arch as he pressed into my more than ready body. My arms shook, breath stuttered, heart thundered, but I kept my shaking thighs wide to keep from touching him too much.
His eyes shown greener than I’d noted before, with an intensity that rushed adrenaline through me and arousal to seep around his buried cock. He set his hands on the mattress by my shoulders, dragged out, pulling a whimper from me, and thrusting back in to catch my breath again.
I set my feet on the mattress—couldn’t help myself—and lifted to meet him on the next thrust.
“Goddamn,” he said through clenched teeth, his gaze dipping down between us where our bodies joined.
The scent of sex, the sounds of very wet sex, enveloped me in heat that rushed through me from head to toes. I lost myself in his eyes, and when he buried deep and ground his pelvis against me, my climax arched my back, brushing my chest against him—and he grunted, filling the condom rather than me like I suddenly wished he’d done.
****
A vibrating buzz woke me, and I blinked open one eye to find a hint of light around my shades—and a heavy limb over one of my spread legs.
Hot breath fanned the side of my face, and I held still while fully waking with realization we’d cuddled a bit while sleeping.
The buzz came again, and Ryker shifted, his semi-hard ridge brushing against my thigh.
Oh…
I wanted to press into him, wrap my hand around his length, feel the satiny skin, swipe at a bead of pre-cum—
Ryker tensed at the third buzz. “Fuck.” He ripped his leg away from mine and rolled to the edge of the bed, leaning over to fish in what I assumed to be his clothes.
Cell in hand, he sat up once more. “Jenny?”
I shifted onto my side, hands beneath my pillow to keep from soothing the ridged set of his shoulders as he listened to his sister. He ran a hand over his scalp, his calloused palm scratching at the hint of stubble he must shave off every morning.
“Fuck,” he said again, grabbing up his pants. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
I scrambled to sit as he yanked on his leathers, his back still toward me. Lifting the sheet over my bare chest kept my hands from reaching for him to soothe whatever hurt I could feel rolling off him in waves.
“Ryker?”
“Mom died in her sleep.”
Nonchalant, but hardly flippant—but he didn’t fool me. He’d told me she lived on borrowed time, that the hospice nurses didn’t expect her to make it much past the weekend.
Sunday, a day of rest, and I knew he would do no such thing.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as he pulled his t-shirt down over his head. “Can I do anything to help?”
He shook his head and sat once more to pull on his sock and boots. “I appreciate the offer, but no.”
Worrying the inside of my lip, I watched him finish dressing and grab up his cut off the foot of the bed. He finally paused and faced me.
He’d hardened his eyes, shutting me out from whatever emotions he experienced. “Thank you for that,” he said, motioning toward my bed with his chin. “I’m glad I got to experience that first with you.”
“Did it upset you?” I asked, keeping a close watch on his face. “Waking up with our legs touching?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched his beard. “A little.”
“Maybe we can try again sometime.” My suggestion came out needier sounding that I’d wanted, but he nodded, keeping me from crushing disappointment.
“I’ll give you a call.”
Said every man to their one night stands, I heard in my head as he strode out the door of my bedroom, disappearing into the hallway. My ears strained for his boots on tile as he passed through the kitchen and into the tiny foyer. The front door clicked shut quietly behind him, and I sank back into bed, my eyes closing, my heart aching.
Not being able to offer comfort when a person needed it really sucked. Not knowing how he felt about me sucked even harder.
Chapter Eleven
Ryker
I hadn’t expected one goddamn ounce of grief over Mom’s passing, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt at all. The fact I couldn’t even fucking hug my sister—she wrapped her arms around herself while the coroner rolled Mom’s body out the condo’s door—pissed me the hell off.
The need to punch the shit out of something, demolish a face, shed some blood, rode my shoulders tense to the point I caved and poured myself three shots of whiskey before focusing on the shit I needed to take care of.
A call to my lawyer later that morning set paperwork in motion. A call to Vigil let him know I’d be staying in Southie for at least another two days.
We didn’t plan a wake or funeral, just a simple incineration of Mom’s body and a vat of ashes I had no wish to see or touch. Jenny would keep the memento or whatever the shit one called a jar of burned human flesh and bone—I didn’t give a fuck what she did with them.
Tuesday afternoon, I took to the open road, hightailing it up North 95 toward home. I’d wanted to call Pia to let her know I was leaving Southie, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Waking to find my leg over hers, my bare dick against her soft thigh had fucked with my head. I’d wanted more. Wanted to roll her beneath me, demand she wrap her legs around me, dig her fingernails into me, rip at my hair and my beard while I fucked us both raw.
Goddamnit.
My dick swelled in my leathers, the rumbling vibrations of my bike beneath me making me harder than hell.
I wanted more. Wanted her.
Fear clawed at the back of my mind, even as lust to sink balls deep into her sweet pussy while she wrapped herself around me, filled my head. Fucking war—and I needed another drink.
I drove straight to the club, parked, and stalked inside, nearly slamming the door against the wall as I strode through the entryway.
“Ryker!” Vigil called from the end of the bar, and I shot him a scowl. “Pour the man a shot,” he told the prospect manning the bar after a glance at my face. “Leave the bottle.”
I sat on the stool beside Vigil and nodded at the prospect who hooked me up. Two shots burned their way to my guts before I felt I could breathe again.
“How are you doing, brother?”
“Fucking fine as fuck,” I muttered, pouring myself a third, my dick at least a half-mast rather than raging and leaking.
“Got shit taken care of?”
“Yep.” I slammed back my third, ready for oblivion to take away the goddamn emotions hurdling over me like a bunch of fucking g
azelles intent on escaping a lion.
We sat in silence as I sucked down whiskey, one shot after another.
Devil joined us for a time, offering condolences—but Stone and Warden along with their old ladies didn’t show, thank fuck. Couldn’t handle seeing that shit when I couldn’t get Pia out of my head.
I crashed on Vigil’s couch in his office rather than attempt to drive home, too damn drunk to care about the stench of the old piece of shit and the dozens of old cum stains from past fucks on its cushions.
Darkness finally took over my mind, my emotions, and I rested for the first time in forty-eight hours.
The next morning, a few brothers and prospects were in the club when I stumbled out into the land of the living. No one bothered checking in with me or even greeting me for that matter as I stalked through the club intent on the door. I expect my scowl kept them away.
Once home, I showered and relieved the ache in my balls, but once finished and dressed again, I took note of the heavy silence inside my house. Three bedrooms, two of which sat empty of anything. A large eat-in kitchen and nice den I’d spent some cash to outfit with leather sofas, a big fucking TV for football season right around the corner, and a loaded liquor cabinet in the corner.
I eyed the bottle of whiskey, but my stomach churned. The amber liquid disappeared down the goddamn drain while I swore to never drink the shit again.
Slapping a steak on the grill appealed more, so I did just that—and sat alone at my table, wondering why I suddenly couldn’t stand the quiet. The peace of being alone.
I called Klingon an hour later, expecting he’d finally be up and around out in Vegas.
“Fuck, man, sorry to hear that, brother,” he said when I told him about Mom. While he’d had a better childhood than I did, he’d always had a soft spot for my mom even when I didn’t.
“Met a woman,” I blurted out the next bit of news and clenched my eyes shut tight at my stupidity.
“The fuck?”
I snorted. “Not gonna ask me how that’s working out?” He knew exactly what I’d meant—and fucking laughed.
