Fuck, he thought. He hadn’t considered what it might look like when they kept moving her around, but he needed her in a job where she was safe, even when he couldn’t be there to watch over her all the time.
She continued, “Things are better now at the diner. It seems like Slate’s going to leave me there. I picked up some office work at another place; plus, I’m doing the books for Murphy’s Law.”
“The fuck you say?” The words were out before he even knew his mouth was open, and he felt her tense up at his brusque, questioning tone.
“Just…hedging my bets. I don’t want to be dependent on Mercy’s friends in the club, and I can pay my own way, Hoss. She and I have agreed on the split for expenses. But if I got dropped off another job, I wanted…needed to have a backup plan.” Her words were carefully spoken, selected so they wouldn’t rile him and he didn’t like the fact she felt she had to dance around things with him, guarding herself. Fuck, he thought again, I did this to myself.
“I think the diner is a sure thing, baby,” he said gently. “I didn’t want you working at Murphy’s, because it’s a Diamante bar. Is Fury aware you picked up those hours?”
“I’m not in the bar, only in the office, working on the books for Dale. They were a mess, and in the short time I worked there, I’d already started the process of getting them in order. I don’t have an accounting degree, but basic knowledge is all they need, and I picked that up from Mac and Nelly. So there’s no reason for Fury to be bothered about me helping out.” She pushed at his arm, tentatively testing to see if he would let her go, but he tightened his hold around her instead.
“I’ll deal with Dale and Fury,” he muttered, kissing the side of her head. He couldn’t have missed the tension flooding through her, but before he could say anything about her reaction, her phone ringing in her pocket interrupted their conversation. He relaxed his arms slightly and she pulled it out, touching the screen to accept the call.
“Hello?” He couldn’t hear the other person clearly, but knew it was female. “Oh, no. Okay. We’ll be home as soon as we can get back.” She twisted in his arms, looked up at him, and said, “Sammy’s not feeling well. How long before we can be home?”
“About forty-five minutes,” he responded, noticing some of her hair had escaped her ponytail, so he reached out to tuck it behind her ear, trailing his fingertips down her neck and drawing a shiver from her.
“Tell him I’ll be home in less than an hour, Luce. I’m so sorry,” she said then listened for a moment before disconnecting and putting her phone into her pocket. “Can we go?”
“Yeah, baby,” he said softly, leaning in to kiss her gently, loving the way her face softened when he did so. Tipping her chin up with his fingertips, he kissed her harder, tongue roughly stroking against hers, nipping at her lips. He slanted his head again, eating down her gasp at the hunger he revealed, then shut it down ruthlessly, pulling back to peck a final soft kiss on her lips. “Let’s get in the wind.”
Humor me
As promised, forty-five minutes later, they were walking into the apartment, Hoss’ hand wrapped around hers, fingers threaded together. Luce quietly gathered her brothers and shooed them out, telling Hope she had left a pizza warming in the oven and that Sammy had already gone to bed. Hope hurried into the bedroom to check on her son, finding him sleeping on his side, back to the door, covers pulled up to his ears. He didn’t seem overly warm to the touch or clammy, so she didn’t believe he was running a fever. Maybe it was a short-lived stomach bug, and he would be better in the morning. As she stood, she saw a shadow on the far wall, realizing she had walked away without a word, leaving Hoss standing alone in the living room.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, moving across the room towards him.
He looked past her, and one corner of his mouth edged up, but when she turned to look, it was only Sammy lying on the single bed wedged into the room at the foot of hers. “I called the diner, asked them to cover your shift in the morning. I suspect he’s going to be okay,” he said, reaching out to curl a hand around her waist and draw her out of the room. He left the door open a couple of inches, and then led her into the living room and towards the couch. Crap, she thought, hesitating as she wondered how to derail what looked to be an expected petting session.
“Hope, no, baby. I simply want to hold you while we talk some more.” He looked back at her, evidently sensing her reluctance. Nodding, she let him thread his fingers between hers again and followed him to the couch, smiling tentatively at him when he guided her down, lying back and positioning her between his body and the back of the sofa.
“What did you want to talk about?” She thought this was probably a safe question, since he already seemed to have an agenda. As long as they didn’t talk about her behavior in the park, letting him put his hand down her pants in full view of anyone who could have driven up. Granted, no one had come to the park, but they could have, and she had been so far gone in the experience she didn’t know if she would have even recognized an audience.
“The park,” he said softly, and she groaned silently. The one topic she didn’t want to discuss, and of course, that would be his focus. “I told you…I like you, Hope. I don’t want you to be worried about what you think I want, or embarrassed about anything we might do in the future. For me to help you down that road, we have to communicate, so we’re going to talk. And then, I have some questions for you, baby.”
She swallowed hard and nodded, waiting. When he didn’t say anything else, she bit her lip and asked, “What questions?”
His voice was quiet when he asked, “How many men have you been with, Hope?” Oh, God, this was where he decided she wasn’t worth it. Not worth his time, because she was stupidly unexperienced and didn’t know what she was doing. There had been no one since Cal, and he had been her first.
“One,” she said, feeling her lips trembling. Waiting for his dismissal of her, she was surprised when he didn’t react.
“How long were you with Suiter?” This question came fast on the heels of the other one, and he hadn’t seemed to stumble at the information on the number of lovers…lover. Maybe this didn’t have to be as scary as she feared.
“Only a few weeks.” The words came out strong, but she ducked her head to avoid his gaze until his fingers lifted her chin.
“Don’t do that, baby.” Leaning in, he softly kissed her then pulled back with a stern look. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart.” He said this quietly, and instead of the condescending one she might expect, the gentle expression he offered her was warm and sweet, yet somehow dark, with that darkness causing a flood of heat in her belly. “So one guy and a handful of times got you Sammy?”
“Yeah,” she said with a quick nod. “I was lucky.” That earned her a full smile and a rumbling laugh, and because of that, she knew he got it, so she continued, “I can’t picture my life without Sammy in it. I don’t want to imagine what it would be like. So yeah, I got lucky.”
“You like waking up in bed with me today?” The question startled her, because they hadn’t been in bed, not really. Okay, sure, technically the same bed, because they had been on the same mattress, but she had been under the sheets, and he had been lying on top of them. It had been so…right, waking up next to him. Felt like where she belonged. She wanted to answer him, get it right and make sure he knew how much she had liked it, had liked his hand curling around her shoulder, pulling her close. Making her feel cared for. Wanted.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “It was nice.” Inwardly she winced, Lame-o. ‘Nice’ isn’t what a man wants to hear.
“I thought it was nice, too. Hell, you’re sweet all the time, but you were completely…mmmm. Just waking up, all warm and sleepy and sexy as hell. Hell, yeah, you were exactly what I wanted, and I’d like it to be a regular thing between us. For it to be what I think we’re both going to want, we need to get you and Mercy into a three-bedroom place. For a couple weeks now, I’ve had a call into Myron, our money g
uy in Chicago, but he’s not moving fast enough for me, so I’ll see what I can find for us.” His hand curved around her cheek then threaded through her hair, and she found herself pressing into his touch like a cat seeking affection.
“I get you’ve got an independent streak, and it seems to me that you and Mercy need some time to get comfortable with this sisterhood thing you’ve got going on. I’m aware you need that time, or I’d move you into my place right now. I’ve got plenty of room for you and Sammy, but Mercy stayin’ at my house would cause problems elsewhere in my life, and I ain’t down for that. This leaves us with finding you girls a bigger place. Which we’re going to do.” His hand tightened in her hair, angling her head up so she had to look at him. “And, baby, we’re going to do it, because I loved what you gave me today. What I said was true; it was what I wanted. Everything I wanted right then.”
He paused, his fingers moving through her hair again. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, thick with desire. “I want more, Hope, and I’m going to want privacy from your son when I get that more. When I take you…when you let me take you, and you give that to me like you did today, I’m gonna need it to be just you and me.”
The whole time he was talking she was holding her breath, every spoken ‘but’ making her heart clench. Because until he began articulating it, she didn’t know she wanted it, but now she wanted everything he revealed. All of that, she wanted, right alongside him. She wanted to have him look at her like he did today, focused and intent, as if she was the most important and precious thing he had ever held in his arms.
“What would be wrong in having Mercy as a roommate?” she asked. His statement made her wonder about how friendly he had been with her sister in the past. Or if, under the surface niceness, he was like some of the women, shunning Mercy for things she was now sorry she had done.
“Because Deke, who is my brother, wants to get her on his bike permanently, and her stayin’ at my place would give her a reason to keep space between them. I ain’t gonna be that reason, and I also ain’t gonna give her an easy out like that.”
He shook his head. “You’ve met Deke; that man is an open mouth/insert foot kinda guy, and he doesn’t have a filter. Especially when he’s fucking himself in the head, and he would hugely fuck himself in the head over that. Mercy is a good friend, and he knows we’re friends. When she got mixed up in something ugly a few months back, I was here for days, taking care of her. We’re friends.”
There was a slight emphasis on that repeated word. The emphasis underlined what she believed he was about to say, and her stomach rolled with the sure knowledge as his words hit her, hard as punches to the chest, stealing her breath. “We fucked, once, a long time ago, but decided it wasn’t the thing for us, because friends are hard to come by.”
At his words, she stiffened and when he chuckled at her response, she began pushing at his chest, trying to get away in earnest. He slept with Mercy. Then, he had his hands in my pants today, she thought in a panic, pushing harder and trying to twist out of his embrace, her breath coming hard and fast as her throat tightened.
“Baby, hold the fuck still,” he growled when she continued to struggle, even after he had tightened his arms around her in what felt like a warning. “Did you not hear what I said?” He paused, and she stilled, but didn’t answer. “Answer me, Hope. What did you hear me say?”
“You slept with my sister,” she whispered.
After a long pause, he prompted, “What else, Hope?”
“Nothing else. What was there to hear? You slept with my sister, and now you think you want to sleep with me. I don’t know why, or how it should make me feel, so I think I’m going to pass on the whole keeping it in the family thing.” Holy crap, she thought. Where did that attitude come from? It’s going to piss him off for sure.
Sure enough, his arms tightened around her again, but his voice was soft when he said, “Always so quick to imagine the worst. What I said was yeah, she and I fucked. One time. Only once, baby. It was a long time ago, a lifetime away…more than three years. I didn’t sleep with her. I fucked her bent over the back of a chair in the clubhouse, never kissed her. Never touched her in any way that mattered. I got done, got off, threw away the condom, and sat back and watched the next brother take his turn, because that’s what she wanted.”
She swallowed hard, listening to him, wanting to believe.
“Next day, we had a chat, and I tried to tell her what she was doing would turn around and bite her in the ass, but she wouldn’t even hear me out. I told her I wouldn’t be part of her self-destruction.” He lifted a hand, smoothing her hair back from her face.
“The list of what I did and did not do are very different, Hope. I never held her in the middle of a thunderstorm, feeling shaken to my core, because something that beautiful would come to me for comfort." His hand stroked through her hair again, the pad of his thumb caressing her cheek. "I never had her on the back of my bike, ever. You’re the first to be behind me, baby."
Leaning in, he kissed her softly, and then whispered, "I never fingered her, drawing it out for nearly an hour, just so I could watch her face as she broke apart, because I needed to hear my name spoken in passion from her lips. Never felt like I would fall to pieces and lose my shit unless I were near her, touching her, holding her…loving her.”
Now she really was sure she couldn’t breathe, because things were beginning to look wavy around the edges.
“In all that, I wanna know you’re holding onto the fact you feel like something special to me, baby.” His fingers found their way underneath her chin, lifting her face to his as he leaned in, pressing his forehead to hers. Lips barely brushing hers, he said, “If I thought it was the best thing for you to move in with me today, we’d already be on our way. You need Mercy, and, whether you’ve got a handle on it yet or not, she needed you in a desperate way. I think the two of you are saving each other. Make no mistake, I am going to want my time with you, a lot of it, so get used to having my ass around.” He kissed her softly, and then rubbed the tip of his nose along hers.
Raising his voice oddly, he said, “And I’m going to want private time with Mommy, so get used to that, too.”
There was a noise in the hallway, and she twisted in time to see movement. Jerking her gaze back to Hoss, she hissed, “Was Sammy watching us?”
“Watching and listening to that last little bit.” He laughed when she felt the blood leave her face, and she was successful in pushing off the couch this time, rolling over his torso to get to her feet. She stood, frowning down at his smiling face, upturned to her. “He didn’t hear anything bad, baby.”
Ignoring his words, she trotted to her bedroom and opened the door to find Sammy sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring at her. He was scowling hard, and she flirted with the idea of avoidance before she took a breath, and then pulled the door closed behind her. “How’s the tummy, bud?” Reaching out her hand, she ignored his dodging duck, firmly placing her palm against his forehead to find his skin still cool, unfevered. “You need a bucket?”
“What did he mean he wanted us to move in with him? We’re living with Aunt Mercy now, and she makes you happy.” He had ceased his attempts to get away from her hand and was scowling up at her around her arm. “Why would you want to leave?”
Crap. This was not a topic she would be discussing with her son; it didn’t matter what he may have overheard just now. “That’s the thing; I don’t. Not right now. And, Hoss knows it. He was merely making his wish list. Kinda like you do at Christmas.” She sat on the edge of the bed, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and pulling him into a hug. “Talk to me about the tummy.”
“I feel fine,” he said brusquely, still stiff and unyielding in her arms. “He was here this morning. Then he came back, and now he’s here again. Is he moving in with us?”
“No, sweetie,” she said softly. “He has his own place. He’s enjoying becoming friends, and when you make friends, you want to hang out with those peopl
e. Like you do with Jonny and Kane. You enjoy hanging out with them, right?”
He nodded, leaning into her a little. “Why do I have to get used to him?”
“Hmmm?” She made an inquiring noise, not certain how to articulate something she didn’t even understand herself.
“He said he was going to want time with you, and I needed to get used to it. Why? Why can’t things just stay as they are? Why do they hafta change, Mom?” Was that a tearful quaver in his voice? Crap.
“He wants to get to know us a little. It takes time to build a friendship, bud. You know that.” He leaned into her a little more and then, with an enormous yawn, suddenly sagged against her, letting go of whatever emotion had him so stiff and upright. She started swaying slightly back and forth. “If your tummy is okay, then you need to head back to sleep, bud. I love you, bunches and oodles.”
“Love you too, Mommy,” he yawned and sighed, “ice cream and noodles,” he finished, sliding out of her arms and under the sheet. “Is he gonna be here in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, leaning down to tug the covers up to his ears. “Would it be okay if he were?”
“Yeah,” he yawned. “But you’re my mom, so I gotta take care of you. I’ll,” he yawned again, “let him know the score. Bring my D-game,” he was mumbling now, skidding down the hill into sleep. “Hit the ice hard,” he sighed, and she thought he was done, but then he mumbled, “gotta keep my best girl safe. Mac told me so. ‘Sponsibilities of the good boys.” Another sigh, this one followed by a small snore, then, “No lies.”
Standing there for a moment, she traced his features with her fingertips, a caress he would never allow in the light of day. He had told her seriously a few weeks ago he was too old for her to love on him all the time, so she tried to respect that and give him a little space, but she missed holding him like she had done tonight.
Rebel Wayfarers MC Boxset 3 Page 15
