I looked up at him with a shy smile. “You miss me or something?”
He looked away from the television and nodded. “If I’d known you walked around in your underwear, I would’ve been over here every night. You like history?”
I didn’t, but nodded anyway, and he settled on a World War II documentary. I tried to stay awake, but he kept stroking my back and my eyes drifted shut not long after it started.
I awoke to my face being tickled. I shuddered and moved away, but it didn’t stop. I finally popped one eye open and found Mike kneeling by the side of the couch with his lips pressed against my cheek. His beard must’ve been what woke me.
“I got a call. I have to go,” he whispered softly.
“What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s just a little after three.”
I turned enough to free my arm from the back of the couch and looped it around the back of his neck, pulling his mouth down over mine. “I want you to stay,” I breathed against his lips.
Screw the rules.
If it was the next morning, maybe it counted as the second date.
Mike used the sofa to brace himself as I pulled him closer to me. His tongue sought entrance to my mouth and I moaned, allowing him in.
He broke away with a groan, “Fuck, I wanna stay, but I can’t. Tomorrow night, I want you to come over—I’ll make you dinner. Is that okay or would you rather go out?”
I shook my head. “Let’s go to your house.”
He pressed another quick kiss to my lips and then stood up. “Come over at six. I’ll text you the address.”
I sat up and began smoothing my hair back before moving to stand up. Mike steadied me. “I’d tuck you in, but I want to make sure you lock up after I leave. Okay?”
I nodded sleepily and followed him to the door. “Goodnight. Thanks for coming.”
He bit down on the corner of his mouth as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Bye. I’ll text you later.”
I locked the door behind him and then laughed soundlessly until tears were streaming down my face.
Either he’d been carrying tonight or he was leaving my apartment with quite an impressive erection.
I awoke late that morning to my phone ringing. “Hello?” I grumbled. My dreams had been a disjointed mess of bombs being dropped from airplanes onto marriages that were once good. That was the last time I mixed marital drama with war-time documentaries.
“LoLo, it’s after eleven, why are you still in bed? Are you sick?” Josué’s voice took on a concerned tone.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and responded, “No, I just went to bed late. What are you up to?”
“Well, I’m staring at an envelope full of cash and a note from your mother.”
I sat straight up in bed, suddenly wide awake. “What? How did she get your address? Is she there now?”
He sighed, “She’s not here—it came in the mail. LoLo, it’s a lot of money.”
I rubbed my temple with my free hand. “How much money, Josué? And, what does the note say?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s uh—it’s about seven…grand.” I gasped and he continued, “The note just says that it’s payment for what she stole and for taking care of you. She also talks about her rehab and how she’s been sober since March. Oh, and to tell you to stop being stubborn and take the money from her.”
My palms went sweaty. When I saw her at the hospital, she’d been adamant that I take the cash; said it’d help her clear her conscience.
I’d considered her offer the second time around. She’d looked so good—her eyes were clear and someone had obviously spent the money to get her hair highlighted and trimmed. Minus her teeth, there was no evidence of her ever being a drug user.
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.
He cleared his throat again, obviously uncomfortable with the topic. He’d admitted that in the early years, he’d been so afraid that she’d show up and demand to have me back. I knew without a doubt that her showing up now was just dredging up old feelings. “She left a phone number and said I could give it to you.”
I didn’t want it, but wrote it down anyway. Monica had made her bed years ago, long before I arrived. It would only be fitting if she had to spend the rest of her life knowing that her only child wanted nothing to do with her.
Josué didn’t ask how she got the money and I didn’t have the heart to tell him. If he knew that she was in deep with a biker gang, then he and Isaac would be in their car and on their way to me.
I was twenty-seven. I needed to handle Monica like an adult—an adult who’d learned the hard way how life worked with an addict, but an adult nonetheless.
I hung up after promising that if I did decide to hear her out, I’d ensure that my car keys were chained to my body.
It had been hard to connect the beautiful woman who approached me at the hospital with the addict who had made my life hell, but I knew that sooner or later, I was going to have to do just that.
Chapter Ten
Late June 2014
Exclusivity was bullshit.
Two weeks in and I was certain I was getting carpal tunnel in my right wrist. It didn’t seem to matter how much I jacked off, I’d see her face in my head and get hard again almost immediately. My hand hadn’t seen that much action since I was a teenager.
The worst part was that I was two weeks in and we’d yet to go on an actual date. I was still realistically looking at another five weeks of this shit.
I hadn’t meant to offer to cook for her last night. It had just slipped out. She was a five-dater though, so technically, cooking wasn’t an entirely unreasonable date.
Maybe because I’d offered to cook, it would count as two dates?
Hell, it was worth a shot.
The thing that threw me though was the fact that she’d asked me to stay. That wasn’t in the book; not like there were any actual guidelines for me to follow. I was flying blind here.
I just needed to buckle down and be patient. If I could handle Silent Phoenix MC, then surely, I could handle a feisty redhead for a few more weeks.
A few more weeks of this and then I’d fuck her brains out and move on with my life. I’d probably need to find a couple of hot twins to make up for the deprivation I’d been experiencing.
My jeans immediately grew tighter and I cursed. I was going to have to think of something else or spend the evening in agony. My brain was a sadist so I immediately thought of Lauren begging me to stay.
Fuck me.
I fired up the grill and then glanced at my watch. It was almost seven; I had about five minutes before she arrived.
Yep. That’d work.
I ran upstairs and into the bathroom. My jeans were on the floor within seconds and two minutes later, I was sane again. I washed my hands and pulled my pants back up before strolling back downstairs.
“Hey!” Lauren said from the screen door leading out onto the front porch and I jumped in fright.
I unlatched it and let her in. “Hey. How long have you been waiting?”
Translation: How much did you just hear?
She gave me an easy smile. “I just pulled up a second ago—I hadn’t even gotten a chance to knock. You’re out of breath. Were you working out?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck and let out a small laugh. “No, just got the grill going and then ran upstairs to make sure everything was put away.”
Lauren looked around. “This place is amazing. I don’t know the last time I saw a house with a wraparound porch. And because you’re in the country, you don’t have neighbors. That’s gotta be nice. I hear my downstairs neighbors arguing all the time.”
The place had been a steal. It had needed a shit ton of work, but between David and myself we’d gotten it back to almost perfect. And just when I thought it was too much for the two of us, Grey had shown up and put his skills to work.
“You help me, I help you. What’d I sa
y?”
It had felt like more than that though. When he said it, it had come out like an apology, as if he’d regretted pulling me into the club’s dealings.
“Is this the original flooring?” Lauren asked, before kneeling down and running her hand across a section of it.
I’d been more than a little preoccupied at getting busted doing the five-knuckle shuffle that I hadn’t taken the time to really look at her.
As she caressed the flooring, I had plenty of time to do just that. Her hair was braided and hung over her left shoulder, but her red sundress was what really caught my attention. It was short and cut just low enough for me to see right down it with the way she was bent over.
A fucking sundress?
Was she trying to kill me?
I shook my head. Five-dater. “It is the original flooring. What do you say we get those steaks on the grill and get to know each other a little more?”
She stood back up and smiled again. Her smile was like that of a child’s—given completely and without provocation. It was as if everything amused her.
We stepped out on the back patio and the evening sun highlighted the freckles across her nose and cheeks.
Goddamn. Could she be any more adorable?
Adorable?
What the fuck, Mike?
“What can I help with?” She offered, but I shook my head.
“Just sit there. Do you want a glass of wine? Beer?”
She sat down in the chair at the small patio table. “Wine sounds good.”
I poured her a glass and carried it out with the steaks. “So, Red, tell me about yourself. Where’d you grow up?”
She’d just a taken a drink of wine and looked up in surprise. “Oh, I grew up in Denver actually. What about you?”
I placed the last steak on the grill and closed the lid. “Denver, the sunshine state. Gorgeous!”
Her nose wrinkled as she smiled. “What’s that?”
I shook my head. “It’s from a movie—Old School. It’s stupid. Anyway, I’m from the Galveston area. David and I grew up together.”
It was mostly true.
I’d already shared more with her than ninety-nine percent of the chicks I’d banged. The one percent was a therapist I had to see a few years back after a particularly hard case. I’d opened up to her and once our session was over, she’d opened up to me.
She took another sip. “I didn’t realize you guys went that far back. Do your parents still live down there? I know his mom does.”
I nodded. “My mom does.”
“And your dad?” she prodded.
I hadn’t spoken to my father since the morning after David’s wedding. He’d called me a traitor and a traitor to Michael Sullivan, Sr. was as good as dead. Grey or another biker had handled anything to do with me.
Last I checked, he was still making regular trips down to Beaumont to hook up with my mother though. I think that’d been the most disappointing thing. She’d done so well on her own, but then he showed up the night Patrick got killed and she’d immediately taken him back.
As if she hadn’t been capable of living on her own.
I’d told her about the cheating, certain that she’d change her mind, but she knew. Said she’d known from the beginning. They were no better than addicts—their drug of choice just happened to be the other person.
“Sorry, that was pushy. We can talk about something else.” Lauren was studying my face intently and for a minute I would’ve sworn she’d been able to read my thoughts.
I turned my back to her and began flipping the steaks. “What about you? Your parents still in Denver?”
This time her face fell, but she quickly recovered. “Um, well, my dads live outside of Austin. We moved to Texas in 2005 after they got married.”
Whoa.
I hadn’t expected that answer.
I turned back to her. “That’s a little intimidating.”
She cocked her head to the side as her smile faded again. “What do you mean?”
“I just meant that meeting one father is hard enough when dating a girl. Now, I’ve gotta meet two? I’ll be lucky to leave with my balls intact.”
She bit down on her lip and grinned widely. “I think you can manage.”
That was the thing with five-daters. They loved talk of the future and mention meeting their parents? Well, that was foreplay to them.
“So, I know you work at a dental office, but what exactly do you do there?” Satisfied that the steaks were going to be cooked perfectly, I closed the lid and rejoined her at the table.
Lauren leaned back against her chair and laughed. “How much time do you have? I’m the office manager so it kind of falls on me to make sure the place is running smoothly. You name it, I probably do it.”
I took a swig of my beer. “Did you go to college?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I went to Tech and got my Bachelor’s in business management. What about you? Did you go to college or just cop school?”
Cop school?
How did she manage to say things like that and not sound stupid? She just came across as cute and witty.
God, I needed my head checked. I was starting to think like a chick.
“I did go to real school and cop school. Got my degree in sociology and then went to the academy.”
She nodded her approval. “You’re a smart one, aren’t ya, Tex?”
She hadn’t called me Tex since Galveston, back when I’d just been Jack the surfer. I’d convinced myself that I was just playing a role to get what I wanted, but was I really?
I hadn’t lied to her once tonight—I mean, I hadn’t been really upfront with the situation with my old man and where I really grew up, but I’d been honest enough that I was starting to question my intentions.
I was doing all of this just to get laid…right?
“Grab your wine and come sit with me on the front porch. You haven’t experienced a real west Texas sunset until you’ve seen it from my porch.”
We’d gotten to know each other even more over a dinner of steaks and salad. I’d planned on serving baked potatoes as well, but when I went back in I realized that in my fog, I’d forgotten one important step. Since I’d never turned it on, I had a cold oven full of raw potatoes.
Lauren hadn’t seemed to mind and I was starting to wonder if anything fazed her. Even when she’d confronted me on the patio at Nick’s, it had felt more like a questioning than anything aggressive.
The screen door slammed shut behind her and she balanced her wine glass as she settled in next to me on the front porch swing. I hadn’t planned on installing that, but David had assured me that every old farmhouse needed a good porch swing.
I pulled her closer. “This is one of my favorite spots at night. It’s quiet, so I get a chance to decompress from the day.”
I had to be careful or I was going to end up pouring my heart out to her like some fucking Lifetime movie.
She sighed happily and murmured, “I don’t think I’d ever make it inside. I’d just kick my shoes off and spend the night out here.”
I glanced down at her bare feet. “Well, you’re halfway there already.”
Lauren rested her head against my shoulder and stroked my arm. “I didn’t know you had all these tattoos. I’ve only ever seen you in long-sleeved shirts, I guess.” Her fingers traced the intricate designs lightly, sending my body into overdrive.
I hadn’t thought much about my ink in a while. I laughed softly, “Well, I meant to just get one, but it became an addiction of sorts.”
“What does this mean?” She pointed to the quote that wrapped around my forearm and up into my bicep.
“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious—it’s a quote from Sun Tzu.” Seeing her blank expression, I added, “He wrote The Art of War.”
Lauren nodded and lightly dragged her finger over to the one next to it. “And this one?”
It was singlehandedly the most erotic thing I’d ever experienced w
hile sitting on my front porch.
Jesus.
“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim—Ovid. It’s Latin for ‘Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”
Nearly all of my tattoos were related to pain and war. Coincidentally, I’d started getting them once I knew I was indebted to the club for life.
If a therapist ever got wind of it, I was certain they’d piss themselves with excitement.
Lauren continued running her fingers across them before quietly saying, “It’s beautiful work though—they should put your arms in an art gallery.”
I tilted her chin up so I could see her face. Her eyes were a little glassy, but she wasn’t drunk like I’d suspected. “You wanna put my arms in an art gallery? Where’s Charlotte when we need her? She’d know if these babies were the next van Gogh.”
She bit down on her lip and smiled lazily. “I like you, Mike.”
I felt like puffing my chest out. I’d done it. Four more dates and she’d be mine. “I like you too, Red.”
The swing creaked as Lauren stood up suddenly. She swayed as she regained her balance.
I frowned. “You going somewhere?”
She drained her wine glass and then carefully set it down on the porch before coming back over to stand in front of me. She gave me a small grin and then surprised the hell out of me by placing a knee on either side of my legs, straddling me.
“Hi,” she breathed before brushing her lips against mine. “Is this nice?”
Nice? It was fucking exhilarating. I never expected to get this far on my first night with a five-dater.
I closed my eyes and nodded, trying to get my body under control. She pressed her lips to mine again, this time with more firmness, as her hips rocked against my body.
“And this?” She whispered again.
I nodded again, afraid to speak and break the spell she was most certainly under.
The air was filled with the sound of cicadas and our heavy breathing. At some point the sun had set, leaving us alone in twilight.
She sucked my bottom lip into her mouth and I groaned, conflicted. I wrestled with wanting to lift up that pretty dress and force her down onto my cock and respecting the fact that she was a five-dater.
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