by Paula Cox
"Are you trying to say it's my turn?"
The annoying thing about being naked was that he could clearly see how, when she blushed, it started at her nipples and moved up to her forehead. Gorgeous look, clearly. "Unless you don't want to."
His eyes widened. "Yeah, baby. Yeah, I want to."
She forced myself to be realistic for exactly one second. "You brought that condom with you?"
He nodded. He reached back to where his jeans had landed in a heap—nothing like her neat little pile—and pulled a square metal pack out of his back pocket. He pulled out that classic foil package, and even flashed her the expiration date.
"Always be prepared?"
"My parents wanted me to be a boy scout."
She slid out of his lap as he rolled it on, but when she went to lie down, he pulled me back.
"If it's okay," he said, "I would really like you here."
"Most guys find my ass too bony for this," she said, trying to play it off as funny. He wasn't fooled.
"Most guys are fucking idiots," he said. "Riding me hard, your tits in my face, bouncing around. What's not to love?"
She looked down at her itty bitty titty committee application entry. "They don't...bounce so much."
He shrugged. "You haven't been doing it right."
"Is that so?"
"Yup."
"And you're going to show me the right way?"
"If you ever fucking shut up and mount up," he said. He winked, which kept her from smacking him again.
She found myself pausing for just a moment. This dude from her past had just given her the most spectacular partnered orgasm she'd ever had in her life, and then cuddled her through the aftershocks. She was as good at love-‘em-and-leave-‘em as the next emotionally withdrawn sexual enthusiast, but this was something else. Slipping him into her, looking him in the eyes while she fucked him rotten. She wasn't going to walk away from this without leaving some part of her behind. Was there enough of her left to risk that?
The truth was that, at this point, she was already a goner. As soon as she'd mounted up on that motorcycle behind him, there was no holding back. This was really just the part where she admitted it.
He didn't push to enter her, letting this be entirely her moment, entirely within her control. But he was right on the edge of her, and it took just a moment of positioning to sink down onto him. She watched his nostrils flare as she slowly, carefully, sank down onto him. The moment of taking a man deep inside always felt strange, an odd yielding and piercing all at once, a complete acceptance of someone else, quite literally, into her.
For the first time, she saw the same awareness in Tex's eyes, the sense of the holy divine pouring through both of them. His mouth was open, his eyes in awe of her as she shifted slowly over his cock. "Oh my great good God," he whispered. His hands splayed over the small of her back, shifting her position slightly, so that the next time she moved, his eyes fluttered closed. "Have you been waiting for this for a decade and a half, or was that just me?"
"I used to think of you when I touched myself," she said, and his breath hissed in, his hands tightening on her. He started to move with her, thrusting up into her as she let herself tumble down onto him. "All the time, after you were gone, but before, too. When I didn't even know what I was doing, what it was supposed to feel like, or why it felt so goddamn good, it was you I imagined. It felt like heaven, all the time, heaven and hell and sin and sainthood, all wrapped up into one."
Whatever control he'd been using evaporated. His arms closed tight around her waist and he slammed into her, so hard it danced on the edge of pain. In another time, in another place, it might have brought her to a second orgasm, but right now, at this time and in this moment, all she could see was his face, his eyes unseeing and all-seeing, as he found completion within her.
She held him as his breath shuddered back down into a steady rhythm, his cock slowly softening. He took a moment to take off the condom and tie it off, tossing it into a corner, and then he laid down on the bedroll, pulling her down with him, resting on his shoulder. "That was fun," he said, laughter in his voice, and she poked him in the rib. Jerk had figured out how to avoid being tickled, though, and he just laughed at her attempt.
"Unfair," she pouted, and snuggled in closer. He pulled her tight against him.
It felt amazing to be held close like this. She knew she should stand up, put on her clothes, and tell him to take her back to her car. Back to town. Back to anywhere. Because this relationship—no. It wasn't a relationship, that was the point. It couldn't be a relationship, because she didn't know him anymore. He was amazing and he made her body come alive, but she didn't know him, not really.
Motorcycle clubs were bad news, she knew that. Drugs and violence and guns. All things that had made her stay in her sleepy little town where the most dramatic nonsense she had to put up with was resort visitors speaking slowly to her because being a local clearly meant that she was below average intelligence.
But could someone be this kind and gentle with his body, and then turn around and kill someone in cold blood? The look in his eyes when he'd told her that he intended to get revenge on Danny's killer certainly made her think so. He'd looked ice cold when he'd said all of that, and if there was anything she'd ever learned, it was that the poet who said to listen to people when they tell you who they are the first time was very right. Tex had said he was a cold man who was going to do what he needed to do to see his friend, her brother, avenged.
But what about after that, her brain kept asking. What about when that need for revenge is sated? Will he be a man who can love then?
"So," he said, interrupting her wool-gathering, "exactly how old will I sound if I offer you a penny for your thoughts."
"Hm. Tough call." She pretended to consider, rolling onto her back and staring off at the sky. "Late 50s at least. Possibly older. I mean, my grandma used to say things like that."
"How is your grandma?"
"Dead," she said, and then regretted it when he winced. "Cancer. She went fast, and with good meds."
"I'm glad."
"Why didn't you ever get back in touch with me?" She'd asked the question before, when they had all their clothes on, but she needed to hear it again, with the waves and the sand as witness.
"I was broken, Jessie. I was convinced I was worthless. And I was sure you wouldn't want anything to do with me. You could make a strong argument that Danny-" his voice choked off, and it took a minute for him to collect himself. "That if we hadn't been kissing right then, your brother wouldn't have backed out into the street. And so I was sure you wouldn't want me. Because you'd see it as my fault."
"You really thought that?"
She felt him shrug. "I thought it was my fault. Why wouldn't you think the same thing?"
"Because I was sure it was my fault."
He was quiet for a long time, as if that had absolutely never occurred to him. "Oh," he said, after a long while.
"Yeah," she said back. "Oh."
"So, what you're saying is that it might have been nice to reassure you that, worst case scenario, we shared the blame?"
"And, if what we felt for each other was really as big as it felt, that he hadn't died for nothing."
Another long stretch of quiet. Her body was so relaxed and at ease that she almost nodded off. "I think I owe you an apology," he said, after a while. "I mean, I could throw this on my parents, but, let's be honest, email was an option. I should have been in touch."
"You should have."
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you."
"That simple?"
"For now."
He did sit up, then, and she moved with him. Without conversation, they both got dressed again. He dropped the used condom into a burn bin that was a safe distance from the cabin, and they mounted up on the bike again. She was sore as she sat down, from the sex and from the long ride beforehand. She held tight to him as he set them back on the road to the improvised clubhouse.<
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Chapter Ten
The yard was conspicuously empty when he pulled the bike into the barn. Had Take dragged everyone off somewhere? Tough call. He'd be grateful if the man had, and Tex made a mental note to thank him later. After the way he and Jessie had jetted off—well, he had a reputation, and there was no real other reason they would have peeled out of here except to go enjoy themselves without an audience. At least, no other reason the Sons would know about.
He walked the bike into the barn, and then helped Jessie off. She was moving stiffly. He knew it was probably the bike ride, but he gave himself exactly one moment to be lewdly proud of himself for fucking her that hard.
They walked together back to the front porch, which still had a rickety hanging swing. She settled herself in it while he went inside for a couple of bottles of soda in glass bottles. He brought back a Coke and a ginger ale; he held them both out to her, and she chose the green bottle. "Thanks," she said.
"My pleasure," he said. He would have preferred a beer, but he wasn't sure how she'd take that just now. She seemed to have a lot on her mind, even after the conversation about Danny. He settled in the swing with her and braced one booted foot, swaying them gently in the light afternoon breeze.
"So what happens now," she said, after a long wait.
"How do you mean?"
"With us. With finding Danny's murderer. With these Racketeers, and what they want for Castello."
"With us?"
"Mostly with us. Right now. I'm sorry to be that girl. The answer can be anything, and I'll be fine, I really will, but I need to know. I don't want to leave and—and be confused."
She was tracing patterns in the condensation on the outside of her bottle. He touched the back of her hand with a finger, and she reached out, taking his hand. They sat there like a couple of high school kids, swinging.
He wanted that life. He wanted it so hard it turned his guts inside out. He'd spent years debating what Danny would have done, if he hadn't been run down in the street. He was pretty sure Danny would have made noise about being grossed out that Tex was fascinated by Danny's little sister. But the three of them had always been together. It would have made sense in a way that would have run bone-deep. It would have made him and Danny brothers for real, brothers for life. He needed to believe Danny would have come around. It was the only way he'd been able to make peace with loving the girl this much, for this long.
And what she'd said, about this meaning Danny had died for some kind of reason—he didn't believe in fate, because there was no God or karma or fate that could determine a 14-year-old boy would die and be worthy of belief—but he could believe in her belief. As little sense as that made.
"Are you going to be pissed if I say I have no idea?"
"Nope. It's inconvenient, but at least we're on the same page." She squeezed his hand a little tighter, and the words I love you bubbled around in his throat. He didn't let them out; it was way too soon for that sort of nonsense. Even if it wasn't really nonsense.
"You mean you aren't completely overwhelmed by my sexual prowess, impressively sized manhood, and debonair attitude?"
She raised an eyebrow, then busted into laughter at his expression of romantic hero perfection.
"How about this," he said. "I'd really like to take you to dinner. We were talking about coffee earlier, but it never happened. I have to check on a few things in town, and then maybe we can go to an actual restaurant. What do you think?"
Her expression was conflicted. "I'm not sure-"
"That you want to be seen with me?" He looked down at his body, road dirty, tattooed, scarred. "I clean up better than you'd think."
"It's not that," she said, but in a tone that implied it was exactly that, she just didn't want to admit it. He tried not to let that hurt too much. She'd clearly been living the clean life up here, and here he was, busting in on all of that like it was nothing to write home about. Like his life was for everyone. But he would have been lying if he'd tried to say it didn't hurt at all, and after a moment of considering, he let some of that hurt shine in his eyes. "Sorry," she said.
"I get it," he said. "Not the first time I've been the piece on the side."
She winced hard. "That's not how I want to see you. I don't know how to feel right now. This feels like a dream. It feels like I'm going to go home and wake up and find out it was all just a big tease. And I don't know how to reconcile that with dinner dates."
He nodded, pushing himself to believe her. "So what do you want to do?"
She shook her head, silent.
His heart pounded as he saw an opportunity that he hadn't thought he'd get so soon. "I have a dumb idea."
"Oh?"
"So, I was actually heading to Delilah's Do for a reason yesterday, and not just to see you. Seeing you was a bonus."
"Okay."
"I saw the ad online that she has a space open for a massage therapist."
She actively leaned away from him. "You?"
"It's so unbelievable? You've felt the strength in my hands." He watched her eyes narrow, and he huffed out an annoyed breath. "I swear, if you make a joke about happy endings, this non-relationship is over. I went to school for this, whether you believe it or not."
"Sorry," she said. "Most of the massage therapists I've encountered have been. Um."
"Goofier?"
"Hippies."
"Committed to their woo."
"Yes."
"I'm not like that."
"I gathered."
"So, you think she'd be interested in a tattooed biker working as a massage therapist in her salon?"
Jessie looked him up and down again, but this time her gaze was more clinical. "You really do have a license? You're not just saying this as an excuse to get me in a room with a massage table and hot oil?"
He put his hand on his chest in a total affectation. "As if I would besmirch my honor with such a thing."
Jessie had to laugh. "I'll talk to her," she said. "Applicants haven't exactly been knocking down the door, so I'd say your odds are good. She will want references, though."
"I have them."
"Cool."
He watched her for a long minute. "You're surprised I have a legit profession, aren't you?"
"Nope."
He stared at her for another moment.
"No. Really, no. I mean, I was going much more stereotypical, but. I'd like to believe you wouldn't turn up back in my life just to screw it up, so, no, I was not automatically assuming the worst about you." She leaned against him for the first time. His entire side tingled, and then she laid her head on his shoulder, and he thought he might explode with the joy that shivered through him. "I want this to work," she said, and her voice was low, pitched for no one else. "But wanting it to work is terrifying. Because yeah, I've known you my entire life, but there's also a 15-year blank spot. And I deserve some time to be okay with that."
"You do," he said. "I'm sorry for pushing."
She leaned up to him, touching his cheek and bringing his lips down to hers. "Nothing to be sorry about. But I should head back to town. I didn't have any appointments today, but I should talk to Delilah, about this, and about some other stuff. So I should go." There was a long silence, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as the first few. "I want to do dinner," she said. "I'm sorry it took me some time to be okay."
"I'm not everyone's cup of tea," he said. "But I made the choices I did to survive."
"I believe you."
"Thank you," he said, nodding.
She stood, kissed him once more, and then walked down to her car, sliding behind the driver's seat, backing up carefully, and driving away with appropriate use of turn signals, even though not a single car had passed between when they'd parked the bike and when she'd approached the road. He found himself smiling. It felt good.
Chapter Eleven
Riding in her car back to town, Jessie felt more and more like she'd left behind a dream world that she would never quite access again. She wo
uld get back to town and find Delilah and say "Remember Cody Brewer?" And Delilah would say "Who?" And Jessie would spend the rest of her life wondering why she remembered someone no one else did, and had she stepped into an alternate dimension somewhere on the way back from Polanco's orchard.
Her lower body ached, and not just from the (incredible, mind-blowing, fantastic) sex. The bike ride had been a delicious vibration on the way down, but on the way back up to the farm, her thighs had ached from the effort of holding the right position on the bike, and her ass was sore from the continuous pressure. When she'd been a kid, one of her friends had taken her horseback riding at a ranch, and she'd felt the same way, like she'd be walking funny for days.
