His smile into my eyes was enough to have my heart rate sky-rocketing.
“Are you going to share the queso?” he teased.
I shrugged. “Maybe. Best to get your own, just in case.”
Then I watched as he threw his head back and laughed.
CHAPTER 20
Panic at the disco? Grow up and panic everywhere like everyone else.
-Text from Laric to Bruno
BRUNO
She wasn’t kidding about the not sharing her queso thing.
After she consumed almost all of the chips and hot sauce, she started on the tortillas and queso before finally ending on her entrée.
I was halfway through with my food when she finally offered me what little was left in her queso.
“I’m good,” I joked. “Where are you putting all of this?”
She rolled her eyes. “My brothers and I used to compete in every way. I guess I just learned to eat a lot from a young age. I didn’t like being outdone. I’m not very good at sports, shooting, or anything really. But I can eat. And read. Two things that really shouldn’t be something I can excel at seeing as they’re both things that cause you to gain weight if you’re not careful.”
“Reading doesn’t really cause you to gain weight,” I disagreed.
“No.” She paused. “But it does cause me to sit there for hours on end, and not want to do anything. So it leads to gaining weight if I’m not careful.”
“Ahh,” I said. “I guess that I can see your point.”
She pushed some cheese onto her tortilla and shoved it in her mouth before saying, “When I was younger, my mom and dad used to think that I fed the dog my food because I always ate everything on my plate.”
“And did you ever feed the dog?” I wondered.
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t really like the dog. He was really standoffish around me, and I think he sensed that I didn’t really like him.”
“You don’t like dogs?” I asked. “Or just that one in particular?”
“That one in particular, but all dogs really.” She winced. “I’m just not good with animals. I don’t like dog hair. I don’t really like them touching me with their wet mouths. And I don’t really like the smell of them and how dirty they make things. Or the way they’re so loud.”
I grinned. “So, what you’re telling me is you don’t like kids, either?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out.
CHAPTER 21
I like big butts and taco trucks.
-Bruno to Belle
BRUNO
“How many times have you been to prison?” she asked curiously.
I grinned at her change of topic. How we’d gone from talking about dog adoption to prison was anyone’s guess.
“Twice,” I answered.
She tilted her head. “For how long each time?”
I thought back to that answer.
“For the first time, I spent eighteen months in there. For the second time, which was just last year, I was in for four months,” I responded.
She blinked. “You were in prison just last year? Why?”
I grimaced. “Long story short, I needed to be in there to get some information that I couldn’t shake out by other means. So I picked a fight using an alter ego that Lynn set up for me, got arrested, and then spent the time there while I waited for shit to get settled on the outside. Fast forward two months, I have the information that I need, but not the means to get myself out. It was decided, instead of Lynn pulling a get out of jail free card, I just spent the rest of my time in there that they deemed necessary.”
“I’ve never heard of someone getting into jail because they wanted to be there before,” she admitted as she sat back with a sigh and rubbed her belly.
It was then that I saw she’d unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, exposing her underwear that said ‘Holi-yay’ on them.
My eyes were glued to the green fabric.
“What did you do when you needed to let one loose?” she asked curiously.
I tilted my head. “Let one loose like a fart? Or let one loose like an orgasm?”
She blinked. “An orgasm.” She tilted her head. “I assume you’re just like any other guy in that respect. Wherever you may be, your wind goes free.”
My lips were seriously kicking up hard at the corners.
I managed not to smile, though.
“Interesting.” She grinned. “That didn’t even make you smile. You’re such a robot.”
Did it make me a robot that I didn’t laugh? Maybe.
But I’d learned from a young age that showing any joy, sadness, anger or hope was a one-way ticket to pound town.
Showing no emotion was preferable to getting a fat lip or a black eye.
My family had never been the best at handling emotions, and I had the inside and outside scars to prove it.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked out of the blue. “If I start another book, I might have to finish it tonight depending on if it’s any good or not. So it’s best to watch something I won’t get so emotionally attached to this late in the day.”
“This late in the day being eight in the evening.” I snorted as I leaned forward and caught up the television remote. Turning it on, I paused when I saw the guy that I’d been trying to find earlier. The governor. Sander Bryan. The most corrupt governor that’d ever had the chance to lead the great state of Texas.
“That guy looks smarmy,” she said as she stared at him. “It would stand to reason that his dad is just as weird and creepy.”
I agreed. “I can’t believe I haven’t heard anything back from Hunt about him yet.”
Just as I was about to flip the channel to something else that didn’t have that motherfucker’s face on it, my phone dinged, indicating a call.
“Ask and you shall receive,” Belle said as she stood up and pulled her pants off.
I was so busy watching her that I missed the first half of what Hunt was saying. I mean, the woman was stripping naked right there in front of me and expected me to be able to listen?
“…isn’t Sander Bryan’s dad. It’s his brother. His elder brother by about fifteen years,” Hunt explained. “I’ve managed to track him down to a little place right outside of Nacogdoches, Texas. He works as a hotshot transporter. You know what that is?”
When Belle looked at me, I knew that she didn’t.
“Hotshot transporters are men and women that own their own trucks and trailers and move equipment around all over the country like a truck driver does,” I said.
“Exactly,” Hunt said, thinking I was explaining to him that I knew what he meant, and not to Belle. “Funny thing is, TX-DOT doesn’t show that he’s taken a single haul anywhere but from his part of town to the Arkansas/Texas border. He never deviates from the path, even though he gets hundreds and hundreds of orders and requests a month. Not even his crew that he hired about two years ago deviates from that path.”
“What does he transport each time he goes?” I wondered, watching as Belle moved until she was tucked against my side before reaching for the blanket on the back of the couch.
I had to lean forward slightly to allow her to get it out from behind me.
“Says he transports insulators,” he answered immediately. “Those things that go on telephone poles?”
I shook my head. “You able to get into his camera feed or anything?”
“Nope.” Hunt sounded disgusted. “The guy doesn’t have any camera feed to jack into. He’s completely off the grid. Even has solar panels and his own goddamn cell tower. He’s one-hundred-percent self-sustainable.”
I groaned. “Like that isn’t fuckin’ suspicious at all.”
“Exactly,” Hunt agreed immediately. “I am using other peoples’ business systems to get as much as I can remotely before I suggest we start sending people in.”
“Nacogdoches is about forty-five minutes from where you are. And about ten minutes from where I ended up riding the
other day before they tried to run me over,” I told him.
There was a long pause on Hunt’s end and then, “We’re looking into it right now. You did the hard work, man. This part, finding them, is going to be easy. And obviously they have something to hide, or they wouldn’t have tried to run you over. Or put a hit out on you. Good work.” Hunt paused. “I have a really good feeling about this.”
I was beginning to have that same feeling.
For the last two years since this all started, I’d had a feeling that each person we took down was only one really small part of a whole.
But this time, I felt like maybe, just maybe, we might’ve gotten lucky and found the snake that kept laying the eggs.
The momma.
The bad motherfucker that was the brains behind each and every bad thing that went on in our neck of the woods.
When I finally hung up a few minutes later, it was to find Belle leaning into me so heavily that I knew she was asleep.
At some point, with the movie up on queue, and through the rumble of my voice going back and forth through Hunt’s questions, she’d succumbed.
And I wondered idly how long since she’d had a true night of sleep.
They’d told me that she’d stayed vigil at my bedside for the days that I’d been in a coma.
The guys also said that she had been a godsend when she’d told the police that I’d been with her. That made the club able to hide their involvement, meaning that now they were able to look into the details of this all anonymously without having a target on each one of their backs.
My hands trailed down the length of her hair, my fingers sliding effortlessly through the long locks.
“What am I going to do with you?” I asked her.
She didn’t reply.
But she didn’t need to, either.
If it took me going blue in the face, I was going to convince her to stay with me.
I was going to make her mine.
I was going to keep her.
She just didn’t know it yet.
Leaning back in the couch with my mind at peace at the thought of what keeping her meant, I crossed my ankles, tugged the woman in my arms more fully into them, and then switched on a different movie from the one she wanted to watch.
When I got bored with that one, I changed to the television cable, then cruised through those channels until an old favorite, Top Gun, showed up.
I was halfway through the movie, at the volleyball scene, when Belle stretched and then settled more fully onto me. Her leg straddled one of mine, and then she moved until her head was tucked against my neck.
“I used to love this movie,” she mumbled sleepily against my throat.
My cock jerked at the husky sound of her voice.
“It’s one of my favorites, too,” I admitted.
She hummed, her lips playing along the skin there. “Surprisingly, it’s not the volleyball scene that’s my favorite. It’s the part where he’s at the end, and flying, thinking about his partner, and he finally gets past that final roadblock that kept him from really flying again.”
“Some would say that’s one of the worst parts,” I confirmed.
She rubbed her skin against my own.
“Maybe,” she acknowledged. “But it’s also the part of his rebirth. The part where he realizes that he can make it on his own. He doesn’t want to, he misses his friend and his old life, but he knows that life goes on even when he’s missing a serious component of his soul that he can never get back.”
I hummed in agreement. “That’s very philosophical.”
“I’m a philosophical bitch, what can I say?” She snickered, moving even more fully onto me. “I do read and edit books all day, though. I’m bound to have some professionals’ words making their way into my daily life.”
I started to run my hand up and down the length of her back, my fingers tangling with the tips of her hair with every stroke.
“Do you like doing what you do?” I asked curiously. “I know you like reading, but isn’t it a bit different, too job-like, reading, when you’re actually editing?”
“Depends,” she admitted around a yawn. “Sometimes it can be if it’s not a particular genre that I like. Like last month, I had to edit a gothic horror-type romance. It was set in the depression era and even worse, it was about vampires. Another sub-genre that really isn’t my favorite. It took me a while to get through it, but I have to admit it was probably one of my better edited works. When I’m not ‘into’ something that I’m reading, it takes me longer, and I don’t get pulled into the story as much.”
I hummed in understanding. “Are you a professional? I mean, I know that you’re good. You wouldn’t have as much work as you do if you weren’t. But are you like school-licensed or anything?”
“I went to college and majored in English lit. I finally got my master’s last year while waffling between wanting it or not. But it didn’t change anything that I was doing professionally. When an author and I were just starting out, she took a chance on me being her editor. And now that she’s a New York Times bestseller, her name-dropping—mine in particular—gets me enough business to last me all year. I was very fortunate,” she admitted.
“Who’s the author?” I wondered.
She snickered. “She writes erotica. She’s the woman behind the new movies coming out about that billionaire that buys an island and then traps the love of his life on it. The line that they used on the movie poster at the movies is one that I wrote myself.”
I moved my hand up to catch a lock of her hair, twirling it around my finger. “Why don’t you write?”
She shrugged, causing her delicate shoulder to drag against my nipple. “I can. I just don’t really want to. It’s not something that really sounds fun to me. I’d rather sit on my ass and read all day than come up with worlds of my own.”
I grinned as she stretched like a cat.
“I like when you play with my hair,” she murmured, moving so that she was more fully in my lap, allowing me full access to her hair.
I twirled a long lock around my finger, and in companionable silence, we watched the rest of Top Gun before it rolled into the next movie—Terminator.
“Do you think the mom is hot?” she wondered.
I thought about that for a long moment.
“I mean, yes. I think it’s hot that she knows how to handle herself.” I paused. “I think her body looks good. But I think the outdated style kind of throws me off.”
She rolled until she was face up, her back against the couch with my thigh being used as a pillow, but her head still faced toward the screen.
It gave me an unencumbered view of her legs which had slipped out from under the small blanket.
Her toes weren’t painted—at least, not all the way.
And her legs were ashy.
Yet she didn’t give a fuck.
Not that I cared about either, but from what I could tell from my other girlfriends, they wouldn’t be caught dead with half-painted and chipping off nail polish.
I grinned and smoothed my hand down the length of her side, my hand going to her ass to play my fingers along the length of her panty line.
She rolled over and exposed her butt to me fully, causing me to grin.
I continued to run my fingers along her backside, grinning with each swipe that caused goose bumps to break out on her flesh.
She groaned and buried her face in my lap, right up against my cock that I was having a very hard time keeping under control.
She sighed, and I felt the heat of her breath against my length.
“I can feel that,” I teased her.
She burst out laughing and then went up onto her knees, raising up all the way before she straddled my body.
I caught both of her ass cheeks in my hand, groaning when my fingers sank into her squishy flesh.
I looked at her, the words on the tip of my tongue, and bit it.
“What?” she asked, leaning forward and slowly gri
nding her pussy down against my cock.
I swallowed. “I was thinking things I probably shouldn’t voice.”
She tilted her head sideways. “Like what?”
“Like things about other women and why you’re better.” I paused. “Again, things I probably shouldn’t say.”
Her eyes filled with mischief, and the iconic ‘I’ll be back’ filled the air behind her head, causing her to laugh.
“Come on,” she urged. “Tell me. It’s not bad, is it?”
I thought about that for a moment. “I don’t think it’s bad.”
“Then tell me,” she said, smoothing her hands down the length of my shirt.
When she came into contact with the hem, she gathered the ends up in her hands and then pulled the shirt up over my head.
I rolled forward slightly so that it was easier for her and then groaned when she started pressing open-mouth kisses to my flesh.
“I was thinking about how you’re so different from other girls,” I admitted. “How I like that your ass jiggles when I sink my fingers into it. Or how when I fuck you, your flesh bounces.”
She licked the line of my chest between my pecs, causing me to groan.
“What else about me do you like?” she asked.
I took her shirt off before answering, hissing in a breath when I realized that she’d been braless this entire time.
Her breasts spilled from her shirt, and they bounced and bobbed with the movement.
Her nipples were turgid and dusky brown, making me want to lean forward and capture them in my waiting mouth.
I did, but only after I answered.
“I like the way that my hands are filled up with your ass,” I told her, leaning forward and running my tongue along the very tip of her breast. “I like the way that you tell me what you’re feeling, when you feel it, and don’t make me guess.” I switched to the other nipple. “I like that you’re right now in my arms, rubbing yourself against me, asking me to explain what I meant instead of getting pissed that I’m comparing you to another woman when you’re in my arms.”
She bit her lip, and I had to bite back a groan as I pulled away to get a good look at her. “And most importantly, I like that you didn’t run and hide when you had the chance, and instead chose to come on this crazy journey with me. Even though it would’ve been way smarter for you to leave me to my own devices.”
Shakedown Page 14
