I started heading toward the door.
“The bird’s new man.”
Then I walked out without another word.
Or tried to, anyway.
I made it about halfway down the driveway before my name was called, and I was stopped by a hesitant voice that made my heart race.
“Rafe?”
I put one foot in front of the other again.
Bad.
Bad, bad, bad.
Don’t do it, Rafe.
Don’t do it, Rafe.
I lectured myself for the two minutes it took me to make my way down the driveway and hit the ‘exit’ button.
I slipped through the barely cracked open gate and then felt her hand on my shoulder.
I halted beside my bike and turned, trying not to betray the way she made me feel by being this close to me.
“Yeah?”
My voice didn’t just fucking squeak, did it?
She’d been absolutely killing me during that meeting, and it’d taken everything I had in me not to betray the way I felt. The way I wanted to throw her onto any available surface and suck her fucking soul straight out of her pussy with my mouth.
“I’m sorry that my father and uncles say the stuff they say to you,” she apologized. “Swear to God, they have more manners than that. I hope they didn’t hurt your feelings.”
I snorted. If I pussied out every single time someone called me a bad name, I’d be dead and gone a long fucking time ago.
“Your father can’t hurt my feelings,” I said. “Everything he’s had to say so far isn’t anything I haven’t heard before.”
Janie’s eyes narrowed. “You hear this all the time?”
I laughed at that. “Honey, I’m the son of a man who screwed over military families, took their life savings, and left them desolate. I’m known far and wide. I might not have been the man behind the schemes, but I was the boy who was benefiting from their money. Military men have long memories, so believe me when I say, anything your family says to me, I’ve heard worse.”
She frowned. “Rafe, just because you’re used to it, doesn’t make what they’re saying to you all right. You should say something.”
“I’m not going to say anything,” I laughed.
Janie narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, and I couldn’t help but to allow my eyes to go to her mouth. That succulent, beautiful mouth with her pretty, puffy lips.
They were shining today with a sheen of lip gloss, and my hand twitched. It ached to wrap around her wrist, yank her to me, and lick those lips until they didn’t shine anymore.
Goddammit.
My eyes moved away, and I found my eyes tuning into Janie’s dogs.
“Your dogs are trying to dig under the fence,” I muttered.
Janie turned and ran forward, bending down to the dogs’ level to scold them.
She had her finger pointed at Glock’s nose, and she was lecturing him on why he shouldn’t do that, but all I could fucking look at was her ass in those pants.
I found my feet moving forward despite my brain screaming at me to stop.
I walked up until the large pillar hid my body from view and said, “Do you think that’s going to help?”
Janie screeched and whirled, losing her balance.
I caught her before she could so much as tip slightly to the side.
And that was how I finally lost control.
Feeling her body pressed against mine, having those soft curves pressed against my sharp angles…I lost it.
My mouth found hers, and suddenly I lost the ability to make rational decisions.
My tongue moved out the moment our lips met and licked at the gloss. Apple. Her lips tasted like goddamn apple.
My. Fucking. Favorite.
I had a thing for apple.
It was my weakness.
The actual fruit. Apple muffins. Apple Cake. Apple ice cream.
Anything apple would do. I didn’t discriminate against anything apple.
And Janie’s lips tasting like my favorite thing in the world?
That was what caused me to do things I would’ve never normally done—at least that was what I kept telling myself.
My hands went up to her lower back, and I pulled her even tighter against me.
I’d never, not once in my life, lost control like I had in that moment.
I backed her up until she was pressed against the large stone pillar and plastered my body to her from chest to knees.
Janie’s hands went to the fabric of my shirt and fisted, pulling me impossibly tighter.
My tongue tangled with hers, and I was so fucking turned on that I knew, had what happened next not happened, I would’ve taken her right then and there.
“Janie?” Sam called out. “Your fucking dogs better not be digging a hole in my wife’s goddamn flower beds, or I’ll never hear the end of it!”
I pushed off with a snarl and stared at Janie.
She stared right back, wide-eyed, mouth swollen from my kiss.
Her chest was heaving, and I nearly fucking came at the sight of her so disheveled.
Then, without another word, I turned my back on her—which was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do—and went to my bike.
I didn’t look at her again as I started it and walked it backward out of the driveway.
Why?
Because I knew if I did, I’d be making the same mistake again, but this time, I wouldn’t be stopping no matter who or what interrupted.
Chapter 4
I hate when people say Facebook is just for attention whores. Sometimes it’s for regular whores, too.
-Text from Janie to Kayla
Janie
1 month later
“Are you sure this’ll work?” Kayla asked me for the fifteenth time.
“I’m going to hell,” I moaned. “I really am, but I don’t know what else to do!”
“Well this isn’t the brightest thing you’ve ever done, that’s for sure,” Kayla muttered.
I threw my old panties at her, and she jumped away from them like an acrobat would when she tried to reach someone’s hands on the set of rings across from her.
“Stop!” she cried. “That’s so nasty!”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
“It’s not nasty. They’re only about an hour into my wear, they’re still pretty fresh,” I teased.
I’d be more inclined to agree with her if I’d worn them all day.
“This is beyond ridiculous,” Kayla sighed. “You can’t just go down there and expect him to let you in his door.”
My brows rose. “I can’t?”
“Janie, this is a bad idea.”
I sighed. “Kayla, this isn’t a bad idea. I have to try. I have to. If he won’t let me stay with him, I’ll just get a hotel room.”
“Are you taking your dogs?”
I looked at Kayla and grinned.
“No.” She immediately started to refuse. “No, no, no.”
“Kayla,” I drawled. “Pleasssse?”
Kayla growled. “If they wake me up in the morning just because they want something to eat, I will seriously fuck you up. I will call you, and maybe even call your dad, and scream at you both.”
“Why my dad?”
“Because he refused to keep your dogs for you after that last time,” she explained.
That was true. The last time I’d gone out of town, I’d had my dad watch the dogs. That had turned into a disaster because my dogs decided to howl all night because my father had locked them in the laundry room.
The only problem with that was my dogs like to roam all night long. They do what they want, and I let them because I’m such a sound sleeper.
My dad, however, was not. He woke up to the sound of their claws clicking on the floor and knew from having them over before that they were night owls.
And so, my dad had ignored the howls from the laundry room�
��or tried to anyway. When he’d gotten up the next morning, it was to find his entire room trashed. The drywall had been gouged. The hoses and cords from the washer and dryer were torn to pieces, and baskets of clothes shredded.
Yeah, it hadn’t been good.
And now he refused to watch them.
Hence the reason I was asking my best friend to do it.
“I’m watching them at your house,” Kayla said. “They’re not coming to mine.”
I snorted. “That’s fine.”
It wasn’t like Kayla didn’t live at my house half the time anyway.
We were best friends. Either she was at my place, or I was at hers.
Though, we were literally right next to each other.
Kayla’s father, Dougie, had been a part of my father’s unit when they were in the Army. He’d died while overseas when Kayla was a young child, and ever since, she’d been a pseudo-family member. My sister, though not by blood.
“Fine.” She sighed. “But I’m only doing it until Monday. I have to be at an orientation in Benton, Louisiana on Tuesday. I want to leave on Monday so I’m not late for work on Tuesday.”
I rolled my eyes.
Kayla was shadowing an officer named Bryce Rector, better known as Loki. He was a member of my grandfather’s MC, and my grandfather had also been paramount in setting up this shadowing with the officer in the first place.
For some reason, Kayla wanted to be a police officer. However, Kayla also wanted to be a school teacher. Oh, and a doctor.
She was two years into the first two degrees and still wasn’t sure what path she was taking.
Papa Silas had asked Loki if he’d be willing to let Kayla follow him around for a week or two so she could see what the job entailed. Loki had agreed, and now Kayla was going to be gone for two weeks while she learned the ins and outs of being a police officer.
Though my father had told her she could follow him around, we all knew that wasn’t going to work. That would be because my father was just as protective of Kayla as he was about me. Meaning my father wouldn’t let her really dig her heels in and see what it actually took to be a police officer.
Which was where my grandfather came in.
Silas was going to be watching over her, but Kayla would also get the real experience that she wouldn’t be able to get here thanks to my father.
“I’ll be back. Promise!” I held up my pinky finger.
Kayla sighed, took my finger in hers, and then we shook on it.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Kayla drawled.
“Me?” I squeaked, batting my eyelashes. “Never!”
Chapter 5
I don’t know why people complain about my appearance. My attitude is a lot worse.
-Rafe to Janie
Rafe
The last thing on my mind when I got home was entertaining.
However, when I pulled up in my driveway, drenched from head to toe in my own sweat, I found that my driveway wasn’t empty like it usually was.
It was filled with cars.
Well, two of them, anyway.
I pulled my bike up to the carport door and shut it off before swinging my foot over the side of it.
The moment I was standing, I turned to find Elspeth, Layton Trammel’s daughter, standing there with a warm, welcoming smile.
My stomach knotted.
“Hey,” I said, sounding welcoming when I felt anything but. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
Why are you here?
I snorted.
I knew why she was here.
Last night I’d ‘accidentally’ bumped into her at the bar in town, and I had mentioned moving out to the new place on Old Highway Five. Apparently, Elspeth hadn’t forgotten.
And now she was bringing me a pie.
How fucking sweet.
“I thought I’d welcome you to the neighborhood.” She smiled, holding out the pie.
I didn’t bother to tell her that I’d lived here for a while now. Three months, to be exact. I wasn’t exactly ‘new.’
However, I needed her—or, more accurately, the in with her father she could provide. I needed to be able to get closer to Layton to find out what he was doing and to do that, I was going to have to get closer to Elspeth.
I looked down at the pie Elspeth handed me and nearly grimaced.
Pecan pie.
I hated pecans.
My father used to have a bowl of them in his office, and I used to go steal them when he wasn’t around.
The pecan likely still tasted good to me, but the thought of fucking pecans, which reminded me of my father, just turned me off.
I’d never eat another one of them for the rest of my life—not without thinking of my father—and I tried to do that as little as possible.
“Thank you,” I grinned. “I really appreciate it.”
The door to my house opened, and my eyes flicked up to see Janie standing there.
I immediately cursed.
Janie had called, said she was in town and had also requested to stay at my place.
Since I was a glutton for punishment, I’d agreed.
Which led to now—two women I needed in very different ways here in the same place at the same time.
Two very different women—one who meant something to me and one who was a means to an end—both staring at me with an expectant look in their eyes.
“Uhh,” I hesitated. “Janie, this is Elspeth. Elspeth, this is Janie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Janie grinned. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer earlier. I was taking a shower.”
Elspeth’s eyes went to Janie, and her jaw went tight.
I would’ve laughed had I not been needing Elspeth’s pull to get me in with her father.
“It’s okay,” she lied.
Janie’s smile turned warm, and her eyes turned to me.
“I’ll just leave you to chat…” she hesitated, then backed out of the doorway and slammed it shut.
I turned back to Elspeth, holding the pie slightly away from my body due to the smell that was making me slightly sick to my stomach.
“Thank you so much for bringing it over,” I smiled my congenial smile, the one that came out when I was trying to make someone at ease.
Nobody ever got the real me. Not even my sister.
The real me needed to be protected, because he actually gave a fuck.
Rafe Luis was always protecting himself because when he didn’t? It always backfired.
Raven, my sister, had been my rock when we were growing up.
Then, one day that relationship took a hit because I couldn’t take her with me. She’s held a grudge against me for a long time, and still to this day, we were working to get back to how we used to be.
Sure, she’d ‘forgiven’ me. But I say forgiven loosely because I still wasn’t altogether positive that my sister actually had, or if she’d just pretended that she had.
Anyway, the smile that I gave Elspeth wouldn’t have worked with Janie. She would’ve known that I was schmoozing, which was why I was glad that she’d gone back inside.
“Who is that girl?”
The way she said girl made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“A friend.” I smiled. “She’s the daughter of one of the men I work with.”
As far as anyone down here could tell, I was a crew member of Hail Auto Recovery, a towing company in Hostel, Texas.
As for the what the rest of the world knew of me? They didn’t know what I did, which was the way I liked to keep it.
Janie included.
“Daughter,” Elspeth hummed. “That’s good to know.”
Then she smiled a secret smile at me, and I felt my stomach clench. But not in appreciation, in worry. I hoped that Janie didn’t see her because I did not want her to do or say anything to hurt my investigation. I’d done a lot of work insinuating myself into the perfect position to sur
vey Layton Trammel, and I was not going to be happy if anything happened to jeopardize it. I wanted to go home, and I couldn’t go home until I finished one final thing.
And once that one final thing was taken care of? I was going to go hide in my cabin for six months and not do a single damn thing.
At least, until Trace needed me.
This entire thing had been fucking exhausting.
When I’d arrived in Hostel, I hadn’t realized what I would be walking into. I hadn’t realized that one thing would come up after the other and that soon I’d be dealing with way more than I ever intended to.
I also hadn’t intended to actually work on top of that.
So now, I was working a regular job with Hail Auto—when I had time, that was. I was working for Free, dealing with those issues, and I was working my own case. There were days that I was lucky if I got three or four hours of sleep, and I was fucking tired.
I needed a fucking break.
Yesterday.
“Anyway,” Elspeth smiled. “I’ll let you enjoy that pie and go. Welcome to the neighborhood.”
I smiled—my nice smile again—and waved.
The moment she turned around, I didn’t hesitate to turn myself and head to my door.
I didn’t bother watching her go, either.
She wasn’t Janie, after all. She didn’t have Janie’s ass. She didn’t have Janie’s juicy thighs. She didn’t have anything Janie.
I was so Fucked.
Fucked with a capital F.
I walked into my house, and the first thing I saw the moment the door opened was Janie’s ass in the air, bent over my couch, as she tried to reach the remote control that had fallen on the floor.
It was well out of her reach, yet she stretched farther and farther until she was precariously close to falling completely over.
I swallowed and looked around the room, noticing all her things.
On my coffee table sat her old, raggedy looking shoes. Those stupid Converses were the cutest things I’d ever seen on her feet. I’d always hated Converse sneakers. Always. They were useless for anything but casual wearing. I couldn’t go hiking in them because they didn’t protect my feet from sharp rocks. I couldn’t wear them in the rain since they didn’t shield my feet from the wet. And wearing them in the cold? That was just plain stupid. They offered absolutely zero protection from that.
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