Sneaking a glance from my head lowered position, I noticed that Ridley had lost his smile.
“Aw shit,” he swam towards me.
“I’m sorry, Kitt,” Ridley apologized as he moved towards me. “Did I hurt you?”
Everyone around us had gone quiet, and I smiled, knowing all of them would be witness to the smack I was about to lay down.
Luckily, my wet hair was hiding most of my face from everyone’s gaze, meaning no one, not even Ridley, could see the smile that twisted up further and further the closer he got.
“Kitt?” Ridley murmured once he got close, his arm coming out to rest on my shoulder.
I waited until he was in perfect striking distance, then launched my entire body at him, hitting him in the belly like a battering ram.
“Ooof,” he grunted as he went down, my body on top.
I gasped a full breath of air before I followed him down into the water, then immediately wrapped my arms around his head.
He started struggling then, but I held on like a fucking tick, even going as far as to wrap my legs high around his chest.
He burst from the surface of the water, gasping for breath and trying to shake me off at the same time.
I held on, being sure to dig my fingernails into the side of his head as I did.
“Owww!” He yelled, thrashing to get me off him without hurting himself further. “Get off me, you fat cow!”
I snickered as Ridley started to use every dirty name in the book on me.
Once he got too close to the edge and the rocks, I planted my feet in his back and shoved off him, swimming frantically to the side of the pool.
He was fast. Luckily, I had the advantage of necessity.
I was nearly at the far wall, and climbing up the steps, when he caught me.
I screamed and held on for dear life.
“Let me go, you accident!” I yelled.
The insult made sense to no one but me, and I snickered as he cursed at me.
“You know damn well and good I was planned,” he snapped. “You were the accident.”
“I may have been an accident, but I wasn’t the reason our parents got married. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been born in a castle like I deserve,” I teased.
A thick, callused hand reached out and wrapped around my bicep, causing me to look up in surprise.
Then I grinned and latched onto his shirt and pulled.
Wisely, Ridley didn’t continue to pull, otherwise my suit would’ve gone right along with him.
“Thanks,” I gasped, smiling at Apple.
Apple winked and walked back to his seat, the whole front of his shirt covered in water.
I walked with Apple to the table that they were all crowded around, and would’ve taken my brother’s vacant seat but he decided to come out of the water as well, leaving me with nowhere to sit.
But it didn’t stay that way for long, because Apple caught a towel from the lounge behind him and opened his arms.
I smiled and went to him, intending to take it from him.
He had different ideas, though, and pulled me down onto his lap before he wrapped the towel around my body and pulled me in close to his chest.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
He rumbled a ‘welcome’ and went back to his conversation.
“What are you saying? You know who did it?” Apple asked. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“Because I just remembered,” Mig said shortly.
Apple’s eyes narrowed.
“This is a bald eagle nest. This is so far out of the realm of being okay to forget,” he argued, moving his hands to form air quotes. “It’s not even funny. What’s the guy look like that you saw coming in?”
I watched the group continue the conversation, move on to others, and laugh occasionally for another forty-five minutes, at least, before I got uncomfortable.
Ridley was talking to Mig and Casten periodically about their office and a case they were working on, meaning they weren’t paying that much attention to me and Apple.
Something I was grateful for, moments later, when I turned and repositioned myself.
I also exposed myself at the same time.
Luckily, the towel hid most of the flash from everyone but Apple.
The one who I thought wasn’t paying any attention to me, seeing as he hadn’t said a thing to me in nearly half an hour.
He was speaking to Griffin about goats, for some reason, but the moment my breast became revealed under my towel, he shifted the towel up so it covered me head to toe.
I would’ve said he hadn’t even realized he’d done it, but his cock started to harden underneath me, telling me he most definitely did catch the slip.
I moved experimentally, shifting my ass on his lap and closing my eyes as I did.
If I accidentally made eye contact with anyone at the table, I might blush and reveal that I was having naughty thoughts.
I reached my hand down, letting it trail along his chest and abs, stopping when I reached the buckle of his belt.
He’d lost the gun that’d been there all during the trip sometime in between us changing and coming down here.
Meaning, I was thankful because it gave me access to his belt buckle once I managed to move the towel out from under our two bodies, bunching it up to the side so I could make it happen.
He didn’t show any outward signs that he liked what I was doing, but boy was his cock hard.
So hard that I was scared to unzip his jeans for fear that I’d catch his cock on the zipper.
Just when I finally found the courage to unzip the zipper, he abruptly stood.
“Let’s go get you into your hotel room and changed,” he said. “I have some things I need to talk about tonight, and I want to make sure you’re settled.”
The abruptness of the whole scene had me standing and grasping at the towel that was still in Apple’s grasp.
He held onto it, though, meaning I either let go or play tug o’ war with him.
Needless to say, I knew when I was beat.
I didn’t fight for something that I knew I wouldn’t win, and that towel wasn’t one of them.
So I let it go and started shuffling to my room.
But he didn’t follow me up to my room.
He stopped me about halfway up the steps, grabbed a hold of my hand, and pulled me to a stop just inside of the stairwell.
“Stop,” he said softly.
I stopped and turned to find him at the bottom step, me four steps above him.
“You’re not coming?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked.
He ran his hands through his hair and looked down at his feet.
“I have to tell the guys something, and I’ll come back to the room and talk to you about it once I’m done. I thought about it the whole way over here, and I just have to get it off my chest before we take this even further,” he said softly, looking up at me with sadness in his eyes.
I nodded mutely.
“You remember the room number?” He hoped.
I nodded again.
“Good,” he uttered. “I may be a little later, but if I’m not there by nine, come get me.”
“Where will y’all be?” I asked.
He pointed down the stairs.
“There’s a bar in the lobby that you missed since you came in through the back door,” he informed me.
“Okay,” I breathed, shivering slightly.
He grinned.
“Get up to the room,” he ordered.
I nodded again.
When neither one of us moved, he started up the steps until his face was even with mine.
“I think you need to go,” he said. “Or I’ll have to take you right in this stairwell.”
I shivered again.
“They have cameras,” I po
inted to the cameras that were in the corners of the stairs.
He grinned.
“I don’t mind if you don’t,” he teased.
I blinked slowly, then smiled.
Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“Hurry.”
His eyes flared.
“I’ll see what I can accomplish,” he said.
I nodded and turned, but his grip on my hips had me halting.
“Did I tell you how fucking hot you looked in this?” He asked.
My head dropped to my chest.
“No,” I told him breathily, my nipples beading into sharp little points.
But before I could act on the need that was exploding through my body, he was gone, and I was left alone in a cold stairwell with only the smell of him to keep me company.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “The man’s going to be the death of me.”
Chapter 7
I’m trying to cut down on my fucking swearing. Let’s fucking see how the fuck that fucking goes. Fuck.
-Text from Kitt to Ridley
Apple
“Well, you got us,” Mig said as he took another shot. “Are you ever going to grow a pair and tell us why we’re all here getting drunk, instead of out with our women?”
I was getting to that.
I just needed another drink first.
I held my finger up to the bartender, and he brought me my eighth shot.
“You’re going to die of alcohol poisoning. How are we going to get your bike home without you to drive it?” Ridley sighed in exasperation.
I took the shot the moment the bartender sat it down on the bar top in front of me.
“It’d be helpful as fuck if you didn’t push me,” I said, bringing the beer that the bartender followed up with up to my lips and took a long swallow.
I wasn’t even tasting it at this point.
I nearly chickened out and that was about the point where I started ordering the shots.
“Come on, boy,” Peek said thickly, finishing the last of his beer. “I got a hot, warm, willing woman in my bed. If you don’t spit it out, I’m just going to assume you’re not going to and get to her.”
I downed the rest of the beer, not stopping until the only thing left was the foam.
“Fine,” I ground out, looking around the bar.
There was no one there, which worked well.
I wasn’t about to tell them my deepest, darkest secret with other people around.
It was one thing to tell them, men I knew I could trust to carry my secret to the grave.
Others that weren’t in the same lifestyle…who didn’t know how fucking hard it could be for a combat veteran to acclimate to regular life after they’d done so much time in combat.
Normal people just didn’t understand.
These men in front of me, though, did.
“I met my best friend in the Army when I was eighteen. We stayed with each other all through boot camp, training and then later, the Army Rangers,” I started.
I saw Peek wince when he realized that something bad was about to unfold.
A man didn’t have to drink eight shots of whiskey to tell a story unless it was bad.
“He got hurt,” I continued. “We both did, but he was worse. We both came home, both of us fucked up as hell. Me with a head injury. My arm and back fucked. And him...”
I took a deep breath.
“He couldn’t walk. Couldn’t piss by himself, and he had seizures nearly once a week.” I didn’t look at Ridley when I said that. If I did, I would see the sympathy there, and I couldn’t handle that right then. “He couldn’t even get out of bed because both of his arms and one leg were blown off. He refused any and all treatment and help in getting his health and his life on track again after all that,” I blew out a breath. “I started out better. Got a job on the Los Angeles police force once my head was deemed ‘okay’ and my arm healed. My head had supposedly healed, but the emotional damage wasn’t healing, not at all. So, I lied. The longer I was home, the worse I got. I was violent. I got into fights and then blacked out and couldn’t remember what I did the previous day.” I shook my head. “It kept getting worse and worse until one day I made a deal with Stephen. One that was his idea, but I went along with it, and I shouldn’t have.”
My voice cracked as I said those last few words.
I needed another drink.
“It’s okay, son,” Peek said in his lilting Irish accent.
I closed my eyes.
Then reopened them and stared Peek in the eyes when I said what I had to say next.
“We both hated ourselves so much that we knew something had to be done. We made a deal. We shoot each other, that way it’s not a suicide. Our parents would get our life insurance, and that’d be the end of it.”
“But he didn’t follow through,” Peek guessed.
I gasped in a ragged breath, my chest so tight it hurt to breathe.
“Yeah,” I choked. “That was one of those days that I could barely remember. I only know those few facts. That’s all.”
“So what happened?” Mig asked, having stayed silent this whole time, I’d nearly forgotten about him. I’d nearly forgotten about all of them being at my back.
“They thought I’d shot him out of self-defense,” I explained. “I was still in uniform. I’d come to see him during my lunch while on shift.”
“Damn,” Ridley said.
I was sure he was thinking better of asking me to tell Peek now.
It was something that no man would ever want to divulge.
Not that he wanted to kill himself.
Not that he planned it out, and it would have happened if his friend had played his part and not chickened out when pulling the trigger.
I couldn’t say the same for me.
I’d done my job. I’d pulled the trigger.
And I’d pay for that decision for the rest of my life.
Stephen haunted me in my dreams. In my waking moments.
There was never a time that Stephen wasn’t there.
Until a certain lady had come into my life and had gone about changing my outlook on everything.
“So, how are you better right now?” Casten chimed in. “You’re sitting here, not getting into a fights. What changed?”
I lowered my head and removed my hat.
The hat that I always wore, no matter what.
“Surgery,” I twisted to the side and moved my hair out of the way. “After I quit my job, the next day, blaming it on the job, I went in to see a doc about my episodes. He ran a CT scan and then saw the blood. It was a bleed so fine that it was missed by everyone but me. I knew something was wrong. I just wasn’t willing to admit it.”
“Fucking sucks, man,” Peek rumbled. “Glad you told us.”
He gestured to the bartender.
The bartender stopped in front of us once again, and Peek said, “Give me the bottle.”
The bartender handed him the rest of the bottle of whiskey and walked to the end of the bar once again where the cute little redhead waitress was talking and flirting with him.
Peek poured me another shot.
“You still think about killing yourself?” Ridley asked bluntly.
I turned my gaze to his.
Then picked up the shot and downed it.
Fire burned down my throat as I shrugged.
“Not in the last two weeks,” I told him honestly.
A slight gasp had me turning to see Kitt standing there, a look of shock covering her beautiful face.
And my belly sank.
Fuck me.
I’d never wanted her to hear that story.
Hell, I never wanted anyone to hear that story, but definitely not her.
And I could tell that she’d definitely put the timeline together.
It’d been exactly two weeks since I’d met her.
Two weeks and eight
hours to be exact.
And it was the truth.
I hadn’t once thought about killing myself in the last two weeks.
Everybody else heard the gasp as well as me, and they turned to see Kitt’s ashen face.
“You need help to your room?” Ridley asked.
She bit her lip.
“No.”
She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and studiously avoided them, letting me know clearly what she thought.
Ridley growled.
“You know better, Kitt,” Ridley said through clenched teeth.
Kitt shrugged.
I turned around and presented Kitt with my back, shame pouring off of me in waves.
And somehow I knew that I just had a setback.
I was fucked, and not in a good way.
Needless to say, I didn’t follow her back to the room.
***
Two hours later, I was about ten sheets to the wind and barely making it up to my room.
I fiddled with the door for about two minutes before a bleary-eyed woman opened it.
“You forget how to work your card?” Kitt asked with amusement.
I didn’t answer her, only walked into the room and collapsed onto the bed.
“You want me to help you off with your boots and pants?” She asked laughingly.
I rolled over.
“Do your worst,” I ordered.
My voice sounded rough. Way rougher than normal.
And I couldn’t feel my face.
“You can’t feel your face because you’re drunk off your ass,” Kitt said with a smile on her beautiful lips.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?” I asked.
“For calling me beautiful,” she whispered. “It’s nice to hear it.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” I growled. “And don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.”
She blushed and that’s when I realized all the lights were on.
“Why are all the lights blazing this late?” I asked, closing my eyes and letting her take my boots off.
“Because I was waiting for you. I wanted to tell you I understand.”
She pulled my boots off, and they fell to the floor with a soft thump.
The hotel had excellent carpeting. Carpet that was so thick that it could possibly pass for a fucking extra bed—comfortably—if worse came to worst.
Bad Apple (The Uncertain Saints MC #4) Page 7
