“What are you up to? You look like you’ve got a bee in your bonnet,” Gentry said from where he was tinkering with the motor.
She glanced up from texting. “Canceling a date I had tonight.”
Gentry stood, looking utterly pleased with himself. “That’s a cruel thing to do to a man. Especially in a text.” Skye made a show of looking at the time display on her phone. “There’s still time to drop me off in time for the date, if you want to take me back.”
“Like hell I do.” He climbed onto the picnic table next to her and reached around her waist, tucking his hand under her hip to grab her ass and pull her close. “The only place I’m dropping you off tonight is onto a bed, right before I climb in with you.”
She fed him a piece of chicken, popping it right past those gorgeous, full lips. He licked the grease and spices off her fingers.
“I’ve got to clear the air about something,” she said with a smile, so he’d know it wasn’t anything serious.
“Oh yeah? Make it fast because I’m ready to eat some dinner.” Judging by the look in his eyes and the way his hands were getting friendly with her backside, the dinner he was talking about was her.
“That wasn’t my roommate you talked to today at my house. It was my sister Gloria.”
He pretended to contemplate that. “That is a bombshell. So glad you cleared the air. Gloria … she’s the one with those two kids I thought for a second were yours.”
“That’s her. I live with them. Or they live with me, actually.”
“You and your sister are close?” he asked.
“Very. Gloria’s husband died in combat four years ago, when Chris was just a baby. I asked her to move in with me, to be closer to the family, and I’m so grateful that she did. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Does she work for your housekeeping company too?”
Mom had tried to convince her that nothing was as noble as joining the family business, but Gloria had known she wanted to be a solider since she’d been in middle school, and even though Mom was one of the most persuasive people Skye knew, Gloria had been even more stubborn. “No. She’s in the army, stationed at Camp Bullis.”
“You sound proud of her.”
“Very. And her kids are great. I love being an auntie.”
“But that love spell you had your mom conjure tells me you’re ready for a family of your own,” he said.
Her hand crept to her belly of its own accord. “I’d like to try. It’s time.”
“I still don’t get it. You’re not into these guys. You say you want to get married and settle down, but you sure don’t act like it. Why push yourself like that when it clearly makes you miserable? Take it from me that some people aren’t the marrying types.”
“That’s the thing, Gentry. I am the marrying type. A little too eager, my sister says. I’ve already tied the knot once. Briefly. When I was twenty. Don’t you see? There will be no more divorces for me. I can’t bear to bring any more shame to myself and my family. So the next time I get married, it has to be forever, and a forever kind of man has proven really hard to find. Impossible, actually.”
Skye wasn’t sure what had prompted her to overshare like that, but she had. For reasons she didn’t want to analyze, she wanted him to know her. Maybe it was the anniversary of her miscarriage warping her emotions, but suddenly nothing was more important than coming clean to Gentry about who she was and all she’d been through.
She looked to him for support or questions or anything, but he stared blankly at her, and all he said was “Oh.”
* * *
She’d been married. And divorced. Gentry wasn’t sure why the news came as such a shock to him, but it did. With that nugget of information, all the pieces fell into place: Skye’s serial dating, the desperation, and her dissatisfaction with every man she auditioned for the role of her forever mate.
She’d shed her suit coat and her bare shoulders glowed golden in the light of the setting sun. Flecks of red shone in her hair. She turned to look at him, taking in his posture and expression as though searching for signs of judgment. Just in case he was accidently projecting any, he sat up straighter and schooled his features.
“My first husband, Mike, he wasn’t good for me in so many ways,” she said. Her eyes radiated with pain.
Gentry could easily conjure an image of all the men who wouldn’t be good for her using the exact traits she’d told him she was looking for in a man. Vanilla to a fault, a churchgoing, upstanding citizen, a true Texas gentleman. Like she’d said, what she wanted in a husband was wrong for her in every way.
“He was a performer with a traveling circus, living like a nomad. A flashy, macho”—she turned a pointed gaze at Gentry—“rock-star type of personality. Not religious, not into family. Barely into me. And I followed him anyway.”
Boy, oh, boy, had he called that one wrong. No wonder she wasn’t looking for a future with a man like Gentry. No wonder they could never be more than temporary.
“So what did he do? What was the final straw?” Gentry prompted. “Because you would never just throw up your hands and give up on a marriage for nothing. You may be a wild spirit, but you’re not built to leave.” Not like me.
But that was a thought for another time, not when the woman in his care had trusted him enough to open her heart and her past to him. The mask of stone she’d been wearing started to crumble. She chewed her lower lip hard enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if she broke the skin soon.
“No, I’m not. Or, I didn’t think I was. Not in my wildest dreams. But in the third month of our marriage, when I went to find him after a performance to tell him I was…” Her expression turned angry as her gaze shifted to the horizon beyond Gentry’s shoulder. Her teeth gnawed her lower lip without mercy. In the stretching silence, she drew a sharp breath through her nose and sat straight up as her hand flew to her mouth. She really had drawn blood.
Gentry grabbed a napkin from the table and shooed her hand away. He dabbed at the cut until the ooze of blood had subsided, then he cracked open a fresh water bottle and handed it over. She drank deeply, in rhythmic, noisy glugs, and he had to wonder if she was that thirsty or if she was stalling, debating if she really wanted to reveal to Gentry what she’d been about to.
“What were you about to tell him?” he prompted.
She crushed the empty water bottle in her hand, then hurled it in the direction of the trash can. It bounced off the side and landed in the dry red dirt with a puff.
“That I was pregnant,” she bit out.
Well, shit. But she didn’t have a kid. At least, she’d told Gentry she didn’t. So … abortion? No, even as a lapsed Catholic, there was no way she’d do that. Then, she either had a miscarriage or gave the baby up for adoption? His imagination spun out the possibilities and he had to force himself back to the present, to her words.
“What happened to the—” Shut the fuck up, man. She’ll get there if she wants you to know. It wasn’t like she owed him total access to her life and her family, much less her past choices.
“I’d gone to a clinic that day after the half-dozen drug-store tests came back positive. When I walked into our trailer, he was on the couch, his hand wrapped around the long, blonde ponytail of the girl kneeling in front of him. One of the lighting techs. Someone I’d considered a friend.”
“What a bastard.” Then again, he’d known dozens of that kind of guy during all this years of touring. Dozens upon dozens of men who didn’t consider a blowjob from a roadie to be cheating on their women. There was a time Gentry hadn’t either. When he was young and stupid and thought the world was his for the taking. Before he figured out that partying and womanizing turned him into the kind of man he didn’t want to be.
Skye cut a sideways glance at Gentry. A regal smile spread on her lips, causing a fresh smear of blood to appear in the cut. She darted her tongue out to taste the blood, and for a moment, Gentry thought again about wiping her lip clean. But he knew from experi
ence that something about the taste of blood was grounding. Maybe she needed that tonight. To taste the blood and embrace the pain of memory. He knew all about that too.
“When I saw them like that, I went crazy. I threw everything in the room I could get my hands on at the two of them, and then I chased that bitch out of our trailer with one of the knives from the kitchen. I almost threw it at him, and I think he thought I would, too. But I told him, “You’re not worth going to jail for, you piece of shit. But you don’t get to have me anymore. And, guess what? You don’t get this baby, either.” I left him standing there blubbering like a fool. I stole his motorcycle and took off with nothing but the clothes on my back. I got about two hours away before the bike ran out of gas and I didn’t have any money, so I had to swallow my pride and call Gloria. It was a ten-hour drive from Dulcet to that gas station in Arizona, but she picked me up and listened to me rage about Mike the whole way back to our parents’ house. I never told her I was pregnant until years later. Not my parents either. I just couldn’t deal with their reactions to that, on top of everything else.
“I’d been home two weeks when I miscarried. Two weeks of my mother urging me to return Mike’s phone calls, to make things right. To try. A woman didn’t just give up on her marriage, she said. No, actually she said that a Catholic woman didn’t just give up on her marriage. Divorce is a sin, and God will punish you, she reminded me. Our priest reminded me of that too. But I hired a divorce attorney anyway. I had no interest in trying to work something out with a man I didn’t trust, even if I’d thought I loved him for a while. The day I had the papers served to Mike, I started cramping and bleeding. And that was it. I went to the doctor and they told me the baby was gone. Maybe my mom was right, you know? Maybe God was punishing me for my sins.”
She’d used the word maybe, but there was no mistaking the conviction behind her words.
Fucking hell. She really believed it. She believed that leaving her cheating husband had caused her miscarriage. No wonder she’d heaped so many rules onto herself about the man she’d end up with this time around.
He knelt before her and took her elbows in his hands. “Listen to me, Skye. It was not God’s will that you lost the baby. That’s not how it works, okay? You did not bring all that on yourself.”
She stared daggers at the ground to his left, lost in her anger. He pushed on, feeling helpless and desperate to soothe her. “This Mike guy was the one who sinned. Not you.”
He could practically see his argument float through her like an apparition.
She shifted her gaze to the horizon again, silent and trembling with rage. Then all of a sudden, she seemed to snap herself out of it. She slapped her knees and offered Gentry a forced smile. “This isn’t a sexy topic for our weekend away together. Let’s drop it. Please.”
He tried to swallow, but the walls of his windpipe seemed to stick together, tacky and dry. No, it wasn’t sexy. But who the fuck cared? Not him. Somehow, knowing her, this intimacy was better than sex. Deeper. It would last them both longer. This was the real Skye. Not the muse. Not the vixen. This was Skye Martinez, a real woman, with all the scars and feelings and needs of one. Somehow, that made her even sexier, that realness. The trust she gave him.
He kissed the palm of her hand, then left his lips there against her skin, breathing into her his gratitude that she’d trusted him with her secret. He rose and slid his fingers through her hair to cradle her head. He had to kiss her, to taste that blood and leech the pain from her.
He kissed her with all the tenderness he could pour into it, letting her know that she wasn’t alone and that she was perfect in every way that counted, perfect in her flaws and failings and painful past. He knew what his role was in her life, his function as her lover. Escape. As much as he craved for her to connect with his true, creative self, she needed him to help her disconnect from her life, from her past and her pain. The two of them were the perfect yin and yang of need and release.
Not so different from the way his music was designed to pluck people out of their minds and their worries. Such was his lot in life, to offer himself up as a gift of forgetting, to be that illusion. Tonight, though, might have been the first time that he didn’t feel used. He didn’t feel like a tool or a puppet. What he felt was privileged to be the man Skye trusted with this job. “I’m gonna take you someplace soft tonight. Someplace nice. And I’m gonna fuck you so sweet, baby, that you’re gonna forget everything but me.”
Her eyes glittered with unshed tears and toughness. “Promise?”
His grand romantic plan had been to linger at the lookout point until the sunset, but that’s not what she needed. And if he were being honest with himself, that wasn’t what he needed either. Not romance or sunsets, but she needed kinky thrills that pushed her boundaries and lit up her kink for breaking the rules. He gripped the collar of her dress in his hands and tugged her toward him for another kiss, open-mouthed and urgent.
He slipped his hand beneath her skirt and took a firm grip of her ass.
She pushed into his hand. “I like that.”
And he liked the sound of uplift in her voice. That determined joy, despite the quaver in her breath. This was why she’d jumped on the back of his Harley tonight. This, right here, was why he’d been compelled as though by angels back to Dulcet. To be here for her like this.
She didn’t need another man in her life who tamped her wild spirit down. This was the woman who’d let him take her in that club, who’d got off on being watched while she was taken hard. He would give her this gift of escape. Hell, the way she whimpered against his mouth and inspired song after song after song, he’d give her whatever she wanted. Anything in the whole wide world.
He took his time strapping her helmet on, first combing back that thick mane of hair, then picking errant tendrils from where they tangled with the helmet strap. He held his leather jacket out in offering and she slipped her arms into the holes. He zipped her in, and when the zipper closure curved over her chest, he paused to plunge a finger between the swells of her breasts and trace the full shape up to her collar bone.
Her skin was soft and hot, as though she’d absorbed the heat of the sun.
He’d passed a place on his way down from Tulsa that had looked nice, a modest resort hotel on the other side of the mountains near the Oklahoma border that looked out over a wide expanse of the Red River, cutting through a valley. Right on the edge of wild. Perfect for the two of them to hide away from the world, if only for the night.
He straddled his bike and fired it up. The engine revved, ready to be unleashed on the highway again. She threaded her leg over the leather seat behind his back and tucked in behind him and held tight to his sides. He felt strong and good. Right with the world, exactly where he needed to be.
He got them back on the road, and he took the hairpin turns, smooth and in control, like he would with Skye’s curves later that night. He’d ride each curve of hers just as hard and fast, just as daring. Until she clung to him as she was now. Was that laughter he heard?
“I love this,” she said.
In his rearview mirror, he watched her chin tip up, eyes closed. Trusting him, loving the ride he was taking her on. Wind in their faces, the setting sun to their left.
His attention shifted to the road in front of him, and adrenaline and fear jolted through him with the strength of lightning. He opened his mouth to scream at the sight of a delivery truck barreling down on them.
Sounds were muffled, even the blare of the truck’s horn.
Time stretched, giving him just enough space to process his choices. Hit the truck head on, go over the cliff or crash them into the mountain.
And then the choice was taken away from him.
So focused on the truck that he didn’t see the slick patch on the road. The bike laid down, spinning. His left leg was consumed with pain. White hot, nauseating pain. Skye flipped up over him, her limbs as limp as a doll’s. Her bare legs bright red. Blood? Everything was bright red.
Red and black and hot white pain. He screamed her name. Or maybe that was all in his head. He couldn’t get his jaw to work.
He heard the skid of truck brakes. The crumple of metal as the bike was eaten below the truck. The last thing he saw was Skye’s body tumbling over the cliff.
Chapter Fourteen
Gentry woke up flailing, screaming. For real this time, not just in the movie playing in his mind about the crash every time he closed his eyes. He felt the vibrations of the scream in his throat, sandpaper against his raw, dry windpipe.
Tubes weighed down his arm. He was in a bed. A hospital.
The Life Flight and ambulance rides had been a blur of fuzzy shapes. He hadn’t been able to speak or move. His whole body pulsed with the pain.
A familiar face came into focus next to his bed. “Nick. What are you doing here? I thought you’d be partying in Las Vegas for the rest of the weekend.”
“The hospital called. I guess I’m your emergency contact, eh? That’s cool. I know I’ve put you down as mine a few times over the years. I’m glad you’re all right.” But Nick’s face was drawn tight, and his words rang hollow in Gentry’s ears.
Something was really wrong with him because he could barely move his left arm, but none of that mattered until he learned Skye’s fate. He’d never been much a praying man, but he was sure praying now. “Where’s Skye? Please tell me she’s okay.”
“Skye? That’s her name, the woman you were with in the crash?”
Gentry’s heart contracted painfully. “Yes. And if you don’t know her name, then I’m guessing you either don’t know if she’s all right or she’s hurt really badly and you don’t want to tell me.”
“I’m not lying to you. I swear to God. The doctor wouldn’t tell me anything except what was going on with you,” Nick said. “But I’ll find out about her for you. Just … stop moving, okay? You’re going to hurt yourself worse if you keep this up.”
One Wild Night Page 17
