One of the whores goes to say something, but, when she looks over my shoulder, she closes her mouth.
Hands grip my hips, and I’m pulled back into Nash’s strong arms. “I love when you get all feisty Baby Girl,” he whispers in my ear.
Turning in his arms, I wrap my arms around his neck and he picks me up. His hands slide into the bottom of my shorts and he gives my ass a squeeze.
I hear the whores behind me whispering to each other and as much as I want to punch one of them in her whore-ish mouth, I focus on the man right in front of me.
“Where have you been?” I ask.
“I had something to do, but now the only thing I have planned is getting you in bed.” He nibbles on my neck, and I let him take me to his room.
When he closes the door behind us, I get him to set me down. At first he gives me a questioning look, but then lets me slide down his body.
Before he can say anything to me, I blurt it out. “Marry me.”
I watch as his blue eyes both darken and then lighten before he raises an eyebrow at me. He never says a word, but he does shake his head.
“Say something,” I whisper, sounding totally unsure of myself now. He grabs my face and places his lips to mine.
“I swear you are the most impatient woman I’ve ever met,” he grins.
Confused, I try to figure out what he’s talking about, but I am coming up blank, and have to ask what he means.
“Baby Girl, I’ve been gone because I went to buy you a ring. I was going to ask you tonight after I made you dinner, but, just like when I tried to tell you I loved you first, you beat me to it.” He shakes his head and pulls something out of his pocket.
Looking at the small box in his hand, I feel my heart sink into my stomach. As soon as the box opens, I cover my mouth with my hands as I see the most beautiful diamond ring.
“So since you asked me, I’m just going to take your answer as a yes, and put this ring on your finger,” he says with a smirk. I nod my head and try not to let the tears fall down my cheeks.
“I can’t believe you bought this for me,” I finally manage to stumble out. He slips the ring onto my finger and it fits perfectly. I couldn’t have chosen a better ring than the one he picked out.
“I would buy you the world if you wanted it Baby. I love you and I will lay my life down for you and never think twice. I want you to be the queen by my side for the rest of my life.”
Kissing him roughly, I pull him to the bed with me. “I love you,” I whisper against his lips. Before I can go any further, there is a knock on his door.
Groaning, I tell him to send them away. He kisses me once more before he gets off of me and opens the door.
When I see Pepper standing in the door way, I squeal and jump up off the bed and practically tackle her. We go tumbling into the hallway and Benny catches us. “Take it easy girls,” he says as he rights us both.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” I say pulling her into a hug.
“Someone had to help that sexy biker of yours pick out the perfect ring for you! Now, let me see it on your finger!” I look over at Nash and he shrugs his shoulder like he has no idea what she’s talking about.
“You helped him?” I ask, shocked.
She nods her head, and they high five. “It looks amazing! See, Nash, I told you that you didn’t need my help.” She gives him a huge grin, and I can’t help but fall even more in love with him than before.
“How did you know I would have gotten the ring already?” I finally ask her.
“Thea, I’ve been your friend for years! I know you better than you know yourself and based on our last conversation, I knew you were going to ask him if he didn’t ask you soon. You are so impatient.” She gives me a smug smile.
“You gave him a heads up?” I ask, looking back at him.
“No, she didn’t. I asked her a week ago to go with me and, with club business, I haven’t had the time to go until today. She mentioned that you were hinting at the idea while we were shopping and I had a feeling you were going to say something soon so I planned on asking you today, but you still ended up asking me first.” He grabs my hand and pulls me over to him.
Wrapping me up in his arms, he places a kiss to my lips and my hands grip the edges of his cut. “You’re amazing,” I say against his lips.
“Not as amazing as you Baby Girl,” he says before he kisses me once more.
Just think, if I went through with my original plan I wouldn’t have got to find my happily ever after.
Sometimes, the truth is the most important part of someone’s plan.
About the Author
K. Renee started writing this year, but has loved writing since she was young. She started writing because she couldn't get the stories out of her head, no matter what she did. She's twenty-seven years old and typically writes in her free time or on her lunch break. K. Renee works full-time and tries to go to the gym every day. She reads constantly and has hundreds of books she can't wait to start.
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost I want to thank everyone for buying this book! I never in a million years thought that I would be releasing a book, let alone writing multiple ones. I can't wait for everyone to meet my characters and fall in love with them like I have.
To my street team, K's Wayward Ladies. Thank you for all you do! You girls are amazing at pimping my book out to the indie book world. Thank you for your support and I can't wait to see what the future brings.
To the readers and fans, I thank each and everyone one of you who come hang out with me during takeovers and participate in my giveaways!
I hope you enjoy my books in the future and as well as this one.
-K.
Boy Blue
Bibi Rizer
Chapter 1
“You can’t sleep here.”
The kid lifts his head, gazing bleary-eyed through his floppy blue bangs. The silver hoop piercing his bottom lip makes him look pouty. Or maybe he just is pouty. Annoyed at being woken up. Again. Second time today. I’m only waking him up now because my shift is over and the night manager is likely to call the cops.
“This is a library,” I say. “Not a hotel.”
He uncurls from the reading chair, stretching his long lean legs and arms. His Ramones t-shirt rides up under his leather jacket, revealing a taut teenage six-pack and a thin line of sparse golden hair, like a trail leading into his low-riding skinny jeans.
So. Not a natural blue-head then.
“What time is it?” he says. He has a surprisingly deep voice, making me revise my estimated age upward a bit. I thought he might be about fifteen but I think he’s legal after all. For one thing, he smells of booze. At least he did when I checked on him this morning. Now he smells a bit sweaty, sleepy. The way my husband used to smell when he woke up on a Sunday morning. He’d slide his warm hands around my waist and up inside my t-shirt to cup my breasts as he pressed his morning wood into my butt from behind.
I work early Sundays now, so he wakes up alone. Not that I think he minds.
The kid yawns and looks like he might just curl up again, if I let him.
“It’s time to leave,” I say, faking the stern librarian as hard as I can. I don’t like the way his lazy grin is making me feel. He’s too young to think of this way, but damn…he’s beautiful, as pretty as a cat but with a wild edge
, like a stray cat, a tomcat. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him growl. Or purr.
He sits up straight, pulling a tattered black messenger bag from behind him and slinging it over his shoulder as he stands. His height surprises me too – he’s got to be over six feet. The more I look at him the more I realize I misjudged him this morning when I found him fast asleep in the comfy chairs next to the mystery section. I thought he was a punk kid skipping out on school, but now I think he’s a punk man skipping out on life. Probably an addict. Maybe homeless, though he looks pretty clean.
Some fucking story there I’m sure, but one I don’t need to hear. Not today. Not ever. I’m married. I’m a librarian. All that’s left of the old me, the girl who would run away with a guy like this in a San Francisco second, are a few tattoos and my bike: a Triumph Bonneville SE I bought myself with the money my old dad left me. It saw me through the bad years when I wasn’t far off from sleeping in the library myself. It took me away from the last guy who laid a fist on me too—took me away at eighty miles an hour and not looking back. And it stayed by me, faithfully, while I changed into someone new. Sober and educated. Married. Employed. A responsible citizen.
I love my job. I love my husband. And I love my bike. This kid and his dreamy eyes and sharp jaw don’t move me.
“You’re pretty cool for a librarian,” he says, running his fingers through his blue faux-hawk. “I like your tat.” He nudges his head down to my right wrist, where the Little Prince peeks out from under my cardigan sleeves. Books were always my destiny, even when I was living rough, hanging with bikers and getting tattoos. I just didn’t know it then.
The kid is inked too, more evidence that he’s eighteen at least. In addition to something just visible out of the top of his t-shirt, he has the word miserere spelled out one letter on each finger. I looked it up earlier today. It’s Latin for “mercy”
He rolls his eyes slowly back up to my face, making me resist the urge to pull my cardigan over my chest. I had to pin my blouse closed today to keep it from gapping over my boobs. Marriage has done great things for my lifestyle, my bank account, my mind and my soul, but my body is spreading out like a cloud in the wind.
You can’t have everything I guess.
The kid smiles at me, a little too invitingly, and lopes away on his long legs. After I watch him leave I turn and see the book tucked into the side of the chair. He must have been reading it as he fell asleep.
It’s Anne of Green Gables.
For fuck’s sake. I need a cold shower.
The ride home is my time. No library patrons asking for that red book that they saw someone reading and they can’t remember the name of. No husband with his intellectually taxing conversation. He’s brilliant and creative but a little high maintenance as company. We never say “How was your day?” like a normal couple. It usually starts with “I read this article in the New Yorker and…” or something. I don’t mind. After five years of marriage we haven’t run out of things to talk about. That’s something to cherish anyway.
I knew who he was when I agreed to marry him, knew the small pharmacy of pills that keep him on a relatively even keel, knew how intense he could be. He told me he was bipolar on our first date. And I told him I’d been shacked up with a biker gang, hooked on coke and dancing naked for money.
The thought makes me laugh. The only way I could dance naked for money looking the way I do now would be in a circus sideshow. Once I got clean I steadily gained weight at a rate of ten pounds a year. Eight years sober. Eighty pounds layered over the skinny little five-foot three stripper with the penchant for books and bikers. I look different. I feel different. Only my bike remembers the old days.
And when I ride, I remember too, but mostly just the good stuff. I peel off Lombard and up onto the Golden Gate Bridge just as the sun kisses the glistening water of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a good forty-minute ride to our house in Marin. I usually get home about half an hour before my husband, who tends to dawdle at his job at Starwalk Sound. He’s one of their top engineers, designing and developing new software and hardware for sound editing in all the big blockbuster movies. His team gets nominated for Oscars every year. Makes my little job as an assistant branch manager of adult services in the San Francisco Public library seem pretty small potatoes by comparison, but that’s one of the lovely things about my man. He talks to me as though my work is the most incredible thing he’s ever heard.
“None of them knew about the online journals?” he says. “And you showed them? That will change their lives!” or “But you transformed the whole focus of the committee. That project will be amazing now!” That’s one of the benefits of being married to a manic—lots of enthusiasm. And the things we sacrifice for keeping the depression at bay, the mania in the safe zone and his ability to function on high definition are worth it. It’s a small price to pay.
The bike rumbles under me as I slow down through the toll gate, then hums happily as I accelerate over the arc of the bridge. It’s not foggy today, which is a bonus. Like all San Franciscans I’m used to the fog, but riding into it, like a traveler through a magical curtain, is unnerving enough in a car. On a bike it’s cold and clammy and unnerving.
I turn off and head down into Sausalito. There’s a fish shop there where I think I’ll get some ahi steaks that we can do on the barbeque, since it’s lovely and warm today. There’s no line up at the fish store, and they pack the tuna with a little dry ice, so instead of rushing home I take the time to ride a bit around the winding back roads of Marin. My headlight illuminates the eucalyptus trees blurring past in the canopy above, the wind washes over my face and I try to forget the faint whiff of sorrow the boy in the library gave off. He smiled too much, I tell myself. He was a little too friendly.
No one sleeps in a library, regularly—this wasn’t the first time I’ve seen him—unless they have nowhere else to go. And young men with nowhere to go in San Francisco usually end up selling more than drugs to get by.
I pull the Triumph into our driveway and let it growl down to a stop as I cut the ignition. Giving myself a little moment to come down from the high of my ride, I sigh about the boy in the library. I know I’ll see him again. And I know he’s the exact type to make the old twitches from my past spring back to life. Sexy and rebellious. A little dangerous. And worse of all—he needs saving. And that’s the last fucking thing I need.
Chapter 2
“Baby?” My husband, Rory, calls out from the front door. On cue I hear his laptop bag bang down onto the desk in his study, his shoes clang onto the shoe rack in the hall, the fridge open, and the tsk of a Perrier opening. Neither of us drink alcohol, so Perrier is a treat for us. We have it with fresh squeezed OJ, fancy stuff like pomegranate juice, crushed ice, frozen berries, slices of lime or strawberry. Rory likes to make “mocktails” before dinner and as I follow his voice up from the laundry room I try to guess what it will be tonight.
“Grapefruit and crushed ginger,” he says, greeting me by the kitchen island.
“That sounds exotic,” I say.
“I saw it on Pinterest,” he says. And I enjoy the brief moment of chill, sipping his delicious concoction before he launches into whatever it’s going to be tonight.
“I read the transcript of the Democratic debates at lunch today,” he begins. “It’s going to be a close race. Frankly I don’t think health care is deciding issue any more. It’s not that simple.”
I smile to myself, pull the patio door open and turn on the barbeque as he continues.
“The education questions were where the candidates really diverged from each other. I mean on a paradigmatic level. That and taxes of course. Always taxes. For once I’d like to hear some mathematical analysis of what they’re really talking about. If it’s a four percent cut to the lower tier then what does that mean in dollar figures, and if it’s coming from increases to middle or top tier employers, what does that mean in terms of job losses? Ultimately it could end up being a zero sum game, but none of the m
indless voters would ever know that.”
His chatter continues as I chop vegetables for a salad and wait for the barbeque to warm up. By the time I’ve put the tuna on the grill the topic has changed to cosmology and when we sit down to eat it’s free speech, one of his favorite topics because it involves my work.
“What do you think is the most dangerous book in your collection?” he asks.
“The Holy Bible,” I say without hesitation.
He laughs, coughs a little on his second ginger grapefruit before becoming serious. “Really?”
“Consider all the horrific things that have been done in its name.”
“So the Quran is dangerous too?”
“Of course. All religious texts are.”
“What about non-religious texts in the public library? Anything about guns, uprisings against the government?”
I begin a meandering list, much to his delight, everything from The Hunger Games to Brave New World, 1984 to Jean Val Jean, before launching into non-fiction classics such as Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and the NRA Guide to Personal Protection. By the time we’re clearing the plates into the dishwasher, he seems calmer, as though the thorough examination of the issues has relaxed him, untangled whatever knots he had inside. It could also be the medication kicking in. Two years ago his doctor added a low dose sedative to help him settle down enough in the evenings to get a few hours’ sleep. In the early years of our marriage there were days, weeks, where he would pace around the house all night, occasionally waking me to discuss some random issue or show me some new piece of technology he’d designed.
And I would sleepily listen and eventually he would slide in beside me and his body would take over his mind just long enough for us to make slow sweet love dozing and waking and having more sex until dawn. It was beautiful, perfect, even though it frequently left me exhaustedly completing assignments, or zoning out at the reference desk. Then an “incident” instigated a complete overhaul of the medications Rory took. He disappeared for two days and was found in a motel room with a laptop computer on which he had programmed a whole new algorithm for sorting, encrypting and cataloging sound files.
Biker Chicks: Volume 2 Page 28
