by Sophia Gray
She looked like she was about to cry. Her bottom lip shook. “It melted.” She sniffed.
I took the stick from her and tossed it in the small can by her night stand. “It’s okay, sweat pea. No crying.” I scooped her up into my arms and headed to the bathroom. Her hands were all sticky when she wrapped them around my neck.
By the time I had her cleaned up, Beth came into the bathroom to see what was going on. I had Maddie standing up in the sink while I cleaned her hands and face with a wet cloth and she was giggling so loud when I washed her neck that Beth had been alerted to our antics.
“What happened?”
“The popsicle melted. But I didn’t get it on the floor.” She sounded awfully proud of herself for that fact.
“She did get it on the bed though.” I grinned. “And all over her clothes.”
“I can see that. Well, dinner’s ready. C’mon, let’s change your clothes and have our burgers. After, we’ll change your bedding. Okay?”
“Can I put on my pajamas? I wanna wear my Barbie gown.” She let Beth pick her up from the sink and carry off down the hall. I heard Beth agree to the little girls demands and head off into her bedroom.
I didn’t understand my reaction to the situation. Her having a kid was a clear cut sign that said run the fuck away. I didn’t need a kid in my life. Hell, I’d only just accepted the fact that I’d be taking Beth into my bed on a more permanent basis. A kid coming along for the ride hadn’t been in that picture.
But my panic button wasn’t tingling. Instead I watched Beth carry that little girl off to her room and wondered about helping her in the kitchen while she took care of the kid. I also wanted to find that fucker who walked out on them and put my fist through his face, repeatedly.
No one hurt my girls and got away with it.
Chapter Eight
BETH
Putting Madison to bed never had been so difficult. Usually she was tired enough to lie down and fall right asleep after a short book and a snuggle, but that was before Rafe entered our lives. The man didn’t understand kids, or boundaries apparently.
“Mama, I wanna stay up. Rafe said I could.” Maddie bounced on her bed. I managed to grab her before she fell off and put her on the ground.
“Rafe doesn’t make the rules, Maddie. I do. And I say it’s bedtime. You can play with him tomorrow if he’s still here, okay?” Play with him. Like he was a new toy I’d brought home for her.
She climbed up into bed, wiggling her way under her covers giving me her I’m gonna do it, but I’m mad about it look. “Mama, why were those mean men making all that noise today?”
I sat on her bed and took a deep breath. She hadn’t mentioned the parking lot so foolishly I had hoped she would forget all about it. Tucking her hair behind her ear I tried to make my voice light. “They were just screwing around, baby girl. But sometimes when you play around people get hurt.”
“Like when I was playing tag with Justin and he pushed me down when he tagged me?”
I grinned. “Yeah, something like that. They were just being rowdy boys. But we didn’t get hurt, did we? We are safe, right?” I laid her blanket over her, tucking it into her comforter.
“Rafe saved us.” She nodded matter-of-factly.
“Well, I guess, sort of.” As far as little girl logic went, he had in fact saved us.
“He said nothing will hurt us when he’s with us. He’s like our body guard.” She explained to me. It was getting harder to keep a straight face. I wondered what Rafe’s reaction would be to hearing her description of him.
“I guess that’s right. Now, it’s time for bed. No messing around, you go right to sleep.” I tapped her nose and gave her a kiss to her forehead.
“Okay, Mommy.” She let out a sigh and turned over to her side, pulling her blankie up closer to her chin. I turned her light off and quietly closed the door.
“Your body guard?” His deep voice whispered from behind me, startling me.
I spun around and slapped his chest. “Don’t do that!”
He gave a hearty laugh. “Sorry, was too easy.”
“I’m going to take a shower. I put a blanket and a pillow on the arm chair in the living room for you.” I pushed my way around him and headed to the bathroom. I could feel his eyes on me and imagined his look of annoyance at my dismissing him so easily, but nothing waylaid me. I wanted my hot shower, and I wanted to sleep for a week.
***
The shower did just the trick. My muscles softened, the soft pounding in my head finally simmered down, and my racing thoughts slowed to a trickle after standing under the hot water. Once I was dried off and slipped into my pajama shorts and t-shirt, I tiptoed down the hall to see if Rafe was still up.
The couch was empty. The blankets I had left out were still folded on the armchair. I hadn’t heard the door open, but it looked as though Rafe had left. I couldn’t lie to myself and say I was thrilled about it, a small part of liked having him in the house with us. His presence seemed to make my nerves settle, and the little touches he gave me throughout the night had kept my body responding to him.
Before I took Maddie to bed, he’d given me a kiss and sent me on my way with a pat to my ass. Which of course reminded me of the spanking he gave me earlier. I should have still been pissed at him about that. My mind told me to be angry, to kick him out of the house for laying a hand on me. But my body overruled it and reminded me of the tender way he treated me after the awful spanking. His fingers had worked so nimbly, so skilled at bringing me to one of the strongest orgasms I’d ever had. He wasn’t wrong about my attitude, and I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit his take charge personality turned me on.
“Goddamn cave man,” I muttered to myself, trying to ignore the heaviness in my chest at his disappearance. Checking to make sure the front door was locked, I decided to forgo the dishes until morning and go to bed.
I checked in on Madison once more to be sure she was sleeping soundly, then headed to my room. I had the morning shift the next day and needed to get up early. I turned off the bathroom light, and went to my room.
I pushed the door to my room open and jumped at the sight of Rafe sitting on the bed, his back pressed against the backboard and his legs crossed at his ankles out in front of him. He’d taken off his kutte but left on his black t-shirt and jeans. His boots were lined up next to my nightstand on the floor.
“Shit!” I shut the door to make sure Madison didn’t hear me. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“That seems to be happening a lot lately.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “I wasn’t in the mood to watch TV and you looked tired.”
“You aren’t sleeping in here.” I tried to sound firm and formidable, but his expression didn’t convince me I’d been successful.
His lips curled into a slow and easy grin. “I sure as hell am.” He slid his legs off the bed and stood up. The muscles in his arms strained against the thin material of his shirt as he stretched his arms. “And before you get any ideas, you are, too.” His fingers gripped the hem of his shirt and he yanked it over his head. I tried to look away when his hands moved to the button on his jeans, but I seemed content to keep gawking at the man.
He pushed his jeans down to his ankles. Stepping out of them, he grabbed them with one hand and tossed then onto the hope chest sitting at the foot of my bed. The only thing left was his boxers. The length of his cock couldn’t be mistaken as it pressed against the black cotton material. A small wet spot appeared on the material at the head of his dick. I could feel my own moisture begin to slicken my thighs at the sight of his hard body in front of me. The dark black tattoos covering most of his upper body didn’t distract away from the ripples of his muscles, but instead accentuated his strength.
“What are you doing?” I finally found my tongue.
“Getting ready for bed.” He pulled back my light gray comforter and eased himself under it, his back again propped up against the headboard. “As cute as you are in those pajamas,
I want your body against mine. Take them off.”
The hunger was back in his expression when he gave his direction. A part of me wanted to rebel, to tell him he couldn’t keep ordering me around like some owned woman, but the other parts of me, the ones that felt slippery and wanting, told me to go along with him. To do as he said, because refusing him only made things worse.
“Tell me about your job.” He changed his tone of voice as he pushed the pillow behind his back. My full-size bed didn’t seem large enough for us both to fit; hell, he barely fit with his massive shoulder span.
“My job?” I slid my pajama bottoms down and folded them, placing them on my dresser next to the photographs of Maddie I kept there.
“Yeah, that nursing thing you do.” He laughed. The reminder made me turn my gaze to his shoulder.
“You took the bandages off,” I accused him, jumping on the bed with my shirt still on. He winced a little when I touched the red area surrounding the black stitches in his shoulder.
“They were annoying. I’m fine. Stop prodding me.” He shoved my hands away. “Your shirt’s still on.” He pointed to me.
“You shouldn’t be using your arm so much. You’re going to tear the stitches. Look how red it is. Have you been using the antibiotic they gave you?” I jumped off the bed and ran to the bathroom to get some of the ointment I kept on hand for Maddie’s endless scrapes and scratches.
When I got back to the bedroom he watched me silently as I dabbed some ointment over the angry looking stitches. “So, how long have you been a nurse?” he asked quietly as I screwed the top back on the tube.
“A few years. I was just finishing up school when I became pregnant with Madison.” Placing the medicine on my nightstand, I sat beside him.
“You finished school while you were pregnant? That asshole of a father of hers didn’t care about that?” From the sound of his voice, I knew if he ever crossed paths with Jeremy, there’d be more than a few spark flying.
I ignored the anger in his voice. No point in arguing; Jeremy turned out to be a bigger asshole than I would have imagined.
“We were already living together and we planned on getting married, but when I got pregnant my need for a full-time job was even more important. Jeremy worked construction, and sometimes there were weeks that he’d go without work. So I had to work. I’m not the first working mom out there.” I gave him a sideways glance. Hard eyes were fixated on me.
“You sure as fuck wouldn’t be doing that if you were carrying my baby in your belly.” He made the statement as though he couldn’t imagine anyone making me work. But the phrase “my baby in your belly” sent a shiver down my spine. The man was nearly impossible as it was, I could only imagine how much bossier he’d get if I were pregnant. “You wouldn’t be working no night shifts either, you’d be home with me and our kids at night. Like a fucking family.”
“Was your mom at home every night when you were growing up?” The change in topic seemed to surprise him. His eyes widened just before he looked away.
“My dad walked out when we were little. Just up and left. Mom worked all sorts of shitty jobs and shifts. I took care of my brother most nights.” I tried to picture a younger version of himself, toting a little boy behind him to school, or fixing him dinner. Rafe had the same experience with his dad as Maddie did hers, no wonder he was so fixated on family, and his rage at Jeremy, a man he’d never met, was so raw.
“Is your brother in the club with you?”
“Fuck no. I carted Danny’s ass off to college. He’s just finishing his master’s degree. Accounting or some shit.” His pride for his brother seeped into his voice, and it made me wonder if he wished he had done something else besides joining up with the town’s biker gang.
“Your mom?” Since he was opening up I decided to test the waters, see how far he’d go.
“Died in a fire a few years back. Been just me and Danny since…well, not really. Jason and his little sister were always around. The four of us, we were family.” The tension came back when he mentioned Jason’s name.
“Jason was the friend who died.” I took his hand in mine. It seemed so small in comparison to his large one, but I held him.
“Yeah. That was him.” His thumb rubbed my palm. “Your shirt is still on, Beth.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then my jaw, and then down to my neck. “Take it off.”
“One track mind.” I laughed and leaned away from him. He let go of my hand.
“I could tear it off of you if you want.”
I had no doubt he would do just that if I didn’t do as he said. I rolled my eyes and scooted under the blanket before I pulled it off quickly and tossed it across the room, pulling the blanket up to my chin.
“There.” I stuck out my tongue at him.
He laughed. “Such a brat.” Turning to his side, he kissed me. Not a gentle, good night kiss, but a hard kiss. His tongue brushed across my bottom lip, not asking entrance but demanding it. I brought my hands up to his face, feeling the stubble beneath my hands.
His hands wandered to the blanket, pushing it downward until my breasts were exposed. Palming one then the other, he pinched my nipple. When I groaned from the intensity of it, he pressed his lips harder to my lips.
“Fuck, I could kiss you all night.” He barely pulled away from me before he spoke. His eyes wandered over my face, as though inspecting me. “But there are other parts of you I want to taste.”
He tossed the covers completely off the bed, and yanked my thighs open, exposing my wet pussy to his gaze. The cool air brushed over my body, tightening my hard nipples even more, and tingling my wet sex.
Moving like a man with a mission, he settled between my thighs, pushing my legs open and toward me. “Rafe, wait.” I hadn’t had a man so close to my pussy in years, even Jeremy didn’t go down there very often. I tried to scoot away from him, but his big man hands clamped down on my legs and kept me in place.
“I told you not to give me commands.” He gave me a wink, telling me he wasn’t mad at all, and pulled me even closer to where his face was. He inhaled deeply. “Goddamn you smell so good.”
Heat flooded my cheeks as his thumbs spread my lower lips and exposed my sensitive clit. I bit down on my bottom lip and gripped the bedding beneath me. His warm breath washing over my sex was more tempting than when he sunk his fingers into me only hours before.
“You’re so wet, Beth. Your pussy is dripping. How can that be when I let you come earlier? Wasn’t I generous, finger fucking you until you came all over my hand?” His words were an extension of his fingers as he began to circle my entrance with the very tip of his fingers. As though he were testing the area for tenderness. “Answer me.”
“Yes,” I groaned out. If the man didn’t touch me soon, I was sure my body would explode. Pieces of me would be strewn throughout the room because he had to fulfill his evil need to tease me senseless.
His thumb slowly rolled my clit beneath it. My eyes rolled back and I pulled my knees up closer to my chest. The sensual rippling ran through my body, deep into my very core when he lowered his mouth over my pussy and dragged the fat of his tongue over my clit. I could feel him stretching out my labia, exposing every bit of my pussy to him as he continued to lick and nip at me.
My entire body tensed at the need to come, so quickly could he bring me to that edge. “Please. Rafe. Please,” I begged, I didn’t care, I needed that sweet release that only he could give me.
He ignored my please and continued to lick me, alternating the sensations between harsh and soft, while his finger eased inside of me. I arched my back, pushing up at him. All embarrassment of having him between my thighs vanished. “Please!” I slapped the bed.
He chuckled and looked up at me. “Please what, Beth? Please give you your orgasm or slow down?”
If he slowed down any more I would have to take matters into my own hands, but I knew he wouldn’t allow that. I growled instead. He laughed again. “Rafe, please. Don’t make me say it.”
“Please let me come, Rafe,” I whispered.
“What was that?”
“I’m going to slap you! Please let me come.” I shot at him.
He laughed at my response, but stopped touching me all together. “Your battiness is cute, but there’s a line, Beth. If you slap me, what do you think I’ll do?”
“You’d probably spank me.” I needed to get my tongue under control or he would never start touching me again.
