by Isabel Wroth
“Jasmine and lavender.” She murmured softly, shivering a little at the palm he settled on her belly. “You never answered me about the alarm, and the three deadbolts. That asshole you beat up, making good on his threats?” She drew in a slow, shallow breath and continued to stir around some sauce that was white and smelled like heaven. “No, but I wasn’t taking any chances after my uncle died. I didn’t have anyone to-“
“My brothers had you covered.”
“Hardly,”
“Babe,”
“What? They live in Texas, never came in, never introduced themselves or said hello. They just showed up randomly and sat there, looking all hot in their leather, straddling those big ass bikes, like crazy hot stalkers. I felt like I was under surveillance,”
“Crazy hot, stalkers?” He purred as his jealousy kicked up, and she elbowed him in the gut, “Get over it, your boys are hot. Just like you. I’ve seen like, five different faces over the past few months, and they’re all crazy hot. Is that a prerequisite for joining a biker gang?”
“Club. Not a gang. And no, Perdition recruits bad ass mother fuckers.”
“And what exactly does this club do, aside from sitting across the street outside my shop for a few hours a month, looking scary?”
“Most of them are bounty hunters. That’s our main gig, some of them do take private security work.”
“Bad ass mother fuckers. Right.”
“Go back to the part where you said I’m hot,”
She shot him a look over her shoulder that was sarcastic and sardonic. She even snorted at him and waved the thing she was using to stir the sauce stuff with at him, slinging it in a streak to splat on the floor. Cruncher was right there to snorf it up until there wasn’t a speck left. Which explained the spotless state of her floors. “Puh-lease. Like you have no idea you melt panties at a hundred feet.” She turned scarlet when he smiled slowly at her, “Did your panties melt for me, princess?”
“Definitely.”
“Good.” He said, and smooched her. “Need to step out and make a call.”
“Kay. The alarm code is 5367.”
That she trusted him with her alarm code was only a little bit surprising, and seriously humbling. He kissed her again and left her a little dazed to go make a call to one of the brothers who’d come on during his time away. He liked the guy, he was a total nerd, but an ass kicking bad ass mother fucking nerd that had been training for the space program. He’d washed out because he was a paranoid bastard and had had a meltdown in the office that put his supervisor through a plate glass window. He found a home in Perdition, and fit right in. “What’s up, brother?” Nasa greeted, and he didn’t lie, it felt good to be called that again. “Need a favor.”
“Shoot,” Nasa automatically replied, and he could all but hear the guy’s fingers flying over his keyboard. “My woman sent me letters and packages that I didn’t get. Six months worth, some of them FedEx that required a signature. Need to know who accepted the packages and didn’t give them to me. Why my letters didn’t get to her either.”
“Help if I had some tracking numbers or something. FedEx account number.”
“I’ll ask her for them. Thanks, Nasa.”
“No prob. Might take me a few days, that cool with you?”
“Soon as you can get’em. Her uncle died while I was up there, one of her dogs too. I’d known that, I’d have asked one of you to bring her to me.”
“Fuck. I’m on it. She okay?”
“Happened five months ago, and she’s still got his brand of beer in the fridge.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Thanks man, gotta go, she’s makin me dinner.”
“Lucky bastard.”
He was. He really fuckin was. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and looked up at the blanket of stars above his head, breathing in so deep that the cold air made his lungs ache, holding the smell of it, taking it with him when he went back inside and armed the system. He walked down the hall, now smelling delicious fuckin food, made by a gorgeous women and was on the move to join her when he saw a certificate on the wall with her name on it. A graduation certificate from a massage therapy school, that licensed her to perform therapeutic sports injury related massage. He looked at the date on it, and his heart turned over in his chest. She’d started two months after they’d started writing letters back and forth, and she’d graduated two months ago. “Babe, you went to massage school?”
“Uh…” He could hear her blushing. Jesus.
He walked down the hall to find her pressing a bag of frozen peas to her cheeks, and sure enough she was scarlet with embarrassment. He crossed the kitchen to her and chucked the bag of peas into the sink and slid his arms around her hips. She swallowed nervously and set her hands on his chest, hesitating a moment like he hadn’t kissed her tonsils out an hour ago. “I um, have a massage room at my shop. No one is using it, I thought I’d expand my skill set to um, utilize it. Test out some of my stuff on the unsuspecting public.” She was the shittiest liar he’d ever met, and from how she continued to turn an even deeper shade of red, she could tell he knew she was lyin to him. “You did it for me.”
“It was just an added benefit.” She insisted, and he leaned down until they were nose to nose, “You did it for me.” He insisted in a loud whisper, watching how her face screwed up with embarrassment. “Weird, stalker crazy. I know. We never met, but I wanted to-“
He swallowed the rest of that protest in a hard kiss. Fisted his hands in her hair and slanted his mouth over hers until she was sagging against him. “You wanted to put your hands all over me and make me feel good. Do I look unhappy about that?” She smiled crookedly and shook her head, rolling her lips under while she looked down and traced the patches over his heart with her elegant fingers. “Luck of the draw, I suppose. You could have been some really gross, hairy guy that sweats like a pig. I’d have still rubbed you down, but I’d have had to really dig deep.” He threw his head back and laughed so hard that tears gathered in his eyes. “Babe, you can put your hands on me anytime, anywhere.”
NINE
He ate chicken alfredo on her couch with her feet in his lap, her dog on the floor beside him with his nose over the edge of the white fabric looking up at him with soft, hopeful eyes. The very tip of his tail wagging back and forth and every now and again he’d lick his lips. “You feed your dog table scraps?” He drawled, and Cruncher’s ears perked up, eyes sliding to Athena and back, “Veggies usually, and bacon. Bacon only on Sundays. But he’s been pining for R-o-s-i-e,” She spelled out her other dog’s name, “So I’ve been spoiling him a little too much. Cruncher, go to bed.” She ordered firmly, and with a pitiful sound, Cruncher hung his head and went over to the big dog bed by the fireplace.
When he got there, Athena tossed him a spear of broccoli, which he snapped up like an alligator and lay down on his bed, now staring at Athena. “You gonna get another dog?” She sighed sadly, some of the laughter dying from her eyes and he felt like an asshole for even asking. “I thought about it, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to go to the pound. Or take Cruncher back there to pick out a new buddy. It’s stupid, but I felt like he would think I took his girlfriend back there and abandoned her.”
She had the sweetest, softest heart he’d ever seen, and he rubbed his hand up and down her calf, wondering how in the hell her skin could be that soft. Wondering if she would be upset with him if he took her upstairs to her room and spent the rest of the night buried inside her. “Not stupid at all, baby. Where are you planning to move?” She blinked at the change of subject and shook her head with a mouth full of her noodles, which were the best thing he’d had in the last seven years, hands down. “I haven’t really thought about it. I just…this isn’t the place for me anymore.”
“And your shop?”
“I make my own stuff, I can take it anywhere. I was thinking about New Mexico.”
“New Mexico.”
“Mm hm, Santa Fe has a big New Age presence
, and my stuff would sell there like hot cakes.”
“Hmm. You ever been to Austin?”
“Yeah. I have a few friends there.”
“And me.”
“And you,” She murmured, her cheeks turning a little pink while she twirled her fork around in her pasta.
He went for it, balls for broke and didn’t second guess himself. “The boys are throwing me a welcome home hog roast. I want you to meet them, and Cruncher is welcome to come if you feel the need for a chaperone.” Her cheeks warmed again, but this time it was a soft, gentle blush of pleasure. “I’d like that. Where um, where are you staying?” She asked it as nonchalantly as ever, looking down at her plate, focusing, like she wasn’t dying to know, and he tugged on her foot to get her to look at him. “I haven’t gotten a room yet. I came to find you as soon as I got off the plane. Probably at the motel in town.
She squirmed, wiggled her lips, fidgeted and when he tugged on her foot again she blurted, “You need a good bed, not some motel room mattress that’s seen more play than a football field.” His lips twitched as he tried not to smile, but he couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice, “A couple nights on a crap mattress isn’t going to kill me, sweetheart. I’ve been in a hospital bed for over a year, those things aren’t exactly comfortable.” Now she got ticked off, and fuck all it was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen. “Six months ago you were paralyzed after getting blown the fuck up. Now you’re walking, because of a serious god damn surgery that could have killed you, and you need a good bed.”
“You offering me yours?” He teased, and was honestly shocked when she answered, “Yes! I mean no, it’s the room my uncle used when he’d get sloshed and I took his keys away,” Pain sliced through her eyes, and he guessed that the night her uncle had bought it, she hadn’t thought he was sloshed enough to take his keys. “It’s a tempurpedic. You’re welcome to stay, if you want to.” She added almost hesitantly, and he put his plate down on the coffee table, took hers, and pulled her forward to sprawl across his chest. Damn, she felt good. “I’ll sleep with you, or I’ll sleep at a motel. A few nights on a mattress that’s had more play than a football field will be okay. I’ll give you my doctor’s number and you can grill the shit out of him if it’ll make you feel better.”
“That’s not my business, Raid.” She murmured, and he fuckin lost his mind laughing.
She tried to sit up and be serious, slapping at his shoulder and demanding that he not laugh at her. He reached up, grabbed her hair and yanked her down to spend a good, long time kissing her until she went limp on top of him. He rolled with her so that her back was to the couch, and tangled their legs together. “Athena, babe, look at me.” She blinked her long, mascara coated lashes at him and rolled those gorgeous purple eyes up to his. Made his cock so hard that it jerked against his fly, and he knew she felt it because her blush deepened. “I did that experimental surgery,”
“Experimental?” She shrieked, no longer soft and dreamy from his kisses, “Babe, I was dead from the hips down. Wanted to be totally dead because even though I couldn’t move my legs, I could feel the pain of the shrapnel every time I took a deep breath. The surgery was either going to work and I’d get my legs back, or I’d be totally paralyzed and I could die in peace. It was successful, because I had a reason to suffer every single second of the pain. The PT that made boot camp look like Miss Manners School for Girls.”
“What reason could you possibly have had to risk becoming totally paralyzed?”
He ducked his head and rubbed his nose against hers with a disbelieving smile, “Babe. You. That one letter saved me, and every one after that kept me going. Your picture got me through the surgery. I wanted to come home, to ride my bike with your arms wrapped around my belly, your tits pressed to my back and the world fallin away under my tires, come home to you. Spank your ass for what I thought was you givin me the cold shoulder for telling you no, when you asked to visit. I didn’t hear from you, so I called my brothers, only to learn they thought I was dead because some woman who used to be my mother, told them so. They did me a solid, lookin out for you when they were up this way, so I could focus on getting strong enough to come back for you myself. I’m home to get my old life back, and for you. I’m hard pressed to say which I want more, but it wasn’t my brother’s ugly faces I stared at when I was alone at night. And it definitely wasn’t their face I pictured when my physical therapist was kicking my ass, thinkin I was gonna die for real by the time I dragged my ass from the pool and back to that cold bed at the hospital. So if you’re offering me a bed, I’m there. But it’s your bed, with you in it, and me cuddled right up next to you, or at a motel until you’re ready for that. I’m not pushin you for more than you’re willing to…“
This time she shut him up by kissing him. She tilted her face up to his, her soft hand cupping his jaw, her thumb brushing over his cheek in the gentlest, most tender kiss he’d ever received. “This is like some stupid romantic comedy.” She muttered against his mouth, and he chuckled with a handful of her ass, “What?”
“Totally. Get a letter from a stranger, get in deep, do impossible things to be with them, even on the off chance that there’s zero chemistry when you meet. Or that they’d be monstrously hairy, and sweaty, and that you discovered you’d have been better off with a waxing license than a massage therapy license. You’re not, right? Not rocking a full on bear skin rug under that thermal, right?”
“Baby, if you want to touch me, you go right ahead. You just remember turnabout is fair play.”
“So noted. My bed is a tempurpedic too.”
After another hour or so spent on the couch, murmuring to one another, trading kisses back and forth, he could tell that she was beginning to wilt. She nuzzled like a sweet little kitten against his chest, and he convinced her it was time for bed, though it wasn’t that hard to do. He chuckled at her when she carefully got up off of him and held her hand down to him to help him up. He did an ab curl to sit up and stood to twist his fingers in her curls and touched a tender kiss to the corner of her kiss stung lips. “I did the work, sweetheart. I’ll have to continue to do the work for a long time. But I’m good. I know my limitations, and have no desire to go back to that hospital bed. It feels nice, that you’re worried about me.”
“It’s not hard,”
“That’s what she said.”
She laughed her gorgeous ass off all the way to the kitchen to deposit their dirty dishes into the sink, and all the way upstairs to her bedroom. He’d been expecting a temple to feminism based on the softness of the rest of the house. But her room was…sensual. The walls were a deep purple, which he knew was her favorite color, her bedding a dark silver with purple pillows mixed in. A king size bed, up on a platform that looked easy to roll in and out of, and at the perfect height to stand off to the edge while he drilled his cock into her beautiful body.
A trickle of sweat rolled down his spine just thinking about it, and about the soft pink silk nightgown lying across the end of the bed. He forced himself to look further around, quirking an eyebrow over the tall pink pillars, made out of rock or something, that stood on black bedside tables, lit from the inside, casting a soft glow to the room. There were thick candles on black wrought iron stands, tall stands, more candles on her dresser and a handful of crystals, and a big black vanity in one corner where she had her girly potions and lotions that probably were her secret for such soft, beautiful skin.
She showed him the bathroom, which was done in slate grey and silver, more masculine than he would have thought her to like, but the massive tub that was the perfect size for two, was totally her style. Especially with all the candles and crystals around the edge. “Here’s a new toothbrush, paste, whatever. I’m going to get ready for bed.” He nodded, following her to watch her snag up her nightgown, head into the walk in closet, shut the door behind her, and a few minutes later come out in that pink gown, a matching robe around her body, looking like a movie star. A star sitting down to her v
anity to use some little cloths to clean up her face, her bright eyes catching his in the mirror every so often, and a blush of embarrassment touched her cheeks, but she didn’t stop her routine.
She plucked up a blue tube like glass bottle and popped the cork out of it, pouring a careful few drops of liquid into her palm and rubbed that on her face, wiped her hands off and got up to come to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Her fingertips trailed along his belly as she passed, and he watched her brush her teeth, then wet a clean wash cloth to wipe the oil off her face and rub something else in that left her skin rosy and glowing. She arched a brow at him, squirted some toothpaste on his toothbrush, and he grinned while he stuck it in his mouth and started to brush, still following her with his eyes.
She lit a long match and went to the candles on the stands to touch the flame to each wick until a tall spear leapt to life and soon the room was filled with the scent of geranium and rosewood. Shit. She was going to totally unman him. He rinsed and spit, coming back in time to see her toss her robe away and pick up the skirt of her dress. Her back was to him, and he almost swallowed his tongue to see that the gown had virtually no back to it, leaving her pale, beautiful skin on total display. “Jesus, do you wear that to bed every night?” He wheezed from the bathroom, and she glanced back at him with a blink of those long, crimson lashes of hers. “No. I have other ones. Why?”
