As one would expect of ten in the morning on a weekend, the salon was packed. Mostly women sat in the chairs getting cuts and colors or at the tables in the back having their nails done. As we were led to our saved seats, a woman was led out of a room in the back. Waxing, I figured.
"You need to get your lady business handled? I can make her fit you in," Benny told me in a voice that wasn't hushed at all, making me glance around to my sides to see if anyone was listening.
"Oh, no. I don't need..."
"Oh, fuc--" Thad started, then eyed Jelly. "Fudge yes, she does. The way that beautiful biker man was slobbering all over her last weekend, I give it another couple of days before he comes banging on her door. And she will need to be all tamed down there."
"I am... plenty tamed enough," I told him in a low hiss. "Not that it is any of your business if I am tamed at all or not," I added with a pointed eyebrow raise. "I don't ask you about your tameness."
"Girl, you wanna see? Smooth as bowling balls at all times," he told me with a smile. "No one likes a mouthful of little hairs when they are all up in your business. Am I right?" he asked, looking over at Benny.
"He's right. I mean for us and the strickly-dickly sorts," he said then cast a guilty look at Jelly who was not paying attention now that a girl who was clearly her regular hairdresser was pulling her hair out of her braids, talking animatedly to her about her next style choice from a book Jelena had in her lap. "I don't know if the same rules apply for the lady cave. But given that most men these days have a stroke if a woman has some leg or underarm stubble, I imagine you need your hardwood floors waxed."
"Okay we are so not discussing this," I informed him even as my lips turned up.
An hour later, my hair was trimmed - just barely - my fingernails were lacquered in a matte black that I knew wouldn't last more than the weekend since I couldn't wear polish and cook, my butt and back were getting a workout thanks to the massaging - and vibrating - pedicure chair, my feet slipped in warm water, waiting for the nail tech to come back. The music in the back was loud and soothing, quieting the noise in the front of the building, allowing you to lean back, close your eyes, relax.
Which was precisely what I was doing.
The air shifted, making me aware of someone taking the empty seat to my side. When no vibrating turned on, my eyes peeked open.
Did I find my brother? A woman from the salon?
Oh, no.
I found the star of my late night vivid, sweaty, torturous dreams.
Virgin.
"Big fan of pedicures?" I asked, hoping it would cover any possible longing that might be clear in my eyes.
Longing.
That was the only way to describe the deep, clawing ache inside.
A primal thing, surely. But also possibly more than that.
Ever since I found something I hadn't expected from anyone except my family. Acceptance. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me after Abby had no issues with my past. But, I guess, I had been brainwashed into thinking no one would want to be my friend or want to date me because of where I had been. There was this niggling little voice in the back of my head that whispered What do you have to offer someone?
It was ridiculous, of course. Especially when thinking about an outlaw biker. It was silly to think that a man who made his living selling drugs - and then guns - would look down on me for my past.
But it had been a bone-deep fear until he had given me what I had been so desperately craving.
Acceptance.
Approval.
"'Bout to find out," he admitted, kicking out of his shoes and socks as the nail tech came back, filling his foot spa with water and salts for him to slip into.
My gaze slid down his long, solid legs to his bare feet, finding their appearance oddly intimate. You didn't usually see a man's bare feet unless you were close with them in a physical way. Or at the beach, I guess.
"If you didn't come here for a pedicure, why are you here?" I asked as the tech moved away again, an odd smile on her lips.
"'Cause West said you and your brother would be coming here today," he admitted.
"So... you're stalking me?" I asked, lips curling up. Maybe I should have been creeped out. But I found myself flattered by the attention from a man who could clearly have just about anyone he wanted.
"Lightly," he admitted with a smirk. "You could tell me to fuck off. I will. But something tells me you aren't gonna," he told me, leaning closer, dropping his voice a little, making the entire salon suddenly fall away.
Mouth suddenly dry, I had to swallow hard before I could get any words out. "Well, it would be a shame to miss out on your first pedicure," I told him.
"Eavesdroppin'?" he asked with a raised brow, making me follow his gaze to the woman I had thought of as the nail tech - blonde and super pretty with a determined sort of gait.
Her smile was at once amused and guilty. "Get over yourself, Virgin," she shot back, rolling her eyes at me like we were sharing in some secret. But I was completely out of the loop.
"I better not be getting ribbed about this because you pillow talk this shit to Pagan," he added, pretending to sound threatening when it was clear he had a soft spot for the woman.
A woman who pillow talked to a man named Pagan.
Which, well, had to be a road name, right?
Who else had a name like that?
So the nail tech was one of his brothers' women.
"Hey, how am I to blame if you're in here getting your spa day on?" she asked. "I think the Tickled Pink polish would go great with your skin tone, by the way," she added with shining eyes as she moved away. "Or, at least, that is what I am going to tell Pagan you picked."
"That's Kennedy," Virgin supplied when we were alone again.
"As in Kennedy's?" I asked, meaning the name of the salon we were sitting in.
"Yep."
"You're going to get a lot of crap for this, aren't you?" I asked, lips curving up.
His gaze slipped there for a long second before moving up to my eyes. "It'll be worth it," he declared, reaching for the remote on the arm of his chair. "So how does this work?" he asked, holding it up to me like this was the most natural thing in the world - sharing pedicures. Like we were the oldest of friends. Or the most intimate of lovers.
Fifteen minutes later, I was laughing as Virgin jerked and hissed his way through his foot massage.
"You like this shit?" he asked, hands a death grip on the arms of his chair to - I imagined - avoid slapping the poor nail tech who was clearly tickling him as she worked.
"I love this shit," I corrected as my tech slipped the pad of her thumb along my aching arches, making my head slam back on the chair, my back arching, a low, somewhat sexual noise escaping me. A sound that made Virgin momentarily forget about his own feet, his eyes moving over me, the lids seeming to go a little hooded.
"Keep that in mind," he murmured, filling my mind with fantasies of being sprawled out on his bed, my legs over his lap, his hands massaging the aches out of my sore feet.
"Aunt Freddie!" Jelena yelled, launching herself at me from my other side, landing on my lap with a giant smile. "Like my hair?" she asked, touching one of the little knots that were positioned on each side of her head, a part down the center, little cornrows leading up to them, the other half of her hair left in a curly mass almost down to her shoulders.
"I love your hair," I informed her.
"Daddy is gonna grumble," she told me with an eye roll that she had to have learned from Thaddeus.
"Why?"
"It's gonna get knotty," she told me, pulling at the free strands.
"Well, you're gonna have to let him comb it so it doesn't get knotty."
She made a noncommittal grunting noise as she swirled herself on my lap, her little back to my chest, her head resting against my breast like a pillow.
And my heart did a little flip-flop as she snuggled in like she had always been there.
For some reason, my head swiveled, finding Virgin'
s gaze on us, something strange, unreadable behind his eyes that made my heart do another flip.
"Alright, boo, let your auntie get her toes done," Thad declared, moving up at my side, reaching his arms out to Jelena who reached back, happily settling on his hip when he hoisted her there. "Why don't we go and get you some ice cream?" he suggested. "I can trust you to get her home, right?" he asked, directing his attention to Virgin.
"She's safe with me," Virgin agreed, tone almost determined.
"I'm counting on it," Thad told him, giving me a wink. "See you later. This is all paid for," he added, even though he knew I had wanted to pitch in now that I was working.
"She come to visit you while you were... gone?" Virgin asked, choosing the word carefully, knowing 'away' either meant jail or rehab, and aware that we were not alone.
"No," I told him, a little sad about the lost time even though I had made it clear that I didn't think it would be appropriate for Colson to bring Jelly when he came to visit, not wanting her to meet me after getting patted down like a criminal herself.
"So you just met her?"
"Yeah."
"She has taken to you fast."
"I think that she was kind of looking for a female presence in her life," I admitted. "I mean Thad takes her to do all the girly stuff. And Colson goes with her to all her dance classes and such. But I still think she was craving a woman in her life."
"Her mom bailed?"
"Yeah. When she was just a couple months."
"That's fucked."
"Yeah," I agreed. "But Colson is doing a good job with her."
"What's he do?"
"What he can," I said, shrugging. "It's not easy to work around her schedule. School is off a lot of days. And he has to be around for her classes and such. He works night jobs. A custodian and a security guard at some dive bar a couple towns over. It gives him his days free for Jelly. Then an older lady in his building watches her at night."
"Can't be making much," he mused.
He didn't intend for it to, of course, but the words made guilt stab into my belly. For all the years I allowed him to fill my commissary when he should have been saving the money for Jelena.
"I guess not," I agreed.
"Just sayin'," he started, shrugging. "If he doesn't have some moral objection to a different lifestyle, Reign is looking for good men. And the hours are flexible. And the money is good."
"I will... mention that," I told him, even though I wasn't sure there would ever be an appropriate opening for something like that. Hey, Colson. This apartment is really nice. But if you ever want to worry less about paying your rent, you can become a gun-running biker.
"Figure single dads need to keep their options open," Virgin added, shrugging it off. "So, you gonna let me take you home after this, or be a pain in my ass and insist on walking?"
"She could smudge her nail polish," the nail tech told him with a knowing smile.
"Hear that? You could smudge your polish. After all this work. Can't be having that, can you?" he asked, then suddenly yanked his feet away from his tech. "I'm gonna go ahead and skip the polish," he said with quirked lips and a head shake.
"It's clear."
"And shiny," he shot back, reaching for his socks and shoes, then his wallet, handing a twenty to his tech as he got to his feet. "You go dry up. I'm gonna square up and grab coffee. You actually take it as sweet as you made it at your place, or were you... distracted?" By him. He knew I had been practically drooling over him.
"Three sugars," I told him, sidestepping the last part of his question with the same precision as I sidestepped the leg of a chair so I didn't smudge my polish on the way to the dryer.
I had barely slipped my butt into my seat and my feet into the dryer when I felt his body move behind my chair, curling forward to tower over me, his hands moving down to grab the armrests, lowering his mouth to my ear.
"Be right back, baby."
He had likely made it outside before the shivers inside died down.
Easy.
I was so damn easy.
And I couldn't even get mad at myself about it.
"Here you go," Kennedy said, dropping a glass of water that had come from a giant dispenser with cucumbers and lemons floating in it. "I remember that beginning phase. If I had a block of ice for you to sit on, I'd bring it over," she added with a smile before she moved away to talk to Benny.
My shoes in my hand, new reusable pink flip-flops with Kennedy's on the bottom on my feet, I made my way toward the door where Virgin was waiting with two cups of coffee, his head ducked to the side slightly, lips tipped up just the tiniest bit.
And it didn't escape me either that just about every woman's eyes were on him, eye-banging him, thinking about how nice it would be to have that smile of his aimed at them.
That's right, ladies, that smile is for little ol' me.
It was an oddly possessive thought for me to have, but there was no denying how good it felt to step up to him, have him hand me that coffee he got just for me, then look down at my feet to compliment the color. I'd swear I heard sighs around me at that.
His arm rose over my head, holding the door open, then as we stepped onto the street, his hand went to my lower back, staying planted there. A comforting - and incredibly distracting - presence.
"My bike is at the compound," he explained when he saw me looking at the street for it. "Hence the coffee. Figured we could finish as we walked the block or so. How is it?"
"Perfect," I admitted. "Have you recovered from your tickle torture?" I asked, watching as his smile went almost bashful.
"I can take a back rub any day of the week. But I don't know how you tolerate that shit. You ticklish anywhere?"
"My ribs," I told him. "Don't use that against me," I demanded, locking my elbows down at my sides. I'd endured endless torture sessions at the hands of brothers who wanted something from me. The idea of it happening as an adult filled me with dread.
"If I got my hands on your skin, baby, I wouldn't be tickling you."
"Oh."
Yeah, that was eloquent.
And totally the right response to something that, well, swoon-worthy.
The hand on my back suddenly slipped to the side, sinking into my hip, using it to turn me, press me back against a building.
There was a swoop and crunch as Virgin's arm tossed his coffee cup in a nearby bin, freeing his hands.
So that they could slither their way up my sides, barely grazing the ribs that didn't feel the least bit ticklish at all, sliding up the sides of my breasts, up over my chest, the sides of my neck, stopping only as they framed my face, tilting it up.
And they met absolutely no resistance.
In fact, I was pretty sure my body was incapable of resistance.
Everything went weak, fluid.
It was a miracle I was still able to keep upright as his body shifted inward, his hard lines pressing into my chest, belly, hips, pinning me gently to the wall as his eyes held my gaze for a second before his head started to lower.
My heartbeat tripped into overdrive, and a silly, insecure, niggling little voice wondered if he could feel the pulse pounding in my throat from where his hands were.
But then his lips pressed to mine and all thoughts about anything fell away.
The contact set off a jolt through my body, my muscles all involuntarily tightening and loosening in the span of a blink, and I was vaguely aware of the fact that my hands had spasmed as well because there was the hot splatter of my coffee on my bare feet as the cup dropped, the clink of my shoes falling at my other side.
But my mind couldn't seem to think to be bothered about that, just pleased that my hands were free to rise, slide up Virgin's strong arms, curl around the back of his neck, an action that nearly lifted me off my feet, forcing my body to plaster to his as his lips pressed harder, demanded more.
A low, throaty whimper escaped me as my lips slipped open, inviting his tongue to move inside and claim mine.
<
br /> The hands left my jaw, disappearing for a long second before sinking into my ass, dragging me up and off my feet as his teeth nipped my lower lip hard enough to drag a moan from deep inside.
It was a car horn and cheering that broke the spell, making my body jolt in a much less intoxicating way than the last time. My hands planted on his shoulders and pushed until he settled me back down on my own feet, but pressed me back against the wall. As if he knew my legs were feeling just a tad wobbly.
I pulled in a deep breath that made my chest shake as Virgin suddenly started to lower down, his head level with my crotch.
"What are you doing?" I hissed, wanting to sound horrified, but there was definite heat in my tone.
At the sound, his head tilted up, lips curved, eyes bright with what I could only call masculine pride. I couldn't even fault him for it. He'd earned it.
"Might be a one-percenter, baby, but I don't litter," he told me, lifting his hand to show me the takeaway coffee cup that had fallen from my hand, the lid bent in, coffee saturating the thick paper outside.
Then he slowly - and there is a definite emphasis on the slowly - moved back to his feet, his gaze staying level with my crotch, my belly, my breasts, then my face for what felt like minutes each before he finally moved away to toss my cup where he had discarded his, giving me a second to shake some sense back into myself, trying to calm the chaos of desire coursing through my body.
I pushed off the wall, ready to try to act like I had it together even as the pressure on my belly all but assured me that I would go through an entire pack of batteries later without any real relief.
Virgin turned back, stooped again, this time coming back with my shoes which he clicked together and held at the heels in one hand, his other going to my lower back again. Possessive. Maybe even a little protective.
Or was that my wishful thinking?
Wouldn't it be strange - and wonderful - to actually find a man who wanted to protect me instead of, well, the exact opposite.
I shook my head, not wanting those thoughts. Not now. Not when they could easily sour a sweet moment.
"So, you gonna let me see you again?" he asked as we walked into the yard of the compound, moving over toward the long line of glistening bikes settled at the side.
Virgin Page 8
