A Kiss to Keep You (Rebel Wayfarers MC Book 14)

by MariaLisa deMora

  To tease, or not to tease? To tease, definitely. “You haven’t felt everything, Bex.” Her inrush of air told him she hadn’t realized her words. He pushed it with what she could take as a promise. “Yet.” Heat against his sides meant she’d tried to squeeze her thighs together, and he wondered if she’d be squirming in her seat if she was alone. “What time is your first appointment?”

  A sigh told him he was right to bring them back down to reality. “Ten thirty. What time is it now?” He dug out his phone, woke it, and showed the display to her over his shoulder. Eight fifteen. “Do you…?” Sudden shyness gripped her words, her voice quivering for a moment as her hands stilled. He heard her swallow before she began again. “Do you want to go back to my house, Brute?”

  “More than anything, Bexley.” It was his turn to pause, controlling the rumble that threatened to break free. “You claimed a wish last night, and I very much want to see that come true. Want to grant it for you in all the best ways.” Her legs tightened again, as did her hands; thumbs cupping the back of his skull, tips of her fingers stroking the scarred skin of his temples. “But you promised something, too.”

  “I did?” It seemed she asked the question in genuine confusion because he felt her body move with the shaking of her head, the shadows on the ground in front of them giving him a glimpse into her movements. “What did I promise you, Brute?” Hope and fear warred for space in her words, and he didn’t know why.

  He licked his lips before replying, his voice echoing low and sounding needy even to himself when he said, “Sweets.” He watched as her shadowed-self threw back her head, hair flying. Laughter filled the air around him in a way that he knew would addict him after only this single exposure. “Gonna renege on that promise, sweetheart? Deny me something sweet that I want so badly?” She was the sweet he desired. She was the single thing he needed.

  “Never!” She threw that word down like a gauntlet, daring him to question her resolve.

  “Then we still have to hit the grocery store.” He moved, ready to rise to his feet when he felt her palms on his shoulders, holding him in place. “What is it, Bexley?”

  Her hands slipped down his neck, thumbs underneath his jaw, tipping his head backwards so he looked into her face upside down. She was staring into his eyes when she leaned in, and he lost their gaze as her head tipped to the side so her mouth could brush against his. This was just as chaste as the months-ago kiss, but she lingered for a long moment, then her lips moved against his when she said, “Thank you.”

  Brute straightened and twisted around, forcing her up so she leaned over him, not into him as he asked, “For what?”

  “For making this so easy.” She stared at him, a soft smile making her features radiant. “For being you.”

  “That’s all I can be, sweetheart. With me”—Brute gestured towards his chest—“what you see is what you get.”

  “Then it’s good that I see what I want.” She laughed, rolling her eyes, talking through her laughter, “God, that sounded stupid.”

  “No, sweetheart. Not stupid.” He reached up, capturing her chin with his thumb and finger, tugging her down for another soft lip touch. “Not at all stupid knowing you want what you see. I don’t think so, anyway.” Brute stood and looked down at her, fingers angling her face upwards now. “I see what I want, too.” Her lips parted on a soft gasp, and he couldn’t have stopped himself if he tried, so he gave in to the desire carrying him forwards, leaning down and capturing her mouth.

  Moments stretched as he kissed her. With movements unhurried and deliberate while at the same time urgently driven by impulse, he slanted his head, deepening the caress of his lips against hers. Stroking into her mouth with his tongue, he consumed her, finding the caramel flavor of her latte worth pursuing. He groaned down her throat when her arms twisted around his neck, pulling him deeper into her, showing him with no hint of hesitation that she wanted more. Panting, he broke the kiss, burying his face against her neck, feeling the heat from her rolling across his skin. No less short of breath, she curled into his chest, nuzzling him and giving him an extended dose of her touch. Something he could get used to. Something he found he wanted more now than ever before.

  He muttered softly, “Jesus, sweetheart,” feeling the pounding of her heart where his lips had latched of their own accord onto her neck. “I could do that all day, kiss you until the sun drops behind the horizon.”

  “Me—” She took a breath that shimmied in the middle. “—too.”

  “But you gotta work, and I do, too.” Her arms flexed and tightened, a physical rejection of the separation she knew was coming, and his body agreed with hers. Knee to the seat, he leaned in to her, feeling her legs part so he could slide closer. Mouth working up her neck, he trailed kisses along the edge of her jaw until he reached her lips. “I’ll need another taste of you before we go, though.” At his whisper, she arched her back, pressing her front to his and turned her head, offering him everything he wanted at that moment.

  He took it all, and found in taking what he wanted, he gave in to her desires, too.

  Bexley

  “When did you start going out with Brute?”

  Duncan’s question was a surprise, and her jerking reaction caused the eggs she had been briskly beating with a fork to slop over the edge of the bowl. Tipping her head to one side, she studied him out from underneath her bangs. Pointedly not looking at her, he was arranging and rearranging the knife and fork beside his plate. His brows were drawn together in a sweetly confused look that reminded her of Jean so strongly, it broke her heart to think of Brice seeing his dead wife’s face on their son.

  When she didn’t reply, he made one final minute adjustment to the alignment of the silverware and then lifted his head, staring at her. “Auntie Bex?” Mouth twisting, he considered his words for a long moment. “You didn’t tell me. Was it…” His voice dropped to a whisper, and she heard a thread of disappointment in his voice, “Are you ashamed of him? You know, because of how he looks?”

  Bexley straightened, putting down the fork and bowl, wiping her hands on the towel lying nearby. “Come here, you,” she called, holding out her arms. When he fitted himself to her, she wrapped him up, holding him tightly. “No, I’m not ashamed of him. Do you know how he got those scars?” Dunk’s head moved back and forth, and she giggled. “He’s a hero.”

  He was, too. The day she’d gotten his name, she had looked him up online, found that he had been decorated while still flat on his back in a hospital in Germany. His actions had saved many of the soldiers in the column because he had seen a suspicious arrangement of trash on the side of the road, and recognizing it for what it was, had called a halt. His movements to return to the truck had triggered the IED however, and the blast had thrown him more than fifty feet. Four men had died, two more wounded irreparably. Fifty-eight lived. “He saved a bunch of people, but then the bomb went off anyway. He was closest to it, trying to keep everyone else back. I’d never be ashamed of a man like that.”

  “I didn’t think you would, but…” Dunk took a breath. “…you never told me.” His tone accused her of keeping secrets, of not trusting him with important information. Questioned his place in her life.

  “Dunk, I’m not ashamed of him, and I’m not ashamed of you, either.” Pressing her lips to the top of his head, she said, “It’s just…new. Kinda. Mostly.” She gave him a squeeze and released, turning back to their meal preparations. “New, but not. I met him months ago, but we didn’t stay in touch. I didn’t even know his name until recently. Then he called one night, came over the next day, and we rode his bike. You met him before our first date. That’s why he was picking me up. So I’m dating, but it’s new.” Bex let some of her nervous anticipation fill her voice as she bumped Duncan with her hip. “You think he likes me?”

  “Duh.” Now Duncan was laughing at her giddy happiness, and that was fine by her. “Only like a lot.”

  “Good.” She dumped the eggs into the heated skillet. “Yo
u doin’ toast?” Just that quickly, they had moved past his questioning his importance in her life, worried that she was either keeping secrets from him or replacing him in some way. His faith in her restored, and she reminded herself to have the same conversation with Brice because his reaction this morning had carried the same question of need. “I love you, you know that, right, Dunk?”

  “Yeah,” he responded, and she turned to see a grin on his face, “only like a lot.”

  “A lot, a lot,” she agreed, digging in the drawer for a spatula.

  “Auntie?” Quiet again, his trembling voice pulled her head up, and she saw his eyes were welling with tears. “I love you, too.”

  “I know.” Swiping at her cheeks with the crook of one arm, she scolded, “Now stop that. Right in the feels. You’re gonna make me cry in the scrambled eggs, and we all know that the tears of a favorite aunt are super salty.”

  His laughter carried her heart soaring, something that until Brute, only Duncan had managed.

  Brute

  Chief’s voice on the phone wasn’t expected. “My friend. How goes it?” Brute hoped this surprise meant good things.

  He leaned forwards in his chair, elbows on the desk as he answered, “It’d go a fuckuva lot better if I knew who’d hurt my goddaughter.” All of his investigative efforts so far had turned up nothing. Whoever the guy was, he was a ghost. They knew more about who it wasn’t than who it might be. It wasn’t a student in any of Natty’s classes, nor any of her professors. Wasn’t any of the local sex offenders, registered or not. Chief still had two guys on campus, but Brute couldn’t ask for much more than the week already given to the search. “You got anything for me?”

  “I do.” Short and terse, the response shocked Brute, and he sat straight, spine ramrod stiff. Unfocused gaze aimed at the wall, he didn’t have to wait long for Chief to continue. “Your girl’s smart. So smart, coming in as a freshman who’d taken college courses the last two years of high school, she was allowed to take classes normally reserved for upperclassmen. She did a paper in a psychology class that got the prof’s notice. He submits one student paper per class for publication. Only one. And he chose hers.” Chief paused, and Brute made an involuntary noise, needing him to hurry the fuck up because this seemed like background info that didn’t matter, but he knew Chief. If the man felt this was important, then Brute needed to be patient and listen.

  “Older, just coming back to school after a seven-year hiatus, there was a rich bitch in that class who had been riding the wave of being the smart gal on campus. Until your Natty came along.” Fuck. Was he saying what Brute thought he was saying? “She didn’t like that, paid a guy to come up from Salt Lake to, in her words, ‘distract’ Natty.”

  “Jesus,” Brute ground out the word, hearing Chief grunt in response. “Are you fuckin’ shittin’ me?”

  “Shit free. We got the guy, and no worries for you, he now lacks the equipment to ever do that shit again. Seemed the most permanent solution to my man, so he took it upon himself to make it so. But this woman…” Chief trailed off for a moment, then continued, “Her daddy’s high and hot up in Wyoming politics, so dealin’ with his darlin’ daughter would bring heat on my club. That said, I do see a way to deliver a payback that fits the crime.”

  “Talk to me.” Brute waited, and as Chief spoke, he felt the muscles in his face pull and tug, stretching as he grinned.

  Brute

  Brute watched as Natty opened the newspaper. Seated in her customary place at the table, head in hand, she was propped semi-upright on an elbow in order to spoon cereal into her mouth. This lounging position was a holdover from childhood, and it warmed him to see it. He was surprised when she sat stiffly upright before exclaiming, “Holy shit.” Her eyes flickered to him, then back to the paper, then she smiled broadly. “Check it! Senator’s Daughter Pegged for Predator at Sex Club.” She flipped the paper around so he could read the blurry picture’s headline for himself. He sucked in a breath at her next words, knowing what he knew about the setup that bought that headline. “She was in one of my classes. Biggest bitch around to everyone. Especially me.” Natty snorted, then giggled, “Pegged.” Her voice dropped to a mutter when she said, “I bet she got pegged.”

  Frowning, Brute stared at her. “What do you know about pegging?”

  “Pappa Ricky.” Natty grinned saucily, arching her eyebrows as she gave him a flip of her hair. “I have an inquiring mind.”

  “Jesus.” He stood, pushing away from the table. “You know what? I don’t need to know.” Turning towards his office, he called over his shoulder, “Ruby picking you up today?” It was group day, and Ruby taking Natty had become part of their routine over the past few weeks. So it surprised him when she grunted in a way that could only be interpreted as a negative. He looked back, seeing her mouth was full but her head shaking back and forth.

  Garbled by cereal and milk, she told him, “Bex.” He stood stock still, his brain going at warp speed, considering and discarding responses. She swallowed and repeated herself, wrongly intuiting he hadn’t understood. “Bexley’s taking me.” The silver of her spoon flashed in the overhead light, disappearing into an ocean of white, reappearing bearing the cereal company’s idea of fruit-colored pieces of puffed grain. “I told her I have my car, but she insisted.” Another dip into the bowl, and she chewed and swallowed again, gesturing with her now-empty spoon. “It’s like they think I can’t do this myself. Like I’m not capable of making it to the group.”

  “I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I’d bet anything that’s not it, Natty. It feels more like they want to make something that could be hard, easier to bear. Maybe they remember what it was like to go to group alone for the first time, maybe they want a better outcome for you than they had, but I’m fairly sure them taking you doesn’t say one thing about how strong you are.” He was feeling his way through this, hoping he got it right because she didn’t need to feel like an obligation. He knew exactly how that could undermine your confidence, and didn’t want to think of Natty taking any more hits. “They know you’re strong, a fighter. So it doesn’t say anything about you, but everything about the kind of women they are. Survivors, who have compassion and need to serve someone who’s in the same situation.” As he talked, all laughter had fled her features, and even after he finished, she just sat there, staring at him for a moment.

  “You think I’m strong?” Trembling voice a throwback to her early teens, with four words, she exposed the burden of fear and uncertainty he’d been hoping to keep from her.

  Taking a deep breath, he promised, “I know you’re strong.” He could hold enough confidence for both of them, for as long as she needed. “I know it, Natalie. You and Ruby and Bexley, strongest women I know.”

  “I don’t feel strong.” A whispered confession, one he hated she shared while he was a dozen feet from her side because he wanted to wrap her up, keep her safe, lend her his strength. Going to her now would weaken the determination she needed to build herself up, so he rooted his feet and waited. “I don’t feel strong at all.” Her gaze darted around the room, ricocheting off reflective surfaces, finally coming to rest centered on his chest. Barely a whisper, her voice trembled as she told him, “I feel weak.”

  “You were raped.” He had spent hours on the phone with Bexley over the past couple of weeks. Schedules hadn’t cooperated for them to be together often, and every moment he was with her was consumed by their slow physical exploration. He wanted his hands and mouth on her every chance he got, and since those weren’t frequent enough for him, he was unwilling to waste a moment. This meant that the phone conversations had been all about exploring the way their minds fit together.

  One of the things Bexley had said, and he’d noted, was how it felt to hear someone acknowledge what had happened to her. So now, when Natty needed it, he couldn’t shy away from giving her the same validation. “That’s the vilest betrayal someone can do to another being. You survived it. You are finding ways to help you
rself deal with the mental and physical fallout of having something like that be forced on you.” Not a consensual act and his words would never give her any inkling that he believed her anything other than unwilling. The social and legal system seemed predisposed to shadow the victim with the blame pencil, and he would fight to the death before he allowed Natty to feel the weight of that implication.

  “You are unbelievably strong, Nat. So when they offer to give you a ride for something like group, maybe that’s them wanting a little bit of that strength for themselves. Give it to them, let them do this. You’ll never know how much you might be helping them.” He opened his arms. She needed no further invitation, pushing to her feet and crossing to him, letting him wrap her up. “Like you give me strength when you let me do this. Makes me feel like I’m helping, but really you’re helping me because there’s not a thing I can do to help take away your pain. Except hold you and tell you I love you, and give you shit about eating a kiddy cereal.”

  Muffled against his chest, her voice held tears when she said, “You forgot to give me shit this morning.”

  “Jesus, girl, you eatin’ that kiddy cereal again?” His words held no sting, were more near a croon than anything else, like a parent with a precious child, telling them they were loved. “There you go, shit given.”

  “I’m glad you give a shit, Pappa Ricky.” Finally. Fuckin’ finally, he heard a thin thread of humor in her voice, and Brute smiled, counting it worth every effort.

  Brute

  “Brute!” Bexley called out as she came, shoving her face into his throat, her body strung tight and quivering as his hand moved with purpose between her legs. Arm banded across her back, he held her tight against him in her bed, feeling an addicting rush of satisfaction at bringing her pleasure. He was at her house for the first time in days, already half hard when she’d opened the back door at his knock.