He held up a brown paper bag. “Had to buy a thermostat.”
“Oh, by the way”—Phil took the bag from Frank—“in the workshop in one of my bike’s saddlebags is something I was told to give to you.”
“From whom?” she asked, curious.
“You’ll know when you see it.” He motioned to Frank. “Hand me the tools, dude.” He squeezed into the wood burner where he could reach the blower. “Let’s get this thing repaired,” he added, his voice tinny in the confined space surrounded by metal. “Tomorrow morning is supposed to be a heavy frost, so it’s gonna get chilly tonight.”
Casting Phil a perplexed look, Frank picked up the toolbox and moved it closer to where Phil was working. “Meet me in the workshop in about half an hour,” he told Bernadette.
“Okay.” She waved to him as she walked away.
Inside the workshop, she found a switch by the office door and turned it on. After opening the other door leading into the actual work area, she crossed over to Phil’s Harley with the aid of the light spilling through the doorway. She unfastened first one saddlebag, finding nothing, then did the same to the other. Inside the second one, the brown tote and its colorful shawl greeted her.
What the hell? Why did Daffi return my gift?
Bernadette didn’t know whether to be offended or not. As she stared into the bag, something Daffi had said about Ezra asking her how she could afford the shawl rose in Bernadette’s memory. What happened to force Daffi to return the gift? Certainly this Ezra guy hadn’t known about it. If he had, Bernadette guessed he’d have destroyed it to hurt Daffi.
Wait. How had Daffi given to Phil?
“Let’s just say it’s a woman.”
She sucked in a sudden breath, her hand going to her mouth. Oh, hell. Frank wouldn’t like it if Phil was seeing one of the River Rebels’ sweetbutts. It would cause friction between the MCs.
Phil was the type of guy who would treat Daffi with respect—if they were even seeing each other—so he’d be good for Daffi. Bernadette was unwilling to jump to conclusions, but all the clues—Phil, Daffi, the shawl, Phil’s moodiness—were all there blinking brightly in her mind.
For now, she wasn’t going to breathe a word of her suspicions to Frank. First, she had to talk to Phil. They’d become good friends over the last four months, so she knew with some kindness and a little cajoling that he’d open up to her.
Poor Daffi. If she was into Phil, the hell of being the River Rebels’ property must be a million times worse.
Quickly, she left the workshop and entered the MC, making her way through the kitchen, where several women were already preparing supper—it smelled like deep-fried chicken—and through the living and family rooms where several single women had already arrived for sweetbutt night. Erica reclined on one of the small sofas, her bare feet drawn up under her ass, and wiggled her fingers to Bernadette in a silly wave. Not wanting to be rude, Bernadette waved back and smiled before she turned and mounted the staircase. Something about the little blonde always rubbed her the wrong way, as though the young woman was only there to use the MC. She couldn’t explain why she felt that way, but Erica, as well as her two girlfriends she’d begun to bring to sweetbutt night, just seemed…manipulative? No, that wasn’t the right word. Whatever it was, all three women set Bernadette’s teeth on edge, especially Erica.
She stepped on something crunchy as she passed one of the older matrons, Betty Lou, from the community, who was running a vacuum upstairs.
“Sweeping during a full house?” Bernadette asked, then looked down at what had crunched underfoot.
Betty Lou shook her head in exasperation. “Just up here for now. The kids brought a bag of potato chips up during nap time and spilled them everywhere. I’ll vacuum downstairs in the morning.”
Smiling, Bernadette patted her on one plump shoulder, then entered her room and hurriedly placed the gift tote in the back of her bedroom closet. On instinct, she took the key from her purse, locked the door, shut it behind her and looped the key on its elastic band around her wrist.
Betty Lou was winding the vacuum cord as Bernadette returned downstairs. Erica was nowhere to be seen, but one of her friends—Kiki? Kendra?—was sitting on the floor by a coffee table playing cards with two of the younger prospects. Bernadette rushed out to the workshop, eager to meet Frank, and passed through the office and back into the garage again.
“I thought I’d gotten stood up,” Frank said from the shadows.
She jumped slightly. “Nah, had to run in to the house for a minute. It’s already packed in there for sweetbutt night. Maybe we should stay out here tonight,” she joked.
“Hmm… that might go with what I have planned,” he replied, his voice a low rumble that stirred Bernadette’s blood.
She couldn’t help staring at him as he emerged from the darkness cloaking the back of the shop. He’d shed his MC cut and had unbuttoned his flannel, revealing the dark blue undershirt. His belt hung unfastened, the button of his jeans unhooked too. The man oozed primeval sex appeal, and the power within her responded to it by simmering beneath her skin.
“If I don’t get to taste you now,” Frank began, “I don’t know how much longer I can last.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice came out as though she hadn’t spoken a word in years. The sexual heat in her mate’s eyes shot adrenaline through her limbs.
Frank reached her and took her by the waist. “It has been nearly two weeks since we’ve made love. I’m always busy, or you’re helping with another community task or project.” He looked directly into her eyes. In his black depths, raw need flared, then burned. “I plan to make love to you right here, right now.”
The hard bite of desire lodged in her lower abdomen where it grew heavy and hot. He pushed her yoga pants over her hips, then knelt to remove her canvas slip-ons before drawing the slacks on down her legs, over her feet, then off the tips of her toes. He kissed each toe of each foot, firing electrical sensations up her limbs to settle in her pussy, before he stood again to leave her wearing just her boy briefs and button-down shirt.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I’ve missed you too.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I thought maybe that…”
He shrugged out of his flannel, then tossed it over the workbench. “Thought what?”
“Nothing.” She unbuttoned her shirt enough that she could pull it over her head. Sitting there in only her briefs and lacy support bra, she reveled in his heated gaze wandering her body.
“Damn, honey. You’re so beautiful.” He drew his undershirt over his head and threw it onto the pile of clothes accumulating into a pile, then stepped between her thighs, the warmth of his skin on her legs heightening her excitement. “Every time I look at you, I can’t believe you’re mine. The woman you are inside”—he tapped the spot above her cleavage—“makes you a hundred times even more gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous day for a gorgeous woman…”
She stiffened. Why would that man pop into her mind now?
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked. Concern marred his brow. “Would you prefer to go somewhere else?”
“As much as I like the smell of grease, welding smoke and paint,” she replied, “and as much as I want you, it would be nice to enjoy you without the chance of someone walking in on us.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I agree. No one’s allowed to see your tits or ass ’cept for me.”
She laughed. “You’re flowery way of talking is so sexy.”
“Like that, do ya?” He tipped his head to one side and offered her his most handsome, wolfy smile. “Well, I can do even better than that.”
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her briefs. She rose onto one ass cheek, then the other so he could pull them down and off her legs. Moving to unhook her bra, she was intercepted as he pushed her hands away and unfastened the front clasp himself. Her breasts free of their confinement, he stared in appreciation, a soft smile tweaking one corner of his m
outh.
“Damn, you have fine boobs.”
Amused, she said, “Hey, my eyes are up here.”
“I wasn’t talking about your eyes.”
Giggling, she shook her breasts at him, eliciting an appreciative groan.
He quickly shucked the rest of his clothes, then, standing fully naked, his cock hard and proud, he held his arms out. “Come here.”
She leaned forward, and he scooped her up to impale her on his length. With her tits pressed to his slightly haired chest, her pussy firmly planted against the root of him, and his length and girth stretching her so unexpectedly, she threw her head back, instinctively stretching and wiggling to seat him into her as far and as snugly as possible.
“Oh…Frank…”
He grunted, tensing. “Fuck, baby! Hold still or I might lose it.”
Her breathing grew more erratic. All she wanted to do was grind, but he held her still as he stood with his eyes squeezed shut, his face a mask of concentration.
“Don’t move,” he ordered. “Just hang on to me.”
She leaned forward and tucked her head into the crook of his neck, her arms under his, hands flat across his shoulder blades. Frank walked over to a corner where several coveralls were hanging, reached between two of them and opened a door.
“I didn’t know there was a door there,” she said.
“There’s a low loft upstairs with sleeping quarters,” he explained. “It’s not used often because it’s either too hot or too cold up there, depending on the season.”
He climbed the stairs, the tops of his thighs brushing her ass, his movements causing his cock to rub deliciously against her cervix.
“Damn, you feel so good…” She couldn’t restrain herself from wiggling.
“Umph…woman…”
Frank barely made it to the last step before falling onto a low bunk with her and instantly driving into her core. She snapped her legs around his hips, her back sinking into the roll-out mattress.
“That did it,” he groaned. “Fuck, I love your sexy little legs.”
He pumped into her, his cock nudging her deepest spot, his width spreading her so it both stung and delighted her. She moaned, clasping him to her, needing him as close as he could get, even willing to share the same skin if that were even possible. Damn, how she loved the sensation of his chest hairs sliding over her breasts, which had grown so heavy and tight she wondered if they’d explode. When he raised enough that he could dip his head and lick first one nipple, then other, she arched into him, tightening her legs, her feet hooked behind his knees.
He grunted. “Fuck, Bernadette…”
Thrusting harder, he pinned her to the mattress. All she could do was hang on to him and let him control their lovemaking. He pistoned his hips and she let her thighs fall open, giving him better access.
He groaned louder, raised himself until he was positioned on his knees and yanked her back onto his cock, her thighs splayed wide over his thighs as he gripped her hips. He drove into her repeatedly, his gaze locked to hers, the wolf within him evident by the amber glow of his eyes.
In this position, she was fully open to his cock, which found the deepest part of her and repeatedly assaulted her there. Her wrist began burning. She threw her arms over her head, finding the little headboard bars with her hands and raked the underside of her wrist across one of the cold bars to alleviate the stinging burn-itch, then she hung on as Frank pummeled her with his cock, her breasts jiggling, the pat-pat-pat of his pelvis against her ass loud in the little loft.
The aromas of dust, laundry detergent in the sheets, and hot insulation assaulted her sense of smell. The burn-itch assailed her skin behind the palm of her hand. She tore her gaze away from Frank’s, shutting her eyes, needing a slight reprieve from the intensity of his onyx orbs, and rubbed her wrist over the headboard bar again. The image of the blond, blue-eyed man flashed into her mind’s eye, his grin wide and toothy. Gasping at the unexpected picture, she glanced at the cheap, cream-colored panel board serving as the peaked ceiling, forcing the picture out of her brain.
Frank jerked her hips harder, his cock stiffening further. The fire licking through Bernadette swirled to her pussy, then settled in her core. Fluttering began in her passage. Everything inside her tightened until the coil deep within her core could stand no more. He thrust again, holding her there, his cock firmly pressed to her cervix. The fluttering transformed into a rhythmic clenching. Frank uttered a low moan and tugged on her hips harder. At that, his cock so tight inside her she didn’t know where she began and he ended, the rhythmic muscle actions exploded, taking her by surprise.
She stiffened as she arched her body, her hands so tight around the headboard bars that her fingers ached, and let out loud, warbling scream in the tiny room. Frank withdrew, then shoved into her, doing the same action again and again as if he were possessed. He stopped suddenly, his body tensing, his face a mask of euphoria, then his cock pulsed several times and heat bathed her cervix, flooding her inner walls as they both came simultaneously. He held her so tightly as he coaxed the last drops of himself into her that she’d have fingerprint bruises on her hips and ass, but she didn’t care. Those fingerprints showed ownership by a mate, her mate. Oh, how she loved him too. Her heart swelled with love and she held her arms out to him as he collapsed on top of her.
“You’re mine, Bernadette…” The blond man’s face rose in her mind’s eye again, forcing Bernadette’s magic to rise and attack the image. The stranger’s semblance wavered, then winked out like a dying cigarette ash.
Frank rolled to the side of her, placing his back to the wall, then lay tracing his fingers in a figure eight over the taut skin of her belly. She shut her eyes. Why was the man invading her mind?
“What’s this?” Frank touched her wrist that kept burning.
Her eyes flew open and she released the bars to look at her wrist.
“It looks like you have a fingerprint burned into your skin,” he said, his tone concerned.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It itches and tingles, though.”
“Better have Scary Mary take a look at it,” he said as he drew her hand to his nose and sniffed the spot. “It smells like magic.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she replied. The memory of how the blond had grabbed her by the wrist jumped to the forefront of her mind.
“Just the same,” he murmured and pulled her over to spoon her, “have her take a look at it, okay?”
“I will.”
“Let’s have a nap, then start over.”
“What about supper?” She smiled to herself.
“Hell, it’s sweetbutt night, so there will be slim pickings after supper anyway. We’ll either go out for some pizza later or we’ll make up for it with breakfast.” He nipped the back of her neck, the rake of his teeth pushing goose flesh over her skin. “I like our little hideaway up here.”
She snuggled against him, rooting her ass into his lap and winning a low, rumbling growl from him. “Me too.”
“Hell, I’m ready again,” he snarled into her ear. True to his word, something rod-hard wedged into the crack of her ass.
“One nice thing about lycanthropes,” she quipped, “is that recovery time is short.”
“Roll over and present that round ass,” he ordered, flipping her over.
With a delighted squeal, she reveled in the sensation of him straddling the backs of her thighs and penetrating her.
Chapter Ten
The laughter and sounds of lovemaking from the living areas finally faded a little after one a.m. In his bedroom, Phil sat in a glider rocker, wearing just his boxers, his feet crossed at the ankles on the matching glider stool. The middle of October had provided a full moon. Many of the MC and the community had gone out to revel in the lunar cycle and roam the forest while the weather allowed it. It wouldn’t be long before bitter winds ravaged the mountains and heavy snow blanketed everything.
From his place by the bedroom window
, he caught more lycanthrope figures loping across the lawns to disappear into the dark trees at various points. He’d thought about joining them, but preferred to remain alone tonight. Thoughts of Daffodil riddled his mind and he couldn’t shake the feeling she was in a dire situation—worse than being a woman in an outlaw gang. Something about this Ezra guy had his inner beast ready to attack.
It pissed him off that he couldn’t get his leggy blonde out of his mind. Worse, he couldn’t seem to get out of the habit of thinking of her as his. He kept telling himself there was no use in pursuing her. She was part of the River Rebels, had been sold to them, and one-percenters took their property, whether living beings or inanimate objects, very seriously.
But the haunted took in Daffodil’s eyes tortured him. Each time he’d stared into her light green eyes, he’d seen a soul who wanted freedom, happiness…a real life.
And fucking hell, he wanted to give her those things.
Phil reached for a tumbler on the lampstand next to him, the feeble light of the low setting bringing out the rich, amber tones of the glass’ contents. He knocked back the last big swallow of whiskey and thumped the cup on the stand, the dwindling ice cubes clattering angrily.
It had been six days since he’d seen Daffodil on the roadside. The sight of her swinging the long limb like she was wielding a broadsword had been burned into his brain forever. She’d been on a mission to go out fighting. He admired that. She had heart. Strength. All ingredients for a she-wolf.
The thought struck him as if someone had actually delivered the blow to his skull with a hammer. She-wolf? It wasn’t possible that he’d found his mate…was it?
What good was there in a mate he had no way to reach?
Frustrated, he rose and fished out a few more ice cubes from the ice bucket he’d brought up from the downstairs bar, then spun the cap off the Wild Turkey and splashed three to four fingers’ worth over the cubes. He plunked himself into the glider chair again, his irritation with the situation growing to explosive proportions. If he didn’t mellow out soon, his inner beast might wrestle its way out and wreak havoc, especially since the moon was full.
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