“That’s not safe,” he rebuked.
I shrugged. “It’s a good neighborhood. I’ve never worried about it before.”
The garage door went up as we spoke, and I led us inside, leading him directly to Rowen’s room.
“You can lay her down there. Thank you,” I said as he placed her in her bed.
It was a princess castle.
Reese had paid a local contractor nearly a grand to build it, and I was still unsure how she was going to have it moved. It literally took up the entire room.
“Thank you,” I said as I started working her arms out of the wings. “She’s pretty heavy. She would’ve been hard for me to carry that far.”
Once the wings were off, I peeled off her shoes, followed shortly by her tights.
“She looks pretty capable of walking,” Grayson noted as he stood in the doorway, watching me.
I laughed. “She sure is. She just got tired after the first quarter mile. Thank God I had the wagon!”
He smiled, looking down at the sleeping girl. “She’s cute.”
I nodded and walked to the door. “That she is.”
As we walked back through the house, I could feel his eyes on me.
Could feel the way my body reacted to his.
We walked through the kitchen, and back into the night, coming to a stop just outside the garage door.
“Thanks again for walking us,” I said quietly, bringing my hands up to cover my arms.
He watched the move, and then something shifted.
His eyes, which had been friendly before, suddenly started to blaze.
He moved fast.
One moment he was standing four feet away from me, and seconds later, he had me pinned up against the brick of my sister’s house.
I went willingly, of course.
One moment I was trying my hardest to keep my hands off him, and the next I was in his arms, my hands finding a home in his soft hair.
His mouth came down on mine. Hard.
The moment our lips touched, my body ignited.
I moaned against him, feeling the heat of his breath against the sensitive skin of my neck, sending shockwaves coursing down my spine.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he said, slamming his mouth back down onto mine.
Our tongues played a game, dueling against one another’s.
I never would’ve thought that the feel of his tongue against my own would’ve felt as it did. Never would’ve believed that with one tiny movement, I’d be straight on course to an orgasm by a man for the first time in my life.
I gasped when his jean-clad thigh worked in between my own, pressing against me, just right, so that I was on the verge of an orgasm before I’d even realized what was going on.
I gasped into his mouth, clenching my fist hard, eliciting a growl out of him.
“Fucking perfect,” he hissed, grinding his thigh into me, letting me feel the hard length of him where he was pressed up against my hip.
I sucked hard on his bottom lip and I ground myself down onto his thigh, seeking that little push that I needed to bring my orgasm upon me.
My abs clenched, and I sucked hard on his tongue as my orgasm finally tore through me like a tornado of feeling.
I’d had orgasms before, of course. But none like this.
It was a good one, too.
A soul shattering, breath stealing, mind blowing release of energy that had me seeing stars.
“Beautiful,” Grayson rasped against my lips.
I could feel his hard length prodding me insistently in the belly, but when I started to reach for it, he stayed my hand, bringing it up between our chests.
“Not yet. When we do that…and note I said when, not if, we will need more than a few minutes for a quick fuck against a wall. I want to enjoy you. Savor you. Suck all of your juices free before I fuck you so long that we’re both raw inside. I’ve never wanted someone so much before in my life, and I want to savor our first time,” he said, staring straight into my eyes.
Little did he know, that he was in for a lot more than our first time…but my first ever.
“Dinner tomorrow?” He asked as he started backing slowly away.
All I could do was nod and lean back against the wall because my legs still were confused on what they were supposed to be doing.
When he grinned and turned his back on me, I finally came back on track again, just enough to watch him walk away, enjoying it way more than I probably should have.
Chapter 5
Be a gentleman, know when to hold the door open for her. Be a man, know when to pull her hair.
-Life Lesson
Tru
“Hello?” I gasped into the phone.
“Hey, baby. What’s wrong?” My dad asked.
I closed my eyes and tried not to cry.
My car. My baby. Was gone.
I’d known as soon as my car had started this morning that this would be her last time.
She’d made an awful coughing sound…one that had been getting progressively worse over the last few weeks.
My 1993 Toyota Corolla had over two hundred thousand miles, and had breathed her last breath at the stop sign two miles down from the hospital.
My dad told me that I needed to get the oil changed. However, it’d been over a year now, and I still hadn’t gotten around to it.
Who knew one had to get their oil changed every three thousand miles…instead of every forty thousand?
I’d been on my way to be with my mom for her second to last round of chemotherapy when the knocking started.
When the shuddering started, I prayed that it would at least make it to the parking lot a couple hundred feet across the intersection, but it was a no go.
The poor gal shuddered one last heave, and stopped a car length short of the intersection.
Cars honked angrily behind me, and I snapped my hand down hard on the hazard light button before shaking my fist at the angry driver right behind me who’d been honking.
I was in jeans and a long sleeved tee, pouring sweat in the unusually hot November sun.
I was in long sleeves because they kept it subarctic in the hospital. Had I known that I’d be pushing my car out of the way, I’d have worn shorts.
Oh, and tennis shoes instead of fucking Uggs.
Closing my eyes in humiliation, I got out speaking to my dad as I looked around.
“My car just died,” I said sadly.
With a muttered, “Hold on tight,” he hung up, leaving me with nothing to do but watch the hundreds of cars move around me.
My dad was a really good dad.
Which was why when a freakin’ fire truck pulled up only moments after getting off the phone with him, I knew I owed him a case of beer.
Especially when none other than the star of my dreams stepped out in his bunker pants like a knight in a shining fire truck.
“Hey there, hot stuff,” Grayson called to me as he sauntered up, two other men at his back.
I exhaled a relieved breath. “Hey, Grayson. I’m so glad you’re here.”
He grinned broadly at me. “You’re in for a little exercise?”
That was the truth. “Yeah, I decided today would be a good day for a walk.”
He chuckled and motioned the others forward. “This is Sebastian and Kettle.”
The two men in question nodded politely towards me, suspicion settled down deep into their eyes.
“My dad called?” I asked once I turned back to Grayson.
“Yep. He said, and I quote… ‘Go get my daughter before she kills herself trying to move her car out of the way,’” Sebastian said, using finger quotes, and speaking in an authoritative voice extremely close to the one my dad always used.
“That sounds a lot like him. Demanding and making sure I never had the chance to question his orders,” I said patiently.
That elicited a laugh out of them all.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of my fat
her’s orders.
They, of course, made it look easy when they moved my car across the intersection and into the parking lot of the Dairy Queen.
No one tried to take them out with their vehicle.
I contemplated hopping into the truck and moving it, but I had a feeling that neither my dad, nor the three men, would appreciate my thoughtfulness.
They came back once they locked my car up, Grayson bringing up the rear with his arms loaded down with my things.
He handed me my keys, followed by my purse, and the bag of essentials I always took with me while visiting my mom, and my cell phone that I’d somehow managed to leave.
“Can y’all give me a ride to the cancer center?” I pleaded.
Grayson’s eyebrows slammed together as he looked at me like he’d been poleaxed. “You’re sick?”
I shook my head, placing my hand on his cheek. “No. My mom has breast cancer. She’s in her second to last treatment there.”
His eyes closed, and when they reopened, I saw the sadness lurking in them. “Of course, sweetheart. Let’s go.”
I noted that both of the other men weren’t looking at me with suspicion anymore, but something more. Something akin to thoughtfulness.
The ride to the cancer center was short. People tended to move out of the way of the large fire truck.
They even helped me out of the truck and came with me inside.
“How are y’all allowed to do this…don’t you have to be within your district?” I asked as I walked through the familiar entrance and down the first hallway.
The three of them followed. Grayson at my side. Kettle and Sebastian at my back.
“We’re in our district. As long as we can make it to the truck in under a minute…which I assure you we can…we can be anywhere,” Grayson muttered as his eyes followed the pictures lining the wall of all those that had battled cancer under that roof.
Some had succumbed, while others were able to prevail.
He stopped at one picture in particular, pressing a kiss to his fingers and then placing it on the glass picture of a woman, early forties, and a young man, sixteen at most. The woman was wearing a pink shirt that said, ‘Save the TaTa’s’ with a pink bandana around her head. The young man was gorgeous, even at that young of an age.
Beautiful brown hair covering his eyes, the start of muscles peeking out of his tight Bass Pro Shop shirt, and finally, the defining factor that tied him to Grayson, was the dimple in the chin.
The beautiful indentation gave him away every time.
“That your mom?” I asked, standing partially back off to the side and looking over his shoulder.
He nodded once before starting to walk. “Yeah, she had breast cancer. It was bad towards the end. She wasn’t even my mom…I miss her every day.”
My heart broke for him.
Cancer was a bad disease.
Where some people kicked its ass, others died within weeks of finding out they had cancer.
Cancer was so unpredictable, and right now, I hated its guts.
Mom will make it. I told myself.
We rounded the corner and I put my game face on.
Mom was, of course, a cop and she’d probably see right through it, but I was willing to give it the good college try.
Nurses all around looked up as we walked into the large open room.
Patients sat in comfortable recliners interspersed around the room, some with relatives or spouses, and others with family or friends.
There were even a few lone ones.
Normally, my mom wasn’t one of them, but today I could see the sadness in her eyes until she saw me from across the room.
Then her face lit up like a spotlight.
To say my mom was pleased to see us was an understatement.
She was a social butterfly and could find absolutely anything to talk about with any stranger. She did so with the three men I’d brought with me.
My mom was a dreamer. She only ever saw the best in people. She had a dream for me and my sister, and that was to marry someone that loved us like my father loved her.
And with each new guy she met when it came to the two of us, the more she hoped that we could find that.
I could practically hear the plotting going on in my mother’s head.
However, Sebastian and Kettle were quick to explain that they were both married, and mom figured out pretty quick that all of my attention was focused on Grayson, not the other two men.
“It’s very nice to meet you in person, Grayson,” my mother said sagely, eliciting a chuckle from the two men behind me.
“So, you’ve heard of me,” he stated forlornly.
She smiled widely at him. “Yes. From my husband and my daughter. Good things from one, not so good things from the other.”
I snorted.
The good things sure as fuck weren’t muttered from my father’s mouth.
To this day, four years after the incident, he still spoke about it.
But with what Grayson said next, I knew I’d fight my daddy tooth and nail if it came down to it.
“You’re looking beautiful, Mrs. Doherty. I’ll bet you look good wearing a gun. You can use your baton on me anytime,” Grayson said cheekily.
A smile overtook my mother’s face. One that nearly blinded me in its intensity.
I knew right then that I was in love with him.
Fuck that it’d only been three months. Fuck that I’d only seen him for an hour a day tops, once a week. That was enough.
If the man could make my mother laugh when she was getting a treatment, a woman whom had never even met him until five minutes before, was a freakin’ miracle worker.
One of the few.
My father was just going to have to suck it up, ‘cause I was totally marrying this guy.
Chapter 6
If my mouth offends you:
I’m sorry.
I’ll try to do better
1 and 2 are lies.
4. You’re a pussy.
-Torren to Sebastian
Torren
“Someone has a crush,” Sebastian goaded as we walked out of the cancer center.
I turned my head to him and smiled unrepentantly. “That woman makes my cock hard for hours.”
Kettle made a gagging sound and I bared my teeth at him.
Which caused him to laugh. “Have you ever heard of TMI?”
“What’s TMI?” I asked, batting my eyes at him.
He grunted.
“So what’d you learn from Cleo about your brother?” He asked as we approached the truck.
I got into the back before answering. “Not fucking much. He started there a few months after Cleo did. He came here when his mother got sick, but also to ‘meet his father.’ And he hasn’t been able to get much else out of him.”
I saw Sebastian’s frown in the mirror. “So why didn’t he tell you?”
“Cleo says he wanted more to go on before he got my hopes up. Ross doesn’t know about me. All Ross knows is that his father lives around here and is a member of The Dixie Wardens,” I explained, thinking about all the time that’d been wasted.
I’d always been an only child.
When I was younger, I’d dreamed of a brother or sister.
My mother had been all I had, and most of the time she was at work or too busy while she was at home dealing with prospective clients.
I’d wished, many times, that I had someone to be bored with.
Only on rare occasions was I able to visit my father, and it was even rarer to stay overnight with him. Most of the time he came over to us, spending time with me only under my mother’s hawk-like supervision.
Back then, it’d been normal. Now, though, I knew that it was not normal.
“Still, though. I’d have thought he’d have told you the second he suspected,” Kettle wondered.
I’d felt that way at first, too. However, after thinking it over, I knew Cleo had only been looking out for me. Most likely his partner, to
o.
“How’d you find out you had a brother?” Sebastian asked offhandedly.
I winced, remembering how I’d found out.
It hadn’t been by my father telling me on his own free will, that’s for sure.
It’d slipped out during a fight between my mother and father the summer before she’d been diagnosed with cancer.
I’d gone inside, on one of his rare visits, and had returned via the backyard because I’d wanted to show my father the new bike I’d picked up at the junk yard earlier that week.
I’d been in the process of rolling it around the back corner when I’d heard my mom hiss at my dad that she still loved him, but could never forgive him for fucking some ‘sweet butt’ and knocking her up.
“I overheard my parents fighting one day when I was young,” I muttered distractedly, watching the traffic pass by out the side window.
“Your folks were divorced, weren’t they? Ever since I’ve known Booney, he’s been alone,” Sebastian stated.
I shrugged. “Yeah, they divorced when I was a kid. When my ma died, I was supposed to live with my dad, but spent most of my time with my Paw because I was such a shit head.”
“I can’t see that at all,” Kettle drawled.
A grin split my face wide. “I’m not that bad.”
“So tell me, Grayson, what’s going on with that girl?” He asked as he pulled through the intersection just in time to miss the car that careened towards us, missing us by only inches.
However, the car did not miss the light pole.
It hit the pole hard.
So hard, in fact, that the light pole swayed side to side, before falling down into the middle of the intersection, causing three cars to slam into it.
“Fuck,” I hissed as the destruction played out in front of me.
Kettle wasted no time stopping in the middle of the road, flipping his lights on, and throwing the parking break before we all bailed out.
Vaguely, I heard Sebastian calling into his mic at his right shoulder, but I was focused on getting the bag and putting gloves on my hands to pay much attention.
Once the gloves were securely in place, I started to the furthest car, the one that hit the light pole.
Within an instant, I knew the guy was dead.
His head was at an unnatural angle, mostly because it was halfway sticking out of the windshield, but that was neither here nor there.
Charge to My Line Page 5
