Sweet Dreams

by Kristen Ashley

  He looked both concerned and pissed. His lip was cut and still bleeding. There was redness around his cheekbone. He’d have a shiner the next day.

  “Can you get to your feet?” Tate asked and my eyes turned to him.

  He was crouched beside me. There were droplets of blood leaking from his nose into his beard. Other than that, he looked okay.

  “Yeah,” I whispered and got to my feet with Tate’s hand at my arm and hip supporting me.

  I got up and stood steady. Then I took in a deep breath.

  Tate turned to Wood, tagged the ice from his hand and then came back to me, lifting it and pressing it gently to my temple.

  “Laurie,” Wood called, my eyes went to him and my mind snapped to sharp focus.

  “You didn’t tell me she was sick,” I whispered, my hand going up to take over the ice from Tate. His hand let mine hold the ice, he moved to my side and slid an arm around my waist.

  “Lauren, I –” Wood started.

  “You what?” I interrupted, still whispering. “You didn’t give me the full story, Wood.”

  “Baby, there’s a reason.”

  “Really?” I asked. “I spent ten years with a man who kept things from me, Wood. I’m not going to start something with another man who’d do the same.”

  Wood’s arms crossed on his chest, the gentleness went out of his face and he jerked his head to Tate. “He tell you everything?”

  “We haven’t had time,” I reminded him. “My father being sick, Tate needing to work. You haven’t told me everything either and you and me, Wood, we had time.”

  And we did. Me having dinner with him, sharing my breaks with him including my dinner breaks, necking on my bed. We’d had time.

  I’d felt like a heel the last three weeks because I was a nice person and I found it hard to live with what I did to Wood. It hadn’t occurred to me that what he did, with him knowing what it meant for me to be on the back of Tate’s bike, wasn’t nice either.

  “I’m sorry it happened this way,” I told him, still being nice. “I wish it didn’t.”

  “I do too,” he agreed instantly and walked straight away as I blinked at him, shocked by his sudden departure. I thought he’d get angry or at least have something to say like “Sorry I acted like a Neanderthal, fighting with Tate in his living room, and punched you in the head.”

  My body moved to watch him and Tate’s moved with mine.

  Wood stopped at the still open sliding glass door and turned, his eyes leveling on me.

  “You don’t burden a good woman with that shit, baby. You find out, you’ll know. You get a shot at her, you hook her deep, then you lay that shit on her,” Wood stated and I felt my lungs freeze again but he wasn’t done. He jerked his head at Tate and went on, “He’ll tell you shit about me, if he hasn’t already. And all of it’s true. But none of it was true with you.”

  Then he disappeared into the night not even bothering to close the door.

  I stood staring into the darkness even as I heard his bike roar. Tate let me go and walked to the door, sliding it closed.

  When he turned and started back to me, my eyes went to his.

  “What was he talking about?” I asked.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” Tate replied.

  “Tate,” I said when he stopped in front of me.

  “Bed, babe,” he repeated. “You need to lie down and I need to clean up.”

  I didn’t know what to do in this situation. I was losing patience with Tate being so cagey. He’d just had a no-holds-barred fight in his living room with my kind of ex-boyfriend, a man whose picture was on the wall in Tate’s house, a man who used to be his friend, a man whose sister used to be under his skin. Now neither was true and Tate wasn’t talking about it, wasn’t sharing with me. And I’d told myself not to be a shrew, I’d made the decision I didn’t want to fuck this up.

  How on earth did I proceed?

  “You just fought with Wood in your living room,” I told him cautiously.

  He came to my side and slid an arm along my waist, propelling me forward.

  “Long time comin’,” he muttered.

  “That wasn’t about me,” I stated and Tate stopped us both at the mouth to the hall.

  I looked up at him and held my breath at the fury I saw stamped into his features.

  “Yeah, Lauren,” he said and it sounded like a snarl, “it’s all about you.”

  I braved the snarl and asked quietly, “How can that be? I haven’t been around long enough for something like that to be a long time coming.”

  “You need to lie down,” Tate reiterated and I could tell it was straining his patience to do so.

  “Tate –”

  Tate pulled in breath on a hiss and I stopped speaking.

  “Put it together, Lauren, at least part of it,” he demanded, definitely with strained patience.

  “Sorry?” I asked, definitely with confusion.

  “In my life, three women have been on the back of my bike. One was his sister, who fucked up my life. One was his ex, who fucked up my life. Now it’s you, who’s been in his bed.”

  All of that didn’t pull together for me in any way mostly because, just like with Wood, I had the bones but none of the meat.

  “Tate –”

  “Babe, Christ,” he clipped. “You just took a power punch to the fuckin’ temple. I got blood leakin’ outta my nose. Can we talk about this goddamned later?”

  No strained patience now, he’d lost it. I could read it in the line of his body and in his face.

  Even so, even though this was frightening, that scary energy emanating from Tate directed at me, I wanted to tell him we couldn’t talk about it later. I wanted to tell him we were definitely going to talk about it now.

  But something stopped me and instead I whispered, “Okay, Captain.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Your Own Brand of Trouble

  “And all of it’s true. But none of it was true with you.”

  My eyes opened and I stared at the dark pillowcase.

  I was in Tate’s bed with Tate but he was far away. I could feel Buster’s little body weighing the covers down between us.

  We hadn’t slept together very often but every time we’d done it either Tate held me close or I snuggled into his back.

  Not that night.

  After our exchange, he’d led me to the bed, made me get in it and ordered me to keep the ice on as long as I could. This was difficult since it was getting really cold but also I was uncomfortable because Tate still seemed really angry.

  I’d lain there, holding the ice to my head while Tate cleaned up in the bathroom. Buster kept Tate company in the bathroom until he came out and then he left the bedroom without a word, Buster prancing after him. I heard Tate righting furniture and Buster came back, obviously not a big fan of hanging around while Tate was righting furniture. Buster leaped on the bed and curled up with me, I gave her scratches, saw the lights go out in the hall and Tate came back.

  He took off his jeans and climbed into his side of the bed. He turned out the light and didn’t move to me, touch me or speak to me. He settled on his back with one arm behind his head, Buster abandoned me, walked over my belly and curled up against Tate.

  He took his hand from behind his head and started rubbing Buster.

  Then he said in a low, menacing voice, “I tell you to stay where you are and not to move, Ace, next time, do what I fuckin’ say.”

  I blinked in the dark, my eyelids the only things that moved. The rest of my body was statue still.

  There was a lot there I didn’t like. Firstly, Tate again telling me what to do and expecting me to do it, even when he was in a fistfight in his living room! Secondly, the intimation that my getting hit was my fault because I didn’t do what he told me to do when I was breaking up a fistfight in his living room! Lastly, Tate was again telling me what to do and he was clearly infuriated I didn’t do it.

  If I had my car, I would have gotten up,
gotten dressed and gone right to it.

  Fuck that and fuck him!

  I was better off at the hotel. It was below average but Ned and Betty never told me what to do and they had a pool.

  But I was stuck in a house in the hills. It was night, it was dark and I had no way home.

  So instead, I got out of bed and walked to his bathroom, dumped the dripping ice into his sink, rinsed and wrung out the kitchen towel Wood had put the ice in and hung it on a towel rail. Then I went back to bed and got in on my side, turned so my back was to Tate and closed my eyes.

  He didn’t say another word and neither did I. He fell asleep way before me and still didn’t roll into me or reach out to me.

  Apparently Tatum Jackson could be angry even in his sleep.

  I eventually fell asleep and woke twice while words he’d said drifted through my head. I was able to get to sleep both times but this time, with Wood’s words floating through, words I didn’t understand but words I knew somewhere deep meant something huge, I knew I wouldn’t.

  I tried, adjusting my position to my back, then my belly, then my other side and finally a combo of side and belly.

  Nothing doing.

  Instead of waking Tate with my fidgeting, I carefully got out of the bed and just as carefully walked through his bedroom, down the hall and into the living room. I went straight to the couch, stretched my legs out, pulled the blanket there over me but I twisted my upper body toward the window. I crossed my arms on the back of the couch, put my chin on them and looked out the window.

  The moonlight made the trees and terraced plants silver.

  “You don’t burden a good woman with that shit, baby. You find out, you’ll know. You get a shot at her, you hook her deep, then you lay that shit on her.”

  I closed my eyes and the silver hillside turned to black.

  “Let’s have this and not fuck it up. We’ll talk about Wood later. Yeah?”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the plants and flowers, unruly, unkempt, but I knew not planted by Tate’s hands.

  “You don’t get this because you don’t know Wood. I know Wood. Trust me, you knew Wood, you’d get it and you’d know you don’t owe him shit.”

  I felt my lip tremble.

  “The thing you gotta know before you climb back on the back of his bike is that Tate Jackson is trash too.”

  I turned my head and looked at the six-seater dining room table.

  Did a bachelor own a six-seater dining room table? I didn’t think so. Tate didn’t exactly strike me as a man who held dinner parties.

  Maybe he played poker. Tate struck me as a man who might throw poker parties.

  My eyes went back to the plants.

  “In my life, three women have been on the back of my bike. One was his sister, who fucked up my life. One was his ex, who fucked up my life. Now it’s you, who’s been in his bed.”

  I stared at the plants knowing it just by looking at them.

  Neeta had lived there, or Bethany or, if not lived, then one of them was around long enough to put their stamp on it. Two women who fucked up his life.

  Now, me.

  His “type”.

  The type to fuck up his life?

  Really, what was a man like Tatum Jackson doing with me? Mini-skirt wearing, hotel assignation-exciting Neeta, yes. Crazy Bethany, I didn’t know. Me, I didn’t get.

  In fact, what was handsome, gentle-talking Wood doing with me?

  My mind moved to that morning in the forecourt of the garage.

  “You’re on my bike,” Tate had growled to me.

  “She’s in the ‘Stang,” Wood had growled at Tate.

  They were fighting over me because that was what they did. No matter what Tate said, it was not because of me.

  I considered this.

  Not being mean or anything but there wasn’t a lot of female talent in Carnal. The best of the lot was Krystal and she was with Bubba, and also Wendy, but she was with Tyler and too young for Wood or Tate.

  I’d been around awhile, I’d seen what was available in Carnal and for men like that, I was pretty much it unless they wanted to go the Jonelle somewhat-skanky route and there was a lot of that, even though some of them were very nice, they were still somewhat-skanky which was probably why they weren’t taken like, say, Krystal or Wendy or the rest of the cool-as-heck biker babes I’d met at the bar or in town and I knew were taken. And, clearly, neither of those men went for that.

  I moved fully into the seat of the couch and curled up under the blanket, tugging it high over my shoulder and pulling my knees in my chest. Without any toss pillows, I used the armrest for my head. My temple throbbed but I ignored it as searched for it, trying to call it up, to hear the whisper because I needed it.

  “Sweet dreams, baby.”

  The memory of Tate saying that to me came, my eyelids drooped and I fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  I woke up when the blanket disappeared and my body was moved. My eyes opened as my body kept moving.

  The sun was up but it was low, very early dawn, barely enough light to see.

  I was cradled in Tate’s arms.

  “Tate?” I whispered, my hand moving to his chest, my arm that was dangling curling around his shoulders.

  “Quiet,” he growled.

  Uh-oh.

  “Tate,” I whispered again.

  “Shut it, Ace,” he growled again.

  I lifted my head to look at his angry, set profile and decided to stay silent at least until my brain fully came awake.

  He took me to his bed and put me in it, following me in, yanking up the covers in an annoyed way and then pulling me under his body. Or, I should say, he pinned me under his body. I was on my back, he was mostly on me, his heavy thigh thrown over both of mine, his arm holding me tight about the waist, his face against my hair at the side of my head, his weight weighing me into the bed.

  “Um…” I started.

  He cut me off. “You curl into me.”

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  “My back,” he replied.

  “Um…” I paused then repeated, “Sorry?”

  “You curl into my goddamned back, Lauren,” he ground out and his arm around my waist gave me a rough squeeze.

  “I was… uh…”

  “Pissed,” he finished for me. “You can go to bed pissed just as long as you don’t wake up that way,” he informed me like this was a rule written in blood somewhere that all men and women must abide by under threat of certain torture although he seemed to have done just that. “You do not get up in the middle of the fuckin’ night and crawl outta my bed to go be pissed somewhere else.”

  “I… um…” I took in a breath, “didn’t actually do that. I couldn’t sleep and I was restless, so –”

  “You don’t do that either,” he declared.

  “What?”

  “You can’t sleep, you can’t sleep here. You don’t go somewhere else.”

  “But I don’t want to wake you.”

  “You wake me, I fuck you or we talk until you get back to sleep. You don’t sneak outta the goddamned bed –”

  “I didn’t sneak,” I interrupted him quietly.

  He ignored me. “You sleep here or you lie here not sleepin’.”

  “Are you…” I hesitated and started again, “are you angry I didn’t want to disturb you?”

  “You’re quick, babe,” he muttered sarcastically and gave my waist another rough squeeze.

  “Tate –”

  “Three weeks, after fuckin’ you, knowin’ what you taste like, what you feel like, the sounds you make when you come, three weeks I’m on the road and all I got is a couple minutes of your voice on the phone every night. Fuckin’ you, that’s all I can think about, like a teenager, at night in the dark, it’s the only thing in my goddamned head. So I jack off, hopin’ to cut through it, but nothin’ compares to you.” I stopped breathing at this admission and he kept talking, “Then I know you can’t sleep so I can’t fuckin’ sleep
wonderin’ if you’re sleepin’. That shit’s whacked and I come home, fuckin’ beside myself it’s over. First night you’re in my house, you sneak outta my bed and sleep on the couch. What the fuck is that?”

  “I was trying to be nice,” I informed him.

  “You failed, Ace,” he informed me.

  I felt a chill seep into my bloodstream.

  “Which one are you?” I whispered.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Are you the good guy, the sweet guy who takes care of me or are you this guy who’s kind of a jerk?”

  His answer was instantaneous. “I’m both those guys, babe. Your job is to get used to it.”

  There it was, another order. Not even an ultimatum. Just, “get used to it”.

  “Tate –” I started.

  “It’s simple, Lauren. You’re in my bed or any fuckin’ bed with me in it, you don’t leave it.”

  “But –”

  “That can’t be hard to sink in.”

  “Tate –”

  “Now can I get some goddamned sleep?” he asked on another squeeze and I could tell he was done with this conversation.

  Therefore the conversation was done.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  And he could because he did. It was just me who couldn’t.

  Or, at least it would take awhile.

  * * * * *

  I woke up to an empty bed.

  I turned to my back, lifted up to sitting and pulled my hair out of my face. I saw movement at the window and sleepily watched Tate walk along the deck toward the balcony area.

  Once he disappeared from sight, I stared out at the bright sunshine. Then I threw the covers back, got out of bed and wandered to the window. I looked out and to the right to see Tate dressed in jeans and a tight, army green t-shirt, no belt, no shoes, sitting in a lawn chair pulled up to the railing. He was slouched in the chair, his feet up high resting on the railing, crossed at the ankles. He was staring out to the woods and drinking coffee.

  His hair was wet but curling and drying fast in Colorado’s arid climate.

  Apparently I couldn’t take a shower without Tate but he could take one without me.

  Figures.

  I walked as quietly as I could to the dining area and retrieved my bag where Tate dropped it, taking it with me back to Tate’s bathroom. Buster came with me and glided around my ankles as I pulled my hair in a ponytail and surveyed my face in the mirror.