Devious Wingman: A Cocky Hero Club Novel

by Hagen, Casey

  A dominating force in the room, its existence alone whispered a dare to come and play.

  “You got the boom-boom room,” I said, my voice nothing more than a surprised whisper. “We’ve been trying to figure out who got it.”

  “Who’s we?” he asked as he gingerly made his way to the bedside.

  “Me, Soraya, and Marcella. I can’t wait to tell them. They’re never going to believe it.”

  “Yeah, well…surprise. Don’t tell Cory and Hawk. If I find them fucking in here, there will be bloodshed.”

  “Hey, at least someone would be enjoying it,” I said with a shrug.

  “Yeah, and I’m about to enjoy a lengthy medical procedure in it with no anesthesia. Sounds about right.”

  I glanced around at every surface. The only indicator someone even stayed in the place was the duffel bag with a pair of jeans tossed over it on the edge of the dresser. “You don’t even look like you moved in.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  He laughed. “I’m not opening a single drawer in this place.”

  “Where’s your gift basket?”

  “It’s not my fucking basket.”

  My hands froze right before reaching the side pocket in my purse where I kept my tweezers. “Oh my God, you’re afraid of a few sexy gag gifts?”

  “Those weren’t gag gifts. I’d bet they dropped upwards of a grand on the basket. That shit is premium,” he said, easing himself down on his right side.

  “Okay, we’re going to talk about this, but first, we’ve got to get these thorns out of your skin.”

  “Super. Hand me the liquor and I’ll get started.”

  Kneeling in front of the mini fridge, I grabbed the closest bottle and passed it back to him. “Here.”

  He scoffed and handed it back. “No tequila.”

  “You’re going to be picky now?”

  “I could be on my deathbed and I’m still not drinking the shit.” A haunted look filled his eyes while he shot daggers at the bottle.

  “Your father,” I said quietly.

  The only response I got was a hard jerk of his chin while he looked anywhere but at my face.

  “Okay, what do you want? There’s Fireball, vodka—”

  He maneuvered himself down to lay on his side. “Whiskey. Plain, classic, trusty fucking whiskey.”

  “Whiskey it is. Here. I’ll be right back.”

  Heading for the bathroom, I grabbed the ice bucket along the way. I turned the water on full force and grabbed two washcloths while I waited for the water to run hot. Snagging my hair elastic, I pulled my hair down, finger-combed it, and twisted it back up in a knot on my head where it couldn’t fall in my eyes while I worked.

  I could do this.

  Steam billowed from the sink, obscuring the mirror and my rosy cheeks. Filling my hands with soap, I scrubbed my skin as clean as I could, washed my tweezers, and filled the bucket with hot soapy water.

  Stepping out of the bathroom, I paused for a second, looking over his body as he lay on his side in the exact same position I’d left him.

  Leaving no doubt how much pain was in.

  More physical pain than I’d ever witnessed in him.

  And for someone who grew up seeing his worst, it spoke volumes.

  My hands shook for the briefest of seconds, but I clenched my fingers on the side of the ice tub, closed my eyes, and drew in a cleansing breath.

  I could do this. I would do this.

  If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t hesitate.

  Maybe I should have relished this opportunity to inflict a little pain on the man after all that had happened between us, but the anger, the resentment, he kissed it away in the cave, leaving me exposed.

  Leaving me feeling every damn thing he felt…all mixing with a truckload of feelings of my own.

  I spotted a throw blanket along the arm of the chair next to the window and snagged it along the way before rounding the bed and gently taking a seat on the mattress next to his hip.

  “Okay, flyboy, let’s get these thorns out,” I said as I laid the fabric over his legs. I snagged a couple pillows and propped them along his back so he didn’t have to hold himself so rigid in order to keep still.

  He shot me a glance. “Have you ever done this before?”

  “Eradicated stubborn pricks?” I laughed. “In my business…all the time.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, twisting the cap off the second bottle of whiskey.

  “You’re interested in weddings now?”

  “I don’t give a shit about weddings, but I’m interested in you. I want to know. I could use the distraction.”

  “Okay.” I grabbed the bottle of vodka I’d kept out for me and took a quick sip, eyeing the nightstand drawer.

  How the hell did he spend so much time in here and not explore?

  “You can go through shit later when I’m passed out,” he said, reading my mind. He reached over and laid his warm palm on my thigh, his fingers tucking under the skirt of my sundress. “I know you will anyway. You can’t help yourself. You never could.”

  Adjusting myself, I slid a bit closer and his hand shifted up higher.

  And yeah, maybe I did it on purpose.

  With the barriers between us gone, I just wanted to see what this was like. To have him reach out and touch me whenever he wanted…and to do the same.

  I winced the minute my fingers hit the hot water, but I quickly grabbed the washcloth and wrung it out over the bucket. “What do you really have against this stuff anyway? It’s just for fun.”

  “If you need all this shit for fun, you aren’t doing it right,” he muttered before sucking down the last of the bottle and closing his eyes.

  I snorted. “Well, don’t go looking in my drawers; you might not like what you find.”

  He cracked one eye open. “Really?”

  “Hey, I’m single,” I said with a shrug.

  “Were single,” he said quietly as his eye drifted shut once again.

  I didn’t dare touch his words. I was afraid if I elaborated on it or acknowledged it in any way, he’d take them back, so I let his comment sit in the stillness of the room while we both retreated into ourselves and maybe tried the new status on for size.

  He would expect me to argue.

  Normally, I would have.

  I’d make some comment about how I’m single until I’m asked because I decide my own fate.

  But something was settling between us. Changing. Turning into something new. Something which might have a chance.

  With the soapy water in arm’s reach and the lid to the ice bucket on the mattress next to my hip, I studied the hundreds of thorns buried in his flesh. Swollen, angry red skin puffed up around the barbs holding them in even tighter.

  “So, how bad is it?” he asked as he watched me.

  “If I get them all pulled out straight and they don’t break off in your skin, we’re probably good. We need to watch for infection. I know you hate this room, but you’re probably going to be spending quite a bit of time resting in it.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, feel free to snoop long enough to find the remote then.”

  I cupped his cheek and feathered my thumb over his cheekbone. “Okay, flyboy, you ready?”

  He gave me a jerky nod and turned his cheek into my palm.

  “Let’s get started,” I said quietly, brushing a soft kiss over his mouth.

  Oh, but he didn’t let it remain a soft kiss.

  Nope. Not Falcon.

  He groaned with pain even as he reached his hand around to cup my neck and pull me in deeper, tilting his head and opening his sexy mouth for more.

  I laughed against his lips and gently pulled away. “Kissing is what got us into this mess.”

  “No, it was the ugly little bastard with the teeth crashing our good time.”

  Using the washcloth, I wiped at the skin around the area and tried to figure out the best place to start.

  Hundreds
of thorns stuck out in all different directions from his hip, waist, rib cage, and over a narrow strip of his back.

  The ones on his hip, though, and the ones at the base of his ribs, that’s where the skin was the angriest, mottled and red, swollen and so damn sore-looking.

  I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and clamped my tweezers on the first barb.

  With a quick tug, his skin pulled for the briefest of moments, before snapping back into place as the thorn broke free completely intact.

  “That was great. Only a thousand more, right?” he growled.

  I tucked the blanket around him a bit tighter. Fussing. I was fussing. I hated causing him pain. I knew I had to, but every single tug had me biting my lip with dread. I plucked another. “Something like that.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  He grabbed my wrist and brought my hand to face and glared at the thorn. “Furry fucking bastard.”

  “God, this is worse than the time when you and Ethan got into poison oak. You remember that?”

  He smiled, his eyes getting a faraway look. “Your mom called my parents. Made up some family trip they said they wanted to take me on with them. She took care of me for two weeks straight. She knew my father would have had my ass and shown no mercy if I went home with poison oak.”

  “My mom loved every minute of taking care of you,” I said softly.

  The thought of my mom at home, hoping, waiting—I never should have told him to stay away.

  The conversation veered to dangerous territory. Or healing. At this point, who knew.

  I caught the grimace twisting his mouth after each and every thorn I tugged free from his skin.

  “She was good at it. Not all moms…” he began, his words falling away.

  I laid my palm over the hand he rested on my thigh. Volatile energy rolled off him, ripple after ripple. Soundless, invisible, but with our connection, each wave hammered against my heart.

  My heart that desperately wished I could heal the ancient ache surfacing with the memories.

  But I had to recognize my limitations—so many things I couldn’t fix.

  The silence swelled and my throat grew thick with angry, frustrated tears.

  As though he sensed the shift in me, the emotions I choked back, he turned his hand over in mine and interlaced our fingers.

  I stared down at the picture we made. Two hands fitting together so naturally. Long and rough fingers—the way they should be—wrapped around my small, softer ones.

  Tough and unyielding meeting merciful and pliant.

  He’d always be unpredictable and turbulent.

  I’d always be the soft place for him to land.

  “I’ve never said a bad word about your mother,” I murmured. “I never will again after this.”

  He watched me—and waited.

  “I hate her for neglecting you. She should have protected you the first time. There never should have been a second, let alone a thousandth.”

  I squeezed his hand, then let it go so I could start on the worst of the thorns.

  “I miss them, too,” he said quietly.

  I bobbled the tweezers and they landed in my lap. “What?”

  “Your parents. You said they miss me,” he said, his chest expanding like he was breathing in, ready to take a blow as he stared into the quiet room. “I miss them too. I just—I thought you should know.”

  God help me, the ache in my chest threatened to swallow me whole and leave me rocking in the fetal position, shedding a lifetime of tears. I went back to my task, tiptoeing through the sudden land mines in our conversation, letting the ache run its course, beating in time with my heart.

  “They want you to go home,” I admitted. I’d never planned to tell him. I’d vowed to protect my parents from one more hurt, but this pain wasn’t going away. It shifted between all of us, near or apart, and fed off our energy, our guilt, our memories—a never-ending cycle trapping us all.

  “I never really thought I had a home to go back to,” he admitted, his voice jagged with pain.

  “As long as my parents are alive, there’s always a home for you to return to, Falcon. Always.”

  A scant few words, but so full of power. I made room for reconnection, for healing. What he did with the opportunity, well—who could predict what Falcon would do. But for the first time since Ethan died, I recognized the flicker of a man tired of running—a man ready to heal.

  “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

  “What became of your parents?” I wanted to suck the words right back out of the air. The thin line we balanced on left no room for us to wobble.

  At least not yet.

  So much for that wedding talk he was so willing to have just minutes ago.

  “My mother found a guy just like my father. So now she takes her beatings in the Poconos instead of the Catskills.”

  My fingers froze, and when I looked down at him, his hard eyes were looking right at me.

  “And your father?” I asked, pushing past the shock, the anger, doing my damndest to treat this like any other subject. Because if we didn’t figure out how to discuss the past, how the hell did we have a future?

  “He’s dead.”

  “Did you kill him?” I tugged on another thorn and dropped it with the growing pile.

  “No,” he said, his lips twitching. He grabbed the rest of the vodka and sucked it down.

  I didn’t tell him I was sorry. I wasn’t sorry. Every time the boy came to our house with another set of bruises and a new collection of wary shadows in his eyes, I wished his father a slow, painful death. He had absolutely no redeemable qualities, was a waste of perfectly good air, and deserved every last bit of misery he got for torturing Falcon.

  Smoothing the warm washcloth over the area I’d finished, I wiped away the droplets of dried blood and dirt. With every gentle swipe, his body relaxed a fraction more, leaving him sinking into the bed instead of battling to stay rigid.

  “You’re good at that,” he said, his voice slurring.

  “What?” I asked him, moving to the section right above his waist at the bottom of his ribs.

  “Taking care of people.”

  I laughed. “It’s kind of a job requirement.”

  “It’s who you are,” he said, a slight slur to his words. “The anchor in the storm. No matter how bad it got, I knew if I kept my eye on you…I’d find my way.”

  My hands stilled. “Falcon—”

  “Shhhh, I’m showing you my sunset.”

  “What? Okay, you’ve definitely had enough liquor.”

  “You said the sunset looks like your secrets. Years ago…on the deck. Fuzzy socks,” he murmured, his eyes drifting shut. “I have secrets…”

  Between the drinking, the pain, and the exhaustion settling over him, his hand fell from my thigh as he slumped further into the bed.

  I took advantage of his relaxed state and pulled thorns out double time, the job so much easier knowing my every tug didn’t douse him in a wave of pain.

  But his words—I have secrets—they played in a constant loop in my head until I finished with the very last one.

  An hour later, I threw away the last pile of thorns and grabbed fresh warm, soapy water.

  While running a clean washcloth over his skin, he opened his eyes.

  “Done?” he whispered.

  “All done. You should rest. As much as I hate to leave you, I have to go schmooze for a while. You should relax anyway. I can bring you back food later.”

  “Food is good,” he said, his voice groggy. “Stay the night.”

  “Ambitious, but I don’t think you’re going to be up to it.”

  “Not for that. Just—let me fall asleep with my arms wrapped around you,” he said with an exhausted sigh.

  I smoothed my fingertips over his forehead threading them through his thick dark hair, savoring my first real chance to touch him like this.

  With nothing between us.

&n
bsp; “Okay,” I murmured, unable to tell the boy or the man no.

  23

  I shoved the key to Falcon’s room into the lock. He’d been recovering in here for the better part of two days. He’d slept a lot in between numerous showers to keep his puncture wounds clean and cool the swelling.

  Today had been the first day he started looking like himself again. Full of piss and vinegar…well, at least when the chance arose to go see a pilot friend.

  Nothing about his near-death experience with the javelina and cactus did a thing to improve his outlook on the whole wedding scene, or his desire to immerse himself in the fun and games.

  Watching us laugh through trying out the karaoke machine, playing wedding bingo, getting readings from a local tarot card reader, or the hour and a half we spent playing with the giant wedding-themed Price Is Right wheel wasn’t his style.

  He’d popped in a few times a day, grabbed food, chatted with Hawk and Graham, smiled at me when no one was looking, even did some exploring, this time with a walking stick—whether to help him walk or in case he came across the javelina, I couldn’t say—and eventually returned to be sexually harassed by his suite.

  His resistance shouldn’t amuse me, but it totally did.

  Giving me space worked for me anyway because I had a job to do and his proximity put a dent in my focus every single time.

  I mean, why wouldn’t it? Every single part of him from head to toe had been powerfully built and brought a woman to her knees with all the sexual cravings.

  And with each moment passed, I became more and more impatient to explore that playground. I didn’t take the time I should have the one night we had, and well, now it looked like we had lots of nights to come, but still...he’d gotten me all preheated in the cave. Hell, even his lying practically naked on the bed while I pulled half a cactus out of his skin had left me…inspired.

  So yeah, my engines had been revving for days while he’d been healing and giving me space, but I hoped tonight he would decide to crowd me a little.

  A lot.

  I wanted him to crowd me a lot.