I dropped my head.
God, God.
I should have walked to Essence’s place and unloaded months ago.
God.
I was such an idiot.
I only lifted my head when I felt Rush’s hand curl around the back of my neck.
He was reaching across to me, his beautiful eyes soft and sweet.
“Okay?” he mouthed.
I wasn’t.
But I had a feeling I was getting there.
Essence was helping.
But it was mostly about those beautiful eyes across the counter, soft and sweet on me.
I nodded.
Rush’s hand gave me a squeeze and he let me go.
“You’re a beautiful soul,” Essence cooed in my ear. “And I sure am glad I know what’s put that gray in your aura that hasn’t gone away. Now I can help you bring back more pink, add some yellow and get you some green. But I want you to promise me you’ll call on me no matter what comes for you, you’re in my little cottage, or not. I love you like one of my own, Rebel, and it eats me you didn’t lean on me. I might no longer be young, but my heart’s working just fine, and you’re in it and just like you wanna take care of the ones in yours, others feel the same about you. So let us take care of you. Okay?”
“Okay, Essence.”
“Now go get your brains banged out by that beautiful biker,” Essence bid. “You come home, I want details. All that’s him, I’m sure the Goddess gave him a beautiful member. Be good to it, it’ll be good to you.”
I started giggling.
“Right. This little mama’s gonna light up a doobie,” she told me. “If any day deserves some good reefer, today is that day.”
“Don’t let Boz get too stoned,” I warned.
“We’ll be just fine. You hear that, Rebel girl? We’ll be just fine.”
“Love you, Essence,” I whispered.
“Love you back, child. Don’t be good,” she replied, then rang off.
I put my phone down and picked my beer up.
“My take from your end of that, which wasn’t much, she read you and good,” Rush remarked.
“Hmm,” I hummed, swallowing beer, wishing it was more tequila.
He grinned at me and slugged back more of his own beer.
Then he leaned into his forearms on the counter across from me.
Okay.
Straight up.
I could simply look at this man for eternity.
He was that amazing.
“You wanna take our beers in and watch TV?” he asked.
Okay.
Straight up.
I could kiss this man for eternity, not only because he was a fantastic kisser, but because he was just that sweet.
Things had been extreme, but he had not once made a mention, or even assumed a look like he was ticked about what was interrupted on his couch.
And I felt him hard against me, we were going fast and it was getting intense and all that had been outstanding, and then he was racing us across town to look at a dead body.
Not a word.
Not a look.
And now he was offering me beer and TV.
No pressure.
Just unwinding.
In his house, where he’d moved me in to look after me.
On our first date.
“You know, I can probably call Diesel. Head down to Phoenix. Put up with their sex noises, and D and Mad will look after me, and Molly will feed me, and I’ll be safe. You don’t have to move me into your awesome bachelor pad to look out for me.”
“You stay, am I eventually gonna get laid?” he asked.
But it was a tease.
Still.
I gave it to him straight.
“Yes.”
His gaze grew gentle on me, not heated.
He wanted that, but he wasn’t going to push it and he liked my honesty and showed it.
I mean, seriously?
This guy really could not be real.
“I like my space, Rebel,” he said quietly. “But I also like you. Lived twenty-nine years waking up mostly alone. Spent the last ten coming home to an empty house. I figure I’ll get off on the change.”
That was nice, him continuing to be so sweet.
But I was staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re twenty-nine?”
“Yeah.”
How could he only be twenty-nine?
He didn’t look twenty-nine.
All right. Riding his bike, sun and wind explained those little lines by his eyes.
But he did not act twenty-nine.
He acted far older (read, far wiser) than that.
“What?” he asked again.
“I’m thirty.”
“Yeah?”
That yeah was more so?
I was staring at him again.
I was one year older than him.
Maybe not even a year.
Why did I instantly jump to the thought he might not be all right with that?
The way he was looking at me, he was all right with that.
Something else struck me as I kept staring at him.
Which made me continue to stare at him.
Essence had told him her Woodstock orgy story on first meeting, and he’d grabbed my hand and dragged me out the door to get to her not even knowing there was a dead body that involved me on the street outside her house.
He just thought something was wrong with Essence, he grabbed me, and he booked.
“Rebel?” he called.
I said nothing.
Just kept staring at him.
Because it wasn’t even just that.
When he and his brothers took me to that cabin, he’d told me he knew Diesel was bi.
He’d talked of Diesel and Maddox and Molly since. So had I.
He agreed hate was a burden.
He was a biker dating a woman whose brother loved and intended to commit to a man.
And Rush hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t even given me a facial expression to share he was not down in some way with that.
It was what it was. It was how Diesel was. Essence was how Essence was.
And for Rush, that was it.
I grew up in Indiana, and one could not say every citizen in that state had some prejudice, great or small. A lot of folks were awesome.
One could say it was far from the most tolerant state in the union.
And my house was one of the least tolerant ones I knew.
I grew up listening to vile, venomous shit about blacks, gays, Mexicans, Muslims, hippies, and it went on. Hell, my father and Gunner had written off the entire state of California as liberal losers and wouldn’t have a problem if they seceded from the union.
Rush didn’t just buy his date potato chips and fry fantastic hamburgers for her. (And not once had I seen my father cook a meal for my mother, even though he refused to allow her to grill steak because she “ruined meat,” even though she never ruined his chops, burgers, cutlets or meatloaf, just that grilling was “man’s work”—the asshole.)
Rush was more.
So much more.
He was the real deal.
I came out of my thoughts when Rush’s hand wrapped warm around mine and gave it a squeeze.
When I focused on those eyes—those insanely beautiful eyes—he asked, “Where are you now?”
“I don’t wanna watch TV,” I whispered.
His hand tightened further on mine.
I twisted my fingers so I could tighten them on his too.
Then I slid off my stool, holding on to him, but now tugging him.
He came around the counter.
It was me who led us to his stairs.
Up them.
To his bedroom.
He’d admitted during the tour that not only were the framed photographs of his family and his brothers that were dotted around the house the product of his little sister and stepmother interfering with his décor, but together t
hey’d picked his bedclothes.
When I met them, I’d congratulate them on a job well done.
The sheets were a slate gray, they had a sheen, so they not only were masculine and attractive but looked expensive.
His comforter was swirls of dark blues and grays with some chocolate brown thrown in, and it was manly but smart and crazy appealing.
They’d given him euros with shams that were on the floor. And the comforter was askew because he clearly didn’t make his bed, just threw the covers back.
But on that low, contemporary, mattress-only king-size bed with its short headboard that looked covered in black python, those sheets were the shit.
I thought this during the tour.
After I walked him into his own room, I just turned to him, ready to get busy in that bed.
He put his hands to my hips and kept me walking, just backwards.
Toward the bed.
And all of a sudden, I felt weird.
I didn’t have hang-ups about sex.
I did, back in the beginning. A woman didn’t grow up in the house I grew up in and not have hang-ups about sex.
I left two days after my nineteenth birthday, and although I’d gone back, I never looked back, and after I found a few good lovers who guided my way, I found my way past that.
But there were women (and men) who would say I could stand to take off a few pounds.
And it had been a while, what with Diane being killed and me going undercover in the porn industry.
Then there was me going undercover in the porn industry.
But most of all . . .
This was different.
I knew it.
This wasn’t just sex.
This wasn’t taking on a new lover.
This was Rush.
And I knew from what I’d already had of him this meant something.
And if this didn’t go well, if I did something to make it not go well, that would be very, very bad.
He was still walking me backwards to the bed, his hands smoothing over my dress at my hips, his eyes aimed there.
Okay, that was hot.
“Rush,” I whispered.
It was hotter that, at my call, his head snapped right up and his eyes, already starting to haze over with the promise of sex, snapped to attention.
On me.
“Okay?” he asked.
I could stop what we were doing, what I’d promised when I led him there, and tell him I changed my mind. I wanted to watch TV.
I could have another meltdown.
Another dead body could turn up.
Whatever.
He’d be with me, however it went down.
I hesitated a step, he didn’t, and I did this so our bodies could collide.
When they did, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
“Okay,” I answered.
Those gemstone eyes flared right before he bent his head and kissed me.
This was right before my calves hit the bed and we went down.
I rolled him, still kissing him, and straddled him.
The pads of his fingers dug into my waist.
I dove my fingers into his thick hair.
I’d been right that first night when he’d hijacked me.
That hair begged for my fingers to be buried in it.
I broke our kiss and went after his throat.
He had a beautiful throat and I’d wanted my mouth on it since I’d first noticed it.
So I took that, gliding my lips down, and up, then my tongue along it, to the dent in his collarbone.
I did this unbuttoning his shirt.
He’d worn a nice, dark-blue button-down that highlighted his eyes.
Biker date gear.
I liked it. I liked the effort he took to look nice for our date in a way he was still Rush.
But that shirt had to go.
Two buttons in, I let my mouth trail down.
Another button, and down.
His skin was warm and sleek and firm.
Another button, I spread him open and took him in with my eyes.
Swelling pecs. Fabulous quarter-size brown nipples adorning the bottoms.
I wanted my mouth on those nipples.
But I had more to uncover first.
I yanked the tails of the shirt out of his jeans.
More buttons.
Down.
I spread the shirt wide.
He didn’t have an eight-pack.
But he had a four-pack and a flat belly and nice dents at his V.
Delicious.
I kissed his navel and looked up.
Okay.
Um.
That.
The hungry look on his handsome face that still managed to seem satisfied.
Now that was delicious.
“My biker takes care of himself,” I whispered.
I got that out, the hunger sank deeper in his expression, and then I had his hands under my arms and I was up, rolled, and he was on me. His mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth, his hands pushing up my skirt.
Right, now this was delicious.
I was disappointed when one of his hands went to my back so he could put his weight into his arm in the bed, and not to my nipple, the trajectory he was taking when we were on his couch.
I was not disappointed when the other went down, into my panties, and he cupped my ass, lifted me, and ground his hardness into my hips.
I moaned into his mouth.
Rush kissed me, and he kissed me, and he kept kissing me as he ground into me and I squirmed into him, already wet and getting wetter.
Finally, he broke the kiss.
And he was such an amazing kisser, I chased it.
He slid his hand out of my panties to tug the hem of my dress.
“I want this gone,” he growled.
Okay, we could stop kissing to do that.
“Get rid of it,” I breathed, lifting my arms to help with that effort.
Using both hands, he pulled up, then tossed it aside.
He planted a hand in the bed, arm straight, and dropped his head to look down at me.
I was wearing a bandeau-style, black, strapless lace bralette that didn’t do much but give a little lift and support, but it was better than nothing.
Rush stared at it like he wanted to rip it off with his teeth.
And that made me even wetter.
I lifted a hand high and slid it over his hair, tucking a thick shank of it that had fallen into his eye behind his ear, murmuring, “Baby.”
He dipped down in a one-armed push up that didn’t go back up and sucked my nipple in over the lace.
I arched up and whimpered, “Baby.”
I should have known with the way he kissed, his mouth would be magic.
It was.
I held his head to me until I was done with that and put the fingers of both hands to the bralette, tearing it up.
He lifted his head just long enough to let me do that and catch my eyes. The blue fire raging in his had me catching my breath before he bent back to my nipple and pulled it deep.
I squirmed.
His hand came up to palm my other breast then roll and squeeze that nipple.
I writhed.
Then I caught his shirt at the shoulders and he kept at me with his mouth even as I shoved it down his arms and he tore it off.
He switched nipples with his mouth but not his hands because his other hand trailed over my belly, in, down, and . . . oh yeah . . .
In.
He hit my clit with a finger and rolled.
Oh man.
My back arced off the bed.
His head came up and he took at my face.
“Rush,” I panted, my hips undulating with his finger.
He took one look at me, slithered low, spread my legs, then his mouth closed over me through my black lace panties.
I cried out, my nails scraping his scalp as I reached down to cup his head with one hand and that was as much as I
got before he rolled to the side flipping my leg over his head.
I did not protest like I intended to protest when I lost the magic of his mouth between my legs when he dragged my panties down those limbs. He tugged off my boots, yanked off my little socks, flipped my leg back over his head as he rolled back in and then he lowered his mouth to me and went at me.
Oh God, did he go after me.
I held his head with both hands as he sucked and nibbled and tongue-fucked me.
“Rush,” his name rushed out on a breath as I pushed his face hard into my pussy, my head digging back, everything arching so the crown of it was in his comforter, my heels finding his shoulder blades and plowing in . . .
I cried out sharply before my orgasm became just a very long, very lush, very amazing, open-mouthed, silent moan.
I was floating down very slowly, my fingers no longer curled into his hair but into his back and his mouth was at my ear.
“I want inside,” he growled.
“Then come inside,” I panted.
He kissed the skin beneath my ear.
My collarbone.
The space between my breasts.
Then he was gone.
I was still catching my breath when he came back, positioning between my legs. I barely focused on the burning, determined look in his eyes before he took my mouth again, kissing me deep, wet . . . hot.
I felt him glide the tip of his cock over my clit. My hips jerked and I gasped against his tongue, rounding his hips with my calves.
Rush kept kissing me.
Somewhere in the depths of my brain that wasn’t about my body, his cock, the staggering orgasm he just gave me, or the fact we were about to connect, I realized I liked that.
Loved it.
I loved that Rush kissed, so intimate, so generous, so beautiful, while he fucked.
To me, it said everything.
To me, that just was Rush.
As deep as these thoughts were, they flew away when the tip of his cock caught at me and he slid in an inch.
I clutched at the back of his neck with one hand and dragged my nails down his spine with the other.
He slid in another inch.
I was being stretched, widened.
His kiss deepened, and he went in another inch.
I whimpered.
He broke the kiss and lifted his head.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“You’re—”
“I got some heft.”
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