by Sybil Bartel
No argument, he straddled his Harley and fired it up. Before I’d gotten on.
Fighting tears like my life depended on it, I got on behind him, but I didn’t put my arms around him. I couldn’t. Pulling the night sunglasses out of my jacket that would do nothing once the sun crested the horizon and blazed in the sky, I shoved them on my face and grabbed my thighs like holding on to myself would keep me on this bike. “I’m ready.”
Nodding but doing nothing to reposition my hands, he gave the beast gas, and we were off.
I didn’t know how everything between us could so easily flip like a dime, but it seemed to be what we were now. This was us post Stone Hawkins, and I hated it. I hated it so much, I let the tears fall as the man who used to be mine pulled on to the highway heading north.
I cried, and he drove. He didn’t touch me, and I didn’t touch him.
Somewhere around Palm Beach, he pulled off the highway and drove to a gas station, but instead of pulling up to the pumps, he angled around the side of the building. Cutting the engine, throwing the kickstand, he pulled me off the bike and into his arms, both arms.
I burst into tears.
“I do not want you to ever take another man’s name. I am bonded to you. I made you that promise. You are my woman. I know what marriage means to you, but we are not ready for that. I cannot even take you without fucking you in anger.” His arms tightened around me. “Do not cry, woman.”
I cried harder. “You could’ve said all that back in the Glades.”
“I did not know I needed to say any of it. My actions speak for themselves.”
He was so damn alpha, I didn’t know where to put it all, but for some reason, it only made me love him more. Reining in my tears, I knew I couldn’t be angry at what he’d said. He was speaking the truth. “I’m sorry.”
“Do not apologize to me.”
“I don’t want this last name either,” I admitted. It was hanging over me like a noose, and I hated it.
“Then we will change it.”
I couldn’t believe I was about to say what I needed to say next, but I put the words out there anyway. “I don’t want to change my last name just to change it.”
“Why not?”
“Because then Daddy wins. He will have robbed me of all my dreams. Since I was a little girl, I dreamed of gettin’ married. Sparkly diamonds, a pretty white dress, a cake with tiers, the whole nine yards. If I change my name just to change it instead of savin’ that for marriage and takin’ my husband’s name, then he robs me of that too.”
“Change it to Scott.”
My heart fluttered, but it wasn’t the solution I wanted. “It’s not the same.”
His chest rose with an inhale. “Then we will wait.”
I pressed my cheek against his warm chest and held him tighter. “Thank you.”
“Do we need to discuss anything else right now?” he asked stiffly.
“I’m kinda hungry,” I admitted.
He nodded.
“For a sit-down meal,” I amended. “In a restaurant.”
The man who’d crawled out of the swamp and survived River Ranch looked down at me, and if I didn’t know for a fact that he never wasted movement on something so pedestrian as rolling his eyes, I would’ve sworn his eyes were rolling.
But he didn’t, and they weren’t.
His almost colorless blue eyes were staring down at me with concealed irritation, and mercy me, he tipped his chin in assent.
I smiled.
I despised restaurants.
People eating together en masse and being served by females reminded me of compound life, and I wanted no part of it. But my woman had shed tears, so here I sat.
The waitress set waters down in front of us and smiled at me. “Did y’all decide on what you want?” Her gaze lingered on my arms.
“I did,” my woman replied cheerfully. “How about…” She trailed off when she saw my expression, and her smile dropped. “You ready?”
The waitress nervously dropped her eyes from my ink.
I tipped my chin at my woman. “Order.”
Biting her lip, she went back to studying the menu like this was a test.
“Now,” I commanded.
“Um…” She looked up and down the menu again like she didn’t know what the hell she wanted.
I took the menu from her and handed it to the waitress. I knew what she wanted. “Two cheeseburgers with fries, a strawberry shake and a coffee, black.”
“You got it.” The waitress took off.
My woman frowned. “How’d you know what I wanted? I could’ve wanted somethin’ else.”
“You spoke about cheeseburgers, french fries and strawberry milkshakes in the cabin.”
“You remember that?”
I remembered everything. “Yes.”
“Why did you look mad when the waitress appeared?”
I changed the subject. “I do not want you working at Talerco’s.”
“Huh.” She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms, looking everywhere but at me.
“That is not an answer.”
She shrugged. “You didn’t ask a question.”
“You do not need to work,” I clarified.
She finally looked at me, but it was in challenge. “Yeah, why’s that?”
Looking more nervous than before, the waitress came back with the coffee and milkshake. “Food will be up shortly.”
“Thank you.” My woman smiled sweetly, then dropped her smile the second the waitress left. “Wouldn’t kill you to not look so mean.”
Fuck the waitress. “I have money.”
“Good for you.” She put the straw in her milkshake. “I don’t.” Her lips wrapped around the plastic.
I wanted her lips on my cock. “What’s mine is yours.”
“You’re bein’ bossy. You should have some milkshake, sweeten yourself up.” She shoved the ice cream toward me, ignoring what I’d said.
I picked up my coffee. “I don’t eat sugar.” I hated sweet shit. There was never any dessert on the compound growing up.
My woman frowned. “Since when?”
“Since always.” The coffee was watered down shit, and it was lukewarm.
“Why are you angry right now?” she demanded.
“Why do you want to work?” I countered.
“You first.”
I studied her. Delicate, ethereal, she had the face of an angel but a sharp wit and even shaper tongue. She could enrage me or bring me to my knees in the blink of an eye. Everything about her made me want her, but I had forgotten how challenging she could be. I was glad she had not lost that part of herself, but right now I was pissed she wanted to work with that surfer prick at Talerco’s.
“Still waitin’,” she pushed.
I lost my patience. “Eating in a restaurant reminds me of compound life where all the females served the brothers. I hate eating in public, I hate restaurants, and I fucking hate food being brought to me where I don’t see it cooked.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh.”
“Your turn,” I ordered.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice went submissive quiet. “We can get the burgers to go.”
“Answer my question, Shaila.”
She blinked. Then her throat moved with a swallow. “You called me Shaila.”
“That’s your name.”
“Yeah, but you don’t call me that usually.” She dropped her gaze. “Unless you’re mad at me.” She cleared her throat. “And you’ve been switching between compound speak and Candle speak, and that’s also not a good sign. You’re mad.”
“I’m not mad.” I was furious she wanted to work at Talerco’s.
“Angry then,” she corrected.
“Drop it,” I warned.
Inhaling, she leaned back in her seat. “I’m sor—” She caught herself and stopped. “I didn’t realize you felt that way about restaurants. I’ll remember that. My intent wasn’t to make you uncomfortable. I just… wanted a hot me
al that didn’t come with strings attached.”
There it was—enraged to on my knees with one sentence.
“The meals I made you did not come with strings.” But I hadn’t cooked for her without attitude. I was an asshole.
Her gaze and her voice dropped. “I didn’t mean you.”
The rage came back. Fighting to keep it down, telling myself those asshole Hangmen were dead, I reminded her of the reason we were in south Florida. “The past is buried.”
The waitress showed up with our food. “Here you go.” She set the plates and a bottle of ketchup down. “Can I get y’all anything else?”
“No,” I clipped.
The waitress took off, and my woman looked at her food like she was miserable.
Fuck.
I pulled her plate across the table toward me. “Come here,” I demanded, sliding further into the booth.
“I’m fine sittin’—”
“Get up, woman.”
Petulant, she did as I said and came to my side, sliding in next to me.
I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Eat.”
She didn’t move.
I grabbed up my burger and took a bite, giving her a moment to sulk.
When I was halfway done, she picked up the ketchup. “Want some?”
“No.” I hated the shit.
She squirted it all over her fries. “It’s sacrilegious to not dunk a fry in ketchup.”
I didn’t say shit. I ate my food.
“You really don’t like ketchup?”
“No.”
“Have you ever tried it?” She held a fry up to me.
I refrained from grabbing her wrist. “First of all, do not feed me. Second, I don’t eat condiments.”
“What?” She dropped her hand. “Who doesn’t eat ketchup?”
“Anyone from River Ranch.”
“Oh.”
“Eat your food, woman.”
“Okay,” she quietly answered before taking a bite of her burger.
I finished my meal, she ate half of hers, and I asked for the check.
While we were waiting, she pushed a fry around her plate. “Seems a waste to leave this here.”
I would’ve eaten it if she hadn’t drowned everything in ketchup, but that wasn’t what she was getting at. “We’re not two kids in the Glades rationing food anymore. I can get us more burgers.”
“Is that what we were?” Still tucked under my arm, she looked up at me. “Two kids?”
“Yes.” No. Neither of us had had a childhood.
“I didn’t feel like a kid then,” she admitted.
The waitress came back. “Thanks for coming in. Y’all have a nice day.” Dumping the check, she took off again.
My woman waited until the waitress was out of earshot. “You didn’t have to scare her.”
I pulled my wallet out and threw down some cash. “She shouldn’t have been looking at my ink, especially with my woman sitting across from me.”
My woman smiled, but then she left it alone. “For the record, just so you don’t feel bad, I would’ve ordered the cheeseburger and shake.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “Get your ass out of the booth, woman.”
“Yes, sir.”
I scooched out of the booth. Feeling all the miles on the bike in my legs, I stumbled and Tarquin was right there.
Grabbing my arm, his expression turned lethal, and his compound speech came back. “What is wrong?”
Awareness, much more so and much, much different than my sore legs heated my arm where he held me, and then everything shot south. “Nothin’. Just gettin’ my sea legs is all.” I glanced at his big, rough hand still holding me. “If you don’t mind, I gotta use the little girls’ room.”
He glanced toward the back of the restaurant, but he didn’t let go of me. “This way.”
An uncomfortable laugh bubbled up. “I can manage on my own.” I wasn’t peeing in front of him, no way. I’d lived for months in the woods with him without him ever seeing me do my business, and I wasn’t gonna start now.
His frown deepened.
Even though I never knew what his reaction would be these days if I touched him, I dared to put my hand on his chest. “I’m good, promise.”
His gaze cut to the hallway to the restrooms, then to my hand before he looked at me again. “Three minutes.”
“You puttin’ a time limit on a woman goin’ to the restroom? Are you new?”
His jaw ticked, and he dropped his hand. “Go.”
Before he changed his mind about coming with me, I hightailed it to the bathroom. Doing my business, washing my hands, giving up on my windblown too-long hair that was now tangled in the rubber band, I walked back out of the restroom in under three minutes and almost ran smack into Tarquin.
Catching me before I face planted against his chest, his long fingers curled around my arms.
Our eyes met, and sweet mercy, it was instant.
Heat, need, something stronger I didn’t have words for, it all hit me at once, and I wished like hell we weren’t in public.
“Tarquin,” I whispered, daring to put my hands on his waist.
His eyes darkened with a threatening storm. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Touch him?
His chest rose with an inhale, and his voice deepened. “Do not look at me like that, woman.”
“Like what?” I licked my bottom lip.
Inhaling sharply, his hand went to my throat, and he pushed me against the wall.
But then he did the very last thing I was expecting.
He covered his mouth over mine and he kissed me.
Reverently.
This wasn’t the boy from the Glades thrusting his tongue into my mouth like a starved man. This wasn’t the way he used to use his dominance to take control of my mouth like he took control of my body.
This was a man stroking his tongue across my bottom lip, as if asking permission to gain entrance, then devastating me with his skillful caress as he swept through my heat and incited a new kind of need I didn’t know I had.
The boy from the Glades knew how to kiss.
But this man knew how to make love with his tongue.
I kissed her.
Dominant, barely on the edge of control, I swept my tongue through her mouth in apology.
I’d never kissed her before. Not with skill.
But I was kissing her now, giving her what she deserved.
Except every stroke of my tongue through her heat was making my cock harder, and I needed more than my tongue inside her.
My hand still on her throat, I took her submission with one more kiss as she groaned into my mouth, then I grabbed the back of her thighs. “Legs around me,” I ordered.
“Tarquin,” she panted, as she did what I said. “We’re in public.”
I didn’t give a fuck. She was coming before we got back on the bike.
Covering her mouth with mine again, I walked us into the bathroom and spun. Shoving her against the door, bracing one boot against the bottom so no one walked in, I drove my tongue into her mouth.
Her hands fisted in my hair, and she kissed me back.
Hard as fuck, I ground my hips and wished like hell we weren’t in a goddamn diner bathroom, hours from Ormond. “When I get you home, I’m taking you all goddamn night,” I warned. “But right now, you’re going to come for me.”
I didn’t wait for consent.
Smelling her desire, I slammed my mouth over hers and shoved my hand down her pants. Thankful I didn’t get her the fucking jeans, my fingers stroked through her already wet cunt.
Crying into my mouth, she thrust her hips against my hand.
Wanting more than my goddamn fingers inside her, I shoved two in anyway. Then I stroked her clit.
Her entire body jerked, and her cunt constricted around my fingers. Digging her nails into my scalp, she broke the kiss. “Oh my God, oh my God.” Her legs started to shake. “Stop, please.”
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“No.” I pressed my thumb in a tight circle over her hard clit and brought my mouth back to hers as I drove in and out. “Fucking come.”
“Tarq—”
I covered her mouth and curled my fingers.
Her back arched, and she went off.
Her cunt constricting, her legs shaking, she cried her release into my mouth, and I swallowed every fucking second of it.
Soaking my hand, riding out her orgasm, she turned boneless in my grasp. “Sweet mercy,” she whispered.
My fingers still in her cunt, I dropped her leg and let her feet hit the floor before I eased out of her. Bringing my hand to her mouth, I dragged a finger over her lips and gave her the truth. “There was nothing merciful about that.” It was me being selfish, taking what I wanted. “Suck,” I ordered.
Submissive as hell, she opened her mouth.
I shoved my fingers in.
Her gaze lazy and hooded, she swirled her tongue, and I thought of every goddamn way I was going to drive my cock in her mouth.
Giving me one more hard suck, she withdrew. “You’ve never kissed me like that before.”
I’d never fingered her like that before either. “Time to go.” I kissed her once and reached for the door.
She caught my hand. “Is it always going to be this way?”
I frowned.
Her throat moved with a swallow. “A little… rough?”
I opened the door. “Let’s go.”
She stared at me a beat, but then she walked out.
A better man would’ve told her no.
My legs aching, my pussy sore from his thick fingers and the bike, my bottom lip still swollen, I held on to him as he pulled into his driveway. Not bothering to wait for him to cut the engine, I swung my leg over, but then I froze on the spot.
A For Sale sign.
In his yard.
The anger was instant. “What the hell?” I yelled over his stupid custom pipes. “You’re sellin’ the beach house?” Now? When we were finally starting to work shit out? When I was finally gonna have a chance to have my dream of living in a house on the beach?