by Naomi West
Katrin gave a slight inhale.
“Bummed around there for a little while. Almost started to imagine I could start a new life there. Away from my mom, away from the club, away from anyone who was gonna tell me how to live my life.”
“I’ve thought about doing that too,” Katrin said softly. There was a quiet intensity in her expression. “After my mom died. Get away from my dad. Start somewhere fresh — somewhereI chose, not him.”
Instead you’re stuck here with me, Pistol thought ruefully. Listening to the tale of my emo years. Wanting me without really trusting me. Needing me without actually wanting me. Because the alternative is to strike out on your own. And that can be a cold and lonely path.
“I thought it would change everything,” he said quietly. “But I was still the same old me. One night I picked a fight in the alley behind a local bar. The other guy pulled a knife. Fucked me up pretty bad. But I eventually pulled my stolen gun. Shot him in the shoulder. Self-defense, but still, I was scared out of my fuckin’ mind. I left him there bleeding. Found a payphone — I’d lost my cell somewhere in the fight — and called Kong.”
Katrin exhaled.
“I said ‘I’m in San Antonio. I’m hurt pretty bad. I can’t go to a hospital.’ He didn’t ask questions. Drove up there, drove all through the damn night. Brought me home.”
Gripping the payphone. Shaking, trying not to vomit. Covered in blood — he wasn’t sure whose. Wasn’t sure if the other guy was gonna live or die. Kong’s low growl telling him to stay put had been a lifeline.
“I’m glad he was there for you,” Katrin whispered, stroking his shoulder.
Pistol tried to grin. “He ripped me about four new assholes once I was patched up. But he took me back.”You’ve got potential, but you’re too brash. Learn some patience, some humility. It’ll serve you well. “I stopped fighting after that. Well, until I was made an official member of the Blackened Souls. Then—sanctioned fights.”
Katrin was quiet for a moment. “When did Deion join?”
“He joined about three years later. He was a couple of years older than me, but we hit it off. Been inseparable ever since.”
Katrin’s expression grew sad. “Until now.”
He captured her hand in his. Kissed it, and met her gaze. “I still see him. We’re still brothers.”
“But it’s not the same, is it? With my father in control?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t the same. Leonard had cast a shadow over everything.
She sighed.
“Let’s make a deal,” he said, voice low.
Hazel eyes regarded him intently. “What?”
“Let’s not talk about him anymore tonight.” He kissed her hand again. “Let’s not bum ourselves out. I just told you my sob story. Now let’s focus on something better.”
She half smiled. “Like what?”
“Liiiike… I don’t know. What do you want to tell me?”
She pursed her lips. “Mmm. I don’t know. I feel like I still have a million questions about … you.”
“I doubt I have any good answers.”
She smiled. “It’s just … strange that I never really got a chance to know you.” She touched his buzzed hair. Brushed her fingertips softly over his temple. “Normal couples, they get to date. They get to learn each other.” She blushed. “Not that we … I mean, we were forced into this…”
“Still. I’d have liked to take you on a romantic first date.” Well, not bullshit. Just something he hadn’t really thought about.
Her smiled returned. That sexy, warm smile that drove him wild. “Yeah? Where would you have taken me?”
Crap.
He thought for a moment. “If we’d had a chance to date, I’d have taken you…” He swallowed. He really didn’t have any practice with this. He’d wined and dined a few girls, sure. But just to get them into bed, not because he actually cared where they ate or wanted to go to a museum or a play or whatever. He was a McDonald’s and Netflix guy. Had no idea where he’d take a girl for a romantic evening. There was the amusement part out by the Harris County border. Chicks liked shit like that, right? Holding hands on the Ferris wheel? Guys winning them stuffed animals?
“Well, I’d have started by takin’ you out to dinner. That Italian place downtown. Split a bottle of wine. Eat our weight in pasta. And we’d have to get dessert too — no skipping dessert.”
He’d taken a couple of girls there when he’d had a little extra cash. Some girls didn’t hop into bed on the first date, and he’d liked a challenge. So he’d taken them out a couple of times first, always to the Italian place where the snooty manager eyed his tattoos with disdain.
Yeah, a real romantic hero — taking girls out to dinner whenever I scored some cash in a drug deal.
Katrin laughed softly and nestled closer to him. Damn, she smelled so good. How did girls smell like this? He was pretty sure even if he used her shampoo and body wash and perfume, he wouldn’t smell this good. “What would we have for dessert?”
“Uh, chocolate, obviously. Chocolate cake, maybe? Girls love chocolate, right?”
“Some do, some don’t. We’re not actually all the same model, you know.”
No kidding. She was — God, so fucking different from anything he’d expected. He stroked her hair, almost tentatively, half afraid she’d pull away. But she closed her eyes. Let him touch her.
“Do you?”
She smiled, keeping her eyes closed. “Yes.”
“Okay, so chocolate cake. They have a really good one there. You ever been?”
A furrow appeared in her forehead. “No.”
Right. Because she’d gotten to town and then literally been taken hostage the next day. Probably not a lot of time for fine dining. “Well,” he went on, “It’s got that chocolate sauce — chocolate gaucho or whatever.”
“Gaucho?”
“Gancho? Garnish? I forget what it’s called.”
“Ganache?”
“That’s it.”
She laughed incredulously. “Gaucho?”
“I knew that wasn’t really it.” But he did feel a stab of genuine embarrassment. No, he didn’t know what fancy shit was called. His mom hadn’t exactly had a lot to teach him on the subject of ganache.
“All right, so we have the chocolate cake with ganache. Then what?”
Then … we head back here and fuck like animals? Okay, a first date had to be more romantic than that, right? He remembered something Deion had told him once, and grinned suddenly. “Then we go to the planetarium.”
Deion swore up and down that chicks loved the planetarium. Rialto had a nice one, with an observatory and a movie theater that showed science documentaries. Deion said you could take a girl to one of the nighttime constellation sessions, feed her some shit about your sign and how it suggested you were compatible with her, buy her a Saturn keychain from the gift shop… “Girls are all about Saturn. Prob’ly because there’s a ring on it.”
Katrin tilted her head back to look at him. “The planetarium?”
“Yeah. Don’t you like … planets?”
“Sure. They’re fine.”
She placed her head back on his chest. He stroked between her shoulders. “All right,” he teased. “You seem less than thrilled with my first date plan.”
She lifted her head again, giving him that inscrutable half smile. “It’s fine.”
“Fine, huh?” He shifted. “All right. What would you want to do instead?”
She propped herself on one elbow. Pursed her lips and pretended to think. “Hmm. How about a motorcycle ride?”
He jolted. Then slowly grinned. “A motorcycle ride?”
Her smile became shy, and she nodded slightly, her cheeks pink. “Yeah. A motorcycle ride. Way out into the desert, where there’s no one else around. We could take a blanket. Maybe some chocolate.” She grinned at him. “Chicks love chocolate.”
He grinned too. “That’s what I’ve heard.”
“We could lie o
ut there and watch the real stars together.”
“Damn. Why didn’t I think of that?”
She placed a hand on his chest. Let her fingers drift back and forth. “Then we could fuck until we’ve got sand in all the wrong places.”
He whistled. “Damn, girl. You’ve got a dirty mind. On a first date?”
Her cheeks colored further, but she laughed. “Oh, like you’ve never had sex on the first date?”
“Touché.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“To be fair, though, I haven’t had many dates, period.”
“You just love ’em and leave ’em?”
“I just—”
“See women as objects rather than human beings.”
He felt genuinely stung by that. “For your information, the girls I sleep with want to have sex with me. I’m not tricking anyone, or — or taking advantage…”
“You make it clear it’s no strings attached?”
He couldn’t tell whether she was teasing or judging him. He breathed deep, making his chest rise under her hand. “Most of the time.”
She twisted her mouth to the side and raised her brows, clearly unimpressed. “Uh-huh.”
“Look, nothing I can do about it now except change my ways, right?”
She was quiet for a moment. He wished he could tell what she was thinking. “Look, if you want to sleep with other girls, I won’t stop you.” All the playfulness was gone from her tone. She didn’t sound angry — just serious. “It’s just, we have to always use condoms, and you need to get tested regularly.”
He practically had to pick his jaw up off his chest. “What are you talking about?”
She shrugged. “I know you were forced into this. I know you don’t actually want to be my husband. And since we don’t know how long this is for, I just want you to know I’m okay with you seeing other people. I kind of assumed that’s what you were doing already.”
He sat up too, so their faces were level. He caught her hand as it fell from his chest. Held it in his own. Looked directly into her eyes. “I’m not sleeping with anyone else. Aside from the fact that your dad’s most likely spying on me everywhere I go, I don’t … I don’t want to be with anyone else right now.”
She eyed him a little suspiciously. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” he said firmly. “I know these are strange circumstances, but I…” He couldn’t make himself say it. I really like you. “I’m your husband,” he finished gruffly. “I plan to honor that.”
She continued to gaze at him firmly. “I don’t want a marriage that’s a sham. I want us to be honest about what this is. Loyalty isn’t really loyalty if you think you don’t have another choice. Then it’s just obligation.”
He swallowed. Where did he stand on this? The marriage was a sham. He had some feelings for her, sure, but they were … mostly sexual, weren’t they? If it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have chosen to marry her; wouldn’t have married anyone. Wasn’t loyalty out of a sense of obligation better than no loyalty at all? And it wasn’t obligation, exactly — he wanted to protect her, wanted to care for her. Maybe not ‘til death do them goddamn part, but…
Shit. He was losing it. “I’ll do what I can,” he said finally. “I can’t promise I’ll be the perfect husband. But the part of this where I want to protect you? That’s not a sham.”
She closed her eyes briefly. Gazed at him and offered a fraction of a smile. “I trust you. I don’t always know why, but I do.”
That made Pistol’s chest uncomfortably tight.
“I like your vision of a first date,” he said after a moment. He trained his fingers up her naked belly to the underside of her breast. Watched her nipple stiffen, little goose bumps rise on her skin.
She sighed, arching her back slightly. “That’s what I’d most like to do. I mean, I’ve never … maybe it wouldn’t be as romantic as I’m hoping. But I think I’d love it.”
“We could go on that date,” he suggested.
She perked up, studying him with her head cocked like a dog. “What?”
“Well, yeah. What’s stopping us from going for a ride? Stopping somewhere in the desert to check out the stars. Then coming back here to…”
He saw her blush deepen and grinned to himself. “Fuck like bunnies?” she asked.
“That sounds about right.”
“What if I…?” She bit her lip. “What if I suck at riding a motorcycle?”
“There’s not much to it,” he replied. “You just hold on tight.” He shifted a little at the thought of Katrin’s arms wrapped around him as he roared down the highway. His dick started to harden.
“And when do I get to try driving it?”
He raised his brows. “You wanna ride?”
She grinned, eyes lighting up with mischief and excitement. “Someday.”
“You need a motorcycle license, first of all.”
“What if we’re out in the desert, and there’s no one to check whether I’m properly … licensed?”
“Well, in that case, I guess I could put you behind the handlebars.”
Her grin grew more teasing. “You’re gonna teach me how to drive?”
“We call it riding, not driving.”
“Then what’s it called when I’m sitting on the back instead of steering?”
Pistol thought for a moment. “I’d call that ‘ridingon a motorcycle.’”
“Fine. Are you gonna teach me to ride? Really?”
He gazed at her for a moment. “I’d like to.”
Her smile slipped and she gave him that soul-searching, slightly quizzical stare. “But…”
“But nothing. Let’s go.” He climbed out of bed.
“Now?”
“Yeah.” He turned to her. “I’m asking you out on a date. Our first date.”
Shit, if anyone had told him he was one day go in for corny romantic shit like this, he’d have laughed in their face. But something about this woman made it feel not corny at all. He wanted to give her the romance she’d never experienced before. Wanted the two of them to discover together how to navigate this marriage business.
She hesitated, then her face lit up with another smile. She climbed out of bed after him, her long dark hair falling to almost cover her breasts. She didn’t look shy, embarrassed. She looked happy, fearless. “All right. Let’s go.” She began pulling on clothes — tight jeans, a tank top, a hoodie. He watched her dress. She glanced up and caught him watching. She smirked and made a little shooing motion with her hand. “Go on. Get dressed.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Pistol led the way down to the garage. Katrin followed, heart racing.It’s happening. It’s really happening. She watched as Pistol found one of his old jackets in the box Deion had given him. “Here, uh—” he handed it to her. “It’ll be too big for you, but it’s better than nothing. Gonna be cold out in the desert.”
She took the leather jacket.
He didn’t have any gloves small enough for her, but he did have an extra helmet. It felt comically big on her.
“I can’t get the strap—” she fiddled with it.
“Here.” He tilted her chin up with one of his broad hands. She froze. Let her own hands fall to her sides. God, even a touch like this made her wild with desire for him.
He tightened the strap, the gesture surprisingly intimate and gentle. That familiar heat coiled between her legs, making her thighs tense. Her panties dampened as she stared at him, as she imagined his cock inside her. The way his neck corded and his arms bulged as he fucked her.
Don’t lose your head, Katrin. He might be hot, but this is still hardly an ideal situation.
She didn’t want to think about that right now. Didn’t want to think about her father or her lie of a marriage, or even about Pistol’s dick. Instead she wanted to focus on her first motorcycle ride.
“Where’syour helmet?” she asked him. She knew he didn’t wear one, and she’d never felt it was her
place to nag him about it before. But if they crashed…
“Oh, uh…” He grinned a little sheepishly. “I’ve had a lot of experience.”
“Uh-huh.” She flipped the visor up on her helmet so he’d be able to hear her more clearly. “And all it takes is one drunk driver, or one patch of loose gravel… You think I want to see you splatted on the side of the road?” She flushed, a little taken aback by her own vehemence. She really didn’t want to lose him. Not on this ride, or any other.When did I start caring? Not that she’d ever have been okay with anything bad happening to him, but this feeling was … different. Protective. As though he really did belong to her.