by Karen Renee
“When I spoke to Reggie on Monday night, I asked him to do me a favor and keep as much of this bastard’s shit away from you as he could.”
I stood up from the bed and was standing slightly in his space. “Why would you even think he could do that? Keep Stillman’s shit away from me?”
Vamp tossed my phone on the bed behind me. “Did you have to call the sister to get her friend’s info? No, you didn’t. Either Reggie or your boss did, all because he found out about you meeting the sister before I did, and, thank fuck, he took me seriously. He got that scrap of paper, and I’d much rather you lose your mind trying to hunt down a scrap of paper, than you get reminded of the attack because you had to talk to that bitch’s friend. Even if your boss spoke to her, you’d still be reminded of the unpleasant meeting with the sister when you handed over the info to your boss.”
My hands went to my hips, “You both still could have told me what the hell you were doing.”
Vamp shook his head, “Nope. You’d have argued just like you did on Tuesday night when I told you I was going to protect you physically and psychologically. How’s that cliché go, ‘easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.’ I’m better at begging forgiveness than asking you for permission, God knows.”
I turned to nab my phone, but Vamp grabbed me from behind. He whispered, “Don’t call him. It can wait until morning. Better yet, send him a text, tell him you’re not upset, you’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
I tried to pry his hand from my waist, but it would have required a crowbar. So I said to the bed, “But I am upset. With both of you, and especially him, because he’s been with me through thick and thin. He damn sure should have told me what you asked of him.”
Vamp chuckled. Why his chuckles at my frustration made me so irate, I’d never know, but then he said, “Reg and Tucker might be gay, but they’re still men and stand firm with a fellow man when he needs a hand. Besides, if there’s any man out there who loves you more than me, it could only be Reggie. Though after tonight, my dad might be in the running too.”
Damn it all! Now my heart had a melty feeling to it, and I had the ‘just-over-the-big-rollercoaster-hill’ feeling in my belly. He loves you! It was official. I needed a shrink. I was genuinely thinking I had another personality developing. Nope, you’ve been denying this part of yourself for six years. You never got over him and you still love him as much as ever. Maybe even more than ever. Gah! Ok, I had to get a grip. He didn’t say that looking me in the eye, so it could mean nothing at all. He could be completely full of shit. That was what I was going to tell myself.
“You’re full of it, and you’re just protecting Reg.”
The room suddenly spun because Vamp had forcefully whirled me around to face him. His cobalt eyes were angry and determined.
“I’m protecting your friendship with Reggie because that’s something very damned important to you and always has been. Anything that means something to you is what I’m protecting. I am not full of it, woman, and you know it. I love you, and if the look in your eyes is anything to go by, you never stopped loving me.”
Apparently I needed that shrink like five days ago, because now instead of errant thoughts, I had reckless behavior as I put my arms around his neck, went up on my toes, and kissed Vamp hard and long. I poked my tongue out to flick at his lip ring and his lips opened and Vamp returned the kiss with gusto. I was pressed up against his hard planes and could feel his nipple rings beneath his dress shirt. I had nearly forgot about those piercings and I found myself pulling him to me as I lowered down to the bed. He followed me down but only for the briefest moment, and suddenly Vamp was gone.
Walking to the doorway, he closed and locked the door, “One thing to give people a show on a dance floor or at a bar, but my fam doesn’t need to see us. I’m not stopping with just kissing. You want me, and I have to have you. If you’re not down with that, tell me now, and I’ll go for a ride on my bike and be back late. Otherwise, we’re back and I’m not letting you go. Ever.”
A niggling of fear was crawling up my neck, but I was too horny. Bullshit. You want him and you’re not going to let him go either.
“No cheating again. Is that going to be a problem?” I asked, and my voice was full of trepidation.
Vamp had been unbuttoning his dress shirt, and he tugged it off his arms brutally. “Fuck, no that’s not a problem. I’ve learned my damned lesson. I could walk into a Goddamned genuine harem and not one piece of ass would hold a fucking candle to you. Get undressed. I would love to take my time and do it myself, but I’m fuckin’ starved for you.”
He moved to the nightstand, pulled out some condoms and then set an iPod in a docking station. The sounds of Mumford and Sons singing “I Will Wait for You,” filled the room. I had managed to get down to just my bra and panties, and watched as Vamp removed his boots and jeans. He stood at the edge of the bed in his red boxer briefs.
“You forgive me?”
“What?” I whispered, and propped myself up on my elbows on the bed.
“Do you forgive me?” he asked again.
“Uh…”I whispered as I gave it serious thought and suddenly he pounced on top of me.
“You’re mine. You’ve always been mine, but after this I’m not turning back. So, I need to know if you forgive me. I don’t expect you to forget any time soon, but I would like you to forgive. Can you do that?”
I pressed my lips together hard. After a beat, I said, “I think I can forgive you. It just can’t happen again. I really couldn’t survive another go ’round of that. I have little doubt that it hurt so bad specifically because I’ve always loved you so damn much.”
As soon as I was done speaking, Vamp slightly sung, “You forgave, and I won’t forget.” Shortly thereafter the lead singer of Mumford and Sons sang the same six words. As soon as he saw the words register in my eyes, he kissed me fiercely and his hands went to my back to unclasp my bra.
I could feel my bra straps being tugged down my arms. Once my arms were free, I started pulling Cary’s boxer briefs down his thighs. Cary bucked upwards slightly to yank his underwear down to his ankles. Before he lowered himself again, he yanked at my panties. We were fully naked in no time and I remembered how much bliss I could experience when it was just our naked selves. I had always thought Cary and I were like two pieces of the same puzzle. Most of the time we could always find a sense of harmony with one another, be it physical or mental; we were peas in a pod.
Once we were both nude, Cary homed in on my breasts. He sucked one into his mouth and then moved to the other to prime it. Moving back to my right breast, he sucked my nipple into his mouth again, but added his teeth to the mix. It started with a quick bite, and then he held my beaded nipple and slowly dragged his teeth away.
I was getting so excited, my mouth ran away from my brain as I said, “That’s why they call you Vamp, I just know it. You’re so good at biting, you should be part of the Cullen family of vampires.”
His weight pressed into me, and his head lifted. I opened my eyes to see his hardened gaze and he said, “No. Not why I’m Vamp, but this is not the time at all. I fuckin’ missed you, and if I could eat you up without losing you, I’d do it. Now, kiss me, Rainey.”
I kissed him vigorously and wondered if I could go by ‘Rainey’ again. My musing was derailed when I felt the cool metal barbell of Vamp’s apadravya piercing against my clit. Fuck! How could you ever deny or forget about this? It was absolutely driving me crazy. I might have told the bitchy nieces that his pierced cock would hit the G spot every time, but I could not believe I had forgotten about the deliciousness of that piercing working its way around my clit. My casted hand was in my own hair, yanking, while my left hand went to Vamp’s ass in an attempt to keep him where I wanted him. It wasn’t doing me much good. He pulled away from our kiss and hovered over me to enjoy the show I was involuntarily putting on for him. I was writhing beneath Vamp like I was a basket of cobra snakes in India and Vamp was playing the
oboe to charm me. I needed something and I needed it now. Strike that, not now, five minutes ago!
Vamp lowered his weight down on me, “You’re even more gorgeous gettin’ worked up than I remembered. Time to take care of my woman.”
He grabbed a condom packet from the side of the bed, opened it and sheathed his cock in a very fluid move as the music shifted to Bruno Mars “24K Magic.” His hands spread my legs a little wider, and then I felt a magical fullness I hadn’t known in six years. I might have been able to talk a good game about the piercings, but I had thoroughly pushed out of my mind how perfectly Vamp’s piercing could hit the spot. Not once, not once in a while, but every single time it hit the right spot. I had pushed it out of my mind for my own protection. I know that I told those bitchy girls it happened every single time, but in talking about it or thinking about it, I had never thought about the satisfaction of all that was Cary. He was so damn good, someone from Webster’s should consult me to redefine the meaning of the word ‘good’. When Cary added his thumb to the mix and hit my clit, the action catapulted from ‘good’ to ‘fucking spectacular’.
Cary put his finger to my clit and I thought I might shatter with the release of my climax. He lifted my legs over his arms and started thrusting at a wicked pace, and I felt pleasure building again. Back-to-back orgasms. I don’t think Cary had pulled that off with me six years ago. I was going to be ruined, that was, if I wasn’t reduced to a puddle of human goo. I thought Cary would need more time to reach his orgasm, but his weight suddenly pressed me well and firmly into the mattress as he grunted his release. His weight on top of you is the best! I didn’t even have it in me to be shocked by my own thoughts any more. It was too damn fabulous to have Cary ‒or Vamp‒ back in my life. Before I could savor the feeling of his weight on me any further, Cary gently pulled out and went straight to the bathroom to clean up.
I was sprawled out diagonally on my back in Vamp’s bed. My right leg was extended in a twenty-degree angle straight out and my left leg was cocked open wide. My arms were exactly where they dropped after Vamp left my embrace to clean up, which is to say the tips of my fingers were resting ever so slightly on my hips. My eyes were closed, a relaxed smile was on my face, and I was savoring a steady twitch hitting three places in my body simultaneously. The very soles of both feet and my doo-dah were twitching every thirty seconds or so as I came down from my orgasm. I didn’t know if those nerve endings were somehow related to one another, but it was really weird to feel after-effects of my orgasm in the soles of my feet. Maybe an acupuncturist could tell me if they were physiologically related. Bottom line, it was one of the very best parts of sex with Cary, but as I mentioned before, only Cary could summon that kind of orgasm in me. The room had gone quiet, and I didn’t open my eyes.
“You gonna sleep like that, doll? Or will you make some room for me?”
I opened my uninjured eye to give him a look. I shouldn’t have looked at him. Now who’s satisfied and tickled too? I supposed both of us were, but the look on Vamp’s face was one part cat-who-got-its-cream and one part mesmerized. The competitive part of me hated to think that he had won the war, but was it really worth fighting the war if I ended up with those delectable triple twitches every night by surrendering?
I felt the bed depress and my cocked leg was moved to drape over the back of Cary’s thigh. He moved my hands and pinned them by my head. At that maneuver, I opened both my eyes to find his intently examining me.
After a deep breath, he said in a low voice, “I want to marry you.”
I would not freak out. My eyes slid to the side and then back to him, “Um, did you drink from your dad’s highball glass tonight?”
He smirked and shook his head. The niggle of fear I felt earlier was back except it had grown to a full-blown ache sliding through me. Mom and I were left by my dad when I was still a baby, and no man since had ever wanted to commit to my mother. Maybe that’s why you go for cheaters. You kick them aside before they can love you and leave you. What the fuck? Now really, my thoughts needed to get with me and not try to undermine my sanity. His mother deserted him, but he’s not scared of mentioning marriage. True, but hell, we just got back together.
I took a deep breath and said, “I’m thinking it might be a little too soon, Cary. We just got back together.”
More of his weight descended on me. “I’m thinking it might be six years too damn late. We gotta make up for lost time.”
“Let’s take it one day at a time, and…” I trailed off because I was going to say he could make me his old lady before we tried marriage. The problem was I wasn’t new to the MC world. I knew full well that being an old lady was a higher commitment than a marriage license and wedding bands would ever be. If I was willing to say, make me your old lady first, then any protests to marriage were useless.
A sudden memory from Tuesday hit me like a smack in the face. I pressed my lips together and expelled a noisy breath through my nose while I lightly shook my head.
“What’s the head-shake about, baby?”
“I’m ticked.”
“Why? We both just came very hard, and you got to come twice. What could you possibly be ticked about?”
“Reggie.”
“I told you –”
Since Vamp still had hold of my hands, my left hand moved both of our hands to his lips, “No. Tuesday at lunch, he said he was ‘pulling for a reconciliation.’ I thought he was out of his damn gourd. Now I know why he was so cocky about it. He’d already talked to you Monday night. Hell, he probably had this down as a foregone conclusion.”
He turned our hands so mine was in front of his lips and he kissed it gently, “That’s nothing to be ticked about, Rain.”
I closed my eyes. When I opened them I blurted, “We’re both going to have identity issues at this point.”
His eyebrows drew together, “Why?”
“You call me ‘Rainey’, ‘Rain’, ‘Frankie’, and I can’t seem to decide if you’re ‘Vamp’ or ‘Cary’ to me.”
“I’ll call you whatever you want me to, baby. I’ll always be Cary for you though.”
“Why? Because your days of biting women’s necks like Dracula are long over?”
He shook his head at me and said, “If you had a dictionary right now, you could look up the actual word ‘vamp’. If you did, you’d find out that a vamp is the upper portion of a shoe or a boot. It also references a short introductory passage in jazz and sometimes other popular music. It gets repeated several times until otherwise instructed. While it would thrill the hell out of my dad, and probably you as well, to know my road name has to do with jazz music, it has to do with the first meaning.” He rolled off of me to his back, and then he positioned me on my side snuggled close to him. Once he was satisfied, he continued, “I knew I was close to getting patched, and that day I had to go on a run with the club. As the prospect, I had to take down the asshole we were after. For whatever reason, he had pissed me off so bad that I roundhouse kicked him in the face. The top of my boot connected with a loud crack. He fell to the ground and I was yelling at him about how did the top of my boot feel on his face.”
He took a breath and moved me so I was on top of him. “Anyway, one of the guys snickered at me and I suddenly remembered one of my Marine corps drill sergeants inspecting our boots and he drilled it home that the ‘vamps’ of our boots had to fuckin’ sparkle. So that snicker just sent me over the edge with my temper. I started kicking at this fucker harder and I was yelling at him about the vamp of my boot. None of the other guys had been acquainted with the term before apparently. The rest is history.”
My head bobbed up slightly as I said, “Hmmph. Well, color me educated.”
His sly grin reappeared and I was suddenly on my back with Vamp hovering over me, “I’ll color you something all right, smart-ass woman of mine.”
Twenty minutes later he actually did color my skin, and it was just as filthy and fabulous as only Vamp could make it.
CHAPTE
R 13
I woke up hearing a doorbell. I knew it was not my own doorbell because my doorbell was a straight forward ‘ding-dong’ sound, but this chime was far more elaborate. It sounded like a grandfather clock was marking the bottom of the hour. I stretched out long, but my casted hand ran along Vamp’s bulky forearm and bicep next to me. He suddenly jerked out of bed. This startled me fully awake.
Simultaneously sitting up and pulling the sheet to my chest, I mumbled, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scrape your arm with my cast.”
Vamp was hastily pulling on his jeans from last night, “No, doll, that ain’t the issue. The doorbell just went, and it’s Cal. If I had to guess, this is his attempt to get me back for something I did back in March. Anyway, I want to get the door rather than Brock or Gabe.”
I lay back down and wished we had more time (and privacy) this morning to make up for lost time, but I knew there was no chance for that to happen. I hoped to take a shower sometime this morning, but before I could do that I needed to find out if Mr. S. had a stash of plastic bags I could use to cover my cast. I was ready to get out of bed to put on my clothes from last night, when I heard a female voice instead of Cal’s voice. I couldn’t say if it was jealousy or what it was, but I launched myself out of the bed, grabbed Vamp’s dress shirt from last night and shrugged it on. It hit me mid-thigh, and I buttoned it up with lightning speed. I was not hearing Cal’s voice whatsoever, and I had a lurching feeling in my gut that perhaps some woman from Vamp’s past was on the doorstep.
Padding out to the hallway, which was not far from Vamp’s room, I said, “What’s going on, Cary?”
I had a view of the backside of a curvy brunette wearing a pair of Levi’s and a stretchy black tank top with flat soled biker boots. The front door was wide open, but Vamp was standing quite close to the dark-haired woman.
“Go back to sleep, Rainey,” Vamp said.
My eyebrow arched, and before I could stop myself, I snapped, “Do not call me ‘Rainey’ right now, mister.”