A natural.
So I kept doing it.
* * * * *
Don’t think I’m stupid. I’m not.
Along the way, I learned a lot. At first, I only did it for friends in a jam, snooping around, doing things such as getting the goods on a cheating ex, shit like that.
But I always took care of the situation.
Then my friends told their friends and I got referrals.
Eventually, shit got serious.
But I’m a Nightingale. I don’t shy away from serious. No freaking chance.
But Ren was wrong. I had a solid network. I had backup.
Because I got help.
* * * * *
One of my partners is Darius Tucker. He’s one of Lee’s best friends (and one of mine, too). He’s an awesome guy who I love and have loved since he started hanging with Lee way back when they were in school. He’s an awesome guy I love more now because he’s cool, he’s kind, he takes my back and he believes in me.
He’s also an ex-drug dealer and current private detective on staff at Lee’s agency, Nightingale Investigations.
Even though Darius got out of the trade that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know everybody. And if he doesn’t know them know them, he knows of them.
My other partner is Brody Dunne, another friend of mine for forever. Brody’s a boy-man (with more boy than man, even though his age says more man than boy) who could work a computer like Yo-Yo Ma a cello, Stephen Hawking an equation and Tex an espresso machine.
As you can see, both good partners to have.
* * * * *
Fast forward to last night, when I found out another friend of mine, Faye, was getting buried alive because her boyfriend’s dad is a dick.
Don’t ask, it’s a huge-ass story.
Anyway, someone had to step in. And since I’d been monitoring the situation for some time, I was in a place to do that.
So I did.
And I saved her life.
* * * * *
However, it must be said that Ren was not wrong (though I was not going to admit that to him).
The men involved, including Faye’s boyfriend’s dad, were not good men.
Not even close.
* * * * *
Fast Forward—Hit Play
“This is the last time you’re gonna tell me?” I yelled at Ren.
“Baby—”
I shoved at his shoulders and succeeded in rocking him back enough I could roll across the bed.
This I did, snapping, “Don’t you baby me.”
I got a foot to the floor and nowhere fast because Ren hooked an arm around my belly and yanked me back into bed.
Then he covered me with his body.
This was an effective maneuver he utilized often during Our Talks because I could possibly land a knee to the ‘nads, but I was loath to do that since I liked his ‘nads as they were in those times we weren’t fighting.
Other than that, he was bigger, heavier and stronger than me so I was totally screwed.
Exhibit B. Ren had no problem using his physical advantages to give him more opportunities to be bossy and in my face.
“Get off me,” I demanded.
“Listen to me.”
“Get off me,” I ordered on a buck of my hips.
When my hips settled back on the bed, Ren was still on me.
Fuck!
Then his hands moved to frame either side of my face. He dipped his head so he was all I could see and his voice was a voice he’d never used. It was deep and it was sweet, but it was also weighty and thick and it kind of freaked me out (in a maybe good way) when he said, “Ally, baby, listen to me. I care about you, you mean something to me, and I don’t want to see you in a box under three feet of dirt without the tank of oxygen to keep you safe until I find you. Are you understanding me?”
He cared about me.
I meant something to him.
Yeah.
Right.
I’d give it to him. That was a maybe.
He just cared about someone else a whole lot more.
“I’m understanding you’re a bossy, annoying, in my face jerk who thinks he can tell me what to do when he cannot, no matter how often I tell you it’s my damned life and I’ll do with it as I please,” I retorted.
Something flashed in his eyes so fast I couldn’t catch what it was before he started, “Ally—”
“Now, get off me. I got shit to do. I have to get home to Denver.”
His body pressed mine into the bed. “We’re finishing this here.”
“Fine by me,” I agreed readily. “We’re finished. Leave me alone, and we’re all done.” I drew out the “all” sarcastically.
His face changed to a face I’d never seen before, either. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t impatient.
It was infuriated.
He’d been mad before, even really angry (see aforementioned notes about us yelling at each other a lot).
And his anger had a physical presence. So much so, its weight could fill a room.
But this was different.
The room didn’t feel its usual stifling.
It felt still.
And that freaked me.
“I just told you you mean something to me and you won’t give me ten minutes to talk this shit through?” he asked with deceptive quiet.
“No, because the only outcome that’s acceptable to you is unacceptable to me, so we have nothing to talk about.”
He shook his head, still looking very, very angry.
“Unh-unh. You rewound too far. You just ended things with me like it’s all the same to you.”
“Well it is,” I clipped (lie!).
“Bullshit,” he fired back (he knew I was lying).
“How many times do I have to tell you? We’re fuck buddies, Zano.”
He shook his head again, his thumb sweeping across my cheek and his face getting so close to mine, his lips nearly brushed my own.
“No, baby, we are not. I’ve had fuck buddies, Ally. And not one of them looked like you look when I slide inside you, every fucking time I slide inside you. Like a piece of you has been lost and now it’s found.”
Oh crap.
I probably looked just like that.
Because when he slid inside me, that was precisely what it felt like.
My eyes drifted away.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
“Get off me,” I returned.
He went silent.
I let him and waited, hoping this would be a morning where Ren would give up, roll off and wait to fight another day.
It wasn’t going to be that kind of morning. I knew this when he kept talking.
“Your brothers by now are gonna know about this. And when you roll into Denver, they’re gonna lose their minds.”
“They’ll get over it.”
“If you think you’re pullin’ shit on them, Ally, you’re wrong. Lee and Hank know everything that goes down in that town, and they know you’ve been doin’ your thing and just how long. Make no mistake, they’ve been distant, but they’ve been in your business. Part of it was to keep an eye, part of it was to have your back. But you never got this deep or went this far.”
I slid my eyes back to him.
“Newsflash, Zano. I’m not Nancy Drew, solving crimes as a hobby just out of high school. I’m a big girl. I know my brothers know and I don’t care what my brothers think.”
Something flickered in his beautiful eyes. His fury was long gone, and just then his voice went back to sweet. “Baby, I’m trying to impress on you, this is different. And I was worried before at the shit you were doin’. But now I’m fucking alarmed.”
It was then, something happened.
I didn’t know what did it for me. The new tone to his voice. That look on his face. His warm, hard body pressing mine into the bed after a night of mind-boggling, soul-enriching, life-changing sex. Knowing he found out what was going on last night and drove for hours to get from Denver to t
he Colorado mountain town of Carnal where all the bad stuff was going down in order to get to me. Or the fact that he really sounded like he meant what he said.
Whatever it was, it did it for me and it led me to doing something I’d never done with Ren.
I agreed.
But I did it quietly.
“I get you.”
He blinked. “You get me?”
I nodded, not about to say it again.
His eyes grew sharp but his face went guarded. “Maybe I should understand what exactly you get.”
This was a weird thing for fuck buddies, and another way I had to admit we kind of broke that mold. It was also something Ren used repeatedly to press the fact that we weren’t actually fuck buddies, but together together. We just didn’t go out on dates or meet each other’s parents… yet (the “yet” part was Ren’s).
And what that weird thing was was that he knew me. I also knew him. He paid attention, when we were having sex and when we weren’t. I did the same.
So it wasn’t surprising he asked this question.
“Those dudes were bad dudes,” I explained. “I know how bad, Ren. I’d been poking around them for months.” I put my hand to his chest to press my point home since his face went unguarded and his eyes started to warm. “But they buried Faye alive. I knew the risks. I weighed them and my friend got pulled out of that box breathing. Barely, but she made it.”
He moved one of his hands down to the side of my neck so he could stroke my throat with his thumb. This was another something new. Then again, I didn’t give him many opportunities to show affection like that and I was thinking that was a good thing seeing as it felt incredibly nice.
“There’s gonna be a path you cross,” he said gently. “A path that no matter what firepower you got taking your back, they’re gonna try to take you down. I do not want you to get to that place, baby.”
Unusually, I used a calm voice rather than an irate one when I explained, “I’m not exactly being stupid. I’ve got Brody and Darius. I’m careful.”
That was only mostly true.
I slid my hand up his chest, exploring this unchartered territory of intimacy and sharing, and wrapped it around the side of his neck, putting pressure on. He gave me what I wanted and his face drew even closer.
“I like doing this, Ren. I like it. I’ve tried a lot of things in my life. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree. I’m a certified radiology tech. I’ve done nails. And I’m thirty-two years old. Now I work part-time in a bookstore/coffee shop and full-time slinging drinks. I don’t like doing any of that as much as I like what you don’t like me doing. That’s why I keep doing it, even though I know a lot of people, not just you, don’t like me doing it. Because I like it. It feels right. It feels like I finally found what I wanna be. It’s like I finally found me.”
He studied me and for once said not a word.
Again unusually, I kept talking rationally.
“I know you’re worried about those guys I got involved with last night. So are Darius and Brody. So am I. But I took a calculated risk to save my friend. I’ll watch my back and I have good guys watching it, too. So I’ll be all right.”
He kept studying me, but I had nothing else to say.
Finally, he spoke.
“You know, just sayin’, you said this shit to me like you just said it to me rather than yellin’ at my ass until the only option I have to stop you from yellin’ is to tap your ass, it might have penetrated about ten months ago.”
Something about that made me laugh. Maybe because it was funny.
And there was something about this that I liked. And there was no maybe about the fact that it not only seemed he listened to me, but he heard me and he got me.
And I liked that.
When I quit laughing, Ren was smiling down at me.
My heart skipped a beat.
I didn’t get many of those, seeing as we fought all the time and when we weren’t his mouth was engaged with doing other things.
But just like now, when I did get a smile from Ren Zano, it hit straight to the heart of me.
His smile downgraded to a grin and his eyes moved over my face, something happening in them I didn’t quite get. But whatever it was seemed to mean something. It looked like he was about to say something, but he thought better of it and kept quiet.
I didn’t.
“I dig the mountains, but me and the boys shot up here without provisions and I’ve got shit to do at home, so it might be time to get a move on.”
“Right,” he replied. “There’s a drugstore across the street. I’ll go over, get toothbrushes and shit. There’s also a coffee shop down the street. You wanna make coffee in that little pot on the dresser or you want me to pick you up a real coffee?”
I stared up at him.
We’d never done anything like this, acting semi-normal and not always crazy.
I was a little stunned he could be thoughtful.
No. That wasn’t true. I knew he was the kind of guy who could to be that way. He often demonstrated thoughtful tendencies. Like when I’d show at his house in the wee hours after a bartending shift, he’d ask me if I’d eaten and I’d find he’d made a batch of spaghetti sauce or some cannelloni and he’d heat it up to feed me. And I knew he probably didn’t make that just for himself, but also preparing to feed me later.
Shit like that.
But everybody had to eat, so going out of his way to be thoughtful? I’d never seen that. Mostly because I’d never given him the chance.
Except last Christmas, when he’d been really thoughtful.
So maybe I wasn’t staring up at him stunned because he was being thoughtful.
Maybe I was doing it because this demonstration of further thoughtfulness moved me.
Shit.
“I, uh…” I started and stopped since it took me a bit to shake it off, how nice it felt to be this way with Ren. But I managed it and kept going. “We’ll start with coffee here and get a real one for the trip home. But a toothbrush wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Gotcha,” he muttered, dipping close to touch his lips to mine, and he did this for no reason. Something else he’d never done. Then he pulled away, rolled off me and exited the bed. He yanked the covers over me after he did (again, thoughtful) and proceeded dressing.
It was then I lost the ability to think about anything as I watched Ren move, going from naked to dressed, so I laid there and let myself enjoy the fullness of that (as well as the heat it caused in me). The show was so good, I was rerunning certain parts of it in my head when it was over and this made me an unmoving target when Ren came back to the bed. He hooked a hand around the back of my neck, pulled me up and again touched his mouth to mine.
“Back in a few,” he murmured. He gave me a small grin that warmed his eyes in a way that ratcheted up that heat in me, then he walked to and through the door.
I stared at the door for a good long while.
Then the name he’d murmured in the back of my hair over a year before… a name he murmured while we were in bed, naked, he was holding me and he was asleep… a name that wasn’t mine… came back to me.
And it reminded me this wasn’t real.
I truly believed Ren wanted it to be.
But I knew it was never going to be, not in the way I needed it to be.
So I shoved thoughts of his warmth and thoughtfulness aside, jumped from the bed and started coffee.
I was in the shower when he returned and I knew he returned when he joined me in the shower.
Me wet and soapy, Ren wet and naked meant things happened, and those things included me getting an against-the-tiles-in-the-bathroom-of-a-moderately-priced-motel-in-a-small-Colorado-mountain-town orgasm.
Like every orgasm Ren gave me (yes, I said “every”, and that is no lie), it was freaking righteous.
I was in my bra and undies, Ren in his boxers. We were both at the small sink brushing our teeth while I braced myself against liking another heretofore unknown intimac
y when Ren gave me the ammunition to forever put the “us” he wanted us to be to rest.
He did this by spitting out foam, rinsing and catching my eyes in the mirror after he wiped his mouth with a towel.
Then he said, “Got Ava and Stark’s wedding invitation. I know you’re in the wedding party but I’m gonna take you.”
I still had my brush in my mouth, but my eyes locked to his as my insides froze stone-cold.
I forced myself out of the freeze, pulled the brush out of my mouth and asked through foam, “Are you shitting me?”
His brows shot together and he answered, “No.”
I leaned forward, spit but did not rinse. I spoke again after I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth and my words came out biting.
“Tell me you’re shitting me,” I demanded.
He rocked back and crossed his arms on his chest, murmuring in a way I knew he was annoyed and didn’t expect an answer, “Jesus, what’s up your ass now?”
He was.
He was totally fucking shitting me.
And that burned through me. Not with anger.
With pain.
So much of it, my voice was actually weak—fuck me, weak—when I answered, “What’s up my ass, Ren, is that you just asked me to go with you to the wedding of the woman you’re in love with. That,” my voice—goddamn it!—broke on that word, but I kept going, “is what’s up my ass.”
I registered the shock on his face. It would be hard to miss seeing as it suffused every feature and shot from his eyes.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
“So no,” I whispered back, the pain still affecting my voice, making it come out shaky. But I couldn’t stop it. I also didn’t have it in me to try. “I will not go to Ava and Luke’s wedding with you. And also,” I swallowed, “this shit, you and me, after you’d ask me something like that, is done. Over. No more fuck buddies. No more anything.”
And on that, I didn’t stomp out of the bathroom.
I ran.
Chapter One
You’re a Nightingale
Rock Chick Rewind
Thirteen months earlier…
I woke up in Ren Zano’s four poster bed, with its wine colored sheets, that was in the bedroom of his awesome house in Cheesman Park, knowing I’d done it.
Rock Chick Revolution Page 2