"Because I want to talk to you."
"Oh." She blinked up at him, a bit puzzled. "Um... OK."
Without a word, without letting go of her hands, Sam slowly sank to his knees on the floor in front of her. Annie gasped and he smiled. They were both disheveled and dusty, and they were surrounded by towering piles of cardboard boxes, and he knew that his hair was as much of a mess as hers was – and he thought that she'd never looked so beautiful, that this was the perfect moment. That he'd never loved her more than he did right now.
"Annie?"
"Yes?" she whispered. "Yes, Sam?"
He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out the box, opened it to reveal the diamond ring. She gasped again, raised one trembling hand to her mouth.
"Annie, my gorgeous, wonderful, kind princess... will you make me the happiest man on the planet? Will you be a mother to that sweet little girl sleeping in there? Will you be in my bed and in my heart for the rest of our days?" He took the ring out of the box, held it to her finger. "Will you marry me, Annie? Will you?"
"Yes," she said, stunned. "Oh, God, Sam... yes."
He slid the ring on, and she smiled through her tears, thinking that the happiest day of her life had just become perfection. Unable to wait even one second longer, Sam got to his feet, took her in his arms. Their kiss was pure magic: gentle and teasing, passionate and fiery, tender and feral. It was everything that they were separately, but made perfect when combined together. Like love, like relationships, like marriage – it was bringing together two separate souls, taking two things that were fine on their own but were made much better as one.
It was the best thing in the world.
Sam kissed Annie again and again, felt the heat between them rise. She opened her mouth to invite his tongue, and he groaned at her sweetness. In one sudden movement, he pushed her down and back, and she fell on the sofa. Right away, he was on her, his hands under her loose shirt to cup her full breasts, her hands on his shoulders to pull him close, closer, as close as possible.
"Daddy? Annie?"
They jumped apart, straightening their clothing, not looking at each other for fear of laughing.
"Hey, sweet pea," Sam managed. "Did we wake you up?"
"No," Cindy said rubbing her eyes and looking around in confusion. "I wanted to see the babies."
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry," Annie said. "The babies and Sarah had to go to sleep, so we brought you home."
Annie and Sam exchanged looks, and they knew that they were thinking the same thing: that although Annie had been basically living in the house for two months, that night was the beginning of when they really started to build a home together.
"So when can I see them?" Cindy asked. "Tomorrow?"
"Absolutely," her father told her. "First thing tomorrow."
"OK," she said, mollified, then she stared at Annie. "And the pizza and pictures?"
The adults laughed, and they looked at each other again. They knew that making love to celebrate their engagement was going to have to wait for a little while, until after Annie and Cindy made a pizza together in the kitchen, and Sam dug out some of the photo albums, and they all curled up on the sofa under the blankets, and they ate and looked at pictures, and talked until Cindy was ready to go back to bed.
It was OK, though. They had time, they knew, time to undress each other, time to kiss and stroke and touch, time to make love deep and wild and sweet. They had time to love each other in all the ways that they knew, as many times as they could, and so that night, they were happy to eat homemade pizza and look at pictures and wait. They knew that they had time.
And they did have time, as it turned out, lots of it. They had years of it, actually, almost thirty-eighty of them together. In that time, they laughed and ate pizza and looked at family photos. They raised their daughter to be a resilient, compassionate woman who somehow did manage to forgive her mother. They helped raise their two grandchildren, and they saw Sarah and Jax become grandparents themselves. They watched Noah become an international artist, they watched him and Callie marry. They attended the weddings of their friends, the births of those friends' children, the parties to celebrate the milestones of lives well-lived.
And yes, they loved. God, they loved.
They not only believed in the fairy tale, they lived it. They breathed it. They became it.
No, it wasn't happily-ever-after all the time for Sam and his princess, but it was pretty damn close.
And really, in this day and age, in this time of modernity so lacking in people who really, truly believe in fairy tales, that was pretty damn good.
Dear Reader,
I very much hope that you enjoyed following the individual and group stories of the ‘Dangerous Curves’ characters. With this book, their stories conclude, since ‘Lush Curves’ is the final book in this series.
Having said all of this, I can now announce that I’ll be publishing a new series in the next month or so, and it will spin off from this series and the ‘Unseen Enemy’ series. It will be called ‘The Road Devils MC’ (yes, the Road Devils, like Sam’s brother Scars Innis). Book 1 will be called ‘The Devil’s Scars’ and it will be Scars and Zoe’s. I’m giving you a little sneak peek here, so I hope you like it!
Thank you so much for reading!
Warmly,
Marysol
Chapter One
When Zoe Parish clapped eyes on Wolf Connor for the first time in more than six years, her immediate thought was, Goddamn. That man must have made a deal with the devil, because nobody? Can look that fucking good without divine – or more probably – dastardly intervention.
He was still tall, of course, still strapping and muscular. His face was hard and handsome, and damned if the lines around his eyes and mouth didn’t look good on him. Speaking of which: his steel-gray eyes were still as scary-as-hell, his mouth the same almost-cruel line that was somehow sexual and sensual and made women think of it caressing and probing their lips. Both sets.
When he saw her walk in to Blue Dragon Ink, he jumped to his feet. Now that startled her. She’d known he was eager as hell to get her here, but that actual leap out of his chair showed her just how badly he needed her. And Wolf wasn’t a man who needed much beyond the club – he never had.
“Zee,” he said, and she noticed how her whole body reacted to him saying her name. Yeah, his voice was the same, too: deep and husky and all sexy-dark. It’s how drinking whiskey naked on a sultry summer night would sound if it could develop the ability to speak. “You’re here.”
“I am.” Zoe set her backpack on the floor next to the front counter, and watched as two-hundred-plus pounds of hot, hard man strode across the floor to her. “I made good time.”
He opened those massive arms and she just stepped on in, let him pull her up and close. Yeah, his chest was as impressive as ever, and she smiled up at him. Holy hell, she’d missed him.
“Lookin’ good, baby girl,” he said, that mouth curled up in a devastating grin as he growled out his pet name for her. “I like the longer hair.”
“Yeah?” She pushed it back and off her face and shoulders. “I was thinking about cutting it. Fucking hassle.”
“Don’t.” Wolf shook his head, and stepped back. “Looks hot. And we need some hot around this place, trust me.”
“I haven’t said yes to your offer, Wolf.”
“But you’re here,” he countered. “So you’re thinkin’ about it.”
“No. I’m here to talk about it.”
“Awful long way to come for a chat, Zee.” He shrugged his shoulders, and she saw the muscles ripple even through his t-shirt. “North Dakota ain’t exactly a hop, skip and a jump from Colorado, is it?”
She stayed silent. Wolf knew the score, and so she saw no need to tell him things he was already totally aware of.
Wolf stared down at Zoe, a bit taken aback at how happy he was to see her, and at how great she looked. Yeah, OK, she also looked wiped out
, but several days of driving would do that to anyone. Throw in all the shit that had been dumped in to her life over the past year, and you got one tired, stressed-out woman. What he was offering her could change things for her for the better, he knew; all he had to do was convince Zee. And truth be told, that wasn’t going to be easy.
“So.” He ushered her over to the sofa, sat her down. “You want to shoot the breeze over a morning beer or just get right to it?”
She leaned back, those dark green eyes as sharp and whip-smart as he remembered them. “No beer. Hit me with it, Wolf, and I mean all of it. Give me your hardest, best sell.”
“No wastin’ time, huh?”
“Nope. No bullshit, either. You be straight with me. I’ll know if you’re lying to me.” Her smile was disarmingly sweet, and he immediately flashed back to Zee at the age of ten. “I always know when you lie to me.”
“That is the goddamn truth, baby girl.” Wolf paused to collect his thoughts, then launched right in. “So. You know I took over the Road Devils Presidency almost a year ago after Wheels died, but what you may not know is what a fuckin’ hard time I’ve had since then. I mean trouble recently – not all that shit in the beginnin’.”
“Some guy named Kansas filled me in a bit over the phone the day before I left Fargo.”
“Yeah, I asked him to since I was on the road that day.” He ran one large hand through his dark hair, down over the stubble on his defined cheekbones. “You needed to know that the situation is… in flux.”
Zoe already had serious reservations about all of this, but Wolf’s cagey manner made her tense up even more. Those walls that she’d built up over the past six years got a bit higher, a bit thicker, and Wolf’s already-challenging sell got way tougher to buy in to.
“Be more specific,” Zoe said. “What kind of hard time and trouble are we talking about here?”
“Serious resistance to my changes in the club.”
“No surprise there,” she said. “The Road Devils MC has always run drugs, and been big in to the illegal strip clubs. When you shut all that down and left the world of the one-percenters, you really thought everyone would be thrilled with the loss of income?”
“No, of course not. I was expectin’ push-back from the two or three older guys and some of the more fringe members. Guys who were loyal as hell to Wheels.” Wolf exhaled, hard. “I just didn’t expect things to drag on this long.”
“What’s really going on, Wolf? Spit it out.”
“Lots of members leavin’,” Wolf said quietly. “Last month, one guy – Dawson – started a whole new club behind my back and took over a dozen guys with him. Fuckin’ blindsided me, baby girl. Never saw it comin’ at all.”
That shocked Zoe, and she sat up straighter, not even pissed that Wolf had waited until she was here in person to tell her this part: this was a big goddamn deal, the kind of info that was passed on by the President, not anyone else.
Leaving an MC after being patched in was a major thing… an unthinkable thing. There were ways out, of course, though they were so hardcore that none were worth thinking about seriously. But just taking off and starting a splinter club without permission or warning? Fucking unheard of. And she’d heard and seen plenty about these MC boys.
“You’re kidding me,” she said, indignant for him. “What an asshole.”
“Yeah, well.” Wolf shrugged again. “It’s done now. They just picked up all the dirty contracts and clients that I’d dumped, so money’s no major issue for them, and all the parties involved know each other.”
“Is Jensen involved with the new club?”
“Yeah, of course.” Wolf stared at her, intense and angry. “That fucker’s involved with everythin’, Zee. Same as when you left.”
Zoe nodded. Kirk Jensen was without a doubt the dirtiest and most dangerous man in Denver – he was also one of the smartest, which is how he killed people, and trafficked drugs, and ran sex rings without serving even one minute of jail time. Wolf’s decision to sever all ties with Jensen a year before had been a bold, brave move… but no way it had been an overwhelmingly popular one.
“Is there trouble between you and the new club?” she asked him.
“Nah, no trouble. Bad blood, for sure, but they leave us alone.” He sighed. “They’re busy, you know, settin’ up new contracts and expanding. They ain’t got time to come around here and cause shit.”
“You got Dawson’s word on that?”
“Yeah. He sent a message through Ice. He ain’t interested in any back-and-forth with attacks, and payback and more payback. He wants to focus on building up the business and growin’ the club.”
“So this guy Ice is with them now? He left you to join Dawson?”
“No way. Dawson asked him to go, but Ice told him to fuck right off. He’s loyal.”
“So your major problem at the moment is – what?”
“Lack of warm bodies,” Wolf said, waving his hands around the tattoo studio. “The guy that I had runnin’ this place did go off with Dawson, and now I’m stuck with no decent manager that I can trust to play by the rules. That’s where you come in.”
Zoe leaned back, and surveyed her oldest and dearest friend. Yeah, here it was: the reason that she’d hauled ass across three states in her beaten-up Volkswagen that was practically being held together with packing tape. Wolf had a job for her, and even though the money was right, nothing else was.
“So.” Zoe looked around, noted the clean and professional surroundings. “I’d be an employee of Blue Dragon Ink?”
“Yeah.”
“And the tattoo parlor is one-hundred-percent owned by the Road Devils?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, in effect, I’d be working for the MC. For you.”
“Right.”
“I’d be back in to it. The life.”
He paused. “Yeah. In some ways.”
She fell silent again and this time, Wolf let the silence go on. He knew she was fighting every instinct in her body to put as many miles of highway between the Road Devils and herself as humanly possible, and Wolf didn’t blame her. She’d barely gotten away from the club in one piece six years earlier, so he understood that she wasn’t in a big old rush to hand her whole life back to them, even if Wolf was in charge. He’d have to win her trust, however the hell she needed him to do that.
Her stunning eyes were narrowed at him. “Convince me that you and your boys are on the up-and-up now. That the club isn’t the same as I remember it. That you’ve turned your backs on the one-percenter lifestyle for real and for good.”
Wolf nodded. “How?”
“You earning money on your three businesses only, and you got the accounting to back the numbers up? You paying taxes? You got employee contracts for here and the bar and the garage? You got papers proving that you own this property? You got suppliers that aren’t being threatened, and are being paid on time?”
“Yes to all of it.”
“Show me.” Her blonde hair fell forward over her shoulders again, warm and loose. “Show me all you’ve got to prove to me that you’re legit and legal.”
“You want to call the suppliers personally?”
“Yeah. And show me their invoices, proof of payment, agreements.”
“You got it. What else?”
“Wolf…”
“Yeah?”
“I’d be safe? We both would?”
She asked these last two questions in a hushed, hesitant voice that was so unlike her usual ballsy confidence, it almost killed him. Wolf knew that for all her blustering about taxes and invoices, this was the real issue. He’d never forget finding Zoe tied up and gagged in that bar back room, naked and helpless and surrounded by his own brothers, most of who had their dicks out, just waiting for their turn. Wolf had barely gotten her out and away; thank Christ he’d been in time.
> Just in time.
“Yes.” His rough voice was gentle now, his hard eyes soft. “I promise you, baby girl… you’d both be safe here. Nobody in the club is gonna lay a fuckin’ finger on you. I got my boys under control, and nobody in-house is questioning my Presidency. Dawson and his merry band of idiots have no interest in anything but establishin’ themselves – and they have a hard job, believe me. I’d never have asked you to come back if I thought for one second that anything bad would or could happen to you or Keira.”
She stared up at him, really looking at him. They’d known each other for twenty-two years now – since Wolf was thirteen and Zoe was ten – and she knew his every expression, every twitch, every tone. No way he could lie to her, and fuck if he wanted to. She was the one constant in his life, and they’d pulled each other through raging rivers of hell. It was a weird thought, but she was his best friend, his family. He’d never let her down. Not again.
“OK,” she said softly.
“Anythin’ else, Zee?”
“That’ll do for now.” She stood up, peeled off her jean jacket. Wolf eyed her full breasts in her tank top with automatic male appreciation, and she huffed at him. “Eyes off the girls, Connor.”
“Sorry.” He grinned, charming as hell, decided to tease her a bit now that some of the tension had passed. “Can’t help it. You’re a hot piece.”
“Urgh. Really?” Zoe put her hands on her curvy hips, and he grinned again at the endearingly familiar stance: she was raring up to hand him his balls, just like she’d done for the past two decades. “You fucking sexist dickhead. Call me that again and I’ll call you nothing but ‘Calvin’ and I’ll make a point of doing it in front of the guys and your slavering hordes of women.”
He shuddered at his civilian name that he’d tried hard to forget. Who the hell named their kid ‘Calvin Connor’? “Fuck. OK, deal. No more comments aloud about your sexiness. I’ll just keep my thoughts to myself.”
“Good plan. You’ll live longer. Now, you get me what I asked for, and then you beat it. I’ll take a few hours, check things out, and we’ll talk again after.”
Lush Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 8) Page 21