Today’s choice is a Milky Way bar and I don’t feel the slightest bit of guilt considering how I skipped lunch and breakfast consisted of an apple and a cup of coffee from the street vendor outside my building. The bologna and cheese sandwiches just aren’t cutting it anymore. I want a fucking steak or a slice of pizza. I’m not sure if Stryker was kidding about having a thing for cold cuts but in an attempt to torture him I’m the one suffering. I think tonight I’ll show him my skills in the kitchen. I’ll pick up the phone and order us the best damn pizza either of us have ever had and then he’ll drop to his knees and beg me to be Mrs. Kincaid.
How about them apples?
I’ll never admit it but I completely did a victory dance in my head when he gave me his last name. We weren’t even playing the fact game when he handed over that piece of himself. He gave it willingly, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t mean something to me.
The knock on my office door drags me away from my thoughts of Stryker and I turn to face the vice president of my firm, Matt.
“Am I interrupting?”
I roll my eyes and divert my gaze to the stack of paper sitting in front of me.
“Not at all, I’m just killing trees,” I say, tossing the rest of my candy bar into the wastebasket beneath my desk. “What’s up?”
“A couple of us are headed out after work to celebrate the article in the Wall Street Journal,” he tells me as he walks further into my office and takes a seat on the corner of my desk. “It’s been a while since you kicked my ass in a game of pool.”
I take in the way he’s leaning his ass against my desk and lean back in my chair before I smile at him.
“How’s your wife doing, Matt?”
He bites the inside of his cheek and shakes his head.
“C’mon, Gee, it’s not like that,” he declares.
“Oh, no? Then why did you take your wedding band off before walking into my office?” I lift a finger between us, silencing him before the bullshit spews from his mouth. “Don’t try to deny it. I was on the trading floor all morning and I saw you running your fingers through your hair when you lost half your investments in a shit move. I saw the ring then, and now? Now, I don’t see the ring.”
“I’m as good as divorced when I go home and tell her I lost the kids college fund,” he mumbles, glancing down at his bare hand for a moment before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the gold band, slipping it back on his finger where it belongs. He lifts his gaze to me and offers me a smile.
“You can make it back, all you need is one good day and the right stock,” I assure him.
He nods, pausing for a moment before he tips his chin toward me.
“I’ve been seeing the guy from the steakhouse hanging around outside a lot lately. You do know what happened to his motorcycle club, don’t you? I mean it was all over the news.”
“I know all about it,” I say, nodding. “But thank you for the concern.”
Matt shakes his head as a smile tugs the corners of his mouth and he pushes off my desk.
“You’re one tough broad, Gee, sometimes I swear you have a set of balls.”
“I do and they’re bigger than your head,” I reply with a laugh.
Matt laughs too before bending down to kiss my cheek in a friendly manner.
“If you change your mind and decide you’re in the mood to have your ass whipped in a game of pool, call Tanya and she’ll let you know where we wind up.”
“I’m going to sit this one out since I don’t play for peanuts and you lost your shirt today,” I quip, turning my eyes toward the door and do a double take when I spot Stryker leaning against it, arms covered in leather, crossed against his chest and a death glare pointed at the back of Matt’s head.
He rolls a toothpick between his teeth, reaches up and snags it from between his lips and pushes off the doorjamb, walking further into my office.
“Stryker,” I greet as Matt turns around and his eyes meet the big bad biker.
“Pretty girl,” he mutters, keeping his eyes trained on Matt.
“I’ll catch you later, Gee,” Matt says, glancing down at me and offers me a wink. Stryker doesn’t move an inch, I mean, he doesn’t blink or anything. Intrigued, I watch as Matt steps around my desk and tips his chin in acknowledgement to Stryker.
Still, the man remains perfectly still. He doesn’t move a muscle until Matt is out of my office and the door is shut, then he turns his eyes to me and gives me the most intense look I’ve ever been on the receiving end of.
There go my panties.
“He your boss?”
“Yes.”
“Did he try to make a move on you?”
“I can handle myself, Stryker,” I defend instantly. I’m not into the whole cave man thing. Sure, the heated looks are sexy and all that, but I don’t need a man to save me from unwanted attention. I can bury that shit all by myself thank you very much.
“Never said you couldn’t, now answer the question,” he grounds out.
“He was having a bad day,” I evade.
“So, your boss has a shit day and thinks he can make it better by making a play for you,” he accuses, narrowing his eyes.
“Do you have a point or are you acting like an asshole for the hell of it?”
“My point? You want my point?”
His voice drops dangerously low as he walks around my desk and spins my chair around so I’m facing him, and for the first time since he showed up in my office I notice the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and watch as he reaches for it and dumps it on my lap.
“Nobody makes a play on the woman that rides on the back of my bike,” he growls.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means change your clothes, pretty girl, we’re going for a ride.”
Well, that shut me up.
Chapter Nineteen
Rendering her speechless is quickly becoming my favorite pastime. Watching as her green eyes go wide and those pouty lips smack shut makes my dick go hard every fucking time. Add the way she feels wrapped around me as we ride along the Belt Parkway and I’m ready to pull over on the shoulder and fuck her senseless on the side of the road for all to see.
Having her at my mercy, clinging to me with her breath against my ear and the wind against our faces, it’s the medicine I need to heal me. After walking in on the exchange between Gina and her boss and being two seconds away from whipping out my dick and pissing all over my territory, I needed this. I needed something to put my ass in check because acting like a barbarian won’t get me anywhere with my pretty girl. She isn’t the girl you nail down, she’s the one you watch fly, and if you’re lucky, you’re the bastard who gets to spread your wings alongside her.
I’m in no position to be thinking like that.
To be thinking I can keep her.
To be thinking she’s mine.
Her grip tightens as we ride over the Verrazano Bridge and I lift a hand off the throttle to touch her hand on my chest before I turn my head slightly and call to her over my shoulder.
“I’ve got you, pretty girl.”
She loosens her hold on me as we ease through the tollbooth and I veer to the right, off the first exit on the Staten Island Expressway. Five minutes later we pull into a parking lot and I help her off my bike, hanging the helmet I bought her off the handlebars. The scent of saltwater washes over us and I watch as she runs her fingers through her hair trying to tame it. She turns toward the boardwalk and I stare at her profile for a moment before her gaze finds its way back to mine.
“Didn’t I tell you I thought long walks along the beach were overrated?” she teases, but her eyes give her away as does the smile on her pretty face.
And then there’s that smile.
I’m growing fond of that too.
Real fucking fond.
She takes my hand and starts for the wooden ramp leading to the boardwalk and I’m treated to another thing of
hers that I’m fucking fixed on, her ass. Images of my fingers digging into those globes as I pull her G-string down with my teeth flashes in front of my eyes and my dick twitches begging me to pull her under the boardwalk and sink into that cunt of hers.
Fucking hell.
“Hello? Earth to Stryker,” she says, interrupting my thoughts and I look back at her blinking as I try my hardest to play it off like I was listening to her the whole time.
“You lied to me,” she accuses as we walk the length of the boardwalk, the Verrazano Bridge hanging as a backdrop behind us.
“I don’t lie,” I tell her.
“You said you didn’t like sand,” she adds, pointing to her left where miles of sand lay just a few steps away.
“That wasn’t a lie. I’ve seen enough of that shit, had enough of it in my eyes to last me a fucking lifetime,” I confess, stilling beside her. “But I like seeing you smile and I haven’t gotten enough of that yet.”
“Easy, Romeo…a girl can only handle so much,” she whispers.
“Yeah…then what happens?”
“You’re not ready for that yet,” she says softly.
“You are?”
“We’re getting too deep,” she insists, tugging on my hand. “Time to switch it up.”
I follow her until our steps are in sync and we’re walking in an uncomfortable silence, trying to bounce back from the twist our words took and the path they put us on.
“Five facts,” she finally says. “You owe me five facts.”
“I’m all caught up, sweetheart,” I argue.
“No, I gave you five facts the night you showed up at my door.”
“I gave you five right back when I told your brother to ditch the guard.”
“Oh, you think you’re slick like that, huh?” she asks as she releases my hand and rolls up the sleeves of the sweater I found in her closet. Red really looks good on her.
“Fine, you want five more? I’ll give you five more but you first.”
“Wimp,” she says, sticking out her tongue playfully.
A groan escapes my mouth as I reach down and press my palm against my cock to alleviate the agony her mouth is wreaking on me. What makes me even more fucking attracted to her is the way she doesn’t even try to be sexy, how it comes so naturally with everything she does.
“Okay, here it goes,” she starts, holding out her thumb. “I was majorly turned on by the way you came into my office today. You almost got head under my desk.”
“You’re killing me,” I ground out.
“Two,” She continues and smiles, adding her index finger, “If you play your cards right, I’ll take you under the boardwalk and give it to you anyway. Three, I don’t remember the last date I went on. Four, I’m considering trading my heels for riding boots and buying myself a Harley because that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Five, I miss my mom because she’s the first person I wish I could call to tell her about this guy I met.” She pauses, glancing at the ocean before tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and turning her soft gaze back to me. “So much for trying to switch it up. Does it get any deeper than admitting you miss your mother?” She forces a smile as I reach out and run the back of my hand against her cheek.
“Was she sick?”
“Cancer,” she reveals, leaning into my side. “I’ve been thinking of her more lately. I think it’s because Rocco is around and I know how much she’d hate how we treat one another.”
It was hard not to notice the turmoil between her and Rocco. What I took as entertainment, clearly was hurting Gina.
“I feel like I failed her,” she confesses as I wrap an arm around her shoulders. “She wouldn’t like how isolated I’ve allowed myself to become even though she did the same thing after my father died.”
“Isolated from everyone or someone in particular?”
“Well, I’m not a hermit or anything like that, but aside from the cousin you sort of met that night at the taco place, I don’t speak to any of my family.”
“So you’re not close with your uncle Vic or his daughters, your cousins?”
“No, I haven’t seen them in years,” she says with a frown. “There were so many times I should’ve probably reached out to them, starting when Adrianna had her first baby, but I didn’t. I didn’t so much as send a gift, nothing,” she mutters.
“You could reach out now,” I suggest, leading her over to a bench facing the ocean. “They’d probably appreciate it after everything they’ve been through.”
“You mean the bomb,” she replies, turning to me. “Do you know them?”
“Not well.”
“How crazy is that?”
What’s crazier is I broke her cousin’s wrist and lived to tell about it, that’s fucking crazy. I don’t confess to my malice and instead I give her five facts, five truthful facts I’ve told no one else.
“One, I miss my mother too. Not like you, she’s still alive and well. At least I hope she is…I haven’t seen her in years. Two, becoming a Marine was the proudest moment of my life. Three, war is ugly as hell and being a Marine ruined me. Four, I lost my men on a mission when I probably could’ve saved them. Five, I attended all their funerals and after each funeral I held a loaded gun to my head. I tried to take my own life. I told myself I didn’t deserve to live…that it should’ve been me not them. Even now, I still believe it should’ve been me and not them. They had families, people who needed them to come home alive while I had nothing, have nothing.”
My voice trails off as my own words shock me. It’s one thing to stare at yourself in the mirror, pointing a gun to your head, but it’s something different admitting you’ve tried to kill yourself and failed several times.
Saying the words makes it real.
It’s admitting I’m plagued by war.
It’s admitting that terrorism won.
It’s admitting I’m not a hero.
Gathering my courage, I turn to Gina and watch as tears roll down her cheeks.
“Shit,” I hiss, reaching out for her, taking her face in my hands as I wipe away her tears with my thumbs.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She shakes her head and reaches for my face.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You’re the one who deserves an apology, an apology from every single person who has never thanked you for what you’ve done, for what you’ve sacrificed for your country,” she whispers, leaning her forehead against mine. “You’re a hero.”
I was wrong.
It’s not the color of her eyes that has me spinning in circles.
It is what’s reflected in them.
It’s all the good left in the world shining back at me.
It’s the hope I’ve lost.
The shit I don’t deserve.
“No, I’m not. I haven’t saved a single person.”
“You’ve saved thousands, millions, every single day you fought for their freedom. Thank you,” she whispers.
It’s her turn to render me speechless, and because I can’t formulate a sentence worth speaking, I lean down and brush my lips over hers, taking the goodness left in a world that’s in ruins.
The goodness that is Gina.
My pretty girl with the green eyes.
Her lips part, inviting me to take more, to forget the world I’ve tried to escape and steal a sliver of peace. Slipping my tongue inside her mouth, I lose myself and drown in her. Her taste, so fucking sweet, it ignites a fire inside me. Who knew burning could feel so good.
I pull away, groaning as I draw in a deep breath and watch her eyes flutter open and peer back at me.
“You’re beautiful,” I say huskily.
“You don’t have to try any harder, soldier,” she laughs, but it’s not the laugh I’m used to it’s one that’s laced with nerves neither of us expected to have.
It’s that lightning.
It’s fierce.
And it’s big
ger than either of us know.
“You’ve got me,” she whispers.
“Yeah, I do,” I agree, dropping my hands from her face and lacing my fingers through hers as I bring our hands to my lap. “Well, as first dates go I’d say this one was a failure,” I announce, nodding toward her face stained with dried tears. “Who makes the girl cry on the first date?”
“I didn’t know this was a date,” she grins.
“It will be after I buy you a slice of pizza and you make good on that promise of a blow job,” I tease and wink at her.
Alive.
Watching her as she throws her head back and laughs up at the dark sky, I feel alive.
I’m sporting a grin as proof.
“This is the best date I’ve ever been on,” she admits as she cocks her head to the side and stares back at me. “First, last, and everything in-between—the best one.”
“Is that a fact, pretty girl?”
“It most certainly is,” she promises, reaching out to pinch my cheek. “Now feed me.”
Oh, I’ll feed you pretty girl.
Chapter Twenty
My mother told me it would happen. She said I’d kiss my share of toads but one day a man would come into my life and knock the socks off me. She predicted that the man would likely differ from all the ones that came before him, swearing he’d stand in a class of his own.
My mother was right.
She was always right.
He came dressed in cargos and leather, with a broken soul and a smile that the world doesn’t get to see that often, and he knocked me off my five-inch heels.
My mother never told me what would happen after I found him and I’ve never been good at flying without a plan.
But my mother encouraged me to always go after what I want. She taught me never to be afraid of the unknown because sometimes there’s a beautiful surprise waiting for you. She loved surprises and I’m learning I might love them too.
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