Stronger (Stark Ink Book 4)

by West, Dahlia

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jonah stepped into the relative cool of the veterinarian’s office. He spotted Sienna, at the receptionist’s desk, scribbling into an appointment book.

  “Can I help—?” She looked up and gasped. “Jonah!”

  “Hey, baby.”

  She tossed the pen on the counter, burst through the little swinging half-door that separated the receptionist area from the rest of the lobby, and hugged him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Came to pick you up. For a real, actual date.”

  She stepped back from him. “Really?”

  He nodded.

  She bit her lip and fiddled with her shirt. “But…I’m not dressed.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “But…”

  He shrugged. “We’re on a schedule, otherwise I’d take you home first. We have to be there by sundown.”

  Her brows furrowed. “Sundown. What would—?”

  A door beside them flew open and a large black Labrador came charging out. Instinctively, Jonah swept Sienna behind him, putting himself in the middle. A harried male lab technician came stumbling out, attached to the leash that was barely keeping the dog in check.

  “No!” he shouted, yanking on the leash.

  Not the wisest of decisions, apparently, because the dog abandoned Jonah and Sienna and turned on the tech.

  He lunged, slamming his front paws into the man, who stumbled back into the wall. There was no biting but a lot of snarling and posturing. The dog’s loud barks echoed off the thin walls.

  Sienna stepped calmly around Jonah and approached the two of them.

  Jonah’s jaw twitched as he fought the urge to step between her and the dog again. This was her job and he was out of place here. He took a deep breath and stayed out of the way.

  Sienna gave the dog a wide berth, making certain he saw her in his peripheral vision. She reached out, toward the tech, and grasped the leash he was still holding. She had to tug on it once or twice before the tech broke his gaze from the dog and finally looked at her. He let go and pressed himself up against the wall.

  Sienna turned and walked away, not giving the dog or the technician so much as a backward glance. “Come on, Duke,” she said brightly. “Let’s go home! Almost time for Judge Judy.”

  Duke seemed cheered by the prospect and abandoned his quarry. He trotted along happily beside Sienna, tongue lolling, one ear standing on end and the other flapping as he moved. The front door opened and a tiny blue-haired woman stepped inside. She caught sight of Duke and grinned. “There’s my boy!”

  The dog seemed utterly transformed. He howled and yipped excitedly and danced circles around Sienna as they approached the old woman.

  “How’d he do?” she asked, taking the leash from Sienna.

  Sienna beamed at her. “Fine. Just fine.”

  The technician in the corner snorted and shot everyone a disgruntled look, but he didn’t argue.

  The lady grinned and patted Sienna’s arm. “Thank you so much, honey. You’re the best!” She looked down at Duke and gave his leash a shake. “Come on, Duke. Let’s go home! You know what time it is? Almost time for Judy!”

  Jonah held the door for Duke and his television-justice-loving mom. The dog gave him a wary look but kept walking.

  The technician scowled. “That dog almost killed me!” he snapped.

  Sienna rolled her eyes. “He’s thirteen years old and he’s missing half his teeth.”

  The guy stalked through a door marked Employees Only and slammed it behind him.

  Sienna shook her head at his retreating form and then she turned to Jonah. “I’m ready, I guess, then. Since I’m going like this.”

  Jonah took her under his arm and guided her toward the door. “You look cute,” he assured her. “I’ve always thought so.”

  She gave him a sideways, suspicious look. “When have you seen me in my scrubs?”

  He grinned at her and shrugged.

  Outside in the parking lot, the day was already beginning to cool off as night was falling. Jonah stepped off the walkway and onto the blacktop, but Sienna paused, looking around the small lot. “Um,” she said, “where’s your bike?”

  Jonah sighed. “Well, I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, but…I brought a car, instead. We’re going to the drive-in.”

  Sienna’s eyebrows shot up. “The drive-in, really?”

  He nodded. “I said it was a real date. So, we needed a car.” He gestured not to Adam’s Charger but to a compact Toyota parked a few spaces away from them.

  Sienna blinked at it.

  “Come on,” Jonah coaxed. “We’re going to be late.”

  “This?” she asked him, still not moving. “This is your car?”

  “Yep.”

  “This is your car.”

  He sighed again. “Woman! What part of ‘Time Crunch’ is tripping you up?”

  “The part where you’ve obviously been abducted and replaced by aliens. Do you even fit in this car?”

  Jonah considered it. “It’s tight,” he admitted.

  “Okay, now I know,” she finally said. “Now it all makes sense. I fell asleep the night before my birthday and I still haven’t woken up. The snow globe, the kisses, the wedding—it’s all been one long fever dream. Any moment, this car will split, transform into your Harley, and we’ll drive to Hawaii and sip piña coladas on the beach.”

  Jonah laughed and held the passenger door open for her. “Get in.”

  She stepped off the curb just as a dented station wagon rolled past them. The little old lady rolled down her window and called out, “Bye, Sienna! See you next time!”

  Sienna waved. “Bye! Hope you make it home in time for Judy!”

  Duke stuck his head out the window and gave Sienna one last happy yip.

  Jonah chuckled. He wasn’t surprised his woman was good with beasts.

  She’d tamed him, after all.

  Chapter Twenty

  He’d graduated, which Mom and Pop might have considered a minor miracle. Adam, Dalton, and Ava had attended the ceremony, clapping and cheering loudly for him, even though you weren’t supposed to. Maybe they couldn’t believe it, either. Or maybe they were just being Starks. The other people in attendance seemed to think it was the latter.

  Jonah never seemed to mind that, though. Being a Stark was better than being nobody at all.

  At home now, he unzipped his gown and slid it off. She wanted to keep it, apparently, as she had Adam’s and Dalton’s. Jonah wondered if his older brothers had thought it was silly. It was just a poorly stitched piece of nylon, after all. But for some reason, Jonah felt proud that she wanted it. Even if it went into her closet where he knew she kept the other two, he’d know it was there, stored with the others.

  He liked the idea of that.

  Mom handed him a plate of brownies and he plucked one off the top. She beamed at him, eyes sparkling. At least she wasn’t crying anymore. He thought that was an improvement. There were about a thousand photos of him on her camera that he knew she was itching to have printed.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do?” she asked him.

  It took a moment for him to figure out what she meant. “Do? Oh…umm…” He nibbled his brownie, buying some time. He hadn’t given it a lot of thought.

  “Don’t rush him, Miriam!” Pop called from the living room. “He just got his diploma!”

  Jonah smiled to himself even though the truth was, he felt uneasy. He liked things just the way they were, with his bedroom down the hallway, Mom’s brownies on the kitchen counter, Pop watching Sports Center entirely too loudly.

  He’d do anything to stay a bit longer, he realized. He’d do his own laundry, buy groceries if he had to. He didn’t much like the idea of living alone.

  Ignoring Pop, Mom said, “I picked this up for you,” and handed him a brochure.

  Jonah studied it closely. Western Dakota Technical College.

  Dalton had gone there, Jonah knew.
He felt a tiny bit of panic rise in him. Adam and Dalton had left home right after graduation.

  Would he be expected to do the same?

  Mom smiled at him warmly, though. “Take your time, Jonah. It’s an important decision.” She patted him on the shoulder and headed back to the kitchen.

  Jonah felt the tension leave his body now that he knew he wasn’t being asked to leave right away. He was comfortable here, more so than he’d ever been in any place. And he had saved all his pay from cleaning the gym. He had no problem giving it to Mom and Pop to cover some bills.

  He took the brochure into his room and set it on his desk. He took a good look around, glad that the room would be his a while longer, and then collapsed on the bed, exhausted from his long day. He’d only just closed his eyes, though, when he heard a tap on his bedroom window. He sat up, unsure he’d heard anything at all at first, but there it was again. He slid off the bed and went to investigate. When he pulled back the curtain, he was shocked to find Sienna standing on the other side.

  He stood motionless, unsure what to do.

  She gestured for him to lift the window and, though he still hesitated for a second, it was ridiculous to act like he didn’t know what she wanted. He debated for another second before finally grasping the sash and lifting it up.

  She didn’t ask to come in. She just climbed through the open window.

  Jonah wasn’t sure whether he should stop her or help her so he didn’t do either. He simply stepped out of her way.

  She wiggled though the opening, planted her feet on his floor, and stood up in his room, out of breath, clearly nervous. She didn’t say anything, though, not even ‘Thanks.’ Perhaps she’d used up all her courage just to enter his room. She seemed to because she gave him a tentative smile and then immediately turned away from him. Instead, she inspected the posters on the walls and the books on his shelves. “Wow, I’ve never been in here before,” she said.

  Jonah didn’t need to be reminded of that fact. Not at all. Oh, there’d been the occasional awkward pass in the hallway whenever she spent the night with Ava. (Jonah was fairly certain that Sienna had orchestrated every single one of those). She’d never pressed her luck any further than that, but she clearly hadn’t forgotten the kiss they’d shared a few months before.

  He hadn’t forgotten, either, even though he tried to seem as though he had.

  “Sienna, what—?”

  “So, you graduated,” she said, a little too loudly.

  He shushed her, gesturing to the door.

  She giggled and whispered, “Sorry!” She was wound really tight, Jonah could tell. She bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet, like a boxer from Chappie’s gym. She circled the room, getting ever closer to him. Jonah backed up until he felt the desk behind him hit him in the ass. This girl was poised to attack at any moment.

  Who knew if either of them would survive when she did?

  “So, what are you going to do now?” she asked. “Are… are you…leaving…or…?”

  She sounded disappointed at the idea and Jonah wouldn’t lie to himself, he was heartened that she cared.

  He shrugged, though. “I don’t know. I haven’t really decided.”

  Sienna moved a bit closer, the balls of her feet flexing in her canvas shoes.

  Jonah pretended not to see it. Or be terrified by it. Or especially be excited by the prospect. Which he was.

  “There’s a technical co—”

  She pounced.

  Jonah caught her in his arms but couldn’t push her away in time.

  Sienna’s mouth planted onto his. Her body pressed up against him tightly. She was all lips and hair and breasts, like a whirlwind of female energy sweeping him up in its path. Sienna was just a few weeks shy of her sixteenth birthday and, on some level, warning bells were going off that this was still so, so wrong. The roar of his own blood and the sudden rush of his heartbeat drowned out the worry. That curious, probing tongue from just a few months ago teased against his lips and, this time, instead of backing away, he let it in.

  He let her in.

  His arms wrapped around her and the usual tightness in his jaw relaxed, allowing her tongue to explore his mouth fully. She smelled good, she tasted good, and above all she felt good. Jonah lifted her and eased her down onto his twin bed.

  Her frantic, desperate kisses slowed to more relaxed, sensual ones now that she’d figured out he wasn’t going to stop her this time. She picked up his hand and put it over her breast. Jonah hesitated but, urged on by Sienna, he thumbed her budding nipple through the fabric of her shirt. She was a perfect handful, soft and round. She tried to lift her shirt for him, but he stopped her—not every part of him was out of control.

  He did dip his tongue into her mouth, tasting her sweetness, or possibly cherry lip gloss. He didn’t know and really didn’t care. The soft little noises she made underneath him let him know that she was okay with it.

  “Jonah,” she whispered and he shushed her. She said his name again and he kissed her again, harder this time, to keep her from asking for things he couldn’t give her.

  He wanted this, just this, for a little while longer, for as long as he could stand it. He thought he’d managed to rein Sienna in a bit, thought she was okay with just a little kissing and touching. He thought they were on the same page.

  Until she went for his zipper.

  Jonah shot up off the bed. His hip slammed into the desk and the lamp tumbled onto the carpet.

  “Jonah?” Mom called from down the hall.

  Jonah licked his lips and tried to catch his breath. “It’s nothing!” he called back. “I knocked over the lamp. Sorry!”

  “Okay!”

  Sienna panicked and sat bolt upright. “I’m sorry!” she hissed quietly.

  “It’s fine,” he grumbled, picking the lamp up off the floor.

  She stood up and righted her shirt, probably to avoid his gaze.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked quietly.

  “No,” he told her. “Of course not. You need to go, though.”

  She tucked her chin into her chest and sniffed, nodding glumly. She straddled the window sill and lowered herself to the ground. She turned before she left, though. “You’re really not mad at me?”

  “No, Sienna. I could never be mad at you.”

  Jonah watched her sprint across the shared yard and sneak back into the back door of her own house. He knew two things: He wasn’t mad at her, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet. He swept the brochure for Western Dakota Tech off the desk and into the trashcan sitting next to it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As Jonah drove them to the theater, he marveled at how his life had turned out. He’d put off Western Dakota Tech because he hadn’t been ready to move on from Sienna—not then, at least. After a full year of cleaning the gym and taking care of the equipment for rent money to give Mom and Pop, he’d finally been ready to start his own life. He finally felt strong enough to walk away from her.

  But just as he was about to enroll, things had disintegrated at home. Mom had died and Pop had gotten his shocking diagnosis. In the end, Jonah figured it was probably for the best that he’d never even started classes. He’d never felt as though he’d sacrificed much of anything by cutting back his hours cleaning the gym to help out at home.

  You couldn’t really be upset about having to give up what you never had in the first place. Which went a long way to explain his long and twisted history with Sienna.

  As he looked at her now, smiling happily in the passenger seat, he was amazed at how many different ways his life could have gone, how many places he could have ended up that weren’t right here. A different foster home that Christmas eve, the truck stop, even, if Sienna hadn’t been on her back porch, crying. Technical school, if his family hadn’t needed him instead.

  It was strange and breathtaking for Jonah to realize that he’d never, ever been happier in his entire life than at this exact moment. And if things hadn’t worke
d out the way that they had, he never would’ve been. He’d be a wrench monkey like Emilio, but without Shooter as his boss and friend. Or a laborer, maybe, doing construction work like Dalton, but without Dalton’s talent for carpentry and without Zoey to come home to every night.

  He was living the best day of his life with the added bonus that he was acutely aware of it. His hand slipped off the steering wheel and found Sienna’s. He squeezed it tightly and held on.

  “You’re in a good mood,” she mused as she looked at him from across the front seat.

  “Yep,” he replied, and kissed the back of her hand. “I guess I am.”

  He pulled into the drive-in and found a place to park the Toyota near the back. They had a full view of the huge screen and it was already dark outside. He put the car in Park and killed the engine.

  Within seconds, Sienna was on him, kissing him, biting at his lower lip.

  “Whoa,” he chuckled.

  Her fingers scraped his scalp gently as she ran them through his hair. “This is what people do on dates,” she told him.

  “Is it?” he asked in-between kisses. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  They made out, hands exploring, tongues tasting, breath mingling. After a few minutes, Jonah tore his lips from hers. “Sienna?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “There’s a movie playing.”

  “Is there?” She pressed her lips to his again, oblivious, single-minded. She clawed at his arms, his shoulders, mewling in frustration.

  “Come here,” he finally said, giving in and hauling her onto his lap. Thankfully he was tall where she was small and she fit between Jonah’s muscled body and the steering wheel.

  She ground on his cock, riding his cock with her ass. If she didn’t stop, Jonah would shoot a load into his boxer briefs.

  Instead of embarrassing himself, he curled one arm behind her, cradling her close to him. With his other hand, he gave her breast one last squeeze and trailed his fingers down her taut tummy. He tugged on the drawstring of her scrubs and loosened it.