Flagger

by Laramie Briscoe

  Oh, he wanted to live. He wanted to go to the parties his friends talked about, he wanted to get drunk at a bar and take a chick home and fuck her all night without thinking of the consequences. But… “I have responsibilities.”

  So did she, but they were getting in the way of everything, everything that she wanted to do and everything she could imagine herself doing with the guy sitting in the driver’s seat of this car. “Not to me you don’t.”

  The way she said the words made him stop the car and pull it over on the side of the road. “What are you sayin’ to me?”

  She unbuckled her seat belt and leaned in closer. “I’m saying I have responsibilities too, ones that weigh me down and never allow me to have any fun. I think you and I could have some fun together.”

  “No strings?” he questioned, wanting to make sure he understood what she said.

  “I don’t want strings. I’m nineteen; I just wanna have a good time. Like you, I have people who count on me, but sometimes, I want to throw caution to the wind and let my freak flag fly, so to speak.”

  His gaze raked over her body. This hot girl was telling him she wanted to use him to let her freak flag fly and there would be no consequences to it? There would be no one bitching he spent too much time with his brother, acted too much like an adult with his mom, spent too much money on his car? She wanted to have a good time? With him? Fuck. Yes.

  “Alright, Harper…What’s your last name?”

  She laughed. “Stillwell. My name is Harper Stillwell.”

  “Well, Harper Stillwell, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  They lapsed into silence, and tension hung between them. Neither was sure what to do, now that they’d made this agreement. Leaning over the center console, Cash placed his hand on her neck. “I guess before we go any further, we should probably see if we have chemistry.”

  Oh right, that was something she’d been lacking with most everyone she’d been with. The inside of the car was cramped, so she checked the road before stepping out and walking around to the back. Cash took her cue and met her there. His eyes were intense as he walked towards her, and her mouth went dry.

  “About that chemistry.” She licked her lips, and that was all the invitation he needed.

  Pressing her up against the trunk of the car, Cash situated himself between her thighs and proceeded to get so far up against her she didn’t know where he started and she ended. His mouth owned hers, situating her to his liking as he coaxed her lips open and stroking his tongue with hers. Desperate to keep upright, she locked her arms around his waist and held on for dear life.

  No kiss had ever affected her the way this one did. Her heart hammered in her ears, her thighs shook, and her core clenched.

  As Cash brought her down, pulling back on the intensity of the kiss, she sighed. Harper grasped her hands in his T-shirt and tried to anchor herself on the pavement. If this was any indication of the kind of chemistry the two of them had, they were in for a wild ride.

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  Chapter Five

  People were staring at her. People who had never once looked in her direction were blatantly staring at her. It had been happening ever since she’d gotten into the line of cars that turned into the school every morning. The stares had increased as she pulled into the parking lot and searched for a spot.

  “Do I have something on my face?” Harper asked as she got out of her car, gratefully grabbing the purse Nat held out to her.

  “No, girl. You left the Trail last night with Cash Montgomery.” The “duh” went unspoken between the two of them. “Of course people are going to be staring at you today. They want to know what happened last night. With his reputation, they’ll probably be expectin’ a baby to pop out of you in nine months.”

  “They’re going to be very disappointed.” Harper shook her head.

  “So you mean to tell me that absolutely nothing happened with him? You left with him, he took you home, and nothing happened? That sounds nothing like the rumors.” The tone with which Nat spoke told her she did not believe her friend at all and was ready to call her bullshit.

  “You forget, I was there,” Harper argued. “Do I look like the kind of woman who tumbles into bed with a man on a whim? Have I ever been the type of woman to do that?” She’d only lost her virginity because she’d been sick of being the only one of her friends who hadn’t yet lost it.

  “Not on a whim, but you have to admit, he’s a nice looking man.” Nat’s eyes traveled to the left side of the parking lot, where the object of their conversation had parked his car and was striding towards them.

  In the light of day, Harper had to readily admit how good-looking he was. To put it bluntly, he was fucking hot. Not in the way movie stars were hot. No, he was hot in the way blue-collar men were hot. She could tell he worked with his hands, that his muscles weren’t there because he liked to play sports or because he spent hours in a gym. They were earned the hard way. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. His dark hair was rumpled; the beginnings of a beard showed on his cheeks and chin, even his eyes looked sleepy. They had dark circles under them, telling her without words how many hours he probably spent on the Trail each week. The shirt he wore was wrinkled and old. She could see the edges of the ink he sported peeking out from under the frayed edges at his bicep.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected from him, but she didn’t expect the bright smile and wave he directed her way.

  “You liar.” Nat smacked her on the shoulder. “What happened?”

  “I told you.” Harper turned so that she faced her best friend. “He drove me home. Maybe we kind of became friends, but that’s it.”

  “Kind of became friends?”

  As the two of them made their way off to their classes, Nat swore to herself she wasn’t going to let this go.

  *

  “It’s about time you made it here this week.”

  Cash looked up at the sound of the voice. Liam Walker wasn’t someone you messed with; he wasn’t someone you wanted to be on the bad side of. As the president of the Heaven Hill MC, he got a lot of respect in the small town of Bowling Green, but at the same time, he had earned that respect. No one wanted to cross his path on the wrong side.

  “Sorry,” Cash apologized, as he lifted his arms out of the car he was working on. “I’ve been busting ass at school, we had two Trail runs, and I’ve been watching Remy while Mom worked. Things seem to be leveling out now, though. Sorry I’ve been a little incommunicado.”

  “You know you can come and go as you please, my man. We were a little worried about you. Next time things are gonna be crazy for you, at least text me or Tyler.”

  “Will do. I didn’t mean to worry anybody.”

  Truth was, there had been no one to worry about him in a very long time. He wasn’t used to checking in with people. He’d purposely kept his trouble as a teenager to a minimum so that he didn’t have to have a probation officer. In his world, he was his own authority, his own parent, and for someone else to worry about him was foreign.

  Liam grinned. “What can I say? We’ve all taken you in as our own a little around here. You have one of those personalities where we can’t help but kinda like you.”

  Cash knew Liam was paying him a huge compliment, and he appreciated it, but it still made him uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to say, how to react to the praise. Liam must have sensed that because he quickly changed the subject.

  “I hear you won twice at the Trail in the past couple of days.”

  “Yeah.” Cash’s face became animated. Racing was truly something he loved. It was the one thing guaranteed to bring a smile to his face. “The second race was very impromptu, but the first one I needed to win.”

  “How is Remy?” Liam asked. Cash had worked for them long enough that everyone in the club knew about his family.

  “It’s been two months in between asthma attacks. That’s the longest he’s gone in a very long time. I’m cautiously optimistic the medicine they h
ave him on is gonna work this time, but it’s fucking expensive. Mom’s insurance doesn’t cover it, and now that she’s been promoted to manager, we no longer qualify for state aide,” he admitted to the older man.

  “Damn, boy, that’s tough. If you need to pick up some extra work, you know you can work as much as you want here.”

  It was on the tip of Cash’s tongue to ask about the MC, but that wasn’t something anyone did, even if they were considered a friend. Besides, he wasn’t a motorcycle fan; he loved cars, and he loved to drive fast. He also loved that he was completely enclosed in a car. There was a lot of glass and metal between him and the road if shit went south.

  “I appreciate that. You don’t know how much.”

  Liam had a bit of an idea. This kid reminded him a lot of Drew when Drew had come to live with him. He could see the need for a father figure in this kid’s eyes, but Liam worried he would never get that figure. “Whatever you need, you let us know.” He clapped his hand on Cash’s back and turned to leave, but then stopped himself. “By the way, I was out in your neighborhood the other day. Why didn’t you tell us your gutter fell again?”

  “I can fix it,” Cash argued.

  “When? In the wee hours of the morning in between Trail runs, doing homework, and keeping up with the millions of girls you have chasing your dick?” Liam joked. “I don’t wanna hear any shit. Tyler and I will be out there to fix it in the morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No thanks needed.”

  Cash watched as Liam walked away, fighting back tears of humiliation. He’d always been able to take care of his family, and it killed him to let other people help. It didn’t matter that they only meant well, it still made him feel like a failure because someone else had to step in. It was crazy, he knew that without a doubt, but it still didn’t make the feelings go away. To cover up his feelings, he bent down, putting his head back into the body of the car he was working on. At least doing this, his mind slowed down, his worries went away, and he could be the twenty-one-year-old kid he sometimes dreamed he was.

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  Chapter Six

  He was taking a huge chance, showing up here. They’d not discussed this, at all, but he’d wanted to see her. He’d had to see her. In the short time they had been together the night before, she’d calmed him. There was no explanation for it, and he couldn’t even tell how he’d felt calmer, but he had. He wanted that feeling again, but he felt like a stalker waiting here outside the catering company Harper was working for. Travis Steele, IT expert for Heaven Hill, was a great guy to have in your corner when you needed info on someone else.

  With anyone else, he would have walked in there, grabbed her up, and told her exactly what he wanted to do with her. There was something about this woman that told him that method wouldn’t work. She would run. He knew that without a doubt. So here he sat in the parking lot, waiting for her to get off work, hiding in the shadows like a criminal.

  Glancing at the clock on his dashboard, he saw the time and recognized it as the time Nat had told him Harper would be getting off work. Right on cue, he saw her walk out of the building. She was oblivious to her surroundings, not following any of the safety rules that were supposed to be engrained in women from birth.

  “Harper,” he yelled, hoping he wouldn’t scare her to death.

  She jumped but glanced his way, a curious look on her face. “Hey,” she called out as she walked over to where he sat in his car. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just wanted to see you.” He shrugged, getting out of the car and coming around to the front of it so they could stand next to one another.

  She wanted to ask him why, wanted to know how he’d known where she worked, but those questions invited answers that might take them too deeply into something that was supposed to be for fun. “Well, you’ve seen me.” She playfully curtsied and spun herself around in a circle.

  As she came to a stop in front of him, he encircled her waist with his arms, pulling her closer to him. “I’ve been thinking about this since the last time I did it,” he whispered¸ entangling his fingers in her hair. When he gripped her scalp, he pulled her lips to his, claiming her mouth with his own.

  He’d kissed lots of girls in his lifetime, more than he wanted to count. Hell, if he did count them, he would be ashamed at the number, but there was something about the energy this one gave him. It was a clench in the pit of his stomach, a zing of energy that made him want to brand her. There were no words he could put to the feelings, no emotion he could use to describe it, but he’d known he wanted to feel it again.

  Harper gripped his shirt in her hands, standing on tiptoe as she let him dominate her mouth. There was a small voice in the back of her mind that told her she should put a stop to this, that if she let this get out of hand, she might never be able to come back from it, but she couldn’t. Even though her experience was limited, she knew the way they kissed wasn’t normal. It was all-consuming.

  Cash leaned back against the hood of the car, pulling her so that she stood in between his legs. It gave him the leverage he needed to guide her head to the left and right; it let him ravage her mouth with his. One hand disentangled itself from her hair and trailed down her back, stopping over her jean-clad ass, grasping the cheek, pulling her thigh tight around his body.

  “Cash,” she breathed against his lips. “What are we doing?”

  He didn’t know. The only thing he knew was that he needed this; he needed the feeling he had with her. There was so much in his everyday life that got in the way of his feelings, that caused him to be completely numb. With her, he felt something at least, even if it was arousal.

  “Being young and dumb,” he answered. Using both hands to grasp her completely under the ass, he wrapped her legs around his waist and turned them so she now rested on the hood of the car.

  Young and dumb was a good way to describe this, and she knew it, but she’d had so few reasons to be young and dumb that she couldn’t make herself stop. Her fingers trailed down to the edge of his T-shirt, pushing it up around his stomach. There weren’t a lot of people milling around this portion of the university at this time of night. The rest of the catering staff lived in the dorms and didn’t have cars in the employee parking lot. Throwing caution to the wind, she stopped the kiss and pulled his shirt over his head, sighing as she finally saw the tattoo that she kept getting a glimpse of. A female sugar skull covered one pectoral and a male sugar skull covered the other. The part that kept peeking out from under his T-shirt was a cross with writing over it that she couldn’t quite read. Silver barbells adorned his nipples, and her mouth watered as she fought the immediate reaction to take one between her lips.

  “Wow,” she breathed, gasping as her heart raced.

  “What?” he asked, but the grin that tilted up the corner of his mouth told her he knew exactly what she was wowing.

  He was different than any other guy she’d ever been with. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he wasn’t immature. He may make immature decisions, but he was very much a man, in the way people five years older than him were men.

  “You’re a lot more than I’m used to,” she admitted, running her tongue over her bottom lip.

  Cash tilted her head back, exposing her neck to his lips. “What exactly are you used to?” he asked before exploring her skin.

  It was hard to concentrate on forming words when he was busy licking and sucking every available piece of skin. “Immature, not comfortable in their own skin, worried that Mom will be coming home from work early.”

  How did he tell her he wished he was that type of guy, he wished those were the least of his problems. He wanted to be that fucking normal. “Nah, sweetheart, I’m a bit more intense than that.”

  She could tell he was. There was nothing about Cash Montgomery that said anything they wanted to do together would be easy. She had a feeling that no matter where this took them, they would both fight it tooth and nail. “I kinda like the fact that you’
re intense.” She gripped his hair between her fingers, pulling him back up to her mouth as they ground their lower bodies against each other.

  His fingers trailed to the rivet of her jeans, and she widened her legs further, offering the invitation to take this as far as he wanted to, when headlights turned into the parking lot. They broke apart, chests heaving.

  “Fuck.” He buried his face in her neck, his hot breath gusting against the skin there. “Who the hell is that?”

  She pushed against his neck, gasping right along with him. “They must have made a wrong turn, because they’re backing out.” She gripped his hips tighter with her thighs, pushing against the hardness of his body.

  “Fuck, I wish we could do this here, but we can’t.” He pushed slightly against the hood of his car, breaking them apart. “I have someplace I need to be; I shouldn’t have even come to see you, but I couldn’t keep myself away.”

  Harper didn’t know what to make of that admission.

  “I have to go too. My aunt will be wondering where I am.”

  He grabbed his shirt and put it back over his body, groaning when the soft cotton rubbed his sensitive skin. “We’ve got to stop getting halfway there and having no follow-through,” he told her, kissing her softly on the mouth this time.

  “Soon.” She kissed him back. They lost themselves again in the chemistry they inherently seemed to have.

  “Go,” he said against her lips. “Get off the car and go before I lose my mind and fuck you here, out in the open.”

  The words he spoke made her hot, but she knew he was right. Kissing him one more time, she hopped off the car and ran towards her own, not glancing a look back.

  *

  Harper sat in the car, waiting on him to come out of the gas station. He’d smiled and told her he was going to get her the Blow Pop she liked so much, or maybe the Snicker’s bar. He had been in there a long time—even her young child’s mind could comprehend that. People had been in and out of the store as she sat in the car. He’d kept it running because it was cold, and he said she needed the heat.