by Marie Harte
He lowered himself to her, and she put a hand to his chest to stop him.
“Wait.”
He paused, his gaze intense, his body rock hard.
“I want to touch you. To make you feel the way you make me feel.”
“I don’t think I can wait. Not this time.” He watched her while he moved between her legs, and she dragged her hand over his chest, pinching his nipples.
He liked that as much as she did, because he nudged her sex, getting himself all slick, then thrust deep, moaning her name as he moved. “Fuck. You feel so good, Sadie.”
He wasn’t having sex with a faceless woman. When Gear joined her, he joined her. Sadie Liberato. She got him this way, frantic to couple with her. To be one, inside her.
Gear stared into her eyes as he took her, and their passion burned hotter, the connection stronger, as he neared his end. “Love fucking you. Need you tight around me. Fuck,” he rasped as he stroked. He felt so thick inside her, leaving not one part of her untouched as he delved deep.
His breathing grew choppy, his eyes wild as he neared his end.
“Come, baby,” Sadie urged, and wrapped her ankles around his back. That put her clit in contact with his pelvis, and his every thrust increased her arousal.
Gear grew rougher, and his powerful body owned every part of her. Mind, body…and heart.
“In me,” she whispered, needing to see him surrender.
He groaned and gave one last push, then stilled while his body jerked inside her.
She held him tight, this man who, for this time at least, belonged to her. While he gave her all he had, she took what she could. And she knew it wasn’t enough.
* * *
They slept for a short time after that, a nap much needed and surprisingly comfortable on top of the comforter, but under a warm, fuzzy blanket.
When Sadie next woke, she saw the sun shining into the room, and Gear sliding his fingers through her hair.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”
She cracked her jaw on a yawn, and Gear grinned. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him so relaxed. Even in the short duration of their association, he’d mostly seemed guarded. Not so now.
“Man, great sex is blinding. Who knew?” she teased and stretched.
The blanket rode down, exposing her breasts.
“Mmm. Brunch.” He feasted, and her arousal returned as if it had never left.
“I’m recharged,” she purred and wrapped her hands around his shoulders. “Coffee, donuts, and sex. My life is complete.”
“No. Not just sex,” he corrected. “Sex with me. Say it.”
“Possessive, are we?”
He tightened his hold on her hair, and the bite of pain produced a swell of pleasure. “Say it.”
“Sex with you, Gear Blackstone.”
He moved closer to her, and she felt him hard and insistent against her hip. “My condom is gone. I’m naked, Sadie. All over.” He ground over her skin, his cock hot, hard.
“You’re a needy guy, aren’t you?” She kissed him, wanting more.
The wake-up kiss became something else. A prelude to a fast, hot interlude.
And she wanted it. Wanted him.
“In me.”
“But, the condom…”
“In me,” she urged, and he didn’t need any more prodding.
Gear slid inside her, and the sensation was incredible.
“Oh fuck. You feel so good. So fuckin’ good.” He moved faster, his body brushing hers in all the right places. She gripped his tight ass, and he flexed, moaning.
“Oh, oh yeah.” Ground into an orgasm, Sadie cried out, unable to process more than the ecstasy of Gear inside her.
He thrust, his body a powerhouse, until he hurriedly jerked out of her and came all over her belly. “God. Yeah.” He continued to spend, and the warmth that could have been inside her but wasn’t should have freaked her out.
The timing wasn’t right for a baby at this point in her cycle. But what woman with a brain relied on almosts and maybes when it came to possibly getting pregnant?
He lay over her, panting, and the warmth of his breath fluttered over her, a gentle caress while he fit against her like that last puzzle piece that had always been missing.
“You were inside me.” She stroked his back, then his arm, staring at his tattoos. “I love this. All the colors, the flowers and skulls. The motorcycles.” She smiled, dreamy for him. The way he touched her, made her feel. Like she mattered so much. Gear, I think I’m falling in lo—
“Hey there,” a deep voice called from somewhere in the house. “Anybody home?”
Gear and Sadie froze.
“Home invasion?” she whispered.
“Worse. My dad.”
They hurried to dress and clean up. Gear sacrificed his underwear to clean up her belly and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. She finger-combed her hair and hoped she didn’t look as if she’d just been royally fucked.
When she realized what she’d wanted to say to him, she wanted to sink through the floor. But that would have to wait.
A glance over her shoulder showed evidence of their time together.
“Gear, the bed.”
They rushed to straighten out the comforter, but she had a feeling it would need to be washed. The blanket too.
“Drop the blanket under the bed. We’ll take it with us when we go.” He nudged it under the bed, then put an arm around her shoulders and dragged her to the window.
Loud steps could be heard coming up the stairs.
In a louder voice, Gear said, “And there you can see the imprint where we put the crowd. The stands go there.” He pointed at the field. “Villager tents go all around and are populated by all sorts of trinket stands.”
“Very cool.” What the hell was he pointing at? She didn’t see anything.
“Hey, now. What’s this?”
Gear and Sadie turned to confront a mammoth of a man. Even taller than Gear, the older gentleman—a term she used loosely—by the doorframe had to stand at least six and a half feet tall. He had dark hair threaded with gray pulled back into a ponytail, dark eyes, and he wore Gear’s face. Except his eyes looked meaner, his face a study of hard knocks and lessons learned. She wouldn’t want to meet this guy in a dark alley. Or a lit one either.
When he saw Gear, he smiled, love for his oldest clear. “Hey, boy. Who’s your friend?”
“Otis, meet Sadie. Sadie, my dad, Otis.”
She held out a hand but couldn’t move to meet him because Gear refused to let her go.
Otis noticed and grinned wider. He stepped close and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you. Why don’t you two come on down and get something to eat? Your mother brought a picnic, Harrison. Enough to feed at least three of me.”
Gear groaned.
“Harrison?” Sadie frowned.
Otis laughed. “Harrison M. Blackstone, my boy. Or as you know him, Gear.”
“Harrison.” Sadie stared up at Gear, watching his cheeks turn pink. “Oh man. You must really hate that I know that.”
“I do. Like you can’t believe.” He glared at his father. “Thanks a lot, Otis.”
“Anytime, boy. Anytime. Now, how about something to eat while you introduce your mother to your friend.”
“Yeah, Harrison. Let’s go.” Sadie practically skipped out of the room, but not fast enough to miss Otis saying, “And don’t worry. We’re here to grab all the linens to be laundered one final time. Just make sure your mother doesn’t find out what you were up to, or you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Dad, shut up.”
Otis just laughed.
Chapter 10
Sadie couldn’t stop staring at Gear’s parents. She could totally see their looks in their son, but they were each fascinating on their own.
> Otis owned his big-bad-biker cred. He’d supposedly been out of the rough life for years, since just before his kids had been born. But that toughness had never left his features. He had a wariness to him that told her he’d seen a lot in his life.
Black hair just starting to go gray, and that same dark shadow of a beard that graced Gear’s face. He had a diamond stud in one ear, his hair long enough to put back. Yet he didn’t appear feminine or trying too hard to look sexy and mean. He just did.
“You stare any harder and your eyes will dry out.” Gear didn’t sound pleased.
Otis—he’d told her to call him that—laughed. “She’s obviously trying to see where you get your good looks from.”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be it.” Gear rolled his eyes. “Yo, Orchid. What are you guys doing here?”
His mother, on the other hand, looked like an earth goddess. She wore a flowy, floral dress over purple tights tucked into black canvas—not leather—boots. Her long red hair waved over her shoulders, the loose curls strewn with lighter blond, nearly white strands. Her hazel eyes sparkled, mirth and patience twined as she looked from her son to Sadie.
“We’re here for our annual cleanup, Harrison. You know that.”
He’d stopped grimacing after about the tenth time his parents called him that, no longer glancing over at her to see Sadie’s smirk. She loved his names. Gear fit him, but oddly, Harrison did too. Not a stuffy name for a stuffy guy, but a grand name that fit the responsible, funny, tender man she’d come to know.
“I thought you guys did that at the beginning of November.”
Otis shrugged and sat down across from Sadie at the overlarge kitchen island. Covered in a white-and-gray marble top, the island had a gas stove, prep sink, and plenty of space, much of it now occupied by bags of food. Orchid continued to pull out containers of potato salad, baked beans, salad, watermelon…
“You really did pack a picnic.” Sadie stared. “It feels like summer in here.”
“Even though it’s October.” Gear groaned. “This isn’t some kind of weird pagan ritual where you and Otis do weird things in the moonlight and call out to the spirits of yesterday, is it?”
Orchid frowned while Otis smothered a grin.
“No. We did that on the summer solstice, and there was nothing strange about your father and I making sweet love on that bed of—”
“And I’m happy with that answer.” Gear cut her off. To his father, he said, “Not sure if you heard, but I’m totally out of Motorcycle Madnezz now.”
“Good.” Otis grunted. His gaze shifted back to Sadie, and she felt it like an anvil on her shoulders. “So I saw an interesting video yesterday.”
“Were people naked in it, or was it a different kind of movie?” she had to ask.
Orchid laughed. Gear groaned.
Otis snorted. “Well, I watched one of them too, but that was later. This one was of an angry woman tossing cold water all over Marsha Concannon.” Otis gave a wolflike grin. “Very nice.”
“She was a nasty piece of work. Kept asking stupid questions and wouldn’t leave when I told her to.” She spared Gear a glance, noticing his attention on the food his mother pushed toward him. Before he could reach for what looked like half a roast beef sandwich, she nabbed it, took a bite, then remembered to chew and swallow before talking again. “And mind you, I was nice. I asked her a few times to move her skanky ass…er, butt. Then I threw out our bad water. The ice was melting, and we use it to keep our milk cold. It has to be fresh to serve to the kids, you know.”
Otis nodded. “Makes sense.”
Orchid’s eyes widened. “You threw ice water over a reporter? And they caught it on film?”
“Nine other networks aired it. At Concannon’s expense, I’m sure,” Gear said and snatched the other half of the sandwich before Sadie could.
“Orchid, this is really good,” Sadie said. “What’s on it?”
“Roast beef, lettuce, tomato, my famous garlic aioli, and some fresh beets marinated in a vinaigrette.”
“Oh, the beets. That’s where I’m getting all this fabulous taste.”
Orchid smiled. “I make all our food from scratch. We’re farm-to-table people.”
“You have a farm?”
“More like an expansive greenhouse,” Gear explained. “Orchid cans a lot of the stuff she plants outdoors. Then they continue to have food all year long from the greenhouse. Fruits and veggies you can’t get in the cold.”
“What about meat?”
“Ah, a girl after my own heart,” Otis said. “Orchid’s a vegetarian.”
“Pescetarian,” she corrected. “Meaning I eat eggs and dairy, as well as fish, in addition to fruits and vegetables. But no meat.”
“So no chicken or turkey?” How did the woman handle Thanksgivings?
“Nope.”
“Growing up was harsh,” Gear said. “Orchid used to make us eat a lot of fish.”
“Gives you a good dose of omega-3 fatty acids.” Orchid nodded. “You should be thanking me.”
“He never had to eat it.” Gear shot a thumb toward his father.
“Of course not,” Otis scoffed. “I’m the man of the house. I eat red meat.”
“He eats meat when he buys it from the butcher,” Orchid corrected. She winked at her husband. “But with that big body, he needs more than fish and vegetables can give him.”
“You got that right.” Otis accepted the sandwich his wife pushed his way. “Thanks, baby.”
To anyone not knowing Otis and Orchid to be Gear’s parents, the pair seemed much like his older contemporaries. Sadie liked them. They seemed right at home being themselves.
“You guys are why Gear—I’m sorry, Harrison—is so normal. Well, maybe I should say down to earth.”
Otis grinned. “Yep. No way a kid of mine is going to get a big head over a stupid TV show.”
“He doesn’t mean it like that,” Orchid quickly said to Gear. “You know what he means, honey.”
To Sadie’s surprise, Gear glared at his father, and not in a fake-annoyed kind of way either. He seemed genuinely irritated.
Uh-oh. Some family tension.
“You’re still pissed we never put Chrome on the show? Seriously? He’d just gotten out of prison for drug running. Come on, Otis. Get real. I barely managed to survive three years of that show. If Chrome had gotten too popular, you know he’d have gotten busted for something sooner than he did.”
“Well, you got that part right. Motherfucker couldn’t handle his pills, but the money from the show might have helped him stay cleaner longer.”
Gear shot his father a look.
Otis glared back.
“Wow,” Sadie drawled to defuse the tension. “And I thought I was the only one who used big, bad words around non-family.”
At that, Otis blinked. “Huh?”
“Your use of motherfucker. Inspiring.”
Gear coughed.
“Is that what the M. in Harrison M. Blackstone stands for?”
Gear glared. “Never mind that.”
Oh, a mystery. She grinned, wanting to know more.
“I apologize for my husband.” Orchid sighed. “He’s barely housebroken, even after all these years.”
“That’s why you love me,” Otis told her. “So how did you two meet, anyway? You a Madnezz groupie? Trying to jump on my boy when he’s barely over Sahara?”
“Barely over?” Gear huffed. “Try glad to be rid of. It’s taken me a good five months to get rid of her.”
“I told you,” Orchid said to her husband.
“Well, how was I to know? She was a looker and about the only woman I knew who could pull you away from a bike.” He shot Sadie a once-over.
“I know. I’m a hag. Sahara’s much hotter. Blah-blah.”
Otis grinned. “Lot of piss
and vinegar in this one. So you’re bangin’ my boy.”
“Dad.”
“Takes a lot to get him to call me that.” Otis chuckled. “You pregnant?”
Sadie liked this guy. He was just her speed. Obnoxious and funny. “Yep. With a pack of wild ones. We think twins. I’m the luckiest girl around. Harrison’s gonna marry me, no prenup or anything. We’re going to sell this place when you die, then put up condos for rich white people to buy while tearing up the land. We might even start a cattle farm over yonder.” She nodded to the window behind her.
His parents stared at her, openmouthed.
Gear gave a fake gasp. “Jesus, Sadie. I thought we agreed not to tell them that yet.”
Otis started laughing. Orchid soon joined him, but Sadie thought the release might be because none of it was true, not just that she’d been funny.
Gear looked oddly satisfied. “Twins, huh? You sure they’re mine?”
“Well, they aren’t Brian’s. He’s got a small dick.” She paused. “Or so Sahara said.”
Otis came around the island and pulled her into a bear hug. “I like you, Sadie No Last Name. Now tell me how you met my son.”
“And don’t leave anything out,” Orchid ordered, smiling at her. She pushed more food at them, and his parents sat with rapt fascination as Sadie explained meeting Gear at the Halloween party. Leaving out that small tidbit about having sex with him, she basically filled them in on everything. Including that punch.
Otis slapped her on the back, and she would have stumbled had Gear not caught her.
“Otis.”
He flushed. “Oh, sorry, Sadie. Thought I’d just tapped you.”
“No problem.” The man was a monster.
“You know, violence is never the answer,” Orchid said quietly.
The three of them turned to stare at her.
“But in Sahara’s case, it was justified,” Orchid added. “I never trusted that girl.”
“She wears real fur,” Otis explained. “And she’s a bitch. Pretty, but nasty.”
“No kidding.” Sadie made a grab for the apple pie sitting near her plate. “Oh my gosh. Orchid, you can really cook.”