by Monica Rossi
“Okay, I’m coming, geez you don’t have to pull my arm off,” Somer laughed, happy to see her friend so animated.
They perused the selection of yarn hair accessories that came in all the colors of the rainbow, Melissa choosing a bright blue and purple combination that matched her shirt and Somer opting for a the more muted colors of orange and lime. After they paid for their purchases they laughingly adjusted the new additions to their hair in a convenient mirror provided by the vendor. They looked ridiculous and they loved it.
“Do you think we should go help Trey pack up the tents?” Melissa asked.
“No,” Somer’s face immediately fell, “Let him do it himself since he’s Mr. All Knowledgeable about Everything Ever.”
Somer and her boyfriend had had an argument that morning about the eggs. Melissa tried to hide her grin while they’d fought about whether or not eggs had to be refrigerated and whether or not they’d die if they ate them after having only been kept in a cooler for two days. It was actually pretty cute how angry they’d gotten with each other, over eggs. Her mind went to Owen and she wondered what silly things they would have fought about, but she immediately squashed that thought. There was no need to keep losing herself in a fantasy that couldn’t come true.
“If we go back and help him you can poke him a few times with a tent stake,” Melissa offered.
Somer considered, “That might be satisfying.”
They headed back towards their campsite arm in arm, laughing as they slipped and slid in the mud.
“Hey, we came back to help pack up even though we’re sure you have everything under control and don’t need help from two girls who think that eggs, which are hatched outside, are actually ok to eat if they’ve been left outside.” Somer wasn’t going to give up on that little argument easily. The fact that there was no wifi or cell reception available so that she could google that little factoid was driving her mad.
Melissa just laughed, she wasn’t getting in the middle of that. Trey didn’t respond to the jab, his back was actually turned talking to someone on the other side of the truck.
He turned around hearing Somer’s little mini rant, moving to the side only to reveal Owen’s beautiful face.
“This guy says he knows Melissa, says he’s been looking for her the entire weekend.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, incredulous that he’d turn up at her campsite in the middle of a music festival.
“Is this the guy that was no big deal that you just went on one date with?” Somer asked, eyeing Owen and apparently approving of what she saw. Melissa couldn’t blame her, he was even more gorgeous than memory had given him credit for. She drank in the sight of him, from his unassuming brown plaid shirt that fit just snugly enough to the uncertain way he had his hands in his pocket and was shifting uncomfortable from foot to foot. She wanted to capture everything in her mind and hold it there to savor so that when he was gone again she’d still have this picture of him.
“I went to your house but your sister told me you’d come here,” he shrugged, “I hopped on a plane and followed you.”
“But why?” He’d made it very clear to her that they’d only had a passing fling and no matter how strong the connection she’d felt to him was, it had only been one sided.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you Melissa, I’m sorry I acted the way I did when you left but I didn’t think it was smart for you to get too attached to someone while you were so vulnerable. I thought I was doing what was right for you but I was actually just too scared to open myself up to the possibility that there might actually be someone who I could love again.”
Somer and Trey stood to the side watching the exchange, their head swiveled towards Melissa waiting for her response.
“So you intentionally shut me out so that I’d go away?”
“Yes,” his eyes were deep and intense on hers, full of hope and expectation.
“And you chased me up the entire East Coast just so you could tell me that you were wrong?”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Haven’t you heard of a phone?” she asked, she couldn’t believe he’d gone to such lengths on the off chance she still felt the same.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped it a few times and handed it to her. The call log said he’d tried to call her cell fifty eight times.
She laughed, “Right, no cell reception here.” She considered him a moment longer before wrapping her arms around him and saying, “You’re stupid.”
“I am,” he brought his face closer to hers, “but at least I admit it.” His lips crushed hers in a soul devouring kiss. He tasted like honey and she realized just how much she’d longed for the feeling of him pressed against her.
⋆⋆⋆
They barely made it back to his hotel room fully clothed. Having him there with her again made every hormone in her body flare in arousal.
They’d left Somer and Trey to pack up the camping stuff and she promised to call to check in with them as soon as she figured out what she was going to do. They walked hand in hand out to the parking lot, he’d opened her door for her, and he’d gotten in on the driver’s side.
“We have a lot to talk about,” he said.
“Yes, we do,” she twirled a string on one of the yarn falls she’d pulled out of her hair.
All at once they’d fallen on each other, hungry to touch and to taste, to explore what they’d each missed so much. The drive to his room had been fraught with near misses. Her hand had stolen under the waistband of his pants while she’d rained kisses across his neck. They’d try to walk through the hotel lobby in a dignified manor but as soon as the elevator doors had closed she’d been pressed up against the wall, her legs wrapped around him while the hard ridge in his pants rubbed up against her. She’d moaned, wanting him to take her there regardless of who was watching on the video surveillance camera.
Finally the door shut behind them and clothes flew to every corner of the room. It was so frantic she had a hard time catching her breath, each new place he touched or kissed stole a little more of her composure until she’d been left nothing but a ball of gasping need.
His hand cupped her breast, palming the hard nipple while another clutched her ass and pressed her close against his hard body, while his lips devoured hers, reveling in the taste of her that he’d missed so much.
“Please, I need you now,” she struggled to get out, between gulps for air.
Something like a growl escaped him and he pushed her down on the bed, removing his boxers, the last remaining clothes that stood between them. She marveled again at how beautiful he was, from his sharp jawbone and patrician nose down to his muscled thighs and everything in between, he was gorgeous to look at and she drank in the sight.
He leaned down over her, bracing his weight on hands splayed on either side of her head, her legs spread wide, waiting for him, needing him, but he hesitated, his body barely touching hers. His hard cock pressed lightly against her entrance and she arched against him, wanting him inside her. Now.
“Wait,” he looked down into her eyes, “You need to know something.”
“What?” she breathed.
“I love you,” he said as he entered her, not giving her the chance to respond as every other thought was driven out of her mind.
He rode her hard and fast, their sweat mingling as he pumped inside her, the tension building and building until they came together in a blinding explosion.
⋆⋆⋆
“What you said earlier, that you think you’re falling in love with me,” she said, lying beside him running her hands up the taunt muscles of his abdomen.
“That’s not what I said,” he corrected her while running a finger across her cheek, “I said I love you.”
“I love you too,” she whispered.
He squeezed her, “Then everything else will work itself out.”
“What do you mean everything else?”
He sat up in bed, re
sting his head against the headboard, “Well I mean you’ve got to figure out where you want to go. Back to college, back to your hometown, or somewhere else.”
She hadn’t thought about that, about the fact that he had a life in Charleston and hers was scattered and uncertain, “I just assumed we’d go back to Charleston. Your studio is there.”
“I’m a painter baby, I can do that anywhere in the world.”
Her heart tripped in her chest, he was willing to abandon everything just for her, “I know where I want to be.”
“Where is that?” he asked as she leaned up against him in bed, watching the sunrise out of the huge hotel window.
“With you. Just with you.”
Melissa used the little battery operated fan slash water mister on her face. The heat and humidity had been awful all summer but August was especially rough.
“So tell me all the juicy details you know about Braden,” the blonde lying on a beach towel beside her said.
Melissa mentally rolled her eyes. During the year she’d lived in Charleston Braden had been through at least ten of these women. They were always perfect, always hot, always flirty and bouncy, and were always looking for ways to get their hooks into him for good. She wasn’t sure how much of it was his money and how much of it was his looks, but either way it got kind of old when she was always cornered and grilled about how he liked his pancakes in the morning.
“Oh like what?” she asked, pretending ignorance.
“Like, does he date a lot, what kind of girls does he normally go for? What are his favorite sports, who does he root for? What are his favorite foods?”
She wished someone could save her from the woman and the incessant questioning but she was stuck. She watched Owen and Braden running back towards them, surfboards under their arms. Well, if she had to be stuck at least she wasn’t stuck somewhere with ugly men. The last year with Owen had been so wonderful and full that sometimes she felt like she was going to burst with it.
He had insisted that she move in with him instead of getting a little apartment of her own, saying that he couldn’t stand the thought of her being so close but being unable to touch her. She didn’t mind, she’d much rather wake up beside Owen than to an empty bed anyway.
Her parents had been skeptical, they wanted her to be happy but telling them she was moving in with a man who they had never met before, to another state, was a little much for them. But after their first trip down to Charleston to visit, when they’d seen her and Owen together, they’d stopped badgering her about ‘thinking things through carefully’. She guessed that the love they had for each other was visible to everyone, even worried parents.
It had made them even happier when she’d told them that she’d be starting school at C of C in the fall. She was content just being with Owen, and he’d never pressured her to go out and get a job or start back to school, but she wanted to be something other than just a hanger on. She wanted to find her own passions and see where they took her.
She grinned as Owen dropped down in the sand beside her.
“Having fun?” he asked her, laughter in his eyes. He knew how she felt about Braden’s bimbos.
“Mmmm, loads,” she rolled her eyes where only he could see.
The blonde, Melissa couldn’t remember her name, said, “Yeah, we’re having a great time. Melissa here just told me that you love collard greens with vinegar and fat back and it just so happens, being a country girl at heart, that it’s one of my specialties.” Bright red lips spread in a smile that was meant to be enticing but just looked fake to Melissa.
Braden’s eyebrows lowered and gathered while his upper lip crinkled in disgust, “Ugh. Don’t listen to her anymore. She lies.”
Melissa burst out laughing while the blonde shot her an evil look, “Oh like you don’t. You told me last week that your whole office staff was down with the flu and you couldn’t get away from work and would I please bring you a calzone from Andolini’s and when I got there, surprise surprise, the whole office is packed.”
“Come on, it was just a little joke. And I really needed you to come in and help me, uh, with that thing we talked about. And a calzone. I really needed a calzone.”
That thing they had talked about was her pretending to be his girlfriend so the new temp, who he had of course slept with, would stop stalking him. It had worked, seeing how the girl had thrown the papers she was carrying down and stormed out of the office and hadn’t been back since.
“That’s nothing, you should have seen the things he used to get Jared to do when we were teenagers,” Owen added, tossing a chip in his mouth.
Braden smirked, “It didn’t end when we were teenagers.”
“Have you done something to Jared lately that I don’t know about?” Owen prodded.
The smirk remained on Braden’s face, “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
The blonde looked confused, no doubt she hadn’t heard about Jared before. Melissa had been with Owen a year and she still hadn’t met him. She wondered about it sometimes but none of the McLaughlin’s seemed too inclined to talk about it. Maybe it’d all work out, she’d hate to know she was missing out on such a close knit fun family. They’d welcomed her in with open arms, all happy to see Owen find someone, and she’d fallen in love with all of them. Even her relationships with her own family had improved, she spent more time with her little sister, who loved coming down to visit whenever she could, than she had when they were living together. Sometimes she still ached for Felicia, but wherever she was, she was sure that she was happy for her. Because in the midst of all the pain and loss, the anger, confusion, and numbness, Melissa had found the one thing she hadn’t known she’d been looking for. A home.
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A Sample of Wounded: Dogs of War MC Book One
Chapter One
The rolling green hills passed by in an unnoticed blur as Sidney made her way home in the dying light. Work had been fine, home was going to be fine, everything was just fine, fine, fine. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes.
When she’d moved to the small town of Three Rivers she had been hoping for a clean break; from her family, from her past, from who she had been, and she’d gotten it. What she hadn’t counted on was the long stretches of boredom, tinged with loneliness, that plagued her constantly. It wasn’t as if she’d expected to move into town and immediately have a close knit circle of friends who lauded her every Facebook post with fanfare and a celebratory night out, but it had been three months and she had yet to meet anyone she clicked with, male, female, or some creative combination of the two. She’d been to bars, fundraisers, neighborhood barbeques, she had even joined the Junior Charity League for the love of God!
Maybe I’ve unknowingly stumbled into an episode of the X-files where everyone in town is in some sort of Satanic cult and they’re just waiting until the annual harvest festival before sacrificing me to their patron demon, Zi’ kukuloo. The Greater TriCity Apple Festival was in a couple of weeks, and as improbable as was that a cult would decide to roast her with an organic apple shoved in her mouth, she made a mental note to start a new diet. She didn’t want to look too plump and juicy, just in case.
Even her freaky little assistant at the clinic didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with her outside of work, or during work for that matter. Having asked the black clad, dour faced waif to go out for after work drinks on three separate occasions, Sidney had given up on making friends with her.
Granted, she had
n’t been the belle of the ball back home but if nothing else she’d had several people she could have called who would have gone to a movie with her, or would have even come over and had a few glasses of wine while they played a few rousing hands of Uno. Here she was stuck in her little rented home, unsuccessfully browsing Netflix, looking for something to distract her before giving up and deciding she would just go to bed. Not that she didn’t like her home, she actually loved it. Tiny as it was, it fit her needs perfectly. It was just so… empty.
She was even beginning to miss her sister. Ugh. David, mother, unsustainable emotional turmoil, and miserable working conditions, she reminded herself why she’d moved.
David. He was the key to all of the other problems. All of them. The POS.
Purposefully she tried to clear her mind, she hated it when he popped into her train of thought uninvited, which he did often. Instead, she focused on the scenery. She really had picked a beautiful place to relocate. If she had to be away from everything and everyone that she loved, at least it came with a nice view. She watched the changing colors of the leaves as they whizzed by in a muted blur of Autumnal glory, the lone mountain off in the distance, the lump of dead deer she was about to hit in the road.
She swerved to avoid the huge bloody mass at the last minute. Had it been a deer? A bear? Was it dead or just almost dead? Or was it hurt and laying there in pain?
She cursed her soft heart as she slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. She might be walking up to a disaster of gore that was going to haunt her dreams or maybe she could ease the suffering of a badly wounded creature...or she could have her arm ripped off by a hurt and angry bear. She mentally shrugged as she got out of the car, what would be would be, and what was the point of becoming a veterinarian if she didn’t help animals when there was need?