But Leah was in the cabin, and Gunner’s head was not in a good place. Not at all. He’d been geared up for a fight that hadn’t happened, and that was bad enough, but on top of that, he might have killed the fucking Osage County Sheriff. Yeah—bad place.
He parked his bike next to Willa’s Explorer and then simply sat there, staring up at the brightly-lit windows.
Brightly lit. It was past two in the morning, but somebody was awake in there. They must have heard him pull up. He needed to go in, be cool, and wait for Rad and Griffin.
As he dismounted, the cabin door opened. Through the screened porch, Gunner saw Willa. Seeing only him walking forward, she stopped. When he opened the porch door, her hand was on her chest like she was protecting her heart.
“Something’s wrong. Where’s Rad?” She grabbed his hand.
His crush on Willa had eased back to almost nothing since Leah had been in his life, but he was still afraid to get too close, so he didn’t hug her. “He’s okay. Everybody’s okay. They’re just handling some business.”
“Oh, thank God.” She squinted up at him. “You don’t look okay, Gun.”
He’d only taken the single blow to the gut and the force of Lucas lunging at him, so she wasn’t seeing injury. She was seeing something in his eyes or his posture or something. He didn’t know how to hide shit like that.
“I’m okay. I just…I need to be out here alone, okay? I don’t know if Leah’s up—”
“She is. We all are. Leah’s in the bathroom.”
“Keep her inside. Away.” He was almost shaking with the badness his mind was cooking up. That shit had to go somewhere, out or in, and he had nowhere to send it, so he needed Leah to stay far away from him. He wouldn’t have come back if he’d had a choice.
“She’s not going to like that at all.”
“I don’t give a fuck. Keep her away.” He snatched his hand from Willa and stalked off the porch. He’d sit by the dead fire pit. That would be close enough to hear the phone and far enough from doing more damage tonight that he didn’t want to do.
He dropped into one of the Adirondack chairs and stared at the dark pit, digging his fingers into his thighs.
Whippoorwills sang over his head, and a light breeze rustled the leaves. A sane person might find the moment calming. But Gunner sat there and spun like a goddamn rotor. He could almost hear the chuhchuhchuhchuh.
He needed a fight, or he needed a hard fuck. He needed to hurt. Only hurt would slow him down. He needed Evelyn, because Leah couldn’t know this shit about him. He could never ask her to do it, and he could never tell her he needed it.
He’d been like this from the time he was in second grade. He remembered the first time he’d felt that bladed whirl in his head. He’d been sitting in class during a reading lesson. They’d had these readers with a bunch of stories in them—he remembered that the cover was blue, like a stratified sky. Horizons or something like that.
The only reason he thought he might remember the title was that the teacher had said it often enough. He hadn’t had any idea what the letters meant. In second grade, he hadn’t even managed to write his own name straight yet.
Martin was smart. He’d been reading since kindergarten. One day in second grade, Max sat right behind him, watching letters bounce around like Mexican jumping beans, while his twin read a whole paragraph of a story like he’d written it.
When it was Max’s turn, Martin had turned around and said, “You can do it. Slow, like we practiced.”
They had practiced. Every night after tuck-in, they’d practiced. But Max hadn’t been learning anything. Still, he’d tried. He was the bigger brother. He was tough. He looked out for Martin, not the other way around.
They’d been so much more than identical twins. They’d shared absolutely everything, including an amniotic sac and a placenta. But Max had taken more of the nourishment from it. He’d been almost a pound bigger than Martin at birth, and he’d grown much stronger much more quickly in life.
Martin had been the smart one, and Max had been the strong one.
On that day, their teacher, Mrs. Knicke, who had been sure, since Martin was so smart, that Max was just lazy, had come and stood over Max while he’d tried to read. She’d had her wooden, rubber-tipped pointer in her hand, the one she’d wielded like a weapon, slamming it down the desk of a student whose attention had wandered, or across the fingers or arm or leg of a student who’d sassed her. Back in those days, teachers had hit kids as much as their parents had, and nobody had thought anything of it.
As he’d struggled through the first sentence of the paragraph he was supposed to read, Mrs. Knicke had stood over him, slapping that pointer in her hand. He’d stuttered over the first word with more than three letters, unable to make sense of it, and she’d slammed that wood whip down across the spread pages of his reader. The room had gone completely silent. He’d known they called him ‘retarded’ behind his back, but nobody had teased him where he could hear, because he’d bloody their nose after school if they did. And nobody had said a word at that moment, either.
“NO. Again.”
He’d tried again. Again, when he couldn’t sound it out, she’d whipped that pointer down. It had sung past his ear.
“What’s the short ‘E’ sound, Maxwell?”
“Eh,” he’d muttered. He’d known his letters and their sounds. He was stupid, but not that stupid.
“Then read the word.”
He’d had no clue what the short ‘E’ sound had to do with that jumble of letters that wouldn’t hold still. He’d stopped trying.
“I said read the word.”
He’d clammed up and slammed the reader closed.
She’d brought that pointer down right on his head.
“Hey!” Martin had leapt up. “Don’t do that, you nasty bitch!”
A whoosh had gone through the room as the whole class gasped in unison.
Then Mrs. Knicke had hit Martin with her pointer. She’d swung it like a tennis racket and cracked it across his chest. He’d squealed in pain and slapped his hands over his shirt.
And Max had lost his mind. That spinning, slicing fury had filled him all at once. He’d snatched the pointer out of the teacher’s hand and hit her with it, twice—once across her wide ass and then across her face. He hadn’t been aiming, he’d simply been swinging in wild fury, but he’d drawn blood. When she’d run and wasn’t in his path anymore, he’d broken the pointer on his desk and then started tearing up the room, throwing books and desks and tearing things off the walls, howling all the while.
He didn’t remember any of that. Martin had regaled him with the story later, but he’d checked out around the time the pointer had first hit Mrs. Knicke’s ass.
What he remembered was the beating he’d taken after, in the principal’s office. The principal had had a paddle with two rows of holes drilled into it and the words BOARD OF EDUCATION painted in red letters between the rows. He’d also had a stool that was just the right height for most grade-school kids to bend over it.
His parents had never been big on corporal punishment—a spanking here or there, a slapped mouth for sass, or a glancing pass up the side of the head, but never a belt or a spoon or anything like that. Deb had never done anything wrong, but Max and Martin had been much more likely to get sent to bed without supper and lose television privileges than to get hit. Mostly, getting hit happened when they’d done something to really piss their mom off, and she’d just lashed out.
That day, when the principal had made him drop his green Roebucks jeans, with the patches their mom had ironed into the knees to make them last longer, and his plain white Fruit of the Looms, and bend over that stool with his bare ass up, that had been something different.
He’d been paddled bruised and bloody on that day, and something had happened in his head. The wild fury he’d still been feeling had become screaming terror as the paddle came at his ass the first time. When the beating had kept going, though, he’d found so
mething past the pain: a deep place of calm.
Afterward, he hadn’t been able to sit or even dress for days. They hadn’t expelled him because his mom had lost her mind at the sight of his injury, so they’d suspended him for ten days for defiance and Martin for three days for calling Mrs. Knicke a bitch.
When he’d returned to class, Mrs. Knicke, clearly afraid of him, didn’t try to make him read anymore. All the teachers had been afraid of him after that, so nobody had made him do much work. They’d given him Cs and passed him on, all the way up through high school.
He’d been in fifth grade before he could manage to get through a picture book on his own—because Martin had kept teaching him.
The next time he’d felt that whirlwind fury, he was sixteen. Martin and their mom were dead, and he’d been sentenced to survival without his twin. For a long time, that space inside him that had been filled by his brother—a steady sense of understanding and being understood, of never-aloneness—howled and echoed with his loss. Though he remembered the paddling, he’d forgotten its true lesson. Desperate and lost, he could only flail until he landed on something that calmed him, without understanding why it did.
He got through high school, because the loss was fresh, and people left him alone, thinking they understood. He left the outside as normal as he could, dating Marianne Berg, going to class, working on his car. But inside, he roiled. Only baseball managed to give him some true focus and calm.
Then he had the Army, and its ordered chaos. Then the Gulf War. Sitting in a Black Hawk with an M240 under his control, things made some sense. But that hadn’t lasted long.
It wasn’t until he was out and trying to find his way that people started calling him crazy. But he’d been crazy since Martin’s death. Or maybe since Mrs. Knicke and her pointer. Or maybe always.
He hadn’t understood that it was the hurt, not the chaos, he needed when his head went sideways. Not until Evelyn had shown him.
“Gun?” Leah’s voice, soft and hesitant, behind him. His hands already ached from the force with which he’d been gripping his thighs, but he clenched harder.
“Go back inside, Lee.”
“I don’t understand.” She was closer. Fuck. He stood up and walked away.
“You have to leave me alone right now.” He could hear her footsteps through last fall’s leaves, so he turned on her. “I mean it! Back the fuck off!”
She stopped and stood there, in nothing but his old t-shirt, which came down to her thighs. It was dark, the moon was behind clouds and the forest canopy, but he saw the fear on her face. He hated it, but it was good. If she was afraid, she’d go away.
Except she didn’t. “What’s wrong, Gun?” Jesus, she was coming closer, reaching out for him.
He stumbled backward. “Are you stupid? I said back off!”
“Why? Are you going to hurt me?”
Was he? He’d never lashed out at someone he wasn’t aiming for. He’d roughed up a couple of the sweetbutts a bit, but that had been rough sex taken a step past reason. He’d hit Deb—fuck, how he hated that—but he hadn’t meant to. Not violence, just lack of control. He went looking for trouble, but he usually had enough of a lid not to take down innocent bystanders. Even in Mrs. Knicke’s class, he hadn’t hurt anybody else.
So why was he so afraid to be around Leah right now? Would she get caught in his crossfire?
Not when he was looking right at her. Not the way she was looking at him, her eyes full of trust despite her fear. How was that possible?
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I know.” She came right up to him and took his hands. “You would never.”
Her hands were warm, and so fucking soft. Gunner stared down at them. She’d polished her nails the night before, a deep red, and in the dark they looked like black stones. Such a contrast with her creamy, pale flesh.
“You’re shaking,” she said, squeezing her slim fingers around his hands.
Fuck, she was so innocent and sweet. She trusted him. His mere presence beside her had torn her whole life down, and yet she didn’t blame him at all. But only because she didn’t know all there was to know about him.
That was why he was afraid. He didn’t want her to know this part. “Leah…”
She let go of his hands and stepped even closer, curling her arms around his waist. “I was afraid something would happen to you and you wouldn’t come back, but you’re here.” Her head came to rest on his chest. “Love you.”
As they stood under the rustling trees, in the deep dark of early morning, something happened to Gunner. He felt Leah’s head against his heart, and his pulse began to slow. His breaths deepened. His muscles relaxed.
She didn’t move at all; she simply stood there, her head on his chest, her arms around his waist, and was still. His own hands had been fists at his side, but his fingers relaxed and unfurled. When he lifted his arms and wrapped them around her, she sighed and tucked herself closer, deeper. And he grew calmer. An odd pressure filled his chest and head.
She was filling him up. This girl, too young for him, too innocent for his life, so much better than he deserved, knew exactly what he needed—knew it better than he did.
“Leah,” he said, and she lifted her head and looked up at him. “I love you.”
“I know.” She smiled and settled back on his chest.
The screen door creaked, and Gunner looked over. Willa stood in the doorway. “Rad’s on the phone for you.”
Still full of that beautiful, brand-new calm, Gunner took Leah’s hand and led her into the cabin. He felt like he could handle any news Rad had.
He hadn’t needed to hurt after all.
~oOo~
“You’re clear, Gun.” Rad’s voice was gruff, but it was always gruff.
“Yeah? What happened?” He knew as he asked that Rad wouldn’t tell him on the phone.
“Not on the line. We’ll talk in the morning. But it’s all good. We call this business done, though. No returns. Yeah?”
That implied that Lucas was alive. Relieved, Gunner felt no need to go after the sheriff again. He felt a little high. High on Leah. High on life. “Yeah, got it. It’s done.”
“Good man. We’ll be back before light, and then I’m fuckin’ crashin’. Go be with your girl. We’re on vacation.”
“Fuck yeah, we are.”
Rad chuckled. “Put Willa on.”
Gunner handed the phone to Rad’s old lady and pulled his own through the cabin and back to their little room.
~oOo~
He was on her as soon as he closed the door, yanking her into his arms and shoving his hands into her panties to grab handfuls of her ass and slam her to his body.
She gasped out a little laugh, “Gun, easy!”
“I need to fuck you right now. Fuck, I need to be all the way in.” He buried his face against her throat and nipped at the tender skin there. She smelled so fucking good—she’d taken a shower since he’d left, and the fruity scent of her shampoo, that Aussie stuff, danced around his nose.
Surrendering completely, Leah went soft in his embrace, her moan quivering against his lips. He lifted her and carried her to the bed, resting on his knee as he laid her on the mattress.
Wanting to feel her on every inch of his skin, he stepped back and shed his boots and clothes as quickly as he could, watching her wriggle out of those little flowered cotton panties and his t-shirt as he did.
Damn, that body—long, slender legs, hips with just the right curve, a waist that sloped to fit his hands, and those round, firm tits with their beautiful pink nipples. And all his. Damn.
A blush waved over her skin as he studied her, and he brought his eyes up to hers to find her looking shy. “You’re gorgeous, Lee. Completely fucking gorgeous.”
A sunny beam of pleasure wiped the shyness away, and she held out her hands. “So are you.”
He came back to the bed, but not to her arms. First, he wanted to taste her. So he dropped to his knees at the foot of the bed
and grabbed her legs. With a sharp pull, he dragged her beautiful ass to the edge of the mattress and settled his mouth between her legs, chuckling when she grabbed his hair in both hands, put her feet on his shoulders, and lifted her hips, pressing herself harder to his face.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” she whimpered. He’d grown to love that silly little childish word. It was just so Leah—moaning gosh while he ate her out like a starved man. He hoped she never gave it up.
Her hands abruptly left his hair just as she started bouncing her hips in his hold, rocking his shoulders back with the force of her legs. He knew she’d taken her tits in her hands, and, without missing a beat with his tongue and lips, he looked up, over her belly, to see her twisting and pulling her nipples. He loved that so much.
Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2) Page 22