Random & Rare

by Cat Porter

“Miller—”

  He pushed me down on the bed. “Hands over your head,” he ordered.

  I complied, and one of his hands clamped down on my wrists.

  “I don’t like hearing you disrespecting your pussy. Ever,” he said, his lips inches from mine, his knuckles rubbing over my clit. “Your pussy is my cock’s home, my spunk’s home. It’s fucking mine, and it gets wet when I want it to, doesn’t it?”

  His deep hypnotic voice dragged his desire through my quickening blood. His heavy gaze and his fingers fine-tuned me to what he knew I needed and overwhelming my senses. Satisfaction was now stamped across that determined beautiful face.

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  “And I make it come hard, don’t I?”

  My pulse raced, my insides hot and thick. “Oh…damn…”

  “Don’t I?” His fingers moved faster, sliding down and sinking inside me once more.

  I pressed my head back into the pillow. “Will you just fuck me!”

  “Answer the question.” He tightened his grip on my wrists, his eyes narrowing at me.

  “Yes! All right?”

  “I think your friend Tania had a point.” His broad chest rubbed over my aching breasts as he released my wrists and moved down my body, his tongue flicking over a hardened nipple.

  “Wh-what?”

  His hands squeezed my ass hard, and I gasped. My heart pounded in my chest at the growling sound that escaped his throat.

  “Not going back to work this afternoon.” He moved further down my body, nipping my flesh as he went, his smooth skin scalding mine. “Too much work to do here.”

  He cocked my knees and slowly nuzzled kisses down a thigh. His fingers hooked inside me, churning that rhythm that my body knew and craved. A unique rhythm that Miller had composed just for me. My back arched, and I cried out, cried out at his unforgiving assault, cried out for him to give me more, cried out to forget.

  His mouth finally sank in between my legs, and I was lost.

  A TALL CARDBOARD CUP of Meager Grand Cafe hazelnut latte landed on my desk at the shop. My gaze darted up.

  Boner.

  “Oh. Yum.” I flipped open the thick plastic cover and took in the rich roasted aroma of my favorite coffee. “Good morning, and thank you very much.”

  His brows slammed together. “Nice disappearing act lately. You expect me to dance around that or some shit? I ain’t one of your girlfriends.”

  “No, you aren’t.” I blew on the aromatic hot brew and sipped.

  He pushed the piles of orders and bills I had been going through to the left and sat on the side of my desk. “I’m guessing the caveman routine at Pete’s didn’t go so well. Judging from the vibe inside the shed and in here, it’s looking like another chilly gray-storm-clouds-on-the-horizon kind of day.”

  “Miller’s not in a good mood this morning? You’d think he would be after…”

  “Leave out the TMI on my brother. He’s less black than yesterday but not good. Tense as a fucking tire iron. Yesterday sucked around here, so you know, with you being MIA yet fucking again. He kept giving me those razor-edge hard stares as if I knew where the fuck you were and what you’d been up to. Gotta say, I was happy that I did not have to lie to him about his own old lady, but then again, I was fucking pissed because I did not know what was up with you or where the fuck you were.”

  I sank back in my chair, nursing my hot coffee. The words on endless repeat in my vocabulary fell from my lips, “I’m sorry.” I did owe it to Boner.

  He exhaled a gust of air. “I’m sorry, too, babe.”

  I gave his arm a squeeze and went back to my latte.

  Boner rubbed his fingers down the surface of the desk. “Lock’s been worried about you. Mind’s on you all the time. Had a huge important meeting yesterday with that rich rancher from Montana.”

  “I know. He didn’t tell me how it went.”

  “How it went? Well, Lock was champing at the bit during the whole hour-long discussion about fixing up the dude’s latest finds at some auction, getting ’em ready for two different car shows across the country. This is a big account, baby. One of his biggest so far. This could really put him on the map with a different level of clients.”

  “I know that, Boner. Who do you think set up the appointment? Me.”

  “Ah, so you do give a shit then?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Get your head out of your ass already. That’s what it means. He’s your man, and he’s worrying about how you’re taking all this shit. He’s upset about you and the miscarriage. And in the middle of it, he gets a call, hoping it’s you, I’m sure, but no, it’s Tania, who he doesn’t even know. She’s jamming on about finding you drinking alone at Pete’s and hanging with some Texans and how he needs to get his ass down there. I offered to go instead, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  “He didn’t finish the meeting?”

  “Oh, he did. Tight-lipped, all business, and then he made his apologies and took off. Left the rancher with one of the boys to go over the FAQs. His head was not in the game though, where it should have been.”

  My jaw stiffened. “I’m bad for business. Should I go apologize to everyone inside?”

  His bright green eyes narrowed at me. “All I want from you right now is the goddamn truth. Don’t care how fucking ugly it is. That’s the way it’s always been between us—except, of course, for all those years you took off and did your and Vig’s thing.”

  “You ever gonna give me an inch over that? You know how it was.”

  “’Course I know how it was. Fuck that. This is different shit, plain and simple. You got your old man worrying about you while you’re drinking alone at Pete’s and hanging with some Sunday rider you used to have in your bed. What the fuck?”

  “Oh, Jesus.” My head fell back against my chair. “Don’t tell me. Tania.”

  “I bumped into her at Erica’s just now.” He sucked on his double espresso. Boner was a coffee connoisseur, and lately, he had been drinking nothing else but Erica’s coffee house brew at least five times a day. “She told me all about it.”

  “I bet she did.”

  “That chick has not changed.”

  “I still don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

  He shrugged. “I can still remember her practically spitting at me the first time we met.”

  “She was concerned about your bad influence on me.”

  He made a face as he swallowed the last of his coffee and pushed his long brown hair back behind an ear.

  “What?”

  “Her brother’s with Flames of Hell.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Boner shook his head. “For years now.”

  “First of all, I’m shocked that boy is still alive.”

  He smirked. “Yeah, right.”

  “Second of all, Flames of Hell?”

  Tania’s baby brother, Drew was ten years younger than us. He’d been a hyper handful who transformed into an anarchic slacker by the time he was in high school.

  “Yeah. He’s been with the Flames for a while now,” said Boner. “Anyhow, this time, she gave me a hug and a kiss when she spotted me, and then she dragged me over to a table.”

  I let out a laugh. “Oh, yeah?”

  “She’s looking good, mellowed out some.” He made a face. “Emphasis on some.”

  I grinned.

  “Look it. My point here is that me and her are two of your oldest friends in this town, and we ain’t letting you slide through this shit with a glass of booze on endless refill in your hand.” He tossed his empty coffee cup in the small trash can at the side of my desk.

  I sank back in my chair and sipped my warm frothy liquid heaven. He leaned into me, his long hair falling in my face.

  “Don’t do this now, babe. You’ve got everything in the palm of your hands. You are living a fucking blessing. Everything you ever wanted. Everything that Dig ever wanted for you.” My eyes flared at him, and he clamped a hand
on my shoulder. “I get that you’re hurting, but this is not the way.” His lips brushed the side of my face. “That man in there loves you with everything he is. Deal with your shit before it deals with you. We both know how that goes.”

  I put my cup down on my desk and slid upright in my chair. “I’ve got work to do.”

  His jaw tightened. “Why Pete’s?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I’m asking. Why you been drinking at Pete’s? There are plenty of other places to go. Nicer places for women on their own, let’s say. Even your own house or Lenore’s. Why only Pete’s and alone?”

  My eyes darted to the front lot where Miller was going over custom detailing on a customer’s Charger. Purple and gold stripes.

  “Grace?”

  At the sharp tone in his voice, my head jerked to face Boner, his use of my real name still odd to me. Once Miller and I had gotten married, he and the club had officially put Sister to rest. She’d belonged to another man, another era.

  If only emotions and feelings could be dealt with so efficiently

  I swallowed. “Pete’s was where I told Dig no.”

  Boner’s eyes narrowed at me.

  “After waiting and hoping he’d come around, one night at Pete’s, out of the blue, he told me he wanted us to go for it, finally relaxed his ass about all the monkeys on his back. He said to me, ‘Let’s do it,’ and I told him no.”

  “Why did you say no?”

  “I was a busy girl. I was the big cheese running Pete’s, and I was working here for Wreck. I was having my good time, being an involved old lady, enjoying my moment of having it all together.” I stacked the bills into a neat tight pile. “We had just gotten married. We were fixing up that house. That night, we were fooling around in the office. He had the most peaceful, beautiful smile on his face, and he asked me, ‘Baby, you happy?’ A mundane simple question.” My hands smoothed over the pink, yellow, and white papers. “But not for him. Not typical. He didn’t dwell on how he was feeling or what he was feeling.”

  “He just was, or he wasn’t.”

  “He gave me that beautiful special moment, and I took it for granted. I crumpled it like an old grocery list on a piece of scrap paper, kicked it down the hall, and stumbled along without looking back. He told me he wanted to make a baby, and I asked him to wait. Wait at least another year or two, wait until I had my fill of career moves and responsibility-free good times. Before a baby could cause a…disruption.”

  “You were busy. You two were having fun. That don’t mean—”

  “There isn’t any perfect time! That’s something we convince ourselves of when we’re young to justify anything. Boner, if I hadn’t said no that night, we could’ve had our baby, and I’d be whole inside.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s nuts!”

  “Why?” My voice got louder. My throat constricted. “Maybe Dig would’ve still gotten killed by that jerk when he did and I still would have ended up in the hospital myself, but if I had agreed to getting pregnant that night at Pete’s, I would’ve had our kid and my insides intact. And I’d be able to give Miller a baby now. It all changed on a dime in Pete’s.” My throat clogged. “I did that.”

  “Grace—”

  “We can blame Dig for losing his shit and killing Mole and putting himself at risk, and he did. He did that for fucking nothing—over a drug deal gone south. Got him killed a week later in the name of revenge. But what I had done? Blowing him off in that moment when he’d been sharing a piece of his joy with me that night in Pete’s? That had changed everything. I’d delayed our happiness. I’d deprived Dig of that family he wanted so badly, needed to have so damn bad. Maybe we would’ve only had it for a couple of years, but he would’ve had it. He would’ve known what that felt like. He’d needed that wholeness, and he’d wanted that from me. I’d wanted to give that to him.” My gaze moved back outside. Miller was hunched over the hood of the Charger. “Like I want to give it to Miller now. Instead, I’m fucking with his head. I’m some piece of work.”

  “Oh Jesus, stop it.”

  “I love Miller, Boner. I really do.”

  “I know you do.”

  “He doesn’t deserve this mess I’m giving him. I thought this was a sure thing. The minute they’d told us our parts and pieces were good, that it was a go, I thought…I really thought…”

  “Baby, don’t…”

  “I made this mess,” I whispered, wiping at my eyes. “I don’t think Miller had given having a kid too much thought before I brought it up. He’d shrugged off that kids weren’t in the cards for him a long time ago, and he’d put it aside, buried it, forgotten it. I came along and had these big dreams and wishes for us, and in wanting to please me, he climbed on my bandwagon.”

  “And he’s happy to be there.”

  “My point is that now he’s dreaming those dreams, too.” I lowered my voice.

  “Why wouldn’t he be? He loves you. You two are solid—”

  “It’s more than that. It’s like he’s reconnected to a piece of himself that he’d put away a long time ago. That’s huge. He had bolted down that door, and I went and tore that goddamn door open.”

  “You’re making a life together, Grace. You just wanted to make that life more beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that, babe.”

  “He trusted me with all this, and I adore him for it, but—”

  “Lock’s a big boy. He will figure this out. What the hell are you thinking? That you betrayed that trust?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” My scalp prickled at his words, at the truth of it all seeping through me. “I do. I’ve been selfish, and I’ve let him down. He was fine with the way things were, more than fine. I feel like I took away a puzzle he just finished and broke it apart, rearranged the pieces, tossed them in his face. I’ve made everything confusing again.”

  “That’s crap.”

  I crossed my arms and watched Miller laugh with the Charger customer. “You know what the worst part of all this is? I’ve disappointed two very fine men. That is some track record. So, there comes a point when you have to shut it down. You’d think I’d learned my lesson by now. Obviously not. I did this and all for selfish reasons,” I scoffed. “I wanted to work. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to be the one to give them the family they deserve. Me, me, me.”

  “Grace—”

  “Who the fuck do I think I am?” I gritted my teeth.

  “You need to calm the fuck down.”

  “Fuck you!”

  He pulled me into his arms and held me tight. “Shh.” My fists pounded his back.

  His breath hitched, his chest heaved. “I miss him so goddamn much, you know. So fucking much. I’ll never have a brother like Dig again. But I had to close that book, or I would’ve gone crazy, right along with you. You remember that, don’t you? Almost took those pills with you that night.” My fists uncurled, my hands pressed into his back, a sob escaping my throat. “I can tell you, he’d be so fucking pissed off if he could hear the shit spewing out of your mouth right now.”

  His hands cradled my face. “I get you’re feeling like you’re in a whirlpool here, but you’re not being fair. That boy out there? He needs you. It’s been a rough long road for him. He needs a soft place to lean on. You are that place for him. You promised to do that in that church, didn’t you? Both of you in those fancy clothes, gold rings on your fingers.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re an open wound right now. But you need to be open to Lock. He’s good at being tough and hard, but you got under that, you got inside him, and now you’re a part of him. You gotta prop him up now. He was there for you, stood by you with all that Vig shit and Butler crap. Now you be the cushion Lock needs. And if the way he needs that soft from you is by caring for you, and I suspect he does, then you let him care for you. Let him in, woman.”

  “He is in.”

  He pulled away just a bit and flattened a hand over my heart. “Let him be there.
You be grateful for what you’ve got. God gave this bounty to you. You don’t let go in the thick of it. You make sure it thrives.”

  My body went slack in his grip. “Sixteen years, I did things to keep my sister safe. I did it. And all that was brushed aside by cancer. She died anyway, Boner. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  “Why not? No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, that road will never curve the way you want it to.”

  “If it did, that wouldn’t be a fun ride, now would it?”

  “Dig was right,” I whispered.

  Boner gripped my chin and leveled his gaze at me. “Don’t start with that shit now. It used to piss me off. It’s true to a certain degree, but it’s how you deal in between the random hits that counts. The way you deal with each fuck you hurled at you. How you look that motherfucker in the eyes is the key to what kind of person you are. You either shoot first or you crumple or you run. It’s up to you.”

  I wiped at my eyes.

  “I got something for you,” he said, pulling away from me.

  He held out his open palm. The silver of a ring I knew so well shone against his hand. Dig’s favorite ring. The .44 caliber revolver chamber ring. An ancient artifact of my past.

  “You have it? I thought for sure he’d been buried with it. You gave me his club ring when I left town.”

  “Figured you needed a piece of us when you left. Piece of him.”

  A lead weight pressed down on my chest, making it hard to breathe, as Boner raised the ring before me.

  “This one, he never took off. It was a part of his hand. Did you ever wonder why?”

  I shrugged. “He loved his rings. He always had them on.”

  “This one was different.”

  There was something in the grim quality of his voice, a crisp edge, a clarity. I took in a small breath as Boner placed the ring in my palm. I never thought I’d see it or touch it again. The silver was smooth and battered, almost soft, if a hard metal could even be characterized in that way. My fingertips pressed into the grooves and ridges of the .44 caliber revolver chamber. My heart beat tripped.

  This ring was a relic of the lost civilization of Dig Quillen, and it was now in my hands almost two decades later. Was this what archeologists felt like when uncovering objects in forgotten tombs? Precious. Sacred. The ring hummed in my grasp.