by Jayce Carter
Talking about her father was never easy. Most of the time she would simply tell people he was gone, as if that explained it. It did, in a way. He was a poltergeist in her life, something not real who just tossed her perfectly set-up life around whenever he wanted to.
The scars she carried were worse than from her mother’s death. With her mom, she’d been able to come to some sort of closure. She was buried and gone and anything that happened was forever in the past. With her father, though?
He just kept showing back up to prove he wasn’t quite done tearing her down.
“You and your sister, you make a little more sense now.” Despite Tabby’s warning look, Gray kept talking. “You got this whole mom vibe going on.”
When he paused, Tabby sighed as her reluctance to answer crumbled. She never got to complain. Her place in life had always been clear, and she’d never known anyone she could just vent to. The only person she was close to was her sister, and if Becky knew how hard it had been, she’d feel guilty.
Why was Gray that safe place? Why did he give her somewhere that seemed soft, somewhere she could just rest in? Probably because this was only temporary.
“Our mom died when I was twelve and Becky was six. Dad wasn’t great before that, but Mom handled the day-to-day, so it didn’t matter. Once she was gone, he got worse. Sometimes he didn’t come home for weeks.”
“How’d you make ends meet?”
“Too young to work anything legal, but quite a few people knew about our dad. They felt bad and let me work under the table. I bussed tables, washed dishes, even did inventory at night at a few businesses. Anything to keep us in that disgusting little studio apartment Dad had rented. When I became an adult, I rented my own place and Becky lived with me until she turned eighteen.”
She expected pity on his face, and she hated pity. Instead, something else sat there. It took her a while to figure out what it was, a look she wasn’t used to seeing. Pride?
No, that couldn’t be right.
“Had to be hard,” he said after looking away. “At that age, I was running around, screwing up, being a stupid kid.”
“As opposed to being a stupid adult?”
His laugh was soft. “Hey now, we were having such a nice little talk.”
Tabby opened her mouth to poke at him more, but what was the point? If it didn’t annoy him, if he didn’t rise to the occasion, why bother with it?
“Makes sense though, how protective you are, how regimented. You like things all organized because it wasn’t before, right? Gives you a sense of control.”
“What are you, a therapist now?”
“Just trying to figure you out. You’re this rigid perfectionist on the outside but I’ve gotten a glimpse below that. Curious what makes you like you are.”
“And you? What makes you like you are?”
“Just what am I?” His cocky smile said he was expecting some cute little exchange.
“Your tattoos, your entire motorcycle-riding-bad-boy is like some cliché rebel.”
He shrugged. “I saw someone on a motorcycle when I was ten and I was sold. That sense of freedom? Of doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to? Always appealed to me.”
His words sparked more, the meaning beneath them.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’re always with different women. It’s all about freedom, about being afraid of anything tying you down. You keep trading women in so fast because you don’t want any of them to stay long enough to trap you.”
As quickly as she said it, his face shut down. She’d never seen it do that before, like she’d poured salt right into an open wound he hadn’t even realized he’d had.
“Let’s stop the whole examining-one-another thing,” he muttered softly.
Probably for the best. She didn’t need him seeing any more of her scars and seeing his would humanize him. Better to keep thinking of him as the bad-boy caricature of a person instead of anything more. He was dangerous enough as it was.
“Thank you,” she said to break the tense silence. “If you hadn’t been there, today could have gone a lot differently.”
Gray took a deep breath, as though he used it to clear out the remainder of their past conversation. Finally, he nodded and faced her, his expression having lost most of the edge it had had. “Glad I could help. I’ve seen a lot of assholes in my life, and that father of yours deserves a good beat-down.”
“Probably,” Tabby agreed. “But he’s fifty and hasn’t changed yet, so I’m not going to worry about it. I just wish he’d take off and stop looking Becky up. We’ve moved on, done a good job setting up our lives, and he doesn’t need to keep coming back just to shake it all up.”
Gray’s heavy hand came to rest on her thigh, just as it had in the car, and damn it was far too reassuring.
That sense of not being alone, of having backup, which was the absolute last thing she needed. She’d made it all her life without that. Finding out how nice it was now would only hurt.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him to back off, especially because saying it would reveal too much and her snarky barbs hadn’t worked at all.
“I want to pay you back for the help,” she blurted out, looking for some way to turn this into just a business exchange.
He cocked his eyebrow, amusement shining in his light-blue eyes. Worse? Oh, how the statement made her mind work overtime on all the ways she’d love to repay him for his help.
A curl of his lips said he’d heard the same unintended innuendo. Instead of pointing it out, he chuckled. “You don’t owe me a thing.”
“No. I want to be even again. It’s…important.”
“Important, huh?” His smile went from a slight smirk to a full-blown grin that did not bode well for whatever he had planned. “Sure, yeah. In payment, I want you to clear Saturday night.”
“Why?” Did she really sound like that? Breathless and so damned needy?
“Got a get-together to go to at a friend’s.”
“And you want me there why? Do they need something organized?”
“You can try as hard as you want to pretend you’re some frigid ice queen, but you forget, I’ve tasted your kiss. Even if you’re a little frozen, you’re pure fucking magma beneath that.”
Heat flushed her cheeks at the way he stared at her, a way no one had ever looked at her. Sure, she’d had men hit on her from time to time despite the ‘get the hell out of the way’ attitude she projected. They’d never watched her with the lust Gray had, though, as if nothing mattered but touching her, but having her, like a man obsessed with the thought.
She’d never thought of herself as sexy, yet she felt sexy when he looked at her like that. Tabby swallowed hard at the unfamiliar feeling, at the flutters in her stomach, the want she couldn’t shake. “I’m not going to sleep with you as payment,” she whispered.
Gray’s chuckle called her the liar she knew she was. He set her empty cup on the table and leaned in, catching a drop of the tea from her lips with his tongue. “I never said anything about fucking you. That what you were thinking about?”
“I didn’t mean that.” She stumbled over the denial, and she wasn’t sure if it was more that she was insulted or that he was right.
And she was not going to admit to him being right.
They stared like some face-off. Was he waiting to see if she broke first? Waiting to see if she’d give in?
Because she really wanted to.
In fact, she couldn’t come up with a single good reason not to.
Tabby pressed her lips to his, and Gray reacted with absolute confidence, as if he’d known all along she would.
Am I that obvious?
His lips were firm but less frantic than they’d been when he had kissed her mid-fight. It wasn’t that the lust was gone, but rather Tabby and he weren’t trying to one up each other.
In fact, the wild reaction of her body already meant that as long as he kept doing what he was doing, she wouldn’t mind wh
ere he put his hands.
The girl was on fire. Gray couldn’t have imagined a better reaction, a more responsive woman. Funny that when he’d first moved in, when he’d first gotten a look at the little brunette next door in her always slightly crooked glasses he’d laughed and said, ‘Girl’s ass is clenched tight enough to make diamonds.’
Some people were like ice. Wasn’t a thing wrong with that except that those people weren’t his type. At first glance, Tabby looked like that, maybe, to someone who didn’t know better.
Gray knew better, though, and he’d spotted what others had missed. It was the want in her eyes, the part of her that craved something she refused to give in to.
Which was why when she was hot enough to scald him, when those pretty little hands of hers clutched his shirt like he was the only thing keeping her from getting swept away, he basked in just how right he’d been.
Gray grasped her waist to pull her closer, wanting to explore what her shapeless layers hid. Trim waist, hips wide enough to get a good grip on, and an ass that was larger than he’d expected. Hiding that under those baggy shirts, huh?
He chuckled as he used his grip on her ass to tug her into his lap, wanting to feel her against him. She melted into the touch, as though each stroke of his hands and his lips watered long-wilted parts of her.
The way she reacted was addictive. As stupid as it was, it felt like he was teaching her, as though he got to see her discover parts of herself she’d never found before.
Too soon, she broke the kiss, a whine on her lips as though he’d pulled free and not her. Even as she did it, her hands still grasped, closing as if afraid he’d escape her.
“I should get back,” she whispered.
“Becky’s probably asleep. Doubt she’d miss you for a few more hours.” His words felt dishonest. He wanted her to stay for more than a few hours.
Which was new and altogether unwelcome. Gray never let women stay past sunrise. It didn’t matter how late they got started, the moment the first rays of light threatened to break past the tops of the mountains, he escorted them out.
Sex was one thing. Sleeping beside them was another. In his experience, women tended to take that sort of thing like some sign of intimacy, no matter what he said.
But suddenly he didn’t care if Tabby was there past morning. Worse? He wasn’t sure if he cared if they didn’t end up having sex.
It shook him but he didn’t let it show.
Tabby pressed her forehead to his, her breath carrying tinges of the tea he’d made her. He’d always hated tea, but right then he didn’t think he could get enough. “It’s late.”
“The best things happen when it’s late.”
She laughed softly, the first real laugh he’d heard, quiet though it might have been. Still, she pushed herself from his lap and righted her clothing. When she straightened her glasses, he missed her looking undone. The blush on her cheeks was a win, though. He always did love the look of an aroused woman.
“You’ll come Saturday, right?” The innuendo didn’t escape him, and from the widening of her eyes, she’d noted it, too.
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, and he cursed himself for not having taken the chance to nip at the fullness there himself when he’d had the chance. A criminal mistake, really.
Finally, she sighed, shoulders dropping as if she’d lost. “Okay. But I was serious. I’m not sleeping with you.”
He laughed, offering her his most mocking grin. “I’ll be sure to remind you of that when you’re trying to get into my pants.”
And he’d never seen a girl flush so red or run so fast before.
Saturday can’t get here fast enough.
Chapter Four
It took forever for Saturday to arrive. Gray normally had things to do most weekends, but he’d never had this sort of anxiety.
Becky’s car had disappeared from the yard by Monday, and Gray had fought the desire to stop in and see Tabby. Girl has to be lonely, right?
He snorted at the stupid thought. Course she wasn’t, but that didn’t stop Gray from being tempted to go offer up his services to keep her bed warm.
However, Tabby was the sort to second-guess herself, and he didn’t want to give her a shot at backing out of Saturday. No doubt she’d been stewing over it all week, looking for any excuse to call it off.
And he was too damned excited to let her do that, so he’d kept his distance.
Which made it all the better when he stood in front of the front door of her duplex, waiting on her to answer.
Hadn’t they just been here? A door between them while she took her sweet time sorting out her nerves?
Then again, as he thought about her pacing, he doubted he’d ever care about waiting on her. It had proven to be worth it so far.
The door finally opened, and Gray about fell on his ass.
Instead of the mousey girl with her crooked glasses he’d expected to find, a girl a hell of a lot different stood there.
Tabby’s hair was pulled up, with curled strands falling around her face. She had no glasses obscuring her brown eyes, and instead of the baggy tops she normally wore, a tight-fitting black dress showed off the killer figure she’d kept hidden. To top it off, she had a pair of heels strapped to her feet, bringing her up nearer his height.
She looked like a vixen, like the sort of girl he’d normally try to pull if he were at a bar.
She bit her lip, and it drew a smile from him. There’s the girl I know.
“This is new.”
Tabby pulled at the hip of the dress as though she couldn’t quite relax in the snug fabric. “Becky picked it out.”
Gray took a step back to take in the entire look. How had he never realized what nice legs she had? Seemed an unforgivable oversight that he hadn’t given them the attention they so clearly deserved.
He slid his thumb along his bottom lip as he contemplated all the ways he could pay homage to those perfect legs, when Tabby released a sigh.
“I’m changing.”
“Hold up.” Gray caught her arm, his grasp sliding to her hand before she could leave.
“I told Becky I couldn’t pull this off. It’s not my sort of thing.”
Gray tugged until she was up against him, and for once, she didn’t move away, didn’t go stiff against him. He took it as a good sign. “I think you pull it off, though I wouldn’t mind a shot at that later.”
It took her a moment to get the joke, and as soon as she did, surprise raced across her features, and on the tail end of that, annoyance.
“So where exactly are we going?” Tabby asked, as though she could change the subject and make things less tense.
Gray gave her the out and moved back. “My friends are having a little get-together for their five-year anniversary.”
“And you wanted me to go why?”
“I think you might actually have some fun. How could I miss seeing that?”
She pursed her lips and it showed off the red Becky must have painted on. While she looked exactly like the sort of woman he was normally seen with, Gray couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t right.
He actually missed those stupid glasses of hers.
Tabby plucked a purse off the hook by the door and slung it over her shoulder, the black leather of it far too tempting against her light skin and the stunning black of her dress.
She reached into the purse, and he could hear her talking to herself. “Keys. Wallet. Cell phone.” Her little ritual had him grinning. Each time he thought she was almost gone because of this whole new look, she came popping back up.
“You ain’t driving,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“My night. Trust me, your little car would stick out. We’re taking the bike.”
Her mouth dropped open. “There is no way I’m getting on the back of a motorcycle. Do you know how dangerous they are?”
“It’s not that far, and you worry too much.”
“I don’t have a helmet.”
>
“I’ve got an extra.”
“Is that how you get women to come back to your place? Offer them a ride on your motorcycle?”
“Ain’t a motorcycle ride that gets them back to my place.” Gray offered an unrepentant grin before walking to where his bike sat, the two helmets already on top.
Tabby went with what seemed unhappy steps, slow as if she could come up with a way to get out of it. Once she came up next to him, Gray turned with the extra helmet and after a wink, slipped it over her head. He secured the chin strap and made sure it fit well. Because she’d pinned her hair up, the helmet would disrupt it a bit, but not too bad. When she glared, he slid down the shield to block out the negativity and to annoy her a bit.
He took a look at her, the straps of her dress not hiding a whole lot. Once Gray got the bike on the road, the wind would freeze her. He could have sent her to get a jacket or grabbed an extra of his, but none of that was what he wanted.
Instead, he shrugged off his heavy leather jacket and put it on her. No doubt she was pissed, but with the helmet on, she couldn’t do a thing about it. He zipped the jacket up, ignoring how it bagged on her. He had to admit, he liked her in it, with her bare legs sticking out from the bottom, the arms far too long and hanging well past her hands.
It made Tabby look like his, and damn…
She looked good like that.
The ride was terrifying. Tabby’s stomach dropped when Gray first took off down the driveway, then pulled onto the road.
He didn’t drive crazy, and if she hadn’t been terrified, she might have even praised his caution.
However, on the back of the motorcycle, her arms wrapped around his waist, Tabby couldn’t think about anything beyond exactly how many layers of skin would come off if the motorcycle went down.
She was plastered to Gray’s broad back. In fact, despite the kisses they’d indulged in, she didn’t think she’d ever been quite that close to him.