Quiet Man

by Kristen Ashley

  I wondered if he knew this from experience.

  I didn’t ask then, and not only because I didn’t get the chance.

  “Sounds simple,” Boone entered the discussion. “‘Just be there for him.’ But as you can see, it isn’t. It’s a challenge. But you got a leg up, Mac. Most women look at a man like Mo and it’s a turn off, what they perceive as a weakness. They don’t wanna know. They want him to sort himself out so he can be strong to take care of their shit. So you’re already doing what you need to be doing. It just doesn’t feel like it.”

  I glared at Boone while he spoke, and when he was done talking, declared, “I totally should have torn Tammy’s hair out when I had the chance. Stupid Mo. He made me stand down. If I see that bitch again, it’s gonna make my fights with my sister seem like a cakewalk. And both Jet and I have grips of steel.”

  “We’ll arrange a takedown,” Mag offered, now not looking troubled, only looking amused. “One condition. We all get to be there to watch.”

  “Grip of steel,” Boone muttered. “Mo is one serious lucky fuck.”

  That made me feel better.

  Slightly.

  But it made me feel better.

  I shot Boone a smile and said to them all, “Don’t clean the kitchen before you go. I’ll need something to do waiting for Mo to get back.”

  “I went to the store yesterday. Does this mean, while you’re waiting, you’re gonna adjust all the smartwater and Nakeds in the fridge so they’re facing forward like you did on Tuesday?” Mag inquired.

  “Of course,” I answered.

  “Can I clone you?” Mag asked.

  “No,” I answered through a smile.

  “Bummer,” he muttered through his own smile.

  I headed to the stove to grab the greasy skillet, ordering, “Eat. Go take on the mountain. But leave some of it for other nature lovers.”

  They did the first part.

  But before they took off to do the last, I got warm hugs and a few kisses on the top of my head (this relaying precisely how much it meant to them I gave a shit about Mo, which in turn relayed to me precisely how much they loved Mo), and Auggie, the last one out the door, called to me, “Everything’s gonna go good tonight, Lots. But we’ll see you later for the pep talk.”

  Later for the pep talk?

  “Be cool,” he bid and then the door closed on him.

  Again, pep talk?

  They were gone, so I couldn’t ask, and they thought I was awesome, and they might not think that if I ran to the door, opened it and shrieked, “What do you mean, pep talk? Do I need a pep talk?”

  So I didn’t do that.

  I cleaned the kitchen.

  And I tidied the fridge.

  All while I waited for Mo.

  * * * *

  “Be better if you were in here with me,” Mo groused.

  He might be right.

  But from where I was sitting on the bathroom counter watching him in the shower, he was so very wrong.

  “I already took a shower,” I reminded him.

  “Another reason we’re gonna have words,” he muttered irritably.

  “Dude, you totally cheated me by falling for me and then catching the bad guy before I had the chance to sit in the bathroom while you showered. Throw a girl a bone,” I replied.

  His silver eyes turned to me while water sluiced his big body, making it all wet and slippery.

  “I would, if you got your ass in the fuckin’ shower with me.”

  I grinned at him.

  He scowled at me and turned back to face the water.

  I settled in to enjoy the show.

  He’d squirted bodywash in his hands and was rubbing it on himself when I said, “You know, I have no clue if I would have fallen for you before you went into the Army.”

  Slowly, his arms crossed on his wide chest, his hands soaping his pits, he stopped moving except he turned his head to look at me.

  I kept talking.

  “Though my guess, no. Because back then, you wouldn’t be Mo. Not my Mo. The Mo I need you to be. I’m sure you were still awesome. But not as awesome as you are now. And it’s not I’ll take the bad with the good when it comes to dealing with shit, like your dreams. It’s that it’s all good. It’s all you. It’s who you are and what you did and how you come to me. And I’ll take it all, Mo. Because I want it all. Who you are and what you did and how you come to me is precisely what I need you to be.”

  Mo said nothing and remained unmoving.

  “Just so you know, the boys were here having breakfast after you took off. I talked to them. About your dreams.”

  This did not make him appear to be pissed or even annoyed.

  He just kept staring at me.

  “I don’t want to talk about you, have you find out and have you thinking it was done behind your back,” I explained. “They told me some stuff, but not anything I wouldn’t have done anyway. So we’ll just get this out there right now, so it’s there and over. If you want to talk about your dreams, I’ll listen. If you don’t want to talk about your dreams, I won’t push. If you need to get up and go the gym, I don’t care. If you need to do anything, save injecting heroin, to deal, I’m at your back, on your side or whatever you need. But if shit gets extreme and you aren’t talking to me about it, I’m going to the boys. There it is. You cool with that?”

  Mo didn’t speak or move.

  “You cool with that, honey?” I pushed.

  He finally spoke.

  “Get in the shower, Lottie.”

  “I already took one, baby,” I whispered.

  “Get. In the shower. Lottie,” he said a lot lower, a lot slower and in a way one part of me didn’t have to get in the shower to get wet.

  I hopped off the counter and took off the shorts, panties, tank and bra I put on after I showered.

  Then I got in the shower with him.

  Waiting for Mo, I’d had time to shower.

  I had not had time to do my hair.

  I didn’t think about that.

  I didn’t because Mo’s hands were under my arms, I was lifted up and pulled around, my back slammed against the tile, and Mo was pressing into me.

  “Legs around my back,” he ordered.

  We’d had the talk. Absolutely. Since Tammy had cheated on him, he’d gotten tested. He was clean and didn’t go in ungloved with the two chicks he’d had since her.

  Before him, I’d had a long dry spell and was on birth control.

  So after I wrapped my legs around his back, Mo wrapping a fist around his big dick, guiding it to me and thrusting right in was just about him and me.

  Him and me.

  “Love me?” I whispered as I held on with all I had and did that everywhere.

  His mouth took mine in a hot, wet, long kiss.

  After he broke it, he grunted, “Yeah.”

  That was when I gave it to him.

  “Love you too, baby.”

  “No shit?”

  Uh.

  Wait.

  What?

  No shit?

  What did he mean, no shit?

  “Is that what you say when I first tell you I love you?” I demanded to know, though it came out “Is THAT what you SAY when I FIRST tell you I LOVE YOU?” seeing as I took his powerful thrusts while demanding it so his cock forced every few words to be louder.

  “Words don’t mean dick, Lottie. You’ve been showin’ me you love me since you threw down with Tammy. Now shut up, babe, and get fucked.”

  I glared at him.

  His hips dipped and rolled.

  I bit my lip and stopped glaring at him.

  Mo grinned at me.

  He was still doing it when he kissed me.

  And he fucked me.

  We both came.

  After, I helped him finish washing up.

  I’d watch him shower to fruition some other time.

  Or I wouldn’t.

  It didn’t matter.

  I could have what I wanted with
Mo anytime I wanted it.

  I knew that to my soul.

  So either way was good with me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dream Girl

  Lottie

  I raced down my steps as best I could wearing only one shoe, and turned into the living room.

  My ears had not deceived me in what they heard while I got dressed upstairs.

  The boys had arrived.

  Hot guy action was everywhere.

  Axl stretched on my couch.

  Auggie lounged crossways across my armchair.

  Boone sitting on my counter in the kitchen.

  Mag with his head in my fridge.

  And Mo standing in the kitchen, wearing a dove gray shirt with a sheen that made it almost silver, dark gray trousers, head tipped back, corded throat on display through his open collar, downing water from a black Hydro Flask.

  I did not have it in me to react to all this goodness in my living room and kitchen, even Mo looking extra double hot wearing nice clothes and downing water in a way I got that view of his throat.

  We were leaving in five minutes for his mom’s and I was in a state.

  “Babe, what the fuck? You don’t have beer?” Mag stated after pulling his head out of the fridge.

  “I only drink beer on special occasions or at your place,” I replied.

  He stared at me saying, “That’s impossible.”

  “Crib is tight, Lots,” Auggie told me as I rushed by him (or limped by him on one spike heel, one bare foot, clutching my other shoe to my chest as well as the bag I was switching out to).

  “Thanks,” I muttered to Auggie.

  Mo had come out from behind the Hydro and was staring at me in a way that, if we weren’t imminently going to dinner at his mom’s, and his buds weren’t hanging around being hot, I would be on my back on the kitchen floor getting fucked.

  Good to know he liked the dress.

  But I couldn’t even let that penetrate.

  “How can you not drink beer?” Mag demanded to know.

  “She’s fit, asshole,” Axl called. “That’s how. Not everyone has your metabolism and a cast-iron liver.”

  “Mac, babe, seriously, that calendar on your fridge,” Boone said to me as I dumped all that was in my hands on the counter by his hip.

  I looked up at him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Three-month oil changes?” He shook his head. “Check your manual. Unless you drive a Chrysler Lebaron circa nineteen eighty-two, it’s either five thousand or seven thousand. Sometimes even ten. That three-month or three-thousand-mile gig is totally overkill.”

  “I just knew that was a scam,” I snapped.

  He grinned at me. “Good you now got men in your life who’ll look out for you.”

  I already had men in my life who looked out for me.

  But none of them told me about the oil-change scam.

  I would have words with Eddie.

  Then Tex.

  Later.

  At that moment, I needed to freak out.

  “Can I ask when my woman became all of your woman?” Mo requested to know from behind me, and he didn’t sound happy.

  “Until we get our own,” Mag answered breezily. “You know sister wives? We’re like brother husbands.”

  “No you aren’t.”

  There was my man’s Brook No Argument Tone.

  “Without the benefits, of course,” Mag added.

  “Lottie, babe, step up the matchmaking shit,” Mo ordered, leaning hips against the counter beside me as I reached to my purse so I could switch out what I needed to my clutch.

  But I felt it, that “it” was strong, and I had to stop what I was doing to look around.

  I turned my head side to side to see everyone’s attention on me.

  Even Axl had pushed up on my couch so he could look around the back of it my way.

  “Matchmaking shit?” Boone asked.

  “Lottie’s gonna set you boys up,” Mo told them.

  I was?

  “Let them be strippers. Please, God, if you love me even a little bit, let them be strippers,” Mag prayed, head tipped back, eyes to my ceiling and everything.

  “Actually, Mag, we have a girl working her way through college at the club. She wants to be an engineer. And she’d be so your thing,” I told him.

  His eyes came to me. “An engineer?”

  “Software.”

  Mag started to look like he might be quietly choking.

  He clearly was when his next words sounded strangled. “A computer nerd?”

  “Yep,” I said and turned back to my purse, trying not to smile.

  Though I would never, in a million years, introduce Evan to him. He was a dawg. He was hot and he was funny and he loved Mo and he was sweet to me.

  But he was a dawg.

  And Evie was very pretty, in an understated way, when she didn’t have teased-out hair and wasn’t (somewhat awkwardly, she never got the hang of it, but she was so pretty, it didn’t matter) slithering on a stage with bills poking out of her g-string.

  I already felt bad enough—for Mag and the women he involved—that Mag was working out his heartbreak from Nikki by tapping as much ass as he could to block out the pain.

  Mo had told me she was the reason he needed a place to live. Nikki and Mag broke up three weeks before Tammy and Mo broke up. He’d been sleeping on Axl’s couch, until Mo’s breakup saved him from chronic back pain.

  I wasn’t going to subject Evan to his This All Could Be Yours If Some Other Woman Hadn’t Fucked Me Up Routine.

  Until…

  “No offense to your friend, but I’ll pass,” Mag told me.

  That bought him my attention again.

  My attention with squinty eyes.

  “You got a problem with smart girls?” I asked sharply.

  “Well…” he shrugged, “yeah.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “Why?” I rapped out.

  “Babe, if they’re smart, they can figure you out. Not everyone is level-headed, even keeled and adjusted like Mo,” Mag returned. “I don’t need some smart girl figuring out my shit. I can’t even figure out my shit. What I know is, my shit is such shit, I don’t want it figured out.”

  “Has it occurred to you that if you had a smart girl around, she might help you with that?” I asked.

  “As he said, this would require him wanting his shit sorted, and Mag prefers to be a hot mess,” Axl declared. “And not because he doesn’t want to figure out his shit. Because him not doing that is a woman magnet.”

  “The broken one they think they can fix,” Auggie added.

  “Better that than the lost puppy,” Mag fired at Auggie.

  “That’s me,” he said through a grin. “All ready to go to a good home. Happy just to be fed and watered. But I’ll perform for treats.”

  I looked to Mo. “How do you put up with this shit?”

  “It’s a lot easier to tune out when I got a beer in my hand and some game is on TV,” he replied.

  I’d bet.

  “What are you all doing here anyway?” I asked the boys.

  “Moral support,” Axl said.

  “Preparing you for the Morrison women onslaught,” Boone said at the same time.

  Onslaught?

  There was going to be an onslaught?

  Every fiber of my body grew tight.

  “Jesus Christ, when are you motherfuckers gonna stop being scared of my sisters?” Mo demanded to know.

  Scared?

  These badass commandos were scared of Mo’s sisters?

  “When they stop bein’ scary,” Mag pointed out.

  “You get, Mag, that they’re only scary because they’ve figured out your shit,” Mo returned.

  “Yeah. There you go. Fuckin’ terrifying,” Mag replied.

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” I chanted.

  Here I was again.

  Nervous!

  I’d met boyfriends’ families. And o
kay, if I cared about them, I got nervous.

  But not like this.

  No other way to say it.

  I was a wreck.

  “I’m gonna kill every motherfucking one of you,” Mo threatened, sounding like he’d do it.

  After he did, I felt his fingers curl around my chin and he used them to pull my head around and tip it back.

  I blinked up at him.

  “Look at me, sweetheart,” he urged gently.

  “I am,” I choked out nervously.

  “Okay, focus on me,” he amended.

  I tried to do that.

  When I somewhat succeeded, I felt the boys had surrounded me.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” Mo declared.

  “What if they don’t like me?” I asked. “I can’t have them not liking me, Mo. They’re part of you. They’re blood. They’re sisters. I have a sister!” My voice was rising with the increased beating of my heart which was keeping pace with the increased level of my panic. “I know how important sisters are! If they don’t like me, I’m gone. I can’t have that. Ohmigod!” That last was nearly yelled. “You beat up your dad for one of them. If they don’t like me, I’m not even a memory.”

  I lost his attention as his eyes slid up and did a half circle and his lips growled, “Yup. Gonna kill every motherfucking one of you.”

  “Babe,” I heard Boone call.

  I pulled my chin from Mo’s hold only to have my body tucked into Mo’s hold a different way (this being with his arm) as I turned my head to look up at Boone.

  “You may or may not believe this. Regardless, it’s true,” Boone started. “To get Mo, the tougher wall you had to climb was us.”

  He jerked his chin to the others and I shifted in Mo’s clinch so I had my back to his front and I could take them all in.

  “You might not have noticed, you bein’ you, together like you are, sure of yourself, but I threw down with you practically the minute I laid eyes on you,” Mag reminded me.

  He did that. It was semi-subtle, in the sense it was not like getting hit by a freight train, more like getting hit by a bus.

  But he did it.

  “I know,” I told him.

  “You won me over in about a minute,” Mag told me something I knew at the time, and was happy about at the time, but being reminded of it in this time made me feel a whole lot better.