“I’ll be there.” I paused. “If I’m not busy with her, that is.”
When I let him go, Ford made his way back over to the car, leaving me there staring at him in bemusement.
He said something that made her laugh, then she turned and looked at me, her face turning into a pinched line.
“Uh oh,” I muttered to myself.
After a few more words, Ford tapped her roof, pointed at me, then headed to his cruiser.
I got back on my bike and followed her the rest of the way home.
She went two and three under the speed limit the entire way.
And when she finally arrived at Murphy’s place, dropped his car off, did something with the keys near the front door, and made her way to me, I could tell she was pissed.
“I can’t believe you’d do that,” she grumbled.
My brows rose as I pulled my helmet off and handed it to her.
She took it, yanked it down onto her head without an argument, then glared at me as if I’d been the one to do something wrong.
“Can’t believe I’d do what?” I asked. “I had nothing to do with him pulling you over. I swear.”
She pinched me. “That’s not what.”
It didn’t take a genius to see where this was going.
When I started the bike, she angrily wrapped her arms around my stomach and held on for the two minutes it took us to get home.
When I stopped the bike in front of my house, not intending on taking her home, she all but jumped off.
She didn’t try to march her ass home, though, which was the only thing that saved her from getting bent over my bike and having her ass spanked.
“I wasn’t purposefully trying to avoid them,” I told her. “I just didn’t have my head on straight. I may have only spent a very short time in prison, but I swear to God. My head was really fucked-up for a while. Not to mention Juniper left me really fucked-up, too.”
She whirled, marching her way back toward me.
“Are you still hung up on her?” she asked again.
And, like last time, I answered her. But I also made sure to pull her into my arms as I did. “I haven’t been hung up on her since the day I saw you.”
She licked her lips, her eyes going soft for a few moments as she digested the news.
Then she leaned in, pressing her unbound breasts to my chest, and making me momentarily forget where we were.
“He said that you weren’t coming to see him, and he wanted me to bring you,” she murmured, smoothing her hand up my bare chest, pushing it underneath the leather cut and squeezing onto the muscle of my shoulder.
“Go to my parents’ house with me this weekend,” I urged. “You can make sure I do.”
“As you wish.”
A fissure opened up inside of my heart, allowing even more of her through. “You want to know what else I wish?”
She leaned forward even more, this time giving me a lot of her weight. “What?”
“I wish that you’d climb into my arms.” I grinned wickedly.
She didn’t even miss a beat. One second she had her arms around me, her feet flat on the ground, the next she was climbing up into my lap.
Then her forehead was knocking against mine as she leaned in and pressed one hell of a kiss to my lips.
“Helmet,” I said when she pulled back.
She yanked it off of her head and hung it on the handlebars.
Just as I was about to kiss her again, this time sans helmet, an angry voice sounded from the yard.
I’d heard them come up, they made enough noise to wake a herd of elephants, but I hadn’t expected Melody to be traipsing in the yard this late. Or for her to show her face.
“This is a family neighborhood!” Melody all but yelled. “Take that inside behind closed doors. There’s a child in the house right across the street from you.”
She had a fuckin’ point.
I didn’t need to be in the front yard doin’ this.
But I was never really good about being told the word ‘no’ when I really wanted something bad enough.
I cupped Crockett’s ass when she stiffened, her first instinct was to get away.
“Don’t,” I said. “We’re not doing anything bad. We’re in the shadows. There’s no light around us. And I’m on my property. Not to mention the only house that can see us, if they’re fuckin’ lookin’ since there are no windows on their particular side of the house, is her. She had to have been looking for us to know that we were here.”
Crockett sighed, relaxing almost before I’d even finished the words. “You’re right.”
“I will call the cops,” she promised.
I moved until I could see over Crockett’s shoulder. “Call ‘em. By the time they finally get here, we’ll be done, and already be back inside. I hope that you enjoy the show.”
I wasn’t really going to fuck her here.
At least, I hadn’t planned on it.
But Crockett had other ideas when she started reaching for my belt.
And who the hell was I to tell her no when it was what I wanted just as much as she did?
Just sayin’, but I lost all need for privacy when I was in prison.
I didn’t need it anymore to function.
In fact, there were times that I could function more without privacy than I could with.
I’d been working well under pressure since I’d gone to medical school.
It’d just been a different kind of pressure when I was in prison.
A soft hand cupped my face, and I blinked, surprised that my mind had wandered off so far into the past.
“You’re not paying attention,” the woman in my arms teased.
I licked my lips, then grunted. “We can’t have that, can we?”
“Seriously!” Melody screamed. “I can’t believe that y’all are doing this. It’s gross and disgusting and I don’t want to see it!”
“Then go the fuck inside, Melody!” the woman in my arms roared.
“I didn’t raise you to use that kind of language!” Melody continued, digging herself deeper.
I was stiffening, no longer amused by the way she was standing there carrying on.
Which was why, when I stood up seconds later with Crockett in my arms, intending to go inside just so I could get the fuck away from her, I snapped.
Why did I snap?
Because if she had to say the one thing that would’ve made me lose my shit, it was what she said next.
“You’re just a no-good piece of trash is what you are,” Melody said. “I knew from the beginning that you were going to ruin this family. That was why I had your dad cast you aside. That was why, when your mother died, I fought so hard to get into his life because I knew that, if left to your own devices, you’d ruin this family. And God, you were so whiny! Always begging for every little scrap that we would give you. My God, you were an embarrassment from the very beginning. The day you moved out was the best day of my life.”
Crockett’s forehead came down onto my shoulder, and I knew without seeing her face that she was crying.
What the fuck was it about the woman that could dig so deep into Crockett’s heart and shatter it?
God, I wanted to pull my leg back and kick her in the cunt.
She was such a shithead.
“Melody,” I said carefully. “If you do not get the fuck away from me right now, I am going to go over to your house, pull your teenage daughter out of it, and burn it with you inside of it.”