When he knew sense again, he was sprawled over her back on the dresser. They were both sweaty and panting. She still quivered. He was still hard inside her.
“Fuck,” was the first word he was able to form. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
Beneath him, Phoebe’s body shook harder. At first, he worried that she was crying, until he saw her face. She was laughing.
“I’m okay. That was fucking perfect. It was damn near medicinal.”
He laughed. “Good. Felt pretty good over here, too.”
Easing out of her carefully, Duncan leaned back and helped her turn around. He brushed damp tendrils of golden hair from her face. “Can I stay tonight?”
She nodded and set her fingertips on his lips. “I want you to.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Can we talk now?” Duncan asked.
Phoebe opened her eyes and sighed.
They were in bed together in the dark. She was nestled against him, her head resting on his chest, feeling the warm, weighty comfort of his arm around her, and she’d thought they were heading toward sleep. Just before, with his fingers tracing lazily up and down her arm, she’d felt that beautiful moment right before going under, when her body truly relaxed.
“If it’s about the ranch, no.”
“Baby, come on. Let me in. I want to help.”
She liked that he’d given up all the dumb nickname attempts and had started calling her baby. That one really worked for her; its very ordinariness made it special in her mind. Not something that had to be invented, not something that had to be planned, just something that came out on a wave of sincere feeling.
However, she did not like that he’d just used it as a lever, to push her toward something he knew she didn’t want.
“I told you. It’s too big, too much. It’ll fuck with us, and we haven’t even started building whatever this is.”
“Yeah, we have,” he said.
She pushed out of his embrace and sat up, turning to face him. The only light in the room was the faint glow through the closed curtains, from the moonlight on a snowy landscape. She didn’t move to switch on a lamp; it felt better to have this conversation in shadow.
“Okay. We’ve started building something. But it’s early, we’re still pouring the foundation, and I don’t want that foundation to be me needing help and you helping. Especially not something like buying part of my fucking ranch. It doesn’t matter if you think I owe you. I will feel like I do. I don’t want that.”
“You’d rather lose the animals?”
“Fuck you.”
He sat up and propped his back against the headboard. “Why? Because I said the truth? That’s what this is coming down to, right—you will lose your license without help.”
“We’ve got the GoFundMe up, and it’s doing pretty well. If it funds, that will cover what we need.”
“Good. I hope it works—and I don’t even know if the Bulls can help. I just want to ask the question, so you know if there’s a backup plan there.”
There was something else, a wrongness to bringing in the Bulls, but, though it had scraped at her brain all afternoon and evening, Phoebe hadn’t been able to understand why the idea felt wrong.
Now, more relaxed than she had been in days, even in the midst of a disagreement that was growing into an argument, she understood. Saying it would surely inflame the situation, but she had to say it.
“You can’t be a backup plan. I can’t let the Bulls own the ranch. Not even part of it.”
“Why?” In the dim, she knew Duncan was frowning; she could hear it.
“I don’t need details to know the Bulls do a lot of illegal shit. I know law types know it, too. So how long before somebody gets a warrant to search the ranch because they know it’s connected to the club? When it gets out that the ranch got, like, raided, what do you think will happen with my donors? Or my eligibility for grants? Shit, Duncan. Look at the trouble I’m in because I was a little rude to an entitled trophy wife. I can’t even guess how bad it could be to be owned by an outlaw MC.”
There was more—she wondered whether the club itself would feel she owed them and want to pull her in, to ask her to hide something for them, or whatever, and make her and the ranch complicit in their outlaw dealings, but she decided not to say that part. Duncan was obviously offended by what she’d already said. He hadn’t spoken yet, but his stillness felt active, as if anger vibrated inside his skin.
When his silent non-response continued, Phoebe had to fill it. “I’m sorry to say it like that. I already told you that, personally, I don’t care. Any single billionaire has done more evil to the world than all the outlaw bikers in the whole world combined. I saw a doc on Netflix about a wacked-out rich family in like South Carolina, or North Carolina, whichever, that had the whole state’s legal system helping them cover up murders and manslaughters and all kinds of bullshit for generations, and you know they’re not the only ones. The world is fucked, and everything is rigged to benefit the worst possible people, so I don’t give a fuck that you’re an outlaw. It’s not like law does any kind of real good in the world. But the people providing the money to keep this ranch going, keep the animals fed and cared for, they’d give a fuck, I think.”
Still Duncan said nothing.
“Say something, please. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You didn’t,” he finally said, and reached out to set his hand on her knee. “And you’re right. I see what you mean. But I want to help.”
“You are. This helps. Having you at my back, making me feel good in the middle of feeling like shit, making me forget for a while, it all helps. Just knowing you’re here helps. Vin and Margot have my back, too, but this is happening to them, too. You, though—you feel like my private, personal thing. It helps.”
“Okay.” She heard the smile in his voice.
What an interesting man Duncan was. He was an outlaw biker, pretty much on par with if not outranking military men for their reputation for hypermasculinity, but he’d taken her refusal of his help and her critique of his lifestyle—no, of his identity, his world—calmly, and had even backed down. It spoke to a confidence so deep-seated it didn’t need to be loud or assertive.
There was a line from a book she’d read once, so far back she wasn’t sure which book, but the line had stuck with her. Something like ‘real power needn’t announce itself.’ Duncan was showing her what that looked like.
And it was incredibly hot. Also, it was comforting. He felt like a safe haven.
She laid her hand over his on her leg. “Thank you, Duncan. Just being here, you’ve made this all feel ... survivable.”
He shifted their hands and enfolded hers. “Happy to help,” he said, that grin chiming through each word. Then he pulled her to him and whispered, “How’d you feel about another round of forgetting your worries?”
Laughing, she settled back on the pillows as he moved on top of her. Now she could see his smile. It made the bandage on his cheek bunch, and she set her fingers lightly on it.
“I wondered if you’d noticed,” he said, still smiling.