“I can’t,” I hiss, my legs already shaking from the effort of standing and taking him into me.
“You will,” he demands, working at me when I thought we were finished. But the jet stream in his response to my orgasm and the frantic friction against me once more rips a second geyser from me before I can catch up to what’s happening with my body.
“Rick!” I scream falling into the abyss, drowning in this man’s touch. I collapse, wedged between the cool camper and the heat of his body.
Then I hear his laugh.
As my breathing struggles to regain normalcy, his chuckling ripples up my back pressed against his chest.
“What’s so funny?”
“Never thought I’d be okay with a woman hollering out another man’s name when I’m buried inside her.”
“What?”
“It’s James.”
“What’s James?” I’m having trouble keeping up with this conversation. It’s also killing the post-orgasmic euphoria.
“My name. It’s not Rick.”
As he’d been calling me Peach, even though I told him my name was Evie, I’d taken to calling him Ranger Rick, and completely spaced on the fact I didn’t even know his name.
Oh my God, you are such a hussy, Evelyn Sue Fitzpatrick.
“James,” I whisper.
“My name on your lips is the only name from now on,” he says against my neck. He’s still inside me, still pressing me to the fiberglass of my rig.
“Does that line work on all the women?” I tease, reality slowly creeping in. I’ve just had sex with a virtual stranger in the middle of the dark woods, miles from town. This has local news headline, ax-murder scenario, written all over it.
“Only works on one woman, Evie. Only one.”
1
A Reintroduction
[James]
“Why the scowl, honey?”
My vision glazes over at the question, and I’m numb to the woman on my lap. I’ve had a few too many tonight. Fall is always a difficult time of year for me. September specifically is the worst. This day the most awful of all. I’m in my home away from home—Ridged Edge—a biker bar just outside my hometown of Blue Ridge, Georgia, because I don’t trust myself to be anyplace else. It’s a place where—despite everyone knowing my name—I can forget who I am.
James Harrington.
That’s my name, my birthright, and my curse. I didn’t always hate being a Harrington. At one time, I took it as a privilege. I used it to my advantage. But a name doesn’t stop you from losing everything.
The biker babe on my thigh cups my chin and forces me to look at her. I’m not about to tell her my woes. Few people know the truth, and that’s the way I like it.
Trixie? Trudy? Tabby? I can’t remember her name, but I squeeze her hip. She’s wearing the shortest of short skirts in black leather and a white top cut so low her red bra hangs out. Her thick ass presses into my thigh. She’s unfamiliar in so many ways. She isn’t the woman I thought would be sitting on my legs at my age. By forty-eight, I believed my life would be many things, but none of them hold true. What a fucker I was back in my twenties. My thoughts want to wander to the past, but I reel them back in. There’s no point in rehashing history. The past is the past, as the cliché goes.
“Thinking about how’d I get so lucky,” I sarcastically slur of her being on my lap. She’s a brunette with brown eyes, and it’s all wrong. Maybe I can get lost in her, but I know I won’t. I don’t want to spend the night with her. Still, I don’t push her off me yet. I’m not happy being with other women, but I am a man, and I have needs. I try to give what I take. The tongue works wonders. Fingers too. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t belong to anyone else but one woman.
And she’s gone, fucker.
It’s all my fault.
“We should get out of here,” the babe whispers in my ear. Her voice is off. Smoky and rough, she sounds as tough as she probably is. It’s a hard life being a bitch to a bunch of bikers. Rebels Edge—we aren’t the worst out there. The club is no longer one-percenters. That history happened before me joining up with the group. The original club whittled down to more of a group of rogue bikers and lost souls who found one another. We ride. We drink. We fornicate.
Such is my life now. The life I didn’t think I’d ever be living.
“Not yet, honey,” I tell her as she outlines the shell of my ear with her tongue. Hosed down by the saliva, she laps at me like the kisses my pooch Silver gives me. A lick from my Siberian Husky might actually feel better.
“Ranger.” The call of my biker name forces me to look up. “I think this one’s for you.”
Justice is the president of our non-official club, and he’s also become a true friend. His silver-topped head tips toward the front of the bar, and I squint. The brightness of blond hair from yards away beckons like a beacon across a lake, but I can’t make out the rest of her. She hesitantly stands before the front door, as though she isn’t certain she should be here. Perhaps she’s wondering how she got here.
Join the club, sister.
Then again, don’t. Whoever she is, from this distance, I can tell she doesn’t have a stitch of biker babe in her. Something just doesn’t feel right about her and tells me I’m correct in my assessment.
“Nope. Not my type,” I say to my friend, turning my gaze back to him and then offering a kiss to the jaw of the woman on my lap. Justice snorts and shakes his head slowly side to side. His arms cross over his solid body. He’s been acting all kinds of weird over the past few months. I’d tease him it’s old age, but I know the real source of his content. He’s getting his dick dipped on the regular to one woman, in particular, and it’s mellowing him. He’s in love.
I shiver with the thought. I’d been there once—only once—then I lost it all.
Maybe the chick by the door is lost. It happens on occasion. Someone’s driving toward Blue Ridge, up here in the Smoky Mountains of Georgia, and gets turned around because of a lack of GPS. She hasn’t quite made it to town and doesn’t realize she’s only fifteen minutes outside of it.
Keep going, honey, I want to holler. You’ll get wherever you’re going soon enough.
Blue Ridge is my hometown. Born and bred here, I knew I’d spend my entire life near this place. After what happened, I’ll never leave. Never.
“Wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Justice interjects, responding to my statement about type and pulling me back to the present with a deep chuckle. The lost woman finally walks to the edge of the bar and pauses at the structure. It spans the length of one wall. The rest of the room has tables scattered here and there. I’m sitting near the pool tables toward the back of the place. I’d just won a game, and somehow, the woman on my lap is my prize.
I’m not getting laid, but I’ll be getting long overdue head.
“What do you know?” I snap at my leader although it comes out more a slur. I’m feeling good, really relaxed. I’d like to think the ease will allow me to stick my dick in someone random, but I know it won’t. This bird on my lap could sing pretty, smell sweet, and tease me in all the right ways, and I still won’t be going where I can’t bring myself to go.