“We’d have binge nights. Buy a bunch of junk food. Watch entire movie series. Star Wars, Empire, Return. Godfather one, two and three. Kill Bill. Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter was a whole weekend gluttony sort of thing.”
Rush remained silent.
“She liked Whoppers and Doritos. I’m a Milk Duds and Fritos Honey Barbeque girl.”
Rush started playing with the ends of my hair.
“I sprained my ankle once, the day before one of her charity runs. She showed that morning with a wheelchair. To this day, I have no idea where she got it. But that was Diane. She came up with the wildest ideas and had it in her to see them through. She pushed me in that chair through the whole race. She came in last. Everyone thought there was something wrong with me and we got this huge ovation when we came over the finish line. We didn’t know how to tell hundreds of people I’d just sprained my ankle, so we went with it. Did it up big. Diane took bows. I blew kisses. We made a big show. Amy stood on the sidelines laughing herself sick. It might not have been nice, but it was funny, and I don’t think I ever laughed that hard or that long in my life.”
Rush kissed the top of my head.
I closed my eyes.
“I miss her,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“And what sucks more is, I started missing her way before she died.”
Rush quit playing with my hair and just held me close.
“Yeah,” he repeated.
I pushed my face in his throat and thought of Whoppers, Fritos, Han Solo, Uma Thurman, Legolas and how good it felt when your sides hurt because you were laughing so hard.
Then in Rush’s arms, after nine months of holding on way too tight, I let the bad of Diane go.
But I held on to the good.
“She sold you?”
My voice was rising.
“Babe, I told you she wasn’t a great mom.”
Not a great mom?
“She sold you.”
“Her man had some money troubles.”
“I don’t care.”
“These troubles involved the Russian mob.”
Holy shit.
The Allen Circles of Hell.
Yikes.
But even so . . .
“I don’t care.”
“It was good, baby,” he murmured. “We wanted the break from her. Tab needed it. Dad paid for it. He didn’t mind.”
“But . . . your mother sold custody of her children to their father.”
“I don’t remember how it went,” he muttered. “But I think Dad ended up not havin’ to pay seein’ as Mom’s old man got dead . . . or something.”
Apparently, there were so many of them, he couldn’t even fully remember one of his Circles of Hell.
“Oh my God.”
“Before that went down, Tyra beat the snot out of her in the forecourt.”
I stared down at him and caught his grin in the moonlight when I did.
“Wearing her heels and one of her tight skirts,” he added.
A mental image immediately formed, and I didn’t even know what his mother looked like.
Still, the image was priceless.
“No shit?” I breathed.
“I wasn’t there, but think the story goes that it took two, three brothers to pull her off.”
I smiled. “Go, Tyra.”
He fell silent.
It didn’t feel good.
My smile died.
“Rush?” I called, even though I was mostly laying on him, my hips to the side, my chest to his.
“I hope she calls me.”
I rubbed his stubbled jaw with the backs of my fingers. “I hope she does too.”
“You know, it’s been a wild ride, especially the last decade, but before that too. Big ups. Serious downs. Tyra getting stuck not counting, considering that’s in a league all its own, the worst for me was givin’ up on my mom ever bein’ a real mom.”
I hated that for him.
Really hated it.
If there was ever a son who deserved a fantastic mother, it was Rush.
Well, and Diesel.
But also totally Rush.
“Yeah,” I whispered, ducking in to touch my lips to his throat.
He kept my head there by turning it and tucking it under his chin, my cheek to his collarbone.
“I was seventeen when I met Ty-Ty. Wish she’d have come earlier,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I whispered again, shoving my arm under him to hold him to me.
“At least we got her.”
“She loves you as if you were her own, you know,” I told him.
He said nothing for a second.
Then he said, “Yeah.”
I lifted my head to look down at him. “You’re a good son, honey, with all that, still trying to look out for your mom.”
He slid his knuckles across my cheekbone, watching them go.
Then his eyes came to mine and he repeated without much believability, “Yeah.”
“You can only do what you can do. You reached out. Now it’s her choice.”
“Swallow my own medicine?” he asked.
“Sorry,” I said softly.
“But you’re right.”
I didn’t reply.
“Still, call her again, she doesn’t get in touch, go up to Boulder and haul her ass down here kicking and screaming if I have to.”
And he’d totally do that. I knew it.
“A good son,” I told him. “Even if being that requires kidnapping.”
He smiled up at me and it appeared genuine.
And he again said, “Yeah.”
Rush held my hair back in both hands, and even if he only had moonlight, I suspected he was watching my mouth take his cock as he fucked my face.
He was standing at the side of the bed.
I was on all fours on it.
He pulled out, growled, “Pussy,” and slid his hands out of my hair, along my jaw before they fell away.
I switched positions, knees at the edge of the bed, hands in it.
While I was doing this, I heard foil tear.
A couple seconds later, he was inside.
God, I loved having his big dick inside.
My head went back.
He reached out and caught my hair in a gentle grip.
Totally never cutting my hair.
Ever.
He fucked me and he kept fucking me, and then more, and I took it and I loved it until he jerked back on my hair, curled over me, went at my clit and I came for him.
And I loved that more.
He let my hair go, pressed between my shoulders until I went down off my hands and he kept at me until he came for me.
I loved that too.
He glided inside, running his fingertips over my ass until he pulled out.
He pressed me to my side, righted me in bed, tossed the sheet over me and went to the bathroom.
He came back, got under the sheet with me, curled into my back and rounded me with an arm, pulling me close.
“Clara,” he murmured.
I smiled into the pillow.
“Rhodes,” I whispered.
He pulled me closer.
“Sleep, Rebel.”
“’Night, Rush.”
“Goodnight, baby.”
I closed my eyes and, held to the warmth of Rush in all the ways he gave that to me after the single best night of my entire life, I fell asleep.
Balance
Rebel
The next morning, Rush and I walked into the parlor at Essence’s.
And there we saw a burly man with dark hair and glasses sitting in a chair with a cat on his lap, one on the arm of his chair, one batting at a stray thread at the ragged hem of his jeans and one on the back of the chair, paws at his shoulder, kneading his tee.
“Yo, Roscoe,” Rush greeted.
“Yo,” the brother called Roscoe I had not yet seen replied, then his eyes came to me, before they dropped to my legs.
Even though we spent most of the night talking and fucking, we had to get up early so I could get to my place to scan and email my notes to Meryl and Rush could get on with his day, which might possibly include kidnapping his mother if she didn’t reply soon to the second voicemail he’d left her that morning.
So I’d had a shower. Blew out my hair. And with the way things were going, I’d carefully selected an outfit.
A short, faded-out, tight, black jean skirt. A sloppy plaid shirt over a Ramones tee. A fall of chains and pendants, short and long, at my neck. Hair down and messy. Big hoops in my ears that could be seen through the strands. High-heeled bootie sandals, toes peeking out. Enough makeup, it kinda hid I had about two hours of sleep.
And red lipstick.
It might seem OTT, but a smart girl only got caught out once, and I liked to think I was smart (most of the time), so that shit was not happening to me again.
“Yo,” Rush barked, and him repeating that, but mostly how he did, had me jumping and turning my head to look at him.
My biker did not look super pleased.
“Wanna scrape your eyes off my woman’s legs before I do it for you?” he rumbled his non-suggestion.
Hmm . . .
Interesting.
So he didn’t mind me thinking his brothers were hot.
But he did mind one of them looking at my legs.
Before I met Rush, if someone had asked me philosophically how I’d feel about being involved with an alpha possessive guy, in all honesty, I’d have said it was A-OK with me. I mean, if he didn’t take it to the limit, how sexy was that?
Now that I had indication I had that, it would seem I’d been correct in my opinion.
“Dude, she has good legs,” Roscoe replied.
“I know,” Rush bit out.
“Well, I got eyes, I can’t not see them,” Roscoe returned.
“You can not stare at them, or I’ll dig those eyes out and shove them down your throat,” Rush retorted.
Right.
That was taking it to the limit.
So I was also wrong in my opinion.
It was still sexy.
“Where’s Boz?” I butted in so they didn’t come to blows.
“He’s allergic to macramé . . . and cats,” Roscoe said. “He was a mess. There isn’t enough Claritin in the country to sort his shit. So I took over.”