“Aren’t you on the pill or something?” I ask, because as far as I know there’s kind of an understanding with the Lost Girls and they get their birth control in groups and shit.
“Yeah,” she says flatly with her eyes diverted across the room. Riding bare is not something I’m gonna give up with her. She’s going to have to know that it’s different with us. She’s different. I’m different. It’s a new game plan and we’ll figure it out.
“Okay,” I say. “You need money for that Plan B?” I ask. Her head shoots up, and she stares me down.
“No,” she snaps and crawls out of bed and walks to the en-suite bathroom, stomping her little feet as she goes. “I can fix my own fuck-ups, but thanks.” Then she slams the door.
I bite back the urge to tell her that she didn’t exactly say shit about me riding her bareback when it was happening, but I’m too goddamn tired to fight with her. I find my boxers on the floor, tug them on, and head to the hall bathroom to piss before I crash. After I do my business and walk back in the room, I retrieve my cell out from the pocket of my jeans and set it on the night table then plop down on the bed and breathe a sigh of relief when, a minute later, Nic comes out and picks her night shirt off of the ground, pulls it over her head and crawls into bed. She lays herself down on the complete opposite side of the large bed, but I’m not having that. She might be pissed at me right now, but that’s too damn bad. I snake an arm around her waist and pull her flush against my front.
“We fuck together, we fight together, we eat together. That means we sleep together, too,” I say and nuzzle her neck as I get comfortable. She blows out a frustrated breath and settles in as I drift off to sleep. With my girl by my side, I sleep harder than I normally do, and for once I don’t wake up to every tiny noise around me. It’s fucking glorious, and she can be as pissed at me as she wants, because I’m getting used to this shit, and I’m not about to give it up now.
Chapter 16
Ruby looks over at me from the stove, where she’s got three glass dishes filled with chicken breasts and covered in barbecue sauce, ready to bake. Smirking, she turns back to her dish and shakes her head.
“What?” I ask, but she’s not giving anything up. Standing near the kitchen table, I place my hands on my hips and jstare at her back. Damn woman is like my own mother, only she’s sober enough to actually cook a damn good chicken more often than not. That means she knows me better than anybody, including Trigger, and I’m being so fucking obvious that I should be embarrassed by it, but I can’t bring myself to give a fuck. Ruby’s been my mom more often than my own has in recent years, and there’s no fronting with her. Finally, she turns around, wipes her hands on her dish towel, and sets it down on the counter.
“You’re hovering,” she says with a knowing look. “Take a seat and tell me what’s wrong.” I let out a sigh and pull out a kitchen chair, careful not to knock into anything with the rifle I have slung over my shoulder. She takes the seat next to me and pats my knee.
“Trigger and Princess,” I say. It’s not exactly what I want to say, but it’s a good starting point. “What do you think of that?” She looks down at her hands then up at me. A few days ago she was pretty much forced to tell Princess that she’s her mom, and the fucking brat’s been avoiding her ever since. Sure, I get it’s awkward and all, but the woman needs her kid.
“Doesn’t matter what I think. Neither of them will listen to me no matter what I got to say about it,” she says.
“But you have an opinion,” I say. She nods and blows out a breath. Her eyes search the table top. When they find what she’s looking for, her features soften. She grabs the box and the lighter, pulls out a cigarette, lights one up, and takes a pull. She leans back in the chair and lets out a relieved sigh.
“I try not to smoke these things when I’m cooking,” she says. I shove the ashtray at her, and she takes another pull then flicks the ashes in the tray and looks me in the eyes. Her brown hair has reddish tints to it, and her heart shaped face is dotted with a few wrinkles here and there, but over all she’s aged really well. More than half the club would totally fuck her if she gave them half a chance and Jim wouldn’t shoot their nuts off.
“When I hooked up with Jim, I was in a bad place,” she says with a shake of her head. “I didn’t trust anybody, not even myself. I’d spent the last two years hopping around from city to city and club to club with Ian—poor kid, no wonder he’s so fucked up—just looking for something that made me feel whole. We made it out to Arizona from New York by that time, and it’d only been a few weeks that we were in town, but I knew we weren’t going to stay. The club down there was making a run up to Mendocino, and one of the guys let me tag along.”