His words were enough to make me want to put the brakes on, to keep my hopes checked before they soared like rockets. Except that glint in his hazel eyes...I couldn't ignore it.
It was a bright, honest shine. One that meant everything he'd said, his need for more than one night at a deep, primal level beyond any speech.
“Why don't you help me move while you're here? Assuming you can spare an evening, of course,” I said, giving him a sharp look. “I need to be out of mama's place before the bank comes next Friday.”
“Sure. Where you going next?”
“Little apartment on the edge of Seddon. I scrounged up just enough for a deposit and some new furniture. It'll do, until I can find another gig. Maybe I'll just take something easy like ringing folks up or stocking shelves, then wait for another opening at a bar.”
“You really wanna do retail your whole damned life?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.
My smile melted. No, of course I didn't, but it was just about the only good option I had in this tumbleweed town, pummeled by a crap economy.
“We can't all just ride off into the sunset and make our money other ways,” I told him, shaking my head. “Christ, Joker. If you're about to offer me some kind of strip job or worse, don't even go there. I don't want it.”
He stiffened underneath me, tightening his hold on my back. I laid a finger on his chest, giving him one firm tap, right across the winged skull darkening his skin.
“I want you, Jackson. Not the club. Whatever else is happening between us, that's as far as it goes.”
“Babe, don't be fuckin' stupid,” he said, following the kiss I'd laid on his chest with one on my forehead. “You think I want any of my brothers seeing you naked, then I'm gonna think I truly fucked your brains out. I want you happy, square with your money. If you ain't finding shit here for work, you oughta look elsewhere.”
“Where? Like Knoxville?”
He smiled, cocky and sly as ever. “Something like that. Helluva a lot more opportunities out there than Seddon. Even more in the Tri-Cities, not too far over.”
I didn't answer him then. There wasn't anything to say when my brain was still processing, overwhelmed by everything that had happened tonight.
So, I just buried my face in his chest, freely breathing that scent I'd remembered for three terrible years.
Maybe I'd have to move, if it kept him a little closer, and paid me, too. I'd wanted to put down roots in this town because it was all I knew, but it wasn't working out that way.
Here, the ground was barren.
Not that I'd be making any fly decisions tonight.
All the misery of mama, poverty, and the bar hadn't turned me into a fool. We'd just see how well the next few weeks went.
By the end of them, if he wasn't just playing me – a very huge if – then maybe it'd be time to think about finding somewhere new.
His fingers pinched my ass, causing me to look up. That mischievous smirk on his lips turned into a hungry one.
His hand slipped down, pushed between my legs, and pulled them apart like he owned them.
Tonight, I suppose he did.
He jerked me up, moved me over him, until I was straddling his cock, already rock hard.
“Enough fuckin' around with the future, Summertime. We've got the whole damned night ahead, and I'd rather hear you screaming than giving me shit any time. You've got nothing to worry about, long as you're in these arms.”
One push of his hands on my ass cheeks lowered me on his cock. Then I couldn't think about anything at all except how good, how right, how incredible he felt deep inside me.
*
The next few weeks should've been a total nightmare. Instead, they'd become a dream.
All thanks to him. Joker.
The bastard who'd taken over my head for three long years roared in, wooed me, and conquered my life.
He came to me every other night since our first beneath the stars. I'd climb on his bike with a grin, feeling my heart skipping a dozen beats per minute. He'd introduce me to half a dozen new secret spots around Seddon I hadn't known before.
Now, I knew them like his body, intimately acquainted with every single one of them when we were naked and horizontal in the tall grasses, the broken down barns, the little nook next to the stream.
That last place, he'd held me up in the air the entire time we fucked, banging me into the boulders behind us each time he thrust deep.
It should've hurt, being flung around like a ragdoll, but of course it didn't.
Basically, the story of this whole insane romance between us. Assuming you could call motorcycle rides, doe eyes, and hard sex any kind of love story.
What should've been agony became delight.
Pain turned into pleasure.
Risk blossomed from barren fear into a beautiful certainty.
Forbidden? Impossible?
All of the above, plus so much more.
Nothing about us should've worked, especially at this awful crossroads in my life. But it did, damn it.