“Good to know.” Breanna wiggles as if that nonverbal cue is enough to convince me to release her. “But there are a lot of people around.”
The crystal ball grows clear. Breanna doesn’t like an audience, but if she’s going to hang around here, she’s going to have to get used to a few things. My fingers stay on her hips and I attempt to distract her with a change in conversation. “My jacket looks good on you.”
“Do you want it back?”
“No. I want every guy to know you belong with me.”
“It doesn’t have your name on it, so how do they know it’s yours?”
“They’ll know.” Because it has a hole in the arm from when I got shot. Next time I go into Louisville, I’ll buy a new one and let her keep this one. I’ll tell her it’s for protection on my bike, and it is, but it’s also a nice calling card of get-the-fuck-away-from-my-girl. “Wear the jacket.”
“Should I go feminist and say I belong to myself?” Breanna wraps her hands around my neck and her fingertips tease the ends of my hair. Fire invades my veins and my thoughts of where I want to kiss Breanna leave the realm of respectable territory.
“This isn’t your world. It’s mine. You’re safer with that jacket on.”
“Guess it’s good that I like wearing it. It smells like you.”
Damn, she always says the right thing. I pull her closer to me, tunnel my fingers in her hair and capture those sweet lips.
She’s hesitant and I have no doubt it’s because people are near. Breanna plays a little, then will slightly draw away, but I continue to coax. A nibble here, a slide of my tongue there. My hands sneak under the jacket so I can massage her back and skim my fingers along her spine. Each and every movement slowly thaws Breanna and makes her as hot as a flame. Her sighs and her caresses cause me to want to drop to my knees and beg for more.
A dog barks and Breanna jumps. She laughs as she eases back and that sound soothes some of my rough edges. Another bark, and when I glance down, a part of me discovers the excitement of being ten on Christmas morning. “Well, fuck me.”
“What?” Breanna asks.
I stand and give her a quick kiss before letting her go. “It’s my dog.”
Breanna
HIS DOG. RAZOR has a dog. It feels strange that I never knew, but then again, our conversations lately have been so seriously set on my family or his family or schoolwork or on kissing that we’ve left out the small, fun things like dogs.
Razor’s crouched near the ground scratching behind the ears of a pudgy basset hound with the largest dark eyes I’ve seen. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“I don’t,” he says, and then the dog leaps around Razor. The dog’s tail wags, his tongue is hanging out and he continuously licks his master.
“Have you told him that?” I ask, but the big, bad biker has been reduced to cooing.
“What are you doing here, boy?” A rub behind the ears, a lick on the face in return. “Did you walk all the way from Florida?”
The dog chases his own tail three times before collapsing on the ground. He rolls over to show his belly and proves he really is a boy. I’m smiling as Razor rubs the dog’s stomach with both hands, declaring him a “good boy.”
Razor eventually peers over his shoulder at me and I’m knocked breathless with how happy he appears. “This is Lars.”
At the mention of his name, Lars hops up on all fours, sniffs Razor’s face and then plants another wet, sloppy kiss on him. Razor chuckles but moves Lars’s snout away as he begins petting him again. “Lars, this is Breanna.”
The dog’s tongue rolls to the side again and he pants, surveying me as if he can understand Razor. “My mom gave me Lars the Christmas before she died.” Some of the sadness that’s always attached to Razor returns.
“So this is really your dog?” I kneel beside Razor and Lars pads over to me. I pet his head as Razor continues to run his hand over the length of the dog’s back.
“When I was a kid, Cyrus’s wife, Olivia, used to watch me when Mom and Dad had to work. She let me bring Lars with me to her house. When Mom died, I lived here for a while. Dad split after the funeral, and when he returned, he was a mess. When Dad got his shit together, he came and got me but left Lars. Dad wasn’t sure he had enough in him to take care of a kid and a dog.”
My heart honest-to-God breaks. Like someone reached into my chest, ripped it out and has cracked it in two. “What happened?”
“To the dog or me?” Razor forces a grin like what he admitted doesn’t matter—that it’s not absolutely soul-shattering.
“Both,” I answer seriously, and he frowns, unhappy that I’m not offering him the easy route.
“We both know I’m fucked-up.”
“That’s not true—”
“Olivia kept Lars,” he cuts me off. “I was here enough anyhow, so it’s not like I didn’t see him, but everyone eventually forgot he was mine and he became Olivia’s. Then Olivia died this summer. When her granddaughter, Emily, returned to Florida, Eli had Emily take Lars with her.”