When he was done, he freed her mouth but only to tuck her forehead into his throat as they both fought to steady their breath, unmoving and still connected, pressed against the wall.
Eventually, he grunted. “Lost control. Next time you were in this dress, wanted you over my knees so I could hike it up, play with your ass and * until you begged me to fuck you.”
He felt her lift her head out of his throat and dipped his chin to look down at her.
She was hazy from coming.
She was also turned on.
Anywhere, any way he wanted to give it.
His Millie.
“We’ll do that next time,” he promised.
Her eyes softened and that look on Millie, High had no choice.
He kissed her again.
This time, he did it easing his cock out.
When he was done with her mouth, he righted her clothes and his, led her by her hand to the bathroom, and cleaned her up.
They walked out together, but with Millie going in front of him, only to stop so he had no choice but to stop with her.
Right away, High saw what stopped her.
Poem was chasing Chief across the floor. She pounced. They rolled, scratched, and mewed. Chief got loose. Poem got to her feet. They went into stare-down.
Then Chief chased Poem out of the room.
There was humor in her voice when she whispered, “Best money I ever spent.”
High moved the half a foot that was separating them and wrapped his arms around her from behind.
He kissed the spare inch of skin under her ear exposed by her turtleneck and felt her tremble as she wrapped her arms around his, her hands at his wrists giving them a squeeze.
She turned and twisted as he lifted his head up. She kissed the bottom of his chin.
They’d had moments like this, practically daily, back when they were together. Random moments of tenderness that happened after sex or before it or whenever the spirit moved them.
Fuck, but he’d missed that too.
When she was done with her kiss, he gave her his eyes.
“Need to go check on progress in my office, Snooks,” she muttered.
“Right,” he muttered back, brushed her mouth with his, and let her go.
He didn’t move in order to better enjoy her ass in that dress walking through the room.
She stopped at the door and turned to him.
“I only have one turtleneck dress,” she said softly, a look in her eye he liked a fuckuva lot. “But I have three sweater dresses. One’s kinda fancy, so my biker best take me out to dinner so he can get his reward.”
After delivering that, she walked out.
High still didn’t move.
She’d changed a lot since they ended. None of it in good ways.
Except shit like that.
She might not have had a lover but that didn’t mean she didn’t mature. She didn’t come to know herself better. She didn’t gain confidence.
She obviously did.
She was a hot piece back in the day. They went at each other all the time. And their sessions could get intense and last a very long time.
But there had not been shit like that coming from Millie.
Not where he’d just fucked her, out of control just because of a dress, and then she’d give him a look and say shit that made him want to drag her back and do it again. Do it until he forced her to lose control. Dominate and get her to the point where she was the one begging for more.
If he’d had her all the time in between, that might not have happened. They would have had what they had, which was great, and kept it. Or that shift would have happened and he wouldn’t have noticed it.
But there wouldn’t be that nuance of change that hit him right in his cock. There wouldn’t be the newness to discover. There wouldn’t be fresh things to savor.
It sucked but it seemed there were pieces of the hell that was being apart that were worth walking through to get to what they were building.
The same but different.
Just as good but better.
On that thought, he pulled out his phone, moved his thumb over the screen, found what he wanted, and hit Call.
Then he made a reservation for a fancy steak dinner Monday night at The Broker.
*??*??*
An hour later, after the alarm company had done their final test on the system, it passed, and he’d left Millie, High walked into the Compound.
He moved straight to the brothers who were hanging in a huddle at the bar—Tack, Shy, Hop, Hound, Pete, Joker, and Boz.
“Yo,” Hound greeted as he made it to the bar.
High looked to Hound, gave him a chin lift, then looked to Tack.
“Slim and Mitch good?” he asked.
“Yep,” Tack answered, and held his gaze. “Valenzuela still had eyes on Millie, brother. Joke noticed them and Snap noticed them when he was sitting on her house yesterday. Speck reports nothin’ today.”
High did not like this. He didn’t like it enough that he was burning to do something about it.
He couldn’t. He hated it. But too much was riding on it for all of them.
So he had to bury it.
“Joke told me,” he grunted, and returned Tack’s steady gaze before he went on. “This shit is takin’ a long time. We got no in with Valenzuela’s crew. Not even insider gash he sells who gives shit info for a ton of cake. Lucas and Lawson are gettin’ more than us but what they’re gettin’ is mostly dick, too, and we got more pains in the ass patrolling more territory and keepin’ an eye on our women.”
This wasn’t lost on any of them. Months ago, when they heard that on the street, their reputations had taken a hit and with it, the respect they’d earned, they’d pushed Valenzuela, claiming more turf, growing that from the five-mile radius around Ride that they’d patrolled for years to ten.
They’d also done other shit, like brothers moving out to beat the absolute snot out of the man who shared that he thought Chaos were *.
The message had been relayed. No one else had fucked with them.
But looking after more turf took more time. More patrols. More manpower.
Valenzuela landed dealers and whores on their patch regularly, so it wasn’t uneventful but it still was a pain in the ass.
“This is why I called you here,” Tack said.
“We’re all here now. You gonna give us that?” Boz asked.