Devil May Care: Boxed Set (30 page)

Then he let out a breath and seemed to will his body to relax. When he looked back at me, he still looked mad, but the gaze he settled me with was full of tenderness. And something else.

“Can we…can we just get out of here or something?” I asked hesitantly.

He offered me a slow smile, then nodded. “Yeah. I know a good place.”

I didn’t even consider that I’d just more or less asked him for a date or the fact that it was one of the most natural things in the world for me to do.

Rome

I enjoyed the feel of Olivia wrapped around me too much. She was on the back of my bike, clinging desperately to me, and I could almost convince myself that it wasn’t about the blatant fear of being on a motorcycle for the first time, but instead about a deep desire for me.

Almost.

What worried me wasn’t that she was doing that, but that I was so interested in her doing that. How much I wanted her to want me.

She’d rejected me at least twice now—well, three times if you count the slap in the face
and
the walking away at the bar—and instead of leaving me with the sense that she wasn’t worth the trouble, I found myself more and more eager to try again. I wanted to win her over so badly and I couldn’t figure out why.

I told myself it was the rejection itself. I was interested in the challenge, not the woman, but as her breasts pressed against my back and I thought about how high her skirt had to hike up for her to straddle the bike, I thought it might be more.

And that was a little unnerving.

I drove her to a little diner that looked like a squished Twinkie from the outside, the white roof dingy from years of weather and dust, the narrow face of it a pale green that was probably not the original color of the paint. It was so small that it looked like you would be walking into a closet and the sign above it read
Ben’s
something, but I never could figure out what the something part of it said. I never bothered to ask because I didn’t think anyone who worked there knew either. It had changed hands half a dozen times since it had opened, but the guy who owned it now was a buddy of mine. One of the guys from the old neighborhood who had made it despite the odds being stacked against him.

I ate here whenever I could.

Parking was in the back, meaning you had to go up and around the block, down an alley and through a fenced in area that looked like it used to be a basketball court to find parking, but at least there was always space. Since no one could find it, most people just parked along the side of the road out front.

I went ahead and turned the corner, heading down the alley to park in the lot, not because I didn’t usually park on the street, but because I enjoyed the feeling of her arms wrapped tightly around me. I was desperate to prolong the feeling.

When I finally pulled to a stop and turned off the engine, she lingered with her arms around me for a moment longer. I wondered if it was because of the same stirring feelings as I was experiencing, but the thought fled as soon as she released me. I saw her slide off the bike on shaky legs and decided that a big part of holding on had been the bike, not me.

It made me decide to try a little harder to win her over.

“C’mon, down this way,” I told her, starting down a little slot that wasn’t quite an alley between the two buildings.

Hesitantly, nervously, she followed behind me. Closely behind me.

We came out on the opposite side of the street beside Ben’s and I led her inside. The door opened and a little bell chimed. Despite the exterior, the place wasn’t as long and narrow as it initially seemed. Towards the right the room bulged out, the floor stepping down a notch to let us all know that that half of the diner had originally been its own building. It had been merged together with Ben’s about ten years ago, which was why from the outside the place still looked so damn small.

I gave a quick wave to a waitress that I was on good terms with—we’d slept together a half a dozen times, but she was good about it, never wanting more than the sex—then escorted Olivia over to a booth that was tucked over to the right in a corner.

She slid into the booth silently and I sat in the one across from her. For a moment, we were both silent, then Cherise, the waitress, came over to deposit the menus.

“Drinks?” she asked in a deeper voice than you would expect coming from such a mild, tiny-looking young woman.

I nodded. “Coffee.” I looked over at Olivia, questioning. “Coffee?”

She nodded mutely, probably not even registering the question.

Turning back to Cherise, I added, “And bring creamers. We might want some.” I didn’t know how she liked her coffee, so I was erring on the side of caution.

“You got it.”

Cherise left the table then, but when she was out of Olivia’s line of sight she sent me a wink and a thumbs up. She apparently approved in my choice of company this morning.

It wasn’t until after we’d gotten the coffee and ordered pancakes, eggs, and sausage, not bacon, that I finally broke the silence.

“You finally giving me a chance?” I asked, letting confidence leak easily into my voice.

She looked up in a hurry, as though startled to see that I was still sitting there across from her. “What?”

I gestured between us. “Well, you
did
call me.”

Heat rose in her cheeks and once again my mind flashed me an image of her beneath me, writhing, moaning, and begging. I wanted my name to fall from her lips in a desperate cry, needy and wanton.

But that would have to wait.

“Not because of…
that
,” she argued, the blush trailing down her neck and dipping into the line of cleavage that was just barely exposed by the top two unbuttoned buttons.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “No?”

She cleared her throat. “No.”

“Then why call me?”

She faltered for a moment and I felt a needling of remorse. Maybe she didn’t have anyone else to call, which was a really depressing thought. It made me want to go to her side of the table and slide an arm around her, pull her close to me. I wanted suddenly to keep her safe, and not just because her ex was an asshole and I hated assholes.

Then she seemed to compose herself and the moment was broken. “Because
you
got me into this mess!”

I laughed. “
I
got you into this? I didn’t tell you to date a dick.”

She folded her arms across her chest, causing her breasts to lift and squeeze together. My cock twitched in response, but I forced myself to focus on her words.

“You’re the one who said we were
married
!”

That was true, I did do that, but that hadn’t gotten her in trouble. That had saved her ass. Her very nice, full, perky ass. “And? Should I have just said I was fucking the brains out of you?”

Her blush intensified and I grinned. I knew that she had just pictured it, us together on the bed, me above her, our bodies naked and slicked with sweat.

Yeah, she wanted me. That much I was sure of.

“
No
, you should have stayed out of it.”

“Really,” I commented, unfazed. “Are you honestly upset that I stepped in, or that I let a little thing like a slap across the face stop me from taking you home?”

Her lips parted and she let out a quick breath of air, her eyes flashing bright with something that was either anger or desire, or maybe both. Subconsciously, her little pink tongue darted out to lick her lips, her gaze flickering down to my mouth, then back to my eyes. Pulling herself together, she opened her mouth to correct me again, when our food came.

The round definitely went to me.

We talked a little during breakfast. She commented on the oddness, but quaintness, of the diner. I commented on how she made button-down blouses look sexy. She said the motorcycle ride was fun. I said I liked her straddling things. She thanked me for coming over after the fiasco with her ex, Tom. I told her next time I’d just have to stay at her apartment overnight so that he’d find me there the next time he tried to pull that stunt.

She blocked my flirting effortlessly it seemed, but she wasn’t unaffected. I watched her breasts rise and fall with labored breathing. I saw how she nibbled on her lips until they were pink and swollen. I noticed her shift in her seat, discreetly open her collar to try to let air through, and glance at my lips more than a few times.

Whether she deflected my flirting or not, I knew I had her in my back pocket. All I had to do was get close enough to touch her.

I paid for the meal, though she tried to stop me, and left a decent tip for Cherise. Then I escorted Olivia out the door and back down that narrow corridor. When we reached the bike, I paused. She was already starting to ruck up her skirt, pulling it up high onto her thighs in preparation for straddling my motorcycle, and I watched as she exposed more and more creamy white skin until I could almost see the underside of her ass.

When she realized that I wasn’t moving to start the bike or anything of the sort, she straightened up, looking to me. When she caught sight of my heated gaze staring at her hungrily, her face flushed once more. Her hands paused, leaving her skirt shoved high up onto her legs, her breasts rising as she took in a deep breath.

I stepped close to her, close enough that we nearly touched. She opened her mouth, probably to tell me that she still wasn’t interested, but I took a risk before she could. I covered her parted lips with mine and when my tongue slid into her open mouth, she didn’t even try to push me away.

Instead, she sighed into my kiss. I took that as encouragement to continue. My hands went to her hips and slid around to the middle of her back. I jerked her sharply against me, causing her to gasp. I swallowed that gasp hungrily, my tongue sliding around inside of her mouth eagerly. I pressed her against me, pulling her so that her hips were lined up with mine.

I had her. Whatever resistance she had felt up to this point had fizzled out and what was left was a simmering well of heat that called to my own desire.

We broke apart only to catch our breaths. I looked down at her and saw that her green eyes were bright and hooded, desire welling within them. I opened my mouth, about to suggest that we find a nearby motel and finish what we started when my phone went off.

I cursed and considered ignoring it altogether, especially with her breasts heaving like that and her eyes lingering on my lips, her own swollen. But I couldn’t do it. Things were so messed up with the Renegades that there was a good chance that whoever was calling was calling because it was important.

I let one hand wander across Olivia’s face, tracing over her swollen lips, before I forced myself to pull away and answer the phone.

She looked a little dazed and confused when I pulled back, blinking several times as though to clear away the fog of lust that had overtaken her. I really hoped that she wouldn’t push it away entirely, because I was still sorely tempted to find the nearest hotel and have my way with her.

I jerked out my phone and saw that it was Skylar calling.

This couldn’t be good.

“What’s going on?” I asked, turning away from Olivia and lowering my voice so that she wouldn’t catch what I was saying.

“Heads up, Jacob’s been to see Axel. Your head’s on the menu.”

“Shit. Does Axel buy it?”

“Too early to tell,” Skylar told me hesitantly. “But they talked for the full visit. If Axel thought he was full of shit, they wouldn’t have spoken for longer than five minutes.”

Skylar was right. A short conversation meant that Axel thought Jacob was out of his mind, but if they lingered for a while and Jacob whispered in Axel’s ear the whole time, then it meant I could very well be on the wrong list for Axel now. Part of me didn’t want to believe that Axel would ever think I was capable of betrayal, but the other part of me knew that Axel was in prison. He’d fucked up and there was a very real chance that someone had gotten him into that mess.

I just happened to be an easy scapegoat. At the very least, I trusted what Skylar was telling me because he legitimately believed there was something to be concerned about. He was quickly turning into one of the few Renegades left who I still trusted.