Текст книги "Rule"

Автор книги: Jay Crownover

Соавторы: Jay Crownover
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“So I saw you earlier, you’re friends with the band.”

“Yep.”  Normally this was the kind of girl I sought out, easy, no strings, aware of where the night was going and what the morning was going to hold.

“So do you maybe wanna get out of here, go somewhere quieter where we can…talk?”

My eyebrows shot up.  When I was drunk maybe that sounded smoother, but now that I was sober it just seemed kind of sleazy and desperate.  “Thanks but I’m here with somebody.”

Her bright red mouth pulled into a frown and she took a step back.  “Yeah I saw that, and I also saw that there is no way that she’s with you for long.”

I was used to judgment, used to hearing that I wasn’t up to par or good enough for whatever reason, but coming from a boozed up bar fly that had just tried to talk me into taking her to bed it made me reel back a little.

“Okay.”  I didn’t know what else to say to that.

The girl snorted and flipped her over processed hair over her shoulder.  “That girl has money and status written all over her, you have ink and nothing but a good time spelled out bright and clear all over you.  How long do you think she’s going to think you’ve got more going on than that?”

I frowned and was done with social courtesy.  I physically moved her out of my way and called over my shoulder, “I don’t know, but I’d be an idiot not to stick around until she figures it out.”  Sweaty bodies got nudged and prodded until I got to the girls.  Jet was right in front of them both on his knees, his head was thrown back, his shirt was torn off and the massive angel of death I had tattooed across his torso was in full display.  He was wailing like a true rock god and while Shaw looked fascinated, Ayden looked like she was about to melt into a pile of orgasmic goo.  Looked like my buddy had turned the country mouse, rock for the night.  I put a hand on Shaw’s hip and bent low to tell her, “I gotta get Nash out of here, he’s done for.”  She looked at me with big eyes and nodded with no argument.  She leaned over to holler something at Ayden who hollered something back.  The brunette wiggled her fingers at me in a wave and the next thing I knew Shaw’s tiny frame was pulling me back through the crowd.  Nash was now almost fully draped over the table and I didn’t miss the bouncer giving him the eye.

“What about Ayden, you said we needed to make sure she got home okay?”

“She promised to call when she was leaving.  She said she would just get a cab.”

“She’ll be alright here by herself?”

“Yeah, she’s a big girl and can take care of herself, plus I think she danced most of the booze out.  I think she’s sticking around to tell your friend how much she enjoyed the show.”

“Jet has that effect on women.”

“I can see why.”  I wrestled Nash up and marched him out of the bar with an arm around his waist.  He was solid and maneuvering his sturdy bulk was difficult.

“You gonna change your mind and drop me for a rock star?”

She snorted and took the keys I tossed her to get the cab doors open so that I could shove Nash sideways across the back seat.  “You better not get sick in here dude.”

There was no response so I helped Shaw climb in and it occurred to me that she hadn’t even hesitated to leave with me.  That made something in the center of my chest get all slippery and warm.

“I’m just saying that he’s pretty charismatic and even though I didn’t understand half of what he was singing it was still pretty powerful.  He had that entire bar eating out of the palm of his hand, that kind of draw is impressive.”

“Yeah, Jet was born to be a rock star he just has a problem with the spotlight and recognition he always has.”

“You’ve known him a long time?”

“We used to go see him play when we were kids, back when he was into punk.  Nash, Jet and Rowdy have been my inner circle for a long time.  Rowdy we met later when he started working at the shop but we all kick it like we are brothers from other mothers.”

She settled in the leather seat and I adjusted the heat when I noticed she was rubbing goose bumps on her arms.  “It must be nice to have a lot of good friends.  I was never like that.”

I looked out of the corner of my eye at her.  “What do you mean?”

“I’m shy and awkward.  I never know how to just make friends like that.  I was picked on a lot in high school.  Remy was my only real friend and now really only Ayden.  I have a hard time letting people in, I guess because I’ve seen how painful it is when it’s the people that are the closest to you are the ones constantly disappointing you.”

“What about me and Rome?”

“What about you?”

Nash groaned from the back and I looked over my shoulder apprehensively.  He didn’t sound good.  “What about us, we were there too, weren’t we your friends?”

She made a little humming noise that immediately made vital parts of my anatomy take notice.

“Rome has always been like a big brother, he looked out for me, he picks on me, he tries to keep things that hurt me and cause me pain at bay.  You, well you were always something else, not a friend, not a brother just something else.”

“Is that bad, the something else?”

I felt rather than saw her shrug.  “It has been, and then sometimes it’s not.”  I didn’t know what to make of that so I let the subject drop.  I drove the rest of the way keeping one eye on the road and one eye on Nash who was making increasingly loud noises of distress in the back.  When we got to the apartment I looked across the cab at her but she was bent over the back of the seat rubbing Nash’s bald head and uttering soothing words to him.

“Hey I don’t know how long it’ll take to get him squared away, you can just hangout and if you want me to run you home or whatever I will.”

She looked at me over her shoulder and raised a pale brow.  “Rule its fine.  It’s not like I don’t know how you end up in the state you’re normally in on Sunday morning.  Like I told you I just have to be to work on Sunday around ten as long as you make that happen we’re good.”

At a loss for words I just stared at her for a moment before Nash’s gurgling made me move.  “Have you always been this awesome?”

She shut all the doors behind us and helped me haul Nash up the steps.  I noticed she didn’t answer my question, but she did get Nash a huge glass of water and fished around in my bathroom until she found some pain killers.  She left both on the bathroom sink in the hall that Nash used and gave me a pointed look.  “Come find me when you’re done.”

I swore in a long litany under my breath as I helped Nash battle his thermal and jeans off.  I was contemplating shoving his ass in a cold shower when the tequila started to take its revenge.  The tattooed head disappeared inside the toilet and I spent the next hour making sure he didn’t pass out and alternately cramming liquids down his throat and jumping out of the way as they came back up.  When I was finally sure he wasn’t going to get sick anymore I hauled him to his bed and made sure he was face down before I did a quick cleanup of the bathroom and myself and then went to find Shaw.

The door to my room was cracked open and she had my TV on.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, the dirtier part of my imagination had all kinds of interesting scenarios laid out but wait awaited me wasn’t one of them.  She had my California king stripped to the mattress pad and was making short work of changing all the bedding.  Her crazy blue shoes were in the center of the floor looking totally out of place next to my discarded t-shirts and jeans and as I propped myself up in the doorway all I could do was watch her.  She seemed to be having some kind of conversation with herself but she was muttering too low for me to hear what she was saying.  I waited a full five minutes for her to look up at me or notice my watching her but she never did, so I asked, “What are you doing?” which made her jump about a foot in the air.

She put a hand on her chest and had the good grace to look a little bit guilty.

“Changing your sheets.”

“Why?”

“Uhh…Why?”

“Yes, Shaw why are you changing my sheets at nearly three o’clock in the morning?”

She was saved from answering when a Garth Brooks song rang from her pocket.  I was starting to see she liked to pick songs for ring tones that fit the person calling.  She had a brief conversation with who I assumed was Ayden and left the phone on the night stand next to the bed.  She picked up the edge of my comforter and started to smooth it back over the big bed.

“Ayden got a ride home, I guess your friend in the band remembered her from the Goal Line and offered to take her.”

“That’s cool, though Jet isn’t exactly known for being a one girl kinda guy so I hope she isn’t reading anything into it.”

“Like I said she can take care of herself and honestly you aren’t really known for that either,” she waved a hand over the bed, “so I’ll be damned if I’m going to sleep let alone do anything else in a bed that has had more visitors than DIA without changing the sheets first.”  Her bottom lip stuck out and she sounded slightly defiant.

“Shaw,” I moved out of the doorway, making sure to shut it and turn the lock on my way to her.  “No one has been in that bed since you.  I told you I knew on that Saturday that something was happening between us that was different.”

She shivered a little as I got close and I could see raw vulnerability in her eyes.  It was scary to know how easily I could hurt this girl and how desperately I didn’t want that to happen.

“I don’t know how to do this with you, Rule.  I drunkenly threw myself at you and was lucky you were willing to catch me, but sober it’s hard to look at that bed and not see every single other girl that was there before me, sometimes more than one at a time.”

She tried to make light of it but I could hear the genuine melancholy coloring her tone.  I put both my hands on her face and tilted her head back so that we were eye to eye.

“I can’t change the past, Casper, not any of it.  I can’t make any of those girls disappear or the fact you walked in on them on Sunday morning time and time again go away, I can’t bring Remy back or go back in time and not call him for a ride that night.  There are probably a million and one regrets I have and if they are going to be between us here or in bed then let’s just stop it now because I’m not going to do combat over my past when my future is finally starting to be something I want to invest in.”

She lifted her hands up and grasped my wrists, at first I thought she was going to pull me away but she didn’t.  She leaned forward and let her forehead hit the center of my chest.  “Rule if this goes bad it’s gonna be so, so bad.”  Her voice was just a husky whisper against my chest.

“True, but if it’s good it’s going be so very, very good.”  I tunneled my fingers through her hair and she let her hands fall to my shoulders.  We weren’t a perfect match, she was a lot shorter than me and I had to admit that I knew logically we made an odd pair physically but there was just something about her, something about the way she curved into me, the way she sighed my name like a prayer, the way she smelled like sunshine and sweetness and everything yummy all wrapped into one bite that made none of that matter and made her the only girl I could ever remember wanting to hold onto for more than a fleeting minute of time.

She started to pull my shirt over my head and I laughed a little when she got mad when it got stuck on my spiky hair.  She made a face at me and tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor.  She used a finger to poke the front tip of the spiked up hawk and lifted an eyebrow.  “You look hot with a mohawk, Rule but I gotta say this hair is more trouble than it’s worth.”  She trailed her hands over my ribs and stopped to look at the art work imprinted there.  On one side was a grim reaper that ran from under my arm pit to the top of my thigh, on the other side was a beautiful angel and in-between them on my back was a massive gothic cross that went from shoulder blade to shoulder blade and ended at my tailbone, scrolling from shoulder to shoulder on an elegant banner was ‘Remy’ in bold script.  I had more inked skin than not and where I normally didn’t think anything about it, being naked next to her in all her pale, perfect skinned glory it seemed slightly overwhelming.  Her hands moved lower and before I had even kissed her she was messing with my belt buckle.

“Remy would have loved that piece you know?  He always used to tell me he was so glad when you started getting tattooed.  He said someone having the same face as him was always too weird, but then you started looking so different , he was glad it was you because there was no way he could tolerate sitting still long enough to get anything done.”

It was true.  Remy was always moving, always fidgeting and twitching he would have never been able to sit long enough for a session and every time I had come home with a new piece something I wanted to show off, he had been the first to see it.  If he had lived long enough to see me finish my apprenticeship he had promised to let me draw up something for him, it was one of those million regrets I had mentioned earlier.  She was making short work of my pants and I had the sudden need to slow her down so I picked her up like she was a little doll and tossed her onto the center of my bed.  She bounced with an oaf and ended up sprawled on her back spread eagle.  I toed off my boots and let my pants fall the rest of the way off, since I typically just went commando when I crawled up over her I was naked and she was still fully dressed.  Her eyes got big because I put my hands under her shirt and dropped down to plant a bunch of kisses along her throat.

“You’re like good whiskey, Shaw.  You go to a guy’s head quick and smooth.  Last time we blazed through a bunch of the good stuff, why don’t we slow it down a little this time?”  I let my fingers brush over the top of her bra and felt her body get tight.  She bent her legs up so that I was cradled in between and despite our size difference we fit together just fine.  She let her hands roam all across my back and I felt the edge of her nails bite into my skin and the press of her heels into the curve of my ass, it was awesome.

“I was afraid last time that if we slowed down to think you would stop and I felt like I would die if you stopped.”

I had my hands under her bra now and she was making little gasping noises that made me harder than I already was.  I got her shirt off over her head and sealed her mouth shut with mine.  She didn’t hesitate to kiss me back and I decided then and there that kissing Shaw was probably as close to heaven as I was ever going to get.  There was just the right amount of give and take, just the right amount of tongue and teeth, just the right amount of breathless pull that made me see stars and want to tear her pants off and forge ahead like a marauder.  She wasn’t kidding about liking the jewelry in my mouth.  She rubbed her tongue across the barbell and rubbed her bottom lip across the hoop in a way that had my eyes drifting closed and almost made me forget that I was supposed to be showing her that there was lots of good stuff we had flashed past last time.

“See I don’t think we spent anytime here.”   I ran my thumb over her nipple and watched as it puckered instantly at my touch.  “You are so pretty and pink Shaw and I don’t think you even know the half of it.”  I let my tongue run across the base of her throat and down until I had one peak in my mouth.  She tasted as sweet as she smelled and the idea that I was the only one that got to do this to her, that she was mine, just mine made it all even better.  She muttered my name and arched up as I worked her over pretty good with my mouth on her breasts.  She was undulating under me, pulling me closer to her with greedy hands and rubbing against the part of me that fully agreeing with her that I was moving to slow.  I let go of the flesh I was torturing with a soft pop and kissed her breast bone.  “See, good stuff.”

She sighed, “Totally.”  I propped my weight up on an elbow and traced a path from her throat to her belly button.  The taunt skin on her belly quivered a little when I traced a pattern around the small indent.  I liked the way my tattooed skin looked against her much clearer canvas; I also got a little kick out of the fact that when I flattened my palm against her belly that my name went from one side to the other claiming what I was quickly starting to consider my very own.  I let my thumb hook under the top of her pants and rubbed a pattern that made her wiggle enticingly against me.

“Rule,” there was a hitch in her voice.  “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing.”  I kissed her again and took my time about it  I wanted her to know that she affected me just as much I seemed to be affecting her.  Normally when I was with a girl I was all about instant gratification, there was no build up, no anticipation.  I mean I liked to think that I had developed some pretty good moves over the years but I was also a big fan of getting to the finish line in as little time as possible.  I wasn’t there to create memories.  I was there for a mind numbing orgasm and a minute of peace, but she was different.  With her I was different and this thing happen between us was most definitely different.

I got under her super tight pants and was surprised to find that she hadn’t bothered with anything underneath.  I pulled my head up and grinned down at her.  “Commando?”

She shrugged and shifted a little when my fingers brushed over all her soft and warm parts.  “What?  These pants are practically painted on and no matter how tiny the panties are they show so no underwear was the only option.”

“I would never peg you for the type.”  She gasped my name out as made my way in to her damp heat.  Her whole body bowed up against mine and I caught her across the back to keep her there and taunt under my ministrations.  The friction between what I was doing and her tight pants was making her quake in my arms and I knew it was only a matter of time before she came apart in my hands.  “You’re always so proper and put together, who knew underneath was such a naughty girl?”  She was slick and fluttery all the things I wanted a girl to be right before she made a sweet noise of surprise and flared her eyes open at me.  Her hands clamped down on my neck and she tugged me down for another mind bending kiss right before I felt her melt.  I smiled against her mouth and shifted so that I could help her pull her pants off even though she was moving a lot slower than me.  Once she was as naked as I was I took a minute to appreciate the view because a naked Shaw was something to appreciate and a naked, luminously satisfied Shaw was something master artists would kill to capture on canvas.

She leaned over me to dig a condom out of the drawer.  I settled on my back and let her crawl over the top of me.  I stacked my hands behind my head and just watched as she tore the packet open with her teeth and set about suiting me up.  She was gentle about it and I think afraid she might hurt me but it was a good thing she took her time with it because the jewelry down there sometimes made getting protection on tricky.  Once everything was set and I was hard enough to pound nails she looked at me a little apprehensively and settled over my lap.

“I don’t think I know how to do it this way.”

And wasn’t that just amazing?  I got to teach this beautiful, amazing, kick ass girl all about sex and all about the great shit in between.  I moved so that she was where she needed to be and helped her figure out how to slide down and glide back up.  I gritted my teeth and let out some swear words because nothing had me prepared for her trying to find her rhythm.  As she moved up and down, rocked back and forth and pretty much turned my mind to mush I tried to keep some modicum of control but it was no avail.  When I felt her start to come apart I flipped her over on her back and drove into her like I was trying to bury myself inside her to live forever.  She didn’t seem to mind the manhandling too much, her nails scraped across the shaved part of my head and her tiny little teeth nipped into my shoulder.  It only took another breath before I followed her over the edge than laid in an annihilated heap on top of her.  I felt her hands flow over my shoulders and her husky voice ask in my ear, “Have you always been this awesome?”