He raised his head and gave her a satisfied, slightly smug smile. As much as she wanted to praise him for taking her to the moon and back, all she could see was the wild rat’s nest of hair she’d created while he ate her out. She snorted, trying to hold back a laugh.
One of his eyebrows rose, and Brooke lost it. She flopped back on the grass, laughing so hard, her stomach ached.
“Not sure you’re supposed to laugh after I give you my best moves,” he said with a fierce frown she wasn’t buying for a second.
“I—I’m sorry,” she said between laughs.
“Are you?”
That had her dissolving into giggles all over again. “No! Y—your hair!”
He rolled his eyes at her as he sat up. Once steady, he tied his hair back with the band on his wrist. “Stay the night?” he asked, extending a hand to her.
Her heart lodged in her throat. Stay the night? That sounded like a colossal mistake, but the idea of waking up to him was almost too tempting to resist. Still… “I have the dogs.”
“Oh, right. You fried my brain, and it’s not one hundred percent recovered yet.” He winked. “I could stay at your place.”
No.
Nope.
Not gonna happen.
Danger!
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
And she’d done it. What a fool. This was step one down the relationship highway and the path to compromising her identity.
Curly helped her to her feet. Then he knelt and grabbed her denim shorts. “Madam,” he said, holding the shorts at her feet. It was an odd Cinderella moment that had her face heating. No one did things for her. Sure, Nancy and her husband helped her out if she needed assistance with something major, but day-to-day, it was all her. After leaving her husband, she’d set it up that way, and that’s how she liked it.
Having Curly do something as simple yet sweet as helping her into her shorts after sex messed with her head. She needed to take back control before she slipped up and handed a piece of herself over to him. He couldn’t be allowed to have power over her. To have the ability to hurt her.
But as he held out her flip-flop like her very own Prince Charming, she slid her foot in the sandal and chuckled along with him.
Once she was all set, he held out a hand to her. “Let me grab Harley and a change of clothes, then I’ll follow you home.”
She almost told him she’d head out while he gathered what he needed then meet him at her house, but as she kept doing in his presence, she broke her own rule and followed his lead. “Sounds good,” she said.
He smiled as he squeezed her hand, then pulled her in for a quick kiss.
Fifteen minutes later, when she glanced in her rear-view mirror, she found herself smiling at the sight of his truck behind her.
There was something nice about not having to travel across town in the dark alone. Nice to have someone at her back.
Nice, yet terrifying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WHAT A FUCKING joke.
Curly could have run this operation better blindfolded and gagged. For fuck’s sake, he’d waltzed right into the packed barn on Prick’s property as though he belonged there. Security consisted of one monster-sized brute at the door acting as a gatekeeper who was too busy drooling over a big-titted woman with candy apple lipstick and skunk stripes in her hair to do more than extend his meaty hand for the cover charge. After all his bluster about Brooke staying far away, she could have joined him, and no one would have noticed her either. However, Curly was more than happy to have her tucked away at home.
He’d spent every night in her bed for nearly a week and couldn’t think of any place he’d enjoyed more. Ever. He’d be lying if he said he would rather be at the dog fight than stashed away with Brooke, but some things they couldn’t avoid.
Just because Prick’s meager security allowed him into the dog fight without a single issue didn’t mean his luck would hold out. Aside from his guys milling around, at least fifty other people, primarily men, filled the barn. The place was as shitty as it’d appeared the day he’d found Brooke sneaking around. Faded planks and rotted roofs made it seem as though one hefty breeze take out the entire structure. The run-down state of the interior matched the exterior.
Six stalls, which must have been used for horses at one point in time, now served as makeshift kennels for snarling fight dogs who were about to be used as money-making props for their sick owners. The urge to casually stroll past each stall and release the dogs clawed at Curly’s stomach, but he’d never make it past the first without getting busted, so he remained where he was in a dark corner of the barn where no one paid him any attention.