“He said that you weren’t coming to see him, and he wanted me to bring you,” she murmured, smoothing her hand up my bare chest, pushing it underneath the leather cut and squeezing onto the muscle of my shoulder.
“Go to my parents’ house with me this weekend,” I urged. “You can make sure I do.”
“As you wish.”
A fissure opened up inside of my heart, allowing even more of her through. “You want to know what else I wish?”
She leaned forward even more, this time giving me a lot of her weight. “What?”
“I wish that you’d climb into my arms.” I grinned wickedly.
She didn’t even miss a beat. One second she had her arms around me, her feet flat on the ground, the next she was climbing up into my lap.
Then her forehead was knocking against mine as she leaned in and pressed one hell of a kiss to my lips.
“Helmet,” I said when she pulled back.
She yanked it off of her head and hung it on the handlebars.
Just as I was about to kiss her again, this time sans helmet, an angry voice sounded from the yard.
I’d heard them come up, they made enough noise to wake a herd of elephants, but I hadn’t expected Melody to be traipsing in the yard this late. Or for her to show her face.
“This is a family neighborhood!” Melody all but yelled. “Take that inside behind closed doors. There’s a child in the house right across the street from you.”
She had a fuckin’ point.
I didn’t need to be in the front yard doin’ this.
But I was never really good about being told the word ‘no’ when I really wanted something bad enough.
I cupped Crockett’s ass when she stiffened, her first instinct was to get away.
“Don’t,” I said. “We’re not doing anything bad. We’re in the shadows. There’s no light around us. And I’m on my property. Not to mention the only house that can see us, if they’re fuckin’ lookin’ since there are no windows on their particular side of the house, is her. She had to have been looking for us to know that we were here.”
Crockett sighed, relaxing almost before I’d even finished the words. “You’re right.”
“I will call the cops,” she promised.
I moved until I could see over Crockett’s shoulder. “Call ‘em. By the time they finally get here, we’ll be done, and already be back inside. I hope that you enjoy the show.”
I wasn’t really going to fuck her here.
At least, I hadn’t planned on it.
But Crockett had other ideas when she started reaching for my belt.
And who the hell was I to tell her no when it was what I wanted just as much as she did?
Just sayin’, but I lost all need for privacy when I was in prison.
I didn’t need it anymore to function.
In fact, there were times that I could function more without privacy than I could with.
I’d been working well under pressure since I’d gone to medical school.
It’d just been a different kind of pressure when I was in prison.
A soft hand cupped my face, and I blinked, surprised that my mind had wandered off so far into the past.
“You’re not paying attention,” the woman in my arms teased.
I licked my lips, then grunted. “We can’t have that, can we?”
“Seriously!” Melody screamed. “I can’t believe that y’all are doing this. It’s gross and disgusting and I don’t want to see it!”
“Then go the fuck inside, Melody!” the woman in my arms roared.
“I didn’t raise you to use that kind of language!” Melody continued, digging herself deeper.
I was stiffening, no longer amused by the way she was standing there carrying on.
Which was why, when I stood up seconds later with Crockett in my arms, intending to go inside just so I could get the fuck away from her, I snapped.
Why did I snap?
Because if she had to say the one thing that would’ve made me lose my shit, it was what she said next.
“You’re just a no-good piece of trash is what you are,” Melody said. “I knew from the beginning that you were going to ruin this family. That was why I had your dad cast you aside. That was why, when your mother died, I fought so hard to get into his life because I knew that, if left to your own devices, you’d ruin this family. And God, you were so whiny! Always begging for every little scrap that we would give you. My God, you were an embarrassment from the very beginning. The day you moved out was the best day of my life.”
Crockett’s forehead came down onto my shoulder, and I knew without seeing her face that she was crying.
What the fuck was it about the woman that could dig so deep into Crockett’s heart and shatter it?
God, I wanted to pull my leg back and kick her in the cunt.