Because …
Perfect?
Oh man.
Okay.
Official.
I really needed my guy to fuck me.
“And you’re fasting,” Axl continued. “Because that asshole gets in your head. I told you, baby, he harms you, I intervene. I’m intervening.”
“It’s intermittent fasting,” I said softly. “It’s a program to—”
“Lose weight?” he asked curtly.
“Yes. I could stand to shed a few pounds.”
Like, maybe, twenty-five (okay, thirty) of them.
“Why? You out of shape?” he queried.
“Well, no.”
“So?” he pushed.
“What I’m trying to share is, it isn’t him. It’s something I want to do for me.”
“Think real hard, Hattie, honey. Isn’t it? Is. It. Not. Him?” Axl challenged.
Okay.
Um …
Heck.
It was.
It was him.
Whenever I felt crap about myself, it was always Dad.
“Yeah,” Axl said quietly, reading that realization on my face.
“Axl,” I whispered.
“We’ll talk about this more tonight,” he said, much more calmly. “But I am no longer okay with you walkin’ into his house with that target on your back, Hattie, knowing the extremes of his abuse.”
“Okay, we’ll talk about it,” I quickly agreed.
He nodded, turned his eyes to Lottie and said, “Apologies for interrupting, Mac.”
“Not necessary. In fact, I wish I could do an instant replay,” Lottie replied.
Even if that was kind of funny, Axl was in no mood, so he didn’t even smile.
He looked back to me. “I’ll be home around four. Will you be back?”
I nodded.
“Good,” he muttered. “We’ll finish this then.”
Great.
I started to move to him because it seemed like he was leaving, and I wanted to give him a kiss good-bye, but with a sharp movement, he lifted his hand my way, and I stopped again.
“Don’t get near me in that dress,” he warned.
I felt a flutter, two tingles, and a spasm, all of these in different places in my body, all of them awesome, all of them familiar, and all of them frustrating.
His face grew a little soft (but only a little, he was still ticked), and he said, “See you later, beautiful.”
Beautiful.
Oh God, the waterworks were coming.
I trusted myself only to nod while I tried to get a lock on the tears, both of which I accomplished.
There were general farewells all around with Boone going to Ryn and laying a hard, closed-mouth kiss on her before he and Axl departed.
The door barely closed on them before Lottie said, “You absolutely need to pounce on that man.”
“Oh my God, yes.” Ryn.
“Put him out of his misery.” Pepper.
“I mean, seriously.” Evie.
“I’m outta here again.” Mag.
“I was like you, before Eddie,” Jet said, referring to her husband, Eddie Chavez, and I focused on her. “I put him through the wringer. He had to do all the work. That meaning all the work.”
I so caught her drift.
“But, honey,” she kept on, “as much as I get you, that man really, really needs to fuck you.”
Oh boy.
Yikes!
“Do you think …him losing it like that about Dad …is because he’s frustrated?” I asked.
“No,” all of them, every single one, answered at the same time.
Okay, so that sitch wouldn’t have an easy fix.
My eyes wandered to the door.
“Are you in any doubt he wants you …and bad?” Pepper asked, and I turned to her. “I mean, Hatz, he couldn’t even let you get near him wearing that dress for fear of what he’d do if you did.”
“Fireman’s hold then sex noises from behind the curtain in the dressing room,” Ryn guessed.
“I think, since it would be their first time, he’d have it together enough to take her to his car, drive her home and do her in his bed,” Evie shared her version. “Though, he’d take her to his car in a fireman’s hold.” Pause, then, “And the same when he took her to his bed.”
“Nope. He might get her to his car, but he’d do her there,” Pepper put in.
“Okay, we all need to stop talking about Axl doing me now,” I warned, visions of me in a fireman’s hold on Axl’s shoulder dancing in my head and the flutters, tingles and spasms were back with a vengeance.
The girls grinned at each other.
And that included Lottie, but she did it noting, “What they’re saying is, you can share with him what you need. He needs it too. As bad or worse than you. You guys have been waiting a long time for this. And you can trust him with it, Hattie. You can also trust him to take care of the both of you.”
She was right.
There was one thing I was getting, and that was coming in strong.
I could trust Axl Pantera to take care of me.
It still wasn’t going to be easy.
But I was avoiding avoidance.
I was tackling things that scared me.
Right?
Right.
Damn.
* * *
At around four that afternoon, I was on Axl’s deck with Evie and Mag when Mag suddenly said, “We are so gone.”
That was right before we all heard the garage door going up.
Oh God.
Axl was home.
Evie was in a moon chair beside me, Mag’s (very, the man was six foot four) long body was sprawled in a lounge on the steps up to the Jacuzzi, I was in the other moon chair.