"I like the way you think."
I spent the day on pins and needles—and finally understood on a personal level what the humans meant by that turn of phrase—because a part of me was convinced Josephine was looking for the right moment to flag down a stranger, to tell them she'd been kidnapped, to beg for help, to run away from me and never look back again.
I couldn't shake the feeling, even as she told me about her mom, about the childhood she'd once played down like she hadn't struggled, when they clearly had.
It was there when we got a table at a packed pizza place, and she had eyes only for me. Well, only for me until a pile of grease and cheese and bread was put on a plate in front of us. Then I was pretty sure she preferred the pizza to me. At least until she grumbled that I'd let her eat too much and Red's borrowed skirt was too tight.
So we went ahead and picked up some pants. And my stomach was in knots as she tried on different pairs, modeling a few for me, asking me for input. When she dipped back into the changing room area, I was paranoid she wouldn't come back to me. Even though she did.
It was a present worry even when we went to the ocean, and she'd gasped and grabbed my hand. When she showed me the shells she found, holding one up with the glee of a little kid and declared, "This is a mermaid's toenail!"
By the time we swung by some drive-through to get her a greasy meal out of a bag which she ate while dancing around to some atrocious song on the radio, I started to feel some of the tension leave my shoulders.
Something dangerous uncurled through my system, something I could only name hope.
"That was the most fun I've had in a long time," she declared as we started down the long road to the house, the sun already well set. "And I don't just mean since you kidnapped me," she added, sending me a saucy smile as she licked the ice cream cone she swore she didn't have room for. "What?" she asked when she did another slow, deliberate lick while keeping eye-contact.
"You know what," I told her, voice rough.
"Well," she said, licking the corner of her mouth. "If you want to hold this for me," she said, pushing the cone into my hands as she moved up to her knees on the seat, "maybe I can see for myself what," she finished, leaning over the center console of the SUV, pulling my cock out, and sucking me deep.
It was right then that I finally felt the uncertainty leave my body. Because she'd had more than a dozen chances to get away from me. But she chose to come home with me. She chose to come home with me then go down on me in the front seat of the car in the driveway.
She didn't want to go anywhere.
She wanted to be right beside me.
And under me.
And on top of me.
But most of all, she wanted to be with me.
That was a high I was still riding as we settled in the library with Ly and Lenore. Drex had taken Daemon with him to the club. Minos was off, well, being Minos—probably sulking and listening to sad shit on repeat.
The girls had put their heads together and decided to put on some show about some brothers who hunted down and killed demons. They claimed to fuck with us, but they were clearly into it as Ly openly scoffed at the plots and I zoned out with a book, happy to have Josephine sitting near me, even if we weren't into doing the same thing at all times. A different kind of intimacy, if you will.
It was a perfectly fucking normal evening.
And, at first, when we heard the bikes, I didn't immediately jump to anything negative, figuring maybe the guys had decided to head back early on their little mission.
It wasn't until they got closer that Ly and I started to share unsure looks with each other.
There were too many bikes.
"Turn the TV off," Ly snapped, getting to his feet.
Lenore jumped, dropping the remote, having to scramble for it to turn the show off as the bikes came up the driveway.
"What's going on?" Josephine asked, following me as I got off the couch, going toward the bookshelf to grab the guns we kept stashed there.
Sure, if Ly and I decided to Change, we could tear humans to shreds with our bare hands. But that was a last resort for obvious reasons.
We'd pissed off plenty of people just by being bikers, by making deals that put other clubs out of business, by being assholes as a whole.