“But—” I started.

Buck interrupted me again. “I give you reason not to trust me?”

“No,” I whispered.

“My boys?”

I didn’t answer, just shook my head.

“I told you last night, you don’t do us wrong, you don’t do me wrong, you got nothin’ to worry about.” He bent so his face was closer to mine. “No promises. I don’t know where we’re goin’, darlin’. What I do know is I want to find out. But if it doesn’t work, the break’ll be good.” His gaze grew intense when he promised, “I’ll see to that, baby. You have my word.”

I had Rogan’s word and I trusted Rogan. I trusted him with my love and with my happiness.

But Rogan had never beaten up anyone for me, putting himself out there.

And Rogan may have babied me when I was sick, but he also put me in a position where I was eventually thrown from a moving vehicle. And when that happened, Buck had planted one of his boys to watch out for me.

I was thirty-two years old.

Was I prepared to cocoon myself for the rest of my days, existing through a terrible life?

Or was I willing to live more?

I thought I’d been making all the right moves.

But had I?

“Okay,” my mouth said before my brain processed it was going to say it.

Buck dropped his head so his forehead rested against mine a second as his fingers gave me another squeeze. Then he lifted his head.

The whole time he kept hold of my eyes.

“You get safe, you need space, I’ll give it to you. But now, I want you close.”

“Okay,” I repeated, but before I could stop myself, I asked, “Why?”

“Why?” he asked back, straightening to his side of the counter.

“Why are you doing this? Why do you want to find out where we’re going? You barely know me.”

He grinned and took another huge bite of his, well, again, my Pop-Tart.

After he swallowed, he laid it out.

“Because you forget to be uptight when I got my hands and mouth on you. You totally lose control when I got my dick in you, going so far as to hang on so you don’t come and lose my cock. Then, when you let yourself come, you come harder than any woman I ever had. You don’t mind me knowin’ it and you give as good as you get.”

Hmm.

Well, it was nice he enjoyed me in bed as much as I enjoyed him.

That said…

He continued.

“You don’t have any fuckin’ clue how to play games, because when you do, you’re really fuckin’ bad at it which means you won’t play me. You’re not hard to look at, even with a shiner and a busted lip. I like to make you smile. And it does somethin’ for me, knowin’, even with your life as fucked up as it’s been, that I can make you laugh.”

He paused a beat and finished it with a question.

“Is that enough for you?”

With all he’d just said, it took me not a second to understand that was enough for me.

I had nothing so even a little bit seemed like a lot.

But that seemed like more than a lot.

It seemed like a gift, especially the fact that he liked to make me smile.

And laugh.

In fact, it made me breathe a little heavy again, but this time for good reason.

So he wouldn’t notice me semi-panting, I didn’t answer verbally.

I nodded.

His grin turned into a smile, deepening those lines by his eyes.

Then the Pop-Tarts popped up.

8

I Took You On

“Babe, get your ass in gear. They’re here,” Buck shouted from the front of the house.

I was in his bedroom getting ready to go out shopping with the old ladies.

Buck had some business to attend to and he’d decided it was time for me to enter the real world again.

This meant he arranged for one of the MC’s “prospects,” or boys who had not yet been accepted into the Club and were now proving their salt to the members, to take Lorie, some of her girlfriends and me out shopping.

I wasn’t certain how this would help the prospects prove their salt as rough and tumble members of a motorcycle club. But I was getting the impression that the recruits did whatever a member told them to do (no matter what it was) to demonstrate their dedication, loyalty and commitment to the Club.

And this included taking a bunch of the members’ old ladies shopping.

The prospect selected for this task was Driver, who I already decided I liked and who had been my bodyguard the last couple of days.

I’d also already decided I liked Lorie.

So that was good.

The rest of it was bad.

I didn’t make friends easily.

When I was young, it was because insularity was key to survival. You didn’t want to form attachments when life was uncertain.

I’d learned that the hard way.

When I was older, it was out of habit.

After Rogan got arrested, it was because no one wanted anything to do with me.

It was Friday. Buck’s kids would be there that evening. Buck had talked to them and they’d told him they were leaving right after school. He told them he had company.

What he didn’t do was tell me how they reacted to this.

Thus, I decided it was probably bad, or if not bad, then not met with exuberant curiosity that their dad was all of a sudden shacked up with a virtual stranger.

I had been in Buck’s house for three days, including the one where I slept most of the day.

This time was taken up with me inspecting Buck’s place, unpacking my stuff that his boys delivered, picking up Buck’s bedroom, doing some laundry and watching daytime television with Driver.

It was enough.

Moving around to keep my body from getting tight was one thing, but overdoing it was bad. I learned that clearing Buck’s floor space. I was still tender, but after succeeding in that feat, I felt pain.

So when I was done, Driver and I fired up the television and watched soaps and reruns of Dynasty.

Most of the soaps we watched were Mexican because Driver thought all the screaming, dramatic music and narrowed looks were hilarious (and I agreed). Neither of us spoke a word of Spanish, but still, they were funny.

We watched Dynasty because it was even funnier.

Buck was not around this whole time. He left me with Driver to get work done at Ace and to do Scary President of an MC Things.

I learned to spot the difference quickly.

If he was going to Ace, he’d share this with me.

If he was doing Scary President of an MC Things, he didn’t share.

The first night of my first full day in his house, Buck came home early with a pizza.

Driver was not invited to stay.

We ate it in front of the TV. Buck drank beer, I drank Coke, and Buck talked, mostly updates about my issues.

These included that Esposito was laying low…

“But darlin’, he has no choice. I was pretty thorough.”

Yikes!

Also no word from anywhere about Tia.

Which I was trying not to think about, planting visions firmly in my head each leg of her imaginary journey on her road trip to freedom in Seattle (I decided she’d gone to Seattle, just because that was where we’d planned to go).

When we were done eating, I cleared the box away (Buck didn’t do plates with pizza either, something I found difficult—eating pizza with nothing but my hands and a paper towel—but I mastered it on my third and final slice), and I brought him another beer.