Page 67 of Bourbon & Blood

“It’s like you’ve done this before,” I said and he looked over my head, peering at me in the mirror.

“No,” he said.

“Then how did you know to hold the hair to keep it from pulling?” I asked.

“Watching you,” he said with a shrug.

I had to ask, “How did you see all that from downstairs?”

“Dunno, but you would stand right in front of the window, lookin’ at the sky, doing things all the time. If it wasn’t the one you would read at, it was the one next to it.”

I blushed, not realizing how much I took for granted that no one was watching or that nobody out there cared about me.

He stood silent sentinel behind me, running my brush through my hair and soaking up extra water with his towel. I handed him my leave-in conditioner spray, and he used it a bit sparingly, checking with his eyes in the mirror until I smiled and murmured, “Thank you,” to signal that it was enough.

He lifted his chin, handed it back, and resumed combing and brushing my hair until it was dry.

It was a pleasure I almost couldn’t describe. A tingling wash all along my scalp and down my back that after enough time left me totally relaxed, bordering on sleepy. I don’t know how long I sat and let him brush, but it was a good long while. My hair was barely even damp by the time that he set the brush aside.

“C’mon, cher,” he murmured and held out a hand for me to take. I got up and followed him to my bedroom, where he went to the drawer that held my nicer things and pulled out the nightgown he’d said he liked best. I smiled and put it on. I mean, it was such a little thing to indulge him in after he had spent the better part of the last two evenings positively spoiling me.

He tucked me in and got into bed with me, switching out the bedside lamp I always left burning while I was out, in anticipation of coming home in the dark.

I laid my head on his shoulder, his arm around me encouraging me to get close and I did, because honestly? It felt nice. It felt nice to be cared for the way that he cared for me, and it made being his seem so much less daunting than when I’d first agreed to it.

I felt like maybe, just maybe, I’d misjudged this man and his MC as a whole. I mean, after dealing with the police the way that I had and after some of the stories Maya had told me about her father… I had to question who was really the bad guy here? Certainly not the one that held me in his arms. I mean, right?

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

La Croix…

She fell asleep on me almost immediately, and even though it took me a while, eventually, I fell asleep right alongside her. I think it was sometime around noon when I woke up, andshitdid I feel like I’d overslept, as in I’d slept way too much.

“Hi, good morning,” she murmured, and I finished stretching, looking to her doorway.

“What time is it?” I asked, my voice rough and gruff with sleep.

“Eleven-thirty,” she said, and handed me a steaming mug of coffee once I’d sat up.

“What you doin’ up before me?” I wondered out loud and held up my free hand, dropping it by my hip and patting the mattress. She came around the bed, her own cup of coffee in her hand, and set it down on her bedside table. She got up next to me, lifting the satin fall of the floor-length skirt of her nightgown as she did. A distinctly old-fashioned gesture that was the type of feminine that – shit, I don’t know, it justdid thingsfor me.

“I don’t know,” she murmured with a smile. “I guess I just am.” She lifted a slender freckled shoulder in a shrug.

“C’mere,” I said, and she leaned in to put her mouth against mine.

I palmed her waist over the slick material she wore and my cock twitched beneath the sheet. I groaned into her mouth and she made this soft sound into mine that riled me up even more.

It surprised me when she took my coffee from me and set it aside. Lifting the long skirt of her nightgown, she threw a leg over both of mine to straddle my hips.

“Cher?” I asked softly, and she responded by crushing her mouth over mine all over again.

I felt her body through the satin covering it, and whew, was that a thrill. She kissed me like a woman starved and I definitely felt that. I wanted her like nobody’s business, but I respected her choices about her body and I didn’t have a fuckin’ condom with me.

“Cher, mm, baby…” It was hard as fuck to talk with her biting my bottom lip like that. Harder still with her pullin’ the sheet off my lap and gathering the satin of her long nightgown up out of her way. I stroked my thumbs over that slick material covering her hips and finally managed to find the strength of will to jerk my head back and say, “I ain’t got a condom.”

“Mm, don’t judge me,” she said breathlessly, throwing herself off to one side and yanking open her bedside drawer. She extricated a foil-wrapped package, and I already knew it was gonna be too small – but at the same time, I didn’t care. I’d take it. Any port in a goddamn storm, you know?

I took it from her, ripping it open with my teeth as she leaned back, holding the satin material back out of my way so I could roll it on.

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