Rock Chick 08 Revolution (3 page)

He moved one of his hands down to
the side of my neck so he could stroke my throat with his thumb. This was
another something new. Then again, I didn’t give him many opportunities to show
affection like that and I was thinking that was a good thing seeing as it felt
incredibly
nice.

“There’s gonna be a path you
cross,” he said gently. “A path that no matter what firepower you got taking your
back, they’re gonna try to take you down. I do not want you to get to that
place, baby.”

Unusually, I used a calm voice
rather than an irate one when I explained, “I’m not exactly being stupid. I’ve
got Brody and Darius. I’m careful.”

That was only mostly true.

I slid my hand up his chest,
exploring this unchartered territory of intimacy and sharing, and wrapped it
around the side of his neck, putting pressure on. He gave me what I wanted and
his face drew even closer.

“I like doing this, Ren. I
like
it. I’ve tried a lot of things in
my life. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree. I’m a certified radiology tech. I’ve
done nails. And I’m thirty-two years old. Now I work part-time in a
bookstore/coffee shop and full-time slinging drinks. I don’t like doing any of that
as much as I like what you don’t like me doing. That’s why I keep doing it,
even though I know a lot of people, not just you, don’t like me doing it.
Because I
like
it. It feels right. It
feels like I finally found what I wanna be. It’s like I finally found
me.
”

He studied me and for once said not
a word.

Again unusually, I kept talking
rationally.

“I know you’re worried about those
guys I got involved with last night. So are Darius and Brody. So am I. But I
took a calculated risk to save my friend. I’ll watch my back and I have good
guys watching it, too. So I’ll be all right.”

He kept studying me, but I had
nothing else to say.

Finally, he spoke.

“You know, just sayin’, you said
this shit to me like you just said it to me rather than yellin’ at my ass until
the only option I have to stop you from yellin’ is to tap
your
ass, it might have penetrated about ten months ago.”

Something about that made me laugh.
Maybe because it was funny.

And there was something about this
that I liked. And there was no maybe about the fact that it not only seemed he
listened to me, but he heard me and he
got
me.

And I liked that.

When I quit laughing, Ren was
smiling down at me.

My heart skipped a beat.

I didn’t get many of those, seeing
as we fought all the time and when we weren’t his mouth was engaged with doing
other things.

But just like now, when I did get a
smile from Ren Zano, it hit straight to the heart of me.

His smile downgraded to a grin and
his eyes moved over my face, something happening in them I didn’t quite get.
But whatever it was seemed to mean something. It looked like he was about to
say something, but he thought better of it and kept quiet.

I didn’t.

“I dig the mountains, but me and
the boys shot up here without provisions and I’ve got shit to do at home, so it
might be time to get a move on.”

“Right,” he replied. “There’s a
drugstore across the street. I’ll go over, get toothbrushes and shit. There’s
also a coffee shop down the street. You wanna make coffee in that little pot on
the dresser or you want me to pick you up a real coffee?”

I stared up at him.

We’d never done anything like this,
acting semi-normal and not always crazy.

I was a little stunned he could be
thoughtful.

No. That wasn’t true. I knew he was
the kind of guy who could to be that way. He often demonstrated thoughtful
tendencies. Like when I’d show at his house in the wee hours after a bartending
shift, he’d ask me if I’d eaten and I’d find he’d made a batch of spaghetti
sauce or some cannelloni and he’d heat it up to feed me. And I knew he probably
didn’t make that just for himself, but also preparing to feed me later.

Shit like that.

But everybody had to eat, so going
out of his way to be thoughtful? I’d never seen that. Mostly because I’d never
given him the chance.

Except last Christmas, when he’d
been
really
thoughtful.

So maybe I wasn’t staring up at him
stunned because he was being thoughtful.

Maybe I was doing it because this
demonstration of further thoughtfulness moved me.

Shit.

“I, uh…” I started and stopped since
it took me a bit to shake it off, how nice it felt to be this way with Ren. But
I managed it and kept going. “We’ll start with coffee here and get a real one
for the trip home. But a toothbrush wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Gotcha,” he muttered, dipping
close to touch his lips to mine, and he did this
for no reason.
Something else he’d never done. Then he pulled away,
rolled off me and exited the bed. He yanked the covers over me after he did
(again, thoughtful) and proceeded dressing.

It was then I lost the ability to
think about anything as I watched Ren move, going from naked to dressed, so I
laid there and let myself enjoy the fullness of that (as well as the heat it
caused in me). The show was so good, I was rerunning certain parts of it in my
head when it was over and this made me an unmoving target when Ren came back to
the bed. He hooked a hand around the back of my neck, pulled me up and again
touched his mouth to mine.

“Back in a few,” he murmured. He
gave me a small grin that warmed his eyes in a way that ratcheted up that heat
in me, then he walked to and through the door.

I stared at the door for a good
long while.

Then the name he’d murmured in the
back of my hair over a year before… a name he murmured while we were in bed,
naked, he was holding me and he was asleep… a name that wasn’t mine… came back
to me.

And it reminded me this wasn’t
real.

I truly believed Ren wanted it to
be.

But I knew it was never going to
be, not in the way I needed it to be.

So I shoved thoughts of his warmth
and thoughtfulness aside, jumped from the bed and started coffee.

I was in the shower when he
returned and I knew he returned when he joined me in the shower.

Me wet and soapy, Ren wet and naked
meant things happened, and those things included me getting an against-the-tiles-in-the-bathroom-of-a-moderately-priced-motel-in-a-small-Colorado-mountain-town
orgasm.

Like every orgasm Ren gave me (yes,
I said “every”, and that is no lie), it was freaking
righteous.

I was in my bra and undies, Ren in
his boxers. We were both at the small sink brushing our teeth while I braced
myself against liking another heretofore unknown intimacy when Ren gave me the
ammunition to forever put the “us” he wanted us to be to rest.

He did this by spitting out foam,
rinsing and catching my eyes in the mirror after he wiped his mouth with a
towel.

Then he said, “Got Ava and Stark’s
wedding invitation. I know you’re in the wedding party but I’m gonna take you.”

I still had my brush in my mouth,
but my eyes locked to his as my insides froze stone-cold.

I forced myself out of the freeze,
pulled the brush out of my mouth and asked through foam, “Are you shitting me?”

His brows shot together and he
answered, “No.”

I leaned forward, spit but did not
rinse. I spoke again after I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth and my
words came out biting.

“Tell me you’re shitting me,” I
demanded.

He rocked back and crossed his arms
on his chest, murmuring in a way I knew he was annoyed and didn’t expect an
answer, “Jesus, what’s up your ass now?”

He was.

He was
totally fucking
shitting me.

And that burned through me. Not
with anger.

With pain.

So much of it, my voice was
actually weak—fuck me,
weak—
when I
answered, “What’s up my ass, Ren, is that you just asked me to go with you to the
wedding of the woman you’re in love with.
That
,”
my voice—goddamn it!—broke on that word, but I kept going, “is what’s up my
ass.”

I registered the shock on his face.
It would be hard to miss seeing as it suffused every feature and shot from his
eyes.

“What the fuck?” he whispered.

“So no,” I whispered back, the pain
still affecting my voice, making it come out shaky. But I couldn’t stop it. I
also didn’t have it in me to try. “I will
not
go to Ava and Luke’s wedding with you. And also,” I swallowed, “this shit, you
and me, after you’d ask me something like that, is done. Over. No more fuck
buddies. No more
anything.
”

And on that, I didn’t stomp out of
the bathroom.

I ran.

Chapter One

You’re a Nightingale

Rock Chick Rewind

Thirteen
months earlier…

I woke up in Ren Zano’s four poster
bed, with its wine colored sheets, that was in the bedroom of his awesome house
in Cheesman Park, knowing I’d done it.

I wasn’t certain it was going to
happen to me. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was beginning to think it
wouldn’t.

That happened to some women. They
went their whole lives and didn’t find
the
one.

The man who, just looking at him,
made your blood warm.

The man who, when he smiled at you,
made your heart skip a beat.

The man who was so attuned to your
body, he could use his hands, his mouth, his words, his
everything,
and make it sing.

Even the first time.

Or, I should say, in Ren’s and my
case, the first
three
times.

And the man who was interesting,
charming, maybe a wee bit edgy and mysterious (but that wee bit was
way
hot and something I liked a whole
lot) and made no bones about the fact he was into you—into you in the sense
that he wanted to get
in
you—and that
way would last awhile.

That while maybe being forever.

Okay, so last night in the parking lot
of Herman’s Hideaway, Ren had fought with Luke, one of the Hot Bunch (in other
words, one of my brother’s guys) over my friend Ava.

But then Luke accidently elbowed
Ava in the head. They took off in his Porsche and I’d stayed in the parking lot
giving Ren what for for being a macho asshole and fighting in a freaking
parking lot (I mean,
really?
). Then
I’d noticed he was still pissed. He appeared to give more than a passing shit
about Ava (and there was reason for this; she was in the middle of a shitstorm,
not unusual with the Rock Chicks) so I decided to get a few drinks in him.

When I offered this suggestion, he
stopped being pissed for a second, looked me up and down, and agreed.

This led us to going to My
Brother’s Bar where I worked as a bartender. We got a back corner booth and
commenced in tying one on.

At first, I avoided the subject of
the Luke/Ava/Ren triangle because he seemed to be getting his shit together and
I didn’t want it to slide back. Especially if he intended to get shitfaced. I
didn’t want to watch another hot guy go gonzo, even verbally, and especially
drunkenly, over another one of the Rock Chicks.

That wasn’t my idea of a fun night.

I’d had that when Indy got pursued
by Lee.

And when Lee’s best friend Eddie went
after my friend Jet.

And when Hank decided, for him, it
was Roxie.

And also when another one of Lee’s
boys, Vance, locked his sights on a woman we eventually recruited into the Rock
Chicks, Jules.

And last, I was currently swimming
through the crazy waters of Luke staking his claim with another one of my
friends, Ava.

I couldn’t say all this wasn’t
exciting—sometimes
way
exciting,
sometimes hilarious, sometimes not a small amount of insane—but the end was
always good. The guy got his girl, the girl got her guy, and everyone was
happy.

As happy as I was for my
friends—and make no mistake, I was happy, and the rides to get to the end of
their kickass, modern-day fairytales were all sorts of sick, delicious fun—I
was thinking it wasn’t going to happen for me.

But until recently, I’d been going
out for a while with Carl, who was a good guy. He was into me, the sex was
great, the banter almost better, but something about him just didn’t
do it
for me.

It didn’t make me look the way Indy
looked at Lee, Jet at Eddie, Roxie at Hank (I think you get me).

Like he was
it
. Like the search was over. Like I’d made the epic journey and
found treasure beyond my wildest imaginings.

I didn’t usually think shit like
that.

I was a Rock Chick. I had a lot of
friends. I had a lot of good times. The concept of “anything goes” was pretty
literal for me. I didn’t have issues speaking my mind. And I didn’t have issues
creating a drama if the situation deserved it. I also didn’t give a shit if
someone disagreed with the situation deserving it.

I was…
me.

I wasn’t girlie.

I wasn’t romantic.

I didn’t have fantasies (except
those that came while wielding a vibrator).

Let’s just say the knight in
shining armor concept did nothing for me.

I also didn’t want the picket
fence, the two-point-five kids, the meatloaf in the oven and the snuggle during
Letterman that would lead to missionary sex that lasted ten minutes and then
dreamless sleep.

But that wasn’t what my Rock Chicks
were getting.

They were getting something else.
Something big, bold, bountiful and amazing.

For one, I knew all about their sex
lives, and missionary was on the menu but it was
far
from the only choice.