Rough Ride

  He looked like he was trying hard not to start laughing.

  Then his white teeth came out, sunk right in the center of his beautiful lower lip just like they did at Zip’s. I got mesmerized at the same time sidetracked, and it was me wondering if I should jump him through the butter chicken.

  Sadly, he let his lip go and spoke, breaking the spell.

  “How about we break yours down first?” he suggested.

  I didn’t know whether to be happy we weren’t going to push any weird small talk and instead were going to get it out of the way or to be freaked that what he said intimated that he had items for the agenda.

  I didn’t comment on this. I just nodded.

  He swallowed the load of Indian food he’d put in his mouth waiting for me to nod, reached out and nabbed his beer, took a swig, then set it aside and turned back to me.

  Then he started.

  “Valenzuela and Bounty, Rosalie, they are not your problem.”

  He said this unyielding, like he could just get away with saying that and I’d let that go when we were talking about really bad bad guys and a beef with a rival motorcycle club, not to mention vigilante activities.

  “Snap—”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “No. Your involvement in that stopped in that warehouse. It’s over for you now.”

  “But it’s not over for you,” I said quietly. “And we’re right now finding our way to the us I think it’s clear both of us want, so if you’re gonna be a part of my life, what’s part of your life will be part of mine.”

  “Is it clear?” he asked.

  “Sorry?” I asked back.

  “The thing that you said I really wanna get into, Rosie, is that you’d started falling for me. Considering what put us here, I felt it was priority to state you got nothing to worry about with Valenzuela and Bounty. But now we’re there.”

  “I’d rather clear things up about Valenzuela and Bounty,” I replied.

  “Baby, are you falling for me?”

  It was a whisper, soft and sweet with snowy, blue eyes intent on me, like the next words I spoke were the words he’d been waiting for since he’d started breathing.

  “You’re…you’re…” God! “You’re Snap.”

  His tone was the same when he confirmed, “I am but that doesn’t answer the question, Rosie.”

  My tone matched his when I returned, “To me it does.”

  His snowy blue eyes started flaming as he muttered, “Fuck, now I’m not hungry and instead I wanna jump you through the butter chicken.”

  From what I’d eaten, I could tell the food he got was crazy-good and I’d been hungry.

  But now I wasn’t. I also wasn’t feeling nervous or shy. I just wanted him to jump me.

  Even so, we needed to stay on target.

  “I don’t want you to think I’ll find someone else when I’m with you,” I whispered.

  “Rosie, do you think I’d be sittin’ right here…hell, you’d be sittin’ right here if I thought that?”

  That made sense.

  But still.

  “I need you to know. I need to say the words. I need you to understand I know that was there and how it happened and it’s still all about you. It was messy and crazy and scary but you came through all that, solid and strong and protective, and it became about that. But it feels wrong because it was all the first parts.”

  “It’s not wrong, Rosalie.”

  “I want to make sure you believe that.”

  “I can assure you, baby, that I believe that.”

  I wished that worked.

  It just didn’t.

  Not for me.

  Because I knew how it was supposed to be.

  “My mom…my dad…” I shook my head hard, trying to shake some sense into the words I had to say so he’d understand how important they were, “there was no one else for her and no one else for him. It wasn’t about being a couple and forsaking all others. When they got together, the world just vanished. They functioned in it and I came along and they made me part of their world, but it was just us. There was family and there were friends, but in the end, it was just us. They never shared, either of them, but at least for Mom, outside going to the prom with somebody, I don’t think there was anyone before him for her. I know my grandparents were freaked he was so much older than her but then Dad was Dad and he won them around.”

  “You cannot live your parents’ life, honey,” he said gently.

  I nodded. “No, I get that. I totally do. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I’d want the man I decided on to know there was no one for me but him. That I want our lives and our children to be our world. I want the end result of what they had but it’s not even that. I’d want my man to know down to his bones that was what he was getting from me.”

  “And you think, we go to that place, because of how this began, I’ll question that,” he deduced.

  “I think you’re brothers with Shy, so that history is just plain in your face, and then I was with Beck when things started, and I think life happens, arguments happen, and it would kill me if anything ever shook your understanding it’s only you.”

  “Baby, when we make love later, you’re gonna find out I’m not comin’ to you a virgin.”

  I put my plate to my lap, leaned his way and said, “It’s not the same.”

  “I been along for this ride with you, Rosie. Do you think I missed that?”

  “No, it’s just—”

  “I’m totally fuckin’ in love with you.”

  I leaned back and stared, a flare happening around my heart that started to spread throughout my chest cavity.

  “Gone, babe. Gone,” he continued. “You’re sweet and you’re funny and you’re not selfish. How you could think that, I do not know, seein’ as you put your ass on the line to save the soul of the man you were living with.”

  As much as I was rejoicing in what he’d said to me, I had to lay out where all that was at.

  “That wasn’t just for him, Snap, it was also for me.”

  “All right, if you told tell me there is some form of pure altruism out there, Rosalie, I’ll tell you you’re wrong because it doesn’t exist. Even if you get nothin’ outta something good you do, you still get the satisfaction that you’re the kind of person who would do it. So in the end, that’s getting something. So yeah, part of your angle was to get something outta that. You also got your face fucked up and your ribs busted. You knew that was a possibility and instead of getting shot of that guy, you carried on. So what do you think that says to me?”

  “I was with that guy,” I replied. “The wrong guy.”

  “No,” he denied, beginning to sound impatient. “It says if you care about someone, it’s not about going that extra mile. It’s about giving everything. Honest to God, I fell in love with your tits and your hair and that beautiful voice and the way of you that I’ve learned recently you got from your mother and that cute-as-fuck skip-walk you got goin’ on first, Rosie. But after that, all that is you filled in the rest and I don’t give that first fuck he was there in between. He isn’t anymore. And that’s where we are now. He doesn’t factor to me. He only factors to you and you’ve gotta let that go, Rosie. Because for me it’s already gone.”

  “I get into this with you and later, it comes back to haunt me, that would not be good, honey,” I pushed.

  “It won’t.”

  “You can’t tell the future, Everett.”

  “When it comes to you, I can,” he declared, all flinty. “We’re gonna finish this conversation and the food. Then we’re gonna go upstairs and finish what we started this morning. Tomorrow, we’re gonna wake up and do more a’ that. Repeat for eternity, tossin’ in a couple of kids along the way. That’s our future, Rosie. And just to make that clear, knowin’ now you’re falling for me, my world shrank to what’s on this couch the minute with both sat on it but you should know, my world started shrinking long before that. And I’m not only good with that, it makes me really
, fuckin’ happy.”

  Right then, I was really fucking happy too.

  “I have a feeling,” I whispered, the words uneven from the emotion stuck in my throat, “that you’re not gonna let me pay rent.”

  A smile bloomed on his face, huge, handsome, amazing.

  He knew I was happy too, finally allowing myself to reach for it, and he was right about there not being any pure altruism because he also knew he gave me that, and he got something huge out of it.

  That was what made him happy.

  The chance at a shot of making me happy.

  God, that was all just so Snapper.

  “You wanna exercise your independence, we’ll negotiate somethin’ that makes you feel easy about that but you can still buy garden furniture. The bed, babe, that’s not gonna happen since, if shit works out the way it should, I’ll be in it as much as you, so that’s on me.”

  “Are you saying that you wanna…” I swallowed, happy we were there, no…thrilled, but this was maybe too fast, “move in together?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I think you need some time and space, and we got more gettin’-to-know-you shit to do. But yeah, obviously eventually. Definitely.”

  And with that, Snap shoveled in more food.

  I called his attention back to me. “Snap, Valenzuela and Bounty.”

  “Babe—”

  “It worries me.”

  He gave me a thorough look and I could tell he was thinking deeply about this.

  It took two mouthfuls of rice and korma with a chaser of a bite of tikka masala coated naan for him to come to a conclusion about what he was going to say.

  “You know Chaos has been patrolling our turf now for well over a decade.”

  I didn’t know that.

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “Nothing has happened, Rosie. Not even close. Before Valenzuela, patrol wasn’t even that big of a deal because everyone doin’ stupid shit in Denver knew to keep it off Chaos. We just did it regularly to make sure that message stayed out there.”

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  He studied me again while he was eating and I took another bite too while he did it.

  Finally, he pressed forward.

  “Before my time, when they were pullin’ outta some shit they were into, they lost a man.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Good guy,” he carried on, “way everyone tells it, the best.”

  “Snapper,” I whispered.

  “And I tell you that, Rosalie, because that loss did two things. It tore apart every member who stayed in the club and it solidified the brotherhood as well as the path they were on to get clean. I know that’s a dichotomy but it’s the way the story is told and it’s the brotherhood I know. So what I’m sayin’ is, that last part, we got in hand, but that first part, every brother is going to do everything in their power not to let that happen again.”

  “Not everything is in Chaos’s power,” I pointed out.

  “That man they lost, name was Black, he had a woman and two boys.”

  Uh-oh!

  “She’s Chaos lore too, baby,” he went on gently. “The way it’s told, she never got over that and they loved their brother, they loved that woman, they loved those boys, so they felt his loss three ways. So when I say we’re gonna do everything in our power not to lose anything precious along the way, we’re gonna go balls to the wall with that.”

  He didn’t lean into me but the way he was looking at me changed so it made it feel like he’d slid across the couch and got in my space.

  “We are not doin’ this stupid. We’re playin’ this smart. Those men have women and children to protect, Rosalie. I know you get that Club is a family, but maybe you don’t get that Club is family. We want this done and we’re all in to do it, but we’re not gonna Butch and Sundance this shit. We all got different parents but we share blood. Chaos is our blood, baby, and I’m not sayin’ shit isn’t intense. I’m sayin’ we’re not taking unnecessary chances. And I can’t tell the future. What I’m askin’ is for you to trust me.”

  “I trust you, Snapper.”

  “Then all we got left is to eat and then we can go upstairs.”

  “There’s nothing you have for the agenda?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he answered.

  Well, that was a relief.

  “We have something else to talk about,” I shared as he shoved food in his mouth.

  “What?” he asked after he’d swallowed.

  “I want you to get that what I’m gonna say is real and not about all you’re giving me.”

  “What?” he repeated.

  “And I’m worried it’s too soon and you won’t believe in it.”

  “Baby…” He was losing patience. “What?”

  “I’m not falling for you,” I told him.

  A look came over his face that made me scramble to keep talking.

  “I’ve already fallen in love with you.”

  He froze.

  Solid.

  Staring at me.

  I sat.

  Solid.

  Staring at him.

  Snapper broke the silence.

  “Shit, fuck, we’re gonna have to nuke it,” he growled, practically threw his plate on the coffee table, yanked mine out of my hand and did the same, then pulled me out of the couch.

  Before I knew what was happening, he was pulling me up the stairs.

  “Snap!” I snapped.

  He turned and I nearly collided with him but stopped because his hands came up, framed my face, and he bent low from his step above me to put his face in mine.

  “You just gave yourself to me, Rosie, so I’m havin’ you now and I don’t give a shit the naan is never as good after it’s microwaved.”

  I was wrong.

  The fireplace was okay for setting a romantic mood.

  But the best romance in the world was standing with your man’s hands on you in the curve of a spiral staircase talking about microwaving naan bread.

  I wanted to laugh. I wanted to throw my arms around him. I wanted to go up on my toes and press my lips hard to his.

  I’d found the man who was perfect for me and he was mine.

  I didn’t get a shot to do any of that.

  He dropped his head farther and kissed me.

  It didn’t even start sweet.

  It started wet and hot and stayed that way until Snapper broke the kiss, let go of my face, but again grabbed my hand and pulled me up the rest of the stairs.

  When we got up there, I was ready to yank off all my clothes, all his clothes, and go at it fast and furious.

  But Snapper had other ideas.

  Sure, he walked direct to the bed.

  And sure, he got right on it.

  That was, sitting on it and pulling me in his lap with both my legs to the side (not even any straddle action!).

  He reached out, turned on the light, and came back to me.

  “Snapper,” I whispered, curling the fingers of one hand around the side of his neck.

  “Rosalie,” he whispered back, sliding his hand up my spine.

  When his fingers made it into my hair and he didn’t pull me down to his lips, I shared, “Mom and I bought condoms at Walgreens.”

  His eyes flashed. “Love a girl who’s prepared.”

  “I’m not usually prepared.”

  “Strike that. Love my Rosalie was in the headspace to know this was gonna happen and she prepared for me. But just to say, baby, you never need to worry. I’ll have that covered for us.”

  I had no doubt.

  I stroked his whiskered jaw with my thumb and asked, “Are you gonna kiss me?”

  “In a sec,” he answered, his fingers in my hair, the tips of them stroking the edge of my hairline behind my ear.

  It felt crazy-nice.

  His tongue in my mouth on the stairs had felt better.

  He did this for a while, staring up into my eyes, and I shifted in his lap.

  “Honey—” I began to prompt.
>
  “This is gonna be our first time, Rosie, so we’re gonna remember it, and I want it to be worth remembering.”

  Oh God.

  How much more perfect could he be?

  “’Kay,” I muttered. “Take your time.”

  He grinned.

  And it got that much more perfect.

  “Love you,” he whispered.

  And much, much more perfect.

  “Love you too,” I whispered back.

  His hand fisted in my hair. “Yeah. And thank you for loving me.”

  Oh God.

  And now he was even more perfect.

  “I think that’s my line,” I retorted.

  “Waited for you awhile, Rosie. So you’d be wrong.”

  I couldn’t take anymore.

  I dipped closer, sliding my hand up to cup his jaw.

  “If you don’t kiss me soon, I’m gonna go crazy,” I told him in all honesty.

  “Your ribs—” he began.

  I cut him off. “I’ll deal.”

  His expression started changing. “No you won’t.”

  “Baby,” I hissed, putting my lips almost on top of his, “shut up and kiss me.”

  He shut up.

  And then he whipped me to my back on the bed, curling over me, and he kissed me.

  He did not tear my clothes off.

  I did not tear his off.

  We kissed and we touched and we stroked over clothes, then under them.

  After a while we kissed harder and deeper and we touched more and I pulled off his thermal. He drew away to yank off his boots and socks.

  He came back and we kissed hotter and wilder and we touched hungrier. But I got the better end of that deal because his smooth, sleek, warm skin was under my hands, I could feel the power of the muscle underneath that heated silk, and with all the kissing and touching and that, suddenly I was all about making this something to remember and going at it hot and heavy.

  And fast.

  So I pushed up with my hips to roll him to his back, straddled him, sat up, and pulled off my thermal and cami.

  Astride him in nothing up top but my bra, Snapper just wrapped his fingers around the skin at my waist and slowly slid them up.

  I felt him straining against his fly between my legs but he took his time.

  “Baby,” I whispered.

  He sat up, touched his mouth to mine, wrapped an arm around me then glided his free hand up to my breast.