Craving Redemption

  “I bought a really sexy bra that I was going to put on when you were almost here,” I moaned, embarrassed. “I was going to change out of this one before you got here.”

  “Why?” he asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

  “Because it’s an old lady bra!” I huffed back, finally giving up on trying to unhook the three rows of hook-and-eyes holding it together.

  “Sweetheart, it’s just a bra,” he told me, leaning down to run his lips over the top of my breasts. “It looks like it fits.”

  “It does fit,” I told him softly, running my hand through his hair as he placed little kisses all over my chest. “But the other one is pretty, and this one isn’t.”

  “If you don’t like this bra, then why did you buy it?”

  I grasped his hair and tilted his face up to mine. “This is one of my comfortable bras. The other ones are for you to see.”

  “You’re saying I can’t see most of your bras?”

  “Just the comfortable ones,” I said with a nod.

  “You’re outta your mind,” he stated firmly, pulling my hips until I’d fallen back on the bed. “You’re throwing all of those uncomfortable bras in the fuckin’ trash.”

  “The hell I am!” I gasped, trying to sit up.

  “Calliope, I want you,” he told me seriously, running his fingers down the center of my belly until he’d reached the heat between my legs. “I don’t give a fuck what kind of bra you’re wearing as long as it’s not digging into your ribs and your tits. You have uncomfortable bras, you throw that shit out.”

  His fingers started exploring as if they hadn’t touched me a million times before, and my breathing hitched as he hit my clit.

  “Now, take off this bra that you’ve been bitching about so I can see you,” he whispered as he leaned down to kiss me softly.

  I arched my back and easily undid my bra with one hand as he leaned back on his knees, his hands leaving my body.

  “Jesus Christ, you’re beautiful,” he mumbled as I threw my bra as far across the room as I could. He knelt there staring for what felt like forever, and I wondered if he was noticing the thicker thighs and waist I was sporting. When he hadn’t moved for over a minute, I felt myself growing embarrassed even though I knew it was ridiculous.

  “Are you going to touch me?” I asked in a snippy tone, my insecurity coming out bitchy like it always did.

  “Yeah, Sugar. I’m gonna touch you,” he answered, running his hand down my leg. “I wanna look at your new body first.”

  “Cataloguing my fat, huh?”

  “Shut it, Callie,” he answered fiercely. “Don’t ever say that shit to me.”

  My mouth snapped shut at his order, my face burning with embarrassment. I knew I wasn’t fat, but insecurities were a bitch and it felt like I was gaining weight faster than I should have been.

  “You were gorgeous when I met you,” he told me quietly, running a hand from the top of my shoulder to my wrist. “But now? You’re so fuckin’ beautiful it almost hurts to look at you. Your tits are all full and round, your belly’s got a little bump already, and fuck me, but I’m pretty sure your thighs and ass are gonna make me have a heart attack.” As he detailed my body parts, he ran his hands over them lightly until my entire body was covered in goose bumps.

  “Such a sweet talker,” I murmured back, reaching up to run my fingers across his jaw as tears filled my eyes.

  “I aim to please,” he grunted back, leaning down to catch a nipple.

  I sniffed once before getting my tears under control and arched my back as he tugged hard with his teeth.

  “Careful!” I hissed quietly. “I’m super sensitive and they hurt.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry,” he murmured back, licking over the offended nipple as if to soothe it. “You sore down here, too?” he asked as he slid down my body until he was looking between my legs.

  “No,” I gasped as he licked me gently. “Not sore.”

  I think he mumbled the word “good” but I wasn’t sure because his lips pressed firmly into my clit and I keened low in my throat. He licked and sucked and bit at me until I was writhing on the bed, but right when I was about to come, he pulled back.

  “Asa!” I snapped, pulling at his hair in an attempt to move his face back where I wanted it.

  “That’s right, Sugar,” he hissed as he pulled my hands away from his head, trapping them above me as he moved in between my legs.

  He paused until I was jerking at my arms and tilting my hips against him, then leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Now scream it for me,” as he pushed inside with one powerful thrust.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, shocked by the feel of him after three weeks.

  “Not what I was looking for,” he commented as he pulled out slowly and slammed back in.

  “Asa,” I whimpered, trying to follow his directions but unable to catch my breath enough to do it.

  “Louder,” he grunted, letting go of one of my hands so he could reach down and very gently twist my nipple.

  I jerked off the bed in response, feeling myself start to shake as his pelvis rubbed against my clit with every slow, outward pull. We were quiet for a few moments, watching each other as my climax grew closer and closer, until finally, it hit.

  “Asa!” I moaned loud and long as I came.

  “Perfect,” he gasped as his hand slid to my chin, tilting my head back. “So goddamn perfect.”

  Then he latched down on my throat and sucked strongly, marking me as he came.

  After catching our breath, I cleaned up and crawled back into bed with him, content to do nothing but feel his skin against mine.

  “You been feeling okay?” he questioned, rubbing his hand softly over my belly.

  “Yep. No issues so far,” I answered, planting my elbow on the bed so I could lean up and trace the tattoo across his collarbone.

  “I hate being so far away,” he told me seriously. “I wanna watch all this. Seems like you’ve already changed in the three weeks since I saw you last. This little curve is new.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of funny because people can’t figure out if it’s a baby or just fat,” I told him with a laugh.

  “When are you gonna let Farrah stand on her own two feet?” he asked with a sigh. “I know she’s your best friend, but she doesn’t seem to see anyone but herself, and you’re not doing anything but giving her a free place to live.”

  “I know,” I murmured, flopping onto my back on the bed. “But I can’t just ditch her. Everyone in her life fucks her over. I don’t want to be another person on that list.”

  “I think you’re gonna have to have a ‘come to Jesus’ with her. We can’t keep putting off our life for her, Callie. It’s gotta stop at some point,” he told me, playing with my fingers.

  When I was silent, he changed the subject, “Why don’t you paint your toenails? Fingers are always different colors, but you never paint your toes.”

  I slipped into a memory of leisurely painting my toes as I listened for my parents and forcefully pushed it out of my head. It was a simple question and didn’t require a long explanation, but I couldn’t force the answer past my throat.

  “Don’t care if you paint your toes, Callie,” he assured me, coming to the wrong conclusion about my silence.

  “The day before my parents were killed, instead of talking things out with them, I sat in my room and painted my toenails,” I told him with a shrug and shake of my head. “Because that was so fucking important.”

  “That had nothing to do with what happened,” he told me quietly, leaning over me.

  “I know that.”

  “You need to stop ignoring it, Callie.”

  “I’m not ignoring anything. I just choose not to remember.”

  “Sweetheart, it’s just gonna keep popping back up, you can’t hold that shit back forever,” he stated seriously.

  “Can we talk about something else? You just got home and I’d just like to revel in that for a bit,” I answered, leaning u
p to give him a peck on the lips.

  “Yeah, but we’re gonna revisit at a later date,” he warned.

  “Fine,” I pouted, then ordered, “Tell me how much you love me.”

  “More than my bike, less than my dick,” he answered with a straight face.

  “Ha! Asshole!” I laughed as he began to tickle me.

  That weekend with him would become one of my best and most important memories.

  Chapter 59

  Grease

  Callie was sending photos of her belly every day, and I swore I could see a difference in each of them. I was fucking done with having her so far away from me. She was already halfway through her pregnancy, and I was still dragging my ass to Sacramento each chance I got. It was insane—how long we’d waited to finally be in one place together.

  As far as I was concerned, Farrah could deal with her own shit. She was still partying and doing fuck all to help herself, and I didn’t see an end in sight. I hated it that Callie was down there taking care of her shit when she should be worrying about herself and our kid. She was tired all the fucking time because she was having a hard time sleeping, and I knew that having Farrah stumble in drunk as shit in the middle of the night wasn’t helping.

  The bullshit needed to stop.

  I was packing up my bike to hit the road that morning when Tommy Gun came lumbering out of the clubhouse calling my name. I was standing right in front of him, and I shook my head when he bellowed my name again.

  “What?” I snapped, anxious to get on the road.

  “Slider wants to see you,” he mumbled, raising his hands with his palms out.

  “You know what it’s about?” I questioned, stuffing the rest of my clothes into the saddle bags.

  “Nope. I’m just the messenger!” he called almost a minute later as I was walking back inside.

  Slider was sitting at the bar when I got inside, and he raised his chin at me as I headed toward him. He had a packet wrapped in brown paper on the bar in front of him, and he palmed it as I reached him.

  “You heading south?” he asked, rapping his knuckles on the countertop.

  “Yup. Callie’s got a doctor’s appointment that I’m gonna miss if I don’t leave now,” I answered impatiently.

  His brows lowered in response to my tone, and I automatically took a step back.

  “Not gonna hold you up. Just need you to drop a package in Sacramento when you get there,” he replied quietly, sliding the package to me across the countertop.

  “That it?”

  “That’s it. I’ll see you when you get back,” he responded, standing from his stool. “Check on my girl for me, would ya?”

  “Yep. I’m outta here.” I turned and strode toward the door, raising my chin at Dragon who’d been passed out on one of the couches and was looking blearily at me over the head of some blonde chick.

  The first hour of the ride was uneventful. I’d taken the trip so many times I could probably sleep through it, and I had gotten complacent about watching for speed traps and highway patrol. I was thinking about the ultrasound, excited as fuck to see my kid again.

  I know most people say some stupid shit about not caring if their kid was a boy or a girl as long as it was healthy, but I didn’t think about it that way. Of course I wanted a healthy kid, which went without saying, but I wanted a fucking boy. I wanted a boy so badly it was like a weight in my gut, something I thought about constantly, no matter what I was doing. I figured Callie probably wanted a little girl that she could dress in frilly shit, but the thought of a little girl made me anxious as hell.

  I wanted a boy that I could teach to throw a football and take apart a motorcycle. I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with a girl.

  I was flying down the highway, thinking about Callie’s appointment and how the hell I was gonna talk her into moving and leaving that fucking weight around her neck, so I didn’t see the police car under an overpass with a radar gun waiting for stupid fuckers like me.

  When I noticed the lights in my mirror, I was annoyed as fuck that they were going to hold me up. It was getting later and later and Callie would have my balls if I didn’t meet her at the doctor’s office that afternoon.

  I pulled over to the side of the road and shut off my bike, putting the kickstand down and taking off my helmet as I waited.

  “You know why I pulled you over?” the cop asked as he walked up beside me.

  “Speeding,” I answered, running my hand over my beard. Damn, I needed to trim that shit so I didn’t look like a fucking mountain man the first time I met my kid.

  The cop looked at my beard and then down to my cut, his mouth lifting into a sneer.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to step off your bike,” he told me condescendingly, taking a step back and dropping his hand to the gun at his waist.

  Fucking prick. He was going to mess with me and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it. I climbed off my bike and stood with my arms at my sides as he spoke into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder before raising his eyes to mine.

  “License and registration.”

  As I reached for my wallet inside the pocket of my sweatshirt, he pulled his motherfucking gun.

  “Hands where I can see them!” he bellowed, pissing me right the fuck off.

  “My wallet’s in the front pocket of my sweatshirt,” I told him, hands raised in the air. “Thought you wanted my license and shit?”

  “One hand stays in the air, grab your wallet nice and slow,” he ordered, watching me closely.

  I followed his orders, slowly using both hands to give him the shit he needed. I didn’t want some rookie cop shooting me in the chest because his balls hadn’t dropped yet.

  “Stay off your motorcycle, I’ll be right back,” he grumbled, taking my shit as he walked toward his car.

  He took a long-ass time running my shit, and I seriously considered hopping on my bike and leaving his ass behind. If he hadn’t had my paperwork, I would have taken off.

  “You have anything on your bike that I should know about?” he asked, as he reached where I was standing.

  “Nope,” I told him with a smirk.

  “I believe you might be under the influence. I’m going to need to search you and your bike.”

  “What the fuck?” I sputtered, completely fucking confused.

  “Hands on the hood of the car.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Are you resisting, Mr. Hawthorne?” he asked menacingly, one eyebrow raised. The fucker was just dying to get me on something.

  I leaned over the car, pissed as hell but still relatively unconcerned as he searched me. I didn’t carry a weapon when I was making the trip to Callie because I was on probation from shit that had happened years ago. I had a piece at her house that I carried when I was in town, but if I wasn’t on a run I didn’t bother to carry. It was more hassle than it was worth if I got pulled over.

  “Keep your hands on the vehicle,” he ordered as he headed toward my bike. Fuck, the guy was taking forever and I was counting the minutes that I stood there, wondering how the hell I’d make up the time so I wasn’t late.

  He was shining a light under my bike even though the sun was coming up, and huffed when he didn’t find anything. Then he searched through my bags, pulling out mostly boxers because I’d bought ugly-ass new ones to wear around Callie so she wasn’t so fucking worried about her bras.

  He finished with the first saddle bag, finding nothing, but when he started pulling shit out of the second, he paused. He reached into the bottom of the bag and my stomach fucking dropped when he pulled out the package Slider had given me that morning. He glanced up at me, probably to make sure I hadn’t moved, and then used both hands to unseal the package and open it up.

  “Jesus Fuckin’ Christ,” I murmured, dropping my head in defeat when I saw what he’d sent.

  I didn’t watch the cop anymore; I just stared at the hood of his car as my heart raced. I was going to miss the goddamn appointment and who
the fuck knew what else.

  As the cop walked up behind me and pulled my hands behind my back, I knew before he started reading me my rights that I was going to jail.

  Chapter 60

  Callie

  “Where is he?” I asked Gram as I paced the waiting room of my doctor’s office. The ultrasound technician was running half an hour late, so it was twenty minutes past my scheduled appointment time and Asa still hadn’t showed.

  “Probably running late,” she answered calmly, flipping through a magazine. “You know he can’t call you when he’s on the road.”

  “He would have stopped to call if he was going to be late,” I worried, chewing the inside of my cheek.

  “Or he’s riding like hell to get here and won’t take the time to stop,” she told me firmly. “Now sit down and calm down.”

  I dropped heavily into the seat next to her and watched my phone. There were no incoming or missed calls, and the longer I went with no word from Asa the more anxious I became.

  “Calliope?” I turned my head when the nurse called me from the doorway to the exam rooms but couldn’t make myself stand.

  “Well?” Gram asked impatiently. “Let’s go darlin’.”

  I drug my feet as I made my way to the nurse, looking behind me a few times in hopes that Asa would be walking through the door.

  “Can we wait a couple more minutes?” I asked her almost desperately as we met her in the doorway.

  “Sorry, hun.” She looked at me sympathetically. “We’re already so far behind, you’d have to reschedule.”

  I looked at Gram for validation, hoping she’d assure me that we should come back, but her lips were pressed into a flat line. My mind raced as I thought it over, but Gram’s hand on my back had me walking through the door and toward a room before I could come to a decision.

  “No need to get undressed,” the nurse told me as she set my chart on the countertop. “Just pull your shirt up and your pants down a little. The tech will be in soon.”

  She shut the door behind her as tears filled my eyes.

  “Calliope Rose Butler, you look at me,” Gram snapped fiercely, pressing both hands against the sides of my head and pulling me close until we were almost nose to nose. “I know you’re disappointed, baby. I know you’re worried and anxious and God knows what else. But seeing your baby on that screen and hearing them tell you if you’re having a boy or a girl—that only happens once in a lifetime. Once, Callie. You’ll never get this moment back.”