“I know. I didn’t admit that to try to make you say anything back.”
He cupped her face in his hand, because he sure as shit was going to respond to that. “I’m a wreck, and I’d convinced myself that I always would be. But lately, I’ve been trying. I’ve been better. Hopeful, for the first time in years.” Admitting that should’ve been freeing, and it was. But, maybe ridiculously, it was also scary as fuck. Because when you’d become wed to a certain narrative of your life, letting go of it threatened to crumble the ground beneath your feet, leaving you with no idea where you’d be left standing when the dust settled.
Her expression went so, so soft. For him. “I’m really glad of that, Slider. So glad you feel better.”
“It’s you, Cora. It’s me, too, some. But you worked your way into my heart and my head and my house and my whole life until I could see again that I had a life. One I’d been neglecting. One I hadn’t been appreciating. So I don’t know how I’m going to pretend, either. And frankly, I don’t want to, not anymore. Because I care about you, too. And not just as a friend.”
“You . . . really?” she asked, her eyes so wide and her face so damn pretty.
God, she didn’t get it, did she? Just how much she’d done to change his life . . . But he was going to make sure she did from here on out. “Really. I don’t know where we go or what we call it or how public we go with it, but there’s something here. And I want it. I want you.”
Chapter 16
Cora could hardly believe what she was hearing. She’d been so scared of what he’d think once he knew her horrible secret, and here, revealing the truth had brought her this . . . this chance.
“Except for that one terrible moment when I wished for it, I’ve been invisible my whole life. A father who didn’t want to be bothered with me. A mother who resented me and didn’t want me around. Teachers that didn’t believe I’d amount to anything because of where I was from.”
Slider shook his head. “I won’t let you feel that now. I see you, Cora. And I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
“Then don’t, Slider. Don’t stop.”
Urgent and deep, their kiss felt like a promise, an oath, a beginning. Cora climbed Slider until she straddled him, her body rising up over him, forcing him to recline against the back of the couch. Clutching his face, his scruff rough under her palms, she sucked his tongue into her mouth and ground her body against his. His fingers dug into her hips and his grip urged her to rub her core against the bulge of his cock. And God help her, she did. Shamelessly and frantically and breathlessly until she was gasping into his mouth and shaking.
“Fuck, Cora. I want inside you,” Slider rasped around the edge of a kiss. “Before you come, take my cock inside you.”
She fumbled with her jeans, giving a frustrated groan when she had to separate from him to take them off. Watching her strip from the waist down, he shoved his jeans to his knees. They both needed it too much to do more, and then she was climbing astride again, her heat to his hardness.
He didn’t ask her if she was sure, and she fell in love with him a little bit more.
She knew her mind and her heart and her body. What her father did took none of that away.
So Cora took Slider’s cock in her hand and centered herself over his long length. Looking him in the eye, she impaled herself on him, inch by maddening inch.
“Christ. Oh, Christ,” he said, fisting his hands at his sides like he didn’t want to demand what he needed. Or take it.
But she wasn’t having it. “Don’t hold back on me, Slider. Touch me and hold me and take me, but don’t hold back on me.”
Her words unleashed something in him, because his hands were on her ass again, strong fingertips digging into her soft flesh, and guiding her down until she’d taken everything he had to offer.
And then they were a frenzy of movement and emotion. Her riding him with abandon, him using his muscled thighs to hammer up into her. The slaps of their skin and their breaths and their strained curses were loud in the midnight room. She clutched at his shoulders, his chest, the edge of his club cut he still wore over his shirt, and the picture of her hand fisted around his cut shot a jolt of lust through his blood.
“Fucking me so good,” he growled, tearing her shirt off to kiss the mounds of her breasts.
He slid down on the couch, flattening himself under her. With one hand on her ass and the other firm on her belly, he forced her to rock back and forth on his cock, her clit grinding against his pubic bone on every thrust. And it shoved her right back to the edge again.
And then straight over it. “Slider,” she cried before the orgasm stole her breath, her thoughts, her very sanity. Her whole body shook with the force of it, until all she could do was brace against his chest and ride it out.
Slider didn’t let up one bit. He fucked her the whole way through it, drawing out her release and making the whole world spin. “That’s it, Cora,” he said. “That’s fucking it.”
Just at the moment her body started to calm, Slider flipped them over, her legs folded up between them, both of her ankles crossed near one shoulder. He was so deep inside her she didn’t think he would ever be able to find his way out, and she didn’t want him to. She could only moan at the overwhelming fullness and the devastating goodness of it.
His pace changed, his strokes shifting to hard, punctuated thrusts that rocked the couch and shoved Cora inch by inch toward the corner. She grasped at him and the cushions and pushed against the armrest. And once she was braced there, he combined those punctuated thrusts with rolling curls of his hips that made his cock hit places inside her she didn’t know she had. “Oh, my God, Slider. Oh, my God.”
He tore off his cut, and then his shirt, gifting her with the most mouthwatering view of his ink and his muscles. And then he lowered himself atop her, his weight pressing down her legs and opening her to him even more. Leveraging his arms around her head and her shoulder, his thrusts were relentless and driving.
Slider wasn’t holding back. Not anymore.
And it made Cora’s heart sing even as her body threatened another explosive release she wasn’t at all sure she could handle.
“Jesus, Cora. A condom. We didn’t . . .” He made to pull away.
She grasped his back. “Don’t go. Not yet. Just pull out. Pull out and come on me.”
Rigid and still, his face was a decadent mask of arousal and need and debate. But then she rolled her hips up, forcing him deeper inside again. Her movement ripped a groan out of his throat and lured him to cave. Hands on the backs of her thighs, he set a fast pace that made her pant and writhe. The lean muscles of his shoulders bunched and his stomach rippled. He was a feast for the eyes, masculine and raw, and he was hers.
God, let him be mine forever. And let me be his.
“Coming. God, I’m coming.” On a shudder, he withdrew from her and took himself in hand. Two strokes and he was true to his word, shouting her name and shooting white stripes on her ass and hip and thigh.
Cora went limp with satisfaction, not caring in the least that he messed her up. His come on her skin felt like a claiming. And no one had ever claimed her before. Not really.
Leaning down, Slider kissed her, a soft tug of lips on lips, his hand gentle in her hair. “I see you,” he said. “Always.”
Four words. And her heart felt too big for her chest.
I love you was so close to the tip of her tongue she didn’t know how the words didn’t fall out. But he hadn’t said them. She knew he was coming to terms with the idea of them. And she didn’t want to push.
So Cora just said, “I see you, too.”
For now, that was enough. And so much more than she ever thought she’d have.
“Hey, guys,” Cora said to the boys as they climbed into her red baby in the carpool line at school. She’d picked them up today because she’d been out running errands for Bunny and Haven, who were busy with race night party preparations at the clubhouse.
“Hi, Cora,?
?? Ben said brightly, while Sam’s “Hey” was more subdued.
As they buckled in, Cora’s belly did a little flip. This weekend, Slider planned to at least tell the boys that the two of them were dating. The house wasn’t that big, and Sam was old enough—and sensitive enough—to pick up on the change between them. It was important to Slider that they hear it from him, and Cora agreed.
But, God! What if the boys hated the idea? What if they weren’t ready for their dad to date another woman? Thus her belly and the flip-flopping.
“You guys excited for race night?” she asked, pulling out of the driveway and heading to the grocery store. At this, Sam, who was as interested in cars as his dad, finally perked up, and both boys launched into an excited discussion of drivers and cars and racing stats that left Cora totally dazed—a feeling that probably wasn’t helped by the ambivalence she felt about going.
She’d attended all three nights of the carnival that the Ravens held on the grounds of the track back in June, but had attended only two of the races since, and only because Slider asked her to take the boys while he worked. Both times, they’d attached themselves to Ravens who were more than happy to give Slider’s kids a behind-the-scenes experience, allowing Cora to hole up in the brothers’ lounge near the ticket and security offices.
Those places, however, she avoided like the plague.
Because the security control room was where she and Haven had been forced to hide from their fathers when they came to kidnap Haven. And the ticket office was where Cora had witnessed Haven’s dad shoot Meat point-blank in the gut to prove that he was willing to use violence to regain his daughter. If that hadn’t been horrific enough, that room was also where Haven said her good-byes before she fled to sacrifice herself so no one else got hurt.
Just the memory of that moment—Meat bleeding out on the floor as Haven thanked Cora for giving her even the smallest chance at a happiness she wouldn’t let herself keep . . . Cora shuddered. She couldn’t let herself think about it. Because not knowing if she’d ever see her best friend again had been one of the worst moments of her life.
So the racetrack was not her favorite place.
But it was important to the Ravens, and to these boys whom she loved—
The thought stopped her in her tracks, so much so that she didn’t immediately notice that the light she’d been sitting at turned green until the car behind her honked its horn.
Glancing into the rearview mirror revealed Sam and Ben playing rock-paper-scissors to determine who got the first turn to push the grocery cart. Awed and amazed, Cora had to acknowledge the truth. She’d spent most of the past nearly five months with these kids . . . and she’d grown to love them. Not just care about them or enjoy them or like them. She loved them as if they were family of her own. The boys had made it so easy that she hadn’t even realized it was happening. But now that she saw it, now that she recognized the feeling for what it was, she couldn’t ignore it. She couldn’t go back.
Cora didn’t just love Slider. She loved his boys, too.
And she thought her belly had been jiggly before. It wasn’t every day you not only started dating a man, but admitted your feelings to him and realized they were deeper than you even knew.
At the grocery store, Cora found the parking lot to be an absolute madness, Friday afternoon not being the ideal time for any sane person to go to the grocery store. She drove in circles looking for a space without success, and finally had to drive down the sketchy side lot of the store off which the loading-dock area backed to an empty-looking industrial park.
The three of them climbed out, the boys chattering away—goofing around one minute, and bickering the next.
Barking. The sound crept through the mental checklist she’d been running through. But there it was again.
Cora peered at the nearby cars, worried that a dog had been left without enough air on the unusually warm October afternoon. But the barking sounded aggressive and agitated, and way too loud to be coming from inside a car. Something about it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Frowning, she debated. “Stay right here guys.”
She walked to the back of the store building and peered around the corner. Nothing. Just a tractor trailer backed to one of the docks. But the barking was louder, and . . . was that a man shouting?
“Cora?” Sam whispered, worry plain in his voice.
She held up a hand. “Stay right there with Ben, please.” Her gut twisting with dread and suspicion, she followed the sound to a fence at the back of the lot. A line of scrubby, overgrown bushes grew haphazardly on the other side, but they weren’t so thick that she couldn’t make out two men standing behind the open covered cab of an older blue pickup truck facing off with a big black-and-tan dog. Her heart was suddenly a bass drum in her chest.
“Shit, we shouldn’t have stopped,” one man said. “I told you we shouldn’t have stopped.”
“You also told me he was out cold, asshole,” the second man bit out. Taller than the first, his tone seemed to indicate that he was in charge. “We couldn’t drive through town with all that barking. Your grasp of the need to keep things on the down low is surprisingly lacking . . .”
Holy shit! She wasn’t sure what she’d stumbled upon, but her gut seemed to have an idea.
“Let’s just go before someone hears all this racket.”
Cora tried to get a closer look at the men, but they stood a good thirty feet away with their backs to her. Both wore baseball hats. And, damnit, it was too risky to chance moving to a part of the fence where the bushes were thinner. She’d learned that dogfighting carried a felony charge, which meant anyone involved in it—if these guys indeed were—wouldn’t want to be found out. And might do all kinds of things to make sure no one did.
Glancing over her shoulder, she found that Sam had come halfway across the wide lot behind the grocery store, a concerned scowl on his face that looked so much like his father. Ben hung back at the corner. She gave Sam a fierce shake of her head, silently pleading for him to stay where he was.
“Fuck it,” the taller man said. “And fuck these goddamn piece-of-shit dogs you’ve been finding me lately.”
For a minute, the dog’s growls and barking were all she heard, and then the men reached some sort of agreement, one of them turning to close up the truck’s rear hatch.
Heart in her throat, Cora scrambled in her purse and found her phone. Her hand was shaking so bad she wasn’t sure how good her pictures were going to be, but she tried to zoom in and take some anyway. Of the men, the truck, its license plate.
And then they were gone, and there was just the terrified dog, barking and whining and making the most pitiful, angry sounds. Cora couldn’t get a good look at him through the bushes, but there was something she could do. She had the shelter’s number in her contacts, so she placed a call.
“I think I just saw two men drop off a dog in the industrial park behind the Shopper’s Way,” Cora rushed out when one of the volunteer receptionists answered. “Is Maria there?” When Maria picked up, Cora detailed everything she saw.
“Whatever you do, don’t try to approach it, Cora,” Maria cautioned.
“I won’t. We’re behind a fence. But he’s really whining now, Maria. I think he’s hurt.”
“I’m sending animal control to you. Can you wait?”
“Yes. Should I call the cops, too?” she asked.
“Animal control will call it in. Just hang tight.”
Cora did, with the boys at her side, a little scared but a lot more angry at those men. Fifteen minutes later, two men in a boxy van arrived, first for the dog, and then to interview her.
Subduing the dog, a Rottweiler, it turned out, was not something she could watch—and she didn’t let the boys watch, either. Because it involved shooting him with a tranquilizer, and even though that’s what it took to safely get the dog the help it needed, Cora didn’t want to see an animal get shot.
Unbidden images of Meat’s blood
rolled through her mind’s eye . . .
By the time she’d recounted what they’d come upon, provided descriptions of the men and truck, and forwarded her pictures, Cora was late. Really late. She shot off a quick text to Haven and headed with the boys into the store.
“We’ll have to hurry,” she said. “Bunny and Haven are waiting on us.” The boys were unusually helpful as they speed-shopped throughout the aisles, Ben pushing the cart and Sam running off to find items here and there. Twenty-five minutes later, Cora hoped she hadn’t forgotten anything as they loaded up her trunk.
It felt like a whole day had passed by the time they were fastening their seat belts again.
And then Sam leaned up from the backseat. “What you did was really badass, Cora.”
“Sam!” she said, trying not to chuckle. Or melt at what looked like admiration in his eyes. “Language, dude.”
He rolled his eyes, but she imagined it was hard not to pick up a few bad habits when you grew up around a biker club. “Sorry. But it’s true.”
“Sam’s right. Even his bad word is right.”
Cora turned in her seat. “And what do you know about his bad word, Mr. Bean?” That made both of them laugh, since they’d watched movies with the British actor who’d once played that role and knew who he was.
“I’m just sayin’, Coowa. It was bad butt.”
That had them all laughing, and it felt good after the stress of having witnessed men who might be involved somehow with all the dogs that’d been appearing in the area. She could only hope that something she’d seen could help even a little.
Being later than planned meant that Bunny and Haven were already neck-deep in cooking and baking for that night’s race party, a weekly tradition for the club. About midway through the races, club members started showing up to hang out for the rest of the night, until nearly the whole club, friends and family of members, Hang-Arounds, and women the brothers referred to as Biker Bunnies overran the place, turning it into a loud and rowdy party that was often as crazy as it was fun.