Sully (Henchmen MC: Next Generation #13)

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bonnie

I’d been prone to nightmares as long as I could remember. I used to wake up screaming as a little girl, my body unable to tell the difference between dreaming of being chased by a clown with a meat cleaver and the reality of it.

I would wake up in fight-or-flight. And without parents to give a damn—save for occasionally busting in to tell me to quit my crying or they’d give me something to cry about—I just spiraled.

Honestly, it was probably a big source of all of my anxiety as an adult.

But the nightmares persisted. Though, the older I got, the less I dreamed about things like clowns, and the more they tended to involve subliminal manifestations of my conscious fears.

Like being forced to speak in front of a crowd, or being chased through the streets, or even having someone break into my place at night.

Before right then, there’d never been a basis in reality to harp on.

I couldn’t have anticipated how strongly I would dream of the man who abducted and nearly killed me.

It was like being back there.

Except everything was heightened, dragged out, intensified.

I woke up with a cry. But the panic was already in full effect. Thundering heart, choking sensation, the cold sweat. All of it.

Then there was Sully.

He was playing it light, but I saw the concern in his bright eyes. That was… surprisingly attractive. I always thought that having a panic attack was one of the most embarrassing things possible. The idea of having one in front of a man—let alone an insanely attractive man—was horrifying.

But Sully didn’t seem to judge.

He just jumped into action.

He brought me markers .

Then offered me his back tattoo as a canvas.

I was sure I wouldn’t do it. I mean, I hardly knew this guy. It was awkward to touch him all over. Except… he wasn’t making it awkward.

So I reached for the markers and opened the top, smiling to myself as I found that every single one of the markers had the wrong colored cap on, likely placed by little hands that didn’t know better, or ones who were too impatient with their clean up to care.

I moved up onto my knees and crawled across the bed toward Sully.

My mind flashed with the memory of him reaching to pull off his shirt, showing me a surprisingly fit chest and torso for just a second before he moved to rest on his belly on the bed for me.

Heat surged through my body as I leaned over him, resting a hand on his shoulder to steady myself, then pressing the nub of the marker against his skin.

His back piece was massive, covering almost every inch of skin in an outline from shoulder to shoulder and all the way down to his waistband. It was one cohesive piece of art but featured so many different elements. Up near his shoulders were clouds and a sun setting over a town full of houses. Moving downward, there was a ship in the center, an eagle, swords, a compass, a snake, and some flowers and foliage.

In short, it was the absolute perfect coloring page.

As much as coloring was supposed to be relaxing, when I found ones that were too intricate—like mandalas—I got stressed out and had to put it aside. But Sully’s back, while full, wasn’t full of too much fine detail.

Sully reached back, removing his phone from his pocket. He fiddled for a moment as I traced the leaf around one of the roses. Then music started to play from the phone, familiar pop songs it was impossible to avoid since they played on a loop everywhere.

It wasn’t long before I was really starting to fill his tattoos in with color and humming along to the music.

I didn’t even realize how quickly and fully the anxiety had dissipated until I was putting the finishing touches on the boat.

“You okay?” Sully asked, sounding a little sleepy.

“Trying to figure out my next color,” I lied.

I could have told him it worked, that I felt better. But that would run the risk that he would think the job was done, get up, and leave.

I wasn’t ready for him to go yet.

That was a completely new experience for me. Generally speaking, I was pretty much always ready for people to leave so I could be alone. But I didn’t want Sully to leave yet.

I maybe didn’t want him to leave at all.

I was sure if I dug deep enough, I could conclude that I wanted him around because we had a trauma bond from the whole bomb thing. We could have died together. And he’d stayed there with me, ready to go if he couldn’t disarm the vest.

It was a lot.

It wasn’t weird to feel connected to him.

Sully was an imperfect canvas. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from rocking his shoulders or swaying his feet or hips when a song he loved came on. Once, I had to hold back and wait while he belted out a song about believing in a thing called love.

I didn’t even realize how big I was smiling until my cheeks hurt. I immediately decided I needed to add that song to one of my playlists. If for no other reason than to replay that very moment over and over again in my mind.

Was that maybe a smidge pathetic of me? Possibly. But I’d accepted long ago that my fantasy life was always going to be richer than my reality.

And if in my fantasy, Sully rolled over, grabbed me, and pulled me to straddle him, so be it.

And if he…

Sully’s body made a strange, fast jerking motion, dragging me out of my fantasies that were getting increasingly more steamy.

“What—“ I started.

“Your hair,” he said, turning enough to glance back at me, looking a little bashful.

“My hair?” I asked, confused.

“You gotta promise not to tell my brothers, but I can be ticklish as fuck sometimes.”

“Really?” I asked. “Just on your back?”

“And the bottoms of my feet,” he admitted. “But don’t go trying to test that theory. You might get kicked in the face. I freak the fuck out.”

“I would never,” I assured him. “Here,” I said, grabbing the tail of my braid and tucking it under the collar of my shirt. “Problem solved.”

“How’s it looking back there? I fully expect you to take a picture when you’re done. I wanna see the masterpiece.”

“It’s not that great,” I said. Now that I was mostly done, I could see all of the ways that I would do things differently. But that was the nature of coloring in a big picture.

“It’s fantastic.”

“How would you know? You can’t see it,” I said, leaning over him again to start working on the town at the top. I decided to do it in bold, contrasting colors because it would be a little boring otherwise.

“I have complete faith in you.”

“Temper your expectations,” I demanded, my tone light. “And stop squirming.”

I got a little chuckle for that before I steadily got back to work. I even backtracked to try to drag things out a bit.

But, eventually, it was as done as it could be.

And I had to move away.

“Nuh-uh. Picture,” he demanded as he pushed his phone back toward me.

“Okay,” I conceded. “Hold on. I need to get a better view,” I added, moving to stand on the bed, wanting to capture the whole back. “Alright. All done.”

Sully scooted up onto his knees as I retreated to the top of the bed again.

“Okay, Picasso,” he said, shooting me that charming smile again.

“I thought I was Monet.”

“Which one is best?”

“I guess that depends on interpretation. I prefer Monet.”

“Miss Monet, you are then,” he declared.

“You can totally go and wash it off now if you want.”

Sully ignored that.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked instead.

“Better,” I admitted. There wasn’t a trace of the panic left. In its place, though, was something else that I dared not even acknowledge. Especially when Sully was around. I’d been told far too many times that I wore all of my feelings on my face. The last thing I wanted was for Sully to know about the unexpected ache between my thighs, the way I was finding it really hard to keep my gaze on his face now that he was up off the bed.

Oh , he had those little indents of muscles that led right toward his…

Nope.

No.

I was not going to follow those lines. And I certainly wasn’t going to wonder about what they might be directing me toward.

“Sorry I took up so much of your time.”

“You kidding? I was bored off my ass. This was a welcome distraction. You want more company, or you want me to get my ass out of here?”

“I wouldn’t mind company.”

“Movie night?” he asked, sounding excited. And I was reasonably sure he wasn’t faking it either. “Snacks included?”

I’d never agreed to something so fast in my life.

Not because of the snacks or the movie.

But because of the company.

To my utter delight, after acquiring the ‘mandatory’ snacks that included popcorn, chips, candy, snack cakes, and drinks, Sully simply walked up the bed from the bottom—still gloriously shirtless—and sat against the headboard with me.

I sat there snacking and listening to his running monologue about the best movies in each genre until he, finally, chose some obscure movie from the ‘80s that he swore was going to ‘change my life.’

I didn’t care about the movie.

I was too enraptured by the company.

And the fact that he wanted to spend his time with me.

One movie turned into two.

But before the second could even get to the good parts, I was out cold.

For the first time in a really long time, it was a deep and dreamless sleep.

I was out so cold, in fact, that I was almost certain I was dreaming when, sometime later, the pattering of water on the shower floor gently pulled me back toward consciousness.

My mind was slow and thick enough that I was confused by my surroundings for a long moment.

Until a figure moved into my line of vision.

Sully stepped out of the now silent bathroom with nothing but a low-slung towel on and bunched-up clothes in his free hand.

He stopped at his closet, tossing the dirty clothes in a hamper. Then, without any hesitation, he grabbed the towel tuck and whipped it off.

He whipped it off .

I was thankful the TV was still on, or I was sure he would have heard my gasp as my gaze took in every inch of him.

Every glorious, thick inch of him.

Realizing what a creep I was being, I forced my eyes to shut. But I only saw the image of him on the backs of my eyelids.

That heat that had been blooming through my core earlier started again, spreading until I had to press my thighs together to ease the ache.

It was bad enough that I was considering waiting for Sully to leave, then taking a shower myself and, well, getting a little relief from the ache.

Only Sully didn’t leave.

He moved around for a bit, likely getting dressed and cleaning up the bathroom. He went toward the door, but only to flick off the light.

Then he was coming back to the bed.

And gently crawling up to the top.

Shock shot through me, but it was quickly chased away by more need as that peaches and vanilla scent overwhelmed me up close.

Sully didn’t scoot up to me.

He didn’t reach for me.

But his voice did reach out to me, soft as a caress.

“I’ll be right here,” he said, making my belly flip-flop. I wasn’t sure if it was pleasure or fear that he knew I was awake, that I’d been ogling him. But then he added, “if you wake up and need me.”

I was positive that sleep would be the last possible thing I was capable of then, with him up close and scrambling my logic with his warmth, his scent, his mostly bare body. And what I now knew was underneath.

But it wasn’t long before I drifted back off.