Chapter 4
Faith
As the night wears on, I’m more conscious of every noise outside than I was the previous night. While Logan had left Bruno’s bed in the living room, the second time I thought I heard something outside, I dragged the big thing into my room and lured him in with treats before closing the door.
I’m sure I’m being silly, but the idea of wild hogs and armed men running around outside is not comforting, and it’s well past midnight when I finally fall asleep. A long, wet lick across my face wakes me up and I nearly scream when I open my eyes to see Bruno’s muzzle a few inches from my face.
His front paws are perched on my mattress as his soulful brown eyes silently plead with me to get moving.
“Sorry, boy,” I mumble, sitting up and rolling off the other side of the bed.
Ignoring my bladder, I hurry to the kitchen door and snap the leash on him before heading outside. I’m relieved to see that my garden is untouched as I slowly walk him around the house, stopping with a start when I get to the front porch.
Bruno lets out an excited woof and pulls the leash away out of my grasp, quickly letting me know he was merely allowing me to pretend to be in control for his own amusement.
There, half of his long body on a padded bench, I see Logan sleeping in the most uncomfortable position I’ve ever seen.
“Hey,” he groans, softly at first, until he tries to move, and I can almost feel the pain he’s in from the look on his face. “Damn, everything hurts.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“You slept through the hogs the other night. I didn’t think it’d do much good to knock.” He smiles up at me as he pets Bruno.
“Come inside, I’ll make breakfast,” I offer, even though I only have eggs and leftover pizza.
“God, yes,” he moans as he stretches and, not having the key with me, I continue my circle around the house, trying to ignore the sight of the tats on his stomach as his shirt climbs up his body.
“How was the hunting?” I ask him when he catches up with me.
“Good. Demo said to bring you to the zombie pig roast tonight.”
“I think I’m going to take a pass on that,” I say with a laugh as I enter my kitchen, shaking my head at the thought of going to a party at a motorcycle club.
My life has changed so much in the past couple of months that I can barely catch my breath some days.
“Don’t be like that,” he replies. “You might even have fun.”
“Sorry, not to be rude, but I’m not really in the mood to party,” I quickly respond, worried that I might have offended him before I see the look on his face.
This man is too incorrigible to be offended. I feel the blood rush to my cheeks when I remember his kiss. Even more so when he winks at me, and I realize he really can read me like a book.
Apparently, the sheriff and Demo can also, if what Logan said yesterday was accurate.
“Look, city girl, if you plan on sticking around—and this house gives the impression that you do,” Logan says, looking around at the new appliances. “It’s as good a way as any to meet people around here.”
“Do you think the sheriff would agree with that?” I smart back, proud of myself for thinking of that.
“You can ask her tonight.” My jaw drops at his response, and I can’t help but look surprised. Then he drops his next bombshell. “Paverson is Demo’s half-sister. Your contractor’s wife is also, come to think of it, so they’ll probably be there.”
“Half?” I don’t know how to finish my question without sounding nosy as hell, so I yank open the fridge to grab the eggs and pizza.
“I haven’t met him, but Demo’s father had a slew of kids. I think Demo knows of five of them, but figures there are more out there.”
I let out a whistle as I start cracking eggs into a bowl, looking over to see Logan tossing a slice of pizza to Bruno. The dog looks guiltily at me before walking toward my bedroom with it clenched in his jaw.
“Did you let him sleep in your bed?” Logan asks me, frowning when I slap his hand away from the pizza.
“No, but I moved his bed in there. Stop eating that until breakfast is ready,” I demand, indicating the pizza with my chin. Shooing him out of the way, I turn on the oven and grab a cookie sheet to heat it up.
“I’m good with cold pizza.”
“I’m not, so just wait.”
He looks more amused than anything as he continues looking around. “Where’s your coffee? I’ll get to work on that.”
“I don’t have any.”
“What? Did you run out of money after that Sub-Zero fridge? You have a coffee pot and no coffee, plus a massive fridge with no food in it?”
“Me, apparently. I had coffee, but I didn’t take into account how much the workmen would drink, so I’m out and haven’t been back to the store.”
Hearing that, he simply lets out a grunt instead of an apology.
“Do you want water or Diet Coke?” I ask, just as I’m pouring the eggs into the skillet. “They’re in the Sub-Zero that I got on sale, thank you.”
He crosses behind me and looks between the nearly empty shelves back to me.
“Before you say anything, smartass, it was installed yesterday afternoon,” I cut him off. “And I bought the eggs from that couple up the road.”
“The Davidsons. They would have loaned you coffee, if you had asked,” he tells me, reminding me of their name. “His brother was with the Saints, back in the day. Gary met Sabine at State and they’ve been together ever since.”
“That’s so sweet,” I say, feeling like that’s the appropriate response to stupid ass happily ever-after stories.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it? Actually, she was a nursing student and he was a janitor. When she turned up pregnant, her parents cut her off, but Gary just worked harder. He paid for the rest of her schooling, working whatever jobs he could get. They didn’t have it easy, then Gary went and won the lottery when their kids were young.”
“I bet all her relatives came knocking on their door, then, huh?”
“A tale as old as time. Money makes it easy to overlook a lot of things, right?” He chuckles, at least until he sees me piling the scrambled eggs on top of the reheated pizza. That gets a quizzical look.
I plate up a couple pieces for both of us and put those on the table before grabbing the salt and my favorite hot sauce from the cabinet.
Looking up at him as I’m taking my first bite, he shrugs and takes a bite of his own.
“Hmm,” he hums out, reaching for the salt. “Not bad. Weird, but not bad.”
“I saved some eggs for Bruno, if that’s alright with you.”
At the sound of his name, the large Bouvier rejoins us and sits beside me. “You’re such a good boy!”
“Beggar,” Logan counters my assessment.
“You just ignore him,” I tell Bruno, trying not to laugh when the large dog gives his owner the side eye. Taking another bite of my egg pizza before getting up, I put a healthy scoop of eggs in a bowl and place it next to the table for the dog.
“I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty tonight,” Logan tells me, and I raise an eyebrow at him as he takes the last bite of his breakfast. “I’ll bring you home whenever you’re ready.”
A short time later, when Logan’s halfway through the door with Bruno’s bed awkwardly folded in half and balanced on his shoulder, I remember he never finished telling me about the Davidsons. “Hey, did Sabine and her family make up?”
“No. She told them to fuck off,” Logan replies with a laugh. “You’d never know those two had any money, but they put their kids through college and take a nice long trip every year.”
Smiling at his back, I nod my head in satisfaction as I lock the door behind him. Now, that’s my kind of happily ever-after, I think, revising my earlier opinion about the older couple down the road.
*
I know I can easily back out of this pig roast thing, but it wouldn’t hurt for me to get to know some people from the surrounding area.
Bullshit. Pipes in an annoying voice in my brain.
Looking at the room I’m using as my closet, I decide not to overthink my attire—while once again chiding myself for not leaving some of the outrageously expensive dresses from my old life behind. My clothes and shoes are the reason I needed a trailer on my new Jeep the night I left Vegas.
I didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of the obnoxious art, furniture, or other things Tore collected. Both cars were in my name, so I merely signed over his Maserati to one of our neighbors down the street, in exchange for his trailer and no questions.
I’ve kept the second bedroom locked since I moved in, what with all the workmen around, because in a world obsessed with social media, even a roofer from a town this small can probably figure out that even my luggage costs more than they make in a year.
Money was never a problem for Salvatore Ruggiero.
He had more than enough to afford all of his whims, the only thing that eluded him was peace. And when his associates discovered his deepest, darkest secret, his final moments were sheer hell.
His associates overlooked each other’s sins regularly. They, possibly, would have overlooked the fact that he was gay. If the dumbass hadn’t been grooming another one’s son for years and hadn’t been caught balls deep in the kid between courses during the celebration of his eighteenth birthday.
The Five Families had recently elected Tore to take the reins, and I’m sure he would have been great at it, but there’s nothing that man loved more than barely legal cherries. I had thought he had calmed down, having been in a relationship with his bodyguard for the past year or so, but once a dog, always a dog.
Granted, Tore was a jealous one himself. After buying me from my stepfather, he popped my cherry on our wedding night, before explaining what my role in our life would be. Acting as his beard wasn’t nearly as difficult as the fear I lived with—constantly worried he would think I was having sex with any of the men he paraded me around.
As it is, here I am at twenty-five and have had sex a sum total of one time.
Who knows? Maybe a party with a group of bikers will change that.
An alarm rings on my phone, letting me know it’s a quarter past seven. Another habit that’s ingrained in me from my marriage. There would be hell to pay if I wasn’t ready when I was told to be, so I hurry, tossing aside the black T-shirt I was considering and reaching for a red halter top. I grab a pair of five-thousand-dollar open toe, high-heeled, black leather booties and go to put them on in the living room, keeping an eye out for Logan.
Ten minutes later, my phone pings:
You almost ready?
I take a step outside, unable to figure out how I didn’t hear his bike. But he’s nowhere in sight.
I’m outside , I reply.
I’m docked at the river, city girl.
The river! I know there’s a constant flow of boats, but I never considered that’s how we would travel tonight. Looking down at my shoes, I shrug and hope for the best.
Logan lets out a whistle the moment he catches sight of me and the tattoo of my heart increases with both nerves and excitement.
Nerves because it’s been so long since I’ve been free of Tore and excitement at the sight of him, knowing that he likes what he sees.
When I get closer to his boat, his wide smile falters and his eyes narrow.
“Take those shoes off,” he instructs me, and my jaw drops open. “You’ll scuff up the old girl.”
“Oh,” I let the syllable out with a heavy breath, not having considered that.
Since there’s no place to sit, I awkwardly try not to go head over ass into the murky water as I unzip them before I start to wrestle them off my feet.
Logan’s exasperated sigh reaches me just before he easily steps onto the dock and wraps around my back. Thinking that he’s trying to help steady me, I nearly butt heads with him when I lean forward.
Letting out a scream when he swings my legs out from under me with his other arm, I frantically grab onto his cut as he steps down into his boat and places me on a cushioned bench.
“Let’s get these off, now,” his voice is silky smooth, deceptively so as the teasing light in his eyes betrays his amusement at my reaction to how gracefully he got on and off the boat. Kneeling in front of me, he lifts my left foot and slides his hand up to find the top of the zipper. “Damn, if your jeans aren’t as soft as butter.”
Those words are all it takes to make my body melt.
I lean further back and open my thighs with a sigh. I have no idea what I was expecting to happen next, but he drops my foot as he leans forward to kiss me.
This time, I don’t bite him.
Our tongues dance and twine around each other while his hands shift to the button on my jeans. I nearly yell out again when he quickly opens them and tugs on them. Pushing my feet against the bottom of the boat, I lift my ass to help him, surprised when he leaves them near my knees and pulls away from my mouth to dip his head to the junction of my thighs.
“Um, what? No,” I murmur, trying to figure out how to stop him from doing that .
“Yes,” he responds, shifting my panties out of the way with his thumb. “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
Without another word, I feel his tongue lick down one side of my pussy, then up the other before it plunges into me.
“Oh, fuck,” I bite out the word, barely noticing how it sounds more like a prayer than anything I’ve uttered in a while.
I’ve never experienced oral sex before, but I know that even if Tore had attempted it, that what Logan is doing would be still be extraordinary. His tongue dips in and out of my core, twisting and turning while deep inside of me. Taking his time, it’s as though he’s a man dying of thirst as he devours me, and I nearly want to weep when he pulls his tongue back.
At least until it sweeps in circles around my clit, when his lips close around my swollen button, I realize how tightly I’m holding onto his head—horrified at my need but too far gone to ever want him to stop.
My loud moan seems to bounce around the riverbanks when he gently pushes a finger into me, and I hear him curse against my clit. As he slowly works his digit in and out of my slit, his tongue works faster and harder until my hips buck upward without any warning, my orgasm overtaking my entire body.
Once my pulse slows down, I crack open an eye to see him grinning up at me. My knees start to snap together, but with him kneeling between them, they don’t get far; then my eyes follow his down to where two of his fingers are still pushed deep inside of me.
“You aren’t a virgin, but you might as well be.” This time his voice is gentle, tinged with an odd mix of surprise and annoyance. “About time a man did right by you.”
As I fumble for something to say, he pulls his fingers out of me and sticks them into his mouth, obviously sucking my juices off of them as he studies my reaction.
My mind has gone blank, so I just sit back as he finishes removing my booties and gives me space to fix my jeans as he starts up the boat.
“How far is it?” I ask, coming to stand behind his captain’s chair.
“Just a few minutes,” he answers, and as it’s my first time on the river, I wish there was more daylight left so I could see more of the homes on either side of the river. “It’s safer coming home this way, so we all pretty much boat to parties.”
“Where’s Bruno?” I ask, not used to seeing him without his sidekick.
“I dropped him and some of my brothers off first, then doubled back for you,” he replies with a shrug.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“My pleasure,” he drawls out, and I smack his shoulder. He purposefully turns the wheel so I have to grab him for purchase. “Come here.”
He snakes an arm round me and pulls me in front of him. “You ever pilot a boat before?”
“No. What’s the deal here anyway? Do I have to take classes or something?”
“Nah, I’ll teach you that, too. You only need to have a driver’s license,” he says, leaning forward to nibble on my neck. “I can help you find a solid used one, if you decide you want one.”
“I’d like to learn,” I reply and just as I’m getting comfortable in his arms, the level of noise on the river changes—letting me know we’re getting close to the party. “That was a quick ride!”
“Oh, we haven’t been for a ride yet,” he teases me. “And it sure as hell won’t be quick when we do.”
My blush spreads from my face down my chest and I brace myself, aware that anyone who sees us will know what we’ve been up to. Just then Bruno’s distinctive woof! reaches my ears, and once we reach an outcropping of branches, I see him standing on the end of the dock.
“Oh, poor boy!”
“Poor boy, my ass. I’m sure my brothers have been tossing him scraps since I left.”
“How many brothers do you have?” I ask as he pulls alongside the front of the dock, and he chuckles as he tosses a rope to a guy who looks like he’s in high school.
“The Saints, we’re all brothers,” he tells me, holding his hand out to help me get onto the dock as he looks over at the kid. “Billy, you scratch up my boat like you did Critter’s and we’re going to have a problem.”
“I won’t, I swear it,” the kid mumbles, nodding his head.
With my boots in one hand, I make my way to a bench to put them on while fending off Bruno’s attempt at a greeting. From what I can tell, there’s some sort of valet system in place so that the partygoers’ boats aren’t all crowded around this dock.
“All set?” Logan asks, as he turns back to me just as I’m standing up and he guides me toward the crowd with Bruno on our heels. “Just out of curiosity, what do you like to drink?”
Looking around, I know better than to say wine, but with everyone seemingly drinking out of red plastic cups, I’m not sure what the correct answer is. “Um, beer? I guess.”
“There are mixed drinks at the bars that’ll be set up, if you’d rather. Demo has an impressive collection of whiskey, but wait until you’re invited to try it,” Logan informs me, jutting his chin out at a group of guys we pass. “You may want to steer clear of the moonshine. Just some friendly advice.”
“Cowboy! Get your ass over here,” a man with a shaved head and a thick red beard calls out.
“That’s Risk, come on.” Throwing out that brief tidbit, he reaches for my hand and I immediately lengthen my stride to catch up to him.