Chapter 16
Pyre
Opening the door, I watched Rae as she came up the walk. “Right on time.”
She gave me a beautiful smile and scooted past me when I motioned for her to come in.
I didn’t move out of the way, forcing her to squeeze her fine body past me.
She was a little jumpy, so I wanted her to start getting used to my touch.
I wasn’t sure why exactly she seemed so nervous around me, but I planned to find out.
Eventually. Because I wasn’t going to be able to hold myself back for long.
I was trying to be a gentleman for her sake, but that wasn’t me.
I wasn’t soft or gentle. It was never in my nature to be that man and any inclination I might have had to act that way had been driven out of me by my time in service.
You couldn’t deal with the dead and dying in a combat zone and be gentle or nice. It would break you.
Instead, you grew a strong mental fortitude. And maybe even ended up being a morbid fucker—this being the go to for most in my MOS. Often the way I responded to all things gruesome made even my brothers pause.
People thought I was weird. That was fine by me.
Meant they left me the hell alone more often than not.
Everyone except my MC brothers. They didn’t give a shit about any of that.
They understood my nature more than most. Civilians could almost never understand the things I’d seen.
The things we’d done. The things we still do.
Some paramedics understood, albeit in a G-rated version.
They saw morbid shit too, in comparison to normies, but even their fortitude would be stretched after a few hours in my world.
“Have a seat,” I told her, watching as she quietly looked around my home.
“I like your place.”
“Thanks. It’s nothing special, but it works for now.”
She looked over at me, those dark eyes searching my face. “You don’t plan to stay here?”
“No. I want to get myself a ranch house, a bit of property, someplace a little out of town where it’s secluded,” I said, dishing up two plates for us.
I’d made the only dinner I knew how to make.
White chicken enchiladas. It was damn impossible to get good Mexican food up here in Wyoming, but I loved it.
Anytime we went to Tucson, I hit all the local spots.
Those little hole in the wall places—in Tucson that often literally meant holes in the walls—that served authentic food that made you want to weep as you ate.
I’d considered getting take-out, but I wanted her to see I was putting effort into this. Into her. I wasn’t afraid to treat my woman well, though to continue treating her well I’d need to never cook another dish because it wasn’t a skill of mine.
Maybe I could cheat, replace the chicken with turkey, then elk, deer? That counted right?
“That smells amazing,” she told me, rising a little as she took her plate from me. Her eyes widened. “You don’t expect me to eat all of that do you?”
“I’ll finish off whatever you don’t eat,” I told her, taking the seat next to her. Grabbing the top of the coffee table, I lifted it up until it hit the end of the hinges and acted like a dining table. “Sorry, nothing fancy around here.” I grinned at her.
“I don’t mind. I eat in my recliner at home.” She shrugged. “When you live alone, you don’t bother with formality.”
“Exactly. How’s work going?”
“Oh, good.” She paused, frowning. “I mean…as good as can be.”
She wasn’t comfortable talking about work, that much was clear. “What you do doesn’t bother me, Rae.”
She looked a little startled that I’d caught on to her unease. “It’s just…most people are.”
“I get it. I’m not.”
She smiled. We chatted, me asking her questions about how she worked both sides of her business.
“You must get some interesting cases.”
“Not a lot here in Sentinel,” she admitted. “I did when I was working in Boston, but I got tired of all the violent deaths. Though, I did have an interesting case Owen brought in not too long ago.”
Trying not to look too interested, I probed. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
“It was an overdose that…” She trailed off, realizing that she was saying too much. “Oh, I’m sorry. Actually it’s still being investigated so I better not go into detail.”
Damn. Still investigating? What are the odds that this is related to our new friends?
Pushing her was the last thing I wanted to do because then she’d just shut down, assuming I just wanted information out of her. I mean, I did, but that wasn’t the only reason I was interested. There were other ways to find out what I needed to know. Warrant approved ways.
I set my plate on the table and picked up my remote. “Alright. What are we watching tonight?”
She smiled at me and reached over, her fingers brushing mine as she took the remote. She flicked through the different streaming services until she found what she was looking for, then pressed play.
“Wait,” I said, a slow grin forming. “I thought you said we were watching a love story?”
“I said we were watching a movie that had a love story in it,” she corrected.
I looked at her, then back at the screen, eyebrow raising. “There’s a love story in Alien Vs. Predator?”
She nodded, giving me a firm look. “No one can convince me that Scar didn’t love Lex.”
“Scar…”
“The predator she teams up with.”
“They have names?” I asked, mildly surprised. We’d watched some of these movies way back in the day, but I wasn’t sure I remembered what happened.
“Yeah, they do.” She took a bite of her enchilada, then closed her eyes. “This is delicious.”
My eyes were glued to her lips. “Thanks,” I said when she glanced over at me, expecting a response. “Pretty much the only thing I can make worth a damn.”
She set her fork down and turned toward me. “You made this?” Her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t get it from Rosa’s?”
I scoffed. “Rosa only wished she had my white chicken enchilada recipe.”
A beautiful grin spread over her face. “Well, thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.” Her smile dimmed a little as her eyes widened. “Not that I wouldn’t have appreciated it if you’d gotten it from Rosa’s-”
Reaching over, I cupped her cheek to stop her rambling. “You’re welcome.”
We stared into each other’s eyes for a few moments while gunshots and action sounds played in the background. She looked away first. “That’s Scar.” She pointed to the screen. “And Chopper. And Celtic.”
“How did you find out their names?”
“Oh there’s books, and a whole lore for these guys. Predators, I mean.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope. They don’t kill the weak…unless they make themselves a threat. They only go after the strongest of a species, to test their own prowess.” She gave me a shy look. “In fact, you sort of remind me of them.”
My brows shot. “How’s that?”
She shrugged and looked away. “Big, strong. I imagine you’re a very good fighter, if that night at the bar was any indicator. And you’re honorable.”
“Those aliens kill a lot of people,” I said with a chuckle.
“They do,” she replied.
She gave me a look that said she suspected I did too. She had me there, even though she never voiced the thought.
“So…you like,” I waved a hand at the screen as the huge alien stepped into the frame.
Her smile was a little guilty. “I do. You… You wanted to know about me right?”
“I do.”
She took a deep breath and said, “One of my guilty pleasures is reading monster smut.”
I’d taken a bite of my food and nearly choked on it. Swallowing, I looked over at her. “Monster…smut. Like…”
“Orcs,” she admitted. I blinked. “Minotaurs. Sea creatures. Alien creatures.” She nodded toward the screen. “I mean it’s not all I read, but it’s high up there.”
I was going to have to get some of these books to research.
That confession from her spun me so far out of my depths I didn’t know where else to begin.
Making a mental note to do that, we continued talking as we ate and watched the movie.
Thankfully she didn’t seem to expect that we’d be silent while her choice of film played in the background.
I just wanted her here, in a quiet place, where I could learn more about her.
And maybe make out on my couch like a couple of teenagers.
“See,” she said a little while later. “Look how he looks at her.”
“He has a mask on,” I pointed out.
She sighed, a little longingly, as she stared at the screen. “Even with the mask you can tell.”
I grinned and shook my head. She was so different than I expected. And I fucking liked that about her. I leaned back and draped my arm over her shoulder, ignoring the way she stiffened a little. Then she relaxed and scooted a bit closer, leaning my way.
Abandoning the movie, I reached over, cupping her chin and turned her face toward me. I didn’t move slowly, the way I probably should have. There was no chance for her to move away as I lowered my mouth to hers. I needed to touch her. To kiss her. Wanted it more than my next damn breath.
Her mouth opened on a small inhale and I took the opportunity to press my advantage. My tongue brushed against hers. She’d turned to face me and was gripping my biceps as I kissed her. Our mouths moved together, I wasn’t sure for how long, until I got tired of craning my neck in her direction.
Turning my upper body, I grabbed her by the hips and pulled her up and over until she was straddling my thighs on the couch. The little yelp she made as she went airborne was adorable. I vowed to myself I was going to see what kind of sounds I could drag out of her.
I raked my hands through her dark hair, grabbing two fistfuls as I kissed her again.
She’d been about to say something, but whatever it was dissolved into a moan.
We were making out to the sounds of people screaming as they died, and honestly?
That was kind of fitting considering the reputations we both had.
After a couple of minutes of making out, she put her hands on my chest and applied the slightest amount of pressure. Ripping my mouth away, I stared at her as I tried to catch my damn breath. She had me huffing like I’d just run a few miles trying to beat my personal best.
“Pyre.”
My eyes dropped to her lips. She didn’t have any make-up on, that I could tell, but her lips were red from my kisses.
“I-I like you.”
One side of my mouth kicked up into a smirk.
“I like you, too.” I didn’t mind admitting it.
And if she tried to run, well, she wasn’t going far with my hands on her hips.
I’d been about to let them start wandering when she’d stopped me.
My dick was fucking throbbing and now I was kicking myself for trying to ease her into this.
She tucked her hair behind her ears to keep it out of her face. “I…um…I’m not quite ready to…”
Damn it.
I had myself a classy lady here. And I was glad that she wasn’t going to just jump into bed with me, no matter how much I wanted to.
She was going to make me prove my intentions in no uncertain terms before she was going to let me in.
Not just to her body, but into her life. Her world. I didn’t mind.
Leaning forward, I brushed a kiss over her lips. “No problem. Why don’t you catch me up on what I missed of this movie and we’ll finish it?”
“Okay,” she said, giving me a bright smile as she scrambled off my lap and settled in next to me. She laid her head on my shoulder as she pointed at the screen and started talking.
I counted the fact that she was comfortable enough to lean on me as a win.
Hell, I’d count all of tonight a win. And I was going to need to figure out how to talk my way into her home.
I needed to make sure Warrant didn’t follow through on his threat—assuming he hadn’t already—to put cameras in her house.
He wouldn’t dare fucking put one in her shower, but that didn’t mean the rest of the place was off limits, and I didn’t want to have to kill him for ‘helping’.
The irony here was that I would have to put my own cameras up in her place just to make sure that Warrant didn’t.