Rock Giant

After

Jodi Castle

Jodi woke to piercing daylight with a crick in her lower back courtesy of an errant tree root.

Hardly something she could complain about since it’d been there first. Best just be grateful for the shelter its boughs had provided her.

Honestly, she thought she’d moved past sleeping in the open.

Things had been looking good, steady relationship, sensible friends, yet here she was again…

Down on her luck… hustling for food… praying the goddamned world would give her a break…

Wait!

Fuck! Wait!

This wasn’t right. She was not stuck in that void anymore.

Even if everything had gone belly up, she had a tent.

A perfectly nice, teepee-like tent with a porch and a sleeping bit, and a soft fluffy sleeping bag, and a nice little stove that ran on camping gas that packed down small enough to fit in her backpack.

So, why the hell wasn’t she tucked up safe inside it?

Gingerly, she cracked an eyelid. Okay, she was not outside, but within some sort of haphazard structure made of interwoven branches with a canopy of bracken.

Flashes of constructing it pierced her woolly thoughts.

Had she and Nash built this after the ceremony?

Taken things a step further and become one with nature?

That kind of rang a bell, even though it didn’t seem a very Nash-like thing to do.

He was more of a brooding-in-a-dark-corner type than a let’s-get-our-hands-dirty-and-construct-stuff one.

Then again, here she was. Maybe the occasion had inspired him.

They had tied the knot, hadn’t they?

Yes, she could feel the ribbon still bound around her wrist. She raised a hand to admire it, grinning in sheer bliss, her future now secure.

Shame the details of it were so thoroughly lost behind a misty shroud.

She remembered laughing. Laughing so hard that her stomach muscles were still cramped from it even now.

Or maybe she just needed a decent breakfast.

Her stomach gurgled, hinting it was likely the latter.

A robin chirped overhead. Jodi watched it hop between branches.

The roof of the shelter was rather sparsely filled, a testament to its late-night, hasty construction.

Why hadn’t they gone back to her tent, or, hell, even his bus?

The latter would have lacked privacy, but not the former. Instead, they’d opted for what?

A love nest.

At least he was here with her. She’d woken enough now to recognise the heat of a body beside her.

They’d rolled apart a little during the night, because she’d definitely gone to sleep with his arms around her.

“I need food. A nice bacon butty, maybe… That something I can get on your bus?”

She rolled onto her side, intending to wake Prince Charming with a kiss.

Only Prince Charming was already alert and observing her, his head tilted contemplatively, his beautiful hazel eyes burning with adoration.

Every inch of him was agonisingly familiar: the shape of his face, the strong jaw, the easy smile, that dimple that formed right on the edge of where his stubble grew whenever he grinned. He was grinning at her now.

The hair was different though, buzzed short, where it had previously been longer on top, and nothing at all like Nash’s shaggy mane.

“You!” Her heart plunged into her stomach.

“Castle,” he said, as his gaze dropped to take in the curves of her semi-naked body, prompting her to cover herself.

He was wholly naked, save for a chain of sadly wilted daisies, the corner of a plaid blanket, a lot of glorious ink…and a ribbon that matched the one fastened around her wrist.

“Oh, shit!”

Jodi hastily put some space between them.

No… This wasn’t right. It was a dream. A nightmare.

She’d wake in a moment. She tried closing her eyes and reopening them, but he hadn’t magically blinked out of existence or metamorphosed into the person she prayed he would become.

He was still him. Still an inked giant with a heroic jaw and a kindly gaze.

“Oh, God!”

Her heart was going to burst right through her rib cage; it was galloping so much.

Time past, she’d have welcomed the sight of him.

God, for months and months, she’d wanted nothing more than to stumble back into him, but not now.

Not when she finally had her shit together.

When things were going right for once, and she’d found her feet…

She’d found love. Committed to someone. Tied the knot…

She raised her wrist and stared at the ribbon bound around it. Then at the matching one that encircled his.

No, that wasn’t right… That couldn’t be… They hadn’t…

“You okay, Castle?”

No, she wasn’t fucking okay! Not a fraction, an iota, or even a tiddly bit.

This was bad. Soul-destroyingly, atrociously, life-shatteringly bad.

She grabbed the blanket, hugging it to herself in a bid to build a barricade between them.

It was too little too late, of course… And she hadn’t given the consequences of her movement sufficient thought.

The plaid slid off him, revealing him in all his naked, tattooed, pierced—she blinked—multiply-pierced glory.

Fuck, he was huge, and—“Christ, that must have hurt!” The words rushed out irrespective of brain involvement.

But also, wow… intriguing, and not something she ought to be focusing on.

She raised her hand to block the view as she jerked her gaze sideways, but even seeing him in her peripheral vision was too much, because she remembered.

Remembered just how gloriously well put together Paul “Rock Giant” Reed was.

And then… then she was hot under her non-existent collar, and her lady bits were screaming that they were up for the challenge.

Paul Reed. The larger than life, sometimes vegan, cat-rescuing, mad as a box of frogs, hippy-trippy, adventure-loving bass player for goth metal superstars Black Halo. He was always and always would be, too much.

He was also responsible for making her homeless.

Had she told him that? Was that why she was in a makeshift shelter he’d no doubt constructed? Had he tried to counterbalance things by building her a residence? If only a similarly mad explanation would explain away the matching ribbons, or the fact that they were both extremely naked.

And did her body have to react to this vision of godly flesh in quite such a visceral fashion? Her nipples were like two spokes, her heart thumping, and her pussy purring at the thought of rubbing up against that column of barbell-enhanced flesh.

How many were there? Three? Six? More?

God, girl! Get a grip. And stop gawping at his gearstick.

He wasn’t even her type, not really. She wasn’t into big, muscly men.

She liked them all wan and stringy. The sort of guys that a good strong breeze could blow over, not behemoths capable of sweeping her off her feet like she was some renaissance-era waif, not a twenty-something with a food addiction and curves the Sheela na Gig inked on his upper arm couldn’t even match.

“What the fuck did we do? Please tell me we didn’t…” She wrenched a hand through the tangled strands of her hair. “Fuck!” Tears welled when her fingers got caught.

“Hm?” The noise told her nothing.

She turned to face him again, carefully keeping her gaze focused on his head. “Paul. Did we fuck?”

“Oh. I wasn’t sure if you were just cursing or that was a question.” He settled his back against the tree trunk, irritatingly at ease, and idly raised an arm to shield his eyes from the rising sun. A smile played on his lips, suggesting he was remembering exactly how their bodies had entwined.

Jodi snatched a handful of leaves from the shelter wall and chucked them at him. “Did we?”

He showed her his wrist. “What can I say? We tied the knot.” As if she wasn’t already painfully aware of the damn ribbon and its symbolic trinity knot.

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“It’s kind of fuzzy,” he admitted, his recollection seemingly as incomplete as her own. No matter how hard she strained, the memories were no more than snapshots, as if she were flicking through the pages of a book too fast. She screamed and pulled her hair again, neither of which helped.

“Shift,” she ordered, scouring the ground. She shoved him, forcing him to budge over.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t see any condoms.”

He arched his eyebrows.

“You wouldn’t have. We wouldn’t have. You’re always prepared for anything.”

“Also wouldn’t chuck them on the ground for some unsuspecting beetle to happen upon.”

A sob broke in her throat. She drooped, wilting as if all the life had drained from her. God, she was such a fucking moron.

She ought to have known it was all too good and wouldn’t last. Yet again, she’d proved to be her own worst enemy.

“Hey.” He was there then. Strong arms around her, cradling her to his chest, and filling her nostrils with his earthy scent. “What’s the deal? It’s not like it’s a first for us, and I don’t remember any complaints. And I quote, ‘You’re an awesome fuck’.”

She shoved him away and immediately regretted the loss of warmth.

“That was three years ago. We shared one night.” A night that remained simultaneously both the best and worst night of her life.

It’d upended everything. Ejected her from the bubble she’d been existing in.

Shit had needed to change, but she hadn’t been ready.

She didn’t blame him, though. Her choices had been her own.

The only person responsible for the dung heap she’d landed in was her.

And honestly, the same was likely true now.

Curious that he’d been instrumental both times, mind.

“How are the cats?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘How are the cats?’”

“I know what you said.” She raised her hands. “You don’t get to do that. You walked and haven’t been in touch since.”

“I walked? That’s not how I remember it.”

“I left you my number.”

“The fuck you did.”

“I fucking did.”