Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
LINDY
I rang Alicia’s front door bell, and within moments the door flew open. My breath cut at the sight of Wes. His hair was messed up, a muscle twitching along his jaw. Had I interrupted something?
At the sight of me a dark eyebrow shot up as his watery eyes widened for a split second. A lazy laugh that sounded almost bitter erupted from him, sending a chill over my skin. “Ah. Perfect timing.” His voice was unusually husky, growly even. His body seemed to waver.
My spine straightened. Something was wrong.
I raised the Lenore’s Lace shopping bag in my hand. “Alicia ordered this from Lenore, and it came in late today, so I’m dropping it off on my way home. Is she here?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. Okay. Sorry to bother you. My mistake.”
My Jacks prospect had dropped me off at Lenore and Finger’s, but after he left, I’d decided to take Alicia’s bag over to her house, which was only two blocks away. Lenore had planned on dropping it off herself, but she’d gotten a last minute hair salon appointment, so I’d taken the bag.
I knew it was a risk to go on my own, without telling anyone, but I gave into the temptation. I craved taking a simple walk outside, doing something, anything other than go from the store to the house to the store to the house. And what did I get for this impetuous decision of mine?
Wes. Sexy Wes. Wes alone, and in a strange, dark mood.
“Here—” I shoved the shopping bag in his chest as I stepped back down the stone stairs. He didn’t even attempt to grab the bag, and it dropped to the floor.
His body wavered again and he propped himself up against the doorjamb.
My gaze landed on a whiskey bottle in his hand. “You okay?”
“Better than ever.”
I glanced past him into the dark house. Empty beer bottles were lined up on the kitchen counter in the distance, giving off a green glow from a small light in the kitchen, the only light on in the house. “Am I interrupting a party?”
“Party for one.” A biting smirk swerved over his lips. “Want to make it a party for two?”
Something was definitely off. “I should go.” I turned away to head down the walkway.
“Hey, Blade girl, hold up!”
I swiveled around. “Excuse me?”
“I need to ask you something. Something about your club.”
“That club doesn’t exist anymore, and I’ve got nothing else to say about it.”
“Lindy! Please…don’t go!”
The urgent ache in his voice stopped me. There was desperation there, sadness. I knew them well. I returned to the front steps. “What’s wrong, Wes?” I lowered my voice. “What’s going on?”
He rubbed a hand across his broad chest, his taut arm muscles flexing. “I found something, and I need you to help me figure it out. Please.”
“What is it?”
“Something of my dad’s,” he whispered. “It’s got to do with the Blades. Please, Lindy.”
My teeth dragged across my lip, and I stepped inside the house. A flare of warmth from his body rolled over me like a thick, heavy wave from which there was no escape. Locking the front door, he glanced down at the shopping bag at our feet. “Lingerie?”
“Bingo.” Grabbing the bag, I set it down at the foot of the staircase. I gestured at the bottle in his hand. “Alicia went out for the night and you’re partying it up alone at the house?”
His features twisted. “I haven’t lived here in years.”
“Oh.”
“My mom sold the house and I came by to clean out my old stuff.”
“Nostalgia hitting hard?”
He wiped at his mouth, teetering. “Other things are harder.”
“Like what?”
“Did your dad ever cheat on your mom?”
“It kind of goes with the biker territory, doesn’t it?”
He tilted his head. “So he did and you’re cool with it?”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t know for sure, but I only have good memories of my parents together—they laughed a lot, were always affectionate with each other. Enjoyed being together. They didn’t fight much or get nasty, at least in front of me. They never seemed unhappy.”
“Lucky girl.” He raised the bottle in my direction and drank. “In this house, there was a shit ton of yelling and arguing. Loads of anger. Mountains of resentment.”
So his nostalgia was the bitter kind. “That must have been rough on you. I’m sorry.”
“The last year before my dad died was the roughest. I was sixteen-seventeen, I understood what he was up to, and I understood how it affected my mother. I saw it, felt it, and I started hated him for it. Then, poof, he was gone. You know what that’s like too, don’t you?” His fingers went to the side of my face, brushing my skin.
“I do,” I whispered, my insides fluttering at his touch in the dim light, at the rawness in his voice. “So…what did you find?”
“It’s in my room.” He climbed the staircase and I followed him, holding onto the banister in the darkness. On the second floor, we entered a bedroom where the light was already on.
A small Snoopy stuffed toy stuck out of a black plastic bag on the floor, and I plucked him off the bag. “I love Snoopy. I lost mine on one of our many moves. Never got over it.” My fingers squeezed Snoopy’s soft curved torso.
“You can have him.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s all yours.”
“Thanks.” I glanced around the room. “This room has been frozen in little boy Wes time.”
“My mom redecorated when she started showing the house to potential buyers to encourage the family vibe.”
“Smart move.” I sat on the quilt covered twin bed. “Did you used to bring girls here?”
“Sometimes. If my parents were out.”
I put Snoopy on the desk. “You never brought me here.”
“You were different.” He took my hand, and a soft heat billowed up my arm.
“Because I was the fake relationship that you kept a secret from your family?” I took my hand back. “Imagine if your parents knew you were dating me, a Broken Blade? And you never told me that your daddy was the president of the Jacks, did you?”
“I did not.”
“That girl I saw you with after? Did you fuck her here?”
His eyes narrowed. “What girl, when?”
“After us.” I let out a dry laugh. “But there were so many girls, weren’t there? How could you possibly remember one out of the many?” I took in a breath. “A few weeks after you got shot at, there was a music festival in Deadwood. I was there with a couple of friends. I saw you with your arms wrapped around this cute blonde cheerleader type. Like you were in a heavy relationship. Blew my mind. Stupid me hadn’t realized we were officially broken up, that it was over.” I dug my heels into the carpeted floor. “I hadn’t even seen you there until Zac pointed you out to me.”
“Yeah, Zac…” He took another gulp of whiskey. “I remember. I was trying to forget you that night.”
“How sweet. Did you forget me while you were screwing her?”
“I didn’t screw her, and I never forgot you,” he bit out.
“Be still my heart, you fucking liar.”
“I certainly was a smooth fucking liar back then. Lying to you, to myself, to everybody around me. After my dad got killed, after us and the shooting, I was trying to pretend I could pick up the pieces that were left of me and keep on keeping on.”
“You only considered your pieces, not mine.”
“True.” He sat on the floor opposite me, his body sagging. “I hope you can forgive me for that. For all of it.”
“Zac told me everything that night.”
His eyes lifted to meet mine. Heavy, glassy. “He did, and he made sure I knew that he’d told you everything. I was so angry.”
“That your secret was out? That your intended victim heard all about the plan to share her with his pal, to use drugs if need be? And then after, drop her like trash.”
His jaw tensed. “I didn’t realize the consequences of what I’d set out to do. I only knew that striking out seemed like a solution, like I was achieving something.”
“And I was going to be your virgin sacrifice roadkill in the name of outlaw justice.” I grabbed the bottle from his lax grip. “Here’s to you, big man.”
His head jerked back as if my words had stung him. “Unforgivable, I know.” He wiped his hands down his face. “I felt no one was doing anything to find my dad’s killer. The word was that the Blades were responsible, and I was desperate to hurt them any way I could. I stole from them, torched their junkyard. Using you was another part of that revenge.”
His truthful words hung in the room, giving off smoke like glowing embers in the night. It was logical this plan of a broken teenager who was grieving his father. I got it. That kind of cold, churning black ocean of bottomless grief that threatened to pull you under in its tide every day and crush you as you sank. I knew that ocean. I’d been paddling in it for years.
“I should have come clean to you right away, Lindy, especially after you and your dad saved me and Butler on the road. Jesus, I’ll never forget that. That’s in here.” He tapped on his chest.
“I’ll never forget it either.”
“It’s eaten me up inside ever since, what I tried to do to you,” he whispered, his voice an ache. “I want to believe I’m not that fucking monster.”
My shoulders fell. “I don’t think you’re a monster.”
The scent of the sweet liquor on his breath, coupled with man and something like spicy wood, hit me in my already melty center. I cleared my throat. “You told me you found something that you needed my help with? What is it?”
He sat up on his haunches, his hand cradling the side of my face, and I shivered at his touch, at the sadness filling his eyes. “I wanted to avenge my dad’s murder no matter what, no matter who I crushed, even myself. But he wasn’t worth it.”
“Why wasn’t he worth it?”
He let go of me and a sigh dragged from his lips as he stood up. “He wasn’t only a cheater, but a fucking traitor to his own brothers. I was going through all this old stuff today when I remembered my dad had a hidden compartment in my closet. It was our secret. We had a stash point in the living room, but my mom didn’t know about this one.”
“We had stash points too.”
The edges of his lips curled into a slight grin. “Goes with the territory, eh?” he quoted me. “I haven’t opened it in years. Tonight, I did. And I found these.”
He went to the bag where Snoopy had been and pulled out a lockbox, opened it, and took out a pile of spiral notebooks, handing me one. “Take a look.”
I flipped it open. A tally of names, figures, a count of weapons and chemical ingredients bought, sold, traded filled the pages. “Accounting for different jobs?”
“Look at the names.”
I let out a gasp, my finger tracing over Uncle Zed’s name written in black ink all down the page.
“These are jobs my dad and Zed were running together. My dad was club president, and yet look what he was doing with another club. Cutting deals, making cash for himself.”
“Are you sure the Jacks didn’t know about it?” I grabbed another notebook and leafed through it. Jump and Zed. Jump and Zed. “This doesn’t necessarily make Jump disloyal to his club or Zed to his.”
“Then why did my dad stash these here and not at the club safe? Nah, Lind, this fits his profile.”
“What profile is that?”
“Always looking out for number one,” he spit out. He was stewing in this discovery. In what it implied, and maybe worse, what it confirmed. A grimace flashed across his face.
I closed the notebook. “Zed and Jump were both presidents. Maybe what they were doing was for the good of their clubs? Laying some kind of groundwork, making contacts for some big future project? I know that my dad really respected Zed as his prez. Always said he was a solid brother and a great leader. He was devastated when he died.”
“When Zed died, this didn’t die.” He handed me another notebook. “You’re a Blade. Take a look, see if you recognize any other names. The first five notebooks are all Zed and my dad. But the others have other names.”
I leafed through the fifth notebook. Toward the end of July the Zed notations stopped. I remember it was summer when Zed had died. I’d been eleven or twelve when it happened, and the heat and humidity had been brutal at his epic funeral. Holding onto my mother’s hand as we stood in the thick of the massive noisy crowd, sweating, tired, thirsty, dizzy. Everyone so upset. It had been horrible.
Beck handed me another notebook. The first transaction listed was dated late September that same year with the name Thor.
“Thor was a Blade,” I murmured. “Zed’s Treasurer. Dad used to call him Money Man. He got killed in the takeover.” I opened the next notebook. My breath balled up in my chest, my pulse jerking at the sight of that name.
“What is it?” Wes sat down on the bed next to me, the mattress dipping. His warm fingers brushed the hair from my face, and sparks prickled over my flesh, bringing me back to the here and now. “Lind, you okay?”
I swallowed hard. “It’s Raptor.”
“That name sounded familiar to me, but…” Wes looked at the notebook with me, his gaze following my fingertip tracing the entries. Pages of transactions with Raptor’s name. “Who is he?”
“Raptor and my dad were best friends. They’d come into the Blades together as prospects. Raptor later became Zed’s Sergeant at Arms.”
“So maybe he knew what Zed and my dad were up to and took over after Zed died?”
“Seems that way.” I sat up straighter, trying to inch away from the warm wall of hard muscle that was Wes, strong Wes, comforting Wes, hot Wes, that was distracting me. “My dad always said that after Uncle Zed died everything had changed at the club, not only because their new president, Notch, was kinda nuts and completely swerved the Blades’ allegiances around causing havoc. But after Zed died, things weren’t the same between Dad and Raptor. Raptor had allied himself with Notch and had iced Dad out.”
“Survival.”
“But my dad was an officer too. He was Road Captain, but Notch only kept his VP and Sergeant at Arms real close.”
Wes scanned the page, opened other notebooks. “Judging from the dates, my dad and Raptor were running shit up until Dad got killed. Raptor’s a Flame now, like your dad?”
“No.”
“He’s dead?”
“He’s the only one who got away. He’s been a renegade nomad of sorts. The Flames and the Jacks have been after him for a while. Why don’t you know this?”
“My mom and I aren’t part of the club anymore, we’re not in the loop.”
“Why aren’t you a One-Eyed Jack?”
“Am I supposed to follow in my daddy’s footsteps?” he shot back, his voice a dark sneer that made my heart stop. There was raw pain in that voice, in those beautiful blue eyes that had now darkened.
My hand went to his thigh, and his muscles tightened under my touch. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Sorry.” His jaw muscles flexed.
“It’s okay.”
He let out a heavy breath. “Tell me more about Raptor. If you want, that is.”
“He has this insane tattoo from this throat down to his chest of a dinosaur’s open mouth, fangs and all. I still remember how it gave me shivers when I first saw it, and I was in elementary school then.” I let out a breath. “When the Blades got destroyed, Raptor refused to join the Flames, and he took off before they could kill him. Disappeared for years. Word was he’d become a nomad for the Smoking Guns.”
“He affiliated himself with the Flames’ number one enemy? Did Raptor stay in touch with your dad all these years?”
Raptor might have taken my dad, but I can’t tell him that, can I?
My fingers curled tightly into the notebook. “They’d gone their separate ways years before the Blades fell apart.”
“Now everyone’s after him because he never came to heel?”
“I don’t know all the details, but my dad said Raptor had been running a human trafficking operation with a Smoking Guns president and some gang or mafia organization. A few months ago, that Smoking Guns president got arrested?—”
“That I heard about. Dog, right? It was in the news, and Trick and Nicole had something to do with that.”
“They did. But Raptor managed to disappear again.”
“Maybe there’s something in these notebooks that can tell us more about Raptor. If he picked up the reins after Zed died, he and my dad must have had a solid infrastructure that worked and, more importantly, stayed under the radar.”
“Good point,” I murmured. “How about I make us coffee and we go over the notebooks?”
“Sounds good.”
We went to the kitchen, and I made us coffee with the Keurig on the counter as he cleaned up the empty beer bottles. Sitting at the table, Wes and I combed through each notebook.
“I keep seeing the word ‘dip’,” Wes said. “And dip is capitalized. What the hell is that?”
My pulse flickered. “Let me see.” I leaned over, and he showed me the entries.
“Does that mean anything to you?”
“When I was little, my dad used to take us to this open field where the guys would race around on their bikes. They’d found it off an old hiking path over the Nebraska border into Wyoming. They liked it because there was a hill, and at the bottom there was a dip in the earth, a kind of basin. And depending on the weather, it would get real dusty or real muddy. Either way, everyone loved it. An amusement park for the big kids. And in the winter snow? Best sledding hill ever. It was fun.
“There was an old shack at the top of the hill, wasn’t much of anything. A tiny wood house built by some wilderness loner dude. This old man. We’d bring him food and clothes, blankets, and drugs in exchange for us coming and making a ruckus once a month or so.
“He liked lollipops. I remember that because my mom made me give him mine the first time I met him and I’d gotten upset. But the lollipop got this little boy smile out of him. Same smile that dropping acid with the men brought out in him too.”
“Creepy.”
“It was. After that, Mom used to bring him a bagful of lollipops every time. I remember he had a trap door in the floor and he’d store weird end of the world stuff in there along with the lollipops. They’d always send a club girl in there to fuck him, and everyone would laugh at the noise they’d make.”
“Nice.”
“Then he died, but we kept going out there.”
What had Minty said? That he didn’t think it was a coincidence that Dad had disappeared in Blades territory? I sank back onto the kitchen chair. The Dip was in our old territory—over the Wyoming border where dad was last heard from.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I went back over the notebooks I had and went down the list.
“What’s is it, Lind?”
“Jump and Raptor kept using the Dip. Even more than with Zed.”
“Then it’s a perfect off-the-grid location. Do the Flames know about it?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that, for my dad, the Dip was sacred Broken Blades territory, and I doubt he would have offered it up to the Flames, you know what I mean?”
“Sacred, huh?” A wicked smirk flickered over his lips again. “I get it. The Flames had taken everything from his club, taken out his brothers. Why would Pick hand anything over to them like some freebie on a silver platter?” He took in a deep breath. “So that makes the Dip a good place for Raptor to lay low all these years, to keep using it.” He closed the notebook, his face lighting up. “I’ll tell the Jacks about the Dip.”
My body jerked. “What? Why?”
“What do you mean why? Raptor could be there. Sounds like they haven’t had a solid lead on him in a long time. This could be it.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not? What’s wrong?”
“Because…” I stuttered. My heart stuttered.
“What is it?”
“Wes…”
“Tell me. I want to help you find your father, don’t you believe me?”
“I do believe you.”
His eyes widened. “Holy shit. You think your dad could be there with Raptor?”
My face streaked with heat, and I pressed my lips together.
“Lindy?”
“I don’t know what to think! I’ve been in the dark since I found out he was missing. But I need to consider the possibility that maybe he went off grid with Raptor.” I swallowed hard. “But it doesn’t make sense to me. He’s worked so hard to settle in as a Flame, to be accepted, to prove his loyalty. And I know him, I know he feels good about that, so, no, I can’t believe that he would go off with that guy, disappear, and not tell me, not give me some kind of heads up, something…”
“Sounds like a huge risk, but the brotherhood runs deep, doesn’t it? If that’s what Pick did, he’d keep you out of it to keep you clean.”
My chest caved in, and my shoulders sank. “I don’t know what to think, Wes. All I know is that I miss him. That I hope he’s still alive wherever he is.” My breath hiccuped in my chest.
Wes pulled me into his arms and rubbed my back. I sighed deeply, my face buried in his rippling chest. His clean scent of wood and warm skin filled my senses, and my muscles eased one by one. It felt good, so good to be held by him, comforted, but I couldn’t break down now.
Wes kissed the top of my head. “You remember where the Dip is?”
“I could find it.”
“If what we have in these notebooks is something to go on… I want to help you find your dad.”
“You would help me?”
“You two saved my life and Butler’s.”
My fingers pushed against his chest. “You don’t owe me, Wes.”
His hands cradled my face, keeping me close. “I don’t want you to lose your dad.” His raw voice drilled a hole in my wretched heart. He had a hole too, didn’t he? “I could have lost Butler that day too. Thank God I didn’t.”
“You two are real close?”
His hold on me relaxed. “We are. Something changed that day in Deadwood, on that road, and I’m glad it did.”
He’d lost his dad but gained another father figure, a mentor. “You’re lucky.”
“I know I am.” His fingers brushed back that lock of my hair that always fell in my eyes, and a delicious shudder went off inside me as we held each other’s gazes. Intense, heated.
The need to help him overwhelmed me. I wanted to, he needed this. He needed me. “Here’s an idea: Why don’t you show Butler the notebooks that have Zed listed. See how he reacts. Find out if he knew about their gig. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To know what your dad was really up to?”
“I need to know.” His jaw tightened once more. He believed the worst of his dad and it was killing him inside. And I hated seeing it. It was why he got drunk tonight, wasn’t it?
“Your dad took advantage of a business opportunity with a friend and kept it going because it was a moneymaker. Who would say no to that? You don’t know if he shared it with the Jacks or not, if it was some strategy thing with Zed for the future. Discussing it with Butler would give you the answer. But…” I touched his arm.
“But what?”
“If this is news to Butler, would he flip out and tell everyone? That would suck.”
“I don’t think he would. He’d let it lie.”
“Either way, your father’s reputation as President would remain intact with the club. Wes, you’ve got nothing to lose and a whole lot to learn.”
He met my gaze. “You’re right.”
“Go for it. Find out what you can. And I’ll go to the Dip.”
“You’re not going there alone!”
“I don’t want to put my dad’s reputation with Finger in jeopardy. He’s worked so hard to be a part of the Flames, you have no idea. First I need to see for myself if he’s there or not. Then I’ll tell the Flames about it. ”
“Hold up. I won’t tell Butler about the Dip. I’ll only show him the Zed notebooks, see if he knows anything. Then you and me will go to the Dip together.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Warmth flowed through my chest at his confirmation of helping me. “If my dad is there with Raptor, he might have been forced into it, blackmailed by him somehow. I need to be sure. Either the Flames still don’t know anything or they’re not telling me what they know.” I let out a breath. “To them I’m the girl. The Blade girl.”
“You’re not a girl anymore, Lind.” There was something smoky in his voice. Maybe it was the booze. His gleaming gaze burned right through me, burned through my veins, my heart, igniting everything I’d felt for him since the last time I’d seen him as that girl. His girl.
“I kicked that girl to the curb a while back.” Darting up from the table, I picked up our coffee mugs and brought them to the sink.
“Thanks to me?”
Rinsing off the mugs quickly, I shoved them in the dishwasher. “Did you even like me? Were you even attracted to me or was it all fake? I’d like to know. I want the truth whatever it is. Because I liked you. I wanted you, but I’d made that obvious, didn’t I?” I slammed the dishwasher door shut. “You were special to me, and I’d wanted you to be…” I bit my lip, stopping the words, my face heating.
What the hell had gotten into me?
He sat up straighter. “Wanted me to be what?”
“Nothing.” I ripped a paper towel off the roll and wiped my hands.
His lips curled as he pushed back his chair, and it scraped loudly on the floor. “Lindy. What did you want me to be?” Facing me, he planted his hands on the counter. The demanding urgency in his voice lit a match through my veins, igniting something bolder inside me.
Go on, let him know how deep it went.
“I wanted you to be my first.”
His eyes widened in the silence. In a burst of movement, he lunged around the counter and grabbed me, his mouth crushing mine as my lungs constricted.
Wes kissed me like a desert traveler and I was his oasis. His tongue drove deep with need, a fierce need that matched my own. The firm muscles of his arms held me tight as his hips pressed against mine.
But, oh, that taste. His taste.
Those intense sensations I hadn’t felt in centuries surged inside me. This was no memory, but a potent, intoxicating cocktail of this-is-for-real. I was engulfed on a tidal wave of Wes, out of myself, and into the heart of an explosive and violent storm.
My arms pressed around him. I reveled in the feel of him, the intensity of his kiss. A kiss that branded and claimed and demanded. Back then it had all been fake. But was it fake now? Ignited by guilt? Or was it only whiskey and hormones?
My body went rigid, and I shoved at him. “You don’t deserve me.”
“No, I don’t.” He brought me back into his chest. “But I’m showing you…”
I shoved again. “Showing me what? What you want?”
A noise tore from his chest. “Showing you how I feel about you.”
My fingernails dug into his arms. “When you targeted me, kissing me and touching me must have been a real tedious chore for you, but you did it for the good of the mission, right?”
“I liked you, Lindy. You were all innocence and enthusiasm about life. Passionate about diving in headfirst to whatever it was you wanted. You were genuine. Everything I wasn’t. Everything I didn’t know.”
“But you kept your eyes on the prize, didn’t you? Nothing got in your way, until Butler did.”
“I was real goal oriented then.”
I twisted in his grip. “You’re not now?”
“Now I’m just getting by,” his voice rasped, ragged and bruised, fisting in my heart.
My hand reached up and stroked his warm, stubbly cheek. His eyelids sank as he leaned into my touch, a low noise escaping his lips, a raw, vulnerable sound. The same raw that filled my soul.
“Wes?”
His eyes blinked open.
“Is leaving this house behind hard for you?”
His ringed fingers slid over my hand and took it in his. “I didn’t think it would be, but the little boy in me, the one who took the family fairy tale for granted, always thought this house would be here for him forever. No matter what, this house was a sure thing.”
I squeezed his hand. “My dad and I are still living in the house where my mom got sick and died. And you know what? Now that I’m not there, I realize it’s been sucking the life out of me. Out of my dad too. I never wanted to let it go because it meant letting her go, letting go of the way we used to be as a family. But what the hell’s the point? She’s not there anymore.”
He curled my hand in his. “And she never will be again.”
I blew out a breath, blew out all those child fears of letting go, of what if. “Like your dad isn’t here anymore and never will be again.” The two of us stared at our hands clasped together. I shifted my weight. “Your mom has gotten on with her life in a big wonderful way, and that’s fantastic.”
“It is. I’m happy for her. How about Pick?”
“This year, for the first time, he started bringing women to the house instead of keeping it at the club. But I don’t know if that means he’s letting go and trying to start over or if he’s floundering even more, given up.”
“And you?” He took my other hand in his. “You getting on with your life?”
“Just getting by,” I repeated his words on a whisper.
Our gazes locked once more and something powerful and loud hummed in the room, throbbing around us. Need, want, desire.
Recognition.
My arms flew around his neck, and I smashed my mouth against his.