22. All In
22
ALL IN
Diana
Hugger stopped us the minute we stepped inside Annie’s house the next morning.
I knew why.
There was a vague smell of burnt food.
However vague it was, you couldn’t miss it.
This meant, when we made our way into Annie’s house, Hugger was chuckling, and I was pleased as punch because he was doing it.
Regardless of the smell, when we hit the dining room, the table was covered with food, and none of it looked burnt.
After a brief search, we found Annie out by the pool.
She was talking to someone, so we stood just a bit away, waiting for the moment to greet her.
We were doing this even though the person with her glanced at us five times, all of them smiling, and he did it to try to get Annie to cotton on she had new guests.
And we continued to stand there until she finally turned to us (on the dude’s glance number six), she blinked and said, “ Oh , you’re here.”
“ Yeah , we are,” I replied, and offered her the bottle of Veuve we bought her.
She took it, gazing down at it distractedly like she’d never seen a bottle of Champagne before.
“ How lovely,” she mumbled.
“ Thanks for asking us for brunch,” I said.
She nodded and turned to Hugger , looking him up and down.
“ You clean up nice,” she remarked.
He was back in his caramel button down.
“ Thanks ,” he muttered.
“ I prefer the T -shirts,” Annie said.
Hugger’s lips twitched. “ Right .”
“ They have more personality,” she explained (and I agreed, though he looked fab in his button down).
“ Right ,” Hugger repeated.
“ And there’s great art put on T -shirts,” she went on. “ Album and rock art are forms of that medium that are often overlooked. Annie Leibowitz , Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol have all done cover art for rock albums. But Storm Thorgerson and Audrey Powell of Hipgnosis were pioneers of album art and created iconic images that are even better known than Warhol’s Campbell Soup pieces.”
“ Can’t argue with you on that,” Hugger said. “ Dark Side of the Moon . Zepplin’s Houses of the Holy . 10cc’s Look Hear ? The Wings ’ Band on the Run .”
I stared at my man, because I was impressed.
Annie was too. “ You know your album art.”
“ Yup .”
“ Can I talk to you a moment?” she asked.
Although her gaze was aimed at Hugger , as was her conversation (so why she was asking was a mystery, since she was already talking to him), and considering she shouldn’t have anything to talk to Hugger about, except album art, I queried, “ Me ?”
“ No , your young man.” She tucked her arm in his. “ Come along.”
And off they went, leaving me behind, with them rounding her pool to the other side while I watched.
I continued to watch as, surprisingly, Annie did most of the talking.
Hugger , unsurprisingly, said nothing. He just listened while looking serious.
In the end, he nodded. Annie tucked her arm in his again and returned him to me.
“ You can have him back now,” she declared.
Then she wandered off, seeming to have forgotten she was carrying a bottle of Champagne .
I looked up at Hugger . “ What was that about?”
“ She told me she has clients who have ‘connections.’ She then said if I hurt you, she’ll call on them to show me the error of my ways so I’ll wish I didn’t.”
This stunned me.
“ What on earth?” I whispered, my gaze drifting to Annie .
“ It was hilarious as fuck,” Hugger said, and I turned my attention to him. “ And kinda cute. Though , I didn’t let on it was either.”
Annie had…
Wow .
When it hit me what just happened, I latched onto his arm, leaned all my weight into him and said, “ I think she likes me. She really, really likes me.”
He smiled down at me. “ Yeah , babe, she really likes you.”
Although I kinda knew that.
Still .
It felt great .
“ I didn’t know any of our clients had ‘connections,’” I remarked.
“ They probably don’t. She just made that shit up so I’d do you right, and she knows a little chick who always wears black with her hair rolled at her forehead like she’s Betty Grable is not gonna have me quaking in my boots when she lays a threat on me.”
“ Gotta admit, Annie is the least threatening woman I know, outside my gram.”
“ Your gram still laid your mom out yesterday,” he reminded me. Then he advised, “ Never underestimate a woman. Most of them might not have the brute strength of men, but they find a way to get the job done. Like just now.”
I adored that he knew that.
So I shot him a beaming smile.
Hugger bent his head and kissed it off my face.
“ You have enough room after our donuts to get some food?” I asked after he pulled away.
“ Sure ,” he replied.
We went into Annie’s house, which was located in Arcadia Lite and was decorated in All Annie (that being monochromatic in blacks, grays and whites, the perfect foil to showcase her Jeff Koons magenta balloon swan and her Ashley Longshore pop art portrait of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman that included the words Roll the Credits ).
Along the way, I waved at people I knew and made note to introduce Hugger to them. Though , this was a bigger smash than Annie normally put on, and I wondered how she remembered all the people she met in order to invite them to her pad.
After having a donut earlier, I went directly to a mini quiche to balance the levels in my stomach of sweet pastries with a savory one.
Hugger grabbed a plate and nabbed a small stack of little pancakes, skewered with a long pick through a blackberry. It was a cool idea to lay them out like that, turning pancakes into finger food, and I made note should I ever create a brunch buffet.
He poured some syrup on them, and holding the plate under it as he went, he was raising the stick to shove them in his mouth when a woman standing close cried, “ Don’t !”
Too late, he’d bitten down.
Then he turned to me.
At the expression on his face, I immediately dashed to a stack of paper napkins and gave one to him.
He turned his head and spit out the pancakes.
The woman leaned in after he straightened and said, “ We think Annie put salt in them instead of sugar. But everything else seems okay, erm…so far.”
I started giggling.
Because …
Annie .
“ How do you know Annie ?” she asked.
“ I work with her,” I told her.
“ Oh , that means you must be Diana .”
Hmm .
Annie spoke of me.
“ Guilty ,” I said. “ And this is my boyfriend, Harlan .”
“ Hi there,” she said to Hugger .
“ Hey ,” he replied.
“ I’m Wendy . Me and my husband have known Annie for ages. We live down the street. She talks about you a lot. All good. She thinks you’re just great.”
If the threat of Hugger’s broken kneecaps (or other) wasn’t warming me enough, that did it.
“ She says you’re the best employee she’s ever had,” Wendy continued.
And more warmth.
“ Wow , that’s nice,” I replied.
She leaned in again and whispered, “ My husband says she’d be out of business without you. She’s sweet as sugar and would do anything for someone she cares about,”—yes, like the threat of busted kneecaps (or other)—“but she isn’t the type to be a savvy businesswoman.”
Hugger grunted.
I tamped down laughter. “ No , she’s a great boss, and I really like her, but she’s not that.”
“ I …” The woman sniffed and her brow wrinkled. “ Do you smell something?—?”
A loud beeping filled the house.
“ Fuck ,” Hugger grunted a word this time, then he dumped his plate and the napkin, and he was on the move.
I followed him to a kitchen filled with smoke.
I noted where it was coming from, dashed to the oven, opened it, and more smoke billowed out, making me cough. I waved at it, and after some of the smoke dissipated, I saw some kind of casserole that was put directly under the top coils had caught on fire.
Hugger saw it too, I knew, because he yanked me back and went in himself.
“ Hugger !” I cried.
He turned off the oven, grabbed some oven mitts, and ordered loudly to be heard over the fire alarm still going off. “ Do something about the alarm, babe.”
I ran to a window, opened it, then raced to a dish towel and started waving it at the alarm as Hugger used the oven mitts to pull a casserole dish out of the oven. He dropped it with a clatter on the stovetop, then used those mitts to beat out the fire.
After flapping the dish towel about a dozen more times, the alarm stopped sounding.
Thank God .
What a racket.
The kitchen reeked of burnt food.
I suddenly sensed we had attention, so I turned to the doorway of the kitchen, which was jammed with people.
And just then, Annie pushed through to the front.
She was still cradling the bottle of Champagne we gave her.
She looked at me, Hugger , the casserole, Hugger , me, and back to the casserole.
“ Oh , did I make bread pudding?” she asked no one and everyone.
That was when it happened.
One of those golden moments of life.
And I got to watch.
This being the fact that Hugger didn’t only bust out laughing…
He was taken over with it so bad, still holding a singed oven mitt in each hand, he leaned his ass against Annie’s kitchen counter, bent double, and his whole big body shook with amusement so strong, he had to brace his hands (and the mitts) against his knees so he could continue laughing and not topple over.
In that moment, watching Harlan “ Hugger ” McCain laugh that hard, I knew I’d love Annie forever.
But I’d love my guy for eternity.
* * *
Hugger returned from the bathroom after disposing of condom number two of the afternoon.
I lay naked as a jaybird on my stomach at a diagonal on my bed, and barely had it in me to jump when he lightly slapped my ass and asked, “ I finally do you in?”
As I knew well, and lived that knowledge, you learned something new every day.
What I learned that day was never wrestle a biker.
And definitely don’t do it in bed.
And further, absolutely don’t do it naked.
What got into me, I didn’t know. My man was take charge, and I liked it like that.
Though , if I tried to take charge, something else I’d just learned, he took it as a challenge.
It was an awesome challenge and one I oh-so-one-hundred-percent didn’t mind that I lost in a massive way.
But it was a challenge.
He got in bed properly and tugged me so I was draped down his side.
“ Next time we wrestle, you have to have one arm tied behind your back,” I mumbled.
“ I’ll still get you on yours and fuck you stupid.”
“ Ulk ,” I gagged, though I had no doubt this would be true, and it would be awesome, like what just happened was.
He chuckled (he knew it was awesome, then again, how loud I was and how hard I came couldn’t be missed).
I lifted my head so I could watch his humor, and made the mammoth effort to move my hand so I could sift my fingers through his beard as he experienced it.
“ I could look at you for days,” I whispered. “ Especially when you’re happy.”
“ Di ,” he whispered back, scooching down in bed and turning to me so we were face to face.
“ I don’t want to scare you, but in a theme for our day, you should know, I like you. I really, really like you,” I confessed.
“ That’s good, ’cause I feel the same.”
I relaxed into him. “ Thank God .”
He smiled gently at me. “ Thought I made that pretty plain.”
“ Nice to have the words.”
“ So noted,” he murmured, then came in for a peck of our lips.
“ I think it’s time we had our chat,” I said.
“ Yeah , about that.”
Uh -oh.
I wasn’t sure that was a good beginning.
“ When we know you’re safe, I need to go back to Denver . Work some shit out with the brothers,” Hugger declared.
Oh boy.
“ What shit?” I asked cautiously.
He was quiet for a spell, then he pulled me closer.
“ My father was a Chaos brother.”
“ Oh ,” I breathed, because I wasn’t expecting that. He loved those guys, and they loved him, but no mention until then of his father being one of them.
“ He did some nasty shit. Seriously nasty, to the Club , to a bunch of other people. It takes a lot, once you’re in, for your brothers to turn on you. They all hate him, Di . And there’s a lot to hate. He did them so dirty, anytime I think about it, it turns my stomach. He was an absolute waste of space along with being a total piece of shit.”
I hated this for him.
“ Harlan .”
“ I never really knew him. Only met him once. Just knew of him.”
“ How did you know all of that then?”
“ I asked Ma . She put it off until I was older, after he came to me, tried to get in there with me, mostly so he could use me, probably so he could use me against Chaos . She told me so I’d know and wouldn’t buy his bullshit. And so you know, he did her dirty too. It was back in the day when the Club had lost its way. Mom was in their stable. This guy, he conned her. Sweet -talked her. Told her he loved her. Told her he was gonna get her out of the life, marry her, give her a house, kids. She fell for it. She fell for him. If he hadn’t done that, she’d never have let him have her ungloved so they’d make me.”
“ Oh God ,” I groaned, hating that his mother got her heart broken through a betrayal like that.
“ Yeah . He was full of it. He just wanted freebies.”
I pushed closer. “ God , Harlan . What a…” I didn’t know what to call the man because that was such a down and dirty shitty thing to do, I didn’t think there was a word for it.
“ Yeah , not many words strong enough to describe what a complete dick he was.”
I grimaced.
Hugger ran his thumb under my eye then continued sharing.
“ When Chaos got out of all that business, she tried to go it alone. Tried to set up a client-only situation so it’d be safer. But she got strong-armed by a pimp who was a total asshole. He wanted Ma under his thumb, but after what my dad did, she didn’t want to be under anyone’s thumb. He wasn’t taking no for an answer, beat her to shit more than once.”
This just got worse and worse.
I pressed even closer and the only thing I could think to say was, “ Honey .”
“ Yeah ,” he agreed to all the feeling I put in that one word. “ About the third time that happened, she went to Chaos . Took me with her, because he threatened me too, all so he could take his cut of the money she earned off her back. Literally . She told Chaos , they found this guy and put him out of business forever.”
I felt my eyes get big. “ You mean, they killed him?”
“ No , I mean they did a number on him, and he was so shit scared of them after they did, when they told him to get in a different business, he did.”
“ Oh . Right ,” I muttered.
“ Then they got her set up. It took a while, but after that while, she never walked the streets again. Had a client list. Took referrals and ran checks on them before she took them on. In the end, a lot of them were just regulars who got in the habit of visiting her, they did the deed, but mostly they just wanted company, someone to talk to, and Ma was familiar.”
It hurt my soul he knew this about his mother’s business.
I wondered why she didn’t try to do something else.
Then again, single moms now had it rough. Thirty -five years ago, it had to be worse.
And it was something she knew how to do.
“ Chaos also paid for her cancer care,” he continued. “ Chemo . Radiation . Then eventually hospice. She didn’t have insurance. I was bouncing then, I sure as fuck didn’t have much to help her out. They got her the best Denver offered.” His voice dropped so he whispered his last. “ Luxury death care.”
My heart heavy with his loss, I smoothed his hair back off his forehead, and kept running my fingers through, because as much as I wanted to wave a magic wand and change this for him, there was nothing for me to say.
“ Last , they paid to bury her,” he finished.
Official , with a stamp, a gold seal and everything.
I totally loved those guys, and I hadn’t even met half of them.
“ God , honey. I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.
“ Nothin ’ to say. It was our life. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. What I know is, I had a great mom. It wasn’t about her keeping me fed or clothed, she was just a great mom. In our house, you wouldn’t know what she did. We were normal. She gave me that against some pretty slanted odds.”
They weren’t normal, with what he knew about all of this.
Then again, I’d lived a protected life. So protected, I was even protected from my mother.
So maybe they just lived an honest life.
“ What do you need to do with your brothers?” I asked.
“ Figure out why my ma worked so hard to give me a good life, show me the way, but I let a man who done her wrong, a man who I only met once, drag me down into thinkin’ I didn’t deserve shit. Set me on a path in life where I was just breathing, and not really living.”
I would very much like Hugger to get a handle on that.
“ Will they be able to help?” I asked.
“ Kinda already did. Had a conversation with our ex-president the other day. He was the one who guided them out of the fucked-up crap they were doin’. He knew my dad.”
“ Biological father,” I corrected.
His lips tipped up slightly. “ Biological father,” he repeated and ran a finger along my hairline. “ Do you ever worry you’ll turn out like your mom?”
“ No . I worry that I didn’t give my dad the credit he deserved for how hard he worked to make sure I didn’t.”
“ He didn’t want you to know that, babe,” he reminded me.
“ I know. And I have to get past it. I will. But we aren’t talking about me now.”
“ I asked the question.”
I gave him a soft smile. “ You’re right. You did.” I moved us along. “ Do you worry you’ll be like your bio-father?”
“ I did. Maybe still do. It’s haunted me.”
I could imagine.
“ So this ex-president?” I prompted. “ Is he going to help with that too?”
“ Tack . Good man. Solid gold. Loving father. Loving husband. Loyal brother.”
“ Okay ,” I said when he stopped talking.
“ Chaos recruited me. They came after me. I didn’t get that, not with who my…”—his lips curled up—“biological father was. But they told me my mom wanted it for me. I see it. She trusted them. And what Tack made of the Club , she knew it was a safe place for me. Somewhere I could be when she was gone with people looking out for me. So I became a prospect, but I did it for her.”
“ I wish I’d met her,” I said fiercely.
“ I do too, baby,” he whispered. “ She would have loved you.”
“ I hope so.”
“ No , baby, get this, she would have really loved you.”
Fuck , I was going to cry again.
Fortunately , Hugger let that go and carried on, “ What I didn’t get was what Ma really wanted me to have when it came to Chaos . Even though they told me from the beginning. I didn’t get it. Until recently.”
“ What’s that?”
“ Family .”
I closed my eyes and tucked my face in his throat.
He wove his fingers in my hair.
“ I had one, and then she was gone, and it was just me,” he said quietly, like it was a confession. “ But I’m understanding now, I’ve been grieving her something fierce. I been thinkin’, and I reckon that’s why I fell into just getting through one day at a time. It was always just her and me. Didn’t have any grandparents that I knew. Home wasn’t good for her growin’ up, she never went back. That meant I never lost anyone that meant anything to me. After she was gone, I didn’t know what I was feeling, so I couldn’t know how to deal with it.”
God , he was just killing me .
Sensing why his mom had to do what she had to do to get by.
How alone they were.
How alone he was after she was gone.
How much he loved her and how much he lost.
And that he had enough trust in me to be this beautifully honest.
Yes .
Totally killing me.
Hugger kept going, and I knew by the change in his tone that it was about to get even worse.
“ She would listen to this song,” he whispered. “ And sometimes, she’d sing it to me.”
“ What song, honey?” I whispered back.
“‘ You and Me Against the World .’ Heard it?”
I shook my head while swallowing, holding back tears, because just the title of the song done me in.
“ That song…” He took a second, then he said, “ It was like she was preparing me for when she wouldn’t be there.”
Oh God .
“ I wanna hear the song,” I croaked.
“ I’ll play it for you later, baby,” he murmured.
“ Okay .”
He pulled breath into his nose and kept giving it to me.
“ So , yeah. I got so stuck in the grief, when Chaos took me on, I didn’t realize what was all around me. What she wanted for me. What Pete and Rush went out of their way to find me and give to me. What all the brothers and the old ladies and the kids gave me from the get-go.”
I loved he was understanding what he had with his Club .
I loved it .
But I had a sinking sensation in my stomach because of what he was saying.
His family was in Denver .
And mine was in Phoenix .
With the life he lived, I couldn’t take that from him. Especially not now when he was comprehending the fullness of what his mother gave him.
Even though I just lost some of mine, I got the important parts back.
Still .
So Hugger could have his family, I was going to have to move to Denver .
“ Di ?” he called.
I tipped my head back to catch his gaze. “ I can’t contain my joy that you’re figuring it out, Hug . I haven’t met them all, but the ones I’ve met are awesome. And I can tell by the way they treat you they think the same about you.”
“ Yeah .”
“ So , if that was what she wanted, your mom would be happy you’re with them?” I asked a question I knew the answer to.
“ She totally would.”
God .
I was going to have to move to Denver .
“ You get one parking spot with this unit, or two?” he asked.
I blinked slowly, not following his change of subject. “ Sorry ?”
“ Your parking spot come with the property, or you rent it?”
“ It comes with.”
“ Just one?”
“ No ,” I breathed. “ There are two. And , um, a big storage room. I mean, not humungous, but it fits my Christmas tree and other stuff. Though , I don’t have a lot of other stuff, so it’s mostly empty.”
“ Mm ,” he hummed.
“ Why did you ask that?”
“’ Cause , I move in, I gotta have somewhere to park my truck so I don’t have to get in a fuckin’ oven whenever I use it.”
My body went completely still.
“ Now , this is the way I see it,” he went on.
Suddenly , even if a second prior I would have told you I could take no more, I could not wait to find out the way he saw it.
“ I’m all ears,” I practically panted.
He smiled at me, rolled to his back, pulling me on top.
He then gathered my hair at my neck and held it there in both hands, resting his forearms on my bare back.
“ I go home. I figure shit out. Won’t take long, but it’s gotta be done. You come up for a weekend, meet the brothers, their women, the kids. I show you Denver . If you fall in love, sweet. If you don’t, I talk to my brother Snap . He owns a ton of properties. Rentals . He buys ’em, fixes ’em up, rents ’em out. He’d help me do that to my pad. I rent it out, I got income.”
“ I —”
“ I move in with you when I move down here.”
When I move down here .
I melted into his body.
He kept speaking.
“ Already seems we do okay with that, I mean living together, but we’re new. Might just be first blush of all we got going. Lots going down, we haven’t really gotten to real, day-to-day life shit. We conquer that and we’re good, we’re golden. We don’t, I move out, we get to know each other the normal way, I move back in when we’re ready. We got a plan?”
My voice was hoarse when I asked, “ What about the Club ?”
“ I don’t need a lot, so I got a good amount saved, though gonna have to use some of it to fix up my place. I won’t feel good takin’ my cut if I’m not doin’ my bit for them, but I’ll have to have that discussion with them. Although all MCs have rules and regs, a hierarchy, none of them are about puttin’ a man in chains. Or not any I know of. Though , what I know right down to my gut is my Club will not stand in the way of me having you.”
“ Maybe we should talk about Denver ,” I forced out.
“ Denver is a great city. You’re gonna like it. But it doesn’t have your dad, Nicole , Larry , Charlie , Bernie , Mel , Annie . A job you love. And? —”
“ And Phoenix doesn’t have Big Petey , or Dutch , Jagger , Roscoe , this Tack guy, and all the rest of them.”
All of what his mother wanted him to have.
He rolled us again, so he was mostly on top, and he got right in my face.
“ Here’s the bottom-line deal,” he announced.
I held my breath.
It was a good call.
“ I don’t give a fuck where I am, as long as you’re there.”
Once he said that, I wasn’t sure I’d ever breathe again.
But he was far from done.
“ I’ll rent my place, got the investment in it so that’ll always be there for us, and it’ll keep growing. I’ll also have whatever it rents for, which’ll help us out.” He smiled. “ But I’m not the kinda guy who can sit around watching Real Housewives . I need something to do. I’ll figure it out. Aces has a home improvement store in north Phoenix , and I bet they’d take me on. I got store experience, practically run Ride , so it won’t be like they won’t get a good man who’ll do them right.”
“ Hugger —”
“ I don’t know how much you make, but I’ll contribute. Half and half, across the board. I like your crib. It’s the shit. Covered parking. Secure . No yardwork. You don’t wanna make coffee, you go down and get yourself some. We get on to making those two kids, babe, we’re gonna have to have bigger. I’ll carry my load with that too.”
“ Hug —”
“ It’s hot as fuck here, but I checked, and the weather will be crap from June to September . Four months of twelve, I can work it.”
He had checked.
He’d checked!
He kept going.
“ And I like snow, but you got mountains here, not far away, same as Denver . I get a hankerin’, we can drive to it.” He gave me a gentle shake on another smile. “ And I’ll do the driving. Just like in Denver , you gotta take a road trip to get to the good kind of snow in the mountains, but here, you never have to live in it, which is all right with me.”
“ No , you don’t have to live in it. But , Hugger? —”
“ In the end, Denver is a two-hour flight or a one-day drive away. It’s a haul, but you can do it in a day. Ain’t that far. We can go back and be with my family whenever we want.”
I waited to see if he had more to say, and when he didn’t, I tried again.
“ This can break couples,” I noted.
“ What ?”
“ You giving up something so huge for me.”
“ And what are you giving me?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure of the question.
“ I … I don’t know.”
“ Brunch in a hip pad with a kickass Wonder Woman painting in it that fortunately didn’t go up in smoke today.”
I wanted to smile at his quip, but with what we were discussing, there was too much at stake, so I didn’t have it in me.
He kept going.
“ You can have your cocktails in a weird bar with animated fairies flyin’ around on the walls and drinks served in weird glasses. I could tell that wasn’t for me. But that other bar was the shit. And their fried bologna sandwiches can’t be beat.”
I ran a hand over his shoulder and whispered, “ Hugger .”
“ You’re all that’s you, babe, and I think I made it clear I want all a’ that.”
Oh , he did that for certain.
“ But you’re opening up my world,” he continued rocking mine, “and I never knew I wanted it, but now I know I do. More , my ma would want it for me, and she’d love you’re giving it to me.”
My “ Honey ” this time was trembling.
He rubbed his nose against mine before he said, “ I think you get, if I had a shot at havin’ my mom back, I’d take it.”
Yeah , I got that.
“ And you just got your dad back,” he continued. “ No way in fuck I’m takin’ that away from you…or him.”
“ It’s not the same thing,” I pointed out.
“ No , not entirely, but it still kinda is.”
I couldn’t argue that, so I repeated, “ And you just figured out what the Club really means to you.”
“ My Club , my family, they’re not goin’ anywhere, Di . They’ll always be there. Another thing I learned recently ’cause Pete put it up in my face, and then Dutch did, and finally Tack did…they want me to be happy.” His arms tightened around me. “ You said it earlier, babe, but I don’t think you get it. It’s you that makes me happy, Di , and they want that for me. They’ve all said it, about you, direct. Even Tack , and he hasn’t even met you. Just told me to get you up to meet the family.”
“ He did?”
“ Yup .”
“ Whoa .”
“ Yup .”
“ Does Big Petey have a big mouth?” I asked suspiciously.
“ Yup .”
I didn’t find this surprising.
“ Okay ,” I stated.
“ Okay what?”
“ Okay , I’ll go up to Denver . I want to see it. I want to meet everyone. I’ll talk to Annie about scheduling a vacation, sometime really soon, spend a week up there. I still have a week of vacation left. I’ll go up there, get a really good look around so we can decide. I might love it. Who knows? But I want the experience I’ll need to make an informed decision. If it doesn’t seem for me, then we can do it your way.”
His lips started to spread into a grin.
I put a finger to them before it fully formed.
“ But I want you to promise to communicate with me,” I demanded. “ If the heat gets too much. Or you don’t like working at a home improvement store. Or you just miss your family.”
He pulled my hand from his mouth and said, “ I can promise that.”
“ And I don’t want any long-distance stuff.”
“ Come again?”
“ You need to go up there to deal with whatever you have to deal with, laying your issues with your biological father to rest, okay. But when you come back, you bring your truck, haul your bike, fill your truck with your stuff, and we’re doing this.”
He rolled further into me so he was totally on top of me.
And man, oh man, I freaking loved the look he had on his amazing face.
“ We’re doing this?” he asked.
“ All in,” I declared.
“ You totally fucked out?” he asked.
“ Yes , I am totally fucked out,” I answered. “ And seeing as that’s all your fault, if you’re in the mood to bang me again, you have to do all the work.”
“ Like I don’t do most of it already,” he teased.
“ You will note that earlier, I tried to take control, you just didn’t let me.”
His hands were moving on me, and as ever, my body was reacting.
“ I did notice something like that,” he muttered on a sly grin.
“ How could you miss it? I practically fell off the bed twice.”
He dipped his head and said to the skin on my chest, “ Definitely noticed that.” He trailed his mouth to my nipple. “ Not where I wanted you.”
“ Well , you did something about it,” I returned, going for fake-irritably, and failing since it came out all breathy.
He flicked my nipple with his tongue.
My clit contracted.
It was like he knew it, because one roaming hand glided over my hip and in, and when I said “in” I meant “ in .”
I mewed and ran my nails lightly up his spine.
“ Always so fuckin’ wet for me,” he said against my nipple, before he sucked it between his lips.
I fisted a hand in his hair and arched into his mouth.
He paid attention to my nipples (both of them) and my clit, until I was writhing under him and pumping my hips into his hand.
Hugger brought his mouth to mine.
“ You on the pill?” he asked.
“ No .”
“ You gonna get on the pill?” he pressed.
“ Yeah .”
“ Both of us tested, ASAP . Get on that.”
“ Okay , honey.”
I thought he’d reach for a condom.
He didn’t.
He slid down my body, threw my legs over his shoulders and went down on me.
I came against his mouth, and I came again a little while later around his cock.
It was then, something else was official.
I was fucked out and orgasmed out.
I had no idea either could happen, but there I was.
I’d also found my man.
And he was an amazing man.
Perfect .
He was mine.
He was coming to me.
He was moving in with me.
We were figuring this out with no long-distance crap pulling us apart.
We were doing this.
Both of us.
All in.
And even though, when Hugger left me in bed to deal with the condom, I literally couldn’t move ( I certainly couldn’t do the happy jumps and cartwheels I felt like doing), I was ecstatic about it.
Abso -freaking-lutely.