Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Drew
Ayda was busy shrugging into her tight leather jacket as I threw down a bunch of bills onto the table, not caring if it was too much. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and as I made my way to stand by her side, I felt like the luckiest bastard in the whole of Texas.
“Leather is most definitely my favorite thing on you… besides me,” I said, wrapping my arm around her to pull her closer.
Ayda’s head met my shoulder easily. “I guess I’ll have to get more of it then. I wanna keep my man happy and all.”
“You’re about to make your man very happy.”
As soon as the cool night wrapped itself around the two of us, Ayda curled even farther into me, and I acted on instinct, holding her as close as I could simply because I couldn’t seem to get enough of her.
Maybe it was because of the fact that I’d almost convinced myself to try and walk away from us, or maybe it was because we’d had such a shitty time of it lately that finding some light in a world so heavy felt like something worth clinging onto.
I didn’t know. All I knew was that for that night, no matter what happened, I was going to make sure Ayda knew how much I fucking loved her.
“Well, I sure hope so. Don’t want my ass getting chilly for nothing.” She grinned up at me, wriggling her ass from side to side.
“Let me worry about your charm.” I laughed, reaching down to swat her cheek to show her just how I intended on keeping her warm.
“Who said I was worried? This is you. I don’t think I’ve been cold a day since I met you.
” She turned, her chest coming against mine, her arms wrapping around my waist as she walked backwards, her head tipped back so she could see me.
“And I think you owe me a kiss for teasing me in there. I assume PDA is part of the package this evening?”
“A PD what now?”
Pulling one arm from around my waist, she reached up with the same mischief in her eyes as she’d had through dinner.
She was taller than usual with the heels on, but it didn’t keep her from pushing to her toes, her thumb pulling down on my chin until her lips met mine.
It was a short kiss, her teeth nipping my bottom lip before she fell back and smiled at me again.
“That’s PDA. Public display of affection. I’m letting all these bitches know how lucky I am.”
“A public display of affection,” I breathed out as my hands found the top of her ass. “You want to make the bitches really jealous?”
“I think that’s called PDI. Public display of indecency.”
“And your point is?” I growled, bending at the knee to pick her up in the middle of the street, hitching her legs around my waist. The moment they tightened around me, I half spun her around and threw my head back to shout out to the whole damn world, “I’m gonna stop traffic for my girl, right here, right now! ”
“Well, damn… Any argument I had is now completely invalid.” She rocked against me to get closer, her lips brushing along my jaw to my ear where she whispered exactly what she wanted me to do to her.
I had to stop myself from unzipping my jeans in the middle of the street as her words drifted through my mind, her promises of what she was about to do turning me on more than I’d ever been turned on in my life.
I was harder than hell as I barked out a small laugh and dropped my head into the curve of her neck.
That didn’t help, either. She smelled out of this world, and mixing that with the images of her ass in the air while I fucked her was making me way too lightheaded.
“We should go. We need to go. Now. Immediately. Right this second. Go. We should…”
Ayda started to laugh, her head falling back between her shoulders, her hands tightening around mine.
Her laugh faded a little as something caught her attention over my shoulder, but the happiness was still shining from her face.
“We should definitely go. I don’t think the chief would appreciate the PDI you have in mind. ”
My eyes closed in a heartbeat, and even the mention of the chief made a spark of that fire in my dick float away.
Groaning quietly, I spun us both around to see if she was messing with me or not.
As soon as I saw that man standing only a few steps away from my bike, I let her slide down my body until she was on her feet again and pressed my forehead to hers.
“He’s such a cockblocker.”
“Not really. I’m still going to be bent over your bike,” she whispered, stepping away and to the side of me, her polite smile directed at Sutton as we approached hand in hand. “Just not on Main Street.”
“Please, let’s not taint my fantasy with my own personal Sutton nightmare,” I mumbled from the corner of my mouth before I copied her exact expression and aimed it directly at the man in charge of Babylon’s safety. Apparently.
“Chief,” I said with a small nod as he stood there in his usual western pose. For a second, I imagined what it would feel like to smack him square in the jaw, but that quickly faded to nothing as Ayda’s quiet giggle slipped free beside me, and her hand curled tighter around mine.
“Tucker. Hanagan.” His tone was flat as he watched us move closer, and something about the way he looked Ayda up and down made my spine stiffen until she pulled me back to her with just the smallest of touches on my arm.
“Good evening, Chief. Beautiful night,” Ayda said without a hint of animosity in her voice.
“Beautiful,” I sang beside her, unable to keep the smile off my face.
“Hmm,” Sutton drew out, widening his stance as we came to a stop in front of him. All he needed was a matchstick in his mouth and tumbleweed to roll past and he was fucking set. “If you say so. Unusual for us to be graced with your presence, I must say. Any special occasion?”
I glanced at Ayda briefly before returning my attention to him. “Nope. Just enjoying the delights of our hometown, doing the romance thing with my girl.”
He made no effort to hide his snort of derision or the roll of his eyes, and where once it would have made me want to fight back, tonight it just seemed to make the laughter bubble in my chest.
Ayda’s hand squeezed mine—no warning or hesitation, just appreciation at being called my girl, I figured. She ran her fingers along the seat of the bike, unable to wipe the smile from her lips. “It’s date night, Chief.”
“Date night,” I repeated, like I was some kind of fucking moron.
“Date night. Riiiiight.” Sutton made no attempt to hide his hatred towards me. “Didn’t I warn you to stay away from my town, Tucker?”
“Aw, c’mon. I’m not here to make any trouble. I thought we’d made friends the other day.”
“Chief, look around. We’re not doing any harm.
No one’s even staring in our direction. We just wanted to eat out and have a good night.
I know you can appreciate that.” Ayda stepped closer to my side, her hand on my abs as she looked up at me with a grin.
I could hardly believe the innuendo she was throwing at me.
My eyes widened and I quickly coughed to clear my throat before schooling my face. “Just… eating. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to take my date home and finish what we haven’t even really started yet.”
“Hold it right there, Tucker.”
“Not tonight, Sutton.” I sighed quietly, glancing up at Ayda. “I have somewhere I really, really need to be.”
“We need to be,” Ayda added sweetly, the hand on my abs patting gently.
Looking back over my shoulder at him, my smirk said it all. I had nothing left to say to him unless he wanted me to spell out word for word that I was planning on taking Ayda to the nearest secluded spot and fucking her until she couldn’t walk.
When his face set to stone and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets, I turned away from him and straddled my bike. Without any instruction needed, Ayda followed me, placing the helmet I made her wear on her head before she wrapped her arms around my waist tightly.
Howard’s mouth moved to say something, but he thought better of it. Just as I was about to ride away, the sound of his phone ringing made me pause to look up at him.
He slapped it to his ear, answering with a frustrated sigh as he threw up one hand to worry his forehead. I couldn’t put my finger on what was going down with him then, but he was acting weirder than usual, and considering what a mousy little freak he was on a good day, that was saying something.
Ayda leaned impossibly closer, resting her chin on my shoulder again as we both watched him begin to pace. Her fingers curled against my stomach and her ass shuffled behind me, but I couldn’t turn away from him.
Then he began to shout.
“The graveyard? Fuck. Again? Okay. How many?”
The mention of the graveyard demanded my attention even more, but my hands curled slowly around the grips of the handles as I looked down at the ground and tried to ignore whatever it was he had going on.
“These fucking kids,” Sutton roared, forcing me to look back up at him again. My frown was deeper than ever, even as Ayda whispered quietly in my ear that we should go.
“We’re going,” I whispered back, and I had every intention of doing exactly that until the chief came charging over to stand in front of my bike, kicking the sidewalk like a frustrated kid.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelled out.
“Whoa, easy,” I said calmly, pulling my chin back as we both watched him storming around.
“Drew,” Ayda whispered quietly. “If you want to check it out first, we can ride by. Let’s just go.”
“I’m not doing his job for him, Ayda. I handed that shit over the other day. If he needs my help, he better get down on his knees and beg for it. We’re leaving, don’t worry.” I spoke so only she could hear me, backing us out onto the road as carefully as I could.
Sutton was still on his call, more animated than I’d ever seen him in my life. I wanted to ride away, and I knew it was the right thing to do, but something about his behavior was confusing me, and that weird feeling of trouble ran down my spine like a long lost foe.
Before I managed to turn away, he stepped down onto the road and began walking towards us.
There was desperation to the way he was moving.
Panic, too, and when he threw his arm up in the air and pointed his finger straight in my face, I struggled not to swing my leg off the bike and bend that fucking finger backwards.
“You. Stay away from my town. One sign of you and those kids are running around wielding their goddamn knives again.”
“What?” I choked out, unable to hide the sarcasm on my face.
“You heard me. Stay away. Stay away from Babylon, stay away from the graveyard and stay away from anything that doesn’t involve you. This is all your fault.”
“What exactly is my fault?”
“The fact that I have two boy scouts on the loose, threatening the whole of my town, wearing your patch on their backs.”
“Ain’t my fault if you can’t keep the ankle biters away from the big boys’ toys, Sutton. Like you said, it’s your town, not mine. Not my responsibility.”
“If people end up hurt, I’ll make sure it’s your responsibility. You hear me?”
That was all he had to say for me to shake my head, sigh heavily and be done with the fucking conversation. Date night was going to be perfect, no matter how much he or anyone else tried to stop that.
“Whatever you say, Chief. Despite what you think of me, I only want what’s best for this town, and by this town, I mean every single person in it.
That includes you. If pinning this on me is what gets you off, go for it.
I’m not playing. I have a date to finish and a woman to look after tonight, so how about you stop forcing me to be an asshole and just let me ride away.
You go do your job, I’ll do mine, and hopefully sometime in the future, the two of us will grow up enough to work together instead of tearing each other apart. ”
Howard stood back quickly, stumbling over himself as he struggled to find his footing. The shock on his face was more obvious than I think he realized, and as Ayda tightened her arms around my waist once again in some kind of approval, there was only one thing left for me to do.
Smile and ride away.