Chapter 5
TAYA
“What are you doing?” I mentally screamed at myself. There I was, stammering like an idiot, about to blurt out my sexual history to a relative stranger.
Granted, that stranger had been the star of my daydreams and naughty dreams for years now, and he was standing in front of me. Of course, he didn’t know what he was getting into when he came here, but he stayed once he found out. That was encouraging.
I wasn’t completely stupid about these things. Obviously, he was looking for a one-night stand, but was that wise? We lived in the same town.
Then again, we’d been living near each other for a while now and had only seen each other once, so what would it hurt to have a fling here in the mountains, far away from home? It was the stuff romance novels were made of - a cabin in the woods, a hot guy, a willing woman, and then he . . .
Down, girl! Maybe he’s just a gentleman.
I thought about what I had to drink in my cabin and was relieved that I’d picked up the wine.
I walked over to the small kitchen and opened the fridge to grab a bottle.
Luckily, I’d thought ahead and bought a corkscrew at the grocery store, and as I started twisting it into the cork, he asked, “Do you mind if I start a fire?”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you!”
Cabin in the woods. Check.
Toasty fire. Check.
Hot guy. Check.
Now all I needed was a blizzard so we could get snowed in for three days and have a sex fest and fall madly in love. . . .
Get out of the book world and into the real world, Taya! Good grief.
“When are your friends supposed to get in?” Chewie asked as he knelt down in front of the small stove.
“Their flights arrive late tomorrow afternoon, but I’m worried that it’s going to snow and they won’t be able to get here, or if they do, they’ll be stranded at the airport. I wonder if I should call them now or wait until later.”
“If they do make it here, they may get snowed in.”
“I don’t think they’d mind a few extra days of vacation,” I assured him as I carried the bottle of wine into the living room along with two glasses I’d found in the cupboard.
Chewie stood up as I got closer. I handed him his glass of wine and smiled before I said, “My drink choices are kind of sparse since I planned to be entertaining two women who have been looking for a chance to let loose for a few days while we reconnect.”
“I haven’t had much chance to learn about wine, but I’m willing to if I have the right teacher.”
“This is not the kind of wine that you’d come across during lessons like that since I bought it at the local grocery store, but it will do in a pinch.”
Chewie motioned toward the couch and asked, “Will you be warm enough that far from the fire?”
Considering that looking at the man raised my temperature at least ten degrees, I thought I’d probably be fine, but I didn’t say that.
Instead, I nodded and took a seat on the couch, not on the end, but not directly in the middle either in the hopes that he’d sit close to me.
He took the hint and sat down so close that our hips were touching before he lifted his glass and took a small sip.
He winced before he swallowed it, and I couldn’t stop myself from giggling at the look on his face.
“That’s, um, an acquired taste, I guess,” Chewie said before he swallowed hard and took another sip.
This time he didn’t have quite the same reaction, but I could tell he still didn’t like it. “I can get you a glass of water if you’d rather have that.”
“Why don’t I just run over to my cabin and get a beer?”
“I’d hate for you to go out into the storm, but if you . . .”
“Juni put me in the cabin next door,” Chewie interrupted with a grin.
“She’s quite the planner, isn’t she?” I asked, smiling back at him. “I’ll wait here.”
Chewie put his coat on and ventured out into the cold.
The second I saw his shadow pass across the window, I jumped off the couch and sprinted into the bathroom.
It had been quite a while since I’d found myself alone with an attractive man, or any man for that matter, and I’d gotten lax on certain things - namely, shaving my legs regularly.
I wasn’t a wooly mammoth by any means, but it had been a few days.
I turned on the faucet, and while I waited for the water to warm, I shimmied out of my pants and dug my razor out of my toiletries bag. Thank God there was one still in there from my last trip because I never even thought to pack a razor for this one.
It wasn’t the most thorough job, but it would work in a pinch. Within just a few minutes, I was out of the tub and drying my legs. After I put on some lotion, I got dressed again, rinsed out the tub, and hurried out of the bathroom only to find Chewie waiting for me on the couch.
“I thought you might have decided to get ready for bed or something,” he said as I tried to calm my racing heart and rapid breathing.
“I just, um, well, um . . .” When he smiled, I blurted out the truth and admitted, “I shaved my legs in case you happened to be interested in seeing me with my clothes off.”
Chewie threw his head back and howled with laughter. I blushed furiously as I poured myself another glass of wine and went back to the couch.
He was still chuckling when he said, “I wanted to get you naked that day in the bookstore. I’ve thought about it more times than I can count since then.”
“Let me finish another glass of wine, and that thought may become reality.”
Chewie’s face became stony and serious before he said, “I won’t sleep with you if you’re drunk.”
I stared at him for a second before I said, “I’m not planning on getting hammered; I’m just calming my nerves because it’s been a while, but the fact that you just announced that tells me more about you than what little I know so far.”
“There’s no need to be nervous,” Chewie said as he leaned forward and set his beer on the coffee table. He turned so that he was facing me and then picked me up and settled me on his lap.
He picked me up.
My whole body, off the couch and onto his lap.
Like I weighed nothing.
Good lord.
“Let’s get to know each other.”
Within just a few minutes, I had slid off his lap, and my ass was perched between his thighs and the arm of the couch while he rubbed first one foot and then the other. If I didn’t already think he was the perfect man, the way he dug his thumbs into my arches would have easily convinced me.
“Samara is a pistol. The girl’s got a mouth on her that’s gotten her in trouble way too many times and will probably keep giving her trouble the rest of her life, but she’s also strong in her convictions and won’t bend when she believes in something.”
“That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the situation.”
“That’s true, but I was happy to find out that when she’s confronted with information that proves she could be wrong, she actually considers it instead of dismissing it without a thought. I think that impressed me more than anything else.”
“I have to ask because my curiosity is killing me. Why didn’t you get visitation when she was a child?”
Chewie gazed at the floor and swallowed hard before he said, “A friend of my family adopted Samara at birth because her mother and I were both in prison.”
“Oh.”
“Juni didn’t mention how Sugar and I met?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“I belong to a motorcycle club that’s made up exclusively of ex-cons.
We were each chosen to live at a compound in Texas to help us adjust to the outside world after being released.
We became brothers because of shared experiences and our love of motorcycles, and I’m still close to many of them to this day, Sugar included. ”
“All of your friends were in prison too?”
“The majority of them.”
I mulled over how to ask what I really wanted to know but couldn’t find a delicate way to ask, so I said, “I understand that people make mistakes, but I think some crimes are unforgivable.”
“I agree.”
“Do you have any friends who have committed a crime like that?”
“Depends on what you consider unforgivable, sweetheart,” Chewie replied hesitantly.
“Rape, child molestation, things like that.”
“Are those the only unforgivable crimes you can think of?”
I shrugged and said, “There are others too.”
“Give me some examples.”
“Of unforgivable crimes?”
“Yes.”
To lighten the mood, I listed some of my biggest peeves.
“Saying, ‘I seen’ rather than ‘I saw.’ Pumpkin anything. Not knowing the difference in context of the words ‘actually’ and ‘literally’ and then emphatically using the word ‘literally’ all the damn time. Low-rise jeans. Starting a sentence with, ‘No offense, but . . .’ when you know damn good and well you’re about to be offensive.
Pronouncing the word ‘Valentine’s’ as ‘Valentime’s.
’ People who say ‘or-ee-GONE’ as if the state just disappeared.
Any use of ‘supposably’ or ‘irregardless.’ Asking, ‘You know what I mean?’ in between sentences.
Someone telling you how to do your job when they’re not even good at what they do, or when people say, ‘You look good for your age,’ as if that’s not an insult in itself. ”
“I’ve never heard of anyone being convicted of any of those heinous crimes.”
“I’m not saying years in prison or anything, but there should be repercussions.”
“Anyways . . .” Chewie grinned before he said, “You missed one.”
“It’s on the list.”
“Well, I already served my time in prison, so I hope you don’t send me back for that infraction.”
“I don’t know a lot about, um, that lifestyle . . .” Chewie’s bark of laughter made me pause for a second until I finished, “but I know it’s impolite to ask why someone went to prison.”
“Impolite, huh?”
“Are you gonna tell me or not?”
“I went to prison because I beat a man to death.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to know the how and the why, or do you want me to get out?”
“You’re not finished rubbing my feet yet. The left one hasn’t had nearly as much time as the right, and it might get jealous.”