Chapter Sixteen #2
Though the light was familiar, several things about her waking were not. For instance, a large man was weighing down the mattress behind her. Mel had spent the night.
He’d never returned to the clubhouse, and had even ignored a few texts and a phone call from other Horde, including Badger. Abigail didn’t know much about the inner workings of an MC, so she took Mel’s word for it that it wasn’t anything as important as being with her was.
She liked that answer, of course. So they’d spent the rest of afternoon in bed, and then she’d made dinner and after the meal they’d cleaned up together, and Mel had helped her with her evening chores. They’d watched The Big Sleep and Key Largo , and then they’d gone back to bed.
But not, for quite a while, to sleep.
It had been one of the best days of her life. She felt different, fundamentally. Not as if she were a different person, but as if ... as if an empty space somewhere inside her, a small compartment hidden behind the back wall of one of her mental closets, had been filled up.
The last little bit of need in her, finally met.
She was quite sore, but in ways she didn’t want relief from. Each twinge carried a beautiful memory.
She also felt completely rested and brim-full of energy.
Abigail was a habitual early riser, but Mel had told her that, left to his own devices, he could sleep to noon every day.
So she eased his arm, weighed down with sleep, from her hip and slipped from the covers, careful to slide a pillow under his hand where her body had been.
She slid her robe on, then tiptoed around the room, avoiding the loudest creaky spots in the floor, and collected a fresh set of clothes for the day.
When she left, she pulled the door closed like a bomb might go off if the latch made a sound.
In the bathroom, she took care of her usual morning needs and got dressed. Mitch and Bogie stood outside the door, pushing against it occasionally and letting out a soft whine of confusion here and there. She didn’t usually close the bathroom door; there wasn’t usually another human in the house.
This was a home of routines, and the past day had broken most of them apart. The dogs didn’t know what to make of it all.
After she brushed her teeth, Abigail began to put her hair up, but she stopped with her hands on her head, ready to make the ponytail that got the whole thing started. Letting the hair fall back to her shoulders, she studied herself in the mirror above the sink.
It might well have been years since she’d last looked at herself so carefully. Even when she put her hair up, or on those few occasions she wore a little makeup, she didn’t really look at herself. She focused on the part she was working on, and barely gave the whole a glance.
It wasn’t that she thought she was unpleasant to look at, but that she wasn’t interested. She’d rarely saw a need to wonder if she looked good or otherwise. She looked like her, and that happened whether she gave herself a study in the mirror or not.
But today she thought she looked pretty, actually.
Surprisingly, the wild rolling and twisting and such in bed had made her hair look soft and fluffy rather than like a nest of twigs.
Her cheeks had sprouted roses from the abrasion of Mel’s beard, and her lips were swollen and ruddy from hundreds of hungry kisses.
It looked a bit like blush and lipstick.
If she left her hair loose, it would drive her nuts in minutes.
But today was the first day of the Harvest Festival, and she’d be making a little extra effort for that anyway.
Maybe beforehand, while she was still at home getting her chores and work for the day finished, she could do something a little different.
Something that would make fixing herself up later a little easier.
Opening a drawer in the sink vanity, she found an old stretchy headband in a pink paisley pattern.
After smoothing her hair with a wide-toothed brush, she pulled the headband on and gave herself an estimating scan.
Not really her style, but pretty. And it matched well enough with the dress she’d grabbed, too.
Okay. Time to get the morning chores done, get the animals situated, and get busy making breakfast for her man.
Her man.
Abigail let a quiet giggle slip out as she opened the bathroom door.
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~oOo~
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“H ey.”
Abigail froze with the wooden spatula at her mouth like a microphone. She’d been lightly singing “Butterflies” along with Kacey Musgraves and had swung away from the stove to sing the chorus at Lilith, who was perched on a stool at the island, observing the tomfoolery with a squinty gaze.
Mel’s voice had filled a beat of quiet in the song, surprising her. She’d really expected him to sleep longer. Ideally, he would have come down to a ready breakfast and a laid table, not to a frumpy middle-aged woman bopping around the kitchen like a teenager.
Well, a moment of joy like the one he’d walked in on should never carry shame. She stood straight and turned to smile at him.
He was smiling, too. And leaning against the doorway to the middle of the house. And half dressed—in only his jeans (the top button open) and his striped shirt (all the buttons open). His bare chest peeked between the plackets.
And his feet were bare, too; somehow that was even more alluring than his beautiful chest.
Abigail had to swallow down some extra saliva. And clear her throat.
“Hey! You’re up earlier than I figured.”
“Smelled breakfast cookin,’” he answered. His smile sharpened. “Smelled almost good enough I didn’t mind wakin’ up alone.”
“Sorry. I can’t stay in bed once I wake up.”
Pushing off the doorjamb and stepping into the room, he said, “Wake me up next time, and I’ll give you a reason to stay in bed.”
He reached her, pulled the spatula from her hand and set it across the skillet. Then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.
This kiss was another wholly new thing. Abigail understood instantly that it wasn’t an overture to something more, nor was it like the kisses they’d shared before last night, gentle and sweet things, with a period at the end.
This was gentle and sweet, but it was deeper, too.
It lingered. It wasn’t powered by a promise of something to come but by a memory of what had happened between them.
It was different because they, together, were different now.
“Hey,” he said again when he eased back and stared into her eyes.
“Hey,” she answered in a breath. “How d’you take your eggs?” She’d cooked for Mel many times, but never before had she made him breakfast. The thought effervesced through her heart.
“Over medium,” he said. “And you made biscuits and gravy, too.” His voice rumbled soft and low, the way he’d talked yesterday in bed. It turned their mundane exchange into foreplay and made Abigail flushed and fluttery.
Before her knees actually shook, she turned back to the stove. “I did. You like biscuits and gravy, I hope?”
He stepped up behind her, tucked his face to her neck, nestled under her hair, and turned his answer into kisses behind her ear. “’Course I do. Wouldn’t trust anybody who’d say no. You left your hair down this morning.”
And oh, she was glad she had. But he was making it nigh impossible to focus on her work, and his eggs were going to end up over hard if she didn’t get some room. “There’s fresh coffee—and would you set the table?”
With a final, firmer smack of his lips at her ear, Mel let her go and busied himself elsewhere in the kitchen. Abigail breathed out her flutters and focused again on breakfast.
“Can we talk about yesterday while we eat?” he asked as he poured his coffee.
Abigail felt a fresh set of flutters—these of nerves rather than desire—but she knew he was right.
More than that, she was glad he’d brought it up first. It would be tempting, for either of them, to sweep yesterday out the door and call it the past, but there was something important in that conflict.
Something that might rise up later when it would hurt much more to repair—and be devastating if it couldn’t be.
Putting off hard things only ever made them harder.
“I think that’s a good idea,” she answered, but found she couldn’t turn to face him as she did.
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~oOo~
M el slipped a forkful of biscuit and gravy into his mouth. His eyes slid shut and he groaned. “God damn , woman. Where’ve you been all my life?”
A feather-light touch of delight warmed her cheeks as she grinned. “Right here, where I’ve always been.”
He gave her a sharp look at that answer, but it was gone in a flash. He went back in for a bite double the size of the first. After he’d swallowed that down and chased it with a slurp of coffee, he set his fork and cup down and focused on her.
It was time for the talk. Again she was pleased to find him leading this and not running from it.
“I need to understand what happened between us yesterday—not last night”—he grinned broadly as he made that clarification—“I don’t need an explainer for that.
But at the clubhouse, when everything went wrong.
You were mad. I hurt you somehow, and I don’t know how.
” He reached out and clasped her hand. “But I know I don’t ever want to hurt you. So I need to understand.”
Taking a breath to consider her response, she decided it would be helpful to hear him describe that scene. What had his motivations been? They hadn’t had a chance to talk it out yesterday in the parking lot; Double A had interrupted just as they were getting to the dangerous part of the discussion.
“How would you describe what happened?” she asked.
He studied her for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Some bitch said something shitty to you. I called her on it. Her man took up for her, and we had it out. Somewhere in there, you got mad and left.”