Chapter Six
Scorch
THE SITE WAS QUIET by six, most of the noise gone, the pavilion already half-broken-down.
Whitley was standing at the edge of the field watching two Comal Saints work a trailer hitch, a paper cup from the pavilion coffee urn in her hand, the early light coming low across the caliche, a hawk riding the thermal off the south ridge.
Good morning to be standing somewhere. Better morning than yesterday had been, which was saying something. I came up beside her.
"So here's what I'm thinking," I said. She turned and looked at me.
"You drive back through Bandera to get to Houston.
My truck's already there, so that's just geography working in our favor.
" I kept the drawl warm and reasonable. "And you fed me twice and gave me a bed and I've done nothing about either of those things, which Gran would consider a significant personal failing. "
"You're citing your grandmother for this argument."
"She had strong opinions about hospitality." I kept the drawl easy. "Come have breakfast at my place. I make good eggs and better coffee than anything you'll find out here."
"You haven't made me any yet, so that claim is entirely unverified."
"Come verify it." I picked up my jacket from the ground. "Also I'm not done with you, and I'd rather say that out loud than let you drive straight through and pretend I didn't mean it."
She looked at the jacket for a moment. "Your grandmother would be very disappointed to know you used her memory to get a woman to make a twenty-minute detour."
"She'd understand the impulse."
Whitley took one last look at the site, the hawk still up, the pavilion going down, and turned toward her car. "You navigate, I'm putting it on the radio."
"Works for me."
The drive ran six miles of county road, limestone close on both sides before the road opened out into Bandera, low and quiet, a Sunday morning that hadn't gotten to itself yet.
She put on a country station with fiddle in it and left it there without asking.
I navigated. She drove. The deal we'd made.
The Road King was in the garage when we pulled up, chrome catching the early light through the open door beside my truck.
The house sat back from the road on a half-acre lot: a low ranch, a covered porch, a spread of pecan throwing morning shade across the flagstone.
I'd bought the place eight years ago for the garage space and the quiet, and those two things had been enough.
She stood in the drive, taking it in.
"This is very you," she said.
"What does that mean, exactly?"
"One tree, one door, no decorations." She studied it. "Everything exactly where it belongs."
"Don't need decorations."
She walked up to the porch and waited.
I opened the door and she went through into the main room.
It took her about four seconds to account for the space: the beat-up leather couch, a ceiling fan turning slow overhead, a worktable with maps spread across it, the gun safe in the corner, the bookshelf stacked with manuals, the kitchen to the right.
Then the hall, and the door at the far end left open, the spare room visible from where I stood, bed made tight, the same as the day I'd moved in.
She looked at it. "Who uses that room?"
"Nobody ever does."
A beat. She looked at me.
"Nobody ever has," I said.
She turned back to the main room. Her eyes went to the mantle.
I'd put the photo there the first day and hadn't moved it since: Gran at the kitchen table she'd had her whole life, laughing at whoever was behind the camera. The only thing on the mantle worth putting there.
Whitley stood in front of it.
"She looks like someone who was never wrong twice," she said.
"She wasn't." I crossed to the kitchen and started the coffee. "Mostly about whether you'd shown up on time and whether you'd eaten."
"The important things, in order."
"She would've liked you for saying that."
Whitley did the wound care at the kitchen table while the coffee ran. I sat and she came around behind me with the kit, same sure hands she'd been using since Room 407. Eight days out, the incision nearly healed over. Her fingers were sure and light.
"It's looking good," she said.
"I keep saying."
"And I keep confirming." She pressed the new dressing edges down and ran her thumb along the tape to seal it. And then she didn't step back.
She stayed right there behind me, her hands still resting at my side, and the kitchen went quiet except for the coffee finishing its run and the early light coming flat through the window over the sink. I'd gone still before I'd decided to.
After a beat she said, quietly: "You're going to need someone to do this for another week at least."
"Is that a professional opinion?"
"It's a fact." Her thumb ran along the last piece of tape. "Lucky for you I know someone."
"That so." I turned on the chair to look at her. "Anyone I've met?"
Whitley poured two mugs and set mine on the table and looked at the mantle from across the kitchen.
"Tell me about her," she said.
I picked up the mug. "Gran was the constant. My parents left when I was young, both of them, different reasons, same result. She took me in when I was five." I looked at the photo. "She died the week before I shipped out."
Whitley was quiet.
"Four years in the service. Came back and there was nothing here.
No one." I kept my voice even; I'd had enough time to get there.
"Brim found me in a bar in Kerrville about six weeks after discharge.
Bought me a drink and sat three hours without saying one word about any of it. Then he asked if I knew how to ride."
"That's all it took?"
"He's a man of efficient questions." The corner of my mouth went up.
"The club gave me structure. Brotherhood.
But a club isn't a person." I set my coffee down.
"I've spent my whole life showing up for people.
The one who handles it, keeps everybody moving, makes sure the thing gets done.
Did it growing up, do it for the club." I looked at her. "Nobody's ever done it for me."
Heat moved through my chest and settled in behind my sternum. I left it there.
Whitley set her cup on the counter.
"I've spent most of my adult life making sure I didn't need anyone to stay," she said. Flat and clear, no armor in it. "If you don't need it, it can't hurt when they don't."
"I know it now." I held her gaze. "I was going to let you drive straight back to Houston this morning. Before I came and found you, I had the whole argument built: long weekend, you'd been through enough, nothing stopping you. Ready to hand it to you." A beat. "Couldn't make myself say it."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then Whitley crossed the kitchen.
She put her hands flat on my chest and looked up at me and kissed me. I gave it one beat—and then I wrapped around her and kissed her back.
She pulled back just enough to see my face.
"Those eggs of yours," she said.
"Not hungry for eggs right now."
The corner of her mouth went up. She took my hand.
My room was at the end of the hall. Spare and clean, a bed that had only ever been mine. Whitley went to the edge of it and turned around, and I came to her and waited.
She pulled my shirt over my head. Ran both hands flat across my chest, slow and certain, and her eyes followed her hands: the memorial ink at my right pectoral, the full left sleeve going dark toward the wrist in the morning light.
She was looking at me the way she looked at everything she was working through.
"I've been fitting pieces together this whole time," she said.
"You've got the picture?"
"I'm getting there." She kissed me, slower this time, and I let her run it.
I got her shirt off. Unhooked her bra and set it aside. Looked at her, the early light across her skin, those hazel eyes direct on mine, the faint scatter of freckles at the bridge of her nose. I'd had my hands on her twice already and it still landed somewhere past my ribs every time.
"You're staring," she said.
"Every chance I can get."
She pushed me back to sit on the edge of the bed, reached for my jeans, and I lifted to help her get them off. Then she went to her knees and looked up at me from the floor, and I exhaled hard and clean.
She took my cock in her hand and looked up at me with those level eyes and took her time.
Ran her tongue slow from the base up, watching my face the whole way.
I put one hand in her hair, not directing, just resting, and let her set the pace, which was thorough and merciless.
The pull of her mouth made my hands go still and my jaw lock, something low and deep pulling taut in a way that had nothing to do with eight days' worth of healing.
She worked me with the same focus she brought to everything else, and the pace was entirely hers, and when she took me deeper and looked up through her lashes I held her gaze and stayed right there and let her feel exactly what it was doing to me.
"You're perfect." Rough and low. "Every damn time."
She took me deeper in answer.
I let it run as long as I could hold still, which was longer than I'd expected because she was wicked and relentless and she never stopped watching my face, and when I finally pulled her up and brought her back to the bed she was flushed and breathing hard and there wasn't a single clinical thing left anywhere in her.
I laid her back and got her jeans off, no rush about it, and she stretched out across my sheets with an ease that caught me somewhere past my ribs, moving through my space like she'd always known where everything was.
I got my mouth on her pussy and she arched up immediately and hard.
Her hands went into my hair. I worked her slow and thorough, tongue and two fingers, learning the specific pressure that made her thighs shake, the rhythm that made her stop catching the sounds she made. When her hips came up I put my forearm flat across her belly and held her down.
"Scorch." My name stripped all the way down to the base of it.
"Right here, darlin'. I've got you." I said it against her and felt her shudder at that.
I kept the pace even and thorough until her thighs locked against my shoulders and her back came off the mattress and she fell apart completely, hands fisted in my hair, my name in her throat, nothing held back.
I pressed a kiss to her hip and moved up beside her. She caught her breath for about twenty seconds. Then she pushed me flat on my back and swung up over me and looked down at me.
"My turn now," she said.
"Right where I want you." I put my hands to her hips, not guiding, just there, warm and certain.
She took me in hand, positioned herself over me, and sank down slow. The rough exhale she let out went straight through me.
She set the pace from the first stroke and I let her.
My hands stayed at her hips and I watched her face and she held my gaze and didn't look away.
Full eye contact, no distance between us.
I'd been waiting for this version of her—the one with nothing in the way—since the day my pulse jumped under her fingers at Memorial Hermann.
"You're so fucking good." Low and even, watching her face. "You know that?"
"Tell me again later," she said, breathless, and rolled her hips, and the sound I made was entirely honest.
She leaned forward and changed the angle, both hands braced on my shoulders.
"Fuck," she breathed.
"Stay right there, darlin'." I slid my hand between us and found her clit. Her hips rocked forward hard and the sound she made broke against her throat.
"Don't you stop," she said.
"Not a chance."
I kept my thumb even and watched the second wave hit her: the way her lips parted, the way her eyes went dark and unfocused, the flush burning up across her skin. When the climax broke it was low and wrecked, and I followed her over not long after.
WE STAYED EXACTLY WHERE we were.
The morning had come all the way into the room, light slanted long across the floor, the day going on outside without us. Her weight on my chest was something I was already bracing for losing. That told me where things stood.
After a while Whitley lifted her head and looked at me.
"Go on and say it," she said.
I held her gaze. "You know what it means in my world when a man brings a woman to his place." I kept my voice level. "I've been a guest in yours. I want to return the favor permanently. I want you to be my old lady, Whitley. My person."
She sat up. Looked at me for a long moment. Then she reached out and pressed her hand over the memorial ink and held it there.
"I'm yours, Scorch," she said. Her eyes came up to mine. "I already am."
I caught her hand and held it.
I made the eggs. Whitley ate at my kitchen table with her hair loose and her feet tucked up under her on the chair, and I was already planning what to make her for breakfast tomorrow.