Chapter 14
Penn
Ipull into the driveway after a two-day run, and I’m ready to crash. The sky is just setting, and Dixie isn’t working tonight. Which means I have the night with my two girls.
Even if one of them doesn’t consider herself mine yet.
I step inside to find Dixie sleeping with Princess at her feet. She’s immediately alert, ready to bark and attack, until she sees me. All Princess does is lay her head back down on Dixie’s leg, and I smile.
Yep, we got a small little bodyguard for the woman of the house.
Tiptoeing past her sleeping form, I walk into my bedroom and strip down before hopping into the shower. I don’t wait for the water to warm up first. I’m so dirty and dusty that I just need to get clean.
The water at my feet turns brown, and I swear I’ve brought half the desert back home with me.
We tried a new route to avoid the threats from the Venom, and it ended up with two bikes with flats.
Not mine, luckily, but I don’t ever want to take that way again.
It’s a little too off the beaten path for my liking.
Once the water at my feet is clear again, and I’m washed and clean, I turn off the water and step out.
I dry off, and I wipe down the foggy mirror to stare at myself.
One of these days, I’m going to make a move.
I’m going to tell Dixie that I want more than just her sleeping in the guest room.
I want to be welcoming her and a new baby into my home when she gets released from the hospital.
“You can do it,” I mutter to myself. “Maybe not tonight since she’s already asleep, but before the next run. Before it’s too late.”
I glance down at my naked body and wonder if walking out completely naked to talk to her would be a little too forward.
It should get exactly what I want across to her.
The moment she sees me, the cock resting against my thigh will be hard and pointing directly at her.
There’s no way she could mistake how I feel then, could she?
Laughing, I shake my head. As much fun as that would be, I know it’s not the right tactic. Hell, she’d probably run screaming out of here. It’s a bit too forward.
I get dressed, and when I step into the hallway, Princess is at my feet. She has that look in her eyes. The one that says she’s going to take another piss on my boots if she doesn’t get taken out right this moment.
Picking her up, I carry her quickly to the back door and set her down on the grass. She immediately squats down to pee before placing her nose to the ground and moving to find the perfect spot to shit.
I’ve never really understood that. Do they really need to smell the best area to poop, or is it something to do while they walk the crap out of them? Kind of like scrolling when we’re on the toilet.
My bare feet move on the hot stone, still overly warm from the sun that was up just thirty minutes ago, and I can’t wait until the winter months come. When it’s not ungodly hot at all hours of the day and night.
The familiar smell of dog shit hits my nose, and I see Princess trotting over to me from the shadows. Her proud little prance with her clumsy paws makes me smile.
“God, I’ve missed this,” I say, bending down to scratch her ears.
Her tongue licks at my palm, and I open the door for her to scramble inside. And right to Dixie. Like she always does.
She doesn’t hate me. In fact, I think Princess loves me. But she is definitely Dixie’s dog.
“Good,” I whisper.
It’s exactly what I’d hoped for. Give Dixie another reason to stick around. Leaving with a newborn and a young dog would be incredibly difficult. And she loves Princess as much as I do, so it’s not like she’s going to be overly willing to leave without her.
“Hey,” Dixie’s soft voice calls as I walk into the living room where Princess has taken up her spot on Dixie’s legs again. “You’re home.”
“Been home for a bit,” I say, pulling her blanket back up over her shoulder. “Had to wash the sand off me.”
“You took a shower already?”
Nodding, I sit in the recliner and smile at her. “Sure did. Pretty sure I just made mud in my pipes, but fuck it. How was she?”
“She was good. Tiring, but good. And I think she missed you.”
“Is the dog the only one who missed me?”
Dixie flushes as she closes her eyes again. “It’s not as quiet when you’re gone now.”
That’s not a yes or a no. “I bet.”
“You look tired. And you have that look.”
I frown as she opens her eyes again. “What look?”
“The one that makes it clear you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“Just a long ride,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. “Nothing to worry about.”
“You always say that,” she says and sits up. “You’re a closed book, Penn. You know almost everything about the mess I’ve gotten myself into, but I don’t know much about you. It’s not really fair.”
Princess looks put out as Dixie moves, but she won’t be deterred. She climbs onto Dixie’s lap when she sits cross-legged and rests her head on Dixie’s knee.
“There’s not that much to tell. I’m a simple man. Pretty sure Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote that song before I was even born about me.”
“Cop-out,” she challenges and leans forward as much as she can between her small belly and Princess. “How about a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“A trade, really. A secret for a secret. You tell me one, and I’ll tell you one of mine,” she says. “Or, one more of mine.”
This has lots of possibilities. “Really?”
“Really. Tell me something juicy. Something real. Scandalous, even.”
I smirk at her. “You were watching that Bravo station again, weren’t you?”
“Maybe. Shut up!”
Laughing, I sit back. How deep do I want to go? We have this playful banter going now, but what if I ruin it by going too far into the trauma of my life?
The air becomes thick and heavy with the weight of things I’ve kept quiet for years. Only shared with a few people. And even though the last thing I want to do is talk about Veronica, I feel like I need to. To give Dixie a glimpse into the pain of my past.
“Alright,” I say, my voice stronger than I feel, “you want a real secret? Fine. I’ll give you the one that made me leave my old life behind and become a biker.”
Her brows lift. “You don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do.” I look down at my bare feet and let out a long, calming breath. “Five years ago, I was a very different person. I had a normal job. A house. And a fiancée named Veronica.”
“You were engaged?”
I nod and bite my lower lip at the memory. “We’d been together since my freshman year in college. She was the one I thought I’d want my entire life, and when we graduated, I proposed. Then spent two years trying to give her everything she ever wanted.”
“What does that mean?”
“I worked eighty to ninety-hour weeks. I bought her the house of her dreams. Let her stay at home without needing to ever worry about money, and I made sure she had the car she desired. The clothes, the makeup, the restaurants. All of it.”
“Wow,” she whispers. “That sounds like a fantasy.”
Chuckling, I nod but can’t meet her eyes. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what it turned out to be. As it turned out, to make the money I needed to keep her happy, I had to travel often. We were one week before we were supposed to get married, and I’d come home early to help her with the arrangements.”
“Uh oh. This sounds like it’s not going to go well.”
Oh, how right she is. “I walked through the door with the chocolates she always insisted on whenever I flew through Chicago. But she wasn’t alone. I heard noises in our bedroom, and when I opened the door, I saw her fucking another man.”
The image still haunts me. Her hands on the headboard as she rides him. The look of pure pleasure on her face I thought was reserved for only me.
“Jesus, Penn, I’m sorry.”
The smell of the old house fills my nose, and my chest tightens. It’s like I’m back there again. Like I’m walking up the stairs to find her in our bed with someone else once again.
“Fucking the last person on earth I’d expect to find her with in the expensive sheets she insisted I buy her. Eighteen hundred thread count that kept in body heat like a fucking baked potato in tin foil, and she refused to sleep on anything else.”
“You know the guy she was with?”
This makes me snort. “Know him? Oh, yeah, I fucking knew him.”
“He was a friend?” Dixie whispers.
I look up and lock eyes with her. “My best man.”
“No!”
“It gets worse. My best man was Patrick. My twin brother.”
Her jaw drops, and I clench my fists at the memory. The vindictive smile he gave me when he saw me in the doorway. Like he finally won the game I was never interested in playing.
“He was always in competition with me. Making more money than him, getting married to an attractive woman, and living a dream life pissed him off to no end. Everything in our lives was always a competition, and he’d finally played the ultimate move. He won.”
“No, he lost,” she says, reaching out to take my hand. “Because it sounds like he lost you, too.”
“My entire fucking family did. They all backed him up. Like they always did. Patrick and Veronica are married now, but she’s not happy. And I’m glad. No matter how vindictive that makes me sound. I’m fucking happy she’s unhappy.”
Releasing my hand, Dixie leans back. “I can understand that. I used to hope my father would get herpes or something that would stop him from stepping out on Mom.”
I can’t stop the laugh that comes, and I nod. “That’s funny.”
“I’m serious,” she exclaims through giggles. “I always hoped he’d mess around with the wrong woman. Not to the point of dying because of the woman’s bigger husband but something that wouldn’t kill him but make him undesirable.”
“You hoped your dad would get herpes. That’s fucking amazing,” I say. “Wait, that’s not your secret, is it? Because as great as it is, it’s not really comparable to mine.”
Red fills her cheeks, and she looks down at Princess in her lap. “I honestly didn’t expect you to give something so deep. My secret I planned to share doesn’t really… match.”
“You already had a secret in mind?”
Nodding, she looks up through her long lashes. “Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately. And it’s not because of the baby or because of my ex. Or the fact my house and all my possessions got burned to the ground.”
I raise a brow. “What is it?”
“You.”
My heart rate spikes, and I’m beyond happy she chose to share this secret. “Me?”
“I just lie awake down the hall from you, and all I can think about is what it would be like to be in the same bed. How your hands would feel on me. Having your body on mine. I’ve been craving you, and it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.”
Fuck. Me.
My sweatpants tent, and I like the way it makes her plump lips part as she stares at what her words just did to me. The physical reaction to even the idea of being with her.
“Dixie, you shouldn’t say things like that to a man like me unless you mean them.”
Her tongue runs over her lips as her chest heaves. “I mean them, Penn,” she whispers, and she picks up Princess to put her on the blanket at the other end of the couch. “It’s been nearly impossible to pretend I don’t want you.”
Reaching over, I wrap a hand around the back of her neck and press my lips to hers. She reacts immediately, pressing herself forward and parting her lips to allow my tongue into her mouth. I pull her onto my lap, and her hips immediately grind against my groin, making us both moan.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask, pulling away just enough to look into her eyes. “If I take you, there’s no going back. If we do this, you’re mine. You and this baby.”
Dixie swallows, her eyes shining with a desire I didn’t know was possible. “I don’t want to go back. I need you.”
That’s all the invitation I need, and I kiss her again. The kiss is deep and possessive, and as much as I hate to admit it, desperate. There’s a pent-up hunger that’s been driving me crazy since the day I met Dixie, and it’s all coming out as she allows me to consume her.
She moans softly against my lips as my hands graze along her body, gently touching the sides of her breasts, and despite the layers of clothing between us, I feel her nipples pressing against me.
I’m finally going to have Dixie in my bed. My life. And hopefully, in my heart.