Chapter Thirteen
Chapter
Thirteen
No Shit
Lottie
The massive spasm of his big body woke me and nearly
sent me flying off his bed.
And then I wasn’t teetering off the edge.
I was in Mo’s arms, those arms so tight around me, I worried
he’d snap my ribs.
And I couldn’t breathe.
Just awake after coming out of a deep sleep, which came
after a great fuck, unable to breathe, feeling the strength of him for the
first time in a way that frightened me, it took me a second to figure out what
the fuck was going on.
But I heard Mo’s breathing, felt his skin was hot and
clammy, and I figured it out.
“Okay,” I pushed out. “It’s okay. It’s okay, baby. I’m right
here. Right here. You’re home. In bed. With me.”
His arms got tighter.
Was he even awake?
I couldn’t tell in the dark in his bedroom.
I forced my hands under his arms, shoved them up his chest
and grasped either side of his neck.
“Mo, honey,” I called.
He rolled into me, giving me all his weight.
All of it.
And his arms hadn’t loosened.
God, he was going to suffocate me.
“Mo, baby.” I squeezed out the words as I squeezed his neck.
“Wake up.”
“Awake,” he grunted, putting his weight into his arms at my
back, taking some of it from me, at the same time relaxing his hold.
I sucked in a big breath.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Fuck,” he said.
Then he let me go and rolled to his back.
Instantly, I rolled into him, climbing him, my chest to his,
the rest of my body falling off his side.
“Dream?” I asked quietly.
“Christ,” he replied.
I gave it time, carefully moving my hand to hold his neck
and stroking his throat with my thumb.
When his breath came easier and some of the tension went out
of his body, I tried again.
“Was it a dream, honey?”
“Yeah,” he said to the ceiling.
It was the Sunday, the morning of the night I was going to
meet his family.
In the ensuing two weeks, I’d met all his buds (and all of
them were as awesome as Mag was). I’d hung with all of his buds (and hanging
with all of them was as awesome as hanging with Mag was). He’d had dinner with
my family. I’d gone back to the club. He’d been put on some surveillance job
where, fortunately, he worked nights so he was working when I was working which
meant we had most of our time together.
Though the first night I was onstage, Axl, Auggie and Mag
were sitting front row to the side.
Not to watch me strip.
To make sure I was good my first night without Mo at my
back.
Boone was working some other job.
Vance, Hector and Ren with their women, Jules, Sadie and
Ally, as well as my sister, by the way, were sitting at the table next to them.
Eddie was at home with the boys (doing this avoiding having
to watch me dance).
Jet, Jules, Sadie and Ally watched me dance.
Vance, Hector and Ren engaged in an apparently deep
conversation while I danced.
I was loved.
And it was good to be loved.
But now, I wasn’t feeling that goodness.
For nearly a month, being officially together for a two and
a half weeks of that, Mo and I spent all our time together when we weren’t
working. We slept at his house, or mine, depending on a variety of factors.
He had a razor, shave cream and bodywash in my bathroom and
a drawer and a rail full of clothes in my closet.
I doubled up on all my stuff, including a ton of
makeup, a hairdryer and curling irons (that was fun, more fun, Mo was a man who
didn’t mind shopping—I had his sisters to thank for a lot, something I was
going to get a chance to do that night). And since his big master closet was
far from full, I’d filled my own rail and two drawers.
Neither of us was fucking around.
This was it.
He was the one.
I was his one.
And both of us knew it.
It hadn’t been years, but we now had some time in and in
that time, not once since Mo started sleeping at my side did he get up before
seven in the morning.
No nightmares.
All good.
Until now.
And I had no clue what to do.
“You wanna talk about it?” I
asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Do you need to go work out or something?”
“Maybe.”
“Wanna fuck?” I offered.
“Lottie, you don’t have to fuck me every time I have a bad
dream.”
He sounded short and impatient, something I’d never heard
from Mo.
“You’ve never had a bad dream,” I pointed out. “And besides,
in case you missed it, I wouldn’t mind.”
He lifted a long arm so he could rub his face with his hand.
I bent my neck and put my mouth to his skin.
“Really, babe, love you, but I don’t want to associate your
mouth on me after dreams like that,” he announced.
But I arrested.
Really, babe, love you.
Love you.
He loved me.
Loved me.
His other hand came to the small of my back and drifted up
until his fingers were in my hair.
“Go back to sleep. I’m gonna go to
the gym,” he muttered.
“Okay,” I whispered, though no way in hell I was going to be
able to go back to sleep.
He pulled me further up his chest, gave me a closed-mouth
kiss and rolled me to the bed.
He threw back the covers and got out but tossed them over me
and pulled them high up my shoulder before he walked to the bathroom.
He didn’t turn on the light until the door was mostly
closed.
Mo was a man who didn’t turn the light on until the door was
mostly closed when the room he left was dark and his woman was in bed in that
room.
He was a man who pulled the covers up high to my shoulder.
Mo was a man who loved me.
Loved me.
I didn’t feign sleep and Mo knew I didn’t after he left the
bathroom, went to the closet, put on workout clothes and came right to the bed
to smooth my hair back before touching his lips to my temple.
“We’ll go out and get breakfast when I come back,” he
murmured and gave my hair a soft tug. “Try to get some more sleep.”
And then he was gone.
I lay in bed, unable to do what he asked (get more sleep),
making plans of reading websites and finding books and bucking up so next time
this happened, I’d have some tools to deal with it that could help Mo.
I was feeling this was a decent plan, but not feeling much
better (except about the part that he loved me, loved me, and said
it), when I heard noises coming from the kitchen.
You couldn’t hear much in Mo’s place, even if Mo and Mag’s
rooms were both right off the open-plan living space, just on opposite ends of
the condo.
Though if it was early, silent, you were jazzed and not
entirely in a good way and had already made your plan about how you were going
to help your boyfriend with his PTSD so your mind wasn’t jammed up, you could
hear.
I got up, dashed to the walk-in, tore off my nightie, threw
on some sleep shorts, a bralette and a cami, darted
to the bathroom to take care of business, wash my hands, slap water on my face
and brush my teeth.
Then I walked out.
Two Sundays ago, in the morning, Mo and I had been
confronted with something Mo warned me later I’d see a lot of at his place: one
of Mag’s girls. A pretty brunette who spent the time Mag allowed her before
getting her ass out of the condo to take her home looking at him like she was
wondering if she should tranquilize him so she could successfully put a ball
and chain on his ankle.
She hadn’t been seen again.
That said, last Sunday morning, we’d met a redhead. She also
had the ball-and-chain look.
And she, too, had been hustled out the door by Mag so he
could take her home.
The good news was, he was not a man who made them Uber it.
The bad news was, he was a Slam Bam Thank You Ma’am Man.
Mo explained, unnecessarily, this was about Nikki. He’d been
rabidly faithful to Nikki, and with any woman he was seeing, staunchly
monogamous.
But now, his bud was attempting to fuck Nikki’s memory away.
This was doomed to fail. I knew it. Mo knew it. Mag probably
knew it. Though it was clear he needed this pointed out so he not only knew it
subconsciously, but also consciously, and then he could stop breaking hearts
all over Denver doing it.
I wasn’t prepared to get into that just then.
I wanted to take care of the Denver sisterhood at the same
time help Mag over his heartbreak, but…
Priorities.
Luckily, right then, I didn’t have Mag’s latest random piece
of ass.
I had Mag, Auggie and Boone filling camelbacks with water
(Mag) and downing a protein-load breakfast (Auggie and Boone) which, along with
them all wearing various forms of running gear, shared with me they were going
to take to the streets.
“Is there a marathon I don’t know about?” I asked in
greeting, and got three big, white smiles.
Just to share, Mag was nearly as tall as Mo, built tough,
but lean, and he had a mess of black hair that was longish, prone to wave,
curl, flip and often fell in his eyes in a way that he knew worked so good, or
he’d tame that mane. This was paired with rugged, rough-hewn features and
electric-blue eyes.
Boone, on the other hand, was pure, classic male beauty. The
angles of his face could have been drawn by Michelangelo. The cut of his
cheekbones probably had numerous poems written about them. They definitely had
countless orgasms attributed to them (amongst other things about him). He had
dark blond hair that was a thick swath on top, short on the sides and brilliant
green eyes.
Oh yeah, and he was tall and built, but instead of being
Mo’s six five, or Mag’s six four, he was probably around six two.
Auggie had not turned out to be a disappointment. It was no
wonder women treated him like a god. Thick black hair that curled quite a bit
around his neck, black eyes, olive skin, dense brows with a perfect arch, long
stubble, sublime nose with slightly flared nostrils and a generous mouth, even
I would be down with worshiping at the altar of him. And I had all that was Mo.
He was slim, not slight. Sinewy. Not an ounce of body fat on
him (not that the others had any). And he was the shortest of the bunch,
including Axl. Auggie probably measured in at six one, whereas Axl slotted in
at number three, behind Mo and Mag, who, at my guess, was six three.