Chapter Fifteen
What the fuck? Why the hell were his lips on Autumn’s?
He knew the answer. Didn’t know what to make of it, but he knew it: he’d been sitting on the fucking toilet watching her tend his ‘wounds,’ and his entire attention had narrowed to her mouth. Those gorgeous, full lips, her pearly top teeth biting down in concentration. The way her hair slipped from her shoulder to dangle before her mouth like a gleaming red curtain.
And she smelled fucking amazing, like wildflowers and honey.
He was kissing Autumn because he wanted to. Because he’d been wanting to from the moment he’d spoken to her this evening. Hell, from well before that. He’d wanted to kiss her again since that misbegotten kiss that spring—her far too drunk, him feeling like a bastard.
He shouldn’t have done it, but he’d been thinking about doing it again ever since.
When he’d seen her boss pawing at her, for half a second he’d been deeply jealous—until he’d seen her shrink from that touch. Then he’d been furious. Furiously protective.
He liked this woman. As a person. He felt ... calmer around her, even when they argued. He enjoyed her company. And that was an earthquake through the terrain of his loner self-concept.
He’d realized it with clarity in the Hall, while they played pool. Watching her study the table, lean over and set up her shots with skill and confidence, had him looking for a way to subtly shift himself in his jeans. His mouth flooded at that way she had of sweeping her hair to one side when she made up her mind and was ready to do something about it. But it wasn’t about her full lips, or her copper eyes, or her lush hair, or the pert roundness of her little ass. Her looks were just the wrapping, and a pretty girl had never turned his head so much he’d chase after her.
What had caught him was Autumn’s personality—the very thing he’d thought he’d hated, before he had a chance to get to know her.
She was tiny, even delicate, yet she filled up a room with her first step into it. She was smart and sassy, but she wasn’t flamboyant about it. Instead she was confident. Autumn drew attention everywhere she went, but she wasn’t interested in attention. She was interested in respect.
The thing that had been so off-putting about her was her confidence. She stood toe to toe with men and didn’t flinch. She had an opinion and she expressed it. When she was sure she was right, she didn’t prevaricate. She didn’t couch her words in the kind of self-effacing language men (and probably most women) expected women to use, like If that makes sense or Maybe I’m just not understanding ... She was direct. Confident. Forthright. Exactly the kind of person he didn’t despise.
What kind of asshole was he that he’d condemned her for being sure of herself?
There was a lot going on under her surface, more than he could guess at, but he’d been wrong to think of her as ‘Going to Work Barbie’ or a corporate snake. She was no empty-headed doll, and her boss was the snake. Autumn was just trying to do a good job, and maybe do some good while she was at it.
He didn’t agree that building a shopping center was ‘doing good,’ but somewhere along the line, he’d started believing that Autumn really did think so.
The thought of that piece of shit she called her boss vexed him like a splinter at the base of his brain. He hated men who hurt women, and it didn’t always take a fist to do damage. That Chase shithead was as big a bully as whoever had fucked up Abigail’s place. Maybe worse, because he had real power to wield.
The way Autumn spoke about being able to ‘manage’ him meant he was a constant problem. Everything inside Cox had drawn in tight when she’d talked about having to ‘fix’ things, like even that was her responsibility. It wasn’t true; the club was working right now to neutralize Chase Whatzisname, but Autumn didn’t know that. She knew only her history with that lech.
She’d insisted that it was her responsibility because she was about to leave, to go home with her boss and return to Indianapolis. Hundreds of miles away from Signal Bend. From the club.
From him.
That had driven him to his feet.
So now he was kissing her. Because he wanted to.
And damn.
Her resistance had lasted the length of one sudden inhale. Then she went all in, throwing her arms around his neck and rising onto her toes. When he pushed his tongue to her lips, she opened for him with a soft, rolling murmur like a purr, and her tongue met his and urged him deeper.
Jesus Christ.
Cox had never been much interested in kissing—at least not since he was a teenager learning all the mechanics. He supposed he subscribed to the notion that kissing was a particular intimacy, because he rarely felt the desire to kiss a woman he was with and always felt that something was slightly off when a woman went looking for a kiss and he complied.
He had not ever been interested in bringing a woman into his life. He enjoyed sex, he enjoyed having sex with attractive women and did so regularly, but he wanted no one, romantic or otherwise, to be close enough to him to really know him. To Cox, kissing felt—intuitively, as if he’d been programmed this way—like that kind of intimacy.
But here he was, wrapped up with a woman he barely knew, kissing the sense out of her and letting her do the same to him. Not a kiss like in the spring, drunken and stunted and full of self-recrimination; this one might also be a mistake, but it was no accident. He was kissing her because he wanted to, she was kissing him back, and he could practically feel the shape of his mind changing. He was being reprogrammed.
What the fuck?
“What are we doing?” Autumn gasped into the tiny space between them as Cox tipped his head the other way.
“Hush,” he commanded. He shoved his hands into her thick mane and sealed their mouths together so she couldn’t introduce more doubt into this stupendous moment. His head was already a riot of wonder; it would spin apart if they tried to talk about this, question it. Later, but not now.
She offered no further protest and made no further attempt at words. Instead, she bit down on his bottom lip and tried to climb him like a tree. That was vastly better than talking. And cute as all fuck.
Chuckling against her lips, Cox lifted her and set her on the counter. They knocked the first-aid kid to the floor with a crash and scatter, but it registered more like a distant memory than something happening right then. The clubhouse could explode around them, and he wouldn’t care.
He pushed between her thighs, and she hooked her legs around him at once, pressing herself against him. Despite his jeans and her corporate-attire slacks, her heat spread through him and set him alight. Filling his hands with her ass, he drew her even closer, rocked against her. A rough sound, nearly feral, rose from her chest, and she rubbed herself against him all the harder.
She’d slipped inside his open kutte, and the mounds of her breasts pushed against his chest. Through the cotton of his t-shirt, he thought he could even feel her nipples, little points hard as diamonds. Freeing one hand from her ass, he pushed between their bodies to take hold of a breast, pinch down on one firm little gem. Her bra was thin, just a slip of satin under her blouse.
She moaned as his hand cupped her breast, and she bucked wildly, arching her back, when his fingers closed on her nipple. He almost lost the kiss through all those gyrations, but he followed with her wherever she went. This woman was a handful of pure flame.
God, he wanted her naked. But they were in the fucking bathroom.
He finally broke away—but he couldn’t bring himself to let her go, so he leaned his forehead on hers and tried to reclaim his sense from somewhere in his spinning mind.
“Fuck,” he muttered, feeling dizzy.
“Yeah,” she whispered back. She seemed as unwilling to split apart as he was. “What’s happening here, Cox?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Right now, don’t care.”
That made her laugh softly. She tipped her head back and kissed the spot between his eyebrows. “Always frowning.” The soft words flitted over his skin, carried on her breath. “What in your life has made you so angry?”
The strange magic that had Cox behaving like a hormonal teenager shattered, and he took a step back, letting his arms fall away from her. He wanted to tell her to mind her fucking business, he opened his mouth to say exactly that, but his eyes met hers, and he couldn’t do it.
Instead, Autumn reached out and took the hand she’d cared for. “Sorry. I see I crossed a line.”
He meant to nod, to indicate that yes, she had indeed, he was not interested in sharing thoughts and feelings with anybody. But he found his head shaking instead. “I just ... don’t talk about my shit.”
A frown tried to settle on her face, her curved brows quivered with it for a moment, but it couldn’t find purchase. “Okay” was all she said. Then: “Can we talk about what just happened instead? Or ... I don’t know ... what is happening?”
He didn’t want to talk about that, either. His brain was swollen with thoughts, in every direction, and if any of them got out, they’d bury him.
But he also, again, didn’t want to rebuff her. He was worried about her feelings—and that was new. Though he tried not to be a shit to anyone who didn’t deserve it, that impulse wasn’t about the other people. He wasn’t trying to be kind, he wasn’t thinking about others’ feelings. He simply didn’t want to add to the shit mountain that was life among the human race. He had no compunctions about defending his own boundaries, and doing it forcefully enough that he wouldn’t have to do it again. Except, apparently, with this one woman.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he said, because that was true and direct.
She tugged on his hand until he erased the step he’d put between them. “Then why’d you stop?”
Another question with a true, direct answer. “I remembered we’re in a bathroom.” True and direct, but harder to say with her hands pushing under his t-shirt, around to his back.
“May I be forthright?” she asked, watching his t-shirt shift as her hands moved from his back to play through the hair on his chest.
He closed her hands in one of his, the t-shirt between them, before all those feathery caresses had him shaking. “Don’t be any other way.”
Her eyes flashed up to his and held for a beat before she said, “This is wildly unexpected. Which makes it confusing and a little scary. But it’s not ... unwelcome.” Sudden light seemed to emanate from her face as she smiled and freed one hand from under his shirt. She brought it to his mouth, brushing the tips of her fingers over his bottom lip. “My God, Cox. What a smile you have.”
As usual, he hadn’t realized he was smiling. More reflex than intention, he rocked his head back, away from her touch.
“Don’t,” she said. “I like that I can make you smile.”
Unexpectedly, confusingly, he liked it, too. What the fuck was happening?
A blast of thunder filled the room as somebody pounded on the door, making them both flinch. “Jesus, Cox!” Saxon shouted. “You been in there half an hour!”
Cox’s spine went taut, and he glared back at the door.
Before he could yell back, another voice, from much farther away—Cox thought it was Mel—said, He ain’t alone, bro.
“Oh!” Saxon said, more quietly. He knocked on the door again, lightly. “Sorry, man. Carry on. I’ll piss in the warehouse can.”
Cox turned back to Autumn, whose face had gone so red she almost glowed.
The moment was truly destroyed. Cox girded himself, ready for sanity to storm back into his head and show him how fucked up this interlude had been, how wrong it was for him to get close to Autumn, how emphatically he did not want anyone in his life like that, even though a door seemed to have opened for her.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t—”
She covered his mouth with her hand. “Please don’t take this back.”
With a kiss to her palm, he lifted her hand away. “Autumn—” he began, but no words appeared to finish the sentence.
She took the opportunity to create some of her own. “This feels like it came out of nowhere, but it also ... kinda doesn’t. I’ve been thinking of you since the spring, and I’ve just realized—or maybe I mean accepted—what that means. I know there’s nothing really deep that can happen between us, our lives are too far apart, in more than just geography. But right now, this feels good, and it’s been an epically shitty day. It feels good to feel good. When we leave this bathroom, I’m going to have to deal with Chase and the aftermath of that scene—”
“No, you won’t. He’s neutralized. At least for today.” Their plan for Chase was club business, so he couldn’t tell her about that, at least not yet. But he could tell her this much: “They’ll clean him up, and Izzy’s there to make him feel better. By now, he’s even drunker, and he’s probably dick-deep in Iz. He won’t be trouble ‘til he sleeps it all off, and that’ll probably be tomorrow.”
She regarded him with a troubled, almost wary expression, and Cox wondered if she was suspicious. Already she’d observed that they were getting her boss drunk on purpose.
“How much choice does Izzy have in that?” she asked.
Cox almost took offense, but he cut the impulse off before it settled in. “I could take that question bad, but instead I’ll say: you did plenty of research on us. You tell me if we make our girls do anything they don’t want to do.”
She studied him, her eyes shifting focus between his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“That’s right.” He brushed the worry lines from her forehead and made a decision. He was not ready for this moment, whatever it was, to end. “If you want to keep feeling good, my room is just down the hall. The guys out there’ll probably make a lot of noise about it, ‘cuz they’re all immature shitheads, but they won’t get in our way.”
Autumn looked away. She seemed to study the mess of the first-aid kit they’d upended. Then she met his gaze again. “Since we’re being forthright, I’ll say that there are alarm bells going off in my head like I’m a disabled spaceship about to self-destruct, but I can’t bring myself to care. I just want to keep doing this.”
It eased Cox considerably to hear that her head was as loud as his. “We can make out all night if you want. But I’d like to do more.”
She grinned and hopped down from the counter. “Where’s your room?”
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~oOo~
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The animals he called brothers made some noise about it, but Cox flipped them off and led Autumn to his room. He ushered her inside, then shut and locked the door, leaving the fool’s circus out there to its revels.
“Huh,” Autumn said, standing in the middle of the room.
It wasn’t much. Though patches and prospects sometimes lived in these rooms for weeks or months at a time—for a prospect, when they had one, it was years—they weren’t designed for long-term residency. They’d been bigger, and fewer, back in the day, but when the club membership doubled in size, they’d remodeled the space for more, smaller rooms.
Now each one was eight by ten feet, with a full-size bed (mail-order mattress and metal frame) wedged into one far corner and a three-drawer Walmart chest wedged into the other. A small window, covered with mini-blinds, sat in the middle of the exterior wall, between those two bleak pieces of furniture.
There was a microscopic bathroom as well, about the size of an RV bathroom, shared between each two adjacent rooms.
Cox had never spent more than an occasional drunken night in his designated space. He primarily used it for one thing: he didn’t like fucking in public.
Thus, what few personal items he kept here were of the ‘personal item’ variety. A large, half-empty bottle of lube sat atop the chest, alongside a stack of white hand towels (Walmart specials, ten for ten), and a Costco-size box of condoms. A speaker/charger dock for his phone sat at the corner of the chest, beside a small gooseneck lamp.
The three drawers contained more towels, two extra sets of sheets, an extra blanket, a few pairs of underwear, and a couple Horde t-shirts, thus far unused.
The bed was made simply—white sheets, two pillows, a Walmart comforter with a blue gradient pattern.
“This is a sex room,” Autumn said.
Cox didn’t reply, because that was both correct and not a question.
She turned around and looked up at him. “Not sure how I feel about that.”
Taking a step to the side, he indicated the door. “Not holdin’ you here.”
Her brow went taut. “Do you want me here?”
Now, see, that was one of those weaselly questions meant to wring out some encouragement without saying she needed encouragement. He didn’t like that twisty kind of talk.
“You’re here. What else you think that means?”
Surprisingly, she smiled—no, she grinned. It lit up her whole damn face. “I wasn’t looking for a pat on the head, Cox. What I meant is do you want me, specifically, or am I simply convenient. Because this”—she swept an arm out to encompass the narrow slice of room—“looks like convenience is your main driver.”
Speaking generally, habitually, about his feelings and relations with women, she wasn’t wrong. But speaking specifically about this particular moment, this particular woman? That was different.
Cox took the step that put their bodies in contact. “Nothin’ about you is convenient, city girl.”
Her grin held as she flung her arms over his neck. “And that’s just how I like it.”
He grabbed her hips and brought their bodies firmly together. “Good. That’s enough talk.” He slammed his mouth over hers and made sure they were done talking.
As before, she seemed absolutely into him taking charge, without becoming submissive or passive. When he claimed her mouth again, she tightened her arms around his neck so snugly that when he stood tall, he brought her off the floor. Climbing him again. Her legs snaked around his as he took the two steps that brought him against the frame of the bed. When he tried to lay her on the mattress, she held on, bringing him down with her so that they landed with a bounce.
He'd meant to take her clothes off first, but somehow he’d forgotten. Now Autumn was dragging his kutte back by the collar, trying to draw it off. Cox complied, shrugging and twisting until he had the leather in one hand. The only place to put it was the hook on the back of the door, but he didn’t want to get up from the bed. So he pushed it to the side, against the wall.
When he was able to focus on Autumn again, she’d opened her blouse. Copper eyes stared at him, bold and vulnerable. Cox looked down at a slim expanse of peachy-pale skin, and his mouth went dry.
The same kind of freckles she worked to hide on her face crossed the top of her chest lightly, like she’d passed through a mist. The notch at the base of her slender throat fluttered rapidly with each shallow breath. Her bra was indeed a filmy thing, a sheer and lovely pink that showed her nipples, contracted to hard little stones.
As he studied her beautiful body, Autumn lifted her hand and traced a finger along the edge of his leather shoulder holster. Cox watched her finger for a moment, then focused on her face again.
“Bother you?”
Her focus was on her finger, his holster, what it meant. But when he spoke, she shifted to meet his gaze. She considered his question for a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
That was enough for him. He shrugged free of his gun, reached to set it on the dresser, and returned to the business at hand—her gorgeous tits wrapped in silk and lace, the nipples like tiny candies waiting to be sampled.
He bent his head and captured one between his teeth. Autumn cried out softy and flung her arms over his head, holding him in place. That flowers-and-honey scent wrapped around him, and he moaned as all his senses clamored for more. More touch, more taste, more scent, more sound, more sight, more everything.
What the fuck was going on with him? With her? Never in his life had he been hungry for a woman like this. More than hungry. He fucking needed her.
Part of his brain kept trying to wedge caution into this moment, kept asking that question: What the fuck? But it made less impression on him each time. He did not fucking care. It was possible that he felt better right now, with Autumn, touching her, feeling her, tasting her, than he had in the past twenty years of his life.
He did not care why this was happening. He did not care how long it would last. He did not care what it meant. He did not care what came next. All he wanted was this, as long as he could have it.
All the bullshit that was his life would be there later, just as shitty as ever. For now, he wanted this one good thing.
Whatever it was.