Chapter 19
When Reeze opened the door, the first thing he noticed wasn’t Charlie but the mess.
Boxes stood open all over the floor, clothes hung over the backs of chairs, and someone had apparently decided the bed made a perfectly acceptable dumping ground.
In the middle of the chaos stood Mia with her arms folded and an expression suggesting she was taking the entire project considerably more seriously than clothes shopping had any right to deserve.
Charlie, on the other hand, looked thoroughly defeated.
She stood in front of the mirror while Mia adjusted the hem of a black skirt that Reeze suspected contained less fabric than one of his old bandanas.
The top she had paired with it didn’t exactly help his concentration either, and when Charlie caught sight of him in the mirror, he saw something shift in her expression.
Just for a moment, that uncertainty returned, the one he was already beginning to recognise, and almost immediately one hand went to the hem of the skirt.
As though she were waiting to be judged.
“Yeah,” Mia said without even turning around. “That’s the problem.”
“The problem?” Charlie repeated.
“Yes.” Mia met Reeze’s gaze in the mirror. “I’ve been trying to make you actually look at yourself for twenty minutes and this is how well it’s been going. He looks at you for two seconds and suddenly you’ve forgotten I exist.”
Charlie’s cheeks immediately turned red.
“I haven’t forgotten you exist.”
“Oh, no. Of course not.”
Reeze closed the door behind him and walked further into the room while the two women continued bickering.
For the first time since meeting Dennis outside the gates, some of the pressure in his chest eased.
The bastard was still there at the back of his mind, along with everything else that needed dealing with, but thinking about any of it became considerably more difficult when Charlie was standing right in front of him, tugging at the hem of that skirt for what had to be the tenth time.
“Stop doing that,” Mia said.
“Doing what?”
“Pulling at the skirt.”
“Because it’s too short.”
“It isn’t too short.”
“It’s very short.”
“It’s perfect.”
Charlie opened her mouth to argue again, seemed to realise it would be about as useful as arguing with a brick wall, and closed it.
Reeze couldn’t decide which of them was more stubborn.
Probably Mia. Nobody beat Mia once she had decided something.
He let his gaze travel over Charlie again.
The skirt ended considerably higher on her thighs than anything he had seen her wear before, while the top left her shoulders bare and emphasised the curves she usually seemed to do everything she could to hide.
Yet despite the clothes, despite the fact that Mia had clearly spent a good part of the morning trying to make her see what everyone else already saw, Charlie still stood there as though she were waiting for someone to tell her she didn’t belong.
After everything he had learnt about Dennis, it wasn’t particularly difficult to understand where that came from. It only made him want to kill the bastard a little more.
“What?” Charlie finally asked when he still hadn’t said anything.
Mia looked from her to Reeze and immediately began to grin.
“Or we could ask him.”
“Ask me what?”
“About the skirt.”
Reeze didn’t really need to answer. Judging by Mia’s laughter, his face had already done it for him, and Charlie turned even redder.
“You’re impossible.”
“No,” Mia said, reaching for her coffee. “He’s impossible. I merely have the misfortune of standing here witnessing the disaster.”
Charlie rolled her eyes, but when Reeze walked over to her, her gaze dropped to the skirt again.
“Is it awful?”
The question stopped him.
“No.”
He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her again. “It’s really fucking not.”
Mia nearly choked on her coffee. “Oh my God.”
“What now?” “You genuinely can’t hear yourself, can you?”
Charlie bit her lip to keep from smiling while Reeze gave Mia a look that should have shut her up. Since it was Mia, naturally it had the opposite effect. “You know what?” she said, putting down her cup. “I actually think my work here is done.”
She patted Charlie on the shoulder as she passed. “Try to survive.”
“Mia.”
“I meant him.”
Then she disappeared into the corridor and closed the door behind her.
The room became quieter once she was gone, although the clubhouse outside certainly wasn’t. A bike started somewhere in the yard and a door slammed farther away, but Reeze barely registered either sound as he stood watching Charlie trying to work out what was happening behind his eyes.
Finally, he crossed the remaining distance, took her hands and pulled her towards him.
“Reeze…”
“Come here.”
“That wasn’t an explanation.”
“No.” A faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth as he leaned closer. “But it’s the only one you’re getting right now.”
Mia’s triumphant voice came through the door. “I knew it!”
Charlie burst out laughing, but Reeze had already turned towards the door with her hand in his.
“You do realise you’re behaving like a caveman?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “So?”
“Mm. One of those who drags his prey back to the cave and then looks surprised when people comment on it.” Now his mouth actually twitched.
Charlie shook her head and followed him. There was something almost charming about the way the same man who noticed the slightest change in her could simultaneously become completely oblivious to the rest of the world once he had made up his mind about something.
Almost charming.
She had just enough time to think that Mia would never let her hear the end of this before the door to Reeze’s room closed behind them and he kissed her.
The change in him was immediate. Whatever restraint he had been holding on to outside the room disappeared the moment they were alone, and Charlie barely had time to draw breath before her back met the door and his mouth was on hers again.
His hands moved over her with the same restless hunger she had already begun to associate with him, pulling her against him until there was no space left between their bodies.
There was nothing hesitant about Reeze when he wanted her. Charlie didn’t want hesitation either.
She caught hold of his shirt and pulled him closer, answering the kiss with enough force to make him growl against her mouth.
His hands slid down to her thighs and he lifted her, and Charlie wrapped her legs around his hips without thinking, laughing breathlessly when he nearly walked them both into the edge of the bed in his hurry to get there.
“Smooth,” she managed.
“Shut up.”
She was still laughing when he kissed her again.
Clothes disappeared somewhere between the door and the bed, dropped and pulled away with very little concern for where they landed.
Reeze was all heat and impatient hands, his mouth moving from hers to her throat while Charlie ran her hands over his shoulders and down his back, feeling muscle tighten beneath her fingers.
This was the Reeze she had only glimpsed before. Not careful because he was afraid she might break. Not holding himself back because Molly was sleeping in the next room. Just Reeze.
Hungry, demanding and completely focused on her.
By the time he pushed her down onto the mattress, Charlie’s pulse was hammering and every trace of the insecurity she had felt in front of the mirror had disappeared. There was no room for Dennis’s voice in her head now, no room for old insults or the memory of being told she wasn’t desirable.
Not with Reeze looking at her like that.
As though there was nowhere else in the world he would rather be.
The bed protested loudly beneath them and somewhere along the way the headboard struck the wall hard enough to make something rattle on the other side, but neither of them cared.
Charlie clung to him, breathless and laughing one moment and losing the ability to laugh at all the next as he drove every coherent thought from her mind.
He was exactly what she had expected him to be.
Too much. Too intense. And absolutely unapologetic about either.
When the world finally stopped spinning, Charlie lay flat on her back staring at the ceiling and trying to remember how normal breathing was supposed to work.
For several seconds neither of them moved.
Then Reeze shifted beside her.
Mia had just managed to convince Tony that the boxes were actually supposed to be carried into the storeroom rather than abandoned in the middle of the corridor when a muffled sound came through the wall.
She stopped with her coffee halfway to her mouth and met Billy’s gaze over the box he was carrying.
Billy sighed. “Yep.”
“Yep,” Mia agreed.
Tony looked between them.
“What?”
Another sound came from the next room, followed by a thud hard enough to make something on the wall rattle. Tony blinked.
Billy looked like a man whose worst suspicions had just been confirmed. “I don’t need to hear this.”
Mia calmly took a sip of coffee. “You say that every time.”
“Because I never want to hear it.”
“You can hardly claim you’re surprised.”
“No.” Billy shifted the box to his other arm. “But I’d hoped he might at least pretend to be civilised.”
Mia raised an eyebrow. “Reeze?”
Billy stared at her for a few seconds. “I know. It was na?ve.”
She laughed and shook her head. In all the years she had known Reeze, she had seen him with plenty of women and had long since stopped caring who disappeared into a room with whom, but Charlie was different.
That had been obvious long before Reeze himself seemed to understand it.
It was there in the way his eyes searched for her whenever he entered a room, in the way his entire mood shifted around her and, not least, in how close he had come to starting a small war when Dennis began forcing his way back into her life.
Mia hardly needed to be psychic to know where this was heading.
“He’s completely gone.”
Billy snorted.
“Absolutely fucked.”
“She is too.”
That made him pause before he nodded. “Yeah.”
Another thud came through the wall. Billy closed his eyes. “I hate everything.”
Tony was still standing there with the box in his arms, looking as though he hadn’t quite decided whether to be concerned or impressed.
Mia pointed towards the storeroom. “Carry.”
The prospect obeyed.
When the world finally stopped spinning, Charlie was still lying on her back staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe normally.
Somewhere beside her, Reeze was getting dressed again. She heard his boots hit the floor, the rustle of his belt and the familiar sound of leather being pulled back into place, but actually lifting her head to look at him felt like a project best left to future generations.
If anyone had asked her at that moment, she would have sworn she had been run over.
Not by a motorcycle. By the entire biker. Ninety kilos of muscle, stubbornness and tattoos, accompanied by that scent that always seemed to follow him. Leather, soap, the faintest trace of motor oil and something else that was simply Reeze.
“You look happy.” His voice made her open one eye.
“I’m trying to work out whether I’m still alive.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as he sat on the edge of the bed and reached for his boots.
“Verdict?”
“Undecided.” Charlie reached out and caught his arm. “I’ll be demanding compensation.”
“For what?”
“Personal injury.”
This time he laughed properly, and the low sound made something warm move through her chest. She liked his laugh, perhaps more than she should, and she liked it even more now that she was beginning to hear it more often.
But it disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
Charlie noticed the change before he said anything. Reeze remained sitting on the edge of the bed with his eyes lowered to the floor for a second longer than necessary, and reality, which had remained safely outside the room for a little while, began creeping back in.
“You have to go.”
It wasn’t a question.
He nodded.
“Yeah.”
Outside, the clubhouse continued living its own life. Someone shouted for Billy, a door slammed farther down the corridor and another motorcycle started in the yard, but inside the small room it had suddenly become very quiet.
Charlie sighed and sank deeper into the pillow.
“I don’t like it when reality interrupts me.”
“Trust me.”
Reeze leaned over and brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
“Neither do I.”
Then he bent down and kissed her, much softer this time, before getting to his feet to leave.