Clean, maintained, and ready to go.
The truck interior was spare, but comfortable. Crank windows, of course. Updated A/C and heater, but with the stock vintage controls. I stuck the key into the ignition, floored the clutch, and she rumbled to life with a snarl.
I pulled out of the unit, heart slamming in my chest. I parked and went back to make sure nothing was missing or left behind, shut off the lights, closed the door, and drove away—stopping at the office to make the first decision which would seal my future…I closed my account, handed in my keys, and let the unit go.
I’d had a little work done to the truck interior—installing a USB charging port so I could keep my phone powered, and play music if I wanted.
I plugged my phone in, set Ketchikan, Alaska as my destination, and headed north.
For the first time in my life, I chose my destination just because I wanted to.
Charlie
The disaster that is my life continued unabated.
I got a speeding ticket outside Seattle. Dropped my phone in the toilet in the bathroom of a rest stop an hour later, forgot the replacement on the table of a diner in Vancouver—which was an hour out of my way to begin with, meaning I had to go back for it, requiring an extra almost three hours of unneeded drive time. My car’s GPS got confused in a low-signal area, redirected me down a rutted two-track from one highway to another, where I got a flat tire.
No phone to call a tow truck.
Slipping in mud from a recent rain, I thanked the spirit of my father for having taught me how to change a tire.
Running on a mini-spare on a two track at ten miles per hour, it took me three hours to reach any kind of civilization which had a shop that could fix my flat tire and dented wheel. I had to stay in a fleabag motel—which is where I was at the moment, and I wasn’t sure where that was, exactly, except somewhere in Canada––eating nasty fast food, watching Wheel of Fortune on a TV older than me while I got things back on track.
Unable to fall asleep, my mind wandered to the one place I’d been trying far too hard to forget: Crow.
His hands.
His mouth.
That cock.
I squirmed in the bed, remembering.
I blushed, remembering what I’d let him do—what I’d done. What I’d begged him to do, which was fuck me up against the door of a dive bar bathroom, and then fuck me bent over a sink.
I had that image burned into my skull: me in the mirror, bent over the sink, tits swaying as he pounded into me, his body lean and hard and dark and strong, his eyes wild and primal, his hands clawed into the round curve of my ass cheeks as he fucked, fucked, fucked me into blithering oblivion.
To say it was the best, hottest, most erotic, most intensely orgasmic sexual experience of my life would be an understatement on the order of saying the sun is a little warm.
I squirmed in the uncomfortable motel bed, wriggling, uncomfortable, aching in my core, throbbing between my thighs. Remembering how I’d ached with him inside me, and how deliciously sore I’d been afterward. How badly I’d wanted him again, even as things fell apart.
His mouth…god, his mouth on me was something I craved. I’d never felt like that until I met him, never knew what I’d been missing, and now I woke up in the middle of the night craving his stubbled jaw scraping up the tender silk of my inner thighs, his soft wet slithery strong tongue driving into my clit and making me come apart again and again, each time harder than the last.
I gave in and let my fingers slip under the waist of my underwear, picturing him—Crow, tall and strong behind me, the feel of his cock driving into me, splitting me apart in the best possible way…his mouth on my sex, tongue flying and circling. His cock in my mouth—I wanted to finish that. Finish him that way, what we’d had interrupted.
Each thought, each image was more arousing than the last, until I was aching with need and my clit was throbbing and I was arched off the bed as my fingers blurred over my sex, flicking back and forth faster and faster, until I let go with a gasp—
“Crow!” I heard myself screech, breathless and soft.
God, I was screaming his name as I brought myself to release.
I was so drained by the time I came down from the wild high of my orgasm that I couldn’t move, just lay there in the hard, squeaky bed, my hand still inside my underwear, panting, eyes tearing up as my whole body ached, brain to toes, soul to heart.
Had I made a mistake? Had I done the right thing? I still didn’t know.
I saw, again, the body of Yak.
The pile of near-corpses he’d created.
I mean, we’d met that same way—him saving me from six men, whom he’d sent to the hospital.
Could I tolerate such violence in my life? I didn’t think so. Mom had raised me to be calm, to solve problems with our words and our logic and our will, not through yelling and screaming and violence. Hitting someone was a last resort, only if our very life and physical safety was on the line.
Crow was from a different life.
I fell asleep wrestling with myself, fraught with need and doubts in equal measure. I was as scared of him and the life he represented as I was deeply desperate to be with him, to be in his arms.
In his life.
Once my car was fixed and run through a car wash to rid it of the mud, I cruised along the Canadian highway northward, until I ran out of road in Prince Rupert. I took a ferry, then, for something like seven hours. Despite the spectacular scenery, the hours were long and boring. I strolled the deck, had something to eat, slept, and read on my Kindle.
The only books I had in my Kindle were romances, and each of them left me desperately missing and wanting Crow even more.
Even as I ran as far away from him as I could get, short of moving to freaking Siberia or something.
Every time I thought of him I refused to second-guess my decision.
This was for the best.
I couldn’t tame him, and it wouldn’t be fair to try. And I wasn’t cut out for the kind of life he lived—not by a long shot. Maybe I wasn’t tough enough, or adventurous enough.
All I knew was that I couldn’t live a life on the back of his bike, or on a bunk in his tour bus. I needed a home. I needed a career. I needed stability. Some adventure now and then was fine, and I now knew I needed more spontaneity and adventure in my life.
But bar fights which resulted in people dying was way too much.
No. I’d made a tough decision, but it was the right decision.
This was best.
I would miss him. Of course I would. I would ache for him. I would probably be celibate for the rest of my life, because there was just no possible way anyone could ever top how he’d made me feel. The thought of being touched by anyone else made my skin crawl with something like revulsion.
Crow had marked me as his, and now, without him, I was lonely, aching, and morose.
But what else could I do?
I pulled up into Mom’s condo complex parking lot, parked the car, shut it off, and thunked my head against the steering wheel. I was utterly exhausted, completely spent both mentally and physically.
It had taken me almost a week to get from Denver to Ketchikan, what with all the disasters and detours and the occasional side trip to an outlet mall where I spent money I didn’t really have on purses and shoes I didn’t really need, but which filled, at least temporarily, the yearning ache inside me.
A tap on my window. “Charlie?” Mom’s voice, concerned. “Is that you?”
I swallowed. I peered out at her—it was after ten at night. “Hi, Mom.”
“You—you’re here.”
I nodded blearily, raggedly. “Yep. Here I am.”
“Are you—are you okay?”
Mom. I needed my mom. I pushed at my door, and she opened it, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up. I collapsed gratefully into my mother’s arms.
“Momma.”
She didn’t miss a beat. Shushed, soothed, stroked my hair. “You’
re here now. I’m here. Momma’s got you.”
I hated the burn of tears in my eyes, hated that I had no words to relate what I’d been through. But I was glad as hell to be with my mom again
“Liv, I, uh—I’ll go. Let you take care of your girl.” A deep, bear-like growl, with a southern drawl.
I opened my eyes and saw a simply enormous human being—Jupiter, but in thirty years. Six-six easily, built like someone had turned a grizzly bear into a human. Muscled like a bodybuilder, with a graying goatee and close-cropped hair, black T-shirt stretched around impossible muscles.
Mom shook her head. “No, Lucas, it’s all right.”
“That’s him?” I muttered.
She held me away. “Charlotte, this Lucas. He’s my—well, we’re not sure what to call it. Boyfriend seems childish and trite, but neither of us are super keen to get married any time soon. So he’s just my person.” She turned with me to Lucas, who was physically terrifying, but his eyes were kind and deep and warm. “Lucas, this my eldest daughter, Charlotte.”
I extended my hand. “Call me Charlie.”
“Pleased as punch to meet you, darlin’.” He winced. “Sorry, habit. Pleased to meet you, Charlie.”
“It’s Lexie you want to be careful around with that, not me. Doesn’t bother me.” I suppressed a sigh—it didn’t bother me at all, not after Crow.
Mom glanced into my car. “I was under the impression you and Lex were together.”
I rubbed my face. “Long, long, long story, Mom. And I’m too exhausted to tell it now, for one thing and, for another, most of it is Lexie’s story to tell, not mine.”
“Is she okay?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Seemed like it. But with her, it’s hard to tell.”
“Are you okay?” She palmed my cheeks and gazed into my eyes. I knew then I had no chance of lying.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not.”
“What can I do?”
I sucked in a deep breath, held it, letting it out slowly. “I’m starving. I’m exhausted. I need to eat some kind of real food, I need to sleep for about eighteen hours, and I need to…honestly, to not have to talk about what happened until I’m ready.”
Mom guided me to her front door. “I’ve got you, honey. I won’t ask any questions, and I’ll just expect you tell me what’s going on in your own time.”
We went inside her condo, which was a modern design masterpiece in light and dark colors and clean lines. She went to a linen closet and pulled out sheets, a pillow, and a blanket.
“Lucas, can you make her something to eat while I make up the spare room?”
“Sure thing, sweets.” Inside the condo, he was even bigger, improbably massive in height and muscle, yet his eyes were inviting and trustworthy and genuine. “What’cha want, Charlie? I ain’t fancy, but I can rustle up some grub to fill you.”
“Something quick and filling. An omelet?”
He nodded, turned to the fridge and began pulling out fixings. “You like it how your mom and Cass both do? Spinach and cream cheese, mostly egg whites?”
I felt my eyes widen. “You know how Cassie likes her omelets?”
He chuckled. “Sure do. The whole clan meets for breakfast every Sunday morning at Badd Kitty, and all of us who like to cook take turns doing the cooking.”
“Clan?”
Mom laughed from extra bedroom, where she was making up the bed—she popped her head out to comment. “You have no idea what you’re walking into, Char-Char. Lucas is the patriarch of a huge family. Eleven men, each of whom is married or has a significant other, some with kids, plus now Cassie and Ink.”
“You have eleven sons?” I marveled.
He guffawed. “Hell naw, I got a pair of hell-raisin’ triplets—Roman, Remington, and Ramsey. The other eight are my nephews, my deceased brother and sister-in-law’s huge brood of boys.”
“And you raised them?”
He sighed. “That there is a long story, too, Charlie.”
Mom came back into the kitchen. “Short version is, no, he didn’t. But the whole story of how it all came together here in Ketchikan is, indeed, a very long and complicated story.”
I watched Lucas move easily and fluidly in Mom’s kitchen. “Well, I’ll listen while I eat. Anything to get my mind off of my own drama, and Lexie’s.”
“Bacon?” Lucas asked. “Only got real, none of that turkey crap.”
I laughed. “You got Mom off of turkey bacon?”
He chuckled. “Took me some doin’, but yeah. Managed to convince her that if she was gonna eat bacon, it might as well be real bacon and not that totally unconvincing turkey garbage. Compromise was, we only have it on the weekends, cause I’m watchin’ my figure.” He did a hyper-masculine impression of a woman popping a hip, which made me laugh.
I glanced at Mom, smiling. “Wow.”
She knew what I meant. “He’s something else, isn’t he?” she whispered. “Cassie has started calling him Papa Bear.”
I stared at her. “The hell you say.”
She laughed, and didn’t even correct my swear word. “She does. Really.”
I noticed they were both dressed up a little—Mom in a tight little black dress, wedge heels, her hair longer than it had been for most of my life, loose and little messy, him in nice jeans, plain shirt, and black boots.
“Did I interrupt you guys going out?” I asked.
She and Lucas locked eyes, and I caught something pass between them. “We were just on our way back from a date,” she said. “You didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Few minutes later and you may have,” Lucas muttered, under his breath, but I heard it.
So did Mom. “LUCAS!”
He ducked his head. “Sorry.” But his shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter.
I couldn’t help a snicker. “Eew. But…I’m glad for you, Mom.”
She sank onto the stool next to me. “You are? It took Cassie a little bit to warm up to the idea of me in a relationship. I’m most worried about Torie and Poppy handling it.”
“I’m happy for you. I really am. I was old enough that I saw how unhappy you were, there at the end before Dad passed. I’m glad you found someone who seems to make you happy.”
She hugged me. “He does make me happy, Charlie. So happy.”
“Did I really interrupt you guys, um…being alone together?”
My mother actually blushed. “Well, yes. But it’s not like we’ll never get any other time alone.” A pause. A deeper blush. “Or like we don’t find…um…plenty of, um…time.”
“Quit talking saucy, you little minx, or I’ll really embarrass you,” Lucas grumbled.
I rested my head on my hands on the counter. “Sorry I asked. But, um, good for you two.”
My mom. Getting it on, a lot.
I could tell, just by the way she was glowing, by the way she looked at him. By the blush. She was covering a whole host of things I probably didn’t want to know about with those ellipses in her speech.
A moment later, Lucas slid a plate in front of me—a huge egg white omelet, filled with melted cream cheese and sautéed spinach, and several slices of crispy bacon.
“Damn, Lucas. You delivered on the breakfast food.”
He grinned, munching on a piece of bacon. “At your service, m’lady.”
I ate, and ignored the meaningful googly eyes Mom and Lucas were making at each other. It was so sweet it was saccharine, yet I couldn’t mistake the undercurrent of heat sizzling between them.
Weird.
Very, very weird.
Seeing your mom in love, making sexy eyes at a man you’ve never met before is just…weird.
But she was radiating happiness, looked healthier than ever—as if she’d even put a little weight on, some extra softness to her build, which was good in her case as she’d always been so hyperactive, and after Dad’s unexpected death she became so obsessed with health and fitness that I worried she’d get too skinny.
So I
was happy for her.
Even though it made me miss Crow all the more.
I ate, wolfing down the food in record time.
And suddenly I was so tired I couldn’t see straight.
“I need to sleep.” I smiled tiredly at Lucas. “Thank you, Lucas. You don’t know how much I needed good food. I’ve lived off fast food for the last week, and it’s making my face break out. And my ass is probably five times bigger than it was.”
“The last thing you need to worry about is the size of your ass, Charlie,” Mom said. “Skip a meal or two and let Lucas cook for you, and you’ll be back down to size in no time. But don’t stress—worrying and obsessing over it only makes it worse.”
Crow would probably say the same thing, and add something along the lines of liking my ass a little juicier.
How I knew what he’d say, I couldn’t have told you.
Mom saw my mood shift. “Who hurt you, darling?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t hurt me. If anything, I hurt him.”
“This isn’t Glen we’re talking about, I assume,” Mom said.
“Twinkle Mouse? No. Hell no.”
Mom snickered. “Who let that nickname out of the bag? I warned the girls not to let you hear them call him that while you were seeing him, or it would start world war three.”
“Lex,” I said.
Mom patted me on the shoulder. “Just rest, honey. There’s time enough to tell me everything after you’ve slept.”
I sagged against her. “He was amazing. But too wild. And I just…I think I made a mistake, Mom. What if it could have been the best thing that ever happened to me?” I felt myself word-vomiting, and couldn’t stop it. “He killed a man right in front of me. In a fight. Over me. And he was in jail for something very similar. But…you wouldn’t think it, when he’s being the kind, amazing, crazy, wild man I…” I trailed off.
“You love.” Mom finished it for me. “You felt safe with him?”