Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) (17 page)

“Take the day. Spend it with me.”

“You don’t have to work?”

“Nope. No gig today. I was just gonna do some paperwork bullshit. Rather hang out with you. Maybe take Cliff into the mountains before I have to put chains on the truck to get up there? That’s far enough out of town that nobody who’d care would see us together.”

She smiled. “That sounds good. Okay. But I still haven’t solved the problem of washing my hair.”

He had a solution for that, too. “My tub has one of those sprayer things. Get in with me and I’ll wash your hair.”

Her eyes lit up. “Are you just trying to get me naked?”

“It’s possible.”

“Will you make me breakfast after?”

“I will.”

“Okay. Let me call in, and then I’m yours for the day.”

He kissed her cheek, a gentle touch just under the bandage, and went to get the bath ready.

~oOo~

Of course, if he’d thought his idea through a little more, he’d have realized that it entailed having Sid in front of him, between his legs, her back to him, which was not that far from the position that had him so eager this morning and had gone to hell so quickly.

She was okay, though, her pretty body relaxed on him, her eyes closed and her head tipped back so he could ease the sprayer, set so that the water was pouring, rather than spraying, out, over her long, thick hair. She didn’t seem bothered by the steel pole between them, maybe because it was against her back and not her ass.

He, however, was struggling. Her little nipples were high and tight from the stimulation of warm water and cool air. The water had her whole body slick and moving against him, and there was a chance he was going to have to wash her hair again to get the come out of it. Jesus fuck.

It did not help at all that she moaned softly every time his fingers went through her hair.

Finally finished, he turned off the sprayer and set it on its hook. “Better?”

Totally relaxed on him, she nodded. “That was fantastic.”

All he could do was chuckle.

Then she sat up and turned around, kneeling in front of him, between his legs. Eyeing his extremely prominent erection, she asked, “Is there a way we could…?”

His cock was practically nodding its own head. But no. “Need a condom, hon.”

“You could pull out.”

The thought of being inside her bare, even for a minute, was turning his brain into a madhouse. And Jesus, it was her damn idea. He closed his eyes. “That’s a kind of roulette I don’t play. Let’s just go back to bed.”

“Okay.” She rose to her feet, and for a moment she was standing in the middle of his tub, between his legs, water running in sparkling trails all down her sleek, golden skin, over her smooth, perfect pussy. Her hair was slicked back and darkened from the water, coiled like a rope over her shoulder, and she was Aphrodite rising from the foam. It was all he could do not to take himself in hand and jack off while she stood over him.

Then she stepped out, and, after yet another breath for control, he followed her. Before she could do it herself, he grabbed a fresh towel from the shelf and wrapped her up.

“I am so hot for you right now I’m gonna burn up from the inside out.”

She smiled and leaned in to suck at his nipple.

He groaned and picked her up. “Fuck, hon. Do not play. Not right now.”

As he took her back to the bed, she said, “I want to ride you.”

“Sweet holy hell. You got it.” He set her down and lay crossways on his bed, his feet still on the floor. He hadn’t bothered to dry off, but who the fuck cared. “Take me.”

“Condom?”

He’d fucking forgotten. The whole reason they weren’t still in the tub, flooding the floor. “Right. Top drawer.”

She dropped the towel and retrieved a condom from the box. Then she straddled him. As she tore open the wrapper and began to roll the latex down his desperate length, she said, “Why don’t you have an actual bed?”

“Didn’t seem like a need. And it’s not so far to fall if I go to bed drunk and roll off.”

“That happens?”

“It’s happened.” That came out in a groan when she arrived at his base and gave him a little squeeze.

Having wrapped him thoroughly, she resettled herself over his hips and held him as she came down onto him. She moved slowly, easing him in, and it was the best kind of torture. His hands had been under his head, but now he brought them forward and covered her tits, brushing his thumbs back and forth over her nipples until they were as hard as they’d been in the tub. She whimpered and rolled her hips in response.

This was not going to be a long, lazy fuck.

“Fuck, I love your tits. They are perfect. Just perfect.”

She blushed at that and leaned down to kiss him. When his tongue met hers, his hands went around her to hold her close, and she began to really move on him, surging downward, driving him deep, holding him tight. He could feel her in every part of his body. His fucking
toes
pulsed with the steady rhythm of her pussy sliding over his cock.

When she tore her mouth from his, they both drew in deep, loud breaths. “It’s good,” she whispered, her face hovering over his, her wet hair a tangled net around them. “It’s good, oh fuck, it’s so good.”

“Yeah, baby. It is.” He clutched her to him and sat up. The shift in position drove him in more deeply, and he was going to go. Right the fuck now. So he pushed his hand between them and found her clit, so slick and hot, and he latched his mouth onto one of her sweet tits, and he worked her hard, as fast as he could, until she started bouncing wildly on him, her pussy becoming a vise around him, and all he could do was hang on and come with her.

He howled his release and fell backward, taking her with him. They lay together, catching their breath, until Muse felt Cliff licking his leg.

“Go on outside, buddy. I’m okay.” The dog whined a little, but he padded away, his ID tags jingling.

“We owe him a day in the mountains, huh?”

“Yeah, I’d say so. I owe him more than that.”

They were quiet again, still joined, not ready not to be.

After a minute, Sid asked, “Muse?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“I’m falling here. Please don’t be an asshole.”

His heart stilled, then restarted with a thump. “You think I would be?”

“I don’t know. Please don’t be. Be honest and don’t play me. Respect me. That’s all I need.”

“That’s the only way I know how to be, hon. And you’re not alone—in how you feel, I mean.”

She lifted her head and looked down at him. “Yeah?”

He brushed his thumb below the bandage on her cheek—which was starting to lose its grip. One side had all but pulled away, and he could see the row of stitches, several stitches. At least five. Oh, yeah. He was going to get that bastard’s name.

“Yeah. I told you I care. Let’s just play it out, see where it goes. Okay?”

She put her head back down on his chest. “Okay.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

While Muse went to start breakfast, Sid got dressed. Not surprisingly, he didn’t have a hair dryer, so she wove her wet mop into a loose braid for now and put back on the clothes she’d been wearing last night.

Pulling her top over her head, she snagged the loosening bandage in the fabric, and it pulled free. With a muttered
ow
, she caught the useless gauze and tape and tossed it in the little wastebasket on the floor next to his crappy, knockdown dresser. The man was a minimalist, that was a definite.

Literally the only, the single, decorative piece in his entire house was a hinged, two-sided frame, one of the cheap metal things they sold at CVS, with two five-by-seven photographs, obviously enlargements of snapshots. One showed a younger Muse, maybe when he was in his twenties. He was wearing a different kutte, but otherwise he didn’t look much different, except that he was completely clean-shaven in the photo, and his hair was all a deep, dark brown. Also, it was all cropped military short. Now he wore his salt-and-pepper hair cropped on the sides and a little longer on top. She liked the way the longer top flopped over his forehead when he was on top of her. And she liked his salt-and-pepper scruff.

At first, she’d thought he kept it trimmed that way, but now she knew it really was just scruff. He shaved about once a week and just let it grow in the meantime. Because, he’d told her, he hated shaving, but too much beard was too hot for California. Apparently, he would soon stop shaving entirely and keep a beard through the winter. Sid wondered what that would feel like. She’d never been with a man with a full beard.

In the photo of the young him in his kutte, he was standing with his arm around a pretty girl ‘tween’ or early teens, with heavily frosted brown hair, done up in a spiky, aggressively Nineties style, and the dark makeup and grungy-goth clothes to match. Muse was smiling his wry smile at the camera. The girl was smiling broadly and looking up at Muse like he was the most amazing person in the history of everything.

Sid decided that that was his sister.

The other photo, this one blurred and much faded by time, showed an even younger Muse, a lanky teen, with the same girl, now a little pixie in pigtails, holding a huge brown rabbit in her arms. Standing with them was a heavyset older woman in polyester pants and a flowered smock. She had the kind of permed blue-grey hair Sid thought of as ‘grandmotherly,’ and she decided that this was a photo of Muse, his sister, and their grandmother.

“Time to eat, hon.”

At Muse’s low voice, Sid bobbled the picture frames, almost dropping them. She was acting guilty—she felt guilty—and she wasn’t sure why. “Oh—okay. Cool.” She set the photos back in their place on the dresser, opening the hinge so that the frames balanced.

When she turned back to him, his expression hardened, and he frowned. He walked straight to her without a word and put his hand on her face, turning her head to present her injured cheek and its seven stitches, no longer hidden by the bandage. “Fuck, Sid.”

“Muse…”

“Don’t tell me no. I know you won’t tell me who, so tell me how. What did he hit you with?”

Tired of the merry-go-round, she answered his question. “He punched me.”

“Not barehanded, he didn’t.”

“He had a big ring on his middle finger, took up the whole space between his first two knuckles. Don’t ask me what it looked like. It was coming at my face too fast to get much of a look at it.” She forced her head back forward so she could look him in the eye. “Will you please, please drop this now?”

He studied her for another second or two and then said, “Yeah. Okay. C’mon. Let’s get you another bandage.”

Though she didn’t believe for a second he was really going to drop it without more of a fight, she was glad he had for now. She let him lead her into his bathroom and sit her on the closed lid of the toilet. She didn’t mind—the bathroom was almost antiseptically clean. He wasn’t much into decorating, but he very much was not a slob.

“Seems like I’m always patching you up.” He met her eyes and smiled.

She laughed and shrugged. “You’re good at it.”

“Had some practice.”

As he taped fresh gauze over her wound, she asked, “In the pictures on your dresser—is that your sister with you? And your grandma, maybe?”

He paused in his ministrations and didn’t answer right away, which was weird. After that hesitation, when he spoke, his voice seemed stilted, too. “Yeah. Carrie. And that’s our grandma. Our mom’s mom.”

“It’s obvious your sister really loves you. I understand why, if you read
Wuthering Heights
for her. You must be an awesome big brother.”

Again, he only stared, this time even longer. Then he silently finished tending her wound. As he packed up his first aid kit—which was the size of a tackle box—he said, “Eggs are getting cold.”

She’d stepped in something, she could tell. Was Carrie dead? No—he’d used the present tense when he’d talked about her last night. Since he obviously didn’t want to talk about it, though, she didn’t ask. “Okay, thanks.”

He nodded and put the first aid kit back in the closet, then left the bathroom. Standing up, she got her first good look at her face since the day before. Holy shit. She was bruised from her temple to her mouth, her nose to her hairline. The swelling was pretty much gone, but she looked worse than she had yesterday. She looked like a battered woman.

~oOo~

After breakfast, Muse took her back to the women’s center to pick up her car. Peggy, the center director, had called her while they were eating breakfast to make sure she was okay—she’d seen Sid the night before, as she was leaving for the day and Sid was setting up for the class, so Peggy knew she’d been hurt at work. Then she’d arrived to open up that morning and had found Sid’s Thing still in the lot.

Sid felt bad for causing the sweet and ferociously protective Peggy even momentary worry, so when Muse pulled alongside the Thing, Sid got out and ran in to show her that all was well. Then Muse followed her back to her house, and she changed into clothes more befitting a day trip to hike around Lake Arrowhead.

Muse’s truck was an old Chevy pickup with a bench seat in the cab. The three of them—Muse, Sid, and Cliff—all rode up front. At first, Sid thought that was a pretty terrible idea, because Cliff wasn’t exactly a toy breed, and she wasn’t thrilled at the thought of sitting with a hundred-pound beast on her lap. But the dog sat next to the window like a perfect gentleman, and Sid sat in the middle with Muse’s hand on her thigh, and all was right with the world.

As they climbed the mountain, and the air filled with the piney scent of mountain nature, Cliff got a little more excited. Muse had rolled the window down a couple of inches. Through the foothills, Cliff stuck his nose out every now and then, just checking in. Once the air freshened, he wedged his snout in the open space and huffed like an addict. By the time Muse pulled into a little gravel lot that was obviously a trailhead, Cliff was practically tweaking on fresh air.

When they got out, the dog danced around in a circle, but he stayed close, Muse put a harness thing over his head, and Cliff wasn’t thrilled about that at all. He lay on the ground and spent a solid minute trying to work it off with his front paws, while Muse locked the cab and the steel box in the bed. He’d put his kutte in that box before they’d gotten into his truck.

“Is that some kind of muzzle?” It didn’t look like a very effective muzzle, if it was. Cliff’s mouth wasn’t covered.

“It’s called a Gentle Leader. Not a muzzle. More a halter like horses wear.”

“What’s it for, then?”

“So I don’t yank on his throat if he gets excited and needs to be controlled. Cliff has a squirrel problem.” He ruffled the dog’s head. “Dontcha, boy?” The boy in question barked happily and turned toward the trail.

It was too early yet for ski season, but not by much, and the day was cold and bright. Muse was only wearing a thermal and a hoodie, and he seemed fine, but half an hour into their hike, Sid had pulled up the faux-fur trimmed hood on her down jacket and shoved her hands into her pockets.

Muse noticed and pulled her close. “You’re cold. Want to head back?”

They’d been talking aimlessly, focused on Cliff’s enthusiastic enjoyment of the hike, pausing so he could thoroughly sniff and then mark every tree, rock, and trail marker they passed.

“Not yet. He’s having too much fun.” She nodded toward the dog, whose nose was planted in the ground at the base of a big rock.

“Okay. There’s a meadow up ahead, and since we haven’t passed anybody, I’m gonna let him off the leash for a while. Then we can head down. There’s a diner in town that’ll let Cliff sit with us on their patio. They run a couple of big outdoor heaters, so you’ll be warm.

“Okay. Sounds nice. You know, today is our first actual date.”

He cocked his head. “What?”

“We’re out somewhere together, going to a restaurant for a meal. I think this is our first date.”

“I guess it is. Huh. I wonder if I’ll get lucky at the end. Since I’m buying you a meal and all. Only fair.”

She laughed. “Maybe
I’ll
pay.”

“Yeah? I guess I’ll have to put out, then. That’ll make me twice as lucky.”

She punched his arm. “Caveman.”

He grunted.

When they got to the meadow, Muse removed the halter thing from around Cliff’s head, and the dog immediately dropped to the golden grass and rolled, rubbing his face on the ground.

“He doesn’t like that thing, does he? Does it hurt him?”

“Nah. He doesn’t like it, though, it’s true. It’s supposed to be a dominance thing. It uses pressure across his snout, which is supposed to be the way wolves and pack dogs assert dominance, pushing a lesser dog’s nose down. Cliff’s pretty alpha, I guess, so he always fights it at first. But I haven’t been able to break him of his squirrel fetish, and I hate the choke collars and shit like that. The Leader just bugs him, it doesn’t hurt him. And it works. You saw—he sees ‘em, he wants ‘em, but he doesn’t chase ‘em, not with that thing on.”

“Will he bolt if he sees one now?”

“Yeah, but if I whistle, he’ll come. He could be off leash all the time, since he always comes when I whistle. But I don’t have clear sight to what’s coming on the trail, and I don’t want him to scare anybody coming around a bend if he gets some distance before I can call him back.”

He led her to a boulder and sat at its base, pulling her down with him and settling her between his legs. The position briefly reminded her of her freakout that morning, but she set those thoughts aside. It was old shit, and she usually had it well under control. There had been too many unstable factors this morning—the lingering effects of the day before, the oddity of waking up in Muse’s bed, the muddy disorientation of not-quite-wakefulness—otherwise, she would have been much calmer and would have been able to just turn around so they could fuck face to face.

Now, though, since she had freaked out, Sid was worried that he would ask why and push, as he so liked to do, for an answer. She didn’t know whether she would give him one. She didn’t talk about the answer. Ever.

While she was ruminating on that, Muse said, “My sister is in a coma. She has been for three years, and they say she won’t ever wake up. They call it a Persistent Vegetative State.”

Her thoughts died in her head, and she turned so she could see his face. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s awful. Can I ask what happened?”

“Car wreck on her thirtieth birthday. Drunk driver.”

“Fuck. Did they get the drunk driver?”

He looked out over the meadow. “Yeah. Our father. Killed three people in the car he hit head on, made Carrie like she is, and he came out of it with nothin’ but a fucking broken arm. He’s doing thirty-three at Chino.”