Between the Sheets (27 page)

“It’s not something I do a lot of,” Ty said, ending the conversation. “And I’m not for hire.”

“Thirty thousand dollars?” Sean asked, totally ignoring him. “In what, like four minutes? And this crowd? With advertising, we’d have double, probably triple!”

“It took me a year to build the bike, Sean. It’s not like it was easy money.”

“The Chamber of Commerce can take care of the permits,” Shelby said. “If you joined—”

“I’m not interested in the Chamber of Commerce,” he said, a little too quickly. A little too roughly. She paled slightly but didn’t back down.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “Because you could be a real asset.”

“Asset?” He hadn’t been an asset. Ever. “To what?”

Shelby and Cora exchanged a quick glance. Brody wrapped his fingers around Ashley’s. A small raft of community around him.

“To us,” Sean said. “Bishop.”

Ty laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” Shelby said. “We’re not.”

“Look, guys, I’m not interested in a Chamber of Commerce or helping this community. I appreciate what you’ve done tonight, but I’m going to head home and check on my kid. Sean, I’ll take care of the tickets and come back tomorrow to settle up the bill.”

Ty went back inside to say goodbye to the people who were still left. Jimmy said he’d be following him home in a little bit, but he was finishing up a conversation with one of the locals, who had turned himself into a mess over his ex, and Jimmy was being a kind ear.

Ty made a quick circle of the bar, making sure the guys who’d had too much to drink had a way home that didn’t involve them getting behind the wheel. He shook hands with Sean and Brody once more and then made his way out to his truck, which Jimmy had parked around the corner on another dark street.

And there, leaning against the driver’s side door, was Shelby.

She heard the crunch of his boots over the asphalt and pushed herself away from the truck.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his face in hard lines that only reinforced the misgivings that this had not been her best idea.

He needed a chance to cool down; she should have waited until tomorrow. But no, she’d ignored the reasonable voice. For the first time in her life she ignored the reasonable voice. It was highly uncomfortable.

“I’m hoping for a ride home.” She lifted her chin, braving it out.

He glanced around at the shadows of the street. “You don’t have your car?”

Her breath stalled in her chest. He was not going to make this easy. “I do.”

“You drunk?”

She shook her head.

“Where’s Joe?”

“He went home.”

The streetlight slashed across his face, shadowing his lips, illuminating his eyes, cutting him into pieces so she could not be sure of the whole of him. He reached past her and unlocked her door.

“Get in,” he said, holding open the door for her. She climbed into the cold cab and he shut the door behind her. She watched as he walked across the front of the truck and wondered how this had happened. How this wild man had stepped so thoroughly into her life. And how it seemed he wanted to be there. What in her narrow and rigid world could possibly be keeping him?

He climbed in on the driver’s side and shut the door behind him, but didn’t start the truck. Their breath fogged slightly in the cold air; the shadows made everything stark.

And clear.

She didn’t want Joe. Not even a little.

“Ty—”

With one hand he reached over and cupped the back of her neck, pulling her toward him, and she went. She coiled and sprung and launched herself at him. His lips met hers in a bruising kiss that barely held onto civility. On her knees beside him she buried her fingers in his hair, feeling the shape of his head in her palms.

His hand slid over her hips, grabbing her ass with
force. With intent. His fingers slipped down between her legs, pressing hard where she wanted him most.

“Ty—”

“Don’t talk.”

Fine. Yes. Like that. Exactly like that
. She put a hand against his jeans, the faded spots where the buttons of his fly had worn into the denim. He was hard under those buttons. Hard for her.

She shifted her weight, sitting back against her knees, trapping his hand between her legs. She rocked against him, using his fingers to push her higher. Make her wilder. Quickly she undid the buttons of his fly, finding the heat of his flesh beneath layers of clothing.

She was dying. Dying for him, so empty inside it was all she felt. Vacant and blank and waiting. For him.

Somehow he got his hand free from the trap between her legs and he put it in her hair, pulling out the rubber band, tangling his fingers until it stung. She gasped, tilting her head back to alleviate the sting.

His other hand cupped her throat, her chin, pulling her face down to his. Looking into his eyes, she wrapped her hand around his dick. Jacking it slowly up and down its length while his eyes burned into hers.

They didn’t kiss. Open-mouthed, they breathed into one another. Eyes locked, bodies inside coats, and clothing straining toward the other.

“I want to have sex,” she whispered.

“No condom.” He took her lower lip between his teeth and she cried out in pleasure and pain. Between her legs, her arousal pounded, and she had to have him inside of her. In any way.

Scooching backward, she eased down into the foot well, her body over his leg, and she took him into her mouth. Sucking him so hard and so fast his hands flew back against the seat, as if to keep himself steady.

“Oh God. Shelby,” he moaned, his hips pushing up
against her, and she eased off. She found a rhythm, hard and fast, and then slow and teasing.

His laughter had an edge that sent her blood sizzling through her. With one hand, he grabbed her and pulled her back up onto the bench seat. She pulled away from him, about to ask what he was doing, but he stopped her with a hand at her chin.

“Keep going,” he breathed.

She arranged herself as best she could on her stomach and he reached his hand down the back of her pants, finding her where she was empty and aching and wet. His fingers stabbed into her and she arched backward against him.

It was messy and fast and frantic, but soon she was shuddering against the worn nap of the bench seat, breaking into a thousand dark pieces. A thousand dark and wanton and needy pieces. And then he was, too, holding her head in his hands, arching against her, moaning her name as he came.

In the silence of after, she pulled away slowly. Her mouth, then her face. She got to her knees very carefully, because she felt in some ways like she’d been broken and put together with an unreliable hand.

As she moved, his hand slipped away from her and she felt the scrape of his calluses and blisters against the tender skin of her hips, caught between her skin and the fabric of her jeans. She twitched, then shifted, wanting to keep him there. His large palm, warm and firm against her flesh.

His hand could stay there forever. In fact, the two of them could move into this truck and never leave. Pizza could be delivered. They could just have sex and live in this moment without anything but them—no reputations, no sons in trouble, no mothers slipping farther and farther from shore.

Just them. And the sex that turned her inside out.

He squeezed her cheek as if he understood that, but still he pulled away, and then there was nothing to do but sit up, wipe her mouth, and try to make sense of what had happened. Of what this was between them.

The windows were foggy; the air, chilly only ten minutes ago, was now humid, smelling of bodies and sex. And part of her was thrilled to find herself here, as if she’d been waiting for just this sort of invitation to be opened to her, while the other part of her was astonished that she wanted this.

Wild, nearly out-of-control sex in a car with a man whose anger toward her was something she felt in the air. Like a coming storm.

She pushed her hair away from her face and found him watching her. His lush lips red, as if he’d been biting them, and she reached out to touch them.

But he caught her fingers in his hand.

“I don’t share.”

She blinked, curling her fingers against his.

“Did you hear me, Shelby? I don’t share.”

“What a ridiculous thing to say.”

“If you want to date Joe, you don’t get to fuck me.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“I have no clue what you’re doing.”

“I don’t want to date Joe.”

He began to do up the buttons of his jeans, lifting his hips to tuck himself back into his boxers. She watched as his pink flesh, slick with her saliva, disappeared.

“I only want you.” The words were a surprise. To both of them. His hand stilled on his pants and she held her breath, feeling like she’d just changed the game between them. Shoved them into unfamiliar territory. All the guards they wore, the masks and personas, fell away, and she felt suddenly more naked in this moment than she had with him ever.

“Then what were you doing with him?”

“I was finding out that I don’t want to date him. For a lot of years I thought he was exactly what I wanted. But he’s not.” She thought of how Ty never got scared. He met her head-on, every single time, with his own damage in tow. “You are.”

And then his fingers shifted against hers and he twined their hands together. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Despite having long hair her entire life she’d never quite mastered the toss, but somehow she managed to get it done so she could look him in the eye.

His smile was of a different variety. It wasn’t cheeky or cocky. It wasn’t sexy or a barely veiled threat. It was an invitation to a place deeper inside of him, past the sex and the shared weight of the heavy loads they carried in their lives.

It was a glimpse of who he was and what he wanted.

And part of her reared up in fear. In panicked fear.

She didn’t know how to be the kind of person people let in like that. She didn’t know how to be close to someone in that way.

It was as if all the wants and desires she’d suppressed, the anger and fear created in her by her father, her inadequacy and her awkwardness, were too heavy and she couldn’t carry them with her, couldn’t get them through this door that he was opening for her, and so she was stuck, marooned on an island of her own baggage.

I can’t get there
, she thought.
That place you are showing me. That secret side of yourself. I can’t reach it
.

“I only want you, too,” he said.

She pushed herself back up on her knees and then sat down properly, blood rushing back into her feet, which had fallen asleep the way she’d been crouching.

“Shelby?” He touched her face and she nearly flinched away. “Shelby, look at me.”

“Ty—”

“Look. At. Me.” His voice was firm but soft, and as she lifted her eyes to his, her attention got snagged on his smile. “You think I don’t see you?” he asked. “I do. I see you.”

She wanted to ask him what he meant, or maybe make a joke, but she couldn’t. Because she knew exactly what he meant. He saw her marooned on that baggage.

“We’re two people.” His fingers touched her face, the edges of her lips, where if she smiled more she might have wrinkles. Lips she never thought about until he touched them. “Two people who just want each other. Who like each other. It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing to be scared of.”

But it is
, she wanted to say. Because it had been years since she’d started a relationship with a man. Years. And those early relationships hadn’t exactly been giant victories. They’d been mostly cold, slightly awkward affairs with men she wanted very little from. Men there was never any fear would try to get more from her.

Men who would never claim to see her. Men she’d never give that opportunity to.

“Shelby?”

“Okay.” She pulled her face away but he didn’t let go, and his fingers bit into her cheeks as she continued to try and dodge his gaze. He wouldn’t let her. So finally she looked up at him, feeling defiant and wrecked at the same time.

“Don’t be scared,” he whispered, his beautiful lips curved in a soft smile. “I’m not Dean. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Oh, you stupid man. I’m not scared of being hurt. It’s my sharp edges that will slice you open. You are the one that will regret this. Keep your secret self, keep your softness and your vulnerability. Don’t show it to me, because I will inevitably hurt you
.

“You’re nothing like Dean,” she said. “You’re not like any person I’ve ever known.”

“Yeah?” He laughed. “Because I only take you to the
finest places?” He glanced around the truck and she smiled, the tension inside of her cracking.

“I like how you take me,” she whispered.

His eyes narrowed at her words and she felt his desire; the surge of it in his body crashed over his boundaries and onto her.

“It’s you.” He whispered kisses across her lips. “It’s you who takes me. Every time.”

She melted against him. The hard stones of her doubts and worries became inconsequential when he touched her.

Maybe it will all be okay
, she thought.
Maybe this time, it will be fine
.

A knock on the window sent her scrambling back, her hands on her lips as if she could hide the proof of the kiss.

It was one of the men from the bar. The man with tattoos on his neck and across his knuckles, with the long beard and mustache.

A sound embarrassingly like a squeak came out of her throat.

Ty smiled, swearing under his breath, and unrolled the window.

“Hey, Jimmy.”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t mean—” Jimmy’s eyes darted over to Shelby, who tried to fade into the shadows. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Ty said, keeping his hand over Shelby’s. “What’s up?”

“John poured Tommy into their truck and took off and I was hoping for a ride back to your place.”

“Hop in.”

Jimmy ran around the back of the truck to the passenger side and Shelby scooched over to the middle of the bench seat, pulling her purse onto her lap, trying to take up as little space as possible.

“Thanks, man,” Jimmy said, slamming shut the passenger door. He was big, but he turned himself against the door, making sure there was distance between him and her. Which was nice. “I’m sorry if I was interrupting.”