Own the Wind (Chaos #1)(40)

He was good-looking always, better when he was laughing, but it kinda peeved me he was laughing when I wasn’t being funny.

“Shy,” I snapped into his laughter. He sobered, kind of, and focused on me. Then he started speaking.

“Baby, I got a piece of tail, I f**k,” he announced, and that didn’t make me any less peeved. I figured he noted that because he carried on, “I f**k and I do it hard. I take what I want and if the bitch gets off, golden. If she doesn’t let go enough to let me take her there, that’s not my problem.”

Again, this didn’t make me feel much better.

“I’m not sure why you’re sharing this with me, Shy,” I told him. “I’m equally unsure I feel real good about what you’re sharing.”

His hand shifted minutely so his thumb could move over my cheek and my lips before his eyes got intense and he explained, “I have never, not once, not in my life, made love to any woman. Not once. Not until what I just did with you.”

Oh.

Wow.

That was a good response.

“I had you up against the headboard, baby, but that was not f**king and it came natural. It’s what we have. I didn’t know that’s what I’d get but I’m pleased as f**k you gave it to me. That alone answers your why when it comes to the us part. As for why it’s you, I don’t know, I don’t care. It just is. It could be ’cause you’re gorgeous. It could be ’cause you’re funny. It could be ’cause I like the way you handled Pete when he lost his daughter. It could be ’cause you and me got Chaos in common, it’s us, it’s in our blood and this was meant to be. It could be ’cause I like the way you are with your family. It could be ’cause you get off on bein’ on the back of my bike almost as much as I get off straddling it. I figure it’s all that and more. I am not gonna analyze it. I’m gonna feel it ’cause I like it and that’s all there is to it.”

That response was even better.

“Do you wanna know why it’s you?” I asked quietly, my hand gliding up his arm to his chest.

“Don’t wanna piss you off, Tab, but I don’t give a f**k. I’m happy just rejoicin’ that it is.”

Another good answer.

“Now,” he continued, “you get that I’m pretty f**kin’ sure and my guess is, you’re here in my bed, my tee, and my arms, you’re pretty f**kin’ sure. So are we good?”

“Mostly,” I answered and his head tipped to the side.

“Mostly?” he prompted when I didn’t explain.

“Well, I didn’t get the work thing entirely sorted. I have a feeling they’ll let me renege on the contract since I told them I had a family emergency, but if I renege that means I don’t have a job.”

“Can you get your old one back?” he asked.

I shook my head. “They weren’t happy to see me go and they told me when I got back from Cape Cod, if I wanted to come back and they had an opening, they’d see what they could do, but I don’t wanna go back there, Shy. Since you and me, uh… had our thing, Dr. Dickhead got worse and began to target me. He used to spread his dickheadedness wide, but when I became his focus, I decided I couldn’t deal.”

“You talk to the administrators?”

“No, Shy and, darlin’ ”—I kept going quickly, because I knew by the change in his expression and the muscle that ticked in his jaw what he was going to say—“you don’t get how it works in that world, but doctors are king. I could get embroiled in a big drama but in the end it would be a lot of headache, time, and stress, and either I’d have to suck it up and carry on or I’d have to get out and move on. It’s just the way it is.”

“Lucky for you I don’t live in that world,” Shy replied and my belly lurched.

Uh-oh. I knew what that meant, and what that meant was that it was damage control time.

“Shy, you don’t and I don’t but I do have to exist in it for eight-hour shifts, five days a week.”

He leaned a bit away from me and declared casually, “No blowback.”

Great.

The guys said that word all the time and then things would happen, like a few years ago when Tyra got kidnapped and stabbed, like, a gazillion times. Granted, that huge drama wasn’t Dad’s fault. It happened because Tyra’s best friend Lanie’s messed-up fiancé was, well… totally freaking messed up. So messed up, he got both Tyra and Lanie dragged into it. Still, Dad also got in the mix, and no one had given me the full briefing but however it went down pissed my big brother Rush off so much he refused to approach the Club to become a recruit. This gave me the sense that Dad’s involvement upped Tyra’s vulnerability. She survived and she was a fighter, so she didn’t let what happened drag her down, not even a little bit.

But still.

“Shy, I don’t want you to get involved,” I told him.

“And Tabby”—his face dipped close—“you showed up at my door and, unlike other women, you get the life so it’s gonna come as no surprise to you when I say, I hear you, baby, but I’m still getting involved.”

There it was and it came fast.

I had to do the balancing act.

“Shy, seriously,” I said softly, pressing my fingers into his chest for emphasis, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”