Ride Steady (Chaos #3)(33)

And suddenly I had a new dream. One that didn’t involve motherhood, cookies, doing laundry, and being a soccer mom.

One that centered around penetrating the impenetrable.

“So? What?” he prompted irately.

At his words, I flew across the room.

He had the chance to go back on a boot but that was all he had before my body slammed into his, my hands went to either side of his head and I lifted up on tiptoe as I yanked him down.

Then I pressed my lips hard against his.

A breath later, something strange happened.

Strange and wondrous.

His arms closed around me, and if I could think of anything, I’d worry about the state of my ribs.

But I couldn’t think of anything because his tongue spiked into my mouth and my world changed.

My entire world.

I didn’t have a dead sister.

I didn’t have a dead mother.

I didn’t have a lonely father looking after his mother, who was addled with Alzheimer’s disease.

I didn’t have an ex-husband, who I once loved who I thought would cherish and protect me and help me build my dream, but now was making my life a misery and trying to take my son away from me.

I had this.

All of it. All the biker named Joker gave me by holding me so tight it was a pain that hurt so good and who was invading my mouth with his tongue in a way that stated clearly he could do it for a lifetime and never get enough.

My hands left his head so I could curve my arms around his shoulders as I pressed closer.

In return, one of his hands slid up my spine. He pulled out my ponytail holder and drove his fingers into my hair, cupping the back of my head, tilting it one way while he slanted his the other. He deepened the kiss in an intoxicating way while his other hand glided down and cupped one cheek of my behind.

That felt good.

He shuffled me back.

I went with him.

We kept kissing.

Then he turned quickly and we were falling.

He landed on his back on the bed. I landed on him but barely had the opportunity to experience the dizzying beauty of the long length of his hard frame under mine before I was given more beauty when he rolled me and I had the weight of his hard frame pressing mine into the bed.

His hand left my bottom and went up, fingers yanking at my navy LeLane’s polo shirt, pulling it from my khakis, and then I had its heat, skin against skin.

I was right.

His hands were rough.

It felt so miraculous, I whimpered against his tongue.

The instant I did, he was gone.

I lay on the bed, blinking up at him as he stood over me, a biker god with long, messy hair, a beard that made the skin around my mouth sting gloriously, his chest rising and falling in a way I wanted to feel, the steel of his eyes closed against me.

“Joker—” I whispered.

“Took that too far. That’s on me. You don’t try that shit again, it won’t happen again. But you try it again, what happens will be on you.”

I had the highly unusual and electrifying desire to try it again and again and again.

“You need to get laid, do me and my brothers a favor, find it off Chaos. And you throw Chaos’s help in our face, that’s your call,” he clipped. “But you do that shit, you’re a fool.”

He said not another word.

He turned on his boot and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

Chapter Six

Free

Carissa

“WHAT THE FUCK?”

I looked up, tossing a ringlet back that had escaped the red bandana I had tied (rather adorably, I thought) around my head to hold my thick mess of curly hair back, and saw Joker at the doorway to his room, looking unhappy.

The ringlet fell in my eye.

Joker’s eyes narrowed on it.

“What the f*ck are you doin’?” he asked when I didn’t answer his opening question.

“That’s twenty cents,” I returned.

“Hunh?” he grunted.

“Regular curse words are a nickel,” I told him. “Bad curse words are a dime. Everyone knows the f-word is a bad one and since, starting now, you’re paying me every time you curse, that’s twenty cents you owe me.” I shook my hair, bandana and all. “I’ll give it to charity or something. The way you cuss, we’ll probably be able to build a homeless shelter in a week.”

He didn’t look any less unhappy when I finished talking but he did take two steps toward me.

“Carissa, what are you doin’ in my room?”

It was the day after my kiss with Joker. A day where I thought of nothing but Joker… and that kiss. A day and a sleepless night where I thought long and hard about it and made a decision.

I wanted more.

There were a variety of reasons for this.

He was handsome. He wasn’t my type, but really, who knew what my type was? All I’d had was Aaron, and I’d found Aaron was definitely the wrong type for me.

So maybe Joker was my type.

He was also nice. Sure, he cursed constantly and in the beginning he’d seemed thoughtless about my pie, but he and his friends had done a variety of good things for me, all of them huge. But it started with him, which meant he started it.

Further, once he’d prowled out after our kiss, I’d seen the pie plate in his room on his nightstand.

The empty pie plate.