Own the Wind(41)

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.”

“I do it right, Tab, you won’t feel anything at all, and mark me, honey, I’ll do it right.”

Fabulous.

I stared at him and it came to me.

Talk to Tyra.

I might have lived in the biker world all my life, but until I was sixteen and she disappeared, my mom was my biker-babe mentor and she was no good at it.

Tyra was the master.

I’d talk to her.

That was, I’d talk to Tyra about managing Shy after I talked to Tyra about how it was a good idea I was with Shy and then waited for her to get over the fact I was with Shy and believe in us (or pretend she did until she really believed in us), then I’d talk to Tyra about Shy rocking my employment world.

Hopefully, she’d get over the Shy-and-I-being-an-us thing fast, because I had a feeling from the look in his eyes, Shy wasn’t going to dawdle.

“You with me?” he asked, and I wasn’t.

Still, I said, “Kind of, but can I reserve the right to discuss this with you later, at a time when I haven’t just become part of an us with a hot biker guy and brother to my father and a bunch of men who are family to me?”

He grinned and muttered, “Yeah you can reserve that right.”

At least there was that.

Then his hand moved from the side of my head down to my chest and kept drifting further down when he continued, “Though, I reserve the right to repeat that I’m still gettin’ involved.”

Wonderful.

“Shy—”

“Talk over, Tabby, we got things to do.”

I blinked and asked, “We do?”

“We totally f*ckin’ do,” he answered.

“What things?”

He didn’t answer.

He dropped his torso to mine just as his hand curved around my breast and his lips hit my lips.

Then we did the things we had to do which, to spell it out, was take a few trips to paradise.





Chapter Nine


Family Reunion


I heard the knock on the door and I slowly opened my eyes.

It was morning, I could see the sun shining into Shy’s apartment and I was in his bed.

More precisely, I was naked on him in his bed. Chest to chest, my body over his, my cheek to his shoulder, my hips off to the side, my leg crooked, knee resting against his thigh, his arm curled around my waist at an angle so his hand could cup my behind.

This position, surprisingly, felt supercomfortable and very nice, but I had no idea how he could sleep like that without being crushed or at the very least being able to breathe.

I also had no idea how I could sleep like that, seeing as I was naked and I could feel the sheet pulled up to just below my bottom, but mostly I had it all hanging out.

In my groggy, waking-up mind, memories of the day before hit me, and I had the feeling I knew how I could sleep like that and he could too.

I rarely slept naked, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Sometimes, when Jason and I went out on the town and I came back tipsy, we’d have wild monkey sex, this would go on for a while, and then I’d pass out naked.

Normally, if having sex was the last thing we did before going to sleep, after we did the deed, he gave me the hug-and-roll, I slid out of bed, cleaned up, and pulled on panties and a nightie before I hit the sack for good.

This was all the experience I had.

Jason was number two in my not-so-long list of lovers. I gave it away to my high school boyfriend when I was seventeen. It wasn’t great. It didn’t suck. What sucked was, even though he was way into me and told me it was forever and I liked him enough to give him my virginity (which was to say, a lot), he told his friends he did me and that crap got back to me. This did not fill me with joy, and I dumped him. He was devastated, I didn’t feel all that great about the situation, but I wasn’t going to take that, the looks, the under-the-breath comments, the girls’ bitchiness, all of which he caused by doing something as stupid as bragging.