Tirone (The Night Skulls MC #2)(5)

When she gazed at me this time, a hint of smile crossed her lips and eyes. “I remember this one. It made me think you were dating Gaynor Mosley.”

“The Emo girl?”

“She looks more of a dominatrix… So…”

“She’s into some kinky shit that’s for sure.”

“Oh, so you did…you know…date her?”

I couldn’t help the smirk. “Jealous?”

She shrugged, averting her gaze. “Why would I be?”

“Because if you were, I’d say you were so fucking hot when you were jealous, Miss Meneceo,” I answered, and she blushed. Fuck, she was killing me right now. “Then I’d say that I’d been fucking the entire class just to get my mind off of you, and when it didn’t work, I wrote stupid poems about it and gave them to you as homework, hoping, praying, you’d get a clue.”

Her lips stretched into a full grin for one second, but then she shook it off her face and gave me her stern look. “I thought you were here to help me sleep.”

“God, you’re cruel.” I kissed her forehead one more time, and then I plopped on my back on the bed, hands clasped behind my head. “All right, go do your whatever girly bedtime ritual you have. I’ll be waiting.”

She sauntered toward the bathroom, and I murmured, “The flowers have not yet died… She swallows me whole.”

“I don’t remember this one. Where is it from?”

“Stuff I kept to myself.” I nodded toward the bathroom door. “Don’t take too long.”

A couple of minutes later she came out without the cardigan, not looking at me at all. Then she locked the front door methodically and turned off every single light in the apartment. It was pitch black in the bedroom, but somehow she found her way in. She went over to the curtains, closed them and made sure not a speck of light came through them.

The mattress sank next to me. Her breath was loud in the room, and her warmth radiated off her body. The bed squeaked under me as I scooted over to her and placed my arm under her head. She curled up against me, her back to my front. Her body fit perfectly on mine. Her scent, a whiff of roses and lavender and something…salty, summer breeze and sunrise, filled my nostrils. I inhaled her, engraving her smell in my memory forever.

“If you need to take your jacket off, only your jacket, that would be all right,” she said.

“Thank you.” I did want to take it off but didn’t want to spook her or give her the wrong idea. She already had plenty of those about me. I took it off and resumed my position. How lucky was I to have her in my arms, in her own bed, spending the night at her place?

“Ty…”

As much as I hated that name, I was happy she was no longer being formal with me. “Yes, baby?”

“What happens in the morning?”

“I’ll still be here. When you wake up, I’ll make you breakfast, and then we’ll go to school. I’ll make sure of that. Then I’ll be spending excruciating eight hours thinking about your body in the dirtiest ways you can ever imagine, knowing that I can’t act based on those fantasies…yet. Later again, around the same time like tonight, I’ll sneak in and cuddle with you all night, while you pretend it’s not my painful erection that’s poking your ass, just like now.”

I imagined her doing that cute jaw drop thing she did whenever she was too stunned to speak. I couldn’t see shit in this induced blackness, though. No wonder she had nightmares.

“I-I mean, how are you going to leave without anybody seeing you?”

I chuckled. “Don’t worry, baby. I won’t let anything hurt or disturb you…as long as you’re here with me, as long as you’re mine.”

“That sounds more of a threat than reassurance.”

“I didn’t mean to. The two days you were gone… You don’t know what they did to me. I wasn’t myself anymore.”

“What do you mean you weren’t yourself?”

I stroked her hair. “Hushh. I’ll never hurt you or put you in danger, Jo. All I ask in return is that you be with me. Can you do that for me, baby?”





CHAPTER 3


Tirone



Her eyes darted around, right and left, like they did that night I showed up unannounced at her door. Except back then she wasn’t hiding them behind another man’s shades. I yanked them off. The idea of another man’s anything on her was unbearable.

Pale blue eyes glared back at me, matching my anger. “Stay the hell away from me.”

“Do you know how many nights it took you before you trusted me enough to show me those eyes? Do you know how many strokes I gave your stupid wig, thinking I was soothing you to sleep? And you give it all to him, just like that.”

“Your father earned my trust with the things he’s done for me,” she fumed. “I can’t believe you knew whom he was and never told me.”

“I was going to.”

“When the fuck were you going to tell me, Tirone? After you banished me to Psycho Obsessivia with you?”

Psycho Obsessivia. That’s a good one. “You’re calling me a psycho? You drugged me and left me on the fucking street to die.”

“You forced me to break up with my boyfriend, neglecting to tell me he was your dad, and coerced me into moving in with you God only knew where after you raped me with a gun.”