Move the Sun (Signal Bend Series) (12 page)

He got her into the ladies
’ and locked the door before he released her legs and let her slide them back to the floor. Still kissing her, he walked her backward until she bumped against the sink, and then he spun her around. She put her hands on either side of the old-fashioned porcelain bowl and looked at him in the mirror. He met her reflected gaze in the glass and brought his hands around her waist to undo her jeans. He moved quickly, yanking them and her –oh,
nice
—sheer white lace thong to her knees. He pushed gently but steadily between her shoulder blades until she bent forward. Then he snagged a condom from his wallet, opened his belt and jeans, and rolled it on.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered.

“Easy, baby. Gimme a sec to get dressed. Told you I don’t intend to knock you up.” Condom on, he grabbed her hip in his left hand and slid his right down her ass and between her legs. God, she felt good, silky and so damn wet. “Fuck, Sport. No wonder you’re impatient. You’re so wet I could drink you.” He flicked his drenched fingers roughly over her clit until her hips bucked and twitched, then he positioned himself and slid easily into her.

“Oh, fuck yeah. Go hard.”

He was deep in her, and she was tight and hot. He was already panting with the need to move. And this had to be a quickie. But they’d had really rough sex less than 24 hours earlier—blood-in-the-bed rough sex. “You sure? After last night?”

She looked up and caught his eyes in the mirror. “Go!”

He took her at her word, starting off hard, slamming into her as hard and fast as he could. She bucked against him, her hands clutching the sides of the sink, her knuckles white. “Fuck, yeah! Yeah! Fuck, make me come! Harder, God, harder!”

Holy shit, this woman. He folded over her, bringing his hands from her hips to take her clit and a
nipple, sliding into her top and pinching her through the soft lace of her bra. He was rough and moved fast, pinching and pulling as he drummed into her. She was making no effort whatsoever to be quiet, but the band was still playing, so people would have to be clustered around the restroom door to hear. Not that that wasn’t likely.

As worked up as she was, he was at least as much, though he was keeping
comparatively quiet, biting his lip viciously to do so. He was worried he was going to come before her. He was alarmed at how often he had trouble holding off with her. It was not usually a problem.

But then she was coming, shouting wordlessly, her muscles clamping down aroun
d his throbbing, hypersensitive cock. He grabbed her hips again and held off until she was finished and then, with just a couple more deep, powerful thrusts, he came, too, grunting, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips, until he thought he’d collapse.

He rested his forehead on her back for a second, but then she stood straight and pushed back from the sink, making him
slide quickly out of her and take an awkward step to keep his footing. She pulled a couple of paper towels from the dispenser and wiped herself. Pulling up her jeans and thong, she looked at him in the mirror and said, “Probably should get back out there.” She washed her hands and waited by the door for him to pull himself together.

An abrupt end to an intense fuck. He was spun.

~oOo~

The
y closed the bar. Aside from a few parking lot scrapes, easily dispensed with, and one rowdily inebriated Darren Brown to contain and find a ride home for, the night was easy. They drank, they danced. And they’d fucked. They’d done another couple of rounds of shots between the band’s second and third sets, and Lilli was on the edge of being too drunk to keep her seat on his bike. From that point, Isaac’s mission became keeping her at that level of drunkenness and no more.

Lilli danced with all of the Horde who asked her. Isaac was pleased to see that she kept more distance from them than she had with him, but he als
o noticed the way all the men’s—all of them, not just his brothers—eyes tended to focus on her ass while she moved. It pissed him off. He understood it—Lilli had the kind of ass you see in ads for sexy underwear. Or on biker pinup calendars. Impossible not to appreciate. But he was feeling more and more territorial about her with each passing day. Fuck, with each passing
hour
. And he knew the town already considered her his, so he would have to respond to any challenge to that. So he glowered at his brothers dancing with her until he couldn’t take it anymore. He swallowed back the rest of his beer and stood up.

She was dancing alone, suddenly. Dan,
her most recent partner, was headed off to the john. Isaac started making his way to her, around the tables and chairs, and the weaving bodies of drunk dancers, when he saw Steve Bohler grab her and spin her around, trying to dance with her. She pulled away sharply, but Bohler grabbed her again and put his hand square on her ass.

Oh, that asshole was going to lose that hand.

Isaac charged forward, plowing through the people on the dance floor, but when he got to Lilli, he stopped short. He didn’t see what she’d done, but Bohler was on the floor, clutching his throat and not breathing much at all. She must have punched him, her and her big silver rings.

Isaac
touched Lilli’s arm, and she spun on him, backing off instantly when she saw it was him. “Asshole got fresh. Frien’ a yours?”

He brushed her cheek, while Bohler continued to writhed unattended. “You okay?”

“Sure. Room’s a little spinny, but I’m good.”

“You mind if I take it from here?”

“He’s all yours. I’m gonna sit.” She wandered unsteadily back to their table, and Isaac grabbed Bohler by his shirt, got him to his feet, and dragged him outside. He met Havoc, Len, and Show coming in, looking like they’d just been scrapping, too.

Show got a look at Isaac and Bohler, and asked simply, “Need help?”

“Nope. Somebody stay with Lilli. I’ll be back.”

“He hurt her?”

“She hurt him. But he took liberties. Needs a lesson.”

As he dragged Bohler out
and to the back of the building, he heard Len tell Show, “I got his back.”

When he was done with Steve Bohler, he was well certain that there was no amount of drunk that would cause that cooker to forget his manners
again around any woman, much less Isaac’s. He shouted a reminder as he was mashing Bohler into jelly.

His woman. Fuck. He had a woman. Hell, it had been his idea.
He wanted her. She was not whom she claimed to be, and he needed to give a shit about that. She could be a threat to the club, and that made her a potential threat to his town. But he wanted her anyway.

He turned, shaking the blood off his be-ringed hands
, and saw Len leaning against the corner of the building, regarding him curiously. Isaac walked past him without a word and went back in to find Lilli.

~oOo~

They left when Tuck and Rose closed up. Lilli had sobered up a little, but Isaac was still concerned about her ability to sit the bike. When she’d made the turn from buzzed to drunk, it had happened quickly. Something for him to keep in mind. Still, she’d managed to disable Bohler handily. Isaac wondered what she was truly capable of sober.

He pulled her close. “You good to ride, Sport?”

She smiled up at him, and in the sodium glare of the parking lot lights, he could tell that her eyes weren’t quite as focused as he’d like. “Abso-tive-ly. Let’s ride.” She grabbed her helmet and fumbled it.

Alrighty.
He made a snap decision. For this woman, he was doing lots of things he’d made a point not to do. Why not keep it up? His place was half the distance hers was. He was bringing her home.

He mounted, and she climbed on behind him—a bit awkwardly, but not so bad that he thought they’d have to hoof it down to the 7 Eleven for a giant coffee.

“Hold on tight, Sport, okay? Don’t want to lose you.”

She laughed. “You’re just tryin’a get felt up.” But she did—she held him tight, and he felt her breasts on his back, her thighs squeezing his.

He took it slow, but they were still pulling up to his house within fifteen minutes. She dismounted and took a quick extra step, finding her footing. “Hey. Where are we?”

He’d purposely neglected to tell her where he was taking her, figuring she’d fight him, and it was much harder for her to do anything about it from here. “My place. C’mon, I’ll show you around.”

She glared at him, standing akimbo. “Did I say I’d stay at your place?”

“You didn’t say no.” It wasn’t a lie
—he hadn’t asked, so she hadn’t refused. His assertion confused her, and diffused the fight in her. He held out his hand, and she took it. He led her into his house, which was unlocked, for the most part. There was a room in the house, as well as two outbuildings, he always kept locked. Otherwise, he only locked up if he was leaving overnight.

As soon as he got her into his front hall, she yanked on his arm, pulling him back to her. She reached up and pulled the band loose from his braid, unwinding his hair. Then she fed her fingers in
to it and brought his face down to hers. Before she kissed him, she asked, “Got sheets on your bed?”

Fuck it. He’d show her around in the morning. They’d talk in the morning, too.
Getting her to talk might be easier when she was like this, but he could get it done when she was sober. What Bart found out was best discussed in the light of the day, anyway. His hands under her shirt, on the satiny, firm skin of her belly, and then on her back, unhooking her bra, he kissed her.

“I do. Wanna mess ‘em up?”

INTERLUDE: 2002

Lilli wondered if it always rained at funerals. She knew that couldn’t possibly be true, but she’d now been to three funerals, and it had rained at every one.

Her mother.

Her nonna.

Now, her father.

She was alone in the world now. And she’d left him to die alone.

She’d been on a training exercise at aviation school when he’d fallen ill, and it had taken a day for the message to reach her.
It took another two days to work out the logistics to get home. By the time she got to the hospital, he was gone. He’d had a massive coronary. The doctors told her he’d never been conscious since “the event”—that’s what they called it, “the event,” like it was a fucking prom or something—so he didn’t know he was dying alone.

She knew, though. She knew.

He was buried with full military honors at the veteran’s cemetery. The place had a haunting beauty, a stillness and symmetry, every stone the same—white, narrow, and precisely aligned. The “mourners”—she guessed they were called mourners even if they would leave the cemetery, grab tacos at the drive-thru and go on about their damn lives—were all his former Army buddies or his business associates. Her father socialized a lot; as a high-level executive, it was part of his job. But he didn’t have many friends. He was naturally a loner, a family man who preferred the quiet of his home and his family. He was not quick to trust people. Except his old war buddies. They were far flung, though, and only met annually for a big fishing trip. Or when one of them died.

No, her father kept to himself. Since his wife and mother had died, Lilli was the only person he confided in, the
only one to whom he felt close.

And she’d gone away and left him alone in that big house full of ghosts. At least “the event” hadn’t happened at home. Who knows how long he woul
d have lain there if it had. But it happened on the golf course, while he was entertaining a client.

Her father hated golf.

When the military honors were over and the priest had completed the service, the rain pounding on the green canopy that protected him, the casket and the seated family—which was only Lilli—she stood and let the so-called mourners come to her to offer their condolences. The rain discouraged any lingerers. She stood there, holding a folded American flag, as every car pulled away, everyone heading back to regularly scheduled lives. Finally, she was alone at the graveside, her father’s casket still propped above the hole someone had dug for him. It was fitting that she was alone.

She didn’t know how long she’d stood there, but
eventually, a man in a tidy black suit, holding a discreet black umbrella, came up beside her. “I’m very sorry, miss, but we need to inter . . .”

Her father. They needed to inter her father. She looked up and saw two men in work clothes standing at a respectful distance,
getting wet and clearly waiting for her to move along. She did. She went home.

She had a regularly scheduled life to get back to, as well. She had one week’s leave. One week in which to figure out what to do about the leavings of her father’s life—and her own. The house she’d grown up in, full of the curios of a lifetime. Family photos. Her childhood keepsakes. Her grandmother’s pottery. Her father’s den, full of plaques and trophies and mysterious papers. Her father’s car—his beautiful, black 1968 Barracuda fastback. He’d loved th
at car like a son. Her mother’s…no, there was almost nothing left of her mother. Her father had gone through the house in a purifying rage shortly after they buried her.

She wanted almost none of it. She packed up the family photos,
the books, her grandmother’s pottery, a few pieces of jewelry, and a couple of mementos and put it all in storage. Then she contacted her father’s lawyer and set to him the task of selling everything else, taking his percentage, and sending her a check for the rest.

She threw her duffel into the back of the ‘Cuda and drove back to Fort Rucker, Alabama from Stockton, California, which was her home no longer.