Unfinished Hero 03 Raid (29 page)

I would rather that too.

“Fair enough,” I conceded.

“Now, are you gonna fuck me or spend the next hour talkin’ to me?” he asked.

“I suppose I’ll fuck you,” I muttered.

His voice held humor when he returned, “Obliged you’d make that sacrifice for me.”

I glanced at the swing then at him. “Uh… how
do
I fuck you?”

“Babe, you’ve ridden my lap before.”

This was true.

I looked to the porch ceiling at the hooks holding up the swing then down to Raiden.
“Do you think the swing can withstand this activity?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is I wanna find out.”

I bit my lip and looked back at the hooks.

I then stopped biting my lip
and
surveying the hooks because I was up
,
and then I was
up
, again being hefted on Raiden’s shoulder.

“
Raid!
” I shrieked.

“We’ll break the swing in another time, maybe when you’re drunk,” he muttered, walking
to the front door.

“I was good,” I told his back. “I was just strategizing.”

“You don’t have to strategize a mattress.”

This was true.

We were inside and he’d started up the steps when I informed him, “You can put me
down. I can walk.”

“Waste of time,” he replied. He turned on the landing, kept ascending and asked conversationally,
“So, clue me in. When am I Raiden and when am I Raid?”

I held onto his tee and stared at his back a second before I asked, “Sorry?”

We entered my room and he made for the bed. Five strides (I counted) and I was on
it and he was on me.

Only then did he explain, “In the beginning all you did was call me Raiden. The first
time I seriously tested you and that sweet pussy of yours,” he grinned when I frowned
and went on, “you let Raid slip. No one calls me Raiden. Not even my Mom. Now you’re
usin’ ‘em both
,
and I’m tryin’ to sort out where your head is at with which is which.”

I thought about this and then shared, “I’m not certain there’s rhyme or reason to
when I use one or the other.”

“Is there rhyme or reason to anything you do?”

For a second I contemplated my eyebrows (which I couldn’t see
,
but I tried) before I looked back at him. “Not really.”

He’d been smiling when my eyes came back to him
,
but after I spoke, his smile faded. He cupped the side of my face with his hand,
thumb sweeping my cheek then my lips before he said quietly, “My reward.”

I let that slide through me
as I
turned my face
and
kissed the palm of his hand
.

After I kissed his palm, I
said there, “I love it that you think that.”

“Know it,” he corrected and I looked back at him.

“Sorry?”

“Don’t think it, Hanna. Know it.”

That slid through me
,
too
,
and I melted (more) underneath him.

“One more thing before we tear each other up,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

Then, even with all that had happened that day
,
and especially all that had gone on the last twenty minutes, as usual, Raiden Miller
still managed to rock my world.

He did this by saying straight out, with feeling, “Thank you, baby, for forgiving
me.”

Slowly, I closed my eyes.

I opened them
,
planted a foot in the bed, rolled him and straddled him, closed them again and kissed
him.

Raid kissed me back.

Chapter Fifteen

Big Dick

Six weeks later …

I was carrying Spot out of the vet to my bike, or more like struggling to keep upright
under the burden of his weight, when my phone rang. I put him in the basket. He sat
on his ample behind, said, “Meow” and faced forward, telling me he was ready to roll.

You could
have
color
ed
me stunned when Grams and I (well, mostly me, Grams just sat there offering suggestions)
grappled for a half an hour trying to get Spot in his kitty carrier. This didn’t work
and ended with Spot desperately shoving his kitty face into the corner of the
latched screen door and pushing it open enough
to force his fat cat body through it. As I chased after him, he
heaved his big body onto a porch chair then the porch railing where
he jumped into the basket of my bike
,
making the bike sway precariously. By a miracle, it held
.
Spot sat down, turned his head and stared at me.

We’d already learned the hard way through earlier tussles pre-visit to the vet that,
for reasons only known to Spot, he only accepted rides in Grams’s Buick. So even though
Grams never drove it anymore, it was Spot’s checkup day. Therefore I rode to Grams’s
house and was going to take the Buick and Spot into town.

Shockingly, Spot seemed absolutely fine in my basket. I tested this theory
,
rode around in Grams’s driveway awhile
,
then into town. He rode with me, happy as a clam, kitty nose pointed to the wind
rushing through his fur. The vet receptionist wasn’t pleased we showed with no carrier
,
but she was no stranger to Spot and had learned herself prior to kitty claw laser
therapy it was best just to let him have his way
,
so she didn’t say a word.

Spot behaved himself the entire time.

Seemed the cat liked bicycles.

Go figure.

“Crazy cat,” I muttered, grinning
.

I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my shorts and saw the display.

My grin turned into a huge smile
,
I took the call and put it to my ear.

“Hey, honey,” I greeted Raid.

“Baby, where are you?” he replied.

“In town outside the vet. Spot’s annual checkup.”

Silence then, “Drop him off and get home. I’m five minutes out of town. I’ll meet
you at your place.”

A happy thrill raced through me followed by an excited one.

“No. I’m jumping on my bike now and I’ll meet you at yours,” I told him.

“Hanna
—
”

“Raiden,” I cut him off. “I’ll meet you at your place
,
but you have to promise me you’ll go there but won’t go inside. Wait for me.”

More silence then, softer, “Hanna.”

Then nothing but that soft “Hanna” sent another thrill racing through me.

“I’ll pedal fast and me and Spot will be there in ten minutes,” I said.

“You and Spot?”

“He’s in my basket.”

Another period of silence then, shaking with hilarity, “All right.”

“No going inside,” I warned.

“No going inside, baby.”

I mounted my bike. “Right. See you soon. Missed you, honey.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Another thrill.

“‘Bye.”

“Ten, babe.”

He hung up.

I tossed my phone in the basket with Spot.

He looked down at it, turned his kitty face to me and said, “Meow.”

“You can share with the phone, buddy,” I told him.

“Meow.” He didn’t agree.

“Suck it up,” I ordered.

He glared at me then turned to face forward.

I threw back the kickstand, put my feet to the pedals and motored.

* * * * *

The last six weeks, Raid was out of town on jobs for three.

This didn’t stink as much as I thought it would (though it still stunk) because he
did what he said he would do.

He touched base with me. Frequently.

This included him calling during the day at random times. It also included him calling
every night right before he went to sleep.

The first time he’d woke
n
me when he did this, which was the third time he called me at night.

He’d been upset he’d woken me and murmured, “I’ll call earlier next time.”

“No,” I’d replied sleepily. “I want to know you made it through the day and you’re
going to sleep so you’ll wake to face another day. Don’t worry about waking me.”

He’d hesitated and his deep voice was warm and sweet when he agreed, “All right, honey.”

Then he did as I asked, calling every night before he went to sleep.

But when I said he touched base, I meant we talked as in
talked.

Surprisingly, even though we’d been through a lot
,
but still were
relatively
new thus didn’t know each other
all that
well and he was a
man
, he was also a man who could have conversations on the phone.
It helped we knew a lot of the same people and he cared about what was happening.

He asked me about my day, my business, what was going on in Willow, what I had planned
for the next day and he shared about his. Where he was. What he ate. When he thought
he’d be home. Nothing deep about his work but he didn’t keep things from me
,
including if he was frustrated, leads had dried up, informants were jacking him around
or things were taking longer than he thought.

Weirdly, these conversations were getting-to-know-you conversations that, if we were
normal, we would have had during dates. He learned about the vacation I took last
winter. He learned I loved snowboarding. I learned he hated onions and thought Jerry
Seinfeld’s standup routines were funny. And we planned to go to Crested Butte when
the snow started falling and to find a beach when winter turned bitter and we needed
to escape to the sun.

Needless to say, learning about Raiden and planning getaways and vacations was
awesome.

When he was home, life fell into a rhythm. I knitted. I did my thing with Grams. We
all went to church and ate breakfast together at the Pancake House. I saw to my business.
Raiden saw to his in Denver and in the back room of Rachelle’s Café
,
where I learned he met with his “crew”
,
who I did not, however, meet…
yet.
This last was Raiden’s word when he told me he would introduce me to them when “shit
slowed down”. He was also a good neighbor
,
and at his sister or mother’s request, would go off to do things like the yard work
for Grams.

This meant between jobs he wasn’t idle. It also meant we had our own things to do
,
but ended our days together like we would if we were normal.

That was awesome too.

In fact, everything was awesome and had settled in a good way without anything rocking
my world.

Except one thing.

Deep into the night one night at my house, the bed moved with such force I woke, sensed
Raiden awake and I pressed my hand resting on his chest into his skin.

He shifted swiftly, taking me to my back and reared back a fist like he was going
to strike me.

I gasped and tried to scuttle out from under him but got nowhere. Then his arms closed
around me and he tucked me under his big body.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“What’s happening?” I asked anxiously, my entire body tense
,
but I felt the tension in his and it wasn’t like mine.

I was freaked out.

He was strung tight.

“Fuck,” he repeated.

“Raid
—
”

He let me go, rolled to his back, lifted both hands to his face and rubbed.

I got up on an elbow and watched.

Then I urged, “Talk to me. What just happened?”

I half-expected him to evade my question
,
but he didn’t.

He dropped his hands
.

I felt his eyes on me in the dark and he shared, “I dream.”

Oh boy.

“Dream?” I pressed gently.

“Snippets of memories. Sometimes shit is warped and not what happened at all. But
I dream.”

“About
—
?” I didn’t get it out
,
but he knew what I was asking.

“Yeah.”