Head Above Water (Nightshade MC Book 4) (18 page)

“I will, I'm just enjoying the view right now.” He was surprised when she blushed; Drea wasn't one to blush. “You're beautiful.”

“You don't have to use flattery to get into my pants, I'm not wearing any. But for the record, you're not so bad yourself.” She turned towards the door, and Monroe's gaze rested on the scars on her back.

They weren't her only scars, but they were the ones she seemed the most conscious of. He knew just about every inch of her body like it was his own, but not her back, or more specifically her lower back. Every time he touched her there, her body went stiff. He'd asked on several occasions about them; each time she reminded him frostily that she'd “been in an accident” as a girl. Monroe knew that it was more of an on purpose.

“Drea?”

“Yeah,” she said as she looked over her shoulder at him.

“Tell me the truth about the scars, please,” he said softly. “Don't give me the I was in an accident shit either.”

“You're serious. Instead of frolicking in the water naked, you want to talk about my scars? Okay, fine. My grandmother, she firmly believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child. The scars on my back are from when I was six, maybe seven, and she'd been gone all day. I got hungry, so I tried to warm up some soup. I turned on the wrong burner on the stove, melted the top of her coffee percolator. She really loved her coffee. Me, not so much. I was too much a reminder of everything. Do you want the dirty details?” Her tone was as cold as her eyes, she looked away from him and walked to the couch. Her expression was almost glazed over as she walked to couch and grabbed her clothes.

“No.” He moved forward, grabbed her clothes before they could reach them. “Thank you for telling me,” he added, holding tight on the clothes as she tugged.

“Why did you have to ask?” She gave up on trying to get the clothes back from him and went to her suitcase instead. “I don't much feel like swimming anymore.” She took one of his tee shirts she normally slept in out of the bag.

“What do you want to do?” Monroe was pretty sure that he knew what her answer was going to be.

“I'm tired. Can we just go to sleep?”

It was exactly what he'd thought. Part of him was pissed, as much as he enjoyed sleeping with her, even when sex wasn't involved, he knew that sleep was her escape. She shouldn't want to escape from him. Monroe realized that his timing really and truly did suck. For their first night, he'd had other plans, like showing her the stars and how different the sky looked without the light pollution of the city. “Alright, we'll take a nap. When we get up, we can make dinner.”

“Dinner. Oh shit, we didn't bring any groceries with us. How did we forget groceries?” There was an edge of panic to her tone.

“The fridge and pantry are stocked. The lady who came out to open the place up and air it out took care of it. I thought I told you that.” The woman was one of the closest neighbors and did the same thing whenever anyone came up. For the life of him, he couldn't remember her name.

“Maybe you did. I've been distracted,” she admitted. “Even with Casey helping, there's just so much going on. Trying to get ready to take the time off to come here almost killed me. It's also made me a little touchy, I guess.”

“Which is why we're going to go and take that nap,” he said gently. “Like I said, we'll get some rest and then have dinner. I want to show you the stars. The sky looks totally different out here. It's beautiful.”

“Have you spent a lot of time out here?”

“Not really, a couple of long weekends,” he replied. A look crossed her face. “What's that look for?”

“It's nothing. It's stupid,” she answered.

“Is it nothing or is it stupid? Just say it, Drea.”

“Fine. Did you come here alone?” She looked down at the floor. “Stupid, I shouldn't ask that. It doesn't matter if you did or not, I didn't even know you then, and we definitely weren't seeing one another at the time, it doesn't matter,” she babbled. It was very not like her.

“I came here alone,” he told her. He'd asked Maggie to come with him, said that she should bring the boys. She'd turned him down, of course, claiming that she had to work, though he now knew she'd probably hadn't been. “I was seeing someone at the time. I invited her, but she didn't want to come with me.”

“Maggie.”

It was strange to hear the name come out of Drea's mouth, even stranger to think that he'd actually truly believed he'd loved Maggie. “Yeah, Maggie.”

“You don't talk about her much.”

“There's not much to say, I thought that we were headed somewhere. We weren't. In fact, she was actually heading to that place with someone else.” Monroe realized the discomfort he felt must have been close to what Drea had felt when he put her on the spot about her scars.

“I'm sorry she hurt you, but at the same time, I'm glad she did. If things had happened differently, we wouldn't be here right now. I've got to admit, I really can't imagine what my life would be without you.”

“That's good because I'm not going anywhere but to bed with you, right now. You look like you're about to fall out on your feet. I'm sorry I added too it, bringing up things we could have talked about at another time.”

“You don't have to apologize. My day was pretty shitty, lots of drama,” she admitted. “Turns out that Mary Sunshine has the clap. I thought that Casey was going to have a stroke. She's in charge of the testing so she saw the results about thirty seconds before Mary started shooting. Thankfully, she didn't seem to infect anyone else, but it still means she violated contract. She's required to use protection in all sexual encounters,” Drea explained.

“What happens now?”

“She gets treated. Once she tests clean, she can work again. I could terminate her contract, but I'm going to give her a chance. If she does it again, I'll have no choice. I can't put everything at risk because she can't follow the rules.”

“Sounds like you're making a fair decision, giving her a chance to right the wrong if it was a mistake,” Monroe observed. He reached his hands out to her and she took them. “Bright side is, you can forget about it for the next three days. It's just going to be us, relaxing and doing whatever we want or nothing at all.”

“You have no idea just how perfect that sounds,” she replied. “You talked about going fishing earlier. So, let's do it.”

“I thought you were tired.”

“I am tired. You're not, yet you're willing to go and take a nap with me. So, screw the nap. Let's go fishing, but for the record, I've never cleaned a fish in my life and I don't want to start now.”

“Fair enough.” Monroe doubted that they'd catch anything. He never had in the few times he'd fished here. It was more about the ritual of it and the relaxation that came along with staring out at the water and drinking a nice cold beer. “I'll grab the gear after I put the bags in the room.”

“I've got the bags. I think I can manage to find the bedroom since there are only two options.” She stretched up on her toes, kissed him lightly. “I'll be ready in a minute.”

There was a key next to the back door that opened the lock on the shed next to the house. It was as dusty inside as Monroe recalled, filled with all the odds and ends thrown inside over the years, including an ancient snowmobile which couldn't possibly still run since it was covered in spider webs. He gave it a wide berth, spiders weren't his favorite thing, and grabbed a tackle box and two poles.

Monroe heard the cabin door screech and slam behind Drea as she came out of the house. He made a mental note to find some lubricant for it, promptly forgot as he focused on Drea. She'd changed into a bathing suit, a yellow bikini with bottoms that hung low on her hips and a top that looked like a stiff breeze might take it right off.

“You didn't pack a bathing suit,” she called out. “Only those horrendous basketball shorts you like for some unknown reason.”

“They're comfortable,” he answered as he always did. “Guess I'll just have to swim naked.”

“That was probably your plan all along; I'm on to you, Monroe.”

“You caught me,” he told her with a shrug. Her smile widened, and he thought he'd agree to anything in the world in order to make her happy. She was happy now, relaxed in a way that she hadn't been since he'd picked her up. “You ready to learn?”

“I'm ready to stretch out next to you and get some sun while you try your luck. How does that sound to you?”

“You gonna sunbathe topless?”

“If you play your cards right, I will.”

“I'm really good at cards.” Monroe held out his free hand to her. She took it and they walked over to the hard-packed dirt shore. “Hold on, let me go in the house and get a blanket or something for you.”

“Oh, you should grab some beers while you're in there. I didn't think of that. And like some chips maybe.”

“Anything else?”

“No, not that I can think of,” she said with a laugh as she sat down on the grass.

Monroe headed back in the house, found an old blanket in a linen closet and loaded himself down with beers and snacks. The woman who'd stocked the house had done a good job of it; they wouldn't go hungry. It was about a twenty-minute ride to the nearest town, and town was an overstatement. It was more of a stop on the road with only a general store, diner and gas station.

Drea had stretched out on the grass, her hands stretched out over her head. Her eyes were closed, her head was tilted back slightly. Her eyes opened as he approached. “Took you long enough.”

“You want the blanket or not?” Monroe asked.

“I want the blanket,” she admitted. “I'm pretty sure that I'm laying on a rock.”

“Well get up then, silly.” Monroe set the beers and snacks down on the grass. He shook out the blanket, laid it down. “That should be better for you. I'm going to see if I can't catch us some dinner.”

“I saw steaks in the fridge earlier. Honestly, I'd rather eat them. This is really much more comfortable,” she said with a yawn as she settled back down. “You should really just come and join me, forget about fishing.”

Monroe didn't need to be asked twice. He undressed quickly, nearly tripping as he pulled off his socks. Drea watched him, her eyes half-lidded with what he recognized as desire. He got down on the blanket, lay down on his back. The ground was seriously uncomfortable, even with the blanket. “You're right, really comfortable.”

She laughed. “I know when you're lying, Monroe.”

“You lied about it first,” he pointed out.

“I just wanted to get you down here with me. I figure that we can find something to take our minds off of it.” As if to prove her point, she shifted so that she could straddle him. Nimbly she reached behind her and untied the strings holding her top up. Monroe had already been hard when he'd started to undress, and now that she was on top of him and they were only separated by her bikini bottoms, he knew that she was wearing way too many clothes, but she pushed his hands away when he tried to untie the strings that held the scant material on her hips. “Nope, not yet.”

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because I said so,” she replied. There was a playful look in her eyes. “You got a problem with that?”

“Nope, no problem.” Monroe let his hands fall down to his sides. Drea leaned in, kissed him lightly. Her mouth slid from his, trailed along his jaw and down his throat. By the time that she got to his chest, he had a good idea of which way she was heading. The urge to touch her became nearly overwhelming but he gripped the blanket instead and watched as she slid further and further down his body. Her hands joined her mouth. “Fuck,” he hissed as her hand closed around him.

“We'll get to that,” she said. Her hand moved up and down in slow strokes, and she shifted so that she could kneel between his legs. The position gave him a stellar view of her ass. “Remember, hands off.”

“I promise.” Monroe thought that he might lose feeling in his fingers because he was gripping the blanket so hard. A sound somewhere between a shout and a groan escaped him as Drea took him into the warmth of her mouth. He closed his eyes and let his head rest against the blanket.

Pleasure surged through him as she swirled her tongue against him. Monroe used everything he had to not touch her or move his hips against her as she took him deeper than she ever had before. There were no words for just how hot it was to watch her with her mouth full of him, her tits bouncing as she moved up and down. When she took him even deeper, the control he had snapped. His hands went to her hair, gripped the silky dark strands.

The deeper that she took him, the closer he knew that he was to the edge. His hips began to move, and she met the thrusts eagerly. He let out a grunt as he felt the tip of his cock brush against the back of her throat. Monroe released his grip on her hair and came with a roar. Drea stayed on him until she'd taken every drop he had to offer. She lifted her head, licked her lips and grinned up at him. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he struggled to get his breathing back to a normal pace.

“I'll take that as a compliment.” Drea looked completely and totally pleased with herself. “So it was good?”

She wasn't one to fish for compliments, so the question surprised him. “It was amazing. You couldn't tell?”

“I thought so. I think I've picked up a few new tricks since I've been spending so much time at GP.”