His Young Queen: (Steel Jackals MC #1) (3 page)

Taking her keys out of her purse, she glared up at the light that was once again out on the porch. She banged her fist to the right of the mailbox and squinted at the brightness that slammed into her eyeballs, blinding her for a minute. She stood there, blinking while her vision came back to her, then unlocked and entered the house.

As she closed herself in, she smiled a little. With any luck, by the time Josh came home, the graphic arts business she planned on starting up after graduation would be thriving. She’d be able to brag about—

Tish was screaming before she even thought to scream. She stumbled back and slammed into the door as a chair scraped and the dark shape of a man flew through the shadows at her. Terror was an electric buzz that raised the hair on her arms and legs when a strong arm snaked around her waist at the same time as a wide palm covered her mouth. As she belatedly thought to struggle, she heard the most amazing sound.

“Easy, Tish-Tosh,” a familiar voice rumbled into her ear. “It’s just me. We don’t want to wake the neighbors with your enthusiastic greeting, do we?”

With her body pressed against heat and steel, and her heart trying to beat its way out through her mouth, she managed to shut down the shrill sound coming from her throat.

She pulled in some much-needed air, and with every inhalation that scent she’d know anywhere burrowed in and memories came. Josh dragging himself up from their sofa in the mornings to make her lunch and walk her to school. Josh occasionally picking her up at the end of the day and her proudly getting onto the back of his bike while her friends ooh’d and ahh’d because he was so intimidating and beautiful. Josh and Uncle Nick standing at the back of the auditorium, scaring all the other parents because they were proudly wearing their cuts as they clapped and whistled their approval as she took a bow after collecting her first place ribbon at a local spelling bee. And that last tender hug he’d given her when he’d told her not to come back to the prison to see him anymore.

Emotion rose in her so strong she wasn’t sure how to process it. “Josh?” she tried to say but was hampered by that warm palm covering half her face.

“Unless you gave someone else permission to use that nickname you hate, yeah, honey, it’s me.”

He released her and went to step back, but she was having none of that. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him as tightly as she could. She tried like hell not to cry by swallowing repeatedly, but it didn’t help.

“Whoa,” he chuckled, wrapping her up again.

She closed her eyes and savored the sound as her tears overflowed. Her breathing slowed then, and the world paused as everything inside her aligned once more. All she was reconnected, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Tish came to life. Body and mind she felt herself bloom. For this man. The desolation she’d felt without him, the resentment and confusion she’d felt since he’d shut her out disappeared, and the sigh that came from her was the slowest, happiest sound she’d ever made.

“Josh,” she whispered. “You’re home. Oh, my God, you’re really here.” She pushed her face into his neck and tried to compose herself. She was shaking like a leaf. “I missed you so much.

“I got that.” He pressed a kiss to her hair and ran his hand over it as he held her tightly enough to let her know he’d missed her, too.

“Why wouldn’t you see me anymore? You know what? Never mind,” she tacked on right away. Who cared about that now? “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you’re here.”

“I told you back then that shithole was no place for innocent and soft. A girl like you should never have stepped foot in there.”

The protective note laced through his voice really shouldn’t have sent heat sizzling down her spine, but it did. It zipped through her and settled low in her belly.

“Okay. Enough with the strangle.”

When she didn’t budge, he reached up, untangled her arms, and pulled them from around his neck. He walked away, and a second later, light flooded the room. “What the fuck are you doing out so—?”

He’d come around to face her, and because she was gawking through another squint, she didn’t miss how his big body slowly seized up, his face darkening into that typical don’t-fuck-with-the-biker look he’d always effortlessly worn. He stared. She stared. He was just the same but appeared…grim. As if he hadn’t smiled in ages. His normally warm gold eyes were now dull, his tattooed skin paler than she’d ever seen it. He still wore his dirty blond hair in a faux-hawk that was tousled and long enough to flop on his forehead. So damn sexy, he was well over six feet and solid as stone.

“You look fuckin’ different.” His voice was a low growl. Angry sounding. “This what you wear to work every night?”

Her knees continued to knock, and she was beginning to think her heart would never slow. Swiping at her damp cheeks, she looked down at her uniform and hurriedly kicked off her black and gray cowboy boots because they looked out of place in the house. They weren’t so conspicuous when four other servers were wearing them as they traipsed around the wooden floors covered in peanut shells, but here they looked as though Tish was playing dress-up.

“Yeah. They make us.” She slipped her socks off and stuffed them into the tops of the boots before padding over to stand closer to him. If she didn’t think it would send him running, she’d have hopped up and sat on his shoulder, cradling his head like those monkeys who over-love their owners. Not that Josh owned her. Which was too bad.

“How are you? Are you okay? How are you even here right now?” she belatedly asked, shakily sighing her pleasure at this spectacular turn of events.

When he didn’t reply, but stood staring down at her with narrowed eyes, she inched even closer and reached for one of his tattooed hands to bring it to her cheek for an affectionate rub. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered in wonder.

His brows slammed down, and he patted her shoulder in an uncharacteristically awkward move before extracting his hand and going over to push the chair in at the table. How long had he been sitting there in the dark? What had he been thinking about? His time in prison? What would he do now that he was out? Return to running the salvage yard he and Nick owned together, she guessed.

How the hell was he out? Did he hate her mom for putting him away? And, in effect, hate Tish, too? She’d been too afraid to ask him while he’d been inside, but that would explain why he’d stopped seeing her, and the get-it-away-from-me look in his eyes now.

She didn’t voice any of her many questions but stood silent. Waiting.

“Good behavior has its perks,” he finally said. “So does knowing the right people.” He swiped a finger across the counter as if doing a white glove test. “They call it early release. Why the fuck are you out on your own this time of night? Doesn’t the bar have a day shift you can work? And who the hell has been cleaning this place? It looks as if no one lives here, yet I can smell you all the fuck over it.”

Oh, shit. Did that simple animalistic observation have to tickle every erogenous zone she had?

“I, uh…” She cleared her throat and tried to pull her head out from under the sheets. “Um, I clean up every little while, but since it’s usually only me, I’m pretty tight. I don’t spread myself all over the house and make messes in every room. And I go to school during the day, which means I
have
to work at night. You know that. Unless you didn’t read my letters. Then you wouldn’t have known.” Why was his face flushing like that? “Are you hot? I can turn down the thermostat if you’d like. I don’t keep it very low because my uncle insists the bills are included in the rent.” She smiled, thinking of Nick. “But he won’t let me pay rent. When I push about it, he tells me to give it a rest and enjoy my good fortune. So I am. That’s another reason I like to take good care of the house. It’s the first place I’ve lived that feels like a real home to me. That’s pretty special.”

How had she forgotten the square cut of his goateed jaw? And had her subconscious seriously neglected to add the thickness of his inked neck to her many dreams, and that gorgeous tattoo of the Grim Reaper holding up a royal flush? It stretched from below his left ear to disappear under his shirt. She knew the Reaper’s billowing cloak covered his shoulder and reached almost to his elbow.

He took a couple of steps toward her. An odd light had entered his eyes, but it was gone in a blink and he stopped in the middle of the room. “This is your home, Tish,” he said gruffly. “It always will be.”

She was too busy trying to understand his odd behavior to do much more than nod.

He tipped his head to the side as though needing to stretch out his neck. “So you’re tight, and you don’t spread yourself around,” he mimicked, his voice layered with something she couldn’t name. “Because you’re here alone all the time? Where
the fuck
is your goddamn mother?”

The effervescent joy bubbling around her heart began to go flat. What was happening here? Why was he acting like this? She knew him as well as she knew herself, and she could see he was growing edgier by the second, more hostile.

Or maybe she didn’t know him anymore. They said prison changed a person. Could it have changed Josh? She wouldn’t have thought anything had the power to do that.

“I don’t know if you cut Nick off too…?” She looked at him hopefully. She really didn’t want to be the only one who’d been banned from seeing him.

He dashed her hopes by neither confirming nor denying her inquiry. Damn. She knew that meant her uncle had been to see him.

“Okay, uh, then you probably know my mom has gone off the rails and isn’t around much anymore. She drops in the odd time but doesn’t stay long.”

His expression closed up. “Nick failed to mention that.”

Yup. Her uncle had been gifted permission to visit. “Oh, well, she shows up and wanders around for sometimes a few hours or a day.” Tish was happy to be able to share something with him, even if it was about Rachel. “She doesn’t meet my eyes because she knows how I feel about what she did, and then she’s gone again.”

Nothing. He looked like a sculpture. He’d always been standoffish, but not with her. Almost as if they were magnetized, she drifted to where he’d ended up in front of the stove. His jaw tightened, and he moved away. She tried not to be hurt by that, but she was. She didn’t let him see it as she took up his vacated position and leaned her ass on the oven’s door handle. She knew she was still staring, but he had to forgive her. She just couldn’t help it.

“It’s good that she doesn’t stay long,” she continued when the quiet got to her. “I know that sounds terrible for me to say about my own mother, but after…” Would he get upset if she brought up what Rachel had done to him? She went in a different direction just in case. “I don’t appreciate coming out of my room in a rush to catch the bus for school, only to find her dealer sitting there.” She pointed to the table. “Let’s just say I’d much rather live alone and be a little spooked at night than to have to put up with that.” She shuddered and crossed her arms under her breasts.

“Her dealer was in here? Alone? With you?”

She nodded, thankful that he’d responded. At least she knew he was listening to her. “Rachel was likely passed out downstairs, so I guess we weren’t
completely
alone.” It struck her as sad that the telling of stories like these didn’t faze her. They should. “One other guy was in here a few months ago. A pimp, I think. Well, I guess I don’t have to think since he told me outright he was looking for more girls before asking if I needed
‘representation.’
” She air quoted, and then gave him a look that said
can-you-believe-that
? “It was creepy as hell. After work that night I made sure to call my uncle for a ride. I told him why I was afraid to come home by myself, and he was pretty angry. When we got here, the twins were already out front. I was left with Ethan, and Nick brought Gavin in here to make sure Rachel and her buddy were gone. I think he felt bad because he picked me up from work and slept in the spare room for a full week after. Wasn’t that sweet?”

“Did he bring you the cocksucker’s still beating heart after he ripped it from his crushed chest?”

It was her turn to still. She barely breathed as she waited for him to indicate he was kidding. He didn’t. “No. He, uh, didn’t bring me anything like that.” She rubbed at the goosebumps that had sprung up on her arms.

“Then there’s nothing sweet about
that
.” He had his phone out and pressed to his ear. “You want to tell me what the fuck happened to the pimp who offered your niece a goddamn job?” he barked when Nick, presumably, answered. He looked over at her, his eyes molten. “Yeah. I’m here now. Oh. Good. Should’ve known. See you later.” He hung up and slipped his cell into the back pocket of his low-slung jeans. The wallet chain he’d always worn made a familiar chime that warmed her right down to her toes.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

She rolled her eyes. “He said
some
thing. I’m standing right here, Josh. I know he answered you.”

“And I have to report to you the private conversation I just had with my VP, why…?”

She balked. Oops. Overstep much? Dropping her arms, she made to move in his direction to apologize but paused when he stiffened, bracing as if to bolt. She stayed where she was.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it as a demand. I was curious to know if he mentioned anything to my mom, but I wasn’t until
you
put the thought in my head.” The blame was his, and she laid it at his feet.

She was almost positive she saw his lip twitch. “Well, get it out of there again and forget it happened.”

“Nothing did happen, though.”

“Good. Then you shouldn’t have any trouble doing as you’re told.”

Wow. So bossy. Why did she love that so much?

They were quiet for a few moments, and she wondered if maybe his skittishness was simply him getting used to being around people again after having been in jail for so long.

Or more likely, he’d been cooped up with hundreds of other men and probably wanted his space now. She could understand that.