Indulgence (283 page)

“I did earlier so it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, but I promise the next time you will.”

Surprise flared in her eyes. “Next time?”

I frowned. “You thought this was a once off?”

“I thought this was you showing up to help me celebrate
my eighteenth and then taking me home for a one night stand.”

“Fuck no,” I said as I pulled out of her and pushed up
off the bed to dispose of the condom. When I came back from the bathroom I
brought a cloth with me to clean her up, but she’d pulled the sheet up to cover
herself.

I sat on the bed next to her and frowned. “Why did you
cover yourself?”

Her face flamed red. “You turned the light on.”

“Yeah, cause I want to clean you up so I need to be able
to see for that.”

“Oh my God, Kick, I can clean myself up!” She seemed
embarrassed and I couldn’t figure out why.

“Evie, we just fucked . . . I just had my mouth on your
pussy, and you’re embarrassed for me to clean you up?”

She covered her face with her hand for a moment and then
she sat up so our faces were level. “It was dark and you couldn’t see my body,”
she whispered, her eyes reaching out to me, to understand.

And I did fucking understand, and it made me fucking
angry.

I moved her hand, the one clutching the sheet to hide her
body from me. When the sheet fell, I ran a finger across the top of her
breasts. With my gaze fixed to hers, I said, “Don’t let those bitches from
school make you believe you’re not beautiful. Just because they told you you’re
ugly or whatever the fuck they told you, it doesn’t make it true. And it’s not
fuckin’ true, Evie.” I leant my face down to whisper kisses over her breasts.
When I’d finished, I said, “You’re the most beautiful woman I know.”

Tears threatened to fall, but she held them back.
Swallowing hard, she said, “Thank you. I’m such an idiot for believing them.”
Her voice drifted off as she spoke so that the last few words were almost a
whisper, and she hung her head.

I placed a finger underneath her chin and tilted her face
up with it. “You’re not an idiot, you’ve just had so much shit thrown at you
that you’ve started to believe it.”

As I sat and watched her take that in, my chest
tightened. Evie had been through so much and yet she was the best person I
knew. Even though people had been so mean to her, and nasty, she was still the
kindest and most caring person in my life. And I’d been an idiot last year
after I finished school. While she finished her final year, I’d joined Storm
and focused all my attention there, neglecting our friendship.

I was fixing that mistake now because if I was truly
honest with myself, I’d wanted Evie for years.

I wanted her in my life.

And in my bed.

*****

I leant against the doorway of my bedroom and watched Evie
sleep.

Peaceful.

Fuck, she was beautiful. I had a permanent fucking hard-on
for her and, she had no idea. Not fucking her last night had been one of the
toughest things I’d done in ages.

She stirred and a moment later her eyes came to mine.
“Morning,” she said, and then she winced, placing a hand to her head.

I pushed off from the wall and walked to her side of the
bed. Sitting on the edge, I passed her the water on the bedside table and two
aspirins.

“Thank you,” she murmured, taking the pills from me. Once
she’d swallowed them, she gave the glass back to me.

I stood and asked, “Do you have to work today?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll take you home so you can get ready and then I’ll
take you to work. And then I’ll pick you up after work.”

“I can drive myself, Kick,” she said, her voice off. I
thought we’d made progress last night but uncertainty now hit my gut.

“No, you can’t. You’ll be over the limit.”

She stared at me, in obvious pain from her headache, and I
was sure she was about to argue with me again when she surprised the shit out
of me and said, “Fine, you can drive me.”

“Good, that’s fuckin’ settled. I’ll wait for you in the
kitchen.”

I left her to it, and a moment later I heard her crashing
around in my bedroom. Relief hit me, thank fuck she’d agreed to let me drive
her because she was definitely in no state to be driving.

When she appeared in the kitchen ten minutes later, I took
in her hung-over state and fuck if my dick didn’t jerk again at the sight. This
woman could make me want to fuck her even if she was dressed in a fucking sack
and had a shaved head.

She’s it for me.

I grabbed my keys off the table and jerked my chin towards
the front door. “You ready to go?”

She nodded and slowly headed outside. I followed close
behind, watching her ass sway in that sexy-as-fuck black dress she’d worn to
the pub last night. She’d ripped it off as soon as we’d gotten back to my place
and done her best to get me to fuck her, but I’d had no intention of sleeping
with her. Not in that state. No, the first time we had sex again, we’d both be
sober. I needed to know she wanted this as much as I did. And until I got her
to that point, I wasn’t laying a hand on her. As hard as that would fucking be.

*****

I still hadn’t decided what I was gonna do about Peter and
Gambarro when I picked Evie up from work that afternoon. Seeing her, though,
pushed me towards the decision of getting involved. How the fuck could I let
her father die?

I drove her home and insisted on walking her inside so we
could finish our conversation from the other night.

“Okay,” she agreed, seemingly as keen to talk as I was.

Aside from the other night and this morning, I hadn’t been
in Evie’s house for over a year. She lived about twenty minutes from me, in a
small house she’d saved for years to buy. I clearly remembered the day I’d
moved her in and we’d christened a few of the rooms. Back then, it had been in
need of renovating and I’d helped her. It looked as if she’d done more since
I’d been here last.

As we walked down the hall, I murmured, “I like what you’ve
done with the place.”

“You like the colours I’ve added?”

I smiled. “Yeah, baby, I like it.” Evie loved colour and
she’d painted feature walls throughout. Teal seemed to be her favourite colour
these days, judging by the amount of it in her home.

We made it to the kitchen and she dropped her bag on the
counter and looked up at me, seeming rather hesitant. “Why didn’t you sleep
with me last night? I thought you were all up for sex and then you fobbed me
off.”

That was unexpected, but I was more than happy to discuss
it. “I am
all
for sex with you but not like that.”

“What does that mean, Kick?” she asked me, clearly
frustrated.

“It means you’re worth more than a quick fuck to me. If I
can’t have you… have your heart, then I don’t just want your body.”

Silence surrounded us as she processed that. I waited
patiently. She had to relent soon.

Finally, she said, “I need more. It’s not enough for you to
just show back up after all this time and say you’ve changed your mind.”

“What do you need? Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”

“I need
all
of you.”

My body stilled. She wanted the parts of me I didn’t want to
give. She wanted the parts of me that no one in their right mind would want to
know.

The parts she would run from if I showed her.

“No, you don’t.”

She stepped nearer to me. Our bodies were so close I could
feel her warm breath on my skin, and fuck, I needed more.

I needed to feel her body on mine, her hair between my
fingers, her pussy around my dick.

Her words at the end of the day.

Her love wrapped around me, taking all the shit away.

“I’ve known you since I was seven, Kick. You used to share
yourself with me back then. Your thoughts and feelings. And then, after all the
shit went down with our families, you started to pull away and when you joined
Storm, it was like you disconnected from me. I tried so hard to get through to
you, to let you know I loved you,
all of you
, but you never took that
in. I get that there’s stuff you can’t tell me, and I don’t want to know the
ins and outs of it all, but give me something. Anything. Show me
you
.
Let me love
you
.”

Fuck
.

I didn’t deserve her. She was lightness to my darkness and I
had no idea how to combine the two. Or even if I wanted to.

I reached out and ran my finger lightly down her cheek. “I
love you, Evie, but I don’t know how to do what you’ve asked. I can try,
though,” I whispered, total honesty spilling from my lips.

She smiled sadly at me, a look of defeat in her eyes. “I
know.”

When she moved away from me and just watched me in silence,
I feared I’d fucked it all up.

I’m losing her again
.

And then I did what I always did when fear and hopelessness
threatened to overtake me - I resorted to anger and frustration. “This isn’t
the fuckin’ end of this,” I snapped, and stalked out of the room without
waiting for her response.

I didn’t need to see her rejection again.

I just needed to find a way to get through to her.

Evie

I hadn’t heard from Kick in two days. Not since he told me
he didn’t know how to be in a relationship with me. My heart hurt and that
pissed me off. Why did he have to show up and create these feelings when I was
doing okay without him? And why did he struggle so much with letting me in?
When we’d been together in the past, it was like Kick lived two lives. One with
me, and one with his other family, the club. I could never work out why he kept
the two completely separate. What kind of person doesn’t want to introduce you
to his friends? It made me feel like shit when he refused to let me meet them.
I wouldn’t put myself through that again.

I’d decided to try and put him out of my mind when I
realised that would be impossible. Out of the question, actually, because when
I visited my mother two days after he’d walked out of my house on an angry
outburst, Kick was at her house again.

As I entered her kitchen, I asked, “Where is he? I saw his
bike out front.”

She looked up from the vegetables she was cutting up and
smiled at me. “He’s out the back, cleaning the gutters.”

“Why?”

She frowned. “I guess because he’s a nice guy and wanted to
help me.”

“So he just dropped by and decided to do it for you?” I
asked, incredulous.

“He told me he’d noticed them the other day, so that’s why
he came back. Are you annoyed about it?”

I huffed out a breath. “I don’t know how I feel, Mum. I’m
like a big knot of stress at the moment. One minute I want him and then the
next he pisses me off and I just want him to leave.” God, I felt like one of
those whiny bitches I couldn’t fucking stand.

Just make up your mind already.

A huge smile spread across her face. “Baby, you’ve always
loved Kick, and from what you just said, I don’t think that love is going
anywhere soon. You two have always had that push and pull where you piss each
other off, so that’s nothing new.”

“Maybe I don’t want a relationship like that anymore. Maybe
I want something easier with no pissing each other off.”

She laughed. “Oh, Evie… you’d be bored in a day.”

She was right and I fucking knew it.

And that pissed me off even more.

God damn it.

I left her and went in search of Kick. I found him and
Braden up on the roof out the back. He didn’t realise I was there for a couple
of minutes, so I took the opportunity to watch him and just soak him in. He was
shirtless and his muscles rippled as he moved. And I had an awesome view of his
ass, too, so every time he bent over, he blessed my eyes with that ass.

Oh god.

My mother was so right when she said I’d be bored without
the push and pull Kick and I had.

I still love him.

With every fibre of my being.

With every scar he’d left on my heart.

I still want a life with him.

As I was caught up in my thoughts, he must have seen me.
“Evie,” his voice filtered through and I blinked him into focus.

“Hi,” I said, smiling up at him.

“You staying long?” he asked, his frustration with me from
the other day gone.

I had a couple of things to do, one of them being to visit
my dad to get more information out of him about the guy he owed money to. I’d
been desperately trying to find a way to borrow the money but I’d still had no
luck yet so I figured maybe we could negotiate with the guy. “I’ve gotta go and
see Dad but I’ll be here for a while.”

A look of irritation crossed his face, and he said, “I’ll be
down in a minute.”

“Okay.” I had no idea what the irritation was about but I
figured he would clue me in soon.

“Hey, Evie,” Braden called out, waving to me.

I waved back. “Hey, Braden. Long time, no see.”

“Yeah. I reckon it’s about time you two got your shit
sorted,” he said with a huge grin.

I waved him away with a flick of my hand. “Yeah, yeah… you
wouldn’t be the first person to say that.”

He laughed a huge belly laugh. “Well get on that, woman.”

I shook my head and laughed. “I’ll leave you guys to it. I’m
going back inside out of the heat.”

“Have a coldie waiting for me,” Braden said.

I smiled to myself. I’d missed the banter with Kick’s
brother. Although our parents had killed their relationship, us kids had stayed
friends, but when Kick and I had broken up the last time, I’d cut all ties. I’d
needed to put distance between us, and being friends with his family would make
that hard.