Lock and Key (14 page)

I wasn’t sure where I fit in with the women in terms of the tribal hierarchy, but I didn’t care about defining or analyzing anything at the moment. I was with Dig, and that was good, it felt right. That was enough for me. More than enough.

Dig and I swam, we made out in the water. We ate too much junk food and drank way too many beers. Later in the afternoon we got high on their homegrown pot as Willy played a few tunes on his guitar. His voice wasn’t half bad either. We crashed on our blankets, me tucked into Dig’s side. The cool breeze blew over our bare skin and lulled us to sleep.

“Peanut!” Dig whispered in my ear and shook my arm.

I cracked an eye open. The sky was a dusky pink; it would be twilight soon. “Is something wrong?”

“Baby, get up, got to show you something,” he whispered. I looked around at our group sprawled out on the green hill. Everyone else was still asleep. “Come on, get up,” he insisted.

I exhaled and clambered up on my knees. Dig gathered up our two blankets that had been layered on the hard ground, took my hand in his and led me up the path leading to the bikes. We took a steep left down another trail.

“Dig? Where are we going?” Sleep still claimed my muscles and joints. I really didn’t want to go for a hike right now.

We walked on for a few more minutes until we came to a small clearing where there was a grove of trees and long, hanging branches. I had to duck my head. It was as if we were in our own private room of green. He quickly laid out the blankets and pulled me down on my knees.

“What is all this?” I asked.

He put his hands on my thighs. “I wanted your first time to be something sweet, like you are baby. You deserve this, not my room at the clubhouse, not your shit box of a house.” He kissed me as he untied the ties on either side of my bikini bottom. The fabric fell in his hand and I raised myself up an inch so he could yank it away. My insides spasmed at the rush of air and fabric against my delicate flesh. My face enflamed. There in the soft twilight, I felt suddenly shy in front of Dig, even though he had gotten to know every inch of my body over the past three days.

My heart hammered in my chest. “Is that why we haven’t…?”

“I didn’t want it to be with the Demon Seeds around and all that craziness at the club. I wanted time with you. Thank fuck they finally left.” His eyes flashed over me, and a deep fluttering pressure surged within me. He had planned this. His hungry gaze swept over me. He pushed the hair out of his face and licked his lips.

“Dig…” I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him deeply the way we both liked it. He moaned in my mouth.

Suddenly he drew back and removed his faded cut-off jeans. He tugged on the tie around my neck, and I undid the one around my back. My top dropped from me releasing my breasts. He folded my shuddering body in his arms, and we held each other. His hot hands massaged my rear and stroked my back.

“I’ve never had it special, Grace. Never interested me to tell you the truth. But I feel something for you, been feeling it a while now, just didn’t want to deal with it with your sister’s thing going on. Then you showed up at the party, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.” His teeth grazed his bottom lip. “I don’t like complications, but it’s not so complicated between us, is it, baby?”

I shook my head utterly mesmerized by every word that fell out of his beautiful mouth. I reached up and kissed him again.

“I want to make you mine, Sister. Want to come inside you,” Dig breathed against my lips. “I don’t know what this is, but you’re all I can think about. I’ve got to have you.”

My heart swelled and exploded. “Make me yours, Dig.” I whispered.

He pushed me down onto the scratchy blanket and reached out to the side and grabbed something. My gaze darted down to his hand. Purple, blue, yellow, white wildflowers were bunched in his fist. He tore the petals off the stems, held his hands high over my body, and scattered them over my feet, up my legs.

The flower petals and buds fell like magic fairy dust in the fading light which filtered through the trees. My skin tingled with every gentle touch of the tiny petals on my blazing skin. He continued up my body and scattered them along my tummy, around each breast, up to my throat then over my mouth and eyes, my hair. I took them in my mouth and laughed.

“You like that?” he asked.

“I love it. Don’t you dare stop.”

He chuckled. His fingers traced the petals around my breasts, and he planted kisses in between them. “You’re my wildflower, baby. You’re all these gentle, simple colors, but you’re a survivor too, like me. Strong enough to grow on these rocks.”

I reached up for him and crashed my mouth into his. Tears slid down my hot cheeks. He moved away for a moment to fit himself with a condom then leaned over me once more. His fingers trailed down my thigh. His mouth dipped between my legs, and he kissed and licked at my trembling flesh. Flower petals fell from my skin with every jerk of my body’s joyful submission. I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and filled my lungs with fresh air. My fingers slid through his thick locks, and I whimpered his name over and over again.

Dig raised himself up and slid inside me slowly. Every nerve ending in my body and my brain quivered and expanded.

I was his special, and he was mine.

“Oh shit,” he groaned in my neck. I angled my hips towards his, and he rocked in deeper and filled me. I winced at a sudden twinge of pain. My breath caught in my throat, and I froze. Our eyes locked together. He kissed my jaw and whispered, “It’s okay baby. Relax for me. It’ll pass in a sec.”

I closed my eyes and struggled with the burning sting. My body stiffened, and I took in a deep breath.

“Grace, look at me. Open up for me, baby,” he murmured. His fingers went between us and slid over my clit.

There was nothing more I wanted in this world than to open up for Dig. I wanted him inside my body and inside my soul, like I wanted to be in his. I knew that my most secret wish had come true. My chest flooded with heat and my eyes found his again. I released my pent-up breath, unclenched my muscles, and opened myself to him. His fingers slid away, and he settled deeper and began moving back and forth inside me. Our bodies crushed the scattered petals between us.

He let out a deep groan. “My wildflower,” he said in my ear.

I will never forget that moment in my entire life.

It was beautiful.

It was real and big and true.

And that was us.

Every year when the first warm days of spring would blessedly roll around once more we’d pack up the saddlebags on Dig’s Harley and take off for a day long ride always ending up at the Hippie Hole before we went home. Sometimes we would do it alone, sometimes it was with a bunch of the guys and their women, and we’d make it an overnight. And always when the partying would settle down, Dig and I would trot off to our tree and have lots of sex and then a snooze. After the sun would set we’d head back to the party and celebrate the stars sparkling over us in the big night sky with more sex and plenty of tequila and weed.

It was at the Hippie Hole that six years later to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary with an overnight, Dig and I decided to make a baby and had screwed for the better part of the afternoon in our little green hideaway. And it was there that months later I told him I was finally pregnant. He had gone nuts.

Dig had grabbed me and kissed me hard on the cheek when I turned to face Alicia who had shouted at us waving her new cell phone. I squealed and nabbed the beer he had been drinking out of his hands before he got a chance to toss it in the air and probably hurt someone. I held onto him and couldn’t stop laughing. His infectious, wild energy surged through me as Alicia snapped a photo of us with Wreck.

Three months later it would all be ripped to bloody shreds.

I don’t think I can ever go back to that swimming hole again. Not ever.

Let it be for other young lovers with a different, sweeter fate than ours.

My eyes froze on the small, almost inconsequential framed photo hanging on the wall of the clubhouse main room among the myriad trophy shots of the men sporting a variety of firearms or on their bikes.

My breath constricted in my lungs as my gaze passed over my own young and beaming face laughing at the camera, a beer bottle in my hand. Dig crushed the side of my body to his front with the taut muscles of his bare arm tightly clasped around my middle. He was kissing my cheek, his face in profile. Wreck was on the other side of him, his mouth open in a great big howl, his one arm raised high gripping his beer bottle, the other clapped on Dig’s shoulder.

A shadow fell over the glass. Warm breath heated my shoulder.

“You can’t know how many times I’ve looked at that picture over the years and wanted to know who that woman is, who she
really
is.” Miller’s deep voice filled my ear, my eyes shut tight. “That gorgeous, deliriously happy woman in that sexy black bikini making her man feel on top of the world, both of them so full of life.” His finger tapped the photo. “That is pure, unadulterated joy.”

“Please, stop…”

“I’ve been fascinated with her since I got back from the army fifteen years ago, and I walked back into this clubhouse and saw this picture. Knowing that my brother Wreck loved you like a little sister, knowing Dig and the kind of man he was, and then to see him like this, took my fucking breath away. Still does.”

“Miller…”

“And then over two weeks ago, I came in here after being out of town on a run and see this photo again, and I practically doubled over. It clicked why I was immediately drawn to you, why I thought I knew you somehow when I first spotted you at the bar. Christ, I had my dream on my hands, and in my mouth, and I never fucking realized.”

“I’m not a dream,” I whispered.

“No, you are absolutely not a dream. You’re Grace Quillen. The woman who almost bled to death on a country road, yet found the strength and presence of mind to take her husband’s gun to protect herself, her man, and his bike. You’re so real it’s killing me right now to stand two inches away from you, smell your goddamn perfume and want to do nothing but touch you, kiss that unbelievable mouth of yours, drag you to my bed and bury myself inside you.”

“Please…” I tugged on my hair.

“I didn’t grow up dreaming or wishing for things, Grace. Then I saw this woman in this motherfucking picture, and I let myself dream, let myself wish.” He audibly exhaled. We stood in silence facing the photo.

“Why did you leave the motel like that?” he asked, his voice now quiet.

My scalp prickled. “I had to get on the road early,” I said.

“You took off way before early, Grace. Tell me.”

I needed to end this conversation immediately.

“What’s the matter? Your big manly pride hit a new low just because a woman left you first without begging you for another session or a goodbye kiss?”

Miller only glared at me.

“What difference does it make that I took off first?” I asked. “Was it bad etiquette on my part as a female? Wait… were we going steady and I didn’t realize?”

He leaned in closer to me, and I could smell him, clearly see the silver in his dark eyes. All my senses swept me back to being against his hot smooth skin in that motel bed.

“I liked it Grace. You and me. I liked it a lot.”

“It was just sex,” I said.

“No it wasn’t. And it sure as hell isn’t anymore.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means now I get your loneliness and confusion,” he said. “Now I get…”

Something in my brain snapped.

“Well, there’s one thing I’m not confused about… seeing you in the hallway getting your dick blown by that redhead. You don’t waste any time, do you,
Lock
?”

“For shit’s sake.” He grimaced. His hands flew up to the sides of his head, and then they fell away.

I took in a breath. “Listen, that morning I woke up and saw your tattoo and your cut and I…”

He cursed under his breath, his lips drew into a firm line. “I get it Grace, I do. But I can’t pretend I don’t know you. I can’t pretend that what happened between us didn’t happen. I don’t want to.”

My hands gripped my waist. “Why not?” I asked. “You’ve had years of experience at that sort of thing around here, haven’t you?”

“Jesus!” His eyes flashed at me. “You are not those women!”

My gaze darted around the room. His sexy redhead shot daggers at us from her seat at the bar. My eyes cut back to his.

“I can’t do this right now—whatever
this
is. I’ve got a sister who’s dying, a brother-in-law and nephew who are hanging over the edge—”

“Yes, you do, and that’s harsh.”

“It is. And I left everything behind to be here for them.”

He tilted his head at me. “What was there to leave behind, Grace? You’ve been doing that on a regular basis for years now, haven’t you?”

The breath burned in the back of my throat. “It took everything I had to walk in here tonight and keep it together after all these years.”

He sighed. “I’m sure it did.”

“Lock, I’m not Little Sister,” I whispered and turned back to the photograph. My finger grazed the dusty glass over the small photo. “I’m not that woman anymore.”