Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (26 page)

I sat up, hovering over Peter to let him know that I wasn’t turning him aside or refusing him and gave him a small kiss. “I need to think for a while,” I told him. “I have a lot of things that I need to get past first before I can seriously think about us as an item.”

Peter nodded. “I understand.”

Just that made me think differently of him. While he may still be an asshole, he was an asshole with a heart, and the two were worlds away. “Thank you,” I said to him, squeezing his hand and then getting up to go take a shower.

“April,” he said as I reached for the door handle. I turned back to look at him, gloriously displayed on grandma’s quilt. He had tanned, too, I thought incredulously. Damn, times were changing. “You will always be able to rely on me. I promise.”

“I believe you,” I said simply, because I did. I was taking a great leap into the unknown with only Peter as my safety net. Right now, that felt like the only thing that would be a safety net. Right now, I trusted him completely and fully.

Maybe stepbrothers weren’t as bad as I’d originally thought, I mused as I washed myself off in the shower. I closed my eyes, tilting my head back to let the water drum along my throat. I had a changing, growing human being who happened to be beautiful at the same time waiting on my bed outside, waiting for me.

Life was good, I decided.

THE END

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Copyright 2015 by Maya Grey - All rights reserved.

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by Maya Grey

I had never liked bad boys. Even in school when all of the girls were experimenting with the local multiple times Juvie attendee, I was busy trying to keep my 4.0 GPA, honors student boyfriend who also happened to be on such and such sport team happy. Everyone had told me that I always needed to loosen up, but I had adamantly ignored them.

I was always the “play it safe” sort of girl. I never took risks. I only looked at the “buy it now” options on eBay and only answered “Truths” instead of doing “Dares.”

The decision to eschew all bad boys stuck. All throughout high school and college, I avoided anyone wearing any sort of leather or driving anything but a safe, standard-issue car. Except for that one time.

One time I slipped up in high school and it cost me nearly everything, even my life. That’s when I vowed to never go near anyone driving a bike or sporting skull-and-crossbones tattoos and leather jackets for good.

When Mom called to tell me that she was marrying the ex-leader of our local biker’s gang, I panicked a little bit. It wasn’t because of him, necessarily. Nope, it was more because of his son.

Remember that little slip-up I told you about? Christian was the culprit and my one-night-stand that ended in danger. The very same one that made me reconsider ever leaving the house again.

I had packed up immediately and left within the hour of hearing the news, intent on driving up to Mom’s place and talking her out of doing anything she would regret later, such as marrying a certain person who would perhaps cause her unneeded trouble. Charlie said that he was out of the business, but one thing I learned from my night on the wild side was that once you were in the life, it was hard to leave. Funnily enough, I’d heard the same thing about being a stripper, if that put things into perspective.

When I had arrived, Charlie and Christian had already been there, and I couldn’t very well just say in front of them that she shouldn’t be marrying him.

Christian had changed from the last time I had seen him. He still wore that damned leather jacket that mixed beautifully with his dark hair and made his already striking green eyes even more striking, but he was different.

He had gotten a haircut, for one, chopping off a few good inches of dark hair. It made him look more civilized, but certainly did nothing for the bad-boy appeal that he had always managed to carry around with him wherever he went. The stubble that had constantly graced his face was gone. It was strange to see Christian clean-shaven, though I knew I had to have seen him like that back when we were kids.

“Christian,” I said, and it was too delayed for me to have not been caught gaping. “I haven’t seen you for quite a while.”

Christian grinned lazily in that way that had most girls tripping head over heels just to touch the worn leather of his jacket. “You haven’t changed a bit, Cherry.”

I really wished that he had the good sense to call me by the full name. I hated that nickname he’d given me. It had been something that had happened when he had first tried to seduce me in ninth grade and I had turned the color of the aforementioned fruit. The name had stuck, unfortunately it seemed, even into adulthood.

I turned to Mom, who had her arm around Charlie, giving me that bemused smile that she did when she wanted to ask questions but couldn’t because we were in polite company.

“Oh, I know Christian from high school,” I said after a few moments of trying to figure out what she must be trying to ask me with her psychic powers that didn’t actually exist.

“Oh, how nice, then you’ll be able to get along admirably, Tara,” Mom said, leaning her head against Charlie’s shoulder. Mom wasn’t short, but Charlie was tall, topping off on the upper side of six feet, all lean muscle that had come from his boxing career early in life. I had always wondered if he had taken it as a self-defense for surviving on the streets. He had the look of someone who had seen a lot in his years and wasn’t about to tell every single person who he met about it. He knew how to keep secrets. His brown eyes seemed depthless as I gazed at him, wondering what the hell had possessed him to propose to my mother, and for her to say yes.

Unlike me, she’d always gone for the trouble-makers. That’s why I never even met my dad. Once he figured out that she was pregnant, he’d high-tailed out of there as quickly as you could say ‘baby.’ You’d think that would knock some sense into her, when she suddenly had to support herself and a new baby all alone, but it hadn’t stopped her from dancing with the darker side occasionally.

Christian grinned at me again, and I felt myself blush as his gaze slithered along my body. Dammit, I hated blushing. “We’ll get along just fine, won’t we, Cher?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

I couldn’t deny that I was still physically attracted to him, as I had been back when I’d had my one-night fling with him. That blush wasn’t completely uncalled for. He had just looked me over as if I were a prime cut of meat that he planned to consume later.

I crossed my arms after setting my bag down beside the shoes I had taken off at the door. I’d deal with it later, but right now, I needed to set something straight.  “Christian, can we go to the kitchen, maybe get our parents something to drink?”

Christian wasn’t stupid. If he had tried at school, he would have excelled and gotten more than just a GED that qualified him for working at McDonalds until he turned thirty and then switch over to Wal-Mart until he became like one of those old ladies that always called customers ‘Dear.’

Of course, that was if he didn’t become a drug ring leader or a member of some foreign mafia.

On that note, I followed Christian into the kitchen. He’d filled out since I’d last seen him; his shoulders were a touch broader than I remembered them ever being, and underneath that ridiculous jacket, I could see that his hips tapered down to a nice V shape that reminded me of fitness models I’d always seen in college hanging around the art department when I’d come for photography.

“So you have me,” Christian said, green eyes hard like glass. “What do you want?”

“What the hell do you think that you’re doing?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice low as to not alert Mom or Charlie to the fact that I was yelling at Christian. “Your father is marrying my mother.”

“If you think that I just got that, you must have wasted all of that psychology and watching people on something that I don’t remember,” Christian said lazily. “Why else would I be here?” He leaned against the counter, tilting his head back. The late afternoon sun hit his face and reflected even warmer tones than his natural dark skin. He had told me as I had traced my fingers along his arms and chest that he had Native American blood, Cherokee. I shook that mental picture out of my head before I could really even think about why I was thinking about it or what it meant. I couldn’t let him distract me, not like this.

“You can’t allow Charlie to marry my mother.”

Christian looked over at me, eyes flashing.  “He’s happy. For the first time since Cheyenne died, he is actually truly happy.” I winced at the sound of his younger sister’s name. She had been another reason I had decided to go with him that night, and look how that turned out.

“I know that,” I snapped. “But I don’t give a damn about who’s happy about what if we’re all dead.”

“Look, Tara,” Christian said, turning to face me finally. I placed my hand against the handle of the fridge, trying not to lose my temper. I had to at least hear him out, hear what he had to say. The fact that he used my real name meant that he was being serious, at least. I released my grip on the fridge door handle and nodded. “I know that what happened that night was far from ideal, but not every run in with someone who doesn’t walk the straight and narrow path ends like that. Your mom obviously has good experiences with Charlie, and I think that you should give him a second chance.”

“I haven’t even given him a first chance,” I pointed out, and then realized that I had just incriminated myself. Christian gave me a pointed look and then turned back so that his face was in profile.

“My point exactly,” he said.

I sighed. “I just don’t want to see her get hurt.”

“Charlie is out of the life for good. He’s said that before, but this time there was something different in his eyes. There was this gleam I’ve never seen before. I think he finally wants to settle down and start a family,” Christian insisted.

I sighed. “It’s like stripping,” I said, using my earlier metaphor. “You think you can leave it, but you find that you miss the stage.”

“And how do you know this?” Christian said, looking over at me with obvious interest.

I winced. “Watched a documentary,” I mumbled, ducking my head in shame.

“Well that’s practically sneaking out and using a fake I.D. to get into a club in the next big city for you,” Christian said sarcastically. The urge to smack him returned with a vengeance. I glared over at him.

“How can you ensure her safety?” I asked. “Because if you don’t have a way, I will find a way to make this wedding stop.”

“Make this wedding stop,” Christian said, low and intense, “and I will find a way to end you.”

Those words sent a chill down my spine. That night that we had spent together when the gambling debt collector had burst into our hotel room, gun pointed at our faces, I had seen the lack of Christian’s hesitation as he had quickly pulled his own gun out from underneath the pillow and shot the man in the chest.

Christian had been a lot of my firsts. He had been my first man I had taken to bed, he had been my first wander off of the straight and narrow path. He had been my first secret large enough to get me in trouble with the law. He had been my first experience of death.

I swallowed. I had no doubt that he could find a way to make me disappear, and it wouldn’t matter if I was dead or alive, he wouldn’t care, just as long as I never came back and allowed him to sleep in peace knowing that his position in the family was safe.

“Fine,” I said softly, raising my chin and looking him in the eye. He blinked; he had expected me to crumble like a cookie underneath this pressure. There was something different between the me of now and the me he had taken my innocence from all those years ago. This new me was strong and wouldn’t bend, and wouldn’t break under pressure. “I’d like to see you try.”

Christian looked at me for several more moments, eyes squinting and staring down into my very soul to where I knew that he could see that it was all bluff; that I didn’t have the actual guts to go up against someone with so little hesitation. He smirked and brushed past me, not even giving me the benefit of an answer.

###

That night, the moon streaming in through the window bugged me enough that I couldn’t sleep. Shortly after my conversation with Christian, I had pled that the drive over had caused me fatigue, and retired early. I had laid down on my bed without the intention of getting a wink of sleep only to find that five hours later, the bell was tolling midnight and I had fallen into a dreamless sleep.

However, as Christian’s words returned to me, along with memories of that night I had spent with him I had found that the warm blanket of sleep was falling further and further away from my grasp.

With a sigh, I glanced up at my skylight. The moon was almost full, high in the sky and bright enough for it to be daylight. A nightly walk down the block might clear my head. I bundled myself into a sweatshirt and pulled the hood up around my face so that I was cast completely in shadow. If anyone saw me, they wouldn’t be able to tell if I was an average-sized girl or a skinny guy. I also slipped the pepper spray into the pocket of my sweatshirt, right alongside the leftover receipt for Chinese food I’d gotten a couple of weeks back.

As I walked out onto the deck, I didn’t notice Christian leaning against the far edge. He let me be completely ignorant the entire time I was fumbling for the keys to the lock. Right when I had picked the correct one, he decided to speak.

“Are you seriously going to lock me out?” I jumped, cursed and dropped my keychain onto the wood of the porch, making a loud rattling noise.

“You have absolutely no manners, do you?” I hissed, leaning over to search for my keys with one hand and keeping my grip on the pepper spray in my pocket with the other. “You could have scared me to death.”

“Something tells me that you aren’t quite that breakable,” Christian said, and his voice was much closer than I recalled it being the first time. I looked up to see him standing beside me, dangling my keys in front of my face.

How had he moved so quickly?

I decided not to question it, simply straightened and snatched my keys back. “Thank you,” I snapped.

“What are you doing?” Christian asked as I backed away a few steps.

“What do you mean what am I doing? What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I just asked a question. There’s no need for you to get so defensive. Unless, of course, you’re doing something—dramatic gasp—wrong,” Christian said. I gritted my teeth.

“I could ask you the very same thing. Why are you standing on my porch, scaring the occupants out of their wits?” I asked.

“You seem to have retained your wits just fine,” Christian said dryly.

“Only because they happen to be second nature for me.”