Her hand reached over to sift through my hair. “Your hair’s gotten long,” she murmured as I tried to formulate a response. With her hands on me it was next to impossible. Every part of me wanted to climb on top of her and take her again, but I thought she might be sore.
“Haven’t had a cut in a while,” I rasped as her fingertips drifted toward my wound that would undoubtedly leave a scar.
“I could cut it for you,” she offered.
“How far do you think we’d get?” I chuckled, squeezing her ass playfully.
“Probably not far,” she admitted with a laugh. “But it’d be a fun experiment.”
“No doubt.” I was already picturing the fun we could have in her bathroom.
“Did you check in at home?” she asked curiously. She was so expressive when she talked—the slightest emotion played on her face. I wanted to know them all.
“Yeah, it’s all good,” I assured her. “They’ve got it covered for now.”
“For now,” she murmured, and I didn’t miss the insinuation in her tone. At some point, I’d have to go. We both knew it.
“Luckily, things have been quiet.” I pressed on, not wanting her thinking about the inevitable.
“They weren’t before?”
“We had some trouble with a street bike gang wanting to run drugs through Bishop. They attacked the club a little while back—Emmie might have mentioned it, since she and Gunner were there when it happened.”
Grace nodded. “Only briefly though. I didn’t catch the details.”
“Everyone was all right, luckily. We haven’t had trouble with them since,” I explained. “We keep things on the up and up, but if there are threats, we don’t take that shit lightly and we’ll retaliate.” It was important to me that she knew where I stood.
“I get that,” she responded, and I knew with the way she’d grown up, she meant it. With her, I had the chance to share the life, to relate on a deeper level. Before I’d met her, I hadn’t realized how important that was.
“All the founding members are military?” she asked.
I nodded. “When I started the club a decade ago, it was a place for us to land after we left the teams. A family, more or less, with shared sense of purpose. We’ve got a couple of newer recruits from different branches of the military who were looking for the same thing.”
“I haven’t ever known anything different than the huge extended family of the Knights,” she acknowledged. “It wasn’t always easy being the daughter of the prez. My father and younger brother, hell, the entire club, were always overprotective. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The first generation of members, when my grandfather was still prez—they all had kids around the same time, and we all grew up like siblings. Those friendships are thicker than blood because they’re built on so much more than family ties. We’ve been through everything together. The fact that you thought to build that, that you were able to successfully, is really extraordinary.”
“The fact you get the importance of the club to me isn’t something I take for granted.”
“What were your parents like?” she asked gently, zeroing in on one of the reasons building the club had been so important to me.
I hadn’t talked about them in so long, but the pain of losing them would always run deep. “My dad was a military man, a career Marine,” I shared. “Since we traveled so much, my mom stayed at home to make sure we settled okay in each new town. My dad was pretty stern, but they were both good to us. I’m older than Ava by eight years, and though it gutted me, it nearly destroyed her. She was only sixteen when they died in a car crash. I was twenty-four and had already been in the navy for six years.”
“An older man then.” She smiled gently, no doubt trying to lighten the mood.
I chuckled, knowing she was Ava’s age, twenty-six. “Thirty-four isn’t that much older, baby.”
“No,” she agreed, clearly unbothered by our eight-year age gap. “How did you land in Bishop?”
“My dad had been stationed at Quantico when he died, but Ava didn’t like Virginia much. We had an aunt we used to visit in Bishop as kids, and the opportunity to take over the abandoned military base felt fitting.”
She nodded, looking as though she was going to ask another question, but her stomach grumbled. “I need to feed you,” I murmured, leaning in to take her mouth in a soft kiss.
“I still want that pie,” she replied, and I was glad she wasn’t shy about her appetite. “I just need to put some makeup on.”
I swept my thumb over her smooth cheek. “You don’t need makeup. You’re gorgeous as you are.”
“Don’t need makeup?” she gasped, adorably affronted. “Next you’ll be telling me we’re going for a hike or something.”
I chuckled. “Not much of a nature girl?”
