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Dog took a deep breath and shuddered on the exhale. “The police took me to the station. I told them everything he did. They found the bastard and brought him in. I heard later he had an ‘alibi’ for where he was when it happened. Seems he had a woman on the side who vouched for him. His cleaned-up act held more sway than the word of an eight-year-old boy. They chalked up her bruising to the explosion. The cause of the fire was listed as a faulty hot water heater.
“He left after that. Left me to the system, though that I didn’t mind. Didn’t want to live with him after he killed my mother. Bounced from one foster home to another, got into fights, finally did a stint in juvie for theft.” His lips turned up in a wry smile. “Only ever got one present for my birthday, the one the social worker sent.”
Dog rubbed his hand over his face, like he was trying to wash it all away. “When I hit eighteen, I searched for him. Found out he’d died in an explosion on a job site.” He grunted. “Seems like there might be karma after all.”
Any words Charley might have spoken were stuck in her throat. She’d never heard a tale so horrible. The silence between them carried a weight all its own.
Dog looked at her, and she knew the horror she felt was all over her face. His expression shuttered. “Guess I know how to bring a girl down.” His hand dropped from her shoulder.
Charley slid onto his torso, covering his body with hers, and held his face in both hands. “Please don’t shut down. I am honored you shared that with me, that you trusted me enough. You are an amazing man, so strong, so compassionate.”
He snorted and turned his head away. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”
She gently pulled his face back and looked into his eyes. “I know one thing for sure. That was a horrible burden for a child to carry. You deserved better.”
Dog was silent for a moment. “What’s done is done. Like I said, I don’t dwell on it. I got family now in my brothers. It’s all good. But you gotta follow doctor’s orders. Do I have to go for you to rest?”
She leaned forward and placed a light kiss on his lips. “Please don’t go. I like you right where you are.”
He ran his hands down her back and cupped her butt, then gave her that smile that hadpredatorstamped on it. “Yeah?” He gave her lower cheeks a squeeze that pressed her into his groin. “I like where you are, too. But we’ll explore that another time. Now sleep.”
Her lips tipped up. “Bossy.”
***
A crash of thunder rattled the cottage’s old window frames and jolted Charley from a sound sleep. Wind gusts forced the walls to pop like Daddy’s arthritic knees, confirming a nasty squall raged outside. It was pitch dark, too, which meant the power was out. The streetlight outside her bedroom window normally kept her room in twilight, but above-ground powerlines in a neighborhood with mature trees meant almost every storm had this inky aftermath. It was summer in the south, so weather like this was to be expected.
Adrenaline raced through Charley’s body. She sucked in a deep breath to counter it and cuddled closer to Dog, his warm chest providing a comforting pillow. He hadn’t even stirred. He must be a sound sleeper. At least he wasn’t snoring, thank goodness.
She traced her fingertips over his chest, stopping where his heartbeat pulsed against her hand. Where his tattoo acted as a shield against an unbearable memory. Fallen Grace. Two words in tribute to a beloved mother lost in a tragic way. How had he survived her dying at his feet when he was only eight years old, especially dying that way, brutally beaten and burned by a husband and father who had acted like neither? She suppressed a shudder. She was glad the man was dead. In her book, he had no right to oxygen.
Dog’s sleepy voice emerged from the dark. “Electricity out?”
Charley instinctively looked toward his face even though she couldn’t see it in the dark. “Yes.”
He grunted. “No surprise in this neighborhood. Every time a chipmunk farts over here, it knocks the power out.”
A sharp laugh erupted from Charley’s chest. “Why, Dog, I didn’t know you were so eloquent.”
His calloused hand slid over her hip to her butt and gave it a squeeze. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me yet,” he said, and then rolled her to her back. His breath was warm against her cheek, and the musky smell of his skin made her ache for his kiss. “You like to be well-informed, and I aim to please.” He ran his tongue over the shell of her ear, a touch so much more titillating because she couldn’t see him. “You want more of that attention you said you enjoyed?”
How did he do it? He had told her the story of the tattoo right before they had fallen asleep. Yes, they’d had amazing sex earlier, so she could understand wanting another round, but he must have been able to shove all those memories very deep.
She ran her hands up his back and into his silky hair as desire pooled between her legs. Maybe there was something wrong with her, but she wanted to shove the memories deep, too, and she knew exactly how. “Yes.I think I can suffer through it.”
Chapter Thirteen
The pitch blackness caused by the power outage hid Charley’s curves, so Dog used his fingertips to map the terrain. The swell of her tit, the hard pucker of her nipple, the valley in between the mounds, all distracting him from his past.
Why the fuck he’d told her about Ma, he didn’t know. Even his club brothers didn’t know it all, except Cutter. That shit should stay buried deep. But Charley brought things out in him, outofhim, that he didn’t recognize half the time.
Her breath was coming faster, hot against his ear, raising her chest underneath his hand, and Dog got his head back to who was beneath him. He traced her cheekbone with his nose and closed in on the target—her mouth. He pressed his lips to hers and slipped his tongue inside. For a brief second, she let him taste her, then she anchored a foot on the mattress beside his hip and pushed up.
Dog let her roll him to his back, breaking the kiss. She climbed on top, her legs hugging his hips. Her pussy covered his cock, speeding up the hardening that had already started.
Rain fell harder outside, the wind battering it against the house siding. Lightning flashed, and the room brightened just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of her—hair wild from sleep, luscious soft belly on display beneath her tits—and then the room went dark with a crash of thunder. The storm was really close.
He felt a storm beginning in him, too, and he was ready to let it rage. He ran his hands up her thighs to her waist. “Somebody’s a little eager.”
