I rinsed the washcloth and left it on the counter before going back into the bedroom to see the TV was already on and the bags were all piled in a corner furthest from the door.
Shooter gave me a small tight-lipped smile before turning to Breaker. “Keys,” he said, holding a hand out.
Breaker reached in his pocket, produced the keys, and threw them at Shoot.
Shooter nabbed them then walked over to me, his hand sliding across my jaw, then kissed the tip of my nose. “I'll be back in a couple of hours,” he said, then walked to the door and disappeared.
“Where's he going?” I asked, looking over at Breaker.
“Getting lost for a while,” he said on a shrug.
“But... why? This was his idea...”
“Come here,” Breaker said.
“It's really not a good idea for him to be all out and about when we just...”
“Alex, doll, come here,” Breaker's voice called, both soft and firm at the same time, making my belly flip flop. So I went there. And his hands reached out, cradling my face for a second, his thumb brushing over my lips.
“Oh,” I said, smiling a little as I realized Shoot's plan.
“Yeah,” Breaker smiled back, “oh.”
Twenty-two
Breaker
I tried to keep my eyes on the road while I drove. Because anytime I looked at her face and saw the damage Lex had done, I was equal parts furious and wanting to go back to Lex's place, drag him out of that panic room (if he was still alive in it) and rip all his appendages off, or also, pull the car over, wrap Alex up in my arms and tell her I would never let anyone lay a hand on her again.
Unable to do either of those things, I just looked ahead and kept driving.
But we were in the motel room. Shoot was gone. I had her bruised and bloodied face in my hands. And I didn't want to fight it anymore.
I dropped my hands from the sides of her jaws, over her shoulders, down her sides, and around her back, pulling her gently to my chest when what I really wanted to do was crush her there. But she had taken shots to the body and there was a wince when she walked. Bruised ribs. I needed to be easy with her.
Her head shifted, moving to bury her face in my neck as her arms went up and around my shoulders.
“I didn't mean it,” I said, my lips in her hair.
“Didn't mean what?”
“All that shit. About Lex keeping you and it just being a job and...”
“Shh,” she said, shaking her head. Then her face tilted slightly and I felt her lips press a kiss into the pulse point in my neck. “I know.”
My arms squeezed her a little and she didn't stiffen. “Don't ever,” I said, pushing her slightly away from me so I could duck my chin and look her in the eye, “ever fuckin' run away from me again.”
“Breaker... I was trying to protec...”
I shook my head. “Ain't your job.”
“What?”
“Ain't your job to protect me, doll. That's my job. So don't ever fuckin' do that to me again.”
“Listen Mr. Macho Badass, Guy” she started and I could see the heat rising in her dark eyes. Fuckin' hell. She had just stayed at a skeezy hotel run by a creep she thought (and probably was) going to date rape her, got taken to Lex's place, held against her will, beaten, almost raped, then escaped a bombing situation... and she was ready to go a couple rounds? Jesus Christ.
“No,” I said, my lips twitching.
“No what?” she asked, her eyes getting small.
“No, I ain't listening. You're new to this. You think you got me all figured out. But macho badass guys, doll... we do the protecting. You do the being sweet and cute and a royal pain in the ass thing. You don't go running off on your own. You don't make me worry about you. You don't fuckin' do that. Got me?”
“You were worried about me?” she asked, her voice getting low.
“Of -fuckin'-course I was worried about you. Running off on some hairbrained plan made up by someone you didn't know...”
“That someone I didn't know turned out to be a pretty big badass herself,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, doll, but you didn't know that. There was no way to know that. It was a stupid risk.”
More eye squinting. “Did you just call me stupid?”
Jesus.
This woman.
I sighed. “I called your plan stupid.”
“It's the same thing.”
“Ain't the same thing and I ain't fuckin' fighting about this either.”
“Well I want...”
“Shut up.”
At this, her eyes stopped squinting and went huge. “Excuse me?”
“I said shut up,” I said, letting the lip twitch turn into a smile.
“I don't know who you think you're talking to like...”
“You wanna keep arguing or you want me to show you why you shouldn't run away from me?”
I watched her brows draw together as she genuinely struggled with whether she wanted to go through another useless fight (she did) or see what I was talking about.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, my hands slipping back around to her sides, tickling slightly over her sore ribs and coming up to rest right below her tits, “I want to show you all the things we could have been doing instead of you sleeping sittin' up scared some shithead was gonna try to put his hands on you while I sat at home trying to figure out how to get you back.”
Recognition hit her eyes, making them warm up, the lids get heavy. “What kind of things?” he asked, wetting her lips.
“All kinds of things,” I said, dipping my head and pressing my lips against her neck, my tongue slipping out to slide up toward her ear. Her air choked out of her mouth as her head fell back, giving me more access. “Like this,” I said, taking her earlobe between my teeth and sucking until her body melted against mine. “And this,” I said, my hand moving from it's resting place on her rib cage to cup her breast and squeeze. “And this,” I said, moving my fingers to her nipple that was reaching hard through her bra and shirt.
Her throaty groan sent a bolt of desire through my body and I had to force myself to keep from ripping both our clothes off and slamming into her hard and fast.
She had a hard fuckin' day. She needed hands on her that weren't rough for a change.
So one of my hands slid to her hip, pushing her backward until the foot of the bed tapped her legs and she grabbed my shirt so she didn't fall. I reached out, grabbing her shirt and hauling it over her head, floating my fingers in her hair to set it to rights again before my hands slipped behind her back to unclasp her bra. Her eyes were on my face the whole time, lips slightly parted, eyes getting heavier by the moment.
My hands slid down her stomach, fingers snagging into the waistband of her pants and her panties and slowly pulling them down as I lowered myself onto my knees in front of her, kissing down her belly, over her hips, down her thigh as I slowly exposed it.
Up until that moment, I didn't know I could do lovemaking. That wasn't the kind of man I was- soft, sweet. I was hard, rough. And that was how I fucked. But hearing Alex's quiet whimpers had me exploring the idea of giving her soft and sweet as much as she wanted it.
Her pants slid to the floor and I grabbed her ankle, lifting it, removing the material then doing the same with the other ankle. Then I kissed my way up her other thigh, tipping my head up when my face was level with her pussy to see her watching me, her hand moving out to rest on the top of my head.