“I’m glad you feel that way, baby. And just for the record, you take my fucking breath away. You’re the most beautiful woman I know. I thought so the first second I laid eyes on you, and I’ve wanted you ever since. At first I thought all I wanted was to fuck you, but once I had you, I wasn’t satisfied with once. I wanted more. You’re smart and funny and sweet.”

  He leaned in and continued the words against my lips. “You’re brave, and caring, and a pain in my ass.” Our lips connected briefly. “You’re the light to my darkness, Hellcat. Your smile makes everything right in my fucking world.”

  He wound my hair around his hand and jerked my head back slightly, taking my mouth with a rough passion that dragged a moan of pleasure up my throat. I loved Brody’s kisses, loved his masterful mouth grinding on mine while he asserted his dominance. His tongue curled around mine, causing a flutter of arousal in my core. I found myself scooting my lower body closer to him, needing the heat and contact between his thighs. I wrapped my arms around his neck and savored the texture and flavor of his mouth against mine.

  “Get a fucking room!” someone laughed as they walked past where we were parked in the dark. It sounded like Loco, and I wondered if he could see who we were or just our dark silhouettes.

  By the time Brody pulled away, we were both breathing heavily. I smiled, feeling his hard-on throbbing strongly up against my pussy. My body had come to life, too. I could feel the wetness between my legs, and moaned loudly when his hand roamed up to my breast.

  “Come on, babe, I need to fuck you.” His tone was hoarse, and he made a move that indicated he wanted us to get off his bike.

  “What’s wrong with right here?” I asked brazenly, rocking against him while nibbling on his chin. I felt my nipples turn hard against his palm. It was amazing how the pleasant tingle made a direct line down to my pulsing clit. The thought of him fucking me on his bike turned me hotter inside. I reached for the front of his pants.

  “Fuck me, baby.” I breathed the words against his mouth. I worked frantically at getting his pants undone so I could get to my prize.

  “Christ, you’re going to be the fucking death of me,” he rasped. I could feel his heart pounding hard against mine.

  He didn’t stop me from lowering his zipper and reaching inside. As I pulled out his cock, I felt his hands undoing my pants, and then I lifted my butt off the seat so he could yank them down to my thighs. Without words we simultaneously rearranged ourselves. Brody leaned back in his seat and thrust his pelvis out, making his cock stand up and away from his body. I lifted my hips slightly and scooted forward, impaling myself on him.

  “Oh, fuck, baby!” Brody’s guttural tone was music to my ears as he began to thrust.

  I loved being filled by him. Loved feeling the weight, girth, and length of his cock taking up every inch of space in my pussy. I clenched around him, relishing his shudder as he groaned deeply, as I began to meet him thrust for thrust. His hands dropped to my hips.

  “Touch yourself,” he commanded, breathing hard.

  I did what he asked, whimpering when my fingers came into contact with my sensitive clit. Was it possible to feel too good? Not when it was Brody fucking me into oblivion. We kissed and nibbled at each other’s lips while fucking like it was the end of the world, but not until we came first.

  “Brody!” I whimpered against his mouth. My heart was pounding hard, and I knew that I was about to come undone. I could feel the hot rush spiraling from my core. One more brush against my clit with his hard cock and I buried my face into the side of his neck, crying out with a blinding, explosive orgasm. “Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!” I panted weakly, before biting down on him during the uncontrolled movements of my body.

  He grunted, and continued to fuck me fast and hard. I felt his cock swell and turn even harder, and then he was coming with a lion’s roar against my neck. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly, releasing deep inside of me, so hard that I could feel the warm jets of his cum against my womb.

  We stayed wrapped around each other for a long time, holding each other tightly, our hearts beating as one as our panting calmed into regular breaths and Brody gradually slipped out of me. I loved him. God, I loved him. And while part of me thought it was too soon, it’d been years in the making. Wasted years that we’d never get back. Where would we have been today if things had been different? I suddenly felt overwhelmed over a loss for something I’d never really had. Tears burned in my eyes, and I realized that I was getting emotional.

  “You okay, Hellcat?”

  The soft rasp of his voice soothed me instantly. I pulled myself together and snorted. “Are you?”

  He huffed, “I’m getting too old for fucking beautiful women on my bike.”

  “How many women have you fucked on your bike?”

  “You really want to know?”

  I thought for a moment, reminding myself that it was all in the past. “Yes.”

  “One.”

  One? I drew back to meet his eyes. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I couldn’t help the smile from spreading across my face. It was too dark to fully see his expression, but woman’s intuition told me what I wanted to know.

  It suddenly occurred to me that there was a lot about Brody that I didn’t know. “Just how old are you, anyway?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  Seven years older than me. I laughed. “You have a lot of good years left for fucking women on your bike.” I thought about some of the things that I’d seen over the years at the club. Age had never stopped any of the men I’d been around when it came to fucking their women, wherever they wanted.

  He grunted. “We going to spend the night here on my bike or head inside?”

  “I’d love to spend a night out under the stars,” I admitted, surprising myself. A lost memory worked its way into my thoughts, one of my sister and I putting a tent up in the backyard and sleeping outside. We would stay awake half the night talking and laughing, snacking on grapes and pineapple when mom was around, tearing into the Oreo cookies we had stashed when she wasn’t.

  “Babe? You got quiet.”

  I lay my head against his chest with a sigh. “Just reminiscing.” My tone was a little sadder than I’d intended it to be.

  His hand began to brush up and down my back, as if he recognized that I needed comfort. “About what?”

  I told him.

  “What was her name?”

  “Blanche.”

  He snorted.

  “Yeah, I know, but mom named her after her best friend. We were only a year apart, so we were very close.”

  “I’m sorry you lost them.”

  I nodded. “Do you have any siblings?”

  I felt him shake his head. “Nope. I was an only child.”

  “I bet you were spoiled.”

  “Don’t know about spoiled, but I had a good childhood,” Brody admitted. “Dad was a scientist at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and mom was a school teacher.”

  A scientist and a school teacher. Wow. Brody came from intelligent stock. “Are they still alive?”

  “No.”

  I could tell that he was hesitant to continue, and I thought maybe the memory was too painful for him to rehash. I waited patiently for him to decide.

  He took a deep breath. “They were stopped at a train track. The crossing gates were down. Some drunk came speeding up behind them. He was unable to stop in time and he crashed into the back of their car, pushing them through the gates and onto the tracks right in front of the oncoming train. They were killed instantly.”

  “Oh, Brody! I’m so sorry!” A sob escaped me, and I didn’t realize that I was crying until he began to wipe my cheeks down.

  “It was a long time ago, babe.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “So we’re really are going to spend the night out here, huh?” he asked with amusement in his tone.

  I laughed and climbed off his lap, and quickly did up my pants. “I thought maybe you might want to go another round,” I teased.

  He zipped up and snapped his jeans closed. “You’ll get your second round, baby, and a third and a fourth. But first let’s get a drink.”

  He took my hand and we walked into the clubhouse. I heard familiar laughter, and looked in the direction that it had come from. Millie, Lissa, JoJo, Bobbie, and Holly were clustered around a table with drinks in front of them. Millie waved me over when she noticed me. I slipped my hand from Brody’s.

  “I missed visiting with them the other night.”

  “Go ahead. I want to talk to Demon anyway.”

  A quick glance at the bar revealed Demon and the others whose old ladies’ table I was about to crash were there. It appeared the men were having a serious pow wow at one end of the bar. Heads were bent close together and they were talking low. Not everything made its way into church. I watched my man’s tight ass walk away, licking my lips.

  Life was good for me right now.

  I hoped it stayed that way.

  Chapter 29

  Lulu

  “Megan, will you please give Mrs. Jenkins a call and reschedule Little Man’s surgery for next Tuesday? Something has come up and Dr. Bowers won’t be in tomorrow. Everything else on the schedule we can handle. Also, see if you can schedule Millie to spend that night and the next in case we need someone to stay.”

  I hadn’t had to ask Millie to come in again since the first disastrous time when she’d come to stay with Buttercup, and since then we’d added a security system, thanks to the donation from the Desert Rebels. I also knew that Loco had insisted she learn how to handle a gun, and she now carried a permit. During our visit at the clubhouse the other night, she’d told me that she and some of the old ladies were also going to take self-defense classes and wanted me to come. I thought it was a good idea.

  “Will do. Does that mean I can take tomorrow off, too?”

  I smiled, handing her the folders of the last three patients of the day. “Good try, but no.”

  Stephanie came out from the back, blowing the bangs off her forehead, her shirt soaked. “What a day! Hugo’s bath was a breeze, but that Birdie was a little bitch! She scratched the hell out of my arms!” She held her arms out from her body to show us the damage. She looked like a druggie.

  Hugo was a huge St. Bernard, Birdie a tiny little cat, but Stephanie was right, she was a little bitch. No matter what she came in for she fought us like a little demon. My first reaction to Stephanie’s swearing was to glance around to make sure the lobby was empty. Some day she was going to slip up, but I’d warned her, and until it actually happened I didn’t care if she said what was on her mind.

  “You better make sure you clean those scratches.” She knew that, but a reminder wouldn’t hurt. Stephanie had a habit of getting side-tracked.

  I turned my attention to Megan. “What do we have left for this afternoon?”

  She pulled up the appointment schedule on her computer screen and I leaned down to glance over it. Unless we had any walk-ins, it looked like we had four clients coming in. Three of them I knew, the fourth was someone new.

  “I better go get Birdie ready, I see Mrs. Rodriguez coming in,” Stephanie quipped, leaving the room again.

  I glanced up when the door opened and the elderly woman breezed in with the energy of someone twenty years younger. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Rodriguez. Stephanie is getting Birdie for you now.”

  “Hi, ladies,” she smiled, greeting us both. “Was my little baby a good girl for you?” She handed Megan her credit card.

  “She always is,” I lied. I’d learned early on that pet owners got very defensive when you criticized their fur babies. “There she is now.”

  Mrs. Rodriguez turned in the direction I was looking, the smile widening on her face when she saw Stephanie. Stephanie held the carrier up so that the woman could look inside and see Birdie. “Oh, my goodness, she smells so good!” She grabbed the handle out of Stephanie’s hand. “Thank you! See you next time!” She picked up her credit card and turned to leave.

  “Another happy client,” Megan said.

  I eyed Stephanie. “Has Hugo been picked up?”

  “Yup.”

  “Go clean those scratches before you forget.”

  She saluted me. “Yes, ma’am!”

  Megan rolled her eyes, and then they turned serious. “Is Dr. Bowers okay?”

  Elizabeth had told me what was going on with her, but it wasn’t my place to tell Megan and Stephanie. If she wanted them to know she would tell them. I nodded. “She’s good.” She was dealing with a health issue, and I hoped I would be able to say the same after Tuesday.

  Megan accepted my response without questioning it further. The three of us had worked together long enough now to know certain tells about each other. Supposedly I had an office voice that warned them when not to push me.

  The afternoon flew by as Elizabeth and I dealt with the yearly examinations and shots for a terrier and a greyhound. The third was a follow-up appointment for a cat that had been attacked by another animal. The poor thing was bald in several places now, and had been stitched up like Frankenstein. We had some time before our last appointment showed up, and I found myself following Elizabeth to her office.

  I plunked down in the chair in front of her desk and studied her. She looked tired and a little pale. “Why don’t you go home? We have one appointment left, and all they want to do is board their cat for the night.”

  She leaned back in her chair with a sigh and gave me a tired smile. “Have you ever thought about becoming a vet?”

  Where had that come from? “I did once, when I was younger.”

  “What changed?”

  She knew my story. I’d broken down one day during lunch in her office and had told her, so it surprised me that she’d ask that question. God, I didn’t want to get into it again, so I kept my answer short and sweet. “Time and money.” Time, including all the years I’d lost when I’d been hiding instead of going to school to purse my dream. Money, because I had none.

  Her laugh didn’t last long. “You don’t want to talk about it.”

  I shook my head. “Not really. Not right now.” I knew that she’d understand.

  She leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful look on her face. “I’d like to leave this place to someone who’s as passionate about the care of animals as I am.”

  Oh, my God! Was she sicker than she’d let on?

  “But that someone would need to have a diploma on the wall.” She laughed at herself. “My girls all have other interests.” She tapped her finger against her lips. “I want you to think about going back to school and getting that diploma. We can work out something with the money.”

  My mouth dropped in astonishment, and the tears welled up in my eyes. It wasn’t the fact that she’d suggested that she wanted to leave the clinic to me, or the assistance she’d offered with the financing for school, but that she cared about me in that way. I was overcome with emotion and couldn’t speak, just sat staring at her in awe, as if she were my guardian angel.

  “I can see I’ve caught you unaware, honey.” Elizabeth rose to her feet. “Think about what I’ve said. And I think I’ll go home as you suggested.” She grabbed her purse.

  I rose to my feet, too, and somehow managed to pull myself together. “Don’t worry about anything here. We’ve got it covered.” I walked her to the back door. “Good luck tomorrow. I’ll see you Wednesday.”

  I closed and locked the door behind her and took a deep breath. My eyes shifted to the clock. We still had one more appointment left, and that was half-an-hour away. Boarding cats was easier than boarding dogs because no one had to stay to let them out during the night. Cat cages were set up with everything they needed. I headed out front to see Stephanie and Megan hanging around the reception desk, laughing.

  “You know, you girls might as well leave for the day. I can take care of the last patient.”

  “You sure? I don’t mind staying. Why don’t you go home early for a change? I don’t mind—”

  “Oh, my, God you’re such an ass kisser!” Megan exclaimed with a laugh, grabbing her purse from beneath the desk counter. “We’re young! We have lives!” Her eyes darted my way. “Not that you don’t have a life—”

  Stephanie added, “Or that you’re not young.”

  I laughed along with them. “See you both bright and early tomorrow.” I walked them to the door, a thought crossing my mind that maybe I should lock it until the next client showed up. But Crow was still out there, and he wouldn’t leave until Brody arrived. I gave him a little wave and went to the back to make sure the cage was good to go for the cat that was coming in. Food, water, litter box, comfy blanket--all there.

  Satisfied, I returned to the front, and just in time. As my last patient for the day came through the door with his cat, I noticed that Brody had arrived and was outside, talking with Crow.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Stabler.” He was an odd-looking little man, his way of dressing a throwback to the sixties. He kind of reminded me of Mr. Rogers with his slicked-back hair and sweater. He took short steps up to the desk, greeting me with a friendly expression.

  “Good afternoon,” he acknowledged.

  “I understand you want to board Fluffy for the night.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll take good care of her. Do you have proof that she’s up to date on her shots?”

  His expression sobered. “I-I didn’t know that I had to bring it.”

  I asked, even though I already knew the answer, “Has she been here before?”

  He shook his head, the disappointment showing on his face as he realized that he might not be able to leave his cat. I sighed, knowing that I was going to break the rules. “I tell you what--taking in animals without proof of vaccination is against policy, but I’ll make an exception just this once.”

  His face lit up. “Oh, thank you! That’s very sweet of you.”

  I walked around to him and took the cage from him. I peered inside at the long-haired calico. “She’s a beauty,” I murmured, noticing that she was wearing tags, which was a good sign that she’d had her shots. The name on the tag gave me reason to pause with confusion, though. It was Ginger and not Fluffy. “Huh. The name on her tag says Ginger.”

 

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