Kristen Ashley - Rock Chick Revolution

“She got raped that night, Ren!” I stated loudly.

“I know, baby,” he said comfortingly.

“Now she’s a Rock Chick and you heard her tonight!” I kept talking loudly, tears sliding from my eyes. “And I haven’t figured out how to make amends.”

“You and your posse taking her in and having her back is doing that, Ally,” he pointed out.

“Obviously not fast enough!” I returned. “But none of my posse was ugly to her. Except me and Shirleen, but Shirleen got her chance to make amends. Sadie even asked for her.”

And this was true. Shirleen was Darius’s aunt, Lee’s receptionist, and also a Rock Chick of the Daisy variety (which meant she wasn’t attached to a Hot Bunch boy, but she was a Rock Chick all the same).

She’d been snippy with Sadie that day. But when Sadie finally reported her rape, she’d asked for Shirleen to be there.

“Ally, baby, what happened with Sadie tonight didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I know that,” I snapped, yanking out of his arms and taking a step away. “But she…” I shook my head. “God, that monster broke her wrist. Gashed her face. Made her feel tawdry.”

“Come back to me, honey,” Ren urged.

I shook my head again. “No. I can’t.” I stopped talking, started pacing then kept babbling. “I have to sort this out in my head.”

I continued pacing and Ren didn’t say anything.

This didn’t last very long before he said something.

“Jesus, you really can’t deal with being mean,” Ren murmured incredulously.

I stopped pacing and whipped around to face him. It was dark but I still could feel he was watching me.

“Not to someone who doesn’t deserve it!” I yelled. “I’m all for a smackdown if a bitch is a bitch. But Sadie is no bitch.”

“No, she’s not,” Ren agreed cautiously.

“So that means I kicked a sister when that sister was low. I don’t do that shit, Zano.”

“Fuck, you’re back to Zano,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked sharply.

“Nothing, honey. Just come here, will you?”

I shook my head again. “No. I…” my eyes narrowed on him and I re-asked an earlier question. “What are you doing here?”

He gave me the same answer. “I was worried about you.”

“You ditched your date because you were worried about me?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately.

Shit.

What did I do with that?

“Ally, look at me,” he ordered.

I was looking at him, or at least I was looking at his shadow. But he sensed I wasn’t focused, and how he could sense that, I had no clue. It weirded me out and made me feel all warm inside at the same time.

Still, I focused on him and he sensed when I did that, too.

Yikes.

When I did, hesitantly and gently, he asked, “Did something like what happened to Sadie happen to you?”

Oh God.

He thought I’d been raped.

That was why he was worried.

I couldn’t let him think that so I replied softly, “No, Ren.”

“Back to Ren,” he whispered.

Oh shit.

He was trying to figure me out.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Okay, time to end this.

“I—” I started to do that, but that was as far as I got.

“Shut up and listen to me.”

I clamped my mouth shut, and I did this with a bit of surprise and not a bit of temper since he’d suddenly turned macho alpha on me.

Before I could start yelling, he started talking.

“I don’t know what’s up with you, but tonight, watching you at the gallery in a dress that succeeded in making me fight my dick getting hard faster than that other one, and your response to what went down with Sadie, I don’t give a fuck.”

He’d been watching me?

When?

And how did I miss that?

Ren kept talking.

“You take the backs of that crew of yours like your blood flows through their veins. Indy may be their foundation, Daisy and Shirleen the emotional support. But you’re the backbone.”

Jeez.

How did he know so much about the Rock Chicks?

And why did what he said make me feel even warmer inside?

And last, why the hell was he saying this shit at all?

He didn’t make me wait for an answer to the last.

“You don’t need to make amends to Sadie. You’re set on giving her a lifetime of sisterhood the like she’s never had before and never even dreamed of having. That’ll do it, so you can let that go.”

That was all nice, and true, and made me feel better, but unfortunately he wasn’t done.

“You’ve got your way, the way you are and the way you are with the ones you care about. And that tells me, a man gets in there, you give that to him, the children you give him, that man will be all kinds of lucky. And I’ve decided we’re gonna see if that man is me.”

Oh my God!

Was he crazy?

He’d just been gazing softly at Ava (well, not “just”, but not three months ago either!) and now he was saying this shit to me.

“Zano, we’re done,” I reminded him.

“You can be done, but I’m not. So we’re gonna explore this and see where it leads until we both make a decision we agree on about where it’s heading.”

Oh crap.

Now he was giving me the macho alpha bossy shit.

“Zano, I—”

“Shut it.”

My back snapped straight. “Don’t you tell me to shut it, Ren Zano.”

I watched his shadowy head shake before he stated, “Baby, you’re gorgeous. The way you wear a dress is goddamned foreplay. The way you give me everything and nothing, making you a challenge only a real man would accept, is all kinds of hot. The way you give as good as you get in bed, totally unselfish at the same time phenomenally greedy… fuck,” he growled, and I felt that growl straight in my happy place. “You’re the best I’ve ever had, Ally. Bar none. And the way you love, stubborn, tough, unshakable, is unbelievably fuckin’ beautiful. And still you’re a serious pain in my ass. But I found, not havin’ you, I got off on the pain. I missed it. So I’m takin’ it back and we’ll see how it goes.”

“I know how it’ll go,” I returned. “Nowhere. We’re done, Zano.”

“Tell me you haven’t missed what we had,” he demanded.

I clamped my mouth shut, because even for self-preservation’s sake, I couldn’t utter that colossal of a lie and I was totally down with lying if the situation warranted it (or when it didn’t and I just needed to save my own hide).

He knew it, damn it all to hell, and I knew he did when he whispered, “Come here, Ally.”

I put my hands on my hips and stated, “If you want to rewind and start up again, I’ll consider it. But, pointing out, we’re rewinding, not rewriting. We’re fuck buddies, Zano. We enjoy each other. You go your way. I go mine.”

“We were never fuck buddies, Ally.”

I wished.

I also rolled my eyes.

“Now come here,” he went on.

I rolled my eyes back to hm.

“Tell me, exactly, why it is I have to walk the three feet that separates us?” I asked.

He was on me in a flash, which meant I was in his arms, plastered to his body. He had one hand in my hair cupping the back of my head, holding it steady for whatever he wanted to do to me.

Great.

That was on me. I’d challenged the alpha and there I was.

I knew better.

One could say I was seriously off my game tonight.

God!

And he felt good. So freaking good. Hard with his heat burning into me.

He was also in a suit.

I was screwed.

“Do you agree to fuck buddies?” I pressed, even as my hands lifted to his biceps and felt the rich material of his suit jacket.

Nice.

“Absolutely not,” he replied, right before he dropped his head and I felt his lips on my neck.

Very nice.

“Zano, we should get this straight before we start this up again,” I told him, even as my hands slid up his arms to his shoulders then around his neck.

His lips slid to my lips and he invited, “You make your plays, Ally. I’ll make mine. And we’ll see where this is gonna lead.”

Unfortunately, that sounded all kinds of fun.

And dangerous.

Both things I liked.

Too much.

Crap.

“I know where it’s gonna lead,” I retorted.

Suddenly I felt my stomach drop, my lungs evacuate all oxygen and my heart skip a beat.

This was because I also felt his lips smile against mine right before he said, with great authority, “So do I.”

My inner thighs quivered and my happy place got really happy.

Then Ren quit messing around and kissed me.

After that, he really quit messing around and did a lot of other things to me.

And I was right.

It was all kinds of fun.

It was also dangerous.

And I loved every fucking second.

Rock Chick Rewind

Christmas Eve …

Ren’s voice came in my ear me. “Jesus, you’re shitfaced at your brother’s wedding.”

I turned my eyes to see him close. So close, as I turned, he had to pull slightly away.

But he pulled away only slightly.

We were at Roxie and Hank’s wedding. Do not ask me why Roxie invited Ren to her wedding. Though, truth be told, even though it seemed to go against all the laws of the universe (or at least my universe, save, of course, being fuck buddies with Ren), somehow along the way the Rock Chick tribe had gotten tight with all the Zanos. But I didn’t think they were that tight.