Fuck!

Then his hands moved to frame either side of my face. He dipped his head so he was all I could see and his voice was a voice he’d never used. It was deep and it was sweet, but it was also weighty and thick and it kind of freaked me out (in a maybe good way) when he said, “Ally, baby, listen to me. I care about you, you mean something to me, and I don’t want to see you in a box under three feet of dirt without the tank of oxygen to keep you safe until I find you. Are you understanding me?”

He cared about me.

I meant something to him.

Yeah.

Right.

I’d give it to him. That was a maybe.

He just cared about someone else a whole lot more.

“I’m understanding you’re a bossy, annoying, in my face jerk who thinks he can tell me what to do when he cannot, no matter how often I tell you it’s my damned life and I’ll do with it as I please,” I retorted.

Something flashed in his eyes so fast I couldn’t catch what it was before he started, “Ally—”

“Now, get off me. I got shit to do. I have to get home to Denver.”

His body pressed mine into the bed. “We’re finishing this here.”

“Fine by me,” I agreed readily. “We’re finished. Leave me alone, and we’re all done.” I drew out the “all” sarcastically.

His face changed to a face I’d never seen before, either. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t impatient.

It was infuriated.

He’d been mad before, even really angry (see aforementioned notes about us yelling at each other a lot).

And his anger had a physical presence. So much so, its weight could fill a room.

But this was different.

The room didn’t feel its usual stifling.

It felt still.

And that freaked me.

“I just told you you mean something to me and you won’t give me ten minutes to talk this shit through?” he asked with deceptive quiet.

“No, because the only outcome that’s acceptable to you is unacceptable to me, so we have nothing to talk about.”

He shook his head, still looking very, very angry.

“Unh-unh. You rewound too far. You just ended things with me like it’s all the same to you.”

“Well it is,” I clipped (lie!).

“Bullshit,” he fired back (he knew I was lying).

“How many times do I have to tell you? We’re fuck buddies, Zano.”

He shook his head again, his thumb sweeping across my cheek and his face getting so close to mine, his lips nearly brushed my own.

“No, baby, we are not. I’ve had fuck buddies, Ally. And not one of them looked like you look when I slide inside you, every fucking time I slide inside you. Like a piece of you has been lost and now it’s found.”

Oh crap.

I probably looked just like that.

Because when he slid inside me, that was precisely what it felt like.

My eyes drifted away.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

“Get off me,” I returned.

He went silent.

I let him and waited, hoping this would be a morning where Ren would give up, roll off and wait to fight another day.

It wasn’t going to be that kind of morning. I knew this when he kept talking.

“Your brothers by now are gonna know about this. And when you roll into Denver, they’re gonna lose their minds.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“If you think you’re pullin’ shit on them, Ally, you’re wrong. Lee and Hank know everything that goes down in that town, and they know you’ve been doin’ your thing and just how long. Make no mistake, they’ve been distant, but they’ve been in your business. Part of it was to keep an eye, part of it was to have your back. But you never got this deep or went this far.”

I slid my eyes back to him.

“Newsflash, Zano. I’m not Nancy Drew, solving crimes as a hobby just out of high school. I’m a big girl. I know my brothers know and I don’t care what my brothers think.”

Something flickered in his beautiful eyes. His fury was long gone, and just then his voice went back to sweet. “Baby, I’m trying to impress on you, this is different. And I was worried before at the shit you were doin’. But now I’m fucking alarmed.”

It was then, something happened.

I didn’t know what did it for me. The new tone to his voice. That look on his face. His warm, hard body pressing mine into the bed after a night of mind-boggling, soul-enriching, life-changing sex. Knowing he found out what was going on last night and drove for hours to get from Denver to the Colorado mountain town of Carnal where all the bad stuff was going down in order to get to me. Or the fact that he really sounded like he meant what he said.

Whatever it was, it did it for me and it led me to doing something I’d never done with Ren.

I agreed.

But I did it quietly.

“I get you.”

He blinked. “You get me?”

I nodded, not about to say it again.

His eyes grew sharp but his face went guarded. “Maybe I should understand what exactly you get.”

This was a weird thing for fuck buddies, and another way I had to admit we kind of broke that mold. It was also something Ren used repeatedly to press the fact that we weren’t actually fuck buddies, but together together. We just didn’t go out on dates or meet each other’s parents… yet (the “yet” part was Ren’s).

And what that weird thing was was that he knew me. I also knew him. He paid attention, when we were having sex and when we weren’t. I did the same.

So it wasn’t surprising he asked this question.

“Those dudes were bad dudes,” I explained. “I know how bad, Ren. I’d been poking around them for months.” I put my hand to his chest to press my point home since his face went unguarded and his eyes started to warm. “But they buried Faye alive. I knew the risks. I weighed them and my friend got pulled out of that box breathing. Barely, but she made it.”

He moved one of his hands down to the side of my neck so he could stroke my throat with his thumb. This was another something new. Then again, I didn’t give him many opportunities to show affection like that and I was thinking that was a good thing seeing as it felt incredibly nice.

“There’s gonna be a path you cross,” he said gently. “A path that no matter what firepower you got taking your back, they’re gonna try to take you down. I do not want you to get to that place, baby.”

Unusually, I used a calm voice rather than an irate one when I explained, “I’m not exactly being stupid. I’ve got Brody and Darius. I’m careful.”

That was only mostly true.

I slid my hand up his chest, exploring this unchartered territory of intimacy and sharing, and wrapped it around the side of his neck, putting pressure on. He gave me what I wanted and his face drew even closer.

“I like doing this, Ren. I like it. I’ve tried a lot of things in my life. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree. I’m a certified radiology tech. I’ve done nails. And I’m thirty-two years old. Now I work part-time in a bookstore/coffee shop and full-time slinging drinks. I don’t like doing any of that as much as I like what you don’t like me doing. That’s why I keep doing it, even though I know a lot of people, not just you, don’t like me doing it. Because I like it. It feels right. It feels like I finally found what I wanna be. It’s like I finally found me.”

He studied me and for once said not a word.

Again unusually, I kept talking rationally.

“I know you’re worried about those guys I got involved with last night. So are Darius and Brody. So am I. But I took a calculated risk to save my friend. I’ll watch my back and I have good guys watching it, too. So I’ll be all right.”

He kept studying me, but I had nothing else to say.

Finally, he spoke.

“You know, just sayin’, you said this shit to me like you just said it to me rather than yellin’ at my ass until the only option I have to stop you from yellin’ is to tap your ass, it might have penetrated about ten months ago.”

Something about that made me laugh. Maybe because it was funny.

And there was something about this that I liked. And there was no maybe about the fact that it not only seemed he listened to me, but he heard me and he got me.

And I liked that.

When I quit laughing, Ren was smiling down at me.

My heart skipped a beat.

I didn’t get many of those, seeing as we fought all the time and when we weren’t his mouth was engaged with doing other things.

But just like now, when I did get a smile from Ren Zano, it hit straight to the heart of me.

His smile downgraded to a grin and his eyes moved over my face, something happening in them I didn’t quite get. But whatever it was seemed to mean something. It looked like he was about to say something, but he thought better of it and kept quiet.

I didn’t.

“I dig the mountains, but me and the boys shot up here without provisions and I’ve got shit to do at home, so it might be time to get a move on.”

“Right,” he replied. “There’s a drugstore across the street. I’ll go over, get toothbrushes and shit. There’s also a coffee shop down the street. You wanna make coffee in that little pot on the dresser or you want me to pick you up a real coffee?”

I stared up at him.

We’d never done anything like this, acting semi-normal and not always crazy.

I was a little stunned he could be thoughtful.

No. That wasn’t true. I knew he was the kind of guy who could to be that way. He often demonstrated thoughtful tendencies. Like when I’d show at his house in the wee hours after a bartending shift, he’d ask me if I’d eaten and I’d find he’d made a batch of spaghetti sauce or some cannelloni and he’d heat it up to feed me. And I knew he probably didn’t make that just for himself, but also preparing to feed me later.