Rowe by Jessica Gadziala

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Billie

I lied, Billie. I’ve always wanted you.

I can’t tell you how many times I’d fantasized about him saying that very thing to me. Or how many times I’d berated myself for having those fantasies. Because he’d been very clear that he didn’t want that, had never wanted that, and would never want that. Not with me anyway.

I had never been able to stop thinking What if when it came to Rowe. Or to beat myself up for wondering what it would be like if things had been different.

So a part of me was almost, I don’t know, angry when I heard those words.

Don’t get me wrong, the larger part of me was elated, over the moon, over the fucking Milky Way to hear that it hadn’t all been in my head, that I wasn’t imagining the chemistry between us, that whatever it was that kept drawing me back to him even after his rejection was something more than me being a glutton for punishment.

But still, there was that little, niggling voice that was angry and resentful that in lying to me, he’d forced me to second-guess myself.

I was going to say something. I was going to demand an explanation. Hell, I wanted an apology.

But then his hands were drifting up my spine and slipping into my hair, and my righteous anger decided to take a back seat and let my desire take over instead.

Rowe’s dark gaze was on me as his fingers started working gentle circles across my scalp, making an immediate tremble course through me. Seeing it, feeling it, Rowe’s eyelids went heavier.

This time, my class wasn’t around. There weren’t any rules about no contact.

My hips sank down on Rowe’s lap, and I felt the proof of his words pressing against the juncture of my thighs, making me suck in a surprised breath.

I couldn’t seem to prevent my hips from rocking against him. Once. Twice.

Desire exploded through my system, the flames lapping at every inch of my skin, the fire burning through my bloodstream.

Suddenly, the thin material of my linen harem pants and tank top felt too hot, too itchy, too oppressive.

My arm lifted, reaching back to grab his wrist, guiding his hand around my body, sliding over my breast, but not lingering. I wanted him to linger. Sometime. But right then, the need for release was becoming a clawing, aching, undeniable thing.

So I glided his hand down my thigh toward where the material slit up the sides to allow for free range of motion. But also for curious fingertips to graze over bared skin. Up my thigh, over my hip. Then over. And down just slightly.

“Fuck,” Rowe hissed when I pressed his hand between my thighs. Right up against my bare skin since everyone knew panties and yoga didn’t really mix. Rowe’s thumb moved up, finding the swollen bud of my clit and working the pad of his finger in slow circles around it. “You’re so wet,” he groaned as his middle two fingers slid down my cleft to tap against the entrance to my body.

Leaning forward, I pressed my forehead to his. “I always get wet thinking of you,” I admitted, close enough to hear his low, ragged groan at my words. “I’ve thought of this so many times,” I added, loving the way his breathing was getting quicker at my words, the way his cock was getting harder against my thigh. “Rowe, please,” I begged, rocking my hips down until his fingers started to slide inside me. “Yes,” I moaned as they settled to the hilt, and my walls tightened around him.

Pulling back slightly, I looked down at him, finding his eyes molten. My hands rose, cradling his face, tilting it up slightly, and then leaning down to seal my lips to his.

I’d thought about kissing Rowe more than was probably healthy. I wondered about how his lips would be. Hard and demanding or pliant and gentle. I thought about how he might taste, how his tongue would feel sliding over mine, the way his body might react as the kiss deepened.

None of those musings quite got it right.

His lips were soft and pliant for a stunned moment after the contact. But they quickly got rougher, more demanding.

His free hand rose to the back of my neck, holding me against him as he deepened the kiss, his lips bruising into mine even as his fingers started to thrust inside me. They were lazy, barely-there movements at first that only got faster as my hips started to rock against him, as my teeth nipped his lower lip, as our tongues started to move over each other’s.

Rowe’s fingers twisted in my hair, grabbing, pulling, then yanking back as my whimpers became moans, as he pushed me closer and closer to that edge. With his thumb. With his fingers.

I rocked my hips backward and held there, so Rowe’s thrusts rubbed up against my top wall, engaging my G-spot, leaving me teetering on that edge for just a moment more.

My breath caught.

“Come, babe,” Rowe whispered, his thumb and fingers keeping the perfect pace, sending me crashing through the orgasm.

I leaned forward into him, my face burying in the crook of his neck as the waves crashed through me time and again.

I was still resting there, trying to catch my breath when there was a splashing and sizzling sound.

“What was that?” Rowe asked even as my brain cleared of the surge of oxytocin from the climax, making me remember what I’d been doing when he’d called me over.

“Soup,” I said, jolting backward, then climbing off of him to rush around the sectional and into the kitchen to lower the heat under the pot. “Whoops,” I said, shooting Rowe a lazy smile from over the steaming pot whose bubbles were already slowing to a slight simmer.

“Turn it off and get back over here,” Rowe demanded, voice husky, and the sound made my stomach shiver.

And, well, I wasn’t about to object to that, was I?

Except then there was gravel crunching, something that made both of us stiffen as Tommy and Chuckie got up from their respective places and ran toward the door, butts wiggling.

“Oh,” I said, deflating.

“Shit,” Rowe hissed, moving to sit up, likely trying to talk himself down from the hard-on I’d felt against my thigh as his best friend parked, then started making his way toward the house.

“You cooked?” Malc asked immediately upon entering, looking over at me.

“Kitchen Sink Soup,” I told him, wondering if I still had a post-orgasm flush on my face, if there was a sex vibe in the air.

“Rowe, you got anything to pack it up in? We got church. Fallon thinks he has something to go on with the fucks who ambushed the club.”

“Oh, so am I free?” I asked, brightening. “No babysitters? I don’t like that smirk,” I grumbled when he smiled at me.

“We got the girls to agree to have a night in with you,” he said. “Think you’ll be covered.”

“Is Hope coming?” I asked, knowing I’d been avoiding the lecture I knew was coming from her for not speaking out about the first box when I got it. With her job, she saw a lot of women with stalkers. And she knew how bad things could get if they weren’t taken seriously. I never avoided my loved ones, but I’d been screening my calls from Hope since the news spread about my situation. I would ‘miss’ the call, then text her back when I knew she would be at work, apologizing and saying I’d been on a job.

“She will,” Malc said, his voice low, knowing.

“I think I want to come to church,” I declared, getting a dark chuckle out of Malcolm.

“You’ll have to face her eventually.”

“Or I can get a new name and move across the country,” I grumbled, looking through Rowe’s cabinets to find some heavyweight storage containers.

But the wheels were in motion. And after we got all the soup secured, we were on our way back to my place where I was met with Violet, Gracie, and Luna—Uncle Cyrus and Aunt Reese’s daughter.

“Be honest,” Vi said as we got into my apartment. “How many books do you have stashed in that giant black hole you call a purse?” she asked Luna who managed to look a little bashful at the question because, sure enough, she’d stashed five of them in there somehow. On top of her tablet where I had no doubt she had at least a thousand ebooks and audiobooks stored. Like me, Luna had a mom who was a librarian and hardcore book lover. And while I did absolutely enjoy a good book, Luna was the biggest bibliophile of all of us.

Luna was much like her mom. Soft, sweet, on the shy side. She had dark brown, curly hair and tanned, golden skin with stunning green eyes and very small features from her bone structure to her body, she was petite and delicate-looking. Even if we all knew she’d been raised in the self-defense gym like the rest of us, and was deceptively strong. I mean you had to be to carry around those tomes with her at all times.

“Aside from Hope, is this all of us?” I asked as I got everyone tea and coffee.

“Nope. You got most of us tonight. Willa is picking up dinner. Andi is coming over after work. And I hear Layna rolled into town too.”

Layna was the only child of our Uncle Edison and Aunt Lenny. We never got to see much of her. She’d gone off to college like any other eighteen-year-old, and then had bounced around several major cities, trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life.

As it turned out, like it seemed to with all of us who went out into the world, her roots had recently called her back home.

Half an hour later, she was at the door. Which Luna hopped up to open. To a less than amused Layna who had her arms crossed and a brow raised.

“Really, Loon?” she asked, shaking her head, making her silky dark hair dance around her shoulders. “There is a stalker on the loose and you just open the door? Would you invite him in for tea too?” she asked, but she had a soft smile on her pretty face.

Layna was willowy like her mom with these big, gorgeous chocolate-brown eyes that were surrounded by long, lush lashes that most people could only have if they got fake ones glued on. She had deceptive looks. Her face was soft and round, very hyper-feminine. But she was every bit as kick-ass and independent as Violet or Hope.

“And you,” she said, rolling her eyes at me as she moved inside, closing and locking the door. “You have a stalker and you don’t hit me up like ‘Hey, bitch, I know you’re out living your badass life, but some dude is making creepy fan-art about me, just thought you should know’.”

“Hey, some of us were even around during this and she didn’t say shit. Don’t feel put out,” Vi said. “When did you get in?” she asked.

“Two nights ago. Wanted to spend some time with my parents before I let everyone else know I was around. But then Malc called. So here I am. Armed and ready to kick someone in the balls if necessary. Speaking of balls. Have we gotten to the trash-talking men portion of the night, or do we need some booze first? If we have to choke down some of Billie’s herbal-infused vodka, I’m down. I’ve got a doozy of a story to tell about this fuckboy back in, if you can believe this, Montana of all places.”

“There are fuckboys in Montana?” Gracie asked.

“My darling girl, there are fuckboys in every corner of the world. Every damn one of them,” Layna declared, dropping down on the arm of Luna’s chair. “But this one, being the only halfway fuckable guy in his whole town thought he was damn near a god.”

“Did you fuck him?” Vi asked.

“Vi, love, I said he was halfway fuckable,” Layna said with a wicked smile. “I would never lower myself to halfway fuckable. But I got to observe his bullshit. And it is a story to tell.”

“What were you doing in Montana?” Luna asked as I went to grab the infused vodka because it sounded fun. I hadn’t had a girls night in far too long.

“There was a game I couldn’t pass up on.”

Layna dabbled in—and by ‘dabbled in,’ I meant she had truly made a name for herself—in high-stakes poker games all over the world.

She’d gone to school for finance.

And we all thought it was hilarious that she’d taken that love of numbers and used it to count her winnings from large pots.

So then we drank.

Eventually, Willa brought in food, and we all each did shots to each of our worst fuckboy stories.

“I mean, he thought I would drop my panties for some leather-clad mullet-wearing, greasy-faced, sub-par skip chaser?” Vi asked, and we threw back a shot.

“I needed to take it to HR when I found he had some down-shirt pictures of my tits in his desk drawer,” Willa had told us.

“He took me to a fast food restaurant on our first date and then demanded I pay for my half of the meal,” Gracie announced. “And then wanted me to have sex with him in his car,” she finished.

“I caught him with his hands down his pants in the manga section,” Luna had supplied, looking a little green at the memory.

“Alright, you’re up,” Vi said, pouring us each another round even though Luna looked like she was getting close to a night on the bathroom floor, and I was at numb-face stage. “Give us a story about a guy.”

I was drunk.

That was the only reason the truth spilled out of me right then.

“A while back, a certain someone that I was crazy about told me he was not interested in me, and that my interest in him was ‘sad’,” I told them.

“He called you sad?” Vi asked, stiffening. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have been so nice about him.”

“Yeah, who the fuck does he think he is?” Layna asked. “I mean, really, who is he?” she asked, giving us a bleary-eyed smile. “I’ve been a bit out of the loo— uh oh,” she said when there was a key in the door.

Not a couple seconds later, there was Hope, bursting in wearing her usual dark-colored utility pants that hugged her soft curves, but was more about functionality for her than fashion, a black tank, and combat boots.

“You,” she said, jabbing a finger at me. “I know you have been avoiding me. That’s fucked up, Bills,” she said. “Almost as fucked up as you not saying anything to anyone when some fuckwad shows up at your door and drops off threatening letters and creepy art. I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea how many women end up raped and murdered from their goddamn stalkers? These men are deranged.”

“Do people still say ‘fuckwad’ these days?” Layna asked, making Hope’s head whip over. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your tirade. It’s just a little whip-lashy. We’re currently shit-faced and sharing about asshole men.”

“Oh, well, I can berate her later,” Hope declared, waving at me. “I have a story. Give me a shot,” she demanded.

So we had another shot.

Luna tapped out, resting her head against Layna’s thigh to stop the world from spinning.

“Well, finally,” Violet said as Andi came in, carrying a backpack full of her clothes to change out of her work scrubs. “You never work this late.”

“Ugh, I had this lunatic woman throwing a holy fit in the office tonight,” she said, taking a slow, deep breath, probably her first one in hours.

“About what?”

“The fact that I won’t crop her Dobie’s ears,” Andi said, throwing up a hand. “I am not going to perform a painful surgery just for aesthetics. I don’t crop ears or dock tails or remove claws from cats. I don’t understand wanting to do it in the first place, and I’m not going to change my mind just because she shrieks at me. Go find another vet, y’know? Ugh. Oh, we’re drinking. Good.”

“Our male cousins are not going to be pleased to show up here and find that Billie’s entire guard crew is plastered,” Vi said, smiling. “Which only makes me want to drink more. Go change. We will get you caught up,” she added, lining up a few shot glasses.

“Who is that?” Layna asked when there was another knock on the door.

“I don’t know. I think we’re all here,” I said, my voice slow and slurry.

“I’ll get it,” Hope said, getting to her feet, wobbling a bit, but righting herself as she reached for her gun as she approached the door, looking out. “Oh,” she said, moving back to unlock it. “You,” she added, moving out of the way for whoever it was to enter.

Danny.

Fallon’s woman.

A verified former MC president herself.

“Damnit. He was right,” she grumbled.

“Whoever he is, don’t you hate it when they’re right?” Layna asked.

“I do. Especially since he’s been right twice in one day, which is fucking infuriating,” she said, closing and locking the door.

“What was Fallon right about?” Hope asked.

“That you’d all be wasted, and no one would be sober enough to pull proper guard shift.”

“Hey, I shot a beer can off a fuckboy’s head while sloshed a week ago. I mean, I took off a little skin. But he needed to be humbled anyway,” Layna told Danny.

“I feel like I missed a lot of the fun,” Danny declared, reaching for an egg roll off the table where Willa currently had her hand planted, trying to stop the world from spinning.

It was refreshing to see her let loose a little. I wasn’t sure I knew anyone aside from Hope who worked as hard as Willa did. Except Hope got to be on the road or on the move a lot. Willa was in an office from before sunup until after sundown, trying to build an empire for herself.

You wouldn’t know that from looking at her with her suit jacket off and her blouse unbuttoned most of the way down because she was hot from the vodka, revealing the delicate peach lace bra. Her expensive shoes were kicked across the room. Her brown hair with heavy blonde highlights that she usually kept pulled back mercilessly was loose to fall in waves around her shoulders, framing her pretty face with her slightly upturned nose and her pretty blue eyes.

I worried about her not having any sort of work/life balance.

She always shot back that I worked a lot too.

The difference was, my job gave to me as much as it took from me. I wasn’t so sure about Willa’s job. It gave her money, sure. Boatloads of it. But it seemed to drain her a lot of the time. I didn’t know what it was going to take for her to slow down and realize there was more to life than charging up the corporate ladder, but I hoped to hell it wasn’t an all-out breakdown.

“You okay over there?” Danny asked, looking at Willa.

“Willa, you want me to walk you to the bathroom?” Vi asked, grimacing at the shade of green our cousin was taking on. “Wills? Earth to Willow…”

“That’s a silent yes,” Danny declared, rushing forward to grab Willa, practically dragging her to the bathroom. Where, it sounded like, she made it there just in time.

“We broke Willa,” Layna declared, shaking her head.

“I think we did a number on Luna and Gracie too,” Hope agreed. The former had passed out sitting up. And Gracie was stripping out of her shirt and pressing the cool bottle of vodka to her chest. Andi wasn’t faring too much better, either, nodding on and off, mostly due to tiredness since she hadn’t had much to drink.

“We’re bad cousins. Bad, bad cousins,” Layna said, smirking.

“We should have known they don’t have our tolerance,” Vi agreed.

“You’re holding up alright,” Layna said, looking at me.

“I’m buzzing,” I admitted, finding no sticky thoughts in my head. They all just kept floating past me, disappearing before I could fully grasp them.

Until an image of Rowe popped up.

He got stuck.

Right there at the forefront of my mind.

His thumb on my clit. His finger inside me. His intense gaze on my face as he brought me to and through an orgasm.

“I’m gonna call him,” I declared, mostly to myself, but I’d said it aloud.

“No!” was the chorus from the whole room.

“You don’t even know what we’re talking about,” Layna said as Danny joined in as she came out.

“As a general rule in life, you never call the guy. Especially not the guy you are thinking about when drunk,” Danny said, snatching one of the throw pillows and blankets off the couch. “Willa is in the bathroom for a while,” she explained, taking them in, and then making her way back out. “Oh, ah, your neighbor has his cock and giblets out. You want me to close the curtains?” she asked, jerking her thumb back toward my room.

“Oh! Manuel!” Layna said, bolting to her feet. And, to her credit, she only swayed for a moment. “I have to go tell him how much I love his new series.”

“New series?” Vi asked.

“Yeah on his porn site. He reads erotic poetry while he lazily jerks off. It’s hot. Oh, Maneullllll!” she called, disappearing into my bedroom.

“I like her,” Danny declared, nodding.

“Oh, I forgot you haven’t met everyone yet. I would have introduced you,” I said. It was hard to remember at times that not everyone was raised around our giant family unit.

But Fallon’s girl, Danny, and Malcolm’s girl, Holly, were new additions to our little girls club. They hadn’t met everyone yet. Especially those like Layna who weren’t always around.

“Hey, why didn’t Holly come tonight?” I asked, worried someone had forgotten to invite her. Like we’d clearly forgotten to invite Danny.

“She’s baking a big wedding cake,” Vi explained. “We didn’t forget her.”

“We didn’t mean to forget you,” I insisted, pressing a hand to my heart as I looked at Danny.

“You didn’t,” she admitted. “Gracie texted me. I wanted to listen to some of the talk at church since I know a thing or two about the up-and-coming organizations in the area. I did a lot of research when we’d decided to open up the club here.”

“Oh, good. I don’t want you to think we didn’t think of you. You’re just…”

“New,” she filled in. “It’s okay. I’m not always down for girls nights anyway. The karaoke in particular. But if you guys are drinking hard like this again, I will be game for that.”

“We also… hold on… I’m ringing,” Vi said, patting at all her pockets until she found her phone wedged down into her bra for some inexplicable reason. “My tits were ringing,” she declared, letting out a high, girlish giggle as she slid her finger across the screen to answer. “Violet’s tits,” she answered. “Who may I ask is…whoa, that’s loud. You’re being very loud right now,” she said, voice sluggish. “Fine. You don’t have to yell at me, assface,” she declared, then held out her phone. “The assface you call a partner wants to speak to you,” Vi said, handing Danny the phone.

“Assface?” I asked, giggling with her when she broke into a fit of giggles.

“What?” Danny barked, the sound loud and sharp. “Are you sure? No, we’re all here. Everyone is safe. Well, we have three vodka casualties right now, but everyone is inside and safe. Oh, wait, Layna, get your head in the apartment, shut and lock the window,” she demanded, and the firmness in her voice made Layna suddenly seem a lot more sober as she said goodbye to my neighbor and followed orders, closing the curtains for good measure. “Okay. Yep. I’ve got it. Yeah, I, ah, I…love,” she said, voice really small, like she was embarrassed to use the word in front of us, “you too.”

“Something happened?” Layna asked, reaching for a coffee on the table that had long-since gone cold, and chugging it back.

“There’s a box outside the door,” Danny told us, and it was like an ice bucket had been poured over all of us who were still conscious, making us a lot more sober in a blink.

“What? How? Did they see who dropped it?” Hope asked, likely the most sober of all of us next to Danny.

“They caught a shoulder of someone on the video, that’s it. But they want us all to stay right here until they get some of the guys over here. I know,” she said with a smirk when Vi grumbled. “But we have to admit that, as a group, we aren’t going to be the most effective at fighting off a threat right now. On a normal, sober day, we would be every bit as good as the boys.”

“Better,” Layna insisted. “Our moms and aunts were ruthless with our training,” she added.

“But a little spinny right now,” Violet agreed.

“Armed and spinny,” Layna agreed, reaching for her own gun.

“Why don’t you move your peace and love ass a little further from the door,” Hope suggested, waving me over toward her side.

Not ten minutes later, the apartment was swarmed with men. Our fathers and uncles, our cousins too.

But not, I noted with a sinking sensation in my stomach, Rowe.

I mean, I shouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t as mobile as the rest of them. Of course they would leave him home. But still, I was more than a little disappointed at his absence.

“I’m sure he would be here if he could,” Hope said, wrapping an arm around my waist and leading me back toward my bedroom where the guys had barricaded my windows with furniture since I’d told them I needed some sleep.

“Who?” I asked, slow blinking at my cousin as she led me over to the bed and half-dropped me down next to a sleeping, and empty-stomach’d, Willa.

“Rowe,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “I know something is going on there. And I will say… it’s about time. But he was probably ordered to stay at the clubhouse with the others. They need to protect their home base too with all this nonsense going on. I’m sure he will find an excuse to be here as soon as possible.”

As it would turn out, though, as soon as possible wasn’t soon enough.