Luke: A West Bend Saints Romance (45 page)

"Yeah," he said.  "It's been an...interesting...reunion."

He stepped back, and I remembered something.  I reached for my purse on the nearby table "Wait."

Silas paused.  "What?"

"Here."  I pulled out the medal, the decision impulsive, before I had the chance to reconsider.  It had served its purpose - it was a reminder of what had been between us, a long time ago.  But it wasn't lucky.

We
hadn't been lucky together.  We’d been exactly the opposite.

Silas turned it over in his hand, his brow furrowed.  "My state championship medal," he said.

I nodded.  "I figured you knew I'd taken it."

He looked up at me.  "You kept it."

I laughed.  "Did you think I pawned it or something?"

He stood still, unmoving.  "No.  Yeah.  Hell, you took my savings.  Why wouldn’t you pawn it?”

"First of all,” I said, “It’s a wrestling medal.  It’s not made of gold.  Second, what are you talking about?  I never took your savings."

"When you left," he said.  "You ran off with the money I'd saved up to get out of West Bend.  Taking the state championship medal, that was just the icing on the cake."

I shook my head slowly.  "No," I said.  "The medal was the only thing I took.  I felt badly enough about that.  And about the leaving.  I wanted to tell you in person, but I left the note instead.  Your mother -"

Silas interrupted me.  "What note?"

"I left a note in your room the day my parents and I left town."

"No," Silas said.  "There was no note.  Stuff was just gone."

"Didn't your mother tell you?" I asked reflexively before I realized. "No.  Of course she didn't.  She wouldn't have."

Silas looked at the medal in his hands, then back up at me, his expression hard to read.  "All this time," he said.  "I thought you'd just taken off."

"You thought I’d taken off without saying anything?"  I asked.  "And stealing your savings?  I knew what that money was for.  It was to get out of West Bend, to get away from your father."

He looked at me.  "Us," he said.  "It was supposed to be for us."

I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight.  "Yes," I said.  "And for us."

"We were going to get married," he said, turning the medal over and over in his hand.

"You don’t have to remind me,” I snapped.  “It’s not like I forgot.”

I couldn't forget.  Even if it had been a lifetime ago.

"I hated you," Silas said.  "For a long time, I hated you."

I nodded, blinking, biting my lower lip to distract myself from the tears that threatened to well up in my eyes.  "I know."

"Why did you keep it?" he asked, stepping forward again, closer to me.

"Luck," I said.  It was the automatic response I gave when Iver and Emir and Oscar had asked me about it, immediately followed by the honest answer.  "I needed a reminder.  Of you.  Of us."

Silas looked at me for a long moment, his gaze steady.  For a moment, it was like he was that same boy again, the one I had loved before.  "Okay," he said.  "A reminder of us…”

But his words weren’t wistful.  They held all the promise of what he wanted to do to me, and I shivered.  Standing on my tip-toes in my high heels, I brushed my cheek against his.  "Take me somewhere," I whispered.  "Somewhere that's not here."

"Ask me nicely," he said.

"Please."

He made the same sound again, that low growl that suggested he was about to bend me over and take me right here.  "Let's go," he said, his hand on the small of my back.

We walked back inside, through the bar, Silas' friends staring at us as we passed.  "Lucky son of a bitch," one of them said, whistling low under his breath.

Turning my head, I winked over my shoulder as we passed them.

"Excuse me."  The maitre'd stopped us as we left.  "Ms. Jameson."

"Yes?"  I was distracted by thoughts of Silas and what I wanted him to do to me.

"The gentlemen who were with you earlier?"

I glanced across the restaurant at the empty table.  "Yes?"  I asked.  "They left?"

He nodded.  "They said that you would be taking care of everything.”

I laughed.  "Of course they did," I said.  "Add the bill to the room, if you would, please."

"Of course," he said.  "And, Ms. Jameson, they said to tell you goodbye."

"I see," I said.

Silas' hand was on my arm as we left the restaurant.  "Is everything okay?"

If you leave a group of grifters alone for thirty minutes, they'll find a way to stick you with the bill, even if you're one of them.  "Everything is just fine," I said.  "I believe we have a suite to ourselves."

SILAS

We paused outside Tempest’s hotel room door, and I wondered if she was going to reconsider and tell me to get lost.  But she didn’t.  Instead, she looked up at me, her eyes wide, and did that thing with her tongue again, the thing where she ran it over her bottom lip.  And all I could think about was bruising her lips with mine.

I remembered the way her tongue felt on my skin, how her sweet mouth felt wrapped around my cock.  The thought sent warmth flowing through my body, rendered my dick immediately hard.

"Here it is," Tempest said, her voice breathy.  That breathy voice was a flashback to being seventeen again, when she straddled me as we sat on a rock down by the creek, her breath warm against my ear while she rode me, her moans echoing through the outdoor space.

I reached for her waist and pulled her to me, pressing my hardness against her.  When she inhaled, her chest rose, and I looked down at the dress, cut so low on her cleavage that it gave me more than a hint of what was underneath.

Hint,
hell.

I remembered everything that was underneath that dress like it was yesterday.  My hands had her body memorized- every curve, every angle.

Except, of course, that was when we were seventeen.  Everything about her had changed.  She wasn't the same girl I fell in love with back then.  No, the Tempest I was holding now was all grown up.

And she'd kept that goddamned medal all this time.

I didn’t know what the hell to think about her.  I hated her back then for leaving the way she did.  I hated her for doing what she'd done, helping her parents with the scam that ripped off the same people in town who already despised my family even before I was associated with her.

She had made things worse for me.  She didn't understand that.  Or didn't care.

But here she was, in my arms again, all curves and tattoos and sass.  And I wanted her.

My hands traveled down the sides of her hips, following the length of her dress until it ended.  I took the edge of the material in my hands, then slid my hands underneath it and up around her hips, cupping her curvy ass.  When Tempest laughed, it was a sound that was more familiar than anything else in the world.  She batted at my hands.  "Silas, my dress is up over my ass," she said.

"Oh, is it?" I groped her ass harder.  "That's not decent at all."

"Let go of me, before someone comes down this hall."

"Who's coming down this hall?" I asked.  "I like this ass.  I used to
love
this ass."

"Well, the entire world doesn't need to see it," she said.  But she was grinning.

"Then you'd better hurry up with that key card," I said.  "Because I’m sure as hell not going to stop touching it."

Tempest laughed again, and the sound made her impossible to resist.  Seeing her did something to me.  It awakened things in me I thought I'd buried a long time ago.

Her lips parted slightly, and I didn't wait for whatever she was about to say in response.  I let go of her ass with one hand and slid the same hand behind her head, pulling her against my mouth.  She opened for me, her tongue pressing against mine, moaning into my mouth as she kissed me.

Then, as quickly as the kiss had started, she put her hands on my chest and pushed me away, her lipstick smudged on the edges of her lips, now plumped from the kiss.

“Hold on,” she said.  “I have the key card right here.”  She fumbled with the clasp on her purse, and I slid my hands back to where they had been, caressing her ass.  “Hands off, Silas.”

I grabbed the key card from her fingers and waved it near the door handle, swinging it open.  Squatting down beside her, right there in the hallway, I pulled the skirt up over her ass, my arms wrapped around her thighs, holding her in place.

Tempest squealed.  “What the hell are you doing, Silas?”

“I’m not sure I remember your ass,” I said.  “It’s been a long time.  I need a closer view.”

“Not here,” she said.

“You’re right.”  Before she could protest again, I leaned into her, standing up with her draped over my shoulder, her rear near my head, skirt bunched up to her waist.

“Silas Saint,” she said.  “Put me down.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.  “I have a better view now.”

“Put me down.”

But I didn’t.  Instead, I smacked her ass cheek as I walked inside the room, then grabbed a handful of flesh.  “You used to like it when I touched you like that.”

“We were kids,” she said.

“I’m sure that's all it was,” I said.  "We were just horny teenagers, right?"  I ran my hand down her curvy cheek, still on my shoulder, then touched my finger between her legs, feeling her wetness.  She squirmed at my touch.

“Silas, put me the fuck down now,” Tempest said.

But I ignored her as I walked through the suite, past the sitting room and the grand piano, noting the ridiculous opulence.  “Jesus, Tempest.  You're living large, aren't you?  Who the hell stays in a hotel suite with a grand piano?”

“It’s a business expense,” she said.

“Business expense,” I said.  The words came out bitter, even though I didn't mean them to sound that way. 
Put it out of your head,
I told myself. 
You don’t need to ask about however the hell Tempest gets her money.  This is just a fling.  This is revisiting the past, getting beyond it, and letting go.

When I reached the bedroom, I deposited her onto the bed.  “At your service, my lady,” I said, in the best butler voice I could muster.  I added a gesture and a bow, just for the hell of it.

I was trying to lighten my mood, but failing.  It just made the moment more awkward.

“At my service?” she asked.  She turned onto her side and propped up her head with her hand.  A piece of hair fell across her face and she tucked it behind her ear.  “If that’s the case, you’d better get to work.”

"Is that right?" I asked, standing beside the bed, drinking her in with my eyes.  She lay with one leg crossed over the other, the fabric of her dress riding up on her thigh, covering the ass I'd just smacked.  I wondered if I'd left a handprint on her flesh, and my cock stirred at the thought.

I crossed to the other side of the room and tugged at the sides of my shirt, intending to toss my clothes on the overstuffed chair in the corner.  But I stopped at the sight of the chair.

Shit.  That fucking chair probably cost more than the purse from my fight.

I sighed.  I needed to put those kinds of thoughts out of my head.  I had a girl lying here on the bed - not a girl,
the
girl, the girl I would have given everything in the fucking world to hold on to back when we were kids, the girl I'd have done anything for - and here she was, soon-to-be naked, lying on a bed in a fancier hotel than I'd ever been in in my whole damn life.

And all I could think about was how she'd made the money that paid for the damn room.

Shit, Silas, what the hell is wrong with you?

Trigg and Abel would kick me in the nuts for what was going through my head right now.

Behind me, I heard music come on, soft over the speakers, and I turned to see Tempest leaning over to replace a remote on the table beside the bed.

"What?" she asked, sitting up on the bed.  "You have a look."

"I don't have a look."

"You have a look, and it's not the same look you had a minute ago, the one that said you were about to pounce on me."

I shook my head.  "It’s the whole place, Tempest," I said.  "You have a damn piano in your hotel room.  Is it always like this?"

Tempest looked down, her hair slipping forward and shielding the side of her face.  She tucked her legs underneath her on the bed.  "Silas," she said.  "It's not what you think."

"It's hard to swallow, is what I think," I said.  "Seeing all of this, paid for by innocent people."

Tempest laughed, but when I looked at her, she wasn't smiling.  "Innocent," she said.  "Yeah, sure."

I walked along the length of the windows that lined the walls of the bedroom from floor to ceiling, overlooking the Vegas skyline.  Those lights in the houses out there were where regular people stayed, people like me and my brothers.

The kind of people she and her parents conned.

People like her parents, Tempest and her crew, they saw regular folks as marks. 
Chumps.

"I remember you wanted to give it all up, you know," I said.  Back then, back when she’s mattered to me and I mattered to her, she wanted to leave it all behind.

"I remember a lot of things, Silas," she said.

So did I. 
That was the fucking problem,
I thought.  I remembered too much.  Like the way she tasted.  I couldn't forget it.  Or the way she looked when she came, the expression on her face, one of unbridled pleasure.

Or like the way she had played with her hands and stared at the ground when she'd told me she loved me for the first time, as if she was too afraid to speak the words for fear that I wouldn't say the same thing.

I couldn't forget any of it.

But that was
before
.  Before I found out who she really was.

I turned to face her.  "I'm not stupid, Tempest."

"Did I give you the impression I think you're an idiot, Silas?" she asked.  "You've always been one of the smartest people I know."

"All of this," I said.  "You haven't exactly gotten it working a regular job.  It’s not like you earned this, clean."

Tempest looked at me, her eyes flashing.  Sliding off the bed, she crossed to the other side of the room and stood in front of me.  "No," she said.  "You know that.  You knew that when you came up here.  You knew that before you slid my dress up on the balcony out there and stuck your fingers inside me.  If you're suddenly too chickenshit to follow through, don't cover it up with some bullshit crisis of conscience."

Anger rushed through me.  Goddamn it, this girl pissed me off in a way she'd never angered me back when we were kids.

The thing is, she was right.  I'd done a lot of dirty shit, betting on myself in fights.  It wasn't like I'd never taken a dive in a fight before, either.  Hell, I was thinking about having Coker murdered.

I didn't have room to be all moralistic.

Still. 
Chickenshit?

It was like she
wanted
to piss me off.

Her head was tilted up at me, her lips parted, breath shallow.  I could hear it, even over the music playing on the stereo, Sam Smith begging a one night stand to stay.  I didn't know if I wanted to tell Tempest to go screw herself, and walk away from her bullshit, or if I wanted to bend her over the bed and plunge my cock inside her until she couldn't walk straight.

"Chickenshit," I said.  I put my hand at the back of her neck again, threaded my fingers through her hair.  The sensation made me harden immediately, and I had to remind myself not to rip her fucking hair out of her head, I wanted to pull her to me so hard.

She made this little moaning sound and leaned into me, her hand on my chest.  "You know, if it walks like a duck.  Or some metaphor that works with chickens," she said.  "Put up or shut up."

The corners of her mouth turned up, like she was baiting me, and yet I couldn't help myself.  I wanted to take the bait.

And then she licked her bottom lip, and it was all over for me.

***