Midnight Jasmine (Devil's Hornets MC Book 1) (7 page)

CHAPTER NINE

She would have never thought she would consider herself lucky for being mugged, but the man she’d met because of it was something special. It had been three weeks since their first date, and they’d been out every other day even though sometimes he’d come over very late, and they talked on the phone several times a day. Just then her phone rang, and she had to smile.
Speak of the devil
she thought as she saw Jack’s number flash across her cell phone and could almost hear her mother’s response, “And the devil appears.”

“What are you up to?” Jack said as soon as she answered the phone.

“Not much. This is the time you usually call, so I’m all cleaned up and ready for bed.” Natalie wanted to know what type of work he did. Jack had always found a way out of telling her. He either changed the subject or he fucked her into oblivion until she could barely remember her own name much less questions about how he made his fortune. She didn’t know what he was trying to do, but he must have sent everyone he knew to her shop. People always bought flowers, and she didn’t do bad in her business before, but she was booming now. There were requests for weddings, funerals, delivery arrangements, and a stream of large motorcycle men who frequently visited her shop buying flowers of all sizes. Maybe he was trying to get her as financially stable as he was. It could be that’s how someone helped him out. This could be a paying it forward situation, but she didn’t think so.

“So you’re telling me my hot pussy is clean and ready for me?”

“You came over last night, and you usually come over every other day.” She wanted to tell him that he could come over anytime and that yes his pussy was ready for him, but she’d been on bated breath waiting for the other shoe to fall. He didn’t do relationships, and that is exactly what it felt like they were doing.

“I can change it up sometimes,” he said playfully. She enjoyed being with him, talking with him, and exploring his body at her leisure, but there was one thing that was beginning to bother her.

“Is there a reason we never go out anywhere? I am enjoying what we’re doing, but I feel like you have me hidden away. You don’t answer a lot of questions about what you do, and if I didn’t see your mother and she said you lived with her, I’d think you had another family somewhere.”

He didn’t say anything, and she felt like kicking herself. Just a few weeks ago, she didn’t think she would have ever met someone who could keep her so sexually satisfied and happy, but as her body grew sated, she wanted him in her life for more than just a sex toy.

“You saw the only family I have when you met my mother, but I can understand you feeling like I’m hiding you away. I just enjoy our time together when we’re alone, and I don’t want to share.”

It sounded like a good reason, and it had sounded good the first time she’d heard it too, but somewhere in the last few weeks, she started wondering if there were another reason he wouldn’t take her out in the light of day unless they were at a private picnic or a few hours away.

They looked like total opposites… her with her prairie skirts and him with his leather jacket and jeans. She was so proud to be with him, but she was beginning to believe the feeling wasn’t mutual. He still didn’t say anything, and she wished she’d never started this in the first place. She was going to ruin the most fun she’d had in a long while because she wanted more. They’d never talked about what this was, and she shouldn’t have a problem with this being a friends with benefits situation since that’s what he pretty much agreed he usually had. It was the other things that threw her off like the fact he texted her when he woke up and called her every night before she went to sleep. She knew that he worked nights, but his schedule was very irregular; She hadn’t a clue what kind of job he had, and she’d run through a good deal of them in her mind.

“Never mind, I’m just being weird. What are you up to tonight?”

“Don’t do that, Natalie. If you have a problem with something I’m doing, it’s okay to let me know,” he said, and she was delighted that she’d not ruined things. “You want to go out? I can do that. Where would you like to go?”

“There is a ballet tomorrow, and I have tickets.” She didn’t think it was his thing, but she still hoped that he’d go with her.

“If that’s where you want to go, then that’s where we’ll go. Do you want to go out to eat, too? I know a great restaurant.”

She knew he had a way to get to all the top restaurants in town, but she wanted to have a nice meal at her house. “No, I’ll make dinner, and then we can leave from here.”

“This sounds like a great idea, but you really think we should eat at your place before the ballet? We probably won’t make it out of the house.”

“We haven’t had plans to go anywhere before, so we usually eat and then continue our bedroom fun afterwards. I’ll make sure we have time to eat and that we’re out the door.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. This is going to be great.”

“Well, since we have such a big day tomorrow, how about I let you go, and I’ll be over tomorrow night early for dinner.” He was trying to get off the phone, but he didn’t sound displeased. It would have been easy to get out of that, but apparently he didn’t want to.

“Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When he got off the phone she lay there where she was and wondered why there was a nagging feeling that this may change things. She’d opened her mouth and told him what she’d been thinking, and he was going to do it. Problem solved, and she wasn’t going to sit here and fight with herself about it.

CHAPTER TEN

“Was it as bad as you thought it would be?” Natalie asked Jack who was wearing a fitted suit that, on him, looked like it should be on a runway in France. They had about twenty minutes until the intermission, and she knew that she shouldn’t have had so much wine with her dinner. For whatever reason, it made her have to go to the bathroom more than usual.

“I love being with you, and I love watching you enjoy yourself. Even if you’re enjoying the fact that the lead dancer is wearing pantyhose and you and see his junk,” he whispered in her ear.

That caused her to belly laugh in a place where only tinkling laughter and quiet twitters were acceptable. “Jack, stop that. Everyone here is going to think I’m rowdy.”

“You are rowdy, and I enjoy every minute of it.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she told him and got up to make her way to the bathroom. It was beautiful in there, and she was happy that she went before everyone else wanted to go. She looked at her watch and knew she had about 10 minutes before intermission. Should she wait it out or disturb everyone on her way back to her seat?

She got to the hallway where their alcove seats were and was surprised to find Jack waiting for her near their entrance.

“What are you doing out here,” she whispered as she moved closer to him.

“I wanted to take you on an adventure to get your blood pumping.”

“An adventure?”

“You said there was only a few more minutes before intermission and all the people sitting in those seats will be out here in the hallway.” He was talking in a low voice that was turning her on as much as it was scaring her. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she was afraid of herself. He backed her up against the wall. “You do remember teasing me in the car, don’t you?”

Natalie wanted to laugh because she’d been so upset that she’d lifted her skirt in the car he brought over to take her to the event, and he didn’t say much when he saw she had on garters and no panties. She’d placed her back against the car door, put her foot on the arm rest, and showed him her pink parts. He took his thumb and dragged it from her clit to her entrance before inserting himself to the hilt. She’d wanted to get off so bad, she probably would have been willing to pull over and fuck instead of going to the ballet. The point of the whole thing was that she wanted him to take her out. Now that she knew he would, she wasn’t as concerned with the actual event. He slowly fucked her with his thumb until they got close, and then he withdrew his thumb and told her to straighten up her clothes because they were almost there. If it weren’t for him sucking his thumb into his mouth and then adjusting his hard cock in his pants, she would have thought she didn’t affect him. She could see that he wasn’t the one to mess with, and paybacks were a bitch because he was calling her bold behavior out now.

“I remember,” she said trying not to whimper.

He’d pulled a fold out chair that was sitting against the wall over to them. “Put your foot up on that chair.”

“The people are going to be coming out in like six minutes,” she said like it would have mattered. This man turned her on so much, and she trusted him so implicitly she would gladly do what he asked because she knew he would protect her.

“Then you better come fast. I’ve been sitting in this place with a hard on that you gave me, on purpose, right before we came in here.”

“If you’d have sexed me before we left, I wouldn’t have to tease you with what you didn’t ask for.”

She probably shouldn’t have said that because the look on his face turned wicked, and she wished she’d worn panties because as wet as this was making her, she would be sitting in a puddle before this was over.

“Oh, so that was you punishing me for not giving you enough attention?” He unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out the hole he made in the fabric. “The countdown is on Natalie, and I’m not stopping until you come for me.”

She lifted up her dress and put her foot on the chair as she listened to the swell of her very favorite ballet being played by the symphony. He was wrapped in a condom and deep into her pussy before she could catch her breath.

“Mmm…you feel so good, Natalie. Did you think I didn’t want to drink from your sexy body and fuck you into the couch you were sitting on? I wanted to make sure we go to this event because you telling me I never take you out yesterday told me you feel like I don’t want to be seen with you, and that’s far from the truth.”

He continued to thrust into her going faster and faster like he was dancing to the same music as the dancers.

“Can you feel how much I want you?” He pulled down the stretchy bodice of her top and bent over to suck her nipple into his mouth, and she went crazy. It was almost too much. The elegant smell of the opera house, the music, and the man. Her body was wound up tighter than it had ever been before, and she hoped that she could come before the whole place witnessed her getting plowed against a wall. The dam burst and the waves of pleasure made her cry out, but she couldn’t hear it over the loud roar of the crowd; she could feel Jack’s cock flexing and moving within her, and in the back of her mind she was glad that he could come with her. The music had stopped, and she was holding on to him trying to pull in breath but was terrified that everyone was going to come out the doors. She started pushing him off of her.

“Shhh,” Jack said in her ear, “no one is coming this way. I paid a few of the ushers to block the doors to this hallway.”

Natalie had never been so relieved. She’d wanted to have a quickie in the hallway, but she didn’t know it was going to be so intense or that she wasn’t going to be able to recover in the minutes soon after. The metallic taste in her mouth told her how very frightened she was. She needed to clean up and then get home. The ballet was beautiful, but she’d just been testing him to see if he’d take her out.

“I have to go to the bathroom, and then I want to go home.”

“Okay.” Jack looked worried, and she didn’t want that.

“This was so much fun. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that much exhilaration in my life. Now I just want to watch the news and relax.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said getting himself situated so they could go out into the main room and blend in with the other guests.

The bathroom wasn’t as nice when it was crowded, but there was a lot of room. There were even couches to sit on, and she wondered how long people hung out in the bathroom if they weren’t using it like it was supposed to be used.

There was a woman with bright red hair that had been looking at her since she walked in, and for the life of her, she didn’t know who the woman was. Eventually, the woman made her way over to her and stood there like she was figuring out what to say.

“Hello,” Natalie said to the woman trying to encourage her to spit out whatever it was that had made her walk across the room to talk to her.

“Hi,” she said nodding her head.

“Can I help you with something?” Natalie wasn’t normally this bold, but for some reason she knew this was going to be about Jack, and she wasn’t in the mood to talk to this beautiful woman about him. There was absolutely no other reason this woman would be trying to talk to her. Natalie wasn’t a coward, and she would listen to what she had to say.

“Are you Natalie Harper?”

“Yes, I am, and you are?” It was going to be hard because her first instinct was to put her fingers in her ears and block out whatever this was. Three weeks they’d been going strong, and everything in her life was falling into place beautifully, but the knot in her stomach was growing with every passing second she was in this woman’s presence.

“My name is Gina Baylor. I’m here with Ian Daily.” The woman was looking at her like she should know the names she was spouting off, but she had no clue.

“I’ve never heard of either of you. I’m sorry.”

“You haven’t?” Gina said looking puzzled. “I thought you were here with Stormy, and I know for a fact that your shop has protection from the Devil’s Hornets.”

“The motorcycle gang?”

“It’s a club. I just wanted to welcome you into the flock and find out why you never come by.”

“You want to know why I don’t come to your motorcycle club? I’m sorry, Gina, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“You’re telling me that you don’t know the man you’ve been dating for the last few weeks, who’s been encouraging everyone in the world to buy flowers in your shop, has put you under the Hornet’s constant protection and is the lead man in our pharmacy department?” Now the woman was somehow upset because she didn’t know any of this.

“Pharmacy department?”

“Oh that’s rich. How do you think a man like Stormy can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? I don’t know how you caught him when there have been so many others before you that seem more like his style, but you have. If you want to believe your man isn’t selling drugs to the masses for The Devil’s Hornet’s, fine. I’m sorry to have interrupted your fairy tale.” Gina gave her a narrow look and walked away, and Natalie no longer felt like going to the bathroom; she felt like screaming.

How in the hell did she, a woman who avoided drug dealers like the plague, end up with the biggest one in the Devil’s Hornet’s… a motorcycle gang. What the fuck?

When she exited the bathroom, she could tell by the look on Jack’s face that he’d seen the woman who’d spilled all the beans in the bathroom.

“We need to talk,” she told Jack when she reached him. Drained, that was how she felt. It was like the bottom had been pulled out from under her, and she had been so high when she went into the bathroom that the drop felt fatal.

“Let’s go.” It seemed like his voice hardened, and he’d morphed into another person. He led the way out of the opera house, and she followed behind him.

She didn’t know what to think, but she knew one thing for sure: what Gina had told her in the bathroom was the honest to goodness truth. Fuck a duck.