Rock Chick 08 Revolution (16 page)

I just got out the last word before
Ren slanted his head and took my mouth, hot, hard and wet.

He also again started moving.

But not gliding.

Not even close.

And he kept doing it until we both
found it.

Simultaneously.

It.

Was.

Righteous.

Chapter Eight

Semi-Sweet

We were in Ren’s Jag, nearing my
apartment complex, when I pulled my phone out of my purse.

For obvious reasons, I elected to
ride back with Ren.

When I called Darius to inform him
of this fact and ask him to meet me at his truck so I could get my stuff,
Darius laughed his ass off.

I did not take to this kindly but I
was in a good enough mood I let it slide.

Letting it slide got harder when I
met Darius at his truck and Brody was there.

He took one look at me and said to
Darius, “She got her some.”

I glared at Brody.

“She’s anywhere near Zano, she
always gets herself some,” Darius replied.

I transferred my glare to Darius.

Darius took in my glare, lifted his
brows and asked, “Am I wrong?”

Since he wasn’t, I decided not to
answer.

“So, are you guys
together
together, as in, you’re gonna
stop pretending to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and come out of the
bedroom, or are you two still gonna keep dancing your dance?” Brody asked
nosily.

“Ren and I had a meeting of the
minds this morning.” I decided to share.

“Sounded like the opposite,” Darius
muttered and I started glaring again.

“Yeah, when you fight, you guys are
seriously loud,” Brody put in.

Unfortunately, I’d discovered Brody
and Darius’s rooms flanked Ren’s and mine.

Though, I had to admit, even if
they didn’t, they probably still would have heard us shouting.

I took in a deep breath, reminding
myself Ren loved me and I’d just had a fabulous orgasm, and let it out feeling
much calmer.

Then I told them, “We worked it out.”

Brody leaned into Darius and
mumbled loudly, “That’d be the part where she got her some.”

Darius’s eyes never left me through
this, but when Brody was done, he grinned.

I practiced more calming breathing
and requested, “Can I get in the truck?”

Darius beeped the locks.

I moved to the door.

“This sucks,” Brody remarked as I
yanked it open and reached in to get my purse and laptop bag. “The Rock Chicks
have cost me a shed load of money. And now there’s none left. I can’t win any
back.”

I pulled out of the cab, slammed
the door and looked at Brody. “You bet on Ren and me?”

“Sure,” he replied and when I
started glaring again, he added, “But I bet
on
you. I thought you’d hold out longer. But you caved.”

My back went straight.

“I didn’t
cave,
” I snapped
.
“Like I
said, we had a meeting of the minds.”

“You’ve been having a meeting of a
variety of things but you never caved,” Brody pointed out. “Though, if it makes
you feel better, you held out a whole lot longer than any of the other Rock
Chicks. I did a spreadsheet. Sadie took the longest to win. You beat her by,
like, eleven point five months. You should be proud. That’s a lot.”

Darius started chuckling.

“Do you
want
me to hurt you?” I asked the both of them and the both of them
grinned.

They said no more and I didn’t
either. I was in for a lot of this, I knew. I bought it and I knew that too. I
was just going to have to suck it up and take it.

“I’ll see you guys back home,” I
muttered, moving away.

“Ally,” Darius called and I turned
back.

“Yeah?”

“Believe in it,” he said softly,
“and be happy.”

God, I loved Darius.

I swallowed as my eyes started
feeling hot.

Then I nodded and got the hell out
of there.

I barely had the door to the room
closed before Ren asked, “How much shit did they give you?”

He was sitting on the side of the
bed tugging on his boots.

I dumped my stuff on the bed and
turned to him. “I’m screwed.”

He straightened, reached out,
grabbed my hips and shifted me so I was standing between his opened legs.

I rested my hands on his shoulders and
looked in his eyes.

This man loved me.

Seriously.

How lucky could I be?

“I’ll make it worth it,” he
whispered.

Yeah.

He loved me.

And I was
very
lucky.

“I think, after acting like an
idiot for a year, that’s my job,” I replied, and his warm eyes got warmer, his
hands slid from my hips to my ribs and he pulled me down to him as he fell back
so we were lying on the bed, me on top.

“How you gonna do that?” he asked
as one of his hands drifted over my ass and the other one drifted up and into
my hair.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But
I’ll be creative.”

He smiled.

My heart soared.

“Lookin’ forward to that,” he
murmured.

“Would you like to start now?” I
offered. “Or after we get back to Denver.”

“Seein’ as I’m takin’ my woman on
our first official date tonight even though she’s been my woman for a long
fuckin’ time, I want to get back to Denver. So you can start there.”

God. I’d been
such
an idiot.

I didn’t admit that since I figured
he knew. And, by the way, he was being very cool by not rubbing my nose in it.

Which made me love him more.

Instead, I replied, “Copy that,”
and got another smile.

Then I got a hot, heavy, wet kiss.

After that, I got my ass hauled to
a sweet ride and Ren pointed the Jag toward Denver (after we checked in on Faye
who, surprisingly, after being buried alive, was doing all right; then again,
she had her own hot guy badass so maybe this wasn’t a surprise).

I delayed until nearly the final
moment to check my phone because I knew what I’d find. I’d even avoided looking
when I’d called Darius.

But this was sissy behavior and not
me. However, I allowed myself this bubble of happiness with Ren without letting
the world intrude as he drove his sleek, high performance machine through the
beauty of the Colorado Mountains.

He did this, by the way, almost the
whole time holding my hand against his thigh. Yes, the fact that I loved this
was more romantic girlie than Rock Chick, but who cares? A hotheaded Italian
badass loved me. This required being romantic girlie on occasion.

And I picked that one.

But it was time to stop being a
sissy and face the music.

So I hit the button to turn on my
phone and found I had fifty-seven missed calls and thirty-three voicemails.

“
Shit,
” I hissed.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” Ren asked,
having been around the Rock Chicks enough to know what I was facing.

“Fifty-seven missed calls and
thirty-three voicemails,” I told him.

Ren started laughing.

I didn’t find it funny and found it
less funny when I went to my Recents list, scrolled down and saw the vast
majority of calls were not from the Rock Chicks, snippy and calling to ream me
because I didn’t share.

They were from Lee, Hank and Eddie.

Not good.

Those three were also the vast
majority of voicemails.

Also not good.

I turned off my phone and shoved it
in my purse as Ren pulled into the parking lot of my complex. I did this
deciding that maybe I could still be a sissy for a little while longer.

Ren parked. I put my hand to the
handle but stopped and turned to him when I felt his fingers curl around
my
 
knee.

“We go up, you pack enough to stay
at my place awhile, but you make sure you got a variety of dresses and heels,”
he ordered and I bit back a smart mouth retort at him being bossy. It took me
so long to do that, he was able to keep talking. “And you do that shit fast.”

At bossy part two, I failed in
biting back the smart mouth and asked, “Should
 
I salute when you issue an order? Or will nodding and instant compliance
do?”

He grinned and replied, “No
salutes. No nods. But you could kiss me.”

I gave him a look.

He kept grinning.

I decided to throw out a deal that
he couldn’t refuse.

“I’ll kiss you, and comply with
your order, if you do me a favor.”

His fingers gave my knee a squeeze
and he asked, “What do you need?”

I dug in my purse, got out my
wallet and opened it. I found the little pocket that had absolutely no use. A
pocket I put a use to. I snapped it open and pulled out what was inside.

I dumped the wallet back in my
purse, turned to Ren and lifted my hand between us.

Then I dropped the guitar pendant
and it bounced between us from where I held the chain.

“What I need is for you to put this
on me,” I said quietly and Ren’s eyes moved from the pendant to me.

His voice was rough when he stated,
“You carried it with you.”

“Yes.”

“Always?”

I took a breath in through my nose.

Then I nodded and whispered,
“Always.”

His eyes stayed locked to mine,
heated and intense, before he grinned and declared, “I was
so
in there.”

I palmed the necklace and snapped,
“Zano, do you
want
me pissed at you?”

“Semi-sweet Ally, just seein’ how
far she goes,” he replied.

“You reached the end, mister,” I
returned, twisted to exit the vehicle but instead found myself in Ren’s lap,
wedged between him and his steering wheel.

Oh, and he was kissing me.

I decided to forgive him and kissed
him back.

Then kissing turned into making
out.

After we were done doing that, he
put the necklace on me.

When the guitar was dangling in the
dent of my collarbone, Ren touched it as his eyes watched.

He lifted his gaze to mine and
stated, “You do know you aren’t bullshitting me. There is no semi-sweet Ally.
She’s pure honey all the way through.”

I slid my fingers along the dark
stubble at his jaw and whispered, “Don’t tell anybody.”

“Baby, your secret’s safe with me.”

I smiled at him.

He smiled back, touched his mouth
to mine and deposited my ass in my seat.

We got out of his car and walked
hand in hand into my complex and up the stairs.

I was in my head. Precisely what I
was thinking up there was which dresses and heels I was going to pack to take
to Ren’s.

On the way home, we’d made the deal
that we were going to try this
together
togetherness
,
not fuck around and not
delay. That meant me staying at Ren’s (because, seriously, his house was awesome;
he even had a sauna in his bathroom).

This also meant me meeting his mom
and two sisters, him meeting my family not as Ren, a member of the Zano Crime
Family, but as Ren, the boyfriend of me, and me sitting down to dinner with
Vito and his wife Angela.

None of this scared me. Vito liked
me. Ren loved me and he was the kind of guy who, if he made that decision, even
if his mom and sisters didn’t like me, they’d have to deal. As for my family,
Ren was Ren and his family was his family and mine were who they were and
usually this would be a Romeo and Juliet type of scenario. But I wasn’t big on
Shakespeare so my family was also just going to have to deal.

I was narrowing down my dress and
heels choices when I felt his hand tighten in mine and he pulled us both to a
dead stop.

I looked up and tensed when I saw
The Kevster running our way down the hall.

“Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Bo—!” he was
shouting.

But he didn’t get the last one out.

This was because my apartment
exploded. The Kevster was taken clean off his feet and was blown our way. Ren
and I rocked backward, Ren tugging my arm and curling me into him so when he
landed on his back, I landed partly on his front but my left side slammed into
the floor.

Instantly, he rolled me so I was on
bottom and he tucked me low so he fully covered me.

Oh man.

Here we go.

Shit.

Chapter Nine

Sixteen to Me

I was pacing Lee’s office.

The Kevster, healthy and all in one
piece (thank God), was sitting in one of the chairs in front of Lee’s desk.

For some reason, the police cruiser
we were loaded into took us to Lee’s offices in lower downtown Denver (known as
LoDo) instead of the station. We were escorted into Lee’s office and locked in.

Yes.

Locked
in.

When we left my place, the entirety
of the Hot Bunch were milling about with police and firefighters.

And when we left, looking out my
window with a totally freaked out Kevster at my side, Ren and Lee were nose to
nose, and neither of them looked happy.

I was not either, being carted off
like a girl (or a pothead) who needed to be protected.

What was
that
all about it?

I also wanted to know why Lee and
Ren were in each other’s faces, but neither of them were answering their
phones. Sadly, before I could try to get to either by proxy, as in calling Indy
to call Lee, my phone ran out of juice.

The Kevster didn’t have one.

And Mace had destroyed Lee’s office
phone in a fit of (justifiable) rage during his and Stella’s drama and Lee
elected not to replace it. This meant Shirleen couldn’t transfer annoying phone
calls from clients that he didn’t want to handle and therefore he could spend
more of his time “in the field.”

It also meant, since we were locked
in (again,
locked in
), I was
incommunicado.