Blood & Bones: Ozzy by Jeanne St. James

Chapter Six

“So tell me… Blood Fury. That’s a motorcycle club, right?”

Truthfully, he was surprised she hadn’t asked earlier. He’d been wearing his cut when she returned from her class reunion because he’d only returned from a long solo run about an hour prior.

And, yeah, the reason he was sitting out front was because he was waiting for her. Since he never sat out front, Josie kept coming out to check to see why he was hanging out there and he had to finally tell her to mind her own damn business.

She had snorted with amusement and called him a hungry dog who must have gotten a whiff of fresh meat.

She wasn’t exactly wrong.

But luckily, she eventually went back inside and got lost in some serial killer documentary on Netflix.

Shay returned to the motel looking hot as fuck in those heels, but those shoes had been the perfect excuse to touch her. He’d never massaged a woman’s feet before, but there was a first time for everything. And, for fuck’s sake, the ecstasy on her face while he did it was worth every damn second. That massage also gave him a reason for her to spend more time with him.

He’d been tempted to push this touch beyond her knees but didn’t want to scare her off.

She intrigued him. From the second he spotted her earlier that morning standing by the counter, it was like taking a punch to the gut. And not the kind he wanted to give that drunk who had grabbed Shay near the bar.

“Yeah, sweetheart, it’s an MC. Know anythin’ about them?”

She shook her head. “No, not much. Just what I remember from living in Manning Grove when I was younger and seeing those same type of vests around town.”

“Cut,” he corrected her, grabbing his cue stick and moving over to the pool table.

“What?”

He stared at the scattered balls, considering his best shot, and once he spotted it, said over his shoulder, “What you’re callin’ a vest’s actually called a cut. Our cut, the vest, displays our colors, our club’s patches. Our club patches represent our brotherhood.”

Apparently tonight wasn’t only going to be a lesson on playing pool for her, but also on MCs. He hoped it didn’t scare her off or make her want to end the night early.

He lined up his shot and took it, easily sinking the two ball into the corner pocket. He was a good player and usually cleaned up when money was on the line. But he wasn’t playing for scratch tonight. He was only playing as an excuse to spend more time with Shay, just like the foot massage. Also like the massage, teaching her pool kept her close.

This game could be ended in minutes. He could clear the rest of the solids, drop the eight ball and declare a victory. Along with his prize.

Instead, he purposely missed his next shot. He glanced over to where she stood by their high-top table and noticed her dark brown eyes were glued to him.

Tater lumbered into the billiards area and Ozzy instructed the prospect to give the drink to Shay with only a jerk of his chin. The young biker set it down in front of her and headed back out without a word.

Tater was turning out to be a good prospect because he did what he was told and never argued about it. None of his brothers gave a shit about a prospect’s opinions or complaints. If they didn’t like the way things were or how they were treated, then they could leave.

Simple.

Just like the sweet butts.

He inhaled a deep breath and when he blew it out, he made sure his thoughts of Liz also went along with it.

Ozzy rounded the corner of the pool table and watched Shay take a tentative sip of her new drink. “Better?”

“Yes. Thank you. That was sweet but totally unnecessary.”

Anything to see her smile.

The more time he spent with her, the less she was hiding it. But he wasn’t going to mention it, otherwise she might get self-conscious again.

Just like when thoughts of Lizzy invaded his brain, when Shay hid her smile or laugh, it annoyed the fuck out of him.

Nobody should have to hide when they’re happy, no matter what the reason.

“Your turn.” He set his stick to the side and, after downing some of her abandoned much stronger drink, he stepped back over to the table and to where she now stood.

“Take a good look at where all your balls are. See if you can find any with a direct path to a pocket. Ain’t gotta be fancy, just accurate. Ain’t playin’ to impress, playin’ to win. Always go for the easy shot first ’til you get better.”

She turned her gaze from the table to him. “You act like I’m going to be playing pool again after tonight.”

“Never know.” He moved closer behind her. “What shot you gonna take?”

“The ten ball into the side pocket.”

He grinned. “You gonna do it this time?”

“Yep.”

“All right. Ain’t gotta be pretty. Just gotta be accurate. Set your grip on your stick.”

She leaned over and put her hands like he showed her, but he still put his over hers on the handle and one on her hip. Because, fuck if he was passing up that opportunity and she didn’t seem to mind it, even when his hard-on had pressed into her ass earlier.

When she didn’t pull away before, it proved to him she wasn’t skittish about sex, but that didn’t mean she was interested.

Or at least as interested as he was.

“Don’t tense up,” he murmured.

His dick wasn’t currently hard but it wouldn’t take much to get it there. Especially when she adjusted her stance and pressed her sweet ass against him this time, instead of the other way around.

She was playing with fucking fire. If she wanted what he wanted—and he hoped to fuck she did—they could end this game right now and go play one in private.

He knew he could be pushy when he went after what he wanted and he was trying not to scare her off by only unleashing a little bit of his personality at a time. If he let her see who he was in small doses, he might be easier to swallow.

And, for fuck’s sake, he hoped it got to the point she was swallowing him.

One corner of his mouth curled up.

“Concentrate. Visualize the ball droppin’ in that pocket,” he whispered in her ear so she could hear him above the music. He kept his grip on the handle loose this time so she had more control of the shot. “Take it when you’re ready.”

She leaned over even further, jamming her ass right into his dick. He bit back a groan and breathed slowly so he wouldn’t ruin her shot.

A few seconds later, she took it. The crack of the cue ball into the ten ball gave him some hope. Amazingly enough, the ball fell right into her target, the side pocket.

He let her go and took a quick step back when she released an excited squeal and jumped up and down, almost knocking him in the face with her stick.

“Holy smokes! I did it!”

He grinned at her excitement. “Yeah, you did it. Now you get to shoot again, playa.”

She spun around and shot him a grin that got him right in the dick. “I want to do it myself this time.”

“Just don’t fuck up the felt or shoot a ball across the room and you’ll be good.”

“Well, thanks for that pressure.” She playfully stuck out her tongue at him.

Fuuuuuck. The things he wanted to do with that tongue. Or have that tongue do to him. Either way would be good with him.

More than fucking good.

Maybe he should hurry this game along. “There’s a simple shot. Take that one.”

She did what he taught her and set up the shot on her own, picked a spot on the cue ball to hit, then concentrated on the pocket beyond.

“Don’t gotta slam it,” he reminded her, “just take an easy shot. Don’t choke the stick, either.”

Her focus became laser sharp on the ball she wanted to sink into the corner pocket.

When she hesitated too long, he asked, “Need help?”

She didn’t take her eyes off the eleven ball’s destination. “I got it.”

She got it.

She certainly fucking did.

He watched as she visibly relaxed, took aim and hit the cue ball dead center, not too hard, not too soft. He held his breath as he watched it roll smoothly toward its target.

Then that fucking eleven ball fell right into its intended destination.

His breath rushed out of him when she whooped loudly and spun around with her face all lit the fuck up. She grabbed his shoulders and shook them as she yelled, “I did it!” went up on her toes and planted a kiss on his mouth.

Fuck yeah.

Unfortunately, it was only a quick peck and without that tempting tongue. Not quite what he was hoping for. He snaked an arm around her waist to pull her into him, to give her a real kiss, but she skirted away, wagging her finger at him. “Uh uh. I didn’t win yet.”

“We both might be playin’ for the same prize.” He hoped to fuck they were.

“I’m playing for a kiss. What are you playing for?”

“Mine’s gotta do with lips, too.” She didn’t have to win for him to kiss her, all she had to do was ask and he’d be glad to take her mouth.

And anything else she wanted to share.

“You know, besides stickin’ your tongue out at me, you stuck out your tongue when you took that shot.”

“I did?” Her eyes went wide and she automatically covered her mouth.

He grinned, shook his head and pulled her hand away from her face. “Yeah. You did it while you were concentratin’. It was hot as fuck. Think you gave a boner to the fucker at the next table.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the guy watching her.

“He’s been watching me?”

“Sweetheart, there’s a whole bunch of people with dicks watchin’ you. Especially when you jumped up and down. And every time you bend over, they’re checkin’ out your ass. I’ve been stickin’ close to block their view.” He was coming up with all kinds of good excuses to touch her.

Fuckin’ genius.

“Huh. I thought you were sticking close to hide your own boner.”

He barked out a laugh. “Fuck no. That monster can’t be hidden.”

Amusement made her eyes glitter. “I’m not sure I’d call it a monster.”

He slapped a palm to his wounded chest. “Damn, woman.”

She practically bounced back to the table. “Maybe you can help me with the next shot and I can gauge its size a little better.”

“There are other ways to do that, too.”

“But not in this bar.”

“Not in this bar,” he repeated softly, his humor quickly fleeing at the possibility of getting her under him tonight.

It had been a few days since he’d had sex with anyone other than his own fist. That wasn’t normal for him but then he’d still been kind of bent about the whole Lizzy thing. It had fucked up his normal groove.

Shay went over to the high-top table, grabbed her drink, took a larger sip this time, then rubbed her hands together when she turned back to the pool table. “Okay.”

“Look at you, all cocky and shit,” he said.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh, and you’re not?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Fuck no. Humble as fuck. Once you get to know me better, you’ll see how true that is.”

She actually rolled her fucking eyes at that.

“You don’t believe me?”

She looked him dead in the eyes and answered, “No.”

He snorted and glanced back at the table. “It’s still your shot.”

“I get to shoot again?”

“’Til you miss. Just don’t miss and you could win this. Right now, you control the table.”

She glanced over at said table. “I’ve got a bunch of balls yet.”

He decided not to respond to that. He reminded himself to only give her small doses.

He’d been told in the past he was “too much” and that was the main reason he tended to stick with the sweet butts and… the blonde who would not be named because he was evicting her from his brain. But dealing with randoms sometimes got a little sticky.

Shay approached him instead of the table. She stopped right in front of him and touched one of the patches on the front of his cut. “So tell me… The rest are self-explanatory, but what does an Original mean?”

“Means I was part of the original club before…” He needed to choose his words carefully and not let what happened with the Originals scare her off. He was going to treat her like a skittish doe until he knew she was otherwise, just to be safe. “The end.”

Her eyebrows pinched together. “The end?”

“Bunch of shit went down. Everyone… scattered.” He needed to avoid telling her that a shitload of Originals died or ended up in prison because they were all turning on and killing each other. The club had turned into a total shit show.

“When was that?”

He had just earned his full-set of rockers when it all went down. “Around twenty-two years ago.” Maybe now it was getting closer to twenty-three years. Didn’t matter since it felt like it could’ve been yesterday or a lifetime ago, depending on the memory.

“Huh.” Her brow furrowed and she chewed on her bottom lip for a few seconds.

He was tempted to volunteer to nibble on it for her.

“That’s about when my father disappeared. Before that, I remember seeing the Blood Fury around town but both my parents told me to steer clear of them. They said the MC was bad news.”

“Yeah, they were right.” He didn’t want to spook her by thinking the current Fury was like the old Fury, but he didn’t want to sugarcoat it, either. He’d just rather avoid some, or most, of the gory details.

His intention was for her to be on the back of his sled later when they headed back to the motel, not for her to split early after calling one of those cab-like services. Lyft or Uber or whatever the fuck they were.

“My father loved to ride. He had a really nice Harley Davidson and I lived for the days he’d take me with him. Because of those warnings, I assumed he didn’t ride with that club. But I still wondered sometimes when I saw them around town, since he was gone a lot at night. He’d get home from work, have dinner with us and most nights he’d kiss us goodnight, then head out to hang with his buddies. Unless the weather was bad, he always took his bike.”

Or he was going to visit a side-piece, not hang out with other bikers.

“Know where he’d go?”

She shook her head. “Not usually, though he’d mention this bar sometimes.”

Interesting… A man who owned a hog and occasionally hung out at Crazy Pete’s. “He live with you and your mom?”

“Yes. I never saw him wear a cut like yours or even mention the club except for those warnings.”

He was probably just an enthusiast. A weekend warrior. While some of the Originals had families on the side that they shielded from the club, it was still difficult to keep being a patched member a total secret from those families. Every Original he knew had lived and breathed the Fury.

Until they stopped breathing because of the Fury.

Some of the Originals, and even some members of the Thirty-Eight Calibers, lived two separate lives. They had two families. The legal wife, along with their kids, and a job or career they hid their club life from, and then their brotherhood. Sometimes they even had an ol’ lady on the side. It wasn’t uncommon among outlaw clubs.

Ozzy doubted Trip would tolerate that kind of shit now. The Fury brotherhood was family. A true family. One that included a brother’s legal wife or ol’ lady, but not both. Having both could stir up some really fucked-up drama. Trip was trying to avoid that possible cluster-fuck. It was a quick way to destroy everything he worked so hard to build.

Ozzy remembered when a wife, who’d been kept separate from the club, found out her husband had claimed an ol’ lady. The pissed-off woman showed up one night at the warehouse and confronted them.

Unfortunately, the wife, because she’d been sheltered from the club, didn’t know what she was walking into. The married brother’s ol’ lady got into a brawl with the wife, breaking her jaw, an arm, crushing her rib cage and slicing her face with a blade. Before the wife even completely recovered, she divorced her husband and he never saw his fucking kids again.

So, yeah, living two lives wasn’t always twice as fun. Sometimes it could create a fucking nightmare.

He didn’t want one ol’ lady or wife, forget two.

Shay’s next words brought him back to the woman standing before him. “So, you were part of that club before everyone vanished. But you didn’t. You remained.”

He shook his head. “No, I hit the road, too. Nothin’ of the club was left so there was no reason to stay. Only a coupla members stayed in the area because they ran established businesses. One of them was Crazy Pete because he ran this bar. But at the time, when trouble went down, his wife split and took his daughter, trying to keep Stella safe.”

“Ah, the Stella you mentioned earlier.”

“Yeah.”

“The way you said that makes me think the club came to a violent end. Did it?” Since she was a good eight inches shorter than him, she had to glance up to meet his gaze. She held it while waiting for his answer.

An answer he didn’t want to give her.

He did his best to keep his expression blank. “A lot of disagreements and in-fighting. Shit just didn’t work out.” While he didn’t want to sugarcoat it, that was exactly what he was doing.

Sugarcoating the fuck out of that history.

No one but the Fury members and their ol’ ladies needed to know how bad it was back then, and the current ones only needed to know so they wouldn’t repeat history.

“Maybe you knew my father? From riding or maybe from this bar…”

The hope in her eyes made his chest tighten. He’d only been in Manning Grove for about a year before it imploded. And the majority of that time was him being a prospect and practically a slave to those assholes. He wasn’t running around town making friends with who he considered civilians. “You said he disappeared.”

“Yes, he just disappeared one day and never came back. No one knew what happened to him.” A frown marred her expression. “But maybe he disappeared before you joined the club.”

“Maybe,” he murmured. “Your mom look for him?”

“Yes, and the police did a missing person’s report but nothing ever came from it. It was like he just disappeared into thin air.”

The tightening in his chest turned into a knot. The man rode a Harley and just happened to disappear around the same time as the Fury imploded. “Got a name?” He wasn’t liking the turn of this conversation.

“Marshall Graham.”

A legal name didn’t mean shit to him. He didn’t know any of the Original’s legal names. Hell, even now he didn’t even know Dutch’s real first name.

“Don’t sound familiar. You know if he had a road name? Even if he wasn’t ridin’ with an MC, or even an RC, he mighta had one.” A lot of wannabes did. They wanted to act like they lived the lifestyle without actually living it. Look badass without being an actual badass. Her father could’ve been one of those. A lot of weekend warriors who rode with riding clubs, as opposed to motorcycle clubs, were nothing more than suits playing biker on the weekend.

“I’m not sure.”

“Your mom know?”

“My mom died two years ago,” she murmured just loud enough he could hear her over the music.

“Damn.” She lost both of her parents. Like he had.

She might have told him that back at the motel, but sometimes when she talked, he got distracted and while he watched her, some of her words didn’t sink in.

He should do fucking better about that. Women liked to be heard.

“It was difficult.”

He cupped her check and brushed his thumb over the soft skin. “Sure it was.”

“Took me forever to settle her estate and all the things that go along with that.”

“You do it by yourself?”

She nodded. “Yes. I have no siblings.”

Something else they had in common. “Don’t got any, either.”

She released a dry laugh. “I guess our parents didn’t go along with the norm of having the two-point-five kids.”

She didn’t hide that laugh, either. She was probably making an effort not to do so in front of him.

He thought about what she just said about the lack of siblings. His mom never got the chance to have another kid. The autopsy showed she was pregnant when she was killed. He had to assume it was Fender’s kid since no one else had been sniffing around at the same time Fender was.

Fender was an asshole loser, but his mom was more loyal than she should have been to him. Ozzy doubted that fucker was loyal to her. It wasn’t even a doubt. Knowing what he knew now about MCs, he was damn sure his mother wasn’t the only woman Fender was sticking it to.

“Said your mom went to the pigs. They didn’t do shit about it?”

Shay shrugged. “Like I said, she filed a missing person report, but was told since he was an adult, then… He could’ve just gotten sick of his life, hit the road and started a new one elsewhere.”

“Shit good between your mom and dad?”

“Yes, really good. He pretty much did what he wanted to do and she let him. She wasn’t controlling or distrusting like some women can be. From what I saw, they had a happy life and relationship.”

He really didn’t want to open this can of worms, but… “Your mom or the pigs check with the Fury?”

“I don’t know, but I kept telling her she should. I had a gut feeling he was involved somehow with the MC, in some capacity, at least. Though every time I asked him, he said he wasn’t. If he was, he hid it really well, but I don’t know if he hid it from my mother or she knew the whole time and just accepted it. But before she could go to the Fury and ask around, the club disbanded.”

Disbanded. Yeah, that wasn’t what happened to the original club. But it was probably a good thing her mother never started snooping around the warehouse. It wasn’t the best place for the average woman. Sometimes it could be fucking brutal. More than sometimes.

Ozzy had seen a lot of shit back then that he was glad Trip didn’t allow now. But then, the current Fury president had seen and experienced a lot of that himself. The Fury’s implosion left a lot of scars behind on those who survived.

“That what your mother told you? The club disbanded?”

“Yes. I always held out hope he’d show back up. Well, we both did. You said Crazy Pete and Dutch were also Originals, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d love to speak with them. If anything, I’d like to know what happened to him, get some sort of closure.”

“Gonna be hard to talk with Pete. Cancer got him a few years back. But Dutch is alive and kickin’.” And fucking any woman who’d let him.

Dutch wasn’t picky. He didn’t give a fuck what color, race, creed or religion. If she spoke English or even had three tits. Cage once said his father was working his way through a bag of Skittles and no one could argue that.

“Maybe he knows something about my father. Maybe they knew him or heard rumors about what happened to him or where he went.”

Maybe he did. Hopefully, he didn’t.

Because if this Marshall Graham had been a part of the Fury, his disappearance could only mean one thing. Especially since the pigs would’ve told Shay’s mother if her father had turned up in jail or prison. Ozzy couldn’t imagine the man just abandoned his family. Shay talked about him like he’d been a good father and husband.

Another possibility was maybe Shay’s old man wasn’t an Original but his disappearance was caused by a run-in with someone from the Fury.

He frowned. “How old were you when he disappeared?”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “I had just turned sixteen. In fact, he missed my sixteenth birthday.”

As her face began to twist, she took her cue stick and turned to study the pool table. Probably taking his advice and searching for an easy shot and hopefully not turning away to hide her emotions.

Even so, he hoped she was done talking about her father’s disappearance because the whole thing was making his skin crawl. He’d feel bad for her if her dad turned out to be a casualty of the shit that went down.

Because if he was a Fury member and he survived that mess, Ozzy couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t have packed up his family and gotten them the fuck out of town. Most of the women took their children and bolted, like Stella’s, Trip’s, and even Sig’s mom.

He hoped to fuck whatever happened to the man had nothing to do with the colors on Ozzy’s back.

He hoped to fuck he had no part of it, either, since as a prospect he’d done some crazy fucking shit that could’ve landed him on death row. But to get in good with the club until he could find out who killed his mother, he had to follow orders.

He had been laser-focused on one goal and didn’t give a fuck what he had to do to reach it.

Ozzy stood at the end of the pool table, watching her take her next shot. When she did, she missed.

He could use his turn to clean up, finish the game and get the fuck out of there.

Because, fuck, she wasn’t done talking about it.

After making a little noise of disappointment at the missed shot, she had straightened and turned back to him. He noticed the sheen in her eyes. She loved her fucking father and his disappearance still caused her pain all these years later.

No wonder she wanted closure.

“I was so desperate to find him, I hopped on my bicycle and rode through town one day hoping to find out anything I could. I asked everyone if they’d seen him. I even discovered that the club had a warehouse at the other end of town and one day rode all the way there, just to be sure. Or even ask anyone I could find there.”

Christ all-fuckin-mighty. A barely sixteen-year-old girl going to the fucking warehouse alone. That could have been completely disastrous. He was almost afraid to ask, “What’d you see?” but he needed to know.

He could read the disappointment on her face. “Nothing. Just a big, ugly metal building that looked deserted.”

“You go inside?” He held his breath while waiting for her answer.

“No, all the doors were chained shut. I tried to look in the windows but they’d been spray-painted from the inside. I assume to keep anyone like me from doing that.”

Thank fuck. “Club liked their privacy,” he mumbled. For good fucking reason.

He went back over to their table, downed the rest of the drink she couldn’t finish, then grabbed his stick.

As much as he wanted to spend more time with her, it was time to go.

He needed to talk to some of his brothers and see if anyone recognized her father’s name.

He hoped to fuck they didn’t.

The problem was, he didn’t know if she was checking out of the motel in the morning or staying another night since he never looked at the details of her reservation.

Here he was now rushing the fucking night away because he was the one who got spooked. Yeah, he shouldn’t be but his gut was telling him something different.

He moved around the table, taking shots and sinking them one after the other until the only balls left on the table were the stripes, the cue ball and the eight ball.

This game could be over in less than a minute.

He set up the shot that would finish it, he glanced over his shoulder and spotted the expression on her face.

Confusion.

Maybe a little bit of hurt.

God-fuckin-damnit.

“You could’ve won a long time ago,” she said.

He turned his attention back to the table, took his last shot and watched the eight ball fall into the pocket he’d called with a tap of his stick.

When he straightened, he muttered, “Yeah, sweetheart, I coulda.”

He put his stick back in the wall rack and when he went over to get hers she asked, “That’s it, then, huh?”

He took the stick from her fingers and gave her a single nod. “Yeah, that’s it.” Once he put hers away, he returned to her. “Gonna talk to Dutch tomorrow and ask if he recognizes your dad’s name. You leavin’ in the mornin’?”

She stared up at him, her brow wrinkled. “I planned on hiking the Grand Canyon tomorrow. Maybe afterward, explore the town a little and grab a meal at Dino’s Dinner. I’m heading back to Boston Monday morning.”

That gave him a day to do a little digging.

But did it really matter if her father was a Fury member or not? Or if the Fury made the man disappear? Would anything change for her? Because if he was and he met his end at the same time some of the others did, would she really want to hear that? Or is it better to let her keep wondering?

Christ, he didn’t fucking know.

But the whole thing was now eating at him.

The Originals were like a goddamn flesh-eating virus. Everything they had touched turned to shit.

This was why he was surprised Trip had come home to Manning Grove to resurrect the club. He had seen the devastation and it had affected not only him, but Sig, too. So, when Ozzy heard the Fury was being rebuilt from the ashes, it was why he had to see it with his own eyes.

“Are you interested in hiking the Grand Canyon with me tomorrow?”

What the fuck?“Hiking?”

“Is that a foreign word to you?”

“Fuck yeah.” He sighed. “Tell you what, once you get done with your hike and your trip down memory lane around town, you come back to the motel. I’m gonna take you to Dino’s and then for a long run on the back of my sled. Yeah?”

Her face lit up. “Yes. I would love that.”

Yeah, so would he. Plus, that would give him time to go talk to a couple of his brothers to see if they ever heard of Marshall Graham.

“I guess we’re done here?” she asked, finishing off her weaker drink.

“Yeah, we’re done here.” He placed a hand at the small of her back and steered her back through the dwindling crowd since the band had finished up for the night.

Passing the bar, he gave Dodge a chin lift, but didn’t stop until he had her out the rear door and on the back of his sled.

He took his time returning to the motel and when he pulled into the front parking area, he parked behind her Lexus. He shut it down since it was late and he didn’t want to disturb the rest of the guests by letting it idle, and they both climbed off.

“Well, that was much more fun than my class reunion. Thank you for taking me and also for teaching me to play pool.”

“Ready to go on the road and hit some tournaments.” His teasing came out flatter than he intended.

When the night began, he wasn’t expecting it to end like this. Where they both slept in different beds. That wasn’t his intent at all.

Maybe that was for the best right now. Until he knew she had no ties to the Fury. And if she did, what that all meant.

“I’d need a lot more lessons before I’m ever ready to be a pool shark.” She glanced over her shoulder to her motel room. “Well, I guess I’ll say goodnight since it’s late.”

“Yeah—”

Before he could say anything else, she got up on her tiptoes, curled her hand around the back of his neck, tipped her face up to him and pulled his down to hers.

Then she took his mouth.

Since he wasn’t a fucking idiot, he let her.

He’d been wanting to kiss her all night. Hell, more than kiss her. So, this was a good start. Unfortunately, it was over before he was ready.

“I didn’t win but I figured you wouldn’t mind me taking my prize anyway.”

Fuck no. “Since I did win, gonna take part of my prize now and the rest another time.” He hooked her around the waist, yanked her into him so hard, her tits slammed into his chest, and this time he took her mouth.

She groaned and fisted his shirt under his cut as he explored every corner of her mouth, sucked on her tongue, nipped her bottom lip, and then completely overtook her mouth again.

It wasn’t quick.

It was more than a friendly peck this time.

When she moaned into his mouth, he was tempted to drag her into her room or upstairs to his.

But he didn’t.

He used his fucking noggin for once.

Fucking her tonight before he knew who her father was could make things really fucking messy.

If it turned out no one ever heard of him, no one knew who he was, then he’d consider taking things further tomorrow night, if that was what she wanted.

But until then…

He groaned and turned his head to break their kiss before he was tempted to throw his plan out the fucking window. The quiet night air was filled with her quick pants.

She was probably just as wet as he was hard right now.

But he needed to walk away.

He needed to walk away.

For now.

Fuck.

“If that’s only part of your prize for winning, what’s the rest?” she asked breathlessly.

You naked, your hair loose around you, with my mouth on your cunt and my eyes on your face when you come.

Of course, that wasn’t what he fucking said. Fuck no.

“Dinner tomorrow night.” Then after that, he’d see if she wanted to be his dessert.

“I look forward to tomorrow, then.” She smiled and he noticed she began to hide it but stopped herself and she shot him an even bigger one. “Goodnight, Ozzy.”

He wanted to kick his own ass for letting her slip through his fingers tonight. He wanted to do so much more than just kiss her. So much fucking more. He was crazy for walking away from a woman who would probably let him into her bed, if he asked.

“Night, Shay.”

He mounted his sled, started it and forced himself to take it around to the back of the motel where he parked it.

For once, he was trying to be smart.

Though, he felt like a dumb fuck for not taking what he wanted for the first time in his life.