Maci
Grinning and heart light, I poured a little more heavy cream into the alfredo sauce I had brought up to a simmer. A couple handfuls of shrimp, and I nodded. Ought to be perfect. I tested the linguini, deciding it needed another minute or two.
The rumble of Digger’s truck pulled close, and my pussy tightened, nipples pebbled. It had been all of twelve hours since I’d seen him, and my body craved his nearness. I’d grabbed one of his shirts when I’d first arrived an hour earlier, and had decided to wear that to make him dinner—and nothing else. The navy-blue t-shirt hung to my knees, hiding my nakedness, but not my hardened nipples.
Digger hadn’t even gotten all the way in the door before he groaned. “Fuck. Me.”
“After,” I said with a wink over my shoulder. “Don’t want dinner to get cold.”
He growled and swept me up into his arms, his hands on my ass. Nothing to do but wrap my legs around his waist, so I did. The attack he landed on my mouth spun my head. Accelerated my pulse until my heartbeat thumped in my ears. His disfigurement didn’t hinder his ability to kiss me senseless.
My pussy clenched on nothing, desperate to be filled with all eleven point six inches of his huge cock.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked while trailing kisses down my neck.
“Shrimp alfredo.” I gasped and ground myself against his hard ridge as he bit me, my fingers tangling in the hair atop his head.
“Damn.” He heaved a breath and tilted his forehead against mine. “I’ve only got a couple hours before I have to be back at the club, so let’s hurry up and eat so I can devour you for dessert.”
All kinds of yummy warmth flooded through me. “Gotta put me down first,” I whispered with a smirk.
Another groan, and he reluctantly put me back on my feet.
I turned on weakened legs to dump the linguini in the alfredo pan, and Digger tugged on the back of the t-shirt covering my ass.
“Christ, what a witch you are.”
Giggling, I sidestepped to put dinner on the table before he revealed my nakedness beneath. “Why do you have to be back at the club later tonight?”
“Jonny wants to have a little chat with whoever has been watching the club and following me.”
I hesitated in setting the pasta on the table a couple heartbeats, my stomach in a vise as Digger sat. “Something like that could escalate.”
He peered at me, sending a shiver down my spine—so not the kind I’d been looking forward to all day. “It could, yes, which is why I’m giving you this.” A clink on the tabletop drew my attention to his hand. A sheathed knife rested beneath.
“I’m going, too?” I asked, my voice a squeak as I sat down hard.
“No.” His gaze slid over my lips and along my collar bone before returning to my eyes. “But whoever the fuck is following me around … I don’t have a good feeling about their intentions. I want you to have some sort of protection on you when you aren’t with me. It’s only a four-inch blade, but it will be enough to take a man out if he ever thinks to touch you.”
I swallowed. Knowing he lived a dangerous lifestyle and possibly being threatened because of it were two totally different things. “You think I’m in danger?”
“If someone is after me, what’s to stop them from hurting you to get to me?”
Shit. “I—I’m a caretaker. Someone who set aside her life to keep another alive…”
Even through the whiskers on his jaw, I noted the tension. “Maybe you ought to get out while you can.”
My throat thickened as the vise on my stomach tightened. “Is that what you’d prefer?” I whispered. Everything about Digger drew me in, and the thought he wanted me gone turned my stomach sour.
“No.”
I chewed on his single word while gnawing the inside of my lower lip and the pasta grew cold.
He pushed the knife across the table.
Blinking up to meet his gaze, an overwhelming urge to accept the knife—character and life be damned—swept over me. “You want me to stay.”
“I hardly know you, but the thought of being without you feels like that blade would if it was buried in my stomach.”
Holy fucking shit. I stared. How was it possible to feel what I did, what he did, after a mere weekend together? Stuff like that only happened in romance novels and fairy tales, not real life, and especially not between two polar opposites.
“Say something, Maci.”
I swallowed again, trying to work enough saliva into my mouth to get words out. “You want me to be your old lady?”
“Yes.”
Grin, cry, or flee? I asked myself while studying his face. The softness in his gaze, the longing, loosened the clamp on my stomach.
My hand trembled, but I reached across the table and pulled the knife closer. Only a four-inch blade, I noted while pulling it out of its sheath.
“Capone forged it. It’s a boot knife.”
“Cooks and forges knives… Who’d have thought?” I murmured. Turning the blade in my hand had the overhead light glinting off the polished metal. The hilt fit my hand perfectly.
“You’re killing me here…”
I lifted my head, a smile growing on my face. “I’m scared shitless over all this—” I motioned a hand between us and toward the front door, “—but I can’t just walk away from you.”
He expelled a breath, seeming to melt in his chair. A definite twitch lifted the scarred corner of his lips.
“You’re smiling.” Even I could hear the wonder in my voice.
“Ugly as shit, isn’t it?” he asked, his eyes still betraying the insecurity wrapped around his self-consciousness.
“Not at all.” I stood and leaned over the table, cupping his face in one hand. “You’re hotter than hell. Every single part of you. Scar included.” He leaned toward me, and I kissed the disfigured side of his mouth, sliding my lips up over the whiskers attempting to cover the scar running clear up to his ear. “Now, eat your dinner, so you can tie me up and fuck me until I forget my name.”
He groaned, and I sat back, a saucy smirk tilting my lips.
“Witch,” he muttered while reaching for the alfredo.
****
Digger didn’t tie me up. Didn’t wrap his huge hands around my neck to bring me to the edge of passing out before climaxing. No spanking. Nothing but tenderness, sending wave after wave of unnamed emotion rolling over me, sweeping me up in the undertow. Whatever it was, whatever the energy I felt between us, I craved it. Couldn’t imagine life without it.
Had I lived before? Not really, I realized as I snuggled against his side, my cheek resting on one of his hard pecs. One of his arms lay beneath me, his palm resting on my lower back, keeping me close.
Eyes closed, I soaked in the warmth of his skin, listening to the steady thump of his heart beating in time with my own.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, his chest rumbling under my ear.
“That tonight could go terribly wrong,” I whispered. “That the strong beat against my cheek…”
Digger smoothed my hair away from my face, tangled his fingers through my messy locks, and tilted my head back. “We’re just going to go have a chat with them.”
I could barely make out his face in the darkness. “And if they do more than chat?”
“Then I’ll finish whatever they start.”
His confidence twitched my lips even though my stomach twisted. “I’m not ready to be without you, so you damn well better.”
“I will.” He squeezed me tight against his side. “Promise.” A few minutes later, he kissed the top of my head and slid out of the bed, leaving me alone and cold.
I hugged the comforter under my chin, breathing in the scent of his laundry detergent and lingering traces of his skin as he dressed in the darkness.
“I’ll be back,” he muttered from the doorway with an Arnold accent.
I should have laughed. Should have smiled, even, but I found my eyes filling with tears. “Hurry,” I whispered, knowing I wouldn’t fall asleep until he did.