Erica

 

I couldn’t say the act itself was unexpected. I’d felt it coming ever since we kissed—maybe before then. I knew it was only a matter of time before we slept together. The pull he had on me was too strong. Our chemistry was too strong. It was inevitable.

 

I just didn’t know it would be the way it was. My whole body was still tingling. The occasional tremble would go through me. I was on fire, maybe not as bright a fire as had burned when we were going at it, but the embers were still glowing.

 

What the hell?

 

When I started thinking clearly, my face burned hotter than the surface of the sun. “Oh, no,” I whispered. We were flat on our backs, side by side.

 

“What? You okay?”

 

I turned my head to look at him. His hair was disheveled. His face had a look of complete bafflement. So he felt the same way I did.

 

“Do you think everybody heard us?” I wanted to die just thinking about it. How would I face any of them? I’d never, ever been as loud before as I was with Vince—and I’d been trying to hold back, too.

 

He considered it for a second, then snorted. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s not like nobody here has ever had sex in the middle of the day. I mean, we’re all together a lot of the time. There are bedrooms here for a reason—not primarily for sleeping.”

 

I didn’t feel much better, but the grin on his face told me there was nothing to worry about. I had to play it cool. If we were going to be together, this would happen again. I’d have to get used to it.

 

The thought chilled me to the bone, out of surprise rather than fear. Was I really thinking that way now? That we might be together in the future? One good lay and all of a sudden I was practically planning the wedding.

 

I sank further into the bed, knowing that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t just because of the sex. The connection we had was too strong to be denied—I could try to pretend it wasn’t there, but to what purpose? I’d been trying already, and look where that got me. Not that I was complaining.

 

We were supposed to be together. It sounded ridiculous, but that didn’t make it any less true. It was Fate that made Vince ride down the street at the very moment I needed him. How else could I describe it? If it had been any other member of the club, I would have been grateful to them for helping but I wouldn’t be in bed with them. It wasn’t attachment due to what we’d been through. The attachment was there the minute I looked at him.

 

I wondered what he was thinking about all this, and I pulled the sheets protectively around my body. I felt very vulnerable all of a sudden. What if this meant nothing to him? He’d had so many women. I couldn’t be that special.

 

Then, he turned to me and smiled. His hand found mine, and he covered it. I couldn’t help warming at his touch, and hoping that this meant more to him than the average nooner.

 

“Why are you so far away?” he asked, tugging my hand to pull me closer. I giggled and allowed him to gather me up in his arms. He held me close to him, tight. I dared to hope that he was doing it because he cared about me.

 

He smelled vaguely of sweat and sex, and musk that was his own. I breathed deep, loving every bit of him. His body was so warm and inviting. I couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t get close enough or touch enough. I snaked one leg over his, pulling him closer, and held him tight with my arm while nuzzling his neck.

 

“Whoa, girl,” he whispered, laughing softly. “I need a minute to recover. You girls are ready way faster than we are, which is so unfair. Even if I could go right away, I don’t know if I would. I thought you were gonna kill me for a minute there.”

 

I laughed against his skin, then bit him playfully. “Same here,” I murmured. I eased up on him, loosening my grip and leaning my head on his shoulder.

 

I had to get something off my chest. It had been weighing on me since the night before, and after Vince saved me again, it was almost crushing me. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

 

“You’re what?” He pulled away, looking down at me with a frown.

 

“I’m sorry. I can’t help feeling like so much of this is my fault.”

 

“It’s not. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they have some weird obsession with you. That’s not your fault either. The Wolves have always been a little crazy. I can’t explain why they do what they do. Maybe it’s pride. You got away, and that’s not sitting well. I don’t know.”

 

“I wish I hadn’t gone out last night,” I muttered, idly stroking Vince’s chest. “I really do.”

 

“But then, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

 

He wasn’t kidding. I could tell from the tone of his voice. “That’s true. You have a way of looking at things. I wouldn’t expect it.”

 

His handsome face shifted into a smirk. “What do you mean?”

 

Something that had teased at the edges of my brain since our first conversation bubbled back to the surface. “Can I ask you something personal?”

 

“Well, I’m naked in bed with you. How much more personal does it get?”

 

I snickered. “For real. Do you mind? I’m curious about something.”

 

“Go ahead.”

 

“How come you’re always trying to hide how smart you are?”

 

He laughed and avoided my eyes. “Who said I’m doing that?”

 

“Come on. You’re very intelligent. It’s obvious. Give yourself a little credit.”

 

He shrugged, and I could tell he was trying to brush it off. Then something stopped him. Maybe it was the look in my eyes when he finally got the nerve to look at me again.

 

“You know, I’ve spent so much time playing it down, it’s like a habit.”

 

“Why do you do it?”

 

He shrugged. “A lot of reasons. The people in the club and the people who hang out with us…they’re not big on book smarts. They sorta resent people with educations, either because they don’t have the smarts, or they didn’t have the money to get one for themselves.”

 

“So it wasn’t smarts that held you back. Was it money?”

 

He nodded. “Partly. I was on track to graduate at the top of my class until halfway through my junior year of high school.”

 

I gasped softly. “Stop playing!”

 

He chuckled and glared playfully at me. “What, that’s such a big surprise?”

 

I smacked his chest with the palm of my hand, not missing the way the muscle beneath his skin didn’t yield even a little bit. “No, no. I mean…what happened that year that stopped you?”

 

He stopped being playful, and it took a while before he spoke again. I gave him time. I hoped I hadn’t pushed too far.

 

“See, my dad died when I was ten,” he began.

 

I held up a hand. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean to pry. Please, you don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.”

 

“But I do want to.” He looked very serious. “I do. I never told anybody the full story.”

 

“And you’re sure you want me to be the one you tell the story to?”

 

He shrugged. “Unless you don’t wanna hear it.” I sensed that despite his nonchalance, he wanted very much for me to listen. I told him I wanted to hear anything he had to say and leaned the side of my face on his chest as he spoke.

 

“When I was ten, my dad died. He was working at a factory, one of the last factories in the neighborhood. My mom always said that even if it shut down as the others had, it was all right. She never liked him working there. He was a smart guy, he could do anything he wanted to. That was what she said anyway. But then he was killed on the job. One of the machines malfunctioned, and when he went to see the problem, he touched it and got electrocuted.”

 

“Oh, Jesus.”

 

“Yeah. It was really hard. I was the oldest of five kids. The youngest, my sister, Liza, was only three. Mom went into a deep depression. Some days, she couldn’t get out of bed.”

 

“And you had to take care of everybody else,” I whispered.

 

“Yeah. And go to school. But I did, and I handled it all right. On the days when she was with it, life was easier. She always tried to stay strong for us. When she was too depressed to get up, she would just say she didn’t feel good. But my room was next to hers. I heard her crying at night.”

 

“Oh, Vince. I’m sorry.” I kissed his chest, wishing there was something I could do to make things better. I thought about the little boy he must have been, listening to his mother cry in the middle of the night. How he must have felt when he heard it.

 

“As time went on, things got a little better. She pulled it together mostly. I could go back to focusing on school. I didn’t wanna end up like my dad, working in some shitty factory for the rest of my life and end up dying there with nothing to show for it. But then she died, too. When I was sixteen. Sleeping pills she borrowed from a friend. Took too many, and that was it.”

 

My heart ached for him. I could tell he was holding back—he’d been keeping that story looked away so tightly in his heart for so long. Just the words alone, and what they meant for a kid at that age, were enough to leave me speechless.

 

“So there was just the kids and me. Shit, I couldn’t take care of them anymore. I didn’t have the money to do it. But then I heard from a friend of mine that I could make money if I went along on a job he was doing with the club he had just joined.”

 

“This club,” I murmured. My head was still against his chest, and I felt the murmur of assent as a rumble in his chest.

 

“He told me I could make a couple hundred bucks, and he vouched for me with the rest of the guys. I figured, what the hell? Some quick money. I could use it to buy groceries, keep the electricity going, that sort of thing. So I went. And I kept going back for more jobs, and I earned more money. It was good to feel a little bit of security, you know?”

 

“What about school?”

 

“I had to stop going. I couldn’t do what I was doing at night with the club and get everybody out the door for school in the morning and go to school myself. Somebody had to take care of things. So I did. Until the state stepped in and broke us up.”

 

“Oh, no.” All that for nothing, I thought. If it hadn’t been for his mother’s death, he would never have joined the club in the first place. But then I never would have met him.

 

“Alex took me in. He was president of the club then. He didn’t have any kids of his own, and he sorta took me under his wing. I needed somebody, you know? I needed a family.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh. “I haven’t seen any of my brothers and sisters since we were split up. That was more than ten years ago.”

 

My tears ran down his chest, and he gently lifted my head. “Don’t cry,” he whispered, wiping the tears with his thumbs.

 

“That’s just the saddest story.”

 

“I could have turned out much worse. A street kid. Same with the others. They were all placed with other distant family members, so it wasn’t like they got lost in the system.”

 

“Oh, that’s a relief, anyway.”

 

He nodded. “I haven’t had the guts to find out what happened to them.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I guess I feel bad for letting us get split up in the first place, you know? Like I should have tried harder.”

 

“Not at all! You were just a kid. It was the law. What could you do?”

 

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just felt like it was my job to keep us together, and I failed.”

 

I shook my head. “You didn’t fail. You did the best you could. Nobody could have done better.”

 

He was quiet for a long time, staring off into space. I told myself that if we stayed together when this was all over, all the craziness, I would help him find his family. I could tell how much they meant to him, even though he was afraid to admit it either out of guilt or some weird macho thing.

 

“What about school? Did you ever finish?”

 

“Nope. No time for it. Nobody seemed to care, so I didn’t. Besides,” he grinned, “I wasn’t exactly encouraged. But! Do me a favor and open the armoire.” He nodded to the piece of furniture in the corner. I was confused, but did as he asked after wrapping myself in a sheet. When I opened the doors, I gasped.

 

Books. Hundreds of them crammed in there. Not a stitch of clothing. Novels, histories, biographies. The Bible. Shakespeare. The Art of War. I ran my fingers over the spines of the books, somehow feeling even sadder for him. He had to hide his self-education from everybody else. They wouldn’t understand why he still felt called to learn.

 

“What about getting your GED?” I asked. “Online. They offer the test.”

 

“What’s the point?” he asked. “I like to read and learn new things, but I don’t need a piece of paper. I’ve graduated the School of Hard Knocks. A GED isn’t going to help me be a better leader.”

 

Maybe it was only important to me, then, and a little chill ran through me. It was just one more difference between us. Me, I’d do everything I could to get my diploma and even take college courses online. But it wasn’t important to him. Learning was important, not degrees. Would we ever make it if we were so diametrically opposed? It wasn’t just this. The school issue was a small example of a bigger problem.

 

It was fine to have a connection and mind-blowing sex. But was it enough?

 

I pulled out one of the books at random. A biography of Theodore Roosevelt. “He was amazing,” Vince said, sitting up in bed with a smile. “So kickass. I wanted so much to be like him after I read that.”

 

“I’ll have to give it a read,” I said with a smile.

 

“Hey…come here.”

 

I glanced up from the pages I was flipping through to see him patting the bed. I sat down beside him and ran a hand through my disheveled hair.

 

“I’ve never told anybody what I just told you,” he confided. “Not even Brett.” My body tensed, and he felt it. “Listen, Brett and I…we’ve only ever been friends. She’s the only other person beside you who has the heart and understanding you do. That’s all.”

 

“It’s maybe not the best idea to mention one woman while you’re sitting in bed, naked, with another.” I grinned, holding up the hefty book. “Especially when the woman you’re with is holding a deadly weapon in her hands.”

 

He pulled me onto the bed, rolling over until he pinned me under him. I laughed, but my laughter was drowned out by the feeling of his mouth on mine. It didn’t take long before I felt his hardness pressing into my belly again.

 

“I guess recovery time is over,” I whispered huskily between kisses. I opened my legs and felt him slide inside me, and we started again.