Isabel can’t help but start at every noise she hears, because any of them could herald the arrival of Wesley. She tries to distract herself with the accounts report in front of her. But no matter which way she works them, she can’t seem to make the incomings outweigh the outgoings. In other words, the boarding house is still losing more than it is making, month on month, and nothing she does seems to make any difference.
Feeling her mood darken, she shuts her laptop firmly, drumming the tips of her fingers impatiently on the lid. She looks at the time on her cell again, for about the hundredth time to find it’s only three minutes later than it had been when she’d last checked it. Where is he? He’s usually back by now.
Fear grips her, making her feel like her stomach is twisting and turning. She wonders if she’ll ever get used to the feeling or if she even wants to. The sensation of impending disaster isn’t one she would wish on anybody.
Wesley had told her what he is, the kind of people he is involved in. She hadn’t gotten into this, whatever this is, with her eyes closed. He’d made it very clear that he is dangerous, that she is in danger just by the virtue of being involved with him. She thought that was a little over-dramatic on his part, but she’d kept quiet as it had been clear he had believed it. But the fear that she is feeling wasn’t for herself. It’s for him.
Over the past week, they had lapsed into a kind of routine. Although ‘routine’ implies something boring, something you do over and over again to the point where it’s just an automatic reaction. She hasn’t reached that point with him; she wonders if she ever will. Everything about him is the opposite of routine and dull. When she is with him something comes alive inside of her that she hadn’t even realized had been dead before.
Their particular ritual involves her lying in bed next to Wesley while he gets a call from another member of the Devil Dogs, giving him instructions. He never tells her where he is going or exactly what those instructions are. The less she knows about it the better, he’d told her. She waits up for him until the early hours of the morning, her insomnia not allowing her much sleep at the best of times. He comes back bloody and bashed and she proceeds to patch him up, doing her best not to ask any questions about what he had done or why. Sometimes she is more successful than others at keeping her natural curiosity under lock and key.
She smiles to herself at the memory of the night before, the way Wesley had stopped her questions by kissing her thoroughly, in a way that made her pulse race and her knees go weak. She squirms in her seat, marveling at how she can be so turned on just by the thought of him and those lips of his and what he can do with them.
They haven’t put a label on what they are, but Isabel knows she’s in real danger with this man. He makes her feel things she never thought possible. He makes her want to wake up with his arms still wrapped around her, pulling her close, protecting her. Not once has she considered sneaking out of the bedroom before he wakes, as had been her MO before him. For the first time in her life, she doesn’t want an uncomplicated relationship. She wants more and that, in itself, is enough to worry her.
Her best friend Jamie had laughed when Isabel told her how she was feeling.
“You know, you’re the only woman I know who worries about wanting more than just a one night stand!” Isabel could hear her friend shaking her head all the way from New York.
“Remind me never to call you when I need advice.” Isabel’s grumbling was good-natured, as it always is with Jamie. She couldn’t remember them ever having an actual argument.
“Aww, come on now, Issy, you know I love you really.” Isabel could imagine the pout on Jamie’s pretty, angelic face as she said the words. “Besides, I know you better than anyone and I can tell you’re holding out on me. So what is it you’re not telling me?”
Isabel cursed her friend’s talent for seeking out truth like a missile. Jamie wasn’t wrong; there was something she hadn’t told her, the big breaking news that Wesley was involved in a criminal biker gang. Isabel wasn’t sure if she’d kept that particular nugget of information from her friend because Wesley had warned her of the dangers of sharing the information with anyone, not just for him but for whomever he shared it with, as well, or because she didn’t want to hear what Jamie’s inevitable reaction would be.
Despite the fact that Jamie is the wild one out of the two of them, she isn’t stupid. If she knew the truth, she would be telling her best friend exactly what Isabel knows to be right: she should stay away from Wesley, that it’s one thing to have a crush on a bad boy, but it’s a whole different kettle of fish to be dating a criminal.
Dating – is that even what they are doing? Their relationship hasn’t left the confines of the boarding house; in fact it has barely left the bedroom. In front of the other tenants they make sure to keep things as they always have been so nobody will suspect what goes on behind closed doors at night. Wesley is ferociously private, a fact she was finding more and more frustrating as time went on, so it isn’t a stretch for him to keep things secret. It is harder for her, because being around him, seeing him and not being able to touch him, to kiss him is about as difficult as keeping a starving man away from a feast.
“Nothing, Jamie, really it’s nothing.” She huffed a sigh, knowing full well Jamie wouldn’t let her evasion slide. “I guess I’m just wondering how long this thing can really last for. I mean, he’s a tenant. He’s not going to be around forever and when he decides to leave, what happens?” She didn’t voice the unspoken question that was on her lips, about what happens to her when he packs up his things and goes. But she didn’t need to say it; Jamie already knew Isabel’s fears.
“There’s no such thing as a sure thing, Issy.” Jamie sighed deeply as if she wished what she was saying wasn’t a universal truth despite all evidence to the contrary. “No one knows how long any relationship is going to last. All you can do is decide if you’re willing to run with it for as far as it’ll go and deal with the consequences when you get there.” Her friend’s logic was infuriatingly infallible as always. “You know, happy endings do exist – people fall in love, get married, have babies. It happens.”
“Really? Who does it happen to, Jamie?” Isabel didn’t even try to temper her frustration.
“It happens everyday, Issy. It could happen to you, too.” Jamie paused, a signal to Isabel that she was going to say something that was going to be hard to hear. “You deserve to be happy, Issy. Not everybody leaves.”
The words were harder to accept than they should have been. Isabel had waved Jamie’s concern away, telling her she knew that and she would call her soon. It was only after she hung up that Isabel drew in a shuddering breath. Not everybody leaves. But the two people who should have always been there – her mother and her father – they’d both gone and they’d left her all alone. It wasn’t a great batting average.
As if the very thought is enough to summon him, Isabel hears the sound of a key turning in the lock, followed by the stealthy padding of a man who is used to sneaking around. He needs to be able to keep himself off the radar to be able to do the bloody work the Dogs pay him for. Isabel pushes the thought out of her mind before she can dwell on it. The man had been a Marine, for Christ’s sake, she reminds herself. It’s not that strange that he should know how to be silent.
In just a few seconds she’s out of the office and facing him in the entrance hall. Her breath catches in her throat at the sight of him, and not just because of the way he makes her feel. Even though tonight he’s not in as bad shape as she’s seen him, he’s still a little hunched over, his hand clutched to his side in pain.
“Wes.” The word is barely a whisper on her lips but it’s full of longing and pain on his behalf.
He reaches his hand out to her and, in a moment, she’s in his arms. He holds her close, breathing in the scent of her hair and she buries her face in his shoulder, reassuring herself that he’s there, that he’s come back in one piece.
“I’m all right. I’m okay, Bel.” His nickname for her is soft on his lips. “But I may not be if you keep squeezing the life out of me.”
She hurriedly steps back, dropping her arms, giving him a worried look as he laughs at the seriousness on her face. “Ha ha. Very funny.” She crosses her arms, her green eyes narrowed in a way that tells him she thinks he’s anything but. “If you’ve broken a rib, you won’t be laughing so hard.” She moves to lead the way into the kitchen, which had become her triage center, but he catches hold of her hand, pulling her towards him again. She doesn’t resist him, doesn’t even try, as his hands find their way into her curly hair and his lips settle on hers, proprietorially, as if there is no other way things can be.
Isabel sighs as he deepens the kiss, his tongue thrusting insistently into her mouth, tasting her, suckling her lips until she feels like she might come right there and then, just from the exquisiteness of the kiss. Her palms run along his stubbled cheek, enjoying the scraping sensation in contrast with the softness of his lips.
They’re both breathless, their eyes filled with lust when the kiss ends. It takes a few moments for Isabel to recover her equanimity. She notices the way his hand has gone to his side again, almost involuntarily as soon as he’s released her.
“Come inside so I can take a look.” She leads him into the kitchen and it’s not lost on her the way he sits down so gingerly. There’s no doubt in her mind he’s in pain.
“It’s not broken.” His voice comes out through gritted teeth as she lifts his shirt up, exposing what is already turning into a pretty impressive-looking bruise.
She gives him a withering look that would have a lesser man quaking in his boots. “And you would know that from your previous experience as a doctor?”
“I’ve broken ribs before. It hurt a hell of a lot more than this.” His words coming from anyone else would sound like pure bravado, but Isabel knows that from his time in the Corps he has taken more than a few hard knocks.
Isabel ignores him, resuming her gentle exploration of the injury with her fingers, noting the way he seems to be trying to make his breathing as shallow as possible. When she’s satisfied with her inspection she motions for him take his shirt off. “It’s not broken.” She hates to admit he was right but that’s preferable to him being seriously hurt. “But you’ll have a helluva bruise there tomorrow. I’ll wrap it to stop you moving too much.”
Wesley lifts his shirt over his head, wincing as he discards it on the floor. Isabel feels her heart rate quicken, licking her lips at the thought of his body on top of hers. Their eyes meet and Wesley smiles, knowingly. She can tell from the way his pupils are dilated that his thoughts are running along the same lines as hers.
“If you keep looking at me like that, Bel, we’re going to be in danger of christening the kitchen floor.” His husky voice sends a shiver down her spine and she has to force herself to snap out of it.
“You’re not that irresistible you know, Wesley Raeburn.” She gives him a look that’s probably made less effective by the way her thoughts have a habit of being plastered all over her face.
“No, but you are.” His voice is a low growl and, in a heartbeat, he has grabbed her waist and is pulling her down to sit on his lap.