Also by Laramie
Renegade
PROLOGUE
Whitney
“Ryan, I’m tellin’ you, I need my hair pulled, I need a red handprint across my ass, I need someone paying attention to my nipples, a dick in my treasure cove. I need it all.”
Drunk. I am drunk. Like way past the legal limit – otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here spilling all of my secrets to my baby brother’s best friend. The baby brother that had been totally unplanned by my parents. Ten years my junior, baby brother. He and Ryan are the same age; twenty-five to my thirty-five. Makes me feel so much older, just thinking about it. Not only by age, but by life experience too. And dear Lord, I think I sound like Julia Sugarbaker. I’m three sheets to the wind, and nobody stopped me.
I see him try to suppress a grin as he brings his bottle of beer up to his lips, taking a nice long pull off of it. I am mesmerized by the way his throat muscles move when he swallows, pushing the liquid down his throat. No denying he’s a man. The palm of his hand completely covers the label on the bottle, the one drink he takes, almost drains half the bottle. For a second he focuses on my face, squinting as he watches me. “How many of those have you had to drink?” He points the neck of his bottle to the wine glass in my hand.
His voice is as smooth as the wine I swirl in my glass. I tilt my head to the side, realizing that the whole room tilts too. Counting back, I try to think how many I had before he took the seat next to mine, and I can’t remember. “Five or six?” I ask him, like he should know.
“You think maybe it’s time you quit for the night?” He gently tries to take what I have left away from me.
His fingers are soft as they try to pry my fingers from around the stem, but I resist his attempts, and pull it closer to my body. I’m like a two-year-old with her blankie. This glass of wine is my security and nobody’s taking it away from me.
“Quit?” I ask, and run my tongue over my dry lips, trying to make them so that they can speak easier. “Quitting is not something I do. That’s what my ex-husband did. My mama did. That’s what my former boss did,” I shake my head, and try to stand up on four-inch stilettos. He reaches out and grabs my elbow, steadying me, being a rock when I haven’t had one in a very long time. “Whitney Trumbolt is not a fuckin’ quitter.”
I can see Ryan try again to keep the smile from his face. The corners of his lips twitch, and it pisses me off. Not because I’m mad, but because he thinks it’s funny. He thinks this is a joke, and it’s my life. The life I’ve been trying so desperately to get out from under or save. I’m not sure which yet. All I know is I haven’t been living.
“You think this is funny?” I take another drink from my wine glass. It’s a big one this time, I drain it down.
“No, Whit, I think you’re having a bad night.” His tone is one someone would use with a kindergartner, talking them down from a temper tantrum. It pisses me off too.
A bad night? Try a bad decade. If I could do anything, it would go back to the night I turned twenty-five, and be the age that Ryan is again. I would do so many things different, I would change so much about the choices that I made back then. “You know nothing about me, other than the fact that I’m Tank’s sister.”
He grabs me by the wrist, locking his fingers around the skin and bone. I never realized until this moment how much bigger he is than me. Never really paid any kind of attention to it – oh I’ve paid attention to him off and on through-out the years, but never like this.
Ryan “Renegade” Kepler rises to his full height, towering over me as I do my best to keep my footing and ignore the way my skin tingles where he is gripping my wrist. He leans in close – so close I can feel his breath on my skin.
“I know a lot of things about you that you don’t think I know.”
His voice is hard and soft at the same time. I close my eyes to savor it. This is the closest I’ve been to a man in a very long time. My body is at attention, as is my libido.
“I know that you love your mama’s fried chicken, your grandmother’s homemade mac and cheese, Alabama football, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. I know that you have a soft heart. Hallmark movies make you cry, you pick up strays on the side of the road, and you always buy that homeless man near the Starbucks a morning coffee,” he tells me.
I’m wrapped up in his voice, in the things he does know about me. Things I never knew that he’d paid attention to. I’m swaying, but it’s because his voice is doing weird things to my equilibrium. His other hand wraps around my hip and I can feel the heat of his body through the material of my skirt.
“I know that your ex-husband was a piece of shit. I know that your ex-boss didn’t know what the hell to do with the creative genius that is your mind, and I know that your mama will never forgive you for giving up pageants, but she’ll never forgive herself for pushing you that damn hard,” he stops and pulls back, giving me his eyes and face to stare at.
Our eyes meet and I realize with clarity that I’m breathing hard, hard enough that it feels as if I’ve run a marathon.
“You wanna know what else I know?” The question is asked in a way that says he’s not sure if he wants to answer tonight. There’s a string of awareness stretched between us, and it’s pulling me closer.
I’m captivated by the way the dim lights of the bar make his brown eyes seem darker, I’m enthralled by the fact that it looks like it’s been a few days since he shaved, and I’m even more fascinated by the cut he has on his cheek. He and Tank went out on a call last night, and I can’t help but wonder if that cut is the result of it. I shake my head and then nod, because I do want to find out what else he knows. I step forward, put my arms around his neck, and lean up so that now I’m the one in his ear. “Tell me what else you know.”
I see him look around the bar, checking to make sure that we’re not being paid any attention to. He bends with his knees and grips my ass cheeks in his hands. “I know I’m the one that can put my dick in that treasure cove. I know I’m the one that can pull that hair, I can pull on those nipples, and I can smack that ass. The question is – will you let me?”
It’s not a question I can say no to. The way the air cackles between us, and the alcohol I’ve consumed. There’s not any way that I can say no nor is there any desire on my part to deny it. I’ve denied myself a lot of things in this life, and this right here, is not something that I want to brush off.
“Yes,” I breath out….adding on a “please.”
“Oh baby, you don’t have to beg. I’ll do whatever you need me to,” Ryan says as I find my hand in his and stumble to keep up as he pulls us out of the bar.
In mere minutes I’m in his truck, and we’re headed towards my house. I will myself not to pass out, because for the first time in years, I want to be here and present for this experience that’s about to happen. I want to remember every damn detail. If it’s only going to be for this one night, I don’t want to miss a thing.