Chapter 5

It’s the most wonderful time for a beer.

-Not your average Christmas Card

Sean

I was nervous as fuck and couldn’t figure out why.

She was my partner. She was my friend.

And I was falling for her.

Certainly not as fast as I’d fallen with my past girlfriends but falling for her nonetheless.

The only good thing I could see in all of this was that we were denying it with everything we had in us.

I don’t know why I invited her. I used my days off to recoup from being with her for twenty-four or forty-eight hours at a time, but I’d wanted to see her. And since I was off for three in a row, and she was off for two of those and then partnered with another medic on Tuesday until I came back on Wednesday, I wanted to see her.

Hence, the reason I invited her to go on a ride with me.

It was also my way of showing everyone that I’d moved on from Ellen and the heartache she’d caused me.

Though, that heartache didn’t feel like much of anything these days. Even when I saw Jessie James and her together.

They hadn’t come out and said that they were a couple, it was a given. I’d known toward the end of our time together that they had a thing. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see the longing glances they had both been tossing at each other.

But now, with Naomi coming for a ride with me, maybe everyone would give me some fucking breathing room.

Everyone but Naomi, anyway. She could stay as close as she wanted.

“Where are you going?” my father asked.

I turned to him, wondering if he had his President of Dixie Wardens MC hat or his father hat on.

Either way I would’ve ignored him, but I didn’t want them to leave without me.

“I’m going to pick someone up,” I leveled with him. “Don’t leave without me.”

“You’ll be on time, or I’ll leave without you,” he shot back.

I waved my favorite finger at him, causing him to growl.

“This better not be some dumb blonde that’s only coming so you can prove to the club and Ellen that you’ve moved on.”

That was my father talking.

I gritted my teeth and managed not to snap at him, then walked out the door with my fists clenched tight. Ignoring the way it hurt to have my own father like my ex more than he liked me.

I knew without him saying that Dad had hoped Ellen would be it for me. That Ellen would become mine, and then I’d start popping him out some grandbabies.

Unfortunately for him, and for me, that wasn’t going to happen. At least not with Ellen.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I nearly missed the rest of the men that were already starting to fill up our narrow driveway.

“Yo,” I mumbled, skirting around Aaron’s bike.

His wife, Imogen, was standing at his side, her side leaning against Aaron where he straddled his bike.

“Hey, man,” Jessie held out his hand. “Where ya’ going?”

I didn’t turn to face the man that was at my back. I had liked him at first, but now that he had the full devotion of my ex, it was hard to like him, let alone tolerate him.

The fact that he was sitting in my driveway right now was making my hands itch to punch the fucker in the face.

It didn’t matter that he never did anything untoward while Ellen and I were together. I knew that she had it bad for the man, and it was enough to put me off of anything Jessie James for the remaining unforeseeable future.

“Gonna go pick up someone,” I told him the same thing I’d told my father. “Be back in a few.”

The only good thing I could say about this was that Ellen wouldn’t be here.

Jessie was still trying his hardest to not rock the boat too hard, and he was also denying his feelings in deference to me, I assumed. Meaning that, Ellen wouldn’t be on the back of his bike, and she also wouldn’t be here to rub it in.

Thank God.

I already needed to explain to Naomi that I wasn’t using her just to get back at my ex. I didn’t need to have it rubbed in her face the entire ride.

Thirteen minutes later, I pulled to a stop in front of an older home that’d survived the flood last year.

It was located at the top of a hill and was a pier and beam construction to boot, meaning it had extra protection from the water since it was raised a foot off the ground.

It was also so old that I half wondered if it wouldn’t have been a kindness to the house to be swept away in the flood water.

Alas, some people found the old shit beautiful.

Me? I just saw a fire hazard.

I was all for modern construction. The newer the better.

If it was new, there was less chance of shit going wrong.

Hence the reason I had a brand-new bike, and traded my bike in once every four years, if not a little earlier.

See, I’d done the old breaking-down-in-front-of-the-fucking-mall thing. I’d also broken down in front of the Brookshire’s, the Taco Bell, the movie theater, and the most popular restaurant in town. All of which at least one of my friends had witnessed, giving them free reign to rib me after the fact.

So yes, I was over the ‘will it pass inspection’ thing and was all about reliability. Houses. Cars. Motorcycles. Didn’t matter. If I could afford to buy new, that was what I’d get, or I’d wait until I could afford to buy new.

This house was a far cry from new.

I couldn’t see Naomi living here comfortably, either.

It was old, run down, and I’d lay money down that it didn’t even have reliable running water.

I could see a well house in the back that was likely the source of her water, and the power connected to the house looked like it would come down in a swift breeze.

“Morning,” I rumbled as the devil herself exited the house and started toward me.

She didn’t even bother locking up.

“You’re not going to lock up the door?” I asked her when she made it off the last porch step.

She looked over her shoulder at the house, then shook her head.

“No,” she informed me. “There’s nothing in there to steal.”

“Not a TV?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I have my laptop under a blanket on the couch, which besides my Kindle, is my only source of entertainment when I’m at home.”

“And let me guess,” I eyed her big ass purse. “You have the rest of your life in your purse?”

She started to giggle as she walked down the path toward me, her eyes going to the ground to ensure she didn’t trip on one of the fucked up boards lining the front walk leading to the fucked up house.

I chose to take a moment to take in her body.

She looked different without her uniform. More carefree somehow.

Though her shirt wasn’t tight, it was shapely. It must’ve been a throwback from her high school days, because it said Kilgore Bullies Soccer 2006 over the breasts.

I couldn’t see any other reason she’d be wearing it unless she’d played.

Her thighs, though…those were definitely soccer thighs. Even now, over a decade after that t-shirt was made, it was obvious she tried to keep in shape. Her legs were a tribute to her soccer days.

They were the type made for power. To get her where she needed to go as fast as she could get there.

And they’d look fucking amazing shoved up by her ears as I took her hard, my hands holding her knees hostage as I powered my hard cock into her willing body.

Luckily, those sexy legs were encased in a sturdy pair of jeans, otherwise I’d have to commit the ultimate sin and ask her to change.

As it was, I’d have to be giving up my leather jacket.

I couldn’t risk that sweet, smooth skin of hers meeting the road and being torn off.

Not only would I feel terrible, it’d be a slap to mankind’s face.

She was everything that I looked for in a woman, and it literally baffled my mind that she had man trouble. Some good man with the right intentions, unlike me, should have swooped in and swept her off of her feet already.

She should literally be birthing a man’s babies, and making his life fuller than it already was.

Instead, she was walking toward me with a spring in her fucking step, unaware just what she was walking toward.

As I watched her take the last few steps, I made a decision.

I was done playing friends. I was done with my good intentions. I was also done fucking my life up.

No more would I allow people to use me. I wouldn’t pick up any shift I could. I’d spend time with my girl – one who didn’t know that she was mine yet. And I’d fucking level any guy who tried to take her from me.

I wasn’t some pansy. I was an ex-Marine. I’d fought fucking wars.

And Naomi had the kind of face that drove men to start wars in the first place.

What I wasn’t willing to do with Ellen, I was more than willing to do for Naomi.

I’d only have to prove it…and go slow.

Because I didn’t want to scare her away. She’d been burned before and I wasn’t willing to hurt her in any way.

“I like your shoes,” I told her.

She stopped at the side of my bike and checked out her boots.

“I called my friend back home and asked her what she wore when she was on the back of her man’s bike. She told me, and I had Amazon overnight these to me,” she informed me. “I also got another present that’s yours as soon as I can find out where you live.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“You better not have…” I warned low in my throat.

She batted her beautiful blue eyes at me and grinned innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sighing, I offered her my hand. “Might want to move the helmet so it doesn’t get stuck up your ass when you sit down.”

She snorted, reached for the helmet as well as kept hold of my hand, and then shifted behind me, getting comfortable, before letting go of my hand.

My fingers tingled from where they’d come into contact with her skin, and I cleared my throat to keep the groan at the feel of her thighs around my hips in as she scooted forward.

“I had to ask my friend about this, too,” she said. “Her name is Winter, and her husband’s name is Jack. Winter worked at the fire department with me. Her husband’s also ex-military. Army, though, not Marines.”

“Pity,” I drawled. “You’d been doing so well until you said what branch he’s from.”

She pinched my side and laughed.

I squirmed.

I was ticklish as fuck on my sides and she fucking knew it.

I’d stupidly told that to her on one of our long nights posting—also known as hell in limbo. Posting meant that we were positioned between two stations, ours and a neighboring one, waiting for an emergency in either district at the gas station forty miles away from our station. Though she’d also told me that she was ticklish under her chin and boobs.

At the time, I wasn’t willing to find out if it was true or not.

It was a completely different story now, though.

“That would’ve been funny had you not sounded so absolute about it being a shittier branch than you were from,” she laughed.

I found myself grinning despite trying not to.

“I can’t help it that all other branches are inferior to the Marines,” I informed her.

She sighed and started fiddling with her helmet.

I watched her out of my rearview mirror as she fitted the helmet onto her head.

It was brand new, one I’d bought specifically for her, and it fit her perfectly.

Hot pink with a white stripe down the top, it also had faux white fur glued to the stripe which made it look like she had a white Mohawk. She looked absolutely adorable.

Adding in the pale blonde curls that peeked out from underneath, and I was hard as a rock.

But it also might’ve been because she kept grinding her hips into my backside.

“Ready, Freddy?” I asked her, letting my hand come to a rest on her knee.

She breathed out shakily.

“Yes, Sir,” she teased.

Exhilaration tore through me.

“Those are the magic words,” I told her, then started my motorcycle up.

The ride back to the house was an easy one, made easier by the way Naomi took to riding. It was clear she’d never been on a bike before, but she was a quick learner.

I took turns, and she held on tighter, letting her body sway with the bike.

She also didn’t freeze up when someone pulled out in front of us, or braked too hard like most people would.

She was just there, enjoying herself, while wrapped around me.

And by the time I arrived back home, I was fairly positive that the next four hours were going to be an agonizing form of torture.

As I got off and offered Naomi my hand, I surreptitiously adjusted my very hard cock behind the fly of my jeans and tried to look anywhere but at the men I could tell had been watching the move.

“About fuckin’ time,” Tommy Tom grumbled as he got up off the bench that was in our front yard and started toward us. “I’m starving.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s ten in the morning. You should’ve already had breakfast by now.”

He shrugged. “I actually had breakfast at about three this morning. Something that I’m sure you’re well aware of since you saw me there.”

I had. I’d picked up the back half of a shift yesterday due to a colleague calling in sick.

I’d brought a patient in at three that morning. And again at four, five, and six.

By the time shift change rolled around at six thirty, I was more than ready to head home and catch a few hours of shut eye before the ride was supposed to start.

I’d also overslept, and had texted Naomi once I’d woken up that I was on my way, and not to freak out because I hadn’t forgotten about her.

She’d sent me a quick text in reply that she’d been sleeping, too, and that it wasn’t a big deal. She was going to head into the shower, and she would see me when I arrived.

Which led to now, all the men surrounding us, watching and waiting for me to introduce the woman who’d ridden in on my bike.

Something that not many women had the privilege of doing in the past.

“Nay Nay…”

Naomi pinched me. “Don’t you dare.”

I grinned and winked at her, causing her to sigh and turn back to the full driveway.

“My name is Naomi,” she introduced herself to the group as a whole. “Don’t let him tell you otherwise.”

Aaron’s wife, Imogen, walked forward and extended her hand. “My name is Imogen. That man back there scowling at the world is my husband, Aaron. This is Tommy Tom and his wife, Tally. That’s Truth. His wife, Verity, is heading to the smokehouse in her car since she’s newly pregnant, and these men somehow revert back into cavemen mentality when one of us winds up pregnant.”

She widened her eyes at Naomi, who smiled in reaction.

“That’s nice to know,” she admitted.

It was also true. Pregnant ladies didn’t ride, and every single one of the members of our club felt the same way about it.

I’d seen way too many bad things happen to the passenger on a bike to take the risk.

Which got me to thinking about what Naomi would look like pregnant. Would she be like Imogen, who’d just had her second child, and looked like she’d swallowed a basketball toward the end of her pregnancy? Or would she be like Verity who gained a shit ton of weight, but still managed to look like she was glowing throughout?

I hoped she was one of a kind. I couldn’t wait to see her belly swelling with my child…whoa!

Where that thought had come from, I didn’t know. But I stopped it before it could get too rooted in my brain. There wouldn’t be any babies in my future, at least none that I could foresee right now.

I wanted to take it slow and really get to know each other. Then in a few weeks when—yeah, I said when—I finally get her into my bed, we’ll already be committed to each other. I’d make sure that we were solid and in it forever before we brought any kids into the picture.

My father pushed through the crowd, a big grin on his face when he saw Naomi at my side.

“Naomi,” I took her by the arm and turned her gently around to face my father. “This is Big Papa, the president of the Alabama chapter of the Dixie Wardens MC and my father.”

Naomi took the man in for a few long moments before she offered her hand to him.

“It’s nice to finally meet you.” She shook his hand. “Sean has a lot to say about you.”

Dad’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “I notice that you aren’t saying that he has good things to say about me.”

Naomi’s mouth thinned into a line as she bit her lip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dad laughed.

“It’s nice to finally meet you as well. Sean really has had nothing but nice things to say about you.”

Naomi looked at me with a flare of excitement in her eyes. “Well of course he has! I’m a perfect angel.”

That’s when the UPS driver pulled up in front of our house.

I turned, wondering what my father had ordered, when I saw a flash of curly, blond hair making a mad dash for the truck.

Then a thought occurred to me.

“That better not be what I think it is!” I bellowed at the woman who was taking the big box from the driver’s hands and jiggling it excitedly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Naomi laughed as she dropped the box to the grass just past the road, dug into her pocket to pull out what appeared to be an EMT’s pocket knife, complete with tactical shears, and easily cut the box open.

“Don’t you dare,” I warned her.

Naomi batted her eyes at me innocently.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeated.

Then she pulled out the fucking stool thing that she’d told me about a few days before when she read the description aloud to me.

“I thought you said you needed my address,” I replied neutrally, hoping like hell that she didn’t show off the item to everyone currently watching her like she was an amusement show. Also hoping that she didn’t let everyone know about my unusually long bathroom habits.

I was, of course, unhappy to see that she did pull out the item. Then launch into a long, drawn out discussion about my less than ideal shit times.

“So, this all started when I began working with Sean a few weeks ago. He takes forever to…you know.” She grinned at Imogen who’d walked up and taken the step like contraption from my woman’s hands. “And so I Googled ‘things to help you poop,’ and came up with this beauty.”

“What is that?” my dad asked as he walked over, too.

“It’s called the ‘Squatty Potty.’ It was on Shark Tank, and it is supposed to help make it more comfortable and quicker when you…errrrmmm…poop.”

I was now thoroughly convinced that I needed to spank her.

I wasn’t talking about a purely pleasurable little spanking either, although I’m sure that with my hand on her ass, it would definitely turn into that.

I probably needed to do something to shut that mouth of hers up, too. Possibly involving my dick. Or maybe just her face shoved into the pillows while I fucked her hard from behind would work. That way I could keep a good hold on the back of her head to be sure that she couldn’t move from where I’d placed her.

This, of course, was my inner caveman talking.

I didn’t actually want to do any of that…oh, who am I kidding. All of those things sounded incredibly appealing.

Especially when she handed the Squatty Potty over to my father and ordered him to ‘put it where Sean poops.’

I rolled my eyes heavenward, and Truth, my club brother and a really good friend, came up to my side and slapped me on the back. “Women are awesome, aren’t they?”

“Very,” I drawled sarcastically. “Is there any reason that you can come up with for why I should refrain from spanking her ass? You teach baby cops to become big cops. Any laws that I should be concerned about?”

Truth snorted. “A few, but I’ll cover you, and I know a few guys who’ll play ignorant.”

I grunted in reply and walked over to Naomi, offering her my hand. “I’ll be talking to you about this later. In the meantime, we have a deadline to get to the smokehouse, otherwise they’ll all turn around, and we’ll miss the ride.”

Naomi grinned widely at me. “Yes, Sir.”

The way she said ‘sir’ had my cock straining against the seam of my pants again as I pushed down the urge to pull her into my arms and slam my mouth onto hers.

I didn’t do either of those things. Instead, I bit my lip and curled my hand around her small bicep, thinking that God clearly was torturing me for some reason.

I’d obviously done something to displease him.

“Let’s go,” I ordered.

She pulled her arm out from my grip and then ran toward my house, heading where my father had just disappeared inside.

“I have to check this out,” she said. “Just give me two more minutes.”

I ran after her, caught up to her, overtook her, and then turned and planted myself in front of her. The moment she stopped, I bent forward, picked her up, and tossed her over my shoulder. I was careful not to put her weight on her ostomy side, and marched straight toward my bike, passing my brothers and their wives, who were all laughing their asses off.

“Shut it,” I grumbled as I passed them.

Tommy Tom took his seat on his bike, followed shortly by me on mine.

The rest of them followed suit, and then, eventually, so did my father.

“That better not be in my bathroom,” I grumbled at my father.

My dad didn’t say a word as he mounted his own bike and started it up.

Finally in place, I set a laughing Naomi on her feet and glared at her. “Get on, Nay Nay.”

She bared her teeth at me.

Reaching out, I enclosed her small wrist in one of my hands and pulled her forward.

She came forward on a gasp, and when she was only inches away I moved my face in to meet hers and said, “Spankings. Lots and lots of spankings.”

She grinned, and I broke.

I couldn’t help it.

I pulled her the last few inches to my mouth and slammed my mouth down on hers.

She tasted like fire.

Fucking fire.

Cinnamon and something else that made me want to stay buried in her mouth forever.

But I couldn’t.

Mostly because engines were starting, and my club was yelling at me to ‘get a room’ and ‘be off’ at the same time.

I let her up and her cheeks were flushed.

Blonde curls were scattered all over the place, and I grinned unrepentantly at her.

“Get on, baby.”

She got on, and not another word was said for the next half an hour as we rode to the smokehouse.