5: NOVA

“Hey, you,” I greet when Kai walks through the door.

“Hey yourself, gorgeous,” he says.

“What you got there?” I ask, pointing at the bags in his hand.

“Country fried steaks and gravy, green beans, mashed potatoes, pork chops, and tomato green pepper omelets.”

“Who’s eating all of that?” I ask, laughing.

“I remember somebody used to have a big appetite, especially when they were stressed out. Used to pack it away and didn’t keep a single pound,” Kai says.

“Dude! This ain’t that same body,” I laugh, walking from behind the register to lock the door.

“Looks just as good...actually better,” he says, eyeing me up and down and sending a warm, fiery glow through me.

“Thank you, but that’s thanks to watching what I eat and working my ass out every morning.”

He whistles. “It’s a great-looking ass, if I do say so myself.”

I blush and shake my head. “Just take that meal to my office so we can pig out. It’s my secret, so don’t tell anyone,” I say, laughing as I turn the final lock in place.

When I meet him in my office, he’s already spread the food out on the table by the couch.

“I was always good at keeping secrets. Not sure if you remember that or not.”

“You were good at many things, Kai,” I say, cutting into the country-fried steak.

He nods. “Tried to be. So, what happened after I left?” he asks, changing the subject.

I groan at how delicious the food is and say, “I’m sorry.”

He smirks and keeps chewing his food. He then says, “Always did change the subject too.”

“Yeah, I guess I was pretty good at that,” I admit.

“Never said ‘good.’ Just that you always did it.”

I laugh. “Whatever.”

“So, what happened?” he repeats.

I sigh, set my fork down, and stare at him.

“Um...about three months after you left, a new kid came. Dylan. Kinda like you, he was always getting in trouble, but he kept running away, too and being brought back. The other kids were mean and told him he was making the house miserable.”

I watch as Kai chews his food slowly. He was a bad boy, too, but the other kids adored him.

“I started taking up for him the way you’d done for me.”

He nods and keeps staring.

“We developed a bond, Kai. He became my only friend and my confidant, and I was the same for him.”

“My replacement.”

I reach out and touch the back of his hand, drawing my fingers over his knuckles. “Never. No one could ever replace you, Kai. You were my first love. I just...I was alone and against Mary. Although she did eventually chill out on me once you were gone. I don’t think she ever set her sights on him, though.”

“Dylan.”

“Yeah,” I say, shaking my head.

I close the lid on my box of food because I’ve lost my appetite.

“Um...he got a job at a local warehouse and an apartment a couple of months before my eighteenth birthday. He’d turned eighteen four months before me and left the McLeods, but we still saw each other. He’d meet me at school, and I’d sneak out or skip school to be with him until I got caught. After that, I was homeschooled until I turned eighteen. I hadn’t graduated yet, but I moved in with him and finished school. Then you know the rest. We married.”

He nods. “S’okay, Nova. You needed to do what you had to do for you.”

“I didn’t have any way to take care of myself, and he was all that I had in this world. Didn’t know where you were.”

“In county serving a year for receiving stolen property.”

“I didn’t know. She never told us that.”

“What were you told?” he asks before eating more of his food.

I pull my feet up on the couch and turn sideways, facing him.

“That you’d gotten a job and got on your feet and that you were no longer in town. She said that you were doing good for yourself and wanted to pave a new road, cut your losses, and leave your past behind.”

“Hmm...” he hums.

“Maybe she was trying to paint you in a positive light and give the rest of us hope. You were her golden boy for a while. She probably didn’t want the rest of us to look at you in a bad light,” I suggest, though deep inside, I don’t believe it.

“Yeah. Right. She didn’t give a damn about nobody but herself. Not even her husband. She could’ve cared less about what the fuck y’all thought about me. Mary McLeod said what she said for one reason only. She wanted you to give up hope on me ever returning for you. Wanted you to forget about me.”

“I couldn’t do that, Kai.”

“No, but you did do at least part of what she wanted.”

I look up at him, and he stares at me, chewing slowly. When he finishes, he says, “You went on with your life.”

“I had no choice.”

“You owe me no explanation, darlin’. I was the one that went out there and got my ass in trouble, knowing that I was already on probation. I was the one that ended up in County and refused to write letters because I was ashamed of the stupid shit I’d gotten myself into.”

“What happened?”

I hate that all these years went by, and I had no clue what went on with him.

He heaves a sigh before he starts explaining. “I was hanging out with Tommy Barrow and Ricky Haughton one night, shooting the shit, getting high...same ole stuff we always did. Garrett Eaves came through and asked if any of us wanted to make some quick money. I jumped at the idea first. He asked me to pick up a package for him at one location and drop it off at the next. Figured that was easy as shit, nothing could go wrong.”

He sniffs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. I want to pull him back and force him to look at me because it seems that he’s still ashamed of it after all this time. Yet, if those patches all over his cut are to be believed and if what my staff and neighbors say is true, then he’s done a whole lot worse than what he went to the county for back in Atlanta, Georgia, a couple of decades ago.

“I picked up the package from the address he’d given me over on the southside. Hopped on the highway and dropped it off on the west side. When I finished, I was returning the car back to Garrett. He said it was a friend of his. About a couple of streets away from my destination, cops pulled up behind me and flashed their lights.”

He shakes his head as though reliving the memory and glances over his shoulder at me.

“My dumb ass felt relieved because I knew I’d just gotten rid of the package, and I didn’t have shit on me ‘cept some cigarettes.”

“What was in the package?” I foolishly ask.

He slants a gaze my way and says, “You know what we were into back then.”

“Crack?”

He nods.

“Anyway, I thought I was good, so I wasn’t worried about it. Punk ass cop asked for my license and registration. I gave him what I had and thought I was home free. Next thing I know, I’m being pulled from the car and slammed against it. Hands pulled behind my back and read my Miranda rights.”

“Why?”

“The car was stolen. Garrett lied about it, belonging to a friend. It belonged to some crackhead he’d been selling to. Guy said he could use it for a day, but at that point, Garrett had the car for three days. I was the idiot driving it at the time, though I didn’t steal it, so that’s what I went down for.”

“Couldn’t you just explain that you didn’t know?”

“Doesn’t work like that, darlin’.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you, but I’m glad that you didn’t get busted with drugs on you. You’d have been gone for a lot longer than what you were.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ve thought about that a lot over the years, too.”

“So, California. How’d you end up here?”

Turning his lips down, he leans back against the couch again. I get a whiff of his cologne, and I want to snuggle up to him, but I don’t.

“Got out of county and had nothing and no one to turn to. A friend of mine let me crash on his couch for a couple of weeks, and another guy gave me a little product to sell on the streets. Made just enough to get a bus ticket from Atlanta to LA.”

“What was waiting for you here?”

“A job at a local mechanic’s shop. The guy whose couch I was crashing on at the time, Steve, had an uncle, Dice, who was looking for someone he could train and wouldn’t complain. Steve told him about me, and he said if I could get a bus ticket out there, I’d have a job and a place to stay. I sold some weed for a while to get me a bus ticket and a few dollars. Took the risk of traveling out there and found that what he said was true. He gave me a room over the shop to stay in for about a year. It worked out for him because he wanted someone on the grounds, and I needed a place to sleep and a job.”

“That was decent, but how did that lead to the motorcycle club?”

“Dice was a member. I first started hanging around to get a feel for things so they could get a feel for me. Eventually, I became a prospect and then a fully patched member,” he says, shrugging. “Only family I’ve ever known.”

Kai’s mother was a drug addict, and he’d spent most of his life in and out of foster homes. She’d get her act together for a while and bring him back home, only to spazz out on him again. Whenever that would happen, he’d be back in foster care or group homes.

It all changed when she finally OD’d on meth. He was in the system for good at that point. His mother’s family didn’t want to be bothered with him because they didn’t really know him. They lived in a small Georgia town, and everyone worried that he would bring the same problems to their homes that she’d bought.

I met him not long after she died, and he had a lot of anger and aggression at that point, but not towards me.

“Seems like you couldn’t ever catch a break,” I say softly.

I get up, walk to my desk, and grab some hand-sanitizing wipes to clean my hands with.

“Neither could you.”

I walk back around and prop my hip on the edge of my desk.

“Life was tough for a while there. When you left...I didn’t know what to think or feel. I thought you’d come back for me, and when you didn’t, I wondered if your feelings changed. Maybe you didn’t love me the way that you thought you did, or maybe you’d met someone you cared for more than me.”

“Never.”

“All I know, Kai, is that something changed. I thought it was your feelings for me.”

“Make no mistake about it, Nova. That never changed. I swear to God it didn’t,” he grunts.

My breath hitches in my throat as he stalks nearer to me. I don’t run because I can’t. I’m already pressed against my desk with nowhere to run.

Long tapered fingers stroke the column of my throat, and my eyes close. His touch is the same as it always was, burning a trail of fire along my column. It lights inside of my breasts and fans the embers throughout the nearby brushes of my heart, my belly, and between my thighs.

Kai’s head dips, and he sucks at the side of my neck, and the moan that slips from my throat doesn’t sound like me, but some horny, bold bitch that I don’t even know. My back arches, pressing against him as I grip the raw leather of his cut in my fingers, pulling him closer.

I turn my head as he sucks at my neck and find myself licking along the side of his neck, as well. The saltiness of his sweat mingles with the delicious coffee bean taste, creating a weird but welcome taste on my tongue.

My hands press under his cut to tug at his t-shirt until I pull it up, and my fingers rub across his nipples until they’re pebbled and hard like mine.

His fingers wrap in my hair, jerking my head back, and I stare into those beautiful pale blue eyes. Eyes that always assured me that everything would be okay.

Our mouths clamp together, and he crushes me, wounds me, leaving me breathless and hungry for more. While my fingers remain on his nipples, his fingers move to my jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping them. I push forward to help him pull them over my hips and ass. And when his fingers find their way into my snatch and stroke me, I damn near lose my mind.

“Kai!” I hiss.

His strokes are gentle but quickly turn urgent as though his need to give me what I want can’t be gratified quickly enough. I arch my hips forward as he fingers me, and my hips gyrate to meet his appeals for my release.

With a powerful grip, he grabs my jaw, turning me back to him and kissing me again. Hungrily and desperately. He doesn’t let up as if he were giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and my life depended on it.

His other hand pumps me furiously and intentionally until I’m on the brink of an orgasm. Our open-mouthed kiss allows my moans and whimpers to escape.

“I need you, Kai! Right now!” I moan.

He lifts me and sits me on my desk, knocking several things over, and I don’t give a damn. He can’t get inside of me fast enough.

Kai’s fingers continue working me over as he tries unsuccessfully with one hand to unbutton his jeans. I reach forward, disconnecting his hand from my pussy, and help him unbuckle his belt and then get his jeans open.

Reaching into his back pocket, he removes his wallet and looks for a condom.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been in this game, but you’re prepared, aren’t you?” I ask lightly.

“Always. Sweetheart, I won’t lie to ya. I’m not the same guy you once knew. I fuck often, and it ain’t always the same broad. But I always use protection.”

As much as that should disgust me, it doesn’t. Not at the moment when he’s securing himself with protection. Once he’s finished, Kai grabs my ankles and pulls me toward the edge of the desk, snatching my jeans the rest of the way down my legs and off my body. When he shoves himself inside of me, it’s like a sweet release. A hiccup catches in my throat as I lose my breath.

He uses my thighs as leverage to shift me back and forth in powerful, fast slides as he thrusts hard and deeply inside of me every time I come to the edge. It feels good, raw, and fulfilling. This connection is just what I need and everything I need to run away from.

When he pulls me to the edge again this time, he holds me there, and I balance myself on my desk with the palms of my hands. For the first time, I’m grateful for the daily workout routine that I maintain, especially the chair squats, because although this is pleasurable, my abs and triceps are getting a powerful workout.

When the distance between us becomes too much for him to bear, he wraps his arms around me, cradling my ass and lifts me. The breath is knocked out of me as he bounces me on his dick, and all I can do is hold onto him with my fingers interlocked behind his neck.

My head drops back as my curls brush my back, tickling it and heightening the sensation of what he’s giving me. Kai leans forward, nipping my chin with his teeth. I gasp in ecstasy and moan with delight when he drags those teeth to my covered breasts and tugs at my nipples through my tee shirt.

My fingers run across the sides of his shaved head, reaching up to tug at the longer, silken, dark brown strands on the top of his head. I won’t let him move his mouth from my breast, enjoying the flood of heat that runs through my core with each nip of his teeth and every thrust of his cock.

I’m not a small girl, but I’m not a big girl either. The fact that he can hold me up, bouncing me with one hand while his other hand finds its way back inside of me alongside his dick, is a testament that he’s in great shape.

He spins us around until he finds a free wall in my office, pressing my back against it. He stops writhing inside of me, and I’m still with my fingers still twisted in his soft hair.

“Never thought I could have this again,” he says, staring at me before he kisses me with soft pecks.

His words, while welcome to any other woman, scare the hell out of me. They speak of things that cannot be, promises that cannot be fulfilled.

“You feel so good, Kai.”

“You do, too.”

“You’re different, though.”

“Everyone grows up at some point, Nova. No one remains the same.”

“Thank heavens for that, huh?”

He starts plunging inside of me again, communicating his need and pleasure in a series of grunts. My legs tighten around him because although our connection is reminiscent of the past, I know that it cannot be our future.

He always felt good buried inside of me like this. He always made me feel that nothing could stop us, and this reminds me that I never wanted us to be disconnected. Only with Kai could I feel whole. Only with him could I feel complete. Until I wasn’t.

He never knew, but I fell back into a dark place again after he left.

My salvation during that stint? Were all the wrong things that led me down the path of destruction. One that I’m just now emerging from.

I cannot afford to go down that dark path again if I were to lose him. And knowing everything that I know about him now, it would surely happen.