In the morning, with Ronin sleeping deeply, sprawled on his belly beside her, breathing in the occasional drunken snore, Lorraine leaned over and kissed his muscled back and slid out of bed.
She felt excited and furtive, like she had a captured chance to see inside the mind of her inscrutable lover, who was so much like the man she’d known and yet so different, too.
Her own t-shirt was still out in his living room, so she snagged his black beater from the pale wood floor and pulled it over her head. Then she dug her panties out of her jeans and stepped into them.
His bedroom was sparsely furnished without seeming to be. A blonde oak platform bed, dressed in white linens, a matching blonde oak tall bureau, and a simple beige armchair made up all the furnishings, and the white walls were bare of any decoration. Morning sun glowed through simple white panels that ran floor to ceiling over his windows and double French doors that led out into his back yard.
The room was large, with lots of empty space, and should have felt cold, but it didn’t. What Ronin had forgone in furnishings and art, he’d replaced with life. Four large potted plants sat clustered in glazed pots in a corner. A bonsai tree had pride of place in the center of his bureau. And the windows and French doors, when she pulled the light curtains back, showed a dazzlingly peaceful landscape.
He’d never told her how much their tastes coincided, even though those tastes had evolved since they were young. She hadn’t paid attention to the rest of his house as he’d moved her through it last night, but on the evidence of this one room and that back yard, his taste and hers were a perfect match. His house looked like hers, on a more modest scale.
Glancing back to see that he had not stirred at all, Lorraine eased open the doors and stepped out into his green sanctuary.
The exterior of her own home wasn’t much of a garden. It had been built in the 1950s to capitalize on the natural landscape of the canyon, so terraced stone patios had been installed around the house, meandering into the woods. On those patios, Lorraine had created what she thought of as ‘stations’—little furnished areas either for conversation or solitary contemplation. She had some pots arranged, especially around her little pool, but otherwise, she let nature garden itself.
Here in a subdivision house in the Inland Empire, Ronin hadn’t had an opportunity to capitalize on the natural landscape. Mountains surrounded the area at a distance, but up close, it was like any other subdivision: they’d plowed the natural world under to build their cookie-cutter houses.
From the exterior, she thought Ronin’s house was probably of the same period as her own: midcentury modern. So the design was similar in style, though the market was different, and it showed in the aesthetics. Lorraine’s house had smooth glass walls. Ronin’s had a surfeit of paned casement windows. Her house looked out at the wild landscape. She imagined that the first owners of this house, so conscientiously designed to focus most of the main rooms onto the back yard, had first looked out on a great slab of flat dirt, or possibly, if they’d paid for the upgrade, a fairway’s worth of green sod.
She didn’t know whether Ronin had made this yard the showpiece garden that it was, or if he’d bought it this way, but somebody had made that slab of emptiness into a beautiful, cool, serene oasis.
Standing on Ronin’s stone patio, with nothing but the sounds of early birds and the running water of a fountain somewhere, wearing only his beater and her panties, Lorraine felt quiet and calm—for the first time in weeks. She took in the view as she ordered her thoughts. The curtains had billowed shut behind her as she’d closed the doors, blocking her view of the bedroom and Ronin, and the yard was surrounded by tall cypresses. She might as well have been the last woman on earth.
He’d arranged simple furniture on the patio: a couple of sleek metal chairs with upholstered pads. A small metal café table and two chairs. A cluster of three glazed pots full of assorted plants. A kind of lattice of redwood slats covered a wall between two sets of French doors, and a dozen or so small terra cotta pots hung from the slats, filled with different kinds of plants, some flowering, some trailing, all of them healthy and beautiful. On the wall next to the bedroom doors hung some device, simultaneously elaborate and simple, that seemed to be a series of copper tubes, each about a foot or so long and several inches in diameter, hung horizontally and strung in a column. Colorful succulents were planted in the tubes, growing through cutouts in the metal.
Touches like the copper tubes and the redwood lattice suggested that Ronin was indeed the gardening wizard who had made this fairyland.
She stepped down onto the flagstone path and realized that it wandered off and split in different directions, so she followed it and found the source of the water sounds—an elaborate koi pond—as well as a rock garden, an area with a small bench as its focal point, and what was obviously a meditation space, with a small, smooth, grassy area before a bed of succulents and rocks, with a stone Buddha at its center.
There was also an area that was fairly large and nothing but grass, which seemed both incongruous in all this planned and perfectly executed peace, but also somehow right.
Although she didn’t enjoy meditation, she felt drawn to the Buddha space, so she crossed her ankles and sat down on the sod pad. The grass was cool and damp with morning dew, but she didn’t mind. She liked the cool as much as the quiet.
Last night was the first time she’d seen Ronin in more than a month. In that time, until last night, she’d spoken to him three times, when he’d called, each call to give her some small sliver of information and reiterate that she needed to stay away from him, and then had disconnected after mere seconds.
Cameron had refused to tell her Ronin’s address, insisting that it had to be up to Ronin when and if he became a part of her life, or Cameron’s life, that she had no right to make that choice for him for a second time. Lorraine had found her son’s argument impressively insightful, shockingly hurtful, and painfully true. So she’d waited, trying to focus on her life, worried and growing frantic.
Never before had she been so at a loss in her life and so seemingly out of control of it. She and Ronin had fallen for each other and settled into a relationship quickly, barely bothering to pretend they weren’t a couple from the moment he’d first pulled her into his lap at the Myrtle Saloon. They’d been steady, even when they’d fought, for all the years they were together, right up until he went to basic training.
Then, she’d felt lost and afraid, too, suddenly out of place in the home she’d had for six years, and she’d freaked and run—but that had been on her terms, in her hands. Once she’d made the decision, even once she’d regretted it, she had owned it, and there was strength and focus in taking charge of even one’s mistakes.
When Douglas had announced the end of their marriage, she’d had another spell of untethering. But once she’d acclimated herself to the shift in her future, she’d been able to face forward and make the choices that had brought her to the life she had now: her house that was truly hers, her restaurant, her career.
Now, she felt like her future, even her present, was entirely in someone else’s hands. As Ronin swung back and forth, clearly wanting to be with her but pulling back again and again for more reasons than she could understand or predict, she spun in his wake.
She knew she could take control, end things for good. If she told him she didn’t want to see him again, he would back out immediately. That was his way. But she didn’t want that. She wanted their new chance. He’d been grappling for only a few months with all that he’d missed, while all along she had been living what he’d missed. She owed it to him to be patient and wait.
But while she waited, she was losing hold of what she wanted of her future, and that scared her more than anything.
Before Riley Chase’s death, Lorraine had been lost and frustrated, worried about Ronin and about them, their future, if they’d have one. After that death, knowing some particulars of the violence and turmoil that surrounded the Horde, she had gained a new level of fear.
She’d begun to fear that he’d been right to stay away.
He was right, at least, not to want her in this life. She wanted no part of a life that included shootouts and murders, where children were shot. She now had a real sense of what being an ‘outlaw’ meant, and she didn’t want it in her life.
But she wanted Ronin, and he was an outlaw. It was his life.
What solution could there be to a problem like that? How to separate a man from his life? Could he, as he’d said, keep her and Cameron away from it and still be with them?
It seemed not; otherwise he wouldn’t have disappeared for the past month. So maybe he’d been right to stay away; maybe it was too late for them.
Over the weeks of his absence, she’d nearly gotten her mind around that idea, and then he’d called last night and had, for him, had a lot to say. Little of it had made clear sense; he’d been obviously drunk. What had shone through with bright, clarifying light had been his need. He needed her. He loved her. In the middle of the tempest of his life, he’d reached out and begged for her help.
And she hadn’t even thought about it. She’d barely taken the time to kick her feet into her ratty Birkenstocks. She wasn’t sure she’d even set the alarm on her way out the door.
A life with him was what she wanted. It was what he wanted. So they would find a way. There was a place, a way, they could live a life together. Somewhere between the calm of her life and the storm of his. They would find it, and she wouldn’t give up, or let him give up, until they had.
~oOo~
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear Ronin approaching until he made a shadow over her. She looked over her shoulder and smiled up at him. He wore only a pair of those black pants he worked out in.
“Hi. How’re you feeling?”
He sat down behind her, stretching his legs out on either side of her, and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Better than I deserve. Did I interrupt you?”
Leaning back against his chest, she shook her head. “No. I wasn’t meditating. Just thinking.”
“About?” He kissed her shoulder, letting his lips linger on her skin.
“Us.”
“Rainy,” he sighed. “You shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry.”
“Hush. I’m glad I’m here. But I think you’re right. I don’t want to live in the world you live in. I don’t want you to live in it, either, though.”
He was quiet, and Lorraine knew he wouldn’t respond.
But no. Dammit. They needed to talk. She shifted in his arms and looked up at him. “Roe, talk to me. Really talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. What do you want? I’m not saying I want us to end—I absolutely don’t. I want us to figure out how to start. I want to find a way. Tell me what you want, what you need.”
His grey eyes, the only expressive part of his whole person, danced over her face. When his head moved like he meant to shake it, she reached up with both hands and grabbed it, holding it steady. “Eddie! Talk to me!”
Using his old name had some kind of effect; he blinked and took a deep breath. He didn’t correct her.
“I know what I want. I don’t know how to have it.”
“What. Do. You. Want?” If there had been a wall to bang her head against, she might well have done so.
“You. I don’t want to live without you anymore.”
He’d said that last night, too, more than once, but he’d been drunk. Hearing it now, in sober morning sun, Lorraine felt an achy relief. “And I don’t want to live without you. So we will find a way.”
“I don’t know how.”
She let go of his head and turned to lean back on his bare chest again, crossing her arms over his. His strong body surrounded hers; she felt warm and protected. “We won’t figure it out right this second. Let’s just commit to working it out together, whatever it is, and take one step at a time from there.” She turned her head a few degrees and looked sidelong up at him, his scruffy, grizzled cheek, his intent eyes. “Can you do that? And mean it this time?”
“I meant it before.”
“But you left anyway.”
“To keep you safe.”
“Yet here I am. So this time, we stick together no matter what.”
He dropped his head to her shoulder, and she felt him nod.
“Say it, Roe.”
“Yes. No matter what.” He sighed again. Lorraine thought that those sighs of his were his most comfortable means of communication. “I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt. Or Cameron.”
“I don’t want that, either. I’ll stay away from the Horde. Cam will, too. For now, that’s how we’ll do it—you come to us when you can. You work in the city a lot, anyway, right?”
“Not lately, but yes.”
“When you can come, you come. When you can’t, you stay in touch. We’ll start there.”
“That’s enough?”
“It’s you. Anything is enough, as long as you’re with me”—she picked up his hand and laid it over her heart—“in here.”
For long moments, they sat like that, facing his Buddha, his body around hers, his hand over her heart, her hand over his, his head resting on hers. His breath was the first change Lorraine noticed; it became deeper, louder, and then his hand was active on her chest—not moving, exactly, but not resting, either. His fingers flexed lightly.
With that small change, that slight stimulation, Lorraine’s body began to need. Her own breathing deepened and coarsened, and her nipples tightened against the loose cotton of Ronin’s beater.
“Rainy…” His voice rumbled at her ear, and his hand slid down under the beater and cupped her breast. Her back arched, and she moaned; then they both grabbed at the beater and yanked it away in a tangle.
When she was exposed to the warming air and his rough touch, he took both breasts in his hands, cupping them in his palms as he pressed the tips of her nipples between his fingers, rolling and pulling, alternating between gentle and firm pressure. Sparks of pleasure flared out from those points, heating her core until she couldn’t be still or quiet.
Against her back, his cock had grown long and hard. It pushed at her, demanding, and she swiveled her hips, grinding against him. He grunted and bit down on her neck, dropping one hand from a breast to push into her underwear and over her clit in a sweeping motion. She cried out as his hot, callused fingertips grazed that tender point.
With his other hand, he pulled at the lace garment, and she quickly helped him free her of it. He cast it aside, and it landed at Buddha’s base, just another froth of green in his garden.
Already she was on the brink; he’d taken her there with the devoted attention he’d paid to her breasts, and he knew it, too. He kept his fingers on her clit, so sensitive that pleasure came on the point of a knife, and he brought her to orgasm in seconds—a screaming orgasm out in the middle of his serene garden. She planted her feet on the ground and arched away as excruciating ecstasy blasted through her. Behind her, Ronin growled earthily and held on, not easing off until her legs trembled so violently that she couldn’t hold herself up on them anymore.
As she fell, he caught her and settled her on his cock, which he’d pulled free while she was occupied with the needs of her own body. As the long thick of him filled her, she sucked in a deep breath and let her head fall back to his chest.
His breath came in great heaves, like a steam engine, and he groaned as she found her seat over his hips and thighs.
In this position, Lorraine had to do the moving. But when she tried, she found that she was spent. Her legs still shook from her climax, and she couldn’t make them work; he’d nearly paralyzed her with pleasure.
“Rainy…” he growled, his arm snaking over her chest and shoulder so his hand could grab hold of her hair and pull her head to the side. “Rainy.” He sucked on her neck. “Please.”
“I can’t,” she gasped, trying to chuckle. “My legs are noodles.”
For a second or two, he rested his chin on her shoulder, his beard prickling her skin in a way that made her purr. Then he squeezed her tightly and…did something. Rolled? Flipped? She didn’t know. Before she understood what he’d done or how, she was on her hands and knees in the grass, he was still inside her, and his hands had hooked into her hips, taking the weight of her lower body from her noodly knees.
She didn’t know if he knew it, or even knew that the Kama Sutra existed, but he’d rolled them, essentially, into The Plow. With the little control she did have of her legs, she stretched them back and hooked them around his hips, then brought her arms down and rested on her elbows.
“Fuck me wild, Roe,” she panted, looking back at him.
He did. He fucked her hard and wild, his beautiful cock filling her full and striking deep again and again and again, until they were both shouting into the quiet air of his garden.
~oOo~
“I want you to go back now. Away from here.”
They were still in his garden, now lying together naked in the grass. Lorraine wasn’t sure of the time, but the sun had risen high enough to clear the tops of his cypress trees. She wondered what his neighbors thought of their morning.
She lifted her head from his chest, and he lifted his from the grass. Their eyes locked. “Don’t back away again.”
“I won’t. Understand when I have to be out of touch, but it won’t mean I’m backing away.”
Since they’d been lying quietly, a thought had risen in her mind, a thought that had wanted consideration more and more often lately. Unsure whether it was the right thing to do, she decided to voice it. “Roe, will you tell me something?”
“If I can.”
“Why is this your life?”
He stared at her, his face calm and his eyes turbulent. Then he said, “I told you. There was nothing for me at home.”
She sensed the danger in that answer, the way it poked at the wound she’d made in him, but she pushed on anyway. It was something she needed to understand. “But of all the things you could have chosen, why this? At first I thought it made sense—the bikes, the fighting, the life on the edge. But that’s not you anymore.”
Pushing her gently away, he sat up. “I’m good at it.”
“Breaking the law? Killing people?”
He flinched. “Being a soldier.”
“You’re good at stunts, too. And racing.”
“I needed more than a job. I needed a life. A family. The one I wanted was gone. The club gave me a family when I needed one.” The sharp tone in those words told Lorraine that they’d arrived at the danger, and she’d brought them there, to her fault. But maybe it was no bad thing, because it had also led her to her real question.
“But are you happy in that family?”
Abruptly, he stood and walked away, to the farthest edge of this little garden nook. Naked, with his scarred back to her, he stood and stared at some point beyond them.
When it appeared that he wasn’t going to answer, Lorraine, still sitting where he’d left her, asked, “Roe?”
He didn’t respond, so she stood and went to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his back. At her touch, he relaxed a little.
“Roe,” she said again.
“I don’t know,” he answered at last, his voice so low she heard it most clearly with the ear that was pressed to his back, as the words rolled inside him.
After a few seconds, he said it again: “I don’t know.”