“Good, I’m takin’ you to school today,” King mumbled.
“Okay,” I said, smiling against his heartbeat. I may have loved going to school with Buck because he was kind of making it his duty to be my ‘biker Dad’ but there was nothing better than riding with King.
“Get up and get ready, babe. I’ll be up soon,” he ordered sleepily because I needed more time to get ready than he did, given he was a man who rolled out of bed, took a two-minute shower (that is, if I wasn’t in it) and left.
I pressed a long kiss to the skin over his heart, infusing the moment with every single ounce of forbidden love I felt for him. Suddenly wanting to cry, I broke away and hustled into the bathroom.
My morning routine consisted of a short shower to wash and shave (a daily necessity now that I had King in my bed every night) and about thirty minutes to blow dry my hair, put on my minimal face of makeup and dress. I stood in my closet trying to pick out a dress or skirt (pants were harder to get off in a hurry if King wanted me during detention, which he often did and I just as often gave into because I was weak and he was hot) when I noticed how the small walk-in had changed in the last week.
A surprisingly neat stack of clean t-shirts, all in neutral colors, sat beside a pair of well-loved once-white-now-kinda grey sneakers that King used when he went running every day, usually right after school. Beside those, there was a not-so-neat pile of dirty laundry, men’s boxer briefs, again in neutrals, gym socks and his black mechanic’s onesie with Hephaestus Auto stitched on the pocket.
King had invaded my closet.
It did not bother me.
I was a neat person by training; William and my parents were as close to OCD as you could get without being formally diagnosed. But the sight of King’s mess cluttering my closet floor made my heart warm and throb like an open wound. I was a masochist so I poured salt into it by reminding myself that one way or another, this affair would end. Probably in disaster, but definitely, when he either went off to UBC or patched into The Fallen. I was realistic. No freshman university student wanted a girlfriend, let alone a twenty-sex-year-old divorcee, and no hardcore biker would want Miss Irons as an ‘old lady’.
I slipped on a light blue cotton button up dress and a matching headband with a little daisy on it. I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror as I made to leave and frowned at my reflection. I looked like a freaking grade school teacher—adorable, yeah—but in no way equipped to deal with a biker. Biting my lip, I looked down at the matching cardigan in my hand, dropped it to the floor and grabbed the little black leather jacket I’d bought with Harleigh Rose the other day at Ready & Revved. It was a little incongruous but somehow it looked cute and I decided the bizarre contrast perfectly suited the new me.
I was reading Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance when King joined me in the kitchen a few minutes later. He immediately moved to the coffee pot to pour himself a cup using one of my bookish mugs that illustrated the snitch from Harry Potter and said ‘I’m a catch.’ It was so fitting, I giggled behind my own coffee cup.
His school dress shirt was still unbuttoned, revealing a tanned column of muscular torso that made my mouth water. He scratched at the abs, caught me staring and smirked.
“No time for a quickie this mornin’, babe. ‘Less you want to suck me off real quick?”
I blushed but tossed my book at him. “You are such a twerp.”
He caught the book easily in the hand not carrying the coffee and shook his head at me. “You need to start cursin’, Cress. You teach high school, not elementary school.”
I ignored him, plucked my book from his hand when he came over to the table to grab one of the bagels I’d put out for us, and went back to reading.
He laughed. “Like your choice of readin’, babe. Like that you’re finally tryin’ to understand.”
I shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal when inside, I was happy dancing that he’d noticed I was making an effort. “It’s a classic. It was remiss of me not to have read it already.”
A loud pounding at the door made us both freeze. I looked to King but he was already up buttoning up his shirt and moving towards the window over the sink so he could peer around the bushes at whoever stood at the door.
“Huge ass man at your door, Cress,” he said. “Do I need to get my gun?”