“King,” I murmured, aware of our audience. “Stop.”
He paused in his excited ramblings, his gorgeous face the picture of Christmas morning joy. I loved that doing something nice for me made him so happy, loved how boyish he was in his enthusiasm for the project.
I told him so then added, “But I told you before I even brought my car in, I cannot afford repairs, let alone all this extra car bling.”
His lips twitched, fighting back a smile. “Babe, the ‘car bling’ was necessary. You’re dating a Garro. There is no way a Garro would let his woman drive around in a piece of shit car. You’re lucky I could work with what you had. Thought about takin’ her to the junker.”
“You thought about taking Betty Sue to the junker?” I repeated, in a significantly higher voice than King had.
Finally, his expression flickered. “Yeah, like I said, it’s a piece of shit. But some of the guys helped me in their spare time and now it fuckin’ purrs, babe.”
“That’s great, King. Hopefully you can get a good price from it.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he demanded, affecting the same stance as me but with a lot more intimidation factor. We faced off with our arms crossed and feet braced apart like sailors on rocky waters.
“I told you, I can’t afford whatever plastic surgery you’ve given Betty Sue! You knew that so I don’t understand why you felt the need to go behind my back, keep me from my only method of transportation for weeks and pour thousands of dollars of my nonexistent money to my car.” I’d forgotten about our audience even though they’d crowded closer, and my voice had risen to a near shout.
“And I told you, I can’t have my woman drivin’ a piece of shit car,” King returned, badass biker voice in full force. “And if you try for one fuckin’ second to argue with me about being my woman, Cress, I swear to fuckin’ Christ that I’ll take you on the hood of this fuckin’ car just to prove it.”
The idea gave me full body shivers but I ignored them to forge on. “You are suddenly so shallow that you care about what my car looks like?”
A low growl rumbled up from the depths of his throat before he exploded. “It’s a fuckin’ death trap, Cressida! You want me to be okay with you drivin’ a fuckin’ death trap then you are insane.”
“And you’re insane for completely changing my car without talking to me about it. You were supposed to give it a fucking tune up, for Christ’s sake, King. Now I can barely even recognize her.” It was true. Betty Sue was looked brand new with shiny paint and those cool wheel rims that spin the opposite way when you drive.
Actually, looking at her, she looked pretty cool.
“I was doin’ somethin’ nice for you. You’re tellin’ me I gotta get you to sign off on it every time I wanna do somethin’ nice for you, Cress, you’ll find I don’t fuckin’ do it anymore.”
I shifted my gaze back to the man-boy in front of me and realized that I’d hurt his feelings. His cut-glass cheekbones were flushed with rage, his pose hardened-biker-at-war but those glacial eyes were cracked through with hard lines of pain.
My stomach clenched as the invisible fist of my self-hatred battered against it.
“King,” I murmured softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that I was unhappy about the gesture. It’s easily the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. It’s only one of the many things you’ve done to try to make me happy in the last few weeks and I didn’t mean to throw it in your face like this.” I moved forward to try to lie my hand against his crossed arms but he moved back out of reach. The move burned through me, worsened when I heard female laughter behind me.
“I reacted instinctively,” I continued quietly. “It’s important for me to pay my own way bow. Men have been buying my things nearly all my life. It’s more than that too; I don’t want to feel like I owe you and I don’t want you to feel like you need to get my shit together for me.”
“Haven’t realized this yet, you’re crazy, but I like to get your shit handled for you,” King muttered. “Haven’t realized this part either, but you left all that Stepford housewife shit behind and entered my world. And in that world, men take care of their fuckin’ women because it’s their duty and fuckin’ pleasure, whether those women need protecting or not. There’s something you need, Queen, it’s your King who provides it for you. You don’t like that, you need to learn to eat it.”
It wasn’t his nicest speech to date or even his most eloquent, but there was something about standing in the middle of bikers on their compound with their one-day King that made his words especially poignant. He’d introduced me to this world, I’d unwittingly already become a part of it and only now was I consciously coming to face to face with that reality.