“So, you went and looked for something?”
“Sort of. A buddy of mine, D.R., told me about a club that one of his club brother’s brother was starting to go into and said, I needed a place where people could look out for me and I could displace my anger for something better. Brotherhood, a family. I won’t lie, the first couple of years were hell.”
Her eyes traveled to me, as I looked back into her soft gaze. “What happened?”
“I got involved with the boxing gym that we had been fronting and gotten into some of the fights they were hosting. Hanks and Skaggs found I was pretty decent with gloves and bare-knuckle fighting. One night, I had an opponent that was pissing me off and talking shit all night. I remember my body and mind working against common sense and soon, a few almost fatal punches and the other guy barely moved. I blacked out. I just remember what he had said, and Hank told me it was like watching a switch turn.”
“You turned into a different person.”
“Perhaps,” I said, bending back down to highlight more color on the canvas.
“You weren’t yourself.”
I shook my head. “No, peaches, I was exactly who I was, a mad man that would make someone's worst nightmares come alive. I am the overprotective man that would snap the hand of another person for touching someone they weren’t supposed to touch. People turn in the opposite direction. I have laid hands on my brothers, flicking that switch at the mention of your name.”
Amelia carefully moved her freed hand toward my face, tilting it back to her. “Sometimes being protective isn’t a bad thing.”
“You are truly an odd woman.”
She gripped my chin. “And yet you said you wanted me. Who’s the crazy one now?”
“Art has been my escape. I come here, find a canvas and use the demons as inspirations.”
She giggled. “Such a tortured artist.”
“Don’t you forget it. Now, get back in that position. I’m not done with you yet.”
She relaxed a little, her legs spread a little bit as I settled between them to reach back to the canvas. It was quiet torture for her, and I was loving every bit of it. “Tell me a secret, Amelia.”
“A secret? Don’t you know all of mine?”
“Maybe I do, but I want to hear something that I’m not going to find in the papers, but from your heart.”
“Gah, you are sounding like a romantic. Why is that such a scary turn on?”
I trailed a kiss on the inside of her thighs. Not too close to her wet heat, thinking I wasn’t going to find out.
“Maybe I just want to hear you talk, telling me a story. Something that not everyone knows.”
“Like what?”
“Like how you look at the little ones in your hospital like you long for it.” When I came to see her, she looked into all the rooms with little ones in them and her body relaxed like she was in a daydream.
Like an angry cat, she tensed up throwing up the protective wall. “That’s a bit personal.”
“We’re well past that” I dropped the brush, and grazed my knuckles along her inner leg, “You can trust me. I hold no judgment. I mean you could tell me about your fantasies.”
She wiggled from my touch. “You’re a very strange person.”
I straightened up, looming over her, she watched my movement. “Takes one to know one.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “And it’s called charm.”
“It’s called becoming a pain in my ass.” She huffed. “It’s not really a fantasy. Just a painful, dark memory that hurts when I yearn for something for a long time.”
“Peaches, there’s nothing dark about you other than horrible taste in ex-husbands,” I tried to joke with her, but she didn’t hum or laugh at it.
“I guess your file didn’t cover medical records.”
“That would be HIPAA.”
