Tainted Rose (24 page)

“An apology?”

“I’d say,” she continued. “An apology and five thousand dollars.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

“Plus interest,” she said with a flourish that signified that the discussion was over.

Josh raised his eyebrows. He looked at Jac.

“Agreed?” Rose said.

The two men looked at each other for a minute before slowly nodding their heads. Their feud it seemed, had been settled.

XXIII

“S
O I SUPPOSE YOU TWO
need a room for the night?” Jac said.

“Two rooms,” Rose said.

Jac laughed. “This isn’t exactly the Hilton Hotel,” he said.

“One room will be fine,” Josh said.

He looked at Rose and she looked away shyly. They would be sharing a room. She hadn’t counted on that. She wished she could take a shower and freshen up before she shared a bedroom with Josh Carter but she doubted that would be an option. She was still a bit mad with him for sleeping with Jac’s girl but she knew she couldn’t hold that against him.

“You running from the law?” Jac said.

“Not the law,” Rose said, “DRMC.”

“You still stirring up trouble with those assholes?” Jac said to Josh.

“I never stir up trouble.”

“The hell you don’t.”

Josh shrugged. “We’ll be heading out soon. We just need a place to lay low for a while.”

Jac got up and showed them through to a bedroom off the main living room. It looked surprisingly comfortable to Rose, although she supposed that after spending two years in that hovel with Murdoch, anything would have looked comfortable. At least it had its own bathroom, and a fireplace, and a cozy looking bed.

“There’s only one bed,” Jac said. He motioned at Josh and said to Rose, “I’d advise you to let him sleep on the floor.”

Josh said nothing. Rose wondered if he was hoping to share the bed with her. She wondered if he wanted her as badly as she wanted him. She’d never seen a man as attractive as him in her entire life. She decided to say nothing and see what happened.

“If you need anything else,” Jac said, “tell me in the morning.”

He left them, closing the door behind him.

*

R
OSE SAT ON THE BED.
She’d taken in her few belongings from the bike and set them on the dresser by the door.

“I guess this is us,” she said to Josh. She felt as if she’d been waiting her entire life to say those words.

Josh smiled at her. His curly hair, falling in front of his face, couldn’t have been placed more perfectly.

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

“For sorting that mess out with Jac.”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Rose said. She hated the idea of Josh spending a week with a dancer in Quebec City.

Josh nodded. He seemed to sense her displeasure at that story.

“How about a fire?” he said, as if trying to make it up to her. “You must be frozen after that ride.”

She looked at the fireplace. There was a little pile of wood next to it.

“Okay,” she said. “That would be nice.”

While Josh got the fire going she went into the bathroom to see what she could do about freshening up. She tried the water and miraculously it was hot. She stripped and stepped into the shower. The water was perfect. It felt like life, like sunshine shining on the land in spring. It was as if her flesh had frozen and only now was melting back to life. It could not have felt better. She had some shampoo with her, the cheap crap that Serge had bought at the drug mart in Val-d’Or, and she washed her hair. After her shower she dried off and spent longer than usual on her makeup. She wanted to look her best. She made sure her skin looked perfect and her foundation was exactly the way she liked it before putting on the rest. It was silly to be putting on makeup right before bed but Josh was out there and she knew what boys liked. They noticed was how you looked, and she wanted to look good.

“You okay in there?” Josh said from outside the door.

She came out wearing the only change of clothes she had, a plain white cotton shirt and black leggings. Josh looked startled when he saw her.

“You look,” he paused while thinking what he should say, “lovely.”

She smiled at him and hopped onto the bed. The fire was roaring in the fireplace and the warmth of it was as comforting as anything she could have imagined. She smiled quietly to herself. Josh was looking at her but he said nothing. Everything was perfect. It could not have been more beautiful, more peaceful. She wanted this moment, this delicious moment of anticipation and pleasure, to last forever.

*

S
HE TOOK OUT THE PHOTO
of her mother. It was the first time she’d really had a chance to look at it. She had to wipe the tears out of her eyes to get a clear view.

Her mother had been so beautiful. She looked so much like Rose that it almost could have been a picture of her. She had the same long, rich hair, the pouting lips, the big eyes. She touched the face with her finger. It was the closest she’d ever been.

“I wonder why he never showed me this before?” she said.

Josh was over by the fire, tending it, and he looked up at her.

“You never saw her?”

“No. Not ever.”

“Maybe he thought it would be too painful for you.”

Rose looked down at the picture and nodded. It
was
painful to look at it. But it had been more painful not to know anything about her mother. She still knew nothing, other than what she looked like. Her father had always refused, pointblank, to talk about her. Rose didn’t know if it was because of something bad she’d done, or if it was because he’d loved her so much that he just couldn’t talk about her.

“He might have been waiting till I was older. But then he was gone.”

Josh nodded.

“You were there when he died, weren’t you?”

“Yes. That’s when he gave me the picture. He wanted you to have it. It was the last thing he said.”

She looked up at Josh. He was trouble, any ordinary girl would have known he was bad news, they would have stirred well clear of him, but Rose wasn’t an ordinary girl. He’d been in prison but she didn’t care about that. All she cared about was that he was kind, he protected her, and she felt she could trust him with anything.

“You kept this for ten years.”

“Yes I did.”

“That’s a long time.”

Josh shrugged.

“You never thought of just getting rid of it, forgetting about my father, about me?”

“Not once.”

“Why? I mean, most people would have moved on.”

“It just didn’t ever seem like the right thing to do.”

“And you always do the right thing?”

Josh grinned at her. It was a wicked grin. “The right thing means something different depending on where you’re looking from.”

She nodded. That was true. She’d seen enough of the world already to know that much.

“So you were a Sioux Ranger?”

“I still am,” Josh said. He got his jacket from where it was hanging on the back of the door and brought it over to her on the bed. He handed it to her. “Look at the lining.”

Rose took the jacket from him. It was heavy. She admired the leather. It was supple and soft, excellent quality. It was exactly the type of leather she had wanted to work with when she’d lived in Montreal. That felt like a lifetime ago.

“On the inside,” Josh said.

She opened it out on the bed. She gasped. There it was, the indian rider, the symbol of her father’s club. She hadn’t seen that symbol in ten long years. Anyone who would have had the courage to wear it would have been killed by the DRMC. She looked at the patches, the rider, his hair blasted back by the wind, and so many memories of her childhood came flooding back to her.

“Renegade?” she said.

Josh shrugged. “Your father chose it for me.”

Her eyes filled up with tears again. How was this happening? Just that morning she’d been ready to die. Everything her father had stood for had been destroyed. Her entire life had been reduced to one long, suffering nightmare. Now, here she was on a big, soft bed with a man who’d carried a photograph of her mother for her for ten years. This was the man who her father had entrusted with that photograph. And he hadn’t just held on to it, he’d risked his life to get it to her and to rescue her from the DRMC.

And now she could see that he’d gone even farther than that. He was the last Sioux Ranger, the last of the true breed of biker in Montreal, the old guard, the men who had ridden with her father.

“You’re a Sioux Ranger.”

“I am.”

“Are you the only one?”

“I’ve been the only one for a very long time.”

“Since Bloody Sunday?”

“Yes.”

She looked at him. It was as if an angel had come down, sent by her father to take care of her. She reached forward and touched his face. He didn’t flinch. He let her trace the line of his jaw with her finger. Then he reached out and took her gently and leaned into her.

The moment that Josh’s lips touched hers was like no other moment in Rose’s life. Nothing had ever made her feel like that before. There was no fear in Josh, no question of what he was doing. He just took her confidently, as if he’d known all his life that they were meant to have that kiss.

He pressed his lips against hers and she felt as if she was going to faint. Her heart was pounding so strongly that she could feel it in her chest like a drum beat. She reached out and took a hold of him and he put his arms around her as if to protect her, or prevent her from breaking free.

He opened his mouth and her lips followed his, opening ever so slightly. Then she felt it. The soft, wet touch of his tongue on her lip. Just for a second his tongue touched her lip but it was enough to make her dizzy with desire. She wanted to reach out to his mouth with her own tongue but she didn’t dare. She moved her lips against him and willed him to touch her again with his tongue. She opened her mouth and then felt his tongue reach inside and meet hers. It was a magical moment.

She sighed as their tongues danced, tangling and untangling in a delicious movement of pleasure and intimacy.

“Josh,” she whispered.

“Rose,” he replied.

“You’re not ever going to let go of me, are you?”

XXIV

I
F THERE WAS ONE THING
Josh Carter knew in the world at that moment it was that he would never, ever let go of Rose Meadows. He’d hang on to her through hell if he had to, he’d give his life for her if he had to. He didn’t know a lot about love but he knew that much.

It was just something that he could feel deep down in the core of his being. Holding her in his arms, kissing her lips, there was something magical about it. It was ethereal, unworldly. It was almost weird how intensely he felt for her. He thought about how strange it was that he’d seen her all those years ago, just that one night, when he was seventeen and she was twelve. It had been a strange night. He’d gone there looking for blood, looking for vengeance, but he didn’t find it. Blood found him. He’d seen over twenty men lose their lives that night, he’d nearly lost his own, but the most vivid thing he could remember about it was those two big, beautiful eyes, the eyes of a child, Rose’s eyes.

He leaned her back on the bed and moved his lips from hers down to her neck. Her skin was as white as silk, and as smooth. It was beautiful to kiss it. It was like kissing milk.

She threw her head back and sighed and he knew she liked it. He’d never in his life been with a girl this beautiful, this angelic. He’d never even dared to dream he would find someone so perfect. She was arching her back and he moved his mouth down lower, reaching the edge of her shirt. He wanted to reach under it and touch her breasts. He could already feel them through her shirt.

God, they were perfect breasts, firm and ripe like pieces of delicious fruit. They were the forbidden fruit that he had waited his whole life to taste. He looked up at her. Her head was thrown back on the bed in abandon. Her eyes were closed. Instinctively he knew what to do.

He moved his hands inside her shirt and touched the silky smoothness of her bare skin. He slid his hands up over her waist and along the sides of her body till they reached her bra. Then he moved them around to her back and in a single, fluid motion, unclasped it. It fell away from her breasts and he moved his hands up onto them. They were so soft and so firm at the same time. Just touching them was heaven. What would it be like to kiss them?

“Rose,” he whispered.

She sighed. It was almost a groan. She was waiting for him. There was a part of him that felt like she was still the child he’d seen ten years ago, that he was doing this to her, but he knew she was a woman now.

He pulled at her shirt. He wanted to tear it off her and reveal her delicious breasts.

“Take it off,” she moaned and raised her arms up over her head. He pulled her shirt up over her head and looked down into those two beautiful, saucer eyes.

She seemed shy. She closed her eyes and opened them again and then held his gaze.

“Rose,” he whispered.

“Josh,” she replied.

Then he dove down onto her breasts like an eagle descending on its prey. He felt as if her breasts were an ocean and he was diving into water. He felt submerged in her, in the intoxicating scent of her, the supple smoothness of her skin, it was like touching ice and fire at the same time.

“Yes,” she moaned as he kissed the perfect, soft flesh on the upper side of her breasts. He moved his mouth into her cleavage and licked the valley that lay between them. She tasted like a dream.

“Rose,” he whispered again and she moaned in response.

His tongue slid up the slope of a breast until it reached the very edge of the areola.

“Oh my God,” she moaned.

*

H
ER NIPPLE FELL INTO HIS
mouth like a cherry and his tongue caressed it so gently, so incessantly, that she thought she was going to die. Was this really happening? How could it? How could her past have come back to rescue her like this?

She spread her legs open and arched backward, pressing her pelvis against him. She wanted to feel the hardness of him against her groin. What she really wanted was for him to slide inside her and explode inside her body in a frenzy of lust and passion and love.