ZEKE (7 page)

Caught up in the moment, I barely notice that he has stopped. I still my paddle and, not concentrating on rowing, take in the surroundings. It’s beautiful. Green and white lights twinkle over the canal. I spot a few other boats in the near distance. I glance over the edge of the canoe, awed by the glowing bright green water. I place the paddle in the canoe and lean to the side, catching sight of a couple of fish as they swim by. “Oh!” I point. “Did you see that?” I look up at Zeke who peers at me from over his shoulder. He lets out a light chuckle and maneuvers himself around until he’s facing me.

I look back at the water. “Oh!” I squeal. “There’s another one!”

“Shhhh ...” He leans toward me. “You’ll scare them away,” he whispers. “Not to mention the other people fishing will get pissed.”

“Sorry.” My cheeks flush and I turn back to the water. Aware of my surroundings now—Zeke, the darkness, and the quiet—I wait for another fish. I excitedly point when I see one.

“Yeah.” I hear him laugh at the expense of my excitement. “That’s a speckled trout. Here, give me that pole.” He nudges my left thigh. “I’ll bait it for you.”

I reach down, finding the fishing rod. “There’s only one.” I pick it up. “Do you want to use it first?”

“No.” He stretches out his hand. “I don’t fish for sport.” I stare at him for a second, holding the pole. He drops his hand. “I don’t hunt anything unless I plan on eating it. And I’m not really in the mood for fish tonight.” He smiles. “Besides, to keep a fish you catch, it has to meet requirements, and in this area, well, it’s hard to hook a trout that size.”

I lower the rod. “Why?”

“Don’t know.” He shrugs. “My guess is there’s too much fishing out here. The lights in the canal are a big tourist attraction. The fish that you see, they’re the innocent ones, haven’t been yanked from their home by a sharp hook and then tossed back in the water yet. I think the bigger trout that have gone through that and survived are deeper in the water. The bait doesn’t work on them anymore. They probably just don’t want to fight that fight again.” A small smile turns up his lips as he lightly chuckles.

I sense that he’s trying to cover up the sincerity in his words. What guy doesn’t enjoy the hunt? I search his eyes, and I’m getting all kinds of weird vibes—vulnerable ones. When Rayna assigned me to break
the best damn lay in the Bayou
, I didn’t expect him to be ... like this. He’s more different than I ever imagined. The more time I spend with him, the more I like him as a person. Sure, he’s sexy, he’s cute, and he makes my heart and my thighs quiver, but he’s also smart, caring, and he’s comfortable with himself.

He was until now.

I lower the pole back into the canoe. “Why do you fight?”

His eyes narrow. “I like it.”

“From what I hear, you’ve always liked it. Rayna and Emmie told me that you fought a lot in school.”

“I’m sure you have your policies where you work for bullies.” He grins. “Well, I had mine.”

“Are you saying you only picked fights with bullies?”

“The bigger the better.” His grin widens. “Take down the biggest bully and most of the others will back off.”

“And that’s not bullying? Isn’t that justifying a fight due to a certain stereotype?”

“No. It’s not. See, I got no tolerance for people who purposely try to hurt others just because they’re smaller, weaker, or unable to stand up for themselves. A bully isn’t a stereotype. A bully is a monster who needs to be put down.”

“You’ve been bullied?”

“Who hasn’t been bullied?”

“I got over it,” I reason.

“Yeah, well, some people don’t. Like those trout, they’re not deep in the water because they’re that smart. They’re scared. They hide because their wounds remind them that they should be afraid. Fear is a dominant thing. Its main ingredient is pain. Some people can’t get over the hurt, can’t see past their wounds, and they become consumed by it.”

“But not you?”

“As I said, I like to fight and you,” he rests a palm on his thick thigh, “you educate. The strong ones do what they must to move on, and if we’re lucky, maybe we can help the weaker ones along the way.”

“What happened to you? What made you strong?”

He stares out into the water, eyes glistening from the reflection of the lights. “Life,” he says and turns to me. “You?”

“Five older brothers.” I laugh, attempting to lighten the conversation.

“Fucking brothers, they’ll do that to you.” His eyes glaze over a little. “But growing up, I don’t know what I would’ve done without mine.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.” I sober. “Rayna also told me that you lost your parents at a young age.”

“I was seven. It was a long time ago.” He blinks away the glossy glaze and sits up straighter in the canoe.

“You moved here then to live with your grandmother?”

He nods. “She passed away a few years back.” He clears his throat. “Then the store she owned burnt down. We took the insurance money and opened JZS.”

“No college then?”

“No time. After Grams passed, I finished school and helped Jax run the store. Then the fire and Slate …” He shakes his head “I just never made it there.”

“But you wanted to?”

“Sure,” he says with a faint smile. “I wanted a lot of things, but ya know, shit fucking happens.”

“What about these rules you have,” I say.

“Damn.” He laughs. “I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re good rules. I’m honest with women. I’m not making any false promises like some fuckers do to get laid.”

“Yeah, but it makes me wonder … are the rules to protect the woman, or are they really there to protect you?”

“It’s all about the woman for me,” he says. “But it’s true. I’m not looking for any of them to fall in love with me. So, yeah, I guess it protects me too.”

“Why don’t you want to be in love?”

“If you’d listened to what I just said, you’d realize I didn’t say that.”

I stare at him and acknowledge he didn’t say that. He said he didn’t want anyone falling in love with him. Why wouldn’t he want to be loved? Maybe it has something with the fact that everyone he loves has died. First, his parents, and then his grandmother. He seems like a well-rounded guy, though. I don’t take him as someone who dwells on the past. There’s got to be more to his story than he’s letting on, and I plan on finding out what happened to him and why he believes he’s not worthy of being loved.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

While showing Lurlene the Bayou over the past five days, I realize that I live in a pretty fucking awesome place. We went bicycling and did some sightseeing, saw a few pelicans and herons. We went night fishing and, while we didn’t catch any fish, we did see a couple of speckled trout. And, man, with every new adventure, the look on her face was priceless. Like a little kid finding her nose for the first time, the bright and beautiful awe in her eyes was simply inspiring. We took a boat ride on the Galveston Bay and went for a swim in the canal. The woman has a slammin’ body—perfect curves and flawless skin. It took everything for me not to attack her in that skimpy bikini, but like the past few days, I restrained myself.

From the moment that I met her, I knew she was dangerous. The constant hard-on is killing me. I tried to jerk off, tried to jerk her out of my system; I even went as far as taking a chick home from JZS’s the other night but, fuck. My dick wouldn’t have it. After I gave the girl a few oral orgasms, I sent her happily on her way.

My cock just isn’t going to be happy until I give him what he wants. But what the fucker wants is off-limits. I knew it the first day I picked her up for our sightseeing excursion. If I’m with her, I know what’ll happen. Rusty’s right; I’m a romantic at heart. I won’t be able to stop myself. I will take her tender heart, beautiful body, and carefree soul. I will make her love me. When it comes to a woman like Lurlene, there’s nothing else to do but to make her yours. And if I fuck her, she will belong to me. She’d be forever mine.

That’s why I stay away from the Lurlenes of the world. That’s how I’ve kept them safe from me all of these years. Something, though, there’s something different about her, and it scares the hell out of me.

“Like this?” Lurlene looks up from the peach.

I glance down at the X she cut into the top of the fruit. “Yep.” I smile. “Now, we put them into the hot water for a little under a minute.” I pick up a few peaches from the counter and carry them over to the stove. “Then they’ll be easy to peel.” I drop them into the pot. She’s at my side dumping her peaches in. Fuck. She smells good. “Fill that bowl over there with cold water. We’ll put ‘em in there to cool after we skin ‘em.”

“Okay,” she says and goes to do as told. And fuck, that’s good too. She follows directions well. I’d love to give her some while naked in bed. Damn hard-on. Think about baseball. All-time five best pitchers; let’s see, there’s Kevin Brown, Kenny Rogers ...

After the pie is in the oven, I join Lurlene at the table. With Jax busy opening JZS this afternoon and Slate crashed in bed, I knew that I’d have the kitchen to myself today.

“How long does it take to bake?”

“About an hour. I take it out when the crust browns.”

“So you really have baked a pie before?”

“Yeah, my grams used to bake one every Sunday. Sometimes, I’d sit in the kitchen with her while she made it. She’d say
pie and coffee is the best social interaction a man can hope to have with a woman
.” She laughs, and every time I hear that wonderful sound, I undulate. Man, she’s beautiful. Not the kind of beautiful your eyes alone admire. She’s the kind of beautiful that seeps deep inside your body. Her beauty seizes you, empowers you, and then it possess you, takes a hold of your heart, and hangs on tight. Dangerous, she’s just too damn dangerous. “So, of course, I had to learn how to bake a pie for I do like to interact with the ladies. But, to be honest, I’ve never done the whole pie and coffee thing to get a chick.”

“Until now.” She smiles.

“Right, but I’m not trying to get you. This is strictly platonic, remember?” I arch a brow and her lack of response presses me to admit the truth. “I enjoy our social interactions. You’re good company, Picasso.” I look at her for a moment. “So,” I stand up, “want some coffee with your pie?”

“I’d love that,” she says, her smile reaching the emerald glint in her eyes. Tempted to bend down and steal a kiss from her luscious lips, I turn around and head for the Keurig. At least, she won’t see the hard-on pressing against my jeans. Dammit, she gets my cock hard way too easily. Think baseball, asshole—Kevin Brown and Kenny Rogers, who else? 1997-2000, John Wetteland. Yeah, he’s another good one. I prepare the coffee as more pitchers from the Texas Rangers enter my head, alleviating the problem in my other head.

“Thanks,” I hear her sweet soft voice in my left ear, and then see her hand reaching for the sugar. “It’s been nice, ya know, these past few days. The Bayou is beautiful.”

I glance over at her finding sincerity in her twinkling eyes. She’s too close, a mere hand’s reach away. “So ya like being a teacher?”

“Love it.” Her eyes light up even more.

“English, right? What grade?”

“I teach at the high school, mostly sophomores.”

“Huh.” I hand her the mug of steaming coffee.

She takes the cup and palms it with her small, delicate hands. “I am not a teacher but an awakener.”

“An awakener?” I recall reading that somewhere. Damn, Addy and her literature. “Robert Frost,” I say as my mind recaptures it.

“Correct.” Her forehead crinkles. “Wow, you must read a lot.”

“Yeah.” I laugh. “Well, you awakened me, Teach.”

“How so?”

“The Bayou, you opened my eyes to it, and …” I pause, the fucker inside ready to attack the sexy beauty standing beside me. I pull my mug from the Keurig and lift it in cheer. “I think that this pie is a fitting end to our strictly platonic sightseeing tour.”

“Yes. I agree.” She lightly taps her mug against mine. “It is time for this strictly platonic adventure to come to an end,” she says just before taking a small sip of her coffee. Her eyes peer up at me from beneath long lashes, but they’re no longer bright and glistening. They’re dark and sultry. Fuck, I recognize that look. For the past five days, I’ve waited to see that look in her eyes. A hint of flirtation, a show of some kind of attraction, anything, but she never tossed me a damn bone until now. Palms sweaty and heart pounding hard in my chest, I come to the clear conclusion that I’m not the hunter here. I’m the prey. She’s not trying to hide her hunger. This sexy little predator wants to feast on me. Not even in the cage, getting my ass beat down, have I felt this trapped.

I need to make a move, regain some power here. I set my mug on the counter, take the cup from her hand, place it next to mine, and turn to her. “So remind me again.” I slide my hand around her waist and rest my palm on her lower back. “If we were to go out on a real date …” I add light pressure and draw her closer to me. “What were those expectations again?” Her chin lifts, ready to battle; she’s prepared to hold her power. Her mouth opens, and I stop her. “No, wait.” I place my other hand gently across her slender neck. “It’s coming back to me now,” I say, slipping my hand upward to run my thumb across her cheek. “Ah, yes.” I drag my thumb along her partially opened mouth. Her lips are smooth, like the wet peaches I just held in my hands. I salivate, dying to find out if she tastes just as succulent. I look up from her mouth. She’s watching my thumb caress her lip. Her eyes flash to mine as the warm breeze of her breath bathes my thumb. “Oh, yes. It’s the soft and gentle good night kiss at your door.” With a discreet lick of my tongue, I wet my lips. Her eyes catch the action and remain fixated. I lean in, and her mouth slowly, and ever so slightly, opens and closes a few times. Her breasts rise and fall a little faster, clear signs of a woman ready to be kissed. I need just one little taste of her ... just one. “Let’s see if I can meet your expectations, Picasso.” With the last stitch of my trying restraint, I lower my lids and close my eyes. Inhaling her sweet scent, I place my mouth gently against hers. Our flesh unites and my skin shimmers with goosebumps, but I hold strong for a few long seconds basking in the innocence of such a surprisingly sensual kiss.