Tikka Chance on Me Read online

  Just one taste of his lips, and I knew his reputation with women was well-deserved. He didn’t kiss like it was foreplay, or a preview of what was to come. He kissed like it was the beginning, the middle, and the end. Unselfishly—which I wouldn’t have expected from a swaggering outlaw. But he reached up to hold my face, patient and persistent. Teasing and nipping for minutes before seeking out my tongue. Once we maneuvered ourselves into the truck, though, all bets were off. Patience be damned, clothes got shoved aside at warp speed and I welcomed him between my thighs like he belonged there.

  And, oh, God. He did.

  It had been a while. Since before I came home. Viable sexual partners weren’t exactly thick on the ground in Eastville these days. And risking my extracurricular activities getting back to my parents wasn’t my idea of a thrill. Until now. Until Trucker’s mouth on my neck and his big, thick dick nudging inside me. In this moment, I didn’t care if someone came right up to the windshield and got a good look. They’d see his bare ass, which I discovered was tight and firm when I grabbed a handful of it. And his broad shoulders, dappled with freckles. Maybe they’d see my face. I couldn’t imagine what I looked like. Only knew how I felt. Fucked. So unbelievably fucked. Before, just days ago, I’d thought of him as 6-foot-3 inches of trouble. I’d had no idea it was the seven or eight inches in his jeans that was the real threat.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still knew this was a bad idea. In an adjacent corner, I was glad he’d remembered a condom, producing it at just the right time with some sort of sex-magic sleight of hand. Banging a biker apparently had all kinds of magical side effects, because we’d also turned into contortionists—our bodies bending and twisting to accommodate the claustrophobic confines of the cab. And I couldn’t complain. Not when the end result was so. Damn. Good. Trucker thrusting into me. Reaching down between us and rubbing my clit in case penetration wasn’t enough to get me where I needed to go. Putting more thought into a frantic hookup than some of my boyfriends had put into entire relationships. I held onto him with one hand and gripped the passenger door with the other, riding his knuckles and his cock and his filthy whispers of my name. So gone, so done, that he kept dropping the “y” at the end. So I was Pink. Just Pink. The silly name I’d hated growing up had never sounded so sexy. And I hadn’t felt this sexy in a very, very long time.

  I was still high when he found his own orgasm, coming hard after one last roll of his hips against mine. But not so fuck-addled that reality didn’t set in. We’d spent maybe all of ten minutes banging like our lives depended on it, and those ten minutes hadn’t changed the facts. Truck. Parking lot. Motorcycle club. Taj Mahal. Mom and Dad.

  I wet my lips. Tasted him. Tasted us. “Wh-what now?”

  “Samosas?” Trucker’s brows quirked as he hefted his weight off of me and hitched up his jeans. “Maybe some chicken tikka?”

  ***

  He hadn’t set out this morning intending to fuck Pinky Grover. It had just kind of...happened. Like rain happened. Or earthquakes. One of those unavoidable natural phenomena that took you by surprise. “Soon,” he’d said the other day. And it had turned out to be now. Shrugging back into their clothes, wiping the fog off the windshield, rolling the windows down to air out the smell of their sex. He’d pinched off his rubber and dumped it in a paper bag for later disposal.

  Pinky still seemed to be mulling his suggestion of food as she fixed her hair and used one of the mirrors to reapply her lipstick. Maybe she didn’t want to order up chicken tikka or makhani at her parents’ place right after hooking up with him. He couldn’t exactly blame her. Not being ashamed of your sex life and saying “fuck you” to the whole Walk of Shame concept was one thing, but taking your life into your hands by flaunting your post-sex glow to your traditional mom and dad...well, that was an incomprehensible level of fearlessness.

  His own balls shriveled a little at the thought of Mrs. G’s wrath. She was a nice lady. Soft-spoken, but firm. She’d never been intimidated by any of the Eagles, so she certainly wouldn’t think twice about kicking his ass to the curb. Was it pathetic that he was disappointed at the thought of missing out on her recipes? The next closest Indian restaurant was more than fifty miles away and, in his humble opinion, they just weren’t as good as the Taj. They churned out the same unnaturally orange-sauced dishes as most generic big-city joints and their lassi was way too sweet.

  “Trucker?” He felt Pinky’s gaze on him. And couldn’t mistake the dry amusement pulling at the edges of his name.

  “Yeah?”

  She looked at him askance. “You’re still thinking about samosas, aren’t you? Right after we had sex. Gosh, you sure know how to woo a girl,” she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

  He raised his hands in automatic defense, reminding her, “Hey, we worked up an appetite!”

  She couldn’t disagree. She could, and did, punch him in the shoulder. Damn, he liked this girl. No fear. No regrets. She’d kissed him back voraciously, grinding on his cock and squeezing him so tight that she probably did kegels or something. Not that he was going to ask. He didn’t think they were quite on that level yet. So, he focused on starting the truck and backing out of his parking spot—fortunately far enough from the store that not too many other cars, or nosy drivers, were around. Sure, discovery was kind of a thrill, but not at the expensive of Pinky’s reputation. Or her relationship with her folks. Or mango lassi and samosas.

  “I’ll drive you over to your car,” he told her as he maneuvered around a stray shopping cart. “No worries. We don’t have to start hanging out. We’re not going steady.”

  She was quiet for a long moment. And then she laughed. “Oh, Trucker. Our worries are just beginning.”

  Chapter Four

  True to his word, Trucker dropped me back at my car. He followed me back to town at a discreet distance and watched me pull the secondhand Honda Civic onto my parents’ street before going his own way. And that was the last I saw of him for a while. Almost a week. I tried to throw myself into my studies. Distract myself. But accounting, which had never really been my passion to begin with, couldn’t possibly hold a candle to trying Trucker’s special seekh kebab in the cab of his truck. Helping my mother update the Taj’s menu with various regional Indian dishes was, clearly, not much help either—since everything from the new appetizers to the carrot halwa she added to the dessert list seemed suddenly sexual. And I kept wondering what things he might like to try. Foods, Pinky. Not positions.

  Naturally, it was precisely when I’d finally gotten a handle on all the phallic symbolism—and managed to get halfway through a study guide—that Trucker and his biker boys deigned to grace the restaurant with a visit. There went all of my hard-won self-control.

  It was surely a strike against me in the service industry playbook, but I’d never really bothered to learn any of the other Eagles’ names. In my head, I called them things like “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” and “Frick and “Frack.” Mom had equally absurd monikers for them in Punjabi and Hindi. They didn’t matter much more than that. They were background noise. It was Trucker who popped, like a full-color drawing amidst pencil sketches. He’d always been like that. Too bright for high school. Too loud for Eastville. But not too much for you. You handled him just right, didn’t you?

  My cheeks were still flushed with that thought as I walked the bikers back to their booth—because Asif was missing from his post again, in what was becoming an all-too regular occurrence. “Thanks, Pink.” Trucker said it so casually as I passed out the updated menus. Like he hadn’t had his tongue in my mouth nearly a week ago.

  “You’re welcome.” I usually scooted back to the bar at this point. Why engage with the local riffraff, right? But it was too late to pretend I hadn’t engaged my vagina to his dick. To feign politeness like a stranger. I didn’t want to just walk away. “We’re trying out a few new dishes,” I told the group, though my eyes never left Trucker’s ridiculously handsome face. “There’s a malai kofta—wh
ich is like a veggie meatball, chicken Chettinad—chicken in a spicy sauce, and carrot halwa for dessert.”

  One of the Tweedles, stringy-haired and beady-eyed, thought the appropriate response to this pleasantry was to leer, “I know exactly what I want for dessert.”

  I scowled. Trucker swiftly cuffed him upside the head. I took that as my cue to go back to my post. And this, Pinky, is why you don’t get involved with people in a motorcycle gang! They were customers, not anyone I needed to make small talk with, I reminded myself. I grabbed beers from the cooler and lined them up on a tray before moving to doctor a mango juice with two ounces of vodka. Standard order for the Eagles contingent.

  It wasn’t long before a shadow fell across the spotless faux-marble bar.

  “Veggie meatballs?” Trucker made a face as he slid onto a stool in front of me. “Seriously?”

  I shrugged. It was the most succinct explanation I could think of for a bunch of guys who had little experience with food that didn’t come out of a can or a McDonald’s to-go bag. “We’re trying to expand our vegetarian options.”

  “I get that. I love me some saag paneer and dal makhani.” But he still looked skeptical. Shaking his pretty blond head and then grinning ruefully. “You know, I had a girlfriend once who said she couldn’t suck my dick because she was vegan?”

  “That...is not a thing. I think she just didn’t want to suck your dick.” Not that I could empathize. From what I recalled, and in my personal estimation, he had an incredibly suckable dick. If there had been room to do so in his truck without herniating a disc, I might’ve done it already.

  And I’d had no idea that there was an overlap in the motorcycle club and vegan communities. Who knew? Were there entire vegan motorcycle clubs? Did they wear vegan leather jackets? When I voiced the questions aloud, Trucker’s chuckles turned into choked noises and then stopped entirely.

  ***

  He’d fucked up. Again. Flirting with Pinky. Having sex with Pinky. And now mentioning Meadow? Shit. Shit. Rookie mistakes all around. Not what Trucker had been assigned to do.

  Because that’s what this was. An assignment. Not permanent. Not your life. Just a job. Something he had to get done so he could go on to the next thing. And that next thing, if it all went as planned, was just a handful of weeks away.

  Nobody went around thinking, “I wanna be ATF when I grow up.” It certainly hadn’t been on the to-do list of the hellraising little shit he’d been at 10, 12, and 14. But after Trucker’s extended family had practically hog-tied and tossed him at the Army and he’d landed on some kind of list because of his ties to Eastville, it all came together. They’d watched him for a while. Figured out that he wasn’t some white supremacist anti-government nutjob who spent his free time ranting on the Dark Web. And they’d come to him with the assignment. Deep cover. Years of commitment. For a kid who’d always craved adventure, who’d always wanted more, it had seemed like a sweet deal.

  Trucker knew better now. They drizzled honey on top so you wouldn’t taste the bitter until it was too late. When the role you played had already crawled beneath the skin. Under your nails like dirt. He’d done terrible things to gain the Eagles’ trust. Things he couldn’t take back. He couldn’t blame Pinky for how she’d locked up at Walmart before they’d both lost their heads and fucked each other silly. She had no way of knowing he was undercover...and he wasn’t sure he understood the difference anymore.

  Except that an Eastville Eagle was not supposed to read comic books and date vegan girls who brewed their own kombucha and sold hemp products on Etsy.

  Shit.

  “Are you okay? Tyson?”

  Trucker had been quiet long enough that Pinky was staring at him with open concern. Long enough that she’d accidentally used a name only his superiors called him anymore. He had to fix this. Fast. “What time do you get off tonight?” he blurted out. “And can I watch?”

  Chapter Five

  I’d done it. I’d succumbed to one of the worst pick-up lines of all time. And I couldn’t even feel sorry about it. Mainly because it had been obvious at the time that Trucker was trying to distract me from whatever was bothering him. Plus, I really did want him to watch me get off. I’d had worse invitations in my life. Offered without the benefit of devil-may-care blue eyes and dimples. So I helped Dad and the bus boys close up the Taj at 10:30 on the dot, went home to shower and change, and promptly went back out again. Putting my car on the state route going south, to the stretch of road littered with gas stations and a couple of no-tell motels.

  I hadn’t dressed for a hookup since my interrupted first year of grad school. My wardrobe these days consisted of all-black clothes for work, a few cute dresses, and salwar kameez—which were definitely not easy-access garments. Not subtle either. I didn’t exactly want to leave a trail of sequins all over the Pineview Inn. A tight T-shirt and a short denim skirt would have to do. And I hadn’t bothered to put on my only matching lingerie set underneath, since I didn’t yet know how rough Trucker could be on a pair of panties. That shit was expensive. If he was going to tear something in his haste to get it on, it was damn well going to be Fruit of the Loom.

  I pulled into the motel parking lot at precisely 11PM, circling the single-story units until I spied a motorcycle parked in front of room sixteen. No truck tonight. I was a little sad that our mobile love nest would not bear witness to Round Two. Not sad enough to turn down a proper bed, though. Or the man who opened the door before I could even knock.

  Trucker had changed his clothes, too. Gone was the probably-not-vegan leather jacket and black denim. He wore another Captain America T-shirt, this one faded from too many washings, the shield stretched across his broad chest as he braced himself in the doorway. Maybe he thought Cap was my sexual Kryptonite. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was mixing my comic book metaphors. I didn’t even care. His faded blue jeans rode low on his hips, deliciously heavy in the crotch. He looked like heroism and hedonism’s beautiful bastard. And, at least for tonight, he was all mine.

  “You coming in?” he drawled, raising one eyebrow.

  “Am I coming soon?” I corrected as I stepped over the threshold, crowding him but not budging him. He was massive, after all. A big, bearded, beast of a man. A mountain I was happy to climb...albeit not a hill I necessarily wanted to die on. But I’d worry about the moral implications of bedding a biker later. In this moment, as I stretched on my toes and he boosted me up so I could circle my arms around his neck, all I cared about were the carnal ones. How fast could he turn me on? How hard were we going to fuck? How many times could we do it before my unofficial curfew of 3AM? And “When are you going to kiss me?”

  Now. The answer to that was now. He swore softly, crushing me against him with one giant palm cradling my butt. And he kissed roughly, in that way I was already coming to crave. Like he couldn’t get enough of me. Like my mouth and tongue were air and he was breathless. I could get used to this. To the heat and strength of him. To his taste. To how he pulled me inside completely and shut the door without even letting me go.

  Trucker carried me all the way to the motel room’s lone bed and pitched us both against the queen-size mattress, shifting so I landed on top of him. I had no complaints about that choice. Or about how he dug his fingers into my hair, gripping the back of my neck as he deepened his kiss, slanting his lips against mine again and again. For all his intensity, his hands were gentle. And he didn’t use his teeth. There was tenderness in how he settled me between his legs, flush against the tantalizing bulge in his jeans. In how he finally broke the epic lip-lock to suck in great gulps of air and then rested his cheek against mine.

  “I could do this all night. Just kiss you. Hold you in my arms. But you’re not here for that, are you? You’re here to be fucked by the bad boy.” The words were a low growl against my jaw. A little angry. And I wasn’t sure who he was mad at. Me or himself.

  He was going to have to work through that on his own. I had other priorities. “Do I have to choose?�
� I slipped one hand between us, stroking from his flat, hard, belly to his even harder cock. “Why can’t it be both? Can’t you hold me and fuck me?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He laughed, sounding a little sheepish, and ducked his head so he could brush his lips against my throat. It soothed the sting of that strange and momentary fury. “I think I can manage that,” he assured. “I can multitask.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I murmured encouragingly as I worked his zipper. “I know you have it in you.”

  Trucker’s hand moved over mine, helping me slip his dick out from the prison of boxers and jeans. “I’d rather have it in you.”

  Well, that made two of us.

  ***

  It was really happening. Him and Pinky Grover in an actual bed. Fuck, he was the luckiest—stupidest—man on Earth. And he’d almost blown it. Thinking about how the man she was touching right now—exploring, squeezing lightly, fuuuuck—was basically a lie. What did it matter that the Trucker Carrigan she saw a couple of times a week wasn’t entirely real? Who he was right now, in this moment, kissing her and thrusting into her fist, was honest. This wasn’t a lie.

  Trucker flipped them so she was below him. So he could stare down at her gorgeous face while she got reacquainted with his dick. So he could get under her skirt and return the handsy favor. After all, that had been his impulsive offer, hadn’t it? To watch her get off? He needed to make good on that. To make really good.