RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,125
instead of on a romantic weekend away. I smile at the retreating truck until my cheeks hurt, waving until it’s out of sight, and then I’m up and running, heading down the driveway toward my own weekend getaway.
The car’s set back from the road, parked down a narrow gravel track that obscures it from sight. Black, sleek and shining, the ’66 Mustang Fastback looks brand new, even though it’s well over forty years old. Wren leans against the driver’s door, head down, hair hiding his face. The faded grey t-shirt he’s wearing pulls taut over his arms and across his back, his low-slung jeans hanging off his hips. His scruffy, worn boots are missing, replaced by a pair of black Chuck Taylor high tops. A slow smile spreads across his face when he hears my feet crunching on the gravel.
“I was beginning to think you were gonna bail on me,” he says.
He still hasn’t looked at me. He does this a lot—refraining from lifting his head and making eye contact with me until the very last second, until I’m standing right in front of him. He finally looks up at me from under those expressive, dark eyebrows, and my toes curl in my shoes. “How do you even know it’s me?”
“You’re five-foot-four, Little E,” he says, smirking. “You have a very short stride.”
“Rude.”
“True,” he counters, hooking his fingers through the belt loops of my jeans, pulling me toward him. He brings his mouth down on mine, and the birds stop singing in the trees. The air stills. The sun burns a little brighter. When he releases me, he slides his hands up inside my shirt, drawing small circles over my skin with the tips of his fingers. “You’re late,” he rumbles. “I don’t like to be kept waiting.”
I give him a look. One that he smiles at, running his tongue over his bottom lip, wetting it. We trade these silent exchanges often now—my wordless chiding in return for his entertained, half-felt apologies. “You’re not the boss of me,” I remind him.
“Aren’t I?”
He ducks down for another kiss, but I scoot back, out of reach. “Most definitely not.”
Fire ignites in his eyes. “If I tell you to do something, don’t you do it? If I ask you for something, don’t I get it?” he muses.
“Only because I deign to do or give you what you want, Jacobi. There’ll come a day when I won’t feel so accommodating.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to live in fear of that day, then,” he purrs, prowling after me. I shriek, running around the car, but it’s no use. He was right, I’m five four, and my legs are much shorter than his. He catches me with ease, locking his arms around my waist and lifting me off the floor. “In the car with you,” he growls into my ear. “We’ve got places to be.”
He holds me against his side with one arm, freeing up a hand so that he can open the passenger door of the car and bundle me inside. I land with a soft uffff on the leather bench seat. He slams the door behind me before I can play at making a run for it. Two seconds later, he’s sliding himself into the car beside me and turning the key in the ignition.
There’s something pretty fucking spectacular about Wren behind the wheel of a car. I’ve never seen him drive before; Pax always runs the Riot House boys up to the academy whenever the weather’s bad enough to warrant the short drive. Seeing him like this now, his actions sure and confident as he throws the Mustang into gear and hits the gas, turns me on in the weirdest way. The strangest things tend to turn me on now. The act of watching him fix his coffee, popping the lid off his to-go cup, licking the foam off of it before sprinkling the tiniest bit of sugar across the top of his latte and snapping the plastic back on the cup again. The way his eyes flit quickly and surely over the pages of a book when he’s reading something he finds fascinating. The way he absent-mindedly pulls his lip through his teeth when he’s thinking deeply. Fuck, the way he looks in his clothes, and the sight of his bare feet, and the way my whole being vibrates with satisfaction whenever I’m lucky enough to earn a burst of laughter out of him.