Bones by the Wood by Catherine Johnson

If he was worried that she was going to push him away, that wasn’t going to happen.  Thea slid her own arms around his waist and smoothed her palms up over the leather he was wearing, feeling the rough texture of the patches sewn onto it as she gripped his shoulders and pulled herself closer.  She wasn’t sure what she was doing, or even if she was trying to do anything; she only knew that she somehow needed a connection with him.
     
    At that his mouth came down firmly on hers.  It shouldn’t have been possible, but he pulled her even more tightly against his body and when she parted her lips, his tongue swept into her mouth and danced against hers.  She felt surrounded by him, encompassed by his the heat, the strength, the scent of him.  He ended the kiss, far too soon, with a gentle nip at her lower lip.  Thea felt dazed with arousal and almost stumbled when he pulled back a little.
     
    “You got a phone, sweetheart?”
     
    “Huh.  Yeah.”  She fished out the embarrassing technological museum piece out of her bag and handed it over.  Dizzy tapped on the keypad.
     
    “My number’s in there now.  You need help, whatever reason, you call me, yeah?”
     
    “Yeah.”  Thea just gave up trying to understand what the fuck was going on and nodded dumbly.
     
    “Good girl.  See y’around, sweetheart.”  Dizzy reseated himself astride his bike.  Thea didn’t hear him fire up the engine until after she’d closed the door of the building behind her.
     
    She shed her clothes as quickly as she could and climbed into her bed where she could hide under the comforter.  Curled up under the covers she felt safer, but undeniably lonely. Before sleep came she let her mind wonder what it would feel like to be loved by a man like Dizzy, to be the focus of his attention, to always be protected by him, to know that her boy was protected by him.  That was a powerfully stirring concept for her.  She imagined what it might feel like to be held in those arms and to be caressed by those same hands that she had seen beat a man half to death, assuming that they were capable of any gentleness at all.
     
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
    After a couple of hours, Dizzy gave sleep up as a lost cause.  Beating the tweaker wasn’t weighing on his mind.  The fact that he’d had to do it all was creeping into his thoughts some.  The fact that the Priests had been unaware that the Rabids had been running such a loose operation irritated him.  It didn’t matter so directly now that the Rabids no longer existed, but he wondered what else they might be missing.  The fact the Rabids had not even been taking care of their own town made their attempt to take on the Priests and cut them out of business all the more laughable, like a Chihuahua taking on an elephant.
     
    He needed to call Samuel to talk out his concerns, but that wasn’t the only thing distracting him, and he didn’t think Samuel could help with the other reason for his lack of rest.  The attraction he had to a certain store clerk, a woman he seemed unable to stay away from, had him buying so much Jack that he might well need a stint in rehab soon if he didn’t figure out where the fuck he was taking himself.
     
    Dizzy ran the shower on the wrong side of cold; he needed to think clearly, and he wasn’t thinking about any of the things that he needed to be thinking about.  He hissed as the icy water hit his skin, but gritted his teeth and physically shook the shock off and refused to cave and add hot water, but by god was he glad when he was clean and he could turn the spray off.
     
    He toweled himself dry vigorously to get some heat back into his chilled skin and pulled a clean pair of jeans on.  Remaining barefoot and shirtless, he padded into the kitchen nook off the great room and set coffee to brew.  He propped his hip against the kitchen counter and stared out of the window at the rapidly overgrowing lawn area while he waited.  He was going to have