Free Steele: Into Your Heart (Carolina Bad Boys #3 by Rie Warren

school, when I used to tinker on it with my dad. Over the years I’d made a few modifications—setting it lower to the ground, tinting the windows, revving up the engine. I’d always imagined one day passing it onto a kid of my own.
    I stopped at the white wooden clapboard garage, unlocked the doors, and pulled them open. The welcome smell of grease and gasoline filled my nostrils. This structure must’ve stood on the spot since sometime in the 1800s. The windows were original, small squares of leaded glass. We stowed the garden shit on one side, our motorcycles on the other. Speaking of, there was no sign of Boomer’s bike. Good. Didn’t want to see him anyway. I had to get my game face on first. The man was like a goddamn bloodhound. He could always sniff out lies. I didn’t want him to find out about Ashe and me; I wasn’t sure how he’d react.
    I closed the garage down and slipped up the side porch and into the house. No one home. Excellent. Emptying my bags in the middle of the kitchen floor, I did the single man’s laundry sorting: dirty, really dirty, should be burned. All of it went into two mismatched piles and I started the first load on hot. Make that super hot with an extra scoop of detergent.
    Kicking off my boots, I suddenly found myself swarmed by cats, two of them. They butted their heads against me like they were goats. They arched their backs, purring and rubbing.
    Rolling my eyes, I reached down to do the chin scratch. One was an orange tom, the other a gray tabby cat. A boy and a girl. I knew what they wanted. They liked to cling to my legs and make walking impossible until I fed them. I scooped out their food, replenished their water.
    “There. Eat that and shut it.” I patted both their rumps, and they jerked their tails back and forth.
    Sherlock was the tomcat, Watson the chick tabby. We liked to call them Shitlock and Twatson. Stray cats. Just couldn’t let them starve on my doorstep when they’d shown up within two months of each other last year. Mangy, scrawny, starving for affection things, but they’d filled out. Their fur shined now. We’d gotten them neutered, bathed the crap out of them with flea shampoo, put up with their yowling. Worse than kids, the pair of them. And somehow they both always ended up on my bed at night.
    I didn’t have the heart to boot them out.
    I hit the stairs, taking a moment to straighten the silver anniversary photograph of my mom and dad. Such a good-looking couple—Dad a little imposing with his blond hair like mine until he smiled and his eyes had crinkled in mischievousness. Mom the dark haired beauty Cat had taken after. They’d been awesome parents, the best a kid could ask for. Stern and strict when necessary, loving and giving in every other way. They’d pretty much adored each other. We’d always known that. This house used to be filled with all the good stuff. Now it was just me, Boomer, and a couple of cats.
    Continuing upstairs more slowly, I ran my fingertips across the framed pictures. Boomer at football, the massive linebacker. Me at a skater park, wearing a cocky grin as I flashed the “rock on” sign. Cat during a ballet recital with pigtails, of all the damn things.
    We’d had it good.
    Maybe I still could.
    In the shower, I washed away the road dust and the grimy grit. Water rained over me as I rub-a-dub-dubbed. I tried to banish Ashe from my thoughts. Didn’t work. We’d shared several showers in Myrtle Beach, all of them ending with me inside her one way or the other. Slick and wet, her sleek body had never looked hotter.
    And now I was hard. Again. Fucking stupid cock. I wasn’t doing the beat-my-meat in the shower routine like a horny teen so I ignored the deep throbbing ache in my groin and went about my business. Quick dry off. Fingers through hair. Goatee trim and tidy. I exited the steamy room into my bedroom. Aaand Twatson curled up in the middle of my pillow, purring like a freight train. After I pulled on a pair