“How ’bout this,” he ignored her rambling on Ikea and the fact she spent six times more on a guest bedroom set than he did on rent his first year away from his dad. “I take the laptop in and see if Cherry’s got a fix on someone who looks at computers. She’s got one in the office, it can’t work all the time, and the woman is a lot of things, but an IT geek isn’t one of them. We also pass it around you got that shit available. But you don’t take anything less than three K for it, Carrie. If it’s near-new and quality, you do not take that hit. You sell for as much as you can, get a laptop that’s dependable, and bank the rest.”

“That sounds like a plan,” she said.

That was easy.

Now for the last.

“You’re worried about your dad payin’ for that unit, we’ll shift crap around at the Compound or the stockroom at the store. We put it there.”

She grinned. “My manly man biker. He has an answer for everything.”

“My goofball Butterfly. She’s got a knack for makin’ me hard even when she’s bein’ a total goof,” he shot back.

Her eyes fired and her hand came up to hit his chest.

“Little high, baby,” he muttered.

Her gaze heated further, but as she slid her hand down, she asked, “Is this much sex natural?”

That said her ex not only didn’t have talent, but it would seem he also didn’t have stamina.

“Natural to what?” he asked back, going in, aiming for her jaw.

“Natural to a body’s health. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to have a heart attack in your twenties with all the effort you put in to pleasuring me.”

Pleasuring me.

And the woman didn’t think she was a goofball.

He grinned, finished running his lips down her jaw, lifted up, and pressed closer.

“I think my body can hack it,” he told her.

“Well that’s good,” she mumbled, eyes on his mouth, which he felt on his mouth and also in his dick.

“What you want, Carrie?” he whispered.

She lifted her gaze to his and whispered back, “You can start by kissing me, sweetie.”

He started there.

Some time later, he finished a fuckuva lot differently.

Tack

Tack stood on the deck of his house, his eyes to the silent dark of the woods on his mountain.

He had his phone to his ear and it was ringing.

“Tack,” Knight greeted.

“Yo, you hear?” Tack asked.

“Not yet,” Knight answered.

“Lee found Tine. He sang for Hank. They’re booking Monk right now for conspiracy to commit murder,” Tack told him.

Knight was silent.

Tack gave him that for a few beats before he said low, “We need to deal.”