Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel by J. A. Hornbuckle Read Free Book Online Page A

last of my trepidation.  It had been our drink of choice back in the day.  Something Stan and I shared on too many occasions to count.  And the taste of it, the feelings that came with the heat that then lined my belly, I had to admit, were awesome.
    Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and lowered my chin in determination as I marched back into my bedroom.  Climbing back up onto my bed, I crossed my legs Indian-style and pulled the cardboard box towards me, pulling the lid off and flinging it off the mattress. 
    No freaking, stupid box was going to get the better of me !
    Luckily, the papers on top were simply receipts.  Receipts for the self-storage locker I still maintained in Missoula after I’d sold my childhood home when my mom had passed.  Thirteen receipts showing the annual payment for a 10 x 10 space containing items I’d deemed important enough to keep, but not to carry with me when I left.
    Putting those in a pile to the side, I hit the first of the rest.
    The pictures.
    The photos of me…of him…and of us.
    Of the ‘us’ that we used to be.
    And the viewing hit me so hard, so deeply, I shut my eyes to rein in the dizziness.
    Seriously? 
    Had I really been that pretty?  That young?
    And that in love? 
    Oh god, the look in my eyes as I stared into the camera that I remembered Stan held as he coaxed me, teased me into smiling.  It was there, all the love I’d held for him was fully exposed for everyone to see.
    Had I ever been that open, that vulnerable?
    I watched as my thumb traced over my eighteen year old face before it moved to Stan’s.  He hadn’t been what?  Twenty?  But, god.  He was gorgeous, his golden skin and hazel eyes framed by his dark brown shaggy hair. 
    And that smile.  How had I forgotten that happy look when I had seen it every day on J.R.’s face?  A smile that was so full, so sincere, it made your own face crease in return.
    I slowly shuffled through them, those photographs that chronicled our time together never realizing I was crying until I heard the hitch in my breath.  A deep catch that took me out of the past and back to my thirty-six year old self.  One which held evidence of my mourning in streaming eyes and nose.  But then grief, even of the remembered variety, was never pretty.
    Restacking the photos in time-sequence order, I went back through them again and again.
    Yeah.
    I wasn’t mistaken. 
    I had been that young.
    I had been that in love.
    And I had been loved that much in return.
    At the bottom of the box was a copy of our marriage certificate as well as a copy of our divorce papers.  The beginning and the end of our time together but which didn’t even come close to describing the life we’d shared in between the two dates.
    Of the laughter or the arguments.
    Not even of the dark, dark nights where our bodies had taken over trying to communicate to each other when the words hadn’t been enough to express what we felt.  Communing in secret, sexy ways that left us both boneless, more than satisfied but still reaching to touch, to be connected over and over again.  Sleepless nights that had somehow found us recharged and raring to attack the coming day.
    Couplings so erotic, I found my body, even thirteen years later, responding to the memory.  A tightening and moistening as I remembered his touch, his words, the feel of him as he moved within me.
    ‘That’s it, babe.  Yeah.  Like that.  Give me that fucking beauty,’ he’d growl into my ear and I would go up in flames knowing I was pleasing him.  ‘So fucking tight, Dory,’ he’d murmur almost on a groan. ‘And so goddamn wet.  Did I make you that way?’
    I found myself panting and when I looked down, I found one of my hands was stroking a firm, sharp nipple as the other was tracing my sodden cleft through my sleep shorts.  All because of the memory of him .  All at the thought of having him inside me, slewing deep between my legs as I clutched him to me with both