Tripped Out: A Blacktop Cowboys® Novella Read online

  Stirling was so stunned by his caveman behavior she couldn’t speak.

  Liam laid her on the couch and stretched out on top of her, preventing her escape.

  The smart man had pinned her legs so she couldn’t knee him in the balls, either.

  So she glared at him. She’d said her piece; in fact, she’d probably said far too much.

  “Did you mean it?” he demanded.

  “Mean what? Mean to leave? Yes.”

  “No. Did you mean it that we’re in a relationship?”

  The vulnerability in his eyes just…slayed her. “The pranks, the bickering, the one-upmanship… We’ve been in a relationship since day one, Dr. Dumbass. An adversarial relationship, sort of fucked-up, to be honest. But in that time… Have I permeated your thoughts to the point you aren’t sure if you want to strangle me or if you want to fuck me? Do you have entire conversations in your head about what clever remarks you’ll toss off the next time you run into me? Or maybe you plan to cross my path just so we can have a snarky back and forth? Does your heart race when you see me? Do you imagine shutting my smart mouth with a steamy kiss? Do you fantasize about storming into my office, locking the door, bending me over my desk, fucking me in silence until we both explode, and then leaving without saying a word?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes to what?”

  “Yes to all of it.”

  That’s when she noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He looked less haughty. Less closed off. But still so sexy she couldn’t catch her breath.

  Or maybe you can’t breathe because the man is squishing you.

  But Stirling wasn’t about to complain.

  “You believe that us fighting, playing practical jokes, and acting like mortal enemies has been some kind of prolonged foreplay?”

  She snorted. “Dude. It’s still foreplay since we haven’t fucked.”

  “Yet.” Liam kissed her. Not with hunger but with sweet seduction. Soft, teasing nibbles, followed by the slick slide of his lips. Tasting her. Tormenting her. Finally, he slowed the sensual assault on her mouth.

  “Please tell me that kiss was the last bout of foreplay before you fuck me mindless.”

  He chuckled and planted a lingering smooch on her lips. “No. That was a thank you for voicing everything I couldn’t kiss.” Another smooch. “A you understand me and aren’t running away yelling freak at me kiss.” A longer press of his lips. “An I’m ready to talk honestly about my past kiss…” His eyes gleamed. “But let’s have a couple of hits first.”

  Stirling laughed. “Good plan. As long as there’s hair-pulling fucking afterward.”

  “You truly are the perfect woman, Stirling Gradsky.” He pushed back and stood.

  She scooted around into a sitting position.

  He looked over his shoulder at her after he pulled out his weed box. “Where’s my shirt?”

  “On the counter. Why? Did you think I stole it?”

  “No. I liked seeing you wear it. Never had anyone do that before.”

  That he’d admitted such a sweet sentiment… She felt oddly honored.

  Like before, Liam arranged the cannabis essentials in a precise row. Stirling noticed he’d pulled out a vaporizer pen—one that used concentrated oil instead of bud or wax.

  He caught her watching him. “Don’t know if I can deal with any more smoke today.”

  “Understood. What tasty concoction are you creating for us?”

  “Just a mix of oils I’ve found that don’t gum up in this thing.”

  “Cool. That’s probably why I don’t mess with oils. I had a pen like that for buds.”

  “We all have our likes and dislikes.” He placed the mouthpiece on.

  “What is your dislike?”

  “Dabbing.”

  “Why?”

  “Using a blowtorch to vaporize concentrates is a complicated and dangerous process when there are so many other options. Plus, I get way high, way too fast.” He handed her the vape pen first.

  The taste remained citrusy smooth, even through her exhale. “I like that.”

  Liam indulged in a huge hit and passed the pen back. “I’ve found two tokes to be the perfect ratio.”

  “I’ll stick with one.”

  After he finished his second hit, he set the pen next to his eyeglasses on the table. Then he stretched out on the couch, tugging her down with him so the side of her face rested on his chest. “Are you comfortable?”

  She tried not to let it bother her that he’d chosen this position so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eye when he talked of his past. Turning her hips, she threw her leg over his. “Now I am.”

  “Good.” Liam began lightly dragging his fingertips up and down her arm. He brushed one soft, warm kiss up high on her forehead before he spoke. “I don’t remember my mother at all. She ditched me at her mom’s when I was five. My earliest memory was sitting at Gramma’s kitchen table, eating a deviled ham sandwich. It’s still my comfort food. Anyway, I attended public school until I was twelve. After taking a standardized test, my teacher, the school counselor, and the principal called Gramma and me in for a meeting.”

  “Let me guess. Your scores were off the chart.”

  He chuckled. “The highest they’d ever seen. Apparently the highest for my grade level in the entire state. They urged Gramma to enroll me in a private school for the academically gifted. Keep in mind that my sixty-five-year-old gramma worked as a daytime janitor. We barely scraped by. There was no way she could afford private school. But the school counselor was determined to find the tuition. And she did. Scholarships up the wazoo. We needed to ‘only’ come up with an extra two hundred dollars.”

  “For the entire year?”

  “No. Two hundred dollars per month. So Gramma switched to the nighttime janitorial crew since it paid more. I enrolled in private school that fall. I hated the uniforms, hated the hierarchy, hated being the skinny poor kid. It didn’t help that I academically outpaced my fellow students so they had an excuse to make my life hell. Whenever Gramma asked about school, I lied and swore it was awesome. On an academic level it was challenging. That part I loved. The social aspect? A nightmare. One thing I hadn’t known? Working the night shift paid more because there was more work to do. It wore my grandmother down. She already had arthritis and she developed chronic pain syndrome. Her insurance wouldn’t cover high-priced pain meds, so she sucked it up and suffered.” His fingers stopped moving on her arm. “That’s what I hated most of all. She’d given up so much to raise me. It killed me to see her curled into a ball in her bed because her body hurt so badly. I felt helpless and guilty and told her I’d go back to public school, but she refused to consider it.”

  “How old were you?”

  “At that time…fifteen.”

  “Did you have anyone to talk to?”

  “I’d made one friend—Dougie—we social outcasts stuck together. He’d landed in private school after being expelled from public school for smoking pot. So I confided in him. He suggested I get a nighttime job to help out financially. He also mentioned that marijuana had medicinal properties and gave me a joint. Of course, I balked. Gramma wouldn’t consider getting high, right? But one day the pain was so bad I bucked up and asked her if it would help.”

  Stirling felt him swallow.

  “After I convinced her I wasn’t doing drugs—I’d done research on cannabis to find a way to help her—she finally tried it. It eased her pain, but she didn’t like the smoking part. I tracked down a water vapor heavy bong, hoping it delivered on the promise of less smoke but equal medical benefits.”

  “What about edibles?”

  “Edibles…inconsistent information at that time. It was more of a joke. ‘Hey, you want my Aunt Ginny’s recipe for pot brownies?’”

  Stirling snickered. “And she’d probably have to eat an entire pan of them.”

  “Exactly. Since she didn’t have another option, she kept lighting up.”

  “Dougie was your dealer?
”

  “No. At first he’d supplied me out of his own stash. When I learned how much Gramma needed and how much it cost, Dougie set me up with a dealer.”

  “Wait… Dougie. Why is that name familiar?”

  “Because he’s the cannabis specialist who helped me deal with the plants Friday night. I’ve never met anyone who knows more than he does.”

  “You’re still friends with him?”

  “We kept in touch over the years. He’s a brilliant guy, but the crazy kind of brilliant.”

  “Like attracts like. He’s a perfect friend for you,” she teased.

  Liam lightly tapped her ass.

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He won’t admit to it, but I’d lay odds he’s a hacker.”

  “Wow. He’s not in the cannabis industry?”

  “He grows his own. When we were teens he turned his closet into a grow house.”

  “Enterprising.”

  “Selfish with his product, but not his knowledge. So when I discovered cannabis could be ingested in pill form, he helped me learn how to make them. We screwed up a bunch of times before we got the viscosity right.”

  “Were pills easier for your grandma?”

  “Much. I kept a notebook detailing…well, everything. Especially how her body responded. Sometimes she got a head high and fell asleep. Other times she’d get an energetic full-body boost. But it worked. There wasn’t a chance she could OD, like with oxy. Pharmaceutical companies manufacture drugs full of dangerous and deadly chemicals. But cannabis, which is natural and nonaddictive, is illegal. Makes no sense on any level.”

  “Preaching to the choir, Liam.”

  He sighed. “I know.” His hand had drifted to her arm. The rough tips of his fingers trailed from the ball of her shoulder to the inside of her wrist.

  “Your grandma didn’t have a problem sending her teenaged grandson out onto the streets of Denver to buy weed for her?”

  “She had a serious issue with it. So I lied. I told her I was buying from Dougie, but she couldn’t ever let on that she knew.”

  “Sneaky.”

  “Not sneaky enough.”

  She propped her chin on his chest and looked at him. “What happened?”

  “I started working for my dealer. Partially because he gave me a discount on my biweekly purchase. Partially because it paid more than bussing tables and it allowed me more free time to apply for college scholarships and grants.”

  “When you mean working for…?”

  “I delivered packages a couple times a week. I had no idea what was in them—I didn’t want to know. But given what he did for a living… It was obvious. Anyway, I’d been his ‘errand’ boy for about a year. That day’s delivery was to a fitness club. I had the locker number and the combination memorized. But evidently a skinny, nerdy-looking kid with glasses roused suspicion among the body builders, so the front desk manager detained me. The cops came, searched my backpack, and found the unmarked package.”

  “What did they find when they opened it?”

  “Baggies of pills. Hash. Mushrooms. I didn’t have to feign shock because I was shocked. They cuffed me and dragged me to juvenile. I couldn’t get ahold of my gramma so the cops brought in a woman from social services. That allowed them to start grilling me. Even when I hoped it never happened, getting caught had always been a possibility, so I had a cover story.”

  “Which was?”

  “A big body builder dude stopped me at the end of the block and said he wanted to play a joke on his buddy. Said he’d pay me twenty bucks to take a package into the locker room, write ‘John’ on the outside, and leave it in an empty locker. The cops didn’t believe me and kept asking the same questions over and over. My answers never wavered. So they decided to book me for possession, figuring I’d crack when faced with jail time.” He fidgeted beneath her. “I cried. In fucking juvie. I was terrified to spend even one night in there, wearing inmate orange.”

  “Did anything bad happen?”

  “No. The other kids ignored me. The next morning I had an appearance in juvenile court and Gramma was there so they released me. The cops testified, calling my explanation a ‘total fabrication’. The front desk manager admitted they had several members named John.”

  “Ah, the first seeds of doubt.”

  He yawned. “I had two ‘character’ witnesses. The school counselor who helped me get into private school and my physics teacher. They touted my academics, my flawless disciplinary record, and my helpful nature. Neither of them had trouble believing I’d do a favor for a stranger. With no prior history of arrests, the judge dismissed the charges.”

  “So nothing went on your permanent record.”

  “Nope.” He stretched and rested his forearm across his eyes. “That’s the benefit of a dealer using underage couriers.”

  “Did he know you’d gotten caught?”

  “Of course. He cut me loose. But for not ratting him out, he left me five hundred grams of weed under my pillow.”

  “Over a pound? Seriously?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “What did your grandma say about your stint in juvie?”

  “She asked if I was dealing for Dougie.” Another jaw-cracking yawn. “I didn’t have to lie to her about that.”

  Stirling nestled into his chest. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “You’re welcome. But it’s still embarrassing,” he mumbled.

  “During my teen years I didn’t hang around with kids who bragged about juvie like it was a private club. Bad boys… I never understood the attraction. Not that they were attracted to me, a girl with braces and acne, not to mention my hard line of what was right and what was wrong. No gray areas in my world. My friends were like me—focused on academics and what came after high school. My sister wasn’t. At the time she made me feel like a loser for not running wild like she did. Looking back, I was too afraid acting tough and reckless wouldn’t make a difference in how other kids my age saw me. And looking like you were trying too hard to be cool was worse than just accepting that you weren’t and didn’t fit in, know what I mean?”

  No answer.

  His breathing had evened out, meaning he’d fallen asleep.

  Stupid karma.

  “Fine. I deserve this. But is the ‘payback’s a bitch’ smirk necessary, Dr. Dozed Off?”

  No response.

  “I’m really glad I didn’t take that second hit.”

  She listened to his slow and steady heartbeat. It’d been a rough couple of days and he needed sleep more than sex. She disentangled from him and he didn’t move.

  After she covered him with that butt-ugly crocheted afghan, she perched on the edge of the couch and watched him sleep. “Are we ever gonna get this right?”

  Stirling grabbed her stuff—including his flannel shirt—and went home.

  Chapter Eight

  Chaos ruled at High Society on Monday morning.

  With one half of the stage-one grow house padlocked on the outside and hermetically sealed on the inside, employees were justifiably spooked.

  Liam had taken delivery of the extraction machine and was waiting for the contractors to arrive, when Kiki, the consultant who handled paperwork for the various revenue and enforcement agencies, showed up in terrorize mode. Not only hadn’t they called her when the MED agents were onsite, with Macon out of the country for an indeterminate amount of time, she’d have to deal with Stirling.

  He watched Kiki barrel into Stirling’s office—but she only got as far as Stirling’s assistant Shanna’s desk. So as Kiki paced and texted on her phone, Liam leaned in the doorway, figuring he should stick around in case Stirling needed moral support.

  Or maybe you want to see Stirling shift into ass-kicking mode because it’s highly entertaining… Especially when you’re not on the receiving end.

  Shanna crossed over to Stirling’s office and opened the door. “Miss Gradsky will see you now.”

  “About goddamned time.” Kiki
stormed in and Shanna left the door open so Liam could follow her.

  Stirling flicked a quick look at him but her expression didn’t change. “Kiki. Won’t you have a seat?”

  “No.” She slammed her hands on the desk and loomed over Stirling. “I want to know what is going on here right now. First, there was an infestation that required the MED onsite for hours as the affected plants were destroyed and no one contacted me. Then I find out there’s an industrial extraction machine going in? And once again, no one told me about this development or asked about the dozens of hours that will be added to my workload.”

  Stirling tapped her pen on her desk blotter and studied Kiki coolly. “Is that all?”

  “Is that all?” Kiki exploded. “Don’t you think that is enough?”

  Stirling rolled her office chair back and stood. Then she mimicked Kiki’s pose, angling her body across the desk until they were face to face. “With all due respect, Kiki, I own this business. I don’t answer to you. I certainly don’t need your permission to purchase equipment for my business.”

  Liam did a mental fist pump.

  “Dr. Argent handled the situation with MED. He told me about the outbreak as soon as it was discovered and the measures he’d taken to contain it. I was here Sunday when the authorities were onsite. Besides Dr. Argent, I was the only person required to be here. What I didn’t want to have happen is exactly what happened when you came storming in here like an ill wind, throwing out accusations and rattling my employees.”

  Kiki’s back snapped straight. “I only—”

  Stirling held up her hand. “You acted as if you have more power here than you really do. While Macon and I appreciate the work you’ve done for our company in the past, if you believe the decision we made together last week will create more work than you’re willing to take on, I’d completely understand if you felt the need to turn in your resignation.”