Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8)

by Susan Fanetti

  He closed his fingers on a soft nipple and felt it harden under his touch, but she stayed asleep, soft and pliant in his arms. Moving carefully, he worked his bottom arm under her, threading it under her neck and hooking it around so it could take up play at her tit while he smoothed his other hand back over her belly and between her legs.

  Ah, she was wet. Even in sleep, her body knew him, wanted him. Pushing his fingers through her slick folds, he found her clit—and that sensation drew her forward into waking. She moaned, and her hips twisted gently.

  “Morning, shortcake.” He let his lips and breath dance at her ear. She still wore all her little silver hoops, lined all the way around, and the hoop in the center of her ear, too. He caught one in his teeth and pulled gently.

  She hummed a quiet greeting and twisted her hips again, rubbing her pretty ass on his swollen cock. But her eyes stayed closed, and her body soft, still floating on a cloud of rest. Knowing precisely what she wanted, Becker grinned and got to work on waking her up with an orgasm.

  With slow, soft, lazy strokes, he caressed her pussy and fondled her tit, letting nothing but the texture of his fingers strum over her soft, slick flesh, without pressure. Just light kisses of touch, like they had nowhere to be, nothing to do but stay in this place in time. Her head rolled back, against his shoulder, and a mellow, earthy breath slid over her lips.

  When his fingers dripped with the needy heat of her, he picked up his pace a little, added some pressure, pushed a finger into her. The sound of her indrawn breath swirled around his head, skipped over his skin, pulled his cock up, made it weep. Unable to resist his own carnal need, he rocked his hips forward until he could tuck himself into the join of her ass, the cleave of her thighs.

  She let her top thigh drop forward, making way for him, and he could have pushed into the sweet clench of her pussy, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Not yet. He wanted this, her languorous enjoyment, creeping slowly up, waking her by climbing degrees of heat.

  It was early enough that they had time. He hoped. Stay asleep, kiddos, he thought. Let Mommy and Daddy have this today. Please.

  Sage moaned with more vigor, and her arm came up and hooked over his head. “Oh, Beck, oh God,” she sighed, and he went to the next level, shifting from tantalizing play to explicit intent. Still not too fast or rough, still gentle and easy, but more pressure now, responding to her climb.

  Her body moved with the rhythm of his hands now, driving herself into his touch, urging him onward. She was fully awake and fully engaged, and his hand was soaked in her need.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, right there, right there, right there, don’t stop, oh God.” Her voice stayed low, even in her throes. She grabbed his hands and pushed down on them as her body twitched and quivered and throbbed. He stopped and held on until she could relax in his arms.

  “Morning, shortcake,” he said again and kissed her shoulder.

  “Morning, babycakes. That was awesome.” Her hand pushed between them and wrapped around his cock. “Is there time for more?”

  “Fuck, I sure hope so.” He rolled to his back. “Climb on up.” After she hit about the halfway mark of a pregnancy, he couldn’t fuck her from on top anymore; he was too big, and things changed in there, swelled up or something, making his path smaller and more sensitive. It didn’t always hurt her in the same place or the same way, so he couldn’t figure out how to be sure to avoid it. From the side, it worked okay, but her on top was best—she could run the show and get exactly the depth she wanted.

  She straddled him, and eased his cock in, sinking slowly down, her eyes on his, black with lust. Becker groaned and clamped his hands on her bare belly, big with their boy. He closed his eyes and let her ride, giving himself up to the perfection of being fucked by his wife.

  The baby kicked his hand and rolled, and Sage gasped.

  “You good?” he asked on a grunt.

  “I’m great. He just punched a kidney, I think. But you feel amazing.”

  On the nightstand, the lights on the baby monitor went green, the color surging in an arc though the little bulbs, and John’s toddler voice filled the room. “Lemmy! Lemmy! Lemmylemmylemmylemmy!”

  Sage laughed and swiveled her hips. Oh shit, that felt good. He didn’t need much time—all his slow teasing had him strung like a guitar string, and she’d been playing him like a rock star—if he could focus, he’d only need a few minutes.

  The jingle of Lemmy’s tags came over the monitor, and John laughed—and then yelled, “OUT! OUT! MAMA OUT! DADDY OUT! OUT!”

  “Fuck. C’mon, Johnny. Have your old man’s back here, will ya?”

  And then Lady, their beagle mix, began to bay.

  Sage was full-out howling with laughter now. The spasms of her amusement clenched around his cock and made Becker need to come or die, one or the other.

  “Sure, yuk it up. You got to come.”

  “You think you can do an express ride?”

  “Honey, I’m so close, I can barely breathe.”

  Sage reached over and turned off the monitor. “Then let’s get you there.”

  She planted her hands on his chest, locked her eyes on his, and she got him there.

  ~oOo~

  “Ah-ah-ah, that’s enough blueberries.” Becker caught the carton before Annie dumped the whole thing into her yogurt. He dumped some into Emmie’s bowl, too, being careful to give her the same amount.

  John sat in his high chair and threw Cheerios at the dogs. They were no fools; they practically had the floor worn out under his chair.

  “Emmie, why are you only wearing one shoe?” Sage asked, leaning on the island. This big island had been at the top of her wish list when they’d designed the house: A huge kitchen with an island in the middle and pots hanging above. Room for the family to sit around it, too.

  When they’d found out she was pregnant with John, and were already bursting the walls out of their little house, they’d bought some land about half an hour southwest of the Tulsa metro area and built a big one-story farmhouse to their own specific needs and wants. The land was mostly woods, and Becker liked the way the trees snugged up close to the house. The kids could play in those trees, and there were no bad memories or bad deeds buried in among the roots.

  “Lady took it,” Emmie answered her mother, as if that were all the answer necessary.

  Becker laughed and tugged her dark ponytail. “Took it where, bunny?”

  “Outside.” She shoved a big spoonful of blueberries and yogurt into her mouth. Discussion over, issue resolved.

  Becker turned to his wife, and they shared a shrug. “I’ll go look.”

  “No, I got it. I need to get some vegetables out of the garden, anyway. Will you get John in the bath?”

  “Mommy, I need my hair like Emmie’s!” Annie whined.

  Becker set his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll do it, kitty.”

  “No, you make it messy. I want Mommy!”

  The dogs both leapt up from their Cheerio shower and ran to the front of the house. Lady bayed, as usual, like she’d scented a fox. Somebody was coming to the door. Becker rose from his chair, on alert as ever. The Bulls had been in peace for a long time now, but he had no intention of ever resting on that.

  The door opened without a knock or a bell. The alarm beeped its alert, but the best alert was the dogs, whose scrabbling and whining told Becker it was a friend, and he knew exactly who.

  “Hello, babies,” Mo said from the front hall, giving the dogs the love they wanted.

  “GRAMMO!” the girls both yelled and leapt from the table. John immediately fought to get out of his chair, straining and grunting like he’d been trapped in a torture device.

  Having lost all control of the moment, Becker released his son and let him waddle-run to join the fray. With a wink at Sage, who headed out back to the garden and the shoe search, Becker followed the kids.

  Mo was surrounded by children and dogs. She beamed up at him. “Morning, love.”

  “Hey, Mo. Sage
called in reinforcements, huh?”

  “She did. You’ve got to be going soon, yeah?”

  “I got time for a shower, but not much more than that. Sage is out back. We’ve lost a shoe.”

  She smiled at Emmie. “I see that. Well, a princess can’t very well attend a party with only one slipper, can she?”

  “Lady took it,” Emmie answered.

  “Did she now? Maybe Lady wants to be a princess, too.”

  “Grammo, I need my hair like Emmie’s,” Annie complained.

  Becker laughed. “I’m gonna hop in the shower. They’re in the middle of breakfast.”

  “Come, kiddos,” Mo picked John up and led the girls toward the kitchen. “We can’t start a good day without a good breakfast.”

  Becker stood in the hall and watched the kids and dogs happily follow Mo, and then he went back to the master bedroom and got a shower. The queens had shit handled.

  ~oOo~

  A fiery July sun blazed down over the Bulls. The summer had been dry, and every puff of wind blew a beige fog across the road. Becker rested sideways on the saddle of the Chief, feeling morose despite the club’s happy errand. A couple feet off, Maverick stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the dust blowing over his boots.

  They were on the free side of that tall, vicious fence up ahead, but it didn’t matter. Once you’d spent any moment of your life on the wrong side, the mere sight of it twisted you into a knot.

  “What the fuck’s taking so long?” Gunner muttered.

  Maverick answered without looking up. “They’re in no rush, Gun. They’ll squeeze every little bit of misery out of him before they turn him loose.”

  Becker nodded. Indeed they would. Inmates of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary got no quarter, no sympathy, certainly no empathy, even when their sentence was up.

  He looked at the bike parked beside his. Eight Ball’s Fatboy, with his kutte lying over the saddle. The prospect had detailed the bike beautifully, and paid the kutte the same good attention, but dust was covering up the gleaming chrome and leather.

  In September 2001, Eight Ball had gone in for a four-year sentence for manslaughter. Here in July 2007, after a two-year bump for beating a guard, he was finally about to be free.

  Eight had changed a lot in prison, especially after time got added. The reckless, willful bastard who pretended he didn’t give a rat’s ass about what people thought had grown serious and quiet. He was tired. His body had taken crushing abuse in these six years; he’d fought hard, for his life, virtually every single day of his sentence.

  Becker had thought, back in the day, that his friend could have used more seriousness and little less recklessness, but now he hoped freedom would restore some of Eight’s sense of himself. He knew as well as anyone that it would take time, but it was possible to feel human again. To trust that the freedom was real, that life was one’s own again.

  He looked around at his brothers. Every patch and the prospect, all here waiting on the right side of that nasty fence. Eight Ball had told him he didn’t want a big greeting party, but fuck that. He was one of them, and he was coming home at last. They were all here to greet him on his first free steps.

  The club had changed a bit since Eight had last sat at the table. Becker was at the head, with Simon and Rad at his sides. Terry was patched, and D.C. now, too, whom Eight Ball had never met. Mark, their prospect, had been in tenth fucking grade when Eight Ball had walked the wrong way into that forbidding, foreboding building.

  There were family members he didn’t know. Sage was still the most recent and youngest old lady, but they had three kids Eight had never met. Gunner and Leah had a little boy and a baby girl now. Maverick and Jenny had had a little girl since. Simon and Deb had another boy. Caleb and Cecily had had their boy—and Cecily was due with a girl a couple weeks after Sage was due with their second boy. Fitz and Kari had two girls and Quentin. Seventeen children made up the next generation of the Bulls family, with two more on the way. So far.

  For all the dark work the club did—and they were up to their shoulders in Volkovs and Perros, guns and drugs—what truly made them Bulls, the only thing that truly mattered, was family. The thirteen men who sat at that old oak table, the eight women who stood at their sides, and the children they sheltered and nurtured together. And Brian and Mo Delaney, who’d built the foundation on which they all stood. It was the strength of their love and loyalty that kept them whole, that kept them human, that held the dark outside the walls.

  In his years with the gavel, Becker had come to understand that his true strength as a leader was that: his love. Not love for the club. The bull was just a patch. It was a name, a history, a shared understanding. A symbol. But it wasn’t the thing he loved. He loved the men who wore it, and the women who loved them, and the children their love had made.

  They were a family. That they were also outlaws was almost irrelevant.

  An alarm buzzed behind the fence. Knowing the sound, both Becker and Maverick stood straight and looked over. Guards at their high posts shifted to look as well. Far back, at the building, a door opened, and Eight Ball stepped into the sun.

  Becker picked his friend’s kutte up from his Fatboy and approached the fence, stopping before the guards got antsy. He watched Eight approach—hugely muscled, his head shaved, a solid grey Van Dyke-style beard around his mouth. His limp had improved markedly over these years; it was still noticeable, but his gait wasn’t nearly as uneven.

  The final gate swung open and Eight Ball simply stood there. Becker remembered, and so did Maverick—that sense that it couldn’t be true, that it was all a fever dream, that one step to the right side of the fence would be its end, and he’d wake up in his cell.

  He took the step, and didn’t wake up. For a second, he stared at his boots, like he expected to catch fire on this side of the fence. Becker remembered that, too.

  He handed Eight’s kutte to Maverick, then stepped forward and opened his arms. “Hey, brother.”

  “Holy fuck, Beck,” Eight muttered. “Holy fuck.” He came close and dropped into Becker’s arms. “Holy fuck, holy fuck.”

  Becker held on while his friend quaked.

  Then the whole club circled them, and Eight pulled himself together to accept hugs from them all, even the patches he didn’t know. When he got to Maverick, both men pulled up short. Mav and Eight had never gotten along well, for all the same reasons Eight had trouble with everybody, but times about ten.

  But now they had this in common.

  “Hey, Mav.”

  Maverick smiled and held up Eight Ball’s kutte. “Hey, bro. You missing something?”

  Eight took the kutte gently, reverently, and simply held it on his hands. Then he lifted it to his face and took a deep, long whiff.

  “We had the prospect clean it, but man, Eight, your stink prevails,” Gunner said with a grin.

  Eight looked up and grinned back. “Eat my shit, brother.” He slid his arms into the black leather. “Let’s ride!”

  ~oOo~

  Late that night, Becker went through the house and checked the bedrooms. The twins were sound asleep, both curled up on Emmie’s bed, wound together in their favorite sleeping position, which was pretty similar to the clench they’d been in when they’d been pulled out of their mother’s belly. Their two guinea pigs squeaked quietly, rustling around in the shavings that covered the floor of their cage.

  Lemmy slept on his pink pad between the girls’ beds. He’d decided they were his responsibility on the day they’d come home, and he hadn’t faltered yet.

  John was crashed out in his crib, with his butt in the air—his favorite sleeping position. His little lullaby-light thing was still going. Lady was curled up in the rocking chair. Aside from her klaxon baying, she wasn’t half the guard dog Lemmy was—she was more likely to hide behind a kid in the face of danger—but she liked that old upholstered rocker.

  Finally, he made it to the master and eased the door open. The lights were out, exce
pt for the nightlight in their bathroom. Sage had been exhausted and gone straight to bed, and he wanted her to get her rest. She’d been on her feet all day, keeping the party going, making sure it didn’t get wild while the kids were there, leaving Janine in charge when it was time to let the beasts loose and get the children home.

  “Hey, I’m awake,” she said.

  “Sorry. I wanted you to sleep.” He came in and closed the door. Leaving the light off, he stripped off his clothes. Shit, it was cold in here.

  “I couldn’t get under, but it was enough to lie quietly and think. Thanks for doing all the bedtimes tonight.”

  He leaned over and found her forehead for a kiss. “Love you.”

  “I love you.”

  Her thoughts were deep and vivid enough that he could sense them in the dark room. “What’s goin’ on in there?” he asked as he got under the covers and pulled her into his arms.

  She rested her head on his chest. “I was thinking about Eight Ball, and how long he was away. How hard that must have been. And you were away even longer.”

  Well, that was some heavy shit. “Yeah. But he’s home now. And I’m home with you.”

  “Beck, you know I know bad shit could happen. My eyes have always been wide open.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, shortcake.”

  Typically stubborn, she didn’t let it go. Her head came up, and in the faint light from the bathroom, he saw the gleam of her beautiful eyes. “I know what you do, and how it lets us have this great life. I also understand that things could turn on a dime. You know I know. But I want you to hear this promise: if something happens, I will wait for you. For a day or a year or my whole life, I will wait. And while I’m waiting, I’ll be okay. I’ll keep our kids safe and well, and I’ll make them the best life I can. You don’t have to worry. We’ll be okay. I will make sure of it.”

  God, he loved this stubborn little shit, this beautiful, fierce woman, this tiny Amazon. He framed her sweet face in his deadly hands. “I am not going anywhere, Sage.”

  He stopped short of making it a promise, because they both knew she was right—this was why being outlaws wasn’t irrelevant. Because the things they did, and the people they did those things with, meant that life could turn, life could stop, on a dime.