by A. J. Downey
He nodded. “When you put it that way,” he said with a laugh. “She doesn’t have a thing to worry about, though. She’s family, and when you’re family to a club like this, things may not always be easy but damn if any of us are going to let you fall. We help each other. That’s what we do. We take care of each other, and that’s that.”
It was food for thought. A lot of this was just so overwhelming, and things were going on behind the scenes. The women knew it. Some of them knew more than they were saying, but none dared speak of it.
I worried about that to a degree but all of them that did know, swore up and down that it wasn’t bad, whatever it was.
Still, I worried.
It was a worry that ended up getting put to the back burner and that was drowned in drinking, dancing, and some really bad karaoke until finally, Jared and I had both had our fill of alcohol and other people. Not each other.
It was a fun day and a fun night, but I just wanted to get back to our regularly scheduled program and finish out that to be continued from earlier.
We stopped just short of the big clearing with the firepit to listen to the kids telling scary stories and trying not to giggle. As Marc told a sanitized version of the plotline to Jeepers Creepers to the littler kids, we went up the path to our trailer.
“C’mere,” Jared said. Catching me by my fingertips with his one hand, he towed me in against his body.
The kiss was wild and fierce, and the only thing that prevented the moment from being over-the-top magical, at least for me, was the lack of fireflies lighting up the dark. Sadly, that wasn’t a thing here in the Pacific Northwest. I think it was honestly the biggest thing I missed about the south. The little sparkling golden glow of lightning bugs.
He gripped me by my ass and hauled me against his body, his other hand tangling in my hair and holding my mouth to his as we kissed in the dark outside our trailer door.
I let my arms twine around him and held him close as he pulled me in as tightly to his body as he could get me. I loved that about him. How he could never seem to get enough of me. How he held me so tight and so carefully at the same time.
“Inside,” I gasped between kisses, and he chuckled against my mouth.
“Yes, ma’am,” he growled, and he very reluctantly stepped back so that he could fish out the key from his pocket and unlock the door.
I waited giddy with the buzz I had going on mixed with the intoxication of just plain Jared. Once he had the door unlocked, he held out his hand to me and I took it, letting him tow me in and press me to the metal hull of the outside of the trailer. He kissed me, pinned me with his body, his hands wandering over mine over my clothes, squeezing my breast under the jacket, over the covering of the thin, form-fitting tee, and the cup of my bra.
He slid a hand down my body, over my clothes and dipped a hand beneath the hem of my shirt, pushing it up out of his way, pulling down the cup of my bra. My breast spilled out over it, and he ducked his head and took my nipple into his hot, insistent mouth.
I squeezed my eyes shut and put my head back and tried to strangle the throaty noise of yes that I made but it was barely accomplished. His other hand was at my pussy, rubbing me through my jeans and holy hell, that was smoking hot.
“Jared!” I gasped out his name.
“Mm?”
“What if someone sees?” I asked, gasping and giggling between my pants. I couldn’t help myself. I ground my hips against his hand at my crotch and bit my bottom lip.
“Fuck ‘em,” he mumbled.
“The kids!” I gasped, and he grunted and let my nipple pull, captured between his teeth, the sensation sharp and yet not unkind, just intense and I gasped and squirmed harder.
God, I bet my panties were soaked.
“Up you go,” he ordered. “Get those boots off.”
I got up into the trailer, got my boots off as ordered, and when I turned around, we were crashing into each other, fervently kissing all over again.
It was a mad scramble for each of us to get the other unwrapped. My jacket fell first, then his cut was tossed aside on the counter nearby. His tee followed by my hand, and he worked at my jeans, unfastening my belt, fingers scrambling at my button and zipper even as I struggled with his.
“You do it,” he growled and pulled his hands away from mine as we each slid pants and underwear down as one to get out of them.
He pulled me to him, and we kissed. He backed me up toward the bed. He turned me by my hips to face it and one hand on my shoulder, the other on my hip, bent me over the end. I still had my shirt and bra on, but I didn’t care.
I needed him inside me.
“Jared please!” I begged.
“Oh, fuck yes,” he muttered, and I practically yowled, pressing my ass back toward him and into his hand as the smack landed on it.
I was vaguely aware of him kneeling behind me, stroking himself.
“Let me see that pretty pussy,” he ordered, and I arched obediently, opening myself up to his gaze. The lust in the small trailer was palpable, the air so thick with desire I could almost taste it. Musky sweet, a forbidden fruit, I clutched the bedding in front of me as he nudged my knees further apart with one of his own. With one hand on my shoulder, the other on his cock, he guided himself into me.
I couldn’t wait, so desperate was I to have him in me, I leaned back, taking him deeper. He put hands on my hips and guided me into it.
“Yeah, that’s it, baby. Fuck me. Jesus, that pussy’s so good.”
I fucking loved it when he talked to me like that. So sultry, so dirty, but everything that came out of his mouth was such high praise and I didn’t know how much I needed that. How much I needed to be… just… cherished. That was what he did when he smoothed his hands up my back, under my shirt.
He worshiped me with his hands as I slid up and down his length and fucked his cock with my dripping wet pussy.
Fuck, he felt so good! There weren’t any words for how fucking good he was to me. I arched low, and the heat rose between us, one of his hands on my hip, the other up under my tee, fingers curving over my shoulder as he grunted and with a hard thrust, fetched my body up against the bed.
He. Let. Fly.
Slamming into me with a bruising force, fucking me so hard, so fast, so sweetly, I happily died a little death and kept right on dying over, and over, and over.
His hand moved from my hip, the pad of his thumb teasing my back entrance, and I let out this throaty sound that was pitiful in its begging.
“You like that?” he demanded between panting thrusts. “You like your little asshole played with?”
“Yes!” I gasped, and it was true. It was absolutely a guilty pleasure of mine. One I remained silent about as it wasn’t the sort of thing nice, professional, mothers did… at least not in the south.
Except I wasn’t in the south. And fuck those people. Fuck them all for how they treated me and my son.
I let some of that go and brought myself back in the moment, a fresh orgasm hitting me all over again as Jared breached my asshole with his thumb to the first or maybe second knuckle.
My pussy was drenched, the sex devolving into one of those sessions that was going to make us both a beautiful quivering mess at the end and I needed it, I needed it so badly, a catharsis, a way of shedding my old skin and setting the burden of my past down behind me.
“Oh, fuck, yes!” Jared cried and thrust into me hard and harder, losing his steady rhythm as he took the shining fall with me.
“Goddamnit, you’re so fucking good,” he murmured in my ear after draping himself over my back.
“Oh, shit!” I whispered. “Did you remember a condom?” I asked.
He chuckled, and pulled out of me, and the familiar sensation of the condom dragging out of me past the head of his dick had me sagging with relief.
I did not want another pregnancy; one was enough for me. Plus, I couldn’t fathom making Marc an older brother at eighteen.
“Mm, I’m with you,” Ja
red said behind me as he disposed of the condom in the trash. “I’m good with just being Uncle Glass Jaw to everybody else’s little ones.”
“Ever thought of a vasectomy?” I asked jokingly.
“You know what? I am now,” he said.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Mm.” He lifted my shirt over my head and threw it somewhere behind him, then he bent and unhooked my bra. “To be inside you raw? I am now.”
Holy shit.
“Up you go,” he said and drew me to my feet on shaking legs. He guided me up onto the bed and followed me. We settled in the dark cuddled into one another.
“You’re serious,” I said in awe.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked and kissed my forehead, and I didn’t know. I guess I just never fathomed anyone going that far just for something so small, for me.
“God, you feel so fucking good,” he murmured against my hair. “I want to grow old with you and die like this, right here with you in my arms.”
I cuddled in tighter, pressing my ear over his heart.
“That sounds nice,” I whispered, still drifting on the euphoria of my afterglow.
“Sounds perfect,” he said with a slight chuckle, and with the long drive and ride, the activities of the day, and the drink and songs of the evening, we fell asleep in each other’s arms quicker than anything.
I didn’t have many perfect days to look back on for me, but this one? This one was probably the best one I’d ever had.
Still, with everything he’d given me to think about? I was surprised I was able to sleep at all.
22
Glass Jaw…
She slept, deep and dreamless, which was nice. The few times I’d stayed at her place, she’d shifted at points in my arms, and across the sheets, moaning out in her sleep, her lovely brow furrowed as she wrestled with whatever demons she had.
She was opening up to me, telling me more about the fallout and how she was feeling; what some of those fucks had put her through back in Atlanta with their fake-ass polite, genteel bullshit, their silence a damning one.
Letting a good person needlessly suffer when you could say something to stop it didn’t make you a good person. It made you a steaming shitbag, just like her fucking ex.
I watched her sleep, worry gnawing at my gut that I honestly wasn’t any better for her in that regard.
I was a club man, and the club had its secrets. I think, on some sort of sublevel, she knew that, just like she’d known on some sublevel that things with her ex weren’t quite right.
It gutted me, really, knowing that if shit went any further on the skids with our operation, and the LEOs sniffing around, I could be eating asphalt in a whole different way than how I did every time I looked at her beautiful face.
I was worried it would be just as devastating, just as bad for her if I ended up gone by way of being locked up for an extended stay – or life – as it would be if I died.
I wrestled with that, knowing that things were still relatively new, that she might not be all-in. That I should stop this, protect her and Marc from more heartache but… I was a selfish fucking prick, and I didn’t think I had the balls to do it.
The only thing worse than thinking about how this could all crash and burn for me and her was the way my thoughts chased their own damn tail around in my brain over this whole prescription drug running scheme we were in and how I couldn’t for the life of me figure a work-around.
We were caught between a rock and a hard place. We were way too far in, and we couldn’t fuck these people over who depended on us. There wasn’t any alternative for them. A lot of them would literally fuckin’ die without the drugs we supplied and none of them had the wherewithal to get those same drugs in an above-board way. Some of them were too poor to be insured. Some of them made too much for government assistance, but not enough to afford healthcare or the drugs they needed outright.
It was bullshit, how the healthcare system just expected these people to die.
How many Americans had no recourse and just had to do without. You shouldn’t be expected to sacrifice your home, food, or being able to reliably get to and from work just to get the medicine you needed.
It was fucking barbaric, and yet we were the barbarians according to the cops and the politicians and the fucking bureaucrats.
Cadence stirred, her deep and even breathing interrupted by a shuddering inhalation of breath and a long luxurious stretch. Her green eyes opened, and I only just barely got a smile on my face in time.
She didn’t need to know about the dark night of the soul I was having over here. I didn’t think I could keep it off my face forever, but I damn sure would work on keeping it away from her for now.
“Good morning,” she murmured, voice husky and seductive from sleep and by the fact that she was just painfully sexy as fuck.
“Good morning,” I rumbled, my own voice rough from sleep and the hours of disuse between when we’d passed out and whatever the hell time it was now.
I smoothed some of her long silky hair behind her ear and just stared at her in the late-morning light cutting through the window back here.
She was so fuckin’ beautiful, and if I were to get put away, I wanted to remember this moment.
“What?” she asked, smiling after I stared at her a hair too long.
“You’re just the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen,” I said. “Now c’mere.”
She drifted toward me and I kissed her, rolling her onto her back and posting up between those wonderful thighs of hers.
I had it, didn’t want to waste it, so I put my fucking morning wood to use.
The rest of the day was like having an instant family. We made love, cleaned up, got dressed, and then it was time for breakfast. We all scattered for the day, the clubs people breaking up into their little families or couples and fucking off around town to do all the touristy type of shit.
We were no exception. We ended up at the kitschy little oddity museum in town after our seafood omelets at a little diner in town. We laughed and took pictures with the weird things inside, got some squished pennies which I found funny since it was like, a total obsession of Little Bird’s, and then we hit the main drag and the little merry-go-round and go-kart track.
“Now, how you gonna say you’re gonna whoop my ass when I’ve been driving for like as long as you been alive and then some?” I asked Marc.
Cadence laughed and Marc said, “Just let it happen, old man. Just let it happen.”
“Old?” I cried, turning to Cadence. “Did you hear that? Since when am I old?”
Cadence laughed, head back, sun glinting off the rims and lenses of her sunglasses and it was another one of those perfect moments.
We got onto the track with a few other guys and Tic-Tac from our chapter and let fly. Cadence stayed outside the fence and recorded things with her phone.
It was fun. Marc didn’t win, but neither did I, and despite my best competitive efforts, Marc did come out ahead of me.
Guess the ice cream was on me.
23
Cadence…
I hadn’t seen Marc so happy in a long time. I guess deep down, I always knew he needed that male influence that Ben was never really there to provide him, but it was something else watching how much he opened up and smiled at the go-kart track.
I was standing at the black iron fence, my phone out, video recording this because Lord, I needed these memories committed to some type of media, when two of the girls from another chapter started talking beside me.
“I overheard my old man say the club’s in deep shit,” she said and I immediately homed in to what she had to say.
“The Canada thing?” the other girl asked.
“Yeah, we’re talking RICO, smuggling, the whole works. It’s international. I swear to God, my man goes back to prison, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
“It’s not gonna happen, Carly. The guys are smart. You just wait and see.”
They moved
away from me, and I smiled at Marc who waved at me on his way by, Jared skidding around the bend in the track right behind him. I laughed, but I wondered if I asked him if Jared would say anything about what the ‘Canada thing’ was.
I pushed it to the back of my mind for later when the boys got off their ride and came toward me.
“After that, I think I need some ice cream,” Jared said. “What do you guys say?”
“Sounds good!” Marc declared, and I pasted on a smile.
“Sounds perfect,” I agreed, and Jared threw his arms around my shoulders and turned us toward the old-fashioned general store and ice cream counter across the street.
The shop was crowded, a popular place on the main drag, and so rather than stay within the crush of people or even on the crowded street, we ate our ice cream and started walking back toward the trailer park motel and campground to change to go to the beach.
“I have a feeling I’m not supposed to ask,” I said when Marc got ahead of us to talk to a couple of other teens.
I glanced sideways at Jared, and he cocked his head, taking a lick off his ice cream cone.
“Spit it out, baby. What’s up?” he asked me.
“I overheard something. What’s the ‘Canada thing’ and what kind of smuggling?” I asked once I knew no one could hear me.
Jared stopped in his tracks and put out a hand to grasp my arm firmly but gently.
“That’s club business. Where did you hear that?” he demanded, and he was suddenly earnest.
“A couple of the girls from another chapter. One of them said they overheard their old man talking about it. I don’t want to say who because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I just… I don’t know if I can handle anymore secrets especially something as big as whatever it is.” I bit my lips together for a moment while Jared searched my face. “I don’t want to lose you,” I said, and I felt my shoulders drop.
“Oh, shit, hey.” He pulled me into his arms and pressed a hand to the back of my head and said, “You’re not gonna lose me, babe. We’ve been in stickier situations, and I promise everything is going to be okay. You don’t get to worry about that stuff.”
