“This is twice you’ve worried me. I can’t keep you safe if I don’t know where you are. Just being my girlfriend can put a target on your head. Right now, it doesn’t because no one has the balls to go to war with us, but sometimes the opening salvo in a war is hurting our women instead of coming after us. I need to know where you are.”
She’d been looking through her suitcase, and she stood and turned to look at me with panties and a bra in her hand. “I haven’t had to let someone know where I am every minute of the day for a year. After years of...” She crossed her arms and met my gaze. “I’m not sure I want to go backwards.”
“Then let me track your phone. I can see where you are without you feeling as if you need to check in.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“It isn’t about trust, it’s about keeping you safe. If I could’ve looked and seen you moving around within the park, I’d have been able to figure out what you were doing.”
“Let me track your phone too and we have a deal.”
At one time that wouldn’t have been possible, but we were all really careful not to have our phones on us when we did something illegal these days. Our phones never showed up at the scene of a crime. We used to get a heads-up when a local judge signed a communications warrant on us, but we couldn’t depend on that anymore.
“Assuming Mad Dog approves it, okay, but you have to know the MC frequently ditches our phones for organized events. If I’m with my brothers, the only way to contact me will be through the control room, and that’s only for emergencies.”
“And you don’t think I’ll be worried about you?”
“I’ll be with my brothers. No one fucks with a bunch of bikers. It’s not the same as you being out alone and you know it.”
She pulled her nine millimeter from her bellyband and put it on the dresser. “I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.” She reached back under her shirt, retrieved two extra magazines, settled them beside her weapon, and met my gaze in challenge.
“That makes me feel a little better, but against a dozen bad guys, you have to know how that would end.”
She pulled her hair out of the ponytail, stepped into the master bath, and picked up her hairbrush. “We’re supposed to have our talk today about whether I’m staying another week or not. I guess that falls into the same conversation. How serious are we?”
“I’m feeling pretty damned serious.”
She grinned at me in the mirror as she brushed her hair. “I’m picking up on that. I’ve enjoyed our week, and not just because of the sex.” She stopped brushing and met my gaze in the mirror. “In truth, part of me is worried I’ll become addicted to it again. The adrenaline rush and the endorphins and the power exchange. I love having it in my life again, but what if I lose you? Weaning myself away from it was hell, after Able was killed. I masturbated until my wrist hurt, and I cried when I came because my orgasms sucked when compared to what I’d had before. I can’t do that again.”
She’d lost people already, so of course that was a worry.
“I want to tell you I’m a grizzly bear and we’re hard to kill, plus I have my brothers at my back, but I get that you were with the Owl King before and he had an entire kingdom at his back. All I can tell you is that bears are a lot harder to kill than owls. From what I understand, Able was a good king who looked out for his people, and he died a valiant death. Small comfort for those who loved him, I’m sure, but he went first in battle and died with honor.” I leaned against the door frame. “I’d still want to kick his ass for some of the things he did to you if he was alive, though.”
She pulled her hair up and stepped into the shower without saying anything else. I stretched out on the bed to wait for her. When she came out of the bathroom five minutes later, she had the panties and bra on, and she smelled of soap. No scents. Just a clean, sexy swan.
She opened the closet and I stared at her ass while she talked. “Are we staying in to eat, or going out?”
“Someone told me about a new surf-and-turf place out near the old mall. You can get seafood and I can get steak. Wanna check it out?”
“Sure. Give me ten minutes to get dressed and I’ll be out.” She motioned me out of the bedroom, and I closed the door on my way out. I’d started to ask why she wanted me gone, but I was smart enough to know that — at least while she was deciding whether to live with me or not — I should give her some privacy when she asked for it.
Dementor
“Two nights a week at my house,” she told me shortly after our food was delivered. “I don’t care which two, and they don’t have to be concurrent.”
I put my fork and steak knife down. This had come out of the blue. I hadn’t planned to have this conversation quite yet. “You’re saying you want to keep it as is, except two nights at your place?”
“Not exactly, but I’m saying the rest of the conversation isn’t necessary if we’re going to be in your apartment every single day and night. That’s me in your world, and maybe my world is boring, but there’s a jetted tub and a much better kitchen at my place, plus I have trees around me. I want you in my world at least a little. Two nights a week is around a quarter of the time. That gives us three quarters of the time at your place. I realize you have obligations that mean you need to be there, so I’m good with spending more time at your apartment and not trying to divide it evenly.”
I’d had to leave the bed on more than one occasion when the control room called for me to check on a potential problem, so she understood why I needed to be close. They rotated through the list for small stuff, and called several of us out for bigger problems. Sometimes I was gone ten minutes, sometimes two hours. Most problems happened in the evenings and at night, though. So long as we were at the apartment on at least one of my full nights off, I could probably swing being gone two nights a week every week.
“So long as the MC isn’t having security issues, that should be doable, but if we go to war with another group then I won’t be able to.”
“Okay. I get that.”
“What else do you need to change?”
“I need more space to hang my clothes, and more drawer space too, if I’m going to stay.” She blew out a breath. “And it’s a little embarrassing to admit, but even though I only bring enough to get me through the week, I need a better place to store my shoes.”
“We don’t have any empty two bedroom apartments right now. I can move us to the top of the list, so when someone moves out, it’s ours. Until then, we can put one of those mobile closet things in the bedroom, and I can see about clearing out more drawer space. I can easily reach the top of my closet, so I can put things up there.” I nudged her foot with mine under the table, and she put her foot on top of mine. It’d kind of become our little thing, and my heart threatened to melt every time I felt her shoe resting on my boot. Silly, but there you go.
“What I’m hearing,” I told her, “is logistics more than emotions. How do you feel about me after spending a week with me? I’m closer to you. It makes me want to move forward even more.”
“Ditto. Honestly, my biggest issue is that I’ve enjoyed my freedom so freaking much for the past year. Well, not the first two or three months, but then I got used to it, and not having to report in with someone before I left the house felt great. In my father’s house, they had to know where I was every minute. Things were even more restrictive under Able’s rules, and I hadn’t thought that possible. The idea of having to check in with you before I can leave bothers me, and knowing that if plans change when I’m out, that I can’t just go with the flow, but will have to double-check with you first...”
I got the impression she was too frustrated with the thought to finish it, and that wasn’t good, but I wasn’t prepared to bend on this one.
“You aren’t asking if you can go, you’re just letting me know where you’re going. Same deal if plans change — you just need to let me know.”
“But you aren’t going to let me know where you are
every second.”
We both knew I wasn’t, so I just looked at her and waited for her to finish her thought.
“If you aren’t going to check in with me constantly, I’m not going to check in with you.”
“And if we can see each other’s phone locations?”
“You don’t carry your phone with you when you patrol at night. You don’t always take it when you and your brothers ride together. It’s not an equal exchange.”
“Here’s the thing. It’s never going to be equal. It just isn’t. Some things will weigh in my direction, others will weigh in your direction. I’d venture to say our orgasm ratio last week was fifteen to one in your favor, but that was perfectly okay because I enjoy watching you come unglued. This week, it went the other way, and that’s okay, too. It’s life. Some weekends we’ll be with your friends the whole time because of derby stuff, other weekends we’ll be with my friends most of the time because of club activities. We take life as it comes to us. If we try to make it fair, we’ll drive ourselves crazy. I need to know you’re safe. I need to know my enemies don’t have you somewhere doing horrible things to you. We both come to the relationship with different needs, and I need you to humor me in this.”
She took a long drink of her wine and then a few bites of lobster before she responded. “Okay. Point taken. It’s childish to think every single thing can be made fair or exactly parallel. The fact of the matter is, though, that I’m going to resent having to constantly check in. It might make it sting a little less if you were doing it too, but it’s still going to be something that’s...” She put her fork down. “This might be a case of your needs and my baggage being at odds. This is a prime example of the baggage I’m dragging along behind me, and I’m fully aware of that, but it isn’t like I can just pretend it isn’t there. If I have to constantly check in with you, I’m going to resent it.”
We’d both drawn a line in the sand. Not good. How could I soften my line? I stared at my plate a few moments before telling her, “Okay. We put the location thing on both our phones.” Mad Dog was going to have to be okay with it for at least a few months. “I have your schedule and I mostly know how and why it might deviate now. If I see you somewhere that concerns me, please answer my text. If you’re going somewhere dangerous, or somewhere that just feels as if you should let me know before you go, please do, but that’s a request and not a requirement. That’s it. I won’t ask for more.” Yet.
“We’ll see how it works.”
I didn’t respond, and she shrugged and reached for her wine. “That’s the best I can give you. If it bugs me, I’ll let you know.”
“Fair enough. Do we need to talk about you letting me know about your wants and needs? Or did we cover that enough the other night?”
“I thought that was put behind us.”
“Just making sure. Anything else you want to bring up? Am I demanding too much sexually? Not enough?”
“I’m more than happy with everything you’ve done, though I have to admit I’m really looking forward to being allowed to orgasm in the very near future.” Another sip of wine. “If I had to weigh it one direction or the other, I’d have to say you can be a little harder on me if you want. I feel like you start off gentler sometimes, like you’re making sure I’m primed and ready before you get too rough. You don’t have to do that with me.”
I gave her a lopsided grin. “I thought this was supposed to be about my needs? Maybe it takes me a few minutes to really start feeling it?”
She stared at me, taking it in, and I lost the grin. “If you need it rougher, let me know. It isn’t just about me. It’s about both of us getting our needs met. I can’t promise you’ll get more all the time, but if you want a harsher scene here and there, I can come up with something.”
She gave a single nod. I didn’t know if that meant she needed more, or that she’d let me know if she did, but I could find that out later. We needed to work the logistics of how to spend two nights at her place.
“When I stayed with you before, I left your place with you, since I needed to shadow you. If I can go back to sleep in your bed after you leave for work, then let’s plan to stay there Sunday night and Wednesday night. That gives us one night I’m home the entire time, and one night I’ll be there a good part of the night. Does that work?”
“You can clear that with the club?”
“If I can’t, I’ll let you know.”
Ember
I had to clear it with Aaron for Dementor to be at the house when I wasn’t there. He said it would be fine so long as it wasn’t being used as a safehouse. It rarely was, so I didn’t bother mentioning it to D.
I got to know D’s MC brothers better in the following weeks, but I didn’t think I’d ever be able to watch the sweetbutts being used without wanting to tell them to run away and find their power. However, I wouldn’t have listened to someone being judgmental about the lifestyle when I identified as a toy, and they weren’t going to listen to me, either. Also, this was another case of me needing to deal with my own shit. None of those girls were in the clubhouse against their will. They could all walk out at any time.
Weeks turned into months. The weather grew warmer, and my classes were exponentially harder right before graduation.
But my skating life was awesome because we kicked ass in roller derby. The year before, we’d celebrated being ranked as one of the top one hundred teams on the planet. This year, we were in the top fifty. Granted, we were forty-eighth, but it’s an international rating, and there are a helluva lot of teams.
I invited Aaron and Sophia to my graduation, of course. I didn’t expect them to invite my dad. In my eyes, he’d been too embarrassed by his whore-daughter to have anything to do with her, so he didn’t get to have anything to do with his college-graduate-daughter now. But, I was polite. Parts of my royal training didn’t stick at all. Other parts, I can’t escape. Respecting the hierarchy had been drilled in especially well, it seems.
Of course, Able had reinforced that training once I’d been in his household. He was king, after all, and no one disrespected him without severe consequences.
The MC bought enough land across the street from Blaze to build their new clubhouse. Aaron bought a pre-existing building one block down on the same street, and hired the MC’s construction firm to renovate it to his needs. Since I’d begin and end my workdays in this building, it made it easier to meet Dementor for dinner on the evenings he went in at two or four.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dementor
I never imagined I could live with someone for months, not have sex with anyone but them, and not want to change a thing. I mean, sure, we’d had little things pop up. Apparently, there’s a right way and a wrong way to put the toilet paper on. Who knew? But it was easy enough to do it the way she wanted.
We also ended up with two soap holders and two bars of soap on the bathroom sink because we weren’t able to agree on a freaking bar of soap. Oh, and the day I came home and couldn’t find anything in my cabinets because she rearranged them so they’d “make sense” was possibly our worst fight. If our sex play allowed for me to spank her for everyday shit, her ass would’ve been bright red.
But, it doesn’t, so we’d had to argue it out. In the end, she nicely asked me to live with it for a week, and told me if I still hated it, she’d put it all back. I lived with it for a week and had to admit a few things were better placed, but I wanted my fucking marinating sauces back where they’d started. She did it while I was at work and she was home, along with making a few other small changes. She left sticky notes on the cabinet doors this time, so I didn’t have to open and close every damned cabinet to find shit.
Moving into a two bedroom apartment had also made things easier, because she had the second bedroom to store her things — and my little swan may not act like a princess in most things, but you wouldn’t believe how many shoes, bras, and shirts one woman can accumulate. Pants, too, but I think she had enough shirts and sweaters
to go a few months without doing laundry, if she wanted.
As far as our schedules, the MC had a few new prospects with decent skills. We brought another cook in, a few more people capable of bouncing, another certified bike mechanic, and someone with enough BDSM skills to be a pro-Dom in the basement dungeon at the spa.
A few days before Em graduated, Aaron Drake asked me to come by his new Birmingham office for a chat. That’s what he called it. A chat.
I went in about an hour before I had to be at Blaze, since I had no idea how long this chat was going to take.
“You and Ember track each other on your phones.”
“We do.”
“She won’t have her personal phone on her while she’s working. She’ll have a Drake earpiece in, and she’ll be in contact with our control room. Our opsec means you won’t know where she is, and in most cases, you aren’t going to know who she’s guarding.”
“And you’re telling me this so I don’t give her grief about it?”
He grinned. “Something like that. I know what my reaction would be if someone told me this about Sophia, but I’d have to suck it up and deal with it if it meant that’s what it took for her to be able to do her job.” He breathed in, likely gauging my reaction. “You’re going to have to depend on my people to keep her safe while she keeps our clients safe. She’s a small female and that’s exactly what I need right now, because not everyone wants it to be obvious they’re being protected. Depending on the situation, she’ll pose as assistant, associate, or sometimes their date. You can’t get upset about the latter. All clients will sign saying they understand their date is their bodyguard and they aren’t to assume anything else.”
Dementor (Rolling Thunder MC Birmingham Book 1) Page 18
