by Snow, Nicole
Line's fists were clenched so tight on the table his knuckles went white. He restrained himself, just listening. Smart man.
Before the Prez was done, I saw a hot tear spill a jagged path down Line's cheek, falling from his good eye.
“I want everybody in this room to stand up and shake hands.” Nobody moved. The Prez narrowed his eyes and looked at us. “You heard me.”
Blackjack waved us up with one hand. “If any one of you gets the urge to knife another man wearing your patch, you're helping the Dragons. You'll be treated like the traitorous fucking rat you are. Until we've got Gil back here and we're dealing with him our way, until we've killed every last one of the men who piled up severed bodies wearing Tacoma cuts like trash, no man in this room has any reason to hurt his brother. None.”
Fucking shit. The man talked too much sense for his own good. Sometimes it cut through our guts like a dagger.
Brass nodded and stood up first. We all watched as he walked over to Carbon, the Tacoma prospect. The lean kid stood up and shook when our Veep gave him the most aggressive, lung-crushing hug I'd ever seen.
Roman, Rabid, they all did the same. Even Blackjack embraced one of the full patch Tacoma guys we'd rescued.
I was the last one standing, looking at Line across the room. He started walking toward me, and I pinched fists so hard I thought my fingers would rupture like overcooked sausages.
The Tacoma VP came to a stop in front of me and flashed me a viper's smile. I threw my arms around him and we wrestled right there, trying to see who could crush out the other man's breath the fastest.
In the end, I let him think he won.
This brother was a damned fool for following Gil off the cliff and nearly losing his life over it. But he wasn't Elle's old man, the real SOB who'd stolen her away from me.
Gil did that with his fucked up failure of a plot. So did the Chinese when they'd held her, tortured her, left her with some pitch black poison memories I'd have to spend weeks fucking outta her sweet head.
Line and his crew didn't deserve to have the life choked outta them for obeying orders and putting my woman in peril. I knew exactly who did.
And once I found those motherfuckers, they were all as good as dead.
IX: Sweet Mercy (Elle Jo)
The devil in my dream screamed over the sound of gunfire, plus an explosion that sounded like it just ate half the world.
All Mandarin. All wicked words I wish I didn't understand.
You're going to come with me, little girl. Just as soon as you're finished coming on my cock.
It's a quickie. You and me.
You know how many hours I've been dreaming about tasting this pussy? Finding out how loud you scream? I never had American pussy before, and I'm going to ruin it.
He stared at me in the dark metal box, his eyes flaming animal lust. Zee's followers were just as insane as their leader.
Maybe it was the adrenaline pounding through my veins, or the fact that the demons hadn't even brought me breakfast. I barely knew what was happening when instinct grabbed me by the throat and slammed me down.
I couldn't let this happen without a fight. I had to stop it, even it meant the end of me.
I waited until he started pulling down my jeans before I kicked. Hard.
My foot flew harder than I'd ever moved in my life. Hard as I wanted to live, to see Asphalt and daddy again, to avoid being used and abused in this stinking shipping container while everything went to hell around us.
The mafia man's eyes rolled back in agony as my shoe destroyed his balls. He hit the ground, groaning, clutching his gun until his fingers gave up and dropped it at his side.
Familiar voices started screaming. Someone pounded at the door, and I watched it pull aside on its rusty hinges. The love of my life stepped inside, obliterating the doubt and the mean words we'd exchanged at the park.
I knew I'd be saved. Asphalt won my heart, my body, and a piece of my soul.
Then I woke up.
I should've relished being safe and sound, alive with my man. Part of me did, certainly, but it wasn't over.
God Almighty. It wasn't fucking over.
I had to crawl out of my cot and find out what happened to my father before I'd ever have a peaceful night's sleep again.
A shower sounded like a good start. I walked into the tiny, grimy bathroom attached to the club room and stripped. Compared to the small, dirty space where I'd spent the last few days, it seemed like a five star hotel's bathroom. Even in the run down shower stall, it was a relief to have the filth stripped off my body by cold water.
At one point halfway through, I slapped the cracked wall tile with both hands and held myself there, crying out at everything.
If it hadn't been for Asphalt, I would've been a goner.
Beaten. Raped. Dead.
I couldn't forget the insane explosion that ripped through the old warehouse while we raced away. Easily big enough to incinerate me and my would-be rapist, assuming he didn't fight through the blinding pain I'd inflicted on his balls and kill me first.
I turned off the water and stepped out. My reflection drew my eyes, and I hated it. I couldn't stop staring at the screwed up girl in the mirror, one who'd finally been bit by the life she'd tried to escape after all these years.
Sure, I desperately wanted to see my father alive again, but only so I could slap him across the face.
I didn't deserve this. Nobody did. He'd put me in mortal danger, gotten his men killed, and almost got the love of my life murdered on top of it.
Something changed when I was locked in that dirty, claustrophobic box. I reached up and touched the faded scratch on my cheek, one left by Zee that first evening, when he'd gotten up in my face, rough and menacing.
What the hell have I become?
There wasn't time to ponder. A loud knock on the little door nearly caused me to jump out of my skin.
“What?!”
“Babe? You awake?” Asphalt's voice had that concerned edge in it that turned my heart to butter.
Pausing to wrap a towel around myself, I flung it open, and his arms were instantly around me.
Warm. Loving. Reassuring in all the right ways.
“Fuck. I'm sorry I had to be gone so long. We were talking, me and the boys, figuring out how we're gonna hash out this shit with the Chinese.”
“Kill them,” I said. “Every last one. I don't care how, as long as you come home alive, and bring daddy back too.”
“I'll bring him home, Ell-Bell. Me and the boys are real interested in dealing with his sorry ass for what he's done. We'll –“
I couldn't take the animosity. Not right now. I stood on the tips of my toes and shut him up, pushing my lips against his, hot and eager.
Asphalt growled into my mouth. His hands stiffened, caressing their way down my body. He grabbed the towel and pushed it down to the floor, then shifted his hands to my bare ass.
One fierce squeeze of those hands made me forget everything.
Sex wouldn't be the answer forever, but today, I really needed to be fucked.
He could take me away from everything – the killers I'd just escaped, all the ways I imagined they were torturing my father, the near certainty that the Redding charter would end up destroying him if the Chinese didn't do it first.
“God, I missed you,” I hissed, dragging my fingers along his back. I scratched at his cut, straight across the bear patch and his bottom rocker, the symbol I'd come to love and hate in my sick, twisted life.
“Babe, you don't know the half of it. Get back in the cot, and I'll hold you 'til you sleep.”
“No!” I put one hand on the back of his huge neck and held it, forcing him to look at me. “Don't leave me this time. Not tonight. I need you, and I need it so fucking bad.”
His dark green eyes flickered. They moved in the whites of his eyes like jade pendulums, drinking me in, battling his vow to me against his oath to the club.
“Fuck.” One word and a hand o
n my wrist told me who'd won.
He practically carried me to the flimsy cot and threw me down. He pushed me onto it, holding me down with his weight, tearing off his clothes.
His lips, tongue, and teeth teased down my shoulder, my back, stopping near the spot where I'd had his name inked on me forever. Asphalt pulled me up, and I moaned when I felt his naked torso on my back, the hardness he had between his legs, raging when he rubbed it against my ass cheeks.
“You're ready to give me your full attention, Elle Jo? Tonight, it's just you and me. Nothing else. You need it? I need to know I'm the only fucking thing on your mind. Nothing else deserves a shred of your attention except my dick. Nobody else is gonna give you this.”
He rubbed up and down my ass, then angled his cock close to my pussy, teasing me. I shook as he pulled me up on all fours, making the position to take me deep.
I wanted to shake and die in this pleasure. I wanted to be with him. But those thoughts, those nightmares I'd just woke from, they wouldn't stop coming.
Closing my eyes tight, I tried to lie.
“I'm here for you, baby. Only you. Give me everything. Please.”
Snarling, he fisted my hair. He tugged it, jerking my head around until his lips were against my ear. “No. Not 'til I can believe there's nothing on your mind except the dick that's about to fuck you senseless. I love you so fucking much, babe, and I'm a greedy SOB...you're mine. Only mine.”
I heard him, but I didn't know what he meant – didn't really know – until his fingers pushed between my thighs. He shoved two fingers deep and held them in me, covering my clit with his thumb.
“Oh – Jesus!” I gasped, arching my back. “Fuck, Asphalt! Yeah...”
“Yeah,” he repeated, quickening the loops his thumb circled, digging into my clit in a hard, steady burn. “You whimper like that a couple more times, maybe we'll be getting somewhere.”
His fingers moved inside me. My hips bounced back, caressing the full magnificent length of his cock. The guttural thunder leaving his throat vibrated in my bones, and I smiled.
There was something beautiful about being able to turn him on, even in this fucked up state.
“I knew you'd come for me. Never doubted it. Those words we had before were tough, and I screwed you over by listening to daddy like his stupid little girl. But I knew it wouldn't ruin this, Asphalt, this strange and wonderful thing we've built.”
“Austin.”
What?
“What?” I moaned, fighting for words through another full pussy stroke of his fingers, wondering if I'd heard him right.
“In this bed, you call me by my rightful name. The one that always loved you, babe. The one that watched you growing up and came hard as fucking diamond to you instead of any lesser slut. Shit, I don't give a fuck what you say, just as long as you know who owns this now, who's gonna own it 'til you take your last breath.”
“Austin...”
It sounded so soft and alien after everything that happened. I'd used his name before as a curse, trying to get under his skin. Now, I whimpered it like a lover, especially when he rewarded me with more fingers, another kiss, and a quicker, dizzying lap around my clit.
“Come for me,” he growled, crushing his lips down on mine.
And I did.
I came with my entire body into his hand. Sobbing, grunting, spilling out my pain, my love, my heartache.
He wrapped his free hand around my waist and kept his lips on mine. Asphalt swallowed everything, twining my twitching tongue with his, loosening his pressure when I started coming back to earth.
Tears were still rolling down my cheeks when he finally pulled his fingers out, and he turned his mouth to the nape of my neck, gliding down in soft, gentle kisses.
“No. I don't deserve this,” I whispered. “Not after how I treated you.”
He stopped, his muscles tensed around me. Grabbing my chin, he jerked my face until we locked eyes.
“Babe, what you deserve tonight is exactly what I'm giving you.” His green eyes blazed, turning tender lover into manic killer.
I knew how badly I was fucked when that actually turned me on – turned everything below my waist to instant jelly.
“I wasn't fucking around when I told you earlier, I need all of you tonight. You're mine, woman, and I'm yours too. It's you and me here. The rest of the universe be fucked. And babe, I'm gonna fuck the ever-living shit outta you. Nothing barred.”
“Oh!”
It shouldn't feel this delicious. Not after what I just went through.
Oh, but it did.
He pushed inside me without a second warning. Pleasure overwhelmed me, unexpected and molten hot. I arched my back and gripped the thin sheets underneath me for support.
Oh. My. God.
“All the shit that happened before?” he growled, nipping at my ear as his cock pulled back, slamming into me deeper than before. “Gone.”
His hand moved up, pausing to maul my breasts, before moving up to my throat. He held me in a gentle, but not-so-gentle grip, the kind that said he'd love me and destroy me all at once.
The same grip I needed just then.
“All that shit we spat out our mouths, going at each other like mortal fucking enemies?” His cock thrust deeper, harder, faster, driving me out of my mind. “Gone.”
Our breath came in long, ragged puffs. My fingers scratched, tore, ripped at the sheets until I couldn't even feel them anymore.
“Austin – don't stop!”
“No. Not 'til every last ounce of painful shit in your life's a goddamned memory, babe. Told you, I'm fucking out everything. Killing it by making you come so hard you're blind to all the darkness.” His thrusts quickened, rocking the cot between us.
It might give out, and I didn't care. Hell, I couldn't focus on anything except the lighting building around his cock, my pussy coiling around him, just a few more thrusts from sweet release.
I love this life when we're in bed.
I love this dick.
I love you, Asphalt.
A long, uninterrupted growl poured out his mouth. Long, punishing strokes filled me over and over again, so hard, so loving, he shook my entire body. My breasts swung beneath me, and he reached between my legs, found my clit, and added that miracle thumb to the maelstrom of his cock.
“I'm telling you now, and I'm telling you a thousand times, Elle Jo,” he said, his voice starting to crackle like static from the pleasure ripping through him. “You. Are. Mine. Every last atom of shit that ever makes you doubt it? Gone. Now and fucking forever. And you'll know it when you pass the fuck out from coming on my cock.”
I lost it then. We lost it together.
My pussy clenched his cock so hard I screamed. I came, feeling him stiffen, sputter, and add his heat to mine. Asphalt's seed pumped deep and hot, filled me until I overflowed.
We'd fused our love and hate. Maybe we fucked it away too, a healing fuck, just like he'd said. When he pulled out, he was still hard. He flopped on the cot and pulled me on top of him.
For the first time, I rode him with everything as his wife, his old lady, rather than the bitch keeping secrets.
“Fuck, babe, fuck! Just like that. Don't you stop for all the diamonds in the world, all the blood in the ocean. Love you from the tips of your toes to your ears, and everything in between. Really fucking love this pussy, too, and I'm gonna find out how much come she can take.”
The second time I came, impaled on his cock, I couldn't even scream his name. I was too busy smiling, breathless and happy, numb to everything except this beautiful moment with my outlaw husband.
There'd always be more out there, waiting to hurt me. It could wait. We were too busy reconnecting, or maybe connecting for the first time.
He fucked me like the big, powerful, unstoppable badass he was, but I'd gotten a little of his spark. Nothing was keeping me from his flesh tonight. He'd ripped me wide open with soft, honest words and furious kisses.
I might bleed out and d
ie a little before dawn, but I'd never die alone, without love.
Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever again.
* * * *
A couple days passed. Asphalt practically kept me under lock and key, bringing me food and fresh clothes, telling me to sleep. I spent so many hours in the cot I didn't know how I'd ever sleep again.
I left my room and walked into the empty bar, looking for something sweet and powerful to drown my worries for the next few hours. Looking at the selection made me wrinkle my nose.
These boys rarely drank anything except straight whiskey and thick, dark beers. Not exactly my style. The clubhouse hadn't been restocked in some time, which told me just how obsessed daddy and his guys had really been about going after the Chinese.
I passed on alcohol and chose a tall glass of water instead. It wouldn't make me feel better, but at least it would keep me healthy.
“Elle Jo?” A voice said behind me. “Package.”
I turned around to see the prospect, Carbon, holding out a small cardboard box. I took it, feeling the confusion twist my face. Holding the lightweight box, I gave it a little shake.
“Who's it from?” I asked, turning it over. There wasn't any return address.
Carbon had gone behind the bar to dig around, coming up with a grin when he found half a bottle of Jack. “Huh? Oh, don't have a fucking clue. Found it stuffed outside in the club's big locked box for deliveries this morning. Nobody gets in there without a key except the mailman, so it's gotta be somebody who knows you.”
“Hm.” I reached over to the bar counter, where I'd seen a pair of scissors, and began slicing off the tape.
A strange odor hit me in the face as soon as I pulled back the flaps. The top was stuffed with a scrappy piece of paper smeared with red ink.
It took me a minute to realize what I was seeing.
“Jesus Christ!” Before Carbon could even stop sucking on his whiskey, I realized it wasn't red ink.
