Loose Ends

by Kristen Ashley

  He couldn’t say, With this new zone you’re in, you’re freaking me and Mol way the fuck out so I wanna know why all of a sudden Rebel’s coming down. I also wanna know if Sixx has some insight into your shit and/or has some idea how to help out. Because I’m too fuckin’ terrified of asking you to your face seeing as I thought we were getting somewhere and now I’m scared as fuck we are not.

  “Got distracted,” Maddox answered vaguely.

  “By what?” Diesel pushed.

  With no choice, Mad had to give it to him.

  Maddox looked him in the eye. “Not usual, you got a good thing goin’, workin’ me over. You fuck me quick, let me come, then take off for a run. Wonderin’ where your head is at. Strike that, worried where it’s at.”

  D blew it off. “It’s all good.”

  Mad stared at him. “You sure?”

  “Yup,” Diesel told him and pulled his hand out of his jeans. “The money. From the job with Sixx.”

  Maddox looked down to see in D’s hand several bills folded in half. They were hundreds.

  He looked back up to D.

  “Why are you givin’ it to me?”

  “For the ring. Add it to what your folks give you.”

  That seemed plausible.

  Except for the part it was a lie.

  “So we’re goin’ ahead with the ring?” Maddox asked.

  “I think we should hang tight for a while,” Diesel answered.

  Yeah.

  It was a lie.

  “We need to—” Mad began.

  “Sixx is gonna use me again. She told me so. It might not be five hundred bucks for a couple hours of work every time, but I get the sense the pay’s gonna be good. And I’m totally going to Barclay and Josh at the Bolt, see if I can take on some shifts as DM at nights, on weekends. It might take a while, but it’ll close the gap from what we have and what we need.”

  That was plausible too.

  It was also a lie.

  “Diesel—”

  D didn’t let him finish. “You down with that plan?”

  “I think she’s expecting us to move forward with the commitment,” Maddox stated. “And we can’t let her expect that too long or it’s gonna upset her nothing is happening with it.”

  Diesel nodded. “I agree. And we can get the ring, if Clay and Josh take me on, in a month, maybe six weeks. We can borrow from your parents, give her the ring, use what we got to pay them back when she has the ring, so she’ll expect that money in our savings to be gone. She gets her surprise. We start paying it off. But that way, we’ll owe them less, and with me workin’ a second job, we’ll be able to pay them back faster.”

  That was plausible as well.

  It still felt like a lie.

  “You’re bearing the brunt of that, brother, workin’ two jobs,” Mad pointed out.

  There was a tightening around his cheekbones Maddox caught as D replied, “I don’t bring in as much as you do and this isn’t a discussion. I know you get me. It’s gotta be fifty, fifty. Right down the middle. So that’s somethin’ I gotta do.”

  Maddox again stared right into Diesel’s eyes.

  D stared back, unblinking.

  When Maddox said nothing, sounding slightly impatient, D pressed, “Sound like a plan?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  Diesel nodded again and pushed the bills toward Maddox.

  For reasons he didn’t totally understand, not liking it, Maddox took them.

  The second the money exchanged hands, D turned on his bare foot and walked out of the room.

  Maddox watched him go.

  Then he looked down at the cash in his hand.

  He had a feeling that Diesel wanted Maddox to use that money to buy Molly a ring.

  The problem was, he also had a feeling that wasn’t going to be fifty, fifty for shit.

  Because one of those fifties wasn’t going to stick around.

  The next morning, Sunday, Molly was in her nightie, on her back in the loveseat glider out on the patio, mug of coffee on the table over her head by the arm of the seat. She had a section of the newspaper (entertainment) open, reading it with it practically obscuring her face (and entire torso).

  Maddox was opposite her, in the slider facing the French doors, feet up on the ottoman, the sports section folded halfway and laying along the tops of his thighs.

  They were both in the position to see Diesel lurch out the doors holding a mug of coffee in his hand.

  He moved to the open slider, collapsed into it, lifted a heavy leg and dumped it on the ottoman next to Mad’s feet and mumbled, “Yo,” before taking a sip from his mug.

  “Mornin’, DD,” Molly said through a grin.

  “Mornin’, man,” Maddox said, also smiling, but not entirely committed to it.

  D made a distracted move with his mug in the air before he sucked more back and stared unseeing at the sun beyond the covered patio.

  Molly gave it time.

  Maddox gave it time.

  Diesel drank coffee (so he took the time).

  When Maddox finished the sports section, he shoved up out of his seat, grabbed his mug, reached over, grabbed Molly’s and bent deeper, touching his mouth to hers, before he straightened.

  He then moved around the ottoman, dumped the sports in D’s lap and took his empty mug from his unresisting hand.

  “Warm up?” he asked unnecessarily.

  “Duh,” D mumbled.

  Maddox chuckled, linked the handle of Diesel’s mug with the other two he had hooked in his finger and used his free hand to give the hair at the back of D’s head a tug.

  D tipped that head back.

  Half alert, half still hazed, all so good looking, Maddox’s cock took notice and his mind took that opportunity to run over what he intended to do to his boy later.

  But right then, he just bent in and touched his mouth to D’s.

  D accepted it and his blue eyes were still half hazed, but now warm when Maddox pulled away.

  Easy as that.

  One day, none of that shit.

  A few days later, he was offering up his mouth without hesitation, and taking Mad’s at every opportunity.

  And telling him he loved him.

  Connected, post-scene, telling Mad he loved him.

  Maddox didn’t make a deal of it.

  Any of it.

  Then.

  Or now.

  He took the mugs into the kitchen and did the refills.

  As he was walking back out, he did it looking at the back of D’s head.

  Love you, buddy.

  It just came out of him like he said it all the time when he fucking didn’t.

  Maddox should be thrilled.

  But it was carving him up.

  Because that love you, buddy, felt a lot like goodbye.

  Mad handed Diesel his cup. Gave Molly hers.

  And settled in his slider with his.

  Ten minutes later, D arranged the sports so he could read it.

  Sunday morning it was together time but quiet time. There was eye contact. Smiles. Kisses (or, at least there were between Mad and Mol, or D and Mol, but now it seemed there were between Mad and D). Touches. But not a lot of talk.

  Sunday mornings with his man and woman were Maddox’s favorite times with them.

  Not that day.

  The sun was shining.

  But he couldn’t get it out of his head that a cloud was on the horizon. It was huge. And it brought doom.

  Molly shifted and Maddox looked to her, seeing she threw her feet over the back of the glider, the seat rocking with her movement.

  Her pretty face was relaxed but there was tension around her eyes as she lay there, not reading, not doing anything, her mug of coffee sitting forgotten in her hand resting on her belly, her eyes aimed at her feet.

  “Baby,” he called.

  She turned her head his way.

  “In a little bit, I’m takin’ D back and fuckin’ him. Just him and me. You cool with that?” />
  He felt heat coming his way from Diesel’s direction, but Molly got him.

  Totally.

  “Take care of me later, Mady?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, darlin’,” he promised.

  She nodded. “I’m cool.”

  Only then did he look to Diesel to see he’d lost interest in the paper and his gaze was glued to Maddox.

  “When you’re ready, go. Naked. Get out your ropes, bud. And wait for me,” he ordered.

  D nodded too, his eyes hot, but there was a tightness around his jaw like the tightness around Molly’s eyes.

  This wasn’t right.

  None of it was right.

  Somehow, after a ray of light broke through, brightening their world, they’d all slid into a zone where they seemed to be stumbling through the dark, going through the motions.

  D finished his coffee, got up, and without a word, but more unusually, without even a look at Molly, he walked into the house.

  Maddox watched the door close behind him and turned right to their girl.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  “I’m scared, Mady. He’s so deep in his head, he’s like a zombie. Last night at dinner, his favorite, crab and lobster mac ’n’ cheese, the only thing he said was, ‘This is great, Mol.’”

  “What did Rebel say when you talked to her?” Maddox asked.

  She shook her head. “Not much. She told me she had called him the night before and she thought he sounded like he was in a bad place. But that wasn’t news, since he was. And then he wasn’t. But now there’s this.”

  “She didn’t say anything else?”

  She shook her head then her eyes lit and she sat up abruptly.

  “She told me about what happened when D’s friend was outed.”

  “D told me that too,” Maddox shared. “It didn’t go down too good, but it worked out for him. An excuse for him to get away from somewhere that was toxic.”

  “It might have worked for Tommy, but Diesel having to watch him go through it didn’t work for D.”

  Maddox felt something move in his chest. It was huge. Colossal. Titanic.

  Of course.

  Fuck.

  Christ.

  Of course.

  That was why D told him about Tommy. With them getting closer to making the moves to declare to the people in their lives what they had and their commitment to it, which meant D would need to let it all hang out, Diesel was thinking about what happened to his friend.

  Maddox stared at Molly hard.

  So hard, her voice was trembling when she called, “Mady?”

  “He doesn’t care,” he announced.

  “What?”

  “About what they’ll say. What they’ll do. About losing them. He doesn’t care.”

  Her voice was gentle when she disagreed. “You’re wrong, Maddox. He totally does.”

  “No he doesn’t. What he cares about is what we’ll go through when they hit him with the ugly, because he knows exactly how that feels because he watched Tommy go through the same thing.”

  Molly sucked in a breath so sharp, he heard the hiss.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed. “You’re right.”

  “And Rebel,” he went on. “It’s all on him, not that he’s going to lose them, but when they make that play, she’s going to lose them too.”

  Tears brightened her eyes. “Yeah . . . yes, he . . . that’d kill him.”

  “He’s got issues about money,” Maddox told her and watched her head twitch.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “He’s got issues that he doesn’t make as much money as us. He’s gonna take a second job at the Bolt.”

  Molly started to look angry. “That’s . . . it doesn’t matter to me. Or you. He has to know that.”

  Maddox shook his head. “This, baby, I see. If it was me where he’s at, that’d eat at me too.”

  She studied him a beat before muttering, “Men.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “What it is, is not a discussion for now. I took on this amount of testosterone. It’s not like I can play dumb about not knowing there’d be times when you two would do stuff or think stuff that was completely annoying and totally frustrating. And just FYI, this isn’t the first instance that kind of thing has happened.”

  At least that made him grin. “Like you said, darlin’, you went in, eyes open.”

  Those eyes rolled.

  It was cute.

  But he couldn’t get caught up in her cute.

  “D’s gonna try to save us from all that,” he declared.

  “Rebel doesn’t care. We don’t care,” Molly pointed out.

  “He does.”

  Molly sat straight in her seat, lifting both hands to wrap her fingers around the base of her throat because she knew he was right.

  She crossed her legs under her and dropped her hands in her lap.

  “How do we get him around all this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But maybe Rebel will.”

  She nodded.

  Then her pretty face grew hard with determination, her green eyes glittering with it.

  “Fuck him good, Maddox,” she said in a voice he’d never heard from her. “Give it to him hard and sweet like you can do. Give it to him in a way, when you’re through with him, he’ll know he’ll never have better.”

  “I can’t do that without you there,” he reminded her.

  She lifted a hand and waved it at her side. “Don’t you worry. I’ll give him my goodness later.” She jerked her head to the door. “It’s your turn now.”

  He loved all things about Molly.

  This new goodness was just added to all the rest.

  He pushed himself from his chair, went to his woman, wrapped a hand behind her head, bunching her hair as he leaned in and took her mouth.

  “Love you, baby,” he whispered.

  “Love you too, Maddox,” she replied.

  He touched his lips to hers, let her go and moved to the French doors to get to D.

  With Diesel trussed ankles to wrists, both to the headboard, open and spread wide, watching his thick, hard cock bob, listening to his clenched grunts, with a short paddle, Maddox spanked his ass red and raw.

  Always a sight to see no matter how he saw it, D’s ass after a thrashing.

  Phenomenal.

  “Jesus, brother,” D bit out as Maddox covered a spot he’d hit again and again.

  Maddox looked at him. “Enough?”

  “Take it until you’re done givin’ it,” D returned.

  Yeah, but not to prove you’re a man anymore. No. Now so you can give me whatever I want before you take it away.

  “Enough,” Maddox muttered, tossed the paddle aside, positioned facing D, bent to his boy and sucked his cock deep.

  D’s hips jerked up as he ground out, “Christ.”

  Maddox sucked him, hard, fast, added a hand to pump, and snaked the other one up his chest to tweak a nipple.

  “Christ,” D gritted, his limbs jerking.

  He liked the feel of that so Maddox latched onto Diesel’s nipple, squeezing and twisting as he fisted his dick and sucked him off.

  “Gonna have no choice but to blow, brother,” Diesel shared thickly.

  Maddox knew that, considering his man’s entire body was straining to hold back the load.

  Maddox slipped him out, came up to his knees, and jacked him off, still twisting his nipple.

  He did this as he took Diesel in, that big, muscled body of his bound like that.

  It was how he did him when he shaved him.

  Totally on offer. The only movement was reactionary.

  No control.

  Giving that up to Maddox.

  Even when he worked Maddox, D gave the power to Mad. Maddox didn’t even know if D knew he was doing it.

  Then again, that went both ways like it always did in kink.

  In relationships.

  You gave your power.

  And that gave you power.r />
  “String you up like this an entire weekend,” he murmured, letting his eyes move over the meat on display in front of him, stroking up to the tip, running his thumb hard along the soft, distended skin there, watching Diesel swallow, his hands clench into fists. “Let Molly strap in, come use you, watch her take you ’til she comes, move in behind her, fuck you ’til I come and you blow for me. Cover you in your cum. Fill you with mine. All weekend long.”

  “Maddox,” D whispered.

  Mad looked in his hot eyes, pumping his dick again, harder, pulling at his nipple, and he watched D clench his teeth.

  “Do you have any fuckin’ clue how beautiful you are?” Mad asked.

  A flash in those blue eyes before they closed down.

  Nope.

  He still couldn’t handle shit like that.

  “Fuck me,” Diesel grunted, rolling up into Maddox’s strokes, trying to gain some control over the situation, Maddox, where they were at.

  “I will, baby,” Maddox replied. “Now I’m gonna spend time lookin’ at you.”

  “Just fuck me, Mad.”

  Maddox bent and licked the head of D’s cock.

  “Fuckin’ love this dick,” he muttered.

  “Suck it,” D encouraged.

  He straightened and kept pumping him, slowing it down, but deepening the strokes and letting go of his nipple to allow his hand to roam that warm skin, his gaze again capturing D’s.

  Maddox’s voice dipped way low when he said, “You’ll never taste better pussy than Molly’s.”

  Another flare in those eyes, anger, maybe fear, or sadness, before he bit out, “I know that.”

  “You’ll never love the meat up your ass like you love takin’ mine.”

  “I know that, asshole. So give it to me,” D clipped.

  Maddox let his cock go and reached to the drawer in the bedside table.

  He then knelt in front of Diesel and made a show of lubing his dick.

  D watched his hand move on his cock, hunger filling his features, and muttered, “Jesus, fuck, you’re a motherfucker.”

  With that, Maddox moved in, positioned the head, then he moved in, sliding inside Diesel slowly, his chest brushing against his boy’s, his face an inch away.

  “How much you love your monster, baby?” Mad asked after he’d filled him.

  “Love it, Mad,” D whispered.

  “Yeah,” Maddox replied, taking long, deep thrusts. “Now I’m gonna fuck you hard, D.”