Tacet a Mortuis

by Amo Jones

  His lips came to my collarbone, and it was enough to unleash my second orgasm. My body jerked painfully yet throbbed blissfully as I came down. His teeth sunk into my flesh and he growled out a low groan, just as his cock jerked inside of me. We stood there for a few more beats, collecting our breaths, then he laughed and stepped backward, pressing a light kiss on my lips. “I’m goin’ need to go get some clothes from Nate’s room.”

  “Okay,” I smiled, my cheeks red and my body aching from being fucked to the brink of insanity.

  His eyes twinkled, and his lip kinked in a grin. “You ok?”

  I rolled my eyes—totally bluffing—“Of course. This isn’t my first rodeo with you.”

  He laughed, then got out of the shower, disappearing into Nate’s room. I shut the curtain and bit down on my bottom lip. I couldn’t stop the smile that was spread over my mouth. He loved me. Bishop Vincent Hayes said he loved me. My chest tingled with excitement and it took everything inside of me not to scream in happiness. I felt like a part of me had finally slipped into a puzzle of what was him and I. For almost a year our relationship had done circles, but we had never been here, and it gave me hope for our future. I quickly re-soaped my hands and scrubbed myself down again, even though I really didn’t want to because Bishop’s cologne had left a faint smell lingering over my flesh, then I turned the faucet off and got out, slipping the towel around my body.

  “Oh, what the hell did I miss?” Tate said from my bedroom, probably noticing the door. I peeked my head around the broken door to see her entering my bedroom.

  Her worried eyes came to mine, and then they softened. “Giiirrllll… I need to know everything.” I guess I was actually smiling from ear to ear.

  “You will, but first I need to quickly pack and get changed.”

  “And where’s our GQ brooding caveman?”

  I hiked my thumb over my shoulder. “Grabbing some clothes from Nate’s room.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “This ought to be good.”

  She had no idea.

  “Ok, so we’ve got enough food for the morning and for the guys if they get hungry later. Now we just need to order pizza’s!” I figured my chat with the old man could wait. The girls looked tired, and I didn’t have the energy for him right now.

  Coming to a red light, I thought over where we could grab pizzas that were on the way and were also decent. I smirked. “I have an idea.” Then I slid out my phone and typed out a group text:

  Meet us at CK’s

  I put my phone on my lap and floored it to the pizza parlor. The girls were a lot quieter this time around than they were earlier in the day. Madison had every reason to be tired, considering, but Tate, I didn’t know. I was getting tired by just watching her brain tick over with all her overthinking. I gave a bit of a shit about Tate because I knew how much she meant to Madison. So in short, I didn’t want to see her get hurt.

  I hooked into the parallel park outside Gengy’s Pizza. The “G” was hanging off an old electrical wire and flicked on and off, so sometimes, it looked more like “Engy’s Pizzas”, but Gengy, the owner, he was a good friend from when I was a kid. My mom would bring me here all the time to get his pizzas. It was probably one of the only real memories I had as a kid with my mom.

  “I won’t be a second.” I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket, and just as I was about to grab it out, Gengy’s cussing in his heavy Puerto Rican accented voice caught my attention.

  “No, fuck you, man, that’s not how it’s going to go down. I’m telling you, McGregor is about to beat some ass!”

  I chuckled, shaking my head as I entered the shop. “Good to see you’re still talking shit!” I yelled out, pulling my phone out from my back pocket.

  Gengy’s shit talking stopped and his attention came to me. He gave me a shit-eating grin. “Oh! B, my man!” Then he leaned over the counter and pulled me in for a hug. “Where you been, broki? I could slap you upside your head not coming to visit me more!”

  “I know, homie, that’s my bad. You still haven’t gotten that sign fixed though…”

  “Hey!” He shook his finger in front of himself. “Don’t come up here in your rich pretty boy sports car and your clothes and throw money at me like I’m some stripper and about to give you a lap dance, I told you, I can handle my own.”

  “You’ve been telling me that since I was ten, and how much would that lap dance cost me? I got a couple dollars in here…”

  “Smart shit!” He laughed, tossing a dishcloth over his shoulder. Gengy was a sixty-year-old, beer belly, pot smoking, foul-mouthed, stubborn son of a bitch. But he and I bonded from day one and the rest was history.

  “Whatchu want, B?”

  I yapped off the pizza’s I wanted to order and he went about making them. I looked down at my phone, catching up the texts from these idiots.

  Nate: Why?

  Jase: We haven’t been there in a while, B.

  Eli: Got blunts?

  Cash: Can I bring Cindy?

  Hunter: Who the fuck is Cindy?

  Cash: She’s the chick I’m fucking

  Eli: What like right now?

  Cash: Someone take this kid to school…

  Eli: Who the fuck you calling a kid? I had your mom under me last week.

  Brantley: I’ll gather the children and be there.

  I shook my head. Fucking idiots. The lot of them. Sliding my phone into my pocket, I caught Gengy up on all my bullshit from the past year, paid for the pizzas, and then went back to the car.

  “Just saying,” Tate mumbled through a yawn. “If I catch salmonella poisoning—I’m totally blaming you, B.”

  I snorted. “Don’t let the outside fool you. He’s cleaner on the inside than most of those pretty thousand dollar strips we go to.”

  “Huh, uncanny,” Tatum snickered, more to herself but I caught it. I was on edge about how this was all going to pan out come tomorrow. I’ve kept big fucking things from everyone, and eventually, those big fucking things turn into mountains. You water shit for long enough and it will help plants grow. I had a feeling Nate was about to lose his shit. I don’t know what game Nate was playing with Tatum, but I could see it fucking with her head. Aside from her, he always tried to brush off his feelings for Tillie, but we never bought it.

  It was easy to say you don’t love someone when your feelings weren’t being shoved in your face every day by that person breathing the same air as you. It was why long distance relationships never worked. You don’t see that person for long enough, the illusion that your feelings slowly start to dissipate into thin air begins, then suddenly you wonder if you ever really felt anything at all and how could you fall so hard so fast and then just poof, feel like it’s nothing. You move on with your life, put it down to making memories, and live happily. Until you see her again. The air electrifies between you, eyes collide like comets shooting through the sky, and in those moments, your world has flipped fucking upside. Gravity unleashes you and once again, you’re falling. I don’t know about soul mates and all that bullshit that people like to bring it down to, but I know a bit about connection, and that shit never lies. The space between the next time you see each other can be as long as you want, and yeah, maybe you do subconsciously build a shield that gives you false security, making you think you never really had feelings for them to begin with, but that’s easy to do when you’re not seeing them day and day out. Feeling the magnetic pull that brought you together to begin with. It takes a second for two souls to connect. Connections never lie, and that’s why when their eyes attach again after so long, I know for damn sure that Tate will be fucked.

  I pulled out of the parking lot and drove us towards CK’s. When we got there, I watched Madison’s face morph into horror.

  “Bishop. I swear to God, if I get a riddle text, I’ll kill you. I’m not playing around anymore.”

  I chuckled because her paranoia was valid. “Get out of the car.” I opened my door and stretched out. The old parking lot had h
ay barrels drifting in the wind and old dirt was kicked up in the air from us driving in.

  Madison got out of the car, holding the pizzas. “Wow. How did I not know about this place?”

  I walked around to her side and took them from her. “This place used to be the spot to hang out when we were kids. They shut down years and years ago, no one really knows why because business was always good. Tate climbed out, straightening her skirt.

  “I haven’t been here in years.” Then she opened a pizza box and took a bite.

  Madison was still staring at the old amusement park. I followed her line of sight. The entryway to the park was a rainbow-colored sign that read “Cranksy Klanksy’s Fun Park” in circus font. There was a single chain that linked one side of the entry to the other that had a panel with the words: “Trespassers will be prosecuted” on it.

  “Come on.” I took Madison’s hand in mine and walked toward the entry, just as a few cars pulled up behind us. Doors shut and then Hunter and Eli ran up to us, taking a box of pizza as the rest of them laughed, heading deeper into the amusement park. I rolled my eyes.

  Madison cranked her head over her shoulder to check on Tatum but she was already under Nate’s arm. I shook my head and sighed. He was walking on dangerous ground unless he was serious when he said he was over Tillie

  “Is it safe here?” Madison asked me as I led her deeper into the gloomy park. It was a full moon, so it wasn’t too dark and the boys had torches and were running around like a pack of hyenas in heat.

  “Yeah.” I pulled her under my arm and kissed her head. Dropping the rest of the pizzas onto a small table, I grabbed one box and jerked my head toward the old Ferris wheel.

  “Nope.” She shook her head. “No, Bishop. I don’t do heights.”

  I grinned. “Do you trust me?”

  “No. Yes. No and yes.”

  I stepped closer to her until I could smell her sweet perfume covering the old musk smell of the park. “What is it, Kitty, do you, or don’t you trust me?” I tilted my head. My eyes fell to her lips when she licked her lower one and tugged it into her mouth. My dick swelled in my pants. “Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, stepped forward and yanked her in the direction of the Ferris wheel.

  “Promise me we will stay low.”

  “I promise.” This time. The next time I brought her here, we were going to the top. She finally relaxed and stopped fighting against my hold. I ducked under the chains and she followed.

  “Bishop…” she warned as we got closer to the floating chairs.

  “Get in, Kitty.”

  I stepped in first and sat down. It swung from my weight, but I was forty percent certain it was safe. Madison slowly stepped onto the thick plastic. When it moved, she squealed and then pounced on my lap.

  “You’re cute as fuck.” I swiped her hair out of the way from her face and she blushed before sliding off my lap and sitting beside me. After a few seconds, I felt her body visibly relax from under my arm.

  “Not so bad, huh?” I asked her, my eyebrow quirked.

  She looked behind us, her eyes running over all the metal and hinges—that were no doubt rusted. “I guess not.”

  “Next time, we’ll go to the top.”

  She faltered. “Sure.”

  I laughed again, then my laughter died out. “Shit might get ugly tomorrow, Mads.” I turned to face her. The beam from the moonlight hitting every angle of her features. Her swollen lips, sunken in cheekbones, slightly pointed chin and thick eyelashes. I always noticed that she had two prominent points on her forehead too. She was by far the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes on. There wasn’t a speck of imperfection on her, but the thing that I loved most about her, was that she was oblivious to how beautiful she was. She never flaunted it like Tate did, and never tried to hide it like Tillie did. She was just… Madison. Herself, constantly. It was intimidating and inspiring how secure she was in her own skin.

  She looked straight ahead, grabbing the strands of hair off her face that had swept up with the wind. “Doesn’t it always?” She smiled briefly, then turned serious, her eyes coming to mine. “I can’t have anything bad happen to you or Daemon, or Tate, or Nate, or—” she laughed, shaking her head. “Or any of the Kings. God, Bishop.” She brought her attention back to me. “My list of people who I give a shit about has extended extremely.”

  That brought a smile to my face because these boys were my brothers, so to hear that she cared about them took a load off my shoulders. I never doubted her anyway, that’s just who she was, but we had done fucked up shit to her in the past. I wasn’t sure whether that had done some permanent psychological damage to her. Guess time would tell how deep the scars were, especially the ones that were signed with my initials.

  I squeezed her to me. “I know.”

  She rested her head on my chest and snuggled into me more. She wasn’t short, but she was tiny up against me. “Tell me your favorite color.” She yawned, lacing her fingers with mine.

  “Black. Yours?”

  She giggled. “Mine’s blue. Well, more like a teal color. A mix of green and blue, but more of a green. It’s like that pastel color.”

  “You couldn’t just say red or something simple,” I snorted. That was part of her charm.

  She shook her head against my chest. “No, I’m not simple, so you should probably run away now.”

  “Sorry, baby, running shoes don’t go with my outfit.”

  She giggled, the high pitch notes of it hitting the lifeless rides. Her laugh itself could breathe life back into the dead, let alone this abandoned amusement park.

  Her laughter died out, then she tilted her head up to look at me from under my arm. Our eyes stayed locked together until my chest fucking tightened. “What?” I whispered, my eyes falling to her lips.

  “Is this real?”

  “If it’s not, I’ll kill the mother fucker who created it.”

  “I can’t live without you, Bishop.”

  “Shhh.” I pulled her head back under my arm. I wasn’t going to tell her that she wouldn’t have to worry about that. At least not until we had come back from Perdita.

  We were driving back out to the cabin. The rest of the cars following behind me. Tate had jumped in with Nate, and Hunter tried to jump in with us, but I kicked everyone out. The more time I spent with Madison, where it was just her and I, I started craving more of it. The pups will have to learn to give us some space.

  “I love this song.” Madison bobbed her head, turning the music up.

  “What’s it called?” I asked. Usually, this kind of music wasn’t really my thing, but the voice, lyrics, and beat was catchy.

  “It’s Nikyee Heaton ‘I’m Ready’…” she smiled at me looking out of the corner of her eye. “Most of her songs are about love and sex, mostly sex.”

  “Fitting lyrics.”

  “Yup!” She popped the P. “Which is mainly why I love this song.”

  She turned it up louder and then hit repeat when it ended. By the time we were pulling down the private driveway to the cabin, I was pretty sure I knew every lyric to the song.

  We both got out and shut the doors as the rest of the cars pulled up. It was hitting close to midnight, so I threw up deuces to the guys and led Madison inside and up to the master bedroom. The cabin had been in our family for generations. The main level had a full wrap porch, the whole house built from tarnished logs. Then there was the second level that had around five bedrooms, and then the master bedroom took up the entire third level with a wraparound glass wall so you have a full view of the grounds. My dad created this extension, him and his paranoia, but the cabin itself had been in our family for generations. I swore the ghosts of my ancestors still walked these halls, and proof would have it that that wasn’t a very reassuring thing to feel.

  “Wow.” Madison ran her hand down the old four-post wooden bed. The engravings in the wood filled with intricate designs and patterns. “I swear nothing should surprise me anymore.” She yawned and stret
ched her arms above but flinched.

  I removed Nate’s clothes and tossed them into the corner before pulling the covers back. “You alright?”

  She flushed. “Fine.” Then tossed her clothes off and onto the floor. I stilled when I saw the blue and black bruising around her thighs, arms, and even slightly around her neck.

  “Fuck.” I shot off the bed toward her.

  “What?” She panicked, then her eyes dropped down to her thighs. She relaxed. “Oh,” she pulled the covers back and slid into the sheets.

  “No, Mads, not ‘oh.’”

  “What’s the big deal?” She yawned again. She was tired, so I didn’t want to annoy her.

  I sunk into the bed and pulled her into me. “I’ll try to go softer, but I can’t guarantee it.”

  She shot off the bed as if she wasn’t just yawning like someone who hadn’t slept in weeks. “No. Don’t. I love it.”

  I paused, trying to pick up any dishonesty, then sighed. “Thank fuck, because I honestly can’t help myself. Now get back here. I won’t fuck you tonight, but in the morning, your ass is mine.”

  “This sort of feels like our last feast…” Tate mumbled around her pancake.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Nate sneered at her with his lip curled—as if he didn’t have his tongue down her throat last night.

  Bishop laughed. “It could be…” Eyes fell on him, but he brushed them off. I so desperately wanted to ask what was about to happen, but the other side of me would rather not know until I got there.

  “Girl can cook!” Hunter was onto his fourth pancake. I must’ve made over one hundred pancakes this morning, and match that with pounds of greasy bacon, about twenty-four eggs (scrambled), and an ungodly amount of bread, and you have a casual breakfast for the Kings. It took Tate and I hours this morning, but I was adamant to do it. These guys had turned into family, closer than some of my blood family. When I looked around the table at all their faces, I now understood the saying blood means nothing, loyalty means everything. Because time and time again, it had been these boys who had shown their loyalty to me. Yeah, so they’ve also put me in harm’s way, almost run me over, chased me through a forest in the dark night, fucked with my head, and I’m probably missing a few other things, but above all, they’re my family.