by Paula Cox
“Beat it,” Slick says to the man, and then turns toward me as though that’s the end of the matter.
But the man doesn’t beat it. He squares his shoulders, puffs up his chest. “We’re having a conversation here,” he says. “I saw you in there. You were damn rude to the lady. Why should I beat it?”
Slick sighs, shakes his head. “I don’t wanna fuck you up,” he says calmly. “So just fuck off.”
Something about Slick’s tone must make the man question if I’m worth it, and decide that I’m not. He watches Slick for a few moments, and then bows his head and slinks away, heading around the side of the building, where his car must be.
“That was pretty rude, in there,” I say.
But then Slick just walks away from me, heading around the side of the building toward his bike. I follow him, finding it hard to believe how much of an asshole he’s being, like he doesn’t even know me, let alone like me. The tattooed man pulls out in his car, driving past us, so that when we reach Slick’s bike, we are alone in the car park. Music thumps dimly through the Irishman ’s walls, and far away a car backfires, but nobody is near us. The eaves of the bar throw deep shadows over his bike, further hiding us.
“Slick!” I snap. “What’s gotten into you?”
He has his hand in his pocket, fumbling for his keys, staring down at his bike and unwilling to look at me.
“You’re not driving!” I walk around the bike and snatch his keys away from him.
He wobbles a little, and then lifts his sky-blue eyes to me. He must’ve been drinking all day. His eyes are shot with blood, watery. “What’re you doin’, Brat?” he says. “What’s your problem?”
“What’s my problem?” I reply, dancing back to my side of the bike, where he can’t snatch the keys from me. He just stands there, watching me, that cocky smirk on his lips. “You were going to drive, Slick . . . look at you. You’re drunker than I’ve ever seen you in my life.” It’s true. Slick’s always been able to hold his drink, which means he must’ve drunk a hell of a lot if he’s wobbling like this. “You haven’t even got your helmet with you. You’re not wearing your jacket. And you were going to drive!”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Slick mutters, leaning against the wall of the bar. “I was goin’ to get a pack of goddamn cigarettes. What are you, Brat, my mother?”
“Stop being such a prick!” I wave my arms in frustration, the keys making a ringing noise in my hand. “I wanted to talk to you. Why is that such a problem?”
“Look,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t have a woman shouting at me in front of men who look to me for leadership, not even if you are Boss’s daughter. Do you think I’m goin’ to get ahead by accepting that sort of shit?”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” I mutter. “And you humiliated me. You made me look like a little kid getting a goddamn telling off!” Anger rises once again, and I go on, getting angrier, “And you’ve barely spoken to me since that night at the tree! What is it, Slick, ignoring me just because I haven’t fucked you yet? Is that all you see me as, a quick goddamn lay?”
Slick makes a snorting laughing sound, and then pushes away from the wall. Walking around his bike, he says, “I don’t know what you want, Brat. That’s my goddamn problem. One minute you come at me all hot and heavy, wrapping your legs around me and moaning like you fuckin’ like it, and the next you’re jumping away from me and tellin’ me you want me to stop. I’ll be the first to admit, Brat,” he goes on, backing me against his bike, the metal cool through the thin fabric of my dress, “that I’m not the best man when it comes to that emotional shit with women. But goddamn, what the fuck are you tryin’ to do, drive me mad or somethin’?”
“I . . .” I should tell him now, I should just tell him outright this moment, but it’s that conundrum again . . . his hand is trailing up my thigh, his rough fingers tickling my skin and sending buzzing sensations all the way to my pussy, making my clit warm, making everything warm. “I . . .” He makes it so damn difficult to get the words out sometimes, makes it so difficult for me to think straight when he comes at me like this. I can’t stop looking at his arms, scarred, tattooed, powerful, muscles pressing well-defined through skin, big masses of muscle.
“You what?” Slick says. And then he grabs my thigh with what feels like all his strength, grabs it so solidly that for a moment it hurts. But then he eases off the tension, and slides his hand up my thigh, stopping just short of my panties. “What do you want, Brat? Don’t you want to come all over my hand, just like you did that night? Don’t you want to squirt like my little whore? I remember the way you squirted; I remember the way you sucked my fingers afterwards.”
“I—”
He presses his hand down on my panties, pressing my clit. It’s been so long since I felt his hand on my pussy that all thought is obliterated from my mind. I bite down, and then try once more to tell him, one last ditch effort. But my body is too hot, too aching for pleasure. He pushes my panties aside and brings his middle finger to my hole, which is wet, so wet so quickly, soaked and tingly and aching for his finger, his cock, his tongue, his everything.
“I remember when you got on your hands and knees and begged me to fuck you hard from behind, Brat. I remember how you bounced your ass up and down, moaning, telling me you were my little slut, just mine, and you’d do anything for me. I remember looking down at my rock-hard cock and seeing it covered in your come, thick and white, and I remember fucking you ever harder ’cause I loved to look at it so fucking much.”
When he slides his finger inside of me, I am powerless. There is nothing I can do but lean against his bike, my ass pressing coldly into the metal, his finger pressing warmly into the sweet spot inside of me. He slides another finger in, two fingers buried deep inside of me, his eyes staring like blue flames into me, his muscles taut, smelling of whisky and sweat and me loving the smell more than anything.
“Are you going to squirt for me again?” he asks, sliding his fingers in and out of me, the sensation so full of heat and sparks and electric impulses that I can’t even answer. I just feel them, two strong oily biker’s fingers, callused from fighting and riding, in my tight wet pussy.
“You look like you are, Brat,” he says, fucking my pussy faster with his fingers, in and out, in and out, so that I can hear the fleshy sound of him inside of me. He fucks me so fast with his fingers that I have to stand on my tiptoes from the force, gripping his arms with my hands, squeezing his muscles. “I want you to squirt all down my fuckin’ arm,” he says, breathing heavily. “I want to fuckin’ see it.”
Muscles tensing, he lifts me off my feet and sits me down on the bike so that he can put the strength of his arm into finger-fucking me. Aiming his fingers at my hot spot, he fucks me fast and hard, so fast and hard that I start moaning right here in the car park. I am vaguely aware that someone, at any moment, might interrupt us. And I am vaguely aware that it might even be one of Slick’s men, who’ll then go and tell my father. But none of that matters, not with the pleasure coursing through me like wildfire. I lean back, and shift my hips as his fingers slide, hotly, soaked, into my sensitive stop.
“I’m going to—fuck—Slick—fuck—”
“Come for me,” he growls. “Squirt all over my fuckin’ arm.”
I close my eyes, feeling as though I am floating instead of sitting on the bike, floating and hovering above a raging inferno whose heat scorches into my pussy, holding myself poised above the heat to best ride the pleasure. Euphoria grips me, then, and my pussy gets even tighter, closing like a fist around his fingers, gathering its pleasure into a tight ball. And then—the release hits me with the force of a punch to the stomach, but without any of the pain. I sit up, my stomach tight, my body tight, toes curled in my heels, hands digging into Slick’s shoulder, as the pleasure concentrates into a tiny ball inside my pussy, and then explodes. The explosion sends shards of pleasure throughout my body, to my toes, to my fingertips, and I scream. I don’t care who might hear, not
right now. I throw my head back and scream, squirting thick white come all over Slick’s fingers, feeling myself come all over his hand, the pleasure immense, blotting out everything. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I moan, as another explosion hits me, and I squirt even more over his fingers. I grab his wrist, pushing him deeper inside of me, tilting my hips to get the angle just perfect, and then the orgasm gives me one last mini-explosion, the come pouring, my pussy aching and content and tired all at once. My head is foggy from the alcohol and the pleasure. Maybe that’s why I make the mistake.
“I’m so glad we have a daughter together,” I say . . .
Wait, what? Why the fuck did I just say that?
“Wait, what?” Slick says, as though reading my mind.
“I . . .”
I open my eyes and watch Slick, who takes a step away from me, rubbing his hand against his jeans.
“Give me my keys, Brat,” he says, “and get off my bike.”
His tone is different, dark, troubled somehow. I find myself climbing down from the bike and handing him the keys. After what we just did, I’m amazed by how cold we’ve suddenly become.
“I need to go,” he mutters, climbing onto the bike. “I need to think.”
“You’re just going to leave me, now, really?” The anger returns, and already the orgasm seems very far away. “We need to talk about this, Slick!”
“I . . . I can’t. I’m sorry, Brat.”
He starts the engine, and before I can say another word, screeches out of the parking lot.
I’m left here, angry, confused, annoyed. Annoyed with myself mostly for letting it slip at a time like that, but also annoyed with Slick for running away.
But there’s nothing I can do but pull up my panties and call a cab, which is what I do.
I know one thing for sure: there’s no way I’m telling Heather about any of this.
Chapter Nine
Slick
They kept us in a cold dark warehouse on the outskirts of the dock proper. When I pressed my ear to the wall of my cell, I could hear the sloshing of water and the shouting of men and the crunching of crates. But no matter how much we shouted—and we did shout, all forty of us—nobody ever came to check. Either the Flaming Skulls had sound-proofed the place or they’d paid the dock authorities to ignore the empty warehouse where nobody ever strayed. It didn’t matter to me; my world was the same either way. In the morning somebody pushed a plate of slop through the gap in my cell, I ate, and then I read. At lunchtime, it was the same, and it was the same at dinnertime, too. Over and over. Reading, eating, sleeping. The only time there was a break in the routine was when the Skulls wanted to have some fun.
It was about six months into my imprisonment when I first got my hands really dirty: when I was forced to get my hands dirty. A man wearing a mask—all those bastards wore masks—barged into my cell one day with a shotgun aimed at my face. He dragged me by the collar of my ragged shirt and brought me into the warehouse storage area, a huge empty cavern where all forty of us were gathered. We were enemies of the Skulls, or just playthings: bikers, like me, or personal enemies of the Skulls’ members, or just people picked up to have some fun with, programmers and cleaners and teachers, civilians. We were all forced to sit on the floor for a long time, perhaps around half a day, with nothing to eat, shivering ’cause it was the middle of winter and this place had no heating. Masked men surrounded us, each one holding a shotgun, each one willing to fire if anybody tried anything. They’d proved that before.
Finally, he came out. I had no clue which he he was, but it was the Masked Man. The normal masks the men wore were just balaclavas. The Masked Man wore a full-face tribal mask carved from wood with a deranged smile and two pointed horns. Only his eyes and lips were visible through the mask. This, with his voice, proved that the man changed. But it didn’t matter; each Masked Man was a fucking animal.
I was in agony as we sat there on the concrete. Just two weeks before, I’d been cut with a machete like butcher’s meat, and just a week before that, I’d been shot. I was fucked, sure I was gonna die, certain I was near the end. They wanted me to ride with ’em in exchange for the torture to stop, but I was holding out—for now. At first I was going to agree, until I learned riding with them would give me no chance of escape. They already had a traitor with them, and he was guarded twenty-four-seven from what I’d heard on the prisoner grapevine. Anyway, I couldn’t betray the club, not my father’s club, not Brat’s club. I was a brave goddamn bastard: a brave goddamn idiot.
The Masked Man stood in front of the shivering prisoners, raised his hands like a warped version of a preacher, and shouted over us:
“Listen to me, you fucking rats. I am getting sick and tired of listening to your weeping every goddamn night of my goddamn life. Seriously, do any of you have any self-respect left? Do any of you understand what it is to be a man, and not a goddamn joke? Half of you are babies, not men, and the other half are barely better than that. So, since your crying is the worst thing I’ve ever been forced to listen to, I’ve come up with a way to sort it out. See, we Skulls get shit done, not like you wasted rats, you pieces of shit. Here’s what we’re going to do: cut our numbers down.” When he said this, the prisoners started to grumble and panic. They shut up when the Masked Man fired a shot into the air. “Don’t worry,” he went on, waving his pistol. “I’m a fair man—we’re all fair men—so we’re going to allow you to fight for your lives. We’re not monsters, you know. Twenty versus twenty, one by one, and whichever team destroys the other team first, wins!” Before anyone could protest, he waved a hand at the guards. “Okay, get them up and split them into teams.”
Somehow, I managed to climb to my feet, my body wracked with agony, my back burning from the bullet hole and the machete cut only just starting to heal. I limped to the left of the cavern, joining a huddle of shaking and terrified men. Looking across to the right, I saw that I’d been put on the weaker side. My team was made up of what looked like accountants and office workers: pudgy, thin, weak men, men who have never had to fight a day in their life. On the other side of the room, the bikers gathered, already limbering up.
I wanted to give some speech, but what sort of damn speech can you give to the inhabitants of hell? Anyway, I was in too much pain for any kind of heroics, so I just waited for the guards to pick the first two fighters. The selection was made quickly and one of the bikers went up against the man who looked like a banker, with his wire-frame glasses and torn business shirt. I reckon he’d slept in that shirt for a few months at least.
The fight went the only way it could, with the biker pommeling the man into the concrete. When the victor had been declared, one of the guards fired a shot into the loser’s head for good measure, and then dragged his body away. I was lucky; I wasn’t chosen until the other team had been whittled down, mostly by luck, to around fifteen. Two bikers remained on their side. The rest were the same as my side, civilian types. A shotgun prodded me between the shoulder blades, pushing me toward the center of the room, and the Masked Man shouted out: “Ah, what a battle we have in store for us! Look here, a Road Rager will now face a Hanged Man! A fight for the ages!”
The man opposite me was wide, and burly, and looked like he knew how to handle himself. His nose was flat from where it had been broken in a dozen places, and his lips were cracked and creviced from lack of water. I wondered if I looked as fucked as him.
“Fight!”
He charged at me, and instinct kicked in. I don’t reckon I’ll ever know how the hell I fought this man so quickly, so efficiently. He was bigger than me and he didn’t have two wounds dragging him down, and yet as he came at me, I ducked the blow, spun around, and elbowed him in the back of the head. Survival urged me on, and I launched myself at his back as he staggered, gripping his neck and tackling him to the floor before smashing his face repeatedly into the concrete.
“Wow!” the Masked Man called. “What a hero!”
I stood up, panting. My back had started t
o bleed again. I began to limp toward my team’s side of the cavern, grateful for a rest. But then the Masked Man roared: “Get that one back in the fight! I want to see how long he can go before he falls!”
I had no choice but to return to the bloodshed, the violence. I had no choice but to fight the next man. It started as a joke for the Flaming Skulls and the Masked Man. They thought that I’d fight a couple of men and then my wounds would take me. I thought the same thing; I didn’t think I could go for as long as I did. But at some point, I switched off my mind and I ignored the pain and I let my body take over. I just fought: biting, punching, spitting, hissing, growling, bloody, dirty fighting. I fought and I killed. I lost myself in an ocean of blood. Each time I beat a man, more blood was added to my face, until I was completely covered in it, head to toe, slick with it. My mind distanced itself, and my wounds screamed in agony, and yet I fought on. At first, the Skulls laughed in the way a bully will laugh at his victim putting on a bit of a show. Then the laughter stopped and was replaced with eerie curiosity. Finally, grim fascination came over them.
