Secondhand Smoke (Dartmoor Book 4)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Tango,” Jazz prodded.

  He plucked two condoms off the nightstand and joined them.

  ~*~

  Aidan had to close one eye behind his nighttime goggles on the way to the clubhouse, but he managed not to wipe out or crash into another vehicle. Wouldn’t that just be perfect? His epic turnaround had been prompted by an accident – and when that didn’t work, it would be back to the asphalt he went. Splat.

  But he arrived in one piece, staggering off the bike once it was parked in front of the clubhouse, head tipping back as he sucked cool night air into his paper-dry mouth.

  The stars cartwheeled overhead. The plain gray façade of the clubhouse snapped in and out of focus. The black dog affixed to the siding was running, long legs reaching…

  He was at an unheard-of point of drunkenness. He’d never in his life been this wasted and still been on his feet.

  But the fury was still there, flooding his veins, tangling with the whiskey in a way that made him think he’d breathe fire if he tried to speak.

  She’d done it on purpose, hadn’t she? Gotten pregnant. That’s what women did – they trapped you, pinned you to them for life. Drained you of your money and your soul, and all with those five words:

  “I’m pregnant, and it’s yours.”

  He snarled up at the sky, but the stars ignored him, dancing and swirling and refusing to keep their constellations.

  “Bitch,” he said to Tonya, though she wasn’t there to hear.

  The ground heaved beneath him as he walked to the front door. One way, and then the next. He stumbled and caught himself against the wall. Took three tries to turn the knob and let himself in.

  He wanted there to be a rampaging party waiting for him, some den of heathens where he could drink and fuck and smoke the hatred away. But the common room was empty. TV rumbling to itself. Two beers sitting on the coffee table, cold condensation running down their sides.

  Fresh beers.

  Someone was here.

  The back hall lengthened as he walked down it, like he was in a funhouse. His head pounded, the blood thrusting against the backs of his eyes with each beat of his pulse.

  If he so much as smelled Jack Daniels Honey after this night was over, he’d probably puke on the spot.

  Damn you, Tonya.

  Damn women.

  He heard moaning. Deep, highly-aroused, feminine moaning. Porno material, the kind you dreamed about hearing when you were inside a woman.

  Women – the stuff of both dreams and nightmares.

  All the dorm doors stood ajar, clean and ready for occupancy. All but one, a seam of light flashing along the floor where it was shut up tight.

  Aidan didn’t knock; he’d spotted the bikes in the parking lot. He opened the door and nearly fell inside, catching himself against the jamb and waiting for the room to stop spinning.

  A whole lot of naked skin greeted his glassy eyes. Tango. Carter. Jasmine between them. She was groaning and undulating, chanting “yes, yes” in solid agreement with the double penetration situation they had going on.

  A good old everyday occurrence in the MC world. Some overwrought groupie wanting to be fucked from every direction, treated like a piece of meat. They were all the same, weren’t they?

  Women.

  Aidan pushed off the doorframe and fumbled at his cut, managed to shrug out of it. His hands were made of lead as he found the hem of his shirt and peeled it over his head. He didn’t think it was possible, given how much he’d had to drink, but his cock stirred to life, asking to join the party.

  “My turn next?” he asked, and walked toward the bed.

  ~*~

  Jasmine dragged in a huge breath and launched into another coughing fit, choking, gasping for the breath that had been denied her those few precious seconds.

  “Is she okay?” Tango asked between his teeth.

  “Yeah,” was Carter’s terse, furious response. “I got her. You get him under control.”

  Tango dug his elbow into Aidan’s windpipe, until the guy gasped and his eyes bugged.

  “Shit,” he wheezed. “Shit, Kev…”

  The door clicked and the sound of Jasmine’s coughing dimmed as she and Carter moved down the hall.

  Tango dug his elbow in another notch, just because the anger wouldn’t ebb inside him. Because Aidan was drunk off his ass, and he didn’t know how much force it would take to get through to him.

  “Kev,” Aidan gasped. “Kevin.”

  It had all gone so terribly, terribly sideways. One moment it had been the two of them filling Jasmine, and he’d been building toward the wildest orgasm of his life. And then Aidan had come in, joined them. “Don’t reach above your means, junior,” he’d told Carter, his words slurred. He’d shoved the younger member aside, had taken his place at Jasmine’s sex.

  And she’d been ecstatic, all purrs and moans and deep gasps.

  Until Aidan wrapped both hands around her throat, called her a slut, and tried to choke her to death.

  Tango had thrown his drunken best friend to the floor, and he was pinning him down now, boiling with murderous fury.

  “What in the fuck is wrong with you?” Tango hissed in his face. “Were you trying to kill her?”

  Aidan licked his lips, started to answer. His breath stank of sweet whiskey.

  “I swear to God,” Tango said, “I love you, and you’re my best friend in the world, but you touch her again, and I’ll break you in two. You do not touch Jazz. Understand? Not ever again.”

  Aidan stared at him a long moment, chest heaving, brown eyes far, far away. Then they closed, and his face pinched, and he drew in a shuddering breath. “She’s pregnant,” he groaned. “I got her pregnant.”

  Tango’s skin shriveled. “Jazz?”

  “Tonya.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “She told me tonight.” Fat, drunken tears leaked from the corners of Aidan’s eyes and he took a deep, shuddering breath. “I didn’t use a rubber, and I knocked her up.”

  Tango recalled the beautiful, cold rich girl who took horseback riding lessons with Walsh’s wife. Perfect, moneyed features, and a cruel mouth. Nothing but a heartache in designer clothes, but Aidan had been infatuated. He’d been hooked…

  “Is she going to…get it taken care of?” he asked, haltingly. He couldn’t imagine a woman of that caliber allowing a biker’s seed to grow inside her.

  Aidan’s face screwed up tight.

  “Shit,” Tango muttered, releasing him, sitting up.

  Aidan pressed his hands over his face and took another of those haunted, rattling breaths.

  Tango raked his hands through his hair, suddenly aware of their mutual nakedness, and lack of a girl.

  He bit at his lip. “I’m sorry, bro. Really. I don’t…” He swallowed. “But what you did to Jazz…”

  “I know, I know,” Aidan groaned. “I’m sorry.”

  Tango sighed. “She wanted both of us together. Guess that won’t seem so romantic after this.”

  “No such thing as romantic,” Aidan mumbled. He pulled his hands away, and his eyes opened unnaturally wide, came to Tango. “Brother.” His voice was strained, lost. “Why do we put up with bitches? You and me – you’re bi. And I could learn.”

  Tango sighed. “Aidan–”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “No. Why…why do we…? Why don’t we just…?”

  Tango sighed again and leaned over him, the long hair on top of his head falling down onto Aidan’s forehead. “Because you’re very straight, and I’m very confused, and you can’t be gay in this club.”

  He kissed him, his best friend, his surrogate brother. On the lips, his mouth clinging. Yes, a voice in the back of his head said. Give your body to someone you love. And he could almost imagine that Aidan responded, lifted into him. It wouldn’t be the poison of Ian, would be something so whole and pure.

  But it could never be.

  He pulled back. And Aidan’
s gaze was unfocused, blurred-over.

  “You need to sleep,” Tango said quietly. “And then I’ll help you figure it out. All of it. I promise.”

  ~*~

  “Here.” Carter handed a cold water bottle from the fridge to Jasmine and she took it with a nod of thanks, still wheezing.

  She sucked down half of it in one long gulp. Gasped afterward, coughed a little more.

  They both stood naked in the clubhouse kitchen, but they might as well have been fully clothed for all the interest he had in their state of dress.

  “Thanks.” Jasmine’s voice was all wrong, scraped-hoarse. She pressed the cold bottle to her forehead, her neck, between her breasts. The smile she sent his way was nothing like the one she’d been giving him before. It was without pretense or sexual innuendo. It was embarrassed, actually. “I’m sorry.”

  He folded his arms. “For what?”

  She ducked her head and fiddled with the bottle cap in her hand. “I’m a total skank, huh? Sorry.”

  His chest tightened. From the moment he’d prospected, he’d been fascinated by the Lean Bitches. It had started as a violent disgust…but the curiosity had been there, lurking beneath. And the longer he’d stayed with the Dogs, the more he’d seen, the more he’d begun to hunger for the nastiness. Why work and struggle and make a fool of himself for a girl out in the real world when there were the club girls wanting to snag a piece of him? There were casual groupies who showed up and then never showed back, but then there were the hardcore few. The ones who’d put themselves in Dogs’ beds every night for years, and seemed to enjoy it. Jasmine was their leader, and she was gorgeous, and he’d fantasized about her while he’d held his cock in his hand.

  And now he’d been inside her, and his world was upside down. He wasn’t thinking with his upstairs head; possession roared in his veins.

  “Jazz.” He loved the sound of the word on his tongue. The taste of it. Loved the way her head lifted, eyes wide and red-rimmed, helpless and hopeless all at once. “You’re not a skank.”

  Her mouth lifted at the corners. “You’re sweet.”

  “No. I’m dead serious.”

  She blinked.

  “And Tango’s not your man if he let that happen just now.” He nodded toward the hall, toward what the three of them had done. “’Cause if you were mine,” he said, feeling bold, feeling ten-feet-tall, “I wouldn’t share you.”

  ~*~

  Tango was dressed and sitting on the side of the bed, having a smoke when Carter came back in. He didn’t turn his head to look at the other blonde; nakedness was never a turn-on once the heat of the moment had passed.

  Carter grabbed his jeans and hauled them up his legs in a few efficient movements, not speaking until they were in place. “Did you kill him?” he asked, nodding toward Aidan’s still figure on the floor. His voice was still strained. Tango hadn’t seen him angry since he was a teenager, since Ava was kidnapped. That same tight ire was in his voice now, over Jasmine.

  Tango took a deep drag on his cigarette, forced the smoke out through his nostrils. “He fell asleep. He smells like someone broke a bottle over his head. Or maybe a barrel.”

  Carter braced a shoulder against the door and exhaled sharply, still pissed, all jacked up in the shoulders about it. “What the hell was that? Is he jealous or something?”

  “Nah. It had nothing to do with Jazz. Or us,” he added with a sigh. “Tonya’s pregnant.”

  Carter hissed. “Shit.”

  Tango regarded his passed-out friend, sprawled across the orange carpet, snoring, his brow knotted with a worry the alcohol hadn’t been able to dim.

  “Yeah. Shit.”

  Two

  Samantha checked her ensemble in the floor-length mirror in the corner of her room. Another day teaching her first-year Shakespeare students, another conservative outfit she’d put together off the Kohl’s clearance rack. Oh Professor Walton, what a glamorous woman you are, she thought with cold resignation.

  Today she wore a gray pinstriped pencil skirt, a white sweater set, and pumps with sensible, clunky heels perfect for a day spent at the lectern. Her dark blonde hair was in its usual thick braid, tidy now, but waiting to slip loose a piece at a time and grow wild over the course of the day. Her eyes looked dull behind the lenses of her glasses. Lenses that magnified the crow’s feet she was starting to have thanks to lots of late nights up reading.

  She needed to get more sleep, drink more water, eat more vegetables.

  She needed a makeover.

  But she needed to get her little sister up, because Erin couldn’t afford to be late two mornings in a row on her first week of junior year.

  Sam gathered her bags and headed down the hall. “Erin?” She rapped on her sister’s door. “Erin, sweetie, it’s time to get up.”

  No response.

  “Erin, come on.” She turned the knob, surprised to find it unlocked, and let herself into the room. “You know you can’t…” The words faded in her mouth as her eyes roved across the room.

  The bed was made, or as close to it as Erin ever approximated, the quilts tugged up hastily, pillows stacked against the headboard. The closet stood open and hangers jabbed out of it like plastic bird wings. Clothes littered the floor, tops, cheerleading shorts, bras and panties. Makeup bottles cluttered the dresser. The sharp citrus note of spilled perfume shot up Sam’s nose and punched her in the back of the throat.

  Erin wasn’t there.

  ~*~

  A sound woke him. An awful clanging sound, like Christmas bells and someone beating on a copper pot with a spoon. Low and high notes, clinking and resonant, together. It tolled through his head, pushed at the sides of his skull, hit the back of his tongue again and again, gagging him.

  He became aware of things slowly. The heaviness and pain in his body. The press of a hard surface beneath his cheek. He lay on his stomach, his head twisted to the side, his neck pinched. His skin prickled into gooseflesh and he thought he must be naked beneath whatever scratchy linen covered him.

  He worked his eyes open like old shutters, and that was when he realized the source of the noise. A coffee mug sat in front of his face, and someone was stirring its contents with a spoon, the silver clipping against the porcelain as it moved, the sound magnified by his epic hangover.

  “What?” he croaked, and didn’t know why he’d said it.

  Tango’s voice: “Hot tea, with honey and peppermint. Walsh swears by it.”

  “Yeah, I bet he does. Fucker.” With a grimace and a groan, Aidan pushed up on his arms and sat back. The pounding in his head intensified. The light, weak though it was, stabbed through the high frosted window above the bed and shot needles through his eyes.

  Wincing, he glanced down at himself, confirming that he was indeed naked, and that someone had thrown a blanket over him, one that now trailed off his shoulders. He wrapped it tightly across his front and reached for the tea. It actually smelled good, so that was something, at least.

  Tango sat on the side of the bed, long hair on the top of his head carefully gelled and styled, so a few pieces fell across his forehead. He wore soft colors, a white t-shirt with the Lean Dogs logo and rockers. His face seemed sharp and too-thin, his eyes a little haunted around the edges.

  Or maybe that was just the hangover. Whatever.

  The first sip of tea flowed soothingly across his tongue, proving that his English brother knew everything about everything, as if he’d ever doubted him. He took another sip and glanced over the mug at his best friend.

  “What did I do last night?”

  “Tried to choke Jasmine to death.”

  “Shit.” More tea. “Did I dream it, or were you and Jockstrap and she…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh. How’d that go?”

  “Pretty good up until that whole strangling thing.”

  “Right.”

  “She wanted it to be you.”

  “Come again?”

  Tango sighed, stared at the toes of his
boots. “A while back, she asked if I’d ask you if…”

  Aidan started to grin, and it turned into a gasp of pain as the movement plucked at his headache. “Shit. Yeah, okay, that woulda been fun.” Some faint memory from last night grabbed at him, tried to take a firmer hold. “Wait…did you…did you kiss me?”

  “And you enjoyed it,” Tango deadpanned. “I’m a very good kisser.”

  They held one another’s gazes a moment, Aidan’s watery with exhaustion and pain.

  Then they both smiled together, sad, regretful smiles.

  “I didn’t hurt her, did I?” Aidan asked quietly. “If I’d been in my right mind, I swear, bro, I never–”

  “She’s a little shookup, but physically she’s fine.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Yeah.” Tango gave him a level stare. “I haven’t ever seen you like that. Violent with one of the girls. That was Mercy’s old game, not yours.”

  Aidan swallowed more tea, kicking himself mentally.

  “Tell me about Tonya.”

  “She’s trying to trap me.”

  Tango’s mouth tugged in a sideways frown. “No offense, but what the hell would she want to do that for?”

  “She–” His mind went blank.

  “She’s rich, she’s gorgeous, her dad has connections. She’s got everything she wants. What would she be trying to get out of you?”

  Wasn’t that a giant slap across the face?

  “Nothing,” Aidan muttered. “She wouldn’t want anything from me.”

  ~*~

  “No, no, I’m not calling in sick.” Sam cranked hard on the wheel with one hand, her other occupied with the cellphone she held clamped to her ear. The battleship that was her ’83 Caprice dipped hard into the turn, brakes squealing. “I’m just going to be late is all. Can one of the TAs slap a sign on my room door or something?”

  Her colleague, and new head of the English department, Conrad Pitts, sighed deeply. She could envision him taking his glasses off, rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t spare any of them. Look, Samantha, if you can’t make it in today–”