Devil_Black Talons MC

by Vivian Gray

  “But how do I deal?!” Jacob didn’t realize how angry he was until his fist slammed down on the table and he heard his own voice echoing off the walls. He brought his voice down to a reasonable level, but he couldn’t get the anger out. “How do I decide to be okay with the fact that the woman I—the woman who is going to be the mother of my child is still daydreaming about fixing a damn meth head. We both know that people almost never come back from that, that it’s harder to kick than heroin. How do I know that she went along with a stranger and put herself in this fucking situation? How do I trust that she’ll never do something like that again?”

  He waited for Snake-eye to offer some kind of grand wisdom, some story that would solve the problem and let Jacob finally get some peace. Instead, the man shrugged and look tired, his face showing every line it had ever earned. “You just have to do it, boss. You just have to decide that she’s trustworthy. Or, you know, that she’s not.”

  “And what if she’s not?” Asking the question terrified Jacob, but it was the one that needed to be said. He felt lighter once he’d spoken the words, but he also felt like the worst bastard to ever take a breath.

  “Then you set her up somewhere a little ways away. You hide her identity better than she did so it’s hard for him to find her. You make sure she has what she needs to be successful, to take care of the kid. And you stay involved in that kid’s life, every day, so that if something does happen, you’re there to pick up the scraps. You’re there to help the kid, so that the kid is never alone.”

  There was something about the way that Snake-eye said it all. “Is that what my father did?”

  Snake-eye didn’t seem able to say the words. Eventually, he just nodded.

  Jacob felt his stomach twist. He’d never really thought of his mother; she just hadn’t ever been a factor. Much like Laurie wasn’t the first woman kidnapped by someone they knew and tossed into a warehouse to be sold, his mother wouldn’t have been the first girl to ditch her kid on her biker boyfriend and take to the road. People always thought of it the other way around, but that wasn’t the case. Most of the guys he ran with were responsible, caring, decent guys. They couldn’t hold down a regular job or work in a more typical community for a lot of reasons. They had found their own way to participate in society, and doing it in a way that gave them the best benefits they could get. They were part of a family.

  He was part of that family. He’d made Laurie part of that family as well. Now he just had to figure out how to forgive her for not understanding.

  “What happened to my mother?” He didn’t want to know, but he needed to hear the answer, just once.

  “Overdose,” Snake-eye said, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t going to say more.

  But Jacob felt the need to press. “Bad drugs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was why Dad always insisted on us being so careful. All the measuring and testing, never letting an inferior batch out, no matter what we’d spent on it.”

  “Yes.”

  It was the kind of story that rocked someone back on their heels, he supposed. That was what it was supposed to do. It wasn’t the sort of thing a person was supposed to hear and stay the same. But he didn’t know yet what it meant.

  “I gotta go,” Jacob said because there weren’t any other words. He didn’t know if Snake-eye answered or not; he was halfway out the door already. He had to go see his woman.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Laurie

  Laurie resisted the urge to just put her head in her hands and cry. She’d tried for days to reconnect with Jacob, but nothing was working. When she touched him, he withdrew. When she gave him space, she felt him watching her, but when she turned her head to catch his gaze and smile, he had always looked away first. She couldn’t find the right answer.

  The app was done. There was no more reason for him to keep her here, other than sex and the baby. He wasn’t taking the first thing, and the second thing… he’d said he wanted it, and her, but what kind of proof of that was there, really? Maybe he’d let her take the computer stuff with her when he kicked her out.

  The door to her little office slammed open, and Laurie jumped hard, her eyes wide open. Jacob stood there, his eyes wild, a look on his face she hadn’t seen in more than a month. Not since the day Whip had come to the clubhouse.

  “Now,” he growled out, grabbing her arm and pushing her up. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her with bruising force. She kissed him back as hard as she could, going up on her tiptoes to make up for the press of her belly and how hard that made it to reach him. His hands dug into her ass, and she groaned into his mouth, delighted by the intensity of the pressure. It had been so long – so long it was almost hard to understand how she hadn’t had this for weeks and weeks. “Where?” His words were breathless in a way she’d never heard before, not from him.

  What room? This was fine. Oh, what position. It had been awkward for a while, but with her belly so swollen now... in this mood, he always wanted to fuck her up against something, but the fat pregnant belly was simply going to make that impossible now.

  She stared around the room and her gaze settled on the little couch that had been left in the room. That would work.

  “Here.”

  He kicked the door shut and tore at her clothes as he pushed her backward. He went to shove her down on the worn cushions, but she turned him, putting his ass down first. He broke the kiss, a confused and almost wary expression on his face.

  Laurie ran her fingers down Jacob’s cheek and smiled. “Let me take care of you. Just this once, okay? Let me take care of you.”

  Something let go in his face. He slowed down for the first time, his caresses moving gently over her skin, touching her soft and light. She’d loved the roughness they’d been engaging in for months, but this felt different. Refreshing. An exciting kind of good.

  Laurie pulled back just enough to start stripping her clothes off. He’d popped a few buttons while he was tearing at her, but she took the time to slip the others neatly out of their buttonholes and shrug out of her shirt. Her jeans were easy; she’d needed to switch to the ones with the elastic band a while back. And then there was him to disrobe. She pulled his shirt over his head and encouraged him to lift his hips so she could pull down his boxers and jeans. His cock sprang out, ready and hard, and even though she’d had different plans, she knew what she needed. At least to start.

  She put down a pillow for her sore knees, and then she took his cock in her mouth while he groaned. Just the head at first, teasing at the sensitive underside, then pulling the huge thickness of his cock into her mouth. He was so wide that it was harder to take him deep, but she did her best, pulling him all the way down and swallowing so that she could take him farther. He groaned again, trying to keep his hips still so that he didn’t choke her. Inside her head, she giggled. She wouldn’t be very proud of herself if she didn’t get him moving soon.

  But then, she didn’t want him to come in her mouth. No, she had very different plans for what was going to happen next.

  It didn’t take much to get him throbbing; he was always so hard around her, and that was part of why she’d been so disappointed when he’d disappeared. Her own fingers just weren’t cutting it anymore, not when she was used to being stretched as far as she could go. And that was exactly where she needed him; buried deep inside her cunt.

  When she couldn’t stand waiting, and he was grunting with every downstroke of her mouth, she pulled back. He was sitting too straight on the couch; she urged his hips down so that she’d have room. She climbed up onto him, lining up his cock and sinking down onto him. They moaned together; it felt so fucking good to be like this again.

  She rode him as hard as she could. Her belly was in the way, and she couldn’t get the friction she needed on her clit, but all the same, it felt incredible. He was thick and swollen, and his fingers were digging into her hips while she slammed up and down his shaft. He pulled her closer, biting at her nip
ples as he pushed up into her. They moved together more quickly, and she knew she wasn’t going to come, not like this or at this angle, and that was just fine with her. But then his hand slipped between them and pressed hard on her clit. She cried out, feeling the waves of pleasure envelope her as he spasmed up into her.

  As the aftershocks rolled through both of them, he pulled her close, his forehead against hers. She waited for the words, some sort of answer as to why he’d done this, why he’d thought that pushing her out of his life was going to be the right answer, but they didn’t come. There was just peace, just quiet, and maybe that was okay. She wanted those words, but she also wanted him, and let’s face it, Jacob wasn’t a long talks kind of guy.

  Except then he hugged her even more tightly, and let out a big, big sigh. “I was afraid,” he said. “You called him your family, and I was afraid.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said back.

  He nodded, and then it seemed to be okay. Well, not okay, not really. But good enough for now.

  “Things might get bad, Laurie,” he said. She tried to pull back, but his arms were tight around her. He didn’t let her move, just pressed a kiss to her forehead. She let him hold her, resting against him. “We may have a lead on why Whip is here, and if we’re right... God, Laurie. I don’t know how I’m going to make this right. I don’t... You may have to get out of here to stay safe.”

  “No,” she said, her voice sharper and harder than she’d meant it to be. “No, you’re not sending me away.”

  “Laurie—”

  “No.” She pulled back again, and this time he let her. “You’re not sending me away.”

  “But the baby—”

  “Are you going to keep making me repeat myself?” She made her face as stern as she could. He didn’t burst out giggling, but that was probably because he looked like he was on the verge of tears. “I’m not safer away from you. The baby isn’t safer away from you. People always say that – that it’ll be easier if I go away – but we both know that’s not the case. We both know that if he wants to come for me, he’s going to do that. I’m not safer in the middle of the suburbs than I am right here, with a dozen big tough bikers carrying guns around the clubhouse. I’m not going anywhere.” Laurie forced a smile on her face and ran her fingers down his bare chest. “Besides, if I disappear, who’s going to take care of you when you’re hard and hungry and looking for someone to fuck rough?”

  He laughed then, his hands idly tracing her waist – well, where her waist used to be – and the curve of her hips. “You know, I did manage to take care of myself before you showed up.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And you think that after me you could be satisfied with your hand? Because you know I’m not going to share.”

  He hefted her breasts in his hands, tracing his thumbs over her nipples and making her sigh and arch into his hands again. God, it felt so good to be touched by him. He was always the right kind of rough. “I’m worried about you,” he said.

  “I’m worried about me too. I’m worried about us, and about the baby. But the best way to protect all of us is to deal with this guy. And you can’t deal with this guy when you’re worrying about us and checking in on us every other day.”

  “I’d send someone with you.”

  “I don’t want anyone else but you.” She held up a hand before he could get started. “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about just... who is close to me. I’ve never felt safe or comfortable anywhere in my life other than here, Jacob. I’m not going somewhere else.”

  “Okay,” he said, after a long moment. “Okay. We’ll figure this out somehow.”

  “Yes. We will.”

  They stayed close for a long moment, and she relished the heat of him. The warmth of his arms, the gentle way his hands felt on her hair. She was half asleep all of a sudden; she’d been sleeping worse, the farther along she got, and the release of the orgasm had shattered the little bit of energy she’d had before she would have wanted a nap. Maybe she’d get cleaned up and then convince him to take her to bed and tuck her in for a nap? That would feel good.

  “Oh,” she said, perking up again. “The app is done.”

  “What?” Laurie felt Jacob perking up underneath her. She sat back, giving him room to shift more upright and look at her more clearly. “Already?”

  “Yes. I think we should start small, with just a few customers you can really trust so we can make sure it’s safe and working properly before we start expanding it to a broader customer base, but it’s ready for that, at least.” Her stomach was still curled in fear. He could say all the things in the world, but what if he really was done now.

  “This is amazing,” he said, and she bobbed a little on his lap as he took a long, slow breath. “You’ve done this for us. You’re incredible.”

  The urge to fake modesty was high, but she pushed it away. “I’m really proud of this. The coding was harder than I thought it would be, and it took longer than I thought it would to get it to this point.” How much did she dare? “And I’ve started working on a side project.”

  This would be the point for him to explode – if he were going to. If he was going to be angry that she was using the club resources for something other than what he’d decided – and, no matter what he said, items bought on the company credit card still belonged to the company – it was going to happen now.

  Instead, his face lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Oh, yeah? Will you show me?”

  It made her heart give a little jump. “Okay. Yeah, sure.” She stood up off his lap, suddenly very aware that she was entirely naked. She pulled up her shirt – there were too many buttons gone for it to ever count as a shirt again, but it would do for a fake robe for now – and grabbed her laptop. She was still working on the design for her medical assistance app, but it had enough to show off. “See, the goal is this. For older folks, there’s all this stuff that’s hard to track. When they’ve taken their meds, for example. Or, with heart patients, if their weight is changing quickly. Tracking these things can help them not end up in the hospital for something preventable, or let a relative know that they need help with something. Some places do this with home health nurses, but some people can’t afford that or they live in really rural places. But practically everyone has a smartphone now. So doctors can sync up their patients, or adult kids can use this to check on their parents.”

  “That sounds really cool,” Jacob said. “What’s your plan? This sounds like a lot more than what you did for us.”

  “It’s a lot,” Laurie admitted. “I don’t think I could actually complete this and get it out there on my own. So I need a prototype, and then…” She froze up a little bit. Was it going to cause problems to admit that she had ambition and drive? Jacob hadn’t ever done anything that made her think he was the kind of guy who would be offended that a woman had a brain in her head, but everything seemed to have taken on extra importance and significance now.

  “And then?” He pulled her close, his arms around her middle, and she pushed herself to relax again. He took care of her. One of the reasons he wanted her close by was her ability to program. It made her useful to the club, and since she was then both useful to the club and fun for him, being here was the right thing.

  “And then I need to get funding, I think, to keep going. There were models I could use to build the app for the Talons, and they helped a lot. For this, there are bits and pieces I can steal from here and there, but to really get it working, I’m going to need more money than I have. Real developers, marketing teams, stuff like that. And women have a terrible time getting cash from venture capitalists, so I’ve been thinking about what I want to do…” She trailed off again, and this time he prodded her with a finger to get her talking again. “Some kind of crowdfunding, I think. Once I get going, once I have some kind of prototype to show off, and a clearer idea of how it will interface with digital records from doctors’ offices, and what sort of alerts are reasonable for it to send, then I use a c
rowdfunding campaign to get the attention I need and really get this off the ground.”

  “That’s really impressive, Laurie. Wow.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what to make of his tone. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You’ve put a lot of thought into this, and you sound passionate about it. That feels good to hear.”

  There was a quietness about him she couldn’t quite place, and then she figured it out. “You think I’m regretting leaving the life I had.”

  He shrugged, the answer obvious.

  “I’m happy here, Jacob. I’m happy like this. I can’t say I’m glad that all of that happened, but I’m glad I’m here with you now.” She set her laptop aside and ran her fingers up the tattoos that lined his forearms. “I’m happy with you.”

  There was another way to express that same thought, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. It was funny; here they were having a baby, and she couldn’t say the three little words that were so obvious. Of course, he didn’t say them either. So maybe that was okay. They were at least terrified together. Because he felt it, didn’t he? He had to.