by Cherise West
“Did you learn that from me?” he huffs, squeezing my backside hard, so hard I can tell it’ll leave a mark burned into my milky skin - and I like it. I want him to mark me, I want to be his.
“I know a lot more than you… might think,” my words barely make sense, sung in melodic moans through my shrieking breaths, but he takes them to heart with an enticed growl. He spanks me, harder this time, a sensation that stings, but the stinging quickly gives way to a mind-blowing pleasure as he pumps his hips into my deep. I cry his name, my voice hoarse; he does it again, and again, until my muscles hurt and my skin trembles with goosebumps, and my nerves begin to sing his name.
“I’ve got… nnng, a lot I want to teach you,” he teases; he holds my hands back, and my strained hips can barely move on top of him. Instead, with my body weak, he begins to bounce me on top of his lap with powerful, quick thrusts, entering me rough and erotic over and over and over again, blindingly fast. My eyes roll back in my head and with my fingers struggling and my voice cascading in a dirty song over his shoulders, I reach my peak, my mind absolutely melting as his name drips like hot caramel from my lips and every limb spasms with the sensations he gives me. As I ride out wave after wave after wave of intense desire on top of him, he pumps hard inside of my folds, my name on his lips, screamed a dozen times, enough that we could wake the entire building from their afternoon naps. Squeezing me close to his muscles I feel every tense and flex and quake through his core as he comes inside of me, wave after wave of his release pumping steamy inside of me and leaving me a lewd, satisfied mess on top of him while we come down so slowly together.
“God… Tony,” I whimper into his ear, kissing him over and over again. He returns the gesture, and while reality begins to reclaim some of my senses, when I feel his hands pressing and squeezing and massaging my worn back, I feel a safety that keeps all the terrifying facts - in the courtroom, in the streets, in my car, at my house, and everywhere - buried away from my mind. He lifts me gently, pulling me onto my side with him, laying on the couch, face to face; I see him smile, at least the closest thing to a smile he’s worn around me. I smile back, running my hand through his wild raven locks.
“I have a lot more I want to teach you,” he threatens playfully, “though… I guess I’ll have more chances to educate you later on, won’t I?” he teases, kissing along my cheekbones to my ear. I grip his biceps, my nails pressing into his strong flesh, my breathing quivering.
“I hope so,” I whisper, voice still unsteady, tempered with doubt. I remember that morning after. The look on his face. I remember the pain it left me with for weeks, and the terror it wrought when I saw that positive line on the pregnancy test.
“You don’t have to hope, do you?” he pulls back to look at me, his expression so warmly earnest.
“No,” I state firmly, pressing myself closely to his neck, and letting the world wash away.
Chapter 17
“Where did you want to go to dinner? Please,” I murmur, glancing over the news on my phone, relaxing on Tony’s love seat as he cleans himself up in the bathroom. “Not another biker bar.”
“You go to dinner at a biker bar?” he shouts from down the hallway to his bathroom. I want to see every room in his place, though I’m also afraid of stumbling into his bedroom and finding a closet full of napalm and machine guns. Our time together brought the both of us to life, but it took so much out of us that we napped together on the couch until late afternoon. Now night’s beginning to fall; Tony wants to embark on what I hope is the first of many dates out together. I approach the situation with more trepidation.
“I don’t generally go to dinner with arrested men, men my office - and I - are actively pursuing, Tony,” I confide in him weakly. He emerges from the hallway, worry streaked across his expression.
“Mara,” he expresses in quiet concern, I thought we had decided to push past that to try to see where this could go.”
“We… we did, Tony,” I start to feel the reservations heavy in my stomach, the exhilarating high of another passionate afternoon spent in his arms beginning to subside as reality fills my senses. “But I’m… I don’t know. I’m worried. Lawyers have ethical standards we’re supposed to meet - ethical standards I’m held very tightly to, given my position as a representative of the state. Standards that would certainly preclude my involvement in any case related to you.”
“Cases against me,” he ruminates, upset. “The case you built.” I can feel the sensational high beginning to ebb away in him, too, as we crash down into the pavement from the sky, skinning our knees, the pangs rough in our bodies.
“Tony, I didn’t…” I sigh. “I tried to tell you… I don’t know what Valence had planned. I don’t know— and it doesn’t matter. The case against you isn’t the only one that matters. The case against all the Wardogs - they’re all predicated on my office and I’s work, and our ethical commitments. If I broach those commitments, the case against any of the Wardogs, all of it - the whole office would be ruined.”
“The case against my brothers - the other ones that your friend Valence and his little cop buddy, Renee, made up,” he rebuffs me, staring at the fireplace, throwing his jacket across his shoulders.
“You know officer Bruno?” I ask, curious.
“Renee grew up down the street from my parents. Knew her since she was a toddler, bouncing along the street with her mom,” he says, nose wrinkling. “She’s got it in for us, too. Just the same as you. Don’t now why, but—”
“Tony,” I interject, feeling a seething sensation in my wrists, pulling my hands into fists. “I don’t just… just hate, the Wardogs, for no reason. I don’t hate you. I don’t—”
“You’ve been trying to throw everyone who rides a bike with a ‘Dogs patch on in jail since the day you stepped into that prosecutor’s office - probably before that. I’ve been gone for a few years, Mara,” he grunts, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s been happening in the meantime. I thought we came together here, to abandon the lies, the half-truths, and the misconceptions.”
“We still have a lot of those,” I mutter, defeated.
“Tell me, then,” Tony states matter-of-factly. “I don’t want anymore misconceptions between us, Mara. Forget the case, forget the ethics. Tell me why you hate my brothers and I.”
“It’s complicated, Tony,” I resist, gulping down hard. “I have a lot of reasons—”
“I understand Renee’s hate. I think she’s misguided, but I can understand why she scowls at me every time I ride through her neighborhood,” he interrupts. “She doesn’t know the Wardogs I know. We grew up right down the street from one another, Mara, but Renee, she doesn’t really know me.”
“Do I?” I ask. He takes a long moment to think about that, conflicted; conflicted about giving me a response, and about what sort of response he can even give me. “Do I know who you are, Tony?”
“I came here with you, hoping I could show you,” he replies, defensive. Beneath the rough exterior full of scars, muscles, tattoos and stubble beneath that gorgeous face and raven hair, he’s still the same obstinate, angry youth he was all those years ago; the one Billy Boy told me about.
“You can,” I whisper, rushing up from the couch and wrapping my arms around his shoulders, trembling against him. Stiff as a brick wall, he looks away, avoiding my kisses.
“I want to believe that, Mara, but I’m not the only one who has to open up,” he responds. “You were right, what you said - about our baby. It takes two of us,” he purrs, hands rolling softly across my stomach. “It works both ways. The baby… this relationship, whatever it is. Whatever it might become. We both have to let our guards down.” I take a deep, long breath. Eyes closed, I see mom’s face - the warm smile, gleaming bright in the picture from my high school graduation; the picture still sitting on the bedside table at my house. The picture I wake up to see every morning.
“My mom, Tony… my mom was… she was sweet, she was the sweetest person I’ve eve
r known. The tiniest, too,” I snickered, “four-foot-nothing and thin as a rail. She gave me my fiery hair,” I smile, meek and reminiscent, running a hand through the orange-auburn locks flowing down my back. “I loved my mom, Tony. My dad loved my mom. My brother, he did, too. She held all of us together - dad and Theo, they’d argue. My boyfriend in college, Renaldo—”
“You dated somebody named Renaldo in college?” Tony teases, incredulous.
“Shut up,” I snap back at him playfully. “He was a music major. From another country. Handsome, dashing, charming, all that. My mom never liked him, though, said she knew guys like him in college. She’d treat him just fine at family gatherings, but always stayed vigilant. I should’ve listened to her,” I grumble. “Renaldo had three other girlfriends in three other cities. But mom knew. I might’ve bristled at her at times, but she always watched out for me. She would’ve liked you, Tony, I think.”
“A girl whose mom likes me being involved with her daughter. Now that’d certainly be one huge fucking change,” he laughs.
“She would!” I insist, tugging at his collar. “Not… I mean, she’d be wary, at first. Like I was. She taught me right. But any man, leather and Wardogs patches and tattoos or no, who stares down a nemesis like I was to you, that night, and sees her crying, and takes her for drinks, watches out for her… she’d know. My mom always knew.”
“She sounds great,” Tony exhales deeply. “What happened to her, though?” he hazards. From the tone in his voice, I can tell he already has an idea regarding my answer.
“My mom always tried to help people. Everyone, anyone she could. We grew up here, in Jersey - I ran off to save the world, living on campus at Rutgers, because I convinced myself I needed time away from my family to find myself - even if I was ‘finding myself’ by spending lots of tuition money to live a half hour from home,” I chuckled. “She stayed. Worked in a law office herself, though she only did HR and outreach. She was a social worker at heart, and would always visit the places where the homeless and the addicts and troubled folks would take refuge.”
“Mara…” he breathes out, warm on my skin, holding me close. “Your mother…”
“My mother got to know a man with a history of drug use, a history of violence, who had a fondness for motorcycles. An old member of Quentin Hill’s Jersey City Boys, who still rode with the old man for a long time after. Quentin kept the old junkie around mostly to exact favors in exchange for meth,” I hiss.
“One-Eye,” Tony breathes painfully. “Mara, I’m sorry—”
“My mother got to know this man, Herbert,” I continue my story, wanting him to feel every sting of pain, the same as I felt them. “Frequenting the halfway houses and soup kitchens. She took care of Herbert, as best she could. She talked to me often about him - about how she and the rest of the volunteers really felt they’d reached out to a member of one of the most dangerous gangs in New Jersey, and really gotten ahold of him. She’d tell me, ‘if we can help a man like Herbert, the sky’s the limit, Mara.’ I believed her.”
“I didn’t know…” Tony says. I can feel him pleading; pleading for me to stop. He knows the finish of the story, but I won’t. I need him to hear. No misconceptions and no lies.
“My mother was… on her way home, from a day at her office. Another day, scribbling on paperwork, earning money for the family. My dad couldn’t work anymore. He built houses for twenty-two years, and one wrong move meant a pulled back, and an end to his career. Mom worked until seven every night. Dad always had one of her favorite dinners on the table when she pulled into the driveway - sometimes chicken and linguine, sometimes minted lamb with irish soda bread. They’d hug and sit down together. Every night, I’d call mom and tell her I love her. That night,” I recall, the bitter tears reddening my cheeks, “I called. The phone rang. It rang, and rang. It rang more. I called dad. Busy. I called Theo. Busy.”
“I was wrong, Mara,” I feel Tony soften, taking me tightly against his chest.
“That night, mom drove home. She drove through the old neighborhood. She stopped off near the soup kitchen to see how the girls were doing there - if Herbert had come in recently. When they told my disappointed mother they hadn’t seen him, she took off again, only for her car to be violently rammed by a stolen pickup truck. Sirens blaring, my mom, injured, tried to call 911, and got out to check on the other driver. Dragging her mangled leg behind her, she saw Herbert in the driver’s seat. Panicking, he crawled out of the wreckage. She pleaded with him to stop, to turn himself in. Herbert, this man my mother had cared for. Even called a friend, at our dinner table. A Wardog, one of Quentin’s most trusted lieutenants in years past, Tony, and do you know what he did to my mother?”
“I know, what he did,” Tony trembles. “I know what he did.”
“What did he do, Tony?” I demand, anger and tears thick in my quivering voice.
“One-Eye… sh-shot, he shot and killed your injured mom. I remember,” he looks away in shame. “I remember, Mara. I’m sorry. He, and Quentin, they had a falling out—”
“Don’t,” I sneer, “don’t you dare try to justify, or excuse, the Wardogs, or Quentin Hill, for what happened to my mother. Don’t—”
“They had a falling out, but that doesn’t relieve any Wardog from responsibility for what happened,” he sighs. “Your mother sounds like an amazing woman. One-Eye got what he deserved. Mara, for that matter,” he breathes in deep, “so did Quentin. Quentin Hill treated me like a son, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hate him, Mara. Or the things he did. I didn’t know that was your mother. The woman One-Eye killed. And you might not believe me, Mara, and I wouldn’t expect you to believe me. I wouldn’t believe me,” he swallows hard. “But I mourned your mother. The news reports, they told a lot of that story. I mourned her. Your mom’s death - it’s one of the issues that came up, between Quentin and I. One the reasons that I went out west.”
“Why did you leave? What were you trying to do?” I ask, mystified.
“Find myself,” he teases mildly. “No, but… I guess it’s true. Quentin’s dogs barked and bit when he said. I didn’t accept everything Quentin said as gospel. I didn’t kill when Billy told me to. I didn’t shoot if Quentin demanded it. I did what I wanted. Quentin always told me never to give that up - even if it meant he and I argued every day. He always said ‘followers do, leaders don’t.’ Quentin felt heat falling onto his shoulders, and he didn’t want it falling onto me. He had plans for me, and the worse the Wardogs and Billy Boy got, the more I… well, ‘didn’t.’ We had a huge argument, and he arranged to have me sent away, until ‘the time was right’. I guess that meant, whenever he died, because in the last message he sent me, anticipating he was about to be shot, he told me I’d know who did it, and that that meant it was time to come back.”
“You’d know who… did it?” an eyebrow lifts, as I press my face against his neck.
“Quentin knew his life was… well, he knew he’d lived by the sword, and he’d die by it,” Tony shrugs. “He’d resigned himself to that. He’d… kind of accepted his death as an inevitability, by the time I went out west. He always figured, me out of the picture, Billy would do him in. I guess I was his contingency plan, to try to fix the Wardogs, to save the young guys from the same fate that befell him and the other old guys.”
“You’re telling me Quentin Hill wanted to reform the Wardogs?” I scoff, incredulous. “And that he thought Billy Boy would kill him, but kept Billy around?”
“I’m telling you Quentin Hill wanted the Wardogs MC in my hands after he died, and he knew how I felt about the seedier side of the club. He saw me as a leader, and not Billy. Take what you want from that, but to me it means he knew I’d do a lot better for Jersey City and the Wardogs than Bill Nonniwicz,” Tony bristles, defensive. “He never trusted Bill. They knew each other for decades, and he never distrusted anyone the way he did Bill. That’s what made them such an effective duo, I guess,” he concludes. It hurts that he could feel so nostalgic for a murder
er and a pusher and a monster like Quentin Hill, but in a twisted way, I understand him.
“How do you feel about the seedier side of the club?” I ask him, point blank, pulling away from his embrace to stare into his eyes as he answers. I hope he honors our agreement - no lies, no misconceptions. He answers my appraising stare with a look of his own, piercing my eyes, straight into my heart. I’ve never felt a look as intense as the burn of his hazel visage peering deep into me as he speaks.
“I grew up in Jersey City, Mara. You know what it can be like here. Especially for boys like me. You go from a doe-eyed kid awed by chrome and rumbling engines, to wrenching hogs, to murdering politicians and policemen. I loved the purr of steel and I loved having a family I chose to have, not one fate forced me to. A family I could trust to have my back. Most guys growing up here don’t have that,” he laments. “We have mothers begging for another hit. We have fathers who won’t even claim us as their own, unless a court order requires it.” He softly, subtly strokes his thumbs against my stomach, fiery eyes gripped with his own passion; the same sort of passion I saw in my own eyes the day I enrolled in law school. It occurs so stark to me that Tony and I are shadowy reflections of one another - we’ve been lied to for so long, and we’ve lied to ourselves for just as long, but we both want the same thing - a better world, in our own way of seeing things.
“I had parents who loved me. I was one of the few lucky ones - parents who could see straight, parents who knew Jersey City and men like Bill Nonniwicz for what they are. My dad could never say it just right, and when you’re a kid, it hurts, never hearing that. And mom buried herself in her work, trying to ignore the dark side of the world around us, crying every night knowing who I hung out with. They gave Bill a place to stay when he rambled up here, drifting, aimless. Dad found him work. But men like my father aren’t Jersey City. He may have come from some slimy pit in Mississippi, but men like Bill Nonniwicz - that’s Jersey City. I hated my parents as a kid, but they knew him - they knew this city. I didn’t know I knew it, either, until the day I saw Billy Boy carve a bloody brand into a homeless man’s face. Just so he could steal the man’s boots. Can you believe that? For a pair of boots, Mara.” My blood runs cold. I knew Billy Boy was a sadistic monster, but… that’s maybe even worse than I’d imagined.
