BIKER’S SURPRISE BABY

by Kathryn Thomas

  “Forty-six,” Roman says without hesitation. “Each of them worse than the last.”

  “All as bad as Darius?” I say.

  “No, but still bad. Killers of women and children. Rapists and pedophiles.”

  “All of them?”

  Roman nods. “All of them, I swear it.”

  Perhaps this shouldn’t make a difference—perhaps a killer is a killer—but I find myself breathing a sigh of relief. The father of my child is a good man. A killer, but a good man.

  “I’ve taken plenty of lives,” Roman goes on. “So even if they were devils in flesh, maybe saving you is important not just because you’re the mother of my child, not just ’cause our fates were sealed that night our mothers met, but because if I save you and that sweet baby, maybe it’ll go some toward balancing all the killing I’ve done.” He stops, shaking his head. “Or maybe that’s all bullshit and I’m just trying to make my life seem like it’s worth something.”

  “Roman.” I lay my hand on his chest. His hard, rounded, muscular chest. It’s crazy how quickly a person’s emotions can change. Ten minutes ago I was scrawling lipstick onto the glass. Now I feel closer to this man than I ever have before. Because I know him, now. Know him better, anyway. “You don’t have to choose this life. You can choose a different life. You can choose to have a family, a—a—” I hesitate, and then push on: “A partner, if you want one. You can choose to have a home, just like the home we’ve been living in these past weeks: a fence and a garage and all that good stuff. You don’t have to live this.”

  Roman’s wolf-blue eyes narrow, as though he is seeing something he has never laid eyes on before: seeing a truth which has never occurred to him before. “When Mom died, I . . . this is what I became, Lily. A man can’t just switch that off.”

  “A man can,” I say, gripping his chest forcefully, “if he is brave enough.”

  Through his shirt, I can feel his muscles. I don’t know if I will ever get used to just how incredibly muscled he is. It’s not just the physical sensation—though that does set my heart racing—it’s how secure he feels, too. With Roman, I feel safe, which is about the biggest contradiction I’ve ever felt. Safe—but scrawling the glass with lipstick. I wish emotions were simple. I wish people were simple. But they are not, and so with Roman I am in danger and safe at the same time. With Roman I am scared and excited at the same time. With Roman I am horny and lost at the same time.

  Roman’s face is twisted as he contemplates my words. I can tell they’ve reached him, reached him as no words have reached him before. But then he pushes them away. I see the moment, his face hardening.

  In one quick movement, he leans down and kisses me on the lips. He kisses me hungrily, kisses me like he is drowning and I am his only source of air. I have never been kissed like this. It’s a kiss only a man who is entirely devoted to a woman can give, the kiss of a man who is offering himself. I break it off, leaning back in his embrace; at some point, he wrapped his arms around me, one hand on the small of my back and the other on my ass cheek.

  “You can’t just kiss me and end the conversation—”

  When he kisses me again, I realize I’m wrong. He can do exactly that.

  I try and resist the kiss, but then he presses into me more urgently, his body hard against mine, his rock-solid body too tempting for me. The emotions within my chest are going crazy now, all of them mixing together until I can’t tell where one starts and another begins. That’s true of fear and relief and excitement and affection. But not of lust. Lust stands alone. Lust pushes me on. Lust is stronger than the others.

  After we’ve been kissing for a few minutes, I know I cannot fight this lust. So instead I throw myself into the kiss. Roman picks me up, his hands firm on my ass cheeks, digging his fingers into my flesh. I wrap my legs around his waist as he rests me on the counter, the counter next to the mirror which I just used to try and flee this man. Flee this man . . . the idea seems ridiculous now. Lust propels me and without thinking I begin to unbutton his pants, tugging at his belt and then unclasping the jeans. The kiss stops and I look down as he yanks his jeans and underwear down. His cock springs up. At the same time someone in the diner laughs. It is filling up. Sooner or later, somebody will try and use the bathroom, sooner or later . . . but sooner or later can take care of itself.

  I make to reach down and grab his cock, but he is too horny. He immediately starts to tug at my pants, tearing them off and dropping them to the floor. I don’t realize how wet my pussy is until he grabs me by the shoulders, angles his hips, and drives into me. His cock is covered in pre-come, my pussy is soaked with quick lust, and so this time when he penetrates me, there is no pain. Just a burst of overcoming pleasure: pleasure which can overcome nerves, emotions, anything, everything. Pleasure like heaven.

  He stares into my eyes with his wolf-blues, his hands steady on my shoulders, and then we fuck. We fuck fast and violent. We fuck hungrily. We fuck like we want to fuck away our doubts. I grip his shoulders as he grips mine, sitting down repeatedly on his cock, all the while looking into his handsome, serious face. His muscles contort, tense, at all times marble-hard. His cock buries deep inside of me, hitting my warm spot over and over. It’s a struggle not to scream; I have to bite down on my lip so hard that I feel the sharp bite of my teeth piercing my lip. But none of that matters, not with this sudden outbreak of euphoria.

  My pussy gets tight quickly, pushed on by the absolute dirtiness of this, the passion of it. Fucking me in the bathroom, fucking me when I can hear people through the thin walls, the slapping of our flesh louder than our muffled screams. Roman’s face is twisted in pleasure, his eyes locked on my face. I feel my own mouth opening dozens of time, trying to scream. Eventually I clamp my hand over my mouth and scream quietly through my clenched-tight fingers.

  I sit, sit, sit, and he thrusts, thrusts, thrusts, sitting down so hard the counter digs into my ass cheeks. The orgasm approaches quickly, as I prop one hand on a sink and keep the other over my mouth. His face, his handsome, serious face, his sculpted body, his massive cock, his intensity . . . oh, Jesus, oh, fuck . . . I bounce, bounce, not caring when somebody tries to open the door. Not caring when it rattles. Not caring when somebody calls out, “Excuse me?” I am too far gone now. The pleasure is too hot, too intense, too gripping. Roman and I couldn’t stop for the world.

  I make the mistake of letting my hand fall. A scream escapes me, a scream I cannot stop. The door rattles again, but then—oblivion, and I don’t care.

  I wrap my arms around Roman’s shoulders, throw my head forward, and bite down so hard on his chest that he—tough Roman, killer Roman—winces in pain. The orgasm drills into me, a rotating source of pleasure, pushing up into my belly and then spreading back down through my pussy into my thighs, all of tingling, all of it afire. A voice, distant, calls out in my head, a backing track to the pleasure: “He’s fucking you in the bathroom. He’s fucking drilling you in the bathroom. Oh, fuck, he’s fucking drilling you in the fucking bathroom and there are people outside, it’s so dirty, so wrong, so right . . .” I gasp into his flesh as the final wave of the orgasm grips my body, my legs locking around his waist. I sit down on his cock one last time with as much force as I can muster, my ass cheeks slamming into his balls. Then, as the orgasm passes, Roman buries his face in my neck, biting, groaning, and comes inside of me.

  We freeze, then, even as we hear somebody asking, “Excuse me, do you have keys for this? I think something’s going on in there.” We freeze, holding onto each other, his cock wilting inside of me, his come spilling onto my thighs, our pleasure making us sore and contended. I wish we could stay like it for longer, but then the key begins to clink in the lock.

  We disentangle, grinning at each other like teenagers, the grimness of our journey momentarily forgotten as we hurry to dress ourselves. By the time the waitress walks in—the same heart-shaped glasses lady who served us—we are fully dressed, if a little disheveled.

  “No men allowed,�
� the waitress mutters, staring in bemusement at the lipstick-smeared mirror.

  “Sorry about that,” Roman says, taking me by the hand and leading me to the door. “I thought it was the men’s room.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lily

  The naughty, teenager feeling lasts until we get back to our booth. I am aching, sore and contented. I don’t even care when the waitress whispers something to another waitress and both of them glare at us. Nobody comes over, nobody tries to make us leave. They would be mad to try and make Roman leave anyplace. But when we sit down, my world teeters on its axis. No sooner have I warmed myself to the idea of becoming close to Roman than he is going to be wrenched away from me.

  He says: “I need to leave you for a while, Lily. The only reason anyone would ever come after you is me. Trouble is going to keep knocking as long as I’m around. But if we keep you hidden, and if we give you a fake name and a new life, you will be safe.”

  “What . . .” I shake my head, wondering if I’m hearing him right. “You want to abandon me? I thought you said I shouldn’t go back to Vegas.”

  “You shouldn’t,” he says. “No until it’s safe.”

  “Then . . .” I let the question linger.

  Roman nods toward Carson, at the mountains which stand like frozen waves of rock over the city, a city which is like most of the cities in Nevada, a manmade construct clinging to astounding nature. “You’ll make your home there, for a while.”

  “I don’t understand.” I massage my temples. My head aches with the madness of it all. Sam, I remember a man called Sam, a smiling man who told me his friends called him Roman. I remember a night of carefree lust. And now this? I press down on my temples, trying to work out the throbbing, but it remains, growing. “Won’t I be in more danger alone?”

  “No,” Roman says, in a professional tone of voice, the assassin’s voice, the voice of a man who knows the varying degrees of danger based upon situation. He’s clearly given this some thought. “You’re in way more danger with me. Think about it. The cops wanted to kill me, not you. They tracked me, not you. If we split up—and it’s not like we’re going to tell the world we’re splitting up—they’ll assume you’re still with me. So they won’t even think to look for you. It’s better if we’re not seen together anymore.”

  “I don’t . . .” Too many questions vie for attention in my head. “What will you do?”

  “Finish this.” His face, full of emotion back in the bathroom, is emotionless now. “Then it will be safe for you to return to your old life.”

  “You said you’d protect us,” I whisper. “You said you wouldn’t let anything happen to us.”

  Roman flinches. “I know, and this is the best way to do that.”

  “By leaving us to fend for ourselves!” I exclaim. Several heads in the diner snap around. A family is seated a few booths behind us, ordering their drinks. I feel their eyes on me as their conversation suddenly stops, hear the kid ask, “Mommy, why is she shouting?” I swallow down another exclamation, and say quietly, “How are you going to protect your family if you’re not with your family?”

  “They won’t know that. They’ll think we’re still together. Everything will be okay.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t just believe that,” I say. “But you’ve been hunting this guy for what—a few months? And you mentioned you’d chased him once before and failed? Darius is outpacing you at every step, Roman. How the hell is ditching me at a diner going to help you catch him?”

  “Because I won’t be weighed down!” Now it’s Roman’s turn to make the family’s gazes snap around. He lowers his eyes, and goes on in a softer tone: “Listen, Lily, this is the best all round. You’ll be safer, I’ll be free to work. Once everything is taken care of, you can go back to Vegas. You can go back to your life.”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” I mutter, “but what if you’re wrong, Roman? What if you leave us and Darius finds out? What if he comes and gets us, uses us against you? What if he—” I choke back a sob. “What if he does to us what he did to Carol?”

  “I would never let that happen.”

  “But you might not be around to stop it.” Taking a chance, I reach across the table and place my hand on top of his. “Like I said back there, Roman, you don’t have to choose this life. I love my job back in Vegas, but I have a child to think of now, so if you said to me right this moment that you wanted to hit the road and keep going east until we hit until we hit New York, I’d do it. I swear I would. You want to create new identities? Fine, create two new identities, one for me and one for you. We’ll go east and make a life for ourselves and our child. We’ll be safe, and we’ll be together.”

  I mean it, I really mean it. I want my life back in Vegas, but I want my child to be safe even more. And I’m scared for Roman. Something shifted back there, in the bathroom. Lust and affection replaced weariness. It wasn’t just the lipstick which was smeared away.

  Roman’s face has the same expression again: conflicted, unsure. But then he pulls his hand away from mine and reaches into his shirt pocket, taking out a folded-up envelope. “This man has dealt with North Korea,” Roman says. “This isn’t some dime-store thief we’re talking about, some biker gangster. This is an international fuckin’ criminal. He’ll get to us in New York. He’d get to us in France. Hell, he’d get to us in Bangkok. Anywhere we go, Lily. I don’t want to do this. It’s for the best, though. That’s the only reason I’d even consider it.” He unfolds the envelope and slides it across the table. “Inside is a driver’s license, social security, bank details . . . all the stuff you need to make a new life for yourself.”

  I don’t open the envelope, just keep staring at Roman. After everything—being wrenched from my safe, if busy, life; losing my best friend; being witness to murder and violence; finding out I have a life inside me to protect—the idea of being parted from Roman turns my mind to dark places. Even if Roman is arguably the cause of everything that happened (except our baby, that was both of us), even if it is Roman’s violent life which is putting me in danger, I’d much rather stay with him. The devil you know . . .

  “You’re serious,” I say, “aren’t you?”

  He nods. “I am.”

  “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

  Roman shakes his head. “I wouldn’t even be suggesting this if I hadn’t thought it through. I’m not making this decision lightly, Lily. It fuckin’ kills me to have to do it, but it’s the way we survive, it’s the way you can reclaim your old life. When the job is done, you can become Lily Fields again.”

  “What’s my name now?” I ask.

  “Betty Baker.”

  “Better Baker . . .” I meet his eye, and then begin to laugh. It’s a forced laugh at first, but then I keep saying it in my head: “Betty Baker, Betty Baker, Betty Baker.” And the laughter becomes real. I lean over and giggle madly, not caring when I feel the outraged gazes of the family on my back.

  “Did you have to pick an alliterative name?”

  “I was going to pick Gloria Gilbert, but I thought it sounded too fake.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re full of surprises,” I say. Gloria Gilbert is a character from The Beautiful and Damned, one of the novels I was reading back at the house.

  “Can’t a man like me know the name of a character from an old book?” he shoots back, allowing himself a grin. The grin disappears when he reaches into his pocket and takes out the car keys. “I’m leaving you the car.” He sides them across the table, where they come to rest beside the envelope. It’s not an envelope though, is it? It’s a new life, Betty Baker, a new woman. Betty Baker, not the daughter of a knight in blue, not the daughter of a woman who died of brain cancer, not a devoted nurse. Betty Baker, jobless, pregnant, with a hazy past fleeing into a city she does not know. “The car’s registered in your name,” Roman adds.

  “How long have you had this contingency plan?” I mutter, hovering my hand over the envelope a
nd the keys. If I take them, everything changes, I know. If I take them, I am immutably a part of Roman’s mad life. If I take them, I can no longer claim to be a captive, to be along for the ride; I am part of the ride at that point. What I should do—what countless people would advise me to do—is to find the nearest police officer and confess everything. But then I remember the bullet-ridden house, and I pick up the envelope and keys.

  “Contingency plan?” Roman laughs, but it’s a dark laugh. “Sorry, but it’s damn strange hearing words like that come from your mouth, Lily. Like we’re brothers-in-arms or somethin’.”

  “Well, maybe we are.” I smile, but just like his laugh, it’s dark.

  “I’ve had it since the hotel room,” he says. “I always like to have a backup plan.”

  He stands up. I have no choice but to stand up, too, and follow him outside. The sun has fully risen now, lighting the rolling bumps of Kit Carson and making the city look very small.

  “Okay,” Roman says, as we stare at each other over a meter of asphalt. “This is it.”