BIKER’S GIFT

by Claire St. Rose

  It was foolish to say yes. Mindy had learned over the years that there was no reason to rely on anyone but herself. No one else stood up for her, no one else took care of her. Relying on other people led to pain and misery and unhappiness. But here was a man who wanted to take care of her, help her be safe, make sure that she and the baby were cared for. It felt like a dream. Like a movie. Like something entirely different than anything else that had ever happened in her life.

  And yet here she was, with it happening. She had to believe that it wasn’t a fluke. Everyone had to have at least one dream come true in their lives.

  “Okay,” she said, taking a long, deep breath before she could push the word out. “Okay. Let’s give it a try.”

  She’d never seen Jack smile so broad, and she’d never felt so good as when he reached across the bed and took her hand.

  Stupid hormones.

  Chapter Sixteen Mindy stood in the bar at the front of the clubhouse, trying to look stronger than she felt. The room had gone silent when she’d walked in on Jack’s arm, and she couldn’t read the room well enough to understand why. She recognized the man who had sat with Jack in the diner booth. She recognized a few of the other gruff and narrow-eyed faces that were watching her. Even more than that, she understood the looks that were being directed her way. They said that she was trashy. That she was after something. That she was here for no reason other than to hurt someone they cared about. She’d had plenty of friends look at her that way. It was part of why she’d stopped trying to pretend that she was capable of anything outside of the bedroom. And those looks were happening right now, with the swell of her belly feeling bigger than she could possibly imagine, as if she was expanding right in front of them—God, she hated this part. Anything would be better than this. This was why she gave in and just ran away. It wasn’t worth all this. Nothing was.

  The worst part was that Jack was clearly bristling in response to the questioning. Diner Man’s question had been fairly innocent, even though the tone was pretty shitty. He wanted to know who she was. That made sense, and she couldn’t fault him for asking why his boss and, she assumed, friend, was bringing some trashy waitress to the clubhouse. But it still hurt. Jack leaping to her defense wouldn’t fix either of those things.

  In another situation, she would have just walked out of the clubhouse and called it done—taken a cab back to her shitty apartment, packed up her shitty things, and moved on to the next shitty town that struck her fancy. Start her new life there. If she were feeling generous, she’d send Jack a postcard with a forwarding address. Or maybe she’d see if he came looking for her. That would be nice—to have someone looking for her for a change. That would feel good. And terrifying. But mostly good.

  “Look,” she said, telling herself that she was just testing the waters. “I can just go, Jack. We don’t have to do this.”

  Jack caught her arm in a grip that was firm without being tight or painful. “You’re not going anywhere, Mindy. We’re going to sort this out like civilized adults.”

  Her stomach twisted, and her throat tasted like acid. She wanted nothing to do with any of this, but she had no idea how to get away from the mess. “Jack—”

  “No. No, we’re going to talk. That’s how this is going to go. Bodhi, come over here.”

  The man from the diner took a long, slow breath, and then walked across the room like he was walking towards his death. He stopped, facing Jack, just more than an arm’s length away. His gaze did not fall on Mindy at all.

  Jack reached his hand out to the side in a welcoming gesture.

  “Mindy,” he said, “this is Bodhi. He’s my second in command with the Chain Gang and a longtime friend of mine. He’s awfully protective of me and the Gang in general because we’ve been through some serious shit these past few years.”

  She put on her very best for-company smile. It was rusty, after all those years in storage, but she did it anyway.

  “Hi, Bodhi,” she said and stuck out her hand to shake. After a moment, he took it. She made sure to keep her grip firm, but not overbearing. His hand was far too loose, but after a moment, he tightened his grip on hers and smiled. “Pleased to meet you,” she added.

  “Bodhi, this is Mindy. She’s—” Jack glanced at her, looked her up and down, and then shrugged. “You know, honestly, we haven’t specifically discussed it yet. But she’s having my kid, and we’re going to try and make something work. The Wardens just made a serious pass at kidnapping her, and they nearly got away with it, so for now, she’s staying here, with me, and she’s going to be safe here. I need you to explain that to the rest and make it real clear that this isn’t a topic of conversation, and I’m going to go get Mindy settled in my room. Does that work for everyone?”

  Bodhi smiled slowly, offering a short nod. “Of course,” he said, though there was still a little bit of hesitation in his voice.

  Mindy tried to let it go; if the situation were reversed, she wouldn’t be very nice about it either. He was being a lot more gracious than she had ever been, than any of her other friends had ever been. She could try and believe it would stay that way. Even if it was hard to believe, she could try.

  Jack nodded with the assurance of a man who trusted that his word would be obeyed without further conversation. Bodhi had accepted the order; now the order would be carried out. That was simply how it was.

  In a way, Mindy envied the conviction. It had to be refreshing; to believe that strongly what you asked for would be given.

  Chapter Seventeen Jack took her hand and lifted up the bag he’d insisted on both packing and carrying for her, and led her down the hallway. The front room of the clubhouse was like every movie set of a biker clubhouse she’d ever seen: cement floor, bar in the corner, tables scattered around, pool tables, darts. There were also relatively nice couches where a few girls and guys were curled up. She saw women wearing leather. Not as many as the men, granted, but a few. It was nice, in an interesting way. She’d grown up with such a narrow and constricted version of what women could be. Seeing a broader version of that was interesting. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it, not all the way, but it was definitely interesting.

  The hallway, though, wasn’t the kind of masculine, hunter’s lodge kind of decor she’d expected. It was painted, first of all, and in a nice, welcoming blue. The doors were wood, but they were actual doors, not top to bottom plywood like you got in college dorms. They all had locks.

  Jack’s room was the farthest from the main area. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, and she was surprised at the room in front of her. It was… well, nice. The bed was covered with a lush, maroon comforter and fluffy pillows with light gray covers. He had a light-colored wood desk in the corner with a laptop on it. There were a sliding closet door and another door that wasn’t all the way closed. When she peeked in, she could see an attached bathroom with a big bathtub and a showerhead. She made a happy sound at the base of her throat at the thought of curling up in that tub at the end of a long day on her feet and just letting her worries and pains soak away.

  “It’s not the fanciest thing in the world. If you think you’d be uncomfortable here, I can find a way to put you up in the hotel. But some of the club folks are pretty good cooks—guys and girls, don’t look at me like that, we all take turns at whatever needs doing—and I… Damn, Mindy, I just want you where I can lay my hands on you. Is that alright with you?” He looked so shy, all of a sudden, with a softness to him that she’d never seen before. He had been brusque, fierce, sexy, and firm with her, but never shy.

  Mindy reached out and took the bag from his hands, setting it quite firmly on the floor next to the bed. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him. Instead of going for a kiss, she turned her head to the side and let herself rest on his shoulder. She made a happy, contented sound as his arms closed around her.

  “This is fine,” she murmured, swaying slightly against him. It took him a moment to give in to the movement, and the
n she felt some insubstantial tension drift out of his frame as well. “I like being close to you, too, Jack. I feel safe here.”

  “I’m going to find someplace else by the time the baby comes, okay? I’m not going to make you have a baby here in this place. The crap the kid could get into, crawling around. But this is a safe place to be until I can find something better.”

  She nodded against his chest, then drew back. She’d been on her feet long enough, and she was tired of having them swell. She pushed her shoes off and rubbed her soles, trying to ease the ache in them. Jack grabbed his chair, dragged it over, and sat down. He reached down and lifted her left foot into his lap. She sighed happily as he began to massage, first working his knuckles into the arch of her foot, then slowly starting to spread that tension and pain out. She let her back go, flopping back onto the bed. She could feel the weight of the Bean most at this point, pressing down into her back. Everyone said that, at some point, this would make her feel dizzy, or even sick; so far, however, so good.

  “So, can you tell me what’s going on?” she asked. “Why are the Chain Gang and the Wardens fighting? Why am I even relevant in all of this macho guy stupidity?” He ticked the bottom of her foot for a second and she shrieked and tried to yank it away; he held onto her ankle and reeled her back in, behaving himself after she gave him a glare.

  Jack sighed. She got the idea that he’d told this story a lot, and that it had caused him some pain every single time. “We used to be one club. The Chain Gang. Prez was a guy named Grim Teller. Good dude, but the club was running into financial stuff. A lot of the guys were using, a lot of guys ended up in jail, and Grim wasn’t having it. He kept trying to run against the cops instead of focusing on the club’s legitimate interests. He was putting all of us in danger. So, some of us let him know that we weren’t putting up with that anymore. It wasn’t why we’d decided to ride, and we didn’t want anything to do with that kind of lifestyle.”

  “What’s the difference?” she asked. His gaze shot up at her, and she saw the defensiveness in his eyes, but after a moment, it faded. He sighed.

  “I know it might seem weird to an outsider. But not all clubs are full of the kind of outlaws they make TV shows about. Yeah, we live rough, and yeah, we sell drugs, but we sell the kind of drugs that working people use when they get home after a long week, and they just want something to help them unwind. We don’t sell to kids, we don’t deal in flesh, and we sure as hell don’t sell guns. There’s a difference.”

  “Okay.” Mindy agreed. “I can see that.”

  He nodded and switched feet. “Anyway. We let Grim know that wasn’t the kind of club we wanted to be associated with, and we—me and Bodhi and a few other patched folks—I guess you’d call it a mutiny. We ran him out of the club. A bunch of the guys went with him. And we said good riddance. Club’s big enough for two gangs of meatheaded fool men.” He grinned a little, just a bit ruefully. “And that was fine, for a little while.”

  “And then?”

  “There’s always an ‘And then,’ isn’t there? Yeah. And then, someone killed Grim Teller.”

  She hissed in a breath, and Jack nodded.

  “It was a bad thing, too. He wasn’t just killed, he was slaughtered. And… it happened the night we were together. I bumped into Bodhi that morning when I went out for supplies. I needed to go and deal with it, and it took so much longer than I thought, and when I got back, you were gone.” He was quiet for a moment, then shook himself like a dog shaking off water. “Sorry. Wrong story. Anyway. Most of the Gang was out at the roadhouse that night. I was conspicuously absent. So, some folks have gotten it into their heads that I’m the one who killed Grim, and that I sent the rest of the Gang out to the roadhouse to make it less obvious I wasn’t there.”

  She propped herself up on her elbows; damn, he looked good like this. He looked up and grinned at her, clearly aware. “Why didn’t you tell them you were with me?”

  He shrugged. “It wouldn’t really have made a difference. You’re a woman, and the Wardens don’t patch women. The Gang wouldn’t care you were a woman, but you weren’t patched so they wouldn’t have listened either. Why drag you into this, just to make your life messier?”

  It was weirdly patriarchal, and also really kind. “Thanks for that,” she said, after a little pause.

  His shoulders moved again, like this wasn’t something he thought he should get an apology for. “It’s fine. Anyway. So now they’re after us, trying to make me pay for what happened to Grim. And we’re mostly trying to stay out of their way while we figure out what the hell to do about it all.”

  She was silent, and then she asked the question she had to ask. “You didn’t have anything to do with it? I mean, you were with me. But you didn’t have someone do it or… something like that?”

  He sighed, his fingers stilling for a moment. “The last time I killed someone was overseas. I’ve worked very hard to make sure that I’ve never done something like that again. I’ve worked hard to be a good man.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That feels really good.” She hadn’t even known that the knot in the ball of her foot existed until he dug into it with his thumb. When it released, she felt something in her back let go as well. “Mmm. Hello.”

  “Hey,” he said, and his voice was gruff. “God, woman, do you know how good you look like this?”

  “Like what?”

  He reached out, holding his hand over her belly for just a minute before he laid it down and caressed the bump through her shirt. “You look alive. You look gorgeous. I dunno, earth goddess fertile or some other stuff. I don’t know what to say about it. But you look amazing. Beautiful. Exquisite.”

  She felt that same, warm stir in her body; the heat that he made rush through her. “Do I now?” She shifted on the bed, letting her thighs fall a little open, arching her back to show off her breasts a little better. He made a snarling sound between her legs, and then he moved up the bed, leaning down over her and capturing her mouth with his.

  “I want you so very much, all the time. How long can we keep doing this? We won’t hurt it?”

  She arched again, letting her hips bump against his and causing him to let out a long hiss. “Depends. How kinky do you want to get?”

  Something dark sparkled in his eyes, and she felt another frisson of excitement run through her. “How kinky do you like to get?” He ran his fingers through her hair, and at the base of her neck, they tangled tight in the strands, right up against the scalp. He used the grip to tug her head back, kissing her throat as she gasped. A surge of wetness flooded her panties, her hands twisting his shirt up into knots.

  “God, I love that,” she whispered, and he responded by nipping her with his teeth, then suckling on her skin just a little too hard.

  “Do you now?” He gripped her breast in his hand, his fingers tracing the mound until they came to her nipple, then giving it a twist. Gentle at first, and when she arched into his grip, harder. “And what about that?”

  “Fuck. Fuck, Jack. That feels so goddamn good.” She hadn’t done much “wild” stuff before—she’d heard on some radio talk show once that handcuffs shouldn’t even be considered kinky anymore, because who hadn’t tried that—but now she had an incredible urge to beg for the hard and heavy slap of his big, callused hands on her ass, her tits—anywhere he cared to put them. She’d had a guy try it once, but he was half-hearted at best. It wasn’t a bad experience, but it hadn’t been all that good, either. She’d wanted more in an indefinable way, and she’d been so young that she hadn’t known how to ask. She knew what she wanted at this moment, but she still didn’t quite know how to make the words happen.

  “If I wanted, very much, to spank you,” he said, his voice the low growl that made her arch with delight underneath him, “how would you feel about that?”

  She hissed through her teeth. “I’d call you a mind reader and ask where you wanted me.”

  He stood up,
fast, pulling his belt loose and tossing it in the corner. “Strip.”

  She made short work of her pants and panties—she’d never thanked her lucky stars for elastic waist pants so hard in her life—and pulled her top over her head. Her bra came after, and then she was naked. She stretched for him, letting him see her whole body. He made that low sound again, deep and harsh.

  “Hands and knees,” he said. She moved quickly, doing just what he’d said. A pillow was placed between her hands, and his hand between her shoulders pressed her gently down, leaving her ass up in the air. He spread her ankles and knees, making space so that he could see her soft, wet pussy, and he stroked her. His thumbs parted her labia, moving from her opening to her clit, pinching it sharply between his thumbs when he reached that peak. She groaned and leaned back into him; he slapped her ass lightly for the rudeness.