Jace

by Jessie Cooke

  They both let out a long, loud groan. She was a wild thing and Jace didn’t doubt that she’d been with countless men, but her pussy felt like it had never been breached. It was the tightest thing his cock had ever been inside of and he was buried in her so deep. She started moving, slowly at first. Jace put his hands on her hips and helped her motions, his hips joining in after a few strokes, arching his back so he could plunge his cock into her deeply each time. She was so wet that he could actually smell how turned on she was. The idea of that, of someone wanting him like that, made him practically lose his mind. He held onto her hips tightly and rolled them over, slamming her onto her back and for the first time in his life, taking an overly aggressive approach to sex. He pushed her legs open further and slammed into her, then he slid his arms underneath her legs and pulled them up onto his shoulders. He wrapped his big arms around her thighs and thrust into her, slammed into her, drilled into her, over and over again. She screamed when she came and her fingernails left deep scratches on his arms. Jace felt his orgasm coming from across the fucking room. It hit him so hard it almost knocked him backwards. He felt it everywhere, even in the air. It was unlike any sexual experience he’d ever had before. Fucking amazing.

  17

  “Dax Marshall called for you. I gave him your cell number.” As soon as Jace walked into the shop, Mark was waiting for him. He’d spent all night with Amy. They’d fucked in every possible way, and every possible position. He felt like he lost his virginity all over again. Then the sun came up, and he realized that Dax had left, and he was completely mortified. He had dressed quickly and slipped out while Amy was still snoring. He knew that was an asshole move, and he felt like shit about it, but he was too freaked out about Dax taking off and wondering what he thought of him to even figure out what to say to her.

  Jace slipped his phone out of his pocket. He wasn’t like other men his age. He hadn’t grown up with a cell phone in his hands. Once he could finally afford one, it was a constant struggle just to keep the bill paid. Now that he was making more money, he paid the bill like clockwork, but then he forgot to charge it. “Fuck. It’s dead.”

  Mark picked up the phone on the counter and said, “You can use this phone.”

  Jace rolled his eyes. Mark was just being nosy. “Thanks. I’ll charge mine while I shower and call him back.” As he started to walk away Mark said:

  “What time are you on the clock today?”

  “I’m not. Day off. But…”

  “I know, Clay can call if he needs you. Better charge that phone, I guess.”

  Jace went upstairs and quickly found his charger and plugged in the phone. He couldn’t wait until he showered, however. Even if it was bad, he had to know what Dax had to say to him. He waited for the phone to boot up and as soon as it did, it beeped with a voicemail. He cursed himself. It could be worse than Dax trying to get a hold of him. It could be Rosie’s care providers. His chest tightened and he had to tell himself that was crap. If Rosie needed him, they would have called the shop. Once the anxiety was at a manageable level he pushed the button for voicemail.

  “Hey, Jace. It’s Dax. I hope you had a good time last night. I had to get back, but I still want to talk to you about doing some work for us. Any chance you could come out to the ranch this weekend? Give me a call when you can.” Dax rattled off a number and Jace sat there, waiting for the numbness and tingling in his extremities to stop. Dax Marshall wanted him to work for him. Fuck. As flattering as that was, he knew he couldn’t do it. He owed Clay so much. He was sleeping in his car, eating donuts once a week, and the rest of the time making a 99-cent hot dog last for three meals. Now he had a roof over his head and he could afford to eat steak once a week if he wanted. He was paying his bills…albeit slowly…and Rosie’s house was just a few blocks away so when he went to see her, it was no longer a matter of driving to the next town over and fighting the traffic. He knew how to weld. He could take an engine apart and put it back together. He was learning how to ride. He did so many things now that he’d only dreamed of before. He couldn’t walk away from Clay and he was actually surprised that Dax would ask him to. The Skulls provided a lot of work to Clay and generated a lot of his income. Nope, Jace couldn’t do it.

  He sucked in a shaky breath and picked up the phone. He might as well get it over with and tell Dax he couldn’t do it. His hand was shaking as the phone rang on the other end. Dax picked it up on the second ring. “Hey, Jace!”

  “Hey, I’m sorry I missed your calls.”

  Dax chuckled. “No problem, buddy…you were busy. So, I’m assuming you got my message. I have about a dozen nomads right now and I’d like to have you modify all of their bikes…one at a time, of course, when they have time to bring them in and stay grounded for a couple of weeks or however long it might take you. I think we probably have anything you might need in the shop here on the ranch, but whatever we don’t have, we’ll get.”

  “Wow, Dax, I can’t even begin to tell you how flattered I am.”

  “Great, then you’ll do it?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I can’t.” There was a pause and then in a voice tinged with disbelief Dax said:

  “No?” Jace was sure that wasn’t a word Dax heard a lot in his life, ever. He tried to keep the tremors out of his voice as he said:

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know how much you know about me or my background. But let’s just say that Clay found me in the gutter and I’m only still standing because of him. I can’t leave him.”

  “I’m not asking you to leave him. This would be like a side job for however long it takes.”

  “Man, you don’t know how tempting that is,” Jace said. He could use some extra cash to pay off those damned hospital bills faster…but he just couldn’t. “I just can’t, Dax. Clay’s given me so much that I can never repay. At the very least, I owe him my loyalty.”

  Another long pause and then Dax said, “Good.”

  “Excuse me?” Dax’s abrupt change confused him.

  “Good. Clay hasn’t told me much about you, but what he does say about you is all good. Clay’s opinion means a lot to me. I’ve known him most of my life and he’s always been loyal to us. Matter of fact, he helped my old man out of a scrape, not long before he died. I want you to do this work for us, Jace, but before I open up this ranch or my shop to you, I have to know that I can trust you. Your loyalty toward Clay says a lot.”

  “So…I’m sorry, what does that mean?” Jace had no idea where Dax was going with this.

  “I already talked to Clay. He says if you’re interested, you can spend a week or two a month on the ranch, working on customizing these bikes for me. You’ll be compensated a lot more than you make working in that shop, room and board will be on me, and Clay will still get his regular cut.”

  “So, Clay is okay with me doing this work there?”

  “Well, think about it, Jace. It’s a win for Clay too. You’d be too busy with this job to do anything else, you’d be taking up space in his shop doing it, you’d be using his tools and equipment. This way, you’re not, and he’s still getting paid. Meanwhile, he can bring in other work for his other guys to do. It’s a lucrative deal for him.”

  Jace was truly at a loss for words. As he stumbled over his tongue trying to think of what to say, he realized there was one more thing he’d have to tell Dax. “My sister is autistic,” he blurted out. Dax waited and finally Jace was able to string a sentence together. “She lives in a care home, and I’m her guardian. I visit her at least twice a week if I can, sometimes more often. They call me in between if she needs anything or if she’s just asking for me. Clay and I have a deal that if they call me, I can just go, no questions asked. He knows I’ll pick back up on whatever work I left when I get back. I can’t ask you…”

  “Done,” Dax said. “What else do you need from me, Jace?”

  “Done?” Jace felt like an idiot, but Dax was the most abrupt decision-maker he’d ever met.

  “Yes. Family always comes first
. We have a saying on the ranch. Family, club…everything else. With my parents gone, this club is my family. These people always come first, and I have nothing but respect for a man who puts his family first. So, done. If your sister needs you, you go. Now, anything else?”

  “Um…when would you like me to start?”

  The only thing Jace hated worse than small talk was talking about himself. On his first trip to the ranch he discovered that it wasn’t going to be easy to avoid either. The bikers seemed to be a curious lot by nature. Maybe it was their deeply rooted suspicions about outsiders––Jace wasn’t sure––but even as he tried to stay immersed in his work, he found himself fielding questions about himself, most of which he didn’t want to answer. It wasn’t that Jace had anything to hide. He was sure they wouldn’t judge him for his past since they all seemed to have one of their own…that they kept proudly displayed in the form of black and white mug shots that papered one entire wall of the shop. He just didn’t want to talk about it. He shut most of them down by simply answering their questions with one-word answers, realizing but not caring that it wasn’t doing much for his popularity around the place. Dax seemed to like him, and he didn’t ask a lot of intrusive questions, so to Jace, that was all that mattered. His accommodations were first rate with a room of his own above the club and anything he wanted to eat or drink. Dax had also hinted that the club girls were on the menu as well, but Jace hadn’t been brave enough to go for that…yet.

  It was on his second trip to the ranch, as he was knee-deep into transforming one of the nomad’s bikes, when Dax approached him in the shop and said, “Hey, we’re heading out in about an hour to a little bar where we hang out on the outskirts. Why don’t you call it a night and come with us?” Jace really didn’t want to go, but he hadn’t mastered the art of saying no to Dax. It wasn’t that Jace was afraid of him, it was more that his presence just seemed to command obedience.

  “Um…okay, sure.”

  Dax handed him a denim vest he was holding in his hand. “This used to belong to a guy named Ray, big guy, like you. I know you’re not prospecting but the patch alone will keep anyone from messing with you.”

  “Thanks.” Jace set it aside until he had a chance to wash up.

  “You haven’t thought about it, have you?”

  “Prospecting?”

  “Yep.”

  Had he thought about it? He’d thought about it almost every day since the time he first met Doc and Dax. “Yeah, I guess I’ve considered it. It just doesn’t seem really feasible since I have to be available at a moment’s notice for my sister sometimes. Commitment to anything else gets a little tricky.”

  “How’d that work when you were locked up? How’d the bills get paid? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “My old man pays the bills. It sucked, though, because it was hard for Rosie to understand why I didn’t come to see her, and I’d have to learn a whole new way to deal with her when I did get out.”

  “Never heard you mention your old man before. I guess I just thought it was only you and your sister.”

  “May as well be,” Jace said. “I don’t know, I guess we were lucky that he at least always stepped up when it came to paying for stuff…but he just looks at it like another bill he has to pay, like a mortgage. Anyway, not looking for a pity party,” he said, suddenly embarrassed that he’d said so much.

  “Not gonna get one from me even if you were looking,” Dax said with a grin and a wink. “Think about the prospect thing anyway. I’m sure there would be a way to work it out if you really wanted to. You could always do it the nomad way. Most of my nomads are loner types, more comfortable with their own company than they are in a crowd.”

  Jace chuckled and said, “You’ve got me figured out already. But, wouldn’t being a nomad mean being on the road all the time?”

  “Nah,” Dax said. “Being a nomad just means your loyalty is to the Skulls, both us and the California chapter, the Westside Skulls. You would live your normal life most of the time and you’d just travel when one of us reached out to you. I usually choose nomads that would make good enforcers…I think you’d qualify. Again, just something to think about. We’re riding out in about twenty minutes if you want to get cleaned up.”

  “Sure, okay.” Dax turned and started to walk out. Jace wiped his hands on the grease rag and thought about the humiliation of driving his beat-up old car and parking it next to all the classic and custom Hogs. Not for the first time he wondered if Dax could read minds with those intense eyes of his when he turned back toward Jace and said:

  “Oh, by the way, Tank says you’re welcome to ride his old roadster out tonight. He can’t ride much anymore because of his arthritis so the brothers take turns taking it out and opening the engine up. Makes him feel better.”

  “Cool, thanks.” Lately Jace felt like he was living someone else’s life, and he hoped they didn’t want it back.

  The only thing Jace hated worse than small talk was talking about himself. As soon as he walked into the tiny, crowded bar in the denim vest with the prospect patch on the back, people suddenly wanted to talk to him. The fact that he was six foot six and close to 300 pounds made it impossible for him to hide, so he did the next best thing. He spotted a guy he’d met on his first trip to the ranch, whom they called “Scar” because of an ugly puckered scar that ran all the way down the side of his face. The fact that he was hard to look at didn’t seem to faze him and neither did the fact that his incessant talking seemed to annoy everyone within earshot. Jace took a seat on a stool just a few over from Scar at the end of the bar with the hopes that nobody would want to sit between them for fear of having to engage Scar in conversation.

  “Give me a Budweiser and a shot of Jack,” he told the weird-looking bartender. His hair was shaved on the sides and long on top and it was dyed a combination of red and yellow. His ears had big plugs in them, stretching his lobes out of shape, and his nose was pierced. Both of his arms were covered in tattoos…weird shit that Jace didn’t understand. When he turned to the side, he kind of resembled Woody Woodpecker. Jace didn’t understand people that purposely made themselves look bad. He had spent his entire life trying to look like everyone else.

  “There you go, guy.” “Woody” set the shot and beer down in front of him and Jace tried to hand him a twenty. “Nah, Skulls don’t pay here.” Before Jace could tell him he wasn’t technically a Skull, a woman slid onto the stool next to him and stole the attention of both of them. She was beautiful, maybe the most beautiful woman Jace had ever seen in real life. She looked at him and smiled and his mouth went dry and his throat closed up. He hoped to God she wouldn’t speak to him because he was sure he’d never be able to form a coherent word…and he didn’t trust his damned eyes to stay on her pretty face and off the cleavage that pulled at them like a magnet.

  18

  The goofy bartender flexed the tattoos on his arms like he was trying to make them dance as he looked the gorgeous woman over, pausing way too long on her cleavage. At last he said, “You lost?”

  At least Jace wasn’t the only one that thought she looked out of place. She was dressed the part in a tight top and a short black skirt and sexy black, high-heeled boots, but she looked like she should be on a movie set in Hollywood maybe, instead of a dive bar on the edge of Massachusetts. Jace kept his eyes focused straight ahead, but he could still see her in the mirror behind the bar. Her teeth were perfectly straight and white. Her skin was flawless, like silk, and she had long dark hair that ended in perfect little ringlets that he wanted to wrap his fingers up in. He could see her looking at him in the mirror and he knew the polite thing to do would be to look directly at her and say something. But what the fuck would a guy like him say to a woman like that? In the end, first Woody, and then Scar came to his rescue. She made a face at the bartender when he asked if she was lost and said:

  “Nope, just thirsty.”

  He grinned. “Well then, I guess you’re in the right place. What can I get you?�
��

  “A beer—whatever you have on tap is fine.”

  “I got this, darlin’,” Scar said. He handed “Woody” a twenty, like suddenly Skulls paid. Jace tried not to smile when she said:

  “Thanks, but I can buy my own drinks.”

  Scar wasn’t going to back off that easily though. “I’m sure you can, but I never let a pretty lady pay for her own beer—it just wouldn’t be right.” Just at that moment a woman walked by. She was a little chubby and maybe in her forties, but otherwise not bad-looking. She had medium-length blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. Something about her was familiar and when she spoke Jace was sure he’d heard her voice before too.

  “Damn, Scar! I sat next to you and paid for my own drinks all night last Friday.” Scar curled his lip as he looked at the woman and said:

  “I said a pretty lady. Now beat it, Tub.”

  She flipped him off but smiled sweetly at the hot brunette before walking away, swinging her hips. Scar was already moving on, asking the woman, “So, where were we?”

  Coolly, the sexy brunette said, “I was explaining to you that I could buy my own drinks.”

  Scar laughed. He sounded like a three-pack-a-day smoker when he did. “Well, I apologize if I overstepped, little lady. We just don’t get too many girls in this hole in the wall that look like you. I got excited and forgot my manners. Do you forgive me?” The goofy bartender set her beer down in front of her just then. She took a sip of it before turning back to Scar and saying: