Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Brimstone Lords MC 3)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  I nod, showing my understanding. It’s pretty easy. Smitty takes me in the back storeroom so I know where to find the stock for the shelves upfront. He has everything separated according to which shelf the dry goods go on and there’s a walk-in cooler for the refrigerated items. They’re separated similarly. That way he always keeps track of what he’s getting low on in stores. It’s a pretty streamlined operation considering he doesn’t use a computer.

  Even his cash register is old school. But it all adds to the ambiance of the place. A real step back in time.

  Customers move in and out of the store throughout the day. A little after noon, Smitty’s wife—she introduces herself as Georgie—walks in carrying a small Styrofoam cooler filled with homemade barbequed short ribs, macaroni and cheese, a creamy slaw and cornbread muffins for all three of us to eat. Though, I think my cornbread is better.

  We sit behind the counter eating and shooting the shit, Smitty or myself only stopping to ring up customers. The ones Georgie seems to know well, she offers a rib or cornbread to. Once they leave, she entertains me with some anecdote involving the customer. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in ages.

  The backdoor of the store has a doggie door from which a severely pregnant tabby cat lumbers through and stops by our feet. I feel so bad for her that I offer strings of pork with my saucy fingers. She, giving me grateful kitty eyes, snatches the meat from me and swallows after only a couple of chews. She licks her lips and purrs. Then rubs her head against my leg.

  What else could I do but share the rest of my lunch with her?

  At the end of my day, Smitty declares that I “know my shit now” and he sets up a schedule for the days I’ll be working by myself. After spending the day with the old coot, I kind of don’t want to work alone. He’s been a hoot, and his wife was even better.

  Once I meet and hand off the running of the shop to second shift Krissy, I drive the truck to a bigger town outside Smithfield. A town with a superstore where I can pick up clothing on the cheap. I buy some new things there. But there’s also this cute little second hand shop, like a Goodwill, but not, where I put together a ton of sweet outfits for practically nothing. And because I can, I pick up dinner from a Chinese takeout to bring back to Smithfield with me.

  My mouth waters from the enticing aroma of noodles and sauce filling up the cab.

  At home, I dump my new used clothing in the washer, then wash my hands before sitting down at the small kitchen table to eat my dinner. I’d neglected to grab a drink beforehand and move to the fridge to grab a bottle of lemonade. As I close the refrigerator door, my eye catches my phone resting on the counter, causing my heart to begin pounding. Because on the other end of a contact, with just a push of a button, Gage would answer. I never imagined I’d miss him so much. Stupid, right? I love the knucklehead—no, more than that, I’m in love with the knucklehead. During our entire childhood, he was my favorite person to share a meal with.

  Share being the operative word. Even after we reconnected, after he’d tried so hard to bring me back to good, ruining his lifelong friendship with his best friend in the process. My big, bad, biker shared everything. Even if it was the last bite of his favorite meal. His brothers, with the exception of Boss, called him a “pussy” or “pussy-whipped.” And he’d only smile big and brightly at them and answer, “Yep.”

  Suddenly, the texting that we’d done last night doesn’t seem enough. Not with this overwhelming urge to hear his voice consuming me. Which means I do what I shouldn’t and press call.

  He answers on the first ring. “Liv? You okay, baby?”

  “I’m okay, Gage. Just missing you.”

  His laugh comes soft-like through the phone. “There’s a remedy for that. You could always come home… or tell me where you are so I can come get you.”

  “Don’t. Don’t keep offering that because I’m gonna break. It’ll just take a while to get over you is all. I’ve loved you my whole life.”

  “Then why do you want to get shot of me so badly? It’s only been you for me since the day I saw you, pigtails in your hair, roughing up some older kid twice as big as you because you’d caught him beating on a stray dog. Blood and I waited to see if he tried to hurt you, ready to rush in, even though we were younger and smaller than him, too. But you didn’t just hold your own, you bested the fucker.” He pauses to laugh. And I can imagine him shaking his head at the memory. “That was the day you took my heart, Livvy.”

  The hot tears fill my eyes again, though they don’t fall. Then I whisper, “I can’t be there anymore. He’s out there. He took Elise on her wedding day, right off Lord grounds. Gage, Houdini will come back. He will.” I sniff, glad he can’t see the snot running down my nose.

  “Baby, we’re on the offensive now. We’re hunting him, not the other way. But if you don’t want to come home yet, just tell me where you are. I’ll come to you. Let me take care of you, please. I won’t tell the brothers. It’ll just be you and me until you’re ready.”

  “Let me think about it, okay?”

  “Okay, baby. What are you doing now?” The crazy part is I could feel how much it cost him to give me that out. What is wrong with me?

  “I just sat down to dinner.”

  “Really? What’re you having?”

  “Chinese. A noodle bowl. It has seared scallops, shrimp, Bok choi cabbage and some other junk. What about you?”

  “Ah, Elise fed me lasagna. She feels sorry for me. Honest, I’d rather be having noodles with you.”

  We spend the next couple of hours on the phone while I clean up from dinner. While I transfer the wet clothing from the washer to the dryer. Right up until he hears me filling the beautiful clawfoot tub with water.

  “Taking a bath?” he asks, his interest clearly peaked.

  “Yeah, gonna soak.” My words come out muffled as I pull my shirt up over my head. “Hang on—let me put you on speaker so I can finish getting undressed.”

  And when I do that sitting the phone on the closed toilet lid, and he hears the plunk of my body hitting the water, he speaks again with a voice filled with longing. “You naked, baby?”

  “Yeah, I’m in the tub.”

  “Touch yourself, Liv.”

  “What?” I ask, astonished.

  “Touch yourself. Pretend your hand is my hand, baby.” God, his sensual, throaty voice makes it hard to resist, turning me on more than I’ve been in a long time. “You’ve done this over the phone before. Tell me what you’re doing. Now.”

  “Okay, I’m running my hand down the silky skin of my stomach.”

  “Keep going.”

  “My fingers brushing through the curls.”

  “Use your fingers to part those lips.” The sound of unzipping filters through the receiver. But I do as he orders. “Rub that clit. Bet it’s nice and swollen. You swollen for me, baby?”

  “Yes.” I breathe.

  “Good girl. Now keep rubbing with your thumb. Dip those fingers inside that tight pussy and curl them forward.”

  Nothing happens, not like when he does it. Not until I open my legs wide, draping each one over the side of the tub, and sit up to go at it from a different angle. Then it’s just… “Oh god!”

  “You find it, the spot?”

  “I… oh, hell… I found it, Gage.”

  His words come in spurts, his breaths in pants. “Keep going…baby. Pump… those fingers.”

  It’s only this good because I picture Gage’s fingers inside me. With his voice in my ear, it’s not hard. We fall silent, but I know what he’s doing and he knows what I’m doing.

  And then, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he grunts at the same time I yell, “Gage!” My release hitting hard and fast.

  “Shit, baby, I just came on my gut like a damn teenager.” He laughs. “Now I gotta go clean up.”

  “Don’t let me go. I’m not ready.”

  “You know the answer to that, Liv. I love you, baby. I love you with everything in me.”

  4.

&n
bsp; Gage a.k.a. Chaos

  She’s goddamn killing me. Calling. Texting. Telling me how much she loves me—but she refuses to do the one thing that will bring us back together, tell me where the fuck she is. I know I should hang up on her, get her to miss me to the point she can’t stay away any longer. But Liv and I both know I could never do that. Not when she needs me. Livvy asks me not to hang up, I don’t hang up.

  We stay on the line while I clean the splooge from my gut. While I change into some sleep shorts. And while I stretch out on my side of the bed, but I do it tucking Liv’s pillow next to my body so I can smell her while I talk with her, after putting her on speaker phone.

  “Alright, I’m settled. So tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself?” I ask. And I’ll admit, partly because I’m curious, but partly because I hold on to the hope that she’ll give some little detail away that Blood can run with and we can bring her home.

  “Gage, you know I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. I didn’t ask for names or locations. Just tell me how you’ve been spending your time.”

  “Well, I suppose that couldn’t hurt. I—uh—got a job.”

  “A job? So no more phone sex? That’s great, baby.”

  “It’s just a gas station. But the little old man who owns the place is a hoot. Everyone knows everyone here, so when they come in to pay for gas or get a coffee or soda, they end up staying for at least another ten minutes gabbing. Even when they didn’t know me, Smitty hired me, so they treated me like they had known me from the beginning.”

  “Smitty?” Finally. Something. Maybe.

  She sucks in a breath. “I shouldn’t have told you that. I better go.”

  “No.” I shout into the speaker, my hand thrown out, palm out like an idiot. As if she can see my hand begging her to stop. Embarrassed, I run my raised hand through my hair and chuckle, then quickly charge on. “What can I do with the name Smitty, Liv? Think about it. I have no last name, and it’s probably not even his real first name. You’re safe.”

  “Well, okay then. I—uh—didn’t really want to go anyway.”

  “Good. So what do you do when you aren’t at work?” I prod.

  “Well, I mostly spend my time fixing up my, well, the place I’m staying. It was kind of a dump no one had lived in for years.” She stops talking to laugh. “So far I’ve gone through two cans of WD-40 to try and turn knobs or open some door. The grass is so overgrown, Gage, that I haven’t spent a lick of time tending to it because it’s such a daunting task. No lie.”

  “Livvy Baxter, my city girl, doing yard work? Seriously, I can’t even picture it. You never wanted to live anywhere but the big city when we were younger.”

  “Things change. I will tell you, you’d like it here. I’ve thought that so many times since arriving.”

  “I’m gonna be honest, Liv. I’d enjoy a prison camp so long as you were with me. Though,” I stop and I can hear her swallow. “I’d be conflicted because I wouldn’t want you anywhere near a prison camp.”

  That earns me a Livvy laugh. High-pitched and like chipmunk chatter. Her laugh trails off into a yawn.

  “Hey, Liv?”

  “Yeah?” she answers, but she sounds so sleepy.

  “Do you remember that day when your brother went out of town with your dad, and I took you out on Lake Michigan in that little rowboat?”

  “That was a good day.”

  “It sure was, baby. I hope we have the chance to do something like that again.”

  “Me, too,” she says, but from the sound of it, she’s drifting.

  “Night, Liv. Love you.”

  “Night, Gage. I love you, too.”

  After a few deep breaths in, Livvy’s shampoo and perfume mix helps calm me. They’re the only way I’ve gotten to sleep since she left. And they do their job now. I close my eyes, hoping that I can turn the tide of my dream to that day on the lake.

  It worked. I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face. The dream, so real I could have sworn Livvy’s body warmed my bed and not the memory of her. Until I come to my senses. Then the hurt and sadness rush back in. Lugging my body from the bed turns into a true feat of strength. But once I’m showered, shaved and dressed for the day, the sluggish feeling has abated, at least for the moment.

  Blood needs to know I talked with Liv. The problem being, he still hasn’t said more than a handful of words to me. Goddamn, that man is stubborn. I ran out on the woman I’ve loved my whole life to help avenge the death of his father, no questions asked. That saying, a best friend will help you bury the body… And he can’t cut me some slack? I would never hurt Liv. Never cheat on her. On the contrary, I want to give her the best life she can possibly have.

  I walk out of my room at the Brimstone Lords clubhouse and down the two doors to Blood’s. Knock one: no answer. Knock two: harder, no answer. Knock three: with my fist, no answer. I’m not stupid enough to call out to him because he’d ignore me out of spite. But after three knocks and he still doesn’t answer, I go looking for him elsewhere. When I step into the main common room off the hallway that leads to the member’s bedrooms, I see Hero slapping the ass of a piece to get her moving out the door. A piece he’d obviously bedded the night before and from the barely-dressed, disheveled look of her, this morning. And when I say her ass, I mean she hardly has her miniscule denim skirt pulled back down over her firm, rounded cheeks. No underwear, girls like her rarely wear any. His handprint shines bright pink against her peachy skin.

  Fuck, that used to be me.

  Night after night, I’d snap my fingers and some piece would be on me, riding my dick. I wouldn’t go back to that for anything. All empty pussy. I came harder last night from my own hand with Livvy’s voice in my ear than I ever did from any of them. Liv’s tight, wet heat is all a man like me needs for the rest of my life. Jesus, I need to find her—I need to get laid. What I mean is, I need to find her and I need to get laid. And the only way to do that is to sic Blood on her trail.

  Lucky, Blood hasn’t left for the day. He walks out from the kitchen sipping on a mug of something steaming, most likely coffee, when he looks up from the drink he’s about to take and stops short as his eyes find me, and he quickly pivots to go back into the kitchen.

  “Stop,” I call out. His back is to me, but he stops, waiting for me to speak. “I talked to Liv last night.” That gets his attention.

  He turns back to me. “Go on.”

  “She called me. I assume from a burner phone, since she left hers behind. She’s okay, man. But she’s confused. All that Houdini shit messed her up.”

  “She left you. Why would she call you?” He might have a scowl as he answers, but at least we’ve started a dialogue.

  “She didn’t leave me, Blood. She left Kentucky. She left the club. Liv loves me, just like I love her. I wish you’d get over your shit. Fuck, you’re my best fucking friend, man. You know it’s real between me and Liv. You saw how I took care of her. I just can’t understand why you’re still so bent.”

  “You’re fucking my sister.”

  “Yeah,” I shoot back. “Because I love her. I want her as my wife. Part of that includes fucking her.”

  “Shit… I don’t know why it threw me.” Blood scrubs his hand over his face as he sighs, long and resigned.

  “Well, you think you can get over it? Because I picked up a few details from our conversation last night. They aren’t much to go off, but if anyone can work from this starting point, it’s you, brother.”

  He takes another sip of his coffee. “Whatcha got?”

  “Well, she told me that she thinks I’d love it, where she is. Which means it has to be by water.”

  “Water,” he repeats. “Got it.”

  “And she works for a man named Smitty at a gas station. She has to be in a small town because she said everyone knows everyone. And she has a yard.”

  “Okay. So water. Smitty. Gas station. Yard. Small town. Anything else?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll keep worki
ng her.”

  Blood shoots a curt nod. “Let me get my map out and see what I can come up with.” And he walks past me in the direction of the bedrooms. He stops at the mouth of the hallway. “Treat her well, brother. That’s all I ask.” On that little ditty, he moves again down the hallway.

  Ten months. After ten months, he gives it. Liv and I have his blessing. Now I just have to get my woman back so we can start actually living our life together. The information I gave him, well, it’s not much to go on. But if anyone can find a direction to focus on, it’s Blood. He’s worked with less.

  “Did Blood just give you the go-ahead to fuck his sister?” Hero asks. I’d forgotten he was in the room with us.

  “Yeah, in a relationship. You might want to try it someday.”

  “Fuck, not you too. What I want to try right now is some of Blood’s coffee. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  We both head for the kitchen. Hero grabs the pot while I fish two mugs from the cupboard above the sink and set them down on the counter. He pours one for me and one for himself. Then I pull the jug of milk from the refrigerator and pour a glug into my cup.

  “Milk?” I offer. He takes the plastic jug from my hand and pours two glugs. Liquid splashes over the side of his mug.

  “You know,” he says, sipping on his drink, “Houdini’s been quiet for some time. I don’t like it.”

  Just hearing that mother fucker’s name makes me cringe. “Fuck, I know. And Liv being out there all alone. I don’t like it one bit. But you know, you tracked Elise, brother. You should be in Blood’s room plotting with him. You got good instincts.”

  He smiles. “Right. I’m on it.”

  I watch him leave the kitchen, while sipping on my coffee. We’re going to find her.

  5.

  Livvy

  A couple of days ago, after months and months of putting it off—like three and a half of them—because dealing with what my great-grandad put into storage meant dealing with emotions I’d rather ignore for a while longer, I finally searched through the rooms, cataloging what treasurers still laid waiting to breathe fresh air out of the cardboard boxes, and came across one box in particular. On it, the shaky writing of an old man. The words, ‘Shelly’s Box’ lovingly scrawled across the top.