by Nicole Fox
This? I just wanted to be close to her, and I would probably get some shit from the boys for being a sap, but I didn’t really care at the moment. It was like old days. The bar, the music—and Misha, right where she belonged.
# # #
I was a little buzzed, but I was happy. I don’t think I’d felt real happy in a really long time. It felt good in Trip’s arms, a little more than it should have, but I leaned into him without a hesitation.
I shouldn’t have … But I couldn’t help myself.
As we swayed to the music, I leaned up and kissed him. He seemed surprised, but he didn’t pull away. It was sweet at first, and deepened. I heard a wolf whistle from somewhere, and blushed—but I didn’t pull away.
“Misha … Are you …”
“I should have stayed kissing you in the office.”
It didn’t matter that people were around. I didn’t really care. Why should I? What did I have to be embarrassed by? I was thinking about a lot and the alcohol didn’t help, but I was happy right now, and I deserved that, didn’t I?
“Let’s get out of here.”
He didn’t ask me if I meant it; it was in my voice that I meant it. He took me by the hand and led me from the bar, almost over-eager in the way he tugged me—to the bathroom. It was so silly; it was stuff that teenagers and single people did. Not two people with a history. Not two people who, maybe, probably, still had feelings for each other.
I let him press me against the door, and he hoisted me up, keeping up those kisses. I laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“We used to do this all the time.”
“Are you saying we’re too old for getting dirty in a bathroom?”
“Well, considering the bathroom is already dirty—”
He cut me off with another kiss, and ground against me. I moaned, feeling him between the heat of my legs, hard and wanting—wanting me. I wrapped my legs tighter around him, wanting him just as badly. The alley hadn’t been enough and I couldn’t help but whine when he bit a little harder on my neck.
My hands were sloppy, moving under his shirt, tugging, going down to his pants to get at what I wanted from him. He bucked against me eagerly, groaning while me did, before letting out a curse as my fingers slid over his cock.
“What?” I breathed. “What is it?”
“No condoms on me.”
“Fuck.”
He rested his forehead against mine and I bit at his lip.
“We don’t have to have sex to have fun.”
His brow rose, obviously having his mind on sex rather than just getting off. That was fine. I smirked at him and took him in my hand, figuring at least in part I could return the favor of him fucking me so thoroughly. His eyes rolled and his Adam’s apple bobbed with strangled swallows as I stroked him and squeezed him. I loved the weight of him in my hand and it was nostalgic having him like this in here.
“Fuck, Misha, just like that. Fingers on the head—”
I swiped my thumb over his dripping slit, and he rocked harder into my hand, like he was fucking into me for real. The thought made me wet and tighten around him. He pressed his forehead to mine and I watched him as he got closer and closer, how the muscles in his neck strained until he finally came, pressing hard against me as his release spilled all over my hand.
“Shit …” His breath puffed at my hair and as I pushed it out of my face with my clean hand, he pulled away from me, dropping to his knees.
“Trip, what—”
He shoved my thighs apart, popped my button, and pulled my pants down before I had sense to finish my sentence. He took my panties down with them, and nuzzled himself against my hip.
“I wanna see if you taste the same.”
Heat flooded my core and I had to hold myself up on his shoulders when he went for me, sliding his tongue between my lips to capture my clit between his own. I moaned, and the sound echoed through the bathroom. He groaned against me and the sensation was amazing, tantalizing, and I couldn’t help but rock my hips against his face and the motion of his tongue over me. He slipped his fingers inside of me, curling them and hitting my G-spot with precision only a person who’d been your first could have.
“Trip, right there, right there—” I dug my nails in his shoulders and tightened around those fingers, wishing they were something else. I thought about what it would feel like, and remembered what it had been like when he’d fucked me in the alley. In, out, just like his fingers.
They worked together with his mouth, his growls, all drawing me closer and closer until I was whining.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop—”
I pressed my hips close to his face, almost screaming as I came for him, flooding around his fingers. I panted above him and rocked against him as he just kept going until I was twitching, until it was almost too much. He pulled away but helped me up, making sure that I didn’t slump over or fall in the wake of the orgasm that I had just had.
“Holy shit …”
He stood and nuzzled to me, chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You taste just as good as I remembered.”
Chapter Eight
Misha
Misha,
I can’t tell you how much I miss you. There’s not a day in the last few weeks that has gone by when I haven’t missed you. I put your room back together thinking that it would be easier to accept, but it wasn’t. It just made me angrier to know that I wouldn’t be seeing my baby girl again.
I took to the bottle. I know you wouldn’t like it, but it was hard to say no. I was good after your mama left us, but you don’t just turn down a Daniel’s after you lose your child. You just don’t. It’s something I can’t describe.
I let myself drown in the bottle. I’m not proud to admit it, but it gave me time to grieve. When I was done, it gave me time to think.
You’re out there, somewhere, Misha. I know you are. Lot of things seem funny now that my head is clear and my thoughts are sharp. I’ve known the Jackals and the Pride a long time—long before your beau Trip ever was a squirt in his mama. It’s not a move them Jacks would make. Not even to piss the Pride.
I don’t know why, but you’ve run.
I can’t say I understand why you went to the trouble, but it must be something important if you couldn’t go to Trip to help you fix it. I wish I’d have been the one with the answers, but you’re a smart girl and always have been, Misha—just like your mama. It’s why I love you both so dearly.
I’m not gonna look for you. If you wanted to be found, you’d have told me. I guess I got to trust that you know what you’re doing. I hope that you find what it is you’re looking for since it’s not here, honey. I hope you find happiness. I hope you grow old and prosper and bring so many happy, healthy, pretty, and smart babies into this world.
The only thing I think I can say now is, if you come back, I won’t be here. This place was only beautiful when you and your mama were occupying this space to me, and now you’re both gone. I think I’m going to travel. Maybe one day if the wind blows me right, I’ll end up with you again.
If you do come back, baby—this time maybe give the boy a chance. I know under normal circumstances I wouldn’t usually say this, but for all my hemming and hawing, the boy isn’t bad. He’s young and stupid—like all boys. The Pride isn’t a joke, either. You choose to commit to that, you choose for life. You choose for yourself, for your children, for their children. But I can see you love him more than anything in the world. And if the wind chooses to blow the two of you back together, too, you and the boy have my blessing.
I love you, Misha, more than my life.
We’ll see each other again one day.
Love,
Your Daddy
I’d read over that note what felt like a hundred times since the first time I read it. I read it in my free time at work, stealing off to corners to steal peeks at my father’s lettering, at night after I’d tucked Rose into bed and she was f
ast asleep.
Daddy had always been a smart man. I shouldn’t have underestimated him.
It warmed and hurt how much he loved me, and how much he didn’t hate me for leaving him without an explanation. I wished he would have stayed if he’d known I was alive—wished he would have come after me. Maybe the Jackals wouldn’t have been able to keep me so long.
But then I had to remind myself. I was the one who’d gotten myself mixed up with Jackals. I was the one who’d betrayed the love of my life and sought their help in the first place, and it was that selfishness that had landed me in their den for five years.
The deepest secret that I kept with me in my heart … that it hadn’t been the Jackals that had taken me, not at first, and Daddy knew it. He hadn’t told a soul. He’d wanted me to be happy, whatever my choices.
Even if they included Trip.
That was the part that floored me the most. His words—he’d given us his blessing, told me to give him a chance. They echoed in my heart and to be honest, I’d been rethinking the whole idea to cut up and leave again ever since I’d read them.
Staying with the Pride after I’d gotten pregnant had never been ideal. I knew the moment I found out I was pregnant something had to change, and it wasn’t going to be Trip, so it had to be me. I had to be the responsible one and take me and my child away from this.
Stupid me. I’d gotten help from the wrong man, who’d led me right into the lion’s den. Or rather, a den of Jackals.
I sighed as I sat on the front of Ace of Pride, that letter in my head and my mind reeling. I was waiting for Trip to get off a run with the boys. Didn’t know what it was for, but from what I gathered they were doing something for charity. At the very least, it wasn’t like it was something that would carry worry. It was one of the few things that made what I was going to do rest a little easier in my chest.
Of course, when I saw him pull up, my heart just stuttered back to life again. It was always like that, seeing him pull up. He dismounted and walked over to me, smiling. I waved to the boys as he put his arm over my shoulder.
“Hey. You waited for me?”
“I figured I might as well. Make sure you didn’t get yourself in trouble over a charity run. How’d it go?”
Trip shrugged, looking back over his shoulder to the others. Travis waved over to me, and Brig merely looked at me before brushing past and walking inside. Weird.
I looked back to Trip.
“You ready?”
“Yeah. You wanna cut out of here, though? Sounded like you wanted to talk about something serious and—”
From inside, there were loud hoots and hollers. Trip rolled his eyes.
“The boys want to celebrate.”
“They’re that happy about riding donations over to people?”
“Yeah, something like that. Come on.”
We hopped back on Trip’s bike and zoomed away from the bar. Trixie was looking after Rose for me, meaning that I had the evening to get out what I wanted to say and perhaps get to some common ground with Trip. There was a lot that I couldn’t say and wouldn’t, but there was a decent amount that I wanted to say to him, too.
It didn’t take long to get us there. Trip was still the same way that he always had been, going too fast for his own good but I still loved the thrill of it all the same. We dismounted and he led me in.
“This place hasn’t changed at all, has it?”
It was just as I remembered it when we were kids, from the furniture to the old-time wallpaper on the walls. Trip’s family home had always been a nice one; when I was younger I’d envisioned being his wife and living with him in it.
I pushed that particular nostalgia down as he walked us into the living room. He sat on the couch and I sat beside him. I suddenly felt very fidgety. I knew this was what I wanted to do—but I wondered if it was the right thing.
“You okay, Misha?” he asked, eyeing me with curiosity.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I’m just a little nervous.”
“It’s okay. Just get out what you have to say.”
Oh, he said it like it was so easy. Well. Perhaps for him, it was. I chuckled, shook my head, and took a breath.
“You know I didn’t come back here thinking to … settle,” I said, hoping that it would come out as gently as I wanted it to. “I didn’t come back with these grand ideas of getting back together or being welcomed back like that from the boys. I actually kind of expected you to have settled yourself, or something. Gotten yourself an old lady.”
He went to speak, but I held up my hand so that I could say my piece.
“I accepted this, because so much time has passed, and we’ve changed. I’m not wild like I was. I can’t be. I have to be responsible. It’s also… hard to trust that everything is going to be okay, you know? There’s always this fear that something is going to go wrong. I know what an MC is like.
“But … You took me in and you didn’t have to. You’ve let Rose and me stay, even though you don’t know her like a father knows his daughter. You’ve had the chance to build something new and you could have … Yet you took me back as though nothing had changed.
“I thought maybe … things would be the same. I know what the MC was like before I left. They were in heavy with a lot of bad stuff. I heard that you guys were still poking at the Jackals after I was gone, too. I didn’t think things were different. But I learned you cleaned up a lot of what the Pride was doing after I was taken. You should hear Big Mama go on and on about all the good the Pride has done for the town in the last five years. That there was something that lit a fire under you in those years. I don’t know if it was me—but I do know things have changed and I like them and I think…”
I sighed. Once I said it, it was it.
“I think I want to try this again. Properly. You, me. The Pride. Together … as a family … With Rose. Trip, it’s been five years and I still haven’t gotten over you, and I know—or I hope— that you haven’t gotten over me, either. I want this not only for Rose, but for myself. I … I missed you so much.”
Trip sat there, looking at me like he was just seeing me for the first time in a long time. We’d had sex. We’d had intimate moments. It hadn’t been that long back, though. I didn’t know if everything that had happened was merely because it was familiar or if it was because the things I was feeling were the same things he was feeling, too.
I got my answer when he leaned forward and kissed me.
Just like behind the diner, my body lit up, electric fire all through me. His kisses had always managed to make me weak. I pressed against him, arms going around him. but I wanted an answer, an actual answer, before we went on.
“Is … is that a yes, Trip?”
“Hell, yeah, it is.”
I pulled back a little. “Even Rose? I know it’s been a little awkward. It must be strange for you—”
“You and her. You’re a package deal.”
I smiled and pushed back into his arms.
He stood with me like that, pulling me up. My legs went around his waist and I was in mutual agreement for the next step.
“Bed,” we both said.
He carried me through the house, trailing to his room. We got sidetracked, though. He knocked against the wall and pressed me there, bucking his hips against me. I could feel how hard he was, and I arched against him.
“Trip, please.”
I wanted this to be as real as it felt. The quickie in the alley hadn’t been enough—it was never enough. I craved him having me like he used to.
He obliged me, grinding against me only a little but more before pulling me from the wall and carting me the rest of the way to his room. He tossed me to the bed where I bounced a little with a giggle, especially when he crawled over me. His hands found their way under my shirt, pushing it up so his lips could settle on my belly. I arched against him.
“I want you two here,” he said. I looked down him, gasping a little as he bit playfully into my stomach before I cou
ld speak.
“What?”
“Here. I want you and Rose here. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right.”
There was no room for arguing, and honestly? I didn’t want to. I could envision the three of us living here. A family.
I jerked Trip up to me. He was taking too long to travel up my body.
“There’s nothing more than that I want,” I said, moaning out against his lips as he pressed snugly between my legs. My hands went under his shirt, feeling all his muscles like I hadn’t been able to when he’d taken me in the alley.
