by April Lust
As with any relationship, it had been incredibly intimate at first. There was a point when I had confused my gratitude for love. But as the promises went unfulfilled and he seemed less and less interested, I realized I was simply another tool of the trade for him.
I got a nice apartment out of it. I got to spend my time with friends. I had all the clothes I needed. He kept the pantry stocked, the bills paid. He paid for anything I wanted. It might have been lonely from time to time, but all in all, it was a pretty good arrangement.
By the time he got out of the bath, I was lying in bed wearing a nice piece of lingerie I had bought. It was a silk and lace teddy, lavender and black. I had bought it to surprise him with something a little new. I had pushed the covers back and waited for him to come out of the bathroom.
“I bet that wasn’t cheap,” he said, nodding at my lingerie.
“I think it looks good on me. What do you think?” I asked, ignoring his comment and trying to salvage the mood.
“I think you spent too much on something that’s just going to get taken off and left on the floor,” he said in a firm, gruff voice. He wasn’t even trying to be playful about it.
“I just thought it would be nice to do something a little different,” I told him. Hell, I was loyal to him; the least we could do was pretend every once in a while that I was present in the bed during sex. It wasn’t like I was going to ask him to tell me he loved me or anything stupid like that. I didn’t want that much out of it, but a little acknowledgment wouldn’t hurt.
“Yeah, and did you put this ‘something different’ on the card, or did you pay cash for it?” he asked as he walked over to the dresser and pulled out a pair of gray cotton boxers. He pulled them on, covering his dick.
So far, it didn’t look good for sex. It must have been a pretty rough crossing.
“I put it on the card,” I told him. “I ordered it online, what else was I going to do?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if trying not to unleash on me. “Why do you insist on putting so much on the damn card?” he asked.
“Like I said, I ordered it online. I couldn’t very well pay cash for it,” I argued.
“Do you need it, though? The card is to be used as sparingly as possible. What if I don’t get a score this month? What then? What if I can’t pay for all these things you keep putting on the card? I give you enough money for you to buy the things you need, don’t I?”
“Yeah, you do,” I said, giving up any arguments I had for the lingerie. When he started raising his voice, I knew he wasn’t going to listen to anything I had to say.
“There are shops here in town if you feel like you need something nice or sexy. Hit up the mall with your girlfriends,” he said.
We often referred to the mall as the small because it was just that – small. We didn’t have a Frederick’s of Hollywood, or anything close. We didn’t even have a Victoria’s Secret. We had a department store whose sexiest piece of clothing was a silk nightgown that stopped right above the knee and had a little lace across the top. And the way it was cut, it made every woman look pregnant. Not sexy in the least.
“I know you think you’re living the life here, Nora, but we’re one missed score away from having to cut back on things,” he said as he climbed into bed
He cut off the bedroom light and pulled the covers up. Then, he rolled over away from me and lay facing the other wall in the dark.
“Don’t put anything else on the card for a while,” he mumbled, and a moment later he was snoring.
In all the years we’d been together, he’d never talked to me about money. He had always acted like the money didn’t matter. He treated it like we had enough to do whatever we wanted, and if anything came up, he handled it.
I lay in the dark, in my sexy new lingerie, and I found myself crying silent tears. What had I done to deserve this life? What could I have possibly done that was so wrong that I wound up with a man who took me for granted?
I had always pretended I understood why he kept me around. I was there to feed him, to take care of his American home, and to serve his needs when he was with me. If he didn’t need me for those things, he could have simply paid rent on the apartment to make sure he had a place to sleep where he kept his clothes and stuff like that. Hell, for that matter, he could have paid for a room for the few nights he was here.
I rolled away from him and pulled up the covers, and cried myself to sleep, careful to keep it quiet so I didn’t wake him.
Chapter Two
Mark
“Hey, Pop,” I said to my dad as he picked up the phone on the other side of the Plexiglas divider between us. I’d sometimes call him Pop to get a reaction out of him. He hated it.
He’d been locked up for the last year on assault charges after a fight with a member of a rival MC from downstate. They were a city group trying to expand to the rural market. They were encroaching on Reapers territory, and my father had gone out to handle it with a few other old-timers. They’d handled it, but it landed my father behind bars.
“Don’t ‘hey, Pop’ me, boy,” he said. “Not unless you’ve come to tell me you got one of those girls of yours pregnant and you’re keeping her around to raise your son. If you can’t tell me that, I don’t know why you even bothered coming up here.”
“Well, damn, Alan, I’m glad to see you, too,” I said, using my dad’s real name. “Are they taking care of you in here?” He’d grown a beard, full and gray, but he kept his head shaved while he was inside, showing off the tattoos he’d gotten on the sides of his head when he was younger. One was a skull with the letters F-T-W underneath it for Fuck The World. The other was a diamond with 1%er tattooed in the middle of it.
“Boy, cut the small talk,” he barked. “Why’d you come in today?”
Alan knew I didn’t usually come by to check on him. If I was here, I was seeking his advice on something. He was still technically the president of Shadow Reapers, so there were times when he was the only person who could handle things.
“I think someone’s trying to make a move on us, and I think it’s an inside job. I think they’re going to try to take me out and replace me,” I told him. I had been reluctant to put my suspicions on the table because I felt like it would have opened the door for more ridicule from my father, but there had been some moves made on our people in another market, and I felt like the MC needed some guidance from our real president.
Alan laughed. “I guess they think they’re going to pull the same shit I did. And you’re the perfect target, too, coming in here to cry to your daddy because someone doesn’t like you.
Boy, you’re supposed to act as my proxy, and when I step down, you’re the next president in line. You know that, right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Then fucking act like it, kid. Grow a pair and take charge. Where have they been making moves?”
“New Hampshire,” I told him.
He shook his head. “You might want to send a couple of guys out there, guys you know you can trust to be loyal to you. Guys who won’t be scared to handle the threat and set everyone else straight again.”
“Got it,” I said. I already had a couple of guys in mind.
“And as far as the threat from within, you know why they’re coming after you, right?” He continued before I had a chance to answer. “They see you as weak. They see that you’re sitting in as my proxy, and you’re not making an effort to secure the position as your own.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Are you saying I should try to take this position from you while you’re in here?”
Alan smiled. “Not exactly, but you need to be at a point where the MC won’t let you step aside for me when I get out. Take it from me, because I’ve done it. The stronger you are as a president, the less likely they will be to try to push you out of the way. And you don’t want them to come after you,” he warned me.
“I know.”
“Do you? Fuck, boy, they will kill yo
u, just like I killed the president before me, corrupt bastard.” He shook his head. “That was the day I earned this tattoo,” he said, pointing at the diamond on the side of his head. “That’s how I became president. And I’m supposed to be handing that job down to you, but unless you show them you’ve got your old man’s cold blood in your veins, you won’t make it.”
I sighed. I’d heard the story hundreds of times, in varying amounts of detail. It wasn’t his only murder, but it was the one that mattered the most. Some kids had dads who bragged about that one game in high school, that moment when they had the chance to shine. My father bragged about that one kill. That was his big game.
“You need to quit fucking around, boy, and you need to show your MC that you’re serious about being their prez. You need to have a boy, someone who can take over behind you. You need to take an old lady and show them that you are ready to rule with a cold hard bitch by your side.”
“Like mom?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. My mother had run out when I was little. She’d left me at the clubhouse with one of the other old ladies while Alan was out on a job with a few other higher ups. He came back, but she never did.
He chuckled. “I was hard enough for both of us, apparently,” he said, looking at me with icy eyes.
“Yeah, I’m sure that was it,” I said. “Well, thanks for your advice, Pop.”
“I’m serious about the kid, Mark,” he said, but something in his tone had changed. He wasn’t talking at me anymore, wasn’t throwing his harsh, gravelly tone at me. He was speaking to me like another person – an equal or a friend.
“I know you are,” I said, “but why would I want a kid, outside of playing politics with the MC? I can’t even imagine trying to have a kid with one of the club girls. I mean, they’re all practically kids themselves.”
“Then, don’t use a club girl. You need to leave those girls alone anyway. Using them and throwing them away when you’re done is childish and a sign of weakness. It shows that you’re not ready to be president. You’re still playing around and having fun. It’s time to buckle down.” There was something behind that look in his eyes. I wondered if he knew something, or if something had happened that he wasn’t telling me.
“Stevens,” the guard barked, stepping over behind Alan.
He shrugged at me and smiled. It was a smart-assed little grin, like he was saying the joke was on me. I didn’t even know what joke it would have been, unless he was referring to his time behind bars.
A lot happened on the inside, and I didn’t know the half of it. The spider web tattoos on Alan’s arms told the story of the times he’d been in prison. He was no stranger to life on the inside.
He hung up the phone without another word and winked before getting up and letting the guard escort him back to his cell. I watched him leave and slowly hung up my end of the phone. I got up to leave and couldn’t stop thinking about his words. While he’d tried to give me advice, he’d also constantly belittled me, like usual.
I called him by his name most of the time because he’d never been much of a dad. As the president of Shadow Reapers, he had been dedicated to the MC, from the business end to the lifestyle. The MC raised me, and he was right. Even though I didn’t want to admit it to him – or even myself, for that matter – he was right. It was time for me to take the position of president for myself, as my own.
When I got back to the Reapers after leaving the prison, I did what I always did to relieve my frustration from being belittled by Alan. I grabbed one of the club girls hanging around waiting on one of us to notice her. She was a petite little raven-haired beauty wearing blue jeans, high-heeled leather boots, and a leather jacket.
“Hey, you’re coming with me,” I told her as I walked in. I didn’t speak to anyone else. I didn’t ask for her name; she probably would have given me some stupid nickname she’d made up for herself to sound cool anyway. Some shit like Nyx or something, judging by her dyed-black hair.
“Great, where are we going?” she asked me as I grabbed her by her hand, noticing the chipped blood-red nail polish and the dangling bracelets on her wrist.
I couldn’t tell if she’d walked in from the nineteen-eighties or off the set of a music video after being rejected. It didn’t matter. She was about to serve her purpose.
“Upstairs,” I told her as I took her to my room.
When we got to the room, and I closed the door behind us, she turned and pressed herself against me, licking her thin, young lips. I turned her back around and pushed her down onto her knees on the bed. Her jeans hugged her ass perfectly. I didn’t even have to take them off to see the shape of her inner thighs, the way her legs and ass spread to show her core to me.
“Take off your jacket and your top,” I ordered her as I undid my pants and pulled my cock out. I was already hard and ready to go. I stroked myself as I watched her ditch her top.
She didn’t even wear a bra. Her perky little tits bounced as she leaned back over, placing her hands on the bed. I unbuckled her belt and pulled her jeans down without even unbuttoning or unzipping them. They slid down from her hips easily, pulling her panties off with them.
She moaned and pushed herself back towards me. I reached my fingers out to touch her thin, hairless pussy lips. I slid them between the folds of her skin, feeling how wet she was. I spread her juices around with my fingers and slid them deep inside her. She moaned and pushed herself against my hand.
I grabbed a condom from my pocket and opened the package, rolling the rubber down my shaft, growing harder as the ring gripped my girth. In the back of my head, I heard Alan telling me I needed to father a child, to produce an heir to continue the Stevens legacy.
I was about to fuck this girl. I didn’t have time to think about children.
I spread her open to receive me and slid the head of my erection inside her. Once in, I rammed myself deep into her, slamming my hips against her soft, round ass.
With one hand, I grabbed her hair and wrapped it around my fist, pulling her back against me as I punished her tight little twat. I reached my other hand around to her mouth.
“Taste yourself,” I ordered her, shoving my fingers into her mouth. “Suck yourself off of them.”
She gripped my hand in hers and sucked my fingers like a lollipop. She grunted, moaned, and groaned as I slammed into her again and again. I felt her depths opening up to accept me as I filled her with my length.
I pulled my fingers out of her mouth and placed my hand on the small of her back.
“Yes,” she groaned. “God, yes!” She cried out every time I thrust myself into her.
She let out a long moan as I pulled her hair back and pressed myself deep into her, holding myself all the way in. She started to whine as I exploded, emptying into the rubber I was wearing.
I thrust myself into her a couple more times, finishing. She panted, breathing quick and heavy, as her body tensed up beneath me. Then she started shaking, and I could feel her tight little pussy contracting around my cock. I pushed her down onto the bed and pressed myself deep into her again, letting her finish.
She gripped the sheets and cried out again as her orgasm rocked through her.
I left her there, sliding out of her and getting up from the bed. I tossed the condom into the trashcan by the bathroom door. Seeing her lying there on the bed, her ass hanging out of the jeans I’d pushed down to her knees, her hair a mess, her shirt and jacket on the floor, Alan’s words haunted me again. I couldn’t have that.
“Was that good?” I asked in a harsh voice.
She looked up and nodded. “It was fucking great,” she said.
“Good. Now get out,” I told her, gesturing to the door. I was done with her, and honestly, I didn’t feel any better. I didn’t need some pretentious little club girl hanging around. I needed fresh blood, someone from the outside, like Alan said.
Dammit, Pop.
Chapter Three
Nora
“Hey, guys. Anything I can get for you?” Ed as
ked from behind the bar as Ryan and I walked up and took a couple of stools.
Ryan shook his head and waved his hand, dismissively declining Ed’s offer. He hadn’t said much all night, not even on the way over to the Reapers clubhouse. Something was bothering him. He was never this quiet or withdrawn.
“Sure, I’ll take a Jack and Coke,” I told Ed. There was no point in missing out on the fun because Ryan was in a foul mood.
“Glad to hear it.” Ed patted the bar and went to work.
“Quiet in here tonight,” I observed, speaking to no one in particular, but hoping one of them would respond.
“Yeah, it’s a slow night tonight. Don’t know what that’s about,” Ed remarked.
