by Drew Elyse
Her body crashed into mine, her face going into my neck as her arms locked around me. She trembled with the force of her cries. This was what she’d held in earlier when they’d come to bring me in. This was hours of holding it together, agonizing over what was to come.
Fuck, my woman was strong, but she was falling apart.
“I’ve got you, sugar,” I shushed her. “I’m right here, and I’ve got you.”
“He…he…” she stuttered, unable to catch her breath to speak.
“I know.” Just those two words were agonized, and I knew she could hear it by the way her sobs quickened. She knew what Stone had done for me—for us. “That’s not for here,” I warned gently, hoping she caught it through her hysteria. “Let’s go, okay?”
She nodded into my neck, but didn’t move.
“Sweets,” I coaxed, but she gripped me tighter.
“I can’t let go.”
I didn’t want her to even as I asked, “Why not?”
“I already did once. I can’t again.”
Fuck. My sweet woman.
Not wanting to be in this goddamn place a minute longer, I grasped her thighs just under her ass and pulled up. She got the drift, wrapping her legs around my hips and letting me carry her out of there.
I approached Doc, his face agonized. I knew he was happy to see me walk away, but there was no joy in the fact that it meant Stone couldn’t.
“Come here, boy,” he ordered.
Still not putting Avery down, I got close. Doc reached out and wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and I understood. It was that same gesture—the one that marked every big moment, even the tragedies. He couldn’t move his forehead to mine with Avery plastered to my chest, but it didn’t matter. I felt it all the same.
“Need to get my girl home,” I said to him, and felt Avery’s body buck with another sob at calling her that.
Doc’s eyes, those ones that never missed a thing, looked at the way she was clinging to me, the way I held onto her, and nodded without commenting.
“Let’s get you two home,” he agreed.
Avery crashed before we made it back to the farmhouse. Too much shit in one day. I was feeling the strain of it all too, but I wasn’t sure it could put me to sleep. Not when I had to do that knowing Stone would be sleeping in a cell until he could get an arraignment hearing hopefully tomorrow.
Doc gave me a hand with the door so I could carry her in. When we made it inside, I found Kate standing there waiting for us. Her face wasn’t blank like I’d gotten eerily accustomed to. No, she was fucking worried. As she stood there, ringing her hands in front of her chest, she looked like she was about to fall apart.
“One minute, Katie,” I said quiet enough not to disturb Avery. “Just let me put her down, yeah?”
Kate nodded by rote, but I’d have to take it.
Avery never once stirred as I carried her up the stairs and laid her in the bed. Even taking off her shoes got me nothing. That absolute exhaustion told me a lot about what she went through today.
I wasn’t the only one sunk deep here.
As much as I wanted to crawl in with her and hold her, to take comfort out of just being able to do that at all, I knew Kate needed me. Avery would too, but she was fine on her own for now.
Kate was still exactly where I left her, only now she’d rotated so those wide eyes were focused on the stairs as I came down. She didn’t move or speak as I hit the first level. She just watched like she thought I might up and disappear at any minute.
“Katie,” I said softly.
That seemed to jar her. One second, she was that still image of fear, and the next, her arms were wrapped around me as she shook against me. To all that was fucking holy, I hoped I never had to feel a woman I cared about trembling like that in my arms again.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“D-D-Doc only t-t-told me when he took Avery to give her statement,” she choked out. “Th-Th-They came here and took you away and I didn’t even know.”
Fuck.
“Kate,” I started, but she kept speaking.
“I’m going to do better. I’m going to see the therapist and learn how to deal with this grief,” she swore.
Jesus, she thought she hadn’t known I was taken in for questioning because of that shit swirling in her head. Maybe in a larger sense she wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t wanted to freak her out or send her reeling, but it’d mostly been about not having to be taken away in front of Owen. I never wanted him to see me that way.
“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “I sent Avery off before they escorted me out too. I don’t want you guys seeing that shit. I didn’t know if they were going to put cuffs on me or what the fuck was happening.”
The mention of me possibly being cuffed had a little cough of a sob coming out of her.
I corralled her over to the couch and sat her down there. “Where’s Owen?”
“Ember came by and offered to watch him. I thought it was best to let her when we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Ember had known that early, which meant it was probably Jager who got that info Stone used to sell his confession. Fuck. I wondered if the brother knew what he was setting Pres up for.
“Doc called to say they were releasing you, and I nearly lost it,” she told me. “After losing…” she couldn’t say it. I knew the fucking feeling. That was probably going to be an important place to start getting her better. “I didn’t want to lose you too. I didn’t want Owen to be without his uncle.”
God, she was killing me. I’d lived my whole life acting first and dealing with the consequences when they came. That wasn’t an option anymore. I had more than just my brothers at my back. I had people who couldn’t handle it if I didn’t come home at the end of the day.
That was fucking terrifying as much as it made me feel incredible. And that terror came from knowing I could fuck it all up in an instant. Hell, I already had. If Stone hadn’t saved my ass, it would have happened.
Kate and I sat there together for a long time. We didn’t talk much, but there was a comfort for both of us in just being together and knowing it wasn’t going to end.
Then, I heard the quick footfalls upstairs.
Shit. Avery was up.
“Go to her,” Kate assured me when I looked her way. “I’m fine.”
I ran to the stairs to see my girl round the corner at the top. She was absolutely terrified. Maybe because they came for me and I’d been arrested after all, maybe thinking me being released had just been a dream—I didn’t know, and I didn’t really fucking care. I was here, and she didn’t need to feel that fear.
Bounding up the stairs, I got to her just as she swayed and looked like she might drop to her knees.
“You’re still here,” she whispered.
“Not going anywhere, sugar. I fucking promise,” I told her, taking her weight. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
“Will you stay with me?”
I knew it wasn’t easy for her to be vulnerable that way. She’d spent her life not depending on anyone for anything, but now she needed something only I could give her. What fucking floored me was that she trusted me enough to open up and ask for it.
“I’m all yours.”
“Good.”
She clung to me as I led her back to the bed, and never loosened her hold as we got it in together. I was pretty fucking certain I’d never be able to be just like that, with her warm body wrapped around mine, and not think what a fucking miracle Stone made for me that I’d be able to keep doing it.
“I love you.”
Did I say just being beside her was a miracle?
Fuck that.
Her soft voice wrapping around those words was the sweetest fucking miracle that could ever hope to bless a bastard like me.
I couldn’t hold back. Rolling her onto her back, I took her soft lips roughly. My tongue invaded her mouth. But my Avery soaked it right up, kissing me ba
ck just as fierce. In no fucking time, her hips were pressing up against me.
God, she was so fucking perfect.
Maybe after all the shit we’d experienced that day, after her giving me those words, it should have been soft and slow. Neither of us wanted that shit. We wanted fast, crazy, life-affirming. We wanted ripping off clothes, teeth on skin, violence and passion blending into a fucking heady cocktail.
When I had her gorgeous fucking body bare beneath me, I finally took half a second to stop and take it in. I was right there, with this beautiful woman beneath me when I should have been rotting away.
“I fuckin’ love you, Avery,” I confessed. As the words washed over her, I thrust inside and used my body to show her just how fucking much.
“Why?”
Stone looked at me, giving nothing away in his expression.
He was sitting on the back deck of the farmhouse with a beer, staring out at the yard as the sun disappeared behind the tree line. I knew exactly what he was doing, soaking up his freedom while he had it.
Yesterday, he had been released on his own recognizance until sentencing. Last night had been about being close to everyone. Today, he’d been out on his bike since before dawn.
“You had more to lose,” he responded.
Christ.
“Brother…”
“Laura’s workin’ the prosecution. Says I should only see eighteen months. Spent more time than that in worse conditions when I was serving this country. I was fortunate enough in this life to find myself brothers twice. In the Marines and in this club. Not a lot I wouldn’t do for any of you I consider my family.”
He was fucking killing me.
“Fact is, you’d have gone down for a lot longer. Knew that. Considered going to put the hurt on that asshole myself so you wouldn’t have to, but I spent too long considering and not acting. Had I done it, I’d have been in there confessing to shit I really did anyway. You got shit here you need to take care of, not be separated from for the next fucking decade or however long they’d decide to throw at you. I can sit tight for a handful of months knowing I won’t have to watch my brother do that.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Pres,” I muttered, looking out at the sky myself. When I’d first gotten out of prison, I used to do it all the time. I’d sit just like he was and bask in the fucking freedom. Of course, I’d usually cap it off with some liquor and a willing woman. Maybe even get that view and fresh air with some lips around my cock. Still, that freedom was possibly the sweetest part. I’d gotten used to it now. “And I owe you everything.”
“Could get your woman to make me some cupcakes,” he shot back, and I actually fucking laughed. “No joke. Doc’s been talking those fucking things up.”
“What you did, she’ll fuckin’ drown you in cupcakes.”
“Worse ways to go,” he muttered.
We sat there in silence. What the fuck did you say when someone gave up eighteen months of their life, of their fucking freedom, for you?
“I’ll never be able to make this up to you.”
I saw him lift his beer and take a drink from the corner of my eye before he said, “You get your head out of your ass and tell that woman she’s yours permanently, that’d do.”
Christ. Even now, he was trying to set me up with a good fucking life.
“Told her I loved her when I got back from the station,” I told him. “Got that back from her.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “That’ll do.”
“You got the same from me, brother. ’Til the day they put me in the ground. You gotta know that.”
Stone grunted, “Debt repaid.”
Fuck, no it wasn’t. Not even close. I’d be making this shit up to him for the rest of my goddamn life. But I didn’t argue that with him.
He was making a point, and it was one I felt right down to my fucking soul.
So, I shut up and enjoyed the sweet peace of freedom with a man I owed everything to while I could.
“Fuck, sugar. Ride my cock. Goddamn.”
I moved faster, but not because he told me to. Screw that. I did it because I was getting close.
Daz was on his back, his ass right at the edge of the bed, his legs bent over the side. I was standing between them, bent over, rearing back onto his dick. It had started out as a lap dance. Why I thought I’d be able to torture him with a lap dance for long when he was still naked from us going at each other last night before we both crashed, I had no idea.
Or maybe I knew exactly how this was going to play out and that was the whole idea.
He was an asshole, but he really did have a great cock.
Oh, and I might have loved him, asshole or not.
He wrapped his hands around my hips, yanking me back faster against him. Maybe I should have gotten handcuffs. If I had, he wouldn’t have been able to grab me exactly like this and pull me onto his dick.
Of course, if he’d been cuffed, he wouldn’t have been able to pull me onto his dick, which I was enjoying a whole lot right then. So much so, another couple bounces had me biting my bottom lip to keep from crying out way louder than I should have while I came all over him.
“Hell fuckin’ yeah, baby. You squeeze me so fuckin’ good. You…”
His words broke off as he followed me over, pulling me down flush to him even as his hips bucked up against me.
“Fuck, I love you,” he muttered as it left him, and I laughed.
For once, I was mixing batter by hand. It was an oddly novel concept for me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made a cake batter without the help of a stand mixer. However, this wasn’t just any cake batter. This was going to be hummingbird cake, and the fruit inside couldn’t stand up to the mixer blade without being pulverized. I’d learned that from experience a few days ago when I’d started trying to perfect this damn recipe.
But this was the batch, I could feel it.
It had been two months since Stone was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for third degree assault, a charge he obviously pled no contest to. That pall of his absence lay heavy over all the Disciples, but particularly over me, Kate, and most especially, Daz.
Even everyday tasks like going to the grocery store would bring to mind the fact that the most basic freedoms weren’t available to Stone because he’d given them up for Daz. That burned, and that burn settled deeper knowing I’d not gotten to know him well before he made that sacrifice.
I wrote him, though. I wrote him twice a week even though he wasn’t allowed letters that often.
I’d been nearly distraught when I’d read up online after Stone’s sentencing hearing about how strict the rules were regarding sending things to inmates. Actually, Daz would have probably said it was worse than that. I’d thrown an all-out shit fit when I’d realized it was against the prison policy to send him baked goods. The only way to send food was from a care package site where they’d send him crappy, mass-produced cookies and crap.
“He deserves better!” I shouted. “I can’t send him fucking packaged cookies! I wouldn’t feed my dog that garbage!”
“Sugar, you need to—”
“Oh no. Don't you tell me to calm down. I am not calming down,” I snapped before he could say it.
“No fucking shit,” he muttered sardonically.
“Daz!” I cried. “After everything he did, I have to send him something better. I have to.” I tried to keep it together, but my voice cracked on the words.
My man came to me, wrapping his arms around me. “Take a breath,” he instructed. “You’re too fuckin’ sweet for your own good.”
“Daz,” I started again, but he shushed me.
“You keep a lock on it for one fucking minute, baby, and I’ll tell you what I’ve been trying to since you started flipping your shit.” I looked up at him mutinously, but I kept my mouth shut. “Those rules you read up about prison mail don’t fuckin’ matter. You want to send him something, we’ll make it happen. Not the first time a brother has been inside,” he tease
d. Obviously. “We’ve got connections. We can get him anything we damn well want to.”
I’d settled after that. And since he’d been in, I’d sent baked goods to Stone weekly. Daz teased every time that we were going to bankrupt the club with all the money needed to grease palms to get them to him, but I knew it was bullshit. Daz would spend every dollar he had to keep the line open for Stone to get anything he needed from the outside until he was released.
It was the absolute least we could do.
So, this week, it was hummingbird cake.
This was because we’d finally been able to go in and visit. That had also taken a little palm greasing. Apparently, there was a whole screening process to be approved as visitors, and Daz had not been likely to pass. I had no ideas what connections the Disciples had to make that happen, and I didn’t ask. I just went at his side to see the man we owed everything.
During that visit, I’d managed to wear Stone down enough to tell me his favorite dessert was hummingbird cake because his grandmother used to make it.
I’d known of it. I knew it had pineapple, banana, pecans, and cinnamon in it and it usually was topped with cream cheese frosting. What I didn’t have was an exact recipe I trusted to make it, but that didn’t matter much. I’d researched various recipes online for hours until I got a good sense of what I wanted, then the experimenting had begun.
Stone was going to get the best damn hummingbird cake he’d had since he was a kid. I didn’t care how many times I had to tweak my method.
“You think this is the one?” Daz asked, having come down now that he was out of the shower.
I didn’t look at him. I stayed focused on the bowl in front of me, looking for just the right consistency before I kept going.
“This is it,” I said, all bravado I was trying to sell myself on. I wanted this one to be it. I didn’t care about having to try again, but tomorrow was my day to send another package to Stone. I was determined this one would have some damn hummingbird cupcakes in it.
“Still have to put them in the oven?” he asked, and there was something off about his tone that made me turn around and face him.
