by Violet Blaze
But of course, Fauna's at home with Serenity today, so seeing her right now is out of the question. I might as well get some work done instead. Later, tonight, I'll find some way to see her. For better or worse, she's gotten under my skin, dug herself in deep, taken hold of me and my monster, my animal, my beast … whatever's left of my heart.
I curse under my breath and slide off my bike, climbing the stairs without making a single sound. I'm good at that, moving around silent as death, like a shadow in the night.
I don't bother to knock.
“Well, now, what have we got here?”
The topless woman in the bed screams as I kick in the door; the man underneath her curses, shoving her off and sending her sprawling onto the floor. The sight makes me grit my teeth, and I snatch the man by the throat when he attempts to get past me, slamming his back into the wall and squeezing hard enough to make his eyes bulge out of his skull.
“You sure are lucky I've got a full schedule right now,” I say as my fingertips dig into the rough, sweaty skin of the john and I toss him aside with no small amount of force, the crack of his skull against the weathered door bringing me at least some satisfaction. That little spark, the ember of violence inside of me, it's the only thing that's ever been able to break through the ice, shatter some of that hard, outer shell and give me a glimpse into the world of feeling.
After being with Serenity last night, it's like comparing a match to a raging bonfire.
I smile as the john scrambles to his feet, bleeding red droplets across the floor as he shoves his way out into the sunlight and I kick it closed behind him with the sole of my boot.
“Please don't hurt me,” the girl's voice quivers as she slides across the floor, putting her back to a dirty, graffiti covered wall, holding a discarded pink top up against her naked breasts. “I'll fuck you for free, whatever you want.”
“Put your goddamn clothes on,” I say, tucking my fingers into the pockets of my jeans. “Now.”
The girl scrambles to her feet as I take a quick look around the room—a filthy bed, a dresser with peeling paint, a floor covered in leaves and trash, used needles. My lip curls. What a fucking rat's nest. It smells like piss and old sweat in here.
I look up at the sound of heels on tile, taking in the hooker from head to toe. Too skinny. Bad skin. Fucked up teeth. Probably a meth addict. I'd feel sorry for her if I was into that sort of emotion.
“You were in the forest the other night?” I ask and her eyes go wide as she recognizes me, fear flashing through the swamp green depths of her irises. I seem to have that effect on people, scaring them half to death like that.
My smile gets a little wider.
“I was just doing my job,” she whispers as I take a few steps toward her, reaching up to sweep tangled red-brown hair over her thin shoulder. “I don't know shit, okay? And I got no problem with the Wolves.”
I keep smiling.
“Tell me about your other clients,” I say as I lift my chin and watch the woman's eyes flick over to the door, the slight splatter of blood across the cracked orange tiles of the floor. She's thinking of making a run for it. For her sake, I hope she doesn't. I have no plans on hurting this woman, not unless she forces my hand. “Are they all crack dealers and addicts?” I ask and her face wrinkles up in irritation.
“I have classy clients,” she says and I just keep smiling. Ah, sure she does.
“Tell me about them,” I demand and watch as her eyes get that faraway look again, fear trickling into every facet of her facial expression as she judges the present and sudden danger I pose versus whatever trouble she thinks she'll get in for opening her mouth. Of course, she sees my cut, knows I belong to the MC. There's nobody around here that's more dangerous than we are.
Finally, it clicks and I can see in her face that she gets it.
“There are these two guys,” she starts and then proceeds to tell me about a pair of johns staying at a nearby vacation rental by the beach. How predictable. As soon as she's done, I step aside and hold out my hand for the door, grabbing onto her arm as she passes and squeezing tight.
“Don't let me catch you working around here again. Next time, I might not be so nice about it.”
I release the woman and she stumbles out the door, falling against the railing and then rising to her feet as I stand there and watch her scramble down the steps and across the parking lot.
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial up my president.
The vacation rental's a bust—the men who were staying there left several nights ago—but at least we've got a lead to work on. Well, Mick has a lead to work on. I do fieldwork, groundwork; I'm an artist who works in blood. Mick, the club secretary, he works with computers. How exciting for him.
I park my bike next to Serenity's, in the woods down the hill and around the corner from her house, in an awkward patch of land that's currently in dispute between the state and federal park systems. Nobody does maintenance on the trails; nobody goes there. Trust me: I know all the secret nooks, crevices, and secret shadows that cloak the edges of Trinidad.
About an hour ago, I got another text from Serenity.
Goodnight, Glacier. I miss you already. I'd love to see you tomorrow.
There were a bunch of symbols, too. Emoji, I guess. I never use them, but Serenity does, peppers her messages with hearts and stars and smiling faces. I messaged her back.
Don't go to sleep yet. I want to say goodnight properly.
She responded with a whole sea of question marks, but I haven't bothered to respond. Why should I? I'll be seeing Serenity in person in just a few minutes.
I move through the dark, wet woods around the house, noticing that all the windows are black and empty, the only light coming from a single bulb over the garage. I know I shouldn't be here, doing this, but I want to see her. Need to see her. This fiery compulsion inside my chest, this feeling that I don't fucking understand, it's driving me forward, around the back of my brother's house and up the slight incline of the backyard.
The way the house sits, the bottom floor is nestled in the side of the hill, putting the second floor at around ground level. I move up to the brown wood siding and stand there for a long moment, glancing up at the balcony and the set of sliding doors.
It's easy enough to climb up onto the veranda. I position myself next to it and bunch my muscles, jumping and grabbing onto the side, hauling myself up and over, crouching like a nightmare in the shadows of night.
When I rise to my feet, balancing between two wood beams, slick with dew from the drizzly night, it's just another carefully calculated jump to Serenity's balcony. Like some fucked up Romeo and Juliet story, I use all of my strength to haul myself up, rolling underneath the railing and rising to my feet. Before I bother to open the door, I lean carefully against it and peer inside, the weak moonlight doing little to illuminate the darkened room.
There's a flash of bright—a cell phone screen—and I pause to pull my own from my pocket, angling the light carefully away from the doors.
Saint, what do you mean? Where are you? Should I come down?
My phone slides into my back pocket and I look up to see Serenity toss her phone onto her nightstand, leaning back in the pillows as my eyes readjust to the dark. I blink through the transition, watching Serenity sneak her hands beneath the blankets, arch her back and bite her lower lip.
Ah. She's touching herself. Maybe she's even thinking of me?
She better be thinking of me.
I slide open the door, silent as a fucking mouse.
I'm already climbing on the bed before Serenity even realizes that I'm there. Her eyes flash wide and she opens her mouth to scream or gasp, I'm not sure which. My right hand clamps tight across her lips as I smile through the darkness.
“Shush.” I drop my hand and sit back against the wall, my legs propped up, making a bridge across Serenity's own.
“What are you doing here?” she whispers, her cheeks flushed, the sweet smell of sex in
the air when she pulls her hands from the blanket and sits up, tucking them around her waist. That scent, I've never liked it before. It didn't excite me like the smell of blood, that vibrant coppery tang on the back of the tongue. But I'll be damned if it doesn't excite the hell out of me now.
I curl my hands around my knees and glance over at Serenity, her gently parted lips, her dilated pupils. She thinks I'm here to fuck her; I'm not. Too risky. And with our age difference, potentially disturbing. No, I just needed to see her. Touch her.
I reach out and grab Serenity's hand, marveling at the smoothness of her flesh, the slight wetness at the tips of her fingers. She tries to pull away, but I hold on tight, press my thumb against her knuckles.
“Were you thinking of me?” I ask, tilting my head to the side. I do that to get a different perspective on the world. Looking at it straight never showed me anything I could understand. So I try to switch things up, see if it makes more sense if I look at it crooked. Usually, it doesn't. With Serenity, it might. “Touching yourself to thoughts of me?”
“Maybe,” she says, her voice a warm purr in the dark. When she crawls out of the blankets, dressed in nothing but a pair of panties and a white tank, I let her into the curve of my arm and pull her close. The hot heat of Serenity's body melts some of the ice inside of mine. “I can't believe you're here. How the … how did you get in here?”
“I climbed,” I say, glancing over at her face, loving the soothing balm of her presence. Serenity keeps my monster in check, dims the brightness of my violent urges, makes me wonder if it is possible, if one day I really could love her. My chest tightens, that bright sharpness inside that always hurts, that vindictive cobra inside my rib cage. “It's disturbing how easy it is to get in here.” I pause. “Did you take that gun I left for you?”
Serenity makes to stand up, but I pull her back against my side and curl my right arm around her waist, possessive urges racing through me, taking me this close to curling my lip up in a growl.
“It's in my drawer,” she says, pointing one pale toe towards the nightstand. “Why?”
“If I can get in here, then so could somebody else,” I say as Serenity curls her fingers through mine and I close my eyes, thinking of last night, of being curled around her in my bed. I want that every night. Every single fucking night. The thought of walking away from here and sleeping alone in that white box I call a house makes me want to … kill somebody.
I smile in the dark.
“You think there are many people out there that can do what you do? Sneak into the house of an officer in the Alpha Wolves without being seen or heard?”
I think about that for a moment as Serenity nuzzles her face against the side of my neck and presses her lips to the pulse in my throat.
“No. Not many.” Because, sin for sin, I'm an outlaw in a world of outlaws. I haven't wasted my life drinking, shooting up, or fucking. All of those lost moments spent honing my craft. “Still, I like the idea of you having a gun at your fingertips.”
I glance down at the blonde crown of her head.
“I feel safe with you,” Serenity says, scooting closer, doing … something to me, rubbing her body against my bare arm, curling her fingers in the white fabric of my t-shirt. “With you around, I don't need a gun.” My lips curve into a deeper smile, one that feels almost … real. Of course, I have nothing to compare it against, but it feels different than the smiles I plaster on for my brothers.
“With me around, you don't have to worry about anything,” I say, resting my chin on the top of her head, impulses flickering behind my eyelids, my cock thickening inside my jeans.
“Except, you know, my dad,” she whispers with a sigh, “and the club.”
“You don't have to worry about them either,” I say as Serenity drops her hand to the bulge in my jeans and I curl my fingers around her wrist. I need to prove to myself that when it comes to Serenity, the monster calls none of the shots. I won't fuck her tonight. The next time I do, I'm going to come loose, let myself go. It'll be loud and messy … it might get rough. I need to make sure I can control myself where it counts. At least I know that's something I've always had in spades. Control. I've never lacked for it before.
The thing is … I've never had a Serenity before either.
“You'll be eighteen in …” I pause and she leans back, looking up at me with two pools of tranquil blue. Her mouth hardens slightly, but with steely determination and nothing else.
“Eight months.”
I stare blankly back at her.
Well. Fuck.
“Don't,” Serenity whispers, sitting up and giving me a look like she thinks I might run. She's wrong. No matter what, it's too late for me. My whole life I've searched for something to make me feel alive, anything at all really. It could've been a vice, a hobby, a pet, a person. I've found it now, and it's sitting right here, this woman. It can only be this woman now.
I shrug my cut off, reach down and pull my shirt over my head, tossing it aside, gathering Serenity in my arms and laying us down on the bed. I tuck her head under my chin, feel her fingers curling around my arm, and revel in the simple pleasure of her touch, the sweetness of her smell.
“Are you …” she asks, her voice a quiet whisper against my throat, “cuddling me?”
Is that what I'm doing? I have no idea.
But I stay in that position until I hear her breathing slow, descend into sleep.
And then I join her.
When I wake up, the first thing I notice is an unfamiliar weight across my back, an extra sea of warmth in the sheets next to me. My heart stutters and restarts at a gallop, a smile curving across my lips as I turn over and stare into Glacier's ice blue eyes.
He came to see me last night and he's still here.
I keep smiling until I hear my mom's usual morning knock.
“Ren! Wake up. You've got school today.”
“Okay!” I yell back, feeling this … this horrible thrill rush through me. Here I am, laying in bed with my lover and nobody knows about it. “I kind of thought you'd be gone by the time I woke up?” I ask as Glacier continues to stare at me. No, no I think he's studying me actually.
“Take this,” he says, without responding to the question. He reaches into his pocket and comes up with a set of keys, removing a small silver one from the loop and giving it to me. “It's my house key.”
“You're giving me a key?” I whisper as Glacier sits up and runs his tattooed fingers through his blonde hair, scooting to the edge of the bed and rising to his feet, still dressed in his boots, jeans, his leather Alpha Wolves cut. When he glances back at me, there's this raw, desperate hunger in his face that makes my breath catch sharply in my chest.
“I'm assuming school then the mayor's office?” he asks as I sit up, my baggy tank top sliding down my right shoulder, baring the skin of my breasts. The motion causes Saint to run his tongue along his lower lip. “When you're ready, come over to my place and see me. But don't come until you're ready to deal with,” Glacier points a finger to his chest and curves a terrible, terrible smile at me, “the whole beast. Take as many days as you need.”
He moves over to the sliding doors as I swing my feet to the floor and stand up.
“Wait,” I whisper as my mom's footsteps pass down the hallway and pause at my door again. She raps her knuckles against the wood as I step up to Glacier and he turns to me, letting me sneak my arms around his neck, press my lips to his. Fire races through me as the strong bands of his arms curve around my waist and pull our bodies together. His tongue parts my lips, claims my mouth.
“Ren, hurry up. I have errands to run, so I need to drop you off early.”
Glacier and I keep kissing, turning my knees to liquid, making me wish I could melt across the bed with him on top of me, fucking me like he did in his bed the other night. Instead, he tears himself away from me and lifts his chin with a long, low ragged release of breath.
Without another word, he slips out the sliding glass doors. I
wait a moment before I tiptoe out after him and glance down, watching as he hops off the veranda and into the wet grass, disappearing into the forest before I can even process what just happened between us.
Take as many days as I need?
Hmm.
He still thinks I'm not prepared for the whole of his darkness, the shadows that lurk inside of him. But he's wrong. I don't need days to prepare for that. I don't even need one.
School is fucking awful.
Nevaeh and Bristol are waiting for me as soon as I walk in the front doors, my messenger bag slung over my shoulder, a red and black plaid miniskirt around my hips, a tight blank tank over my chest. They look at me like they always do, like I'm trash, the literal scum of the earth.
“Hey whore, glad to see you back in action,” Nevaeh calls out as I brush past her, ignoring the sound of her high heels on the linoleum behind me. Who the fuck wears high heels to school anyway? What a goddamn poser bitch. Nevaeh thinks she's queen of the school, a vixen with a vendetta, when really, she's just a scared little girl who doesn't know how to grow up. I almost feel sorry for her.
I breeze down the hallway and find Loren waiting for me outside our physics class. He glances up, dressed in the same denim jacket from the other night, same Chucks, different jeans.
“Thanks for ditching me at the bonfire,” he snaps as I slip into the room and take my seat, wishing I was fucking anywhere but here. Ugh. I never liked school before and now … it just feels weird and wrong. I want to be out on the open road, the wind whipping the leather of my jacket, my body taking the curves of the road like my bike and I are one being, a beast of metal and flesh. But I'll sit here and I'll do this and I'll be damned if I don't finish high school with a diploma in my hand.
