by April Lust
“No, wait, what’s all this about?” I asked her.
“No, you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“You really want a house?” I asked her.
“I do.” She turned those deep blue eyes back my way.
I understood what my dad had meant about making decisions. I understood his choice to buy a home when he’d been able to get us out of that apartment. We could have walked out of my apartment right then and found a house to buy if that was what she wanted. Just like my dad, though, if it was what she wanted, it was what I wanted, too.
It scared me that I was willing to go along with whatever she wanted to do, but I wasn’t about to jump on anything new right away like that. We still had a long way to go to get to the point where we would buy a house. I just didn’t think I was ready, and I didn’t think we were at a point yet where it was a viable idea.
We were just getting started. We had our entire life together in front of us. There was no need to rush into anything, but I poured us both another glass of whiskey and held my drink up anyway.
“Here’s to the we, our, kids stuff,” I said.
“Indeed,” she agreed.
We tapped our glasses together and drank. It felt good to have someone who was on the inside for a change. She wasn’t just another woman I’d picked up along the way. She was my woman. She was my old lady.
I looked at her in the golden afternoon light. Her wavy blonde hair fell around her shoulders and glowed in the light. Her eyes were like pieces of the sky that had been pulled down and set against her soft, gentle features. I wanted to reach across the table and stroke her cheek. I wanted to kiss her delicate pink lips. I could see myself unbuttoning the shirt she was wearing and exposing her to me right there on the balcony, but I didn’t want to take her on the balcony. I wanted to make love to her in our bed.
I felt my desire growing harder for her the longer I stared at her. I watched her thin fingers around her glass and remembered how they felt around me. I wanted to feel that now. I knew we were both sore from last night, from the accident and the fighting. But that would just make it so much better, I thought.
“What?” she asked bashfully when she caught me staring at her.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Just you.”
“What you mean?” Her face lit up.
“You’re beautiful,” I told her. “I can’t tell you that enough. You’re absolutely gorgeous, inside and out.”
“You’re sweet, Mason,” she said.
“No. I’m being honest, Clara. I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you…well, the first time I saw you as a woman. When I took that cap off your face and saw your deep blue eyes, when I watched your hair spill out of your cap onto your shoulders, I wanted you then, and I’ve wanted you constantly ever since,” I said.
She blushed.
“Come on,” I said. “While we’ve still got some energy left in us, let’s go make love.”
She looked at me and smiled with her blue eyes. She took another sip of her whiskey, downing the rest of her glass, and set it back on the table.
“Yes,” she said almost cheerfully, “let’s do that. Let’s make love.” It sounded so much better when she said it.
I was about to rip through my boxers to get to her, so it was time to make something happen. I took her slender hand and stood up from my chair. She followed, walking behind me as I silently led her back through the apartment into my bedroom. I closed the door behind us and kissed her, pressing her body against the door.
“You are so irresistible in my shirts,” I told her.
“Be gentle, Mason. I’m sore,” she said, so I turned and took her over to the bed, where we made slow, gentle love all night. I took care of her and cradled her in my arms so she would know how much I loved her, and I gently made love to her so I could take her to ecstasy without breaking her worn body from the night before.
Epilogue
Clara
I sat with my arms and legs tied to the metal chair. The rope hurt around my wrists and ankles. I pulled on them not to try to escape, but to adjust to rope to try to find something less uncomfortable.
I was in a small gray concrete room. The walls were dirty and damp. The air felt musty, like we were underground or something. The floor was slick. I could see the smudges of dirt in the thin layer of water over the concrete. A single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling by a string lit the room. It swayed gently, making shadows dance along the walls all around the room.
I had been captured trying to infiltrate a new crime boss’s hideout. We believed he was trying to take business from Mason and Storm’s Angels, so, once again, I threw on the black ski mask, the tight black sweater, leather gloves, black pants, and my softly padded shoes. I snuck into the dark, abandoned building they were using for their hideout in the middle of the night, just as I always had.
I had found their office and pulled out my phone to take pictures of the documents across the desk. They had all kinds of information on who was selling what and where things were going. They knew every move that everyone else in town was making. Mason was right to want to take these guys down. They had their sights set on becoming number one, and with the information I found in their desk, it wouldn’t have taken them long to do it.
Unfortunately for them, their security guards were just a couple of meatheads. They tore off my ski mask and took my backpack, which had nothing in it this time. But they didn’t grab my phone. My GPS locator was on, letting Mason know where I was. When I’d heard them coming, I texted him an emergency code to make an alert come up on his phone so he knew I was in trouble.
The meatheads stood guard on either side of the sliding metal door in the wall at the front of the room. The light from the bulb overhead barely made it to them. They weren’t more than large, broad silhouettes standing against the wall. I could see the guns strapped over their shoulders standing out in the shadows. They had no idea what was coming their way.
“You boys waiting on your boss?” I asked, trying to get in their heads and distract myself from the pain in my wrists.
They didn’t say anything. They just stood with their arms crossed in front of them, staring at some point on the back wall.
“I hope he’s coming,” I continued. “I sure would like to meet him. You know, I’ve been in a lot of hideouts, and I’ve got to say this place is pretty nice. It’s all unassuming from outside. I thought I had the wrong place at first. Usually there’s a light on or some kind of sign to let people like us know that we’re on someone’s turf. Not you guys, man. You guys are operating in secrecy.”
My thought was that if I kept talking long enough and made it annoying enough, they would eventually crack and say something. If I could get them to start talking, there was no telling how much information I would be able to get out of them before Mason arrived. Then, I would relay that information to Mason as we left the building. It was a pretty good plan, and being overly talkative usually worked, but these guys were good.
I was starting to think they were statues.
“You boys don’t talk much, do you?” I teased. “Hey, what if I need to go to the bathroom? Will one of you untie me and accompany me so I can go with some sort of dignity? Or do I have to piss right here in the chair?”
They didn’t move or say anything, which, of course, put a horrible image in my head of pissing myself in the chair to get their attention, but I wasn’t about to do that. I wouldn’t go that far, especially with help on the way.
“Don’t all answer at once,” I told them, laughing obnoxiously. “I wasn’t trying to get you to move or anything. It’s not like I have to go now.” Thank God I really didn’t need to go. I’d used the bathroom in their office before they found me.
These guys were really making me earn my keep tonight. They weren’t budging on anything I said.
“Hey, look, seriously, it’s that time of the month.” That was every man’s weakness. Either they were sympathe
tic and that line would tug at their heart strings, or it would completely disgust them and they would do whatever it took to shut me up.
They still weren’t giving me anything. If they didn’t move soon, or if Mason didn’t show his ass up soon, I was going to resort to my shitty standup comedy routine.
“But for real, guys, I need to change my pad,” I told them. Oh yes, it was time to get gross. “I think things are getting a little carried away over here.”
They didn’t budge. They seriously just stood there against the wall, staring off in the distance with guns strapped to their shoulders, guarding me until their boss or whoever handled prisoners arrived.
“Jesus Christ, guys! What’s it going to take to make you talk? Do I have to pull some Houdini shit and get out of this chair to get your attention?”
I heard a hand clasp one of their guns. That was the ticket out.
“I mean, I can do it, but you guys look like you wouldn’t mind hurting a woman, so I don’t guess I will.”
I started really working my wrists, and one of them budged. He fucking budged! Finally.
“Hold on, let me get warmed up,” I told him.
He took a couple of steps toward me. I had him. Just a moment longer, and he would be eating out of my hand. If I really tried, I probably could have made that happen literally. I did it with Mason. I did it with a lot of them, but apparently my skills were better against bosses than against guards.
Just then, right as I was about to get him close enough to really start talking to him and getting him to open up to me, I heard gunshots from behind the door. Both men grabbed their guns and move them to the ready position.
The man standing over me reached up with his thick bare hand and unscrewed the lightbulb over my head. The room plunged into darkness, and the door slid open, letting light pour in from outside. It wasn’t much, just the light that spilled into the building from the street lights out front, but it was enough to see that the guards might as well have been twins.
The door closed again, plunging me into complete darkness, alone.
“That’s okay, guys, I’ll just sit here and keep myself company, then,” I said to the empty room. I tried whistling, but I was never all that great at it.
More gunshots rang out on the other side of the door.
“Wouldn’t it be something if another boss was here, not Mason, trying to shoot the place up and stop whoever this fucker is?” I asked myself aloud.
I waited, listening to more and more gunshots while they kept getting closer and closer.
“Dammit, Mason, all this talk about having to go to the bathroom is coming back to bite me in the ass, man. Hurry up,” I called out. I had to pee. It came to me pretty suddenly, too.
I squirmed in the chair while I waited for what felt like an eternity for Mason to come through that damn door. Where the hell was he? It wasn’t like we hadn’t done this shit a million times already. He knew the damn drill.
The door opened, and light spilled in again.
“Don’t close the door,” I called out.
“Clara?” It was Mason, finally.
“Yeah, it’s me. Who the hell did you expect? Now come on, come over here and untie me. I have to piss like a racehorse,” I told him.
He let go of the door and it started to slide closed. “Hang on, let me get someone or something to hold the door.” He pushed it back open and whistled.
Another member of the MC came and propped the door open while Mason ran over to my chair.
“Careful,” I said, “it’s slippery.”
“Yeah, I see that,” he said as he slipped a couple of times trying to get to me.
I looked up. “They turned the light off by unscrewing it, but be careful again because it’s probably hot. He just unscrewed it before leaving the room.”
Mason reached up and screwed the bulb in quickly with his bare hand, letting go of it a couple of times because it was still too hot.
The light came back on and flooded the room again. He smiled when he saw me, and those emerald green eyes of his smiled at me, too. It was always so nice to see his face when he saw me again for the first time after we were apart for any amount of time.
“It’s good to see you,” he said. It was always the same. It was like we hadn’t seen each other in ages, but I figured it probably went back to that night when we’d almost lost each other to my last boss. We knew what could go wrong.
“You, too, baby,” I said. “Now untie me. I’ve got to pee,” I said.
“You talked to them about the bathroom again, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, the pisser usually works, Mason. Don’t knock it.”
“All right, all right.” He pulled out a knife and quickly cut the ropes from my wrists and ankles, setting me free.
I jumped up from the chair and wrapped my arms around him. I gave him a big kiss on his lips and pulled back quickly.
“Okay, I’ve got to go.” I fished out my phone as I tried to make my way through the room without falling and busting my ass. I tapped the screen until I pulled up my pictures.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Oh, you definitely want to see what it is,” I told him, handing him the phone. “This is from the office upstairs. They have all kinds of files.” I flipped through a couple of pictures for him.
“Files?” he asked. “On what?”
“Take a look. Here.” I handed him my phone as I ducked off to the side to head to the bathroom.
“Hey, we’re going upstairs,” Mason called after me.
I figured he would be. When I got out of the bathroom, I met them in the office. Mason and Mick were looking a few sheets of paper while two other guys were pouring gasoline all over everything in the room.
“This ought to teach their boss a lesson,” Mason said as he lit a match and tossed it into the room. The gasoline quickly ignited and everything in the office started to catch on fire.
“Come on,” I told him, “let’s go.” I ran a hand along his chest and pulled him away from the room.
“We took everything out of the file cabinets, everything out of the desks, and we put all of it on the floor,” he told me as we left.
“You’d be surprised what they had on everybody,” Mick chimed in. “They even had information on you.”
“But it was old.” Mason laughed. “They still had photos of when you were working for Skull. They had pictures from when you were at his hideout.”
“Wow. That means that they’ve been collecting information for a long time, Mason. This isn’t a new operation,” I told him, glancing at Mick to back me up on it.
“No, it’s not new at all, but it’s done now. When they show up tomorrow, they’ll find four dead guards and an office that’s been torched completely,” Mason said.
“But what about a cleaner? Don’t you need someone to come in and make sure law enforcement doesn’t find anything first?” I asked.
“No way. If law enforcement finds anything, they won’t find any signs that it was us,” Mick replied.
When we made it outside, the boys all embraced each other. I got the feeling everyone was heading their separate ways for the evening. The two younger guys hopped on their bikes and sped off into the night. Mason and Mick watched smoke pour out of the vacant office building for a moment.
“Looks like the law might get called after all,” Mick said.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Mason told him, patting him on the back.
Mick hopped on his bike and gunned the engine. Then he was gone, too.
“Would you like a ride home, my beautiful damsel in distress?” Mason offered with a smile.
“Definitely, my knight in worn leather.” I climbed on the back of the bike, and she roared to life underneath us. The night air rushed past us as we pulled out of the old abandoned parking lot and headed home to our apartment overlooking the city.
These days, my bookshelves lined the walls in the living room, giving the apartment a
much more studious feel. I had let all of my furniture go when I moved in, including my TV, my coffee table, everything. I just kept my books. I preferred the nice, new, comfortable furniture Mason had at his place.
“Here’s to another job well done,” Mason said as he opened a bottle of red wine and poured it into our glasses.
“Yes, indeed, another job well done,” I agreed as we toasted and clinked our glasses.
Over the last several months I had been putting my skills back to use by stealing from other bosses to help Mason and Storm’s Angels get back on top of everything. After Skull had been removed from the picture, Mason had immediately started working on taking over Skull’s businesses.
