DIESEL DADDY

by Naomi West

  “No,” Spike says, voice firm. He approaches me slowly. “That’s not happening.”

  “You can’t keep telling me what to do!” I snap, throwing my hands up. I move to the other side of the room but he follows. Soon he has me boxed in the corner, looking wild and sexy without a shirt on, blood flecking his skin here and there. The blood shouldn’t turn me on, but it does. This is the father of my child, this is a man who can protect us, this is a dangerous man—my mind fills with sentences like these until I’m almost deafened by them. I try to ignore them. “You don’t own me, Spike. I think you’ve forgotten that.”

  Spike’s lower lip trembles. I can tell he’s getting angry. I can tell he’s trying to hold it back.

  “What’s wrong?” I stare up at him, unable to restrain my own anger. “You don’t like hearing the truth. Fine, I’ll tell you again. You. Don’t. Own. Me.”

  “You expect me to let the mother of my child go to someone like Snake. You really expect me to do that.” His voice is full of disbelief. “What kind of idiot do you think I am? Do you really dream I’d let that happen, Yazmin? I lost a family once. I’m not losing one again.”

  “Neither am I!” I shout, trying to push past him. He blocks me with one arm easily. “If we let Dad live, he’ll find our baby and hurt it. He took my family once. He’ll do it again. Your plan was stupid. It never would’ve worked. My plan will work.”

  “After my family died, the president before me, a man called Sonny, took me in and trained me for the life. He taught me how to fight and shoot, but he also taught me how to think and lead. He taught me what it means for a man to have an objective and see it through to the end. He taught me what it means for a man to get shit done. And now you’re gonna stand there and pretend that you can take out the Scorpions but I’m a helpless child.”

  I back away, going toward the bed. The room seems too small now, boxing me in. I look around it with fresh eyes, at the pile of paperbacks on the bedside table and the meager kitchen utensils arranged on a shelf above the small oven, the under-counter fridge and the small circular table. It looks like a prison. I find it difficult to believe I’ve been here for two months without once kicking up a fuss. Maybe it’s because before I was here willingly. I was here because I wanted to be. Now I want to leave and get my revenge.

  “I’ve given you every chance to take my revenge for me,” I say. “Every time I’ve given you a piece of intel, I’ve given you a chance. I’ve sat in this room waiting for news of my father’s death, and when it didn’t come I thought, ‘Okay, maybe next time.’ But now, Spike, I have a baby to think about. It may be a tiny one-month-old little thing inside of me, but I still have to think about what’s best for it. Dad needs to die.”

  “I just said I’ll handle it, didn’t it?” Spike approaches me. He’s so big, so intimidating. I remember how he looked that day in the forest, scary and handsome at the same time. “Didn’t I just fucking say that?” There’s some bite in his voice. I’m guessing he’s ashamed, as any man in his position would be. “We’re sorting out a plan.”

  “I have a plan.”

  He groans, shaking his head. “Goddamn, Yazmin. Why are you so eager to get yourself killed?”

  “Why are you so eager to let my dad live?” I snap, stepping right up to him and staring into his eyes. “After everything he has done, you want to keep him alive. Why? What the hell’s the matter with you? What sort of President are you? What sort of man are you?” I stand on my tiptoes, my face right next to his, shouting at him. “Are you going to protect your girl and your kid, or not?”

  “Step back, Yazmin,” Spike says quietly.

  “No!” I fall forward, pushing up against him with my body. “You’re angry? Good. Get angry! I’m sick and tired of the Scorpions walking all over us! I’m sick and tired of my dad walking all over us, and all I can do is wait in here like some damsel in a fairytale, wondering when the big strong warrior men will return with news of a win. But it’s never news of a win, is it? You’ve failed, Spike. Every time, you’ve failed.”

  “I said step back.”

  “Or what?”

  His hands dart up to my armpits. He lifts me up as easy as he’d lift up a bag of sugar and carries me to the bed. I kick out with my legs, hitting him in the shin, and smack his chest with his fists. He takes the blows as though they don’t exist, letting them bounce off him, and then drops me onto the bed. I land on the mattress and try to bounce back up, but he sits on my legs, pinning me, being careful not to cause me any pain. I try and pull my legs out, but he’s heavier than me, stronger.

  “Get off of me!” I hiss. “This is ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous,” he says. “I agree. But so is getting in my face and hitting me. So we’re gonna sit here until you calm down.”

  I lash out with my hand. He catches it at the wrist, grabs my other hand, and pins them both above my head. I wriggle from side to side, struggling to get free, He holds me firmly in place, smiling down at me. “Don’t smile at me!” I’m trying to keep a hold on my anger, trying to fuel it, but dammit, it’s been too long since we’ve had sex, and sometimes anger can be turned into passion all too easily.

  As I writhe beneath him, I can’t help but be aware of the muscular bulk of his body, of how utterly under his control I am. I don’t know what it says about me that the thing which frustrates me most can also make me horny. I try and lean up to headbutt him, but the angle of my arms stops me. In the end I just have to lie there, staring up at him, getting angrier and hornier by the second.

  “You’re impossible,” I say. “You’re an impossible, ugly, evil, mean, disgusting, brutish, pathetic man.”

  “Wow.” His smile grows wider. I feel my lips twitch in response. I try and stop them, but the smile keeps coming. “You really are a master of words, Yazmin.”

  “Get off!”

  He’s smiling from ear to ear now and so am I. I don’t mean to, but looking into his smiling face is just too much. I try to kill the smile, try to make it so I’m glaring at him instead, but our bodies are taking over.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he says, his green eyes playful, his hair falling across his forehead in a way that makes him look unspeakably sexy.

  “I’m not looking at you like anything.”

  “You’re looking at me like you looked at me the first time we met.” He moves so that he’s lying atop me, propping himself up with his arms. I could knee him in the balls now and jump to my feet, but that’s not what I do. Instead, I split my legs so that his crotch is pressed against mine.

  “Oh yeah? And how’s that?” I slide down the bed, pushing my pussy into his cock. He’s hard. I can feel it through his pants. I can feel my pussy getting wet, too. A week is a long time to go if you’ve been doing it every day before then.

  “You know how.” He brings his face close to mine, his beard tickling my cheek. “Don’t play games with me, Yazmin.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it—”

  When our lips touch, I find it difficult to remember why we were angry in the first place. It’s there, far back in my mind, but it’s so far back that it no longer seems worth thinking about, not now anyway. Our mouths open and our tongues meet, lashing together passionately. The feeling of his beard tickling me drives me crazy, makes me think about how manly he is, about how wild. The feeling of his lips against mine makes me feel close to him, much closer because we’ve spent a week largely apart. My body is hungry for him, starving, my nipples hard for wanting him to touch them, my clit tingling, my pussy soaked begging for his cock. As we kiss, I grind up and down against his jeans.

  Then he breaks it off and jumps to his feet, staring down at me as he strips his clothes. “Get naked,” he says gruffly.

  I love when he talks to me like that, as if the only thing in the world he desires is me, and he isn’t cautious or nervous about expressing it, not like other men. He knows what he wants and he takes it. I climb onto my knees and take off my shirt
, and then sit back and take off my pants. This isn’t a sexy, slow stripping like I’ve seen in movies, where the stripping is being performed as part of the titillation. This is the stripping of two people who can’t wait another second to be naked together.

  I break one of the clasps on my bra as I yank it free, but then we’re naked and none of that matters. Spike’s cock is a sight I’ll never get fully used to. It’s the hugest cock I’ve ever seen, ten inches or more, a vein running up one side, the end bulging. It’s scary and exciting at the same time.

  “Bend over,” he says, his voice the low, dark tones of a man captivated by lust.

  It’s so dirty, the idea of bending over and having him ram inside of me, especially after a week of abstinence. Part of me remembers the argument, but a larger part of me urges my body into a bent-over position, my shoulders laid flat against the bed as I stick my ass up in the air, exposing my pussy.

  “Goddamn, Yazmin.”

  He brings his hands to my ass cheeks. Usually he’d slide a finger inside of me, play with me until I come, but I can hear by his breathing that he’s lost himself to me. I can tell by the way his hand trembles as he slides it over my ass cheek that he’s completely absorbed by me. I sense his lust, replicating it within myself.

  “Fuck me,” I whisper.

  A moment later, his cock is splitting me apart. That’s what it always feels like, in the first few seconds—that his cock is tearing me in half. My pussy aches and throbs in pain, and then a rush of wetness and an opening for him brings a torrent of pleasure rushing around my body. I bite down on the sheets and push back so that he’s all the way inside of me, pushed right up to his balls, his hard length pressed against my sweet spot. We hold it like that for a while, and then we fuck like animals, his cock pounding over and over into that perfect spot, his balls swinging back and forth against my clit. I bounce up and down, working his cock, taking every piece of pleasure from it that I can.

  Orgasms are never sudden, in my experience. There’s always at least a hint of one approaching. But the one that hits me less than a minute after Spike and I start fucking comes completely unexpectedly. One second I’m riding the pleasure, the heat warm and tingling inside of me. The next an explosion has sent shards of euphoria slicing all across my body, to my nipples and my clit and my toes, right into my head where the pleasure obliterates thinking. I turn into a creature of pleasure, nothing more. I hear myself screaming but that seems distant. I tilt my hips, positioning his cock for the best angle, my ass cheeks crushing into his abs.

  “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Twenty seconds, thirty—fifty, one-hundred—a year, a century—the pleasure lengthens and consumes me. I close my eyes and see red. I listen to the sounds of Spike’s moaning. His cock brings more pleasure even when I think I’m spent. I twist and writhe and moan, my pussy fire-hot, my brain aching with the ecstasy. My hole goes tight at the end, so tight that Spike has to grunt and push harder to get back inside of me. He holds it then, deep within me, holding it so that fireworks of pleasure explode around the tip of him, their heat and light tingling my sweet spot, a thousand thousand nerves of pleasure sending a thousand thousand sensations of timelessness surging around me.

  When it passes, I collapse onto the bed, able to bounce up and down for a couple of minutes before Spike is leaning over, hands in my hair, face pressed against my cheek, spending his own pleasure inside of me.

  We roll aside as we have dozens of times before. After lying there for a minute or so, both of us panting heavily as his come pools between my thighs, I climb into his arms and we lie there, limbs entwined, listening to each other breathe.

  He’s tired from the violence, so he falls asleep quickly, snoring lightly, wheezing through his nose. But I don’t fall asleep. Even if the pleasure was immense—and it always is immense—it doesn’t change my mind about what I need to do. Dad needs to be ended, and I need to decide who and what I want to be. I’m not going to be the passenger anymore. I’m going to be the driver.

  I creep out of bed quietly, wincing at every creak, and then get dressed quickly in sweatpants and a sweater. When I pull on my sneakers, I watch Spike for any sign of waking up. I think he’d wake up if he was upstairs, sleeping in the clubhouse, but down here, with me, maybe he feels comfortable. Maybe he feels safe. That makes me feel rotten for leaving him like this. But if the alternative is to sit idly by while everybody else does the work for me, leaving is my only option.

  And yet as I creep out of the bedroom door up the stairs—the door is unlocked and Spike has stopped placing guards, perhaps because he sees it as a waste of manpower—a familiar feeling of indecision hits me. Is this really the right thing, or am I making a terrible mistake?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Yazmin

  The clubhouse is quiet except for a few noises coming from the bar, men clearing their throats, glasses clinking, chairs scraping. I creep out of the front door, head low, and walk down the road. I’m halfway down the road when I realize I’m heading toward Sunnyside and not the Scorpions’ clubhouse. The familiar indecision is chasing me this way, I think, the feeling which has been with me my whole life, never knowing what to do or who to be. The night is dark, the sky black with clouds, a few stars peeking out here and there. I walk under the shadow of the trees, invisible in the darkness, my heart pounding with the kind of anxiety you can only feel after being trapped mostly indoors for months.

  Outside is big, so open. To my left are the woods, thick tangles of shadowed leaves and trees and vines. To my right is the road, and beyond that more woods. The road, as I’m walking on it right now, has no beginning and no end. My legs ache nicely with the feeling of walking. The running machine makes my legs ache, too, but this is a different type of ache, an outdoor ache, an ache that only comes with actually getting somewhere. I think of Spike back in the basement room, sleeping peacefully. I wonder if he’ll hate me for this. He might. He might wake up and decide that I’m just another bitch, as some bikers like to say, just another bitch who abandoned him. Or maybe he’ll wake up determined to get me back. I hope not. I hope he has the good sense to wait for me to get some information.

  But if I’m really going for information I should turn around and head to the Scorpions’ clubhouse. Even if I know this to be true, my legs continue to carry me toward town. A few cars drive down the winding road, but I’m deep in the darkness, hidden even from their headlights.

  After walking for an indeterminate amount of time—it’s difficult to tell in the deep night—the town of Sunnyside rises out of the darkness. It’s a small town, home to around two-thousand people, set in a small valley. The church is by far the tallest building, a spire which reaches toward the heavens. Spike, I think. Spike. The town hall is the second largest, a colonial-style building with pillars and a big wide entrance. The superstore, a monstrous building which watches over all the others like a suspicious older brother, is the largest by far. Otherwise the buildings are red-bricked and two-story, most of them huddling around Main Street, others, like the school, dotted on the outer rim. I cross over onto the pedestrian path which leads down the small grassy hill to the town entrance, a wooden archway with carved words reading Welcome to Sunnyside, Where Smiles Are Free!

  There are few lights on, I see as I approach the town. The town hall clock tells me that it’s almost midnight. My throat is dry and my legs ache. I walk past a diner which is still open, an old lady wearing a white apron wiping down the tables, her hair bunched up in a net, singing silently under her breath. I want to go in there and get a coffee, sit for a while and try to ponder this situation out. But I have no money. I walk on.

  I go to the town hall and sit under the eaves, knees huddled to my chin, feeling like a kid again. I would often do things like this as a kid, just wander off and sit somewhere, thinking and trying not to think. I had lots of time because Mom was always working doubles and triples. Mom. The bed of blood . . . I try not to cry but the tears come anyway, sliding down my ch
eeks, into my mouth, salty and bitter. I cough them away when the five-dollar bill flutters in the wind into my line of sight, hovering for a split second before gusting away.

  I’m on my feet, chasing it.

  I really do feel like a kid now as I dart down the street, eyes locked on the five-dollar bill. I duck into the park where the five-dollar bill is whisked beneath the swing set. As I pick it up, I wonder if I might just be a little bit mad. Then I turn back and head toward the diner. The old lady smiles kindly at me when the bell above the door rings. Apart from me and her, the place is empty.