Lady Sings the Blues

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  “Then tell me.”

  I grip the steering wheel and sigh. “Woman, I’ll tell you when it’s time. When it’s not time is when we’re drivin’ down a mountain road, so you can get all crazy and grab the wheel, sendin’ us careenin’ over a cliff.”

  “Why are you being so sketchy? What are you trying to hide?”

  “I ain’t tryin’ to hide. Just, learnin’ my last name’ll probably piss you off.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Might be. Might not be. My strategy is to tell you while we’re in bed, and I’m buried deep inside you.”

  “Because you’re worried I’ll reject you?”

  “Don’t think it’ll happen. We got too much of a connection already. But a man can’t be too careful. I tell you buried to the hilt in that tight pussy of yours, makin’ you feel so good, you’ll be less likely to act on any ill feelins’ toward me.”

  “That is a brilliant plan because I can assure you, I felt no ill will toward you this morning”

  “Good to know.”

  She graces me with one hell of a flirtatious smirk. “Well okay then.”

  “So we done with this?” I start the truck, driving us toward the gate.

  The prospects have them open, nodding their goodbyes and we’ve turned onto the road before she answers me.

  “For now. I feel it’s only fair to inform you that we’re seated firmly in relationship limbo until I know everything. And by everything, I mean your last name and why I might not want to be with you. Until then, we’ll take it day by day.”

  What? I had her ready to move. For once I got nothing to say. Can’t really blame her, gonna have to try and convince her.

  “But I do have something I’d like to talk with you about,” she says.

  Good. A distraction. “I’m listenin’.”

  “How do you feel about me talking with Beau Hollister?” I open my mouth to say something, what, I don’t know, but something. Although it wouldn’t matter what I say as she cuts me right off. “We both know he’s going to be at my father’s funeral. I haven’t talked to him in years. He’s avoiding me. We have a lot to discuss.”

  The cab stays silent while I contemplate how I want to answer and she waits patiently.

  “You’re right, darlin’. You will definitely be around Beau at your father’s funeral, and there is a lot to discuss. I just can’t tell you what it means that you’d consider my feelins’ with all this.”

  “Well you seem to have a problem with the Hollisters, too. It’s my dad’s funeral, but… It’s about respect, you know?”

  “I’m goin’ back to Chicago with you. We’ll make it a vacation. Time alone. Just you and me, maybe hit the road for a couple weeks. How’s that sound?”

  “Like heaven. So you’ve got ‘til the end of my father’s funeral to come clean.”

  Her gaze moves from my face to out the window again. Seems wrong to not be touching her after everything we’ve just discussed, so I reach my hand over to squeeze her knee leaving my hand firmly to rest there. Her father’s funeral. Don’t give me much time. The woman doesn’t even glance down but drops hers on top of mine, lacing her fingers through mine.

  When we get home I give her knee another quick squeeze. She turns to look this time and I give a slight nod so she knows to stay put. Then I walk around to open the door for her, helping her down.

  “You going to kiss me?” she asks.

  I think about answering something smart, but just go for it instead. Lips pressed to hers, arms around that hourglass waist, I’m lost completely to the woman of my dreams.

  Dammit I forget where we are and that these assholes ain’t been clued in to what’s about to come their way if they don’t let up. A car speeds past us.

  “Whore.” Someone shouts out. We both turn as water balloons are launched through the windows at our feet, splashing everywhere. Soakin’ our feet and my jeans.

  Elise shrieks. Fuck this. I scoop her up bridal style and run her up to the house, setting her down only once I’ve kicked the door closed behind us.

  “It’s never going to stop,” she says to her feet. “I bought the fantasy. But that’s all it is, Mark. A fantasy.”

  “No. This is real, Elise. We’re real, and I’m not lettin’ you use some stupid teenage prank as an excuse because you’re scared.”

  “Of course, I’m scared. What if we go the distance, you think I want that.” She points at the front door. “For your life? What about these hypothetical kids? You want them being bullied? I need to go. You need to find someone you won’t have to fight an entire town to be happy with.”

  “So you tellin’ me you had the guts to apologize to a room full of bikers but are just gonna run from some punk-ass kids? That’s not the Elise I thought I knew.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Plan on it.” And that’s all I give her, shovin’ her up against the wall my mouth connects with her neck. At the same time my fingers find the hem of her T-shirt, her fingers fumble to find mine.

  It’s rough and hard and frenzied as she shoves her shorts and panties down her legs kicking them off once they’re past her knees, while I suck dutifully at her pink, pert nipple.

  My mouth on her and she completely loses track that she was tryin’ to break up with me just minutes ago. Using my arm to keep her pinned up against the wall, I drop to my knees aligning that perfect pussy with my face and drape her leg over my shoulder to open her up wide for me. She’s so wet already. Smells of honey nectar. Tastes of it, too. Once my mouth connects with her center, teenagers, water balloons, everything disappears. Just me making the woman I love feel good.

  I make her come twice with my tongue before I stand, still pinning her against the wall, and slide inside wrappin’ both legs around my waist and her arms around my neck so I take the brunt of her weight. That’s when we find our rhythm. While I pound into her she tilts to meet me thrust for thrust. One hand holds my neck, she moves the other up to tug out the hairband letting my locks spill down to graze the first hand. She grips and musses the thick strands between kisses and moaning my name.

  I love the feel of her hand in my hair, but when she drops it, clawing talon marks over my back I loose myself completely.

  “Baby…” I pant. “You got…another one… in you…oh fuck—now’s… the time.”

  My words in her ear, she clamps down around my pulsating cock and I explode. Thrusting a few more times before droppin’ my forehead against hers, both of us panting hard. Fast.

  We wait until both of our breathing has calmed before I pull out then she drops her feet to the floor. On shaky legs, I might add. It’s not exactly a hardship to have to keep her in my arms a while longer.

  “Okay, so maybe we can still make this work,” she says to me, although totally avoiding my eyes as she says it.

  “’Bout time you caught up,” I tell her. Then tip her chin up keeping her from lookin’ anywhere else. “So you’re not leavin’ me, are you darlin’?”

  “What about the town, and Chicago?”

  “I’ll take care of it. Tell me. Tell me what I need to hear.”

  “I’m…we’ll make it work.”

  “Why?” I prod.

  “Because there’s no denying our connection. No matter it doesn’t make any sense. That I haven’t been in town long enough to feel this way, I do.”

  “Good.” I smile quick and kiss the tip of her nose. “I’ll order us takeout, then we’re spendin’ the rest of the day loungin’ in bed talkin’ and watchin’ movies. And if at any point you want to take advantage of me again, I won’t put up a fight. That’s a promise.”

  9.

  Elise

  We fell asleep doing exactly what he said we were going to do, lounge in bed, talking mostly about club life and my time in Illinois and how I dealt with the panic attacks, watching movies and eating pizza. All naked. He wouldn’t let me get dressed even if I’d wanted to, which truth be told, I really enjoyed our day of nakedness.


  Mark’s a thing of beauty. Tall and strong and his tattoos. Lord love a duck, those tattoos.

  As he sleeps I turn to admire him some more, touring and tracing the roadmap of ink all representing his life with meaning. And that’s when I see the most breathtaking, startling piece of artwork on his body. Small. All black. A literal heart torn in half inked over his heart. The two pieces have been held together, wrapped several times with barbed wire. But the closer I study it, I see it’s not just barbed wire holding his heart together, it’s… that couldn’t be me, could it? My name?

  I wish he felt ready enough to tell me his last name. After seeing this, knowing how I affected him so long ago—I need to know him.

  Each of his gorgeous eyes opens one at a time to the relentless screaming ring from his cell.

  “Talk to me,” he answers as his greeting. His voice gravelly from sleep.

  While he talks, I kiss. His chest. My name. His Adam’s apple. His jaw.

  “Mmhmm…” he practically moans into the receiver when I suck his earlobe in between my teeth. “Fuuuk—” he groans then and I hear a man’s laughter. “I gotta go,” he tells the man on the other end, hanging up on him just that quickly.

  Then the man is on me. He’s not fooling around, either. I go from kissing to coming just that fast. First his fingers, then his mouth. Once I’m liquid in his arms, he slides all that hard manliness inside me. My man is hung. Thor’s mighty hammer between his thighs. I lose myself to him as he fills me totally. We aren’t making love this morning. We are hardcore fucking and it’s glorious. Exactly what I need to forget I’m burying my father tomorrow.

  He thrusts.

  I moan.

  He thrusts.

  I pant.

  He thrusts.

  I come.

  Long and hard.

  Once he’s finished and holding me so I’m practically laying on top of him, he kisses the top of my head. “That was Duke,” he tells me.

  “I suppose he needs you, club business?”

  “Yep. I don’t wanna go. Not after this. As much as I love my club, nothin’ feels as good as being in bed with you. Even just loungin’.”

  “Can’t he ask someone else?”

  “’Fraid not. You be okay here by yourself?”

  “Will you be home tonight?”

  “You’ll be here waitin’, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then damn straight I’ll be home. We share a bed. Period. I’ve always done runs for him. Sometimes we have shippin’ issues. But we’re gonna have to figure this shit out. I won’t stay gone from you.”

  He won’t stay gone from me? Meaning he’ll consider relocating closer to home? “Don’t get yourself in trouble on my account.”

  “Baby girl, I took over for him when his wife got sick, I guess about three years ago now.”

  “Duke has a wife?”

  “No,” is all he says, and I can see from his pained expression that she’s a rough subject to broach even today.

  “Okay baby. You do what you have to do. Don’t worry about me.” He stares at me. “And quit looking at me like that. I haven’t grown horns.”

  “No. But you called me baby. It’s the first time you’ve used an endearment. I like it.” Then he smiles. “And for the record, tellin’ me not to worry about you is like tellin’ me not to breathe.”

  “Those might be the sweetest words anyone has ever said to me.”

  For some reason, his words affect me deeply. I feel so stupid for giving in to the emotions. It’s all I can do to escape and I start to roll to get away. The roll gets me nowhere as his arm tightens around me to hold me in place while he silently watches my reaction. The tears just start to collect in the corners of my eyes when he clears his throat, and not from sleep, from his emotion.

  I know it’s emotion with one answer. “I meant every word, darlin’.”

  There’s a pause as we both continue to lay, watching one another before he gives my waist an affectionate squeeze and gets up to shower. I throw on his T-shirt from last night and head to the kitchen. Stupid smile perma-glued across my face. By the time he joins me the coffee is steaming in his mug and piping hot bacon and eggs just came to rest on his plate.

  “You are really makin’ it hard to leave you this mornin’.”

  “Well, I guess now that I’ve had your penis inside me, I don’t want you to meet some other woman while you’re out doing biker things, and forget about me. Not until I know if this is going to last.”

  “Elise,” he says. So many words coming across in just my name. And I can guess every single one of them when he finishes, “one of these days you’re gonna believe me. I’m doin’ this biker shit for you. So I can afford to take care of you. I’m yours. You’re mine. Bossman and Elise. Period. Nobody’s ever gettin’ in the way of us again.”

  Except maybe him. But I don’t tell him that.

  ***

  He left me finally. Our goodbye takes far longer and with three more orgasms than either of us meant it to, two for me and one for him. In the end, he had work to get done and I knew exactly what I needed to do today.

  So now here I am walking through the cemetery gates. They placed him only three rows back in the family plot. I wish I didn’t have to be here. I wish I could go on pretending life is as it always was. Without him muddling my brain, the world starts coming into focus again. Mark, he confuses me. Makes me consider things I’m not sure I should consider because of his decadent, melty chocolate hold he has on me, which I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t fully understand. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time on a nice warm and sunny Kentucky day.

  But I guess that’s what I’m here to talk about, Mark’s melty chocolate hold on me. That maybe if I talk I’ll get a sign or something telling me what I’m doing, giving in to Mark’s pull, is the right thing to do.

  “Hey Lo,” I say to the headstone. “Most people won’t believe it, but I miss you. Even after everything you put me through. Those days with the three of us, you, me and Beau, were some of the best of my life. Oh—this is Elise. I guess I should’ve opened with that. Not like you have caller ID on that side.” I laugh to myself.

  “So much has happened over the past five years, I hardly know where to begin. So I guess I’ll start with this.” I kiss the palm of my hand, laying it reverently on the rough surface of the monument. “I never stopped loving you. Our love might have changed, but it was still very much there. Even if we weren’t together anymore. It didn’t have to end the way it did. You can’t have shared what we shared and not retain the love, no matter what you thought.”

  “Ain’t that sweet.”

  My first instinct is to turn to the low growling of voice to see whose interruption I need to get angry about, but I don’t get the chance as his calloused hand grabs my neck from behind, shoving my face roughly against the pocked and grooved surface of the stone.

  “What are you doing? Let me go.”

  “Let you go? Is that any way to treat an admirer, Elise? Sweet, sweet Elise.” He pulls my hair at the nape while keeping my face planted.

  “Please don’t do this. I have no money. I’m just here to bury my dad.”

  “Butllshit. You’re here for more than that, you Hollister whore. First Logan, now you’re screwing Beau. ‘Course everyone knows you were doing that back in high school when you were only supposed to be screwing Logan.”

  “I never screwed Beau. And I haven’t seen him since I’ve been back in town.”

  “Liar.” He hisses, picking my face up and slamming it into the stone.

  I whimper. “I’m not lying.”

  He grinds his hard length against my rear. Grinding and grinding making me cry harder.

  “I promise,” I tell him. “My boyfriend’s name is Mark.”

  “You can’t be that stupid, so then I know you’re lying.”

  “No. His name is Mark.”

  “That what he tell you? You belie
ve it, you are stupid. So let me clue you in to who you been fucking. Beau. Marcus. Hollister.”

  No.

  “It can’t be.”

  But the man keeps me pinned to the headstone dry humping me. Violating me through my clothing. Finally after making a soft grunting noise, a sound like he actually got off, he slaps my butt and bends over kissing my cheek. His whiskers scrape against my neck.

  “You tell your man Houdini paid you a visit today. He’ll know. Just like he knows he got Logan’s sloppy seconds. He tosses your ass aside, I’d probably fuck you. Pussy good enough for the princes of Thornbriar must be good pussy.”

  He lets go of me, and I hear him walk away. I don’t even attempt to pick my face up from the headstone for a good five more minutes.

  Beau.

  Everything makes sense now. And it all points to one fact.

  I’m an effing idiot.

  The joking. The crooked smile. Why he wouldn’t tell me his last name. Why George and Margo showed up on his porch. Why everyone looked at me funny each time I called him Mark. How easily we connected. I think that’s the worst part, using our past against me. The bun. The beard. The tattoos. The attitude. He went from sexy football jock next door to badass biker. I can try to convince myself that these are good enough reasons to forget. But they aren’t, are they? Five years just is not long enough to forget someone I spent so much time with. But somehow, I did. Call it stress. Call it stupidity. Call it naïveté. I never saw it coming.

  My face feels puffy and scraped and wet. When I pull my shirt back after patting it dry, the shirt has red smudges.

  The sun still shines bright and warm, yet I’m freezing. Shivering down to my bones.

  Thank goodness Mark—I mean Beau’s street is empty when I walk back, still being without my car. I can’t even think about dealing with him right now. Not until I’ve had the chance to regroup, form some sort of a game plan to get the hell out of here with as little interaction as possible. After I confront him, that is.

  While I wait, I pack my bag then move to the bathroom to clean my face up a bit. It looks as bad as it feels, which is pretty rough. He finds me sitting on the bed when he returns home from whatever club business he’d been up to.