by Nicole Fox
“Thank you.” I walk over to him, around him, so that we’re looking at each other. “But right now I don’t really give a damn about compliments. I want to know where Butch is, what the hell he wanted to tell me. Or, if I can’t see Butch, I want to know where my goddamn kid is.”
“Your kid,” Jackson says, taking another swig from his flask. “You see him as your kid now, do you?”
“He is my kid. Maybe I don’t know him all that well, but he is my kid. There ain’t no doubt about it.”
“Just like your old man was your father.”
“I’m not my old man.”
“No.” He claps me on the shoulder. “You’re not. Do you remember when we killed those sick fucks, Jack? It was just me and you back then, wasn’t it? You’d hang on my every word, follow me everywhere like a loyal hound.” I don’t like the way he smiles as he says this, like he wishes I was still just his dog. “I promised you I’d get them for you, didn’t I? And I did. One day I picked you up and told you we were going on a ride, and I brought you out into the middle of nowhere to a storage container and who was inside? Do you remember?”
“Of course I fuckin’ remember.” I turn away from him. “A man doesn’t forget a thing like that.”
I see them now: cringing away from the sunlight, shackled to the walls dressed only in tattered rags, shielding their eyes with their hands and then squinting through their fingers at me. Mom smiled for a moment, smiled like I was going to save her, but then she let out a scream when Jackson stepped up behind me.
“They begged you,” Jackson says. “Begged you to let them live.”
“I know.” I spit on the ground. “I was there.”
“And you begged me, didn’t you? Because even after everything that had happened, you didn’t know what was best for you. You thought you could reason with them. You thought you could make them see sense and turn them into good people if you just wished hard enough. You were still deluded, Jack.”
“Maybe I was,” I agree. “But I don’t see why you had to take the choice from me, sir.”
I walked outside and smoked a cigarette and drank a few slugs of whisky, leaving Jackson behind, and by the time I returned, Jackson was wiping his bloody knife on my mother’s rags. He smiled at me, nodded, and that was that. We didn’t talk about it for years.
“I’ve always known what’s best for you,” Jackson says. “Just like I know now.”
“What do you mean? I don’t know why you’re bringin’ all this shit up. We’ve got work to be about, sir, and this ain’t helping.”
“No.” He drains his flask and tosses it to the ground. “But I see that same look in you today that you got back then, like you want to change the way the world is made.” He grabs my shoulder, turning me back to him. “You want to put that girl ahead of the club.”
“Gloria?” I mutter, shrugging his hand off me. “I don’t wanna put her ahead of the club. I wanna get our kid back.”
“Yes … at the cost of the club.”
“You’re not makin’ much sense, sir.”
“Aren’t I? Just think about it like this, Jack. We’ve been fighting these fuckers for more than two years now, two years of blood and suffering, two years of having our shit messed with, and all because … all because that bastard Big Loco knows he can get away with it. And now he wants to back off for the sake of a child? Would it be the worst thing in the world to let him have the kid?”
I take a step back. It takes a long time for his words to work their way through me and become real. I have to convince myself of what I’m hearing, convince myself that Jackson Caw—the man I trust most in this world—is the one saying it. “He’s my kid …” I let the words fade away, the cogs in my head turning. It’s him, I realize. Jackson is the mole. Jackson’s the one who’s been feeding information to the Lady’s Death. Jackson is the goddamn mole!
He reads my face. Makes a clicking sound with his teeth. “Ah,” he says, “so you’ve guessed.”
“You’re standing there talkin’ shit about the war with the Lady’s Death when you’re the one who’s caused it!” I snap. My fists are clenched and my chest is heaving, and there’s nothing I’d like more right now than to smack him across the face. But I can’t. I won’t let myself. “You’re the one who’s made sure the Lady’s Death are always one step ahead of us. You’re the reason why they disappear the second we get there. You’re the fuckin’ mole, Jackson!”
“Mole.” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t use that word. This is complicated, Jack. I already told you that this was complicated. If I’ve been giving information to the Lady’s Death, surely you can trust me that I have a reason—a strategic reason that will help the club?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t see that. I can’t see that. Men’ve died, sir. Our clubhouse was razed to the goddamn ground. I don’t see what strategy there is in that.”
“That’s why I’m in charge. I have to be able to see the long plays.”
“Explain it to me,” I demand. “Explain the strategy to me or you might not leave these tracks.”
He smiles, confident. “I don’t think you’ll stop me. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Are you sure about that?” I take a step forward, looming over him. I outgrew my father and now I’ve outgrown him, too. Or is that just something I’m telling myself?
He shrugs. “I’m tired, Jack. If you’re going to do something, do it.”
“Explain it to me!” I repeat.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he says. “You’d call me crazy, or you’d think I was against you.”
“I already think you’re against me. How many of the fellas know about this?”
“Just you.”
“And what if I told you that the first thing I’m gonna do when this meetin’ is over is go and tell them all?”
He winces. “That would be—inadvisable.”
“Are you gonna explain it to me or not?”
“No.” And then he turns away, heading back toward his bike. “Don’t pursue the child, Jack. It’s what’s best for the club.”
I take out my gun, but I can’t even bring myself to aim it.
“Keep riding on, kid,” he says, and then leaves me standing there.
Chapter Sixteen
Gloria
The more he talks, the angrier I get. I knew there was something off about that old man, that old sinewy man. I knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth. I knew there was some secret meaning behind his unwillingness to help Jack. And now it’s revealed itself. Jack doesn’t look happy about it, either, staring at the floor as he talks, rubbing his forehead like he can rub away the reality of it.
“So he’s working for the man who has our baby,” I whisper, taking a sip from the beer. My hands are shaking but that’s nothing new lately. An anomaly would be if my hands stopped shaking. “He’s a traitor, Jack.”
Jack stares down at his hands. “That ain’t easy to hear,” he mutters.
“I know it’s not!” I snap. “But you have to hear it, because it’s the truth. He’s a traitor. Don’t you bikers have a code or something? A sense of loyalty? What happens if one of you decides to go and work for another club? What happens if one of you decides to sabotage your own club? Surely there are repercussions.”
“Normally, yeah. Of course there fuckin’ are.”
“What do you mean, normally? He has our son, Jack.”
“He doesn’t have him—”
“No, fine,” I correct myself, “but he most likely knows where he is.”
“How can you know that?” He looks up at me. His face is ill, almost ghost-white.
“What do you mean? Because he’s been talking with Big Loco! Do you really think he told you all he knows? It sounds to me like he told you the bare minimum. If he’s been keeping all this from you for over two years, what else is he keeping from you? What about your friend, Butcher? Have you heard from him yet?”
He swallows, glances at his phone. “No.”
“I’d
take the battery out of that,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because if he really has tapped your phone, and it seems like he has, then he can probably turn the microphone on. He might be listening right now.”
He makes to argue, sees the sense of it, and then takes the battery out. “You’re probably right,” he mutters. He goes into the bedroom and takes a new phone out of the packaging.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask. “Because it seems to me that relying on Butcher is out of the window.”
“Yeah.”
He sits in silence for a few minutes.
“Jack!” I hiss, moving over to the couch, sitting right up next to him. “What’s the plan?”
“Just let me think.”
“I don’t understand what you need to think about. What you need to do is obvious.”
“What?” he mutters like a surly teenager.
“Do you really need me to spell it out to you? Fine. You need to get a hold of Jackson and make him tell you where Big Loco is, or how to get into contact with Big Loco. If you were working this case—job—whatever, if you were working it and Jackson wasn’t involved, what would you do?”
“Pretty much exactly what you just suggested,” he allows. “But it’s not just any other case. You’ve gotta understand, this is the man who saved my goddamn life. My dad would’ve killed me, I reckon, if Jackson hadn’t come along and got me outta there. He saved my life.”
“Did he?” I ask, only stopping myself from snapping again with an effort. “Or did he see a vulnerable teenager and spot a chance to make you loyal to him? What did it cost him, really, getting you out of your parents’ house? To me it looks like he got the better end of the deal.”
He stands up abruptly and paces into the kitchen, takes a bottle of whisky from the cupboard and swigs from it, long and deep. Then he slams it down on the counter and rests his fists, knuckles down, panting like he’s just been for a run.
“Don’t say that,” he says.
“Why?” I explode, chasing him to the kitchen. “Because it’s too honest? You talk like this man is your foster father or something, but all I’ve seen is him using you, denying you help, and then expecting you to just go along with the crazy idea that we should let Big Loco have our baby! What sort of father figure does that? What sort of a man does that?”
“Just—stop.” He takes another sip.
I dive forward and snatch the bottle from him, placing it on the counter behind me. He spits whisky onto the floor, startled, and then turns to me. “Give me the damn bottle.”
“We need you sharp right now,” I say. “We need you ready to do what has to be done. Not drunk. Not so drunk you can barely move. You shouldn’t even be here. It’s all up to you now, Jack. That old man killed or kidnapped your friend.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Open your eyes!” I scream.
“My eyes are open.” He turns away from me. “It ain’t an easy thing, to hear this about him. I just need a goddamn minute.”
“Well, you haven’t got a minute. You need to get over this. I’m sorry, I really am, and if we had found this out when Jimmy was safe, I’d comfort you. I’d tell you how hard it must be and kiss you and make you hot fucking cocoa, but right now you need to be Fury, not Jack.”
“Why’nt you go and get him?” he mutters. “If it’s so fuckin’ easy.”
“You’re acting like a child,” I tell him. I walk up behind him, standing close enough to feel the heat that emanates from him as from hot coals. “Think about our son. Our son is innocent. Our son has no say in any of this. If he’s going to have a voice, we need to give him one. We can’t just let them have him!” I slap him on the back. “Look at me, would you?”
He turns slowly, mouth twisted somewhere between a sad frown and a furious grimace. “I don’t intend on lettin’ Big Loco keep the kid.”
“Then you’ll do what needs to be done?”
“What do you know about it?” He places his hands on my shoulders, squeezing firmly. “You don’t know shit about this life. Do you even know what you’re asking me to do? Do you know what it takes to get a man talkin’?”
“Torture?” I offer.
“Maybe not at first, not with Jackson, but like you said, we ain’t got a lot of time. So if he started holding out too long then yeah, that’s what I’d have to do. Can you imagine tryin’ to torture the fella who’s been your best friend since you were a teenager? Who fuckin’ saved you?”
“It would be hard,” I agree, and then I fold my arms, “but not as hard as knowing that our baby is in the hands of some psychopathic criminal, being raised as Samuel and being thrown into a life just as dangerous as yours.”
“It’s all so simple for a civilian.” He shakes his head.
I dart my hand out and grab his package, squeezing his balls and his cock. “Are you a man or not?” I snap.
His eyes flare. “Remove your fuckin’ hand.”
“Well, are you?”
“I won’t ask you again.”
I don’t remove my hand. Instead I squeeze all the harder. “Because a man would go out there and get his son back. He wouldn’t mope about it.”
He darts his hand out this time, clamping it down on my pussy. “It seems to me a woman’d comfort her man, not make him feel like shit.” He presses his middle finger against my clit through the fabric of my shorts and my underwear, so hard he lifts me almost off my feet. “Look at you,” he goes on, reading my face. “You fuckin’ like it.”
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“Do you mean that?” He presses all the harder.
“No.”
He almost tackles me into the living room, tearing off my shorts with one powerful swipe of his hand. Like a bear’s paw. He falls to his knees and snaps my underwear with his teeth. Then he grabs my thighs with his powerful hands and wrenches my legs apart. I moan wordlessly, meaning it to be a get-off-me moan, a we-haven’t-got-time moan. But it comes out like a song of pleasure. He presses his face up against my pussy and licks my clit with cruel speed, with the kind of speed my body can’t help but respond to.
I’m propped up on the back of the couch, my feet resting on his back. He reaches around and grabs my ass, holding me up as he goes crazy on my pussy. I look down at him, struggling to believe the suddenness of this. His tongue makes fire-hot circles on my clit, my pussy getting wetter and wetter, and then he breaks it off and stands up.
I tell myself that this is the time to stop it, but then I find myself leaping forward, unbuckling his belt and pulling his jeans down. I fall to my knees and take his cock in my mouth, as much of it as I can, grabbing his thighs and forcing my face down. I suck him angrily, which I’ve never done before and I never knew could be done. His soft growling is like fuel for our passion. I’m making him moan; that means something right now, perhaps more than it should. I suck him until it feels like his cock is going to burst and then I stand up and stare at him. He kicks his jeans off, staring back at me, and then half tackles me again, this time to the floor.
He lowers me softly onto my back and drives his cock up inside of me, quickly, not giving my pussy time to get used to his massive girth. I gasp, clawing onto his back, and when he looks at me to see if I’m okay, I nod frantically.
“Hard,” I tell him, biting my fingers into his shoulders. “Fucking hard.”
Hard enough to make us forget, just for a little while, is what I don’t say.
He drives up deep inside of me and then fucks me like a madman, pumping his hips. His cock is like a jackhammer smashing inside of me, and soon there is no pain, only the crazy pleasure of it. I lock my ankles around his hips and pull him inside of me as he thrusts, taking every inch of him in gasping, fierce pleasure. I make his shoulders bleed, but I don’t care and neither does he. He only fucks me harder. I run my nails down his back, to his ass, and up again. All of him, every single muscle, is carved from stone. He is the hardest man I have ever touched.
&
nbsp; And then I feel it, distant at first, and then closer, closer. The orgasm crushes into me as he crushes into me, laying all his weight into his cock, pushing all his power inside of me. My pussy goes tight and I close my eyes, and then open them. My vision is blurry but I see him looking down at me, his blue chips-of-ice eyes searing into me as the orgasm sears through me. Waves and waves of euphoria wash over me, a timeless release in which Gloria does not exist anymore. I don’t remember problems, or anxiety, or pain. All I know is the pleasure of this man, of this rock-hard body, his rock-hard cock. Then he pushes one final time inside of me and clutches onto my hair, letting out a spent breath as I do the same. We stay like that, frozen, trying to lengthen a moment beyond lengthening.
