I liked Silvie; she was a good woman. If things had been different, she would have made a great mom and a great old lady. As it turned out, it was obvious by then that Hardy didn’t intend on making her his property. Real shame, too, ’cause it was clear that she fucking loved him, hard. Despite all the bullshit he threw at her, she was strong and took it all—probably believing that deep down inside of him, there was still a good man somewhere. Butch and I both knew differently.
Laney came out of the bathroom, half stumbling in tiny heels that she’d decided to wear. Woman always wore those little black ankle boots, laces always undone like she was ready to kick ’em off and sprint away at a moment’s notice. But that night she’d gone out with her girls and they’d made her up like she was their pet project. Turned up looking beautiful, dressed in a tight little black dress and heels, her hair all piled up on top of her head, and her lips painted a vibrant red. Couldn’t deny that she looked fucking stunning, of course, she never looked more beautiful than when she’d just woken up—her face clear of all that crap, her hair loose and trailing over her bare shoulders. And she always looked her best when she was naked. Charlie and River were great friends to her, but she was a class above them and she didn’t need all that shit.
Laney stopped by the wall and leaned back against it. I watched her lips moving like she was talking to herself and I cocked my head to one side, wondering what the fuck she was doing. I stalked over to her, wondering if I could take her back to my old room and fuck her brains out before I sent her home with a prospect.
By the time I got to her, her eyes were closed and her head tilted up to the ceiling. She was still whispering something and I leaned in closer, desperate to know what it was. I couldn’t stop the laugh from escaping when I realized that she was singing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”
Her eyes opened abruptly, her head tilting to look at me, and I watched as she struggled to focus her eyes on me, a slow, sexy smile crawling up her face once she did.
“Hey, baby,” she mumbled.
I put my hands on her waist and gave a little squeeze before sucking my bottom lip into my mouth and letting it go.
Her eyes sparked when she focused in on me. “Had a little too much to drink. Charlie is a whore. Bitch gave me tequila, and I told her no tequila,” she slurred. “I told her twice!” she said, hiccupping. “No fucking tequila.”
Fuck, she was too drunk to…well, fuck.
I dragged her body tight against mine, loving the feel of her tits pushed up against my chest. The material of her dress was tight and clingy, showing every fucking curve that God had graced her with, and as I held her to me I got a hard-on that I thought might punch out of my jeans if I didn’t blow my load soon. Her pupils dilated as she felt me press against her stomach.
“You want me to take care of that, baby?” She grinned, her arms wrapping around my waist and moving lower to squeeze my ass.
Yes, my dick screamed out. I dragged one of my hands through my hair and let out a frustrated breath.
“Nah, babe, I’m all good. Let’s get you home,” I said instead, pressing a quick kiss on her mouth. She tried to force the kiss deeper but I pulled away. Not that I wanted to pull away. Fuck no. What I wanted to do was pull up that dress, turn her around, bend her over with her palms against the wall, and slam my dick home.
But I wouldn’t—not like this.
She deserved more than that.
My blue balls were crying at my chivalrousness.
I took Laney’s hand in mine and started to lead her across the clubhouse, looking back to see her eyes wide as she watched Cutter, Dexter, and Casa all groping the same club bitch. Laney’s tongue flicked out to wet her lips and my dick laughed in my face, because yeah, there was no fucking way I wasn’t getting in that tonight, no fucking way. Drunk or not, my woman wanted it.
I nodded to Dom as he came back inside, but the man was a moody motherfucker that night. Had been for weeks. Definitely some beef going down with him and Butch. They were usually inseparable, yet they’d been avoiding each other for weeks. Not sure anyone else had noticed much, with all the other club drama going on, but I sure as shit had.
Rider had ordered me to go check on our new warehouse earlier, but Butch had offered to go instead. Said he’d needed some space, whatever the fuck that meant. I’d let him take our bike since it was the least I could do for taking the job for me.
I walked Laney outside, wanting her on the back of my bike but knowing she was too drunk to stay on it, so I headed to one of the trucks instead. Hated driving those things, always felt so trapped, like the air was being sucked from my body. No, I much preferred the freedom of my bike. Couldn’t fucking wait to ride the bike Butch and I had built. It had been our project for over a year; every piece was custom built, and she was fucking beautiful—almost as beautiful as Laney. We’d finished her earlier that day, but I’d barely had time to ride her round the block. The next day I’d ride that bike into submission, though, and tonight Butch would get to ride her and test her power out.
A prospect was standing with the trucks, and I called for the keys as we got close.
“You want me to take her home?” he asked. “You can head back in and party.”
Fuck, it would be so much easier to do that. Just let the prospect take her home and make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit. That was their job, and I could trust him, too. He’d only been prospecting for a month or so and was barely eighteen, but he was a good kid, and it was already looking obvious—to anyone that bothered to look—that he was going to be a great fit for the club.
But I couldn’t let him take my woman home. That shit wasn’t right by me. What would I do? Head back inside, get drunk, and find some pussy that was available to fuck? Fuck that. No pussy would ever match Laney’s. She was it for me. Hadn’t looked at another woman since I’d been inside of her, and there was no way I would until the day I died. Plenty of brothers fucked around on their old ladies, and most of the women just turned a blind eye to it, but I couldn’t do it to her. I knew I’d kill any man that put his dick anywhere near her, so why should it have been any different for me?
Besides, unless their pussy was made of gold, ain’t nothing that any woman could do for me better than Laney already did.
“I’ve got it,” I called back to the prospect, and he nodded before reaching into his pocket and throwing the keys across to me. I caught them in one hand, not even missing a stride as I continued to walk toward the truck. I unlocked it and opened the door and then reached around and grabbed Laney by the waist, hoisting her up into the truck in one swift movement, loving the way she let out a little squeal as I did.
“I love you,” she slurred in my ear. “So so much.”
“Yeah?” I asked, pulling back to look at her.
She nodded and gave me a drunken smile. “You know, Jesse, I never thought I’d have this.”
I put my hand on her legs and pushed them inside the truck, though really I wanted to slide my hand up that skirt and tear her panties off. I slammed the truck door closed before heading round to the driver’s side and climbing in. Laney sat back against the seat, her head turned toward me.
“Never thought you’d have what?” I asked as I started the truck, desperate to get home.
“This, baby,” she slurred. “This thing that we have. Always felt like there was something wrong with me, like I wasn’t worthy of love, and then you came in, all big and butch and bikerish, and you loved me.” She gave a little giggle and hiccupped.
“Think you’ll find that it was you who came into my club, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t big and butch then. Also pretty certain that there ain’t no such word as ‘bikerish,’” I laughed back.
She slapped at my thigh playfully, but then her playfulness gave out to something else and she dug her nails in and gripped my muscle before sliding her hand up.
“You know what I mean,” she whispered, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. Her h
and reached my cock in my jeans and gripped it, and I groaned. Pretty sure my dick was about to explode in her hand.
“Time to get home,” I said between groans as her hand simultaneously rubbed and squeezed me. “Right the fuck now.”
She giggled again and I started to back the truck out of the clubhouse grounds. Yeah, fuck being chivalrous. I’d take her home, fuck her, put her to bed with a bottle of water and some aspirin, and then head back to the party. Fuck, this day was going good.
The streets were pretty quiet since it was after ten on a Tuesday night; not much ever happened around there during the week. It was a small town, with even smaller-minded people in it. While the world developed and changed, that town seemed to be standing still; the only thing moving in it was the club. Business was booming for the Highwaymen, and it didn’t look like it was going to tail off any time soon, either. We’d had a couple of shipments go missing, but we were pretty certain we’d plugged that leak now.
Laney kicked off her shoes and slid down, resting her cheek on my thigh muscle. Her hand had stopped rubbing on my cock, and I hoped that was because she was about to give me a drunken blowjob while I drove.
As I pulled the truck to a stop outside our house, the sound of Laney’s soft snores broke through the quiet of the truck. I looked down at her and shook my head. I wanted to be pissed that I hadn’t gotten any action, but I couldn’t stay mad at her—woman was too damn beautiful to be mad at for long. Besides, she looked after me good every night, so no doubt she’d be making it up to me the next day. Definitely something to look forward to.
Make-up sex was one thing, but guilt sex was even better.
I stroked the side of her face until she began to stir, her body stretching out like a cat’s across the seats, but she didn’t wake up.
“We’re home,” I said quietly, and she mumbled something in response but didn’t move. I smiled down at her, wondering how I got so fucking lucky. My life had been fucked up since the day I was born, with no one other than Butch giving two shits about me. I was born into a world of anger and fighting and death and lying. I had been beginning to wonder if I was cursed, given that everyone I loved either died or hated me, but then Laney had loved me back and the rest was history.
I clicked open the truck door and slid Laney’s head off my lap so it was easier to reach in and take her in my arms, and then I jumped out before reaching in and grabbing her. I kicked the truck’s door shut behind me as I carried her to the house, her head resting against my chest and her breath fanning against my skin and sending shivers through me every step of the way
I unlocked our front door with one hand, grateful that Laney weighed barely a hundred pounds, and kicked it behind me before carrying her up to bed.
She hardly stirred the entire time, even as I laid her on top of the bed and peeled off her dress. She was dressed in matching black bra and panties underneath that tiny dress, and my dick throbbed painfully as a reminder that it was there and still hadn’t been taken care of yet. I reached down and adjusted it before sliding a hand up her thigh, all the way up until I cupped her ass cheek.
Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled lazily, her hands reaching for me and tugging my mouth to hers. I kissed her long and hard and then I pulled away and dragged the duvet over her body. Because if I didn’t cover her up I wasn’t going to be able to control myself much longer. My dick wanted inside and it did not like being told no.
“It’s okay,” she mumbled.
I shook my head and smiled down at her, my hair trailing into my line of sight until I tucked it behind my ears. It had been getting longer and longer and I kept on meaning to get it cut, but now it was chin length I was debating leaving it to grow some more.
“I want you to show me that you love me,” she slurred, her left hand reaching up to pull the covers away from her breast.
“You know I do, I don’t need to fuck you to show you that,” I replied.
Her eyes filled with tears and I panicked that she was going to start crying. Fucking hated it when anyone cried—and not in a sympathetic way, either. More in a shut-the-fuck-up-because-that’s-annoying way. Yeah, I was a real-life saint, I know.
“I miss my mom,” she said quietly, rolling onto her side.
I hadn’t turned a light on, so the only light shining in was from the streetlights outside the window, but I saw enough to know that she was definitely crying then—even if she was only doing it quietly. Strange thing was, it didn’t annoy me; instead it angered me. I hated that she was sad and I couldn’t do shit about it. I couldn’t stop her from missing her mom, I couldn’t bring her back. All I had was me.
“I wish you could have met her, Jesse,” she said, her face still turned away from me.
I sat down next to her and reached out to pull her onto my lap, and she wrapped her arms around my waist and buried her face against my stomach and cried harder. I rubbed her hair back and stared into the dark, hating hearing her cry.
“I wish I could have, too,” I replied. “If she was anything like you, I bet she was fucking great.”
Laney fell silent and I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing. I was no good at this shit. I could fuck her and make her feel good, but I wasn’t used to giving out advice and shit like that. She needed one of her girlfriends there to talk to, not me. I debated if it was too late to call River or Charlie—fuck, Silvie would have been good too. But not me.
“I’m nothing like her, but I wish I was,” she finally whispered, her breath fanning across my stomach. “She was loveable, everyone loved her.”
I frowned and looked down at her before putting my hands on the sides of her face and making her look up at me. “You’re loveable, Laney.”
Her bottom lip was trembling. “I am?” she asked.
I laughed lightly. Not a bitter, mean laugh, but one full of disbelief. “Well I fuckin’ love you. Your friends love you—fuck, even Gauge loves you, though he doesn’t know how to show it.”
“Thank you,” she whispered back.
“For what?”
“For loving me.”
“Don’t thank me, it ain’t a good thing,” I replied.
“Of course it is!”
I shook my head. “Nah, it really isn’t. I’m not a good man, Laney, I don’t do nothin’ good, and I sure as shit don’t know how to keep somethin’ good. One of these days I’m going to wake up and you’ll have left me, and then I’ll be back on my own. And this, this’ll be like a dream—like it never fuckin’ happened.”
I looked away, embarrassed by my own honesty. I hadn’t meant to say those things to her, but now that I had, I realized the honesty I felt behind them.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said, swallowing loudly.
“Of course you do!” she yelled. “Why would you say that? And I’ll never leave you. It’s me and you forever, Jesse, no matter what.”
I smiled sadly. “It’s never forever,” I replied.
“Why would you say that?”
I pushed back her hair. “Because it’s the truth, baby. Everyone I love dies, and everything I touch turns bad. If I wasn’t such a selfish fucker, I would have let you go by now. But I am selfish, and I don’t want to let you go. I’m a bad man, Laney, and one day soon you’re going to realize that and run as far and as fast away from me as you can.”
She stared at me in silence, her expression sad. A single tear trailed out of her left eye and her hand gripped my waist tightly. “Don’t say things like that,” she whispered.
“It’s the truth.”
“I can’t lose you.”
“I told you: I’m a selfish asshole, I ain’t going anywhere. You’ll have to push me away—and I have no doubt that one day you will,” I replied.
Her forehead scrunched up and I used my thumb to rub the little creases away.
“Until then, though, you got me, babe. You got all of me.”
“I’ll never push you away,” she said, defiance in her tone.
“What if
you hate me? What about then?” I was only joking, but a deep-down part of me, the sick part, needed to know. How far would I have to push her to stop her from loving me? How long would it take before she came to her senses and realized I was no good for her? A month? A year? Two? It’d happen, I knew that like I knew my own hands. Because a woman like Laney—no matter what she thought about herself—a woman like Laney was far too fucking good for me.
“I could never hate you,” she said, sitting up and staring into my face, her mouth puckered into a little frown.
Goddamn, she was sexy, even when she was drunk off her face and pissed off at me. And that’s exactly what she was—drunk and pissed off.
“Never!” she repeated, pushing my hands away.
I smiled. “What if I fucked someone else?”
She swallowed, and I knew I’d touched a nerve. Sex for her was something sacred, and she knew I knew that. It had something to do with her mom being a hooker, and the fact that she’d slept with someone new every night for almost twenty years.
“You wouldn’t ever do that.” Laney moved back from me, like if she put some distance between us the words couldn’t touch her.
“But what if I did? What then? Would you still hold me in such high regard then? Or would I be just as bad as every other asshole out there?” I gritted my teeth and forced a smile. I didn’t know why I was pushing the issue, or why it was so important to me to know, but it was, and now that I had started I knew I couldn’t stop until I knew.
I wanted to know what it was that would make her stop loving me—maybe because if I knew, maybe I would know why my mom hadn’t loved me enough to quit drugs, or why my dad didn’t love me enough to treat me like his son. I wanted to know what it was that would make her hate me so that I could use it against her one day to send her somewhere far far away from me. Somewhere better. Somewhere without me in it to fuck everything up for her.
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