“Hey,” she said when he opened his eyes. “Never pegged you for being a cuddler.”
He pulled her closer with a hoarse laugh. “Never pegged you for a woman with a mace as her weapon of choice.”
“Guess we were both wrong.”
“Guess we were.” He pulled her even closer. “Just so we’re clear, I’m a huge fan of morning sex.”
“Any sex you’re not a fan of?”
“Gay sex, but besides that I’m very pro-sex. All kinds of sex.”
She laughed. “I don’t have any male roommates, so don’t worry.”
o0o
He’d left before she’d gone to work, and she didn’t hear from him in the next two days, but didn’t think much about it. Kathleen had never been one of those women who worried about a guy not calling, and even if she never saw him again, it had been worth it. She’d needed that, but she did hope she’d hear from him again.
She’d received a call about her car, though, and she’d gone to pick it up, but Mace had been nowhere to be seen at the garage.
That Friday meant an opening of a play held at the community center, and Harold had told her go with Blair to it. It was by a group of young girls who called themselves The Green Kittens, and the play was Medea. Kathleen loved Medea and wasn’t looking forward to seeing it butchered by a bunch of teenage girls, but she’d been ordered. She’d gone home after work to get appropriately dressed, or… at least what she assumed was an appropriate outfit. Blair had stared at her with wide eyes when she stepped out of the car.
“You look great!”
“Overdressed?” Kathleen asked.
“No… Not really. Skirt and a blouse is probably what most women will be wearing, just not that…”
“Expensive?” Kathleen suggested. It was a gray pencil skirt with a sleeveless black blouse. Not particularly fancy, but it was designer clothing, and it had been expensive.
“Yeah.” Blair nodded with a small smile on her lips. ”Might be some raised eyebrows about those shoes, too.”
They were her favorites, black Alexander McQueen, and the main reason she loved them was the pink sole. It just felt… awesome to have those colorful soles with an otherwise somber outfit.
“I love them.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
A woman, who initially glared at her, gave Kathleen a program, and she eyed through it.
“Next time you’re wearing those shoes,” someone whispered in her ear, and she didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.
“There’s a next time?” she asked without taking her eyes off the program.
“Definitely,” Mace mumbled, and that’s when she turned around.
“A play?” she said. “Why are you here? I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Brick’s daughter is in it.”
“Brick as in the president of the Greenville Marauders?”
“That would be the one, but I don’t recommend trying to talk to him today. He’s a bit on edge.”
“Wasn’t going to.” She couldn’t help smiling at the thought of a big bad biker being nervous about his daughter in a play. “So we’re not done?”
“Not unless you want us to be.”
“Out of curiosity, did you volunteer for the play, or was it an order to come here?”
He laughed. ”I’d say I was volunteered. If family calls, you answer.” He took a step closer. “And you didn’t answer your own question. Are we done?”
“No. We’re not done.”
CHAPTER FOUR
No Sharing
o0o
“WHY THE FUCK DO you always get up so early?” Mace asked and opened his eyes to look at Kathleen when she walked over to her closet. He’d always liked women who were comfortable in their own skin, and she definitely was. She never tried to hide or got out of bed naked only to immediately reach for panties and a t-shirt. It wasn’t her showing off, either; she was just perfectly comfortable with being naked. And she should, she was fucking hot. When she turned around with a hanger hooked over her finger, his eyes automatically scanned her body.
“Because I have a job,” she answered.
“Are you telling me that Glenn manages to get his fat ass out of bed at six each morning? Or any of them?”
“No, but I do. And I get the most work done before the others arrive. After that I’m forced to listen to descriptions of Mrs. Gillian’s petunias.”
“I read they were lovely this year,” Mace laughed.
“You read the paper?”
“I do now. They have a little picture of you next to your name at the bottom of some of the stuff you’ve written.”
“Byline,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s what it’s called—a byline.”
“Whatever it’s called, you should tell Harold to make it bigger. Way too small to jerk off to.”
Kathleen laughed. “Did you jerk off to my byline picture?”
“No. Told you, it’s too small.” He reached out his hand. “Come on. Give me thirty more minutes. Just today. I’ll make it worth it.”
She glared at him for a few seconds before throwing the shirt with the hanger still in it over the rocking chair she had in the corner of the room. He held up the cover and she slipped under it. She moved closer with an arm and leg over him, and he fucking loved feeling her naked next to him. Outside of bed, she didn’t seem to be much for touching, but while in bed she stayed close. It had been some time since Mace had slept like that next to sombody, and he’d been surprised about her being cuddly, but he’d liked it from the start. And the sex was fucking awesome. The first time he’d told her to not hold back, and she didn’t, but even better was that he didn’t have to hold back either. She could take it, all of it, and she was so responsive. Now and then she threw out a ‘more’ or ‘harder’ and made everything so much better. Just like she wasn’t self-conscious about what her body looked like, she wasn’t about how she reacted to things, and she most definitely didn’t hide it. There was no missing what she liked, which made it easy to get her going, and he liked that. He liked it even better that she paid attention to what he responded to, and she wasn’t shy about using it.
“You’re a bad influence,” she said, and he felt her rubbing against his thigh.
“I know,” he said, but he was pleased he’d managed to convince her to stay. He’d tried a couple of times, but she’d never agreed before. “Think you’re way too controlled. You need a bad influence in your life.”
“Is that so?” She ran her fingers over his chest and through his chest hair. “So I need some bad influence, and that’s why I let you in whenever you come knocking?”
“Damn right,” he answered and grabbed her left ass cheek in his hand. It fit perfectly.
“And what do you need? Why do you keep coming knocking on my door?”
“You know why,” he chuckled as he kissed his way down the side of her neck. “I’m in charge of the Marauder’s public relations, and you’re a part of the local media. I’m just making sure you’re satisfied with the service you’re getting from us.”
“You are certainly taking your responsibilities seriously.” She moaned when he sucked her nipple into his mouth. “Very seriously.”
“I’m a loyal member,” he murmured once he’d let her breast go. “And I take fucking seriously. If you’re gonna fuck, you should do it properly, so think you can give me forty-five minutes?”
o0o
Brick approached him at lunch. “Got a minute, Mace?”
“Sure,” he answered.
They walked towards the office, and he pulled out a smoke. Mel wasn’t in there, and they both sat down on the dirty, old couch that had been there since before Mel started working at the garage. Every time he saw it, he was surprised she hadn’t thrown it out, but on the other hand, he’d never seen her sit on it, either. “Something wrong?”
“No. Just want hear what’s going on with our D.C. reporter?”
Mace had been seeing her, or whatever it was called, for about six weeks, and so far Brick hadn’t asked him much, but there wasn’t much to tell. If Kathleen was writing about them, she wasn’t asking him any questions.
“Not much,” he admitted. “What I’ve seen of her place, it’s clean. Nothing about us anywhere, she’s not asking anything, and… I don’t know. She goes to work, she hits the gym, and we fuck. That’s about it.”
Brick sat quiet for a while to think it over. Mace knew that face and knew it was best to just keep quiet and let Brick finish his thought process.
“Besides her handing in her car, what is it that makes us think she’s digging on us?” Brick asked.
“She’d asked around a little before coming here. Gordon said she’d been talking a lot to Evans, and we know how Evans feels about us.”
Gordon and Evans had been the two detectives who’d been going after Mitch for a couple of murders the year before. Mitch had done some digging on Gordon, and now he was in their pocket. Well, not really in their pocket, but he was willing to help on occasion to keep them out of trouble or give them some information when they needed it. Evans knew this, and she wasn’t happy about it but kept her mouth shut. Kathleen talking to Evans wasn’t the end of the world, since most of what Evans had were suspicions, and she didn’t seem ready to rat on her partner, but it wasn’t good. Two bright women teaming up to gun for them could end in something really bad. And Brick seemed to be on the same page as Mace.
“Yeah, that could be bad,” he mumbled. “So nothing at her place about us?”
“No,” Mace laughed. “It’s pretty fucking empty. She’s got a home office with a file cabinet in it, but I’ve never seen her in there. I asked her about the cabinet, and she said it was her private archive. If she’s got anything on us, it’s in there.”
“If she was writing, she’d be asking, or at least talk to more people, but I haven’t heard anything the last few weeks.”
If any outsiders started asking about the Marauders, they found out. Their friends watched out for them, and they had a lot of friends in Greenville. If Kathleen had still been asking questions, Brick would’ve known.
“I can keep it up for a while,” Mace said, and he bit his tongue when he noticed Brick’s smile.
“You falling for her?”
“No! Maybe. I…”
He knew he was, but he didn’t think it mattered. As far as a relationship went, that was a dead end if he’d ever seen one. Kathleen had never flat out said anything, but he knew she hated Greenville with a passion. Staying there was a temporary solution for her, simply since she was currently out of options, and the biggest clue was her house. There were no personal belongings whatsoever, not even a picture of her family. She’d been sent there, and she was prepared to do a lot to get the hell out of there and find a job at a better paper in a different city. He couldn’t blame her. For a woman like her, being stuck at G.O. had to be as if he were stuck doing oil changes on cabs for the rest of his life.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Sure it does. Not sure how the fuck we’d solve that one if she’s planning on writing about us, but you know the drill. It’s on you.”
If a Marauder brought a woman to the club, her actions were on him. He paid for her fuckups, and he could end up paying in blood. That hadn’t happened in Greenville, but it had been known to happen. One guy had been kicked out of the club, and Bucket, one of their members, had been told he had to choose between his woman and the club while he was a prospect, since she’d been hitting on Mace at a party. A woman who did something like that meant trouble, and it might not have been enough if Bucket had been a member at the time, but since he’d been a prospect it had.
Getting involved with a journalist who might be writing a revealing story about them could cost Mace his cut, and there wasn’t a woman out there worth that.
“That’s one of the reasons why it doesn’t matter,” Mace said.
“So, wanna keep up the PR work, or do you want out of it before you’re in too deep? From what I can tell, it might not be necessary anyway if she’s not writing about us. Don’t have anything against journalists in general.”
That was a very valid question, but he knew the answer with more certainty than he should have. “I’m keeping it up.”
Brick left him with a chuckle, and Mace sighed deeply. While he wasn’t too worried that he’d ever have to try to introduce her into the club, he still couldn’t help thinking about it. Kathleen hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d still managed to get off on the wrong foot as far as the club went. That was on him, since he’d raised the alerts, but he didn’t feel bad about it. It had been the right thing to do, without a doubt, but it meant more problems than just the fact that she was on her way out of Greenville.
If he did introduce her to the club, and it turned out he’d been wrong, she was a potential threat to the entire club. So if he was wrong about her, it wasn’t just about getting a beating in the ring, or possibly being thrown out of the club. He could pay with his life.
The rest of the workday was simple things that in no way managed to keep his mind from wandering to Kathleen. It wasn’t just the sex, which was fucking awesome, but he was curious about her, wanted to know everything about her, and it had been quite some time since he’d given a shit about a woman’s personality or life in general. She wasn’t overly open about herself, but unlike other women who were like that, she didn’t ask him questions, either. She didn’t demand anything she wouldn’t give herself, and she was giving them time to get to know each other without forcing it. In six weeks, they’d reached the point where it wasn’t just about fucking anymore. Even if the majority of their time together was still spent in the bed, or in various positions in the rest of her house, they did other things, too. Like having dinner together—or what she passed off as dinner, which was TV dinners—while reading one of the numerous newspapers she subscribed to.
When his shift was over, he had a shower in his clubhouse dorm and went back out to the bar to see if something was happening later that day, or if he should just call Kathleen to hear if she had time to see him later.
“What’s up?” Sisco asked and handed Mace a cup of coffee. “Think a little harder and we’ll see smoke coming out of your ears.”
“It’s Kathleen.”
“Intriguing. Care to give me intimate details about her? Like cup-size, favorite spots and positions.”
Mace laughed. “No.”
“And still no sharing?”
Mace and Sisco had joined around the same time, were about the same age, and had both been single since they joined. They’d shared more than one woman, or group of women, over the years, and it wasn’t just the sweetbutts that came to the club, but any woman Mace had dated, if she was up for it. Mace had never before minded the thought of doing that with a woman he was seeing, but Kathleen was different, and not only because he highly doubted she’d be up for it. He didn’t want to; he didn’t want to see her being fucked by someone else, even if it was Sisco.
“No sharing,” he confirmed.
Sisco looked at him with a knowing smile and then shook his head. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothing? Just fucking spit it out.”
“I don’t know much, Mace, but I do know that when something like that hits you, you fucking grab it, and you don’t let go.”
Sisco had met his wife at a party when they were both still basically kids. He’d been in his early twenties, and she’d been barely legal. He’d told Mace that he knew the next day that he’d love her until the very end. The way Sisco’d described it, they’d been two broken kids who’d tried to start something better. So, he’d married Trudy, stopped touring as a roadie for bands, started working at a garage, and finally knocked her up. Before the kid was born, Trudy was hit by a car, and both her and the baby girl she was expecting died. Sisco still wore the ring, and as far as he was c
oncerned he’d had his love, and he wasn’t looking for anyone else. So when Sisco said he knew what it felt like to be hit by… whatever the fuck it was, he wasn’t bullshitting. He knew.
“I don’t know, man. She’s…” Mace laughed. “I don’t know. But it’s something. Even Ma has started asking.”
The woman was at a hospice, and her main concern was still that Mace hadn’t been able to ‘find himself a wife.’ She’d been more tenacious than usual lately, and not mainly because she was dying, but because Mace had slipped and had mentioned Kathleen.
“How’s Pam?”
“Not great. Still going strong. You know her.”
Sisco laughed because he did know her, and Sisco and Pam got along very well. He never passed up a chance to tell Mace how lucky he was to have a mom like Pam, and he was right. She was a complete bitch, but in all the right ways.
“Think she’d mind me coming by?”
“Nope. Just let me know when you’re going so I can be somewhere else.”
“We’re not that bad.”
“Whenever you two get together, it’s all about Mace-bashing. And for the record, her being all over my ass about finding a good woman is because of you.”
“All I said was that you liked your women easy, naked, and wrapped around a pole.”
“That’s my point! Who the fuck says that to a dude’s ma?”
“Like she didn’t know,” Sisco laughed.
Pam had met all of the members and their families at one time or another—she was a huge fan of Mel—but Sisco and she had formed some weird unholy alliance whose purpose seemed to be to embarrass Mace as much as possible. As much as he complained about it, he liked it. While she was still doing okay and was living at home, they’d often had dinner at her house. It was Mace’s ma or Brick’s place they went to if they wanted a home-cooked meal. After his dad had died, ten years earlier, she’d been lonely, so having dinner with her a couple of times a week, or taking her out for dinner, had meant a lot to her.
But Sisco was right, she’d always known what Mace was like when it came to women, so having accidentally mentioned Kathleen meant it was the first time ever he’d mentioned a woman to his mom. He’d tried to brush it off to Sisco as something he’d done because Pam was dying, but they both knew that it wasn’t true.
Speed of Light (Marauders #3.5) Page 6
