by Shari Slade
Drew slaps my ass. “Get it in gear, baby girl. We’ve got some filthy mouths to feed.”
A sense of dread and a slap on the ass is basically how I’ve started every breakfast shift ever, so it isn’t too difficult to shift into work mode. “What should I do? Scramble? Home fries?” I hold my hand a few inches from the grill to check the temperature.
Drew runs me off, smiling. “Get the hell away from that cooktop. This is my kitchen. You can prep plates and make toast.”
I can’t help but grin back, despite my fear for Noah and worry for Jules. There’s work to be done. Work I know how to do. And Drew is as possessive and cranky as any short order cook I’ve ever encountered. Like Harry had been on his better days. A sadness pings my heart.
She sets a big metal bowl into the crook of her arm and whisks the heck out of a mess of eggs. I want to ask her if all she does for the club is cook, but that seems too forward. Even if she did just touch me inappropriately. I fill the eight-slice toaster with white bread and push down on the lever. “How many do you need?”
She scans the crowd filling up the bar. “Gimme twelve plates. Half white and half rye. One with an English muffin. They’re hidden on top of the freezer.” She spreads out two pounds of bacon slices. “Oh, but no butter on that muffin. He loves grape jelly.”
“Who gets the love muffin?”
“God, don’t let Zig hear you call it that.” When she blushes I realize she’s the girl I’d seen slapping the bearded mountain of a man the other night. And kissing him. “He may be a big old teddy bear once I get something sweet inside him, but—”
A bark of laughter cuts her off. Zig takes up the whole door frame. “I can think of something real sweet I want inside me right now.”
“Unless it’s preserves, you’re out of luck.”
“We can call your fine pussy juice preserves if you want. I could wipe it off my chin and spread it on my toast.”
My face flushes about three shades darker than Drew’s, and I try to disappear into the floor tiles. It doesn’t work. Drew elbows me in the ribs. “I told you they had filthy mouths. But you knew that already, didn’t you? And you—” she points her spatula at Zig “—you know you get an English muffin. Not toast.”
“That’s my good girl. Now hurry up, we need to feed everyone and then head up to the safe house. Looks like the Jokers took Jules last night.”
“Fuck. I was hoping she’d just snuck out again.”
“Am I gonna have time to pick up Ashlynn?”
“I already sent a prospect to pick her up from the sitter.”
“Thanks, Zig. Is this all fallout from the change in leadership?”
Zig’s eyes narrow, all the flirtatious twinkle gone. “Not your business.”
Drew’s lips go tight. She doesn’t turn around as he walks away. Instead she flips the bacon and pours egg onto the hot griddle, then attacks it with a pair of spatulas.
“Is Zig your…old man?” The title feels wrong in my mouth, even though my mother had called enough of her boyfriends old man for it to seem normal. I don’t think it meant the same thing to her as it does here.
“No. He likes me all right, and puts up with my shit, but I got a kid.” She lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m pretty sure that scares him to death.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That I have a kid? Don’t be. Ashlynn is a damn angel. That little snot machine saved my life. The only reason I’ve got my shit together is for her.”
It’s not hard to picture Drew with a baby on her hip. Efficient, organized, determined. Sweet. I wonder what she’d been like before she got her shit together. “No, I meant about Zig. I’m sorry it won’t work out with him. That’s a shitty reason.” And maybe not a real one considering Zig knew who the sitter was and made arrangements to have the little girl picked up.
“It’s okay. It’s good to know how the world works. He’ll hook up with some sweet young thing with a lot less baggage, and I’ll enjoy the ride in the meantime.”
I think maybe the ride will last longer than Drew imagines. I wonder if Zig would come in here and flirt with Drew if he’d just delivered a death warrant to the men outside. I need to see Noah, right now. “Can I start delivering plates?”
“Yeah, stack ’em three deep on your arm if you know how. If not, I’ll dig up a tray somewhere. I’ll take Zig’s.”
“I can do it,” I assure her, and start lining up plates. I leave the love muffin on the counter and try to imagine what it would be like to know something as innocent as how Noah likes his bread buttered.
The men don’t look at me as I pass out plates, they just grunt “white” or “rye” as I pass by them. It takes me two trips to get them all out. And two more trips to deliver ketchup, hot sauce and pepper. Drew works behind the bar pouring tomato juice into glasses of beer while I make the rounds with a pot of coffee. Aside from the Red Eye cocktails, it’s still not that different from Jimmy’s. Hell, even the Red Eyes were popular with the kitchen staff. They just weren’t on the menu.
I still don’t know what’s happening with Noah and Stone. None of the men are talking while they eat—there’s no indication that I can read, no change in expression, no current of relief or renewed fear.
Finally, Noah reaches behind the bar and grabs a mug. I have an excuse to stand in front of him and hope he fills me in while I fill him up. Our eyes lock, and he says nothing as I pour. A nothing so loud my hands shake and coffee flows over the lip of the mug, onto Noah’s hand and down the leg of his pants.
“Fuck, that’s hot.”
“Shit. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.” I flinch, half anticipating a blow for being stupid and wasteful. A reflex I can’t seem to lose, no matter how many miles and years I put between myself and my childhood. My eyes fill with tears, more from stress and embarrassment than any real worry that I’ve hurt him. The coffee’s been off the burner long enough it won’t blister his callused skin. I fight the tears back.
He grabs the carafe from my hand and sets it on the bar. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll just clean it up.”
He leads me out of the bar and back to his room. Once again, crossing that threshold sets me at ease. I feel safest in Noah’s domain. “I’m so sorry I burned you. My brain was spinning with so many questions I couldn’t pay attention to one more thing. What happened? How did they vote?”
He pulls me into his massive arms and smooths back my hair. This is a hug. Noah is hugging me and I never want it to stop. He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “They tabled the decision until after we find Jules.”
“They decided…not to decide anything? They can’t do that.”
“They can and they did. It’s good. It gives me and Stone more time to gather support. And it means we can start looking for Jules sooner.”
“Has anyone called the police?”
“We take care of our own business.”
“But it’s your sister, if—”
“If I thought for half a second the cops could do a better job of finding Jules, I’d be the first to dial 9-1-1.”
My pulse races erratic, stuttering and slamming so hard I can hardly get the words out past it. “Was it my fault they couldn’t decide? Did I say the wrong thing?”
“No, baby. You did good. I was so damn proud of how brave you were.”
His praise warms me from the inside out. I practically glow with it. I press my face into his shoulder. “Almost cried when Zig asked me how I was hurt. Almost cried again when I burned you.”
“Almost.” He pets my hair, stroking down my neck and over my shoulders again and again. “We’re alone now, Star. Do you need to cry?”
As he asks me, his petting turns into something more. It’s stroking. And then it’s fingers tangling in my hair, pulling, yanking my head back. Tingles spread over my scalp and straight to my nipples. My eyes water. I yelp. Surprised and pleased. Confused. “Do we have time?”
“For me to give you something to cry about? I think so.
”
“Ok.” He bends me over and pushes my face into the bedspread. The thermal weave I’d studied so closely is rough against my cheek. He holds me there with just the weight of his hand fisted in my hair.
“I’m going to spank your ass until it’s all pink and perfect. Until your pussy is soaking wet and you’re sobbing from it. Until you’re wild and raw.” He yanks my skirt up and my panties down in two brisk tugs. “And you’re going to tell me when you’ve had enough crying, understand?”
I nod, the slight movement jerking at my scalp, sending a fresh wash of pleasure down my spine.
“And if you’re really ruined—if your eyes are puffy and your face is swollen, if you’re fucking wrecked, just the way I like—I’ll lick your pussy until you come so hard on my tongue we both see stars. You can do that for me, baby. Can’t you? Let yourself go like that?”
Tears are already leaking from the corners of my eyes. Relief. I shudder with it. “Yes.”
The bed creaks as he settles beside me and then the first crack of palm to ass vibrates through my body. It’s a sharp heat and then it fades. A second crack, lower this time. A third, to the left. They layer together until my ass is all stinging heat and throbbing. I’m crying in earnest now. From the sharpness of the pain, the sweetness of the ache.
He spanks me again and again. On the end of every blow is a reverb that shoots straight to my clit, the pleasure on the other side of torment. I can feel moisture gathering between my lips every time I squirm and sob into the bedspread.
Everything feels swollen and ready. My pussy, my ass, my clit. God, my clit feels so hard I might come just from this. And I cry some more at the thought of not having Noah’s tongue. I’m crying for orgasms I’ll have and orgasms I won’t. I’m crying just for the sake of crying and it feels amazing. I’m nothing but feelings, dancing on the edge of Noah’s touch. Tender and brutal.
“I’m ruined.” I cry out. But I’m not. Not nearly. I’ve got miles to go before Noah ruins me fully, drives me completely wild, wrecks me. I don’t know if we’ll have enough time together to get that far, but I’m ruined enough to make him happy in this moment.
He releases my hair. “Let me see.”
I roll over, wincing when my sore bottom lands against the bed, and he sucks in a ragged breath. I can only imagine how I look, but if I were to guess based on his expression alone, I’d think I was more beautiful than I’d ever been. He kisses my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips. “So proud,” he whispers.
He pushes my shirt up and kisses the tops of my breasts. He yanks at my bra cups until my nipples are exposed and kisses them too. Licks them until they’re hard and aching. I squirm, jerking my hips up. Asking with my body for what he promised me. My reward. He kisses down my belly, darting his tongue around my navel, teasing.
And then he’s kneeling at the edge of the bed, forcing my legs over his shoulders. There’s no more teasing. Just more torment. His hot breath panting against the lips of my sex, a caress of its own. The swipe of his tongue. Once, twice, three times. Flicking the edge of that desperate bundle of nerves and opening my folds more with every pass. Slow and decadent. Electric. His hand flattens my belly, pulling me tight, opening me further. I watch him lap at me, his tongue curled, rolling against my clit until I’m bucking and squeezing his head with my thighs. Every movement spears fresh heat across my ass and adds to the fire Noah’s stoking with every swirl and nibble.
He slips three fingers inside me, easy as anything, and stokes the fire from the inside too. I’m so wet and ready. The curve of his fingers, the stroke, drives me closer to the edge. Drives me over it, until I’m less than human. Until I’m nothing but blind need and hunger and yes God yes. He sucks and flicks and drags his teeth over my clit until I do see stars. Until there’s nothing in the universe but my pussy and Noah’s mouth and the supernova we make together.
I cry again. I sob while he kisses my thighs, my belly, my breasts, my lips, my eyelids. I weep while he loves my body back into existence.
His gentle touch is more brutal than any whip. He lashes me with everything I cannot have. Forever and always are things he’s not built for. He’s told me as much. It’s not love. It can’t be love. Not after everything we’ve been through. I remind myself of that over and over while my body trembles with the aftershocks.
Chapter Four
Noah’s rough fingers are threaded through mine as he leads me up a tidy brick walkway. He holds my hand tightly, as if he can protect me with just his touch. But I can’t figure out what I need protecting from in this suburban utopia.
It doesn’t matter, I don’t need to know a danger to brace for it.
I spot a tire swing swaying from a tree branch in the side yard and dusty pink roses climbing a trellis beside the porch. “Is this where you grew up?”
The lawn on either side of the brick walkway is storybook green and dotted with purple clover. A little unruly without edging into overgrown. Somebody cares about this lawn. Somebody cares about the house at the end of the walk, with its freshly painted shutters and gingerbread trim.
The front door is a cheery red. Bright. Shiny. The color of a drop of blood on the tip of a spindle.
“Yeah, my old man could’ve lived in a one room shack, but he bought this place for my mom when she was pregnant with me. They did the whole nuclear family thing until I was ten and my sister was two. Then it all went to hell and my mom skipped town.”
It’s hard to remember that these badass bikers didn’t spring out of an oil stain on a garage floor fully formed and ready to drag their knuckles. I picture a ten year old Noah pushing his baby sister on the swing, waiting for their mom to come back, and my heart nearly breaks. I picture a teenage Noah with milk mustache and prospect vest practicing his scary face in the mirror, and my heart breaks again.
But I can’t be sorry for his childhood. “I never had anything like this, Noah. My shithole apartment was an improvement on what I grew up with.”
“You don’t have to go back there if you don’t want. You can stay with the club, even if…”
He doesn’t finish and I don’t ask him to. I know what he was going to say. Even if I’m gone. And by gone he means dead. But I don’t want the club without Noah. He has to know that too. The sun hangs high in the sky, but the porch light still flickers on. Noah lets go of my hand and pulls some keys from his pocket. We stand there on the front step of his father’s house for several long seconds in a parody of the end of a first date. Only this isn’t an ending. I’m not sure of much, but I’m sure of that.
He pushes my hair out of my eyes, trailing fingertips over my brow and along my jaw. “I just need to see her room and then I’ll take you to the safe house.”
“I don’t want to go to the safe house. If you’re not going to be there—” I shake my head “—I don’t belong.”
“You belong where I put you.”
“Even you can’t shove a square peg into a round hole.”
“The fuck I can’t. But you are not a square peg, Star. You liked Drew, didn’t you? She’ll be there.”
“It doesn’t matter if I liked her or not. The club could decide to kill you tomorrow. How can I possibly feel safe with them? How can you?”
“You met the club at its most broken and I’m sorry for that, but I have to trust it will be right again. I believe in that brotherhood, baby. I have to. It’s all I have.”
He pushes the door open and pulls me inside. The living room smells like cinnamon potpourri and pot. Not quite so storybook as I’d imagined. I wonder if the rainbow colored afghan spread over the back of the sofa is a remnant of Noah’s mother, or his sister’s influence. I can’t see his dad putting it there.
A series of school pictures graces the hallway. Noah’s start with baby portraits and end around tenth grade. Jules’ start at kindergarten and end with a cap and gown. Their transition had to have been rough, but at least Jules had made it to the finish line. I wonder if Noah had just been too cool for yearboo
k photos. I touch the tassel draped over the graduation photo’s frame. I’m pretty sure of the answer, but I ask anyway. “Where’s yours?”
“Yeah, school wasn’t really for me. How about you?”
“I finished. Even thought I might take some classes at the community college, but that didn’t pan out. Not with my hours at the diner.”
“Jules started classes this fall, but I think she majored in getting wasted with a minor in advanced napping.”
A pulse of anger slices through my sadness. I don’t even know her but it hurts me that she’d waste an opportunity I’d have killed to have. I choke back the inappropriate jealousy. Her life isn’t all sunshine and roses…even if her front yard is exactly that.
“Do you still have a bedroom here?”
“We don’t have time to christen that bed.”
“That’s not what I had in mind. Can’t a girl get a peek at your power ranger sheets? Or are you afraid it’ll ruin your image?”
“Baby, this isn’t an image. This is who I am. Besides, my sheets were Wrestlemania.”
“Of course they were.”
He pushes open the door at the end of the hall and a cloud of cucumber melon body spray rolls out. “God, did she bathe in that shit?”
I sniff. The chemical fragrance makes my nose itch, but I recognize something darker underneath. “She was hiding her own pot habit. Your dad probably wouldn’t have noticed, considering his.”
Her bed is rumpled and her dresser is covered with cosmetics bottles and folded papers. It’s kind of a mess, but the type of mess usually left behind by a teenage girl. The only clue that she’d been taken was the playing card whoever took her left behind.
“It doesn’t make sense, Star. If the Jokers took her for leverage, they’d have asked for something in return by now.”
“Could it be a game? Could someone have screwed up?”
“I don’t know enough about their operation to be sure. They’re a young club. Only active for fifteen years. No history means no one really can predict what will happen next. Knowing they’ve been pushing into our territory…it’s not good. I don’t have a clue who all the players are.”
