by Jessie Cooke
26
Gunner woke up some time later to the feeling of soft hair in his face and warm arms and legs wrapped around him. Since the only window in the room was boarded up, he had no idea if it was day or night. The pain in his side and his shoulder didn’t even compare to the sweet sexy feeling of Tamara’s body in his arms. He had held her until she cried herself to sleep, the whole time blaming himself and beating himself up. Gunner wasn’t sure why Tamara wasn’t angry with him. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, that was for sure, and Gunner was surprised at how sexy he found that. But it also scared him. He kept waiting for her to wake up and suddenly go off on him. He expected her to tell him that she wished she’d never met him. He wanted to make this all up to her somehow, but he had no idea how or if he could ever do that. He was surprised by how badly he wanted that. He’d never spent much time thinking about the ripple effects of his behavior before, and he had certainly never looked as far as the next hour into the future with a woman, but the one in his arms made him want to think about it all, and that scared him.
He bent his head slightly and inhaled the light floral fragrance of her hair as she stirred and wiggled closer to him. He tightened his hold on her and she tipped her head back and let the hair fall out of her face and her lashes flutter open. She looked surprised to see him at first and then slightly embarrassed. She buried her face back down in his chest and he brushed his lips through her hair. They lay there quietly again for a while, and Gunner listened to the sounds of her breathing and tried to imagine what she was thinking. She didn’t make him guess for long. The next time she looked up at him, he could see the same desire that he was feeling reflected back in her eyes.
“Hey, Blue-Eyes, how about a kiss?” she whispered in a sleepy voice. God, she was sexy. Gunner caught himself, though, and before attacking her he asked:
“Are you sure about this? Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine…horny…”
He laughed softly and bent his head down and caught her lips with his. He kissed gently at first, afraid of hurting her where her lip was split and bruised on that one side. She was the one who deepened the kiss, letting her tongue slide into his mouth, exploring and caressing at the same time. Gunner lost himself in the kiss, using his tongue to touch and taste and feel everything he could reach. She used her hands to explore his bare chest and pull herself into him even tighter. He slid his hand up underneath the thin dress she was wearing and explored the soft warm skin underneath. She was the one to break the kiss, and Gunner’s lips took a few seconds to stop searching for hers when they were gone. She slid her lips along his jaw until she reached his ear. She let her tongue slide along the outside and when she reached the lobe she sucked it gently into her mouth. Gunner’s body felt like it was on fire and his cock began to ache. She whispered his name breathlessly into his ear, and that was when he nearly lost it. He forgot he was hooked up to an IV and tugged at it as he tried to slide her body up on top of his.
She sat up and smiled down at him. Her pretty eyes were still red and swollen from crying, and the dark blue bruise stained one whole side of her face, but she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “Be still,” she said. “I’ll do the work.”
Gunner wasn’t about to argue with that. He smiled back at her and moved his good hand up, out of her way. She straddled him and slipped the dress over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and his first impulse was to reach up and touch her beautiful breasts. She gave her head a slight shake and he stayed put, happily, as she lowered a breast to his mouth. He let his tongue come out and taste it, gently at first, but the hunger he felt for her was too deep. Before long he had the entire nipple between his lips, sucking and licking and making her moan and squirm around on top of him. She was careful to avoid the wound on his side, but that put her right over his crotch area. They were only separated by a pair of thin shorts and a tiny lace thong. He wanted to be inside of her so badly he felt physical pain, but he continued to devour her breasts until she sat up again.
He watched in anticipation of the ecstasy that was to come as she slowly slid down his body, taking the shorts he had on with her. She tossed them aside and then repositioned herself over his throbbing cock. She leaned down and kissed him on the mouth again, a deep, sexy kiss, sucking on his tongue and licking his lips…almost enough to make him come then and there. Then she slid down his body like a snake, kissing and sucking on his neck, licking down his chest and across his nipples, sucking on the sensitive skin of his abs and softly kissing the area around his wound. Gunner’d had a lot of sex, but rarely in a bed and rarely with someone who had more than fifteen minutes. He’d never been touched and tasted so intimately, and his head felt like it might explode from the stimulation of every part of his body.
When she reached his cock, she wrapped her hand around it and lifted it up. He had to concentrate all his energy on not coming in her warm hand. Then she bent her head down and let her tongue come out and trace along the bulbous head. He let out a long groan as she continued down the shaft, licking and tasting him like he was as sweet as he knew that she was. She licked back up the shaft and then opened her full lips and sucked just the head into her mouth. She licked all around it while she sucked. He was moaning loudly now—slightly afraid the nurse would hear him and come running in. After a few minutes of that, she engulfed the entire thing, taking him all the way back into her throat and swallowing. He grabbed her hair and held on while she bobbed up and down on him. She looked so sexy with her pretty ass in the air and her lips wrapped around him. He watched her for a while and reveled in the amazing feelings until he absolutely couldn’t take it any longer. He used his hold on her hair to pull her up. She grinned at him and licked her lips.
“I need to be inside of you. I don’t have a condom…” Before he finished his sentence, she’d slid the piece of lace to the side and pressed her wet pussy lips down onto the tip of his cock. His mind was completely devoid of any other thought besides how good that felt, and it only got better as she lowered herself down and her soft wet tunnel enveloped his hard cock. He put his good hand on her round ass and held onto her as she began to move up and down on him. She looked incredibly sexy, and he felt like the fire burning inside was hot enough to melt steel. He let his hand slide up and over the sexy curve of her hip, along her back, and up to her shoulder. He grabbed a handful of her hair and when he tugged on it, she let out a wild little sound and began to ride him even harder. Each thrust of her hips brought him into her as deep as he could go, and just before he knew he couldn’t hold back another second, he tugged at her hair again, pulling her down into a hot kiss. They moaned and gasped for air as they kissed, and the most incredible orgasm that Gunner had ever felt in his life washed over him. He felt it in every part of his body, and from the sounds that Tamara was making as she breathed out his name over and over, she was feeling the same thing.
When her body began to relax and she dropped down on top of him, he held in the grunt from the pain in his side. He didn’t want her to know he was hurting because then she’d move her naked body off his, and he wasn’t ready to let her go.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
He chuckled. “Okay is not the word I would use. That was…fuck…”
He felt her body shake. “Better than Mary Beth?”
“Mary who?”
She kissed his neck. “I should get off you. You need to rest. I’m a bad nurse.”
“Baby, if all nurses were like you, men would be shooting themselves every day.”
She pulled her head up so she could look at his face. She was about to say something when there was a sudden shaking and pounding on the door. “Tammy, are you in there! Why the hell is this door locked?” Randall Covey was banging on the door and Gunner was still attached to his daughter. His only thought was that this was how he was going to die, but what a way to go. He still couldn’t stop smiling and Tammy had folded herself into his chest trying to suffocate her
giggles. “Do I have to bust this piece of shit down?”
She groaned and pulled her head back up. “Dad, stop it. I was sleeping. Just a second, I’m coming.” She kissed his lips quickly and slipped down off the bed. She picked up Gunner’s shorts and tossed them on the bed. She didn’t look worried at all. Now that her body wasn’t pressing into his, Gunner was seeing his life flash before his eyes. He stuffed the shorts under the sheet as she pulled on her dress and smoothed down her hair. She walked casually over to the door and pulled it open. “Hey, Dad.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? We just got you back and then you sneak out in the middle of the damned night.”
“I told you I wanted to see Gunner. You should have brought me to see him.”
“I hope you got a good look because I’m about to kill the little motherfucker.”
Tamara looked like a child next to Randall’s bulk, but she pressed her small body into his big one and said, “You aren’t going to lay a hand on him. If it weren’t for him I’d be turning tricks in Michoacán by now. You want to hurt the man that saved your daughter’s life? I thought you of all people would have more respect than that.”
Randall glared over at Gunner. Gunner held his gaze and Randall finally said, “I don’t trust him.”
Tamara put her hand on Randall’s chest and urged him backwards out the door, and before she closed it she looked over at Gunner and blew him a kiss, and then she said, “Too bad, Daddy, I do.”
27
After Randall and Tamara left, the nurse came in and tried to give Gunner a bed bath. He shooed her away and then half an hour later, trying pitifully to remember the Spanish words Dax had used the day before, he called her back to ask for something for pain. She gave him a disapproving look, like she could hardly stand his uncleanliness, but she eventually gave in and put something in his IV that washed away the sharp pain he was feeling in his side and shoulder. He drifted off to sleep again and the next time he woke up it was to the sound of Cody clearing his throat, loudly. He opened his eyes, and Cody and Jimmy were staring down at him. It was not even close to the pretty picture he’d woken up to earlier. “The van is here,” Cody said.
“Oh, okay.” Gunner tried to sit up and Jimmy said:
“Wait a second, Einstein, the nurse is coming to unhook you from all of that.”
Jimmy didn’t like him any more than Cody did. Gunner wasn’t sure why, but he also wasn’t sure he gave a shit. “Hey, is there a guy in the van with a long beard, covered in tats from his neck down? I think his road name is 8Ball.”
Jimmy and Cody both smiled knowingly. “He’s here,” Cody said. “He said he can’t wait to see you.”
Gunner looked from Cody’s smiling face to Jimmy’s and back to Cody’s again. “Y’all can’t wait to see him kick my ass, can you?”
They looked at each other and then Cody said, “You know, Gunnie, nothing would give me more pleasure, but our prez says we have to cover your ass, so unfortunately we’re not going to get to see it today.”
The “Gunnie” really annoyed him. Gunner snorted and said, “You would have seen me kick his tatted-up ass.”
They both laughed. “Yeah, we heard about the fight at the bar.”
“I was drunk.”
“Then there was that fight in the barn.”
“I was trying to lose that one.”
“Wasn’t he unconscious when we got to the ferry?” Jimmy said, looking at Cody.
“I’d been shot…twice!”
The two men laughed. “Always have an excuse, don’t you, Gunnie?”
“It’s Gunner, and fuck you guys!”
They left the room, still laughing. By the time the nurse unhooked Gunner from his IV and he struggled to put the clothes on that Cody had left on a chair for him, he’d worked himself up into fight mode. They didn’t know who they were messing with. He wasn’t part of their fucking club…. yet. And besides, he was their president’s brother. He was the son of a legend. He didn’t owe them any fucking respect and he could kick both of their asses. He put on his boots and tried to storm out, looking tough and pissed. The first thing that happened was, he was stunned to see he wasn’t in a hospital but in the back of a Mexican restaurant that was open to the busy street. There were chickens hanging from the ceiling, beheaded and defrocked, and the smell of blood and grease was overwhelming. He made it as far as the bar that faced out to the street when he ran into a man with a burro, waiting for a shot of tequila. Either the man or the burro hadn’t had a bath in a very long time, and that smell, mixed with the dead poultry, just as he caught sight of another customer sucking the worm out of a bottle of tequila and holding it in his teeth for all to see, sent his world into a spin. Nausea assaulted him from every direction. He dropped to his knees on the dirty wood floor and he didn’t even notice the steel-toed boots before he began to retch. He didn’t have any food in his belly, but there was plenty of liquid and bile and it sprayed out all over the boots. He had his head down trying to fight the dizziness, but it was so hot and sweat was pouring off him. He felt people watching him, and he willed himself to get a handle on it just as he felt blood seeping through his t-shirt where one of his stitches must have come loose. When he finally pulled his head up, he was looking into the dark eyes of the one man in Mexico who already wanted to kill him.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You fuck my woman and then puke on my boots and I’m not supposed to kick your ass?”
Gunner was still trying to find his voice when he heard Cody say, “Your VP and our prez said hands off, 8Ball.”
If he had a gun at that moment, he might have just put it to his own head. 8Ball was glaring down at him from what looked like seven feet high. Gunner didn’t remember him being so tall. “He can find his own fucking ride.” 8Ball spat out the words. Gunner still felt dizzy but he focused on the poorly tattooed black eight ball on the guy’s thick neck, as he slowly brought his good arm up and wiped the vomit off his lips. He looked the tall man in the eye, and with as much of a smile as he could manage, he said:
“I’ll just ride your mama on home, 8Ball. She’s waiting for me over there.” He tossed his head toward the man with the stinky burro, and that was all he’d remember later; the lights went out again.
28
Gunner spent the first three days at the clubhouse, mostly sleeping. He hadn’t seen Tamara, or Randall, or Tommy, or 8Ball. He was thankful for the last one. A different woman came in and out of his room throughout the day, bringing him medicine or food or something to drink. Billy and Patty were in and out to visit him. Billy told him that Cody and Jimmy had taken off back to Massachusetts, but Randall had promised Dax that Gunner, Patty, and Billy would be protected while they were gone. Surprisingly, Patty seemed to be acclimating to the place. She told Gunner they were letting her help in the bar and she kept talking about a retired patch named Louie. In the decade that Gunner had known Patty he’d seen her flirt with many men, but he’d never seen her eyes light up the way they did when she was talking about Louie. Billy seemed almost as happy. He was making his way through the club girls and taking advantage of the free-flowing weed and alcohol. Neither of them seemed worried at all about being displaced from their lives and locked down. Gunner on the other hand felt like he was about to lose his mind being trapped behind four walls. He kept asking about Tamara, but Billy and Patty had very little information. He began to get slightly paranoid, thinking there was something going on that they weren’t telling him.
It was around noon on the third day when he decided he was going to find out what was going on for himself. He waited until the girl that dropped off his lunch had left before getting dressed in the same clothes he’d worn on the trip from Mexico. He went into the little bathroom attached to his room and dug through the drawer where there were brand new, still-in-the-box toiletries and supplies. He found what he was looking for, way in the back, a plastic box filled with elastic hairbands. He pulled his dreads back into a ponytail at the nape
of his neck and splashed cold water on his face. He hadn’t really looked at himself since he’d been there. He had an almost full beard and mustache from five or six days of not shaving. He thought it gave him somewhat of an edge, so instead of shaving with one of the new razors he’d found in the drawer, he decided to leave it. He brushed his teeth and left it at that.
He went back into the bedroom and cracked open the door, looking both ways down the hall like a criminal escaping from prison. When he didn’t see or hear anyone, he ventured out, closing the door softly behind him. He stood still for a few seconds trying to get his bearings and figure out which way to go. He could hear music coming from one direction and nothing from the other, so he followed the music. The hallway was long, and all the doors along both sides were closed. He was braced for what he’d say if one of them opened. Did they all know he was here? Would they think he was an intruder and shoot first and ask questions later? He had no idea. He was well aware that he was in a place where he was surrounded by dangerous men, and he’d have to tread softly if he wanted to stay alive and in one piece.
