by A. J. Downey
I looked down at her and smoothed my hands over the satin encasing her body and said; “You wanted to ask me something?”
She gasped, taking a moment to catch her breath and murmured, “I want you to take me to prom…”
I laughed, “All you ever have to do is ask, Angel. I can’t deny you anything…” and it was true.
Chapter 28
Maren
Spring break felt like a long time coming. We were starting it a little early by taking off the Friday before our official week off from school was supposed to begin. It was Nox’s club’s annual club-only spring lake run. Nox had convinced me that Sage and I should go, that it would be good for us to get away for a bit. With Evy and Mandy all but closing Soul Fuel down for it, it wasn’t like I had anywhere else to be.
Sage was excited, although a little less so when he found out he was riding in the van behind everything with Mandy, Melody, and their babies. Melody couldn’t ride anyways with how pregnant she was. She had three or so months to go? Due in the summer sometime, I think July or August. I hadn’t asked, and couldn’t remember if it’d been mentioned.
“Ready?” Nox asked from behind me, his hands smoothing over my denim clad hips, pulling me back against his chest. I rolled my head back against his shoulder and reached up, cupping the side of his face and standing on tiptoe. He bent down and kissed me softly, a cheer and whistles and no few cat calls going up around us. I laughed lightly and his hands slid around me, causing me to shiver with anticipation.
“Gross,” Sage muttered and walked past us to the van. Reaver’s son, Connor, laughed and got into the last row of seating behind my brother, sitting down next to him.
“I don’t need to remind you to behave for Mandy and Mel, do I?” I asked and Sage rolled his eyes.
“You just did,” he said and Connor elbowed him lightly.
“She’s a parent now, they’ve assimilated her into their evil cabal. She has to say shit like that it’s in their rulebook.”
“Connor!” Hayden barked and Connor grinned wide.
“Yes, Stepmother dearest?” he said, a comedic twinkle in his blue eyes, just like his father’s.
“Eighteen, remember that.” She said coolly.
“If you can’t remember that,” Reaver said, “then at least remember you’re near Noah and Eden, and they’re at that age they can pick that shit up.”
Hayden elbowed Reaver with a scowl and he yelped, “Ow! Hey, what’d I say?” he asked.
I laughed lightly and cuddled back into Nox who kissed the side of my neck. He asked me, “You all set?” and I smiled, feeling lighter than air, loved and in love; and totally excited to get on the road.
“I can’t wait,” I said, and he chuckled darkly, the sound making me shiver.
“I can’t wait for it either,” he murmured into my ear and I closed my eyes.
Life wasn’t exactly perfect. When I say that, I mean, with being responsible for Sage, and both Nox and I’s work schedules, sex and intimacy didn’t exactly get to happen often or spontaneously. It was hard for us to hook up. We’d only managed to a couple of times so far, and I realized that adulting, and being an adult – seriously wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Though I wouldn’t trade having my brother with me for the world, it gave me even more serious pause before any decision making regarding having kids of my own. Not only when it came to the genetics, but because as selfish as it sounded, I really wanted to have a chance at a life of my own for a minute without having someone totally depend on me.
I looked back to Sage, sitting in the backseat laughing and talking with Connor and an overwhelming sense of guilt and resentment flooded me. It was a hard combination of emotions to deal with and so I did what I did best in those moments when they came up – I shoved them down and ignored them as hard as I could. Because, you know, bottling everything up was totally healthy.
Nox had let me go and was setting about doing last checks on gear and making sure everything was lashed down and strapped tightly before we set off on our weekend adventure with the club. I was so focused on how the denim of his jeans hugged his ass I completely missed Dani slide up beside me.
“You okay?” she asked, half hiding behind a sweep of her black hair. I nodded and plastered on my ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ smile. She tilted her head curiously to one side and it made her man, Red-Thirteen stop what he was doing by his classic bike to look over.
“You good, Baby?”
“I’m fine,” she called back over her shoulder, but her eyes never left mine.
“She doesn’t believe you,” a soft male voice said from my other side and I looked over to Blue, who gave me his boyish grin. I blinked, I couldn’t remember ever hearing him speak before, but he did it again, when he said, “I don’t believe you either.” He took the sting out of his words by smiling wider and punctuating them with a wink of his light gray eyes, several shades lighter than Nox’s steel gray ones.
“If you need to talk about any of it, you know we’re here…” Dani said, and I turned my attention back to her.
I was completely unnerved by the two of them at this point and just managed a feeble, “Yeah, sure… okay.”
Dani smiled apologetically, “I don’t mean to creep you out,” she said. “I just see it, you know?”
“See what?” I asked.
“The adults in your life are so worried about Sage and his development, they’ve completely forgotten about you, haven’t they?” she asked.
I nearly startled, and found myself nodding before I could stop myself. She’d gotten right to the heart of my resentment. Sometimes I simply felt so taken for granted, I couldn’t even… I didn’t think anyone but Nox knew, and while he tried his very best – for the most part, he was right in the trenches with me when it came to Sage. It was less lonely for sure, but not something we talked about.
“Come find me sometime this weekend, I think you need to vent,” she said and gave me a quick hug before going over to Thirteen. The look he gave her was the same look Nox gave me, and it warmed me down to my toes to see it.
I had no doubt that I was loved, and that meant so very much to me. Another unsettling stab of guilt pierced my heart, only this time, for a different reason. I suddenly felt bad for any resentment that I harbored knowing how incredibly lucky I was to be so loved and by such a good man…
“Maren, you good, Angel?” I looked up and smiled, and felt like I had absolutely zero handle on my emotions lately. I hid it by nodding and went to Nox, wrapping my arms around his waist and hugging myself tightly against his chest. His arms went around me, and he tossed my long braid over my shoulder to lay down the leather covering my back.
“I love you,” he said suddenly, and I smiled with nothing forced about it this time.
“I love you, too. What was that for?” I asked.
“Just something in your eyes, it looked like you needed to hear it,” he murmured.
“I did,” I confessed and went up on tiptoe, pressing my lips to his. He smiled against my mouth and gave the guys making comments about his display of affection the finger. I laughed and we all turned to listen as Dragon’s voice boomed over the small crowd of bikers and bikes.
“Listen up!” he shouted, and we did, with rapt attention. Dragon was just that kind of man and leader.
***
“Hey,” I looked up from where I was washing my hands in the small bathroom’s sink, just off our room in the great lodge.
“What’s up?” I asked and felt a shiver of anticipation as Nox let his eyes roam over the back of my body. I stared at him in the mirror above the sink while he shuddered as if being released from a dream.
“Dinner’s not for a few hours,” he drawled, and I smiled.
“I should hope not, we just ate at the diner not too long ago.”
“Meh, usually us guys are hungry by the time we get from there to here and dinner is being served up, but something delayed the lodge getting on the food…�
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I turned, and he stopped talking, letting his beautiful gray eyes give the front of my body the same treatment they’d given the back a moment before. I felt my chest squeeze down tight with want, making it hard to draw air, and asked, “What do you want to do to kill time?”
“I thought,” he said, taking my hands in his, drawing me closer, into the protective curve of his body, hands finding my hips, sliding around to my lower back, delving beneath the hem of my shirt.
I closed my eyes, the light, lingering touch of his long fingers against the warm skin of my lower back like heaven as he finished his sentence, “We could talk about what was bugging you before we hit the road…”
It wasn’t what I expected and it startled me out of my enjoyment, putting me slightly on the defensive.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I murmured and Nox sighed softly.
“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Baby. Dani saw it, and when she did, I did… I just feel bad I didn’t pick up on it sooner. It’s okay, you can talk to me… what’s up?”
He stared me in the eyes, his expression so intent and sincere, it made me swallow hard. I both ached to tell him, to let it out and to feel better, and feared what his reaction would be. If it were anyone else, anywhere else, it would likely be yet another minimization of my feelings. Like at school, whenever I complained about the bullying and abuse… Told I needed to get a thicker skin, told that ‘boys will be boys’ and to ‘lighten up’ or that I was too sensitive.
Nox closed his eyes and rested his forehead against mine, patiently waiting me out. I licked my suddenly dry lips and made my confession, “I feel guilty,” I whispered.
“For what?” his voice gentle.
“I… I don’t want kids,” I said.
“We talked about this, Babes. I’m okay with that.”
“I know, I know, but I feel guilty because I don’t want kids because… because…”
“Because why?” he asked when I was silent too long.
“Because I want to have a life of my own,” I whimpered, sniffling, my eyes welling up with tears. “I know that sounds incredibly selfish, and I love Sage, I really do, but it’s harder than I expected, you know? I feel like I am missing out on so much and I know it isn’t fair to think like that –”
“Shh,” he slipped his hands out from the back of my shirt and brought them to cup my cheeks, smoothing the moisture out from under my eyes with his thumbs. “It’s totally okay to think like that, Angel. You’re human, and in the grand scheme of things, you’ve been dealt a seriously shitty hand. You’ve been cheated, and you’re making the best of it, Baby. You’re allowed to have all of these feelings and more about it and that doesn’t make you selfish. If anyone is selfish, I’ll tell you who is; it’s these fucking people who expect you to do all of the things and don’t even bother to check in with you to make sure you’re doing okay.”
He pulled me tight against his chest and rested his chin on top of my head. I sniffed and cuddled in closer, taking the comfort he was offering even as he sighed and said, “I should have seen this coming. I should have asked, but I figured you were doing okay with it, you know? That we’ve been in it together. I forget how good you are at hiding feelings that might make other people upset.”
I jerked back and looked at him, “Why would you say that?”
His shoulders dropped and he smiled sadly, “Been around the block more than a few times, Angel. Had enough state shrinks and been around enough ‘troubled youth’ councilors to know what’s what. How long your ex-boy-toy been fucking with you? How long was your dad sick? It all amounts to the same thing, ‘cept worse because you’re a woman.”
“Worse? Why worse?” I asked, suspicious that I already knew the answer, yet still surprised he would give it voice.
“Shit, Angel, look at the world today… As a girl, you get pissed off and all dudes do is go right to ‘oh, what’re you on the rag or something?’ Never mind if you have a valid reason to be pissed off. Look at you, your dad sick… how many times did Sage irritate you or piss you off and you just let it slide, stuffed it down, so you wouldn’t upset your pops?” he asked.
I felt my body relax as I listened to him and smiled a bit wryly, “A feminist biker, isn’t that an oxymoron or something?” I asked.
“It’s just common fucking sense, Angel. Ain’t nothin’ special about it, plus you think I give a fuck about whatever stereotypes citizens put on me?”
I laughed a little, and shook my head, “No.”
“Listen,” he took me gently by the shoulders and pushed me back just enough to make eye contact with me. “Don’t you ever try to validate your feelings with me, you get me? You feel something, you feel it. You don’t have to justify it. It’s fucked up, and a citizen thing and you don’t have to be a part of that world if you don’t want to. Our world is right here, waiting for you with open arms if you want it.”
“Are you asking me to marry you or something?” I asked incredulous because this was starting to sound bizarrely like a proposal of some kind.
“No, not yet,” he said with a smile and I think my heart skipped a beat.
“Yet? You’ve thought about it?”
“You’re too young, Angel, but I’m serious; my offer is a real one if you want it.”
“What are you asking me, Nox?”
He stared at me intently, and licked his lips, “I was going to wait, but now is as good a time as any…” he stepped away from me, and back into the room and I was drawn as if by strings, compelled to follow.
He went and knelt by the saddlebags he’d leaned against the luggage rack by the distressed wooden dresser. I leaned a shoulder against the bathroom door frame and watched as he unpacked it neatly on the floor, stacking everything off to the side as he went for, seemingly, the very bottom of the bag.
He pulled out a fabric wrapped bundle, the material wrapped gently around something soft. He stood up and turned, considering the bundle in his hands for a long minute before looking up, eyes locking with mine. He held it out to me and I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry.
Nox had never looked so serious and I felt the gravity of what was about to transpire. That if I took that bundle, whatever decision lay inside would change things. I took it, and turned, laying it on the bed with a mixture of reverence and fear. I didn’t know what lay inside, the Ark of the Covenant or a viper poised to strike; either or seemed just as likely at this point.
“Are you okay?” he asked, voice deep, falling into the moment like a stone into a deep well.
“A little scared, you?”
“Yeah, me too.”
“It’s going to change everything, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Do you know what it is?” he asked.
“I have an idea,” I murmured, and it was true, I did.
I stared down at the light cloth, a wrap of some kind, and with a hard swallow to get past the lump in my throat, lifted the thin fabric aside. Leather, black as pitch, kissed my gaze first and I felt my eyes well. I knew what it was, and I knew what it meant.
I touched the embroidered name patch on the breast that read ‘Angel’ and with trembling fingers, lifted the vest, turning it so I could see the back. Sure enough, there they were the rockers that proclaimed ‘Property of Nox’ just like the rest of the Ol’ Ladies of the Sacred Hearts Motorcycle Club.
Nox was asking me to be his, and I wanted it. I wanted him so badly… This was a proposal, albeit one with far more weight and importance than just a mere ring could convey. I wasn’t a stupid girl. He’d explained it once, what property meant to these men, and it was a lesson deeply ingrained. This meant far more to a man of the club than any civilian or citizen could fathom.
“Yes,” I murmured, the word falling from my lips on an exhale of pure relief.
“Yes?” he asked.
I turned my head and looked up at him. “Yes,” I repeated and let the happy tears fall.
He smiled, the happiest, most relieved smil
e I’d ever seen him make and then his mouth was on mine, his hands back beneath the hem of my shirt, caressing my heated skin.
I held his face to mine between my hands and returned his kiss with every bit of fire I held in my veins. He turned me and lifted, setting me on top of the dresser, pulling my legs around his waist which I clamped tightly around him. He pulled his shirt from the back and we broke apart with a gasp so he could get it over his head.
I stared, letting my gaze drink him in. Every inch of corded muscle, every hill, and valley, the dark colors inked under the skin of his left arm, the crows and roses so lifelike, as if the birds would burst into flight from beneath his skin at any moment. I loved it, I loved him, every bit of him, from the sight of him to the smell of him, to how his voice sent shivers down my spine.
I couldn’t fathom ever wanting to belong to anyone else, and I had no doubt in any part of me that this was both real and permanent. Nox had indelibly marked my very soul with his brand and I was proud to wear the mark of such a kind and generous man. He pushed my jacket off my shoulders, smoothing his hands down my arms until it was free, letting it carelessly fall to the dresser and slide to the floor.
We lifted my shirt together, and he laughed a little when my fingers immediately went to his belt as he awkwardly kicked off his boots. He lifted one of my legs and braced the sole of one of my boots against the top of his thigh, working the knots in the laces free. He repeated the process on the other side until my feet were free of the leather. His fingers going for the waistband of my jeans.
We undressed each other, and with each article of clothing we managed to discard the hungrier, the more desperate and savage we became in our endeavors to fit into one another.
Finally, the both of us nude, I pressed my body up against his, both in a bid to be close and to warm myself against him. He bent at the knees slightly, kissing me fiercely, his long, strong fingers kneading my ass.
He lifted me again, and I again wrapped my legs around his waist. The hard length of him throbbing against my body turned me on like no other as I buried my hands in the softness of the back of his hair. He set my ass on the cool wood of the dresser which was the perfect height for this and tore away from my mouth just long enough to tear open the wrapper of the condom we needed to make this happen.
