Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7)

by Susan Fanetti

  Holy fuck. She snapped her mouth closed and locked her jaw down. Those words had come out without her thinking them, certainly without her planning them or wanting them said. She wasn’t quite sure where they’d come from, but she knew why she didn’t want him to ask.

  Caleb went still. He hadn’t been moving, but now, it was like his blood and breath had stopped, too. “Why not?”

  He stared hard at her. Under the parking lot lights, his eyes gleamed, and she knew if he asked, she’d tell him the truth—and she didn’t even know if it was the truth. How could she possibly love him already?

  No. It wasn’t that. It was her careening, chaotic head, mixing things up, pushing her too fast down the hill. Much too fast.

  But he didn’t push. He let his question fade away, and he didn’t ask the other. He seemed to know the answer, and that seemed to be enough. Maybe it was too fast for him, too. Of course it was.

  “Okay. We should get out of here. You still want ice cream?”

  “No. I want to go home and use our hard-won condoms.” She took the tape from his hand. “And I am going to keep this forever.”

  ~oOo~

  As soon as they were off his bike, they were at each other, devouring each other, stumbling in a writhing knot into the house, down the hall, around the corner, down another hall, bouncing off walls, tearing at each other’s clothes.

  When they finally arrived in Cecily’s room, and her legs hit the bed, they paused and took a breath, watching each other, reading each other. Caleb’s eyes were shining black stones. Onyx. Obsidian. His lips gleamed wetly from the wild grappling of their mouths, and his breath blew in soft gusts.

  He reached back and pulled the tie out of her hair, gently but insistently, and she shook her head to arrange her mop in something she hoped was attractive. She pulled the tie from his braid and drew her finger through the twined hanks. He shook his head, and his hair fell perfectly into place, like a velvet curtain released.

  Her hands dug into that black mass. “You have the most amazing hair. It’s like a torrent of black ink.”

  He grinned and lifted a tangled lock of her hair. “So do you. It’s like holding fire in my hand. Let’s get naked, Ciss. I want to get inside you again.”

  Sounded good to her. She slid her hands under his kutte, over his shoulders, and pushed the leather away. As it slid down his arms, he caught it. He dug the box of condoms out of a pocket and dropped it on the bed, then tossed his kutte to the armchair in the corner; Bulls didn’t let their kuttes touch the ground or the floor if they could help it. The gesture reminded her—he was a Bull, she was with a Bull…

  But this time, the thought that the club had killed her father didn’t stick. It tried to rise up, and then it faltered and winked out. Poor reception.

  She grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt and lifted. He took it from her and pulled it over his head. There was his club ink, the bull charging straight at her, angry. Dangerous. Breathing black fire. Surrounded by black fire.

  Without knowing why or bothering to wonder, she leaned forward and kissed it.

  Caleb cupped her face in his hands and lifted, staring down at her, the beginning of a frown brushing lines between the dark arches of his brows. Any question he had, he asked with that frown, and with his eyes, digging deep into hers.

  Cecily smiled, because that was the only answer she had. When his head came to hers, his mouth open, seeking hers, she eased her hands over the smooth contours of his chest, up around his neck, lacing her fingers in all that glorious hair, twisting the strands in her hold as if she could bind him to her that way.

  His kiss was a study in contradictions, fierce and gentle, powerful and soft, deep and light. His hands were under her t-shirt, over her ribs, finding her bare breasts, sweeping around to caress her back, returning to roll her nipples between his fingers. She arched her back into the blaze of that touch, the way it cascaded through her in a shower of sparks.

  They needed to be naked, and right now. She shoved him back and tore her t-shirt off, then reached for the silver buckle of his belt. He knocked her hands away and ripped open his belt and jeans—oh shit, he was commando, she’d forgotten that—and then they were tearing at each other, taking each other’s clothes off and their own, holding each other as they reeled and wobbled, shedding jeans and boots and socks.

  Finally bare, Caleb gave her a little lifting shove, and she landed on the bed. He followed immediately after her, pushing her legs apart, crawling over her, grabbing the box of condoms—ribbed for her pleasure. She almost giggled.

  She lay beneath him, her legs splayed around him, her hands stroking his beautiful thighs, his narrow hips, while he ripped the box open and tore open a packet.

  On the ride back from the drugstore, Cecily had thought about all the things she wanted to do to this man. She wanted to taste his whole body. She wanted his cock in her mouth. She wanted to feel his hands pulling her hair while she sucked him off. She wanted him to come on her tits. She wanted to watch while she made him feel as much as he could feel. She wanted to go slow and feel everything with him.

  Now, though, all she wanted was a hard, fast, intense fuck. So when he took hold of his ribbed-latex-covered cock and positioned himself, she drew up her legs and lifted her hips and took him all in.

  The ribs were—whatever, she didn’t care about the ribs. They were fine. Good. Whatever. What she cared about was the girth of him, the heat of him, the way he filled her, the way his body felt on hers, smooth against smooth, heat against heat. She cared about the thick fall of his hair, the ends brushing her face, her shoulders, her chest, as he thrust into her. She cared about his hand on her breast, his fingers—they were hard and rough, a workman’s hands, a man’s hands—teasing at her nipple, plucking, twisting, pulling. And oh, dear God, she cared about his face. She could see every feeling he had, every emotion, every sensation, in the powerful workings of his face. The potency of her own emotions and sensations doubled in the reflection of his.

  Caleb was almost entirely silent in sex, it seemed. Cecily was loud. She talked and moaned and begged and screamed. But Caleb’s only utterance was the heaviness of his breathing. On the patio, when he’d come, he’d almost grunted, but it had been more a loud breath than a real grunt. He was quiet. Intense.

  And yet, his face. She might have thought his quiet was control, too much of it, but his face showed every atom of his desire, and his ecstasy. He wasn’t especially expressive in normal life; his reactions happened mainly in his eyes. But in sex, his face became soft clay, molded by emotion and sensation, and he showed everything.

  That was the hottest thing Cecily had ever known. Each time he tried to kiss her, she pulled away, because she wanted to see his face. He shoved into her, each time harder, deeper, wilder, each time closer, climbing higher, and she looked up into the face of a man whose need for her raged through him. The room was loud, full of cries and words she knew came from her, but she was too lost in him to care. She was on fire, he was on fire, she couldn’t get close enough, but he was going to consume her, swallow her whole.

  She set her hand on his flushed, damp cheek, and almost at once, he grabbed it away, as if her touch had burned him. Staring down at her with wild eyes, he drew her arm out on the bed, held it wide, laced his strong fingers through hers.

  Something about that hold struck her as more intimate than any touch they’d shared. It rolled through her like a tornado, and she couldn’t study his face any longer, couldn’t marvel at his wild need or her own. She could only feel it. She closed her eyes and clamped her legs around him, and she rocketed her hips as hard as she could, dragging them both to their finish.

  Hers came like a punch directly from God, and her whole body arched up and back with the force of it. The scream that tore through her throat left burn in its wake. Caleb turned to solid bronze in her body’s grasp, heavy and hot and immovable, and he hovered above her like that, a fallen sculpture, while his cock pulsed inside her.

 
; Then he went entirely limp and dropped his full weight onto her. After a second, he tried to roll to her side, but she held on. She felt safe, buried under him this way, their bodies still linked.

  “I like you here.” She kissed his sweat-drenched cheek.

  He let out a sated sigh and set his hand on the side of her head, playing his fingers in her damp hair.

  Cecily wrapped her arms around his waist and closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The strident chirp of his phone dragged Caleb up from deep sleep. He was on his belly, and Cecily slept with her head and chest on his back, her hair spread over him like a lacy sheet. Unwilling to give up the warm intimacy, he flailed his arm out, seeking but not finding the obnoxious device.

  Shit. Right. In his kutte. Which was…on the chair. Other side of the bed. Dammit.

  He tried to scoot off the bed without disturbing her, but there was no graceful way out of their position, so he did the best he could. She moaned a complaint and reached out for him.

  “Where’re you going?”

  The phone chirped away, demanding. “Phone.”

  It was well before dawn, and Caleb moved carefully in the dark, unfamiliar room, headed toward the sound, hoping it would shut the fuck up and leave them alone before he got there.

  No such luck. As he snagged it from his kutte pocket, he saw the green numerals of her alarm clock: 1:53am.

  Ice made a skim over his stomach. His burner ringing before two in the morning meant trouble with the club. Cecily knew it, too. She’d sat up; her silhouette was limned by the ghostly, faint moonlight glowing through the closed curtains.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “Caleb,” Becker barked. “We’re calling everybody in.”

  “Lockdown?” The shadow that was Cecily flinched. She switched on the nightstand lamp, and Caleb squinted at the unexpected brightness.

  “No. Just club.” At Becker’s statement, Caleb shook his head, and Cecily’s shoulders relaxed a bit. The VP wasn’t finished, however. “But there’s trouble. Eight got hauled in.”

  Arrested? Bulls didn’t get arrested, not in Tulsa. Even in the war with the Street Hounds, none of them had worn cuffs. The club spent a lot of money to keep themselves clear of that kind of trouble at home and around most of the state.

  Unless there were witnesses they couldn’t silence. It was long before Caleb’s time, but he’d heard that was how Maverick got hung up—a civilian witness the club couldn’t touch.

  “What? Why? What happened?”

  “Just get to the clubhouse, kid. Now.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there in about twenty.”

  “Good.” Becker hung up.

  Caleb dropped the phone from his ear and stared at Cecily. She stared back, her fierce blue eyes rounded by worry. She’d tucked the sheet up under her arms. The freckles over her shoulders lured his eyes and pinned them in place.

  He blinked and made himself focus. “I gotta go.”

  “There’s trouble.”

  “Yeah. Eight got arrested. We’re all called in.”

  “Okay.” There was a quaver in the sigh she made with the word.

  He sat on the side of the bed and set his hand on her knee. “Talk to me.”

  “You have to go.”

  “Yeah, I do. But I can take a couple minutes. Eight can’t get any more arrested.”

  “If they’re calling everybody in, then something more is up.”

  “Maybe. So you better get talking, so I can go.”

  For that, she gave him a tiny, sad smile. “It’s nothing, I guess. I just didn’t expect this to end in the middle of the night.”

  This was a side of Cecily Caleb hadn’t seen: open and vulnerable. Seeing this, he understood her ferocious combativeness a bit more. When her guard was down, she was raw, so it made sense that she fought so hard to keep it up. He slid his hand into her hair. “Nothing’s ended, Ciss. I sure don’t want it to be. Do you work today?”

  She shook her head. “I told Jenny I’d pick Kelsey up from school in the afternoon, but that’s it.”

  “I’m off, too.”

  “Except for whatever’s going on now.”

  “True. But I’ll call when that’s over. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss. “Go back to sleep.”

  As he dressed, Cecily sat where she was and watched him, silently. He shrugged into his kutte, checked to make sure he had everything, went in for another quick kiss, and headed for the door.

  “Caleb, wait.”

  He turned back.

  “Please be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  ~oOo~

  Rad, Maverick, and Gunner were in Joplin, helping out a club friend with a protection gig. Eight was locked up—in Tulsa. But the rest of the club sat around the table.

  Delaney didn’t use the gavel to call anything to order. It wasn’t an official meeting, just the safest, most secure place they could talk.

  He turned on Wally, who sat quiet and shamed near the opposite end of the table. “From the top, boy. All of it.”

  Wally swallowed. “We were scoping Holloway’s house.”

  Cole Holloway, who’d dosed Cecily. They’d had his info for awhile, but he’d gone on his honeymoon right after that night, and he’d been out of town since.

  Honeymoon. The son of a bitch had thrown Cecily to the wolves to pay off his debt to his dealer before he got married. Then he’d blithely gone off to Jamaica.

  They must have gotten word that he was back in town; that was news to Caleb.

  “Everything was cool,” Wally went on, “but then Holloway and I guess his wife, they went out, and Eight decided he wanted to see inside.”

  “Goddammit,” Delaney grumbled. “I told you assholes all we needed was a check to make sure he was in town. Maverick wanted the action. We weren’t gonna do shit until he’s back.”

  “I know, but you know how Eight gets. He said we needed to know if there was anything we could use against him.”

  “That’s my job,” Apollo said. “Fuck, I should’ve scoped it myself.”

  “In hindsight, yeah,” Becker agreed. “But it was a job any of us could do, and you need to stick close to your woman when you can.”

  Jacinda had been on bedrest for most of her pregnancy. That stuff was way out of Caleb’s need-to-know, but she had some kind of crazy-high chance of losing the baby, so everybody was carrying her around on a satin pillow.

  Becker turned to Wally. “Why the fuck didn’t you stop him?”

  Wally shrugged. “He’s Eight. How’m I gonna stop him without hitting him?” When nobody offered an answer or another interruption, he continued, “I went in with him. I didn’t know what else to do. They had the windows open, so we pushed a screen out and climbed in. We just poked around. But then they came back, the Holloways, and we tried to sneak out the back, but Holloway saw us. He chased us. Eight…fuck, D. He’s gimpy, you know, and he’s slow, and he was gonna get caught. He knew it. He’s twice as big as Holloway. I don’t know why he didn’t let the asshole catch him and then beat the crap out of him for the trouble. But he pulled his piece and fired. Right through Holloway’s head. Brains splattered all over his wife. She screamed like a banshee. Screamed and screamed. He aimed at her, and I knocked his gun down before he did something even stupider. We ran, but Eight’s slow, and the sirens were already loud. I don’t know how they got there so fast.”

  Apollo solved that mystery. “Wife called in. That neighborhood, response time is like two minutes.”

  “And how are you sitting here, Walter?” Becker, Eight Ball’s best friend, asked. “How is it that Eight went down for this and you didn’t?”

  “He told me to go. I was at my bike, and the cruiser was turning onto the street, and he told me to get the fuck back here.”

  “You left him?” Simon asked. “You left him behind?”

  “He said—”

  “I don�
��t fucking care!” Becker roared. “You don’t ride away from a brother.”

  “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Slick put up his hand. “Holloway’s dead? Eight killed him?”

  “Yeah.” Delaney fiddled with the plastic ashtray at his side. He’d given up smoking some time ago, but that little plastic dish remained. The president had to have something in his hands, especially when he was thinking. “Looks like the charge could be first-degree.”