Lock and Key

by Cat Porter

  He checked in with his president and a while later led me inside the building. We passed Vig who was with two women in the dimly lit hallway. He glared at me, and I quickly averted my gaze. Dig’s hand tightened over mine. We turned right down another hallway, and he unlocked a door and led me into what I assumed was his room. He locked the door behind us. A small night light in the bathroom illuminated the room with an eerie blue glow.

  He yanked his t-shirt over his head and threw it to a corner littered with clothing, then unbuckled his belt and unfastened his jeans. “Shower,” he said.

  That was something else I had never done before. I had heard Ruby in the shower at home with a man plenty of times, her moans and laughter audible through the heavy cascade of water. Dig brushed past me and went into the small bathroom.

  Here it was. He and I wouldn’t be fumbling with each other in the dark after too many brews. Being face to face and naked together under the unforgiving light of his bathroom would make this entire surreal situation… real, wouldn’t it?

  The water ran. My pulse raced through me despite my fatigue as I shoved off my boots and peeled off my clothes. I pulled back the shower curtain and took in the dramatic sight of the large sinister One Eyed Jacks skull tattoo on Dig’s contoured back. Long curving lines of muscle were slick with water and shampoo suds. A beautifully detailed snake was tattooed around his waist, as well. I entered the small stall and drew the plastic curtain.

  He handed me the shower gel bottle over his shoulder, and I took it and emptied some of the creamy liquid into my hands. My fingers worked the lather into his firm muscles and my hands ran down his slick lower back and hips and then over his high ass. I kissed his smooth shoulder blades and leaned into his body as I slid a soapy hand around his waist over that snake and down his sleek abs to where his hard shaft waited at full attention for me.

  He leaned back against my body and exhaled. He put his hand over my shaky one and showed me how to touch him. I stroked him until his cock pulsed in my hand. Dig groaned and planted one hand against the shower wall, the other went behind him and wrapped around my middle, holding me tight against him.

  The warm water sprayed over us. He came in my hand, then he tilted his head and stared at me. I stared right back. He turned around and kissed me. This moment was mine, and I tucked it in my brain and in every cell of my being to keep it with me for when this weekend was over.

  I stood there immobile as Dig slathered my breasts with the soapy gel. He slid his fingers between my legs. I choked back a cry as his fingers worked their magic again. My body jerked in his arms against the cold bathroom tile. Dig’s hands cupped my breasts as he kissed my face and I came back down to earth. He released me and began to shampoo my hair. I looked up at his beautiful face in a complete haze of sensation.

  We dried each other off and collapsed onto his bed tangled in each other’s arms and legs, and quickly fell asleep. The following morning when I woke up, I took the opportunity to admire his powerful body while he slept. His streaky dark golden hair had fallen over his face. I swept it back and gently kissed the angles of his jaw.

  My tongue designed wet circles over his chest as my hand slid over his hip and down a muscular thigh. My fingers grazed his cock. He was rock hard. Morning wood, I believe Tania had called it. I smiled and took his stiff length in my hand.

  “Grace?”

  He stretched out on the bed, and rolled onto his back. I crouched between his legs and gently licked around the tip of his hard shaft.

  “Baby,” he murmured and propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Show me how, Dig,” I whispered. “I want to make it good for you.”

  His bleary eyes ignited with heat, and he let out a heavy sigh. “Fuck me.”

  The roar of voices mixed with laughter and the reverberating music assaulted me and Junk at the large archway marking the entrance to the main room of the clubhouse. I tried not to give too much thought to the idea that I would probably see Miller One Night Action. I couldn’t think of that now or what it might be like to see him again because I’d go nuts. I couldn’t afford to go nuts. I was on a mission.

  I took in a cleansing breath of air and stepped through the archway. The main room was where everyone hung out, and the offices, the meeting room, the kitchen, and the bathrooms and the hallways leading to the men’s bedrooms all led off of this large center room. The bar looked the same except fresh posters of hot women in bikinis on motorcycles had replaced the ones I remembered. The same blue and red neon clock advertising a now defunct beer brewery still faithfully ticked away the correct time on the wall, albeit with only part of its neon still glowing.

  I moved towards the bar. The same dusty shelves filled with a combination of empty and full liquor bottles lined the wall overhead. My fingers pressed into the ancient cherry red vinyl topped stools. What tales they could tell. Now scuffed and scratched, those high stools remained like steadfast silent witnesses to raucous, wild exuberance, risky determination, and so much bitter grief.

  The Scorpions blared over the greatly improved sound system. The pool table still held pride of place at one end of the room where a group of four men played a game. Three unmatched sofas of black and a tired brown striped pattern were filled with couples necking and laughing, and an older biker with a young woman in a ponytail who giggled on his lap while he fondled her and whispered in her ear. That had to be Willy with that straggly grey beard. Dear sweet Willy always had a thing for the young ones.

  Three younger men were in deep conversation under a cloud of fragrant smoke on one sofa, practically oblivious to the two young women who gyrated to the music on the big round coffee table in front of them. Another woman in a tighter-than-tight tank top, her firm, bountiful cleavage spilling forth that looked to me like it had to hurt, dashed around and served drinks.

  “Who’s this, bro?” a familiar scratchy voice came from behind me. My eyes slid closed against the dip of my gut. I turned around and faced my husband’s best friend who stood behind the bar. My gaze locked on his sparkling green eyes.

  “A whiskey, neat. Please.”

  Boner’s eyebrows bunched and his mouth hung open.

  “I’m gonna go get the prez,” Junk said. “He was in a meeting.”

  “Holy shit,” Boner said. “Holy shit!”

  I smiled. “Do me a favor Boner. Pour me a drink first, yell after.”

  Boner snatched a glass and plonked a whiskey bottle in front of me. His arms shook with tension. He lifted the bottle and started to pour, his maniacal, glassy eyes glued to mine. The whiskey topped out over the glass, and the amber liquid flowed over the already sticky bar. “Fuck!” he shouted and waved his hands over his head, still holding onto the bottle. “Fuck!”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, man?” Willy charged our way, his long, grey beard swayed. Willy was one of the oldest members of the club and had first nominated Dig to be VP before it all went to shit. I leaned over the bar and sucked in the whiskey until the glass was no longer overly full. The harsh warmth soothed my aching throat.

  “It’s Little Sister, you assholes! Little Sister!” Boner’s voice boomed.

  The room quieted down a few degrees, and a sharp female voice trilled, “Who the fuck is she? Somebody’s Old Lady?”

  I kept my eyes on Boner. His big green eyes burned right through my heart. He shook his head at me, let out a great big whoop and bounded over the bar top. He took me in his arms, lifted me up and squeezed the air out of me.

  My breath snagged and water filled my eyes. “Oh, honey,” I murmured in his neck and held him close as he swung me around and around.

  “Put her down, man!” shouted Willy. Boner planted a juicy kiss on my mouth then released me from his death grip. I hugged him once more as a tear slipped down my hot skin. He wiped away the salty streak and cursed under his breath.

  Boner and Dig had been best friends since before they had joined the club. They had come up to South Dakota from Colorado on a bike
trip. They had just finished a round of duty with the National Guard after high school and wanted to check out the festival at Sturgis. They stayed in South Dakota, eventually hooked up with members of the One-Eyed Jacks, became prospects together, and patched in.

  Willy folded me in his arms and hugged me. His hands cupped my face, and he smiled. “Oh, my baby girl, my sweet baby girl, it really is you. Fucking A!” his voice drifted, his eyes crinkled.

  This was belonging. I had forgotten how it felt. It felt damned good.

  The music had stopped, and more female voices rose in complaint. “Hey! What’s going on?”

  A door slammed open and the hot air in the room became a living thing, intense, expectant, vibrant.

  “Where is she?” a voice I recognized thundered through the room.

  “Our girl’s right here where she belongs!” Willy said.

  The women on the table stopped chattering and turned, the men stood up from the sofas and chairs. Jump smiled at me from the open door of the president’s office. He was just as handsome as ever, his hair, still in a long smooth braid falling right down his broad back, was now threaded with grey. His face had creased with time, his belly was fuller, but his large brown eyes were still bursting with drive and spark.

  Jump and Dig had been officers together. They had shared a secret language that had made directing the club under their prez and having to make tough decisions a streamlined operation most of the time. Jump’s cut was now emblazoned with the president’s patch.

  “Get over here, Sister.”

  I dashed across the room and lunged at him. Jump lifted me up in his thick arms with a great big shout and squeezed me tight. He put me down and planted a kiss on my forehead.

  “Where’ve you been, Sister?” he said against my hair. “Alicia baby, where are you?” Jump hollered. “Get the hell out here, woman!”

  Alicia, Jump’s Old Lady, tall and thin, straight long blonde hair down her chest, expressive kohl-lined blue eyes, just as I remembered her, strutted towards me slowly.

  Alicia had been a close friend from the start and my mentor at the club, not only in all things womanly… clothes and makeup, men and sex, but also in all things biker… riding and old lady etiquette. “Grace?” her voice rang out in the room. “Oh Grace,” she repeated and wrapped me in her arms and hugged me tightly on a deep sigh.

  “Who the hell is she?” a hoarse-voiced woman asked from somewhere behind me. Alicia’s face tightened, her eyes narrowed. She spun us around to face that voice. It belonged to the red head in the white bikini top I had seen giving the blow job to the guy in the hallway earlier.

  “This here is one of the greatest Old Ladies this Club has ever seen, you two-bit twat,” Alicia said in her still sexy, raspy voice. It was another trace of home to me. She put her hands on her hips. “And if you don’t shut your face and show her some respect, you’re gonna get kicked out of here on your ass! Little Sister is a living legend around here.”

  My breath caught in my chest, but not over my old friend’s fiercely proud and loving words. Red-headed Two-Bit Twat had her curvy body draped around Miller, who sported a slouchy black knit cap. He stared at me open-mouthed.

  Oh shit.

  Miller and the red head were the blow job couple I had seen in the hallway.

  It had been exactly sixteen days since I last saw Grace at that motel.

  Now she stood four yards away from me, right here at the clubhouse. A phantom fist might as well have punched me in the chest and lodged itself there. Her beautiful greenish brown eyes locked on mine. Everything suspended in mid-air in that second.

  Excitement spilled over the room like a rushing river. She seemed a little anxious by the tension in her shoulders, but happy. She was home, after all. The club had been her home just as it had been mine, the place where both of us had done a lot of important growing up. It was also the home she had once shared with her husband.

  There was that, too.

  When I had first seen Grace at Dead Ringer’s that night, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  She had been drinking straight whiskey. Not just drinking it actually, but savoring it. Enjoying it. Really enjoying it. It made an impression on me. She had obviously chosen something she really, really wanted and enjoyed the fuck out of it her way. I liked that she didn’t seem uncomfortable or embarrassed at being on her own at a bar. She didn’t seem like she was out fishing for a hookup or any male attention. The woman wanted to enjoy her drink.

  I had stopped at the Roadhouse on my way home from a drop to hit the bathroom, splash some water on my face, and have a quick drink before the last stretch of road home. It was late, it had been a long two days on the road, and I needed a break before I went back to the same old, same old. Seeing as I was on my own, I decided to enjoy my five minutes of peace. I hadn’t had a vodka in a long time. Beer, bourbon and tequila were always on the menu at the club. I was over it.

  Like I was over a hell of a lot of things. I just wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  She was beautiful. Not in a conventional—wow, she’s gorgeous —kind of way. Grace’s beauty was in her quiet, her simple. It sprung at me when she grinned, and it seeped through me when she looked a bit sad or faraway, which was pretty often.

  When I first spoke to her she turned quickly to face me, one sexy dark eyebrow lifted. Her big hazel eyes were tight with suspicion, yet quickly thawed into amusement. And what a color those eyes were. They seemed to shift from greenish-brown to a greyish-green color over the course of the night. She got a kick out of our debate about liquor and change, laced with plenty of innuendo. I got her to smile a couple of times, and she caught herself and bit that sexy lower lip of hers.

  I had introduced myself using my real name. I didn’t want to hear my club road name come off this woman’s lips. I wanted something different from her, and I got it. Every time she said “Miller” in that warm tone, heat jabbed me in the gut.

  I figured Grace had to be around my age. Her eyes had seen and experienced some pain in her days. Her skin was creamy, fresh, though, with a few freckles over her cheeks, the kind that had probably come up in her younger years then stayed. When she laughed, she lit up, she let go. That was beautiful. Yes, she was beautiful. My kind of beautiful. Then Grace would go back to holding on tight to something inside her. Something she refused to share.

  I could have kicked myself when she had turned away from me and leaned back against the bar to check out the crowd as some sort of signal for me to change the subject. A sudden need to touch her engulfed me, too. I wanted my hands to glide over that smooth skin under that tight Harley tee and discover every secret curve. We stood very close at the bar. What the hell was that magic scent… her perfume? Her shampoo? I couldn’t put my finger on it and it was driving me crazy. It was something not too sweet, but soft, like early summer. Hell, I wasn’t big on dancing, but I had to do something to get closer to her.

  Once I had her in my arms, and we moved together to the music, she finally relaxed. My cock wasn’t the only thing that stood at attention; it was as if my blood kicked up through every goddamn vein in my body. That night I hadn’t been shopping for a hookup, hadn’t even crossed my mind. But Grace was different.

  It was easy for me to get laid back home. When the need struck, a selection was always available. But the same expectant, willing eyes batted up at me over and over again. There were different faces often enough, but they all wanted the same things from me—a way in, a notch up, an attachment.

  No, that night I stopped at Dead Ringer’s because I just wanted to enjoy my drink, listen to some music, lose myself in the buzz of the crowd, then get back in the truck and get home.

  But there she was in her sparkly t-shirt, tight jeans, sexy silver jewelry and harsh leather boots that on this kind of woman made my mouth water. She had a real body, all tight curves, that she obviously took care of without going overboard. Even whatever makeup she had on was real. I could see her, a pretty her, not a pump
ed-up version. I wanted to sink my fingers into her long, thick light-brown hair. There was nothing about her that was there to put on a show or jack my cock and jerk my chain. It was all… Grace.

  Yeah, all Grace.

  And I wanted to know that woman. I wanted a piece of that no excuses, been there, done that, no-drama honesty. She didn’t feel the need to let it all hang out and dangle it in your face. She could take it or leave it.

  I liked this. I liked her.

  A lot.

  I had seen something else in her eyes. Something I recognized, because I was lugging the same shit inside my soul. Suspicion, sadness, bitterness? All of it initially flashed up at me, but then she had tucked it away and got back to her drink. Still, she seemed familiar, but I didn’t want to waste any time trying to figure it out just then.

  Maybe I should have.

  I went for it and kissed her. My head exploded when she opened her mouth and gave it up to me. Then she gave it back to me. That was it. I couldn’t keep my hands off her, and I couldn’t help myself with the ice cubes.

  Was it high school of me? I didn’t give a shit. It got me touching her curvy ass, her beautiful tits. My tongue got to glide over her hot skin. I can still feel how her pulse had jumped at the side of her neck.

  I got so desperate for her that I proposed the back of the bar or my truck. Stupid. Her eyes flashed at me. What an idiot. My mouth started to ramble non-stop. I prayed for mercy. Then she invited me back to her room at that motel on the other side of the parking lot.

  I think my hands shook like an eager kid’s when I took out my wallet to pay the bartender. That was a brand new feeling for me, but I pushed that aside and barreled on. Neither of us could get the motel room door unlocked fast enough. Once I slammed the door closed behind us we ripped our clothes off, and I finally got my mouth and hands all over her. And it was sensational.

  Then I got inside her, and I was… gone.