Tainted Rose

by Abby Weeks

  “I never stir up trouble.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  Josh shrugged. “We’ll be heading out soon. We just need a place to lay low for a while.”

  Jac got up and showed them through to a bedroom off the main living room. It looked surprisingly comfortable to Rose, although she supposed that after spending two years in that hovel with Murdoch, anything would have looked comfortable. At least it had its own bathroom, and a fireplace, and a cozy looking bed.

  “There’s only one bed,” Jac said. He motioned at Josh and said to Rose, “I’d advise you to let him sleep on the floor.”

  Josh said nothing. Rose wondered if he was hoping to share the bed with her. She wondered if he wanted her as badly as she wanted him. She’d never seen a man as attractive as him in her entire life. She decided to say nothing and see what happened.

  “If you need anything else,” Jac said, “tell me in the morning.”

  He left them, closing the door behind him.

  *

  ROSE SAT ON THE BED. She’d taken in her few belongings from the bike and set them on the dresser by the door.

  “I guess this is us,” she said to Josh. She felt as if she’d been waiting her entire life to say those words.

  Josh smiled at her. His curly hair, falling in front of his face, couldn’t have been placed more perfectly.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For sorting that mess out with Jac.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” Rose said. She hated the idea of Josh spending a week with a dancer in Quebec City.

  Josh nodded. He seemed to sense her displeasure at that story.

  “How about a fire?” he said, as if trying to make it up to her. “You must be frozen after that ride.”

  She looked at the fireplace. There was a little pile of wood next to it.

  “Okay,” she said. “That would be nice.”

  While Josh got the fire going she went into the bathroom to see what she could do about freshening up. She tried the water and miraculously it was hot. She stripped and stepped into the shower. The water was perfect. It felt like life, like sunshine shining on the land in spring. It was as if her flesh had frozen and only now was melting back to life. It could not have felt better. She had some shampoo with her, the cheap crap that Serge had bought at the drug mart in Val-d’Or, and she washed her hair. After her shower she dried off and spent longer than usual on her makeup. She wanted to look her best. She made sure her skin looked perfect and her foundation was exactly the way she liked it before putting on the rest. It was silly to be putting on makeup right before bed but Josh was out there and she knew what boys liked. They noticed was how you looked, and she wanted to look good.

  “You okay in there?” Josh said from outside the door.

  She came out wearing the only change of clothes she had, a plain white cotton shirt and black leggings. Josh looked startled when he saw her.

  “You look,” he paused while thinking what he should say, “lovely.”

  She smiled at him and hopped onto the bed. The fire was roaring in the fireplace and the warmth of it was as comforting as anything she could have imagined. She smiled quietly to herself. Josh was looking at her but he said nothing. Everything was perfect. It could not have been more beautiful, more peaceful. She wanted this moment, this delicious moment of anticipation and pleasure, to last forever.

  *

  SHE TOOK OUT THE PHOTO of her mother. It was the first time she’d really had a chance to look at it. She had to wipe the tears out of her eyes to get a clear view.

  Her mother had been so beautiful. She looked so much like Rose that it almost could have been a picture of her. She had the same long, rich hair, the pouting lips, the big eyes. She touched the face with her finger. It was the closest she’d ever been.

  “I wonder why he never showed me this before?” she said.

  Josh was over by the fire, tending it, and he looked up at her.

  “You never saw her?”

  “No. Not ever.”

  “Maybe he thought it would be too painful for you.”

  Rose looked down at the picture and nodded. It was painful to look at it. But it had been more painful not to know anything about her mother. She still knew nothing, other than what she looked like. Her father had always refused, pointblank, to talk about her. Rose didn’t know if it was because of something bad she’d done, or if it was because he’d loved her so much that he just couldn’t talk about her.

  “He might have been waiting till I was older. But then he was gone.”

  Josh nodded.

  “You were there when he died, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s when he gave me the picture. He wanted you to have it. It was the last thing he said.”

  She looked up at Josh. He was trouble, any ordinary girl would have known he was bad news, they would have stirred well clear of him, but Rose wasn’t an ordinary girl. He’d been in prison but she didn’t care about that. All she cared about was that he was kind, he protected her, and she felt she could trust him with anything.

  “You kept this for ten years.”

  “Yes I did.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  Josh shrugged.

  “You never thought of just getting rid of it, forgetting about my father, about me?”

  “Not once.”

  “Why? I mean, most people would have moved on.”

  “It just didn’t ever seem like the right thing to do.”

  “And you always do the right thing?”

  Josh grinned at her. It was a wicked grin. “The right thing means something different depending on where you’re looking from.”

  She nodded. That was true. She’d seen enough of the world already to know that much.

  “So you were a Sioux Ranger?”

  “I still am,” Josh said. He got his jacket from where it was hanging on the back of the door and brought it over to her on the bed. He handed it to her. “Look at the lining.”

  Rose took the jacket from him. It was heavy. She admired the leather. It was supple and soft, excellent quality. It was exactly the type of leather she had wanted to work with when she’d lived in Montreal. That felt like a lifetime ago.

  “On the inside,” Josh said.

  She opened it out on the bed. She gasped. There it was, the indian rider, the symbol of her father’s club. She hadn’t seen that symbol in ten long years. Anyone who would have had the courage to wear it would have been killed by the DRMC. She looked at the patches, the rider, his hair blasted back by the wind, and so many memories of her childhood came flooding back to her.

  “Renegade?” she said.

  Josh shrugged. “Your father chose it for me.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears again. How was this happening? Just that morning she’d been ready to die. Everything her father had stood for had been destroyed. Her entire life had been reduced to one long, suffering nightmare. Now, here she was on a big, soft bed with a man who’d carried a photograph of her mother for her for ten years. This was the man who her father had entrusted with that photograph. And he hadn’t just held on to it, he’d risked his life to get it to her and to rescue her from the DRMC.

  And now she could see that he’d gone even farther than that. He was the last Sioux Ranger, the last of the true breed of biker in Montreal, the old guard, the men who had ridden with her father.

  “You’re a Sioux Ranger.”

  “I am.”

  “Are you the only one?”

  “I’ve been the only one for a very long time.”

  “Since Bloody Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him. It was as if an angel had come down, sent by her father to take care of her. She reached forward and touched his face. He didn’t flinch. He let her trace the line of his jaw with her finger. Then he reached out and took her gently and leaned into her.

  The moment that Josh’s lips touched
hers was like no other moment in Rose’s life. Nothing had ever made her feel like that before. There was no fear in Josh, no question of what he was doing. He just took her confidently, as if he’d known all his life that they were meant to have that kiss.

  He pressed his lips against hers and she felt as if she was going to faint. Her heart was pounding so strongly that she could feel it in her chest like a drum beat. She reached out and took a hold of him and he put his arms around her as if to protect her, or prevent her from breaking free.

  He opened his mouth and her lips followed his, opening ever so slightly. Then she felt it. The soft, wet touch of his tongue on her lip. Just for a second his tongue touched her lip but it was enough to make her dizzy with desire. She wanted to reach out to his mouth with her own tongue but she didn’t dare. She moved her lips against him and willed him to touch her again with his tongue. She opened her mouth and then felt his tongue reach inside and meet hers. It was a magical moment.

  She sighed as their tongues danced, tangling and untangling in a delicious movement of pleasure and intimacy.

  “Josh,” she whispered.

  “Rose,” he replied.

  “You’re not ever going to let go of me, are you?”

  XXIV

  IF THERE WAS ONE THING Josh Carter knew in the world at that moment it was that he would never, ever let go of Rose Meadows. He’d hang on to her through hell if he had to, he’d give his life for her if he had to. He didn’t know a lot about love but he knew that much.

  It was just something that he could feel deep down in the core of his being. Holding her in his arms, kissing her lips, there was something magical about it. It was ethereal, unworldly. It was almost weird how intensely he felt for her. He thought about how strange it was that he’d seen her all those years ago, just that one night, when he was seventeen and she was twelve. It had been a strange night. He’d gone there looking for blood, looking for vengeance, but he didn’t find it. Blood found him. He’d seen over twenty men lose their lives that night, he’d nearly lost his own, but the most vivid thing he could remember about it was those two big, beautiful eyes, the eyes of a child, Rose’s eyes.

  He leaned her back on the bed and moved his lips from hers down to her neck. Her skin was as white as silk, and as smooth. It was beautiful to kiss it. It was like kissing milk.

  She threw her head back and sighed and he knew she liked it. He’d never in his life been with a girl this beautiful, this angelic. He’d never even dared to dream he would find someone so perfect. She was arching her back and he moved his mouth down lower, reaching the edge of her shirt. He wanted to reach under it and touch her breasts. He could already feel them through her shirt.

  God, they were perfect breasts, firm and ripe like pieces of delicious fruit. They were the forbidden fruit that he had waited his whole life to taste. He looked up at her. Her head was thrown back on the bed in abandon. Her eyes were closed. Instinctively he knew what to do.

  He moved his hands inside her shirt and touched the silky smoothness of her bare skin. He slid his hands up over her waist and along the sides of her body till they reached her bra. Then he moved them around to her back and in a single, fluid motion, unclasped it. It fell away from her breasts and he moved his hands up onto them. They were so soft and so firm at the same time. Just touching them was heaven. What would it be like to kiss them?

  “Rose,” he whispered.

  She sighed. It was almost a groan. She was waiting for him. There was a part of him that felt like she was still the child he’d seen ten years ago, that he was doing this to her, but he knew she was a woman now.

  He pulled at her shirt. He wanted to tear it off her and reveal her delicious breasts.

  “Take it off,” she moaned and raised her arms up over her head. He pulled her shirt up over her head and looked down into those two beautiful, saucer eyes.

  She seemed shy. She closed her eyes and opened them again and then held his gaze.

  “Rose,” he whispered.

  “Josh,” she replied.

  Then he dove down onto her breasts like an eagle descending on its prey. He felt as if her breasts were an ocean and he was diving into water. He felt submerged in her, in the intoxicating scent of her, the supple smoothness of her skin, it was like touching ice and fire at the same time.

  “Yes,” she moaned as he kissed the perfect, soft flesh on the upper side of her breasts. He moved his mouth into her cleavage and licked the valley that lay between them. She tasted like a dream.

  “Rose,” he whispered again and she moaned in response.

  His tongue slid up the slope of a breast until it reached the very edge of the areola.

  “Oh my God,” she moaned.

  *

  HER NIPPLE FELL INTO HIS mouth like a cherry and his tongue caressed it so gently, so incessantly, that she thought she was going to die. Was this really happening? How could it? How could her past have come back to rescue her like this?

  She spread her legs open and arched backward, pressing her pelvis against him. She wanted to feel the hardness of him against her groin. What she really wanted was for him to slide inside her and explode inside her body in a frenzy of lust and passion and love.

  He was sucking each of her nipples in turn and the way he did it, so gently but so single-mindedly, it was like no man had ever done before. She reached down and gripped his shirt in her hands and clenched it. She pulled it up over his head and he looked at her with a boyish grin that only made her love him even more.

  Oh my God, she thought. That was all she could think. Those three words just went through her mind, over and over.

  His chest was built like a statue. It was hard as rock, his pectoral muscles firm and defined. She rubbed her hands over them and then moved down onto his perfectly formed abs. God, he was sexy. He was what God must have had in mind when he’d designed man. He was the perfect example of manhood. He smiled down on her and then took a hold of the waist of her leggings.

  “Oh God,” she whispered as he pulled them down, ever so slightly.

  “God aint going to save you now,” Josh said and pulled them down around her ankles. She was almost completely naked now, with just her panties left to offer her protection. She’d never felt so vulnerable, so exposed, in all her life. It was as if the last two years of stripping and lap dancing had never happened. She felt like a virgin in Josh’s strong, firm grip.

  “What are you going to do to me?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer. He just bent down and took a hold of her cotton panties with his mouth and pulled them down too. Now she was completely exposed. She didn’t have a stitch of clothing left on her body and it felt amazing. She gripped Josh’s muscular torso with her legs and pulled him down onto her so that they were kissing again.

  God, she loved kissing Josh Carter. His lips were made of honey.

  Whatever happened, however this mad journey of theirs ended, whatever the DRMC did to get back at them for what they’d done, it would all be worth it for this kiss.

  And then his hand, his firm, strong, smooth hand was moving along the inside of her thigh. Jesus Christ, she thought. Touch it. Touch me.

  *

  JOSH COULDN’T BELIEVE WHAT WAS happening. He’d never in his life dared to think he might actually find happiness. He’d gone through the years living like a ghost, as if his life was already over. He’d always thought that if he lived like a ghost, if he lived as if he’d already died, then he would have nothing to lose. But now he was alive. He could feel the surge of life rushing through his veins.

  He’d never wanted anything so much as he wanted to enter Rose Meadows. He opened his jeans and pulled them off. He looked down at himself. He was enormous. Jesus, he thought. That’s going to kill her. He knew it was a silly fear but he felt as if he was so big and rough and ungainly and she was so small and delicate and beautiful. He didn’t want to defile her. He didn’t want to hurt her.

  *

  SHE TOOK ONE LOOK AT
him and pulled him down on top of her. She felt the hard bulge of the head of his penis press against the lips of her pussy. She was aching for him. She was soaking wet down there.

  “Come inside me,” she whispered.

  He looked at her as if to ask if she was sure and she just smiled at him.

  And then it happened. Just like that, the enormous bulk of Josh Carter’s penis was inside her and for the first time in her life she felt like she knew what it meant to make love. She knew what it felt to be a woman. To have a man you truly loved enter you, that was completeness, that was the point of it all. All the suffering in life, all the struggling through the world, the bad things that happened, all of it found its answer right here in this union, this connection.

  She cried out as Josh pulled out and then pushed powerfully back into her. She cried out again and again as he moved in and out of her. She was going to wake Jac but she didn’t care. Something told her that he wouldn’t be too offended by a little noise between a man and woman who loved each other.

  “Oh, God,” Jack sighed.

  “Yes,” she cried.

  He was thrusting back and forth, deep inside her. He was deeper than any man had ever gone before. She had never felt anything like this before in her entire life.

  “Come inside me,” she whispered.

  *

  JOSH COULDN’T BELIEVE IT WHEN she said those words. He could not have imagined a more loving, sincere thing for a woman to say to a man. He thrust down into her and it felt as if he was submerging his cock in a lake of pure pleasure. He had never felt anything so good in his entire life. It was as if he was melting inside of Rose’s vagina, his body losing its form and merging with hers the way two liquids might merge. He couldn’t take it.

  “I’m coming,” he whispered.

  “Come,” she said.

  There was a sweet smile on her face that looked so beautiful, so pretty, that he would have died right then just so that it could be the last thing he ever saw.

  “Rose,” he said.

  “Yes?” she said.

  And then it started. It was as if every muscle deep inside his body suddenly began convulsing at once. It was as if pure, liquid pleasure had just been pumped into every vein in his body. It felt so good, the release was so satisfying, that he couldn’t help cry out as he orgasmed right there, right inside Rose’s beautiful, perfect pussy. The surges of orgasmic pleasure just wouldn’t stop. Again and again and again it happened. He screamed in pleasure and thought he would die, it felt so good.