Blood in the Water (Kairos)

by Catherine Johnson

  Samuel had always called Absolution his home. He’d put on the Prospect patch the day he’d turned eighteen, and for almost twenty years his life had been devoted to the club and the town. He didn’t like the big city, where people passed each other on the street like shadows. He liked that everyone in town knew each others’ names and most of their business. It was a touch inconvenient occasionally, but it felt like family, like home. However, Samuel did prefer to live his life at a faster pace than most people; he figured it was genetic, passed down in his DNA from his daddy. He had no problem at all with the outlaw road that his father had taken the club down in a bid to keep earning at the level required to support so many families. He’d always liked action and excitement; hence his decision to marry Moira. No sane person would’ve married Miss Lebeau if they’d wanted a quiet life.

  As a child growing into a young man, he’d watched fellow townsfolk, civilians, wither and die without ever knowing just what they could have wrung from their lives. That wasn’t for him, getting up at the same time every morning to spend five days of his week cooped up in an office slogging his guts out for someone else to take the credit, only to spend his weekends squeezing in chores to keep the house going and barely ever having enough money to make ends meet, only to die at the end of it all with a shitty retirement present and kids that didn’t hate you if you were lucky. No, that life was not for him; it wasn’t what any of his brothers or predecessors in the club wanted. Samuel had seen his father and his contemporaries roaring through town, their bikes so loud that the sound literally vibrated through his body. They left the ordinary people bobbing in their wake like so many corks in the ocean in the wake of a passing ship. That was the life that Samuel wanted, and if that meant breaking or ignoring a few rules that someone he’d never met or known had made, then that was just fine by him.

  They pulled up to the clubhouse, a long low red brick building set on its own land on the other side of town, almost in the bayou. The isolation meant their business stayed private, and so did their leisure. Just as Terry had described to him, Samuel noticed that the garage attached to the clubhouse had been extended and refurbished. It was a small operation which mainly existed for the club to repair and restore their own rides, but the business it brought in from the town made it one of the club’s useful legitimate fronts. The sign on the gable wall at the apex of the roof showing the club patch - two hands, palms together in prayer, wrapped in a rosary with the cross depicted in rifle bullets - had been renewed and the gravel around the building had been replaced maybe a couple of years ago. It was brighter than Samuel remembered, but not shiny new.

  There was a large amount of the gravel and the clubhouse that Samuel could not see because anyone even remotely associated with the club had gathered to witness his homecoming. His extended family, from babes in arms to grey haired old-timers were arrayed at the front of the building cheering and clapping like Christ himself had risen. Samuel’s heart swelled up from his chest into his throat at the sight of so many faces, unseen for years. But it was the joy radiating from his wife and children that brought the tears to his eyes. If they were angry with him for removing himself from their lives for so long, it wasn’t visible. They were the very paragons of pure happiness. Even Dean, at twelve years old, who usually tried so hard to affect a burgeoning teenager’s casual indifference to everything, was practically hopping up and down.

  Samuel didn’t waste a second. As soon as both his feet were on the ground after he’d swung off his bike he was running over to his family. He gathered them all in his arms, dimly aware that the cheering had increased a few decibels. He hid his sobs of happiness and regret in his wife’s thick, russet hair, knowing only she could hear them. There was barely enough room in his embrace to encompass his wife and both children, but they squeezed in until they all fit. It was something else to be able to hold them so freely after the rules and regulations of prison, and Samuel renewed his promise to himself that under no circumstances would he be spending time behind bars ever again. The new deal with the Rojas family would incur heavy tariffs if any of them were caught. Well, he’d just have to play it smart, and he knew he was plenty capable of that.

  He scrubbed his visible emotion away with his hands as he pulled back so that he could drop to one knee to better hold his children. They were completely unreserved in the moment of expressing their joy at the return of their daddy, and Samuel felt doubly blessed for the remnants of the innocence of their youth. For the first time he fully appreciated just how many years of their lives he had lost and the sensation that accompanied that realization just about stopped his heart from beating. It was Moira, showing her awareness that it was not just a homecoming to the three of them, who put her hand on the back of his neck to guide him to stand before gently pushing him into the throng of people behind her. Samuel was immediately disoriented, dizzy to the point of drunkenness from the calls and shouts and slaps on his back. After years of keeping as much distance as possible between himself and any other human, he almost vomited with the sensory overload of being surrounded and touched by so many people.

  Like the contraction of a muscle, the crowd propelled him through itself into the clubhouse. After the bright sunshine Samuel was blinded by the darkness of the room, but his brothers, having also been squeezed through by the crowd and now at his back, kept his momentum going until he hit the bar. Before he even knew what was happening, he was downing a shot of good whiskey, feeling the burn down his throat all the way into his stomach and out through his limbs. His sense of smell belatedly caught up with happenings and informed his brain that a variety of food was awaiting his attention. His stomach grumbled appreciatively, engendering guffaws from those nearest to him, seconds before a plate filled with a mouth-watering array was pressed into his hands. Terry, whose beam was dimmed only slightly by the concern in his eyes, an expression mirrored exactly by Fletch, the club’s Sergeant at Arms, spread their arms to push back a cordon around Samuel so that he could draw a breath.

  Someone, Samuel didn’t see who, lifted Dean and Ashleigh onto barstools on either side of him. Moira stood behind Ashleigh, making sure the crowd didn’t knock the young girl from her perch. Samuel had a flash of knowing that Dean was beyond allowing his mother to protect him in such a way, but he was holding his own space on his precarious seat which gave Samuel a small flash of fatherly pride.

  Having eaten and practically inhaled another shot and a bottle of beer, it took Samuel a few giddy minutes to remember that he didn’t have to wait for permission or a bell to do anything he wanted to do , anything at all, and that nothing was denied to him. He caught Moira’s eye. Terry and Fletch had obviously seen the glint of his intentions because their laughter caused several heads to turn their way.

  “Go on. There’s a room cleared in back for you two. Moira knows which one.” Terry nodded at the doorway which led from the main room of the clubhouse to a corridor which ran almost the full length of the building and granted access to several dorm rooms. Some rooms were usually in permanent use by unattached members of the club, but at least one was always kept empty for use in case of whatever. Samuel pushed away from the bar, kissed each of his children on their foreheads and left them in the company of the family that was the club before following his wife away from the chattering masses.

  The volume level diminished as soon as they were through the doorway. Moira paused expectantly before him, but Samuel moved her on with a slight push in the small of her back. He didn’t trust himself to speak, or to touch her more than that. He’d locked a tight fist round his control and if he let it go before they were behind a locked door there was a good chance that at all the people back in the main room would at least be witness to the audio of them coupling here on the corridor floor.

  Moira seemed to catch onto his dilemma and hurried along. All the doors looked exactly alike, all painted a shade of forest green that was different from the dark blue Samuel remembered, but Moira knew which one she was aiming
for and fumbled a key into the lock of one. Samuel followed her through, almost pushing her into the room. He took a beat to take in the arrangement of the furniture, namely the location of the bed, while Moira locked the door, and then he was on her, pushing her against the wooden frame, devouring her with his hands and his mouth, reveling in the rediscovery of the taste of her, of the feel of the curves of her body.

  The quiet in the room was so complete that Samuel felt deafened by it after the cacophony in the other room. It took him a moment to register the breathless moans coming from his wife, and another moment to realize the bestial grunts he could hear were coming from himself. There were no words, no need of them, and no use for them. Moira was pushing at his shoulders. His lust was on the edge of becoming rage at the thought she might deny him, until he comprehended that she intended for him to take her place against the door.

  He tripped around her, crashing backwards, just barely keeping his feet under the onslaught of pure need, unable to process her intentions until Oh Dear God! She was on her knees and she was freeing him from his jeans and Jesus H Christ in Heaven he was in her mouth. It was hot and wet and more, much more than he could stand. He was coming in body-wracking pulses before he could finish threading his hands into her hair. His knees buckled and he sagged, only just keeping from sliding to the floor in an orgasmic puddle. Samuel realized he had his eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them, Moira was sitting back on her heels, smiling up at him with a grin that would have made Lucifer proud, delicately wiping the corner of her lips with a manicured fingertip.

  “Welcome home, cher.”

  “Jesus... God. I’m... sorry....” He stuttered between pants.

  Moira laughed a sultry sound that he felt in his balls. His cock began to twitch and harden again. He hadn’t felt this randy since puberty hit.

  “Fuck I love you, cher.” He pulled her up from her knees and buried his hands in her hair and his tongue in her mouth, walking her backwards until her legs hit the edge of the bed. She allowed herself to fall onto the covers, her arms outspread, before he could push her down.

  The look in her eyes had darkened substantially. “It’s been six long years, cher.”

  Samuel’s small brain had taken over again, robbing him of the higher cognitive power necessary for coherent speech. He fell onto his wife. She was wearing a dress, the detail of which had completely evaded him other than the fleeting thought that it looked like a huge, stiff t-shirt and hid everything good about her body, was completely inappropriate for getting on the back of his bike in and was going to be burnt at the earliest opportunity. He bunched the material up around her waist and discovered the primary reason for her choice of outfit. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Samuel paused just long enough to look his wife in the eye and beg forgiveness before he stabbed into her, fast and completely until he was enveloped in her body. Surrounded by that lush wet heat, his composure gave out and he dropped his forehead to her shoulder, sobs shaking him through to the marrow of his bones.

  She was murmuring in his ear, but it took him some minutes to be able to hear the words that she was repeating.

  “There, there, cher. Nothing to be sorry for. I needed you too. Still do.”

  Her words began to penetrate the fog in his head about the same time that Samuel’s body telegraphed the message that she was flexing against him. That brought with it the realization of the sensation that she was slick and wet and that he hadn’t hurt her with the brutality of his need. He tried to make words, to tell her how much he loved her, how much he needed her, how much he was thankful for her, but they got crowded and stuck in his throat until they came out all jumbled together as a grunt.

  So instead he showed her how much he’d missed her, how much he needed her. He pulled out and slammed back into her, wrenching a moan from both of them. The satin heat of her pussy was almost too much. Determined that he wasn’t just going to use her for his own satisfaction again this night, Samuel slid his hand between them, finding her clit with an ease that belied the time they’d spent apart. His body, acting on instinct honed through the years spent together before this separation, took over. He found the rhythm and the angle that had Moira screaming his name, her nails buried in the leather of the kutte he was still wearing as her body spasmed around his, robbing him of reality once more in a flash of white light.

  When he settled back to his body the strength seeped out of his arms and Samuel collapsed onto his wife’s heaving chest before rolling over to give her space to draw breath. The feel of pulling out of her luscious body wrenched another moan from him. He didn’t want to lose that feeling, not ever again.

  Moira’s laughter startled him out of his relaxed fugue. “Cher, you better be plannin’ on workin’ on your stamina.”

  “Cheeky bitch.” He made a halfhearted swat in her direction. The muscles in his body were still refusing to act as one organism.

  “Don’t worry, cher, we have the rest of our lives.”

  “Damn right. I ain’t goin’ back Moira. I won’t ever spend years away from you or the kids again.

  His wife rolled onto her side, without bothering to straighten her dress, and placed her palm in the center of his chest. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, cher. I know what this life is. Knew what it was when I signed up for it. You can’t give me guarantees like that and I won’t ask for them.”

  Samuel didn’t answer, he couldn’t. He didn’t intend to retract his vow or amend it, so anything he might have said would have been a lie, and this wasn’t a time for lies. He turned onto his side to face his wife. He traced the line of her cheek and jaw then turned his hand to brush the backs of his fingers down her throat. When he reached the collar of that hideous dress, some god-awful mustard color, he gave it a tug and grinned.

  “Cher, you know I hate this?” His voice was hoarse and he coughed to try and clear it a little.

  “It served a purpose. It don’t crease either.”

  Moira returned his grin and then rolled off the bed. She pulled the hem of the dress straight and hunted for shoes that Samuel hadn’t known she’d lost. Having found her footwear and slipped it on, Moira disappeared into the small bathroom the adjoined the room. Samuel flipped to his back and stared at the ceiling, listening to the water running and simply letting his mind be blank for a few moments. The draft cooling his cock forced him to stand and tuck himself back into his jeans. He was sticky and it was uncomfortable, but he liked the feeling, liked the idea of walking around with his wife still on him. His knees still felt a little shaky.

  There was a mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bed over flimsy desk. Samuel examined his reflection, looking for traces of lipstick and seeing his black hair, threaded with some grey, more than he remembered, waving back over his ears. It had been a while since he’d last had it cut in prison. They only seemed to have two grades of tools, rusty and rustier. A decent haircut was definitely high on his list of things to accomplish within the next few days. Some quirk of genetics between his dark hair and brown eyes and Moira’s red hair and green eyes had produced two blonde, blue-eyed children. Dean had inherited his father’s quick-to-tan skin while Ashleigh had inherited her mother’s porcelain perfection. Samuel thought a lesser man might have been made insecure by the lack of physical resemblance in his progeny, but the shape if not the color of their features and their attitudes and mannerisms were equal mixes of him and his wife. There was no doubt at all whose children they were.

  When Moira emerged from the bathroom, he slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her against his chest for a deep, lingering kiss. They couldn’t abandon the kids out in the middle of the party all night. The adults would fully understand if he and Moira weren’t seen for another twenty-four hours or so, but Ashleigh and Dean deserved his attention too. He fully intended to pick up where he’d left off with his wife as soon as they were home. But for now, they needed to return to the celebrations in his honor.

  Tomorrow he would ride and reconnect
some more with his family, and then it would be back to business. He’d been gone from his seat at the head of the table too long. Terry wanted him back. His brothers wanted him back. He wanted to be back. He was ready. He had returned to the bosom of his family, his whole family. For now, life was about living. He’d spent six years reflecting, examining, deconstructing; now it was time to immerse himself in the thick of it, to grab life with both hands and wrap it around him. This was his life, it was good, it would be good, and it would get better. There was action on the horizon. The deal with the Rojas family needed life breathed into it now that he was on the outside and he was ready to start the CPR.