Ella shook her head quickly, sending her brunette locks flying over her shoulders. “No,” she said, a little more forcefully than before. “I told you no.”
I chuckled. She was so adorably innocent that I couldn’t deal. She liked clinging to her high-minded principles now that she’d finished stitching me up, but that hadn’t been the case a few minutes ago. A few minutes ago, she’d been shrieking and crying my name in the throes of a wild orgasm. A few minutes ago, she’d been mine. Completely. But now she was shy again. I laughed deep in my throat. Yes, Ella was an innocent at heart alright. And I knew that soon enough, I could get that to change as well.
“Ella, I’m not a criminal.”
Ella looked away. “I can’t take any chances,” she said softly. “Don’t you get that? I mean, seriously, Mickey. You showed up in a box in the back of my rig. Your friends ditched you. You just grabbed me and—” She clapped a hand over her mouth and blushed red. “I mean, nothing,” she said quickly, dropping her gaze.
My chuckle turned into full-blown laughter. Ella was so cute when she embarrassed herself. It was by far one of the cutest things I’d seen her do. I watched her situate herself on the bench and put her medical gear away. When she pulled her phone out of her bag, I reached across her lap and snatched it away.
Ella gaped at me. “What the fuck, Mickey? That’s mine!”
I shrugged and dialed a number, holding the phone up to my ear. “I have to make a call,” I said pointedly. “You wanna keep it down?”
Chapter Eleven
Ella
I stared at Mickey in horror. I couldn’t believe he’d just grabbed my phone! He was so infuriating, and now I couldn’t get rid of him. But he grabbed you the same way, and you didn’t mind, I thought bitterly. It was true, I hadn’t minded. Whenever I thought about the course of our interaction over the day, it made my head spin. For one thing, he’d promised not to touch me but then he had, over and over. And what’s more? I’d liked it. Hell, I’d loved it. No one had made my body sing like Mickey had, and I doubted anyone would ever again. He was like a god who had come down to earth just to give me orgasms. It was crazy.
Mickey caught me watching him and made a point of turning around. The stitches were swollen and oozing blood, but I knew he’d be okay. Head injuries always looked worse than they were because of how much blood flowed to the head. Even a bruise could take a long time to go away. I knew Mickey would have some swelling in the morning, but overall, he’d be fine. He might even have a new scar to add to his arsenal, just another way to get hapless girls like myself in bed with him.
Stop it, Ella, I ordered myself. You’re not really a girl anymore, are you? You’re thirty-one, for fuck’s sake. Realizing my age made the events of the evening seem even worse. I was thirty-one, and I’d never been fucked like that. I was thirty-one, and it had taken a rogue like Mickey to really show me what anatomy was all about. I shivered when I remembered his rough tongue caressing my skin. Our sex had been explosive, but short. I wanted hours with him, hours naked in bed, hours torturing each other. I closed my eyes and imagined him trailing his tongue down my bare body and seizing between my legs, making me come again and again and again, until I was sobbing for release.
I couldn’t stand the paradox in my head. A man like Mickey was everything I despised: cocky, arrogant, insufferable. The kind of man who made promises that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, ever keep. The kind of man who could bring me to the edge of the world and back in the bedroom. The kind of man who could do anything I wanted him to, except treat me with respect. I knew that I’d been sending him mixed signals. But then he was the one who hadn’t been trustworthy with me, either. He was the one who’d promised to keep his hands off me and then grabbed me and ripped my clothes off. He was the one who couldn’t respect my property. I burned with indignity at the way he’d grabbed my phone.
There was something dangerous and entitled about him. It wasn’t just the way he’d shown up in the back of my rig, it was the way he swaggered around and acted like the world was his for the taking. And the way he’d been so nonplussed about his friends forgetting about him? I couldn’t believe that. There had to be more to the story. There just had to be. If it had been me, I would have been panicking. Then again, I didn’t really have any friends to think of. I didn’t have anyone who could have let me down, except myself. I wasn’t like Mickey. And his sure, smug attitude? I had no idea what was up with that. I chalked it up to the fact that he was used to getting what he wanted in life. After all, that much was obvious. He was one of those guys who acted like life had been handed to him on a silver platter. Seeing his hard, muscular body, I had no doubts that he’d been in some hard places in life. But it was hard to think about his struggles being the same as mine. It was hard to imagine that someone who prided himself on being a member of an MC “brotherhood” would have ever been homeless, or hungry, or working as a waitress in a dusty diner in the middle of nowhere. I almost resented him: he was cocky because life had been overwhelmingly easy. That must be it. There was no other answer.
Part of me wanted to hate him, but the other part of me couldn’t forget how amazing he’d felt inside of me. I’d never been fucked like that. I never imagined sex could be like that, except for in the movies. It wasn’t the kind of thing I ever thought would happen to me. Mickey was cocksure alright, but that was one area where he deserved to be a little cocky. And his cock had been anything but little. When I shifted on the bench seat, I could feel my sore labia pressing against the crotch of my jeans. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it reminded me that Mickey was no longer inside of me, and that was painful.
Mickey had taken the phone away from his ear and he was casually scrolling through my text messages. I felt my face start to heat up when I realized he’d see the messages from Rob.
Rob. I’d actually forgotten about Rob. I’d met Rob a couple of weeks ago online, on a forum for rig drivers. I’d been looking for some help with a mechanical problem—I didn’t want to bother Paul in the nursing home—and I’d made the crucial mistake of revealing my gender. Female truckers aren’t really a thing, and while most of the men had automatically resorted to petty harassment, Rob had sent me a private message telling me that he’d be more than happy to take a look at my rig. I was overjoyed until I realized it was just a ruse to get in my pants. When he’d shown up with a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates, I’d kicked him out of my apartment before he’d even had the chance to take off his shoes. But somehow, he hadn’t gotten the message. Since then he’d been texting me and messaging me on Facebook nonstop. I wanted him to leave me alone, but if I was being honest, a little part of me liked the attention.
Thinking about Mickey seeing the messages made me flush. Mickey was scrolling through the texts and I felt a hot blush rising over my cheeks. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised.
“What?” I asked hotly, looking away so he wouldn’t see. “What?”
“Nothing,” Mickey said. He chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I need to call the club and check in, you good with that, little girly?”
“Don’t call me little,” I said under my breath. When he’d dialed a number and held the phone up to his ear, I frowned. I didn’t get it. I knew that he’d seen the messages between me and Rob, but he hadn’t said anything. And while I knew how I felt about Rob, maybe the messages were a little more ambiguous. It made me feel shitty to admit, but I knew that I hadn’t been as forceful with him as I could have been. I should have just told him to fuck right off and then blocked his number, but I hadn’t done that yet. Besides, I was still having that problem with my rig.
Mickey glanced at me while he was on the phone; the volume was turned up so loud that I could hear the other line ringing. I knew he was jealous: his jaw was clenched, his lips set in a thin line, and I could see a muscle twitching on the side of his face. It almost made me grin. I couldn’t believe that someone like me, Ella, could make someone like Mickey jealous.
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But he’s already made you jealous, I thought to myself, recalling the scene in the truck stop. Every woman had let their eyes hang all over him like fur on a dog, and I knew that I hadn’t reacted well. I’d been so obvious that Mickey had called me on it as soon as the waitress had walked away. Yeah, I’d been jealous. And while Mickey had no right to be jealous now, I’d really had no right to be jealous then. After all, we hadn’t even touched by that time! Well, not sexually at least.
I heard Mickey’s voice floating over to me from the other side of the cab. He didn’t have his usual fun, jokey tone that he took with me. In fact, he sounded more severe and stern than ever. He didn’t sound playful at all. He almost sounded scary. I thought of him taking the same growling tone with me and another flush passed over my cheeks. Mickey knew how to rile me up like no one else. I didn’t understand the hold he had on me; it was unlike anything else that I’d ever experienced. Even with Derek, our relationship had felt equal. I’d been the one pushing him for sex! With Mickey, well, I just couldn’t see that happening.
Mickey broke my train of thought when he tossed my phone back onto my lap. When I looked up at him, he jerked his head up.
“Come on, let’s get going,” he said, yawning and stretching. A wave of his body musk washed over me and I tried to hide my arousal. My body was so aware of his presence, it was like I couldn’t possibly sit down without thinking about how close he was to me. I could practically feel the heat and lust coming off of him. It had been half an hour since we’d fucked, and I could tell he was already dying to do it again.
“Where?” I frowned. “Did you get in touch with your friends?”
Mickey shrugged. “They’re at the clubhouse,” he said. “Can you drop me off? Or are you afraid of getting arrested?” He grinned at me wickedly. “You know, because we’re all a bunch of criminals.”
I rolled my eyes and brought my rig to life. The headlights washed over the restaurant and my stomach grumbled. I’d completely forgotten about the cheeseburger dinner that Mickey had ordered for us, and suddenly I felt ravenously hungry. My stomach rumbled and I gasped in embarrassment and surprise.
“Don’t worry, princess,” Mickey said in a smooth tone. “You can get a snack when you drop me off.”
“Fine,” I snapped. “Let’s go.” I shifted my rig into gear and got back on the highway towards Dos Palmos. The night was still, an endless beast of dark, and I knew that it was unlikely I’d get any sleep that night. By the time I got home, showered, and had a snack, the sun would be coming up soon. My little vacation had been off to an explosive start, and I doubted the rest of it would even compare.
As we approached the clubhouse, I kept shifting my gaze over to Mickey. He had his eyes closed and was leaning his head against the window. His features were twitching and I realized that he’d actually managed to fall asleep in the bumpy cab. I envied him. I was so keyed up that I didn’t think I could sleep for hours. When I closed my eyes, instead of seeing highway mile markers, I saw Mickey’s gloriously sculpted body leaning over me and taking me.
“Yo, wake up,” I said, reaching over and shaking him awake. “We’re almost here. Where do you want me to drop you?”
Mickey yawned. “It doesn’t matter,” he said lazily, rubbing his mouth with his hand. “Anywhere is fine. If it’s too hard for you to pull in, don’t do it.”
“I can do it,” I snapped. “I’ve only been rigging for years, after all.”
“I forgot,” Mickey said with a grin. “The woman truck driver extraordinaire!”
“You better believe it,” I said drily. I expertly downshifted the truck and stopped right in front of the clubhouse. It wasn’t an intimidating-looking building—it was a garage with a low wooden building attached, but I could see decorative art of grim reapers and skulls and crosses. The Irish was painted on a wooden banner above the building. It looked so innocuous, but I wondered about everything that went down inside. Probably lots of criminal activity, even murder. I jumped as Mickey grabbed my arm and turned me to face him.
“Thanks for the lift,” Mickey said. He raised his eyebrows at me.
“No problem,” I said, struggling to keep my voice in a neutral tone. It was harder saying goodbye to him than I’d imagined, and I wondered what he was going to do now that he was free of me. As I was thinking, the deafening roar of motorcycles approached the rig and circled round, pulling into the parking lot. I saw a bunch of gruff, leather-suited men hopping off and walking inside the clubhouse. When they flicked the lights on, I saw that the bulbs inside were red.
“Bye,” Mickey said. He hopped down from the rig and strutted off towards the clubhouse.
Inside I felt a mix of emotions that really surprised me. Who was this guy, exactly? And why did I have the sudden urge to run after him and wrap my body around his?
I shifted my rig into gear and pulled away from the clubhouse. When it was almost out of sight, I pressed my hand against the horn and honked loudly. Let’s see how he explains that one to the guys, I thought with a snicker. There’s no way they’re gonna believe he got a ride from a chick.
Chapter Twelve
Mickey
I snorted when I heard Ella honk the horn of her rig. Mason and Jimmy rushed over to me and clapped me on the back.
“Man, we are so sorry!” Mason said. He ran a hand over his bald head. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry, we got held up.”
I had almost forgotten about how they’d ditched me. “It’s fine,” I said flatly. “I take it something happened?”
“Yeah, Jimmy’s old lady went into labor,” Mason said with a snort. “She had to pop that kid out before we could leave. He didn’t wanna leave her alone.”
I held up my hands. “I totally get it,” I said. “I would have done the same.” Turning to Jimmy, I pulled him into a bear hug. As always, he smelled like sweat and leather and tobacco. “Congrats, man,” I told him, ruffling his brown hair. “A kid’s a big step!”
“Don’t you know it,” Jimmy said drily.
We all filed into the meeting room and sat down at the table. Everyone looked at me uneasily, and I felt my stomach start to shift and twist. What exactly had fucking happened while I was gone?
“We want you back, Mick,” Dennis said. He was one of the long-term bikers, and I knew he’d always stick by my side. Besides Jimmy and Mason, he was the best friend I had in the club. “We want you back, but these fuckin’ Dos Palmos coppos tried to replace you. We want to knock those assholes out.”
I frowned. “What happened?” Leaning forward, I rested my arms on the table. The other guys shifted their gazes around and looked more uncomfortable than ever. It was like they were sitting at the table with a ghost.
“Nothing to worry about now,” Mason said quickly. “We gotta oust your replacement, and then you’re back in charge, big boy. That’s all you need to know for now.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. Dos Palmos cops appointing a new president of The Irish? That didn’t sound like their deal at all, especially not after what had happened. For a moment, I had an inkling of a thought: what if they still wanted me gone? They didn’t know I was back, and if I were to become leader, they’d find out sooner or later. Likely sooner. Looking around the table, I tried to read the faces of my guys. I wanted to trust all of them, but somehow the situation seemed too fishy for that.
“I get it, guys,” I said. “Thank you. I love all of you.”
They nodded and beat their hands on the table. “We love you, too!” some of them cheered. It lifted my spirits a bit, but I knew there was more work to be done. But not tonight, I thought gruffly. There was no way we were going to get anywhere tonight. The men were tired and yawning from having been dragged out of bed. I didn’t feel so hot myself—I’d been up for over twenty-four hours. And to make matters worse, I was feeling horny again. Saying goodbye to Ella had been harder than I’d expected. I wanted to see her again, see her cute little pink tongue stick out of
her mouth as she concentrated. See her amazing little tight body work itself against mine until she shuddered with a fierce orgasm. It was enough to make me rock hard in my pants, and I realized Mason was staring at me.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Sorry guys.” I tapped the gavel on the table. “Adjourned. We’ll talk more about this later.”
Mason and Jimmy flanked my sides as we walked out into the main room of the clubhouse. It smelled like oiled wood and leather and engine grease, but more importantly than that, it smelled like home. I’d been away for so long that I’d forgotten how the scent washed over me every time. It made me grateful to be a member of The Irish. It made me grateful to be alive.
“Boss, we really missed ya,” Jimmy said. He dug his elbow into my ribs. “You’re pretty fuckin’ gamey, man! Not get a chance to shower after that crate?”
I snorted. “I got wet all the same,” I said with a smirk. Jimmy and Mason’s eyes opened wide.
“Oh, man, that fuckin’ chick!” Mason said. He cheered and clapped me on the back. “She was sexy! You’re lucky, man. I bet she was a little hellcat!”
Lucky: The Irish MC Page 9
