Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  “Just how am I doing that? By doing great hair? At reasonable prices?” I kept my tone calm, levelheaded but I propped a hand on my hip in challenge. “Or is it that Luscious treats their customers with dignity, accepts walk-ins and doesn’t bump out appointments in order to cater to the hoi-polloi that think they own Missoula?”

  Marian’s eyes did another sweep of me before turning to the shop floor. I knew what she would see: every station filled with a client and more waiting in the seats along the front windows, the linoleum gleaming since I kept two girls on the floor at any given time. A student to sweep and another one to work reception. There was nothing the other woman could point to as a problem. Other than having her in the middle of my space, spewing shit just because she hadn’t had the foresight to ensure she wouldn’t have competition!

  “This is nothing but a haven for bikers and their whores,” she sneered, but my meter was full up with that particular attitude. Especially when given by some skinny, obviously drunk and jealous business owner who was starting to come to terms that she and her shop were no longer considered the best around.

  “Just as long as they pay, I couldn’t give a rip how they live.” I swung my eyes back to hers and saw desperation in them. So I took a step forward, crossing my arms over my chest and spoke softly, as kindly as I could given the circumstances. “I think you need to go now, Mrs. Chirge.”

  “I’m gonna run your ass outta town. Prove to everybody that you’re covered in as much shit as that Hellion you’re fuckin’ on the sly.” I couldn’t even begin to fathom how she knew about Stan, about my midnight trysts and, frankly, didn’t want to.

  So I shrugged, a move given up so sanguinely, I amazed myself given all the shit my day had held. “Do what you’ve gotta do. But you really should leave.”

  “Oh yeah, he’ll fuck you but the moment your back is turned, he’ll be fucking another one. Taking her slow and sweet while you twiddle your thumbs wondering why he’s late.”

  What the freak?

  What was it, let’s-make-Dory-feel-like-shit day?

  So Stan had apparently tapped the ass of my major competitor at some point in time in between hitting all the freaking pussy the club made available!

  Big, freaking whoop.

  Her place, at least according to what I’d heard from Carmi, was way, way down the column in the queue of women that Stan had fucked. Take a step at the end and just to the left of that particular line, darlin’, is what my mind sneered right the hell back but I was careful to keep that thought out of both my voice and my face. “Or maybe I need to call the police in order to get you gone? Because you can leave under your own steam or with a police escort. Either way, Mrs. Chirge, you are outta here.”

  She pushed forward until I could feel the bones of her thin chest against the forearms that I still held in front of me. “This isn’t over, you stupid cunt. So far from over its not funny!”

  Jay-sus. Had she planned this, copying the words from some ‘B’ rated flick or a bad novel in order to try and intimidate me? “Just go, and please know you are not welcome in Luscious Two ever again.”

  She glared my way, glared at all the doings behind me before turning away and stomping towards the door. “You can go take a flying leap at a doughnut hole, you stupid broad!”

  I had to give it to her, the drama her words were given in, with just in the way her threatening tone was delivered, was one worthy of applause. But after the door had closed behind her skinny ass I knew all the hand-clapping I heard was just for me.

  So I turned back to the floor and did the only thing a woman could do when given that much appreciation.

  And for the first time ever, I curtsied.

  Before finding myself smiling at that memory of how my day had started as I went behind the next student at Missoula’s beauty academy. “I think that’s going to be too light for her hair, pretty girl. With black, you need to go into the auburn range.”

  Yeah, it had been a shit day.

  But I still was me, still knew my place in the scheme of all the shit that was raining down.

  And that place was still good.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Due to a fuck-up of a neighborhood security system that took longer than it should have, Bishop hadn’t had a chance to talk with Dory on Friday. According to their calendar, it was his turn to be with J.R. from Friday through Sunday.

  So he and his boy-man had shared a dinner at his place, watching as J.R. settled into the couch to watch some online-ordered, shoot-‘em-up video that had found the kid asleep in spite of all the noise that was blasting through the sound bar.

  Bishop only wished he’d found the same peace.

  Because his thoughts were firmly set on his ex-wife as he tried to guess what she was doing.

  Of the images of her, dressed to the nines as she shared a meal with some handsome fuck, the two of them clinking their glasses together as they shared a smile before going up to some kind of stunning room in order for the faceless ass-wipe to peel her outta her clothes. And then for the fucker to seat himself in the winsome, fucking sweet heat of a woman Bishop had known for more than half his life.

  Was he just then tasting her, lapping at skin so soft, so goddamn fragrant that a man could lose his mind? Or was the fucker going lower, feeling and savoring the muskiness of her arousal on his tongue?

  Motherfucking, sonofabitching, sweet goddamn!

  Bishop leapt from the sofa, finding his feet as he moved to the kitchen. He needed to get both him and J.R. over to Dory’s place but he could barely think, couldn’t even begin to put his thoughts into motion.

  His Dory was at a hotel.

  Was fucking some other man! Some other guy, some nameless, faceless piece of shit was putting his cock into Bishop’s woman and making her moan.

  Christ almighty!

  How could she do that, how could she spread her legs for some ass-wipe she barely even knew, for Christ’s sake? Especially after taking Bishop so deeply in, accepting his fullness with not only a sigh but a moan.

  Didn’t the fucker know she’d been tagged, had been claimed?

  Had she admitted that she was still giving it up to her ex-husband, to a biker who loved her more than life itself and even though they didn’t do it frequently, still fucked her when she’d allow it?

  Happily and with fervor!

  God, no. Dory had always played her cards close, never giving anything away. Otherwise Bishop would’ve known, would’ve guessed there was another man in her life.

  The glass in his hand shattered from the squeeze he’d maintained on it as his thoughts had run rampant.

  Causing J.R. to awaken and stumble into the kitchen.

  “Damn, dude,” the teen had mumbled, his jaw almost creaking on his yawn. “Is there a reason why you needed to prove how strong you are? And why your hand is bleeding?”

  Bishop looked to his kid before his eyes went back to his hand and the shards it held. “I was doing a test.”

  “Seriously?” The kid’s eyes moved from the blobs of red that were streaming down into the porcelain bowl before they moved back to his father’s. “Okay, so I think you proven that a biker’s hand is mightier than the results of heated sand. You all right?”

  “Yep,” Bishop shot back, but in viewing his cut, he knew he needed professional help in closing the slash that scored his palm. “Can you drive?”

  “Uhm…”

  “As real as fuck, dude. Can you fucking drive, little man? ‘Cause I’m thinking I need to have this stitched up.”

  “Erm…”

  Bishop rolled his eyes before reaching for the kitchen towel on the bar. “I’ll call one of the brothers…”

  “No. No. I’ll do it,” J.R. quickly said. “It’s just…you know. I have problems with blood and stuff.”

  “Then don’t look. But grab the keys to the truck and let’s hit it.” Bishop pulled the towel away, dizzyingly noting his hand was still bleeding a helluva lot.

 
As the two males cleared the doorway after Bishop had punched in the code to engage the security system, J.R. spoke again. “I’ve only driven twice. But not for more than 400 yards at a time.”

  “Guess this is the weekend that’ll pop your cherry on a lot of different levels, then.” Bishop offered with a half-hearted smile as he watched his kid carefully slide the key into the locks the front door held. “I trust you, son.”

  And seeing how his boy straightened up, at the gleam of determination in the kid’s eyes all because his ol’ man believed in him and had noted it, Bishop’s heart and mind settled.

  Yeah.

  Maybe things wouldn’t work out the way Bishop wanted them to, wouldn’t see him winning the race that he was running.

  But, by god, it was a helluva cool trek.

  *.*.*.*.*

  Bishop woke up and his first thought was about Dory and how she’d be home that afternoon. The day she was returning back after having a sex-filled weekend.

  Would she feel guilty or hold the look of a woman who was totally satisfied with all she’d gotten up to with her fuck-toy of the moment?

  He brought his still bandaged hand out from underneath the covers and stared at it. The medicos in Emergency said that the stitches would dissolve in a couple of weeks, but that he’d have a scar. Who was he to care about scars when the deepest of them were in a place no one could see, for Christ’s sake?

  But the frown he hadn’t even known he was wearing relaxed into a grin as he remembered J.R. driving him to St. Pat’s. Of how he’d tried to instruct the kid even as J.R. lost it driving the empty streets of Missoula on a Friday night.

  “Less gas, dude,” Bishop had mumbled, pressing the dish-towel against his still-bleeding wound. “You’re going too fast.”

  “But we’ve got to get there fast, Dad,” his kid had announced, loudly and with a scared note in his voice. “You’re losing blood!”

  “Slow down, son. Seriously, slow your roll, man. I’m not dying yet, but I might if you hit one of these other cars.”

  “Shit! Bishop, erm, Dad, please!” The kid was crying and had been since he’d backed out of the driveway, taking not only Dory’s mailbox but Bishop’s own, out in the process. “Please stop talking. I can’t concentrate when you’re yelling at me!”

  The older man, who’d had a grip on the dishtowel, only shifting it to another clean portion when it had soaked through, turned his head towards the window and smiled. Yeah, he would’ve been shouting the same if he’d been pressed into duty at the same age in order to take his grandpa to the hospital for the same reason. “You’re doing good, little man.”

  Bishop had seen a movement in the reflection and realized J.R. was using his sleeve to wipe his eyes. “No, I’m not. I’m all sorts of fucked up here and you yelling at me isn’t helping!”

  Bishop had kept his face firmly averted, kept his smile hidden at the kid’s words. He hadn’t raised his voice once in the whole of their time within his truck but knew that sometimes, when things were tense, that’s how a person might process instructions.

  So Bishop went to quiet.

  “I see the sign,” J.R. said after a time. “The sign for Emergency. Should I just drop you off and then go and park? Because I’m not sure about parking.”

  Bishop had bit his lips, pulling them in between his teeth in order to hold back all that he wanted to say to the boy until he came up with ones of the nice variety. “Yeah, dude. I’ll tell them you are on your way. Try taking a space in the back, where there aren’t any cars.”

  As the truck had come to an uncertained stop, Bishop used his good hand to pull the lever and opened his door. “I’ll tell them to let you in, right? Just get the truck to a safe place, set the alarm and then I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Raising his eyes in order to watch as his kid had responded, Bishop had seen the boy’s reddened eyes were still leaking. “Yeah, Dad. I’ll be there. Just as soon as I…”, the teenager had paused and worked to try and pull himself together. “Park.”

  “Good man,” was the only thing Bishop had thought to offer before he closed the car door and went into Emergency. He’d more than known the drill. Of how he’d be directed into a curtained off area, of the thousand and one questions that would be directed his way well before any doctor saw him in order to attend to his wound.

  Much too long in the biker’s opinion. Giving him too much time to think about Dory giving it up to some asshole in some nameless hotel room and doing the deed with glee. To imagine the positions they might try, ones he knew were Dory’s favorites, that would have her bleeting out her orgasms in a lilted voice.

  Christ!

  But as soon as J.R. had swung through the curtain of his ER bay, Bishop’s mind had eased. Had calmed. Because his little man needed reassurance that he’d done good in getting his father to the hospital.

  They’d been there for three hours before the doc had said Bishop was okay to go home. And as he and his boy had walked through the sliding doors, he held his hand out towards the strapping teenager. “Think I can drive now.”

  It was with an audible sigh of relief that J.R. handed over the keys, but the kid had talked the whole way back to Dory’s house. Using words like, ‘awesome’ and ‘incredible’ as he talked through the experience of ‘racing his dad to the Emergency Room’. A story that Bishop knew would be shared ad nauseum with his classmates on Monday.

  “But I can still go to the party tomorrow, right?” J.R. had asked as soon as Bishop had opened Dory’s back door.

  “Don’t see a problem, but instead of two hours alone, I think we need to whittle it down to one.” Bishop was finding that stepping into the ‘parent’ side of himself was becoming easier with practice. “You know, with my hand and all.”

  The boy’s eyes had shot to his father’s bandaged hand before coming back to his face. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Right. No worries, dude.”

  And Bishop had turned his back as he’d fiddled with the locks of the door and reset the keypad of the security system. But it was in order to suppress another smile. The kid was too much like Bishop had been at the same age. Fighting his young way through the confusing white-water of adulthood.

  A point that was more than made the next night when he’d received a call from his son only a half-hour after he’d delivered him back to Dory’s place from the muchly anticipated party.

  “Uh, Dad? Listen. Stacia says she needs to go home,” J.R. had mumbled. “Can you take her?”

  At the disappointment in his boy’s voice, at what he knew the young teenager was feeling, Bishop had no difficulty answering in the affirmative, saying he’d be there in five.

  After dropping the young blonde off, ensuring J.R. took the time to see her to her door, Bishop opened up the conversation without preamble. “What happened?”

  “Well,” J.R. said on an indrawn breath. “Remember how I told you I was gonna ask Bella after Teri couldn’t go? Bella went with Chad. I was stuck with asking Stacia.”

  Ooh, a third choice. And the word ‘stuck’ said even more than anything J.R. could’ve offered.

  “And she made it really clear that she doesn’t like me as much as she does Richie.”

  Uh-huh. Yep, that’s how it worked in the adolescent world. The girls made the rules while the boys drooled.

  “So when I got her alone, she’d only let me feel her up over her clothes.”

  Fucking cock-tease!

  “And when I tried to touch underneath? To get to Stacia’s skin? Then she’d grab my hand and tell me she wasn’t that kind of girl!”

  Bishop knew that wasn’t the case, but then he had a lot more years behind him, of listening to that same brand of shit that J.R. had heard. And had finally figured out how to work around those feeble words of protest in order to get to the goal.

  “So how did you handle that?”

  J.R.’s head had turned towards his dad. “I’m not a fucking perv, if that’s what you’re thinking!” There were a couple seconds of sile
nce as they maneuvered the Missoulan streets. “I stopped. Pulled away. Told her it was okay.”

  Perfect! So Dory had taught his kid to respect women to the point that his boy remembered that lesson when his dick was so hard he could barely tell which direction was up. Bishop lifted the hand without the bandage to capture one of his son’s shoulders. “You did good, J.R.”

  The boy’s eyes, so much like his own, hit his. But were more than full of uncertainty. “No, really. You handled that really well.”

  “I’m still a virgin, though,” the kid had lamented on a woeful note. “Everybody who’s anybody isn’t a virgin by the time they hit high school.”

  “Shit, kid!” Bishop’s voice had almost exploded from his mouth. “Haven’t you realized yet that those dudes who’ve claimed to have done it, lied? That they’ve no more gotten some than anyone else in your class?”

  The hopefulness that stole over J.R.’s face had made Bishop’s heart do a double beat. “You aren’t alone, son. And just because some big-mouthed ass-wipe hits it with a girl doesn’t mean he’s a man.”

  “Seriously?” Oh dear Christ on a cross! His boy’s voice, at how it held a note of optimism, had Bishop undone.

  “Think about it. You’re gonna live, what? Seventy, maybe eighty years? And you’re whining because you aren’t getting the feel of pussy at thirteen?” Bishop’s voice wound down, softening as he tried to assure his son. “Shit, buddy. Get it too earlier and a man doesn’t appreciate when a girl gives it up.”

  There were more measures of silence as Bishop guided his truck around the residential area of the Missoulan streets.

  “So that means I can wait?” J.R. asked and his tone sounded hopeful, almost buoyant.

  “Absolutely.” Bishop directed his face to his son. “Wait until whoever you pick wants you as much as you want her, dig?”

  “A slow burn kind of deal?” Which was the question that had been directed to the side window instead of the man driving.

  Fuck!

  Those were Dory’s words. Ones she’d used to tell him of how much their first time had meant. When she’d told Bishop that he’d created a slow burn inside her, one she couldn’t deny, couldn’t repress. Not until he’d made her first come on his fingers, then with his tongue until she’d finally, fucking finally, had given him access into her wet sweetness with the steel between his own legs that her innocent moves had created.