by A. J. Downey
He inspected the couch, which was made up like a bed with the sheets and blankets I’d washed after I’d arrived while Doc had treated Dani, and finally he nodded and sniffed.
“You can have a taste if you want,” he said. I felt my brows crush down into a frown. Was he for fucking real!?
“Naw, man, that’s yer Ol’ Lady,” I stated and crossed my arms over my chest, tucking my hands flat under my arms to resist the urge to punch him in his smug, smiling face. His mood turned on a dime and he scowled at me, leaning in, menacing. I wanted to stand my ground but I didn’t know what he was playing at so I leaned away from him.
“You saying my woman’s pussy ain’t good enough, Prospect?” he demanded.
“No, man! I’m not saying that either! Your woman is damn fine, she’s just your woman! I got mad respect, Dude! No disrespect here!” I put my hands out as if to ward off any offense I may have caused and his laughter boomed through the tired old apartment.
“I’m just fucking with you, Prospect! You did good here, keeping my bitch alive. When we going to see you back at the club? Tonight?” he asked.
I tried to look relieved and really only had to half fake it. Fucking Pig-Pen, man, with as much shit as he did and as squirrely as his moods were, you never really could tell. I shook my head and answered him with a total fucking lie that I hoped sounded remotely believable, “Naw man, not tonight, maybe tomorrow night. My guy said someone should be here to make sure she took her pills at least through tomorrow night, that after that she should be good. I know she’s pretty valuable to you and the club so it’s better that I do what the doctor ordered and protect your investment. You dig?”
He eyed me with some suspicion and I found myself praying silently, please buy it, please buy it, please buy it… Finally he nodded and pounded me on the back as we turned for the door.
“I knew I did right by you, letting you hang around. You’re smart and loyal and I like that,” we got to the door. “Coon! I’ll deal with your ass later! You’d better have some shit done and ready for me to sell by the end of next week, you hear me?” he called down the hall in the direction of the bedroom.
“Absolutely! I will, I promise. Don’t you worry,” her voice called back and then dissolved into a fit of coughing from trying to project it that far.
“Tomorrow night,” Pig said and I nodded.
“I’ll be there.”
He ducked out the front door into the evening and I shut it behind him. Once I heard his bike start up, I threw the locks and let my shoulders sag. Fucking-A, I hated that cock sucker. I drifted up the hall and leaned silently against the doorframe to her bedroom. She sat up in bed, still looking so small and frail, staring at her hands. Her eyes drifted shut and tears slipped silent down her face. She sniffed and took a wretched breath and let it out slowly. I knew she’d heard everything and I knew it bothered her; that it hurt, and filled her heart with resentment and anger and such a feeling of hopelessness. It was plain to see in the way she held herself.
“You okay?” I asked. She took a breath and nodded, and I pushed off the frame of the door.
“You didn’t get sick on purpose, but you damned sure let it spiral out of control, didn’t you?” I asked softly. She looked at me, her blue eyes sparking and flashing with anger and resentment, which slid out of her eyes just as quickly as they appeared. As if the emotions had been thrown at her wall and instead of sticking, just slid to the floor, regret and resignation revealed underneath.
“Oh Baby, you can’t give up,” I said. I sighed and sat down by her feet.
“Why?” she asked, her lips parted. Her chin trembled and fresh tears welled in her bright and intelligent eyes and slipped free, down her porcelain skin. The whole effect, surrounded by her raven dark hair, was breathtaking. She jerked back and her expression turned confused. I reached out and thumbed a tear from her chin.
“What is it, Baby?” I asked her, ignoring her question.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Pig’s an asshole.”
She gasped but I pressed on. She’d told me some of her secrets, things that could get her in trouble, I owed her to say a thing or two that could land my ass in the fire. To even the score between us once more. “He’s got this smart, beautiful, fiery woman right in front of him. A treasure that should be treated like the jewels she flips for him to line his fucking pockets, and look what he does to you.” I felt my mouth set into a line of resignation. If anyone from the club heard what had just come out of my mouth, I would have had my teeth knocked out by one vicious curb stomping. If I was lucky it would stop there, but I didn’t think luck had much to do with anything when it came to The Suicide Kings.
Dani raised her cornflower blue eyes from her hands to meet mine and I could see the keen intelligence there. She knew what I’d just done by saying that. She sniffed and her tears started to dry on her face. She nodded carefully.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and I gave her a smile.
“Sure thing, Rocket,” I murmured.
“This moment, right here, right now, this stays just between me and you, right?” she asked carefully. I considered her.
“Yeah. Yeah it does.” I didn’t know what she had in mind but I was willing to give her this.
“Come here?” she whispered barely loud enough for me to hear. I edged closer to her, shifting from sitting by her feet to sitting up by her hip.
“What is it?” I asked. My heart was squeezing down tight in my chest. Was she gonna do what I think she was gonna do? She leaned forward oh so carefully, her eyes holding an intoxicating mixture of bravery and fear with an undercurrent of determination. I held stock still and didn’t do anything. Oh man. This was some heavy shit.
She brushed my lips with hers, oh so lightly in a chaste kiss, her breath warm against my skin. I felt my eyes slip shut and my world went dark for a heartbeat so I could capture and hold this feeling forever. Secret it away for when the whole fucking world was on fire and I needed a small hope to cling to.
Dani Broussard had been trashed six ways to Sunday by the Suicide Kings MC, yet she still held inside her this pure and innocent… just… fire, and she shared a little bit of that with me just then. Her lips left mine and my eyes snapped open to meet her somber yet beautiful stare.
“Thank you,” she murmured against my lips before withdrawing completely. I sucked in a breath, remembering finally that I was supposed to breathe.
She’d kissed me. Knowing what it could cost her, knowing what it could do to me, she pulled out an incredible moment of badass and fucking kissed me even after everything she’d been through. Years of Hell, years of abuse at the hands of that psycho, drugged-out fuck. She’d bravely given of herself to me after so long and so many men just taking whatever the fuck they wanted from her, and she sat there and thanked me!? I blinked at her. I just couldn’t comprehend how incredible she was, and she had no fucking idea what she’d just done.
Dani had just sealed her fate with that kiss because she was going to be mine. Oh yes, she would be mine, and I would be doing it the right way. I wasn’t about to go all caveman on her sweet ass, no. No, no, no and no. I was going to take this damaged girl and do everything in my power to restore her. The only problem was, I still had to do what needed doing for my club, my real club, The Sacred Hearts. I was fortunate that the two paths I was on ran parallel to each other, that there was no conflict. I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do if those paths ever crossed, but I guess I would just have to cross that particular bridge when I came to it.
“I… I’m sorry.” Her hands started shaking when I’d been quiet too long, my thoughts caught up in a hurricane of machination. I took her hands between mine. They were slightly cool and I did what I could to warm them.
“Don’t be sorry,” I told her sharply and she flinched. I raised her hands to my lips and gently kissed her fingertips.
“You’re fine,” I soothed. She nodded and I was acut
ely aware that I couldn’t make this last beyond tonight and tomorrow. That her reprieve was finite and coming to an end. I swallowed hard and even though I didn’t want to, I stood up.
“Come on, let’s get you some sleep.” She scooted down in her bed and I tucked her in, pulling the blankets to her chin.
“I’ll be right out in the living room.” It pained me to say it but I needed some distance from her if I was going to manage to keep a clear head.
“You call me if you need anything.” She nodded and I switched out the light on her side table and went out, shutting the bedroom door behind me, leaving it open just enough so that if she called I would hear her.
I checked all my phones and there was a text that I’d missed by only a couple of minutes on my SHMC burner.
How’s my patient?
I smiled a little to myself. Seemed Dani may have made an impression on more than just me.
Chapter 8
Dani…
I don’t know what was going on and I’m not sure how he’d done it but Thirteen, the prospect, had bought me an additional week of peace with which to recover. I’d spent it getting better along with taking apart and melting down the pieces he’d brought me, refashioning them into something saleable, and taking the odd stones I had nothing to make with and spiriting them into my secret stash, which was my bottle of Sensual Amber perfume that I carried in my purse. The bottle was, as the name of the perfume implied, a rich, deep amber color almost as dark as a beer bottle. It only held smaller gems which was just fine, take something too big, or more than just one or two at a time, it was bound to be noticed.
I know it was damned foolish stealing from the MC, spiriting these odd little bits away, but I had to do something. The money I had from my grandfather was dwindling little by little on rent, food, you name it – just the general cost of living. Pig-Pen and the MC sure as Hell didn’t provide for me to keep a roof over my head and clothes on my back. I still marveled that it had never occurred to any of them how I managed to pay rent or keep gas in my car or food in my pantry or fridge. The odd crumpled twenty or two that Pig-Pen tossed at me certainly didn’t cover any of it.
I had also spent my week of blessed solitude thinking about my curious exchanges with Thirteen. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, kissing him like that. Truthfully, I don’t really think I had been thinking, I had simply been feeling when I’d done it. A multitude of emotions really, gratitude paramount among them, but also, upon reflection, maybe a little desire. I was a woman after all and he was a damned fine specimen of a man, and not just in a physical sense either. There had been nothing but gentle kindness in his eyes in the time he cared for me in my apartment.
He’d been there, later in the night that Pig-Pen had come, gently shaking me awake, snapping the nightmare I’d been trapped in. It’d been another bad one. The blankets and sheets twisted around my legs, the tee shirt I’d been in sticking to my skin with sweat. I’d showered and by the time I’d returned to my room, wrapped in a great big towel, my bed had been freshly made with clean sheets, the others running through the wash, and he’d lain a fresh tee out for me. It had not gone unnoticed by me that he didn’t go through my things, that the tee he laid out for me was one of his.
We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to, both of us simply moved around each other, instinctively knowing what the other needed or wanted. He didn’t go back to the couch right away. Rather, instead, he stretched out on top of the covers beside me. Not touching, just lying on his side, facing me, one arm tucked under his head. I lay on my side mirroring him, my hands tucked beneath my cheek, simply watching him across the short expanse of mattress between us.
“When I first showed up, you were really out of it,” he’d said gently, some time later.
“Yeah?”
“You were speaking French. I didn’t know you could, your English is perfect.” He smiled.
I’d frowned, “What did I say?”
Thirteen had smiled and laughed a little and said, “Hell if I know, I don’t speak anything other than English!” which had elicited a tiny smile from me.
“Sound it out?” I implored.
He tried and the words had broken my heart. I knew I’d been delirious; I mean, I was running a high fever and I had pneumonia, the doctor had told me so. But still… tears had sprung to my eyes and I felt as if I’d been cut, deeply, on an emotional level, except instead of blood, despair had welled up .
Thirteen had asked me what I’d said, his free hand tracing long strands of my hair gently behind my ear and out of my face. I didn’t tell him. How could I? It was just so weak and pathetic. He let me cry, and didn’t push, didn’t pry at all, for which I was so incredibly grateful. I just didn’t have it in me to tell him just how hard I’d been begging him to let me die in the tongue I had learned as a child from my grandfather, that I’d been begging him to let me go and be with the man who’d raised me.
A hand closed around my upper arm with bruising force and jerked me right out of the memory. I looked up, startled, into Pig-Pen’s face. He’d said something to me but I’d completely missed what it was. His hand came down across my face in a brutal backhanded slap and he shook me. Tears sprang to my eyes with the stinging pain.
“I said get me a fucking beer! Jesus Christ! You aren’t here to stand around fucking day dreaming all goddamned day!” he shook me by my arm savagely one last time and thrust me away from him. I stumbled into the bar, my hip checking painfully in to it.
“I’m sorry!” I cried swallowing hard. I got him one of his favorites out of the cooler, and popped the top off of it with the bottle opener mounted into the wood under the bar top. I handed it to him and he snatched it out of my hand so violently that foam boiled out of the long, narrow neck and ran over the backs of his fingers.
“Awww fuck! Look what you made me do, you stupid –“ he raised his hand to strike me again and I cowered back, but he was behind the bar with me and there was nowhere for me to go! I closed my eyes and braced for the blow to land but he was stopped by Griz’s angry bark.
“Pen! Knock it off. We got problems bigger ’n this right now.”
I panted, chest heaving, and opened my eyes to stare straight into Thirteen’s. He was seated in his usual spot on the couch, his face shut down, his eyes the color of a storm-swept Atlantic ocean. I’d seen it once, when I was a girl, off the South Carolina coast when my grandfather and I had travelled there for a gem show. His face gave nothing away but his posture was tense and I begged him with my eyes: No, just stay there, be safe; please don’t intercede.
His posture lost none of its rigidity but he blinked once, slowly. Message received. Pig-Pen’s looming presence backed away, his shadow leaving me, and I slowly eased back to standing from my cowering. He stalked off after Griz and Pipes. Gordy gave me a dirty look before falling in behind them. Skid sighed from where he was seated at the opposite end of the bar from where I stood.
“Girl, why do you do this to yourself?” Skid asked me, leveling me with a pitying gaze. I smoothed my sweating palms over the tops of the thighs of my jeans.
“Glutton for punishment I guess,” I said, voice low and shaky with fading adrenaline. He huffed a sardonic laugh.
“Yeah. Can’t argue with you there,” he returned.
“Everybody good on drinks?” I asked and Skid nodded, so did Thirteen, and Flyer, who was playing around on his phone in one of the recliners.
I gathered the trash from behind the bar, even though it was only half full. I wanted out of there, to get some air for a moment, and taking out the trash was the perfect excuse. I slipped out the fire exit and down the metal steps of the back lot, to the dumpster up against the building, and heaved the sack into it.
“I think about you, too. But you gotta stay sharp in there, Rocket,” his voice came gentle and low from behind me, but I hadn’t heard him follow me. I jumped and startled hard, my heart leaping clean out of my chest before slamming back in, painfully. I pressed a hand
to my breast and his hands fell on my shoulders, a firm, even pressure that held me together.
“I’m sorry,” I uttered and he turned me around to face him.
“Don’t, not with me, not ever,” he whispered.
“Someone might see us,” I hissed. He dropped his hands from my shoulders and started to take a step back but at the last second held his ground.
“Some things are worth the risk,” he muttered harshly and before I knew it I was in his arms, his lips pressed, warm and inviting, against my own. I faltered for a moment, melting against his chest, his heart thudding solidly through his soft tee beneath my fingertips. I moaned softly and opened to him and he deepened the kiss, his tongue, hot and velvet soft, sweeping past my lips.
He tasted so much better than I imagined he would, masculine and crisp with an overlay of hops from the beer he’d drunk inside. I pushed back suddenly and pressed my fingertips to my lips where the feel of his kiss still lingered. He let me go immediately, didn’t force anything, simply let me go, standing a pace away, arms loose at his sides, chest heaving, a match for my own.
“Go inside,” he said gently. I nodded and, with legs shaking, climbed the stairs. I took a second, breath fogging in the cool spring night, and tried to regain my composure before opening the door. Sticking to the shadows I resumed my place behind the bar, my back to the club and my hair hiding my face, which felt flushed.
The door opened behind me a few minutes later and I heard Skid turn on his stool before he said, “You find it?”
Thirteen answered him, “Naw man, it was a sweet ride though, the picture must be back in my stuff at the cabin. If I find it, I’ll bring it in. I thought for sure it was in my saddlebag…” The two men launched into a furtherance of a conversation on restoration projects and classic bikes and I continued doing what I was doing as more guys arrived. Still, I kept my head down and my eyes resolutely off of Thirteen even though I could feel his eyes on me.
