by Hazel Parker
And then, as if on cue, the sound of motorcycles approaching and the sight of their headlights coming down the hill came next. I moved to Splitter’s side, assuming his body language. We traded some light small talk about the drive from Green Hills to here before Trace finally pulled up.
“Well?” he said.
“One hundred grand up front in two weeks, and forty percent profits to you within five days of the end of the month,” I said.
I kept my body posture very still as Trace looked at me, then looked at Splitter.
“That’s the deal?”
“Yeah, man,” Splitter said.
“And you shook on it?”
“Yep,” we both said simultaneously.
Relief washed over Trace’s face. I almost started to wish that I had held firm at thirty percent, but again, it wasn’t like we were going to go broke now by giving up those funds. We were so awash in money that we didn’t need anything else; we’d accumulated and saved so much that even if our monthly profits almost got cut in half, we still were making far more than we spent. We were bikers, not bankers; we didn’t lead flashy lifestyles by default.
“Then we’re good,” Trace said.
He hopped off his bike and extended his hand to me.
“Dom, you just saved all of us a whole lot of heartache. I’m going to come with you and Splitter to The Red Door, if you don’t mind, to finalize this, but I’ll send the rest of the boys home.”
“Works for me,” I said, taking his hand and giving a firm shake.
Two minutes later, it was just the three of us driving down Interstate 15 toward Las Vegas. It was a hell of a lot better look than thirty bikers coming to storm the town.
* * *
We got to the club half an hour later. Walker immediately knew what to do when he saw us arrive. He hurried inside, scrambling the officers, and they headed to the back. Mama let us in through the back door, and the three of us sauntered inside. Everyone’s face still looked ragged as hell, but there were some curious, almost hopeful glances given that it was just the three of us and not a whole slew of Savage Saints from California.
“We’ve come to an agreement,” Trace began. “Thanks to Dom and Splitter negotiating, the deal is that the Las Vegas Savage Saints will give one hundred thousand dollars to the California Savage Saints within two weeks, plus forty percent of monthly profits, delivered by the fifth of the following month. However, the Las Vegas Saints will retain full autonomy. The two clubs will continue to provide manpower as needed for each other.”
Mama smiled. Pork fist pumped. Barber barely reacted.
And Richard, poor Richard. He looked like the world’s heaviest weight had finally come off him. I swore I saw his face sag with relief, and he looked like he was about to fall asleep on the table.
“And Dom negotiated this?” he said.
“Splitter and I,” I said. “It was a two-way, fair process.”
“Oh yeah,” Splitter added.
Richard looked at me, shook his head, and laughed.
“I don’t know how the hell you did it, but I think I speak for everyone when I say I’m fucking glad you did.”
“Hey, I’m a deal maker; what can I say?”
Richard nodded. He and Trace officially shook on the deal, signifying it as a formality, before the two members of the California Saints walked out. As soon as their bikes took off, Richard looked at me.
“There’s a part of me that wants to be pissed at you giving up so much,” he said. “But then I think about the alternative.”
A relieved laugh filled the table. I patted the table, shrugged, and wore that smirk everyone knew me so well for.
“You know what, Dom? You’re going to make a hell of a president someday.”
I laughed.
“Hopefully, not any time soon.”
“Oh, hell no, not anytime soon, I’m not giving this seat up for the foreseeable future,” Richard said with a laugh. “But you saved this club an awful lot. You’re an invaluable member of the club.”
“Thanks, man,” I said.
A nice round of applause broke out that I actually laughed at.
“What is this, a golf club?” I said to more laughter. “Let’s just go watch the show and have some drinks to celebrate.”
And celebrate we did. We didn’t go crazy, not while there were paying customers, but we had more than our fair share of drinks, save for Mama for obvious reasons. We toasted, traded stories, and talked about what the Las Vegas Saints were capable of. What we’d sacrificed in excess money, we’d gained a level of security and resources we didn’t have before.
All seemed well.
Except for one thing.
“So,” Mama said, coming to put my hand on my shoulder. “You saved the club. You’re a hero. How are you going to celebrate?”
I already knew how.
“By negotiating something much harder,” I said. “But something even more valuable.”
Chapter 20: Jenna
I drove to work the next morning in an optimistic, if not necessarily quite chipper, mood.
I couldn’t reach out to Dom myself. I worried that the city officials would somehow read my messages, see I’d responded to him, and then make moves against me. Eventually, if we somehow worked, I’d get a private phone whose number I wouldn’t share with the police but that was not something needed until we crossed that bridge.
The fact that I could even say “if we somehow worked” was a step in the right direction, which was the cause for the optimism, albeit not enough a reason to feel chipper. I needed something a little more concrete than just that for me to feel chipper.
I was at the penultimate traffic light before I turned right into the police station, waiting idly in my car, listening to the radio. From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something moving forward toward my car from my rearview mirror. I leaned forward and caught a glimpse of a bike before I heard the knock on the window.
I gasped when I looked over and saw a man in a Savage Saints cut. It looked an awful lot like Dom, but with the full helmet and visor on—something he normally didn’t wear—it was virtually impossible to tell if it was him. I rolled down my window, my other hand reaching for my gun, just in case one of them thought they were being funny.
“It’s me.”
Dom.
“Didn’t want to text you this. Come by my place tonight. Do whatever you have to in order to remain hidden.”
He never pulled up his visor. I really wanted a look at his face; I knew he was wearing that too-good-to-be-true grin, the smugly satisfied look on his face. I wanted a look at that and those lips that I’d kissed.
But before I could so much as nod or say “OK,” he had revved his engine back up, sped ahead, and left me in the dust.
I knew why he’d taken such unusual steps for the sake of remaining hidden. We all needed to be a little coy, a little undercover right now, especially with Chief Isaac in place.
I wondered, though, with something of a wicked grin, just how much both of us would be chomping at the bit to make up for lost time when I arrived at his apartment.
* * *
I Ubered to his place around ten. I didn’t even send a text alerting him that I was coming. It was like the old days, when you just had to show up and hope that someone was home. If he wasn’t, well, I’d just spent about twenty bucks on an Uber to nowhere.
But then again, if I got there and he wasn’t home, I wasn’t going anywhere either. I’d gone a week without seeing him, much of it in denial about the fact that I actually liked him; what would another few minutes or possibly hours be?
Granted, I wondered at some level if this was just a dumb move on my part. Maybe this wasn’t so much in denial about missing him, but rather, a return to something I didn’t need to be doing.
Too late now, though.
The Uber dropped me off at Panorama Towers. I thanked the guy, headed straight for the parking deck, and found him waiting at the entrance
of the elevators.
“Impressive timing,” I said.
“I could say the same for you,” he said. “Somehow, we just seem to know each other pretty damn well.”
Somehow, indeed.
The closer I got to Dom, the more I felt magnetically drawn to him. The chance for me to change my mind faded with rapid acceleration every time I took a step closer, until I was so close that one more step would have us at arm’s length. I moved in for a kiss, and Dom swept me up.
“Woah, woah,” I said. “Privacy, remember?”
“Ah, damn,” he said, almost dropping me on my ass right where we stood. “OK, fine, one second.”
I followed him to the elevators. As soon as those doors closed, I had hopped right back into his arms, kissing him and grabbing at his face. Unlike the first time, when sex had been a very emotional and sweet moment, this was a lot more pent-up and aggressive. I could have had him naked in that elevator if I wasn’t so worried about someone walking in and capturing it for the internet’s sake.
The doors did not open until we got to his floor.
“Your place is empty?”
“Hell yeah, I told Pork to get the fuck out and not return until Sunday. He didn’t mind.”
“Good.”
He tried to kiss me as we moved, but I ran ahead to his apartment. I tried to open the door, but he had locked it behind him.
“Gonna ruin my pace,” I said teasingly.
“Oh, hush. It’s Vegas; you can’t be too careful.”
He unlocked the door, let me in, and locked it behind. As soon as I heard the click, I immediately tore off my shirt and went at him, clawing at his clothing as well. He tried to carry me to the bedroom, but I pressed him against the wall, going at his jeans and unbuttoning them.
“Ah-ah,” I said. “You get pleasure first, then I do.”
“Just don’t—”
“Shhh.”
I wasn’t going to be told what I couldn’t do here.
I dropped to my knees at the same time that I dropped his jeans down to the ground. His thick cock sprung out of his boxers to my face, and I started by swallowing his balls while my hand went to his shaft. He groaned as I stroked him gently, moving my mouth up to the tip of his shaft. I ran my tongue over it before I went to work.
“Jesus, Jenna,” he muttered. “If I had known this would’ve happened—”
“I said, shhh,” I said, pulling off only long enough to say those words.
Dom got the hint. He put his head back, smiled coyly, and let me go to work on him.
I stroked, sucked, and played with him for as long as he was able to hold out. If that was two minutes or twenty minutes, I didn’t care one bit. Being here now in front of Dom made me realize just how much I’d missed him.
I didn’t even mean the sex, though that was great. Few other people in this world understood what we’d gone through, so perhaps rather than having felt guilty or bad for having taken him, maybe it was only right that we wound up together instead. Rather than being the sort of thing that could have caused heartache and questions about disloyalty to the past, it seemed like the kind of thing we were destined to have found.
Dom ended up being able to handle it for about three minutes before he grabbed at my hair and pulled me up.
“You keep doing that,” he said before kissing me. “And you’re going to make me come into your mouth.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said with another kiss.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I’d rather be it inside of you.”
I started to giggle, but it turned into a full-blown laugh when he picked me up and carried me into his room. He tossed me onto his perfectly made bed, landed on top of me, and then went inside of me.
“You didn’t—”
“I don’t need it,” he said. “I know it’s you, Jenna. No one else has ever made me give up my player persona. No one else has made me feel like you have in the last decade. I don’t need some predetermined time to go raw. I don’t.”
I beamed and blushed, and it wasn’t because he was starting to increase his pace inside of me.
We had so much that could have prevented us from getting together, and we still had innumerable obstacles lying before us. As sweet as Dom’s admission was, it wouldn’t prevent the LVPD from firing me if it found out we were a thing for the next few months. But Dom’s admission was so sweet, it endowed me with all the patience I needed.
If it had to be this way for the next few months, next few years, or until I retired, so be it. Just as he had said, I was the only one that made him feel this way, Dom was the only one who had allowed me to lift the guilt I’d felt from Danica’s death all this time ago. I still couldn’t believe that we both had done this for the other, but here we were.
“Dom,” I said, struggling to try to get him to slow down so I could catch my breath and speak to him. “I don’t need any amount of time to say you’re the one for me, either.”
Now it was his turn to blush and look surprised.
“If you had any idea how good the last twenty-four hours have been…” he said, trailing off.
He just smiled. But this time, it wasn’t the smirk, the player-smile that was used to seduce ladies. It was a genuine, sincere grin.
He leaned back down to kiss me, and the intense sex that I had started with him in the parking lot picked back up. The tension inside of me from him going raw built up so much more quickly than it had before, and it was only a matter of a minute or so before the first orgasm had struck.
He flipped me over, getting me into doggy style. He grabbed onto my hips, his hands squeezing as hard as they could, as his cock slid into me. There was no gradual pushing in like there was last time; this was just a straight shot in, and the only time he took his hands off my hips was so he could slap my ass.
I felt his cock swell inside of me, the first sign that his orgasm was imminent. I turned around and locked eyes with him. His closed for a moment as it built further and further, and then, just before he came, he looked into mine, that split second something I would remember forever.
Though his entire face was contorted with the expectation of release, his eyes all but penetrated my soul. He was looking not just at me, but into me. His eyes said that he was sincere—he was never going anywhere else.
And then, like someone had snapped their fingers, the moment flashed forward, he shot his load into me, and I, too, came in conjunction with him.
We both collapsed into the bed, him just off to the side of me, me onto his chest. We laid there for several seconds, trying to catch our breath at the intensity of what had just happened.
“So,” I finally said. “What happened in the last twenty-four hours that has you feeling so good?”
He laughed. But it wasn’t a short laugh; it was almost a delirious laugh, the laugh a man had when he couldn’t believe his good fortune.
“I got a deal done with the Savage Saints,” he said. “The California Saints. There won’t be any more violence. We’ll give them a percentage of profits for helping us out against the Sinners, but the danger is done. Oh, and the real reason this is great?”
He looked at me, smiled, and patted me on the cheek.
“You.”
“Aww.”
“But now, I want to make the next twenty-four months great.”
“Why twenty-four?”
“I don’t know, I’m trying to riff on twenty-four, but look, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is I want a deal with you.”
“Hmm,” I said, eager to see where this went.
“Whatever it takes to make it work with you,” he said, “I’ll do. If we have to be so quiet that not even my neighbors know we’re a thing, I’ll do that. If we can’t be seen in the same neighborhood ever, we’ll do that. So long as our private life is like this… then we’ll keep this going.”
Yes. A hundred times yes. A million times yes.
“And you know, I think I may have said this
in passing, but we were a little distracted. Pork is moving out soon. I do need someone new to come in, if you catch my drift.”
“I don’t know,” I said with a laugh. “Be careful what you wish for. Once I come in, I don’t think you’ll ever see me leave.”
But I think that was the point—it was exactly what Dom wished for. And, frankly, it was exactly what I wished for too.
“I think we can make that work,” he said.
He leaned over and kissed me. There was just one small thing, one tiny part of what he said that I disagreed with.
I didn’t think we could make it work.
I knew with no uncertainty that we could make it work.
Epilogue
If there was one thing I had learned in the past year or so, it’s that there was no such thing as the perfect situation or something that could avoid being compromised.
Everyone in the club had had to compromise in some fashion, but it was for the better. Richard, Barber, Pork, and I had all had to sacrifice time and energy for other things for the women that we had found. Mama and Cassie had had to sacrifice their various positions in the club to tend to their children. It was a new world for the Savage Saints, and it was a world that we were all still struggling to figure out.
As expected, the financial hit of giving a percentage of our profits to the California Saints hadn’t hurt us at all. We couldn’t have spent the excess money even if we wanted to without compromising the one thing we didn’t want to compromise—our integrity and our values. If anything, the negotiation had benefited us; the relationship with the California Saints had never been stronger.
Still, it was weird to know that Wednesday nights were now dark at the club. We still threw parties on Tuesday just for the hell of it, but our priorities had changed. We weren’t hard-charging, liquor-guzzling women-chasers who went hard every night of the week; now we were fathers, husbands, and boyfriends.
Even within my relationship, we had some compromises to make. The political tensions had faded from up high thanks to a few more months of peace, making the need to remove us from Las Vegas a little less extreme. But we still had to exercise caution being in public; the definition of “private” had expanded to most of Panorama Towers, and now that Pork had moved out to be with Mama and the kid, she lived with me. So at least that was nice.
