Fractured & Formidable: The Sacred Hearts MC Book V

by Downey, A. J.

  I stared at her in wonder for a few more minutes, mostly that she was actually here and would let me touch her, would let me love on her so thoroughly. I really hoped she would let me show her something else new today. Truth was she’d shocked the hell out of me climbing into the shower with me the night before but damned if I didn’t like it. I liked it a whole hell of a lot actually. I got up into the bed and laid the markers out next to me selecting a brown one first.

  I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too pissed at me, but you know what? She was sexy as fucking all get out when she was mad, so a little part of me kind of hoped she would be. Guess there was only one way to find out. I uncapped the pen…

  Chapter 14

  Mandy…

  Tickling against my arm. I sucked in a breath and moved. It stilled, but it started up again a few seconds later, a light touch that tickled across my skin and was driving me nuts. I moved again and it stopped but started up again just a few seconds later. Ugh! Zander chuckled and my eyes snapped open, which is when I saw the tip of the felt pen moving against my shoulder.

  “What are you doing!?” I burst out. He smiled and it was so incredibly boyish and cute it made my heart give a twist in my chest, and things much lower in my body give a pleasurable throb.

  “Couldn’t help myself, Red. You were laying here just so perfect and inspiration struck… Had to do it.”

  I started to sit up but he pressed his palm to my back, warm between my shoulder blades and pushed me gently but insistently back in to the mattress. The pressure of his hand gave my back a delicious little stretch and I groaned out in bliss.

  “You going to let me finish?” he asked, sounding amused.

  “Please tell me it washes off,” I said dryly, when truthfully I was kind of delighted in not only the sensation, but the fact that Zander would take the time and care to put some of his art on me. I loved the way he drew. I wished I had such a talent for it.

  “In a day or so no problem, but if you hate it, it will come off with a little bit more determination right away.”

  I scoffed a laugh and he grinned and my heart melted a little more. I may not love him yet, but yes, I could honestly tell myself I was well on my way to falling in love with Zander. I sighed, a tranquil and contented sound and tried not to fidget when his drawing on my skin started to tickle again.

  “What are you drawing anyways?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he said smiling even bigger.

  “Better not be something juvenile,” I grumbled affably.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, Sugar,” he said and I relaxed even more. He pulled the tip of the pen back and cocked his head to the side.

  “Turn over on to your back for me?” he asked and I complied, pushing myself up. I froze when I caught sight of my left hand. A tracery of delicate ivy wound its way up the back of my hand and spiraled around my wrist and up my forearm. I blinked and pushed myself up the rest of the way. The vine was brown and the leaves a rich dark green against my skin. Earthy and beautiful, some of the leaves in a state of turning, not brown and withering but to a rich deep crimson.

  “Oh my God… Zander it’s beautiful,” I murmured.

  “Turn over for me? I want to finish,” he said, but I could hear the shine of pride in his voice as he said it. I lay on my back and he thanked me, but leaned in immediately, setting back to work.

  The pen tickled over my shoulder to the front, and he spent a lot of time there. We were silent, and I simply watched him, face set into deep lines of concentration that almost seemed grim if you didn’t know any better. From time to time he would pull back and tilt his head to the side and consider his work before leaning back in. The air had grown cool, likely the fire from the night before had gone out, but his close proximity warmed me and his breath, when it fogged across my skin, made me close my eyes. The sensation so unique and arousing to me.

  I let him do what he wanted and held very still. This was incredibly tranquil and relaxing. I felt connected with my lover in a very interesting, very different way. Zander would glance at my face and this warm light would suffuse his eyes before he would turn back to his drawing, which was quickly leaving my shoulder and spilling on to my chest.

  I didn’t care. I liked this, I liked it very much and as the serenity stretched for several minutes into Lord knew how long, I found I almost didn’t want for it to end. Zander started checking my expression with more frequency as time went on and I soon felt why. He switched pens back to the brown and continued a sweeping curling line on to my breast and around my nipple. I giggled.

  “Hold still! I’m almost done, I promise,” he smiled and worked for about ten minutes more before sliding the pens back into a case of them lying open on the bed.

  “Finished?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. Come on!” He stood up and held his hands out to me. I placed mine in his and he led me across the hall to the home gym where he switched on the overhead light. He led me to the bank of mirrors along the one wall and stood behind me, hands on my shoulders as I stared astonished at my reflection.

  “You were busier than I thought!” I blurted and he had been. Ivy vines not only circled my left arm from wrist to shoulder in a single spiraling vine, the vine split at my shoulder, running along the underside of my collarbone, before curling delicately over my breast following around the underside of my nipple. I turned to see the back and realized the vine actually split in three, another running down my back and curving over my butt, which made me realize I also had a vine running down the outside of my leg, the tendrils curling and ending in a few delicate leaves on the top of my foot. I looked just as he had described me, like the goddess of my name personified. Like a goddess of autumn.

  “Please tell me you’ll let me have some pictures of this,” he said and met my eyes in the silvered glass. I blinked.

  “Oh, I don’t know…” I bit my lower lip, apprehensive.

  “Make you a deal, Red. Let me pose you, take some pictures and if you’re still uncomfortable with them I’ll let you delete them yourself.” I thought about it and realized that this was a moment in time that I could never take back. If I said no, then Zander would be hurt that I didn’t trust him, but if I said yes, well, I would have to trust this man implicitly. I weighed my options carefully.

  “Okay,” I agreed, heart in my throat. So many bad things could come of having nude photos taken of me, but the truth of the matter was, I trusted Zander. I trusted him not to hurt me and showing these photos to anyone without my consent would be an incredibly painful betrayal.

  As if he could read my thoughts he said, “You can trust me Red,” and so I nodded and let him lead me back into the bedroom. He posed me artfully against his white sheets and brought out his phone. He took several photos and smiled from time to time.

  “It’s amazing what you can do with a few filters and some creative angles with a phone camera now,” he said as he worked. Finally he got into bed with me and cuddled in close to show me, and holy wow! Every photo was elegant and erotic and only one of them showed my face… and the one that did show my face? Well it was simply a shot of my head and shoulders and stopped just above anything critical, enough to showcase his art and, even I had to admit, my simple natural beauty.

  I had never in my life felt beautiful before, but the girl staring at me out of that picture… she was. She was absolutely breathtaking. I looked up at Zander who was smiling down at me.

  “You can keep them,” I said quietly, “But only if I can have a copy and you send them to Everett, right now.”

  I smiled and Zander laughed, “Glad you like them, Sugar.”

  “I love them!” I pushed myself up and boldly threw a leg over him, straddling his lean hips. He groaned and pulled my mouth down to his. We kissed, a wild passion filled thing. He pulled back and spoke against my lips.

  “You going to fuck me?” he asked and the question made me shiver.

  “I’d like to,” I murmu
red back.

  “Condom’s in the drawer,” he said. I fished one out and he helped me put it on him. Pushing the waistband of his black basketball shorts down enough to free his erection. I rose up on my knees, Zander watching me intently and awkwardly, at least for myself and this being my first time, fitted him inside of me. And Oh. My. God. It was amazing.

  The angle was much deeper and much sharper this way somehow. It was different being the one in control, being the one doing the moving, doing the pleasuring, and I liked it so very much. I let myself go, let myself enter into the persona Zander had inked into my skin and I rode him, vaguely aware of the camera on his phone making the clicking sound one or two more times.

  I didn’t care. I felt so wild and free. It. Was. Amazing.

  Chapter 15

  Revelator…

  I was amazed as hell she let me keep the two pictures I snapped of her as we were having sex. I thought for sure she’d nix them as soon as she saw them seeing as they showed her, head thrown back, body arching so provocatively from her face all the way to her navel. Her hands where she had them planted on my chest, caused her arms to bracket those gorgeous tits of hers, bringing those lush globes front and center for the camera lens. Jesus Christ. She was one heart stopping, beautiful, no, gorgeous, no, fine… hell, all of the above! Woman.

  We spent all damned day in my bed and I kept her nude for as much of it as I could. It had been forever since I spent that much of a day making love to a woman, and I showed her a few more positions that made her scream in pure bliss. I made sure to keep her hydrated but couldn’t feel bad about leaving her sore. I’d brought her to the club with me when I had to be in church, and immediately Everett had marched up to her and hauled her off to chat with the girls.

  It wasn’t lost on me that Red forwent some of the shit in her bag, opting for boots, jeans; a tank top camisole thing with lace edging the top and a cardigan that she conveniently left off the shoulder I had drawn on. Man, if I had known how much she would love me drawing on her… I am so glad I didn’t resist temptation on that one and I was already planning for there to be a next time. I never imagined my preacher’s daughter would be such a fucking wild child at heart. I fucking loved that shit. What’s more, I loved seeing her happy. I settled in next to Trigger and he looked over at me, eyebrow cocked.

  “What’d you do? Spend all day gettin’ laid?”

  “Yup.”

  He looked surprised and then grinned, “Shit. Me too!” we pounded fists and Dragon called the meeting to order.

  “Right so we got a few things to go over. First, we paid our little buddies over the county line a visit last night. A little eye for an eye. Took down one of their meth-lab operations. Now nobody got themselves dead, because you know, that’s just not how we roll anymore if we can avoid it. But I think we sent a pretty clear message, so I need you boys to be on your toes,” there was a sweep of murmured agreement and nods.

  “We have some intel that our antics last night have definitely pissed in their Cheerios, so you all need to be careful. No riding alone. Keep yourself armed, and if you got something preventing you from carrying legal… well who fucking cares? It’s gotten to that point. Neither side is backing down which is what it is,” Dray said.

  Dragon spoke up, “Got some other business to attend to. Gettin’ on toward the beginning of the month, so if you got your dues, pay Reaver. If not, well you got until next meet to get ‘em in. Anybody need the floor?” I shot a look over to Dray and he gave me the signal that he had this, so I settled back in my seat.

  “A lot of nasty stuff been going down lately. Every man in here is pretty much here for the same reason. Lookin’ to get out of the life, settle down some and work towards something better. A lot of you guys know we didn’t ask for this fight and are standing your ground with us, and we appreciate that more ‘n we can say… but a lot of us, me included, are feelin’ like we’re back sliding into the heavy shit.” There was a heavy silence and some uneasy looks. A few of the guys nodded at what Dray was saying, Trig being one of them.

  “How many of you here have spent longer than five minutes with my girl’s bestie, Mandy?” Dray asked. Guys looked at each other and hands cautiously went up. I smiled. Most, if not all of the room had their hands up.

  “I’m gonna give Revelator the floor to explain what’s up.” Dray sat down and I stood.

  “So, uh, how many of you guys actually like my girl enough to get up early tomorrow?” Most if not all of those hands went up again. I nodded, “Here’s the deal…” I spelled it out for them and by the time I finished there were a lot of grins, some feel-good, others downright feral.

  “Now, I don’t want to sound like a pussy, but I’d really like to do this for her, and us, both to remind us that there are other ways of handling shit than fucking shit up and breaking faces, and because with all the shit that’s been going down, we need to do something to at least try to balance the scales some. May not tip ‘em far but for some of us, we can at least feel like we’re taking a break from digging our way straight to Hell.” There were murmurs of agreement and several nods. I took my seat. I think this had more to do with the guys liking my Red than it had to do with me but a win was a win in my opinion, no matter how down and dirty or how close you came, whatever you had to do to come out on top.

  “Okay, so for those of you that are down for this, meet here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Data is our road captain so, you figure a route to take and shit, got it?” Data nodded at Dragons words. “Good, I think that about covers it. Anything else?

  The meeting devolved into a few questions about how Trig, Dis and I were making progress on our business. We’d received an acceptable pay out from the insurance and were just waiting on a check. Still having trouble scouting a location to open up but had some promising ones lined up. As soon as we had the money we could look at getting a space and setting up shop.

  Several of the guys stepped up to volunteer getting us up and running, by pitching in spare time on interior work in whatever space we got. Saving on labor for remodel work would be a huge boon and some of it we could trade out in slinging ink. After about another hour, Dragon officially wrapped up the meeting and we sent Dis back to let the girls out of their cave.

  None of us were surprised when none of them came out. Happened like that with the new setup sometimes. I hadn’t seen Ghost at the meeting but then again, I hadn’t been at the last one. Trig said he was getting Shelly moved in to his house, so it didn’t surprise me that Ghosty boy played hookie. We all had lives outside the club and sometimes those lives demanded we miss out on a church meeting so that we could keep a roof over our heads or food on our plates. Didn’t mean we made a habit of not comin’ because that shit just didn’t fly. If it was a more permanent situation like work gettin’ in the way with no way around it, then arrangements could be made.

  Like in Lucky’s case. Blood before anything, especially where his parents came in. They were good people. He came up and stuck out his hand. We clasped and pulled into each other for a hug.

  “Good to see you back man!” I declared.

  “Shit, me!? Look at you! ‘bout time you stopped fucking around and joined up!” he cried.

  I grinned, “Yeah, yeah it was,” I agreed.

  “Y’know, Unkind would be real proud to see you wearin’ that cut and prouder still to see you keepin’ out of trouble,” he said. Lucky and him, well they had been best buddies. In fact, Lucky would have probably been right beside Unkind the day he died if he hadn’t lived up to his namesake. He’d been pulled out of town for work that morning to a site outside of his usual area. Lucky, like a lot of us guys, was as blue collar as they came. We caught up for a bit but I had to get going. I had an afternoon/evening workout to put in and I needed to hit the grocery store and shit. The day was promising to be a long one with a super early start to it the next day, so I needed to get home and crash if I was going to make it all work.

  I found my Red curle
d up on the floor in front of the media room’s big black leather couch. The girls all laughing and talking. I bent down and placed a kiss on her forehead.

  “See you tomorrow, Sugar,” I promised her. She smiled up at me.

  “Services let out at eleven. Everett’s going to church with me. Can you meet me at my parents at noon?” she asked me softly.

  I smiled, “Whatever you want, Babe. What time do you guys eat dinner?”

  “On Sundays? Between two and three. Sometimes later, just depends on what we’re cooking,” she said it as if eating dinner that early were a perfectly normal thing to do. I smiled wryly. For her it probably was. I kissed her again.

  “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

  “Bye,” her eyes lingered on me as I left the room and damn, but I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to take her home with me, sleep with her warm, soft body tucked in to my own, but I really didn’t want to ruin the surprise I had in store for her. My girl was loved. Loved by a lot more than just me and her best friend, and tomorrow I think she was just going to get an idea of how many people’s lives she touched in a positive way.

  At least that was what I was hoping for.

  Chapter 16

  Mandy…

  Everett and I arrived at my father’s church before anyone else. It was generally how it was for me. Get here about ten minutes before any of the parishioners arrived, that way my father, mother and I could stand at the door and greet everyone as they got there. The perfect picture of what a family should be. As idyllic American as a Norman Rockwell painting. It was the first time that I could ever remember doing it with such an angry resentment in my heart.

  It was all lies. All of it. Every single bit of it was complete… complete… bullshit. There. I said it. Every bit of it was complete and total bullshit and I was incredibly angry, but you would never know it by the polite smile I held on my face as I shook hands with Mr. DelBene or when I leaned forward to let old Mrs. Wainwright kiss me on my cheek.