by Jessie Cooke
She laughed. “From what I remember of last night...and that is every delicious detail,” she told him with a wink, “there’s no ‘might be’ to it.”
Gabe felt his face flush as he said, “Yeah, just not sure we want to advertise that anywhere near the boss.”
She giggled. “So if he suddenly says he doesn’t want us together, you’d stop seeing me?”
“No fucking way,” he said, without any uncertainty. “I can just promise you that it wouldn’t be pretty, if I defied him.” He reached up and put his hand on her neck, pulling her down into a warm, sweet kiss. When he broke it he said, “I can also promise you that you’re the first thing in my life that I know, without a doubt, I would defy him for.”
Patrice lay down next to him and for a few seconds they just lay there, looking at each other, and then she said, “You ever think it was fate...I mean, that I happened to be your nurse and that led to me finding my father and finding all of these things out about my mother?”
“I believe in fate, and karma too. I’m Cajun,” he said with a grin. “You’d be surprised at some of the stuff I believe.”
“I guess I’m Cajun too,” she said. “That’s something I haven’t really thought about since finding Blackheart. I guess I have a lot to learn.”
Gabe put his hand on the side of her face, kissed her softly again, and whispered, “Stick with me, baby...I’ll teach you.”
Their lips met again and this time with their bodies molded into each other it turned passionate in an instant. Gabe had his hands on Patrice’s face, but he felt one of hers wander down to the front of his jeans where his erection was trying to escape. He gasped when he felt her unbutton and unzip his jeans, and then let out a long groan when her warm hand slid down into the front of his boxer shorts and wrapped around his aching shaft. “Oh baby...” he whispered as he pulled out of the kiss and rolled onto his back. Patrice smiled and he closed his eyes as she began to stroke him, slowly and gently. He gasped and let one of his hands slide up underneath her t-shirt. Her skin was so soft and warm and the sensation of touching her while she stroked him sent shivers down his spine and goosebumps skittering down his arms. She tightened her grip on him when his hand slipped underneath her bra and cupped one of her breasts. Her strokes became harder and faster as he massaged and caressed her breast, pressing his palm into her engorged nipple.
Their breaths both began to grow more shallow and just when he thought he couldn’t get any harder, he felt another wild rush of blood to his cock when she slid her hand down between his legs and cupped his balls. He moaned and pressed his head back into the pillow. “Oh Jesus, baby.”
He felt her weight shift on the bed, and then her warm breath as it lingered over his skin. He opened his eyes and when she took his jeans and shorts in her hands, he lifted his hips and let her pull them off. She tossed them aside and once more he felt her hot breath, and then the tip of her wet tongue against the head of his cock. He squeezed her breast harder and she moaned, right before opening her sexy, pillow-soft lips and taking the tip of his cock into her mouth. He arched his back and put his free hand into her hair, wrapping it up around his fist and feeling the silky strands slide through his fingers.
A gravelly noise escaped from his throat when she opened her lips wider and let the shaft of his cock begin to slide into her mouth. It was wet and hot, and when she closed her lips around him and began to let him slide in and out, touching the back of her throat each time, he began to make noises that he was almost worried would reach the end of the hall and notify her father that he was about to wildly fuck his daughter. That thought was fleeting, however, and he stuffed it as quickly as it had risen. All he wanted to concentrate on at that moment was the gorgeous woman who was making him feel like he was floating somewhere between the stars he could see outside the window and heaven—which, he was convinced, couldn’t feel any better than how she was making him feel at that moment in time.
He lay there raising his hips up and down and letting her pleasure him for a long time before he suddenly, and desperately, needed more. He pulled her off him, and when she looked into his eyes, hers were filled with nothing but desire. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips wet and swollen, and he needed more. He pulled her t-shirt up and she helped him take it off her. Before it hit the ground, his hand was on the clasp of her black bra. He loved watching as the lacy covering fell away, exposing her creamy mounds and her big, red, hard nipples. He tore at her pants, desperately, until she giggled and stood up, turning her back to him and giving him one hell of a sexy show as she pulled them down slowly. He ripped off his t-shirt and then put two of his fingers underneath the lacy ribbon of the thong she was wearing, sliding them down between her legs and feeling how wet she was.
She gasped and he groaned when his fingers played along her swollen lips and one of them found her opening and slid in, slowly opening her up just enough for him to get inside, and then clamping back down and gripping his finger tightly. She was pressing her hips back against his hand, and he slid another finger inside of her. With two fingers he began to fuck her, slowly at first but then harder and faster until at last she reached down and pulled his hand away, bringing his fingers up to her lips and licking them before finally turning around, pulling off that thong, and climbing up next to him on the bed. Gabe put one hand behind her head and pulled her down into another kiss. Her breasts pressed hard into his chest and his cock lay pressed into the lips of her soaked pussy. He took his time with the kiss, licking the inside of her mouth, tangling his tongue up with hers and then pulling it out and licking her lips, sucking the bottom one into his mouth and nipping it lightly with his teeth. She moaned into him and he felt her hand slide down between them and take hold of his cock again. He was so sensitive that he was almost afraid to let her touch him. With a groan and his lips still pressed into hers he said, “Condom, baby, in my bag right there next to the bed.”
Patrice groaned too, but she let go of him and bent down off the side of the bed to reach for his bag. While she dug through it, he took the opportunity to grasp the cheeks of her round butt in both of his hands and caress them. She moaned and wiggled it into him before finally sitting back up, condom package in hand. He watched her tear the top off with her teeth...and then he was treated to not only the sight of her gorgeous, nude body, and the feel of her thighs gripping his, but also to the sensation of her grasping the shaft of his cock with one hand and rolling the condom down with the other. When she had him fully sheathed, she lifted her body up and then slowly, and so incredibly sexily, she lowered herself down on him, taking his entire swollen cock in to the base. They both let out a loud moan and then Gabe grasped her hips and they began to grind into each other.
For the next fifteen minutes or so, he was just lost in the sensations of her—the way she looked, the way she smelled, and most of all how she felt. Gabe always wondered if sex could possibly be any better with feelings, the way he’d heard or read about...and now he knew. As he moved in and out of her, he wanted to scream out how he felt about her. He already knew he was falling in love, even before they’d had sex...but he also knew it was probably too soon to say it aloud. Holding back wasn’t too hard, until that moment when their two bodies became like one, and then it took everything inside of him to not blurt it out.
The look on her beautiful face and the tension in her sexy body told him when she was just about to hit her peak. He dug his fingers into the delicate skin of her hips and held on tightly, arching up and pushing into her as deep as he could manage just when she let out a little cry and he saw her body let go. The feelings of her warm juices rushing over him, the way she looked, the way she sounded, and the way the muscles of her wet pussy gripped him so tightly sent him spiraling over the edge into an orgasm that rocked him to his very core. He heard someone let out another loud cry, not sure if it was him or her...and then she collapsed down on top of him. Gabe lay there, holding her tightly and feeling her soft body shake against his, and then as
if having an out-of-body experience, he let his lips slide down through her soft hair and press into her ear and he heard himself whisper, “I love you.”
20
Gabe left Patrice sleeping and, trying to use his stupid crutches, he made his way down the hall to Blackheart’s room. He’d gotten a text from his boss to meet him and the other guys at 6 a.m. He was glad the message had included Lowlife and Le Pirate because the first thing he’d thought when he heard Blackheart’s tone on his phone was that his president had heard him fucking his daughter. He knew Blackheart wasn’t stupid enough to believe they weren’t having sex...but still, it made him a little nervous.
The other thing that made him nervous was that Patrice hadn’t responded to his declaration of love, at least not with words. She’d sighed, an almost contented-sounding sigh, and then she’d rolled off him and cuddled into his body. It wasn’t much later that she fell asleep and he lay there in the dark listening to the soft sounds of her breathing as he wondered if he’d ruined things. Sometimes his mouth engaged before his brain did, and it had gotten him into trouble more times than he could count over the years. But this thing with Patrice was the most important thing he’d had going in his life...ever...and he didn’t want to fuck it up. He told himself that no matter what she said when she woke up, he’d keep his stupid mouth shut, and his feelings to himself.
As soon as he knocked on Blackheart’s door, his boss’s voice called out for him to come in. Le Pirate showed up right behind him, and Lowlife was already inside. They all sat down and Blackheart said, “I know Gabe’s too young to remember, and Pirate, you came on a few years after, but Lowlife...I’m sure you remember Bernie?”
“Fucking rat cunt,” Lowlife said. Blackheart nodded. Apparently they were thinking of the same guy.
“A few months after I formed the club, I met this guy Bernard Hebert at a party in N’awlings. He came from a good, southern family and he’d just gotten out of the Army was what I was told that night. He was special ops in the military and well-versed in explosives and other weapons of mass destruction. He’d been kicking around for a few months trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life and when he met me he started talking about maybe joining up. Y’all know I don’t open my arms and especially not my club to just anyone. So we started by letting him hang around a bit while I checked him out. I found out he went to school in N’awlings and right after he graduated his family moved to Shreveport and he joined the army. I didn’t find any skeletons he hadn’t told me about. He was about twenty-four at that time, I think. He was funny as hell, he had a knack for anything mechanical, and he was generous with his money, which the club didn’t have a lot of back then. He actually helped finance the first renovations we did on the club and rolled up his sleeves and helped build the shop. I patched him in after about six months and at the end of that year I made him one of my enforcers.
“It was maybe a year later when things started going to shit. First, we got hit making a pot run up the Gold Coast. Three of my best guys got arrested that day and one shot and killed. About a month after that, our warehouse got raided and I was arrested on gun charges. They never could prove I owned the warehouse, or anything inside, but that shit took four years of my life going through court. Anyway there were a few other things happening, but I was young, and new at all this shit...it wasn’t until my sister Mandy came to me that I knew I had a problem, right in my midst. Turned out Bernard had been making visits to my little sisters, telling them I asked him to check in on them, but that they shouldn’t tell me he told them. Mandy got all starry-eyed over this piece of shit,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I guess their...” He hesitated, looking for the word and then finally spat out, “affair...lasted about two months. One night, though, while he thought she was sleeping, she heard him on the phone and she wasn’t sure, but it sounded like he was talking to a ‘cop or something,’ she said. She also told me that she’d been trying to break it off with him, but Bernard hadn’t been taking no for an answer, which was reason enough for me to want to kill him. But instead of killing the SOB right off, I had him followed for a while to see what he was up to. You were the one following him most of the time, right, Lowlife?”
Lowlife nodded. “Yeah, I hadn’t been here from Boston too long at that time. Blackheart had patched me in but I wasn’t road captain yet. I spent three weeks following this asshole...by the end of that time I had enough on him that I wanted to feed him to the gators myself.” Lowlife stopped talking and all of a sudden this look came over his face, like he was remembering something...and the color drained out of it. “Fuck...Shit...” Blackheart looked confused.
“You want to share?”
“Patrice’s mother, her name was Kasey?” Blackheart nodded and they all sat silently and waited for Lowlife to go on. He cursed a few more times and then said, “He was fucking obsessed with this girl. When he wasn’t busy on club business...or ratting on us...the fucker would sit on his bike across from her house, sometimes for hours. I didn’t know anything about her except she was a pretty little thing. It was weird, though, because I remember seeing her at one of our club parties at Ace’s one night and old Bernie, he just watched her all night...that creepy kind of stare...but I never saw him talk to her and she didn’t act like she even knew him. It was about a month after that the girl was gone. I never knew where she went...”
“Shit,” Blackheart said. “Did you see me with her that night?”
“Damn, boss, it was so long ago, and I was focused on Bernie and his shit...I can’t honestly say who she was even there with, or who she left with.”
Gabe was watching his president’s face and he knew...Blackheart was suddenly remembering Patrice’s mother, and the night they were together, making a baby. All of a sudden, and to no one in particular, Blackheart said, “The condom broke. She said she was on the pill so it didn’t matter. Jesus Christ.” He ran a hand roughly through his beard and said, “I remember her now. If I remember right, Bernie would have still been in the club when she died.”
Lowlife nodded. “Yeah, it took us about a year to really figure out he was the one.”
“Shit,” Blackheart said again. “If that fucker hurt her...” He stopped there, but everyone in the room knew what the ending to that sentence was. There was dead silence for a while and finally he looked at each of them with a renewed fire in his eyes and said, “Be ready to leave in an hour, we’re going to Shreveport.”
The men got up and Le Pirate and Lowlife filed out first. Gabe was almost out the door when Blackheart said, “I need you to keep her away. Take her to the storage facility, see about renting a truck or whatever she needs to clean that space out, and then take her back to N’awlings, and don’t tell her that’s not where we’re headed until you get there.”
Gabe cursed under his breath. First of all, he wanted to be there when Blackheart took this guy down, if in fact he was the one who killed Patrice’s mother. And second...Patrice was going to be livid when she found out she’d been tricked...and he’d be the object of her anger. He didn’t say any of that out loud, though. He just nodded and said, “Okay, boss.” He was cursing his luck all the way back to his room, and even more so when he opened the door and found Patrice sitting up on the bed, fully dressed. “Good morning.”
She narrowed her pretty eyes at him. “Good morning. Where were you?”
“Meeting with Blackheart and the guys,” he said. “We’re headed out this morning, back to Louisiana.” There, that wasn’t exactly a lie...
“And?” she asked.
“He said you and I should go by and rent a truck or trailer and get your mom’s things out of the storage container. Other than that, I guess we’ll know when we get there,” he said, still trying hard not to lie. He’d been told many times in his life that he was a terrible liar. His face always gave him away, and somehow he always got caught.
“That was the entire meeting?” she said, cocking an eyebrow.
“Pretty much,” h
e said.
She folded her arms. “He didn’t mention a guy named Bernard Hebert?”
Gabe swallowed hard and said, “Yeah, he said that was the name y’all saw on the register that he recognized. I guess the guy was part of the club a long time before I came along.”
“And that was it? He didn’t say anything about looking for him?”
“No.” He didn’t mention “looking” for him, but Gabe knew that meant he’d already made some phone calls and pinpointed the man’s exact location. He waited for another question and was surprised when it didn’t come. Instead Patrice stood up and said:
“Okay, I guess when we get back to Louisiana, Blackheart will let me know where we go from here. I’m going downstairs to grab some coffee. You want anything?” She seemed way too calm, and he didn’t like it, but he smiled and said:
“Sure, coffee sounds good. I’ll get us packed up. We should take off soon.”
When Patrice got downstairs, she ducked out the back way and took out her phone. She went online and looked up “Hebert” in Shreveport, Louisiana. There were no “Bernard Heberts” but there were two others, one named Ella and the other George. She saved both addresses before calling the airport and buying two tickets to Shreveport Regional. Once that was done, she went back inside and grabbed two cups of coffee off the little guest kiosk. She heard the Harleys start up as she started back up the stairs. She stopped outside the door of the room she had shared with Gabe and did her best to manage a neutral expression, even though she was feeling thoroughly pissed off inside. He’d told her he loved her, and she’d almost said it back...but now he was already lying to her, at the behest of his president, whom she feared he adored even more than he could ever possibly love her.
She took a deep breath, pasted a smile on her face, and walked into the room. “Okay, coffee’s here,” she said, handing one of the Styrofoam cups to him. “Whenever you’re ready, we can hit the road.”
