by Khloe Wren
She ran a palm over my head, trying to hold me to her. Like I was going anywhere? With a growl, I thrust my tongue in deep and when she started to wriggle around, I placed my palm over her tummy to hold her still. I wasn’t even nearly done with this. Another long lick through her pussy lips and up to her clit had her crying out. When I thrust two fingers back inside her core and suckled her hard little clit, she blew apart, bucking against me as she gave me her cream. I stayed where I was, lapping up everything she gave me before bringing her down from this first high of the night.
I rose over her and grinned as she lay there, a sheen of sweat on her skin as she panted. Her eyes were closed and a sweet little smile was curling her slightly parted lips.
“Don’t go to sleep on me, sugar. I’m not nearly done with you.”
It felt like I’d only just closed my eyes when someone pounding on the door had me awake again.
“Fuck.”
“Bash! Time to get up. We roll out in ten.”
“I’ll be right out!”
Mac’s voice was not a welcome greeting to my morning. However, the empty bed beside me was even less so. Guess I must have slept for longer than I thought if Lydia had had time to sneak out on me. Fuck, I’d been looking forward to another round this morning. Although, with only ten minutes to get ready, I wouldn’t have had time. It would be a crime to fuck that gorgeous woman that fast. Not to mention a waste.
Dragging my ass outta bed, I pulled my jeans on and sat down to deal with my socks and boots. Standing up, I stretched out my back and neck. I needed more sleep. I was so fucking tired. Not that I regretted the reason behind my tiredness. Not one bit. In fact, I’d happily do it again in a heartbeat.
Grabbing my t-shirt, I put it on before finally grabbing my cut. As I slid it over my shoulders a waft of Lydia’s scent washed over me, making me groan as my cock sprang to life. Fuck. Twisting my head, I pressed my nose to the leather. With my eyes closed, I took a deep breath, catching more of her scent from when I’d put the leather on her last night. Memories of all the ways I’d taken her filled my mind and made my cock throb for some attention.
Noise on the other side of the door pulled me from my thoughts. Fuck my life. There was no time to even take care of myself. With a wince, I adjusted my hard cock so it wasn’t pressed against the zipper of my jeans. I grabbed a beanie from my bag before I stuffed yesterday’s clothes back into it, zipped it up and slung it over my shoulder. I opened the door and as I stepped out into the main room, I slipped the hat over my head. Wolf-whistles and laughter filled the room.
“Shut it.” Heat flared over my cheeks and I knew they’d turned red.
“Naw, c’mon, man. Sounds like you had a great night. We’re just congratulating you on it.”
Mac smirked at me while Tiny gave me a shoulder bump. Arrow was also smirking as he zipped his own bag.
Mac’s phone dinged. “Nico’s waiting on us downstairs. We’ll get coffee at the airport. No time now.”
Damn, that meant I wouldn’t even have time to go searching downstairs to see if Lydia was around for a goodbye kiss at least. Dammit. Following the others out, I kept my gaze scanning for any sign of her but didn’t see her before we were loaded into a cage and Nico was driving us to the airport. Ignoring Nico’s commentary, I scrubbed a hand over my face and tried to get my head in the game for what was waiting for me at home. Would Ma have even noticed I’d been gone? By the time I got home, I would have been gone about thirty-six hours. Only one night. Hopefully she hadn’t gotten agitated with the change from normal.
Once we were through security and waiting at the gate, I shot off a text to Beth to let her know I was on my way back and to check on how Ma fared overnight. As always, Beth wrote straight back saying Ma was her usual self and she was happy I was coming home so soon. Not sure if it was Beth or Ma that was happy, but whatever.
Five hours later I was walking through the hot Texas air toward the Charon MC clubhouse. Mac, Tiny and Arrow were all grinning and clearly happy to be home but I just couldn’t muster the energy to fake it. If anyone said anything, I’d blame it on being tired from my sleepless night, but in reality it was something so much more. After two years of doing all the shit prospect jobs and still not getting the reward of a full patch that I’d earned long ago, I was starting to lose faith in the club. In my place here within it.
By the time I filed in last through the door, Scout was there greeting us.
“Good to see you all got in safely. Sorry I couldn’t get you home last night.”
With a smirk, Arrow nudged me. “No problem, prez. Pretty sure it suited Bash, here, to have a few more hours in New York.”
My face felt like it was on fire at Arrow announcing to the whole fucking room that I got some last night. Bastard.
“Oh, yeah?” Scout raised an eyebrow as he looked directly at me. Which just made my damn blush deepen. I was about to make a break for it when Scout moved to stand in front of me, cutting off my escape.
“Bash, all joking aside, you did good on this trip. We’re having a barbecue later to celebrate. You’re off the hook for any work. The other prospects can handle it all and you can sit back and enjoy the down time, yeah?”
My face started to cool down at the praise from the president, and the reward of not having to come straight back and have to work. I appreciated the break.
“Thanks, prez. Can I head off till then? I need to check in on my mother.”
Scout gave me a nod. “Of course. Family always comes first.”
As I made my way out to my bike I wondered if maybe I should have told Scout about what was going on with Ma. I hadn’t said a word to anyone at the club about her condition or how badly she was deteriorating. I had no clue why I’d opened up a little to Riggs in New York last night, but he was the only one outside of doctors and nurses who knew about her having Alzheimer's.
The short ride home helped clear my head a little. Nothing like the open road and the roar of my Harley under me to wake me up and improve my mood. By the time I opened the front door to the house I shared with my mother, I had a smile on my face. It was getting late, well past Ma’s usual dinner time, so I wasn’t sure if she would still be up. I stepped through the door and Beth was there to greet me.
“Welcome home, Jake. Turned out to be a short trip, huh?”
I nodded. “Thankfully everything got handled quickly. How’s Ma? She still awake?”
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “She turned in after dinner. She wanted to stay up to see you but got too tired. I promised her I’d stay to make sure you were whole and in one piece.”
“So how old did she think I was?”
I wasn’t sure where she was in her memories today, but if she was worried about me getting in whole and in one piece, I suspected she was thinking I was in my teens.
“Not entirely sure, but she mentioned high school. I need to get moving. I’m glad you’re back. She’s better when you’re around. Even if she gets the dates mixed up, she knows who you are.”
I gave her a quick hug. “Yeah, I know. It’s just hard to wrap my head around not knowing who I’m supposed to be each time I see her.”
She patted my cheek. “I know. It’s always so hard on the families. The one with the disease is often the only one not suffering. They’re back in the past, and happy.”
“Until they have a good day, and they realize all they’ve missed out, all the hurt they’ve caused.”
Sometimes the good days were nearly worse to witness than the bad days. Ma would get so upset that she was causing me so much pain with her either treating me like a young boy or thinking I was my old man.
Bidding Beth goodbye, I made my way up the stairs. After poking my head in to check that Ma was indeed safely asleep in her bed, I went onto my own room. I needed a couple hours of shuteye before I went back to the clubhouse for the celebration. By the time I’d stripped down, showered and crawled into bed, I’d decided I was going to skip the club barbecue.
I needed sleep more than I needed to go back to the clubhouse and be given hell about my night with Lydia.
Chapter 4
I’d been back to real life for two fucking weeks and I was done with this shit. Ma was getting worse. Whenever she saw me, she’d either lay into me because, apparently it was all my fault I looked just like my old man, or she’d think I was my old man and try to talk me out of going away to war or some other thing. The only upside to this bitch of a disease my mother had was that, for increasing parts of her day, she forgot all about the final years of my father’s life. Alzheimer's had done her a favor and removed all the drinking and yelling, all the beatings, the brain tumor. At this point it was a rare moment when she got that look in her eye that told me she was reliving one of those horrors.
“Frank? Where are you? Oh, there you are. Have you seen Jake? He should be home by now. You need to go look for him, make sure he’s not getting into trouble with those hooligans he likes to hang out with. He knows better than to not be home in time for dinner.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a few moments and took a deep breath. Whenever my old man was home between deployments, I’d tried to make myself scarce. He’d always been a mean son of a bitch when he got in a mood, then after he’d been discharged from the military due to his PTSD, I’d put even more effort into staying out of his way. Anything was better than being yelled at and having to watch him slam around the house and beat on Ma. I’d been too young to stand up to him back then. Once, when I’d been in my late teens, I’d tried to stop him and copped a beating myself before he moved back on to Ma with more anger than before. Neither of us stood a fucking chance against him, and after that one go I had at him, Ma made me promise to not do anything like it again. So I dealt with it the only way I could think of—by avoiding the bastard. I still felt guilty about it, but I had no way to train so I could take him out. I guess I could have gotten my hands on a gun, but even then, I knew the chances of him getting the weapon and turning it on me or Ma were high. Ma had always thought I was out with friends, but normally I just sat down at the park in a dark corner and watched the others. At least that’s what I’d done as a kid. When I was older, I’d sneak into bars to torture myself with wishing for shit I didn’t think I’d ever be lucky enough to have, like good, solid friends that would have my back. Pity I’d never considered going to the Charons back then. I knew Pop was one of them so I’d figured they’d have his back, not mine or Ma’s. I know how wrong I was now, but back then? I was just a dumb fucking kid, scared of everything around me.
With another deep breath, I forced those thoughts aside and with a smile, turned to face Ma. She didn’t look any different than before the disease took hold. Still wore freshly ironed clothes each day and had her hair perfectly styled. But inside her mind, she was rapidly deteriorating. The cold, hard truth of what I needed to do hit me square in the chest as I watched her walk through the room toward me.
The time that I’d been dreading had arrived. Ma now needed more care than I could provide. I couldn’t watch her 24/7. She’d proven that three days ago, when she’d wandered off during the night. Thank fuck the front door needed some oil and I’d heard the thing squeaking when she’d opened it. I’d been fast enough to catch her before she got past the gate. But what would have happened if I’d been out? My jaw clenched as my mind churned up scenarios of what might have happened if she’d done something like that while I’d been up north. I’d paid Beth to spend as much time with Ma as I could afford while I’d been away. I still did, but I didn’t have the funds to keep it up long-term. Nor could I afford to hire a live-in nurse for her. Guess I’d be calling the local nursing homes to see if I could get her in somewhere. I didn’t want to put her in one of those places, but deep down, I realized it was the safest place for her now.
With a quiet sigh, I decided to play along with her tonight. Whenever I’d tried to explain reality to her, she’d get flustered and upset. And in the end, it did nothing but hurt us both. So, it really was just easier to simply pretend to be my father when she got like this. Even though I had no idea how to be the man she was currently remembering.
The Frank Alfonsi who had returned from his time in the USMC was not the same man who had gone in. I’d been fifteen years old when he’d been discharged and had returned home permanently. But that hadn’t been the start of his downfall. From what my mother had told me throughout the years, Frank had once been a good man, but with each deployment he lost a little more of himself. Honestly? I had no fucking good memories of my dad. Looking back with an adult’s perspective, I could see that he might have left the war, but it never left him. I could only imagine the toll it would take to be constantly fighting your own mind like that. Nearly every night he’d wake screaming, scaring the hell out of me and Ma. It hadn’t taken long for him to start drinking. And that had just fueled his rage when he’d thrown a fit. Ma had tried to shield me, tried to tame his fire but it always burned her. He’d lose it and throw a punch. Then, the next morning he’d be mortified by what he’d done, drop down into a black hole of depression and start drinking all over again. It had been a nasty, vicious cycle that had gone on for way too damn long.
Hell, it still shamed me to admit it, but when Pop did kill himself, it had been somewhat of a relief. It would have been nice if he hadn’t done it three days prior to my twenty-first birthday, but that was the hand I got dealt. He’d always been glued to news programs and anything about the war on terror, and when, on the 11th of September, 2014, the CIA came out stating that ISIS was so much bigger than anyone had previously guessed, it sent him into a paranoid state. He was sure the USMC would come and pull him back into the war. It was the next morning that I woke to Ma screaming...
I shook the thoughts free and focused on my beautiful mother, who stood before me.
“I’m sure he’ll be home any second, Laura. How about I get you a drink? A nice, cold, iced tea, maybe?”
I led her into the kitchen and over to a seat at the table as she began to stammer a response. “Oh. Well, okay. That’ll be great. I suppose it’s really not that late yet. And, well, boys will be boys.”
“That they will, love. Here you go.”
I handed her the glass of iced tea and set her pills down in front of her. She frowned a little but thankfully after a few moments, picked them up and swallowed them down. I bit back my sigh of relief. Every now and then she’d argue the need for her medication and it was hell trying to convince her to take the damn things.
Once she was done with her drink and I’d finished my coffee, I followed her lead when she rose up from the seat and took her glass over to the sink. Then she turned to me and her eyes looked clear, giving me a little hope her mind was back in the present. She patted my cheek gently with her palm.
“You’re a good boy, Jake. Always have been. When are you going to find a nice girl to settle down with and give me some grandbabies? You don’t want to leave it so late, like your father and I did. You want them while you’re young, so you can keep up with them.”
A flash of Lydia’s honey-golden hair and bright green eyes filled my vision for a moment. The sight of her sitting on the bar wearing nothing but my cut was a sight that was burned into my memory. She’d been sexy as fuck and so damn perfect.
“Oh, I know that look! You’ve met someone haven’t you? Oh, my boy, you’ll bring her to meet me soon, okay?”
Pain ripped through me at her words. The chances were damn fucking slim that Ma would be around by the time I settled down, and if she was still alive, her mind would no doubt be gone. And it broke my heart that she wouldn’t be around to see the grandbabies she’d always wanted so damn badly. Especially considering Lydia had been the only woman to catch my eye in years and I doubted she’d given me a second thought since I’d left New York. Why would she? But Ma didn’t need to hear any of that right now. I chose to leave her with the illusion my personal life was looking up.
“Sure, Ma. I’ll talk to her about it. C
’mon, I’ll help you upstairs before I head out.”
After I got her settled into bed, I made my way back to the kitchen, where I grabbed a beer before I headed out to sit on the back porch for a bit. Fuck, I was tired. So fucking tired. Sprawling out across the old-school porch swing, I closed my eyes and took a long drink of the cold brew. I had about half an hour before Beth would come to watch over Ma so I could get to the clubhouse, where I was due to man the bar, and I needed a few fucking minutes to myself before I headed down there. I needed to get my head on straight before I had to face everyone and once more act like everything in my world was a-okay, when it was anything but.
Ma reminding me of Lydia sent my thoughts back in time to my trip up north again. Not that my mind needed much encouragement—it seemed whenever I had some downtime that’s where my thoughts went. New York had been a whole new world for me. I’d never ventured far from Bridgewater before, certainly never left Texas. Staten Island was different, that’s for sure. So many people and cars. But everyone was so friendly. Well, so long as you weren’t driving, they were. I shook my head. They sure gave road rage a new meaning up there.
It had been an insane trip. So much had happened in the day and a bit we were up there. But in the end, things turned out well for both us and the Knights. The Riders were no more, and a strong fucking message had been sent to the cartel and the MC world that the Charons and the Satan’s Knights were not clubs to be fucked with.
When Mac had first told me my job in the operation was to guard those fucking ledgers I hadn’t been happy. Not at all. Turned out it wasn’t such a bad gig, though. It meant I got to spend a lot of time with Riggs. He was a tech genius and had used information from the ledgers to track down locations and other shit that enabled us to bring down both the Riders and the cartel. Didn’t hurt that Riggs was a real character, too. He was constantly pulling shit on his brothers or trying to get his old lady alone long enough to attempt to put another baby in her.
