“No, it’s just…” She blushes, and shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“What is it?” I say. “Don’t be shy.”
“It’s nothing,” she says, looking down at the table.
“It’s clearly not nothing.” I laugh, holding my hands up. “Look, I promise you won’t offend my sensitive soul, alright?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s embarrassing.”
“For me, or for you?”
“For me.”
I give an exaggerated shrug. “Then I don’t see how that’s my problem.”
She rolls her eyes again. There’s something about that gesture, flirty and shy and sexy all at once, that is really getting to me. She tips her wine glass back, and then places it back down when she realizes she’s already drank it all. Then she leans forward, laying her chin on her interlocked fingers, giving me a look I reckon no man could return without feeling something stir inside him.
“I read a lot of romance novels,” she says, “and you…well, you sort of remind me of some of the guys in them. Have you ever read any romance novels?”
“Can’t say I’ve read much of anything,” I admit. “What are the guys like? Men called Red without a shade of red on ’em?”
She giggles. “No, they’re—you know, big, and strong, and assholes.”
“Assholes? Who says I’m an asshole?”
“You’ve barely taken your eyes off my chest since we came in here.”
“Hey,” I say, “I was staring at your rack before we came in here. You’re gorgeous. That makes me observant, not an asshole.”
She closes her eyes, and then opens them a few seconds later. “Can we get some fresh air?” she asks. “That wine is hitting me harder than I thought.”
“Sure.”
About a minute later, we’re walking in the afternoon sun down the street, past the bar, past an alleyway—It’s as we’re passing the alleyway that Christina turns to me, chest heaving, arms hanging at her sides and fingers tapping as though at an invisible keyboard. She looks at my face, and then over my body, and then throws herself at me, panting.
I open my arms, catching her, and we do a sort of dance-walk into the alleyway, our lips pressing together.
Chapter Four
Christina
The wine is burning in my chest, and the sun is burning into my skin, and the events of the past couple of hours are still burning into my mind, but all of this pales in comparison to Red’s lips burning into my lips, his chest burning into my hands as I clutch at his leather. I blame it on the alcohol; I blame it on the romance novels; I blame it on the fear and adrenaline from having survived. We stumble backward, entangled, deep into the alleyway where he pushes my back up against the wall. I can feel his passion, hot, explosive, moving from him into me.
I push my lips into his, hardly thinking about what I’m doing, just feeling the pleasure of it. His lips are clean-shaven, and moist, and a perfect fit for mine. He opens his mouth slightly, a tempting opening, and I thrust my tongue into him; perhaps overeager, for my tongue brushes his teeth. But that adds to the pleasure somehow, as though we are too horny to even wait for both our mouths to be open. He opens his mouth all the way and the tips of our tongues clash. Nerves buzz, sending electric jolts of pleasure down my tongue and around my mouth, a cocktail of pleasure moving around my head.
I dig my fingernails into his leather jacket, wishing I could tear the jacket away and reveal the muscle beneath. I ride that thought, thinking what it would be like to rip the jacket off and show the bursting muscle beneath, the massive pectorals and the hard-packed abs. The kiss deepens as I think about it, and Red reaches down and grabs my ass, one strong hand gripping me so hard I can envision my skin turning red. My whole body feels as though the skin is turning red: burning beneath the surface.
I move my hands down his jacket, smoothing my hands over the leather, meaning to go down to the front of his jeans. My fingers have just moved to the coldness of his belt buckle when I realize what I’m doing.
I am aggressively making out with a man, about to go further with a man, in public. Not only that, but I do not know this man. I only met this man a few hours ago. Sure, he saved me from those bikers, but that doesn’t mean I owe him anything. That doesn’t mean I should just throw away my reason, my sensibilities. I would never normally do this, but that is why it’s exciting, isn’t it? But just because it’s exciting, it doesn’t mean I should do it. What about the consequences?
For a few more minutes, we kiss, but my hands do not stray further than his belt buckle, and soon I feel myself disconnecting from the situation, the physical sensations feeling as though they come from very far away. My inner voice of reason explains to me, in prissy yet reasonable tones, that this is a mistake. I do not know this man; we are outside. Somebody from work might see me, and then where will I be?
My hand moves up to his leather again, but this time instead of clawing I lay my palm flat against him and push softly. He keeps kissing, moaning through our lips, and for another moment I sink back into the kiss. But then I lean back and push his chest again. “No,” I say, pulling away. “I don’t—no.”
He pauses, watching me closely, but not stepping away just yet. His face is tinged slightly red, but nowhere near as red as mine feels. I get the sense that he’s looking at me to judge if I really mean it. Those black eyes are penetrating. I say: “I mean it, Red. I’m going to call a cab.”
He watches me for another moment, and then shrugs. “Alright, sweetheart.” He steps away.
We stand apart in the alleyway. I glance around: overturned trash cans, spilling condoms and rotting banana peels and soda cans onto the concrete; grimy, graffiti-covered walls; a rat scurrying across the ground, tail whipping behind it. And I was about to have sex here—here, where, if you glance street-wise, you can see a few people walking to and fro at the mouth of the alleyway.
“I’m going now,” I say, looking into Red’s face, waiting for him to protest.
That is what most men would do now, I’m sure. They’d try and persuade me to stay, try and reason me back into passion, not knowing that you can never use reason to make a woman feel that burning desire, even if she felt it moments before. But he doesn’t do that. He just watches me, that cocky smile on his lips, not appearing to care one way or the other.
“Alright,” he says, after a long pause. “Do you want a ride, or—”
“I’ll call a cab,” I say. I know that if I agree to a ride, I’ll be tempted to kiss him again, and in the confines of my car—or worse still, my apartment—I know where that kiss would lead. And even if it would be pleasurable, it would also be a mistake. I don’t know him, I’m not that sort of girl, I don’t owe him anything, it just doesn’t feel right…
I stop, realizing I’m trying to convince myself, and then make for the mouth of the alleyway. Red follows me a moment later, waiting as I call for the cab, and then stuffs his hands in the pocket of his leather and turns away. “I’ll see you around, Christina,” he says, that same knowing smile on his face.
I nod, and then mutter, “See you around, Red.”
I watch him go, hands in his pockets, swaggering, a man without a care in the world. I wonder for a second if I made a mistake, but I tell myself I’m doing the right thing, that I’m too tipsy to make that decision right this second anyhow.
Chapter Five
Red
I turn around at the end of the street and watch as she climbs into the cab, still finding this experience a mixture of funny and blue-ball-inducing. There’s nothing quite like getting hot and heavy with a woman and then having her end it before it really gets going. Sure, that hasn’t happened to me since I was about fourteen, but I remember the feeling. The feeling like your balls are about to burst like overripe grapes. She climbs into the cab quickly, not glancing down the street, and so I turn away and head back toward my bike.
The walk does me good, cooling me off a little, and by the time I reach my bike, I’m ab
le to view the afternoon as more funny than anything else. I climb onto the bike and start the engine, revving it loud, and then head toward the clubhouse. It was damn fun, I’ve got to admit, even if it didn’t go further. She felt incredible in my arms, her lips were soft, her body was tight and bouncy. Best of all was the way she moaned as we kissed, almost as though she didn’t want to be moaning but couldn’t help herself. I’m sure I’ll be hearing those moans for a long time to come.
Yeah, it was fun, but truth be told if she’s going to get my blood hot like that and then just take off, it’s probably for the best that we’re not going to see each other again. I like women, fuckin’ love them in fact, but I don’t like women who string men along. Malicious women. Women who try and do to men what my mother did to Dad, cheating on him, playing him, twisting him: killing him. Dammit. I push the thought far down, where it belongs. It’s odd, because I never normally think about it these days, having squashed it a long time ago. Maybe something about Christina …no, I kill that thought, too. Saving, talking, even getting close to a woman isn’t about to crack open my chest and spill all that shit out. No fuckin’ way.
I get to the clubhouse, which sits on the outskirts of the city, a squat wide one-story building split into two parts: the dormitory wing and the bar wing. I head into the bar, past the pinned-up leather of the first Faithless member, long before my time, and past dozens of framed photographs of other Faithless members, the latest including me and the others, kneeling in the sun smiling like fools. The place is empty apart from a pledge standing behind the bar, rag in one hand and glass in the other, and Bron, who sits in the corner, sipping whisky. I take a glass from the pledge and go and join him.
Bron is tall at six one, a couple of inches shorter than me, and he’s leaner. His face is open, welcoming, but it’s a chameleon face because it can change to vicious and terrifying or sincere and kind depending on his mood. His dusty blonde hair is tied in a ponytail, and his hands are covered in tribal tattoos. When I sit down next to him, he slides the bottle of whisky across the table.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, pouring myself a glass.
We sit in the corner, overlooking the bar, the pool table, the door which leads to Chains’ office: the President’s office. And the long council table where we hold our meetings.
“Business,” Bron says. “Or at home, or out drinking. You and me have been put on the unpatched, so we’re holding off on the regular running for a while.”
“Alright.”
I think back to the days when Tiny was in charge. Tiny—who was six seven, a giant compared even with me—became my father when my own father went to the grave. He was a cheerful, life-loving man, a man who didn’t take the business side as serious as the fun side. But then Tiny stepped down and Chains took over, and Chains definitely sees the business as just that—business.
“So our job is to fuck up the unpatched when we see them?”
“Yeah,” Bron replies. “And to investigate, all that shit.” He glances at me, and then offers a small smile. I like Bron, probably like Bron more than any other man in the Faithless; he’s my friend, my partner, and ’cause he’s smaller and younger than me, I sometimes see him as a little brother. “Something happened while you were out, man.”
“You a fuckin’ mind reader now?” I pour myself another whisky, and then drain it.
“Nah, but I’ve been around you enough to know when something’s up.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man,” I reply. “Are you Oprah now or something?”
Bron grins again, scratching the scar under his left eye: a triangular scar left by the heel of a mark’s boot a few years back. “I don’t give a shit one way or the other. I’m just saying.”
We sit in silence for a while, drinking the whisky until both of us are tipsy, which takes a whole lot of whisky; the bottle is almost empty. I turn to Bron and mutter: “I met a girl whilst I was out, on my way back from the protection job.”
“No shit? Where’d you meet her? I thought that job was an old man and his wife …wait, you didn’t fuck the wife, did you?”
“Why don’t you listen when I talk if you want to learn so goddamn much?” I laugh. “I said I met her on the way back. I was cruising and saw the unpatched, Jordy and those pricks, looking like they were ready to tool up this girl. So I stopped them.”
Bron sits up. “You saw the unpatched?”
I nod.
“Well, fuck …how are they doing? They tough?”
I shake my head. “I chased them off, no problem, and there were six of them. They’re green.”
Bron sits back. “I thought as much. So this girl, I guess you did the normal Red routine.”
“The fuck is the ‘Red routine’?”
“You know what I’m saying. You did your fuck and chuck routine.”
Classic Bron…he goes in for relationships, whereas I go in for quicker, hotter encounters. Bron isn’t soft or anything like that. He just likes the longer experience of getting to know a woman and all that shit, something which has never appealed to me much.
“No,” I say, after a moment of reflection, ’cause I know exactly what he’s thinking: why am I still talking about her if we didn’t have sex, when I would never talk about another woman I didn’t have sex with?
Sure enough, he points that out. “I’ve never know you to talk about women much at all, really,” he adds. “There must be something special about this one.”
“Special.” We look at each other for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing.
“I’m serious, man,” Bron says, holding his hand up for the pledge to bring another bottle of whisky over. He places it down, takes the empty bottle, and leaves us. As Bron pours a drink, he says, “You have never, in all the too-long fuckin’ years I’ve known you, talked to me about a woman beyond nodding at her and saying you think she’s sexy. What the fuck?”
“You asked,” I snapped, taking the bottle and pouring myself a drink.
Bron holds his hands up. “Calm down,” he says. “I don’t want to have to tool you up.”
“Ha, fucking, ha,” I reply. “I’d love to see that.”
We both drink in silence for another few minutes, and then Bron says, “Are you still thinking about this girl, then?”
“I wish I’d never mentioned this,” I murmur.
“But you’ve mentioned it now,” Bron says, and I can tell he’s just going on about it to twist the knife. “I really can’t believe that Red Bolton, of all people, has fallen head over heels for a woman. I never thought I’d see the day when you got all doughy-eyed over a woman, and yet here you are. I guess you do have a soul after all. So, when’s the wedding, eh? When’s the big day? Look, I understand if you don’t want me as your best man; I guess I could give a speech which wouldn’t be too flattering in front of your blushing bride.”
“Such a prick,” I say, but I’m smiling at how stupid he’s being. The image is funny, I have to admit: sitting in my leather at a white table, this strange woman beside me, Bron half-drunk blabbering about all the jobs we’ve been on together.
“The club is all the family I need,” I say. “I’ve got my brothers, I’ve got my work, I’ve got some sexy women now and then. That’s all I need. You’re the one who’s got a new girlfriend every New Year, like it’s your goddamned resolution or something.”
“Maybe I don’t see the club as the be all and end all of family and closeness and all that bullshit.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Bron shrugs. “Maybe there’s more, like a proper family, like a wife and kids and all that stuff.”
I grunt out a laugh. “For us? For Faithless enforcers? I don’t reckon I see that, truth be told.”
“Yeah, maybe I don’t, either,” Bron says quietly, and then knocks back a slug of whisky straight from the bottle.
That adds an aspect of darkness into this otherwise cheery drinking session. We sit and drink for another hour or so before we’re calle
d out on a job, but neither of us talk, just sit here listening to the pledge cleaning the bar, scrubbing the pipes, dusting the counter, vacuuming the offices. I sink into my thoughts, thinking first of my mother, the way she stared at me matter-of-factly, as though it was to be expected that she would move in and start a new family with the man she cheated on my father with; as though it was expected that I should just leave, find a new family. And then I find myself thinking of Christina, which Bron is right about. I never do this. I never think about women like this. It never even occurs to me that I might. Is it because I didn’t fuck her? Is it because I want to feel those pert peach-like breasts, those long legs, that pussy, which I bet was wet for me earlier?
Or is it something else, something less plain than that? I tell myself that that’s ridiculous. I am not a man who thinks about women like this. I am not a man who sits around pining over women. I don’t give a shit, ever, when it comes to women. I like their bodies, their moans, but that’s about it.
Devil's Property: The Faithless MC Page 3
