Charge to My Line

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I believed her.

  Dixie came off as an innocent old man, but he sure as hell didn’t act like one. “I know, sweet girl. You doing okay?” I asked, smoothing her hair back from her face.

  She moaned and sat back, leaning her head against my chest. “I blame you. It’s all your fault.”

  I barely contained the urge to laugh at her. Somehow I knew that wouldn’t end well, and I managed to suppress it. “And why’s that?”

  She pointed a finger at my face…or tried to. It ended up more towards the roll of toilet paper, which was a good ten inches from my face. “I found out about them Wardens, today.”

  Was it bad that I thought she was cute when she was trying to be stern?

  “Them Wardens?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yessum. Them Wardens. You’re one of them Wardens. Dixie told me so. And Baylee. And Rue, my long lost twin. And…” I covered her mouth, stopping the excessive flow or words pouring from her mouth.

  “Was it bad, what you learned?” I asked as I pulled her up to her feet, and led her to the sink where she washed her face. Then her hair. Followed by her neck. Which inevitably meant the white t-shirt she was wearing became nearly transparent with the water that she was practically pouring over herself.

  She shook her head once she was finished, and I couldn’t tell if it was due to the fact that she was answering my question in a negative, or trying to lose some of the water from her face and hair.

  “No. It was all good. I was just unsure of whether I would want to be,” she held up her fingers and air quoted the last word. “ ’Owned.’ ”

  “Ah,” I said, taking the hand towel hanging on the rack and covering her chest with it.

  I could’ve taken off my jacket, but then I’d have my forty caliber out where everyone could see it, then it would no longer be concealed. Which made the concealed carry license I had null.

  “Do you want kids?” She asked suddenly, startling me out of my thoughts.

  “Uhh,” I stuttered. “No. Well yes, but no. Not right now. Maybe in a few years. Why? Do you?”

  She shrugged. “Yes. Not right now, though. I just started my job. I want to work up the food chain some. Did you know that the human head weighs eight pounds?”

  I couldn’t follow the woman’s line of thinking. “Huh. Imagine that. I think I’ve heard that somewhere.”

  The smile was threatening to break out on my face again.

  “It was Jerry MacGyver,” she said stoically.

  My laugh burst free from my throat in a sudden boom, and Tru laughed with me, even though I doubted she knew what she was laughing at. “Do you mean Jerry Maguire?”

  She nodded and started to walk out of the bathroom, wobbling side to side like she was on a tight rope.

  Without waiting for me, she yanked open the door and started to walk outside.

  Straight into chaos.

  Chapter 13

  I think I need a massage. There is so much tension in my vagina.

  -E-card

  Tru

  “I’ve never been in jail before. Do you think my mom will be mad at me?” I asked Rue, my BFF.

  She was leaning against my back, as I was doing to her, so we didn’t have to lay down on the disgusting concrete benches, nor touch the wall.

  We’d been in the ‘drunk tank’ for going on six hours now, and I had a feeling that my mom was making me stay there because I was an embarrassment.

  When I’d called her four hours ago, very much sober, she’d sounded disappointed in me.

  I’d never disappointed my mom before, and it felt horribly wrong.

  But she didn’t know what had happened!

  “Me neither. It’s a first for all of us. Although, my husband’s spent some time behind bars,” Baylee said from her perch across the room.

  My eyes widened in surprise. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Yep. A couple years ago, he shot someone trying to kill his sister in the hospital. He didn’t get charged for the murder, but he was charged with bringing the weapon onto hospital property. He had to do probation and wear an ankle bracelet.”

  Hmmm. I didn’t know what to think about how easily she waved it off, but it wasn’t me married to the man. Sebastian was scary. I didn’t know any of the men all that well, although their wives and I had made quick friends at the beginning of the night.

  “What do y’all think about being married to a man who’s in a motorcycle club?” I asked, testing the waters a bit.

  I was scared about that part of dating Grayson…or ‘Torren’ as they all liked to call him.

  “It’s not too bad, really. They don’t do anything illegal to make their money. They help where they can. They actually do a lot of stuff around the community,” Viddy said. “When that tornado came through last spring, two counties over, they spent nearly two weeks over there cleaning up the mess and helping to rebuild. Then, they’d go down every weekend once they used up all their vacation time.”

  I’d actually heard about that.

  “Our husbands are all in public service in some capacity. They try their hardest to be good, but sometimes it just takes a little strong arming. They’re not bad people at all. They’re actually just like the normal citizens. They have hearts and consciences and everything,” Adeline said proudly.

  “Torren saved my life a few months ago,” Rue said from directly behind me.

  I froze, “What?”

  I’d met Rue in the hospital a year prior, while consulting on a patient. We’d made fast friends, so I, of course, had heard about the incident, but this was the first time I’d heard of her blaming herself.

  She nodded, and I could feel her hair bouncing against my shoulder. “Yep. I was responsible for getting him hurt. And I’m the reason that Tunnel died.”

  Every single woman in the room shouted in indignation, but it was Adeline, the closest to me, that I heard the best.

  “You were not responsible for his death, and you know it. Don’t hold that over yourself,” Adeline said fiercely. “He wouldn’t want you to. Tunnel had an oath that he stood by, and he would’ve done the same for anyone: man, woman or child.”

  Rue slumped harder against me. “I know. God, I know. It’s just so hard to not blame myself. God, I still dream about it. Poor Cleo doesn’t know what to do about it, but I can’t make the dreams stop.”

  I reached up and pulled a piece of her long hair over my shoulder, and started to braid it.

  She sighed. “I miss him.”

  The same thought was echoed by them all.

  “I’m ready to go home,” Channing moaned a few minutes later. “My ass is killing me. And I can’t even imagine how much we’re going to have to pay the babysitter that’s watching all the kids.”

  I smiled. “Probably an arm and a leg.”

  I could feel the reluctance about dating Grayson start to seep out of me slowly. They didn’t’ realize it yet, but they just sold me completely on him. Whereas, before this conversation, I was worried about dating someone that was affiliated with a motorcycle club, now I felt at peace with my decision to pursue a relationship with him.

  “Spada. Mackenzie. Rector. Spurlock. Doherty. Caruso. Your bail’s been posted,” A burly old cop said from the bars.

  Rue and I stood cautiously, while Baylee, Viddy, Adeline, and Channing all stood from their prospective seats with annoyance. We were all tired, hungry, and mad. Three deadly combinations.

  Add, on top of that, that we’d all seen all of our men thrown down to the ground and handcuffed was not helping either. Especially since the last sight I had of Grayson was with blood running down a cut above his eyebrow.

  I’d sobered up real quick after that.

  Although, it couldn’t have been because I had a knee in my back while a male cop had been handcuffing my hands behind me.

  They’d come off right quick once they realized whose kid I was, though.

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t still arrested.

  Accor
ding to Officer Colby Prescott, I’d assaulted him and tried to pull his gun, which was the biggest crock of shit I’d ever been served in my life. I hadn’t even been able to walk in a straight line.

  The only reason I’d even been near Colby was because he’d ripped Grayson out of my arms and shoved him into the path of another cop, effectively knocking me off balance and throwing me into him in the process.

  I’d then been thrown to the floor, causing Grayson to go ape shit.

  He’d watched me from his own perch on the floor as the officer searched me for weapons and then handcuffed me. I’d never wanted to cry so hard in my life.

  I couldn’t make sense of what had gone on around me, and when the ladies and I were locked up with each other, we still weren’t able to piece together the clues.

  None of us had been sober enough to make any sense of it.

  The first person that I saw, when I stepped cautiously out of the cell, was my mom.

  She looked me up and down, and turned on her heel to leave.

  I followed behind her like a sulking teen instead of a nearly thirty year old woman.

  “Your mom looks pissed,” Rue whispered to me.

  I nodded. “She was. Is. Shit.”

  The ‘shit’ was because my mom had sent me a glare over her shoulder that’d said volumes. Mostly the ‘shut up before I beat your ass’ look I used to get when I was a kid.

  “Your mom’s kind of scary,” Baylee said from beside me.

  I nodded. My mom was scary. You didn’t work for thirty years as a beat cop and not become scary.

  However, I was surprised beyond belief to find my mom giving the same exact look to nearly everyone she passed. Including the Chief, Cabe Warren.

  “I need to speak with you. Now,” my mother demanded.

  There was none of the usual companionship between my mother and Cabe Warren right then. He’d been to many, many barbeques since I’d known him. He’d shared fish stories with my father, visited my mother during her chemo treatments. Fuck, but he’d even babysat me at one point in time.

  Now, though, there was no friendship. Only a pissed off mama bear.

  He led her into a conference room.

  When we’d have stayed outside, she waved us in and pointed to chairs like we were children.

  However, that didn’t stop us from sitting. No, sir-ree.

  “Now, how about you tell me just what in the mother fuck you were thinking arresting my girl. You damn well fucking know that she’d have never touched another police officer with the intent of violence,” my mother said in a deathly calm voice.

  I blinked.

  She wasn’t mad at me. She was mad at them.

  Score!

  “I know, Doherty. I’ve already put Prescott on administrative leave pending investigation. Boys too hot headed for his own good,” Cabe muttered, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Your girl was just in there because they were all drunk off their ass with no one to take them home. We didn’t have anybody in the tank with them.”

  Well…that was just insulting.

  “If you’d have let their men go, then that wouldn’t have been a problem. I’d have been here earlier, but Frank was working a case, and I was throwing up too much to get here until now,” my mom said sternly.

  Uh-oh. Pulling out the cancer card. I knew, for a fact, that she was fine for the two days leading up to her next treatment, so it was likely she left me in here because she wanted me to have the experience. Mom was funny about life experiences.

  Like the one time she thought it’d be a great experience for me to go on a ride along with her and her partner when I was fifteen. It’d been great up until the point that my mother was slugged in the face by a male trying to get away.

  Luckily, I’d been in the car when he’d tried to run from her, because once he started running, after throwing rocks into her partner’s face, my mother had shot him in the ass.

  Then I had to sit watching as he bled beside my window until the paramedics had come to pick him off the road. My mother and her partner, Dan, had just left him there until then.

  Now, I could laugh about it, but then, it hadn’t been even the least bit funny to see someone abuse my mother.

  “I’m sorry, Daniella. I know it’s not easy getting out. You’ve got one more round, right?” Cabe asked hopefully.

  My mother was genuinely missed on the force. She was also their spokeswoman, which was probably why he was missing her the most. With my mom gone, he had to be the one who gave any and all statements to the press.

  “Yep. Then I’ll be back. Bald, but I’ll be back,” she smiled savagely.

  God, I loved my mother.

  “Not that this hasn’t been fun, but our men have been locked up for the same amount of time we have, and I’m ready to go the fuck to sleep,” I growled, getting tired of their back and forth.

  My mother gave me a reproachful look, but nonetheless made for the exit. “I’ll be getting those boys out, too.”

  And with that, we followed her down some dank hallways to a large celled in area.

  My eyes widened when I saw the sheer amount of people in there. What’d they do? Arrest the whole damn bar? And how’d they get them all here?

  Then I got a look at the other people more closely, and they were a little too rough around the edges to belong to our group.

  What probably happened was there were a bunch of drunks they had to move out of the drunk tank and behind bars to accommodate us women, and in the process made the large cell seem much smaller than normal.

  The funniest thing was, was that every single one of The Dixie Wardens MC had a seat while the other men stood as far away from them as they could, which was not very far.

  Sebastian, Silas, and Dixie were on one bench while Kettle, Grayson, and Cleo were on the other directly across the room. Each had their eyes closed while leaning against the wall, acting for all the world like they were just sitting for a short snooze.

  “Alright, boys. Time out’s over,” my mother said, causing all of our men to open their eyes slowly. Then each and every one of them smiled at my mother, causing her to blush red to her roots.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one affected by those grins.

  I heard sighs behind me, as well. Even the other female officer that had come to open the cell had a blush covering her face.

  Potent stuff, those smiles.

  Lethal was more like it.

  ***

  I walked through the door to Grayson’s house, flipping on the light right inside the door.

  Then I kicked off my boots as soon as I crossed the threshold, pushing them to the side so he wouldn’t trip over them.

  My body was still vibrating from the exhilarating ride on the back of his bike, as well as the hot kiss he’d given me as soon as he’d gotten to me, once the cell had been opened.

  Right in front of my mother, who had a Cheshire grin on her face as she unabashedly watched. The woman had no shame!

  “Thank fucking Christ. I need a fuckin’ shower,” Grayson said.

  He followed behind me, shutting and locking the door before arming the alarm.

  “Wouldn’t do having you in prison. There’s no way I’d have sex in that place. You’d be miserable,” I said lightly, tossing a smile over my shoulder.

  He scowled. “It wouldn’t have even been an issue if you hadn’t been tossed to the floor by that piece of shit.”

  I steered clear of that subject, and instead of commenting, walked into the kitchen where I promptly started to look through Grayson’s fridge.

  “Do you want bacon and eggs?” I asked over my shoulder.

  He was leaning against the counter, his eyes on my every move.

  “I’d rather fuck you,” he answered honestly.

  I froze and slowly stood from my bent position. “Umm,” I said, speechless.

  He’d never used that kind of vulgarity before, and I kind of liked it.

  “Before or after br
eakfast?” I asked.

  He walked forward slowly, before pinning me to the fridge. “Now.”

  His hands met my hips, skimming up the inside of my t-shirt, pulling it up as he went.

  I lifted my arms, because I was helpful like that, while my core clenched at the look on his face.

  Oh, Jesus, but he looked practically savage.

  His cheekbones were sharp. Color rose high on his cheeks, and the look in his eyes turned me on more than I’d ever been before.

  “Gray…” I started, leaning back slightly.

  He followed me, his fingers going to the waistband of my jeans where he viciously ripped the button from the hole, then yanked my jeans to my ankles.

  Then I was lifted, one of his arms around my ass, and the other up high around my waist.

  My jeans fell from my ankles as he twisted, planting me on the other side of him directly beside the table.

  His mouth came down on my neck, and my hands found his hair, clenching in surprise as he wasted no time yanking the cups of my bra down and exposing my nipples to the cool air.

  His hot mouth came down slowly, pulling my nipple into his mouth, running the tip of his tongue in circles around the distended bud.

  “Oh, shit,” I said when my knees started going weak.

  It was embarrassing how quickly the man, currently feasting on my breast, could affect me.

  “You taste…” he said roughly, switching to the other breast as the hand not currently cupping my breast went down, sliding swiftly inside my panties.

  My core clenched as his large fingers started to work between my legs. His thumb flicking the very tip of my clit with the edge of his fingernail, while the other encircled my entrance, teasing the juices from my pussy.

  “Taste like what?” I panted, leaning back against the table and lifting my foot up to the table top to give him easier access.

  “Like mine,” he growled as he plunged two fingers in deep.

  I screamed, yanking back hard on his hair. Hard enough that he was pulled from my nipple with a loud pop, causing him to grin at me like a lecher.

  “I’ll be yours on one condition,” I breathed, causing his eyes to narrow.