Wicked Tales Anthology

by Brandy Slaven

  "Come on," Hash muttered.

  I sighed and followed him. Of course, I didn't follow him to the hallway that would lead to the bedrooms but to the bar where King was working on getting plowed. He hadn't put the bottle down since he'd sat down. It was already a third of the way gone, and he just kept going at it. Another ten minutes and the bottle'd be empty, and he probably wouldn't be able to walk. I had never seen someone drink like that before. This went well beyond King being a heavy drinker and into unknown territory I didn't know what the fuck to do with.

  "Hash," I muttered. "Do you see how fast he’s knockin' that shit back? Maybe it's not a good idea for us to head his way. I do not want to deal with a drunk and completely fucked up King. He scares the shit out of me when he's sober. In this condition, there's no telling what he's capable of."

  "He needs us," Hash pushed.

  "Hash," I said but shut up when he turned around to glare at me.

  "No, Stephan," He said quietly. "He needs us. I didn't see it until tonight, but I definitely see it now. Christ, I don't know how I missed it in the first place. I've got you. Cap's got Batey, yeah, he sucks at the job, but your brother’s still got him. Cap also has King, explicitly. But who has King? Far as I can see, the only person who has King is King. He's family but he's still on the outside, and I know just how lonely being on the outside can be. And there’s seriously got to be something wrong with him to be drinking like that. What if he tries to leave? You heard what Batey said earlier, he's already high, and in the next five minutes he's not even going to be able to walk. Do you think if he passed out on the bar anybody would even do anything other than look at him?"

  I sighed.

  He had valid points. And, he was also right that if King passed out on the bar he'd just be left there. Even if he fell down to the ground in a drunken heap, he'd be left there, and nobody would bat an eye at it. Not because he'd done it before, but because around here, people didn't stick their nose in other people's business. What's more, it was King, and most people were terrified of him.

  "I don't want to be out here for long," I told Hash honestly. "Someone else is bound to come along and make me do bitch work for them when I'd rather not do that tonight. I'm tired, it has been a long day, and I'm ready to go to bed so I can start over fresh tomorrow."

  "We'll just get him up and tucked away into his room." Hash assured me. I didn't believe him for a second. He was up to no good and getting in other people’s business didn't usually end well. I had to follow behind him though, because it's what he'd do for me.

  Hash sat down on a bar stool beside King and I stood back behind him, waiting.

  "That's gotta be some kind of record," Hash told King as he gestured with his hand towards the bottle.

  "This is a bad day for me," King muttered under his breath and already he was slurring.

  Holy shit. He was really putting that booze down.

  "Why's it a bad day for you?" Hash asked. "You seemed fine earlier."

  If by fine he meant screaming at Batey and hauling him around, then sure, he'd seemed fine earlier. The more I thought about it, the more his actions earlier seemed off. He could keep his cool under the best of circumstances and had lost it several times tonight and he'd openly shared something about his feelings. That was not normal behavior on his part, and I wasn't surprised that Hash caught on to it when I hadn't. He might have joked around when it was just the two of us and was always getting me into trouble, but he was an old soul. He saw things differently than the rest of us did. His heart bled for people all the fucking time. It was something I loved and hated about him. I loved it because it added to his appeal and showcased just how beautiful he was on the inside and not just the outside. I loved it because I'd grown up around men and women who hid their true feelings behind masks so as not to appear weak, and Hash wore his on his sleeve for the whole world to see. It was part of the reason I was so into him. He wasn't like everybody else in my life. He was different, and I loved it. I hated it because it scared the shit out of me that one day someone was going to come along and take advantage of him, ripping him to shreds in the process. His home life had been so bad for him that he'd come to Mercy, come to Captain to recruit and seek out a better life for himself, but it ate at him that he left his sisters and mother behind. Every time he went back to see them he always came back with an emptiness to his eyes, and I worried the damage he was doing to himself every time he went to visit them. Him and his bleeding heart could only take so much, and I couldn't take anything hurting him.

  "Miss my girl," King slurred as he put the bottle to his lips and chugged some more booze down. "I thought I saw her today, but I was wrong. It wasn’t her. It’s never fuckin’ her."

  My lungs burned at hearing this news, news I'd known nothing about. King had a daughter? Did my brother know? He liked to think he knew everything about all of his guys and everything about what went down in his Club. If King had a daughter, then Captain would know all about it. What I didn't understand was why nobody else did.

  Hash must have thought the same things because he asked incredulously, "You have a daughter and nobody knows about her? That's not cool, man."

  I agreed with him that it wasn't cool, but I didn't think it was something he should have said to King at the moment, not when he was halfway to blotto.

  "I don't have a fuckin' daughter," King spat out. "Why the hell would you think I had a daughter?"

  Oh man.

  He sounded pissed right the hell off and I didn't like the crazy glint in his eyes that was screaming for a fight.

  "What's going on?" My brother said from behind me, and I audibly sighed in relief. Cap would take care of King.

  "Miss my girl," King slurred as he looked over his shoulder at my brother. I looked too.

  He looked just like me only older, beefier, and with facial hair. It just meant I'd look good when I was his age too, because he looked just like dad and so did I.

  "I thought I saw her out on the street earlier and tried to chase her down, but it wasn’t her," King told my brother. "Kept it together all day because you needed me, but I'm off duty now, and I am getting fucked up and drinking until I pass out so that I can forget about her for one fucking second."

  Captain put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into his side. Without taking his green eyes off of King, he muttered low enough for only me to hear, "Her name is Carmine, and she's some girl he met when he was in foster care. Some shit went down, and they were separated but he's been looking for her ever since because she means everything to him. When I first met him, he told me that she was the only family he had left and that he'd never give up on looking for her."

  Suddenly pissed, I shrugged my brothers arm off of my shoulders. I had skills that the Club used me all the time for, but I knew Cap didn't want me to do it, but it was the only thing I was good at and the only thing I knew how to do. It came natural to me. I was a whiz when it came to anything involving computers, or any kind of electronic really. I could hack into anything, and the Club used me to cover the security on the Compound. I'd set up a room that had monitors in it so the cameras all around the fence and at certain places inside the building could be monitored 24/7. It was my job, and I was damn good at it.

  My brother knew this, and it's why I was so pissed at him all of a sudden.

  If he knew this Carmine's last name and had given it to me, I would have exhausted myself and all of my resources looking for her. I wouldn't have stopped until I'd found her. And I would have fucking found her. What kind of game was he playing at here?

  "Stephan," Captain said in a warning tone that I blatantly ignored.

  I moved closer to Hash and King and leaned into King.

  "What's her last name?" I asked him in a hushed voice. "Tell me her last name and tell me her date of birth. If you can get me all the information you know about her, then I will start looking for her. For you, I will find her, and you'll never have to sit here and get blotto alone again becau
se you went chasing after the ghost of her because, after I've found her, you'll be getting blotto with her instead, the real version of her. I'm gonna do it because of what you said earlier, King. You don't need to prove shit to me, and you don't have to work at earning anything from me. You're my brother, my family, and I give my loyalty and love to you freely because you've already earned it by just wearing that patch on your leather jacket. You earn it over and over again every time you go out and make sure my blood brother comes back with you in one fuckin' piece. You don't have to earn anything, brother, because you've already got it."

  He looked up at me with eyes that were glassed over and too wide for his face. I think he was trying, and mostly succeeding, at keeping his emotions in check. He told me everything he knew about this mysterious Carmine. Then Hash and I left him to his booze, and we left him in my brother’s very capable hands, but only after I'd made him promise he wouldn't leave King out there alone and would make sure he made it to his bed tonight. My brother hadn't hesitated to promise me, and I think it was because he felt guilty over not having shared this with me before because if he had this whole situation might have been avoidable from the start. He'd fucked up and he knew it.

  I would find out later that King hadn't lied when he said he'd earn the love Hash and I had for him, because it was something he worked his ass off to do. He never breathed a word of what he saw between Hash and I, and part of me wondered if he even remembered it because he'd been so fucked up at the time, even though he remembered other shit from that night. The mind was a funny thing, and it could block out many things.

  Eventually, we became friends, and he became one of the most important people in the world to me.

  And I didn't stop looking for his girl Carmine until I found her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Take off your clothes

  The door closed softly behind me with a click, and I sighed. I was over this entire night and was ready to go to bed. This Halloween was a bust, and I wasn't interested in being around other people anymore tonight. I needed to decompress and be on my own for a while.

  I moved through the dark room with ease, not stopping until I reached the bedside table. I clicked the lamp on and sat my own bottle

  of Jack down besides the lamp. I pulled my gun out of the back waistband of my jeans and sat it down on the nightstand beside the bottle of booze.

  I turned around and sat down heavily on my unmade bed. I bent over and unlaced my boots. Once they were unlaced far enough, I toed them off and kicked them out of the way so I wouldn't trip over them if I had to get up in the middle of the night to take a piss.

  "These are new," Hash muttered, and I looked up from contemplating my boots to see he was looking at two new monitors I had on my corner desk. There were already two other monitors on top of the desk and a bunch of hardware lay underneath the desk.

  I was lucky and had gotten a bigger room than most at the Compound. I chalked it up to having been the President’s son and not having been ejected out of it when said President had died because then I'd become the President’s brother. But more, I think it's because this was my second home for a long while until it just became my only home. That's why I'd been given a bigger room, because it served as my only home. I could rent an apartment or save up and get a little house, but I didn't see the point to it, I had everything I needed for myself right here and had no intention of ever moving out of here.

  "What else did you change while you were avoiding me?" Hash asked curiously.

  Hash, I should note, had a smaller bedroom than I did, and he didn't seem to mind the lack of space because he was just happy to have his own space in the first place.

  Instead of answering him, I unscrewed the cap on the bottle of Jack and put it to my lips. I took a hefty pull, and it burned going all the way down. The burn felt good, and I liked it. So, I drank some more.

  "Shit," Hash muttered. "What, are you trying to turn into King now?"

  I wasn't but something about tonight still didn't feel right, and I felt the need to chase something away. I was using alcohol to do it.

  I put the bottle to my lips and poured some more liquid heat down my throat.

  The bottle was roughly pulled out of my hands, and I looked up in time to see Hash put the bottle to his own lips and take a hefty pull from it, much like I had. When he was done he sat the bottle heavily on top of the nightstand with a clatter.

  "I know what you're doing," Hash told me as he moved around my legs and sat down on the bed beside me.

  I watched as he copied what I'd done and bent forward to unlace his boots. He toed them off and kicked them to lay beside my own.

  "Oh yeah," I murmured. "And what is it you think I'm doing?"

  He turned to me and said, "Pulling away from me for some reason. I don't know if it's because you've had a change of heart, which

  would piss me off and disappoint me all at the same time, or because you're scared. Scared wouldn't piss me off, it'd just make me sad."

  I sucked in a sharp breath as I picked the bottle back up off the nightstand.

  He was right, of course. I was scared. Not scared of him, but scared of things going south and our relationship turning sour. Seeing King how I'd just seen him had served up quite the reality check. Hash was almost as important to me as my brother, and I couldn't lose him.

  "What if this doesn't work out between us?" I asked him after I took a drink. I held the bottle out to him, and he reluctantly took it from my hands.

  "We won't let things go bad for us," he said confidently, and I couldn't help my lips from twitching. He seemed so sure.

  "You know there's no going back after this, right?" I asked him seriously. "If we do this, then who you are and what you are to me isn't ever going to be the same again. You're always going to be more, mean more than all the rest, and I likely won't ever be able to stuff you back into the friends only box ever again."

  "You're fooling yourself, Steph, if you think there's any turning back from where we're already at now."

  He was right, damn it.

  "Stop being so smart," I grumbled.

  He laughed softly as he leaned over me and dropped the bottle back on the nightstand. I went to reach for it, but he grabbed ahold of my hand, stopping me. "No more of that," he whispered. "You need to remember all of this night. It'll hurt my feelings if you don't."

  My breath hitched, and I breathed out, "Well, we certainly don't want that, do we?"

  "Don't be a dick."

  He let go of my hand as he stood up. His leather cut came off first. Then he fisted the bottom of his t-shirt in his hands and pulled it up over his head. He didn't toss his clothes to the floor but instead folded them neatly and sat them in a pile on the floor beside the nightstand.

  "Hash," I muttered at a loss for words.

  "Take off your clothes," he demanded, and my eyes widened in surprise at hearing the hard tone in his voice.

  I hadn't expected this from him but I liked it. I liked it enough for my dick to get rock hard.

  I stood up beside him and removed my cut. I didn't toss to the floor either, but instead laid it at the foot of the bed. I pulled my tee up much like he had over my head and dropped that on top of my leather. My hands dropped to my belt, and I took my time unbuckling it. Before I could pull it free, hands went to it, stopping my movements.

  "I want to do that part," Hash said quietly. "Sit down.”

  I swallowed thickly, but did as I was told. I sat my ass on the bed and spread my jean covered legs wide so he could fit between them. I was disappointed to find out that Hash wasn't going to let me undress him because, standing between my legs, he unbuckled his own belt, unbuttoned his pants and lowered the zipper before his hands went to his hips and his thumbs slid under, not only his jeans but his boxers as well. He slid both down his legs quickly and kicked them off of his feet.

  My eyes stared, fixated on his erect cock that had sprung free from his boxers as he'd pulled them down his legs.
His cock wasn't as long as mine but it certainly was much thicker.

  He stood up straight in front of me, proud, though I could see a fine tremble to his thighs. He was nervous about this and trying to be brave.

  That did it for me.

  I put my hands on his thighs and slid them around and up, not stopping until I held the globes of his ass in my hands. I squeezed, making him suck in a sharp breath and pulled him closer to me until his dick was right in front of my face.

  "Stephan," he breathed. "What-"

  I slid my hand back down his thigh and around to the front, going straight for his cock. I gripped him at the base, and he groaned loudly.

  "Stephan," he said my name in a deep voice.

  "Hmm." I muttered as I leaned forward and flicked my tongue over the tip of his cock, tasting his salty pre-cum.

  "You don't-"

  I ignored him and swirled my tongue around the head before taking him in deep. So deep he hit the back of my throat, and I swallowed so I wouldn't choke on him. My mouth was stretched wide to accommodate his thick girth, and I immediately pulled back as I sucked, not stopping until only the head of his dick remained between my lips. I looked up at him then while I took him back into my mouth and all the way to my throat again. I did this over and over again.

  His eyes burned as he watched me and his hands moved to my dark hair where he grabbed ahold of fistfuls and yanked. I grunted but kept up what I was doing and continued to move my mouth over his cock.

  I had both hands wrapped around the base of it and was sliding them up to meet my mouth as I slid it down while still sucking when he grunted. "Stephan," he moaned. "I don't think I can keep this up for much longer. You need to stop."

  I had no intention of stopping, not when I had just gotten started. I also wouldn't mind if he came sooner rather than later because his dick was so wide that my mouth was stretched so much around it that my lips were starting to tingle, and I didn't think I'd be able to keep this up for much longer.