My pocket vibrated, and I sucked on the other piercing momentarily before answering. “Fucking what!” I barked into the poor excuse for what I called a phone. It’s really more the remnants of what used to be.
“Don’t you fucking what me, boy! Get your ass down here, now!” Greg shouted on the other end of the phone, and I quickly slapped closed the flip phone.
“Fuck him.” I already knew that I needed to get to work. I’m no wizard. He’s just going to half to pump his brakes for a minute because the magic I could do is unquestionably not something that would impress him. We both climbed in my old truck and started that way, laughing hysterically about how much trouble we were in with Greg. The whole drive down there, I’m trying to think of just one good reason for him not to fire me. So far, I had nothing. I’m not a punctual person by nature. I just kind of showed up when I felt like it.
My life had consisted of too many days on the time of the correctional system. Since I’ve been out, I’ve kind of done things at my own pace and don’t answer too many. Greg is a shit boss, but when you were a convicted felon, there weren’t too many places you could work. I didn’t kiss his ass but somewhere buried deep in my insides, I had respect for him. Before that, I was under Mouse’s watch. She barely let me mismatch socks, let alone be late for work for a bullshit reason as I am today, taking on two random skanks. I laughed to myself, gritting my teeth and flinching just with the thought of what that conversation would be like passing through my mind. I missed her company on days like this, but damn, am I glad that I don’t have to answer for the fun rides or the gas that fueled them.
The suspense built as we closed in on the shop, while all the dust of the past stormed through my head. At times, it is hard for me to pull myself out of the situations I used to be in and remember to live in the one’s going on around me, mainly because I never expected to see Mouse after I was sentenced. I wiped my hands of what I knew as a life outside of the club and as a criminal.
Flint and I pushed through the big bay doors of the shop, hoping like hell that we didn’t run into Greg before hitting the time clock. Neither one of us ever really had too much luck. When the bottom of our steel toes crunched against the concrete floor, there he stood anyway.
Leaning in the doorway of his small, shitty excuse for an office, he glanced down to his wristwatch and loudly chewed on his gum. “Well, look who the fuck finally decided to show up.” He straightened his posture and waved our timecards in the air like some sort of fan of justice.
“Give me my motherfucking timecard, Greg!” I said with a serious tone, walking the distance of the shop, and stopping in front of him. “You’re holding something that earns me money. Don’t think for a second that I won’t take that arm as a trophy, just to explain to another little prick like you in the future not to mess with my money.”
“Damn, Cobra? You don’t have to take it that far. Just punch in and get to work,” he complained as he handed us our cards.
“Yeah. No shit, Greg,” I said in a condescending voice while dropping my card into the machine. “Come on, Flint, let’s go make this grouchy little prick some money!”
We didn’t hesitate, getting straight to work. The daily grind at the shop is never unbearable. In fact, most places of employment would’ve shit-canned better men than me a long time ago. Greg put up with more shenanigans than most bosses would have, but only because he didn’t have any other choice. He owned the shop but couldn’t run any of his own machines to save his life. We were his bread and butter, and he knew better than to test his luck with that because if all of my brothers walked out, he’d be fucked.
Greg’s shop is small but efficient. He only had enough machines for nine men, and four of those men belonged to the CRMC. Most of the rest of my brothers were constantly blowing through those doors, hoping to get some free work done on their bikes. So, needless to say, it’d be a bad move for him to start any shit.
The old intercom system fired up and crackled loudly. “First rounds on me just as soon as this order gets filled,” Greg announced proudly. A couple of clattering noises followed, and then a loud squeal came over the speaker. “Oh, shit? Where’s that damn off button?”
The guys that were still standing around and not knee-deep in metal shavings all looked at each other, but as usual, I am the first to say something. “That a boy Grouchy Greg,” I laughed.
“Just someone keep his ass in the office and out of our way!” I yelled across the loud roaring of the machines as we fired them up and got to work. I added the last part to be a dick. It isn’t needed, but it’s who I am. I pushed people to their limits and then some, but unlike the majority of guys with personalities like mine, I could back up my shit talk.
Being a reaper for the Chained Rebels Motorcycle Club fit me perfectly. Of course, we had bylaws that I could recite word for word that kept me out of some shit, but that didn’t mean I didn’t raise hell. We all did, and thanks to Skillet, the local law is in our pocket. I thought for sure I would be doing time for what went down with Memphis, but that isn’t what happened. Some other junkie got stuck with those charges, and I didn’t ask questions of how or why. There were a few of the older brothers in the club, none of us questioned them, or how they made things happen, Skillet is one of them.
4
Quinn
“Cobra, I just need some time,” I explain, telling my wandering eyes to focus on anything other than the gorgeous man walking toward me.
“How much time, Quinn? I’m sorry, okay?” His green eyes widen, and his biceps are covered with tattoos flex as his palms flatten against the wall, pinning his body against mine.
“Tell me what to do.”
“I don’t know.” My eyelids close tightly, and I pray I will remain strong. The other brothers call me Mouse. It’s about a fifty-fifty toss-up which he will use. When he uses my legal name, he’s being sincere. It’s something I want to ignore but can’t.
“I promise they were the last ones.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Jude.” My eyes dart open, and heat radiates from my body. He thinks he means it, and at this moment, he does, but it won’t last. It never does. I duck under his arms, needing to put some distance between us, and suck a deep cleansing breath into my body.
He bangs his forehead against the wall a few times and then stills. “I’ll quit drinking. I’ll change.”
“Bullshit. Neither of us will do either of those things.”
“You’re right.”
“Of course I am.” Disappointment surges so easily through my veins as if it’s the only thing my body needs to live. Truthfully, I don’t know how I still have some type of faith in him, but I do. I always will.
“They don’t mean anything to me.” He pries himself off the wall and joins me. “They’re just a means to an end.”
“They mean something to me.” The words rattle through my dry throat as a hopeless whisper. The air is so thin between us that I can barely breathe it without choking on the repetitiveness of it. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this, and I can guarantee it won’t be the last. When the sun meets the horizon and the moon crests, we both will be the same people as we were when we awoke today. If there’s only one thing true about us, it would be that we are consistent. Neither one of us has changed a whole lot over the years, other than the fact of being divorced. The sexual tension between us is still as strong as the day we met. Although I might be pissed at the moment, we always run back to the other in one form or another—case in point, this instant.
“Let’s just get this over with, Jude,” I remind him with a huff. We have a reason for being together right now and it isn’t a social visit. We are meeting Glas, the other reaper of the chapter, and his old lady, Scar, for a little recon mission of sorts soon. A new MC is hanging around Blackwell and Thing, the chapter prez, and the rest of the brothers want to know if they’re friends or foes before the guys’ act.
“I didn’t forget, Mouse.” His
wide devious smile spreads across his face, and his snakebite piercings disappear beneath his tongue as he licks them. This drives me wild, and he knows it.
I glare at him before my eyes close momentarily. I just need a minute. I wouldn’t let him in again. It had taken this long for us to get to a place where we could be around each other for a while without screaming at one another. We were the epitome of a toxic relationship, but there’s one thing no one tells you about those types of relationships. You can’t just end them. It isn’t that easy. The reason people in them fight so hard is because they love each other even harder. At least, that is the case when it comes to us. I am a damn fool for loving him, but I did and always would in some form or another.
He brushes the pad of his thumb across my bottom lip, and fire rages throughout me. Before I realize what I’m doing, my arms extend, and my palms land against his chest, and he falls backward a few steps. “I hate you, Jude,” my lips barely whisper, awakening the history swirling between us.
His head drops as if the words physically hurt. “I hate me, too.”
They aren’t pleasant. They are the blatant, ugly truth, but I don’t always mean them. This is my biggest downfall. I’m the type to speak my mind in the heat of the moment without thinking and regret them later, knowing I don’t always mean them. I do not have much of a filter, and usually, it isn’t a problem. Something like this, telling someone you hate them, is like a cancer that slowly grows and eventually festers from the inside out, though. I know all too well because I watched my mom tell my dad it every time before she took him back. It never failed. She always took him back, regardless of what he had done. I’m not proud to fill those same shoes, but each time this happens between Cobra and me, I understand my mom a little more.
Remorse blankets my body as soon as our eyes connect, and just like that, he pulls me back in whether he realizes it or not. “I’m sorry, Jude.” My shoulders slump, and I lose all of the strength I had within me to stand my ground.
“You don’t have a thing to be sorry for.” He bows his head, resting his forehead on my shoulder blade. “You were my home, and I wrecked it.”
My arms wrap around this beast of a man the best they can, and I count silently, needing something to keep me grounded. His words carry the truth; neither of us can deny them. It doesn’t mean we have to like them, though. He needs me as much as I need him, but somewhere along the way, we forgot how to do anything apart from fight, fuck, and drink. We lost the most important thing that made us, us. Untouched love. What remains between us is imperfect. It carries our battle wounds, and the pain always lies just beneath the surface. Our love carries the incredibly heavy scars of our past, so our bodies don’t have to and somedays the weight is unbearable. Today is one of those days. There are too many ghosts of other people pulsating between us to erase the hurtful memories embedded inside my brain.
He whispers, “I fucking hate this.”
“Me, too.” My eyes painfully close and sting with tears. We are both at a standstill in life, but as stupid as it is, I don’t want to be stuck with anyone else. Hence the definition of toxic.
With a deep inhale, I remind myself I’m not this weak person begging to fall to her knees in shambles. Neither is he. “We aren’t this pitiful, Jude.”
“No, we aren’t,” he growls through a wicked smile as his fingers wind tightly in the long tendrils at the ends of my hair, and he yanks my head backward. His hot breath is on my throat in seconds, and his tongue trails the length of my exposed neck.
Instantly my mouth is dry, and my pussy is wet. He shoves my body against the wall, and my nails grind into the leather cut covering his back as a moan soars out of my mouth. My legs fasten around his body, and my boots lock over one another at the ankle. His lips push hard against mine, and they open for his tongue to enter. This is what we do the best—each other. Nothing would come between us if we could go the rest of our lives without speaking another word and were completely alone. That isn’t a possibility, not even by a long shot, so we live in the moments that everyone else ignores. Most people feel the most alive when they experience long bouts of happiness. Cobra and I don’t have that luxury, and so we find happiness in the forgotten moments of life.
“I hate your clothes,” he grumbles with a shake of his head as his rough hands cup my tits through my nineties band t-shirt.
“This is a fucking phenomenal band.” My ankles unhook in protest, and the stiletto heels tap against the stone floor one at a time. My eyebrow arches suspiciously above the other one. It’s one of the first reasons we began talking to one another in the first place. “When did you have a change of heart?”
“Not the band, Mouse,” he laughs, shaking his head, and then the tip of his nose runs along my jawline.
Chills shudder down my body in a shockwave, and I consider dropping the subject, but I stand by my statement. It might not be the most important thing right now, in the heat of the moment, but later I’ll want answers and might not get them. There’s no predicting what will happen between the two of us from one second to the next. It makes me a hypocrite, but I secretly live for the excitement of not knowing what to expect. The better part of the time, I’m happy with the surprises in our life, the other not so much.
“Your clothes in general. Covering this masterpiece is fucking illegal.”
The apples of my cheeks burn in the dim lighting from his words. I’m not as young as I used to be, and things definitely are not as tight as they were when I was twenty. Neither is his if I’m dissecting things. The difference between us is Jude is basically Adonis walking. Always has been and always will be. The man is the best sex imaginable in a pair of jeans, a black cutoff shirt, and leather boots. Add his Harley into the mix with everything else, and it’s hard to believe he’s real. Looking at him, he’s picture-perfect. There are faults to him, some colossally huge fucking ones. Yet when we are together, like this, I don’t want to remember one single damn thing to stop it. It’s like living the night we met all over again.
Silently, I bite the corner of my bottom lip. Adding anything to protest what he said would ruin the beauty between us. The thing is, he isn’t perfect, and neither am I, but we are perfectly imperfect when we are together.
Our clothes fly off in a frenzy around us, landing around the clubhouse. He kisses me softly with compassion at first, and then they become hard and desperate. I need him as much as his body craves mine. Where we are in life is a conundrum. One that neither of us will be figuring out anytime soon. I will probably hate myself for all of this tomorrow, but I’ll be damned if I don’t live in the moment. It’s how I approach everything in life because tomorrow is never a guarantee. I genuinely believe that cliché statement with everything in me.
Cobra leads our bodies, urging me backward until the cool familiar metal of the pool table is against the back of my thighs. He lifts my body with ease with his strong arms and lays me onto the worn felt.
“Fuck,” he seethes. “No shame,” he says breathlessly, propping his weight onto his forearms, and his chain dangles onto my lips. I catch it with my teeth, knowing how much he loves my mouth.
5
Cobra
“Hey, party’s canceled,” Glas quickly says after I remind him how much I do not like being on the phone.
“Fine by me, brother. I’m otherwise engaged, anyhow.”
“Mouse forgive you?” he asks, knowing how often we do this.
“Who knows. I wouldn’t.” I admit the undeniable truth under my breath, my eyes scanning from the shot glass filled with liquor in front of me to her gorgeous naked body on the pool table. She sheepishly smiles and cocks her head to the side suspiciously. My hand goes up into the air, waving her off, not wanting to answer her unspoken question.
Holding the phone between my shoulder and face, I pull my pants and boxers on one-handed, and my butterfly knife clatters to the floor. After buttoning my jeans, hooking my belt, and retrieving my knife, I awkwardly smile at her.
<
br /> “Fuck. Me either.”
It isn’t a mystery how much of an asshole I am. I don’t deny it because there isn’t any use in doing so. I do try to be better, but I always end up fucking myself and others over in the end—Usually, Mouse falls into the front of the line. I’m the fuckwad who drops his dick in anything with a pussy when I’m drunk. I know the reason, though. I could stop, I really could, if I thought I deserve to be with her. She’s too good for me. Hell, she was when we got together, and I thanked the stars and whatever else for her every day. Somehow throughout my life, I lost focus on what is important and traveled a path of no return.
I meant what I told her earlier, even though I’ve said it more times than I can count on every appendage on my body. I will stand by it this time. I can’t put her through this shit anymore. Even if she doesn’t take me back, if this is the last time we are together like this, I won’t parade muffler bunnies in her face. Even though it’s never my intention to do so, I don’t exactly try my hardest to keep them away from her either.
6
Quinn
“Go ahead, we got this,” I assure Lathe and Screen. There’s no sense for all of us to hang around and clean when they could be working on the house. The last few weeks have been completely different than I ever could have expected. Cobra has stood by what he said about those two rude sweet asses being the last. That I know of anyway. He doesn’t owe me anything anymore than I do him, but this time seems different. I can’t put my finger on it, something new about him. Then again, it usually does. I want to trust him, but this isn’t the first time he’s tried to stand by his word.
Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition Page 52
