Apex Of The Curve (Sacred Hearts MC Pacific Northwest Book 3)

by A. J. Downey

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  A strained silence stretched between us, full of promise and desire. His eyes gravitating from mine to my lips as he clearly considered kissing me and I swear to God, that simple flick of his gaze just mere inches lower caused a hitch in my breath. I held it, rendered absolutely inert as I wished he would go for it.

  I simply wasn’t brave enough to make the first move which sounds silly! I know! I just… I just couldn’t, though.

  How soon was too soon? That ever-present inner voice, full of speculation ceased quickly by the one filled with derision. Too soon and what will people think?

  What would people think, indeed? There was a certain unfairness to that considering the circumstances. It wasn’t as though Charles had died… he’d just left me. Cheated on me, used me as cover from the word go, a lie… I was just a lie. All of it was a lie.

  “Let’s get you tucked in. You look like you could use another good night’s sleep,” Fenris declared quietly.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “Okay,” I murmured and took his hand. He gave mine a little squeeze and led me across the hall, guiding me in front of him through the door.

  The bed had been turned down for me and I felt the tightness of anxiety in my chest loosen some.

  For all of his rough exterior, his frightening countenance, he was so very sweet to me.

  “Up you go,” he whispered and I got up into his comfortable bed.

  “You’re not coming?” I asked.

  “Nah, I have some shit to do out in the barn. We got a couple goats about to give birth, but I’ll be in at some point.”

  “Okay.”

  “You want some music?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind, please?”

  “You got it.”

  He tucked me in close and went to the candle-covered dresser and switched on a couple of the flameless, yet realistic LED kind. I smiled and he turned on a speaker, tapping buttons on the top a few times to get the soothing rhythmic melodies going.

  He came back to me and leaned down, brushing his lips against mine. It was so unexpected; I froze, and it was over before I even had time to register what’d just happened.

  Damn it.

  “Was that okay?” he asked, voice strained.

  “No,” I whispered. “It was too short. Come back down here.”

  He smiled and it held a wicked edge to it, but he obliged me. Bending at the waist, supporting himself on the bed with a hand pressed into the pillow by my head, he bent to cover my mouth with his.

  His lips were soft, his beard lightly tickling my face as he brushed his lips against mine. I closed my eyes and captured his face between my hands, kissing him back this time, pressing both my lips to his bottom one.

  He kissed me back, and it evolved until my lips naturally parted to let him in.

  He groaned slightly against my mouth and flicked his tongue past my lips and teeth to stroke it against mine. He tasted masculine – hops from the beer he’d drunk lingering and mixing with the taste that was so intoxicating and purely him.

  I whimpered slightly, wanting so badly for him to come to bed, but he pulled back carefully and let his eyes drift over my freshly scrubbed face.

  “Get some rest,” he urged. “I’ll be in to snuggle you as soon as I can.”

  I smiled and nodded. He straightened and boy, it was the hardest thing ever to let him go.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fenris…

  I was having trouble deciding which was hardest. My dick or leaving her in my bed to get some sleep without me.

  I wanted to ravish her. Wanted to mark her with my scent, hold her under the shelter of my body and make her scream her pleasure into the candlelit dark, but I had shit to do.

  When I finally did get to go in to her, she was fast asleep, the lines of worry and the weight of her circumstances erased from her face, the tension that rode her neck and shoulders a thing of the past.

  I loved that she unconsciously pulled herself into my side, cuddling close when I came to bed and I couldn’t remember falling asleep so quickly. A night without visions of the things that I’d done…

  The next morning, she was gone when I woke, light streaming in the bedroom window between the cracked curtains.

  Fuck.

  I got up, took a hot shower, beat off to the imagined image of those green eyes surrounded by her tousled blonde hair looking up at me, my cock pressed between her pussy lips as she begged me to fill her and just as soon as I came, I started on my second orgasm when my cock didn’t lose even one iota of its turgidity.

  As soon as I was out and dressed, I picked up my phone to text her.

  Me: What time you gonna be home?

  It was like she was waiting to hear from me, because her reply was immediate.

  Her: 7?

  Me: LOL u askin’?

  Her: LOL, no, could be a little before, could be a little after.

  Me: Is it your Friday yet?

  Her: No, tomorrow.

  Me: K

  Her: Why?

  Me: Dunno yet. I’ll figure it out and let you know.

  Her: Ok?

  I shot back a smartassed emoji and went downstairs. We’d had a couple of babies the night before. Well, three actually. A single kid and a pair of twins, but one of the twins didn’t make it.

  My dad came in the back door just as I poured myself some coffee.

  “How are they?” I asked.

  “Good, no complaints. Both are up and eating off their moms, so I think we’re good.”

  “Right on.”

  He eyed me and it held the feel of criticalness.

  “Say whatever you’re gonna say, Pops.”

  “Aspen,” he said. “You plannin’ on keepin’ her?”

  “She’s not a stray cat, Dad.”

  “No shit, that’s what I’m worried about, Boy.”

  I chuckled mirthlessly. “Just takin’ it one day at a time, if you don’t mind.”

  “Seal the deal yet?” he asked.

  “Oh, what the fuck?” I demanded and he gave me a shallow and knowing grin.

  “She’s a keeper, then. Good to know. Better than your last girlfriend – that’s for sure.” I scowled at him.

  “Shit, anything’s better than that ho.”

  He chuckled and changed the subject. “Wanna get that mead started tonight?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, we can do that.”

  “What time’s she gettin’ here?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I told him. “I can do it; and to answer your question, sometime around seven.”

  “Oh, good to know – and it’s your night to cook.”

  I shook my head and sighed, my phone vibrating in my jacket pocket. I answered it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey, it’s Mav.”

  “Sup?” I asked.

  “Need you to take care of something, real quick.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell you when you get here.”

  Shit, okay, it was that kind of a thing.

  “On my way.” I sighed, ending the call before telling my dad, “I’ll be back.”

  My dad raised an eyebrow. “When?”

  “When whatever needs doin’ gets done,” I answered and he waved me off. Club business. He knew.

  “Don’t get caught,” was his parting shot.

  “You jinx me, we fightin’,” I told him and he just laughed at me.

  I rode out to the club and found Mav at the bar, a steaming cup of coffee at his elbow as he talked on the phone, a pair of aviators on his face despite the dim interior of the barroom.

  “What’s shakin’?” I asked.

  He held up a hand, finished his call, and then looked at me.

  “Dumb fuck broke into the boneyard last night.”

  “Shit, cops get him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Got any leads?”

  “Yup.” He slid a piece of paper down the bar to
me and I looked it over.

  “How bad’s the damage?”

  “Just got off the phone with the claims adjuster; they’re on their way to asses.”

  “What you want to have happen here, P.?”

  “Dump Truck is going with you. I’m pissed, so I’ll let him be the judge.”

  “Anything we looking to recover?”

  “About two thousand in cash, that’s it.”

  “Get what we can, he’ll owe us the rest?”

  “With interest.”

  I nodded. I knew the interest rate was going to be steep but we didn’t want to say more in front of the cell phones. I shot a text to Aspen that I would be working in the fields for most of the day and I’d be away from my phone - didn’t want it damaged or anything.

  As soon as Dump Truck came through the back door, we left the electronics on the big table in the chapel and headed out.

  The kid was something like twenty-two or twenty-three and living with his brother in a house off 23rd SW, so not far from the boneyard which was on 15th SW. He was heavy into drugs – meth or heroine, and had to be some kind of a serious bonehead to fuck with our shit.

  Well, it couldn’t be helped. He was about to reap what he sowed here in a big way. Best-case scenario, he would come out the other side of this shit with enough of a fear of the gods put into him, he would get his ass straight. That was about as far as I went with the bleeding-heart schtick, though.

  “Go around back,” Dump Truck grated and I tossed him some chin in a nod of acknowledgement.

  I waited in the overgrown backyard. There was a dog chain back here but no fuckin’ dog, which was concerning.

  The chain-link fence that ran around the backyard’s perimeter was a short one – three feet or so and just enough to hem a dog in. I cursed silently when I heard the dog barking its fucking head off when DT pounded on the front door.

  Someone inside shouted at the mutt to shut it, and I got ready. As predicted, the back door burst open and dude came flying over the back step. I heard Dump Truck shout but I had a hold of the dude and slammed him down into the patch of dirt at the base of the back stoop.

  It was our guy. He ain’t changed from the printed-out image from the security systems at the boneyard. I heaved a fist, and let it crash into his face. Blood spurted and he grunted, both hands going around my one wrist where it was buried in the front of his shirt.

  “You fucked up,” I declared. “You got once chance to fix it.”

  “Man, what the fuck? I didn’t do nothin’!”

  “There you go fuckin’ up all over again by lying to me,” I said and dragged him over to one of those old-school fixed head rotary clotheslines, the base of which had some cinder blocks on either side of the aluminum pole.

  “Fen!” I heard Dump Truck call from in the house.

  “Yeah, I got him! You okay?”

  “Fuckin’ dog bit me. I got him locked in one of the bedrooms.”

  “Man, don’t hurt my brother’s dog! Cujo ain’t do nothin’!”

  “Cujo.” Dump Truck spit off the back stoop. “Cute.”

  “You hurt bad?” I asked.

  “Jacket took the most of it, I’ll be alright.”

  “Where’s the money?” I demanded without any more preamble.

  “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Put your arm on that block there,” I ordered.

  He was already hyperventilating. I didn’t care. I was in that place that was divorced from all emotion. He, of course, didn’t comply.

  “I said put your arm out. You can either do that or I’ll put your mouth against this brick and stomp the back of your head so hard it’ll not only knock the teeth outta your lying mouth, it’ll break your fuckin’ jaw.”

  He put his arm out.

  “Where’s our fuckin’ money?”

  “I smoked it!”

  I stomped on his fucking arm and heard it snap. He screamed, long and entirely too fucking loud. I looked up and around.

  “You got a week to come up with the fuckin’ money and get it to us,” I told him.

  “Break the other one,” Dump Truck said and sniffed.

  I dragged him around so he could set his other arm up for me and he twisted and damn near broke free.

  “Motherfucker, you asked for it!” I grounded out. I got ahold of his other fuckin’ arm and pressed it against my knee. I broke it like fucking kindling. He screamed, wailed, and cried like a little bitch and I had no fucks to give.

  “That’ll teach you to keep your fuckin’ hands to yourself, huh?” Dump Truck demanded.

  We left him sobbing on the ground behind us.

  “Get us our fuckin’ money that you stole. Interest is accruing, and don’t think to tell a fuckin’ soul about what went down here,” Dump Truck said.

  “I don’t give a shit who I hurt,” I said to drive the point home. Even if it was a lie, he didn’t need to know that.

  The club had a creed, no matter how much a man fucked up and got in deep with a Sacred Heart, his wife, girlfriend, or whatever and his kids were off-limits. That is kids that were still minor children. If his kid was eighteen, a man, and somehow involved, all bets were off. The kid wasn’t involved in whatever bull fuckery that earned our pissed off, we let them alone.

  Who said there was no honor among brigands, eh?

  Dump Truck and I hustled up the block and got on our bikes, riding away and taking some hard turns down streets to avoid the approaching sirens. The pigs were expected. That dude hollered like a fuckin’ baby.

  Back at the clubhouse, we retrieved our phones.

  “So, how’re things going with the blonde?”

  I looked up from my phone screen.

  “Alright, I guess.”

  My buddy arched a dark eyebrow at me, his coal-black eyes raking me over.

  “She’s been staying at my place with me the last couple of nights.”

  Dump Truck failed to keep his look neutral and I frowned at what I unexpectedly saw – pride and like he was impressed.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I like her,” I said carefully, then added, “And I’d rather not talk about it.”

  DT put up his hands, as though to say he was hands-off the subject.

  “The fact you don’t want to talk about it tells me this one’s serious, brother. Good for you, man.”

  I nodded but wouldn’t look at him.

  “I don’t like that look,” he said plaintively. “What’d you just think about?”

  Honestly, as serious as I was about Aspen, as much as I liked her, I was worried that I wasn’t good for her. She’d already been through so much fuckin’ pain. I didn’t want to end up the cause of more.

  “Talk to me,” DT said, like he was trying to sooth an angry dog. He wasn’t terribly far off the mark. I wasn’t the best at processing feelings without lashing out or having anger enter into the equation – usually at myself for not being, I don’t know, normal. As fuckin’ boring as that was, you pretty much always wanted what you couldn’t have and there was no way living this life I would ever have normal… but what if that was what Aspen wanted?

  A normal life.

  She was so damn low-key, I kind of figured it was her default.

  Dump Truck swung the door to the chapel closed and I sighed.

  “Talk to me, bro,” he repeated and he crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I’m a fuckin’ monster on a bad day, and an oddity – a freak – on a good one,” I said coming clean.

  He gave me a crooked grin.

  “And?”

  “And what if that’s not what she wants?” I asked. “What if it’s not what she needs right now?”

  “You really like this woman.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know what it is, but yeah. She sort of soothes the beast, you know what I mean?”

  “Special kind of woman to sooth the rage and pain,” he agreed. “My Little Bird is like that for me.�
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  “She’s also a kind of project for you,” I said without thinking, but Dump Truck was an analytical short. He didn’t get pissed or snap off, that was my modus operandi, no he thought about what I said and finally nodded.

  “I can see what you’re saying there. You’re not wrong. I like putting broken things back together just as much as I enjoy breaking ‘em.”

  I nodded, relieved. “That’s exactly what I meant, Dude.”

  “Not your usual thing, though. Is it?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, not really.”

  “Scared you’re gonna do more harm than good?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said judiciously.

  “The fuck?” I asked.

  “You stop bein’ scared about that kind of shit, that’s the minute you do somethin’ stupid to fuck it up,” he said. “So, hang onto that. Let it be a net positive in that regard. In the meantime, enjoy, my brother. There’s nothing better than a beautiful woman in your bed and by your side making you better.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder and opened up the door to the chapel to let us out.

  “I don’t know. I’m still finding that last part out,” I said, thoughts consumed by Aspen and just how much I wanted to do with her, not just to her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aspen…

  When I pulled down the farm’s long driveway, there was another car up ahead that I hadn’t seen before. It was a black and white Jeep of some kind, heavily modified for off-road capability, the top soft and awkward, not typically ‘Jeep’ in that it didn’t cover the back seat area – which didn’t have seats in it. It gave the beastly looking vehicle the appearance of being a Jeep/pickup hybrid and made me wistfully lonesome for my brother. Copper loved off-roading. It was something he was super excited about sharing with his son, Silver – yes, I know, I’d argued with my brother and sister-in-law slightly over that one, too… but that was Copper. Always joking, always smiling, and he was seriously hoping that when the time came, he would have a grandson named ‘Gold’ or ‘Golden.’

  Such a big dork.

  While the memory made me sad, it also made me smile and that smile that ghosted my lips was everything. It was the first time I think I’d managed since, well, everything, to smile instead of immediately crying. I think this timeout, or break, or whatever it was from my mom’s place where I was sorting through so many photos and old things was good, needed. That despite there being no use for them, going through them was good. I mean, they somehow held sentimental value for my mother who had been just two steps shy of being a hoarder, I swear to God, and going through them was sort of this long but necessary goodbye.