Silver Biker: The Silver Foxes of Blue Ridge

by L. B. Dunbar

  I don’t want to leave him dissatisfied or incomplete. His mouth crushes mine in a hard kiss as his finger and thumb catch my jaw, and then I’m standing. Flipped to lean over the island, I’m pressed forward. James reaches around me, shoving the divorce papers to the floor, and my nipples hit the cool counter. I yelp, tugging up my bra while James grabs my hips.

  “Peach. I need this.” He slams into me, and I cry out as a hand comes to my lower back, holding me in place. James rocks into me, driving in deep with this new angle, and I’m struggling for something to grab on the slick top of the island. He tugs my hips back and continues pummeling into me, breaking me apart in a new way.

  “Peach,” he warns, before he stills, jolting inside me. He pulls back to instantly return, the pulsing continuing as he fills me with his seed. My eyes close as I rest my cheek against the countertop, knowing I’ll never be the same.

  23

  Bedside Promises and Fatherly Advice

  [James]

  Holy shit.

  My breath comes in deep drags as I lay spent over the back of Evie. My arm moves as if in slow motion, swiping up her side and reaching along the length of her arm until our fingers curl together. I press a kiss to her shoulder.

  “Holy shit,” I say aloud this time. Evie huffs under me, and although I’m certain I’m crushing her under my weight, I can’t move yet. “You can’t say shit like that to me, Peach.”

  “What shit?” she mutters underneath me.

  “You wanted me to . . .” I can’t repeat the word although I’m not shy about using that vocabulary. She wanted me to fuck her, and I did just that, like a man experiencing his first time and his last all at once. Evie shudders under me, and I slowly push up and off her. My dick slips free of her heat, and I rub a hand down her spine. She’s so beautiful and pliable spread out on the counter like this.

  “Can’t move,” she says, and I softly chuckle before concern hits me.

  “Did I hurt you?” My hand rubs up her back, and I pause. Fuck. I went a little rough on her in my desperation. I just had to be inside her, but I wanted her permission. I wanted her to want this as much as me.

  “No,” she replies, pressing herself upward on shaky arms. As she spins to face me, I tug up my pants, which have fallen to my thighs but no farther. I reach for her underwear, tap her ankles so she can step into them, and then I pull them up for her. Evie’s hands come to the edge of the island as her knees bend, and she catches herself.

  I reach for her side.

  “I don’t know if I can stand.” She chuckles in dismissal of her still trembling body, and I scoop her up in my arms.

  “James,” she shrieks, but I’m not putting her down. I carry her to our bedroom—our bedroom—and drop her on the bed. Then I crawl over her, caging her in with my arms as columns near her shoulders and knees on either side of her hips.

  “Don’t leave,” I say to her, trying to hold her eyes. It’s still difficult for me, but this is more about the intensity of her eyes than the connection to our child. She looks afraid, and I don’t blame her. “Stay right here.”

  “I don’t think I can move anyway,” she says, her voice lowering. She averts her gaze as if it’s catching up to her what we did, and she’s embarrassed by it.

  “Look at me.” I capture her jaw, holding her face, so she sees me. “Don’t run away. Stay here a little longer. Stay in Blue Ridge.”

  “I’m not running,” she whispers, and I remind myself I’m the one who told her to leave, so I need to use as much effort to ask her to stay. I fall next to her on the bed, wrapping my arm over her waist. “But I do need to go back to Savannah eventually.”

  “What’s in Savannah that you can’t do here?” I ask, still concerned she’s going back to that man.

  “My equipment. My studio.” She’s leaving out that she has an apartment there, but she doesn’t need it. This is her home. Here. With me.

  “We can get you new things.”

  She rolls her head to gaze at the ceiling and groans my name.

  “Evie. Please. I know I don’t have the right to ask for anything, but I’m asking. Stay here. We don’t even have to sleep together.” My lip crooks up because there’s no way I’m not sleeping in the same bed as her.

  “Live like roommates?” She wears a quizzical expression when she looks back at me, asking for clarification, and I laugh until I realize she’s serious.

  “Fuck no,” I state too quickly, and Evie blinks. “Roommates who share a bed,” I tell her, and Evie sighs, looking up at the ceiling again.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little premature?” Her question starts my heart racing again.

  “Everything we do is fast, Peach. This is us.” She looks at me again. “We’ll take it one step at a time. First, we nap.” I collapse my arm and lower my head to the pillow looking at her. I can’t believe she’s in our bed again. I can’t believe she’s this close to me, or we did what we did on the countertop.

  Jesus, where did all that come from?

  Evie and I have always been hot and heavy for one another, but that kitchen encounter was on another level. I stare at her as I stroke her cheek, brushing back her hair over her ear.

  “Stay with me for a little longer. Just a few days, maybe.” Or weeks, months, years. “I know I gave up on us, but don’t give up on me.” It’s so selfish I hate myself as soon as I say the words, but I’m not opposed to suddenly begging her not to leave me.

  “A few days,” she says, rolling to her side and facing me, curling under my chin and into my chest like she did last night when she was crying over some other guy. This is a new position for us, and I want to question if this is how she laid with him, but I don’t ask. I don’t feel I have the right to answers, and I don’t think I can handle the truth. Instead, I want to hold my wife pressed against me, and eventually, we sleep.

  + + +

  “Where are you going?” she says, twisting at the waist to look over her shoulder at me. I’m tucking in my shirt when I gaze over at her.

  “I need to work this afternoon.” Thank goodness for an internal clock that works when my shift moves to nights a few days a week. As I’m the guy who doesn’t have a family, I often take the later shifts and overnight ones so the others can spend time with theirs. Staring down at Evie, I’m rethinking the idea of not having a family. She is mine.

  “You’re giving me a funny look,” she says, rolling completely to face me, and I realize her gaze is just as disconcerting.

  “So are you.” I squat beside the bed, and my heart beats triple time when she reaches for my face, palm scratching as it swipes against my stubble. “You’re looking at me like I might disappear.”

  “I’m afraid I’m dreaming,” she admits, and my hammering heart stops quick.

  “It’s not a dream, baby.” I take her hand and bring her palm to my lips, kissing her there.

  “We have so much to talk about,” she says, bringing us back to the reality of our circumstances, and while I know she’s right, I don’t want to talk. Not yet. I’m afraid she’ll disappear again if we do. For now, I only want to think about her dozing in our bed, waiting for me to find her when I return in the early hours of the morning.

  “I don’t need to tell you to make yourself at home. This is your home, Peach. This is where you belong.”

  Her eyes search my face, and I read a thousand questions in them along with some deep concerns, but I need to get to work, and I don’t want to burst our bubble. Giant’s right. I’m a fool because I’m willing to pretend for a little longer that my wife might love me again and come back to me.

  When I get to the fire department, I’m trying to keep cool and not worry about whether I’ll find Evie in our bed or the signed papers on the counter as a big fuck you. I shouldn’t have taken her like I did. We needed to make love, make up, and then figure things out. Then again, we’ve never been slow out of the gate. I chuckle to myself, recalling our first time together, and I’m hard just thinking about
it, comparing it to earlier in the day.

  I’m saluting the chief as I’m heading to the TV room when I hear him call after me.

  “Ranger.” The brisk voice of the chief catches me off guard. “Someone here to see you.” He nods toward the TV room, and I enter to find my father sitting in a seat. I hadn’t noticed his car out front as I pulled around to the back to park my bike. My dad used to do this when I first ditched my family, trying to corner me at work until I told him I might lose my job. It was the only thing still going for me, and my dad knew it.

  For some reason, he let me off the hook of working for the brewing company easier than the others. He kept his own executive position until he felt Giant was ready, as if always knowing the first son would take over the business despite his military background. As the second son, I was the second string in his plan, but I always thought he wanted Billy to work for him. Young William could not handle that pressure as he was almost as fucked up as me but in a totally different way.

  What surprised me most about my father’s original visits is that he didn’t typically pry into his adult sons’ lives once we were fathers. He was of the belief a man did as a man does, and his family is his family. He didn’t offer advice or tell me how to raise my kid. He let me do my thing, so I didn’t understand why he was coming after me when I walked away from them.

  I don’t address him as he looks up at me, staring at me a long minute before he speaks.

  “It was good to see Evelyn at Giant’s wedding,” he states. “Your mother said she stopped by the house, but I was hoping you might bring her by again.” My dad knows that isn’t happening.

  “You need to tell your wife to back down a bit.” I can’t even bring myself to call her my mother. It’s not that I hate my parents. It’s that I feel I don’t deserve them. I disappointed them on a completely new level with the loss of my son, the true Harrington grandson. Michael was a new beginning for the Harrington name after my father had four boys and all of them but me had daughters. Now, it’s the end of the line. It was better for them that I finally walked away.

  “She tore into Evie,” I tell him, although I can’t imagine Mother being that harsh, not to Evie.

  George Harrington Jr. sits up straighter and narrows his eyes at me. “That is not what I heard. However, your mother and I think we’ve misunderstood a few things.”

  “I heard you talking about her at Giant’s wedding.” They weren’t saying anything bad, just curious about her attendance and my absence.

  My father blinks. “Were you at the wedding?”

  Nice of him to notice, but then again, I was purposely hiding out in the trees. I didn’t need my appearance turning the attention away from Giant or causing a scene on his big day.

  “Is Evelyn back?” he questions, not letting it go that it’s none of his damn business, but I don’t miss the hint of hope in his voice. However, it’s our marriage and our fight. We don’t need my parents meddling, especially my mother, who is always trying to fix things. I remember her trying to hook up Giant and Charlie with various blind dates.

  “I don’t know,” I state, lowering my voice and keeping my answer vague while telling the truth at the same time. I have no idea if my wife will stay or if she’ll leave me.

  “What are you doing to keep her?” The question surprises me. It isn’t accusatory, just curious.

  “Aren’t you the ones thinking Evie’s shit, for leaving me?” It’s an unfair statement.

  “You know, son,” he begins, and I bristle at the label while he completely ignores my accusation of them judging Evie. “We also lost people that day. We lost our grandson. We lost our daughter-in-law, and we lost our child, too.”

  Instantly, I’m vibrating with anger. “It isn’t the same thing.” His child did not die.

  “It might as well be. We lost three members of our family.”

  I stare at him aghast. How dare he compare our situations. “I’m still standing before you.”

  “But you aren’t really. You’re a ghost to us, and so is your wife. We miss you. All of you.”

  Evie’s told me over the years that she didn’t know how to reach out to my parents, and I told her not to bother. I didn’t wish to discuss them on our short, once a year phone calls, so Evie would drop the topic, giving into my surly attitude. I looked forward to her call all year, and I didn’t want to waste it talking about my folks.

  I don’t respond to his missing us. I’m still humming with irritation.

  My father lowers his head, slowly shaking it side to side. “You know, I always thought I taught you better than this. Thought you understood that a man’s position is the rock of his family.”

  I stare at him, remembering all those times I’d told Evie I’d be her rock. She could lean on me. I don’t recall hearing such advice from my father, but him saying it to me now makes me wonder if subconsciously somewhere, sometime, he did mention it.

  “That’s a little sexist,” I state instead, throwing in his face his age and beliefs.

  “No, it’s not actually. Your wife is the sweet spot. You’re the solid one. It’s how your mother and I ran our family.”

  I don’t recall that being the case. Mother was the tough one while Dad was the softy, telling us not to get caught when he found us drinking in the trophy room of their house or when he caught me on a few occasions over a girl in that room. There was only the one time where it was my mother walking in on Dolores Chance and me in my bed when we were eighteen.

  “A rock doesn’t roll over his wife. He doesn’t push her aside, and that’s what you did, didn’t you?”

  I don’t answer him, turning my head, giving him my cheek.

  My father slowly stands. “We want our son back,” he states. “We want his family.”

  “So do I,” I snap, quaking so bad I need to fist my hands to keep myself from screaming at him, embarrassing myself at my place of employment. Does he not understand I’d give anything to have my son back? I narrow my eyes at him before I speak. “I need to work.”

  I’m hoping the statement reminds him where we are and prompts him to leave.

  “Bring Evelyn home to us, son. Come home, too.”

  I stare at him, ready to admit I’m trying, that I’m hoping, but I need to bring Evie to me first, and that’s a long climb up a steep mountain. My palms sweat with the thought. We’ve already gone over the cliff, and I just don’t know if I can save us.

  My dad steps up to me, patting my shoulder in what I take as patronizing.

  “Be the rock I know you can be.”

  With that, he exits, leaving me feeling more like a volcano ready to erupt and break apart everything under my siege.

  24

  Aftereffects

  [Evie]

  After hearing James leave the house, I slip from bed both sore and confused.

  What had we done?

  However, I can’t fight the smile on my face or the giggle tickling my throat.

  Deciding I need a shower before I can function, I roll from the bed and find Silver on the floor next to my side of the bed.

  “Hey, baby,” I whisper to him, and his head perks up. A noise comes from his throat as if he’s answered me, and I stand, walking around the room to discover my dress and boots along with my bag have been brought to the bedroom. I enter our old bathroom finding it absent of everything feminine. It isn’t so much that James erased me, but the empty shelf where my personal items once sat in the medicine cabinet is a reminder I haven’t been here in years.

  When I enter the shower, I’m engulfed in the scent of James. His bodywash. His shampoo. I’m no longer part of this space, and I wonder if anyone else has been here. Has he brought someone to our house? Had he taken someone to our bed? Had he had a shower with another woman? These are thoughts I shouldn’t think, but it’s difficult to dismiss them, and in light of my recent break from Dalton, it’s also unfair.

  I have no more tears left for the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on.
I could sleep for a hundred years, but a warm bed is not where I need to be. Depression is a lingering possibility, but I fought it with therapy and exercise. Years ago, a routine helped me level out my life and move forward as best I could.

  On that note, I need to work. My few days in Blue Ridge has turned into two weeks, and with James’s invitation to stay a little longer, I need to make some decisions. We have so much to discuss, and I’m not hopeful we can just pick up where we left off before Michael. We’re both different people now because of Michael and because of a decision we’ve made without the other. We need time to navigate what happened earlier. If it’s even something to ponder, or was it a fluke? Were we just worked up and giving in to a suppressed craving for each other? Or was that the closure we needed?

  I don’t want to consider such thoughts, especially with everything else racing around in my head. Instead, I finish my shower, dress in day-old clothes, and head to my Jeep for my suitcase in hopes of something fresh. When I return to the house, I take the bag to the bedroom, curious if we’ll sleep together again or if James wants us to be roommates like I said. Perhaps it’s better if we are in separate rooms, but I can’t bring myself to take my bag to the guest room.

  I take my laptop to the kitchen, noticing Silver is following me everywhere out of curiosity. Eventually, standing at the island like I often did, I open my email. Not even a half hour passes before my mind is wandering.

  Then it happens.

  I hear a noise, and my brows pinch. Exiting the kitchen, I cross the front entry and stand in the living room. I hadn’t inspected much the night I brought James home. I walked these rooms but didn’t look at anything in particular. Michael’s room on the second floor had been my destination.

  Amidst the old couch and James’s favorite chair, my mind plays tricks on me. I hear laughter. The soft cackle of a young boy laughing in an infectious manner. I turn for the staircase, and my imagination recognizes the sound of growing feet pounding up the staircase in haste. In my mind’s eye, I see him sitting in this living room with a Braves game on, hear him yelling at the television set over a bad call from the umps.