by Kiki Leach
"And you saw the shit that happened out there?"
"Everybody saw it and you know that I did; but..." I tossed my hair behind my neck and sighed. "I also know why it happened, which means that you don't need to explain anything about it."
"I want to... but not at this very goddamn moment."
"Okay."
"Instead, I uh..." He raised a hand to scratch the back of his neck and laughed. "I wanna know how old you are, Cheyenne?"
The sound of my name rolling off his tongue like a warm stream of water coiling down the side of a riverbank made my lips wet.
Both of them.
"Why is that?" I asked him.
"Because I'm certain you're of age, baby," he replied. "I just need to know by how much."
"Does it matter?"
"Yeah." He nodded as his lips parted into another deep grin. "Because everything between us needs to be consensually adult."
"It will be," I told him. "I just turned twenty-three a few weeks ago."
"Mm." I could see the desire pooling in his eyes as he stared. "Happy belated."
"Thank you."
"You're more than welcome for it, baby." A flash of heat suddenly filled my chest; my cheeks felt warm as my mouth became dry. I cleared my throat again and sat back down. He grunted as a look of hunger and the satisfaction forming behind it overtook desire, allowing his jaw to twitch. Then he took a seat directly across from me and rested his hands on top of the table, folding them together. "You mind if I ask you something else personal?" He slowly rolled his tongue between his lips again while scanning my frame, and flared his nostrils as if he had intended to pounce on me before I could respond.
"No. I mean, it depends on what you're wanting to know about, and why?"
"A lot. But for now I'll start with asking what you're thinking in looking at me right now?"
Nervous laughter escaped me as I shrugged. "I don't know what you mean--"
"The thoughts running through your mind right now when you see my face, baby, along with the rest of me. What are you thinking about?"
"I don't know--"
"I think you do..." He sat back from me and gulped. His eyes moved across my breasts in a manner so seductive, I could feel the warmth of it burning from within.
"Well..." When he returned to my face, I rocked forward and pressed my knees together, my sex reacting with a hard, pulsating throb that rattled my thighs and electrified my clit. The thought of his tongue sliding across it nearly made me come where I sat. "What are you thinking about while staring at me right now?"
"The truth?"
I nodded with anticipation as my heart rate increased, then exhaled as the air around us tightened, the feeling of it encasing my bones like a forthcoming rapture of dissent. "Sure."
"A lot of things I probably shouldn't."
"Like what?" I asked him. "For example."
"You really wanna know?" I nodded again because I did, and because I knew I shouldn't. "I'm thinking that if I really wife you up..." He stopped to cross his arms over his insanely muscled chest, and as his biceps flexed against him, he dipped his head back to stare straight into my face. "That if we really go through with making this shit legal to secure what my old man has left for the both of us, I don't want it to just be in name only."
"You're saying that you want the benefits of having a real marriage along with everything else?"
"For the time being, yeah, that's what I'm saying, baby; because I want you on my cock as soon as possible."
My mouth dropped as a guffaw flew out in reaction. "You can't be serious?!"
"I am -- wouldn't be telling you this shit otherwise. And you were specific in wanting to know what I was thinking."
"I'm a virgin--"
"Doubt that shit. And even if you are..." He tugged at his bottom lip and gently sucked it into his mouth as if it were my clit. "There's other shit we can do in the meantime, until you're ready for more of what I can give."
"Which would be what?" He went quiet while holding back a laugh. I shivered from the embarrassment of having asked at all. "The idea of what you're not saying scares me on a different kind of level I wasn't even sure existed until now."
"I don't wanna scare you on anything, Cheyenne," he said, his deep tone serious yet dripping with sincerity. "I just wanna make you feel things, mostly good. Scaring you isn't something I'm truly interested in doing."
"What you did out there on the court today with that other man scared the absolute hell out of me -- more than anything you could ever say to me inside this room or anywhere else."
"I know that, but I was protecting myself out there, baby."
"I know that too. But what I saw seemed like so much more than that, because you were like a madman hellbent on making sure those men never opened their eyes again, and they won't."
"It was either them or me and I wasn't risking shit with anybody to keep 'em breathing."
"What about your friend?" I questioned. "What did he get out of helping you in taking them out? Especially when he got carted away like an animal meant for the last meal of others while you were allowed to continue on moving upright?"
"He got to take out one asshole whose cock he'd been forced into sucking since being thrown inside here over a year and a half ago, and got to take out another that often got off watching it all go down inside his cell."
"Oh my God." My heart sank to a pit of acid. I wrapped a hand around my stomach while lifting the other to my throat, gently squeezing the sides of it to keep the pile of vomit bubbling up inside my chest from making an actual appearance between us. "Do you know where he is right now?"
"Being held down in a tank. They may transfer him out, they might not -- I don't know just yet; may never find out." He paused while shifting his entire body forward. "But the shit that happened out there had a purpose, Cheyenne." His eyes flickered as his brows knit. "Good or goddamn bad, I don't regret what I did or why it happened."
"But--"
"It scared the hell outta you and I get that shit," he interrupted, "but it can't change after the fact because what's done is done."
"I know that." My eyes lowered as he grimaced. "Your father thinks he can get you out of here sooner than later."
"He's trying, and I think he'll make due on it."
"By the end of the week?"
"It's possible, like anything else; maybe within the next." A beat passed as he shrugged. "You know that I won't do this shit if you're not willing for the same, Cheyenne -- this giving each other what we both need in the green. I assumed with you being in somewhat of the same position that we could work together on it, but--"
"I'm not ready to be someone's wife," I told him. "For any reason. I'm ill-prepared for it."
"I don't expect you to do much."
"You expect me to be on your cock."
He laughed aloud while bobbing his head. "Yeah, that shit would be nice as fuck, I'm not gonna lie about it... Seeing you like this makes me want it from you even more. Because that goddamn face of yours is sweet as fuck."
"There's more to me than just my face."
"Yeah, and I wanna explore all of it with every goddamn part of myself that you'd let me use on you, baby." My God. He was a deliciously untamed Devil just aching to rip my entire world apart. I was an angel just waiting to be wrecked by no one else but him. "But if you really are a virgin," he started.
"I'm not."
"Oh?" His brows flinched as a light of something brighter than the sun itself shone directly behind his irises. I bit down on the inside of my bottom lip, wondering just what the hell it was, and rolled my tongue across my skin. "When was your first time?" he asked me. "Who was it with?"
"What?"
"Your first time in being with somebody sexually, when was it?"
"Oh my God -- I'm not..." I laughed due to the disbelief of his question and anxiously shook my head. "I'm not discussing that with you inside this room or any other."
"I wanna know about it."
> "I don't care. You're not entitled to that kind of information from me."
"Alright then."
"What?"
"I'll start," he returned with a heart-stopping smile. "I'll start and we can go from there."
"I didn't ask for any of what you're willing to give me."
"Not yet." He brought a hand up to his mouth and dragged his fingers across and between his lips in a move so casually sexy that my heart crashed against my breastbone as a result. "She smelled like... warm mocha."
"As in coffee?" My nose crinkled as I dropped back from him.
"Yeah, baby, as in coffee." He nodded. "She smelled like a warm mocha latte in winter; her skin was soft and pale, somewhat pink at times when it got to be too cold outside."
"Hm."
"Or too hot; she had green eyes that were as big as the world and big brown curls of hair that she didn't know what the fuck to do with... When she first jumped on my cock, she was seventeen years old."
"And how old were you?"
"Same age with only a month difference between us. We were in my old man's blue Maserati and I asked her while we were sitting at a red light if she'd be willing to suck me off before I took her back home."
"That's classy -- You actually said that to her face?"
He leaned away from me while refolding his arms. "I wasn't gonna get it any other way."
"Then what?"
"You're eager to know more now?" His smile widened. "We pulled over after a few blocks and she sucked me off," he continued, "and it was good. Then she said she wanted more and climbed on top of me, lifting up her skirt and moving her panties to the side..." His eyes moved directly behind me as he clinched his jaw. "I pushed into her without knowing what the fuck I was doing, but she moved around and liked it because I was big enough to fill her..."
"Okay," I croaked out in slight disgust. "What was her name?"
"Rebecca. We were together on and off after that over the years, and then she was gone."
"Before you got locked up? So, she left you?"
"Nah..." He went quiet, never providing anymore of a verbal response than that while rattling his head. I feared pushing any further as he casually brought his eyes back to mine and lifted his chin. "I wanna know about you now."
"I'm not revealing something about myself that should remain inside the vault for an eternity and beyond it."
"Cheyenne--"
"Why do you care so much about it, anyway?"
"Because if somebody else before me did something you didn't like, I wanna know what it was in order to keep from making that same mistake twice."
"You sound so confident," I said, "so arrogant. As if what we're doing in here will make it anywhere past this point."
"If there were no shot in hell of this moving beyond the room, this meeting never would've taken place. And even if it did, you wouldn't still be in here talking to me about how we won't move past it."
"I could leave right now," I replied. "Just get up and walk out the door and this would all be over."
"Then head on out and find another solution to the problem you've got with these leather wearing motherfuckers on bikes, baby. Because I could find another woman out here to marry for five minutes in the snap of a few fingers, whereas I don't see you having a shot in hell of getting your hands on the kinda money you're gonna need to pay back your old man's club. At least not in any way that's legal or allows you to keep your clothes on and those legs shut for longer than a few seconds at a time."
"You sound like an amoral pig, you know that?"
"I've been told I can be one at times, yeah, and I own that shit -- will never deny it. But what I'm saying to you right now isn't a result of me rolling around in the dirt like one, baby, it's the goddamn truth." He shrugged. "You're fucked without my help and it pisses you off to know that shit, but those are the facts. Take 'em all at once or go ahead and walk right out the goddamn door with that perfectly high ass of yours. Either way, I'm gonna be good with what happens because this shit for me won't last. I don't think that you will."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah, baby," he replied. "Fuckin' so."
When I pushed myself to stand, he dropped his hands on top of the table, following every move I made.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
He leaned his head while his eyes bore into mine. I could see that light behind them dimming by the second. "I want you to think about what this shit is gonna mean," he said. "For you, your old man and his club--"
"Former club. And once they get their payment, they'll be done with him for good."
"And with you?"
"No... I'm in it for life whether I want that for myself or not."
"And you don't want that shit?"
"It's not that I don't want it so much as I'm still trying to figure out a way to live with it. Still trying to figure out how to navigate certain aspects of being a biker brat while also having a life separate from what this one has always offered up to me, which isn't much."
"I can relate to that shit."
"I know. And I didn't get up from the table with a plan to leave the room. You were right in what you said that if I wanted to go with the idea of not moving past this time between us, I could've done it or not bothered meeting with you at all. But I did because aside from wanting to know where you stood on what Chino hoped to accomplish for himself in all of this, some small part of me wanted to know if what you showed out there was the man you truly are on the outside of it, and so far, it isn't."
"I can be a lot of different things," he replied, "to a lot of different people."
"Which means what?"
"There's a good, bad and ugly all up inside me, baby. To the motherfuckers tryna take me out over my old man or for any other reason, what you get is what you saw out there, a goddamn savage doing what he could to remain in tact. To someone like you..." His eyes darted between my legs, his jaw shifted. "What you'd get is something I don't give out to a lot of people unless I feel it's deserved."
"And what is that?"
"My true self. The kinda motherfucker I am behind all this shit."
"And who are you exactly, Nikko Girabaldi?"
"Somebody that'd like to make you his wife, Cheyenne Cunningham," he replied.
The way he said it so matter of fact, so perfectly succinct as if he had just been waiting more than half his life to say those exact words to someone out loud almost made me lose my entire train of thought, along with my breath and entire damn mind.
"You want us married in order to get you paid, and then what?" I said. "We see what happens after the fact?"
"No reason why we shouldn't."
"My life in California would be one reason why we shouldn’t. I've invested time, money and effort out there."
"You can't bring the shit back out here and go to school?"
"I could if that's what I wanted."
"You don't?"
"No. I shouldn't have to rearrange my entire life in order to accommodate yours."
"Goddamn, baby."
"What?"
The corner of his mouth ticked up into yet another smirk, one that made my insides rumble and tumble on top of each other. "My old man was right when he said you've got a mouth on you that can't be contained."
"Nothing about me can be contained," I retorted.
"Is that right?" The smirk remained as he rounded the table and stepped directly in front of me. His eyes lingered on my face as a knowing gaze developed between us; the bridge of his nose crinkled. "I think there's a part of you wanting that shit, and from nobody else but me."
I nearly choked on my next breath before sucking it back and leaned into the window. "You're not technically allowed to move from the other side, and what you said isn't the truth."
"It is, baby, and I don't give a fuck about the other." His eyes darkened as the hunger within them returned. "Because there ain't shit anybody can do about me standing here."
"I could scream," I said, my body b
ecoming completely solid as a flutter of emotions set my skin ablaze. "I could scream as loudly as I needed in order to--"
"So scream for me, baby, I don't mind. As loudly as you fuckin' want." He licked his lips and snickered. "Just know the only time I ever actually wanna hear it is when I'm giving you a damn good reason for it; this shit ain't one of 'em."
"It could be--"
"Oh, yeah?" As he bent forward, I stilled. "Would it be if I tried to kiss you right now--?"
"I'd knee you in the balls for that."
He dipped his head back and barked in laughter, then brought his eyes back down to mine and dragged his hand, which now looked to be twice the size of my own so up close and personal, along the base of his chin. "The shit might be worth it for me."
"It's not."
"You're sure about that?"
"I'm positive."
He bent his head and squint. "You ever gonna tell me about your first time?"
"No."
"You should."
"Why?"
"So that I can make it better for you like I said I would."
I folded my arms and chewed the inside of my lip to hold back an obvious grin. "You can't improve on a first time with someone that's already had their own experience with another person, Nikko. Good or bad."
"I could try it for you, baby, if you're willing to give me a chance."
"The only way that could happen is if I agreed to marry you for this, and I haven't yet."
"You don't have a goddamn thing to get out of it if you don't, Cheyenne." I dragged my attention back to his beautifully chiseled face, peering as he wagged his head. "I know the shit between us ain't ideal with me being in here for what I did to a motherfucker on the outside, and you only being back here 'cause of your old man and his bullshit. But I need to get paid in order to get the fuck outta all this as much as you need the same."
"What do you plan on doing with yourself if you manage to get out of here?"
"When I manage to get out -- I don't fuckin' know. But it won't have a goddamn thing to do with my old man anymore."
"Were you working for him before being thrown in here?"