Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8)

by Susan Fanetti

  Then Becker just could not hold off another second and began to move. He tried to go slow, give her time to adjust to the way he filled and stretched her, but Sage matched him thrust for thrust, moving with him, then against him, driving their pace faster. Wrapped up in the feel of her, keeping up with her, he moved his hand from her pussy to clamp around her hip.

  Immediately, she grabbed his hand and shoved it between her legs. “No, don’t stop! Don’t stop anything! Oh fuck, you feel so good!” Her arms flew up and folded over his head; her hands scrabbled at his scalp, and she rocked and writhed and flexed. He kept at her tit and her pussy, flicking hard at her clit, dipping down frequently to feel the point of their joining.

  Sage’s enthusiasm had no bounds. She got wilder and wilder, demanded more and more of him.

  Becker couldn’t keep up with her in this position. She had all the leverage while he was hemmed in, so he held her close and rolled to his back, laying her on top, meaning to hold her down, get hold of her other tit, keep playing at her clit, and fuck her from below.

  For a while, she let him, arched back and gave over to him. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her cries and moans roared at his ear. Becker closed his eyes, latched his mouth onto her shoulder, kept his hands and hips going in a frenzy, and focused all his energy and will to getting her off before he went himself.

  At last, when they were both slick with sweat, and his glutes, quads, and hammies had caught fire, she yelled, “Oh God! Oh God! I’m coming! Yeah, yeah!” and sat suddenly up, almost before he could let go of her barbell. She jackknifed up and forward, slamming her hands over his thighs, and took completely over, ramrodding herself with his cock. Becker could only paw at her waist and hold on for the ride.

  When she came, she cried out and flew backward; he caught her before she crashed into him, and he wrapped her close. Her pussy pulsed around him, grasping and releasing with force. With his feet on the bed, he drove up into her, chasing his own finish as hers wound slowly down. It slammed through him, blasting outward, curling his toes, clenching his jaw, turning his muscles to rock.

  Jesus Christ, he saw stars.

  They lay together, Sage sprawled on her back over him, sill connected, until the afterglow faded and their respiration settled.

  “You’re really good at that,” she sighed, nuzzling at his cheek.

  “So are you.” After a few more seconds of quiet, time began to press on his shoulders. “I need to get going, though.”

  “I figured. What happens now? With us, I mean.”

  “You’re sure this is what you want?”

  Her head came up and she managed a sarcastic sidelong look, only inches from his face. “Have I given you any indication that I had doubts?”

  That made him laugh outright. “No. You’re a pushy little shit.”

  “Exactly. I know what I want. You’re the one being all Hamlet about it.”

  “Hamlet?”

  “Yeah, Hamlet. You have that anthology. I figured you’d read it.”

  “I have.” He hadn’t been a great student until prison. Then, he’d had nothing to do but learn. In addition to becoming a mechanic, he’d worked his way through most of the classics of British and American literature. Among other things. “I know the play. I just don’t get the reference.”

  “You know, wishy-washy.”

  Again, he laughed. “You think Hamlet is wishy-washy?”

  “Well, duh. Of course. Don’t you?”

  “No. I think obligation, betrayal, and grief drive him crazy.”

  That made her blink, and her expression became more thoughtful. “Oh. Well, I meant wishy-washy.”

  “I get that. Thanks.”

  “So I’m sure. Are you?”

  “No, shortcake, I’m not sure. But I guess I want to try. That enough for you?”

  Sage lifted off of him, slowly, and they both groaned as his still mostly hard cock eased out. Turning to sit on the bed beside him, she faced him. “If you mean to really try, and not push me away every time shit gets a little stinky, then yeah, it’s enough. But I like you, Beck. A lot. So don’t treat me like that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Young, but not immature. Not ignorant or innocent. “I won’t. I promise.”

  She grinned happily, and then she was a little girl again. Becker would get whiplash trying to keep up with her. “So what happens now?”

  “Now, I get in the shower and get out of here. It’s a long day ahead. You working today?”

  “I’m closing manager at the Bin. One to ten.”

  “Gimme your cell number, and I’ll check in with you this afternoon. I probably won’t be home tonight, though. Are you safe at your house?”

  “One—I don’t have a cellphone. Two—I’ve been living in that house or one like it my whole life. I know how to protect myself in it.”

  It was too damn early to move her in with him, but he’d hated sending her back to that house before they’d started this. Now, already, it really ate at him. But he had to be careful about bringing her into his life too quickly. “You need a cell. I’ll pick one up for you and try to drop it by the store tonight.”

  “I don’t need a cellphone, Becker. I can’t afford a plan, and there’s nobody I need to talk to so bad I can’t wait until I’m at a phone.”

  He sat up. “One,” he said, echoing her, “if you’re with me, you need a cellphone. That’s not a debate. I might need to get you that bad. Two, you don’t have to afford it, because I’m paying for it. Three, be stubborn all you want, God help me but I think it’s hot, but when I say there’s no debate, there’s no debate. I won’t lay that on you unless it’s important, but that’s hard and fast, shortcake.”

  “What you say goes?” She smirked like she thought that was ridiculous, and he could smell the rebellion on her. The last thing he needed in his life was a woman who wouldn’t listen. Which Sage had shown herself to be from the start.

  He grabbed her arm and looked her sharp in the eyes. “I am a Bull, Sage. That comes with a whole freight train of baggage. When I tell you no debate, I’ll be speaking as the president of my club, and what I say then goes, you best believe that. You want in my life, that’s part of it. The club will pull me away when you don’t want it to. The club will make demands on you you don’t like. None of that is negotiable. So you say you understand, right now, or we stop this while stopping is easy.”

  He thought they’d already passed the station for ‘easy,’ but it would only get harder from here.

  She studied him quietly, and Becker waited. He’d said his piece and wouldn’t push more. Nor would he take no for an answer.

  “I understand. Okay.”

  “Good girl.”

  ~oOo~

  It was afternoon before Becker could get to the hospital; he’d spent the morning in a hell of cops, insurance investigators, concerned neighbors, vexed customers—four of whose vehicles had been totaled—and random gawkers.

  None of the news was good. There was a hazmat team still on the premises—apparently the structural integrity of the old tanks had been weak already, and Mrs. G’s assault on the pumps had created a breach. A whole lot of unleaded was leaching into the ground. It looked like they were going to lose access to their clubhouse, too, until they could get the spill abated.

  The insurance guy kept saying how lucky they were that the fuel hadn’t been ignited, but Becker didn’t feel particularly lucky. He’d been president of the club for two months, and the whole thing seemed to be unraveling in his hands. The gun money had been running at a trickle for months, and now the station was dead. He had ten men at the table, most of whom had families to feed, and he had no idea how he was going to keep them all whole.

  When he got to Fitz’s floor, he saw Mo Delaney in the waiting room, sitting beside a scrawny, used-up woman he recognized as Fitz’s mother. As he turned in that direction, Maverick and Gunner came around the corner, and he paused and waited for them. They both looked grim. Had there been a chang
e since his last update?

  “You see him? He still awake?”

  Maverick answered. “He looks bad, Beck, and he’s not clear, but he’s awake. In and out, but the nurse told Kari he’s just sleeping, not really going under. The doc says he’s doing good—better than they expected.”

  “He knows Kari,” Gunner added. “But that’s it. Nobody else.”

  Maverick set his hand on Gunner’s shoulder. “They said that’s not unusual, so soon. When the swelling goes down, he’ll get more sense back.”

  Becker scrubbed his hands over his head. “Okay. Jesus, he was just sweeping up the goddamn bays.”

  He could not get his hands around the idea of a brother being hurt so fucking randomly, so innocently. Just a little old lady trying to get home. Taking damage from violence was easier to understand. That was part of the life they’d chosen. This? This was happenstance bullshit, and it pissed him right off. There was nobody to blame, no retaliation to take, no way to make it right.

  Remembering that Mo was here, Becker asked, “Is D around?”

  Both men nodded, and Gunner answered. “Yeah. He’s down by the room.”

  “Okay. I’m going down there. I need you to call everybody to get here. Full table and the prospect, too. We need a quick meeting.”

  “Trouble?” Maverick asked. “More than we know?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Maverick and Gunner turned to the waiting room. Becker caught Mo’s eye and sent her a smile, then headed toward Fitz’s room.

  Delaney stood staring at a vending machine near the nurses’ station. He wore a plain denim jacket; Becker didn’t think he’d ever get used to that. Retired from the club, Delaney no longer had the privilege to show colors anywhere but the clubhouse, and he was diminished without that battered leather on his back. He wasn’t a particularly big man in any case; just average height and build, he’d always been among the smaller patches, but he had a confident and commanding personality, and as the only president of the Brazen Bulls, his presence had been outsized. Now, though, he seemed small. Even his shoulders were hunched, like he was drying out and curling up.

  “D,” Becker said, walking up behind the man.

  Delaney turned. “Beck, hey.”

  “You been in to see him?”

  “No. His woman’s in there, and she don’t really know me.” He’d retired from the club only a few weeks after Fitz had first brought Kari in.

  It wasn’t like Delaney to hang back. But it was now Becker himself whose job it was to keep the club on track, give support to an injured brother and comfort to a worried old lady.

  Honestly, there was no real reason Delaney should be at the hospital. Where he should have been was at the station, which he co-owned. But he’d avoided the scene so far. “Are you coming to the station today?”

  The old man shook his head. “I don’t need to see it. I trust you to keep on top of it. You got any news on that front?”

  “It’s not good. Looks like the building needs to come all the way down. Complete rebuild. And at least one tank’s leaking. They’re saying they’ll probably close off the whole property to get it abated. Clubhouse, too.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t need to see that, Beck. Seems like everything I built’s turned to shit.”

  Becker had had a similar thought not long ago, but he couldn’t let it stand, not in his mind or Delaney’s. “Club’s still strong, D. We’ll get through this like we get through everything. Insurance will pay to put the station back up. We’ll get the clubhouse back. We’ll get straight.”

  “I know. And that will be your club, your station. My station just got flattened. And my club ... ”

  “We are your club, D. That brother in that room there, he’s one of our youngest patches, and you led the table that put the Bull on his back.”

  “You know he doesn’t remember that, right? He only knows his girl.”

  “So far. It hasn’t even been a day since he was hurt. He’ll heal. He’ll know.”

  Delaney stepped out of the alcove that housed the vending machines and stared down the corridor at Fitz’s room. In the ICU, the rooms all faced the nurses’ station, with glass front walls. From where they stood, Becker and Delaney could see Fitz’s bed, the blanketed lump that was his body, the steel contraption bolted to his head, the machines arced around and behind the top of the bed. And Kari sitting at his side, a chair pulled up against the bed, her head resting on the mattress.

  “Do better than I did, Beck. The last few years, I pulled us off track. I still don’t know how or where, but I lost sight of where we were going. I guess I leaned too hard on Dane and never got straight again after he was gone.”

  With a halfhearted pat of Becker’s arm, Delaney turned and walked down the corridor. Away from Fitz’s room. Becker watched him go, wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do differently.

  At the moment, he had more immediate concerns, however, so he set aside that burgeoning existential crisis and went to Fitz’s room. The nurse at the station looked up as he reached for the sliding glass door, but her protest stopped when she saw his kutte. With a nod, she gave him permission to go in.

  The beep and whir of machines filled the small room. Fitz was asleep. Damn, he looked young without his beard. Such a fucking baby face on that big body, even under all the bruised swelling.

  Kari looked up as he closed the door, and she offered him a tired smile. “Hi. Beck.”

  “Hey, honey.” He went to her and set his hand on her back. “How’s our boy?”

  “Confused. But the doctor says he’s doing pretty good. His vitals are stable.”

  “That’s good. He’s a tough one, Kari. He’ll be okay.”

  “You know, he told me he could get hurt. But I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought I could relax when he wasn’t on a run.”

  Becker sighed and crouched beside her. “I know. We’re all feeling that. This is harder without anybody to blame.” Blaming Mrs. Greeley would be like blaming their own grandma. Besides, she’d died in the accident, so even if they wished to, they couldn’t seek redress.

  The accident. That was all it was—a random mistake. A turn Mrs. Greeley had taken thousands of times—one they’d laughed about, watching her creep slowly around the corner—gone suddenly wrong because she’d mixed up the pedals.

  Kari didn’t blame her, either. She simply sighed and leaned on Becker’s shoulder. He put his arm around her and offered her the comfort he could.

  There was nothing else he could do.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When Sage got around the block and back home, it wasn’t yet eight in the morning, but her mom was already out in the front yard. She wore a pair of pink shorts shorter than anything even Sage would wear, and a little yellow smocked tube top. Her hair was in two pigtails, tied up with pink bows. Except for the saggy knees in the middle of her skinny legs, her bony, freckled shoulders, her stretchmarked belly, the blooms of faded color from her remaining bruises, and the cigarette drooping from her mouth, she looked like a little girl ready to play on a warm spring day.

  Okay, she didn’t look anything like a little girl. But she’d dressed like one.

  She knelt in the middle of their patchy, weedy yard, using a garden trowel to dig into the old dirt filling a dried-out wine barrel planter. Scattered on the yard beside her were a couple of trays of supermarket marigold and petunia plants.

  If she was in a home improvement mood, then things were pretty calm in the house. The latest storm really had blown over.

  When Sage pulled onto the driveway and got out of her car—the engine sounded better than it ever had in all the time she’d had it—her mom stood and plucked the cigarette from her mouth. “Where you been, baby girl?” She took up drag and blew it out with a smile.

  “I stayed with a friend.” And such a good friend he was. She’d be sore all day, he was such a good friend. “Everything good here?”


  A furtive dart of her mom’s eyes toward the house told Sage that Denny was actually awake, before eight o’clock in the morning. That was so unusual as to be miraculous, unless he hadn’t been to bed yet.

  Oh shit. Was all this motivation her mom was showing due to speed? Sometimes, when they were tweaking, they’d be awake and manic for a few days, and usually the calm blew apart quickly in those times. But Denny preferred mellow to manic.

  Since her mom hadn’t answered her question, she asked another. “Mom, are you high right now?”

  “No, baby. Don’t be silly. It’s morning. Things are good. Denny’s got a job. Straight work. Pays decent, too.”

  Another miracle. “He did? I didn’t know he was looking for real work.”

  “He wasn’t. A friend of his needs some help, and he asked Den.”

  That sounded a lot less miraculous. Sage didn’t believe anything a friend of Denny’s needed help with could possibly be straight. But she’d ridden this ride a whole lot of times, with a whole lot of guys, and she knew her mom wouldn’t brook any skepticism. As fucked up as she was, as shitty a life as she’d always had, Patsy Cleary had retained a truly cockeyed sense of optimism. She always believed, firmly, deep down, that things would get better—that the guy would be nicer, that the money would come, that the next day would be okay. No matter how many shitty days, weeks, months, years in a row she lived, she always believed that things would be better tomorrow.

  So Sage let her have this good morning. “That’s great. I’m really glad. You think it’s okay for me to go in while he’s awake?”

  “Sure, Sagey! He’s not mad about what you did anymore. He’s healing up and feeling better. Even made breakfast with me first thing. There might be some bacon left, if you’re hungry.”

  What she’d done: used his shotgun to try to defend her mother from being beaten again—or maybe killed. Probably killed. What she’d done. Right.

  That was not a fight she could win, so she smiled. “The flowers look good, Mom.”