Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8)

by Susan Fanetti

  Sage wished she could see more, but there was no moon above them, and the world was absolutely dark except for the narrow beam of light stretching out ahead of the bike. She tipped her head to the side and watched bugs and dust dance across their path, but she could see nothing else. Trees stood shoulder to shoulder along the side of the lane and leaned in close; she could sense their limbs arching low over them.

  This dark place was where he’d grown up? Did his mom still live here? All she knew of his childhood was the story of how he’d killed his stepfather. Clyde.

  She thought about his old, mismatched dishes and pots and pans. She’d assumed that his mom was dead.

  They weren’t on anything that even tried to be a road anymore. Becker had the bike rolling slowly, its engine rumbling low, almost idling, and tall weeds brushed Sage’s legs. If his mom still lived here, she wasn’t getting any help keeping the place up.

  Eventually, she saw something, the side of a truck or something up ahead, and he stopped the bike and killed the engine, but left the headlight on.

  When he held his arm out, she knew he wanted her to dismount first. Using him as support, she swung off the bike and tried to understand what she saw in the headlight.

  A truck. It was a truck—an old one, with a camper top.

  Becker got off his bike and strode through the weeds, confidently despite the dark. She lost sight of him—and then felt the first flutter of fear. This was horror-movie darkness and isolation.

  A rattling growl of another, smaller engine filled the air suddenly, and then glaring yellow light washed over the area—in the solid black dark, Becker had started up a generator, and turned on a frame of hanging lights, strung from one corner of the camper, to a rusted steel pole, and from there back to another corner of the camper.

  He strode around the truck, through the wedge of light, back to her, killed the bike’s headlight, and took her hand.

  “Your mom doesn’t still live here, does she?”

  “She died three years ago. The house is over there”—he waved at the dark to his right—“but a twister took it down a couple years ago. The barn still stands, though.”

  “Aren’t you going to rebuild the house?”

  “Nah. I don’t want to live here. My dad died when I was nine, and after that, I don’t have any good memories from here. I keep it because it was his place, he grew up here, too, but I don’t want to live here.”

  “Why’d we come out here?”

  He turned from her and looked out into the dark. “I don’t know. I ride when I need to burn off bad energy, and talking about your mom made me think about mine. I just pointed in this direction and rode.”

  “Your mom was like mine.”

  “I guess. Your mom likes her drama more than my mom did. My mom felt helpless and stuck, and I wasn’t old enough or smart enough to know how to help her right, until I killed Clyde.”

  “My mom feels stuck, too. She thinks she can’t take care of herself. She thinks she needs a man to do it.” Sage had tried again and again to get her mom to see that the men she brought home didn’t take care of her at all—they used her, took from her—but that wasn’t an idea she could understand. In her mind, women couldn’t survive alone. All a guy needed to do was say the words, make a promise, and she believed he was doing it, even when all the evidence proved otherwise.

  “Then yeah, she’s like my mom. But out here, there wasn’t anybody but me to help her.”

  Seeing that Becker was falling into a deep hole of bad memories, Sage squeezed his hands and stepped toward the truck, pulling him with her. “Why is this here?”

  “We do some club work out here sometimes. I put it out here about a year ago. We use it as a base to work from or take a rest.”

  “What kind of work do you do way out here?” She could guess, but all her guesses went to dark places—like the people who deserved to get killed.

  When he didn’t answer, Sage thought maybe he actually had. How many bodies were buried deep in the earth in the woods around them?

  He reached up to the back door of the camper and keyed the lock. As he opened the door and helped her step up, Sage half expected to see torture tools spread out over blood-spattered tarps.

  Instead, when Becker flicked on the lights, she saw a tidy little camper house, old enough to be kitschy-cute: a teensy kitchenette on one side, storage on the other, a little two-person banquette, and then a thick mattress up in the loft over the cab.

  “Oh, it’s cute! And clean!”

  He’d been sliding the windows open; now, he turned and laughed at her. “What’d you think you’d see in here?”

  Looking back, she saw pleasure lighting up his whole face—he looked younger when he smiled so brightly. He’d said he’d had to burn off bad energy, but if that was the case, then it was burned away.

  “I was afraid to guess.”

  His bright smile shifted into a ‘gotcha’ smirk. “I thought I didn’t scare you.”

  “You don’t. But I’m not a huge fan of the dark, so I was primed for Mrs. Voorhees to leap out at me.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh. My. God. You don’t know who Mrs. Voorhees is? From Friday the 13th?”

  “The movie?”

  “Yes, the movie! Becker, have you seriously not seen it?”

  “I was in prison from ’76 to ‘85, shortcake. I missed all those horror movies everybody talks about.”

  “I was born in 1982, dude. I missed them in the theater, too. Blockbuster exists. You can catch up.”

  With a dry chuckle, Becker caught her wrist and swung her close, pressing her against the little countertop, framing his legs and arms around her. “Try not to remind me how fuckin’ young you are, will ya?”

  His body surrounded her, blocked the light from the little white disc in the camper’s ceiling and put her in shadow. Sage tilted her head up, lifted her hands, brushed her fingertips over his scruff of beard. “You know what being young makes me?”

  Smiling, he leaned his head into her touch, resting his cheek in her palm. “Bratty?”

  She kicked him lightly, swinging a Doc to the side. “No, dorkbutt. Limber.”

  “I’ve already had a taste of that, and I love it. But I don’t know if I can in good conscience fuck a little girl who says ‘dorkbutt.’”

  “What would you rather I call you when I’m pissed? Asshole? Butthead?”

  He laughed. “All your insults come up asses. You got a fetish or something?”

  Sage was not inexperienced about asses, but what Becker was packing was not coming near that part of her anatomy. He’d tear her in half. “No fetish.” She pulled his head down and kissed him. Before he could take it over, she moved her lips to his cheek, trailing her tongue over the rough stubble, to his ear. He groaned as she sucked a lobe between her teeth. “Should I call you Daddy?”

  She’d only been teasing and had absolutely no intention of calling him that, but Becker reared back as far as he could, which wasn’t very far in these close quarters. He slammed against the cabinets behind him. “No, Sage. Not cool.”

  She’d hit a sore spot, obviously. “I was teasing. I’m not into that.” Grabbing the edges of his kutte, she tried to pull him close again, but he held firm, examining her through narrowed, suspicious eyes. “I mean it, Beck. It was a joke.”

  “It’s not a joke. That’s not what I want.”

  She had been joking, but now she felt some seriousness in the point. Becker’s strong reaction was a tad hypocritical, considering she had a bruise on her arm from when he was unhappy she’d defied him. “Just last night, you yanked me around the Bin, demanding I do what you say. Isn’t that what you want, somebody who obeys you?”

  Of course, if she really believed that, she wouldn’t be here with him right now, but still—they had some ground to map out between them, and it looked like they’d wandered onto it.

  “If I wanted that, just about any other female in Oklahoma would be a better pick than you, you s
tubborn little shit. Where the club is concerned, I need you to listen to me. As long as we’re together, I’ll take care of you. But I’m not your goddamn daddy.”

  She pulled again on his kutte. “I’m sorry. Please come here.” This time, he came, and she slid her hands under his kutte, wrapped her arms around his waist. “I don’t want a daddy. I want you to stop thinking of me as a little girl.”

  “Then stop showing me how young you are.”

  Pushing her hands under his shirt, she ran her fingernails over the hot skin of his back, around his waist, up his chest. His muscles twitched beneath her touch. This fight was stupid, and she wanted it to be over, so she changed the subject. “Can we stay here tonight? Are there blankets or something for that bed?” The bed seemed cozy and intimate, tucked up in a nook like it was.

  “Yeah, but you want to stay? I thought you didn’t like the dark.”

  “You’ll keep me safe.” She scratched at his nipples, and he groaned.

  “Yeah, I will.” He clamped her face in his hands and dove in for a kiss. Sage met him eagerly, wanting him to see, to feel, that she was his equal in important ways. In the ways that mattered. She could hold her own.

  Pulling her hands out from under his t-shirt, she tried to shrug out of her jacket, but Becker wouldn’t let her go. His mouth ravished hers, his tongue searched all of her mouth, his hands held her like he was afraid she’d slip away. So she gave up her jacket and went for his belt instead, popping the buckle open and pulling the leather through.

  When she went for the button on his fly, he eased back, out of her reach, breaking out of that wild kiss. “Wait, hold up.”

  “What?” Sage tried to catch her breath and make her thoughts run straight.

  “I gotta cut the genny off. We can’t let it run all night.”

  It really would be dark then, without power. Her fear of the dark was as old as her oldest memory, and it flared up at the thought of a black night in the middle of nowhere. It must have shown in her eyes, because Becker cupped her face with one palm. “You still want to stay?”

  She did. The dark worried her, but being totally alone with Becker, way out here, with the fresh country breeze blowing through—that had some potent appeal. Maybe it was because they were on his property. Or maybe it was because of what he’d done to Denny tonight, but something was different. Something good. She’d even felt it in their little fight. He wanted to stop caring about her age. He really was done turning away.

  Maybe he didn’t even realize it himself, but Sage thought he’d brought her here because he wanted her to know him. He wanted to be with her.

  “Yeah, I want to stay.”

  He smiled and leaned in for just a soft kiss. “There’s blankets in the cabinets behind me. Get naked. I’ll keep you warm.”

  While she stripped, feeling strangely exposed in this little camper thingy, Becker opened the cabinets—the powerful aroma of cedar filled the small space—and pulled out several blankets and a couple of pillows. Standing on the little bench beneath the loft, he made the bed, then helped Sage, alone in her nakedness, up into the loft. As she climbed up, he caught her around the waist and held her for a second. Just held her, resting his scruffy cheek at the small of her back. Then he gave her a boost onto the bed.

  She was right; it felt almost like a secret place, surround it as it was by low walls. She slid open a window, and the night breeze wafted in, bringing with it the sound of a frog chorus. There must have been a pond nearby.

  “You good?” he asked, standing beside the loft.

  “Lonely. You’re getting naked, too, right?”

  “Gotta shut down the genny. I’ll be right back.”

  He turned and left the camper. Sage tried to watch out the windows, and she saw him at the generator. Then it went quiet, and the lights cut out at the same time. There was a sensation like a vacuum, like all sound and light had left the whole world at the same time, and then the Sage heard the frogs again, and the breeze, and the rustle of long grass and the lush limbs of trees rustling in the breeze.

  The dark, though, was complete. She might as well have been blind. When the camper door opened and she couldn’t see, the fear was there. It was Becker, of course it was Becker, but she couldn’t see, and what if someone had been lurking, waiting.

  “Beck?”

  “Yeah, hon. Gimme a sec here.” Hearing his voice, Sage relaxed at once, and she focused all her attention on the sound of him. His boots hit the camper floor, and the chain on his wallet jingled. She heard a condom packet coming out from the wallet, the thick whisper of his jeans coming off, the fleshy sweep of his leather kutte leaving his shoulders.

  Then he was there, climbing up, and she could sense his presence so keenly that she could almost see him, even without sight. He slid under the blankets and wrapped his hot body—he was always so hot—around hers.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d been naked together, it wasn’t the first time she’d felt all his wonderful body on all of hers, but here, now, in this dark, tucked into this lofty nook, it was different. They were entirely alone, without anything but each other, nothing but the touch and taste and scent and sound of their bodies. Nothing else but a whispering night around them, encompassing them.

  He was above her, looming over her, and one hand brushed over her shoulder, down her chest, cupped a breast, tested its shape and weight. His thumb flicked lightly over the barbell through her nipple, and sparks of pleasure so sharp they nearly made light shot out from that point all through her. She bowed up, pressing her body into his hand, and moaned. The sound in this close, quiet space seemed far too loud, and she bit down on her bottom lip, trying to hold back the noises tumbling from her own mouth as Becker’s hand drew blazing threads of pleasure through her.

  Then his hand was gone, traveling south, taking his time, over her ribs, her belly, out to scoop over her hip, down her thigh, then inward again, tickling at her knee, up between her thighs, up, up.

  When he reached her pussy, he dropped his head at the same time, sucking her nipple into his mouth as his fingers slid between her folds, and she could no longer hold back her cries; she no longer cared to try. She felt her wet slicking his fingers, felt the liquid slide as he pushed a finger in, then out, and dragged it up over her clit, then pushed in again, with two fingers, pushed deep, probed, found that spot of pleasure almost too intense to be survived, and focused there.

  His mouth sucked and his hand thrust and curled and flexed inside her, and it was all she could do to keep herself contained inside her skin. She heard her own moans and cries and pleas and didn’t care how loud she was; there was no one but Becker and the frogs to hear her.

  Clutching at his head, she pressed him to her chest. Lifting her hips off the bed, she drove her pussy down on his searching, penetrating fingers, and she opened herself wide to the pulsing bands of pleasure whipping through her from top to bottom.

  She was talking, begging, demanding, but she could have been speaking in tongues for all the sense she made out of the words coming from her own mouth. Becker must have understood, though, because he chuckled, his breath stuttering across her chest as he shifted to her other nipple, and the twists and gyrations of his hand changed, as if he were answering her plea. His thumb, rough like sandpaper, slid over her clit, back and forth, no longer gentle, as his fingers curled upward inside her, pressing, probing, finding.

  Sage had been sexually active since she was fourteen. She’d had her first orgasm—self-induced—when she was fifteen. At seventeen, she’d first experienced a release brought on by someone else. Once she’d learned what worked for her, she’d never been shy about directing someone to get her there. She’d had lots of orgasms. Becker had brought her off brilliantly, wildly, just a couple nights ago. The man knew what he was doing.

  But the orgasm he brought on now was more intense than anything she’d ever felt, alone or with someone else. It attacked her with such ferocity that she felt the urge to flee it. She squirmed
and flailed, pushed at his shoulders, dug her heels into the mattress, wanting it to stop, wanting it never to stop, feeling the limit of her sanity climb with that needful pleasure until she was screaming, legitimately screaming. Talons of sound tore up from her throat as she finally hit the peak and burst over it.

  Becker held her closely and stayed on her, his mouth and hand gentling by degrees as the intensity finally loosened its grip on her and she could breathe and think again.

  “Jesus in a tortilla,” were the first words she understood herself saying, and Becker released her nipple as a short laugh blasted from his lips.

  She could see a tiny bit better now, enough to sense the shape of him as his head came up and hovered over hers. “Damn, shortcake. The way you come.”

  “The way you make me come.” Finding that she had control over her limbs again, she put her hands on his face. He bent low and kissed her—gentle, without demand—and Sage sighed into the pleasure of it.

  “Think you can take more?” His lips stroked hers with the shape of the question.

  She could take more, wanted more. “I want your cock.”

  “And I’m gonna give it to you.”

  The breeze chilled her sweat-slicked skin as he moved a few inches away. She heard the crinkle and rip of the condom packet, heard his soft sigh of a moan as he rolled the latex on, and then he was back, warming her, settling between her spread thighs, framing her inside his arms. She felt the cool slick of his covered cock and reached for it, loving the twitching shudder of his hips and belly when she took hold.

  Guiding him close, Sage gasped at the cool soothe of the condom against her blazing, still throbbing pussy. Becker grunted at his side of the same feeling, and he pushed his tip in.

  He was so damn thick. Even now, when she was loose and slick from the release her body still pulsed with, he stretched her wide. She put her feet on the mattress on either side of his hips and dropped her knees wide open, giving him all the access she could, and she still felt a soft burn as he pushed in, and in, and in, until he was fully seated and she felt his balls. Oh, fuck, he felt so good.