But she’d been very glad when he’d said he wanted to get her home, and they’d left before full dark. Her Dodge was still parked around the corner, because when Becker had said he wanted her to ride with him, she hadn’t hesitated to abandon it until tomorrow. Any time she could get on his bike with him, she took it.
“Okay. Next, Rad is your ... sergeant or something.”
“Sergeant at Arms. SAA.”
The whole pseudo-military thing seemed silly. She couldn’t hold back an eyeroll, and Becker answered it with a frown.
“We’re not playin’, shortcake. What Rad does, it’s not a game. Nothin’ we do is a game.”
“Okay, sorry.” Chastened, she got back to her quiz. “Rad is married to Willa.”
“Not married. But she’s his old lady.”
“That’s a sucky way to say it, just so you know. She’s like, what, forty or something? At the most? He’s obviously older than she is. Is he her ‘old man’?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Well, maybe it wasn’t as sexist as she thought. But that would be the only non-sexist thing in the club, then. A girl could grow her own dick from all the testosterone that had fogged up that room tonight. “Okay. Rad and Willa have two kids—boys. I don’t remember their names. Zach, maybe?”
“The oldest, yeah. And Jake.” He smiled and brushed her bangs from her temple, running a fingertip over her lilies. That had become a habitual gesture, one that always made her flutter.
“Right. Jake’s a hoot. Then there’s Apollo”—she smirked up at him—“who is so entirely hot he should come with a warning label.”
Becker huffed and tugged sharply on her hair. “I swear to fuck, every goddamn woman on the planet falls over for that asshole. He’s not that good looking.”
“Aw, is my babycakes jealous?” Sage eased up, sliding over his still-semi-hard cock, brushing her pierced nipples over the hair on his belly. He groaned softly, and his hands settled on her back. When she was almost face to face with him, she grinned. “Yeah, he is exactly that good looking.”
“You little shit.”
The words were harsh, but his eyes smiled, and he licked his lips. Sage leaned in and took a kiss. When it deepened and became the start of something, Becker turned his head, skimming his lips over her cheek. “I could spend all night like this, but it’s gonna take me a few minutes before I’m ready to go again.”
He wasn’t the only one. His cock was big enough, and, in particular, thick enough, that when they really got going, she was pretty damn sore after. During, she could not have cared less, and usually begged for all he had to give her as hard as he could give it to her, but after, it was a little hot down south. He’d asked her to go on birth control so they could stop the condoms, but frankly, she didn’t mind the lube condoms provided, and only old people used actual lube for regular sex.
It wasn’t that she didn’t get wet. Oh, she got wet. Sometimes she actually squirted. But her wet wasn’t quite as glidey as she needed to get that thing inside her without a lot of stretch.
Good problems to have, but they were probably never going to be more than a two-a-night couple.
“I don’t want to take a quiz anymore. I don’t have everybody straight yet, and I won’t until I’m around them more. You wanna start a movie?” The used tapes she’d bought were stacked on the mantel.
Becker sighed. “I don’t know why you think my life is lacking because I haven’t seen a couple twenty-year-old movies.
“Because they are classics. You’ve got to know the classics. Also, the first one is thirty years old, not twenty. 1972.”
Sage untangled herself from his wonderfully bare full-body embrace and walked naked across the room. They’d fucked without turning on the lights in here, letting the glow from the hallway and kitchen lights show them all they needed to see. Now, she flicked on the overhead, so she could get the tape of Last House on the Left into the player and ready to go.
“Curtains are open, shortcake,” he said, still stretched out on the sofa.
Sage spun on her heel and saw the open window and the dark night behind the reflection of this room. The house across the street had its curtains open, too. That room was dark, but she saw the blue glow of a television.
Whoever was over there could probably see her clearly, standing here buck naked. She didn’t care. In fact, it was kind of cool. They knew who Becker was; nobody could live so close to him and not know. So they wouldn’t fuck with her. They might even feel guilty for looking. She liked the thought of getting them all hot and bothered and guilty and scared, all at the same time.
She walked straight to the window—wide and unobstructed—and stood in full view while she reached for the pull and drew the drapes closed. Oh, it was nice to have control over when they saw and when they didn’t.
Becker had watched her silently, and when she looked, she couldn’t read his expression.
“You like to be watched?”
The idea had never occurred to her before. “Maybe. I don’t know. Do you?”
His head moved slowly, back and forth. No, he didn’t. Then he tilted his head toward her. “That’s just for me.”
It felt just absolutely stupidly good to hear words like that coming out of a man like Becker. Butterflies all over the damn place. What did that make her, that she loved being claimed so much? Was this why her mom was so sure she needed a man, no matter what? Was this why she accepted so much abasement and abuse, because when they were nice she felt like this? Did her mom really believe she was nothing unless she was claimed?
Did she believe that?
Shit, that was too much to think about, especially now, standing here naked, still hot and sore from the ravishing invasion of his magnum cock.
So she made a sharp turn and went back to finish setting up the VCR. A horror movie seemed much safer right now. Oh—and popcorn. She should go pop some microwave corn and get drinks, too.
“Sage?”
“I’ll be right back!” she called on her way to the kitchen.
~oOo~
Becker didn’t even make it out of the crazed killers’ apartment. About halfway through the first rape scene, he snatched the remote from the coffee table, almost knocking his beer over as he did so, and turned the VCR off. He didn’t just pause the tape. He turned it off.
“You like that shit?” He was angry. How could a movie have pissed him off so much? It hadn’t even gotten to the really horrific shit yet.
“I know it’s not the best acting, and the music sucks, but it’s Craven’s first film. He had no budget.”
Jumping up, he stormed out of the living room, around the corner to his bedroom. Sage sat and looked over the back of the sofa, wondering what the fuck.
He was dressed when he came back. Jeans and a t-shirt. Was he actually leaving? His own house? “Becker?”
No, he sat beside her again. “I don’t need to see shit like that.”
“Okay, okay. It’s no big.” Trying to lighten things up from this confusing dark hole they’d dropped into, she smiled and poked his side. “I didn’t know you were such a scaredy-cat.”
“I’m not scared, Sage. But that shit, that’s not ...” He grabbed his beer and drained it. “I don’t think you get who I am yet. What I do.”
“You’re the president of the Bulls. You’re an outlaw. I’ve read the back of the box.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be cute. You need to listen. From the time I was eighteen fucking years old, the shit of horror movies has been my life. Do you understand? I beat a man to death with a Westinghouse iron. Do you understand what he looked like when I was finished? Can you imagine what my mom’s hand was like after he did what he did? I spent eight and a half years in prison. I’ve been a Bull for almost fifteen years. I was an enforcer for most of those years. Do you know what that is?”
She’d seen all three Godfather movies, and Goodfellas, and Donnie Brasco. She knew what an enforcer was. The man who did the bloodiest work. Wh
o got the payback.
Too freaked by the heat of his anger to find words, Sage nodded.
“I’ve done things, seen things, lived through things—it’s fucked up to turn shit like that into entertainment. We’re sitting here eating popcorn, watching a girl get gang raped. What the fuck, Sage?”
“They pay. That’s what the movie’s about. By the end, they all pay. Dearly. I thought that was your world—payback.”
“It is. But it’s not pretend, Sage. Shit like that”—he nodded at the snowy screen of the television—“I don’t want it in my house.”
She’d never thought of horror movies as making light of real horrible things, but of course they did. All movies made light of real things, though. So the real things could be borne. But she knew better than to try to engage him now in a debate about the purpose of entertainment.
Also? If he was drawing a comparison between the kind of shit that went on in horror movies and the kind of shit that went on in his real life, then maybe she hadn’t realized who he really was.
Not that it mattered. She was in way too deep with the man sitting here for it to matter what he did out there.
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
With a brisk nod that was, she hoped, an acceptance of her apology, Becker grabbed his empty bottle from the table and stalked to the kitchen. Sage sat where she was, feeling far more fucking naked than when she’d been standing at the open window letting the neighbor get an eyeful, trying to understand why he was so upset. It was just a movie. The girl was an actor. She hadn’t actually been raped.
Well, there were rumors that the filming had gotten pretty hardcore and line-blurry, but Becker didn’t know that.
Yet she’d seen his hand when he’d grabbed the bottle. He’d been shaking.
A thought occurred to her. She didn’t like it, so she pushed it away, but it came back and made her wonder. Oh shit.
He’d mentioned his prison sentence to her several times, but he’d only ever talked about how long he was there, and when. If she tried to ask deeper questions, he changed the subject, usually by getting physical.
Could she ask him the thing that was taking up prime real estate in her brain now?
Deciding she had to, she went to the kitchen. Still naked. But maybe that was good—being stripped bare while she asked him this naked question.
Becker stood at the sink, draining a glass of whiskey. Though she wasn’t trying to be quiet, when she set her hand on his back, he flinched.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It’s okay. Sorry I came on that strong.”
“Can I ask you something, Beck?”
He poured more whiskey into the glass. A lot more. “Yeah.”
For all her pride in her own boldness and curiosity, Sage found it nearly impossible to make these words come out. “Were you raped in prison?”
A harsh chuckle echoed inside the glass as he slugged down his drink. Then he looked over his shoulder and down, into her eyes. “I was a terrified eighteen-year-old kid locked up in the Oklahoma State Pen. What do you think?”
Sage had anticipated the answer, but it hurt no less to hear it. She stepped close and kissed his back. “I’m sorry.” This time, the words weren’t an apology.
He shrugged her off. “The last goddamn thing I need is pity. It was a long, long time ago. I got tough enough to make it stop, and I made them pay.” He finished the whiskey and stared at the empty glass. “I never told anybody that. I don’t think about it, and I don’t talk about it. Don’t make me sorry I told you.”
“I’ll never bring it up again.” Yes, it had happened a long time ago, and yes, he didn’t talk about it. Maybe he didn’t think about it, either. But obviously, the memory was still alive and strong inside him.
He’d made distance between them, and now Sage closed it. She insinuated herself between his body and the counter, and looped her arms around his neck. “No more horror movies, either. I think you just ruined them for me, too.”
This time, his chuckle held actual humor. “Good.”
Dizzy and throbbing with the power of his trust and vulnerability, the way he’d shown her his pain, Sage couldn’t hold the words back much longer. “Becker?”
“Yeah?” He brushed her bangs back and kissed the lilies of the valley at her temple, and the last thread of her reserve frayed and broke as his lips grazed her skin.
“I love you. I’m totally in love with you.”
He went still, in her arms, holding her, his breath whisking over hair. “Damn, shortcake. What’re we gonna do?”
Though he didn’t say the words back, Sage didn’t need them, not yet. Someday, she’d need to hear them, but for now, it was enough that his arms held her more tightly, that his breath came more quickly, that he lifted her off the floor and carried her to his bed.
Maybe he didn’t love her yet, but he trusted her, and he wanted her. He’d claimed her, and that was enough.
He’d offered her a secret piece of himself so she could claim him, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Becker sat at the flimsy portable table in their dim makeshift chapel and stared at the maps and printouts that Apollo had put together. When the club voted today on whether to take on the Volkov drug pipelines, he wanted to be able to answer every question the patches had. His own vote was decided and had been since he’d sat in a Chicago restaurant with Irina, but he wanted the vote to be fair and free of undue influence. This was too important a question to try to shape the answer.
That was something he’d figured out about who he wanted to be as president. Maybe it was the first thing he’d figured out. Rad had pointed out awhile back that Becker said we when he spoke of the club, and that Delaney had always said I, arguing that it conveyed more strength to suggest to outsiders that there was only one voice calling the shots. Becker hadn’t ever questioned that, he hadn’t really noticed it, and he’d never felt less enfranchised because of it.
But he had been. They all had been. Delaney had pulled the club the way he wanted it to go, he’d held back information if he thought he’d get too much resistance to his ideas, and when he started to lose his way, no one in the club had had the power to pull him back. Slick was dead because Delaney had led the club straight into a firefight that only he had known to expect.
He loved Delaney and had trusted him with his life, without question. The man had built the Bulls up from the ground, and he’d made them strong. He’d been a good leader. But after Dane died, he’d had no one to make him see when he turned the wrong way.
Becker wouldn’t lead that way. He wouldn’t pull the club in his direction. He’d always say we.
The door opened, and Maverick knocked on the jamb. “Got a minute?”
Pushing the papers aside, Becker waved him in. “What’s up, brother?”
He had a strong guess as to the answer. Maverick had pitched a fit in last week’s meeting, when Becker, Simon, and Apollo presented the Volkov deal to pick up the drug routes. He did not want the club taking on the work, and he’d threatened to walk away if they did.
Becker had tabled the question for a week; they’d vote today. But he knew, and he was sure Maverick did as well, how the vote would go. There were too many hungry mouths around the Bulls’ table, and the take was too damn good to pass up. They’d get healthy again on the first run, and they’d all be rich before the year was out.
He’d been hoping Mav would cool off during this week. Really hoping—they needed Maverick. More than that, Becker needed him. But his hope had never risen to expectation. Maverick had been fighting against the Bulls’ involvement with the Volkovs since he’d taken back his seat after his release from the pen.
Now, Maverick sat in the temporary approximation of that seat, two down from the head of the table. Since he’d taken on the Secretary/Treasurer role, he’d sat next to Rad.
He leaned forward and crossed his arms on the table, and the folding chair gave off a metallic creak. “I was serious last
week. If we go down this road, I want out. I’ll drop this kutte on the floor and black out my ink on the way home.”
Having anticipated this reaction, and even this specific conversation, Becker had done some thinking about how he’d handle it. He’d even rehearsed a few exchanges. Maverick’s opening was pretty close to Becker’s imagining.
So he was prepared. “You could walk away so easy?”
An angry laugh burst from Maverick’s mouth. “Easy. Right. It’s not easy, Beck. It kills me. I love this club. I love this family. Jenny and the kids—the Bulls are everything to them, too. But this ... this is the wrong road. We do this, we give up everything to that Russian cunt.”
The Bulls had gotten deep with the Volkovs while Maverick was in prison. He’d been tasked to kill a man inside for them before he’d ever gotten a chance to know the benefit of the work. In fact, he’d done more time because of that hit, and he’d been brutalized in retaliation for it. Maverick had come out of the pen—McAlester, a place Becker also knew too well—with a massive grudge against the Russians, and in the years since, he’d been at best a skeptic about anything that had to do with Irina Volkov.
He was a loyal patch, though, and he’d done everything he’d been asked to do. He kept his anger and skepticism at the table.
The table he now threatened to walk away from.
“We both know how the vote’s gonna go, Mav.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m sitting here. You’re voting for it, right?”
“I am.”
“I want you to know I mean to leave my kutte behind today, after the vote. This isn’t the Bulls I joined.”
“The only reason that’s true is that most of the club is younger than us. But every step we’ve taken, we’ve taken it together.” He’d just been thinking that wasn’t true, that Delaney had held too much power in his last years with the gavel, but Becker needed Maverick to see that he’d played his own part in where they were.
Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8) Page 18