by Hazel Parker
“Interesting. Maybe you can take me there sometime.”
“Or,” Brett said, kicking his leg over the bike, “maybe I can take you up to your place now.”
I let out a yip and a surprised laugh as he lifted me off of the bike, held me against him, and kissed me, even with my helmet still in place. I struggled to lift my hands up, brushing his facial hair in the process. I finally popped it off, but I didn’t exactly place it down cleanly. The helmet fell out of my hands and to the street.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Eh, it’s meant to take a hit on the street,” he said.
Instead, he turned right back to me, kissing my neck—one of my erogenous zones. He remembered. He remembered the exact way to turn me on.
Oh my God…
“Brett…” I begged. “Let’s get inside.”
“Why?” he said with mock seriousness. “I want everyone to know that I have you back. I want everyone to know no one can have you but me.”
“Yes, but…”
It was really hard to express my thoughts coherently when I couldn’t stop laughing in pleasure at his neck kisses and how his fingers dug into my ass. My legs got goosebumps just from his pinkie fingers brushing over them—what was going to happen when the layer of jean shorts was removed?
Thankfully, Brett may have been something like an animal during sex, but he wasn’t a monster. He put me down, guided me to the door, and slapped my ass hard. Another thing I love.
“You remember it all?” I said, looking back at him with wide eyes.
“How could I forget?”
How could I think you’d forget, I thought with a smirk.
I fumbled for my keys in my pocket, desperately trying to find them in a rush of erotic heat and excitement. I eventually got them out, but not before dropping them to the ground.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Like you having to bend over is a bad thing,” Brett said.
I rolled my eyes at him, but I also definitely made it a point to stick my ass in the air a little more deliberately, shake it real slow, and bounce it a little—not enough to make him lose his mind, but enough to tease him with the probability that he would be about to do so.
I finally unlocked the door, opened it, and let Brett in. As soon as he got inside, he moved his arm over mine, shut the door, squeezed my breasts, and resumed kissing my neck. I moaned as I stuck my neck out, reached down for his crotch, and tried to grab onto his cock through his pants.
He guided me toward the bed, his hips pressed into mine, but then changed directions at the last second. He yanked my shorts and underwear off, leaving me with only my top on. He spun me around as the cold air—or what felt like cold air relative to the Vegas heat—brushed over my sex. He still had all of his clothing on, but just the feeling of his pants against my exposed clit was arousing.
“Tell me you want me, Cassie,” he growled.
“I want you, Brett,” I said.
Then he slid two fingers in, making me gasp and barely say his name.
“Tell me you need me, Cassie,” he said, his breath heated against my ears.
“I need you, Brett.”
His fingers suddenly stroked and pumped with precision, sending a rush of pleasure through my entire body. His intense, hungry gaze never left my eyes. His fingers ran over my G-spot over and over, in the exact position that he liked to start me with whenever we had sex before. No matter what Brett said, I still couldn’t fathom the fact that he seemed to remember exactly how to work my body as if he had mapped it and kept it stored in his memory.
“Oh, fuuuuuck, Brett, Brett, Brett,” I said, finding myself sounding like a broken record.
“Tell me you’ll come for me, Cassie.”
“I’ll come, I’ll come, oh, Brett.”
I could feel the tension building. It wasn’t going to take long. I hadn’t had sex in so long, let alone sex with someone I cared about like Brett…
“Come for me, Cassie,” he growled.
“Yes! Yes!” I yelled as I came, my whole body shaking and my sex as wet as I’d felt it in years. His fingers continued to push into me before I finally had to get him off. I got no respite, though, because as soon as his fingers left me, he pushed me into a passionate kiss.
Then he turned, shoved me onto the bed, and made a point to suck on his own fingers, licking my juices off of himself.
“So tasty,” he said. “So fucking hot.”
Oh my God. That alone was enough to spike my arousal.
“I need you, Brett,” I said.
“Tell me what you need,” he said as he took off his shirt, revealing a body that had lifted a lot more weights since our more youthful days.
“I need you naked,” I said. “I need you inside of me.”
“Tell me what you want me to do inside of you,” he said as he took off his pants, leaving just his boxer briefs—leaving not much to the imagination. Not that I needed an imagination to know how big and thick he was.
“I need you to make love to me, Brett. I need you to fuck me.”
Finally, he took off his underwear. His cock sprung out, and I reached forward to stroke it as he let out a pleasured gasp.
“Get inside me,” I said.
“Let me put—”
“No,” I said.
I trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t let himself go raw if he weren’t clean. But if he was, I was tired of things getting between us. Even if he would be inside of me, he wouldn’t really be inside of me. I needed to feel him, his skin, his cock, not his cock wrapped in some rubber.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Just like before.”
Brett smiled, leaned forward, and kissed me as I fell back onto the bed. I felt like I could melt into a little pod of pleasure—the bed sheets under me, nearly on my sides, and the warmth of Brett’s body on top of me. And boy, was his body fucking warm—maybe it was the Vegas heat, but I liked to think some of it was also the excitement of finally being back with me.
Fifteen years. Fifteen fucking years we’d waited for this. And now…
He was back inside of me.
“Oh, Brett!” I yelled.
He took it slow at first. I tried to relish the moment, tried to take it as slow as he could… but it was making me emotional. Too emotional. The slow pace allowed for space for my thoughts to enter: thoughts about what I had lost, thoughts about what I had gotten back, but also thoughts of what I couldn’t get back…
“Fuck me, Brett,” I growled as I nibbled on his ear.
“You’re sure?”
“Do it,” I said, moving my hips faster to emphasize the point.
He lifted his head up, put one hand on my throat—a nice little kink I enjoyed—and then pounded me. It was like going from a soothing, gentle massage to the water-pressure ones that felt like shots fired. I wrapped my arms around him, digging my nails into his back as his cock filled me.
“Oh my fucking God, oh Brett, oh Brett,” I shouted.
I was reduced to a mix of cries, screams, and grunts that I tried to hold back. The tension already was becoming unbearable; it took almost no time for Brett to get me to the second orgasm of the session.
Good thing, too, because Brett had to slow down.
“You OK?” I said, still coming down from my orgasm.
“Jesus, I was about to come,” he said. “I’ve missed this shit.”
“Yeah, don’t stop though,” I said, not yet ready for the emotional fallout of this moment. “Pull out if you have to. Just… don’t fucking stop, please.”
Brett answered with a kiss before he pulled out, tapped the side of my hip, and ordered me on my belly. I acquiesced without hesitation, sticking my ass in the air.
“Take me, Brett,” I said.
I felt a hard slap on my left cheek and then my right cheek, and I let out a soft cry of excitement. He positioned his hands on my hips, squeezing tight as I so loved, and then he inserted himself.
God, how I’d forgotten how good this position was. I buried my head into the pillow, muffling what might as well have been a chorus of moans and gasps. My fingers squeezed the pillow at the edges. I must have said Brett’s name or some variant of it, some barely coherent language, every three seconds.
God, how I’d missed this.
“Oh fuck,” I heard Brett mutter behind me.
I hadn’t felt him explode yet. But I could feel him swelling.
“Come for me, Brett,” I said. “Come, baby, please!”
Brett’s grunts picked up in pace and reached a crescendo. I hadn’t felt his cock this heavy since… since…
And then, at the absolute last second, he pulled out and fired his load onto my back. I looked back with a huge smile on my face as I saw him getting off from me once more. That was worth fifteen years of waiting.
When he finally finished, his head tilted back in pleasure, he collapsed forward and kissed me.
“Don’t roll over yet,” he said. “I’ll get you a towel and get you cleaned up.”
“OK,” I said, giving him one more kiss.
He headed for the bathroom door, his firm ass a wonderful sight to see from my spot.
A wonderful sight that I hadn’t seen in fifteen years. A sight that I had walked away from. A sight…
I had Brett back. But there were some things from that moment I was never going to get back. My parents—though alive, my father was now in a rehab facility, with kidney failure, and my mother was dying from cancer. Neither, when I got communication from third party sources, ever expressed an interest in seeing me again.
My child. I would never bring them into the world. I would never get to see them grow up to be like their father.
I had fought back the tears for the last half hour, but that had only meant they had built up for the moment when I would finally crack. And it had arrived.
All of the emotions of the day that I had fought so hard to contain came gushing out. I bawled like I hadn’t since the night after I had left Phoenix and everyone behind. I’d become hardened since that, more reserved and closed off from the world. But exposing this part of me, though necessary, had allowed not just a conversation’s worth of tears to come, but fifteen years of them.
I’d been such a coward. I’d been such a failure. At least it wasn’t too late.
“Cassie?” Brett said from the bathroom, but I couldn’t turn to face him. “Cassie, baby.”
He came over, gave a quick wipe down of my back, and snuggled beside me.
“Cassie? What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” I said. “I don’t deserve… this. For what I’ve done. I’m a terrible person, Brett.”
“Cassie, no,” he said, kissing me on the back of the head, but it didn’t do any good.
“My child is dead,” I said. “My parents hate me. You’re all I have left. I’m scared.”
Brett said he was sorry and held me. It was both the least and the most he could do, but it was also exactly what I needed. I just needed to cry my eyes out for a few minutes with the security of knowing Brett wasn’t going to leave me. It was rough. But it was necessary.
“I’ve never shared what I just told you with anyone,” I said. “No one knows. I don’t even tell therapists or strangers. Please don’t share it with anyone.”
“I won’t,” he said softly. “I promise you with my life that I will never tell anyone what you just told me. I’ll go to the grave with this secret.”
I grimaced, nodded, and finally felt the tears slow. That didn’t mean they were done, but they at least were getting closer to the point of being done.
“You know, I never stopped loving you,” I said. “Even last week, I just wanted to be in a better place. I know that you’ll wonder why I didn’t reach out to you then. I just… I was scared.”
“And it’s OK to be scared,” Brett said, putting his arm around my back. “I’d be scared in that spot too.”
He was sweet. I wasn’t sure if I believed him—he seemed to be an awfully brave man—but the empathy was so sweet and kind.
“You didn’t deserve to be put into a bad spot with me,” I said. “I didn’t want to burden you with anything.”
“It’s OK,” Brett said. “I don’t believe in deserving good or bad things. I believe in getting what you work for. And right now, Cassie? I want to work for your love. Can I do that?”
I finally faced him. I was shocked to see his eyes were watering too. That, more than anything he could have said, told me that he meant everything that he said.
“You don’t have to work for it right now,” I said softly. “I love you, Brett Pierce.”
Brett smiled, leaned forward, and kissed me as he cupped his hand on the back of my neck.
“And I love you, Cassie Erickson.”
I hadn’t felt as much at peace since, well, you know. Tonight was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
It was perfect because of how imperfect it was. It was perfect because of how much it hurt. It was perfect because, despite how much it hurt and how tough the conversation was, Brett still accepted me.
It was perfectly imperfect.
Chapter 13: Barber
For someone who prided themselves on handling the tough, dirty shit, who didn’t mind getting down into the mud, who didn’t mind using bloody, brutal means to get my way, I definitely would never have guessed that anything would have been as tough as the emotional truths that were revealed that night.
But Cassie had nothing to fear. The past was the past. I wasn’t going anywhere.
The only thing I worried about, as stupid as it was, was if we had jumped into sex too quickly. I didn’t say this out loud for obvious reasons, but I knew Cassie had used our first round of sex to mask her emotions. That was laid bare by the fact that she had gone from ecstatic screaming to uncontrolled tears in a matter of seconds from the end of sex to the beginning of cuddling.
Granted, the next day and a half had just turned into making up for lost time, fucking like animals, trying different positions, undoubtedly pissing off her neighbors at all hours of the day and night. We didn’t go to sleep until we truly didn’t have anything left to give, which usually meant about five in the morning before we finally conked out. But then, whoever woke up went right back to it, and it was as if we had merely pressed pause on a movie in progress.
That didn’t have any real emotional moments. There were no teary-eyed conversations, no confessions that shocked the other person. So maybe Cassie, by revealing everything after our first round of sex, had gotten all of her deep-seated emotions and confessions out. Maybe.
I certainly liked her. But I had to recognize that as long as Cassie preferred to keep things quiet until a moment in which they could not be contained, there was a certain level of playing with fire that I couldn’t ignore.
Still, I was pretty damn happy, all things considered. I had my love back, my high school sweetheart. We had our second chance at love. What more could I ask for?
In love, not much else.
At the club, unfortunately, a whole lot more.
I hadn’t seen any of the club members since Monday night, a night that had nothing special about it other than being the night before Cassie and I came together again. When I walked into The Red Door, I certainly didn’t try to hide my happy and excited mood. I had a smile on my face, something that Dom called me out on from afar. I just shrugged, said it was a good day, and moved on.
But then I walked into the room and I saw BK already seated at the poker player’s seat. Dom followed right behind as if he knew this would cause a scene. The only people not yet in the room were Dom and me.
“A little early for a poker guest, don’t you think?” I said, turning to Dom with what could only be described as the most sarcastic smile I had ever produced.
Dom’s characteristic smirk slowly faded as he moved past me without a word. Shit. This can’t be good.
“I’m tired of these goddamn Sinners walk
ing free after they murdered one of our girls,” Richard said.
There was no levity or casualness to his tone. He instead sounded like he was on the verge of giving a motorcycle club’s version of a fire and brimstone speech.
“These assholes can come after us, they can go after billionaires, but they go after our fucking girls?” Richard said, his voice rising with seemingly every syllable. “We promise every girl here good pay, good treatment, and security. Many of them come from broken homes, dark pasts, or troubled relationships. This is a bastion of safety for them, and I am not going to fucking let the goddamn Sinners ruin this for us!”
He slammed his fists on the table at the end, causing Pork and Dom to jump. BK and I seemed unfazed, though I wondered if I would have willingly shown more surprise if that asshole wasn’t there.
“The two of you,” Richard said, pointing to us sergeants, “will work in unison to bring down Scar and his club. You will hunt them. You will kill them. You will erase those goddamn assholes off the Las Vegas map.”
“Understood,” I said.
Left unsaid, however, was that this would be the fastest I would ever work on a case. I had no desire to work with an outsider; I most certainly had no desire to work with someone I suspected was gunning for my role at the club. Just who the fuck did this Burke, Brad, whatever the fuck his real name was, think he was?
“Have the police said anything?” BK asked.
“No,” Richard said, treating the word like venom. “Unfortunately, while the LVPD are good at dealing with tourists and low-level criminals, the Sinners elude them. Probably because they know we take care of it ourselves, and probably because they know going to try to arrest a Sinner would get one of them killed.”
“What about addresses,” I said, not willing to let BK look like the good student. “We could get home addresses for some of their members. Even if not Scar, could get some of the weaker members to blab.”
“If we went to their warehouse only to find it abandoned, you think we’re going to do any better with picking them off one by one?”
I bit my lip. Now it just looked like BK had asked a legitimate question and I had asked a stupid question, one I certainly knew the answer to beforehand.