by Hazel Parker
“But...the article said you’re a chapter, and the other chapters—”
“They’ve got things like club rivals and other issues they need to take care of,” Fitz said in a casual manner. “We have guns, but that’s purely for self-defense. Our ugliest enemy has been the brother of two of the founders. He was quoted in that article, actually.”
I tried to remember the name.
“Kyle...something, right?”
“Stone, but yes,” Fitz said. “He’s been trying to go through the political and legal system to get us booted. But the truth is, we’re just a bunch of guys who enjoy bikes, enjoy traditional customs between men, and will eventually make a difference in our community when we have the means. We’re so new, you know, and we need to start making money to support—”
“Wait, wait, wait, back the hell up,” I said. “So let me get this straight. You quit Rothenberg Banking to join...a charitable startup?”
Fitz laughed.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes!”
He’s taking this way too casually.
“Fitz, do you realize how crazy you sound?” I said.
“Yeah, but the really crazy thing is giving away your time for a job that you hate. Do you know how often we talk in the offices about how time is money, and yet we seem to be willing to just donate our time to Rothenberg like we’ll live forever?”
Shit…
“I know I won’t make much money. I know there’s a major risk here. But I also know that I’m in my thirties. I’m starting to think about the great beyond, and the funny thing is, the club might be safer than the office. The club might put me in physical harm more, but it won’t stress me as much as—”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t be involved in physical stuff? You said that the chapters in Las Vegas and California had rivals but you didn’t?”
“Well, no, we don’t. Not right now, at least.”
Jesus Christ.
I sighed, put my head in my hands, and took shallow breaths through the split in my hands. It would have made more sense to me if Fitz had quit to join law enforcement. Now he was joining a group that was bound to clash with law enforcement.
“Look, you and I currently work for a company that everyone, including the Wall Street Journal, loves to hate, right?” Fitz said. “We’re called what’s wrong with capitalism and America. We’re told that we need to pay more taxes. We’re told by the protesters that we need to have our coffers sucked dry and redistributed through the country. And yeah, you know we have employees that seem hellbent on living up to that stereotype. But you also know that we provide a valuable service of investing in companies. We give people chances to expand to enormous levels. But you’ll never see that in the Times.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Same thing here. Same thing with the Saints.”
I hated that the analogy made perfect sense. I hated it. It made me understand what he did more, and a part of me didn’t want to understand it. It made things a lot easier.
“Look, I promise you that I haven’t done anything to put us in jeopardy,” he said, putting a hand on my knee.
“Us?” I said, but it was said with excitement.
“You didn’t think last night was just something to be done and ignored forever, did you?” he said with a smile, squeezing my knee. “Do you really think that I sat all those times with you at breakfast and lunch just so that I could then ignore you as soon as I got to you?”
“I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time…”
“Yeah, but we’re not in college, Amelia.”
I meant at Rothenberg. But I understand where you’re coming from and what you’re trying to say.
“I like you,” he said. “I love how straight a shooter you are. I love how honest and real you are. I love that you don’t take shit from anyone—and believe me, I see a lot of shit taking at Rothenberg. That is one thing that I am not going to miss.”
“You’re funny,” I said, putting my hand over his and squeezing back. “I’m going to miss that at work, you know. Your humor. How calm you are. How the fuck do you do it?”
“Hah! I’ve never been the type to be super close to my job. I do it well, but I maintain a certain level of detachment. I know it’s a trite answer, but it’s true. I don’t let my work affect me. It’s an active choice.”
“Well, aren’t you just a goddamn star,” I said with a laugh.
I looked at his face. That smile—that fucking smile. It was so handsome. It was so easy to fall into.
He got the picture. He leaned forward, kissed me, and pressed me back into the couch.
I had drive just like I had last night, but it was for something different. Last night was for release, but not of the sexual kind—it was release of the weight on my shoulders by shifting the weight to someone else. I wanted to be the boss, I wanted to be the one in control, and I wanted to set the ground rules.
Tonight, I just had a drive to be with Fitz. That’s all I wanted. Whatever happened, happened.
Clothes came off after just a few seconds. We were naked in under a minute, and Fitz’s hard cock brushed against the outside of my sex.
“Am I yours again tonight?” he said. “Or can I go inside you?”
“You are mine,” I said back. “But I am yours as well. Do it, Fitz. Do it.”
Fitz nodded, reaching back and feeling for his target. As soon as he’d found my opening, he put his cock right on the edge. I gasped at the sensation running through me—
First time in—
And then my eyes went wide as his hard cock plowed into me, burying as deep as it would go. Deeper, certainly, than I would have expected.
“Oh, Fitz,” I moaned.
I lost myself in Fitz’s body and the pleasure that he gave me. We rolled around on that couch like two teenagers in mom’s basement, laughing and giggling and moaning at the pleasure that came through us. For as much as we had argued when he walked inside—or maybe precisely because of it—our sex felt that good.
But thinking about where we had started did something to me that had not happened the night before.
It made me lose concentration.
He’s quitting to join a club.
He didn’t even explain much.
“Oh, fuck, Amelia!”
His cock swelled inside of me. It felt good. But…
He’s quitting to join a club.
He’s going to be in a motorcycle club gang thing.
He’s out of his mind!
“I’m so close; can I pull out on you?”
“Huh?” I said, shaking my head.
“I’m going to come on your stomach.”
“Oh, OK,” I said.
This can’t be happening. This can’t actually be happening—
“Oh, shit!”
He pulled out, stroked himself, and fired his seed all over me. I made moaning noises, but my head wasn’t in it, and the moans were not so sincere. I mean, the pleasure was real and all, but I only gasped to get Fitz into it.
When he finished, he slowly rose, hurrying to get a towel from my bathroom. He commented on how nice the place looked, which made me wonder if he chose to live in a place well below his means for...some odd reason or another. The sink ran with hot water, and Fitz emerged moments later, wiping me down with the warm towel.
“Wow,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing you could get used to.”
You could.
If your partner wasn’t joining a dangerous organization and throwing away the perks he has. For what?
“You OK?”
“Huh?” I said. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just...been a while since I’ve had something like that. Wasn’t quite as ready for it as I thought.”
“Oh, sorry,” Fitz said with a compassionate smile. “Just, you know, heat of the moment, didn’t want to come inside you—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I said.
I leaned over to kiss him, the sort of thing that I knew would
shut him up. And it did. He leaped up over me and curled his body onto mine, kissing my neck.
But to say that it was just “fine” was a bit of an overstatement. I’d hoped Fitz could explain what was going on, but all he had done was compare the Savage Saints to Rothenberg Banking and say it would be OK.
Yeah, except it wasn’t. I didn’t want to think like “them,” but the money issue couldn’t be ignored. If we actually became something more, was I going to be his piggy bank?
I’d always admired and liked Fitz because he was so different from the rest of the men at Rothenberg. He didn’t seem to tie his self-worth to the company, and he didn’t seem to obsess over every penny that came his way.
But he may very well have proved that he was a little too different for us to ever turn into something.
Chapter 13: Fitz
Life hadn’t been this fucking good in a long, long time.
Gerald hated my guts, but I think that made me feel only better about my decision to quit. I almost hoped that he told me not to come back on Monday when Friday rolled around, but he wasn’t giving me any indication that that would be OK. Actually, he wasn’t giving me any indication at all—he refused to acknowledge my existence and would scowl in my general direction whenever I nodded to him.
Amelia was not just giving me the best kind of sexual pleasure I’d had in ages. She was someone that I felt safe expressing my decision to while also challenging me on my assumptions. Her honesty and intellectual prowess were unmatched by anyone else, and butting heads was a positive for us. I knew it was far too early to say we were dating, but I felt mighty confident about it.
And as for the Savage Saints, they hadn’t yet learned about my decision to quit, but with me on the subway headed into Brooklyn for our Thursday meeting, I knew that it was time to tell them the truth. I couldn’t wait to see Uncle’s face. I imagined he’d be mighty confused and find me insane, but that’s what made it so damn fun.
When I walked into Brooklyn Repairs, I was surprised to find that of the other four officers, only Uncle had gotten there before me.
“Where is everyone else?” I said, removing my suit.
“Hell if I know,” Uncle said with a chuckle. “They should be here any moment. But you know how the Stones are. Marcel’s probably making love to Christine. Biggie’s probably entertaining a crowd at dinner somewhere. Niner I know is on his way; he texted me.”
“Niner talks?”
“I said he texted me, not that he called me.”
I nodded and took a seat. I wanted to blurt out what I’d done to Uncle, but that felt like something better reserved for the rest of the club. I bit my lip, shook my head, and put my hands on the table, twiddling my thumbs over each other.
“The hell’s gotten into you?” Uncle said. “You’re looking like you just stole from the vault, but you’re afraid to tell me. What the fuck’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when the rest of the club gets here,” I said, not realizing how obvious I must have looked. “It’s something for the rest of the club to learn.”
“So...what, I don’t get a sneak peek?” Uncle said, sounding offended—but I knew he was just being sarcastic. “I’m the only other person like you here, and you’re not going to tell me?”
“Well, it’s—”
“Did you get a raise? Did you knock up some broad? Are you moving to Los Angeles?”
“None of those,” I said with a laugh, though I did remember how, last night, I was probably no more than a couple seconds away from unloading my cum inside of Amelia. One of us quitting Rothenberg put enough of a dent into finances, but if both of us had to quit? “I’ll tell you when they all—”
“Ah, hell, Fitz, I don’t wanna hear it,” Uncle said, though at that moment, Niner and Marcel walked in together. “Boys, I don’t know if you know this, but Fitz has some sort of secret that he won’t tell me. Afraid I’ll break the super-secret handshake code between bankers.”
“What?” Marcel said.
Both of us laughed at that.
“There’s no super-secret handshake code between bankers, you idiot,” Uncle said.
“Hey, I don’t know what sort of corruption you two shitheads engage in, and I don’t care.”
Yeah, see, that’s what I meant by us being misrepresented. If Marcel and I walked into the office at Rothenberg, they’d be saying the same thing to us.
“Long as you assholes are making sure the club is funded, then you can do whatever the hell you want.”
“That’s more like it,” Uncle said. “The fiery Marcel.”
Marcel ignored him. Biggie walked in laughing a few seconds later.
“Alright, you got your precious boys-only club here,” Uncle said. “Let’s hear the news.”
“OK, well—”
“What the hell, Uncle?” Marcel said, causing me to drop my head in exasperation. “You know we save personal news until the end. Club business first. The club comes first.”
“You’re telling me this banker asshole comes in here with some news that he won’t tell me until everyone shows up, and then everyone does that, and now I gotta wait?”
“The club. Comes. First.”
Uncle rolled his eyes.
“I should have put myself in as president,” Uncle muttered to himself. Biggie snorted, but a quick glare from Uncle shut him up.
“Now then,” Marcel said. “The Savage Saints from Las Vegas haven’t done anything since Richard showed up a week ago. I know they said they would give us two weeks, and that seems to be the status quo. We said we were going to use all two of those weeks to come up with something. Has anyone come up with anything?”
Jesus. I’d forgotten all about that. That wasn’t quite true, at least not in the literal sense, but Amelia had occupied so much of my time and quitting had made me so happy I’d forgotten that the green grass over here in the club had some stains on it. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows over in the Savage Saints headquarters.
“Fitz?” Marcel said. “You seemed to be the one who could corral the wild Las Vegas man. Do you have any ideas?”
“None, no,” I said honestly. “You said two weeks. I think deadlines spur creativity. There’s no…”
My mind got distracted realizing I would soon have to tell the rest of the club something very different. I shook my head to get the cobwebs out.
“Sorry. Yeah, that’s just it. Deadlines spur action and creativity. No need to think of anything before then.”
“Alrighty then,” Marcel said, sounding a little disappointed that I didn’t have anything more to say. But I didn’t—there was no reason for me to say anything else, not when the club would have their debates and not make a decision until the end anyways. “Does anyone else have any ideas they’ve thought of?”
No one else said anything. No one even cleared their throats, as if wanting to say something but not being willing to volunteer to say it.
“I’d mock all you assholes, except for the fact that I haven’t come up with anything either,” Marcel said. “We’re not fucking giving them fifty percent of our profits. That’s beyond stupid. If we were in San Diego or Phoenix, sure, but not when we’re on the other side of the country.”
“I would guess we’re not in great legal standing though, Marcel,” Uncle warned. “We can posture here and look tough, but this is something that we’re going to have to resolve sooner rather than later. If we blow them off next Thursday, they are going to come after us.”
“What are they going to do, take us before Judge Judy?” Biggie shouted.
Marcel was the only one to laugh at his brother’s joke.
“No, but the fact that they can means they will not feel compelled to resort to violence,” Uncle said. “You think that sounds great, but it’s not. It gives them options. It makes them unpredictable. It’ll be harder for us to anticipate them. We can let this get near the end, but we cannot blow off the deadline.”
“I don’t think anyone was pla
nning on it, Uncle.”
“You’d be surprised.”
I was sitting back in my seat at this point, waiting for Marcel to give me permission to speak. The arguments that he and Uncle had were predictable, boring, and rarely resulted in change. It wasn’t like one of them would say something that would suddenly cause the other to change; Stones were just too hard in the head to do anything.
“Anyone else have anything to say?”
No one did.
“Fitz,” Marcel said. “We’ve run through our club business. It’s time for personal news, and if we make Uncle wait any longer, I think he might kill all of us. So why don’t you tell us whatever it is that Uncle was so desperate to know.”
“Sure,” I said, sitting up taller in my seat. “I quit my job at Rothenberg Banking so that I can work full time at Brooklyn Repairs and with the Savage Saints.”
Silence.
And then…
Uproarious laughter.
“That’s amazing!” Uncle said, laughing. “You, Thomas Fitzgerald? You quit your job to be like Marcel and Biggie? Oh, that’s a good one!”
“We needed some levity here, and you gave it!” Marcel said.
Even Niner appeared to be half-chuckling, half-coughing. I just folded my arms, wore a small smile on my face, and waited for the laughter to die down.
Niner was the first to realize I was serious. Biggie was next. Marcel and Uncle both realized the truth at the same time, though they both tried to force more laughter out, as if once they hit a certain quota of laughter, I would reveal in a big surprise that I wasn’t serious.
“Oh my God,” Uncle said. “Fitz...you’re not joking.”
“Nope.”
Uncle looked at Marcel, who stared back at him with a slack jaw. Uncle stared back at me.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “You’re...are you out of your goddamn mind? Did I not specifically tell you at the club party last week to not quit your job?”
“You did,” I said. “And I considered it, along with the rest of the evidence. And I decided that this was the move I wanted to make.”
“Holy fuck,” Uncle said.
My eyes remained on Uncle, but the rest of the club looked amused, even supportive—that’s what I wanted to believe, at least. Marcel was remaining somewhat neutral, but Biggie and Niner looked impressed.