by Hazel Parker
As people nodded in agreement, Uncle looked at me, came over to me, and gave me a hug.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You just proved you belong in the club. You saved us all from death. It may not have been through bullets, but when it comes to saving the club and saving its members, it doesn’t matter if it’s done through words or violence. You did it. You’re a Savage Saint.”
It was all I had hoped to hear ever since I’d quit my job.
It was all I had hoped to hear ever since I’d joined.
And finally, I had.
Chapter 20: Amelia
I sat on the back of Fitz’s bike as it blazed down the highway, the time well after eleven at night. For the week that I had had, I should have gone to bed about four hours ago. I should have drifted off into sleep by now, and I should not have woken up until about noon tomorrow.
But for as fatiguing as the week had been, I had never felt more thrilled and more exhilarated. I had never felt the surge of...being alive. I had never felt like I had just encountered death so close and survived to laugh at it.
Oh, and being on the bike didn’t hurt in the slightest.
“Whooo!” I cheered as Fitz revved the bike just a bit above the speed limit.
Normally one to drive cautiously, Fitz was content to throw caution to the wind. And why shouldn’t he? He had just saved his club.
He told me after all the handshakes were made and the two clubs went our separate ways that I had played a major part in helping him, but that was only true in the most indirect sense of the word. Fitz had carried the negotiations with Richard and had made the offer; if I had helped him, it was only with very indirect encouragement from right before. It made me proud to see that Fitz could make such a difference.
But forget pride. At this point, I just couldn’t wait for us to get to the beach.
“This is it!” I yelled when we got to the exit in question. “This is the spot where we went last week!”
“Are you sure?” Fitz yelled over the roar of the bike.
“Yes!”
And if it’s not, then we’ll just make new memories here.
Fitz took the exit, drove down a short street toward the beach, found the empty parking lot, and placed his feet on the ground, bringing the vehicle to a stop.
“Wow!” I said, laughing as the tingling between my legs lingered from the vibration of the bike. “I’d say you know how to make me feel pretty damn good!”
“I’d say you know how to make me pretty damn happy,” he shot back.
“Yeah, just wait till you’re naked.”
I didn’t know who was hornier between us, but I knew that we both desperately wanted this moment. It wasn’t just the sexual tension between us; it was the buildup that came because of what we’d just survived. We weren’t only two people who liked each other. We’d survived a potentially fatal and traumatizing moment. We forever shared this moment.
And now, it was time to share something a little less dangerous, at least in the bloody sense.
I grabbed Fitz’s hand and tugged him to the beach, taking my helmet off with my free hand and flicking my hair into the air. I put the helmet on his handlebar and kept pulling him off, so much so that he had to resist to avoid tipping over the bike. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of that moment, and as soon as Fitz got free, the two of us sprinted for the empty beach.
I did take half a second to scan the area and make sure that we were alone. It being Friday night raised the risk that some daring teenagers were out on the prowl, also looking to have some erotic fun, but fortunately for us, Long Island was not exactly a hive of youthful activity. There was no one around. The coast was clear. We were free to act out our naughty fantasies.
“Oh, Fitz,” I said, turning around. “You are so damn sex—”
I didn’t get to finish the word as he kissed me passionately. The two of us twisted and lurched for each other until we fell to the ground, laughing and kissing the whole way. We tried to fight for who would wind up on top first before I won that battle. Just like last time, I took off my top and my bra.
“Damn,” he said. “So fucking sexy every single time.”
But then, without warning, he bucked me over, and now he was the one on top.
“But this time, you come first,” he said.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t we both come together?”
Fitz smiled.
“I knew you were the better negotiator of the two.”
“Haha, you’re a funny man. Get those pants off, now,” I said.
“That’s not a negotiation, that’s an order.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, were you negotiating to try and keep your pants on?”
Fitz laughed as he hurried to get naked. He yanked on my pants, taking them and my underwear off. And just like that, once more, we were both naked underneath the sky.
But this time, we’d gotten a full moon. This time, everything on the beach seemed visible. And as I kissed Fitz’s face, I wanted everything to be seen.
“Oh, Fitz, baby,” I moaned as he rubbed himself all over me, getting wetter and wetter by the second. “God, I want you so bad.”
“I want you,” he said. “No more breakups. No more dancing around each other. We’re going to really do this. Got it?”
“Oh, fuck yes,” I said. “Tell me what you’re going to do, Fitz. Fucking take me!”
“I’d rather show you.”
With that, Fitz inserted himself into me, expanding me as he pressed in. I tilted my head back as he bit down on my neck. My hips arched into him. I let out a gasp that included his name and some inaudible words. My fingernails clutched onto him.
“Oh, fuck, Fitz,” I moaned.
I still made some effort to keep my gasps and grunts a little quiet, but for the most part, I just pressed my face into his collarbone and his neck. Resisting making too much noise was just more trouble than it was worth, and honestly, I didn’t need to suppress myself at all. Better to use natural sound mufflers than to try and do it on my own.
My entire body felt like a ball of tension as I curled up, trying to draw Fitz in deeper and deeper. His cock seemed even larger than the last time that I had been with him, and his thrusting was much faster than it had been on the couch. Maybe he’d just been self-conscious about getting my couch dirty, but he had no such qualms about being this way out in the sand.
“Oh, fuck, Fitz,” I said.
He went at me like so for much longer, somehow never running out of energy or needing to catch a break. He was pushing me closer and closer to orgasm, his rhythm uninterrupted and unbreakable. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get me to orgasm before I could do it with him.
“Baby…”
Just come twice, I thought.
I let go of the expectation that I would have my only orgasm in conjunction with him, and almost immediately, the tension built up. It took far less time than any of my other orgasms had for me to get to the edge, almost certainly because I now felt much safer and much more secure about what my future looked like with Fitz before.
And then, it hit.
“Oh! Ohhhh, oh, fuck, oh, Fitz, Fitz, yes.”
My fingers curled into him as I felt my sex pulse and swell from the orgasm. My entire body felt like the massage of a thousand hands.
And still, Fitz kept going.
“My...God,” I gasped.
He had transitioned from one orgasm over to building to the next with hardly any interruption. Then, without warning, he pulled out, flipped me over, and had my ass in the air. He slapped my ass on both cheeks before entering.
“Now this Fitz, I fucking love,” I said.
Fitz was past the point of communication, though. It was more akin to hearing a hungry lion growl as it ate—it wasn’t speaking in the normal language, but the meaning of the communication was self-evident. I lowered my head into the sand as I felt Fitz enter me. His hands wrapped around my hips, and he pulled me har
d onto his cock.
Again, he had me surging toward orgasm. The process was not a slow one. But this time, I could feel his cock start to swell. The only question I had was if simultaneous orgasm would remove from him the ability to think to pull out.
But honestly…
Maybe I was so caught up in the moment, I just didn’t care. Maybe I’d freak out later.
No, I decided, I’d just take the Plan B pill as soon as we got back. I didn’t want this moment interrupted by some rational, logical decision to pull out. I wanted to feel Fitz come into me. I wanted to feel his cock surge, twitch, quiver, and unload everything he had in me. I wanted to drain him with my pussy.
“Give it to me, Fitz,” I growled when I fell into the decision. “Come inside me. Let me feel you come for me, baby.”
He grunted. He was past the point of thinking about the decision. His panting increased, and there was no part of him that seemed to be trying to maneuver into position to pull out.
“Keep at it, baby, don’t stop, don’t stop,” I said.
I felt my orgasm get to the point of no return. I begged him to keep pushing, keep thrusting, keep hammering away…
He came first, but I was only a second behind. I felt my pussy tighten and clench around his pulsating cock, unloading his seed into me. The sensation felt like something transcendent, unlike something I had ever experienced before. It felt, honestly, like the kind of thing that would bond us together for a very long time.
I didn’t know what happened first: me falling forward and off of him or him pulling out. But either way, we both hit the sand in rapid succession, on the verge of passing out from sheer exhaustion. But after a few moments, we both did the same thing.
We laughed.
We laughed.
And we laughed some more.
“Oh my God,” I said, giggling. “Can you believe this happened?”
“No!” Fitz said. “I can’t believe any of this happened! I can’t believe anything in the last month happened!”
“I mean, we hooked up. On the beach. In my place. On the beach again. You quit your job. You quit your job! And I saved your club. And...I don’t know what the hell is the sanest part of all that.”
“It’s going to make for a hell of a story when we tell people how we met.”
“You’re going to tell this story?”
“Are you kidding me? You wouldn’t?”
We briefly paused before we laughed again.
“This is so crazy,” I said. “So goddamn crazy! But here we are. Here...here we are.”
“It’s perfect,” Fitz said.
He took me up in him, cuddling my naked body and planting a kiss on my lips.
“You know,” he said. “Just to make one thing clear. Just because I quit Rothenberg doesn’t mean I would ever expect you to. In fact, I want you to go as long as you want. Don’t let anything I do affect what you do.”
“That’s sweet,” I said, petting his beautiful face. “But it’s more important for me to say that your involvement with the Saints won’t affect me. I’m probably going to avoid your parties, and I’m probably not going to help out quite like I did tonight. But I recognize that that world is a part of you, Fitz. It matters to you. I don’t ever want to be the person that pulls you away from it, because I care about you. I…”
I almost said, “I love you.” It felt too soon for that. Even for all that we’ve been through…
“I don’t just care about you. I love you.”
I gasped. So much for it being too soon.
“I’m completely serious, Amelia,” Fitz said. “Trust me, if anyone’s going to make a decision that is not rational, it’s me. But you saved the club and, by extension, my life. You came back to me even after my club acted boorishly to you. We put you through hell. But still, you helped me. You went so far out of your way to help me. I...I don’t know what to say other than I love you.”
“Fitz…” I said, smiling, feeling sheepish. “I...I love you too.”
“Do you?” he said, smiling. “It’s OK if it feels too early.”
“No, it’s how I feel,” I said. “I just didn’t want to say it too soon and scare you off.”
Fitz laughed.
“Ironic, the girl who is most known for saying everything that crosses her mind suddenly had a moment where she couldn’t say anything at all.”
“Hey! I said it!”
“With some goading!”
We laughed some more. We sure were doing an awful lot of laughing on the beach. I guess when you’d survived something of a near-death experience, all that you could do was laugh some more.
“Either way, it’s been said,” I said. “And I’m ready to act on those words from now until the end. What say you?”
Fitz kissed me, wrapped his arms around me.
“I say yes,” he said. “I say yes to us being together forever. I say yes to pushing through every fight and every argument. I say yes to never saying no to each other’s goals and dreams. I say yes to you, Amelia Hughes. I say yes to you now and forever.”
And I knew right there that they weren’t just meaningless words.
I knew, lying naked under a full moon on a Long Island beach, that he and I were destined to do this forever. We’d have our fights and our arguments, especially as they related to our respective jobs. We’d have moments where we got into it over money.
But Fitz had shown me that I didn’t need to judge him on what he did with his free time. I didn’t need to judge him on his job. I needed to judge him on the kind of man he was.
And Fitz? Fitz was the perfect kind of man for me.
That, I knew, would be true forever.
Epilogue
One Month Later
“You just have to go to this party, don’t you?” Amelia teased me. “I work all week, and now you’re going to abandon me?”
I turned to her, flashing a guilty grin.
“You know the deal, babe,” I said with a laugh. “Every other week, I go to the party to make sure that I keep face at the club.”
“You work at the repair shop now!” she said with an eye roll. “They know your face so well, they’d probably like for you to only come to every third party!”
“They probably would,” I said, finishing my glass of water. “But for right now, with Marcel still recovering from his wound, he wants to spend a night in with Christine anyways. I think they have some, ahem, matters to attend to that they can’t at the club.”
Amelia came over, kissed me on the forehead, and refilled my glass for me.
“Matters that I will never tire of attending to with you,” she said. “Although it sucks for Christine that she can’t go to parties because of her addiction.”
“Yeah, in some ways, it’s for the best, though. Like Marcel and I don’t have to worry about chasing anyone because we have our someones. We can chaperone the prospects.”
“Oh, Lord, are those sort of like the first-year analysts?”
“Exactly, except we don’t even give ours names!”
“Oh, you’re so cruel,” she said. “Well, if you’ve got to get going, I’m not going to hold you up any longer. Go on!”
“OK, OK,” I said, standing up. “I’ll be back after two. I’d say don’t stay up waiting, but I don’t think you’re going to do that anyway. Miss ED.”
“Haha, that makes it sound like I have performance issues,” she said. “But thank you.”
I walked out of the apartment with a goodbye kiss, off to celebrate not just another peaceful week at the club, but Amelia’s promotion. She had gotten the promotion the week before, and we had celebrated accordingly then, but this was my chance to celebrate with the boys. Such a celebration would involve...well, probably a few beers and then a minor stumble back home.
I was old. I didn’t party like some of the prospects did.
But that was OK. I had everything in life that I wanted.
I had a beautiful girlfriend that I knew I would be with
forever; we just needed the formality of time passing for us to make it official. I had a job that allowed me to shut my brain off, work on cars and bikes all day, and ride my motorcycle frequently. I had friends in the club who no longer called me “nerd” but instead treated me as one of their own. I had enough money in reserve to get by, and I would soon be moving into an apartment that would keep me close enough to Amelia that it only took a relatively short subway visit over to her.
We still had our quarrels, but they were mostly minor. Our biggest fight since we’d consummated our relationship, honestly, had been a philosophical discussion about if her boss, Ben, breaking up with his wife and his ensuing reaction was appropriate or not. She could still fight and have a mean streak when she wanted, but even then, it was more something that impressed me than something that I feared.
As I hopped off the subway and headed toward Brooklyn Repairs, I smiled at how we’d done such a good job building a true club in Brooklyn. The Las Vegas Saints had, upon completed negotiations, furnished us a few weapons and some advice on how to build us out. We, in turn, had generated leads in Chicago and Buffalo for potential new clubs. Neither had taken shape yet, but that only needed time.
I walked up, listening to the thumping music. I opened the door and smiled at what I saw.
Sure, there were plenty of women there. There was way more alcohol there. But the thing that caused me to smile was all the new prospects. We were growing to the point where we almost had to put a cap on new membership.
How was that from going from struggling entity to something of a powerhouse?
I looked around the room. Biggie and Uncle were hitting on a couple of women in the corner. Niner stood by himself, his arms crossed, looking out over the room. Prospects ran the drunk gamut from apparently sober to so drunk that they were mumbling to themselves on the ground. I didn’t want to interrupt the game of Biggie and Uncle—they didn’t need my help, anyway—and so I headed over to Niner.
“Nice party, huh?” I said.
Niner just nodded. He was never one for words except in situations that absolutely called for it, but at some point, I was determined to learn more about him as part of my efforts to become more integrated into the club.