by Christa Wick
Not that Callan loved me, but he seemed to care for me, had risked his life staying in Thunder Valley to get me out. And concern over my well-being was definitely more than I had ever had from one person. It was too rare a thing for someone like me to just let it go, to hop off his bike in some town, accept a pat on the ass and walk into a train station with half a brick of hundreds.
“You’re not,” I repeated when he continued to penetrate me with just his fingers.
“This is something that can only be taken once,” he whispered against my throat.
“I’m pretty sure you already took it.” A harsh laugh erupted from me. He’d been four fingers inside me, all the way up to where his palm started. And it wasn’t like there was some mythical shield in place. Eighth-grade biology class had set me straight on that fact.
“I pleasured you with my hands and mouth, baby.” He paused to suck just below my ear before biting at the lobe. “It’s different with my cock.”
I chewed at my bottom lip to keep from arguing. Callan was too big and strong for me to roll him onto his back and impale my pussy on his erection, riding him until he changed his mind and joined his efforts with mine.
“I’m going in bare.” He slid down until he could tongue one nipple. “And even if I wasn’t, there is always the risk you could wind up with a baby.”
I released the lungful of hot air I’d been holding in to keep from climaxing as he continued to tease my pussy. “You’re wrong.”
Not about the risk of a baby, just about everything else. Even if my brain was too clouded with need to know what those other things were. I just knew he was wrong, that he had to be in me and soon.
“Avery, it’s the first time you’re willing to risk changing your life forever.”
That was too much! I slapped his cheek, the only part of him I could get a bead on. Red flushed to the surface of his skin, its outline shaped like my center three fingers. His teeth took firmer hold of my nipple in warning.
“My life changed forever yesterday, Callan Tilley.” I pushed at his head, ignoring the threat of his teeth against my flesh. He either needed to fuck me or get the fuck off of me. “Even if you do discard me someplace along the road, you’re always going to be a part of my future, baby or not.”
He disengaged from my breast, his body surfing up mine until we were face to face. He didn’t look mad, just dead serious.
“I’m trying not to be selfish, Avery.” The words were a growl, the kind of growl a dog makes just before it bites.
A rush of adrenaline shot through me. I blinked, not caring that the tears sliding down my cheeks made me look weak. My lips and tongue worked at something I couldn’t say.
He kissed me softly on the mouth. “I want to be in you.”
Another kiss, a little harder than the first.
“I wanted to take you to my senior prom, was going to ask you even though you were a grade younger and I’d never said a single word to you, but...”
I nodded my understanding. His life had been thrown in turmoil his senior year. His dad had been arrested and convicted during the school year. That was just the beginning of the end for the Tilleys in Thunder Valley.
In mute apology, I ran my fingers softly against the fading red on his cheek. I trailed them over his chin until I reached the tattoo on his neck. A winged skull covered his Adam’s apple. Lincoln and his dead brother, Boone, had a similar tattoo. They had gotten it after their father was sent away.
Instead of a tuxedo for prom, he had received this mark of loss, this twisted sign that freedom came only in death.
“Baby...” He shifted and I felt the head of his erection pushing at my gate. “I wanted to throw you on my bike the first time I saw you working at Freya’s.”
He started to push in, my body yielding with mutual need.
“Take you home and whip your daddy’s ass for letting you work at a bar full of bikers and drug dealers.”
I blinked, more tears wetting my face and obscuring my vision. I rubbed at my eyes. I wanted to watch his face, didn’t want to miss seeing the emotion I could hear in his voice. Straining my head up, I kissed him as I pressed my thighs against the solid muscles of his hips. My arms tangled around his shoulders.
“We’re here now,” I whispered, desperate for the fat crown to slip all the way inside me. I was exposed, opened as wide as I could go but he had to be the one to sink into me, to surrender.
His lips skimmed across my cheek to find my mouth. “I won’t fuck you, Avery.”
It took me a second to realize what he was saying. He hadn’t retreated, I could still feel just the tip of the broad head wedging me open. But he wanted me to know exactly what this was between us. What he thought it was.
“Not fucking,” I agreed and squeezed his shoulders. “I don’t want you to fuck me, either. But I do want you in me, Callan. I want to be filled by—”
He pushed in and I thought my chest would explode. I gave a soft cry, not of pain although it hurt a little to have him stretching me so suddenly. The cry was an acknowledgment of the word I couldn’t say and that he didn’t want to hear just yet.
Callan mashed his lips against mine, robbing me of any chance of speech. His hips began to move, the head of his cock dragging heavily through me. I gasped for air, greedy for a lungful but accepting the small sip of oxygen he allowed me before the kiss continued, his tongue sweeping through my mouth with the same hard, questing nature of his cock. The bed started to creak as Callan’s pace increased. I could feel my climax building as my muscles knotted around the shaft and fat head.
“Yes...” My nails scratched lines down his back and my vision began to collapse, a grey circle crowding its edges. “Yes, Callan...”
“No,” he teased, slowing down. Remaining inside me, he raised his torso, pushed his legs under mine and settled onto his heels. His hands wrapped around my thighs to hold me open as he stared down at where his cock disappeared into my pussy.
“You’re going to have a hard time riding tomorrow, baby girl.” He chewed at his bottom lip as he slowly fucked back and forth inside me. The big head bullied my flesh as it dipped, retreated then slammed back in to batter the opening of my cervix. Slow again, his hips rolling to outline a gentler circle inside me.
He hit a spot, the swollen tip almost backed entirely out of me, and I cried out.
“There?” He rasped.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t open my eyes to look at him in approval, could only grit my teeth and nod like a fiend.
A small roll, a little dip. I sucked air in, refusing to release a single molecule of it until I climaxed. I would need it to scream his name.
His hand left my leg to bulldoze my clit. He teased me inside and out, the pleasure almost enough to turn my flesh inside out. My nails clawed at the bedspread. Another breath in. I could feel my face purpling.
His fingers moved a little faster, up and down my clit while the head of his cock battered a small circle just inside me, keeping the mouth of my pussy stretched as wide as it would go. I jerked, inhaled my last breath and cried out.
“Callan!”
He rammed into me at my scream, his arms coming under me to lift me up and impale me on his long, thick cock. He bit my throat and the top of my shoulder as my body whipped along his shaft. I was coming, the contractions running through me making him feel even bigger as my pussy rhythmically narrowed.
Callan panted, his fingertips pressing hard against my spine. I couldn’t tell if I was even breathing. Surely I had to be. The mindless moans coming from me needed oxygen to take shape, needed my throat to squeeze them into sounds. But the only squeezing I was aware of, the only pulse of life I felt, was between my legs, my pussy contorting around Callan, milking him for that first jet of his release while my orgasm continued to roll through me.
He seized and I felt it—just his cock moving as he held his breath. A violent jerk tugged at my pussy. Another one and then I resumed my bouncing to wring another thick string of
cum from him. My hands wrapped around the side of his head and squeezed as I reached the very top of my climax and plummeted, my mind shattering when I hit the bottom.
“Baby?”
I opened my eyes to find a soft smile playing along Callan’s mouth. I smiled back, the endorphins in my body making my face feel drugged and floppy. He rolled his lips, massaging my sore muscles for a few seconds before he said anything more.
“You’re never getting rid of me after this.”
8
Callan
The red display on the alarm clock read a few minutes past two when I smelled the intruder. He just might have been the quietest son of a bitch I’ll ever encounter, but his stink gave him away before he could place the gun to my head and pull the trigger.
I grabbed the hand holding the gun and shouted a warning to Avery.
“On the floor!”
The return silence lasted long enough for me to fear that I had slept through his hurting her, but then I heard Avery’s small cry of surprise and felt the mattress move as she slid onto the floor. My free hand found the collar of my attacker and I rolled onto my side after she had cleared the bed.
Despite the leverage he had standing over me, the man was too scrawny to resist. Now I had him on his back and the leverage was all mine. Holding him down, I squeezed his wrist and prayed he didn’t release a round into the wall. At the moment, I didn’t care who was on the other side, I just didn’t want a gunshot drawing the police to our room.
“Let go or I’ll break your fucking wrist,” I hissed.
The bedside lamp came on. Part of me realized Avery must have hit the wall switch, but I kept my concentration on the man beneath me. He hadn’t released the gun, so I squeezed harder, pouring every ounce of strength my arm possessed into my grip.
A sick, wet snap rewarded my efforts and the gun fell onto the pillow. He started to scream from the broken wrist. I covered his mouth with one hand and reached for the gun with the other. My heart hammered inside my chest. I tried to calm it, but the pounding wouldn’t slow down.
I looked at the man’s face but didn’t recognize him. This fucker had been ready to kill us and he wasn’t even a member of the Steel Tide!
At least not the chapter I rode with.
I swallowed a ball of oxygen, felt it travel in a clump down my throat and waited for it to feed my brain. When it did, I looked around the room in the feeble light cast by the cheap lamp. Avery stood at the edge of the bed, her eyes wide, the pupils almost nonexistent from fear. I glanced over my shoulder at the door.
“Lock the door, baby.”
Terrified or not, she didn’t hesitate. Fear wasn’t going to freeze my girl. Under pressure, her brain worked better than mine because she thought to check the other side of the door. Outside, a key hung from the lock. She removed it, locked the door and hurried back to the bed, her hand in a tight fist around the key.
The man still screamed behind my palm, my hand only lightly muffling the sound. “Get me a pillow,” I barked.
Again, she didn’t hesitate. She whipped a pillow from the other bed and placed it over his face. I slid my hand away and she pushed down, keeping him quiet while I shifted position. When I was sitting on his chest, I took control of the pillow.
Instinct brought my gun hand up, the barrel of the cheap, compact 380 denting the fabric and stuffing beneath it.
Avery lightly touched my shoulder. “You can’t kill him. The clerk knows our faces.”
I nodded angrily at the key she held in her hand. “You mean the clerk who sold us out?”
“We don’t know if he threatened her. She could be tied up, dead, or calling the police right now.”
Blood drained from my face like air leaving a popped balloon. Avery was right. All the scenarios were a real possibility. So was the possibility that the desk clerk sold us out and deserved a bullet in the brain to keep her from testifying.
Whatever the truth was, I didn’t have time to find out. Lifting the pillow, I slammed my fist with the gun in my hand against the man’s head, knocking him out.
“Grab my knife,” I ordered.
Avery reached into my boot and unfolded the three-inch blade I carried. She swallowed and then she looked at me, an ugly suspicion clouding her gaze. She wasn’t certain I would listen to her and let the man live.
“Cut up the shower curtain. I need strips so I can bind him.”
Relief brought color back to her cheeks as she ran for the bathroom. I took the man’s limp form and started dragging him after her. I studied him as I put him into position, his arms wrapped around the base of the toilet.
He had a leather vest on, a prospect’s patch on the front and the top rocker for Cain’s Disciples on the back. I shook my head at the stupidity of it—his and mine. He had been stupid enough to believe he could sneak into the hotel room and execute me on his own, maybe because the Steel Tide had spread the kill order to other clubs or maybe to speed along his probation period by taking out a member of the Tide in Disciples’ territory.
As for my own stupidity, I almost choked on it. I didn’t think I would be recognized so far away without my colors. Just me, some shades, a nice bike and a beautiful girl on the back of it. Nothing to recognize—except for the bike.
Frankenstein
I had picked that as the bike’s name for more than one reason. A modified Harley, the front came from a Suzuki 750, with a Harley Fat Bob slotted aluminum wheel that I had shaved about an inch of hub material from so it would fit between the front forks. The headlamp cowl was from a V-Rod and I had put a hinged V-Rod airbox cover over the gas tank.
Like the fictional Frankenstein, the modifications had been made from a graveyard of parts. But I had also painted the body a midnight blue and handcrafted chrome lightning bolts that ran along the sides and over the airbox cover.
There wasn’t another bike like it in the southern United States, and I received comments and envious looks wherever I rode. So it was fucking stupid that I hadn’t stopped once we had half a dozen hours between us and Thunder Valley and done something to disguise the bike. I certainly should have, but part of me was running scared and the other part was controlled by my dick and the soft body pressed against my back.
I had fucked up and almost gotten both of us killed for it.
Growling, I finished binding the Disciple’s hands and feet. Since I didn’t want him screaming and I didn’t want a dead body, I wet a washcloth and shoved it in his mouth before tying a strip of the shower curtain around it. I wanted to do more, not to keep him in place but to hurt him. Only I didn’t have the time to bash his head against the toilet bowl until I felt better and I didn’t want Avery to see me do it.
If I wanted to keep her, I couldn’t be the monster Big Red and the club had been trying to fashion me into for the last three years. I had to be the man my father and brothers raised me to be. Even if they were likely gone from my life forever.
9
Avery
Callan hustled me out of the hotel room. We couldn’t just hop on the bike and ride out of the hotel’s single drive. Not with the cops potentially on the way and the loyalty of the clerk in question. Callan pushed his bike up the steep embankment on our side of the parking lot. As early as it was, there was no traffic on the other side of the small hill.
He hadn’t spoken to me since telling me to cut up the shower curtain. Everything since then was communicated in grunts and hard nods and head jerks. I didn’t challenge him on it. I could see the tension that possessed his entire body. I could feel the sick shake of adrenaline that still infected my limbs and knew he had at least as much of the chemical pumping through his blood.
With the bike finally on the curb, I climbed on behind him and tried to hide the tremble in my hands as I fastened the helmet on my head. We had come up from Florida and had planned on heading north east from Atlanta until we got too close to the Washington DC area with its massive level of surveillance.
I didn’t have
a clue whether that was still the plan until we hit the onramp of I-85. We stayed on the freeway until Greenville. In Greenville, we stopped at a mom and pop grocery store. Callan had me stay near the front of the store, positioned at a magazine rack where I could look out on the parking lot while remaining relatively hidden. Once he had cleared checkout and we were back outside, we crossed the small shopping plaza to a hardware store. This time, he kept me with him while he picked up black spray paint and some kind of metal filler. The last thing he did before we left the plaza and Greenville was pry the chrome lightning bolts off the bike and toss them in a dumpster.
From Greenville, we took back roads, our direction more or less parallel to the interstate while avoiding it. He had filled the holes from the discarded bolts with the metal filler. The container stated a drying time of ninety minutes. We were a few minutes beyond that hour and a half when we stopped again, this time at a little roadside park commemorating a long dead war hero.
With me off the bike and holding my backpack and the store bags, Callan pushed the motorcycle into the trees until we couldn’t see the park and its buildings. Finding a small clearing, he put a flat rock under the kickstand and grabbed the bag from the hardware store.
Shaking the can of spray paint, he nodded at the other bag. “You should eat.”
They were the first words to come out of his mouth since Atlanta and it bugged me. Someone had a gun to his head a few hours ago and he’d almost killed the man because of it. We left that man gagged with his hands tied behind the base of a toilet. And all Callan could say was that I should eat.
I didn’t need him to tell me something my own stomach was perfectly capable of communicating.
“So should you,” I replied, my throat almost too tight for speech.
He glared at me for a second then turned to the bike. He tucked the plastic store bag around the front of the seat and began spraying. Midnight blue turned to black. I gave up trying to stare a hole in his back and sat down against a tree.