Her nipples are puckered in the cool air, dusky pink and big as saucers. I probably couldn’t fit all of one in my mouth at once, but I want to try. She keeps on, revealing her taut, white belly and the curves of those hips, so ripe. And then she stops.
“You’re sure, right? You’re not gonna say ‘this is so wrong’ when I open up my pussy for you for the first time, are you?”
I’ve been so distracted drinking every perfect, creamy inch of her in that I hadn’t noticed the corners of her mouth kick up. She’s teasin’ me.
For a second, I think of teasin’ her back, but I’ve had enough of pretending. That drive, the ugly raging in my chest, tossin’ up the worst of my shitty life, shorting the circuits in my brain, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but drive. Couldn’t even pray ‘cause I didn’t know the words or who to talk to anyhow.
Now that my miracle is in front of me, alive and well, trusting me with what I know is the whole fuckin’ world…I ain’t gonna lie to her no more.
“Well?” My girl’s getting impatient with me.
“I ain’t gonna say that. You’re perfect. This is perfect. Every time you’re around, it hurts to take my eyes off you. And it ain’t ‘cause of your body, which is perfect, but ‘cause there ain’t anything in the world that makes me feel the way I do when I look at you.”
“And what’s that?” Her hands have stilled, but she’s trembling.
“Like there’s good in it.” And I said it all wrong somehow cause her big blue eyes fill with tears. My heart cracks. There it is. I can’t be trusted with nice things. I break shit. It’s how I was made.
“Fuck,” I say and make for her bedroom. “We don’t have time for all this. The club’s on lockdown. We got to head out. You got a duffle bag?”
“Nickel.” She calls me back. She ain’t moved from the spot. “What the fuck?”
I can’t stand to look at those tears, so I stare over her shoulder. “Just wipe your face, would you, Story? It’s been a long day.”
She swipes at the tears, seeming surprised they’re streaming down her cheeks. I hand her the handkerchief from my back pocket.
“Is it the tears? They bother you?”
I don’t dignify that with an answer. After a few moments, after she realizes I ain’t gonna say shit, Story smiles.
“You’re sweet as hell. You know that?”
“So you gotta cry about it?”
She huffs and elbows past me to her bedroom. “You ain’t got a clue about women, do you?”
“Never claimed different.” I follow my girl and stand there while she throws her crap in a bag. My dick’s still hard, but it’s clear the moment’s passed, and I ain’t pressed. She’s here, she’s safe. She’s stopped bawling. It’s all right.
CHAPTER 13
STORY
Nickel Kobald is really absolute shit with women. You’d think my tears were the plague or somethin’. I let him off the hook and pack a bag. I’m disappointed—my clit is aching—but I’m figuring out that getting closer to Nickel isn’t about getting naked.
I wish I could remember every word he said in the right order, but I’m sexually frustrated, still a little woozy from falling on my ass earlier, and I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
Nickel calls to have the pizza sent to the clubhouse, and I don’t fuss when he gets all bossy and tells me I’m gonna be stayin’ there with him until this business with the Rebel Raiders is settled, and that’s that. I’ve spent years trying to get into his bed. I don’t know why he’s acting like I’ve been drafted for some shit job.
I’m tempted to “accidentally” leave my textbooks at my apartment so I can take a break from ’em, but I pack them, too. Ma and Larry are so stoked about this community college thing. I don’t have the heart to tell them I’ve found something I hate more than English Lit, and that’s the theory and practice of dental hygiene.
I wish there was a way to dance for a living and leave my clothes on. I don’t need to be on a stage; I just want to be moving to music, with people, sharing the bliss. Is that too crazy? Probably, yes, in Petty’s Mill. If I want insurance and an income that lets me make rent without working myself to the bone, I need a skill other than dancing. I know that’s what I’m supposed to want—and being a dental hygienist would make for a good life, a better life than any Jenkins ever had at least—but I can’t help but feel sad.
Nickel’s jittery on the drive to the clubhouse, broody and quiet. He keeps checking the sideview mirrors, but I don’t think it’s the Rebel Raiders that have him all twisted up. I find out I’m right about halfway there.
“Look,” he breaks the silence. “My bunk. It ain’t nothin’ special.”
“All right.” I’ve seen the rooms at the clubhouse. The nicer ones have an en suite, but you can’t get around the fact that the building’s a rehabbed diesel garage built in the 50s.
“I got a bed and a sh— a bathroom. That’s about it.”
“Okay.”
“Ain’t like I’m poor.”
I know this. All the brothers get a cut from the businesses, and Steel Bones Construction is a big name now. They don’t show it off, but everyone in Petty’s Mill knows they make bank. All you have to do is drive past the clubhouse and look at the parking lot to figure it out.
“I got no need for a house or anything. I can’t cook worth shit.”
Neither can I, but I don’t volunteer the information. “I’m not gonna judge you, Nickel.”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe you should.”
“We back on that again?” I huff. “I don’t think you want to go there.”
“Yeah? And why’s that?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m just gonna tear up again, and then you’ll puss out, and it’ll be a whole thing.”
He tries to make his face mean, but he can’t stifle a snort. “You got a mouth on you, don’t you, woman.”
I really don’t, but there’s something about this man, vicious as a junkyard dog, that makes me want to mess with him. I want to see what I can get away with because I have the sense I can get away with everything.
He’s not a charmer like Charge, and he don’t dog on women like some of the other brothers. It’s like he’s a total relationship virgin, and I kind of see why guys get hot for the innocent girl. Most people don’t ever get to be first in line, but I’m gonna be. I’m planning on being first to plant my flag on Nickel Kobald’s heart, and that…that’s a hell of a rush.
I’m so into it, I forget my growling stomach, and I turn down Wall’s offer of a drink when we get to the clubhouse. I make Nickel take me straight up to his bunk, where I’ve never been, and I’ve got these ideas of ripping his shirt off or him ripping off mine and us going to town on each other and then—
He opens his door, and I have to blink.
Damn. He wasn’t lying. His room is empty.
It’s at the end of the hall, and it’s big. About as big as the combined kitchen/living/dining room in my apartment. And there’s literally a bed, and that is all. Oh, and a chin up bar hung in the doorway to what I guess is his bathroom. I’ve slept a drunk off in one of the guest rooms a few times, and they share a communal bathroom by the stairs. Nickel’s digs are nicer, but…bare. No pictures. No chairs. No dresser.
“Where do you keep your clothes?”
He walks over to the bed, fishes underneath, and yanks out a plastic tub with a bunch of folded t-shirts and jeans.
“Where do you put the dirty clothes?”
He walks to the bathroom door, swings it open, and I see a laundry bag hanging from a hook on the back of it. He stays over there on the far side of the room, arms crossed, a mulish expression on his face.
I shrug and drag my duffle bag in. He’d set it in the hall when he unlocked the door. Have to admit, I’m not sure why he bothers locking up a bed, a chin-up bar, and a laundry bag.
“You ain’t gonna say anything?” he finally mutters.
I look up. I’ve dropped to my kn
ees, and I’m rooting around for my makeup bag. I don’t like to leave it ‘cause once I had a bottle of baby oil leak, and I pretty much had to throw a hundred dollars’ worth of makeup away.
“Well?” he says.
I’m not sure what to say, but then my eye catches the bed.
“Those sheets clean?” I don’t want to lay down where some other girl’s bare ass has been.
He sidles up to the bed, grabs a pillow, and sniffs it. His shoulders relax. “Yup.”
Thank the Lord for small favors. I stand and start poking through my makeup, checking for leaks, when it strikes me. I glance over. Nickel has perched on the edge of the bed, watching me, wary, as if I might bolt at any minute. I look around the room again, really closely. At the walls.
There.
And there.
You can’t tell at first, but once you see, there’s dozens of them. Patches, painted over, the white just a tad less dingy than the rest of the wall. I know why he doesn’t have any furniture.
Will he tell me? Butterflies shake to life in my belly. I want him to tell me. To trust me.
“How come you don’t have a dresser or a desk or somethin’?”
He skewers me with those black eyes, and he chews the inside of his cheek. He knows that I know.
“I’ll get pissed off, and I’ll break it.”
“How long since you had any furniture?”
He exhales, and his shoulders loosen. I bet he thought I was going to bail. He still doesn’t get that I know what I’m dealin’ with. I saw him launch that Fat Boy. Drag that man out to the parking lot. Lose his shit over a documentary on sea turtles.
He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Broke the shit that was in here when I patched in and got the room from Grinder. Haven’t bothered to replace it.”
So at least ten years ago. He had his patch when he rescued me at the field party.
“That was a while ago.”
“Same man I was then.”
“A danger to men, walls, and furniture alike?” I try to make it a joke, even though I know it isn’t.
He sniffs, and a flush creeps up his neck. “I know it’s stupid. Immature.”
There’s shame in the bow of his head, and he seems so damn lonely, standing on the other side of his empty room. My heart twinges. I don’t want to leave him all alone.
“I still play dance class.”
“Huh?”
Oh, shit. Maybe I should have thought this out. No one knows about my daydreaming. Not even Ma. I can’t believe I’m telling him, but I know if I reach out with my arms, he’ll bolt, so I have to do it a different way.
“When I was a kid, I used to pretend I was a dance teacher. I’d have all these imaginary students, and I’d choreograph these elaborate dances. Then I’d teach the steps to an empty room. Correct pretend mistakes.” My face is on fire. “I still do.”
He could roll his eyes. Snort like I’m crazy. It is more than a little nuts. I’m twenty-one years old. Way past the age when playing pretend is acceptable.
“Don’t you teach a dance class?”
“Yeah. Swinging Seniors. At the rec center.” How does he know that?
“But this is different?” There’s no judgement in his voice. Just curiosity.
“Yeah. Instead of being in the rec center basement, I’ve got my own studio. Natural light. Floor to ceiling mirrors. A barre. A pretty locker room with wooden cupboards painted white and a chaise lounge with pretty pillows.”
“You really got a thing for pillows, don’t you?”
I cock my head.
“You got more pillows at your place than I ever seen before. What do you do with them?”
He’s not making fun of me. Well, he is teasing me about the pillows, but not the whole play pretend confession. He seems less set apart, too. He’s in motion again, like he usually is, and he’s working his way closer to me.
“They’re for decoration.”
“Babe, I do not get that.”
I gesture around his empty room. “I can tell.”
He’s real close now, leaning a shoulder against the wall, watching me so intently like he does, as if he wants to read me but the writing’s all smudged.
“Is that what you want? To have your own dance studio?”
I duck my head, tucking my hair behind my ears. I need a breath. The moment feels so raw, so strange. This isn’t how we are together, Nickel and I. We’re magnets with the same ends pushed together. We don’t touch. We don’t get close. We dance on the edge of a force that keeps us apart.
He reaches out, tucks away a strand of hair I missed. His fingertip whispers over the shell of my ear, and I shiver.
“Is that what you want?” he asks again.
“It’s just pretend.”
I’m Story Jenkins. My real dreams are too big come true. Suddenly, this conversation feels too real. Too dangerous. This time I’m the one to step back.
I survey the room again, fist my hands on my hips. “Well, I’m going to need somewhere to sit.”
If Nickel’s thrown by the sudden change of topic, he doesn’t show it. “What’s wrong with the bed?”
“I need a table, too. I’m going to need somewhere to put my face on.”
“You can’t use the counter by the sink?”
I glance through the open bathroom door. He’s got the kind of sink where there’s no cabinet underneath, just pipes. He’s filled up all the counter space with a cup with a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
“Nope. Sure can’t.”
He shakes his head like I’m the one who’s nuts, and then says, “Stay here.”
He’s out the door without ceremony, and I’m left in the weird, empty room, a funny feeling in my belly. I didn’t really realize there are parts of me I hide. Not ‘til I laid them out for Nickel just now. If this is trust, trust is scary as shit. I felt less exposed when I was flashing my pussy.
Nickel disappears for a half hour or so. When he comes back, he has two prospects in tow. He’s brought a folding table, two chairs, a few empty milk crates, a lamp, a Yankee candle, and a hot pizza with napkins and two Cokes.
“Pizza!” I relieve him of that in a hurry—my stomach’s been grumbling, and it echoes in this bare room—and in short order, the table’s set up, the crates are stacked along a wall as a makeshift chest of drawers, and the lamp is plugged in next to the bed.
Nickel lights the candle with his Zippo and sets it in the middle of the table. The scent of lemon lavender fills the room.
“Where’d you steal that from?”
“Deb’s office.” Deb does her bookkeeping in an office in the annex. She does all the club’s finances, even though Pig Iron is treasurer. It’s pretty much an open secret.
“Deb’s gonna hatch an egg.”
“You ain’t gonna snitch on me, are you?” Nickel retreats to sit on his bed and watch me eat.
“Deb asks, I’m not covering for you. She scares me.”
Deb’s almost as badass as Harper Tripp, Heavy’s sister and the club’s lawyer. Neither of those ladies are particularly fond of club pussy, and since I’m young and I strip, they lump me in with the girls like Angel and Danielle who spread it around.
“Aren’t you gonna have any?” I gesture toward the pizza, folding a slice and going to town.
He shakes his head slow, and a wolfish grin reveals white teeth. “Nah. I’m hungry for somethin’ else.”
The butterflies that had been snoozing in my belly take wing, and suddenly, after only one slice, I’m full.
“You think I’m a sure thing, Nickel Kobald?”
There’s so much tension radiating from him. I bet he hopes I am.
“I fed you dinner, haven’t I? Candlelight dinner no less.” He’s teasing. He’s got the dumbest smirk on his face.
“I ain’t cheap.”
“No, ma’am.”
He leans back on the bed, eyein’ me up, and I push the pizza box away. I want him to come to me. Pick me up and thro
w me on the bed. Tear my clothes off. Lose control. I am past ready.
He bounces a knee, all nervous energy.
I pull my shoulders back, thrust my tits forward. I didn’t put a bra on when I got dressed at my place, and I know he can see my nipples.
He swallows.
I lean forward in the folding chair, press my knees and thighs together. A throb has started in my pussy, just from being here alone with Nickel. The bed is so close. It’s time. No more dancing around each other.
He scrubs a hand over the back of his head.
I wait.
He sits there. Staring at me.
What the what?
“So…are we doing this?” I gesture between him and me. “’Cause I thought we were doin’ this?”
He sighs. Looks down. “Fuck, Story. I don’t know what I’m doin’ here.”
Oh, no. We are not doing this again. I’m going to rip him a new one, get up and kick him in the shins, and then the balls, and then the face, but then he says, “I ain’t exactly…you know…good at it.”
“Good at what?” I already know he’s shit at communication.
“You know…” His knee bounces faster, and a tic pulses where his jaw meets his neck. “Fucking.”
“Fucking what?” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold in the shriek of frustration.
“Just fucking.”
Fu— oh. Huh.
“I don’t— it’s just—” Nickel’s face is actually flushed. He’s blushing.
I did not see this coming. I know he fucked pretty much everyone back in the day—Danielle and Jo-Beth and Angel and Cheyenne and Claudette before Harper ran her off. Since I’ve been going to parties, I haven’t heard of him hooking up with club pussy, but he’s been to rallies. I know what goes down.
But thinkin’ about how he kissed me at first—like a raccoon gettin’ in a trash can—I can kind of see it. He’s not exactly smooth.
“So…” I tread lightly. Nickel doesn’t have that sensitive male ego like some guys, but before today, I’ve heard him talk about personal shit exactly zero times. This might be really new territory for him. “How’s it usually go?”
He shrugs. Glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “The chick gets me off. I get her off. I buy her a beer.”
Nickel's Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 11