by A. J. Downey
“Shit, you ride here?” he asked.
“Yup and you’re sittin’ bitch. Nut to butt, honey.”
“Man, fuck you!” He laughed. Neither one of us were homophobic pieces of shit but we knew plenty of guys that would balk at being thought of as gay.
We rode out to where his bike should have been parked on the street, but he was right, looked like it’d been towed.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” he swore and called the number on the nearby sign to find out where it was and how much it was gonna cost to get it out of impound. I sat on my bike nearby and waited on him.
“Almost seven hundred dollars?... What?... What?... What? Man, you fuckin’ blood sucking assholes are something else. You had my bike less than four hours and you wanna charge me six-hundred-and-eighty-nine dollars to get that shit out?”
I gave a low whistle. Bail may have been on the club, but this? This was all him.
“You better not have fucked any of my shit up.” He swore into the phone and then demanded, “Aight, where am I goin’?”
I put the address into my GPS and checked out the route. I knew where it was. It was on South Tacoma Way just a few streets down from this wholesale place I got some of my construction supply shit from.
I sat by while he handled his shit, and while he griped and grumbled about it, he did it with sort of a smile. I mean, it wasn’t the lot attendant’s fault his shit got towed, it was his dumbass fault for parking on the street like that.
“You good?” I asked as the gate rumbled open so he could go in and retrieve his shit.
“We’ll see in a minute,” he said.
I waited, and a few minutes later his bike fired up and he carefully came out over the gravel on it.
“Alright, club?” he called over the chug of his engine and I nodded. I fired up my bike and we rode together back up I-5 to Rat City and the club, dipping off at state route 518 and taking it all the way into Burien.
Mav was waiting outside the club with a few other guys and handed Major a joint when he got off his bike on the side of the clubhouse building.
Major took it and took a hit off it. Mav said, “Come on and fill us all in on what the fuck happened.”
Major nodded and handed the joint back, holding his breath and the fragrant smoke in as we all stepped around the front of the building to where some of the rest of the guys were piled sitting on the picnic tables and benches out front with their morning beers.
“Calling service?” Deacon asked and Mav chuckled and shook his head.
“Naw, no sense in dragging everyone else in here yet. You want to do this in my office or is out here cool?” Mav asked.
“Out here’s cool. I didn’t do nothin’ wrong, man.”
“From what I gathered, the only thing he fucked up on is he may have been tryin’ to stick his dick in some crazy,” I said when Mav looked past him at me.
Squatch and Nine laughed at that.
“Fill us in,” Mav ordered, and Major did.
“Said he’d hooked up with this chick through a couple of mutual soldier buddies from his time in the Army down around JBLM.” That was Joint Base Lewis-McChord. “Said he and she had hit it off some, and he was sorta lookin’ to hit it but hadn’t gotten there yet. She and some of her hoochie-ass friends wanted to hit a bar down on Pearl and he hadn’t really been feelin’ it, but he wanted to tap that ass so he’d knuckled under and taken her.
“Said they’d been knockin’ back drinks and were having a good time when her brother comes in and starts chewin’ the girl’s ass and he told us, ‘Not gonna lie, like at first I was like ‘hoooo, shit! She gotta boyfriend!’ then I asked her who is this dude? Right? And this motherfucker turned on me and said ‘I’m her brother, you stupid ass nigger!’ and I ain’t about that so I told him to get his honky ass outside he gonna talk to a brother like that. Then he’s all callin’ me boy and we go outside and I tell him this boy is gonna whoop that ass, and the cops show up. This fucker keeps screamin’ at me and I just kept taunting him back. The next thing my ass knows, I’m the one bent over the back of the fuckin’ car, bracelets goin’ on me.”
“Anything happen to this pendejo?” Mav asked and I secreted a smile. Marisol was rubbing off on his lily-white ass and giving his language some color.
“Naw, they let him go, even though girly was tellin’ ‘em that he started it. A bunch of other people in the crowd, too.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get your ass beat,” Squatch said.
“Nah, too many phones out, cameras rolling,” Major said. “I wasn’t resisting or nothing. I was drunk, yeah, but I wasn’t that stupid.”
I met a sideways look from him and saw it plain on his face, he’d been legit pissing himself he’d been so scared, but we all knew it. We didn’t need to tear him down further by refusing to take what he had to say at face value. It was enough that we all fuckin’ knew.
“Alright, we’ll bring it up at our next church meetin’ but the best thing you can do right now is lie low, stay outta Pierce for a minute, and build back your capital for the next set of fines and shit. We’ll send the club lawyer with you to your court date.”
Major nodded. “Appreciate it.”
“No worries,” Mav declared.
“Don’t think either the girl or her brother are gettin’ off the hook, either.”
“Oh, hell no, the fuck they aren’t,” Major glowered. “I know the drill. Bide our time.”
“That’s right.” Mav nodded and leaned back, passing me the joint. I took a hit.
I would be getting my shot in on Billy bumfuck racist myself just for interrupting my time with Cadence.
I texted her throughout the day and checked in on her but didn’t get a response, which worried me.
I hung around the club and my bros for a few hours and changed the oil on my bike over at the boneyard since the lift was free and made it easier. When I got my baby back on the ground and checked my phone for the millionth time, my third and last text still gone unanswered more than an hour later, I decided that was it. I was swinging by Cadence’s place on the way home – which wasn’t really on the way but fucking whatever.
I was glad that I did stop. I felt like a shitbird that it was my phone causing the problem and I damn sure would be getting with my service provider to find out exactly what the fuck. But honestly, all of it just sort of just drained away or turned to so much white noise the second I had Cadence back in my arms.
I wished like hell I could stay, but I knew she and I both needed a little breathing room. We could be too much of a good thing and I wanted to nurture this ember between us. I didn’t want shit to flame out and fade away. I wanted something with this woman that would burn brightly and for all eternity, but I definitely didn’t want to move too fast, nor did I ever want her to think I was apathetic or that she wasn’t enough.
Once again, as I stood there on her back patio with her, I wanted to kill her fucking ex a second time over. She was riddled with a guilt that wasn’t her burden to carry, holding up the weight of his infidelity and all the bullshit that came with it – the anxiety, the shame, people’s sniggering and their judgments. Even from almost three thousand miles away, I could see it weighing her spirit and I wanted so bad to untangle the gordian knot of pain she was wrapped in and set her fucking free. I followed her into the house, and she stopped in her kitchen. She went to the sink, and I waited her out as she cut open a package with a whole chicken in it.
“I feel so dumb now, jumping to conclusions like that,” she said as she shook, yes shook the guts out of her chicken into the garbage disposal.
“It’s fine,” I said, shoulders shaking from the laughter I was trying to suppress and failing at it. “Just, what are you doing?”
She grinned at me sheepishly. “Shaking the innards out, why?”
“I’ve never seen anyone do shit that way.”
“I don’t like to touch them!” she cried. “They’re slimy and gross! I’ve always done it th
is way.”
“Oh, my God! Here, let me.” I went over to her and the sink and took the whole chicken – still mostly in its wrapper – from her hands. Like, legit, she sliced open the package over the chicken’s ass and literally held on to the thing with both hands like you pick up a cat or a baby and shook the shit out of it, trying to dislodge the guts. It had to be some of the funniest shit I’d ever seen.
I gutted the damn thing, peeled the wrapper off, and asked her, “Where do you want it?”
“Back down in the skillet,” she said, pointing to a cast-iron skillet standing by.
I laid the chicken in it and turned back to the sink to wash my hands.
“You’re too cute,” I said over my shoulder.
She blushed faintly and I noticed that about her – that she wasn’t used to compliments or praise and she soaked that shit up like a sponge.
Being who I was and where I came from, I knew a thousand and more little ways to destroy a human spirit. It wasn’t always the kicks or punches that hurt the most, but the well-placed unkind words or worse yet, using a person up. The never saying thank you, taking advantage of them over and over when all they wanted was just a little recognition.
It was the truly good people who just kept on going despite it all and Cadence was one of the good ones. I could see that, and I just honestly didn’t know why anyone from her life before couldn’t.
I hadn’t had the best upbringing. Had spent several years as a teen in and out of foster care. Dad in prison, mom so far gone on her drug habit that there wasn’t any alternative. Aunts and uncles were maxed out with their own brood of kids, grandparents too infirm to handle a hellion of a teenage boy with anger issues.
For a long time, all that boy had wanted was to be loved, but finally that boy had decided fuck it, that it wasn’t ever going to happen.
It was sometime in my twenties when I’d found something close enough in the brotherhood of the club. Spent years getting us on lock and where we needed to be so that we could just coast with this regular thing. Took me just as long to build my own business, working my way up from working for other guys in the contracting, building, and remodeling business to owning my own company and doing for myself.
I was sitting flush now, and that was good – no it was great and all, but something was and had always been sort of missing. Hooking up had satisfied the physical needs, but there was still some of that wounded boy in there, buried deep, and I think it was high time to give myself the deeper connection I’d so desperately craved all those years ago.
I dried my hands off on a kitchen towel and leaned my ass up against the sink counter’s edge and watched Cadence work. Her oven preheating the temperature, ticking up on the display and nearly there as she poured liquids and seasonings over the chicken.
“How long is this supposed to take?” I asked her, hooking one of her belt loops with my finger and towing her into my arms once the oven door was shut.
“Hold on, let me set the timer.” she said lightly. I let her punch buttons and she told me, “It takes a couple of hours, but I need to baste it at the one-hour mark.
“A couple hours?” I asked, and then teasingly I pulled her the rest of the way against me and said, “Oh, no… whatever shall we do to fill the time?”
She chuckled, kissed me, and said, “Mm, that’s dessert. I still have sides to prepare.”
“Oh, God!” I rolled my eyes and let her go with a sweet whack on the ass.
She laughed and got out some potatoes. She’d stocked her kitchen with food even if she didn’t have anything to really cook with and the preparation on her part had paid off. She’d gotten a lot done today by the looks of the living room.
I wandered back around the kitchen counter and retook my seat on the stool I’d vacated to help her out.
“Looks like you got the living room done today.”
“Almost,” she said, rinsing a golden potato at the sink and peeling it.
“What’s missing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Just some art on the walls is all,” she said smiling. “You should go have a look in the display cabinets. That’s my life’s work in there.”
Now that piqued my curiosity.
“Well, I don’t mind if I do,” I declared and got up from the counter to let her work in peace for a minute.
I tell you what, I was not prepared.
The cabinets had all framed photos of completed buildings next to framed schematics and concept drawings and the models… They were impressive, not overly large, probably the biggest one was the size of both my hands put together at the base, but whoa, were they insanely detailed!
The only thing that smacked me harder than anything else was knowing that Cadence had designed every one of them and there had to be more than half a dozen in there. I stopped and took the time to count… eight. There were eight in total, and these buildings were put up all over the world.
I gave a low whistle as Marc came bounding down the stairs.
“Oh, yeah, huh? Pretty awesome, right?”
“You’re telling me,” I agreed.
He pointed to the one, third down on the shelf in front of me and said, “That one’s my favorite.”
I bent at the waist and looked. It was pretty cool. It looked like something sleek, black, made entirely out of glass, and like it belonged in Blade Runner or some other futuristic flick.
“Where’s that one at?” I asked.
“Beijing, I think.”
“China?”
“Oh, yeah. Mom’s got buildings on every continent except Antarctica,” he said.
“What?” I asked and Marc beamed.
“I think it secretly pissed my dad off,” he said in a low whisper. “He was still missing Russia.”
I nodded and thought to myself, of course it pissed him off. Sounded like the dude’s ego seriously knew no bounds.
“Hey, Mom, when’s dinner?” Marc asked, going into the kitchen while I eyed Cadence’s accomplishments some more.
I didn’t listen to them; I was a little too engrossed here. The way she’d displayed these pieces showed how proud she was of them, and they were all something worthy of being proud of.
Damn. I didn’t realize—
“You’re awfully quiet in there,” she called, and I went back into the kitchen. She’d finished up the potatoes and was trimming off the ends to some asparagus.
“Awestruck is more like it,” I said honestly. “Those are some damn fine achievements. I didn’t know I was hooked up with such a badass.”
She blushed prettily and she honestly looked like she was downright giddy.
“It’s nice to hear someone say that instead of telling me not to let my ego get out of control,” she said and bit her bottom lip.
I pulled her to me and kissed her temple. “After what I just saw in there, you’re allowed to have an ego.”
“Should I make up some squash, too, or do you think potatoes and asparagus is going to be enough?” she asked.
“I think that’ll be plenty,” I said. “How much time we got until you need to be back in here?”
She glanced at the timer and said, “About forty-five minutes.”
“Mm, plenty of time.” I swept her up into my arms and she half fell into them, shrieking with surprise. I carried her swiftly, laughing, into the bedroom with every intention of having a little dessert first.
17
Cadence…
He carried me into the bedroom, and it was strange. I didn’t feel like I was a small girl by any stretch of the imagination, but he carried me and tossed me on the bed, pulling me across it toward him like I weighed nothing at all. I mean, it took some effort on his part, but it was as though he didn’t mind it, and not once did he make any kind of disparaging comment even in a joking manner about it.
I was grateful. There were points in our relationship where Ben had been cruel and now, I didn’t know if it was unconscious or not. There was no way to know, and I wrestled
with that and so much more.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked playfully, biting my bottom lip as he unfastened my jeans and gave me a wicked grin in return.
“Gonna make you come, so you better be quiet,” he murmured, pulling both my jeans and my panties beneath off in one smooth motion.
I giggled when he kissed my stomach. Giggles that turned into unbridled laughter when he blew a raspberry against it. He laughed because of my laughter and dragged me back to the edge of the mattress, parting my legs and folding me in half, exposing my pussy. His strong hands were on the backs of my thighs behind my knees as he licked a wet line from my opening to my clit.
I let my head fall back to the bed and moaned, clutching the covers to either side of my hips, knowing I needed to hold on because when Jared got started, he was relentless in the pursuit of my orgasm.
I jumped slightly when he slipped a finger inside me all the way to his base knuckle, and gasped and shuddered when he stroked over that spot inside me.
“Oh, God!” I gasped.
I could hear the grin in his voice when he said, “Don’t forget to be quiet.”
Oh, that dirty, dirty, mother—
I didn’t have the chance to finish the thought because his tongue was back on me, teasing my clit while he assailed my G-spot with the pad of his finger. He was oh, so, gentle about it. One time with me and he already knew what I liked. Not too hard, not too fast, just the one finger felt so nice, so good. I panted and tried to keep my voice out of things as he teased me slowly, holding off just that hair to bring me up slowly.
It was like those movies where they’re on a river, and they’re slowly heading toward the cliff with the roar and pummeling waterfall, about to plunge over the side and to their deaths. Everything building slowly, the music, the mood, everything tense, the characters not realizing the danger at first, then all too soon, overtly aware, but it’s too late. My resolve, much like their boat, breaking up in the current, both my hands clapped over my mouth as I plunged over the side into that shining fall, trying not to scream, my voice muffled to a whimper as he held me down and took me way past comfortable, outside of my scope of control, as he just kept on assaulting every one of my senses with the pure bright fire of his attentions. Tongue lapping at me lazily, finger slowing inside of me as my wetness grew, and I clenched rhythmically around it in my loss of control, my body on maximum overdrive until all I could do was close my eyes and lay limp beneath him, shuddering and shaking involuntarily with sweet little aftershocks.