by A. J. Downey
I chewed my bottom lip but at Jared’s easy smile and the gently chiding look he gave me, I finally nodded.
“Go,” I told Marc, and he bounced on his feet and dashed off into the trees, his tall and gangly frame ducking between trailers.
“Where are we staying?” I asked.
“One of the trailers. They’re reserved for chapter council, officers and the like and older members after that who don’t do ground sleeping so well anymore.”
I nodded and he came to me, holding out his hand. I took it and wandered into the bustling chaos with him, following him down the drive to the lodge and drifting in his wake like a shadow while he greeted other men and connected with Maverick who gave him a key on a diamond-shaped plastic tag.
“Thanks, man,” he said.
Maverick grinned at me. “How you doing over there, Little Mermaid?” he asked me and I frowned slightly.
“Little Mermaid?” I asked.
Maverick’s grin grew.
“Way you’re looking around and clinging to Glass’s hand there, you remind me of the Little Mermaid – all excitement and awkward like you just stepped out of the sea for the first time and you’re trying to take in all the things.”
I felt myself blush. “I definitely feel like it’s a whole new world,” I said, and Marisol laughed.
“That’s Aladdin,” she said, and I shrugged.
“It all blurs together after a while,” I said laughing.
“Come on, baby. Let’s grab your stuff out of the back of Aspen’s cage and find our crash pad.”
“Sounds good,” I murmured and waved goodbye to Maverick and Marisol as Jared led me away with a gentle tug on our entwined hands. They were smiling and Maverick lifted a hand back in my direction to wave us off.
We stopped at Aspen’s car in the small parking lot and retrieved my little rolling carryon out of the back. Jared insisted on carrying it for me as we made our way through the scattered trees and plots along the gravel trails and across little wooden foot bridges built over ditches and gulches.
There was a big circular clearing, also gravel, with a big firepit at its center, surrounded by low, split-log benches that was utterly charming.
“Kids‘ll have a great time around the campfire tonight. Perfect weather for it,” Jared said, and I smiled.
“Got enough fixings for s’mores?” I asked and he chuckled.
“Always.”
20
Glass Jaw…
There was a post outside each trailer door with house numbers nailed to them. Artful, not too bad. We wandered through the camp and park and found the post with the matching number to the tag on our key.
We had a little airstream tucked back into the trees, some flowering pots set up on stone pedestals around it, and lavender by the steps leading to the front door. Pinwheels spun in the light breeze and there was a little bistro table out front with two seats.
“Mom!” Marc called from somewhere. Cadence turned this way and that and beaming, rose her arm to wave back at him. He was down the trail setting up his tent, a brother from another chapter helping him out, a teen girl standing by as her daddy threaded fiberglass tent poles through the pocket it belonged in.
“Looks like Marc’s made a new friend already,” I said with a chuckle.
“I’m not sure if I like that,” Cadence said through a tight smile as she looked her son’s way. “Hormones are gonna start raging any minute.”
“He’s a smart kid,” I said.
She turned back to me with raised eyebrows and a faint smile and mused, “So was I when I was his age.”
“Ooo, touché,” I said. “Want me to talk to him later?”
“Talk to him how?” she asked, stepping up into the little trailer past me once I’d gotten the door open.
“Man-to-man, condom use, making sure he’s set… you know the drill.”
She looked back and took her little suitcase that I handed up to her.
“You’d do that?” she asked curiously.
“Figure it might be easier coming from me than his mom,” I said.
She smiled sweetly and said, “It’s been handled. Marc does know better, but I do appreciate it.”
“Speaking of some sex education,” I said with a lascivious grin. “Trailer’s rockin’, don’t come knockin’.”
She threw back her head and laughed. Shouldering my pack, I got up into the small space with her and shut the door firmly behind us.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, and she turned and smiled, working the window nearby open. I went to the other one on the opposite side of the trailer. It was hotter than Satan’s hairy asshole in here.
“Should cool off with the breeze,” she murmured, and I palmed her hip and drew her closer to me.
“Mm-hm.” I dipped my head and kissed her, and she kissed me back. The bed was a pretty good size in here, but that was all there really was to this trailer. A bed, a place to set up our bags to get in ‘em, a little two-seater nook, and the tiny kitchenette, which was really just a mini fridge now, the stove gone and converted to counter space. Other than that, it was just some funky retro art and a clock on the wall. The sleeping area, clearly upgraded to a bigger bed, ate up the rest of the renovation.
It was the bed I was interested in and getting Cadence in it.
Her lips were like silk underneath mine, her curves sexy and sleek where my hands wandered over her tee beneath the leather jacket that I’d bought her. The jacket looked as good as I thought it would on her, but it was about to look even better off of her and puddled somewhere on the narrow floor.
Her hands were like butterflies against me, plucking at my clothes, landing softly against my chest, her touch sweet and light. We pulled the leather and fabric from each other’s skins a piece at a time and when she pressed herself against me, even with the trailer being hotter than Hell, it was like the pearly gates opened.
So soft, so smooth, so beautiful and goddamn did she smell so good – sweet and pretty, like champagne and candy, decadent and feminine at the same time. I kissed her, tongues twining, and my cock was so hard it ached.
She wrapped a delicate hand around my dick, and I moaned into her mouth. Shit, fuck, it took everything in me not to come right then and there. She stroked me lightly, teasing, her touch almost cool. My cock was so hot against her palm. She gripped me a little more firmly and I grunted, thrusting my hips unconsciously, my precum slicking me through her grasping fingers.
“Jesus fuck, baby,” I breathed against her mouth and felt her lips curl in a little smile beneath mine.
“I love that I can make you feel good,” she whispered and holy shit.
I captured her face between my hands and devoured her mouth, kissing her fiercely, wanting her so bad I wanted to crawl inside her. I wanted to slide my hands into her long tresses, but they were captured by the leather sheath to keep them from tangling.
“Turn around, I want to let down your hair,” I told her, and so obediently, so sweetly, and so trusting, she gave me the long sweeping line of her back.
There wasn’t anything about this woman that wasn’t sexy.
I undid her hair, pulling the elastic off of it and turned her by her shoulders. She turned around, all that silky, ebony perfection foaming around her face, and I buried my hands in it, knotting my fist at the back of it and pulling her head all the way back. I kissed her fiercely, my blood heating to a slow rolling boil in my veins as the volume on my desire was turned all the way up.
I loved how she reached for me. How she stepped into me. How she pressed her body as close to mine as she could get, and how she was content just to make out with me until I was so worked up, I was practically throwing her onto the bed.
She hit the mattress and I pulled her to the end, going onto my knees at the edge of the bed, shouldering her knees apart and grasping her hips as she fell all the way back in surrender. I tasted her and fuck, she was so good – musky and sweet, fresh, and womanly. I could spend fucking h
ours eating her out. So wet and dusky pink, if sunshine had a flavor, it would taste like Cadence Mitchell did.
“Oh!” Her voice was breathy and high, sounding as though she were in awe and fuck, that was a turn-on. A big one.
“I’m going to make you feel so fucking good,” I growled against her cunt, and she shuddered provocatively against me.
I sucked on her clit and lapped at her opening, teasing her slowly, working her up steadily.
I loved how she gasped. How she fisted the covers at her hips. How I had to hold her thighs, fingertips digging in to hold her still so I could give her the attention she deserved.
She yelped and gasped as I slid my first two fingers inside of her and then moaned and whined, pressing the heel of one hand against her mouth as I teased her clit and made that come-hither motion inside her, teasing that spot inside her. But I had another slight trick up my sleeve. I took my free arm and pressed just above her pubic bone, bringing her G-spot in closer contact with my questing fingers, and she made this wonderful animalistic sound, her hips trying to jerk, but I had a hold of her firmly, now and I was about to put her into some beautiful agony.
It was exquisite torture, making her come and not letting her up, bringing her so hard, so fast, and holding her right there against the heat of the sun of her orgasm. I held her there until her doubts burned away and then I held her there a little longer until the panic swept back in, and she was so overwhelmed I had to relent. I wanted to push her every limit, but I didn’t want to scare her, or push her over the edge of what she could endure.
She lay panting, eyes closed, head turned, legs splayed and twitching, and I rose between her thighs with such a sense of satisfaction that it was my hands, my mouth, that brought her to this.
I smiled and watched her, such a beautiful mess below me. I stroked myself lazily, fisting my cock, squeezing, sliding up and down my shaft, over my head, waiting on her panting breath to slow, waiting for her to look at me and to know she was back with me, before I fucked her and sent her sailing over that cliff and plunging her deep into orgasm all over again.
She gasped and turned her head slowly and looked at me through heavily lidded eyes. I smiled – grinned actually – and asked her, “You ready for more?”
“No,” she whispered softly but the flicker of a smile on her own lips told me she was a fucking liar.
I wrapped my arms around her thighs and dragged her bodily to the edge of the low bed. She slid easily over the covers, and I brought her ass slightly over the edge of the bed. It was the perfect height – with me kneeling on the floor beside it – to enter her and so I did. I wasn’t gentle. I plunged into her wet waiting heat hilt deep and listened to her yowl half in surprise and half in pleasure.
I loved the feel of her silken wet heat around me, how she tightened up around my cock as I thrust, making it hard to pull free, as though she didn’t want to let me go. She was so fucking beautiful, so natural, so giving of herself and submitted to whatever I wanted of her so beautifully. It was a special kind of high controlling someone as gorgeous and who had her shit together like Cadence.
She didn’t have to give anything to me, but she gave her all and didn’t hold anything back and that was intense.
I was just on that edge, that fine silver edge, balls tightening, that telltale tingle at the base of my spine when a fucking knock fell at the door.
Cadence jerked beneath me and scooted back on the bed. I swore as I slipped out of her. Whoever was fuckin’ bothering me was gonna fuckin’ hear about it.
“Cover up, baby,” I said, and she slipped between the sheets, pulling the covers over her perfect breasts, and hid her face behind her long shining fall of hair as I went to the trailer door.
I opened it, not caring I was naked as the day I was fucking born, then cursed myself as the door swung out, the thought, ‘what if it’s Marc?’ coming a hair too late.
Thankfully, it wasn’t Marc and there were no kids lingering out here.
“What the fuck do you want, Dipshit?” I demanded.
“Sorry, boss. Fish sent me to come get you. Says the big council’s been called early and you need to be there.”
“Where at?” I demanded, frustrated. Shit was up, shit had to be up. We didn’t deviate from schedule like that often. Not unless it was really called for.
“Firepit area. Everyone’s been told to steer clear.”
“Got it, be there in two.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell ‘em,” he said. He wouldn’t look at me, his face red as he decidedly tried to look anywhere else.
I hadn’t dismissed his ass yet, and I let him squirm for a full minute before I demanded, “Anything else?”
“No!”
“Well then, fuck off!” I shouted and without a word, Dipshit beat a hasty retreat.
I chuckled when I went back in and looked back to Cadence who had her hands over her mouth, her green eyes as bright and vibrant as I had ever seen them.
“Duty calls,” I said, and she blinked owlishly at me. I had to say, I loved putting that freshly fucked look on her.
“I am so glad that wasn’t Marc,” she said.
“Me too. I honestly didn’t even think,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.
“Sounded important,” she said.
“Yep.” I nodded.
“To be continued?” she asked.
“To be continued,” I said with a reluctant sigh and started separating our clothes, finding mine and pulling them on.
“Ugh, I hate that you didn’t get off,” she complained, and I had to smile. The fact she cared was pretty fucking fantastic and just one more reason I liked her as much as I did.
“Oh, I’ll get mine,” I said. “I guarantee it.”
She smiled and said, “What was that about the firepit?”
“That’s where the council is meeting up, so if you could avoid it for the time being, that would be great.”
“Sure thing. I’ll go find Marc and we’ll head to the beach,” she said.
I nodded. “Good plan. I’ll find you there.”
“Okay.”
I pulled my shirt over my head and leaned over her, kissing her soundly. She kissed me back, touching my face and I loved that she did that. Made shit special. More special than it had a right to be.
“I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can,” I promised and took my cut off my jacket and swung it on over my faded gray motocross tee.
“Okay.” She nodded, and her posture was much more relaxed now that it was just us. I gave her one last long, lingering look, and popped open the trailer door and made a small leap over the steps to the ground.
I shut the door behind me and let me tell you, it took some fuckin’ discipline to march my ass down the trail to the meet.
I frowned when I realized it was just Ps and VPs from each chapter.
“What’s up?” I asked Mav.
“Word from Eulogy’s Canadian connections. Shit’s heavy, stay tuned,” he said. “It’ll all get laid out.”
I nodded. “Thanks for the preview of coming attractions,” I grated and wasn’t thrilled. His tone brooked bad things were on the fuckin’ horizon.
We were waiting on the president of the Eastern Oregon chapter who came up the opposite trail from mine with just his cut over his bare chest. Looked like I wasn’t the only one indulging in his woman’s body.
“Couldn’t this wait?” he demanded. “I was just about to get off.”
I laughed and he scowled at me. I held up my hands and shook my head. “Same, bro. Same. What’s the big fuckin’ deal?” I asked.
Fearless gave a nod in my direction for asking the question and posted up next to his VP, Armor.
That’s how we all sort of stood, in a circle, president of their chapter shoulder to shoulder with their vice president. It had been too long, man.
There was me and Mav, repping Western Washington, and honestly with the biggest chapter by far, Mav was sort of the de facto leader to the entir
e five chapters when we all got together like this.
Then there were the new guys, Lone Wolf, or just Wolf and Ryder, repping the Eastern Washington crew.
Lone Wolf was a tall guy, six-three and in his forties, his long hair pulled into a low pony and looked like iron. It’d started out dark, but he had healthy swaths of gray in it, but it didn’t serve to call it salt and pepper – no, iron was the descriptor there and his gaze was straight up steely through eyes as dark as coal.
By comparison, his second, Ryder, was a runty little shit at only five-six. Blond hair that curled like Tic’s, he had it in a pony that went to the middle of his back. If it weren’t for his goatee under those piercing green eyes, he would almost, almost, be as pretty as a woman. I wouldn’t say any of that shit to his face, though. Guy had a temper, but it was cold as ice. He didn’t get mad, he got even, and it wasn’t always in a joking or prankster sort of way.
South of us in the land of Western Oregon, things were run by Gargoyle and River. Gar was one of those silent stony-faced motherfuckers who sat or stood by and observed everything, the calculations going on in his brain unreadable on his face. He was a smart son of a bitch, though, just usually quite a bit more methodical than Mav. When he and Mav put heads together, you better watch out, though. His hair was close cut, a high and tight, and was mostly white with a slight sheen of silver to it. He was an ex-Marine and looked a shit ton like Steven Lang from his Avatar movie days. Cameron’s, not Airbender or whatever the fuckin’ cartoon was.
River was a thoughtful hipster-lookin’ motherfucker with his dark hair and van dyke beard. Always wondered if he fancied himself some kind of revolutionary with how much he hated the U.S. government. He kept it to himself for the most part, but if you got him drunk and got him going, he would almost never shut up about it. I personally kind of wondered if he served and if it was something he’d heard or seen overseas that turned him out that way, but I wasn’t about to fuckin’ ask.
Eastern Oregon’s leadership consisted of Fearless and Armor. Fearless was as his name implied. An adrenaline junky by nature, he ran a skydiving school out near Pendleton. He was a Patrick Swayze motherfucker al la Point Break, but he didn’t have an ounce of surfer dude to him. In his thirties with no sign of slowing down, he was the man you wanted in extreme situations where the adrenaline was flowing – always cool as a cucumber and able to think like the adrenaline somehow streamlined his thought process rather than sent it into chaos.