by A. J. Downey
My balls tightened, I didn’t even have time for that building tingle at the base of my spine, and my world was exploding in flashing lights of multicolor wonder behind my eyelids as I squeezed them shut and came deep inside her shuddering, every small movement sending a pleasurable shock through my system that was almost, almost, too much to fucking bear.
She pulled me down on top of her, hugging me, holding me, with arms and legs, and we both just lay there sweating, panting, silent for the moment in a perfect harmony that I don’t think I had ever allowed myself with anyone else.
“Whoa, God, that was good,” she said with a little laugh when we’d both calmed down some.
“Only gets better,” I promised her. Adding silently, you know, if I can keep my ass out of jail.
25
Cadence…
I could tell he was tense. That he worried about something, and I knew that I knew what that something was, but he couldn’t know I knew… and that was so hard.
I hated secrets. I hated not being able to communicate with him about this, to allay his fears, to tell him I was here for him and to help but the rest of the women of the club had cautioned me against it.
They’d said that in order for our plan to work, we needed to be business as usual, and it was imperative to feign innocence and appear we knew nothing about anything as it related to the club’s side operations. Darker operations? Honestly, I didn’t know what to call them. I definitely knew it fit the definition of an anti-hero, which was Marc’s new favorite trope of superhero thanks to several of the men of The Sacred Hearts and an overly complicated discussion about superheroes over the long weekend.
“Hmm.” Jared slipped from my body and we both shuddered, still overly sensitive from our mutual orgasms. He vaulted my leg gently and collapsed onto his back on the mattress beside me, though he didn’t hesitate to reach for me and to pull me close. I loved that. He held me so tight, so well, I found a real peace and a joy in how he clutched me to his chest.
I laid my head on his shoulder and cuddled close.
“You have fun?” he asked.
“I always have fun when I’m with you,” I said slyly, and he laughed at me.
“Okay, laying it on a little thick, but that’s not what I meant. I meant with the girls last night.”
“Oh! Oh, yeah! We all decided we need a girls’ weekend and started planning one.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mm-hm,” I said, and he chuckled and squeezed me a little tighter, kissing the top of my head.
“What ‘cha gonna do?” he asked.
“Haven’t exactly decided that yet, but we’ll think of something,” I said, and he cleared his throat slightly and hummed thoughtfully.
“What’re you going to do about Marc?” he asked, and I snorted.
“Marc is seventeen, almost eighteen, and should be good for one or two nights without me,” I said.
“Yeah, stock the freezer with enough hot pockets, he might not even notice you’re gone with his head buried in that computer monitor upstairs.”
He said it with a grin and his usual lighthearted sarcasm and I just sort of giggled and carried the joke.
“Why, Jared, do you have a case of the olds?”
He laughed and hugged me a little tighter and kissed me soundly and said, “You want I should look in on him whenever you take your weekend?”
I smiled and said, “Got anything left to fix around here so you don’t make it seem like that’s what you’re doing?” I asked.
“Ahhh, uh-huh, I see what you did there, and yes. I’m sure I can come up with a thing or two left to do around here. Make sure he eats at least one nutritious meal while you’re gone.”
“I would appreciate that,” I said. Not that I didn’t trust my kid, I did… implicitly – he was a good kid. He was certainly better than I thought I deserved, and the type of kid that I would forever be grateful for.
“When you guys planning on going?” he asked.
“Oh, sooner rather than later,” I said with what I hoped sounded like a light and whimsical sigh.
“Okay,” he said, and he tipped my chin up to kiss me. “You just let me know,” he said, and I smiled and nodded.
“Well, I want to meet him,” my mother argued, and I rolled my eyes, tucking my phone between my shoulder and my chin as I juggled things out of my fridge to get them to my counter and it’s cutting board.
“Mom, I’ll be gone one night, and Marc is old enough now. Jared’s just going to stop in and check on him for me without invading Marc’s space. It’s the perfect plan.”
“Except for the part where you’re leaving my only grandson alone with a man that I haven’t met who, might I add, is dating my only daughter. Before you go haring off to Canada, I want to meet him!”
I was laughing by now and trying not to lose my phone as I dumped my armload of slick produce bags laden with produce on the kitchen counter.
“Alright, alright!” I cried. “Uncle! I cry uncle! I’ll see if he’s down to come meet my parents.”
“Lunch on Saturday?” my mother asked serenely.
“Sunday might be better,” I said, thinking of the job Jared was currently on which was taking a lot out of him. He said he might have to work on Saturday.
“Brunch it is!” she crowed triumphantly.
“I said I would see!” I cried.
“Honestly, Cadence. Mimosas or Bloody Marys?” she asked.
I frowned slightly and asked, “Who are you and what have you done with my mother? Why not both?”
“That’s fair, I just wanted to make sure that you hadn’t done something with my daughter – honestly, I am a bit worried, you’ve only just met this man.”
I rolled my eyes and said gently, “Mom, I hate to break it to you, but you just loved Ben so maybe give it a bit of a rest?”
“Well, shit. When you’re right, you’re right and I hate that you are!” she said and let out a huffy breath on the other end of the line.
My back door opened, and I heard Marc call out, “We’re back!”
I held my breath and both my son and Jared stepped into the kitchen. Jared held out the box of cream cheese in my direction and I lowered my phone and asked, “How did it go?”
He grinned at me a bit tiredly and said, “Just fine, mother hen.”
I rolled my eyes and my mom said, “Let me talk to my grandson!”
I held out my phone to Marc and said, “It’s your grandma.”
He rolled his eyes, gave me a bit of a dirty look then brightly said into the phone, “Hi, gramma!”
Jared fought to suppress his laugh so she wouldn’t hear him, and I said, “My mother wants to meet you! Brunch, at her place, on Sunday?” I cringed as I asked the last, knowing it was a longshot.
“Not this Sunday,” he said, shaking his head with a sigh. “Next Sunday is your girls’ thing, so Sunday after?”
“She can take it or leave it,” I said over Marc’s chatter from the dining room. He wandered my way.
“Uh-huh, I love you too, Gramma. I gotta go study though, so here’s Mom.”
Slick little shit, I thought, taking back the phone.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Well?” she demanded with bated breath.
“No go this Sunday, Jared has to work – next Sunday is the trip, but he said the Sunday after that so…”
“Well, all I say is that you better not be found in trash bags on the side of the freeway like so many other girls!”
I laughed, and she was chuckling too. I could hear it in her voice.
“Did you listen to the latest podcast too?” I asked.
“I sure did!”
We talked about the true crime podcast we shared, and she told me a bit about the latest true crime novel she was reading. We talked a bit more about how Marc’s driving lessons were going – something else Jared was taking off my plate and heaping on his already full one, and then we said our goodbyes.
As soon as I hung u
p, I let out a whoosh of a breath and leaned forward, letting my arms dangle, deflating a bit with relief.
Jared leaned back against one of my counters, arms crossed and smiling at me, he unfolded his arms, leather of his jacket creaking and beckoned me with his fingers, holding out his hand.
I put my hand in his and let him tow me into his arms, turning my face up for the kiss I knew he would have waiting. We pecked lips two or three times and he wrapped his arms around my shoulders tight and held me close rocking me a bit.
Do not get me wrong. I loved my mother more than life itself, but she could be a little intense sometimes, and also sort of a drama queen.
“How did it go, really?” I asked, my voice a bit muffled by his jacket and cut.
“Fine,” he said a bit exasperated. “He’s just like every other seventeen-year-old that’s learning to drive.”
I sighed. “You have nerves of steel,” I complained.
“Jealous?” he asked.
“Yes,” I retorted, and he chuckled.
“He did great. I’d take him out the weekend you’re gone, but no way is he driving my truck.”
I blanched. “Oh, God no!”
I heard Marc thumping down the stairs from his room and he hit the bottom with his house shaking thump.
“Mom, when’s dinner gonna be ready?” he asked.
“Half hour or so,” I answered. He nodded and shook his hair back out of his eyes. That was another thing I needed to get handled, he needed a haircut.
“You have a good talk with Grandma?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Yeah, but you know her, if you don’t keep it short, you’ll be on the phone all night.”
I laughed and nodded. “I think she’s just bored in her retirement,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “She’s only ever been retired!” he said and snatched his bottle of sports drink off the counter and walked backwards to head back upstairs.
I rolled my eyes at him. “She was a housewife, and a house doesn’t clean itself,” I pointed out.
“She doesn’t clean her house either!” he said with a grin. “She pays someone else to do it.”
“Now!” I called back to his footsteps thumping back up his steps.
I sighed.
“Oh, to be young.” Jared grinned and moved out of my kitchen to go sit at one of the counter stools in the dining room so we could still talk while I cooked.
I gave a long-suffering sigh and started on the crack chicken in the pressure cooker to get it going before I fixed the salad that would be the bed of greens and vegetables that it was served on.
“So, you ready for me to meet your parents?” he asked me with a sigh.
It was one I returned but for a totally different reason. He knew, we had already discussed it.
“Yes,” I said. “But as much as I love my mother, as you already know, she can be a lot.”
He nodded slowly while I worked. “So you and Marc have both said, but I can take it,” he shot back with a wink and that devilish grin that almost always made my ovaries explode. It was a good thing Marc was a one and done. I had an IUD and I wasn’t about to have another – I did my bid with my son and as much as I loved being his mom, I did not want to do it again and start all over. A decade more, if I was lucky, I would have grandchildren to spoil. If not, that was okay, too. I was content either way.
“I’m not worried about if you can take it,” I said with a slight laugh.
“Hey,” he said and his voice was soft. I looked up from my cooking and he fixed my gaze with his.
“You can take it, too because your mother or not, she oversteps, I’m on your side and depending on what you say? I won’t let it slide.”
I carefully nodded my understanding.
“I love you,” he said when I didn’t speak, as if I needed the reminder.
I smiled, I had to, what else could I do?
“I love you, too,” I told him and that was really all there was to it, wasn’t there?
26
Glass Jaw…
“Hey, man. Good to see you,” Fenris said, and we clasped hands and pulled each other in.
“Feels like I haven’t since the Long Beach run,” I said with a sniff.
“Yeah, well, the cats are away the mice will play,” Tic called out from over by the bar and we all had a laugh.
“Wish we could all relax and enjoy it more,” Dump Truck said with a bit of grim resignation, taking a pull from the neck of his bottle of beer.
“All we can do is wait for the hammer to fall, if it does at all,” Mav said with a sigh. “We’ve done all we can to insulate ourselves. Manny wouldn’t give us up, not in a million fuckin’ years. He’s hidden everything as best that he can.”
“They search his place, we’re all fucked,” Major said.
“We ain’t got no way of getting his stores out of there,” Nine agreed.
“All we can do is wait,” Maverick reiterated. “Quit borrowing trouble – don’t put any of that shit out there. That’s when the universe starts getting ideas and then we are fucked.”
A bunch of us chuckled and exchanged looks.
Mace shook his head. “You’re starting to sound like Raven and Dahlia when they start getting onto one of their astrology tangents,” he said.
“Yeah, well, there might be something to some of that witchy woo woo shit of your girl’s,” Dump Truck told him.
I laughed. “What the fuck ever, bro.” I shook my head. I didn’t believe in a lot, if any of that shit. “I’d like to say we’ve been in darker places and worse positions, but it doesn’t feel like we have,” I said soberly.
“We have,” Maverick declared. “It’s not sticky or a shitshow until the lawyers get involved.”
“Which, the lawyer’s retainer is already paid, and we’ve been keeping up on it. That’s a whole different bag of bricks separate from everything else, and everyone’s dues are paid,” Cipher said, and I nodded. Sometimes you just needed the reminder, you know.
“That certainly makes me feel a lot better,” I said and nodded.
“Me, too,” Deacon agreed.
“We gonna play some fuckin’ poker or what?” Fenris demanded and some nods were exchanged. It was the first time the majority of us had been together since the Long Beach run a couple weeks back, and we had the intention to low key cut loose – meaning stick together, keep our heads down and out of trouble, and keep our noses clean for the time being until the heat was off of us.
So, poker and beer were the order of the evening. We broke up into a couple of groups, some of us around the pool table out here, and some of us in the chapel. Too many of us now to make one big game.
“What’ll you have, Glass Jaw?” the prospect asked me. Momma Kat was with the rest of the girls.
“Gimme a Batsquatch, Dipshit.”
“On it, boss.” The kid was alright. I didn’t know if he had the balls to stick it through, but I’d honestly thought the same thing about Fish a time or two.
I settled at Mav’s right hand in the chapel along with Deacon, Fen, Dump Truck, Blackjack, and Cipher.
Blackjack was shuffling cards, Cipher doling out the chips, and the feeling in the chapel, around the table, was just plain heavy, man.
“You guys think about what to do if the worst does happen?” Dump Truck asked.
“Got it all handled, brother,” Maverick drawled. “Your lady and your baby will be taken care of, bro. You don’t have to think about this shit. That’s what I’m here for. That’s my fuckin’ job,” Maverick said.
“Taken care of how?” Dump Truck asked curiously. Fen looked interested as well likely thinking about Aspen. She’d been through some heavy shit a couple three years back to the point we all had to believe for a while there that if she didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have any kind of luck at all. I mean, Jesus fuck, her whole family and her marriage crumbled inside like a month.
It made what Cadence had been through seem like child’s play in a
couple respects and what Cadence had been through was fucking awful in its own right.
I was thinking about Cadence and was sort of half hoping that if the worst was going to happen, that I was glad she could take care of herself and Marc no problem. That she was independent enough that she didn’t need me, but the fact that she wanted me knowing all of that? Shit, if the worst did happen and I ended up locked up? I could go knowing I’d been a blessed man just for the time I did have with her.
Shit was depressing, and I was trying real hard not to spiral down into my fucking misery over it but these sad fuckin’ pandas around me damn sure weren’t helping with that. I didn’t say anything, just tuned them out and focused my thoughts on my one big ray of fuckin’ sunshine which was Cadence. Well, Cadence and her kid. I enjoyed Marc’s company, too. Kid was a real firecracker just like his mom.
This is why you fought so hard against a fuckin’ relationship in the first place, I reminded myself. Just this eventuality.
Which was shitty when you stopped to think about it. Real fucking shitty.
I cleared my throat and cut whoever was talking off and said, “Bottom line, we all got shit to lose. Some of us before it even had a chance to get started and some of us…” I shook my head. “We all signed up for this shit knowing it had to end at some fucking point. We need to stop fuckin’ talk about it or all we’re gonna do is end up more stressed out and more depressed than when we started. Enough with the misery circle jerk already. Let’s play some fucking cards.” I coughed and took a drink out of my beer that Dipshit had set at my elbow when I had been lost in my own thoughts.
“Your lady and her son will be taken care of, too,” Mav said. “I know it’s new, but—”
“Thanks, man. Won’t save my business,” I said. “But that helps.” I nodded.
“It’s no problem,” he said and sighed. “We all see the way you two are good for each other.”
We tabled the discussion and played cards, and it helped, some. About and hour or two in, Dipshit came in from out at the bar.
“Mav, your burner is blowing the fuck up,” he said, and Mav looked up. We had a rule, no phones in the chapel at any fucking time to help keep any of the boys from ever fucking that up. He checked with all of us at the table with a glance and we all nodded.