by Jadyn Chase
A seething mass of black ink whorled across his chest, up his neck and down his arms. They roiled and foamed in molten waves that spoke of the intoxicating power running in his veins. It frightened me, but that fear got confused with excitement in my sex-starved mind. The fear itself sent streaks of adrenaline through me that tantalized me to greater heights of mad ecstasy.
I collapsed on his chest and sank my teeth into those patterns. They made my mouth water for him even more. He growled between his locked jaws and shoved me away to stand me on my feet.
His black eyes drilled into me while he pulled down my pants to reveal the damp triangle where all my desire lived. In a second, he buried his face between my folds and spiked me into outer space with his tongue.
I teetered on my heels trying to contain so much power and energy blowing me apart. I almost fell, but he caught me and drew me back down on his lap. He sat me on his naked hips where his wicked shaft pointed up at me. It invited me to pour my lust and craving into him and on him and through him. He wanted it. He needed it the same way I did.
I gave in to the mind-blowing intensity of that thick member filling me up and cracking me in half. I swooned at the impossible swollen might of the thing, but the minute it slotted into place, I succumbed to another cataclysmic wave of climax. I rocked on it trying to understand what was happening to me.
He clamped his arms around my waist and moved me to his own rhythm. I just didn’t care anymore. Whatever he did delighted me out of my senses. I gave myself to him. Nothing would change that now.
15
Eli
I veered Logan’s chopper through the gate and drove behind the ten-foot razor-wire fence. The boys closed and locked it behind me. I puttered to the open warehouse door and braked to a stop.
A couple dozen guys and a scattering of women and a few children formed a line next to the warehouse and watched me drive in. I held the bike steady while Logan set his cast on the pavement. Rico and Kane came forward to help him climb off the bike.
Logan straightened up and fired a grin at everyone. Then he gave a sweeping bow. I switched off the engine and the place erupted in cheers. People mobbed Logan and Miguel got under his arm to support him inside. He flopped down on a couch and someone pushed a beer bottle into his hand.
The warehouse devolved into a party scene after that. Someone switched on the stereo and dance music drifted into the yard. Strings of paper lanterns lit up the evening and insects buzzed around them. Savory smoke from the barbeque floated to my nose and made me hungry.
People clapped Logan on the back and hugged him. A few guys sat down on the couch and urged him to recount the tale of our battle against The Furies. Logan spread his arms to resemble wings and mimicked swooping motions. Then he jerked back and forth to demonstrate the fighting.
I pushed his hog into a corner and set it on its stand. He wouldn’t be riding it for a while until his leg healed up. He deserved a break after the shit he pulled up in Barstow.
A few people congratulated me, too. They hugged me and punched me in the shoulder, but for some reason, the usual festivities just didn’t do it for me tonight.
I drifted into the warehouse. Rico sat next to the tattoo machine giving Miguel a new tat of something. A little boy sat on a parked Harley and made revving sounds while he twisted the gearshift. Somethings never changed.
I sauntered back outside and surveyed the scene. Everyone seemed to be letting their hair down—everyone except me. I meandered out to the gate and shot the breeze with the guards for a while. I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to do.
I returned to the barbeque and got myself two cheeseburgers. I retreated to a low cinderblock wall separating the yard from a drainage ditch behind our headquarters. I sat on it to eat in peace.
From here I could see everyone and everything, but they just didn’t appeal to me. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint the problem.
A lone figure approached me. I turned around to find The Boss leaning in next to me. He held out a plastic bottle of Mountain Dew and looked away. He followed my gaze to observe the festivities. “You’re awfully quiet this evening. Where’s your ride?”
“It’s back in Barstow.”
“You did real good up there,” he told me. “I’m proud of you. I’m sorry I didn’t find out about it until after the fact. If I had known, I would have sent you backup.”
I shrugged, but I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to talk to anybody right now, least of all him. “Turns out I didn’t need it, but thanks anyway. It’s all taken care of.”
He took a swig of his beer. He didn’t answer for a while. When he did, it came out of the clear blue sky. “You know, I wasn’t so sure about you when you first came down from Barstow. I thought your Pop was too soft on you. I thought any kid that grew up not knowing his roots wouldn’t be able to cut it in this club. You proved me wrong.”
I whipped around to stare at him. Did I just hear right?
“I never would have believed one man alone could handle a posse of The Furies the way you did.” He held up his hand. “Don’t bother to tell me you weren’t alone. I know all about it and I still say it boggles the mind. Logan was injured and he would have gone down. You both would have gone down if you hadn’t killed Alfonzo the way you did. You…well, I didn’t want to tell you this to your face, but I’d pick you for a Captain or maybe even a General one day. I can’t think of any man who could pull off a stunt like that. It proves your metal. You’re gonna be leadership one day, son. I know it.”
I couldn’t answer I was so flabbergasted. Leadership! The bottom line was I didn’t think I could cut it in the club, either. Like him, I thought my upbringing in the desert put me out of the running for an honor like that.
Now The Boss himself—The Boss!—told me he picked me for a Captain or a General. I couldn’t believe my ears.
He waited a little longer before he pushed himself off the wall. He slapped my shoulder. “You enjoy yourself tonight. You earned it. I’m proud of you. That’s all I want to say.”
He started to walk away. I couldn’t let this moment go by. “I have a son.”
He stiffened with his back to me. When he turned around, his eyes glittered hard and cold. “Where?”
I hung my head and traced lines in the bottle’s dewy surface. “Up in Barstow. I didn’t know about him. My old high school girlfriend got pregnant and didn’t tell me. The boy is seven years old and he…..he needs me.”
I didn’t dare look at him. I couldn’t. I dreaded his answer, but when it came, it nearly knocked me off the wall. “Well, what are you still doing here, then?”
My head snapped up. “What?”
His mouth cracked a grin, but his eyes didn’t soften. “We’ve got more traffic coming into and out of LA now, and it all goes through Barstow. We’ll need a man up there to handle deliveries and make sure everything is copasetic before they enter our territory. We don’t want another disaster like this one, do we?”
I blinked at him. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Why not?” he fired back. “Who better to handle our business up there? You’ll be on your own with no one around to help out in emergencies, but you’ve proved you can handle that. Go on. You’ve earned it.”
I returned to fiddling with my Mountain Dew. This was too good to be true. “My…my girl…. she doesn’t want Los Diablos around the kid. She wants him to grow up normal-like, if you get my meaning.”
He clapped me on the back one more time. “Man, don’t I know what that’s like. As long as you wear your colors for business, I don’t see a problem.” He looked around. “You don’t have a ride back up there.”
I couldn’t hold back my joy. I almost laughed out loud, I was so happy. I never expected him to let me go like this. I never in my wildest dreams imagined an outcome as perfect as this.
I hopped off the wall. “I don’t need a ride.”
“How are you gonna get there?” he asked.
I threw
my arms around him and crushed him in a bear hug. “Fly, of course.”
I let him go and jumped straight up. I dropped the Mountain Dew when I extended my wings and hurtled over the wide sea of lights to the desert beyond LA.
I streaked across the landscape not bothering to look right or left. I trained my mind on one object. I was free! I was going back to Barstow to stay. Nothing and nobody could stop me.
I landed in the baseball field next to Christopher’s elementary school. I scanned the shadowy buildings and the empty soccer goals. I went to this school, too. I never thought I’d be glad to come back here. I never thought I’d be glad to face the prospect of spending the next couple of decades of my life here.
If anyone told me I’d be glad about that, I would have called them crazy. I couldn’t be happier, though. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
I meandered down the block in no particular hurry. I never needed to hurry again. The next twenty years of my life lay mapped out in front of me. School. Home. Business. Watching Christopher grow up. Helping him with his homework. Teaching him how to hold his own around other guys.
This life stuff demanded a lot, but I never wanted anything more. I wanted it all. I wanted all the challenges, all the heartache and drama. I wanted every difficult scrap of it. I didn’t want life taking it easy on me. I wanted the worst it could dish out. I wanted to show Ruby and Christopher just how much this thing meant to me.
I hesitated a long time before I entered the house. I spent every day there for the last two weeks waiting for Logan to recover from his broken leg, but now I felt different. If I walked through that door now, it would herald a new level of commitment for me.
I would never leave it. I would become Ruby’s partner in life and in parenthood. This would become my house. I understood that at a gut level. No one had to tell me. No one else ever had to know. If I crossed that threshold, I would never go back.
I would become a different person, too. The old me died—or it would die when I walked in there. I would finally grow up. I would cease being a wayward kid playing with fire. I would finally become…..I would become my father. I would carry his burden and face his fears. I would repeat the cycle, for better or for worse.
I crossed the street and fidgeted around the gate. I sloped up the walk and paced back and forth in front of the porch for a while. I had to stop and think about each and every move. Did I really want to do this? Did I really want to take this step?
What if I wasn’t ready? What if I fucked the whole thing up to hell? What if Ruby wound up hating me? What if Christopher turned out to be screwed up for life by something I did? What if he went off and got himself in serious trouble—or worse, got Los Diablos in trouble?
The more I thought about it, the more the responsibility sank into my brain. Raising a child carried massive emotional stakes. Most people got at least nine months to wrap their heads around that before they had to look their child in the eye.
Not me. I jumped in the deep end boots and all. My destiny didn’t give me any training period. It all came down to sacking it up and getting ‘er done.
Right. I took a firm grip on myself and opened the front door. The house slumbered in shadow with no sign of anyone around. I tiptoed down the hall toward the bedrooms. I found the old man’s door shut for the night, but when I turned toward Christopher’s room, I met Ruby coming out of it.
She started back when she saw me. Her hand flew to her heart. “Oh! It’s you.”
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I should have texted you first.”
She shook her head and waved her hand. “I just wasn’t expecting you back so soon. I thought you’d be gone longer. How did it go?”
I nodded. “He let me go.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “He…. what?”
I eased close to her and put my arm around her back. “He said we needed a man stationed in Barstow to handle deliveries, so I’m staying here for the indefinite future. When I told him about Christopher, he let me go.”
“Wow!” she breathed. “That’s…. that’s wonderful. Are you okay with that?”
“I’m delighted. I couldn’t be more delighted.” I leaned in and kissed her. “It means I’m going to be around to annoy you for a long, long time.”
She gave a soft laugh while we kissed.
After a while, I pulled off. “Let’s go to bed.” She turned away, but I stopped her. “What were you doing in there? Is everything all right? I thought you’d go to bed early. I wasn’t sure if I should wake you up.”
“Everything’s fine.” She passed her hand across her forehead. “I got a call from Reggie, the diner manager. He wants me to work this weekend. Tina’s little girl has chickenpox, so he wants me to cover for her. I was hoping the three of us could spend some time together over the weekend, but now it looks like I won’t be able to. At least you and Christopher can do something. It will be good for you to do stuff alone with him.”
I observed the interplay of stress and disappointment taking turns with her features. I saw that struggle way too much these days. I bent close to her face and whispered low. “Don’t go in.”
“What? I have to go in,” she exclaimed. “Reggie needs me. He has no one else to call. If I don’t go in, Stan will have to work the whole diner alone.”
“Reggie will hire another waitress because I want you to quit waitressing. I want you to quit working at the diner, so you won’t be working there over the weekend.”
Her jaw dropped. “Quit the diner! You’re crazy.”
“I might be crazy, but I don’t want you working there and I certainly don’t want you filling in on the weekends when you should be hanging out with Christopher and me. Didn’t you say you had to change your shift to nights so you could take care of your dad during the day?”
“Yeah, but I….”
“You don’t have to do that anymore because I’m here,” I told her. “You don’t even like waitressing, do you? You told me you only did it for the money.”
“Yeah, but….”
“I make enough to support all four of us,” I went on. “You can keep freelancing with your accounting work. I know you like that, but there’s no reason you should keep working at the diner. Christopher needs you more in the evenings. Jackson, Ruby, Reggie doesn’t need you at all. He’s running a business, for Christ’s sake. You’re a number to him. You don’t owe him anything and you owe Christopher and your dad and yourself everything.”
She stared up at me in shock. I swear to God she never once thought about quitting the diner. She never thought she’d be able to.
I took her hand. I made the decision. That made me the man of the house. She would do it. Why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she reap the rewards of sharing the responsibility with her son’s father? I sure as hell didn’t come up here to ride on her coattails.
I led her into the bedroom and pulled her to a stop next to the bed. I took off my jacket and laid it across the chair.
Now that I looked at it and fingered the worn, familiar leather, a strange ache seized my heart. “I guess I won’t be wearing this much anymore.”
She drifted to my side and circled her arms around my ribs. She nuzzled close, but she didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t remember a time since I moved to LA when I didn’t wear this jacket. I practically slept in. Now I was taking it off to move back to Barstow. This marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.
In a way, taking the jacket off made me more Los Diablos than keeping it on. I still carried the brand inked into my skin. I could never take that off.
Taking off my colors changed me more than anything. I felt lighter, less stable, more malleable. I could remake myself into anything I wanted and I wanted this. I wanted to be a father and a…..well, I wanted to live with Ruby and make this work.
That was what I wanted. Nothing stood between me and that but my own stubborn will to persist. I would do it. By God, I would d
o it. Nothing would stop me—certainly not some jacket.
I would put it back on for business, but it would never be my second skin again. Christopher wouldn’t see me wearing it. If anything, he would see me not wearing it. He would know something changed, that I wasn’t the same man he met when I wore it.
The jacket would feel strange when I put it on. I would only feel normal when I took it off and laid it aside. This moment would repeat itself every time I took it off. I would make that choice again and again, day in and day out, probably for the rest of my life.
Ruby’s warmth seeped through my t-shirt. She felt different without the jacket, too. I sensed her vitality and her erotic magnetism more. She vibrated through my life as never before.
Without thinking, I scooped her up and laid her on the bed. I eased in next to her and her velvet arms closed around my neck. I lifted her chin to kiss her. She rippled her body against me. My dream came true. Nothing could be sweeter than that.
The dark closed us in, but I didn’t see any more. I closed my eyes against the torrential sublime perfection of this moment. Past and present ceased. The world existed in an endless halo of primal existence, without end.
Her fingers threaded into my hair and along my skin and under my clothes. She infected my flesh with her crushing intoxicating softness. Nothing could match this.
Her tongue and her sighs and her delicious essence swallowed me in their unstoppable maw. I could disappear in her. I could erase everything I knew about myself and be reborn. Whatever I became, it would be good.
She rocked me over on top of her and her hands left blistering prints all over my skin. She found the secret nodes of vulnerability I hid even from myself. She protected me from the raw world that once took shelter under that jacket. She knew and understood. She would hold me together until I developed a new skin, a better skin, a more living skin that could interact with the world without my hard old shell.