“So what do you mean when you say you’re not exactly military?”
Ghost paused with a self-effacing laugh. Things got tricky here, and he was already a little bit worried about it. There was a reason he had a harder time than all the other MC brothers at keeping a good woman around. But he’d made a promise to himself a long time ago that he would never tiptoe around his truth. He was himself at all times, or nothing at all, and if a woman didn’t want him for it, then he was better off without her. Usually, he just hoped this conversation came later in the relationship, after he’d had a chance to feel loved for a while.
He moved from atop her and sat beside her. “I just, uh…” He cleared his throat and looked away from her face. “I didn’t grow up in a family, or anything. My parents were of the laid-back, commune variety, and when I was six all the adults were arrested in a raid. I got thrown in the system and I haven’t seen them since. So I kind of had to make my own way. The story’s kind of cliché, really… a regular episode of Law & Order with far less good-looking actors.”
She didn’t interrupt him, so he pressed on before he lost his nerve. “A lot of kids in the system end up having to do shit they don’t want to do to survive. I got taught how to hotwire before I could even drive. And that was just the early stuff.” He took a deep breath. The abyss went much deeper, but he wasn’t out for that tonight. “Anyway. I might still use the skills I acquired, but things are different now. I run my life. And I try to use my powers for good.”
The look on Bridget’s face when he finally lifted his eyes was upsetting. She was upset, in a deep, dark way that completely betrayed her soldier heart. There were no tears. Glazed over her eyes instead was fury. Heat flushed at the base of her neck, though her face had gone pale. One had to know what the signs meant to understand it, and Ghost did. Bridget didn’t want to cry for his sad story like other women did. She wanted to fight for it. She was angry at what he had been put through.
“That’s monstrous,” she finally said in a tight, quiet voice. She wrapped her hand around one of his. “That never should have happened to you.”
Something deep shifted in Ghost’s heart.
He swallowed against a tight throat and tried to laugh it off. “Yeah, well, it made me the badass, handsome sex god I am today, so I suppose it’s not all bad.”
She was silent for a few long moments, but kept her caressing touch on his hand. The sensation warmed him like he didn’t know he needed.
“I used to work in a much worse school before I moved here,” said Bridget. “I’ve seen the trauma kids suffer in the system. I’ve seen how bad home lives affect them. I mean it when I say that, Ghost: what happened to you is monstrous, and it never should have happened.”
He could feel emotions bubbling up; it was disconcerting. He squeezed her hand in both of his.
“It’s so hard as an outsider to watch that happen,” she said. Her voice betrayed that she was speaking about something else, now; not just Ghost. “It’s insane how an abuser or neglectful person can make everyone feel that way—not just their families.”
He tilted his head and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “What’s going on?”
The look in her eyes said she was surprised by his intuition, but she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she took a deep breath, and the words out of her mouth next had the cadence of a long-held confession. “I think one of my students is being abused. And I don’t know how to help him.”
Ghost went dark. “What?”
“Toby,” nodded Bridget. “The kid who talked to you the other day?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Ghost. “That adorable little nerd? No, no. Don’t say that.”
“I don’t know for sure,” said Bridget. “Not yet. Well, I mean I don’t have proof yet. My gut knows for sure.”
Ghost gave her a thoughtful, sad look. “You strike me as someone with a finely-tuned gut.”
Bridget sighed. Sadness dropped over her posture.
“Hey,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss her deeply. “Don’t get down about it tonight. I’ll help you find a way to help Toby.”
She frowned at him in disbelief. “Really?”
“Yeah, totally. Toby’s my bro now. And even if he wasn’t, like I’m just going to sit back and do nothing to stop some child-beating fucker.”
“I don’t even know what I’m going to do about it,” she said. “And you could get in trouble.”
Ghost gasped dramatically and clasped at his non-existent pearl necklace. “Oh, heavens, trouble?! Lord have mercy, my fragile constitution could never endure the barbs of disobedience!”
Bridget started laughing, even with a few sad tears still in her eyes. She play-tackled him on the couch and made out with him while Ghost ground his hips against her bare skin.
She pulled away and looked at him. “So you think the soldier thing is hot, huh? I’m really not sure whether to take that seriously.”
Ghost made a groaning noise. “Oh, baby, do I ever. You’re basically the hottest soldier on base, and you’re in my bed. We could fuck and kill together. What else is there?”
Sometimes, like right now, the backtalk about how he was too much of a jokester cut a bit deeper. He really did find everything about her incredibly sexy, and he wanted her to believe it. Jokes were just his mechanism, but it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. Quite the opposite.
He watched and waited for her expression to become dark. But it didn’t. Instead, Bridget smirked and laughed. Something in her eyes said she didn’t quite agree with him, but she sure as hell wasn’t throwing him out on his ass, calling him a fucked-up freak. She was wrapping her arms around his neck. She was planting a sweet little kiss on his nose.
“You’re a different sort of guy, aren’t you, Ghost?” she said.
“So I’ve been told,” he said. He bent down and kissed her slowly, deeply, and felt whatever sassy response she’d been building melt away on his tongue.
~ ELEVEN ~
Bridget
Recharged from her weekend with Ghost, and the wonderful sensation of multiple orgasms, Bridget returned to the Academy on Monday morning fully ready to conquer the problem of Toby Cary. The last few days had been an incredible new adventure for her with Ghost, who had arrived for their originally planned date Friday night to take her out for a nice steak dinner. After, he didn’t leave her house for the rest of the weekend. In fact, the two of them had barely left her bedroom. It had been a flurry of laughter, sex, cuddling, and swapping war stories that had lit up areas in her brain she didn’t even realize had been dimmed.
Unfortunately, children often stand in the way of even the best laid plans. It was a lesson Bridget already knew well, and yet she walked right into the trap anyway. After trying and failing all of last week to make some kind of subtle inclination to Toby about the secret they shared, she decided to try a more direct approach, and asked him to take a walk with her to get supplies from one of the closets down the hall, shared by the teachers.
Toby happily followed along beside her as they walked the hall and answered her questions about his recent birthday party, and how much he loved the new section they had started in science about the way planets are formed. Bridget smiled at him as she unlocked the supply closet and went inside, flipping on the light. Toby stood by the door, propping it open with his foot and standing weirdly, like kids were known to do.
As she gathered armfuls of construction paper, she said, “Hey, you know I gave my phone number out to all of you guys at the beginning of the school year, right?”
“Yeah, on those papers,” said Toby. He was watching something down the hall and making a buzzing sound absentmindedly.
“Right. Do you have your own phone, Toby?”
He didn’t answer. Bridget carried some of the supplies over to him and saw the humor had fallen from his face. He took the supplies in his arms.
Bridget acted nonchalant, waving her hand and immediately returning to the supply shelf like it was no
big deal. “I ask because I had a phone number call me last week that I didn’t recognize, and I wondered if it was one of you guys trying to get a hold of me. Whoever called wouldn’t answer when I picked up.” She resisted the urge to glance over at him as she pulled bottles of glue off the shelf.
Toby didn’t say anything for a few heavy moments. When Bridget turned back to him, done gathering what she needed, he looked up at her slowly and met her eyes for just a moment. Then he looked down again and said, “I don’t have a phone anymore.”
Grief pierced Bridget’s heart, its blade coated with poisonous anger. Toby’s discomfort and fear was a palpable force in the air. Whatever was happening, he was clearly not ready to have a face-to-face conversation about it.
Bridget quickly smiled. “That’s okay, I was just wondering. What are you going to make for your art project today?”
It took a few slow, sad blinks, but Toby took her offer of distraction as they closed up the supply closet and walked back to class. He wasn’t himself after that, and Bridget was overcome with guilt. She hadn’t meant to upset him; she just didn’t know what else to do.
She tried her best to get hers, and Toby’s, good moods back by launching into a surprise game time after the students completed their spelling test. They played until the lunch bell rang, and as she hoped, it had lightened the classroom quite a bit. Red-faced and laughing, the kids spilled out into the hallway and headed for the cafeteria. Toby melted into the group and disappeared along with them, and Bridget decided that was an improvement and tried to let herself off the hook.
Before she could get too comfy at her desk, her phone lit up. It was a picture text from Ghost. She smiled as she pulled it up: a phone selfie of him leaning back seductively on his bike, doing the kissy duck face so popular with teenage girls in their photos. Along with the photo was a smattering of nonsense emojis with a single word: lunch? She looked closer at the photo and realized Ghost was in the Academy’s parking lot, and she quickly locked up her classroom and headed out to meet him.
Ghost stood waiting for her in the bright sunshine with a bag of sandwiches from the deli down on Vine Street. Bridget felt like a schoolgirl, but she couldn’t help herself from running up to meet him in a tight bear hug. He lifted her up off the ground and she giggled.
“What are you doing here?” she asked happily.
“Duh, lunch, like I said!” He held up the bag.
Bridget laughed. “You’re not sick of me yet, huh?”
“Sick of you? Jase had to talk me down from bringing you breakfast, too.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close to kiss her. Bridget moaned against his mouth. “Hop on the bike, baby. Let’s go find a place to eat.”
Bridget bit her lip. “I can’t. I have to make arrangements to leave school grounds during the day unless it’s an emergency.”
“Oh,” said Ghost. He turned his shoulders to look around. “Well, is there somewhere on the grounds we could go to be alone?”
“Be alone?” said Bridget with a mischievous smile. “You got something on your mind other than sandwiches?”
“I think I might have something else hot and meaty you can enjoy, yeah,” he said in a low voice, pulling her into him.
Bridget laughed. “That was almost too silly to be sexy.”
“ ‘Almost’ is my middle name. C’mon,” he said, taking her hand.
He led her across the parking lot toward the sloping hill on the east side of the grounds, where the landscaping was filled with tall bushy trees and clean-cut hedges. None of the school yard extended this far east, but technically, it was still school grounds, so Bridget shrugged and sat down next to Ghost in a sweet, grassy little clearing just a few yards into the tree line. Most of the local noise became subsumed by the lovely lilt of chirping birds and buzzing bugs, the breeze in the leaves of the budding spring forest.
Ghost sat down and patted his lap playfully. Bridget obliged, and while she didn’t sit on his legs, she did sit up against him, enjoying the feeling of his strong chest at her back.
“How’s Tommy?” asked Bridget as they dug into the sandwiches he had brought.
Ghost swallowed and said, “He’s improving. He’s spending more time awake, but he’s still all jacked up from the pain meds.”
“Poor guy. He’s going to be okay though?”
“Oh, yeah. Doc says he’ll be right as rain after all the broken bones heal.”
“What’s going to happen about Lucero?”
Ghost sighed, and Bridget almost felt bad for bringing it up. “I’m not sure. I know the whole Eagleton charter—what’s left of them, anyway—is on their way down here right now so we can sort this out. They basically had to close up shop to do it, they’re so low on men.”
“Sounds like you guys are going to have a face-off.”
“I would duel the shit out of him if Henry would let me,” said Ghost with a shake of his head. “I was born in the wrong century.”
Bridget giggled. “Well, I’m sorry you can’t just duel him and fix it. He’s a giant shithead for what he’s done. I hope you make him pay.”
Ghost narrowed his eyes at her, his mouth twisting in a naughty grin. “Ooh, say that again,” he said with a mouthful of sandwich.
“I hope you make him pay?” said Bridget.
“Mmm, again, but all sexy-like.”
Bridget laughed and leaned back against his ear. She felt his heart beating fast against her back. “I hope you make him pay,” she whispered slowly in her best throaty voice.
From behind she felt Ghost’s dick push against her, hardening instantly. He groaned and leaned down to latch his teeth and tongue onto her exposed neck. His hands dropped the food and slid around her torso, one pushing up to lightly tease at the underside of her breasts, the other creeping slowly south.
“Ghost,” she said in an aroused whisper. “We can’t…”
“Can’t what?” he mumbled as he took one breast fully in his hand and squeezed. Bridget sighed softly and pushed her face against his as he sucked on the skin of her neck.
“Can’t…” she trailed off when Ghost’s hand pushed down the front of her black pants and past her panties in one swift movement. Suddenly his dexterous fingers pawed at her clit, spreading the wetness that was already building across her pussy lips like oil.
“Mmmm,” said Ghost against her neck. He rubbed her chest rhythmically and pushed his fingers deeper inside her pants. “Fuck, you’re so wet.”
“Ghost,” she was begging, bucking her hips up to meet his hands and writhing against his back. Ghost held her tight against his body and pushed his hand further down her pants, until his fingers had enough room to slide inside her soaking pussy.
Bridget let out a cry so loud, Ghost released her breast and clamped a hand gently over her mouth. “Shhhhhh,” he said and sucked on her earlobe. “Don’t wanna get caught, do you, naughty girl?”
Bridget moaned helplessly against his hand as he pumped his fingers in and out of her in slow, painful rhythm. The way her body was writhing made Ghost so hard it hurt, and all he wanted was to throw her down on that meadow grass and fuck her senseless, but instead he decided it would be more fun to keep her dreaming about his cock the rest of the day—and give himself a little edging at the same time.
As his fingers fucked her pussy, Ghost put three of them in Bridget’s mouth and she immediately began to suck on them. It was Ghost’s turn to moan, and his dick pulsed hard against his jeans, and against Bridget’s ass. It wasn’t long before she came all over his fingers, pressed stiffly against his body as he held her tight, muffling her cries of pleasure.
He teased her sensitive pussy as she came down from her orgasm, planting little kisses all over her neck and shoulders. Bridget continued to suck at his fingers, albeit with softer, gentler pressure, settling back down in Ghost’s lap, skin aglow.
“You are my favorite,” said Ghost. He gave her clit a few more rubs before he pulled his hand out of her pants and bro
ught his fingers to his mouth to clean them off with a satisfied sound. “And you are too goddamn hot for your own good.”
“I’m hot?” said Bridget, turning to kiss him. “I’m not the one starting quickies in the woods behind school.”
“You didn’t say no, either,” he said with a wink.
Bridget only had a few minutes left to get back, so they cleaned themselves up and started to head back. As he escorted her back to the school, Ghost reached his big hand over and grasped onto hers, twisting their fingers together. She didn’t know why, but the move surprised her. She looked over at him and he turned to look at her. He gave her a simple, handsome smile and squeezed her hand. Bridget felt a fluttering in her stomach as she returned it.
Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance Page 10