Free

by Kristen Ashley

  She dug her cast and crew.

  And obviously, they dug her too.

  “No, not right now. I’ll let you know though,” she lied, took a deep breath, kept hold of his eyes and he knew it cost her when she asked, “If this is gonna take a while, do you think you can take over?”

  Yeah.

  It was porn.

  But it was hers and she didn’t want to let go.

  “What?” the assistant director’s voice was breathy over the phone.

  “I’ve got notes. I can email them to you. You can . . . you can . . .” she pushed into Rush, “take my chair.”

  The voice on the speakerphone was stunned. “Ohmigod.”

  Rebel was looking sick now. “You’re on the ball, Meryl. I think you’ll do great.”

  “This is, I mean, from you . . . that means a lot, Tally.”

  Tally.

  At the nickname, Rebel winced.

  She liked these people.

  So she did not like lying to them.

  “But it also means whatever’s happening is rough. Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Meryl continued.

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s probably going to take some time, but I’ll be all right.”

  “Okay, I’ll . . . just let you go. You obviously have stuff to deal with. But just so you know, I called Mr. Valenzuela. You didn’t show, that’s not like you, I got worried you were in a car accident or something. I’ll call him and—”

  “No!” Rebel cried hurriedly.

  Rush gave her a warning squeeze.

  She nodded to him and pulled it together.

  “He called. I’ll, uh . . . call him. You deal with the set. I’ll handle that.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “Thanks, Meryl. For everything. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay, Tally. Hope it all works out okay.”

  “It will. Later, Meryl.”

  “’Bye.”

  She disconnected and focused on Rush.

  “I need to call Benito.”

  He didn’t like it.

  But he couldn’t disagree.

  “Yeah,” he grunted.

  “Do you think he at least knows that Harrietta’s dead?” she asked.

  “I think he finds ways to know a lot of shit. But cops are not his biggest fans. Not sure anything has ever leaked from the DPD to him. And since it’s lookin’ like Chew did this, and no way Chew would drop a line to Valenzuela to share he offed his old lady, my guess is no.”

  “So if it was Chew, how do you think he knew to dump Harrietta at my place?”

  “Probably knew she was playin’ him, he followed her, she was meeting you, he decided to follow you.”

  “But Hank taught me how to spot a tail. And I promise, Rush, I was looking.”

  “I’m glad Hank looked after you,” Rush said carefully. “But this guy has been doin’ fucked-up vengeance shit for years. You’d probably have to be Jason Bourne to spot his tail.”

  Or a Chaos brother.

  “That isn’t good,” she muttered.

  “No, but that also doesn’t mean he made you. Following her and you, all he’s got is you work for Valenzuela and you live where you live. You workin’ for Valenzuela is enough for him to know you two meeting up was fishy. But even if he did a trace on the property, got so far as lookin’ at names on mail in the mailbox, he might not link Rebel Stapleton to you. You could be crashing there, a roommate,” he grinned, “a lesbian lover. Whatever. But Chew is not gonna get close to a mailbox and get himself made. And if the guy has the brains to do a trace on a property, it’d surprise the fuck outta me.”

  “So he doesn’t know I’m Rebel. So maybe to fuck with me, or get under Benito’s skin, he wouldn’t be able to share with Benito that I’m Rebel.”

  “Just another guess, but no. All he knows is you were in with Harrietta, Harrietta is in with Valenzuela, and he’d just assume you are too. No way he’d dump her and court gettin’ seen at Valenzula’s. You were the safer bet to make his statement.”

  She seemed to relax into that and Rush liked the feel, he still hoped he hadn’t just fed her a line of bullshit.

  “Now make your call,” he urged. “But you make it on speakerphone too, baby. I wanna hear how he reacts when talking to you. Same shit you said to Meryl.”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  He gave her a squeeze. “You good to do this?”

  “Harrietta deserves justice just like Diane does. So if we can focus Hank and Eddie, she might get it. And my crew deserves to keep getting a paycheck even though I’m backing out. So Benito needs to keep that going for as long as he’s in the game to do it. So . . . yeah. I’m good.”

  He bent his neck to touch his lips to hers, and when he pulled back, said, “All right. Get it done so we can move on.”

  Her nod was a lot less hesitant this time.

  She bent to her phone and he got her eyes back when he heard it ringing.

  Valenzuela’s deep, slimy voice came at them, gliding over, “Tallulah.”

  Rush immediately went still.

  He wanted to fuck her.

  “Are you all right?” Valenzuela asked.

  “Benito, I apologize,” Rebel said. “I had a personal situation happen that was extreme and I didn’t call in to production to explain I wouldn’t be in today. I’ve called Meryl. She’s up to speed. We’re halting production for the day, but we’ll be back, hopefully tomorrow.”

  “Just as long as you’re okay.”

  Fuck.

  He totally wanted to fuck her.

  “I’m all right and all will be fine, I just need to give it some of my attention.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  Rebel gave him a stretched-lipped, skeeved-out look.

  It almost made him laugh.

  But Benito Valenzuela wanted in his woman’s pants.

  So he did not laugh.

  “I’m on it now, Benito. I might need to take some time, but I’ll get Meryl sorted out and the schedule won’t feel it, outside today.”

  “Is there anything you need?”

  “No. I’m good. It’s personal. A family issue. I’d rather not explain. But it’ll get taken care of.”

  “Family,” he muttered then, “All right, Tallulah. Take the time you need.”

  “Thanks, Benito.”

  “And if I can do anything, you’ve got my number.”

  Rebel gave him another one of her skeeved-out looks even while saying, “Thanks, that means a lot.”

  “Take care,” Valenzuela said.

  “You too. Thanks for understanding.”

  “Of course. Goodbye, Tallulah.”

  “’Bye, Benito.”

  She disconnected. “He totally doesn’t know about Harrietta.”

  “I got the same take.”

  “So, okay, well . . .” more of her eyes darting around before coming back to him, “that part’s done.”

  He slid his other arm around her. “Yeah. And you did great, sweetheart.”

  “I kinda got Tallulah Monroe down,” she muttered.

  She was proud of her work.

  She wasn’t proud of that.

  “They’ll get it,” he told her.

  She focused on him. “Sorry?”

  “That you lied about who you are.”

  She put both her hands on his chest, even the one that still held her phone, her gaze on him intense.

  “Can’t say I’m in the know with who occupies the porn scene,” he went on. “But if it’s like anything else that rides the fringe, they’re tight. If they know someone killed Diane, one of their own, and you went all out to make them pay, they’ll get it.”

  She studied him a beat before she asked, “How do you read my mind?”

  “Baby, hate to tell you this, but if you’re goin’ for a poker face, you’re failing.”

  “Fabulous,” she muttered to his throat.

  He gave her a gentle shake and regained her attention. “Don’t know, didn’t see you
in action, but my take on what I just heard was that you were you, you just used the name Tallulah. That’s probably why it worked. You didn’t play at anything. You gave them you and you’re awesome. They just know you by a different name.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I played it only because I didn’t know better.”

  “Well, it worked so it doesn’t matter you didn’t know better.”

  She pressed her hips into his and asked, “I’m awesome?”

  He grinned down at her. “Insight into me, I don’t move a woman into my pad on the first date after enduring a meltdown and a body dump if she’s not awesome.”

  She was grinning up at him, but in the middle of it the look in her eyes changed.

  “You ever move a woman into your pad?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered.

  “Mm,” she hummed.

  He liked that noise but now they had no time to get busy.

  He had to get to Ride.

  “We need to get dressed. You need to come with me and hang while I meet with my brothers.”

  “Right,” she said.

  He started to move away but did it taking her with him.

  He stopped when her hand went from his chest to cup his package.

  “Rebel,” he said.

  “I’ll be quick,” she whispered.

  “Rebel,” he growled.

  But he did not move when she floated down to her knees in front of him.

  And he absolutely did not move when she freed his stiffening cock from his jeans.

  He did move when she slid him into her warm, wet mouth, and he did this to glide his fingers into her hair.

  He watched her suck him off and he loved every stroke, especially when it got better after she tucked her hands in his jeans at the back and dug her long nails in at his ass.

  Fuck, her draw.

  His woman had power in her pulls and with the pain in his ass of her nails making her marks in him, telling him she loved his dick in her mouth, it didn’t take long for her to get him where she wanted him to be going.

  “Babe,” he grunted in warning when he was almost there.

  She kept at him, just lifting those pretty blue eyes up to his face, his wet dick sliding in and out of her mouth, and Jesus.

  His hand fisted in her hair and his head fell back.

  “Fuck yeah,” he groaned, beginning to blow.

  She took one hand from his ass and dove in at the front, cupping his balls and squeezing.

  Rush started fucking her face and grunted, “Fuck yeah,” as his mind blanked of everything but Rebel’s hot, sweet mouth and the mammoth orgasm she was sucking out of him.

  The night before when she’d gone down on him, before he’d blown, he’d shoved her to her hands and knees, took her pussy and did it inside.

  This time, as he came down, righting his head, he felt her gently licking his dick, massaging his balls. Before he could tip his head to watch that action, she let him go, floated back up to her feet, and moved her hand from his balls to his dick to hold it in a warm, but assertive grip as she kissed the base of his throat.

  Rush curled his arms around her.

  “Is my biker good?” she asked quietly.

  “Were you there two minutes ago?” he asked back.

  He felt her smile against his skin. “You’re good.”

  She nuzzled his throat and stood in his arms, her fingers wrapped around his semi-hard dick like they had all day to stand there just like that.

  “You claimin’ that cock?” he asked.

  Slowly, she tipped her head back.

  He saw the caution in her face and it made him put a hand to her jaw.

  “Yes?” she asked back like it was him that could answer that question.

  Rush loved it when she got like this.

  She was ballsy and confident and sweet and funny and open, but she could get shy, vulnerable, and show it.

  The biker in him, and the Allen in him, needed a woman who was ballsy and confident.

  It was the Allen in him that needed her to be sweet and funny and open.

  The man Rush was, he needed her to have times she was vulnerable, so he could cover her in those times. He didn’t care what that said about him. He was a man who needed to be needed by his woman.

  Not too much, not all the time, but enough he got to fill that role and give that to her.

  Rebel didn’t believe he was real.

  Rush was beginning to believe she was made for him.

  “You give great head, Rebel.”

  She kept looking in his eyes but said nothing.

  “And you swallow.”

  Her mouth quirked but she remained silent.

  He bent his head to hers. “Baby, we’re doin’ this.”

  “What’s ‘this?’” she whispered.

  “This is me not mindin’ standin’ in my kitchen with my jeans about to fall off my hips ’cause my girl is claimin’ my junk, and I got no problem with that and not only because she just dropped to her knees and blew me.”

  His girl’s hand claiming his junk gave him an involuntary squeeze that made him grunt so she let him go altogether, which eventually had to happen, but it still sucked.

  He took a hand from around her to tuck himself in, hiked up his jeans, did up enough buttons to keep them from falling down, but left the rest open when she stayed pressed to him.

  “You good with the, um . . . ?”

  She didn’t finish so he asked, “What?”

  “Ball, uh, action.”

  Right.

  Here it was again.

  The vulnerability.

  So he had to do this gentle.

  He wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck and kept his face close to hers.

  “Right, I don’t do blow by blows, honey. The fact I did blow, hard, down your throat gave you the answer to that. I do something that you don’t like, I wanna know, at the time, even if it takes us out of the zone. You do somethin’ I don’t dig, I’ll be cool, but you’ll know. We get off on what’s happening, we roll with it. What we don’t do is dissect it after the fact. You don’t have to assume I liked it. If I didn’t stop you doing it, I liked it. There’s no guesswork with me. I want it to be what we already got. Free and easy. We hit a snag, we’ll work around it. But no reason to go searching for snags that aren’t there.”

  He tightened his fingers on her neck and it wasn’t like he didn’t have all her attention, but as he was communicating what he wanted from his touch, she gave him more.

  “I mean that with fucking and I mean that with everything,” he told her. “No guesswork. Free and easy. We hit a snag, we work on it. Are you getting me?”

  She nodded.

  “You okay how I said that?” he asked. “I don’t want you to get hung up I laid it out like that.”

  “I’m okay, Rush. It’s good. I just can get carried away and some dudes aren’t big on that.”

  He wasn’t thrilled at the thought of her being with “some dudes” at all.

  So he didn’t think on that.

  He said, “You can get carried away with me.”

  She smiled.

  “And just to confirm, this once, you wanna force me to shoot harder down your throat, you claimed my cock, my balls come with it, I’m not gonna complain you drain me.”

  She squirmed in his hold.

  He tipped his head to the side, muttering, “She likes dirty talk.”

  “Don’t you have a meeting to get to?”

  He grinned. “Yeah.” He then touched his lips to her mouth, pulled away, dropped his voice low and promised, “I’ll take care of you later, sweetheart.”

  That made her grin, roll up on her toes and touch her lips to his.

  He’d let her go but took her hand and began guiding her to the stairs when she tugged on his arm.

  He stopped and looked at her.

  “Thank you.”

  He was confused. “For what?”

  “How many do you want?”
>
  He was more confused, but asked, “How many you got?”

  “Well, there’s looking after me. Moving me in to protect me. Being cool with my meltdown. Listening to me. Understanding. Not running a mile when Essence told you her Woodstock orgy story. Looking after Essence. Being honest. How you’re honest. Asking if I’m good with how you’re honest. Giving great head. Having a big dick and knowing how to use it.” She gave him a wicked grin. “And liking your balls squeezed.”

  He yanked on her hand, she fell into his arms, and he landed a deep kiss on her.

  When he lifted his head, he said the only thing he could say.

  “You’re welcome.”

  But That Did It

  Beck

  Much earlier that same morning . . .

  Beck opened his eyes and smelled bacon.

  He then rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling a beat before he lifted his hands to his face and rubbed.

  He also counted.

  Five times.

  Five times in the five months he’d been seeing Janna he’d spent the night.

  And every morning, she was up before him, even if he had to get up early to get to work, and she made him breakfast.

  He rolled out of bed, moved to her bathroom and stood at the sink, scowling at the toothbrush she’d opened for him the morning after the first night he’d stayed. A toothbrush that was in her little, ceramic toothbrush holder with dots that formed designs that looked like henna art on it.

  Digging in.

  He used the toilet. Washed his hands. Splashed water on his face. Brushed his teeth. Moved out. Nabbed his jeans. Dragged them on. Same with tee, socks and boots.

  Then he prowled out toward the kitchen of her little two-bedroom place to have a word with her about breakfast.

  But he stopped in the living room.

  They didn’t spend time in it, so he’d never really paid attention.

  The kitchen was a galley kitchen with cheap, fake oak cabinets.

  The bedrooms were small and all anyone could say about the bathrooms (except the way she decorated them) was that they were functional.

  But the living room had a slanted ceiling that had beams and bead board. The walls were painted one step up from white to be a light shade of gray. The floor had that tile that looked like wood, hers was gray. There were big square windows set high enough you could see out, but they still gave privacy. Leading to the yard, a sliding glass door out to a deck with a pergola over it. All these windows giving a lot of sun to the room during the day.