by Tara Oakes
We know who we can’t trust. We can’t trust father. Everyone needs help when faced with a difficult task. What could be more difficult that overthrowing a man like my father without getting killed in the process? We need someone strong and powerful to help. Who could be stronger and more powerful than the Slayers, a group of men that had done what no else had ever attempted before? They challenged my father by taking me, knowing what the consequences would be in the end.
Who better than these people, these Slayers, to help Mateo and I avenge my mother, her family, and Uncle Arturo?
Could this work? With father gone, I could finally be free from his tyranny. Mateo could take what was rightfully his and our loved ones would not have died in vain.
“Catarina?” Chase asks again. “What’s wrong?”
I can do this. I need to do this. Now I just need to get Chase and his men to help.
CHAPTER SIX
CHASE
I don’t read Spanish, even though I took a few years of it in high school. I’d cut most of the classes though, so I guess it doesn’t really count. The only reason I’d passed is because I had stumbled upon something very interesting in the teachers lounge of our run down school after football practice in our junior year.
Earlier that day Mr. Jackson, our Spanish teacher and the head of the Foreign Language Department had confiscated a skin mag from me during class. Well, it was my favorite and I wanted it back. Knowing full well that there was a box of contraband in the teachers’ lounge, I was pretty sure that’s where it hadwound up.
After classes had ended and the halls were empty except for the kids wandering in and out to collect things from their lockers after sports practice, I snuck through the back hallway to the teachers’ lounge which I had thought would be empty.
Instead, I found Mr. Jackson on his knees with his head buried in Ms. Samson’s pussy. She was a brand new teacher that year and hot as hell. All of us kids had taken bets on who’d be able to bag her. Looked like we had all lost and Mr. Jackson had won.
It’s not exactly a crime to screw your coworker. But when one of the people happens to be a middle-aged, married, father of three who was a deacon in the town’s church, you can see how the information proved useful to me.
I skated by with high B’s all through junior Spanish. I didn’t want to get greedy and ask for A’s, although I’m sure Jackson would have given them me. No way in hell would Ma had ever believed I was gettin’ A’s. Especially when the only other class I was getting decent grades in was auto shop.
The next year, my senior year, I’d been lucky enough to get Ms. Samson as a Spanish teacher. Our arrangement still stood, with blackmailed grades ensuring my silence although she’s stopped boning Mr. Jackson by then. I guess she’d figured out that he wasn’t exactly the guy to ever leave his wife for a side chick. She wasn’t the type to screw him knowing that.
What was Mr. Jackson’s loss was my gain. I’d swooped in and acted as a shoulder to cry on for the poor, broken-hearted Elizabeth Samson. By the time graduation came around, I was doin’ her on a pretty regular basis.
I’d lost touch with her when I went away to college and discovered sorority chicks.
Then I met Dawson, found the Slayers and the rest is history. Last I heard, Elizabeth Samson had married some math teacher and popped out a few kids. I’ll bet she’s never able to sit behind her desk without thinking of the things I used to do to her on it though.
“What’s so funny?” Catarina sees me laughing to myself as I think of that poor math teacher who can’t hold a candle to the way I used to make his wife come.
“Hmm?” I pretend not knowing what she’s talking about. “Just remembering something from Spanish class in school.” I don’t elaborate any further.
“You speak Spanish?” She’s doubtful.
There it is again. That look in her eye that says she thinks she’s better than me. If only she knew how many things I’m actually better than her at. I’d bet she wouldn’t look at me that way again. My cock twitches, jumping in my pants thinking about how she’s going to find out.
“Nah. Never went to class.” I edit out the details about how I was still able to pass.
She looks smug. “That’s what I expected. It’s not like you needed to keep your grades up for college or anything.”
She thinks she knows it all, doesn’t she? Thinks she’s got me pegged. I’m gonna enjoy throwing a curve ball in her theory.
“Didn’t need to keep my grades up. I had a full ride to a championship first division school. Played football. Quarterback for LSU”. I arch my eyebrow in silent challenge to her.
The Spanish soap opera that I’d been struggling to pay attention to is now fading away, with Catarina even abandoning it as she turns to me.
“You got a scholarship? A full scholarship? Did you actually graduate?” Catarina is in shock.
See, that’s the thing about underestimating people.
“Me smart. Me graduate.” I pound my chest like a gorilla.
She’s incredibly interested now. “Then, why do you—do this for a living?”
She points to the patches on the front of my leather cut.
“And what’s wrong with what I do for a living? You do realize your family is a drug cartel, right? Not sure there’s much room for judgment on the soap box you’re standin’ on, sweetheart.” I remind her of her own criminal ties.
I seem to have struck a chord with her. Her top lip thins as she bites on it. Her eyes flare.
“I’m nothing like my father,” she snarls.
There’s something behind her words, something deep. I guess she’s not daddy’s little princess like I had thought. I guess she wasn’t the only one of us to underestimate the other.
“Then I guess you’re like your mother?” I deduce. “Is that where you get those gorgeous brown eyes from?”
Whatever anger was blazing in her fiery eyes not even a moment ago is now gone, replaced with a sadness I’ve never seen before, one I’d never expect from a strong girl like her. “I wouldn’t know. My mother’s dead.”
The breath in my lungs suddenly escapes and I choke. “Wha—what? I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought Dawson said Jimenez lived with his wife and your sisters?”
As a club we’d done our research and sized up our opponent. That’s how we found out about Catarina and the college she was attending in Texas. It wasn’t easy to do either. There isn’t exactly a Wikipedia page on drug cartel leaders.
We’d paid for every bit of information we got. Looks like we got ripped off on some of it, if what she says is true.
“That woman is not my mother!” Catarina is getting animated. “My father is responsible for my mother’s death. His wife is nothing to me. He is nothing to me.”
I feel like I’m getting whiplash. What the fuck is going on here? Is she serious? Or is she fucking around with me, playing some kind of game?
The tough as nails girl I’d come to know in the last few weeks is gone. When I look into her eyes now, all I see is a small little girl trying not to cry when talking about her dead mother.
“Shit.” I run my hand back through my hair. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
Apparently she doesn’t either. Catarina realizes she’s shown vulnerability, and controls it real quick.
“You never answered my question,” she changes the subject. “If you went to school and graduated, then why are you doing this with your life?”
I guess it’s my time to share. “They saved my life.” My statement is bold, I know, but I’m not exaggerating. “My senior year in college, I was in a wreck. We won a pretty big football game against Mississippi. Celebrated a little too hard. I was worse for the wear compared to the guy that was driving but he was hammered pretty well, too. I blacked out, but I’ve seen the pics of the scene. The tree won. I ended up in the hospital with a busted knee. Couldn’t finish the season, so I lost my spot on the team and my scholarship.”
It’s been a lon
g time since I’ve told this story to anyone. All the brothers know it, having seen the person that accident had turned me into. “I had no place to go but home. But by then, I wasn’t the same person. Riverdale wasn’t the same either. All my friends from growing up were either still at school or moved away. Everyone except for Gryff.”
I can tell she’s paying close attention because those deep brown eyes of hers light up with recognition at Gryff’s name. “I met him, right?”
I laugh. “Yup, sweetheart. You met him. He’s the one who’s got the baby face. Makes him look innocent. Chicks can’t get enough of it. Well, he was still in town by the time I got back. He’d check up on me. After a while, he was tired of the sorry depressed fuck I’d become who’d given up. Wouldn’t stand for it. He helped me see that just because I’d lost a bunch of shit, it didn’t mean I’d lost everything.”
“That’s how they saved your life.” She seems to understand.
I shrug my shoulders and lean back in the old beat-up sofa. “It’s a dangerous thing when a man thinks he’s got nothin’ left. That means he’s got nothin’ to lose either. People like that can turn to shit to numb themselves. I turned to the club. They gave me a brotherhood, a family, a purpose--”
“They gave you love…” She adds.
My eyes roll. “Slayers have something deeper than love for each other.”
Catarina ponders that. “What’s deeper than love?”
She looks so innocent, so curious for the answer to that question. “There’s no word for it. Not in English. Not in Spanish. It’s just something you feel. Until you’ve felt it, you can’t understand it.”
Here it is, the moment to make my move.
She’s facing me on the small worn sofa. I focus on her lips and move closer to them. She doesn’t shy away.
“You’ve never felt it before, have you?” I ask the wide-eyed girl.
She doesn’t speak, but shakes her head no instead.
“Time to change that.”
~*~
CAT
What the hell was that?
I can barely catch my breath as I lean against my closed bedroom door.
He kissed me! That dirty biker actually kissed me! His lips were on my lips, his tongue was—
My eyes close as I remember the details of what he’s just done. His words had me hypnotized, mesmerized, and then—
He kissed me!
And I actually liked it. At least, I think I did. My body felt like it was about to catch on fire in his arms. But I ran away. Why did I run away if I liked it?
Because he’s a dirty criminal just like my father, no matter how sweet he seems sometimes, and no matter how bad I want to see what else that tongue can do.
He’s a thug. Just like father, I remind myself.
Wait.
That’s right. He’s a thug, and a criminal, and a badass. Just what Mateo was referring to in his letter. He’s what we need, who we need against father. He and his Slayers are the only hope we have.
I take a deep breath and resolve myself to what I’m about to do. I want to be free from father. Freedom always has a cost.
Without giving myself any time to second guess myself, I turn on my heel and throw the bedroom door open. He’s sitting in the same spot I left him, wearing a huge grin.
I march right up to him and plant my feet firmly in place in front of the sofa.
“Why don’t you show me what it feels like? This feeling that has no words.” It’s a dare. A challenge. One I know he’s too arrogant to pass up.
He stands quickly, and I find that I’ve forgotten just how big he really is. I’m reminded of it now as he towers above me. For a second I think he’ll speak, as his lips move, but he doesn’t.
The strong, capable lips that I’d known intimately for the first time only moments earlier are ever so eager to remind me of how they made my body feel. They’re tenacious against my own, adept at moving into just the right position to fill my mouth with his burning tongue.
The subtle hairs on his chin and his cheeks, abrade against my own, adding a heated friction between our bodies as we grab and paw at each other.
This is what he wants? To prove to me that he knows something that I don’t? Something that he’s cocky enough to believe he’s capable of teaching?
Well, go ahead then.
His huge hands move determinedly down my sides, sliding into place over my ass, cupping each cheek. His fingers press themselves into my flesh and they feel as hot as a poker, branding me.
He pulls me in, flattening my body against his, so that every square inch is pressed against his rock hard form. I’m held in a tight vice, one that, oddly enough, I have no intention of trying to escape.
Deep guttural groans come from somewhere hidden. I feel them rumbling through his chest like a powerful engine roaring to life. I picture that engine as part of a huge semi-truck. Big, strong, overpowering, with the sharp angles of hard metal edges. The ignition turned and practically lurching in place before taking off. The thick gearshift of his pressing against my hip, begging to be pushed into drive.
As if the light had suddenly changed from red to green, he bolts into action scooping me up from my defiant stance, swinging us around the lamp table and through the room.
I hear the thud of my bedroom door, my jail cell, being kicked against the wall as he removes the obstacle from our path. The metal doorknob hums with low ringing from the impact. I can hear it like the tang of a bell as my hearing, along with all of my other senses, is heightened.
Somehow it rings through the air, through me. My muscles, my bones, shake from it as Chase drops us to the creaky mattress, splaying his hard body to cover mine.
Every muscle of his that moves, every time his body finds a new way to fit against mine, I feel it.
There are so many layers to what we’re doing. All the hatred and anger I’ve had for him these past few weeks is being taken out on his flesh as I claw at it, nearly ripping his tight t-shirt and leather vest from him. All the heat and sexual tension that’s been brewing is combusting, exploding in a volcanic eruption between us, the molten lava that our mouths leave on each other’s is like white heat- hotter than anything I could imagine.
He’s not gentle. I’m not gentle. We’re each taking something from each other. I know what it is that I’m taking from him- I’m taking out all my anger at my father, at being caught up in a mess like this that should have nothing to do with me, and I’m even taking out the anger I have at myself for actually wanting this.
The threading in the seams of the ill-fitting top I’m wearing pop and tear as the thin cotton is being taken off harshly, leaving my skin exposed. The sudden cool air sends a shiver down my spine that’s instantly quieted by the fevered blaze of his bare chest.
As his tongue demands obedience from my mouth, his hands demand compliance from my black stretchy pants, tugging at them until my hips, my thighs feel the same rush of sensations that me chest first felt when freed.
I kick at the bundled material gathered near my ankles until my legs are no longer bound to one another. Once they are free, his weathered hand finds its way between the soft flesh of my inner thighs, urging them to open.
Chase resettles his weight, shifting, moving to center himself as my knees hug him tight on either side, squeezing.
“Feel it yet, baby? Feel me?” His voice is husky, ripe with lust.
The sound of him calling me baby causes a reaction. As if a damn has burst, moisture floods down my leg, soaking the denim of his jeans that covers the leg pressing against my throbbing core.
A quick laughing breath escapes his lips as the hot, wet denim quickly cools against both our skin. “Yeah. You feel it.”
Roughly, he turns me over so I’m on all fours, facing away from him, suffering the whiplash from the abruptness of the move. A loud slapping sound echoes through the room right before I feel the sting against my ass cheek. It reverberates into my hip. Just as the sound of him calling me baby
turned me on, the sound of my spanked ass seems to turn him on. It’s practically dripping from his words.
“You’re gonna feel a whole lot more in a minute, baby.” His words are taunting.
My chin drops to my chest, hanging, suspended. My hair dangles around my face, pointing down to the mattress. Looking down, I see my chest moving quickly, panting in anticipation of what his words could mean.
He makes sounds behind me. I hear his belt buckle. I hear the swooshing of material against material as his jeans move. I hear the foiled ripping and tearing as he prepares himself. All of this can be heard above the loud, thudding beating of my racing heart.
Instinctively my fingers bend and claw, gripping into the cheap mattress. My eyes are clenched and my lip bit as I wait. The room comes to life with the second loud slapping of my ass, and then the whelped moan I release as he slams into me, thrusting purposefully.
“That’s right, baby. Now you feel it.” He narrates.
And I do feel it. Over, and over, and over again. I can even feel it through my body’s shuddering and quivering orgasms.
Two explosions later I feel something else. I feel Chase’s strong body literally being brought to his knees.
~*~
He’s sleeping. Deep and sound. His heart beats evenly under my ear as I lay my head the middle indent of his hard chest. His strong arm that’s wrapped around me, tickling little circles earlier, is now limp at my side.
The bedroom door is open and I can see beyond it into the open living room. The front door to the cabin is within my sights. I could run. I can run.
I could be out that door, down the hill, and hidden in the trees before he realizes what’s happened.
Then… why aren’t I?
His heart beats strong and steady. I close my eyes and curse myself silently as not to wake him. I know why I’m not running.
Because I felt it. Whatever it was that he was talking about being able to make me feel. I did.
Fuck!
CHAPTER SEVEN