by Zoey Parker
There was a brief pause, and Cain blurted out, “I can't wash my fucking hair, okay? Jesus! Are you happy now? My hair stinks 'cause I haven't done it in a couple of days, and now that my ribs are all fucked up, I can't reach up to do it, even with my good hand. So I'm pissed. Okay? End of story.”
Half of Missy wanted to laugh, but the other half actually felt sorry for him. “Do you want me to help?” she asked.
There was no answer for a long time, and Missy thought he'd chosen to ignore her. But just as she was about to step away from the door, she heard him sigh deeply. “Fine,” he said. “Come in and get it over with, then, since I'm supposed to be some kind of fucking invalid.”
Missy opened the door and stepped in.
Cain raked the shower curtain to one side, naked and glowering at her.
It took all of Missy's self-control to keep her eyes locked on Cain's with his dripping, muscular body inches away from hers. His expression was one of defiance, and she realized that he was deliberately trying to shock and provoke her with this demonstration. He was challenging her to remain neutral in caring for him, instead of hiding behind some veneer of girlish modesty and discomfort. Maybe he thought she'd gawk at his body or run from the room. Either would represent a small victory for him, proof that he could shake her composure.
Missy was determined not to give him the satisfaction. She met his gaze levelly, one eyebrow slightly raised.
Still, it took every ounce of willpower she had not to look down. There were strips of neon-colored compression tape carefully criss-crossed over his ribs, surrounded by a mural of interwoven tattoos with sculpted muscles coiled beneath them. In the lowest periphery of her vision, his cock protruded from a thick brown thatch of pubic hair, just out of focus.
“Well?” Cain asked impatiently. “Are you going to do my hair, or were you expecting me to put tassels on my nipples and do a dance for you?”
“You're too tall,” Missy said.
“Excuse me?”
“For me to do your hair,” she continued. “I won't be able to do a decent job if I have to stand and reach that high. Do you have a step-stool around here somewhere?”
“Yeah, in the closet,” Cain answered.
“Cool, I'll be right back,” Missy said, leaving the bathroom. As she went to the hall closet, her mind kept dragging itself back to the brief glimpse of Cain's crotch. She wished she'd summoned up the nerve to give it one solid look, just so she'd have a firm knowledge what it looked like and her mind wouldn't keep trying to fill in the blanks. That way, she could let these thoughts go once and for all.
And anyway, she thought as she grabbed the stool, if he wasn't prepared for me to look at it, he wouldn't have bared it all for me like that, right? Besides, it's not like I'm planning to openly stare at it for any prolonged period. Of course not. That would give him the wrong idea, and besides, I'm not in middle school anymore. I know what cocks look like. I've seen a decent number myself. I'm just curious about his. A little curious, not even a lot.
So just one solid look when I get back in there, she promised herself. Just one and done. Just to get it out of my system. Okay? Okay. Here we go.
Missy carried the compact step-stool into the bathroom, her eyes immediately lowering to look.
Cain had a towel wrapped around his waist.
Missy felt a pang of disappointment, then kicked herself for being so silly. She couldn't believe she'd even talked herself into trying to look at his rod in the first place. Like she even gave a damn what his cock looked like, right? What the hell was wrong with her?
“Is the nudie show closed for the night?” she snickered, setting the stool in the tub. “Too bad. I was just about to hit up the store down the street, see if I could change a twenty for some singles. Take a seat.”
Cain lowered himself down onto the stool. “Sorry. I was just...”
“Pissed and angry and trying to get a rise out of me. I know.” Missy reached over for the shampoo bottle. As she did, she felt her eyes tug toward the parted edges of the towel, trying to get a look at what was behind them. She chided herself again.
“Try not to get any in my eyes, all right?” Cain said as Missy started to rub the shampoo into his long hair.
“Damn, you just keep ruining my fun,” she replied. As she massaged the gel into his locks, her fingertips pressed into his scalp, massaging it. “Nice hair, by the way. Wish mine had these kinds of waves.”
Cain snorted disdainfully. “Chicks have been saying that to me my whole life. But if they did have hair like this, they'd hate it. It sticks out in every direction when I wake up, and getting it to lay back down again is a bitch.”
“Every direction, huh?” Missy pulled the shampooed strands of hair gently, sculpting it so it looked like it was protruding from Cain's head in spikes like a hedgehog’s. “Like that?”
“Just do my hair, okay?” Cain grunted. “Don't play with it.”
“Oh, come on!” Missy giggled, mashing the sticky strands together and forming a ridge along the top of Cain's head. “What about like this, huh? Don't tell me you've never thought about having a mohawk.”
“Ugh, knock it off,” Cain said. “What are you, four years old?” But hidden just under his annoyance, Missy was sure she could hear the vaguest hint of a laugh.
“You're just so angry all the time!” Missy laughed, forming Cain's hair into a pair of horns. “What makes you so full of rage? Could it be...Satan?”
Cain's laughter bubbled to the surface in spite of him. “Stop! That's not funny!”
“It was a little funny,” Missy said, rinsing the shampoo out of his hair.
“Okay, fine, maybe just a little,” Cain admitted grudgingly. “So are you done?”
“Nope, still got the conditioner.”
“You don't have to do that,” Cain said dismissively. “I don't even really use it.”
“Oh?” she asked. “Then why do you have a bottle of it next to the shampoo, and why is two-thirds of it gone? Have you been drinking it?”
“No, but...”
“Then shut up and let me finish, big guy,” Missy chided, taking the bottle of conditioner from the hanging rack under the shower head. “This won't take long.”
Missy worked the conditioner into Cain's hair. As she did, she found herself rubbing his scalp again, massaging it slowly and deliberately. Her fingers worked in smooth circles, and she realized she was bringing them lower, lower, until she was kneading Cain's temples.
Suddenly, she remembered that he'd been kicked in the head multiple times. “Does this hurt?” she asked.
“No, it's fine,” Cain said quietly.
Missy's hands kept working slowly, sensually, burying themselves in Cain's hair. Missy felt a series of tingles ripple through her body, from the nape of her neck to somewhere just below her waist. She told herself that the conditioner was certainly rubbed in thoroughly enough, and that it was time to stop touching him.
But she couldn't.
Instead, her fingers ventured below his hair, caressing the nape of his neck. She pressed a little harder, working the muscles carefully and feeling them loosen at her touch. A faint groan escaped Cain's lips, and she was sure that what she heard in it was pleasure, not pain.
The tingling in her body intensified, like a chain reaction blossoming through her.
The towel around Cain's waist shifted slightly, and Missy felt her eyes yanked down toward it before she could stop herself.
A sizeable bulge had appeared along Cain's left leg. He had an erection.
Missy's hands paused for a moment, and she heard a growl of annoyance escape Cain's lips. He pulled himself to his feet quickly with a snarl of pain, almost knocking Missy backward in the process. She knocked over the conditioner and it hit the floor, spilling out creamy liquid.
“I told you I didn't want any fucking conditioner!” Cain screamed. “Now get out of here and let me finish.” Below the anger in his voice, Missy heard a quaver of something that sound
ed like embarrassment.
“Fine,” Missy answered in a thin voice. All of the breath had suddenly left her body. “Leave the conditioner, I'll clean it up later...”
“Just fucking go!”
Missy ran out, slamming the door behind her. Her heart was thumping in her chest, and the moisture in the bathroom had given her skin a thin sheen of perspiration. She went to the kitchen and finished the dishes, listening for more curses from Cain.
There weren't any. Just silence.
Chapter 14
Cain
Cain ran his head under the shower spray for a long time, trying to use one hand to vigorously rub out the conditioner. When he'd done his best, he shut off the water and carefully stepped out, making sure to avoid the pearly white puddle on the floor. The way it looked under the yellowed light of the bathroom reminded him of semen, and he felt a fresh surge of anger. His erection was still pointing like an accusing finger, and its steady throb traveled deep into the pit of his stomach.
Goddamn it, why had she massaged his head like that? So…sensually. Hadn't he acted shitty enough to her to make sure she didn't get any fucking ideas?
Cain never had any trouble satisfying his libido when he needed to. There were always plenty of pretty, friendly, uncomplicated girls willing to drop their panties for a night or two and explore their wild sides with a biker like him. He always made sure it never went past that, though. He never wanted to have a real relationship—nothing that could drift toward commitment or marriage, nothing that could even come within spitting distance of words like “love” or “trust.”
He knew why he lived this way, and he was comfortable enough with himself to accept it. He'd spent three years in a juvenile detention center from ages 14 to 17, and while he was there, his court-appointed shrink had gravely expressed her worries that Cain would never be able to “normalize” when in a real relationship, due to “the unfortunate failings of his parental figures” and his “deep-seated phobias based on the poor example they'd set for him.”
Like many bikers, Cain didn't much truck with shrinks and their gibberish. But in this case, he figured she'd pretty well hit the nail on the head.
Cain's father had worked nights as a security guard. Whenever he was home, he was almost always drunk and in a foul temper. Cain didn't necessarily blame him for being sloshed and furious all the time. He could see that his father hated everything about his life—every bad choice he'd made that had led to unwanted kids, an unhappy marriage, a lousy house he couldn't stand living in, and a low-paying job he loathed. Cain reckoned that if he fucked his life up flatter than hammered shit like his old man had, he'd want to spend every waking moment in a booze-soaked haze too, lashing out at anyone within arm's reach.
So he watched, dead-eyed, as his father routinely heaped verbal and physical abuse on his mother. And when Cain got old enough and it was his turn to endure the curses, threats, and smacks, he quietly accepted them.
He didn't feel sorry for his mother, even though he knew he probably should—she had tricked his father into marriage by going off her birth control without saying anything, then surprising him with an unplanned and unwelcome pregnancy. And he didn't feel sorry for himself either, though the anti-abuse posters and public service announcements at his school clearly wanted him to. He mostly felt sorry for his dad, knowing that no amount of yelling or hitting would ever really chip away at the avalanche of anger and self-pity he was buried under.
But on Cain's fourteenth birthday, his father had gotten even drunker than usual and decided to take out his rage on Cain's 5-year-old sister Jill, smacking her in the mouth for interrupting him. Cain went to the garage, picked up a wrench, carried it back to the kitchen, and swung it at his father's head as hard as he could. The heavy tool struck his father squarely in the temple, and he spent the next week and a half in a coma before quietly dying.
Cain was sent to the Hepplewhite Juvenile Correctional Facility. His mother and sister wrote to him many times, but he threw their letters away without reading them. As far as he was concerned, that part of his life was over.
While he was at Hepplewhite, Cain realized that he felt more comfortable in that environment than he had in his own home. The rules were simple. He found that he had an instinctive knowledge of when to stand up and when to back down, when to demand respect and when to show it.
There were plenty of boys there who were older and tougher, but Cain had an aptitude for entering their circles seamlessly, earning their trust and protection. He didn't drink much or do drugs—again, he had no intention of repeating his father's mistakes—but he had no problem helping his new friends smuggle these things in and sell them to the other kids.
During a brief riot his first year there, Cain saved one of the gang leaders from being shanked by a rival, breaking the attacker's jaw in three places and blinding him in one eye. The guards never found out who did it, but from that point forward, Cain was considered one of the most hardcore kids in juvie.
Cain heard about the Blood Eagles from the nephew of one of their members, who he shared a cell with. Every night, he'd listen to stories of hijacking, drug running, wild parties, long rides under a wide-open sky, and other adventures, and he resolved to join them as soon as he got out of Hepplewhite. When he turned 17 and his sentence was up, he set off to make his dream come true.
His cellmate had told him that no one could join the MC without a bike, so he stole his first one. Technically, he stole two—the first had been a canary-yellow Kawasaki, and the Eagles had laughed him out of the clubhouse when he showed up with it, telling him to “steal something American next time.” That night, Cain ditched the noisy Japanese bike, boosted a sleek black Boss Hoss from a roadhouse parking lot, and returned to the Lost Knife defiantly.
Within a year, he was a fully-patched member. Nine years later, he was celebrating his new role as the Eagles' VP when he saw Missy haul Marian out of an overturned port-a-john and beat her like a gong.
Cain had admired that, and it had even given him quite a few lustful thoughts that night which had made it difficult for him to focus on the hot, willing girls who were throwing themselves at him. He'd briefly considered walking over to Missy and tossing a flirt or two her way. But the most he could offer her would be a night or two of no-strings fun, and indulging in something so cheap and tawdry with the sister of the MC's president seemed like something that could lead to trouble later on.
He knew Hunter wouldn't have a problem with Missy dating one of the Eagles—in fact, it seemed like this was what he hoped for, to keep her around the club even more—but he was pretty sure that hope didn't extend to letting MC members pass her around casually like some kind of fuck toy, so he kept his distance.
And now here they both were, trapped in a tiny house together for a week. And yes, feeling her hands on his head and neck had been amazing.
But then he'd felt himself get hard, and suddenly, he was filled with rage as he realized that he had never felt more powerless or less sexy in his entire life.
He'd wanted to stand up and wrap his arms around Missy and shove her up against the bathroom wall and take her, roughly, over and over again. But he knew he couldn't even get up without feeling like there were rusty knives sliding into him between his ribs, and with one arm trapped inside a cast, he wouldn't be holding or shoving anyone anytime soon.
Even when he'd been in juvie, even when he'd served four years in prison, he'd never felt truly helpless before. He'd never needed anything from anyone since the day the wrench connected with the side of his father's head. He'd gone through life secure in the knowledge that the only person he'd ever really need to rely on would be himself. Some people might have found that idea lonely, but he'd found it deeply comforting. He knew where he stood.
And now he could barely stand at all without someone's help.
Cain stepped into his jeans, then slowly bent over to pull them up his legs, cursing and hissing the entire way. With one hand, he clumsily zipped
the fly and fastened the button. He hadn't bothered toweling off, and the legs of the jeans stuck to his damp skin.
For a long moment, he looked at his t-shirt, crumpled up into a ball in the corner of the bathroom. It seemed to be mocking him and he kicked at it. Fuck it. It was crusted with blood anyway.
Before he opened the bathroom door, he took one last look at the conditioner on the floor before speaking his general housekeeping mantra out loud: “Screw it, I'll get to it tomorrow.” The idea of bending down again to clean the puddle made his sides hurt even more.
Cain turned the doorknob and peered out, silently preparing for another ugly exchange with Missy. But he didn't see or hear her. He looked at the kitchen and saw that the dishes had been cleaned, and were drying on the counter on top of a dish towel.
He ventured down the hall and saw that the door to the only bedroom was closed. He never used the room since he generally fell asleep on the couch. There was no bed in it and he wondered how Missy would sleep.