Desolation Road

by Feehan, Christine

  The moment they were gone, the Torpedo Ink members looked at Absinthe. He gave them the thumbs-up.

  “Wanted to talk with you for a minute, Steele, if you don’t mind,” Absinthe said. He squeezed Scarlet’s hand and then let go of that lifeline, patting her bottom, shaping it for just a moment, wishing she was naked and he had the comfort of his kiska, his pussycat. He needed that about now. “Go inside with Breezy, baby. This won’t take long.”

  Scarlet’s green gaze drifted over his face and then she nodded. Breezy was born into the club life and she was the wife of the vice president of Torpedo Ink. Her man nodded toward the bar and touched her face. She smiled at Scarlet immediately, hooked arms with her and went right up the stairs chattering as if they were old friends.

  Absinthe walked away from the bottom of the stairs, not wanting to be overheard by the other members of his club. It was going to be difficult enough to say the things that needed saying to Steele, but he had to do it. The two went around the corner of the bar. Darkness had fallen, shrouding the night in a blanket of fog.

  “What’s up?”

  “Hard to bring this up but can’t put it off any longer. I keep having these flashbacks. They’re getting bad and it put Scarlet in some danger the other night. Savage too.”

  “We’re all dealing with post-traumatic stress, Absinthe,” Steele said, his hand going back to massage the nape of his neck. “It would be impossible not to. You’ve got the biggest brain, you know that.”

  Absinthe wasn’t going to pretend he wasn’t the smartest man in the room. “Demyan and I had experimented with holding a path open between our minds. You know we were pretty strong at connecting with others. But the two of us were really strong together. We worked on it all the time.”

  Absinthe felt sick. He broke out in a sweat. He shouldn’t have let Scarlet leave his side. She somehow managed to quiet the chaos that reigned in his brain when he thought back to that day—that horrible day when he felt everything his brother was feeling. The pressure in his chest was so tremendous he nearly went to his knees. He pressed both palms into the wide cement planter that wrapped around the back of the bar, trying to take deep breaths.

  “I was supposed to hold him. Hold the bridge. I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough.” He confessed the truth in a rush. “I blamed you, but it wasn’t you. It was me. I lost him that day. I was so angry with everyone for so much, for keeping me alive after the kittens died and then when I lost Demyan. I knew it was me. All this time, I wanted to blame you, Steele, but it was me. I’m sorry, man. I should have told you.”

  His admission came out in a rush, the words stumbling over one another.

  “Wait.” Steele held up his hand. “Wait. You used the word bridge. You said hold the bridge. That day, I couldn’t keep my eyes on him. They took him to another room. When I got to him, he was so far gone and he kept trying to tell me something important for you, but I couldn’t hear him. He wasn’t making sense. He kept saying he crashed the bridge. Tell Absinthe he crashed the bridge.”

  “He said he crashed the bridge?” Absinthe turned. He had to sit on the concrete wall abruptly. “Are you certain?”

  “He was all but gone but he mumbled it over and over. Crashed bridge. Crashed bridge. I didn’t tell you because I fuckin’ let you all down by taking my eyes off of him.”

  “You were tied up. They wrapped you in barbed wire. You still have the scars,” Absinthe said. “It’s absurd to think you could have kept your eyes on him. He really crashed the bridge?” He rubbed his chest, trying to breathe.

  Steele caught him by the nape of his neck and pressed his head down. “You’re hyperventilating. Yeah. That’s what he said. Bridge. Crash. Hell. He broke the connection between you because you were feeling everything he was, and he knew he was dying. You were keeping him alive.”

  “Damn that son of a bitch. He made me live when I didn’t want to. When my guts were torn out.” His lungs burned until he couldn’t breathe, and he had to keep his head between his knees. His brother. Demyan.

  Steele shook his head. “He wouldn’t have survived. It was impossible. I saw him. I’m a healer. They ripped him to shreds. I couldn’t even touch him. I couldn’t hold him. There wasn’t a place on him to touch. He tried to spare you, Absinthe. He wanted to spare me. That was the way he was. You know that. If there was a connection between the two of you, he was the one to break it, not you.”

  It made sense. It was exactly what Demyan would do. He had done it. Of course he’d done it. Absinthe would have done it to spare Demyan, to spare any of them. He closed his eyes, trying not to let the burn behind them become anything more than his own. He couldn’t take on Steele’s grief, not when his was so visceral. That cut went so deep for both of them.

  Steele sank down onto the cement beside him. Close, but not touching. “I’m sorry, brother. He was like you. Brilliant. The best of us. Sensitive. Willing to take on too much for all of us. I loved him with everything in me.”

  “I didn’t know how to go on for the longest time,” Absinthe admitted.

  “I know you think you know you’re one lucky son of a bitch to have found Scarlet, but brother, it’s far more than that. We’re, all of us, so fucked up and we’re always going to be. We aren’t like other clubs in that they put the brotherhood before their women. We don’t do that. But somehow in that shithole, all of us, in order to survive, we had to take pieces of one another in order to make ourselves whole.”

  Absinthe nodded. He knew that. “It’s true. When I’m in the room with everyone, I can feel the way we’re mixed together. We’re definitely one person, not eighteen.” He hesitated. “The weird thing is, Destroyer doesn’t upset that balance the way I thought he might. He fits with us.”

  “The point I’m making is that our women have to be able to not just fit into club life, but to fit into the way we are with one another. To be able to deal with our fucked-up ways and needs. Blythe, man, she puts up with all of us for Czar and she loves us. Soleil, she loves what Ice loves and gives him everything. Breezy was born into the life and she’s down for it. Anya, she and Reaper deal with his shit. Scarlet, she just pleases you, Absinthe. She just does whatever the fuck you want or need because she loves the fuck out of you.”

  Absinthe knew Steele was right. He hadn’t looked at it quite that way, but he knew Steele was telling him something important.

  “That doesn’t come along all that often. All of us, we hit the jackpot and the women we’ve got, we have to know what we have. You have to look at her and really see what she’s worth. Know it in your soul. These women—Blythe, Anya, Breezy, Soleil and now Scarlet—they are what we live for. They’re what Czar meant when he said we could turn our lives around. You see the way the others treat them. The way they accept them. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t know what these women are. What they mean.”

  Absinthe nodded. “Savage scared the shit out of Scarlet in order to bring me out of my flashback. He was pissed at me like you wouldn’t believe on her behalf.”

  “He doesn’t want to fuck up his relationship with her,” Steele said. “Any more than I’d want to. She’s special. She’s our sister. She matters.”

  Absinthe understood that because he felt those things for the other women. “I hear what you’re saying, Steele. Demyan was my brother and I loved him. I looked up to him and admired him. I wanted him back after he was gone, and I blamed myself all these years. I was still that child and I knew that. I read psychology books all the time. Intellectually, I knew what I was doing, holding on to anger against you, Alena, Savage and even Demyan for leaving me. For keeping me alive after I’d lost so much. I knew, but I couldn’t stop.”

  “You know the trauma won’t go away because you figured the shit out, right?” Steele said. “Because I’m a fuckin’ doctor and I’ve got this girl, my wife, and she gives me the world and I still can’t make it stop. She makes it better, but it doesn’t stop.”

  “No, it isn’t going to stop,”
Absinthe agreed. “For any of us. It doesn’t work that way, but we can all find better ways to cope.”

  Steele put a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for talking to me about this, brother. I needed to hear what you had to say, and I needed to tell you what Demyan said. I never thought he was able to give me the message for you that was so important to him to say.”

  Absinthe ordinarily would have avoided physical contact in an emotional situation like this one, but he was grateful he didn’t. He felt Steele’s grief, but he also felt his genuine love for his brother, and also for him. It ran deep and allowed him to finally let go of the feelings of anger, betrayal and resentment he was harboring against Steele and just feel that shared grief and love toward him.

  That sat together in silence for a few more minutes while more of their club gathered at the bar and music blared loudly. “I can’t leave Scarlet alone for too long. She’s new at this.”

  The two walked together around the corner to the front of the bar, where several of the members of Torpedo Ink had congregated on the stairs. Absinthe found himself viewing them differently. As his brothers—but just that little bit differently. Scarlet had already changed his life, just by talking to him, by insisting he work things out with Steele and the others, first in his head and then with them.

  In the bar, she was standing in a small, tight circle of women, close to Breezy, who clearly was watching over her for Absinthe. Scarlet looked up, her eyes lighting up the moment she saw him, and then she smiled. His heart reacted, clenching hard in his chest. He went straight to her, threading his way through his brethren, nodding to all those greeting him, but his gaze was locked on hers. She searched his face, making certain he was all right after his talk with Steele. Clearly, Breezy was doing the same thing with her man.

  The moment Absinthe got to Scarlet, he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, gently brushing his lips over hers. “Missed you, baby. You all right? Breezy take good care of you?” He drew her away from the other women.

  “She did,” Scarlet said. “She introduced me to everyone I hadn’t met. Lissa, Lexi and Airiana, who has been regaling us with tales about her son Benito and all of his antics as a mini-Max and assassin in training. Apparently, Blythe and Airiana had an entirely different vision of survival training than Czar and all of you. It was hysterical listening to her. She had us in stitches, although it was heartbreaking at times when she told us sometimes the children still come to their bedroom and crawl into bed with them because of nightmares.”

  He massaged the nape of her neck. “I still have nightmares and I’m in my thirties,” he pointed out. “Steele was just telling me that our past doesn’t go away because we want it to. Trauma like that sticks with you and the ramifications last forever.”

  Scarlet tipped her face up to his. “Are you good with Steele, honey?”

  “Much better,” he admitted. “Thanks for suggesting I talk to him. I did the same with Alena earlier. I feel better about a lot of things right now.” He slung his arm around her neck and kissed her.

  The moment she parted her lips, that strange electrical charge raced from her skin to his. Like putting a match to a detonator, an explosion went off. Fire raced through his veins straight to his groin. “Woman. Every single time.” He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing deep. Taking her in while his brothers and sisters moved all around them setting up the tables and chairs to eat.

  “Get a move on, you two,” Czar said. “Eat now, dessert later.”

  Absinthe found himself laughing, feeling so much lighter, as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He helped fit the tables together while Scarlet helped bring out the trays of food. Fried chicken. Beef. So many side dishes. All the Torpedo Ink members were there, including Savage and Destroyer. They’d returned from the city only a half hour or so earlier. When Absinthe deliberately got close to him, he felt far less strained.

  While Scarlet was putting plates, napkins and silverware at the end of the bar for everyone to use, Absinthe saw Savage go up to her. As always, Savage looked at ease, as if nothing bothered him. Scarlet straightened, her gaze immediately searching the room for Absinthe. He was a distance from her but when he started toward her, she motioned him off with a small shake of her head.

  Savage faced his way so he could read his lips. “Just want to know we’re good, Scarlet.”

  “I figured out, after I got over being scared, that I was mostly mad at myself.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re okay with it.”

  “I love him, the same as you do. So, yeah, we’re okay, Savage.”

  “Good.” He started to turn away but then turned back to her. “Just out of curiosity. When you went for the gun, who did you plan to shoot? Me? Or Absinthe?”

  “I thought I might wing both of you just to make myself feel better.”

  Savage shook his head. “I hope that man knows what he’s got in his bed.”

  Absinthe rubbed his hand along the base of Scarlet’s spine. They sat in the shadows at the very back of the bar in one of the few booths, Scarlet in his lap. He felt like he hadn’t been alone with her in days. The dinner had been fun, visiting with all the members of the club as well as the women. Most of the outsiders had gone home, along with Czar’s wife and some of the newer women in the club—Casimir’s wife, as well as Gavriil’s woman. They weren’t quite ready for what might be considered the wilder side of the Torpedo Ink parties. To the charter members, it was their normal.

  “I wish we were home, miledi.” Absinthe’s hand moved up to Scarlet’s ear, caressed her lobe over and over. “I want to fuck your brains out.” He felt the shiver that went through her body. “We barely got married and didn’t have a chance to have a honeymoon. It’s all I can think about.” He’d wanted a better start for them. He’d given that a lot of thought. If he couldn’t take her off somewhere exotic, at least he wanted to be at their home and try to give her a honeymoon there.

  She leaned into his hand. “Me too,” she admitted. “We haven’t really had time to be alone together with everything going on with the club.”

  At his insistence, she’d worn one of her librarian skirts, the butterfly one that had always made him crazy. It swung around her legs intriguingly, those butterfly buttons up the side making him mad to want to slowly undo them, one by one. Now he could. She had a little matching blouse, with the same butterfly buttons fluttering over her generous breasts, daring him to uncover her. She looked so prim and proper with the blouse closed and the swing skirt buttoned properly, not exposing her thigh.

  He dipped his fingers below the hem and ran his nails up her knee. “This is one of my favorite outfits.” She even wore the square purple glasses for him that matched. Her literary outfit. Prim and proper. “I wanted to sit you up on your desk, tear off your panties and devour you. I think I’m going to do that later. Eat some grapes right out of your hot little pussy. Or some of Alena’s orange-spice dessert balls. She serves them in these little sugar nets with strings I can tug right out of you.” He teased her earlobe with his teeth. “How does that sound, baby?”

  Alena had outdone herself, baking some of the specialty desserts, and Absinthe couldn’t wait to try them with Scarlet, as long as she didn’t object with the club around them.

  “Fantastic. Sexy. I don’t know. There’s so many people here.”

  He laughed, his fingers massaging the nape of her neck. “Look in the corner, baby. Ice and Soleil are already going at it.”

  The lights in the bar were dim. They weren’t expecting the Diamondbacks until the early morning hours. He caught Scarlet’s head and turned her face toward the stage, where Ice was sitting on a stair, Soleil on his lap, her breasts in his hands, while she moved on him rhythmically. It was impossible to tell if he was pumping in her ass or pussy, but she was moaning, and he had his head thrown back.

  Storm had a woman, it looked like Heidi, one of the club girls, busy sucking him dry while he watched. At the bar, Reaper sudd
enly pulled Anya over the top of the bar. She laughed while he dragged her clothes off and laid her out like a feast, reaching for the orange-spice balls, feeding one to Anya before devouring one himself.

  “I guess you’re right, no one is watching,” Scarlet agreed.

  “Alena,” Absinthe called. “You have any of the orange-spice balls left for us?”

  “Sure, babe.” Alena came to the table with a tray.

  “Thanks, honey.” Absinthe took a generous helping. “She’s going to love these. They’re my favorite.”

  “I know,” Alena admitted. She blew him a kiss and sauntered off. As she passed Savage and Destroyer, both grabbed several off the tray.

  Absinthe lifted Scarlet onto the table facing him and slowly unbuttoned the little butterflies holding the blouse together over her breasts. As the two sides parted, the rounded curves spilled over her lilac bra, drawing his eye, her nipples peeking through the lace at him. His cock reacted with a hammering heartbeat. He opened the front of the bra so that her breasts spilled into his hands. At once his mouth was there, sucking her flesh into the heat, using his tongue, his teeth, grazing her skin, her nipples, her aureoles until her breathing was ragged and she was cradling his head to her, urging him to do whatever he wanted.

  He loved being able to take her out of her head to a place where she wasn’t aware of anyone else in the room with them or her surroundings. He began to slowly lift that little swing skirt, just the way he’d wanted to do at the library, on her desk.

  “You’re so fuckin’ sexy, ledi.” He pulled her thighs apart, rubbing them up high, massaging, sweeping his hand close to her heat, but not touching her. Not yet. “I fanta-sized about you in this skirt. On your desk. Library closed. My mouth between your legs. You screaming my name. Once I jerked off at the thought of you on your cushion, kneeling up on your library desk with your tail in, my little kiska, waiting patiently for me while I read my book. Another time, you sucked my cock while I read. And then I fucked you while I bent you over your library desk.”