by Wild, Nikki
Well, fuck. I shouldn't have done it, but I did it. I stayed when I should have gone, and I let Harvey and his grandkids or whatever the hell they were tug at my heartstrings. Truth was, I didn't want to come here and do this in the first place. Something about the whole deal felt off. Harvey had no reason to be spreading lies about our product. We'd been dealing to him for twenty years or more. He was always loyal. Always a good customer. But one little rumor makes its way back to Dutch, and suddenly he's on the shit list. I didn't like it.
I crouched down, next to Harvey, and tried to look him in the eye, but his eyes were rollin' crazy.
“Was it true, Harv?” I asked. “Try and look me in the eye, Harv. Was what you said true?”
What he'd said, to illuminate the situation a bit, was that the last batch of horse we'd sold him had been less than sub-par. It'd been cut so deep, it was barely worth shooting. Didn't even smell like the shit we usually sold. Now, I wouldn't know too much about the smell of heroin, but a junkie like Harvey? Yeah, he'd fuckin' know.
Harvey looked at me, clearly using every ounce of energy he had, straight in the eye. He nodded.
“Yuh,” he said. “T'ue.”
“Well, fuck,” I said. It didn't excuse him spreading that shit on the street; he should have come straight to us if he had an issue. But still, it meant something bad was happening' somewhere along the delivery chain. I stood up. The kids were gone, the boy spirited away by his sister or cousin or maybe even his mother for all I knew. I reached into my wallet and threw two hundreds on the ground. It wasn't much, and knowing junkies it would probably disappear straight up Harvey's arm, but it felt better than leaving him there broken and broke.
I got out of there, then. I was fixin' to meet Bex at Peach's, but I thought maybe I ought to talk to Dutch first. Our men were strictly forbidden from touching our product – or any smack, for that matter. Hell, it was right there in the bylaws that any brother who was found roped up and doped up would face serious consequences – including possible excommunication.
You wanted to fool around with weed, x, coke, meth, special k, angel dust, whatever, you did it with your own money, not the club's product. And you kept your shit together. Start going out of control, and it'd be rehab – or consequences. And absolutely no heroin, ever. You can't trust a junkie, and there are times when trust is all a club has. Can't get a damn thing done when your ranks are filled with speed freaks and ropers.
So if our shit really was being pinched, and it was happening in between us getting it from Mexico and us dealin' it in Cutter, we needed to nip it in the bud. Whether it was goin' to someone's personal stash or for someone to sell on the side, it didn't matter. That person, when we found 'em, was gonna fry.
Cross
I didn't mean to take my anger out on Bex, but I can see how it probably seemed that way. It just happened that I saw her so soon after talkin' to Dutch, and she just happened to be lookin' like a candy apple, sweet and rosy and edible.
Dutch hadn't had much of an opinion on my opinion about whether or not we had a problem. Well, actually, he did have an opinion; only, it went to the tune of “stay out of it.”
His words, exactly, were: “it ain't your job to go 'round askin' questions, it's your job to go 'round gettin' answers. Leave the detective work to Blade and me, boy.”
Suffice to say, my feathers were a little ruffled when I left his office. I was fixin' to drown my sorrows in a pint glass, maybe try to find Grinder and have a little father-son heart-to-heart, but Bex offered me a better outlet, in the form of a text message.
“I'm at your apartment. Can we talk? Also, didn't your pa ever teach you to lock a door?”
You could have mistook my smile for a toenail moon, it was so wide. She had some good timing. Of course, a woman tellin' you she wanted to talk never meant anything good, but she seemed to be in a jokin' mood, and she was at my apartment. A woman wants to talk about how she never wants to see your face again, she does it on her turf. A woman wants to talk about “whether or not we're exclusive,” she comes to you. And never before had I thought I wanted to have that second type of talk.
“Be there in a blink. And until you came through that door, I didn't have anything I meant to protect.”
Ha. There. See how she liked that. We'd do our fair share of talking', but not before she finally let me into that heaven between her legs. Dutch was about the last thing on my mind as I straddled my Vincent and made for home.
Sure enough, there she was, sittin' on the very edge of the thing some people might hesitate to call a couch. Her eyes, big and green as all of Missouri, went straight to me when I came through the door. She was leaning' forward, in a tight blue top and faded denim shorts, the top equipped with a V-neck that tantalized and mesmerized.
“Ain't you supposed to be at Peach's?” I asked, crossing the room, not even tryin' to hide my smile.
“I was,” she said. “But it was just for training, so it only took a couple hours. Cross...”
“Yeah, I know, you want to talk,” I said, dropping down to my knees in front of her and taking her hands from her lap. I kissed her fingertips, heard her sighing. “And we can talk all you want. But first...”
“Ah!” Her shriek was the good kind, the kind that ended in laughter, as I grabbed the belt loops of her shorts and yanked them forward. Her back hit the sofa, and I crawled up her body, forced my way between her thighs, found her lips mid-laugh and took them against my own.
She felt so damn soft underneath me, and she smelled like vanilla and fresh cut grass. My hand twined in her hair, clutching a handful of silky black strands, her moan vibrating against my tongue. I pinned her to that couch, one hand on her hip, her shirt bunching up as I sought her flesh, her lips and tongue moving against mine, eyes closed in bliss.
I could feel the gentle swell of her hip bone under plushy flesh, my thumb tracing the skin of her stomach, my hand pulling her hair until her head rolled back on her neck. She was moving against me by then, her hips undulating against my own. Kissing down her neck, she gasped and shivered at the tickle of my beard, while my hand moved upward, under her shirt.
“Cross,” she moaned, her hands now falling to my hips, tugging them closer so that she could roll herself against me. Biting her neck got her to moan. Grinding against her pussy got her to cry out. And finding her breasts, her hard nipples begging for my fingers, got her wrapping her thighs around me.
But I couldn't do anything properly halfway on and halfway off the damn sofa; and she deserved better than the springs digging into her back. So in a single sweep, I lifted her up, making her gasp again, her pink lips opening in an adorable o shape. I carried her, still kissing her neck, to the bedroom, only releasing her long enough to do away with my shirt.
Then I was diving back down, covering her body with mine, feeling her heart beat hard underneath those perfect breasts. God, I wanted inside her. I needed it. I needed to feel every inch of her velvet pussy, clenching around my cock, her juices flooding down my balls. I wanted her naked and bouncing on my lap while I cupped her breasts and twisted her nipples. I wanted her ass in my hands, my cock driving against her so hard and fast that she couldn't do a damn thing but moan my name while she came and came and came...
“Cross!”
By then, I had my hand on her shorts, struggling with the stupid button while my mouth took every inch of flesh I could find. The button popped free – I think it broke off, actually. My hand dove down, found her pussy, felt it soaked through her panties, the fabric framing her lips like a second skin. Her clit was a hard, swollen button, clinging to the fabric, and the minute my thumb rolled across it, her body stiffened.
“Cross, oh, shit, Cross,” she hissed, teeth gnashing together. “Please, wait, I can't...”
I didn't know what she couldn't do, and it was too late, anyway. Because she was already coming, already bucking her hips against my hand as my thumb rubbed and circled her clit, her slit already gushing until her panties were all but drenched.
Her head snapped back against the bed, rolled back and forth in pleasure, her hands on my shoulders, nails digging into my flesh. It was the most beautiful thing in the fucking world. I wanted to watch it again. I wanted to watch it happen while I was balls deep inside her. I wanted...
“Please!”
Now, I could hear what I hadn't heard before, whether because it wasn't there at all, or because I was too far gone to hear it. The desperation that wasn't wholly lustful.
“Please,” she said again, and grabbed my wrist. “I need...first...I need...we need...please...”
Her brain clearly wasn't working properly yet, but the meaning was clear. My cock hated me for not ignoring her and diving in anyway. Don't think I didn't consider it for a second. But a woman doesn't always have to say no for you to know that's what she means. Any real man will tell you that. And any real man stops when his woman wants him to. So I backed off, my heart beating wild in my chest, my cock roaring a protest through my veins, my hands trembling. Then something awful happened. Something that killed my boner in half a second.
She started sobbing.
Well, shit.
Bex
I had to stop him. I wasn't going to let him in – not that way – until he knew. It was harder than you'd think; the orgasm took me by surprise, it came on so damn quick and hard. It almost ruined my will. Almost. But I wasn't going to go any further before he knew the truth. Even if stopping and knowing it might never start again was enough to turn me into a wailing baby. He sat down beside me, breathing hard, looking unbelievably patient for a man who'd just taken a fall straight out of the gate.
I wasn't sure how he'd take it. I expected anger. But I also expected he'd understand, and forgive, and be happy to know. I expected that he loved me too much to hate me. I thought he'd know how much I loved him, too. You can add another mistake to the scoreboard.
When I was dressed again, and done with my crying, I told him everything. Dutch calling for me at Ziggy’s, then showing up. I told him what Dutch told me, as close to word for word as I could manage. I told him about the threats. And I told him I was sorry. I told him I was sorrier than I'd ever been in my life. When I was done, he just sat there, looking at me. And I could just wait for him to say something, anything.
“Dutch told you I was a rebel,” he said, voice flat. “He said I was fixin' to betray the Crusaders.”
“That's what he told me, Dutch, but I...”
“But what, Bex? You believed him? You believed I'd go 'gainst my own club, my own brothers? Is that all you think of me, Bex? After all these years, all we been through...”
“No! No, Cross, no, it's not like that, I didn't believe him, I didn't...I didn't know what to believe, but it wasn't about you! He offered me money to start over, and he offered me protection from Jase! I was so scared, Cross, please, you gotta understand...”
“Money? Protection? I could have protected you, Bex. I would protect you from anything. But you...you sold me out. Sold me straight out of your lyin' heart. Start over? What makes you think you deserve to start over? You fucked up your life, and you were willin' to see me skinned, drawn, and quartered to fix it. No, Bex, those excuses won't be flyin' with me.”
Cross' eyes were angry before. Now, they were worse, because they were empty. He looked at me like I was a parking meter that ran a bit over its time. Just something that wasn't worth dealing with.
“Cross,” I pleaded, taking a step forward, trying to make him see how I was hurting. “I'm risking' everything telling you...”
“Get out,” he said, voice flat, neck muscles twitching. “Before I do what that cowardly ex-husband of yours can only threaten to do. Go back to the clubhouse.”
Now, it was my heart that chilled. Cross and I had fought before, when we were young. But he never threatened me. And it was a fool who'd take Cross' threats lightly. You only needed to glance at his knuckles to know that. If Cross had my number, I wasn't going back to my room; I was getting the hell out of Dodge. I couldn't have Dutch and Cross out for me.
“And don't you think for a second about leavin' town,” he said, like a goddamn mind-reader. “I'm not done with you.”
The last time he'd said that, he'd been talking about my body, maybe even about my heart – our hearts. Now, I didn't know what he meant. I knew I shouldn't stay. I could grab the next Greyhound to California and leave all this mess behind.
But I owed him a little more than that, didn't I? After all this, didn't he deserve a little bit more from me than just leaving – again – without a word? And once he cooled off, maybe, he'd see how Dutch had used my weakest parts against me, how much I'd risked just telling him the truth. He'd feel bad about threatening me, and we'd figure out how to get past this...
“You're still standin' there, Bex,” he said. “And I know you heard me. Get your lyin' ass out of here. Now.”
Alright. No more time for deliberating. I turned my tail and left, just in time for him to miss the waterworks start up again. No sooner did the door slam shut behind me than I started bawling. I'd never fucked up anything this bad, and my heart knew it. It was breaking. All I could do was watch it shatter, and wish I'd never heard of the Dead Crusaders, or Cutter, Missouri, or Cross DuFrane.
Cross
I was half-blind and full-dumb with rage, and all I could think to do was to go the one place I knew Bex wouldn't be at: Peach's. She wasn't working, obviously, and wouldn't be working ‘til the next day. But she'd be at the clubhouse, and she might be at the bar (though if she knew what was good for her, she'd keep her ass locked tight in that bedroom Dutch gifted her for her betrayal).
Besides, what does a man want to do when a woman breaks his heart, other than find another woman to remind him why women aren't worth it in the first place?
Bex and Dutch. Fuckin' Bex and fuckin' Dutch. Both of them, traitors. I couldn't tell you which hurt worse. Bex, I suppose, 'cause I truly hadn't seen it comin'. But Dutch had been fallin' off for a while now. I had seen all those cracks in his foundation, ignored them in favor of loyalty. Now, I was the asshole whose loyalty wasn't worth the price of a pack of gum.
Out on the streets, I rode too fast for my own good. Those broken wings on my cut didn't enter my mind at all. Fuck, let me crash again. At least I'd be free of all this shit. All this goddamn pain in my chest. It was choking me. It was killing me. I needed to kill it first, with strong drinks and weak women.
A traffic jam threatened my hell-ride, but it was just a threat. I wove in and out of the cars on the three-lane highway, damn near taking a few side mirrors with me, and gladly accepting the angry horns as a soundtrack to my fury.
Dutch. Red-eyed Dutch. Goin'-to-Memphis, don't-come-with-me Dutch. Don't-worry-about-the-drugs Dutch. Leave-it-alone and know-your-place Dutch. I rode a little faster. Twenty-eight years I'd known that man, twenty years he'd been leading' our brotherhood, and I'd served him for half of that. And now, suddenly, he was turnin' on us? What for? What in the bloody hell could Dutch want that he didn't have? Money, drugs, women, power, all right there in his palm. Was it the drugs? Had he been getting' into the horse? No; Dutch was too damn smart for that, wasn't he?
Was it Sylvia, that snake of a woman, whispering in his ear at night?
It didn't make any kind of sense.
Peach's appeared before me like an oasis in the desert, and I pulled into the lot with a roar. My poor Vincent was probably grateful to be safe and sound. Me? I was going to get wrecked that night, one way or another. I had what was left of my heart set on it.
Inside, with the smoke and sound, I felt my tensions ease a bit. But only a bit. Whiskey would take me the rest of the way. And then pussy, whatever pussy I could find, the first one that offered itself to me. But these girls were the ones who got too old or too used up for porn. I'd need a lot of whiskey to pretend any of them could take Bex's place.
Peach herself served me my first drink. And knew enough not to try and chat me up while she served it. I guess my face betrayed m
e, just like everyone else in my fuckin' life. A man feelin' sorry for himself is not a pretty sight.
At any rate, Peach may not have wanted to pry, but the man at the end of the bar did. I don't know how I missed him when I came in, but there was Blade, sittin' pretty with a fuckin' crossword puzzle in front of him. Who does a crossword puzzle in a strip club? He saw me, and gave up on 42-down to solve something more interesting.
“Don't,” I warned as he approached.
“Well, that's no way to talk to your superior,” he said through a grin.
“Don't feel like talkin' at all,” I grunted, slamming back my drink and signaling for another.
“Most men don't, when they come to Peach's with the sun still high in the sky,” Blade said, easing onto the stool beside me. “But I reckon that's when men need to talk the most.”
I couldn't tell Blade. He'd run straight to Dutch, and we'd be fucked. I'd be fucked. There was no we anymore. Bex was no longer a part of my plans.
“I really can't talk about it,” I said, trying to get him off my back. I had no friend in this whole damn world. Not even Blade, who just yesterday was the closest thing I had to a twin brother. Shit, that hurt too. I didn't even have Blade.
“Bex?” Blade suggested. I grunted. Blade took a sip of his drink, swallowed hard. “Dutch?”
I was compelled to look at him for the first time. We never talked about Dutch. At least, not in any significant way. Why would he? He was our President. We did what he said. There was nothing to talk about.
Was Blade on his side, too? Did I have to worry about Blade, trying to get me to say some shit, runnin' back to Dutch like a rat?
Or was it possible that I wasn't the only one who'd noticed the ways Dutch had changed?
Maybe Blade had seen those same changes. Maybe he'd been wantin’ to talk about it for a while. Maybe. But what was I riskin', banking on that? If I told Blade that I knew what Dutch had done, getting Bex to spy on me, and he told Dutch that I knew...