Still Standing

by Kristen Ashley

  “Then you hold on, gorgeous, long’s you like,” he whispered. “And I’ll roll with you.”

  “Buck—” I whispered back, thinking somehow this was a profound moment and wanting to ask why, but he pulled out and rolled to his back so I was on top.

  “Go get cleaned up,” he ordered, his fingers digging into my hips.

  “What?”

  One of his hands left my hip and cupped the back of my head, pulling my face close.

  “Clara, honey,” he said softly, “you attacked me before I got to eat you. And I been waitin’ to eat you for fuckin’ days. Now you need to go get cleaned up and come back so I can eat you.”

  God, we’d just finished.

  And it was good.

  Really good.

  And he was ready to go again.

  After what he just said, so was I.

  “Okay,” I whispered, touched my mouth to his, climbed off him, and one could say I did not take my time (at all) on my way to (and from) the bathroom.

  I was in a sex haze that was quickly segueing into unconsciousness.

  Both of us had made the effort, that was evidently taxing, to muffle each other’s noises so the kids wouldn’t hear should they be awake.

  Still, I’d had three orgasms, two from Buck’s cock, one from his mouth.

  So that was mostly why I was out of it and drifting to sleep.

  “Apparently,” his voice rumbled from his lips and his chest, the last of which I heard beneath my ear where it was resting, “wouldn’t suck for you either, I knocked you up, the way you go at my dick when it’s ungloved.”

  My eyes popped open.

  Oh God.

  We’d done it again!

  Or…

  I’d done it again because he’d definitely (both times) tried to work that in, and I hadn’t let him.

  Was this subconscious?

  Now that I’d seen that cute little baby boy with Buck’s brown eyes in my head, was I trying to get pregnant?

  Oh God!

  I needed to get smart.

  And fast.

  “Condoms from now on,” I told his muscled flesh.

  “Right,” he said, his voice shaking (and other bits of him shaking too) with humor.

  I lifted my head. “Buck—”

  He cupped the side of my face.

  “Worry about it when there’s somethin’ to worry about,” he reminded me.

  “Condoms or no sex at all from now on,” I threatened.

  “Whatever you say, Toots,” he murmured, still sounding amused.

  Hells bells.

  Well, one thing he was right about, there was nothing I could do about it now.

  I settled back in, thinking possible pregnancy, when Buck and I were so new and my life was still a shambles, was for certain going to mess with my perfect track record of great sleep at Buck’s house.

  I was wrong.

  16

  Happiness Is Pop-Tarts

  “Ace in the Hole Home Improvement and Contracting, this is Clara, how can I help you?” I said into the phone, holding it to my ear with a shoulder hitched, my fingers sifting through files in the filing cabinet.

  “Hola, querida,” Mrs. Jimenez replied, and I smiled just as I tensed.

  I’d been working in the office at Ace for three weeks.

  I started the Monday after my first weekend with Gear and Tatiana.

  That day, I rode down on the back of Buck’s bike (and learned why biker babes wore bandanas on their hair—blowout disaster—so, while Buck searched for the “perfect helmet” (his words) for me, I’d unearthed some scarves and used those, one was Hermès, the others were Alexander McQueen and Prada, all I’d save for the new jobs I never got—these didn’t scream “Biker Babe!” but they kept my hair under control, and by the by, riding on the back of Buck’s bike with Buck was everything).

  He took me into the office—the extremely messy office—and let me loose.

  By letting me loose, I meant he didn’t give me a hint of instruction.

  This was because, in his words, he didn’t know “shit” about the office.

  The only clue he gave me was to find a man named Chap who’d show me around.

  Though, he did not share where I might find said Chap.

  What he did say was, “Chap’s always around somewhere…except when he’s not.”

  Obviously, not at all helpful.

  Chap was short for, I would learn later (from Chap, after I eventually found him), “Chaplain” which was his role in the Club.

  Something else I’d learn later was that this meant, mostly, he was the resident sage who all the men took their “shit” (Buck’s and Chap’s word) to, or he was the voice of reason when there was dissension among the men.

  And I found Chap was sage.

  Though I figured, for the most part, this was his role simply because he was the oldest member of the MC.

  Once Buck let me loose, sharing I needed to find Chap, he disappeared.

  Me, in my jeans, librarian blouse (this particular one iris purple with pintucks up the front) and strappy, high-heeled, dark purple snakeskin sandals, searched for Chap.

  But at that time, Chap was nowhere to be found.

  This was, I would find out later, because Chap was on a not-unusual bender.

  Therefore, Chap wouldn’t be found until I saw him stagger out of the Dive four days later while I was in the side lot where the warehouse was, beyond which the Dive sat. All of this, incidentally, was adjacent to their store in a one-through-four hit: their massive store, a small admin building where I worked that had my office and a well-kitted-out, air-conditioned break room, their big warehouse, and the Dive.

  When I saw Chap, I’d been dealing with a delivery of home improvement stuff.

  Or, more to the point, struggling to deal with a delivery since I had no idea what I was doing.

  Since I’d started in the office, I approached every man I didn’t know, hoping they were Chap.

  Therefore, I met most of the MC as well as the employees who worked at Ace, either in the shop as sales associates and resident advice-givers to customers, or those who went out on jobs—electricians, plumbers, painters, drywallers and the like.

  Not all of them were members. Though all of them were rough and tumble. Even the women.

  So, I approached Chap as he stumbled out of the Dive and found my man.

  I could proudly say I hadn’t done badly in those four days.

  In fact, in the end, I found it a blast.

  I was hesitant at first, sorting through what appeared to be a mountain of paper debris and noting there didn’t seem to be a system. Instead, it seemed like whoever had taken care of the office made an art out of not having a system.

  Then, on day three, I figured the system was going to be mine anyway, so I dug in and organized stuff how I wanted it.

  And one could say I’d learned along this journey that a research librarian liked to dig into anything that involved paper, and those papers didn’t have to be contained in books or pages from Galileo’s diary.

  It might make me crazy but setting that office to rights was the most fun outside of being in bed with Buck I’d had for over a year.

  Chap, who had a straggly gray beard that nearly touched his chest, a shock of steel-gray, long, wiry hair that he didn’t bother pulling into a ponytail and a long, thin, almost gaunt body (which made me fight asking him to dinner), was, as mentioned, the most veteran member of the MC.

  He also knew the office work.

  He was gruff, and the first time I met him, seriously hungover. Thus, he made it clear he wasn’t a big fan of giving me time to explain the office work.

  But he also realized if he didn’t, he might be pressed into doing the office work (he realized this when I explained it to him), so he gave me time.

  By week two, I had it down.

  I still didn’t know what half the inventory the shop stocked was. Ditto with what the men told me to order for the job
s.

  But I just had to check the delivery notes against the orders, match up words and numbers, decipher what was stock for the store, and what was coming in for a contracting jobs, direct it to where it was supposed to go and sign off.

  Easy.

  Ordering, easier.

  The boys just told me what they needed, I wrote it down, found out who to order it from by asking Chap (who now was on speed dial), and I ordered it.

  Invoices, even easier.

  Bill paying, even easier.

  Payroll, not so easy.

  But I got the gist of it after I talked to Buck, who okayed me paying for an online tutorial. I took that, it made sense and was far from rocket science, so I got relatively up to speed, ran my first with only one guy reporting an error, and I suspected the next go would be a breeze.

  Gabbing on the phone with current and prospective clients, the easiest.

  I found, oddly, they kind of liked the fact I had no clue.

  They thought it was very “Ace” for some clueless chatty chick to gab with them and promise a callback from someone who did have a clue (this callback, incidentally, usually came from Buck, or Ink, or sometimes Chap).

  In fact, some of them had become phone friends.

  Not much had changed in those three weeks, except the fact that I had a job and it could be the best job I ever had (yes, even better than the Hunter Institute, where I’d actually seen pages of Galileo’s diary when it floated through to be on display for a traveling exhibition).

  I loved getting up and having somewhere to go and something to do and none of it was fretting or hiding from repo men or bill collectors.

  Not to mention, I had complete control of the office and no one got in my business.

  In fact, they let me have at it and seemed relieved paperwork no longer threatened their day-to-day existence. So the job had a built-in popularity quotient, which didn’t stink.

  Further, the guys and gals who worked there might be rough and tumble, but I was sharing Buck’s bed, his home and coming to work on the back of his bike. I learned fast that this afforded me more than a modicum of respect.

  It was like I was Queen Biker Babe.

  They were nice, they were courteous, and they deferred to me instantly.

  In the beginning, I found this slightly bizarre, but I had to admit, it was pretty awesome.

  Moreover, the office had no hours.

  When I began my job there, Buck had not plugged his alarm clock back in, and hadn’t set it before I’d unplugged it, because, he explained, “I go where I go when I go, and if you’re with me, and until we get you your ride, you’ll be with me, so that’s where you’ll be.”

  (Interesting side note: Buck was a journeyman cabinetmaker, so for the most part, he worked in the workshop in the warehouse building cabinets that they then took to jobs to be fitted. I’d seen his work, and like everything else about him, it was amazing. Bonus to this, unless he was off doing MC things, he was around a lot and made a point to have lunch with me every day. Which I thought was really sweet.).

  Thus, I showed at the office when Buck was ready to come into Phoenix. I left when Buck was ready to go home.

  Sometimes, Driver or Cruise would take me back up to his place, but that was rare.

  Mostly, even if Buck was off doing non-store/non-contracting, president of the Aces High MC things, he’d come back and get me.

  I found this an immense relief, and after giving it thought, I understood why.

  And the why was because I had been responsible for every move I made for so long, doing all the right things, being where I was supposed to be, taking care of me, it was nice to have someone else making the decisions for a change. It was nice to be wherever I was whenever I got there.

  It was nice to be able to just be.

  As the days slid by, the guys got used to me and the deference became friendliness. I always had a fresh pot of coffee going, sometimes they’d hang in the office as I’d work, and they’d joke or tease or whatever.

  I liked this so much, I facilitated it by bringing in baked goods. I made boxed brownies first. Then I graduated to store-bought cookie dough cookies. Those were so well received, I made from-scratch cupcakes.

  And I found that the way to badass bikers’ hearts (as well as the other guys and gals) was through their stomachs.

  I had not yet tried out my biker babe apparel, but I was gearing up for it. I needed my librarian blouses and high heels as familiar armor as I got used to my new life.

  But since the biker life was embracing me, and it felt good, I was preparing to embrace the biker life. Which meant donning my biker babe gear.

  Just…eventually.

  In other news, Mrs. Jimenez was on the move (thankfully).

  Raymundo had found her a first-floor apartment in a secure building in a better part of town. The rent was more than she could afford, so her kids were all kicking in to cover it each month.

  Without Mrs. Jimenez knowing it, and with my very first paycheck coming my way soon (as in, the very next day, Friday), I called Raymundo and told him I wanted to kick in my share.

  He tried to argue with me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Since he had five kids and nine nieces and nephews, he eventually gave in.

  Making all this good even better, Minnie, Pinky, and Lorie often showed and hung with me in the office.

  This was because Minnie and Pinky both worked as waitresses in the same biker bar and they did the nightshift, so they had the afternoons to hang with me.

  Lorie was a hairdresser, and if she had a quiet morning, afternoon or day off, she hung with me too, and a couple of times, on my breaks, we went out and got coffee.

  I’d never had a girl posse, and it felt good.

  Okay, no.

  It didn’t feel good.

  It…felt…great.

  And it felt better because they were looking out for me. I could ask them anything and they’d slip right into their Professor Higgins role and offer advice and guidance into the biker babe world (and yes, F-words were not verboten for biker kids, but only those in their teens).

  When we weren’t hanging in the office we texted, and once I went out for drinks with them while Buck was busy, and he picked me up when he was ready to go home.

  The good got even better in the sense that I was bonding with Gear.

  He was a good kid and he didn’t make any bones about liking me and liking me with his dad.

  The second weekend he showed without Tatiana, which was a bummer and something I knew Buck felt, though he didn’t say a word.

  Then, when her weekend alone with her mother and Knuckles didn’t go well, Tatiana decided she’d put up with me and came down the next weekend.

  It was clear she took my advice and she didn’t throw attitude like she did that first weekend, at least not around Buck.

  It was also clear she didn’t intend to extend the olive branch of best-friend-dom anytime soon.

  For my part, I didn’t push, but I was unwaveringly nice and made it clear I was open to the olive branch whenever she felt like pointing it my way. Even when she and I were alone and she let it show she didn’t like me by slipping into her pouty, juvenile brat mode, I kept it up. I kept it up for Buck and for Tatiana. She didn’t have it good at home, and I wanted to make it as safe as it always had been for her at Buck’s.

  I made this clear, left the rest up to her and hoped.

  My start with Buck didn’t change, except after he broke the seal on sex, that was a frequent and extremely welcome addition to our lives.

  Being with him was easy.

  If we were home in time, he always cooked dinner, I always cleaned up. In the morning (after sex), I always made coffee and toasted the Pop-Tarts (unless it was Saturday or Sunday). And I nearly always fell asleep with my head on his thigh in front of the TV.

  Sometimes he’d shake things up by having sex with me on the couch before he carried me to bed, and once I’d kissed him on the way to bed and we had
sex on the landing (that was awesome).

  But we settled into an us quickly and easily.

  He fit me into his life like I’d always been there, and it was a life where I liked to be.

  Last, and the only bad (outside Tatiana), Tia had not been found.

  This was causing me distress, but I was trying to take a page from Buck’s book and not stress out when I didn’t know if there was anything to stress out about.

  She could be lying low someplace safe.

  And this was a possibility because Buck reported they’d learned she’d sold her wedding rings and some other jewelry as well as hocked some stuff of Esposito’s. She’d done this the day after we made our plans to go on the run. She’d also braved going to the bank and withdrawing five thousand dollars as well as done the maximum cash withdrawals at an ATM for three days, the day we planned to leave and for two days after.

  But no one had heard from her or seen her after that second day.

  So she had her car and a good amount of cash.

  That fact made me feel better.

  What did not make me feel better was, the longer it took to find Tia, the more wired Buck became about it. I noticed this every time I asked (so I’d taken, of late, to letting it lie—if he had something to tell me, he would, it was just, there was no news).

  He didn’t even know her, and he told me himself not to worry until there was something to worry about.

  But as the days slid by, his calm faded to impatience, his impatience ratcheted to extreme impatience and now he seemed pissed. Which made me think he was worried (this because anger came out when he was worried about Tatiana), and I didn’t think Buck worried was a good thing.

  But he promised to have my back, he’d promised to find Tia and have hers, and he’d done everything else he’d promised, so I clung to that knowledge and trusted him to find her for me.

  I turned my attention back to the phone call from Mrs. Jimenez.

  “Have you—?”

  Mrs. Jimenez cut me off, but she did it gently. “No, mi amor, no word.”

  She called every afternoon to gab like we used to be able to do whenever we wanted, seeing as I had no job and lived next door.