by Jc Emery
“So you’re grouchy in the morning,” I say. “I’m going to keep that in mind.” She doesn’t move or offer me entrance into the house, so I take it upon myself to get past the doorway. I step up and into the house with my heavy boots and move forward. When we’re close enough to touch, she moves backward and then moves around me to shut the door.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. I ignore the question and make my way into the kitchen. It’s not exactly tidy, but isn’t really dirty, either. It’s just lived in—with magazines and newspapers strewn about the counter and a few bills sitting opened beside them. The sink has a few plates, glasses, and a fry pan in it waiting to be washed. From the looks of the floor it could probably use a sweep and mop, but it’s not gross like it is at mine and Ryan’s place.
Off to the side of the room is a round breakfast table. I pull a chair out and plop down, listening to the wood creak beneath me. Following behind me, Nic enters the room and leans up against the sink.
“How much is it going to cost to pay for the scratch on your bike?” she asks and moves toward the table. When she gets closer, I see what her eyes are fixated on—her purse. It’s hanging off the back of the chair beside me. Reaching out, she grabs the strap and lifts the purse into the air. I catch my fingers as they itch to move in her direction. I’ve been thinking about that shit she said last week. Actually, I’ve been thinking about that and her pussy, but she’d be damn pissed if she knew that my preferred way to make up is by getting my dick inside of her again.
That night brought me back to being in high school and thinking she was bad ass. But back then she thought she was too good for me and the MC. Dating that jackass Darren—who she apparently still keeps in touch with—who thought the rules the MC laid down for the town didn’t apply to him. I knew Nic belonged with a guy like that—who could give her more than some bastard from the public housing development like me could.
But I never stopped thinking about it.
And damn if seeing him with her at the coffee shop didn’t make me want to slit his fucking throat and wash the floor in his blood.
“Not a dime,” I say. She pauses and sets her purse on the table, giving me a grouchy gaze. Looking around the kitchen makes me hungry, and I think I want a sandwich. “Why don’t we talk about it over lunch?” I suggest. Her eyes widen slightly as she looks around and then down at the shirt she’s wearing.
“I’m not going to lunch with you,” she says, shaking her head. I shrug and lean back in the seat. “What part of ‘I’m not doing this’ didn’t you understand?”
“Then we’ll eat here. What are you going to make me?” I ask, ignoring her comment.
The look on her face is incredulous. She’s obviously not up for playful in the mornings. Maybe I can work on that. She takes a long moment to look at me like I’m the world’s biggest idiot before she breaks out into a hearty laughter. She throws her head back and lets her entire body shake from laughing so hard. My eyes travel down her torso to her tits as they bounce around. It’s so rare that Nic smiles, and even more rare that she seems even remotely happy. I drink this moment in for all it’s worth and revel in seeing her this way.
“I’m not sure what you find so funny. I’m hungry and you need to feed me,” I say in a mock serious tone. She looks down at me with the faint twinkle of laughter in her eyes.
“So go find an Old Lady,” she says then clears her throat and runs a hand through her hair. Her body is spotted with tattoos here and there. Like it was yesterday, I remember the string of star tattoos she has on her lower belly. There’s nine of them, and I want to know what they stand for. But it’s the tattoo of the robin that’s on the top of her left wrist that catches my eye. It’s a beautiful tattoo—very intricate with excellent coloring. The reds and the yellows of the bird rest above a light teal background. I’d recognize that work anywhere, even if I didn’t know that Torque—one of my brothers who’s doing a year in county—did it for her birthday last year.
Unable to stop myself, I reach out and grab her left hand. She drops the hand that’s in her hair immediately and looks down at me. Her eyes hold a curiosity she refuses to voice. I give her hand a light tug and bring her closer to me. She moves slowly, but doesn’t pull away. I move back in the chair, which gives her enough room to crawl into my lap. Not that she will, but it’s something I’m about to try to make happen.
“Come here, baby,” I say quietly and pull her down on my lap. I hold her firm, expecting a struggle, but she doesn’t give me one. For once, she’s agreeable and plops into my lap. She turns to face me and shakes her head just slightly. Her silence is so absolute that it makes the entire room feel sad and lonely. Or maybe that’s me, because when I’m near her, I just want to be closer. If she’s standing next to me, I want to touch her. If she’s in my lap, I want her naked. If she’s bitching at me, I want my dick inside her. It never seems to be enough, and I wonder if it ever will be.
“Don’t think I’m going to feed you just because you’re trying to be charming,” she says, but it comes out as a whisper. Again, so very quiet.
“I bet if I made you come a few times you’d want to feed me,” I say lowly and bring my lips to her neck.
“No,” she says, but her body sinks into me.
“No? You don’t like this?” I ask her as I place gentle kisses on her neck. A shiver runs up her spine, making her body shake in response.
“No, and I’m not going to feed you,” she says. Quiet. Breathy. Fuck. “That’s not what we do.”
I stop what I’m doing and pull back, narrowing my eyes, and give her a hard look. Trying to keep my voice quiet so I don’t send her running, I say, “What we do?”
Her eyes travel around the room before they land on my cut. She reaches up and places a hand above my heart right on top of the patches that says FORSAKEN and FORT BRAGG. Giving me a soft pat she lets her eyes travel back up to mine. “This. You’re Forsaken and I’m a Lost Girl. I’m not your girlfriend, and I’m not your Old Lady. I don’t do feeding times.”
The realization of what she’s talking about hits me between the eyes and makes my gut turn to mush. We were on our way somewhere before I fucked it all up. Now she’s just compliant and disconnected, and I hate it. The way her voice sounds and how she’s touching me, she might as well not even be in the room with how present she is. As much as she pissed me the fuck off, and fucked up in front of the club, I’d take every insult she has to give better than I can take this. It’s maddening.
My head swims with a thousand responses I could give her. I could try to make her feel better by telling her that it’s not like that with us, and I could tell her that brothers fall for Lost Girls all the time. She already knows I want her for my woman, I want her voted in, and even if she doesn’t want to believe it, I believe that we can get over this shit. She pisses me off, and I’m going to piss her off, and she’s just going to have to come to terms with that. But if I tell her that, she’ll run. Nic doesn’t do sweet because she doesn’t know what to do with it, but asshole she understands. Only, I don’t want to be an asshole right now. I like the quiet and the closeness. I like feeling of her pressed up against me. The last thing I want to do is to give her a reason to run, and being an asshole would do just that.
“You think too much,” I say with a grumble.
“And you don’t think enough,” she protests. She’s wrong, but fuck if I’m going to argue with her right now. I don’t know how many more screw-ups she’ll forgive before she convinces Chief or Diesel to get the club to vote on shooting me. Not that they would, but I wouldn’t put the attempt past her.
“Look,” I say and lean toward her. Her entire left side presses against me. Her skin is so cold, and her nipples strain beneath the aged tee shirt. “We make the rules. If we decide that all we do is fuck, then that’s all we do. If we decide that you cook for me, then that’s what we do. There’re no fucking rules here, baby. The only rule is ‘you don�
�t fuck me over and I don’t fuck you over.’ That’s it.”
She turns her head away from me. Raising her chin toward the ceiling, she says in a much harder voice, “But you did fuck me over. You fucked me over, you humiliated me, and you’re acting like it’s on me to do better.”
“Clean slate, babe. I fucked up, I get that, but we gotta move past that shit.”
“No,” she says getting loud as fuck right in my ear. “Fuck that, and fuck you. You wanna be my man, you need to do better. You wanna call the shots and take care of shit in my life, then show me that you can. Buckle up, dude, and quit puttin’ that shit on me. You fucked up, and I moved on.”
“I am your man,” I say, taking her face in my hands and forcing her to keep her attention focused on me. Buckle up, she said and it’s like sitting in church and listening to her dad tell us to stop being pussies. Buckle up, he’d say, and we’d listen because Butch wasn’t one for casual chitchat. He spoke and we fucking listened. Which reminds me, I need to get word to Butch about me and Nic. I can’t visit him myself because of my record, and we don’t put club business down on paper, but as a brother, he’s got to know I’m making his daughter my Old Lady. It’s only right.
“No,” she says. “No man of mine hurts me that badly. No man of mine fucks a filthy whore like that when he knows I can see him. That does not happen. So no, you’re not my man.” Her words twist in my gut, making me feel like a fucking loser. I have to do better for her and by her. Short of fucking up club business, fucking up by not taking care of your woman is a big fucking problem. Rage, Jim’s dad and our previous charter president, had a zero tolerance policy for failing at being a man.
“I’m going to do better by you, going to take care of you,” I say, placing a kiss to her forehead.
“And for how long? When does this expire?”
The blow is small, but it feels like a shrapnel bomb that goes off, leaving tiny little splinters all over my flesh. Her once soft body turns rigid, and she pulls away. I don’t fight it, but let her stand and then cross the room. She’s like a cat—territorial and guarded. Resuming her place in front of the sink, she folds her arms over her chest. I stand from my seat and concede that we’re not going to get anywhere today. She doesn’t need bullshit apologies, she just needs me to be here and prove her wrong.
To my left is the refrigerator, which is near the gas range, and adjacent to the sink, where Nic’s standing. I stand and walk to the fridge where I open the door, expecting to find it a little light on groceries, but totally unprepared for what I find. There’s a mostly empty jar of pickle juice in the door and half a stick of margarine in the butter compartment. There are no eggs or bacon, or even sausages. In a package that expired a week ago, there’s a few tortillas and some mostly empty condiment containers. There’s no milk or soda and not a single fucking beer—which is just blasphemy. A few other items are strewn about in the fridge, but nothing that could create anything edible. The freezer isn’t much better. There are a few bags of frozen vegetables and a gelato carton that’s growing freezer burn on the container.
Shooting Nic a skeptical glance, I find that she’s not even looking my way. She hops lightly on one foot and then trades off, hopping on the other. Rifling through the cupboards doesn’t produce much more than the fridge or the freezer did. I’ve spent enough time watching her, and knowing her habits, to know that she doesn’t do blow, but she’s so fucking skinny she looks like she does lines for breakfast. Fuck. How bad is my girl hurting that she’s a goddamn twig and has no food in the house? Doesn’t matter that I ain’t been in this house in years—she deserves better, and I should have known she needed help. This shit isn’t just on my shoulders. The entire club’s failed my girl, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get right with that. We take care of our own and we take the risks we do, doing the shit we do, to make sure we can do that. But this? None of us are good enough for Butch’s girl, and if he knew, he’d have every right to call an officer challenge if he had a vote right now.
“When’s the last time you went to the store?” I ask in a tone that comes across closer to judgment than I intend for it to.
“I’m going to pick up a few things later,” she says and huffs.
“Tell me you normally have more food in this house?”
“Yeah, but Jeremy eats everything in sight,” she says and shifts on her feet again. It’s a nervous habit she’s had since high school.
“So let’s go now,” I say and look over her bare legs and up to her face.
“I said I will later,” she snaps. Placing her hands on the counter behind her, the shirt lifts up, showing off the curve of her inner thigh.
“I don’t got Church until later. I got time,” I say. For some reason, I think this is going to rectify the problem. For some reason, I think she’s telling me we don’t have time. But she’s not. There’s something I’m missing here, and it’s upsetting her. Nic’s not a crier like Alex is. I swear, every time I turn around Princess is trying to stop herself from crying. Nic’s more like a proud, wounded bird. My eyes focus on the little robin on her wrist once again. She may be hurting, but she damn sure won’t let you see her sweat about it, much less cry.
“Well, I don’t and I’m not doing any shopping, so…” She trails off. I take a deep breath as the frustration builds. Trying not to snap at her and her steadfast refusal to go grocery shopping, which I know has not one fucking thing to do with not needing food in this house and everything to do with something else, I close my eyes for a second. Once I open them, I stomp forward and lean over her, placing my hands on the countertop on the sides of hers.
“You really don’t wanna go grocery shopping with me?” I ask. She steels herself then peers up at me, a fire blazing in her eyes.
“I’m not going shopping right now,” she says, squaring her shoulders. Looking down at her, I bend and grip the back of her upper thighs and pull her ass up onto the counter.
“Tell me no and I’ll stop,” I say hoarsely. She doesn’t say anything. She just bites her lip and leans into me and slides my zipper down, pulling out my dick. I smash my lips against hers and start dry fucking her pussy through her panties. My hands travel up her shirt and slip under her panties and kneed her ass.
“Condom?” I grunt, pulling away from her mouth. She kisses my neck then nips at my ear.
Whispering, she says, “Bathroom.” Pulling her off the counter and holding onto her tight, I walk up through the kitchen and down the hall to the bathroom. The door is open and when I walk us in, Nic reaches out and shuts it behind us. The second the door’s closed, we’re grabbing at each other and yanking clothes off like we’ve been deprived of this for a fucking century, and not just a week. She fiddles with a drawer to her left and yanks out a handful of condoms and drops them on the counter. Once we’re totally unclothed, I grab her face and fuck her mouth with my tongue. Her hands fight with the plastic wrapper of the condom. She barely gets the damn thing on my dick before I’m thrusting inside of her. We both come quick and hard. Our bodies are covered in sweat, and we’re panting like a pair of dying animals.
When I pull out, I yank off the condom without even looking and keep my attention on Nic. She stretches and climbs off the counter then reaches into the shower and gives me a perfect view of her naked ass. Walking up behind her, I pull her to me and take my half-hard dick in my hand and grip her hip as I run my dick along her swollen pussy. Testing the waters, I kick her legs apart just enough to expose her completely to me, and press myself into her slick core. She moans and grips the wall in front of her and pushes back at me, plunging me deeper. After the last time I rode her bare, I shouldn’t be so stupid, but I can’t help myself. I hate wearing a rubber, and she’s just so hot and tight and wet. So fuck it. I ride her bare and hard, and I regret nothing, not even when she says, “Fuck, you’re so big this way,” and I come sooner than I intend, do I think this is a bad fucking idea. Because now that I’ve felt my girl bare, I’m not going bac
k.
An hour later, we’re on our way to the grocery store in her car after we shower properly. Even me asking her if she’ll suck my dick doesn’t ruin the mood, even though she laughs at me and says, “Not just no, but hell no.”
The car is definitely in need of some repairs, but I have to wait until she’s not paying attention to get it into the shop where most of my better tools are. She’s been offered and has refused enough help in the past that I know better than to outright tell her I’m going to fix it.
Two hours later, we’ve been up and down every aisle in the grocery store. I’m told that they don’t need peanut butter and then when I insist, I’m told that I grabbed the wrong kind. As it turns out, the wrong kind is the expensive kind. And that’s when I finally clue the fuck in. The cupboards are bare and the fridge is empty because she’s between paydays. I don’t need the specifics to have figured it out. I grew up dirt poor and remember the lean days between paychecks well. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to hook up with the club so badly. I didn’t want to feel that fucking low ever again. But looking around at Nic’s house, how everything is near falling apart—including her—I feel the first slight bit of shame I have in a while. Nic belongs to Forsaken. Her well-being is our responsibility, and if this is how she’s living then we’re fucking failing at our job. So halfway through the store, we start all over again, and when she bitches I tell her to shut the fuck up. It’s the only thing I can say that actually does get her to shut up. Still, we fight over who’s going to pay the bill even though we both know she can’t afford it. And I win because the cashier fears my patch, but not Nic’s bitching.