by Lena Pierce
Meghan brings her hand to her mouth, looking at her brother as though she has no clue who he is. “You’re an animal,” she whispers between her fingers.
“Maybe I am.” He nods. “Yeah—maybe.”
Then he lunges at me, catching me by surprise. His fist crunches into my nose and I stumble back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dirk
Jackson follows up his first strike with an overhanded right that catches me just below my left eye. I wince as the pain lances through my skull to the back of my neck, and then I leap back and raise my hands. The men gather around, not interfering. We are their champions, I realize, and whoever wins this, wins everything. Jackson is quicker and stronger and more skilled than he looks. He dances aside and then leaps at me viper-like, his fist almost catching my chin.
I weave aside and counter-jab him in the throat. He makes a choking sound and leaps back, sliding past my next two strikes with apparent ease. I chase after him, trying to catch his head. It seems he’s determined not to allow me to humiliate him like last time. He is calm now, watching me with the eyes of a jaguar. He ducks one of my blows and eats the other, taking it with hardly a stumble. I reckon I’d be impressed if I didn’t hate him so damn much.
Jackson moves in a circle, ending up just in front of the section of crowd where Meghan stands. He’s smart, the asshole; he’s trying to distract me. And for a moment, he does. My eyes lock on Meghan, her hands clasped in front of her, her chest heaving. Jackson chooses this moment to pounce. He leaps across at me and jabs me twice in the belly, causing me to hunch over, and then catches me with a sharp elbow across the cheek. I stumble, fall, pick myself up just in time for him to land a boot to my gut.
Meghan steps forward.
“No!” I roar, holding my hand out to her. “Don’t!”
She takes a hesitant step back. Jackson circles me, fists raised, grinning madly. “Not so tough now, are you, army man? Not when you can’t catch me by surprise, you sucker-punching fuck. I’ve been training every damn day for two hours. I hear what the men whisper about me. I’m not a goddamn fool. They think I’m weak. Well, how weak is this?” He kicks me in the side.
I roll and roll and then spring to my feet. My body throbs from where his boot landed, almost as though his boot is imprinted into my skin, and my face aches from his elbow. But I ignore the pain and advance on him, seeing him and only him now, blocking everything else out. I jump, duck, make him change his stance and then—I land a straight shot to his nose. I feel his bone crunch beneath my knuckle. Something cracks and then blood pisses from his nose onto his leather, onto the tarmac.
He swings wildly. I’m forced to dance back, out of his range, and then he sends a kick at my shin. I laugh at first, since he looks so fuckin’ ridiculous, but then the kick connects and I realize he really has been training; maybe having the men think he was weak was part of his fucked-up plan. My shin makes a cracking sound. I wince, spit, and then throw myself at him. But he moves like a weasel, always somehow sliding away from me.
“I’m going to kill you, Jackie,” I tell him.
“Sure, you are.” He smiles. “Sure, you fuckin’ are.”
I feint with my left hand and then land a right hook across his mouth, another right hook and then a jab, and then a series of strikes on his body. Then I flip myself around him, wrap my hands around his waist, and throw him behind me with the weight of my body. He slams into the concrete with a sickening crunch and lets out a rattling moan. I dive on him, meaning to finish this, but then he rolls aside just like I did: just keeps rolling until he’s almost at the edge of the road. The crowd follows me as I follow him.
He climbs unsteadily to his feet, reaches into his pocket, and takes out a six-inch blade.
Several men step forward. I hold my hand up. “Let him have it,” I snarl. “Give the prick a chance.”
The men don’t look pleased, but it’s my fight and my life and my choice, so they step back. I advance on Jackson with my hands raised. I dart forward explosively, punching him in the gut and landing one across his mouth before leaping back as his blade whistles through the air in front of me. He curses, spitting blood, and then leaps on me. His knife wails through the air. I leap to the left and the right, ducking and dodging, wheezing with the effort of near-death. The knife sails close to me several times, almost catching my nose and my neck. Then I kick him savagely in the belly, making him fall back with a startled, hollow grunt. It’s the hollowness of it; that does it. That tells me that he’s screwed. I kick him again and again. He lashes down at my leg. I move it quickly, just missing the blade.
Then I leap on him and unload with a flurry of punches, hitting him over and over. He stumbles back and falls; his grip loosens on the knife. I leap on top of him and smash his face four, five, six times, until one half of his face is swollen to the size of a balloon and the other is a patchwork of blood. I reach down for his knife hand, meaning to twist his wrist and get rid of it, but then he suddenly springs to life.
I realize—too late—that he was pretending to be more injured than he actually is. I reach down for the knife and miss it. Then hot agony stabs into my side, through my clothes, and into my belly. I let out a cough, shuddering, suddenly cold. He withdraws the knife and goes for me again. I’m seriously hurt, and a man close to death is far more dangerous than a man who’s never feared dying. I jump to my feet, ignoring the tearing sensation from where the knife bit me, and then curb-stomp his throat. I do it twice, closing it so that his moans become wheezes, and then kick the knife from his hand and swing my shotgun around and aim it down at him. I can barely stand, so much blood is pissing from me. But I don’t fall.
I wipe my bloodied face—I’m not sure if it’s his blood or mine—on my shirt and then call out to the brothers, “Get those fuckin’ pledges in your sights, fellas.” The men do as I say right away, turning on the pledges as one giant mass. “And you.” I pump the shotgun and aim it down at Jackson. “Get the fuck up.”
He manages to climb to his feet unsteadily, tottering from foot to foot, and then he holds his arms to his sides. “What now?” he whispers, his voice stolen from him.
Sissy pushes through the crowd, holding a thick book above her head. “It was in a hidden compartment!” she yells. “It was him! He burnt down the store!”
I walk right up to him, aware that each second I’m getting weaker and weaker as more and more blood gushes from my side. “I’ll give you a choice,” I say, voice as loud as I can make it. “Either you get the fuck out of this town and California, and go far, far away. And stay there, forever, and never come back here. Or I kill you.”
He looks back at his pledges, surrounded by true brothers now, to Meghan and then to Sissy with the notebook. His gaze lingers on Meghan. “I never loved you,” he says, voice dead-calm. “I just wanted you to know that.” He turns back to me and spits on my boots, a thick blob of red-yellow. “I’m not leaving this state, Dirk, so you can do what you want. I ain’t done anything I’m ashamed of. I was running a business, making everyone money.” He holds his hands to the sides, opening himself up. “Do what you feel you need to do, motherfucker.”
“I reckon I’d say you died well,” I mutter, “if you weren’t a rapist woman-seller.”
I blast his face with the shotgun. The recoil judders down my shoulder to my wound, twisting it. Jackson’s face is no longer a face. It shatters into a hundred fleshy, bloody, bony parts and then what’s left of him collapses to the floor. A club girl screams. Rider lets out a snarling, barking noise.
I walk over to him, clutching my side, and take out my pistol with my free hand. I aim and shoot all in one quick motion. His head jolts back and he lands with a wet slap on the concrete. I look over the remaining pledges. “Your leader’s dead,” I say. “So I’ll give you the same choice I gave him. Leave this state and never return—or I execute you.”
They don’t need anymore encouragement than that. They scatter, running to their bikes lik
e kids let out from school early. I turn to the remaining brothers. “I’m giving all of you the same choice.” I limp over to them; my body is being sapped of energy, it feels like. “Either you can be part of a club that works with the Broken Sinners to make this a better town, or you can get the fuck outta the state.”
Highlander walks over to me and offers me his forearm. “We’ll stay, brother.” He looks to the men. They’re all nodding.
“Good,” I mutter, and then I drop my shotgun and almost collapse to the ground. I would if Meghan didn’t come up next to me and wrap her arm around me. She and Highlander help me to a patch of grass and I fall back, staring up at the blue sky.
Then the parking lot is filled with growling bikes. I look up in time to see Badger and the rest of the Broken Sinners riding in, along with a doctor who sits on the back of Badger’s bike in her whites, like she’s from a different planet. Badger brings his bike to a stop and the doctor rushes over to me just as the world closes to darkness.
“I love you,” I say, finding Meghan’s hand.
“I love you,” she whispers.
Epilogue
Meghan
“Just look at this,” he says, grinning over at me. We’re in his apartment but I’ve made a few changes to it, since when I first got here it was nothing more than a bombed-out bachelor pad. There was nothing on the walls, no rugs on the floor, a TV and a couch and some old beer bottles. Now it has life, and color, and though Dirk makes jokes about it, I know he likes it.
He’s tracing one scar down between his pectorals to the stab wound that Jackson gave him. “See, they join here,” he says, and then he laughs. That laugh is like fuel to me. It’s so boyish, so full of carefree joy. It makes me forget about all the pain and the bullshit. “Don’t look at me like that. I know we’re supposed to be working.”
I wave a hand at the table where I’ve carefully laid out all of the papers. Dirk wonders into the kitchen.
“Where are you going now?” I say.
“Hungry,” he grunts, returning with two sausages wedged between two pieces of bread, leftovers from last night. “Can’t a man be hungry?”
“You are driving me crazy.” I pinch his elbow. “And let me tell you, Dirk Dvorak, if you get a single crumb on these papers …”
He leans forward, getting closer to the coffee table as he chews noisily. “Like this?” he asks, raising his eyebrow. He moves even closer. A crumb falls. I watch it in slow-motion. It sails by the table and lands on the floor.
“Enough!” I grab the sandwich and push it into his mouth, forcing the whole thing in. He opens his mouth wide and devours it, and then washes it down with half a beer.
“It’s 10:00 a.m., you beast.”
“Doc said I couldn’t drink. It’s been four months.” He swigs the beer with a grin.
“Okay, just look. These are the estimates for how much it will cost to start rebuilding the store. The insurance money will pretty much cover it but we need to come up with another twenty grand.” I tap my pen against my teeth.
“Goddamn.” He shakes his head, walking into the bedroom. He comes out with a stack of cash. “All this fuss for twenty grand?” He places the stack on the table and smiles at me. “You didn’t have to put on this show if all you wanted was some cash, little lady. You know I couldn’t say no to you.”
I take the money and slip it into my cleavage. “Well.” I lean over to him and kiss him on the cheek. “I guess you better get to work.”
“Oh yeah.” He grins, leans forward. “I’ve gotta say, working for the Broken Sinners ain’t too bad. Badger’s a good man, a real good man, better than …” He glances at me and stops mid-sentence.
“You can say it,” I tell him. “Better than Jackson.”
He nods shortly. “I don’t want to keep bringing that up, Meghan, ’cause even if he was a monster, he was still your brother.”
I wave a hand at him. “Don’t be silly. He was just a monster. He was never my brother, not really. He was just … some kid, some jumped-up kid whose apartment I lived in when I was a teenager. Go make this town a better place.” I kiss him again. “And then come home to me.” I grab his knee. “I have something very, very important to discuss tonight.”
He makes to laugh, but then he sees that I’m serious. “Okay, goddamn,” he says. “You’re not gonna tell me you’re fuckin’ someone else, are you?”
“What!” I slap him on the shoulder. “It’s nothing like that, you freak.”
“Good.” He wipes fake sweat from his forehead. “Because you had me worried there.”
He leaves and I gather up my papers and put them in my folder. Then I go down to my car and drive to the clubhouse. I feel odd as I drive toward the place, especially because Jackson is no longer with us; it’s a constant reminder, a strange reminder, that my life was much worse when he was alive. Maybe I ought to feel guilty at my lack of feeling. He was my brother, even after everything. But I don’t feel guilty in the slightest. If anything, I am only relieved.
A few brothers sit in the clubhouse. The Shattered Hearts are still the Shattered Hearts, but they are technically part of the Broken Sinners now, too; Sinners and Hearts shoot pool together and play cards as I walk through the clubhouse to Jackson’s old office. I knock and Sissy calls, “Yep?”
“It’s me.”
She opens the door with a delighted smile on her cute face. “Old Mother!” she cries, which she’s called me ever since she found out I was pregnant. “Come in.”
She shuffles me into the room and leads us to the couch which has replaced Jackson’s desk. This is a community room now. We sit down opposite each other and she folds her legs over. She’s wearing a mini skirt and her face is painted.
“It’s still jarring to me,” I admit. “Seeing you like this, I mean.”
“But, honey.” She pouts at me. “I’m finally doing something good. Three women have left the club and the ones who have remained—and the new girls, too—they’re finally being treated right. Surely you don’t have to be such an Old Mother about it all the time.” We both laugh and then she takes my hand. “Are you nervous about telling him?”
I shake my head. “Not really,” I say. “Just—I don’t know. It’s a big thing, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” she says. “It’s the biggest thing in the whole world … not that I want to make you more nervous.”
“Right.” I roll my eyes. “Thanks.”
Sissy, giggling like a mad girl, leans down and speaks directly to my belly. “Now listen here, little fellow,” she says. “I want you to explain to your worried mother that there is no need to worry, now or ever, because her knight in shining armor came and made the whole world a better place.”
I spend the rest of the afternoon there, catching up and talking about nothing in particular, and then go and take care of some errands. After that I go back to the apartment, taking a deep breath before I walk through the door. Dirk won’t be home for a while yet but I need to ready myself. I’ve told myself for the past five days that I’m going to tell him, and each time I get to the door and take a deep breath and prepare myself … and each time I end up not telling him. I go about the apartment, clean up, make myself a snack, and do some reading.
Then the door opens and he walks in. He goes to the couch and sits down, smiling at me. “Come here a sec, will you?” he says.
“Why?” I hover near him, but out of his reach.
“I have something to show you.”
I move closer—and he darts his hand out and grabs me by the waist. He pulls me into his lap and there’s nothing I could do to stop him even if I wanted to. His strength is unbelievable. He has the strength of two normal men. I grind my ass against his crotch. I’m wearing a skirt which he hikes up, his hand sliding into my underwear and toying with my clit, and then we’re kissing; kissing hot and sweaty and slow; slow and passionate; kissing and letting the kiss become its own universe. He lifts me up and places me on my back on the couch,
and then stands over me.
“Get naked,” he whispers, staring into my eyes. His eyes pierce mine; they pierce my everything. I do as he says, wriggling out of my underwear and pulling my dress over my head and then unclipping my bra. It feels good to be naked in front of him. There’s none of the old nervousness, or shyness, or fear. There’s only a lust and love that become one and sear into my pussy.
He leans over me, naked too, and guides his cock into my pussy. We make love slowly, rocking on the couch together, and then he pins my hands to the couch and grins savagely at me. I grin back. He unleashes himself on me, still lovingly but more violently, a rougher kind of love: a love I can easily get behind. His cock pounds into me again and again, and I sit down on him over and over at the same pace. I grab his shoulders and throw myself down onto his balls, the tip of his cock going deep inside of me, a place only for him.
I gasp as the heat from the end of his cock fills me up, moves through me and touches every part of me, so that the tips of my fingers feel like they are on fire. I move my hands through his hand, across his stubble-haired jaw, to his shoulders and then wrap them around his back, pulling him into me. I want all of him, the love and the roughness both, the gentle moments and the crazier ones. I take a deep breath and hold it; the orgasm chooses its moment to dive on me.