I angled my head to the side. “Your club still doesn’t know about you?”
He paled. “You know better than that. You wouldn’t want your secret out, either.”
“You better leave me the fuck alone or I’ll have to take my chances. Mal would be more fair than Terrence, and you know it.” My former leader was brutal and unapologetic. “Leave Vaughn alone. He’s never done anything to you.”
Before I could drive off, he got his fingers around my wrist. I yanked my arm away. “Why’ve you been out to the Scorpions clubhouse?” he demanded.
He definitely was keeping track of me. Fuck.
“You know he and Mal go way back,” I said, rolling my eyes. “He’s still got business dealings with him. What’s it to you?”
He was grasping at straws; I could see it in his eyes.
“We hear you got bad blood with the Scorpions and a whole bunch of other clubs,” I said, trying to rattle him. “The Asylum’s gone downhill. Too much partying.”
“Don’t act like you don’t remember how it used to all go down,” he said, and I gritted my teeth.
“Is it true you’re totally pulling out of guns?” he said. “You’re going to be a sorry-ass broke club.”
I could only imagine how rampant the rumors had been that we were a club in trouble. “What the hell do you care about how we run our business, anyway?”
“A bunch of pussies is what you’ve become.”
I clenched my jaw. “You don’t want to go up against us to find out.”
He revved his engine.
“You leave the bartender alone,” I said. “Mal’s got eyes on him, anyway.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You come back to me, I won’t bug him no more.”
I spit the acidy taste in my mouth onto the pavement. “Fuck you.”
I motored off in the opposite direction and then onto the freeway, completely out of sorts from this messed up day.
I’d make it though patrol and then find myself an NA meeting. Figure out my goddamn head.
Chapter Twenty-one
Vaughn
The following weekend, Smoke and I had stayed late closing up the Hog’s Den. It wasn’t something agreed upon. We simply lingered at the bar pretending to be busy until well after Lewis and Cherry left.
Smoke had been patrolling with Felix every night, which I’d admit brought me comfort. Outside of giving him head the other night, I hadn’t been alone with him or had time to talk to him.
If the only way we could steal moments together was like this, under the premise of running the bar together, then so be it. It was better than nothing, though I couldn’t even believe I was still entertaining any of those thoughts. What I really needed to do was move the hell on. But until he gave me a clue that he was doing the same, I wasn’t sure I could.
He was stalling now just as much as I was as he placed the last of the chairs upside down on a table and I swept beneath before replacing the broom.
There’d been no club business in the back room tonight, so we were completely alone for the first time in days. My heart was battering in my chest at the thought of being closer to him. Smoke and I had cut out all the flirting in a silent agreement that it was too torturous from both ends.
But still I joked and yammered away with my regulars because I couldn’t stop myself. Just how it was. Besides, it helped relieve the tension between Smoke’s longing stares and lingering silences. We were like that Penn and Teller comedy routine. I’d set him up and he’d deliver the modest gesture or soft-spoken punch line at the exact right moment. He was quickly becoming a favorite behind the bar with certain customers, and not only the ladies.
“I ran into him a couple of nights ago on patrol.” Smoke kept his voice low even though he knew there was nobody around.
I looked over his shoulder, just as a precaution. “Who?”
“Jake,” he said, and my heart launched to my throat.
My fingers gripped the stool. “What—”
“I was right about my suspicions,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut.
My elbows sank to the bar top. “He admitted it?”
“Not in so many words.”
I balled the towel sitting near the tap. “He thought we were seeing each other?”
He nodded. “I set him straight. I hope it’ll be cool.”
“He still wants you,” I said, and he neither agreed nor denied it. My stomach bunched into a tangled ball. Even though Jake was a sick fuck, I couldn’t help feeling resentful.
“How did it feel seeing him after all this time?” I needed to ask. They had a history, after all.
“Filthy,” he said, practically shivering. “Like I needed a shower. I wanted to knock his fucking teeth out for what he did to your place. But I needed to keep my cool.”
“Smart,” I said, and then straightened. “Guess we better still steer clear of each other in case…”
“Yeah,” he said, looking as bummed as I felt about it.
I cut the last light and headed toward the exit like my boots were trudging through molasses.
An arm wound around me from behind before I was able to make it to the door.
Smoke’s lips found my ear. “I want you so goddamn bad.”
“So have me,” I said, barely able to keep from trembling as his hot breath caressed my throat.
He growled and forced my shoulder against the wall as his hand snaked around front to palm my erection. I’d been aching for him for hours. Days. Maybe even years.
Neither of us spoke. The lights were out, and our heavy breaths echoed in the empty space. I could feel his heart jackhammering against my shoulder blades, and his dick was long and hard as granite against my ass.
His lips attacked my neck as his fingers unzipped my jeans.
He yanked my pants halfway down and shoved his finger along my crack.
Smoke groaned at the same time I did. “Fuck,” I whispered.
“I’ve been hard for you all night,” he said, digging a condom out of his pocket. “I’ve got no lube.”
“We’ll just have to—” Before I could get the words out, he flipped me around, my back making contact with the cold wall, and he sank to the floor in front of me.
Smoke was on his fucking knees in my empty bar, and the sight was enough to make me leak down the front of my pants. His mouth was like a warm oven and as his flushed lips encircled me, I gripped his head and gasped.
“I’ve been thinking about this cock,” he said in that calm and determined manner. “How it tastes and smells, how this vein right here bulges when you’re nearly there.”
His tongue made slow licks up and down my length. I shuddered, my balls pulling up tight. The familiar sensation was already present at the base of my spine. When he deep-throated me, I nearly yelled out.
“It’s so good.” My hips began thrusting toward his mouth.
“You’re going to come for me, and then I’m going to fuck you real good.”
“Oh goddamn.” His commanding, self-assured voice was getting to me. The one he seemed to reserve for me. I was right on the cusp. It had felt like too damn long.
He dragged his mouth away and watched me intently, reaching his fingers up to my lips. “Suck on them.”
I pulled his middle and forefinger into my mouth and hollowed out my cheeks, mimicking the way he bobbed up and down my length, and nearly seeing stars.
He withdrew his fingers from my mouth as his lips kissed their way down to my balls. He licked and sucked while his hand snaked behind to run along my crease again.
He nudged both wet fingers inside. Uncomfortable at first, it soon turned to pleasure as he began pumping in time with my thrusts.
“I need to get inside you,” he rasped, licking his way back up to my head. “I love your tight heat. Fuck, it’s like no other.”
And those words sent me bursting apart like an entire fucking galaxy of shooting stars, a supernova of orgasmic proportions. I spurted inside his mouth as everything
around me blurred into a sweaty, hot, and heaving distortion.
Smoke pulled back after a couple swallows and watched in wonder as the rest of my come filled his palm and then ran down his arm and onto the floor.
I was a limp and mindless heap as his forearm firmly pinned my hips to the wall. He watched my eyes as I attempted to keep them trained on him. He licked at his wrist as if my come was a delicacy and then stood up to unbutton his pants.
“Put the condom on me.” My fingers were numb, so I tore it open with my teeth. Before I rolled it over his length, I swiped my tongue across the bead of pre-come glistening there. “Ah shit, hurry.”
With my come still dripping still from his fingers, he lubed his own cock. The very act was as dirty as it was erogenous.
I groaned and sank my head against the wall. He leaned forward and tenderly kissed my neck before sucking on a patch of skin at the hollow of my throat. I wanted him to leave his mark on me; I wanted to feel its burn the next day.
Smoke steered me to the nearest tabletop and urged my shoulders forward. My elbows sank and I dipped my head as I heard him rustle his jeans further down his hips.
“Fuck.” I was a heaving, quivering mess, but when he pushed inside me using my own come as lube, I nearly sparked to life again.
Jesus Christ, if somebody could have seen me then, bent over the table in my own goddamn bar, giving it up to Smoke as his teeth nibbled at my shoulder and he mumbled unintelligibly. I fucking loved it. Loved hearing him come undone over me.
His arm wrapped around my chest and he held me almost possessively as he thrust harder. My sweaty T-shirt stuck against his chest. He licked along my hairline and then gripped my chin to claim my mouth.
“I don’t know if I’d had better than you,” he said in a pained voice. “And it’s completely fucking with my head.”
“Tell me about it,” I said as I angled my jaw to meet his lips in a sloppy and desperate kiss.
He kept his arm slung around me in an intimate hold as his pounding became erratic and I knew he was about to break apart. He shouted my name as he came, and there was no sweeter sound I’d ever heard.
* * *
The following morning, I showered, changed, and called my dad on the way to the store. Usually I got what I thought he needed, but sometimes he threw in extra requests. He didn’t answer, though, so maybe he was in the shower.
I had mounted one of those handgrips in his bathroom, and though he grumbled the entire way through installation, I knew he was grateful that he wasn’t going to slip and fall in the water collecting at the bottom of the tub. That surgery had taken a toll on him, and even if he never admitted it, he needed all the help he could get.
I tried him one more time in the parking lot, and he still didn’t pick up. I pushed aside the gnawing feeling in my chest that something was wrong. He’d done this to me on other occasions, when he’d been napping nowhere near his phone.
He’d been way more tired than usual lately, so maybe he had fallen asleep in his chair.
Still, I picked up the pace in every aisle and loaded only the necessities before heading for the checkout.
I kept the speed limit to my dad’s place but left the groceries in the car so I could check on him first thing.
When I called out for him and he still didn’t respond, my chest tightened painfully. I didn’t find him in front of the television or in his bedroom.
“Pop?” I called.
A grunting noise echoed down the hallway. Fuck, I was right, he had fallen down.
When I entered the bathroom, he lay half dressed on the floor, his pants unbuttoned, his shirt hanging partway off his shoulder as if he were about to turn on the tap.
“What the hell happened?” I reached for my phone after I bent down to prop his head on my knee.
He didn’t speak, only stared with glazed eyes, so I tapped out the emergency number.
“Hang on, Dad,” I said, stroking his arm. “The ambulance is on the way.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Smoke
I stepped into an empty bar, surprised that I’d beat Vaughn there. My gaze couldn’t help wandering to the table I had taken him on the previous night. Damn, he was amazing and thoroughly wrecking my brain.
Anybody could’ve walked in and I wouldn’t have given two shits. I wanted him that badly. And the fact that he’d given it up to me, allowed me to fuck him in his own establishment, had said a lot. Showed that he’d needed me just as much.
Except now I sought him out every single day. A look, a kiss, a touch. I simply needed him in some capacity, which was really disorienting and fucking complicated. And I didn’t know how to fix it. Because it was as if he were already in my blood, saturating my veins. In some ways mimicking what that other addiction had become.
As I got situated behind the bar, the door opened, and I held my breath. But it was only Cherry. I liked the girl, and her old man was pretty cool as well. It felt like she had Vaughn’s back and would never betray the club.
“Vaughn’s not here yet?” she asked, looking around, as shocked as I had been.
“Nope,” I said, restocking the vodka. “Must be running late.”
“Maybe he had something to do for his old man.”
I nodded as she made her way to the back room to put her things away.
My cell buzzed right then. It was Vaughn. We’d exchanged phone numbers when I started working at the bar, but we had yet to call one another. So I was surprised to see his name pop up.
“I need your help,” he said as soon as I answered.
“Anything,” I said without hesitation.
His voice sounded strained. “My dad suffered a heart attack. He’s in the hospital.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I said, rustling my fingers through my hair. “What can I do?”
He paused, and I heard what sounded like beeping, which probably meant he was standing in the hospital hallway.
“Probably going to be here for a few more hours while they run tests,” he said hesitantly. “He was practically unconscious when I found him, but he’s come around since then. Still, they need to determine the extent of the damage.”
“Shit,” I said, imagining him wandering alone in the hospital. “I’d offer to keep you company, but I’m going to assume the best thing for me to do is to keep the bar afloat tonight?”
“That would really help,” he said in a rush, as if I’d pull the offer. “Thank you, Reed.”
My heart thrummed in my chest. He’d called me Reed. It might’ve been a slip, and I wouldn’t call him on it. But I liked him using it.
“I’ve got it covered on my end,” I said. “Cherry, Lewis, and I will be fine tonight.”
“Appreciate it,” he said, blowing out a breath. “You get stuck on anything, call me.”
“You just be there for your dad,” I said, now pacing the entirety of the bar, my mind already creating a checklist of what was left to do before the customers came calling.
“Will do,” he said. “Ring me at closing time? I’d appreciate that.”
“You got it,” I said. “And Vaughn? No worrying about us. I mean it.”
After I filled Cherry in on what was happening, we got to work opening the bar.
Thankfully the night flew by, and it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it could’ve been.
When Mal strode through the back door, he looked down the length of the bar for Vaughn, his gaze landing back on me. It did feel strange here without the head honcho. Vaughn was the heart and soul of this place and without him, it would never be the same.
“His dad had a heart attack,” I said quietly when I got to Mal’s end, out of the earshot of curious customers. Up until that point, I had been telling anybody who’d asked—which was pretty much everybody—only that he was taking the night off. Cherry had added that he deserved it, following my lead. “We’ve got it covered while he stays with him at the hospital.”
“Shit,” he said, tapping his fingers on the
bar. “We could’ve closed the joint for the night.”
“What, you think I can’t handle this place on my own?” I cocked an eyebrow at him.
He laughed. “You actually look good behind that bar.”
“I almost inherited a place like this a few years back, remember?” I said, resting my elbows on the bar.
He nodded, his eyes softening. “You miss it?”
I looked down the line of customers. Somehow their quiet chatter was soothing. Always had been. My dad would say it meant folks were content. “Dunno. I certainly feel comfortable here, and I’m glad to help out.”
“I’m glad, too,” he said, thumping me on the shoulder. “Vaughn has had a shit ton of luck this last month, yeah?”
I couldn’t help thinking his trouble had begun directly after getting involved with me. Damn, he didn’t need any more headaches. I’d do all I could to help out.
“Well, whatever he needs,” Mal said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “We’ll be happy to do it.”
“I’ll be sure to let him know.”
“Hey,” one of the regulars, Lou, yelled from the other end of the bar. “You gonna spend the rest of the night gossiping or you going to serve me a beer?”
“Better shut that trap or you’ll be out on your ass,” Mal said around a smile.
“You’d need five of yeh to take me,” he said, and the whole bar erupted into laughter, including Lou, because he was an older gentleman, maybe in his seventies. He was here most nights and probably considered these guys family.
I served dozens more drinks over the course of the next few hours as Cherry racked up tips at the tables by serving pitchers and wings.
I certainly didn’t have Vaughn’s charisma or his flair for storytelling, but I think I held my own. It felt like good, honest work and I was glad to be able to hold down the fort for him. It also made me a bit proud of myself that I could do it on my own—outside of Lewis and Cherry’s help of course.
Around closing time, the same woman who had gone home with Vaughn the other night slipped through the door, wearing high heels and an expensive silk blouse. Her gaze searched around for Vaughn, and I couldn’t help the well of jealousy that arose in my gut. It was ridiculous, for sure, but she seemed to be back for a second round.
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