by Franca Storm
“Is that a threat? Are you going to tell on me, huh?”
“No.” And right there, I’m choosing her over the club, just like that. I step into her and growl, “Don’t you ever fucking put me in this position again, woman. Making me choose between you and the club.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” she shrieks at me. “I’m the mother of your child!”
Like I don’t fucking know that. Even though I’ve taught her a lot ‘bout club life, there’s still a lot she’s gotta get used to. And I know that. It’s why I’m really toning it down with her and not freaking the fuck out. But she don’t even get that. I’m the bad guy no matter what right now. She can’t see it no other way, cuz she’s so pissed.
I step back and tell her as calmly as I can, “I’m tryin’ to say, I need you working with me, not against me. All right?”
“That’s not what you said.”
“Well I ain’t exactly a wordsmith, am I? It’s what I meant, though.”
“How can you expect me to work with you, when you’re not prepared to do the same?”
“Look, whatever you heard, it ain’t what you think.”
“Really?” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “So, you didn’t go out tracking down Ben and Eddie tonight then?”
“I did, but—”
“You promised me you wouldn’t.”
“Wrong. I promised I wouldn’t kill ‘em.”
“No, you said—”
“I said I weren’t gonna go after ‘em.”
“Exactly.”
“Going after ‘em means kill ‘em, Sarah. Tonight I were tracking ‘em. Found Ben, but didn’t make no contact.”
“You put yourself in danger!”
“It were only recon. I weren’t nowhere near him.”
“You were near enough, Zeb.”
“Sarah, he’s in jail now, cuz of me. I’m the best tracker in the club. They couldn’t find him. I did. And now he ain’t gonna be a problem to none of us no more. He’s gone, Sarah. Locked away. Outta the picture. That’s why I did it. To make us safe.”
She slumps against the kitchen worktop and brings her hands to her face. “I can’t lose you. Okay? I can’t. Having this baby? I don’t know how to do it alone. I need you.”
“I know, darlin’. I know.”
“I’m sorry I freaked out. Just…what you said about choosing me over the club…it hurt me.”
I walk over to her and take her hands, moving ‘em away from her face and holding ‘em between us. “In the twenty years I been with the club, I ain’t never chosen nothing or nobody over it. ‘Til tonight. That’s how much you mean to me, darlin’. But making a choice like that…it hurts me. Gotta have you and the club on the same side all the time, Sarah, so it ain’t never gonna be a choice. What you did tonight, it’s fucking dangerous. Gotta promise me you ain’t gonna do that again.”
“But how will I know if you’re okay? You won’t tell me.”
“Won’t tell you nothing that’s club business. You know that’s the way it works. I explained all that to you. But I know what I’m doing. Ain’t gonna put myself in danger. You gotta trust me there.” I squeeze her hands. “I’ll make you a deal. I ain’t gonna take on no more jobs that are gonna put me in danger, cuz you and me got a family now. Okay, darlin’? How’s that?”
She smiles and nods. “That sounds good. Thank you.”
I let go of her hands. “All right then.”
“I’m sorry I came down so hard on you. It just really freaked me out, knowing you were doing that. And, just so you know, I didn’t mean to listen in on Ax’s call. I was making more popcorn and he was talking on the balcony with the door open. His voice carries. And then when I heard your name…I couldn’t help it.
“All right, darlin’. I hear what you’re saying. It’s okay. I’m sorry, too.”
“Okay,” she says with a little smile.
“We good now?”
“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “Just…no more dangerous jobs.”
“Promise.”
“Thank you.”
I lunge at her and pick her up. She squeals in surprise. As I carry her outta the kitchen, she wraps her legs ‘round me. “Are we going to bed?”
“Damn straight. I’m gonna rip your clothes off and eat your sweet pussy out ‘til all those worries of yours are buried under pleasure. Gonna make you come so many fucking times, you ain’t gonna be able to think of nothing but what my mouth’s doing to you.”
She giggles and buries her face in my chest. She always gets so embarrassed when I get graphic with her. “You ain’t gonna be shy in a moment, darlin’. Gonna bring out that wild side of yours.”
We reach the bedroom and I kick open the door.
I drop her on the bed and she scrambles ‘round on the covers.
I crawl up the bed towards her real slow and she squeals from the predatory look I’m giving her.
As soon as my mouth crashes down on hers, she’s mine again, relaxing underneath me.
I pull back and tell her, “Looking forward to doing this with you for the rest of our lives. Love you so much, Sarah.”
She wraps her arms ‘round my neck. “I love you, Zeb. So much.”
Chapter 37
~Sarah~
“Yes! More! Harder, Zeb! Fuck me harder!” I scream over my shoulder at him.
He tugs on my hair roughly and grunts, “Fucking hell, woman. I do it much harder and I’m gonna be drilling you right through the goddamn bed.”
“I don’t care.”
He chuckles. “I know you don’t.”
I tighten my grip on the headboard as I feel him shift his weight behind me. I know he’s getting ready to jackhammer me fiercely. I love it when he does that. He loses control and gets crazy and wild.
He pulls out almost all the way. He lets go of my hair and both his hands grip my hips tightly.
He doesn’t give me any warning as he thrusts back into me hard, making my entire body jolt forward against the headboard.
“That hard enough for you?”
“That’s not your hardest.”
“Ain’t gonna be neither. Remember what the doc said.”
Right, not too hard. “Zeb,” I whine.
“Something to look forward to.”
“It’s months away.”
He thrusts into me again, making me cry out in surprise.
“Shh, darlin’. Don’t I always bring my A-game?”
“Yes, but—”
“But nothing. Gonna make you come as fucking hard as always. Ain’t never left no woman unsatisfied and that ain’t changing just cuz we gotta be more careful than normal.”
Before I can say anything else, he picks up the pace, thrusting into me fiercely. It isn’t long before I forget he’s holding back and I get lost in the momentum. In him.
“Ah. Yes! Yes! Yes!” I scream out.
It’s difficult to get him into this state, because he always automatically goes the gentle route with me. I have to beg and really work him up to get him to be really rough with me. That’s how sweet he is.
But I love it when he gets rough. There’s nothing like it in the world when Zeb lets loose on my body.
He doesn’t let up now. He just keeps pounding me into the bed.
As I struggle to maintain my grip on the headboard, I feel my orgasm building incredibly quickly.
It’s like he knows, like he can read my body so well, because he slides one hand down underneath me. His fingers brush my pussy, teasing me in that amazing way of his.
It doesn’t take long before I’m shrieking at the top of my lungs as my orgasm hits me hard, ripping through my entire body. It’s so intense that my legs start to buckle.
Zeb slides his arm underneath me, holding me up as he continues to pound into me.
“Yeah, that’s right. Come, darlin’. Come hard,” he growls.
“Yes, Zeb!” I scream as I ride it out for all it’s worth.
I feel him jerk against me an
d hold his position inside me as he comes too.
He pulls out and takes me with him as he rolls onto his back, so I’m lying on top of him. He slides his hands into my hair and grins up at me.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, seeing the amusement all over his face.
“When we first got together, you were so scared of me being rough. Now you go crazy for it.”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t know rough could mean pleasure. I thought it just meant pain.”
“I told you from the beginning: when I fuck, there ain’t nothing but pleasure, darlin’.”
“I know that now.”
He glances around the room, taking in the many boxes piled around, cluttering the already-limited space. We’re in my small apartment above my diner. We’ve already packed up my house and everything’s ready to be moved from the diner below. This small place was the last thing that needed to be made move-ready. I haven’t used it for a while, as I had my house. But I’d never packed up anything in here. I guess I always liked having it handy in case I needed to pull a double shift and couldn’t be bothered to head all the way home.
“We should get back to it, Sarah.”
“Mmm hmm. Soon,” I murmur against his chest.
“We been here four hours and you’ve begged me to fuck you five times, woman. We lay here much longer and I know you’re gonna be at it again.”
“I can’t help it. It’s the pregnancy. It’s making me really horny. You could show some self-control and say ‘no’.”
“How much self-control do you think I got?”
“Obviously, not much.”
“Gotta keep you happy, don’t I? Just giving you what you want. But we gotta get a move on. It’s getting dark now. Don’t want us riding back to Reirdon Falls so late.”
I push off him and sit up, eyeing all the boxes and thinking about all the stuff at my house too. “How are we going to fit all of this inside your place?”
“We ain’t. Some can come to my place and the rest we’re gonna store at the club.”
“Did you run it by Ax?”
“Yeah. It’s all good. Only for ‘bout a month, ‘til we’re ready to take possession of our house.”
After looking for several weeks, we finally found a house and made an offer on it. It’s brand new and a few things need finishing up before we can move in. That’s why we have a month to wait. Zeb is getting anxious about it, because I’m over four months pregnant now. We still have ages to go yet and more than enough time to settle in before I give birth. But he’s been intense about making everything perfect.
“Okay, let’s get back to it.” I move to get up off the bed and that’s when a nasty wave of nausea hits me. I slap my hand over my mouth.
Zeb is there right away, laying his hands gently on my shoulders. “You gonna hurl?”
I hold up my hand, letting him know I need a second. The worst threat of it passes after a few moments, but I still feel awfully nauseous, which is going to be a problem when getting on Zeb’s bike in a little while.
I ease myself down on the bed, curling up into a fetal position.
“Argh. It must be the sex—the repetitive motion. Too much of it.”
“You got any of those pills with you that settle your stomach?” Zeb asks as he lifts a pillow and gently places it under my head. He pulls the duvet up over me, to cover up my nakedness.
“No. There’s a pharmacy just down the street.”
“I ain’t gonna leave you here alone.”
“Oh God. Please, Zeb,” I groan.
He rubs my back gently. “How far is it?”
“Ten minutes away if you ride.”
“You said it were just down the street, Sarah.”
“It is. Far down this street.”
He grunts and pushes off the bed. He starts snatching up his clothes that are scattered all over the bedroom floor and pulls them on quickly. I watch as he pulls a gun from his holster and places it down on the bedside table next to me. “I showed you how to use it. You know what to do.”
“What about you? You’re the one going outside into the dangerous city streets.”
He lifts up the right side of his cut and I see another gun there. “I got another.”
“What? You only usually carry one.”
“Yeah, well. Knew we were coming down here.”
More evidence of Zeb’s intensity and overprotectiveness as my pregnancy progresses. Ben is no longer an issue, because the club managed to get him locked up somehow. I don’t know all the details, because it’s club business and Zeb wouldn’t tell me. He did tell me that Ben had a pretty bad record, so it hadn’t been difficult. But Eddie is still out there. Ben didn’t rat him out as the club had thought he would. No one has any idea where he is. Not even Zeb. He’s gone to ground—that’s what Zeb calls it.
He leans in and kisses my head softly. “Won’t be long, sweet angel.”
“Okay,” I murmur.
He pulls away and I hear him walking out of the room. He closes the door behind him and I hear him hurrying down the stairs that lead to my diner below.
I groan at the nausea racking my body and pull the covers up over my head.
***
A couple of minutes after Zeb left, I ended up running into the bathroom across from my bedroom, as the nausea had taken a turn for the worst.
Now I’m hunched over the damn toilet, trying to catch my breath after puking my guts up.
And that awful feeling is still there. What the hell? Can’t I catch a break here?
I slowly climb to my feet and flush the toilet. I wash my hands and splash some cold water over my face, because I’m sweating. And then I snatch the robe off the back of the bathroom door, glad I kept it here, and wrap it around me. I can’t be bothered to go through all the hassle of getting dressed, but it’s too cold to be walking around naked. I don’t want to put the heating on for the few hours we’re going to be here, because it’s a waste of money.
I make my way down the stairs towards the diner. I need something to get that awful taste out of my mouth, as I don’t have a toothbrush or toothpaste here.
As soon as I enter the diner, I pull my fuzzy white bathrobe more tightly around me, as I feel a draft coming in. How the hell? I doubt very much that Zeb would leave the door open, seeing as how paranoid he was about leaving me.
I eye the door and it is open.
Oh my God.
My pulse quickens as panic starts to rise within me.
I scan the diner floor, all the tables and booths.
There’s no one there.
“Sarah.”
Adrenaline rips through me.
I know that voice.
I turn to my right and there he is.
Eddie Torvin is standing at the entryway to my kitchen, just beyond the counter.
He isn’t dressed in one of his designer suits now. In fact, he’s a mess. He’s wearing dark blue sweatpants and a hoodie. His hair is greasy and straggly. Long gone is the clean-cut, pretty boy look he’d always had. I guess living in hiding doesn’t agree with him.
“How the hell did you get in?” I demand.
“Scum like that biker traitor, Ben, and your boyfriend’s brother taught me a lot about the criminal underworld. Breaking and entering was a part of that. I picked the lock of the back door by the kitchen.”
“Why are you here?”
He laughs, a crazy unhinged laugh, and walks forward until he’s leaning against the counter, looking me up and down. “You ruined my life. Look at me!”
“You did that to yourself.”
“Wrong. Everything was fine until you set your biker trash boyfriend and his club on me and my business partner.”
“You and Jase came after us. And then you sent Ben after us too.”
“We came after that biker trash, because he was getting too close to what we were working on. All because of you. If you hadn’t resisted me when I’d walked in here, he never would’ve got involved and he would have bee
n none the wiser. I wouldn’t have reported his interference to Jase, Jase wouldn’t have realized it was him I was talking about and he never would’ve gone after him.”
“That would make it all your fault for coming into my diner in the first place and threatening me.”
Does he really think he can manipulate me, like he used to? I’m not that naïve little girl anymore. I know better now.
He rounds the counter, demanding, “You think you’re better than me now, do you? Smarter?”
I stand my ground, eyeing him fiercely. “Definitely.”
His eyes flash with rage, that rage I know only too well from him.
But things are different now. I’m not afraid.
I know what he’s trying to do and I won’t let him succeed. I won’t let him make me into a victim again.
He stops a few feet away from me and looks me up and down.
“You will submit to me here, Sarah.”
“Like hell.”
“Oh, you will. You know why?” He points at my belly. “For the sake of that child you’re carrying.”
“You’re lying. If you hurt me, you hurt my baby. There’s no distinction, you idiot.”
“I’m not planning on hurting you.”
“What?” What’s his game here?
“I want you to submit to me, do as I say, and come with me quietly.”
“What are you talking about?”
He takes a step closer. “I don’t want you.”
Oh my God. He’s after Zeb. He wants to use me to get to him.
“Your boyfriend and his club are going to pay for what they’ve done. They’ve ruined me. I’m broke now after that huge drug deal went to hell. No one will do business with me, because my partners have ended up dead or in jail. No one will risk it. I’m blackballed now.”
“If you don’t walk out of here right now, I can guarantee you’ll be joining them.”
“You’ve gotten a lot spunkier, Sarah. Can’t say I like it.” He steps closer and I brace myself. He reaches into his hoodie pocket and pulls something out. A transparent pouch with some white powder inside.
“Is that—?”
“The product Jase had been working on. Coke.”
“Get out of here and take that awful stuff with you!”
“Are you worried, Sarah? About your boyfriend? What he’ll do when he sees it?”