by Lucas, Helen
He tossed his cigarette to the floor and crushed it out with the heel of his boot.
“But no. Goddamn it, I’ve been fucking careful. There shouldn’t be anyone who has any fucking idea!”
“It’s not your fault,” I said gently. “Fatman doesn’t sound like the most stable guy in the world anyway. Maybe he’s just crazy and he was acting like a big kid, showing off his new psycho toy.”
Fang raised his eye brows and shrugged.
“Sure. I’d like to believe that. I really would.”
I don’t know why I was trying to comfort him, trying to reassure him that he had done a fine job. I honestly knew so little about him, knew so little about how he’d run the operation so far. I don’t even know if Doug knew much about it. Fang could have been fucking things up from day one and I wouldn’t know it. Maybe I was walking into a death trap without any idea.
“How did you come to join the Damned?” I asked suddenly. I don’t know why I asked that. I just did, and I thought it felt relevant, felt like something I should know.
Fang immediately became uneasy, seeming to contract right before my eyes.
“I came back from Afghanistan. And…”
“And then you fell in with them?”
“That’s right. I was using drugs—first for the pain from my injuries, and then because I was an addict. Fatman understood. He let me siphon heroin off what I was selling, never asked questions. Helped me get an apartment. It was almost like social services was taking care of me.”
“That’s… I guess that makes sense. So, why are you trying to sell him out now?”
Fang shrugged.
“I’m not about this life anymore. I lost some good friends in Afghanistan and I can’t think that the way I’m living here is… You know. Making them proud.”
I bit my lip. I wanted to throw my arms around him, wanted to hold him close and press my lips to his, telling him that it would be okay. After all, I had lost a good friend in Afghanistan. My best friend, in fact.
And then, before I knew it, I had wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my breasts into his back, leaning my head into his shoulder.
“You’re making the right choice,” I whispered. “This is the right thing to do, you know. You’re helping take down some dangerous criminals.”
“Hell, I’d like to believe that,” he muttered, running a hand over my forearm, holding it to his chest as he took another slow drag on his cigarette. “I sure as hell would. I just don’t know what I can believe in anymore. I don’t know if there’s anything left. I used to believe in the Corps, but then that left me broken and addicted to smack. I used to believe in the club, but that’s a black hole to no where, to jail or the morgue. So, what else is there?”
I didn’t have an answer for him.
FANG
This conversation with Claire had gotten unexpectedly deep. Unexpectedly fast. We had barely even discussed the things she would need to know to be accepted as one of the club’s old ladies.
“How did you get clean?” Claire asked suddenly as I lit another cigarette. “I mean, how did you get off heroin?”
I grinned. Here, at least, was something I was proud of.
“I bought a boat, filled a suitcase with food and water, and I sailed out to the middle of the ocean. I broke my sails and my mast, and then I sat there on the water for two weeks as I went cold turkey.”
Claire’s eyes widened.
“Jesus Christ. And that worked?”
“I just about killed myself six or seven times, and it was a hell of a lot more miserable than being addicted. At least for those few days. But now I’m clean and I’ve stayed cleaner longer than I ever had in the past,” I said with grin. “That’s how you have to do it—like a fucking band aid. One pull. Don’t make it gradual. Cold turkey.”
“I’m surprised you survived. I know withdrawal is…”
“Hell. Yeah. That was my own personal hell out on the water for two weeks. I was raving and half starved when a shrimping trawler picked me up. They thought I was ship wrecked.”
“But you beat it?”
I shrugged.
“As much as anyone ever beats something like that,” I said with a grim smile. “That’s not to say I don’t sometimes get… Urges. Every now and then.”
“Urges?”
“I’m around smack all day. I don’t sell it anymore, but other guys in the club use it. I see the shipments come in and go out. It’s hell, just watching it, knowing what it can do, what it does to people, what it did for me…”
Claire had gone quiet. Jesus, what must she be thinking about me now? But the feeling of bugs on my skin, my hands shaking bad, the needle piercing my taut flesh—it was all so fresh in my mind, like it had only been yesterday when I had been shooting up, desperate for more, desperate for another hit…
Parts of me wished I could go back to those days.
And, honestly, the rest of me would have rather cut those other parts of me right the fuck out.
Claire was drifting off to sleep. I could tell she was exhausted. Poor girl. Poor thing. Her body had been sliced and pierced and injected with ink till it was beyond recognition. Her face seemed to melt into slumber as she slumped forward, the trails of my cigarette forming a light cloud over our heads as the sky turned a dark pink, the sun drifting off to the west.
Even if she fell asleep tonight, there wasn’t much I couldn’t teach her in the next two weeks. That was the time it would take for the tattoos to heal. For us to make it look like she hadn’t just gotten them in order to fit in.
Which, of course, she had. But we wouldn’t say anything about that, of course.
“Take me to bed, Fang,” she said finally. What I wouldn’t give, girl…
I took her by the hand, led her into the bedroom. Gently, ever so gently, I undressed her, the fabric sliding titilatingly over her torn skin. I loved the hot smell of her perfume, her deodorant, whatever it was—maybe just her—so close to me, so primal, as her nakedness was revealed to me. It was all I could do to keep from throwing her down on the bed and fucking her right there.
My cock was like a piece of forged steel and it pressed viciously against the crotch of my pants, begging for release. Begging to be allowed into Claire’s hot, tight, warm, wet center… Begging to slide down her throat, begging to slide into her from behind, begging to claim and conquer her. And it was only my brain forcing myself to stay calm, forcing myself to remove her clothes and reinforce her bandages without staring too long as her exposed breasts, at the spot between her legs that my cock ached for…
“You perv, you get to see me all naked now…” she murmured as she collapsed onto the bed, gasping at the pain of the tattoos pressing against the sheets.
“That was my plan all along. I’m just running a porno operation with the Feds now.”
“I knew it,” Claire said with a cute little smile playing on her lips. “Knew it, knew it, knew it…”
She was fading fast. I pulled the covers up and cover her.
“Fang, c’mere,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Just come here…”
Her eyes were already closed but I leaned my head in close.
“What do you want?”
She pressed her lips to mine. Fuck this. I kissed her hard, my tongue working its way into her mouth as I held her face with both hands. I kissed her like an animal eats its prey: hungrily, angrily, brutally, like a victorious conquer storming into a defeated city, ready to rape, pillage, and plunder. And oh, I plundered her lips, her tongue, her mouth, biting at her lower lip as I drifted back.
We broke apart. She was already asleep.
I turned the window air conditioner unit on for her and then retired to my own room.
I shouldn’t be doing this, I shouldn’t be doing this, I shouldn’t be doing this—the words rang like church bells on a Sunda in the deep south, screaming in my head, chastising me. But I had.
And goddamn it, I h
ad liked it.
And now, where did this leave us?
It left me with an aching cock, burning lips, and, as I found out in the morning, a girl who didn’t remember anything about the previous night.
CLAIRE
I knew Fang kissed me.
Even though I pretend to be asleep, I was fully awake for it. How could you sleep through something like that? After all, the way his lips raked over me, like burning hot coals searing the insides of my mouth, not to mention torching whatever remained of my heart and soul… God. Goddamn.
But I was afraid too. Afraid of what would happen if I had let him keep going. Afraid of what would happen if I kept going. And, especially, afraid that we wouldn’t be able to stop.
There was also the small problem of my body being covered with fresh tattoos, but frankly, I would have been willing to overlook that issue, after a kiss like that.
No, I got scared. And so I hid beneath the specter of sleep. I’m not proud of it but that’s what I did.
The next morning, I acted like nothing was different. I talked about how I barely remembered anything after getting tattooed—about how Fang would have to tell me everything he had told me then all over again, since I had out and out forgotten it.
“Not very professional of me, I guess,” I had said with a forced smile. Fang’s face as fallen and darkened. I saw those tortured, angry eyes of his searching mine, searching my face, trying to figure out if I were telling the truth or not.
Please, baby, I wanted to say. We can’t. We shouldn’t. Let’s get through this.
But of course I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t ever call him baby or hun or love or any of the things lovers called each other. There was no future for Fang and me and that’s how it should be.
We weren’t even allowed the future-less passion of a one-night stand. There was only the operation and that was it.
Over the next two weeks, I practiced riding Fang’s motorcycle. He went over, in great detail, the various parts of the motorcycle, detailing how everything worked, how things would be fixed, what to call everything—information that would be important for me as an FBI agent but stuff that a Damned shouldn’t really be telling his old lady.
Progressive guys, these bikers.
He told me all there was to know about the club’s history and customs—not only what I had pretend to have forgotten, but the meaning of the colors, of the logo, of the patches. The club’s main patch, the symbol of everything they stood for, was a man on his knees, surrounded by flames.
That’s what Fang must have felt like, back when he was consumed by heroin and addiction, back when he had stranded himself all alone on his row boat in the middle of the sea, unsure if he would live or die, if he would ever see dry land again.
And that’s what I felt like now, my tattoos slowly healing, forced to be so close to a man I wanted, but who I could only talk to about motorcycles, drug dealing, murders. There was nothing else to talk about and any time I tried to—any time I tried to talk about my life outside of work, outside of the gang now, outside of this tiny apartment—I found Fang’s face falling. These were things he didn’t have.
For him, there was no outside. He was fighting for an outside.
And, to be honest, my outside had withered since I lost my husband. My life had withered. I was just as much inside as Fang was. We were both in the flames, and we might as well have been two Damned sinners, clutching each other as the inferno engulfed out fragile bodies.
Finally, the day came. The day we had waited for, the day we had planned for.
I was going to be beaten in.
“What’ll happen,” Fang told me as I applied protective ointment to my fresh tattoos one last time. Now two weeks old, they looked slick and shiny. Dressed in a leather vest and a cut off Sex Pistol’s t-shirt that showed off my muscled midriff nicely, I looked like the perfected image of a biker girl. “Is that I’ll talk about us, how we met, stupid shit like that. And I’ll say why you should be an official old lady, why you should be allowed to hang out with us, what you’ll add…”
“And then they’ll beat me up?” I asked, rolling my eyes. Fang nodded, his face more than a bit grave.
“Yeah. And then they’ll beat you up. The other club old ladies will surround you and they’ll kick the crap out of you.”
He took a long drag off his cigarette and sighed.
“And I can’t fight back?” I asked, hoping that maybe the answer would have changed. But no. Answers like that don’t change.
“You can’t. Don’t even try.”
“Right. And they won’t kill me? Because…”
“No, no, no. The other Damned will intervene before they kill you. Not that they’ll get close. You’ll have a couple bruises but everyone will be too drunk or stoned to hurt you.”
“You promise?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I can’t promise anything…” Fang said with a scowl. “But that’s how it’s supposed to work.”
“Fine. I’ll trust you.”
“You’d better. You don’t have a choice.”
He was right. I didn’t.
We rode out to the beach. I was nervous, I realized. More nervous than I tended to be right before operations. I could walk into a room full of gang bangers armed to the teeth, open fire on them, hold my own, but I couldn’t meet my boyfriend’s friends?
My pseudo-boyfriend. I had to work on that. But maybe it was good if I got to thinking about Fang as my boyfriend.
That would make it more realistic. Right? And that could only help. Right?
Before we got to the beach, I could smell the grills going and could hear the music. We rounded a corner and I immediately spied the lines and lines of motorcycles, leaned up against each other in the parking lot. The last of the civilian beachgoers were beating a hasty retreat back to their SUVs—some college-aged kids who were scampering away from the perverted, leering, bearded motorcycle riders, their bikini-clad teenaged breasts bouncing in ways that only made the Damned hoot and screech louder, while a young family dashed to their minivan, the father with one hand firmly on his pretty blonde wife’s back, while she tried to cover her children’s ears.
So. These were the Damned.
We stopped the bike along the line of allied motorcycles and Fang glanced back at me.
“Show time. Are you ready to do this?”
“Born ready,” I said, giving him what I hoped was the kind of steely look that would inspire confidence. I was sure it wouldn’t but that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except getting through this evening.
As we approached the gaggle of bikers, the mass of leather clad flesh, sweaty and flushed already with intoxication and food, a huge man broke off, catching sight of us. I recognized him from the dossier Doug had given us.
“Fatman,” Fang murmured to me out of the corner of his mouth, not even glancing at me. He put an arm around my waist, letting it slide down to my ass. I was wearing tight jean shorts that looked incredible on my thighs. I couldn’t blame him, even if it hadn’t been put of the ruse.
“Is this your lady, Fang? The famous Claire?”
“In the flesh,” Fang called back as we came to stand in front of the huge biker, his belly peeking out from underneath his sweat soaked shirt.
“She’s a pretty little thing, Fang, you dumbass,” he laughed, leaning in close, as if trying to sneak a look down the front of my shirts. “What are you doing with a piece of trash like Fang, girlie? You know he’s a junkie? You need a real man.”
I just smiled back at Fatman.
“I know Fang’s clean. It’s so good to meet you—I’ve heard so much about you. I’m so glad to be here.”
Fatman burst out laughing.
“You’re fucking a goddamned girl scout, Fang! Does she even know what’s coming?”
“She sure does,” Fang murmured, his hand tightening on my ass. I gasped ever so slightly, feeling my skin flush at the delicious touch. Fortunately, neither of the two m
en seemed to notice. They were way more interested in glowering at each other.
“Hey, all you faggots listen up!” Fatman suddenly roared. “Fang here’s done brought around a bitch who wants to join you cocksuckers! What say you?”
Beer cans were raised. Incoherent hoots and hollers sounded from the crowd.
“I said…” Fatman continued. “What say you? Shall we listen to whatever Fang’s got to say?”
Fang cleared his throat.
“As, uh, many of y’all know,” he began. “I met Claire at a club about six months ago. She wanted to buy some blow off me and she did. But then she kept calling me up, wanting to hang out. I thought she just wanted cheap smack but it turned out she wanted something different.”