Sugar (The Henchmen MC Book 12)

by Jessica Gadziala

  "That too," I agreed, fighting a moan.

  "And what about this?" he asked, his cock gliding backward, then slamming in to the hilt on one thrust.

  "Fuck," I whimpered, trying to breathe through the constricted feeling in my chest.

  Then, well, he fucked me.

  Plain and simple.

  Hard and fast.

  One hand sank into my hip, the only thing keeping me from slamming forward into the wall in front of me with each thrust. The other, when I tried to lean forward to bury my face in the blankets, trying to muffle my moans, tracked up my spine to slip into the hair at the base of my neck, curling, and pulling back hard enough to make my back arch to try to ease the pain/pleasure sting.

  "No," he growled as he pulled. "I want everyone in this compound to know I own this pussy," he finished.

  There was no more talking after that.

  Just fucking.

  Feeling.

  Then crying out his name as I came.

  He came on the tail-end of my orgasm, cursing out my name as well.

  After, I fell forward, rolling onto my back as Sugar walked into the bathroom to deal with the condom. Deep-breathing to try to get my heartbeat back under control, I looked down, seeing the cups of my bra all askew, my boobs all just doing their own damn thing. I was still shoving them back into their jail when Sugar came back out, eyes moving up my bare legs and the skirt I hadn't bothered to yank back down yet before landing on my face as he half-dove onto the bed at my side, closest to the wall, flopping onto his back as well, one hand under his neck, the other resting on the center of his stomach where you could still see abs, even in his relaxed position.

  All that went through my head right then was an even more startling revelation.

  I really like this.

  And, perhaps worse: I wonder what cuddling might be like.

  Ugh.

  What was happening to me?

  "Just so you know," I started, trying to cover what was going on inside, "you don't own me."

  "Never said I did."

  "You..." I started, but was cut off when his hand suddenly cupped me between my legs.

  "Said I own this. Meant it too. While I'm fuckin' you, no one else is."

  I liked that.

  That possessiveness.

  And I knew I shouldn't.

  "You don't get to tell me what to do with my own body."

  His lips tipped up wickedly, his finger flicking my clit unexpectedly, sending a jolt of rekindled desire through me.

  "Too bad, Peyt. That's how it is."

  "What, do you make all the clubwhores agree to this too?"

  "You're not a clubwhore."

  "No? What am I then?"

  "You're--" he started, looking suddenly at the ceiling like it had some answers. "You're something else."

  "Well..." I started, reaching over to grab his cock. "Fine. Then this is mine too. No fucking anyone else while you're fucking me."

  Oh, good god.

  Did I, Miss Non-Exclusive, just demand exclusivity?

  Seriously, what the hell was going on with me?

  Then the unthinkable happened. Sugar's ever-present arm slid under my neck and force-curled me into him.

  For the first time in my very colorful, healthfully varied and shameless sex life, I knew what the feel of a man's chest under my cheek felt like. And, well, let me tell you, it felt good. It felt way, way too good. Dangerously good. Then when his arm curled tighter, holding me to him, forcing my whole body to meld into his, yeah, that felt even better. Finally, when his other hand went across his body to stroke up and down my thigh, hip, and the exposed part of my lower back. Gently. You wouldn't think a man like him - rough and wild - could do something gently. But he could.

  Determined to ignore the butterfly sensation in my belly, I took a breath. "So when did you join an MC?"

  "When I was three."

  That was perhaps the only thing that could make me shift from the oddly comforting, safe feeling of being cuddled to his chest, pushing up, and looking down on his stupidly good-looking face.

  "What?"

  "Yeah," he said, smiling at my surprise.

  "You're going to have to explain that to me."

  And then, to my surprise - and maybe delight - he actually did.

  TEN

  Sugar

  Not many people's memories stretch back to the time before they first went to school. And even if they did, it wasn't usually vividly.

  But for me, that day was in bright, Technicolor detail.

  I remembered the smell of my ma's cigarettes - both offensive and comforting because of its familiarity - from her place in the front seat of the car, window cracked for the smoke to sift out, but it didn't work. It never worked. I was in a booster in the back, the material torn and stained, most of the damage done before my ma had gotten it secondhand at the thrift shop.

  I remembered the look of her hair, dark and piled on the top of her head, dancing in the wind as we drove. And drove. And drove. I fell asleep in daytime and woke up at night, being thrust a McDonald's box over the front seat. And for the next however long, I was kept half-occupied by the allure of half-warm French fries and deep-fried nuggets.

  I remembered the silence. The complete and utter silence on the drive. Which wasn't normal. My ma was always talking - to me or on the phone, the long cord half-wrapping around every surface in our apartment as she did so while she cleaned or cooked or simply paced around. The only time she was ever quiet was when she was sleeping.

  I felt it then. In my belly. A swirling, uncomfortable sensation that had me pulling my pillow out of the bag piled beside me, and cuddling it to my chest, breathing in the smell of our house.

  The bags were another thing.

  There were several of them, all full almost to bursting.

  With my clothes.

  Shoes.

  Toys.

  Blankets.

  Snacks.

  We finally stopped what felt like days later, my ma sitting there with the engine cut for a long time before I started whining about my butt hurting from sitting so long.

  Looking back, she had been debating it, her decision.

  And the sound of a three-year-old me doing what three-year-olds do best - whine - seemed to be what she needed to make her climb out, move around the car, and finally pull me out of my seat, putting me down on the grown where feeling slowly came back to my butt and legs as she reached inside, grabbing all the bags, hauling them onto her small shoulders, grabbing my hand, then leading me a short walk down the street.

  Then into a building.

  There were smells here too that were familiar. More cigarettes. The ones like my ma smoked in the car. Then there were those funny cigarettes too. The ones that made my nose curl up when my ma would have her friend over at night and smoke in the living room, laughing and wrestling. And then there were the drinks that my ma and her friends always liked. But it smelled stronger here. It made the air harder to breathe.

  Everything else, though, was new.

  Namely, the leather-clad men scattered all around, loud, laughing, yelling, snatching the women who were walking around with next to no clothes on.

  "Well, well," a man said, stopping in front of my mother. "It's Candy. Where you been, sweet stuff? I missed that eager mouth of yours."

  "I'm here to see Phil."

  "Oh, fuck Phil. Phil has whiskey dick tonight. Take me on instead."

  "I'm here to see Phil," she reiterated, dragging me forward. The movement caught the man's attention, his gaze going down to me, then shooting back up to my mother.

  "Right. Right. Well, fucking glad I ain't Phil tonight."

  "Real nice, ya bastard," my mom called at his back as he left.

  "Candy?" another voice called not a minute later, making my mom turn.

  This time, the man noticed me right off.

  And, in turn, I noticed him too.

  Tall, wide-shouldered, long dark-haired, gra
y-eyed.

  "No fucking way. I always wore a rubber," he said to my ma who shrugged her small shoulders.

  "Shit happens, Phil."

  "And I'm hearing this now because?"

  "Because I'm done," she said simply as I looked up at the man, guessing he was why we came all this way as I clutched my Happy Meal toy in my hand.

  "You're done."

  "Yeah, I'm done. Three years. And all I'm doing is fucking up. And I can't turn shit around because I gotta be around for him all the time. I'm done. You're up."

  "I'm up?" he asked, lips tipping up as his gaze went to me for a second. "You fuckin' serious? I look like daddy material to you?"

  "I look like mommy material to you?" she shot back.

  "Got a point there," he agreed. "The fuck am I supposed to do with him?"

  "He ain't rocket science, Phil. He's a person. You feed him. You clean him. You teach him shit. Put him to bed. Shower, rinse, repeat until he can take care of himself."

  "And you?"

  "What about me?"

  "You're just washing your hands?"

  "Look, I love the kid. I do. I love him too much to keep him. So, you need help here and there. You got a long job. You get pinched. My number and address is in the bag with his snacks and information about his doctor and stuff."

  "Does he have a name?"

  "Of course he has a fucking name. He's not a couch."

  "You gonna tell me it, or am I supposed to guess?"

  "You haven't changed a fucking bit," my ma said, shaking her head at him, but she was smiling. "His name is Sean."

  Then, ten minutes later, my ma stooped down, threw her arms around me, and squeezed me until I was sure I was going to pop.

  And she walked away.

  "Alright, kid. Honest to fuck here, don't know what to do with you," Phil said, left standing there holding all my bags, looking as lost as I suddenly felt. "But figure it is late for little shits like you, so come on. I'll show you to the bed."

  That was what he did.

  He led me to a room with a bed and a dresser, pulled off my shoes, put me on the bed, shook my toys out of a bag, and left me there.

  He was gone long enough for me to eventually fall asleep.

  The next thing I remembered was waking up crying for my ma.

  He came walking in to that, big body looking almost fearful at the sight of three-year-old tears.

  Sitting down off the end of the bed, he reached for me with hands the size of dinner plates, pulling me awkwardly onto his knee, then wiping at my cheeks with the end of his leather cut, the material not absorbent, so all it did was smear them around more.

  "Alright look, kid," he said in a grown man voice, the sound somehow breaking through the pit of sadness inside me, making my cries stop even if the tears kept coming. "I don't know what I'm doing here. Don't know dick about raising no kids. So you're just going to have to work with me here. You need something, you tell me. No more of this crying shit. Don't know what to do with that. Gotta be a man, now, Sean. Ain't nobody around to baby you no more. But you do that, you man up and work with me, we could have a good thing going."

  I couldn't claim to know exactly what he was saying to me. But something got through. The tone, maybe some of the words, maybe just an innate understanding that this man, he was all I had now, and I needed to do what he needed from me. Because there was no one else to turn to.

  I never cried again.

  "That's the saddest thing I think I've ever heard," Peyton cut me off, eyes big and sad, but not watering. I figured she wasn't exactly the kind of chick who cried easily.

  "It's life," I corrected. "Plenty of kids have it worse than I had it. Sure, I never got to have someone singing me to sleep or kissing my knee when I scraped it all to shit, but I had a family of sorts."

  They were that, too.

  A family.

  All these men who seemed to take my presence there with a grain of salt. Some ignored me. Others treated me much the way my father did. The clubwhores occasionally pinched my cheeks and told me how handsome I was before they got dragged away. Other than them, I didn't see another woman for years.

  About a year after I moved into the compound, one of my father's buddies had a similar drop-in from an old fling, the woman loud and nasty, throwing a dirty kid at Dwayne, my father's friend. Unlike me, he didn't come with his bags, with his toys, with his favorite things. He barely came with clothes that fit him.

  So when he was put down on the floor, his eyes locking on me, big and fearful as I remembered feeling the first night I was at the compound, I walked over toward him, patting him on the shoulder the way all the men did.

  "You're a man now," I remembered telling him. "So we can't cry," I added, leading him away from the scene his mother was making, swinging, slapping, spitting at Dwayne who seemed too shocked by the situation to do anything but prevent himself from being hit. "Don't worry," I added as I led him down the hall toward my room. "I have toys to play with."

  And so I did.

  And so we did.

  "That's your buddy, right?" Peyton asked, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of a tattoo on my chest. "Virgin. That was him."

  "That was him," I agreed, nodding.

  "What was this MC?" she wondered. "I know most of them aren't like this one. Were they into guns or prostitutes?"

  "Heroin. They were into heroin."

  Those were rougher times, less moral men.

  Chances were, if there was blood spilled in that town, you knew whose hands it was by. The police pinched men when they could. For possession, for assault, for drunken brawls.

  Phil went away for a three-month stint when I was five, ripping me away from Virgin, who had become a brother to me. It was the two of us against the world.

  When Phil or Dwayne wanted their rooms that we shared with them since there weren't enough to give us our own so they could fuck the ever-present clubwhores, we went out into the yard, climbing trees by moonlight, playing cops and robbers - except in our game, the cops were the bad guys. When shit went down and men with guns were at the gates, we would shoot downstairs, huddling behind the furnace, pretending not to jump at the shots popping off above us.

  Then all of a sudden, I had to leave him. To be shipped back to a mother who I only really remembered from the day she left me. And on the drive to Staten Island, all I could think was how we were never supposed to leave a brother behind. And that was what I was doing; I was leaving Virgin behind.

  But at five, choices weren't mine to make.

  "Seany, baby," she had greeted me at the curb, eyes glassy, voice slow, something I attributed to her drinking since, at that age, I didn't understand the concept of 'high' yet. "You remember me?" she asked, eyes and voice filled with hope.

  So I had nodded. And let her hug me, cry into my hair, tell me how much she missed me, bring me inside to a house that wasn't familiar, to be put on the pull-out couch in the living room like an unexpected overnight guest.

  But she cooked for me.

  She tucked me in.

  She told me how she was making moves, getting her life back on track, trying to make something for herself so that one day I could come back to her.

  If I wanted.

  Not three months later, just when I was starting to settle in, Phil was at the door, fresh out of jail, ignoring his orders to stay in the state, coming to pick me up from my mom.

  It was the first time I remembered feeling torn between them.

  It would fade quickly too.

  Once I was back at the clubhouse, back with my buddy, back with the men and the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to already.

  "How'd you get the name Sugar?" Peyton asked, smiling down at me. And, let me tell you, I liked that sight just a little more than I should have.

  I was seven.

  And we - my father and I - had been spending a lot of time in an abandoned storefront in town. Inside, there was no heat. The electricity was stolen from the movie re
ntal place next door. All there was inside was a folding table and cold steel chairs set up beside a counter that was full of bowls, old credit cards, bags of pure heroin, and pounds and pounds of sugar.

  For cutting it.

  Which was what he did.

  Every day after school, Phil would scoop me up, and bring me to the storefront. Sitting at the table, he would pour, sift, and sort, putting the finished product into baggies as he helped me with my homework.

  I was never allowed to help.

  The job seemed simple enough - pour the white stuff, move it around with the card, put it into the little baggies.

  But my father never let me even try.

  It was one of those nights.

  I was bored trying to train my yo-yo to walk like the other kids at school could.

  Phil had just finished his sifting and sorting, and was running out to grab us dinner.

  "Don't touch this shit, you hear?" he asked, stuffing his baggies into his pockets. "I'll clean it up when I get back," he told me, gesturing to the bags and baggies and credit cards on the table.

  With that, he was gone.

  And, well, I was never known for having great impulse control. As soon as I saw his figure disappear out the window, I jumped up, went to the table, and started imitating what I had seen him do hundreds of times. Pour, move around, put in baggies.

  Just as I had suspected, there was nothing to it. Before I knew it, I had twice the amount of little baggies that Phil had made just stacked right there on the table.

  About fifteen minutes later, when I had finally given up on doing it because it was really no fun after a while, two of my father's brothers came in.

  "'Sup little homie?" Dwayne asked, giving me a nod as he started stuffing the bags into his pockets. "Your pops run out for food?"

  "Yeah."

  "You being good?"

  "Yeah," I agreed, choosing not to tell them that I had made the baggies they had taken off the table. Because, well, I didn't want to get in trouble. Trouble would mean a butt whooping. I'd had enough of those. I wasn't going to volunteer for more.

  Then it happened.

  Blue and red lights out front.

  "Motherfuck!" Fast Frank, the other brother hissed, looking around helplessly even as we heard doors slam.