by Paula Cox
“What about your bike?”
He opened the passenger door and I slid in. “It’s just a motorcycle. It can be replaced,” he said before he shut my door.
Chapter 10
We rode in silence, an uneasy truce between us. As the houses drifted past my window, I thought about what he had said. I saw that he was concerned for his child and, by extension, me, but it still bothered me that I didn’t know what he did. His refusal to tell me told me everything I needed to know. What he did, no matter what he said, was illegal. I desperately wanted to trust him. And I did, but only so far. He could say he was in no danger of going to jail, or of being killed, but he had no way to know that.
On the other hand, we both could be killed tonight, on the way home. He was right about that. There were no sure things in life. It’s funny how your priorities change once you became responsible for another life. I never understood moms driving their huge SUVs, but over the last month, I had become keenly aware of just how small my little car was. Before I was concerned about looking good behind the wheel. Now, I concerned about being safe.
I was still musing over life, and the choices we made, when Cain stopped my car in the drive so I can get out, before putting it into the garage.
I was standing behind the car as he struggled out of it, the tight garage making the task even more difficult. When he finally shut the door he looked at me and grinned crookedly. “You need a bigger car.”
“I like my car,” I protested.
“Well, then, you need another one, so I can wear one on each foot.”
I giggled at him as I slipped past, but he made no move to follow. I stood at the top of the two steps into my house and looked at him. “Stay with me tonight?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “Why? The last time you kicked me in the nuts.”
I felt my mouth pull down in a pout. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just so…confused. I want you, but, at the same time, I’m afraid of you.”
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said as he moved toward me.
I opened the door and led him into my house. “Not from you, but from what you do. I’m afraid to…get involved with you. I’m afraid to let you into my life, and if I do, I’m afraid that one day you just won’t come home.”
He moved in close and took me into his embrace, holding me snuggly, one hand around my back, and the other on my head. It was a very loving embrace and I relaxed into it. “I promise you, Alex, nothing can keep me from you. I want to get to know the mother of my child. I want…”
“What?” I asked when he didn’t continue.
“I want…a chance to fall in love with you.”
I felt a smile form but otherwise I didn’t move. “Why? I was just a one night stand for you.”
“Yes you were. And now you are the mother of my child.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“Only the difference between night and day.”
“Why?”
“Because you have a part of me inside of you. Now, I want to find out if I can win a piece of you for inside of me. Your heart. Everything happens for a reason. Despite all the precautions, you got pregnant. Maybe that means we are supposed to be together. Maybe this is fate’s way of bringing us together.”
I muscled my way out of his embrace. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, his eyes meeting mine. “I just know that you are an amazing woman, and any man would be lucky to have you. I’m just asking for a chance, Alex. Won’t you please give me that chance?”
I thought about Granny and Grandpa, and how she had to take the leap of faith for him. I wanted to make the leap for Cain, but I stood rooted, unable let go of my fears. As I stood, trying to let go of my reservations, trying to accept him into my life, he took my face in his hands and gently, softly, kissed me. I melted into him, my arms going around his neck, pulling him into the kiss. I wanted him. I wanted him in my life. I wanted to give him a chance to fall in love with me, and me with him. I wanted to fall in love with the father of my child. I opened my mouth and offered my tongue, our tongues touching as they wrapped in their own embrace, relaxed, then wrapped about each again.
He picked me up as if I weighed nothing at all and carried me through my house to my bedroom where he placed me carefully in the center of the bed. He pulled back and simply looked at me, his eyes taking me in as if seeing me for the first time, his expression making me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.
I didn’t move, allowing him to look at me as I warmed with his gaze. I could feel the first tenuous connections forming between us and I smiled. Perhaps we were meant to be together. I held my arms out, offering myself to him, and his smile touched me. Not the smile of a man taking something he had won, but the smile of a man that was receiving a cherished gift.
He leaned in and took my lips as his fingers drifted along my cheek, his touch gentle, as if he were handling the most delicate flower. He slowly undressed me, removing my button down blouse, jeans, and sneakers, his lips never long removed from my skin. I had managed to unbutton his shirt, but nothing else, and I wanted to feel his flesh against mine. I pulled him up by his arms and he came, his lips finding mine. I pushed his shirt over his shoulders and he allowed it to fall as I began to work on his belt.
He allowed me to open his pants and I reached inside, taking his hardness into my hand, each beat of his heart a pulse in my hand. As I held him, he kissed me with intent, a kiss as erotic as any I ever had, and it practically took my breath.
“I want you,” I whispered as I stared into his eyes.
His smile returned and he beamed at me as his face softened. “I want you,” he whispered in return. He moved away from me and removed his boots and pants as I curled into his back and kissed him on his neck. As his pants hit the floor, he turned to me, taking me by the shoulders and guiding me back to the bed. He followed my slow tumble and began to kiss my neck, his tongue and lips busy as he slowly worked his way under my jaw and down the valley of my breasts. He paused to suckle at my nipples, his tongue caressing the hard little points until I began to squirm and gasp from the sensation. Just when I thought I could stand it no more, he moved on, kissing his way down my body.
I shuddered softly in anticipation of the pleasures to come, well aware from our first encounter of what he could do down there. I lay still as his lips danced across my stomach, soaking in the pleasures like a sponge. As he moved between my legs, his breath on my most intimate area was warm and erotic and I whimpered softly. I drew my legs up as he wrapped me up, my ankles hitting him on the back of his arms as he reached through the triangle of my legs and placed his hands on my hips to hold me in place.
He started out slowly, his tongue touching me lightly as he teased with anticipation. My hands found his head and I pressed him down, needing to feel the sweet release that his kisses were promising me. I looked down and met his eyes, his smile as he probed me with his tongue causing his eyes to crinkle. I watched, unable to look away, as his eyes held me. The orgasm bore down on me in a rush and my eyes closed as I curled up, panting my way through my release. I was surrounded in a warm blanket of pleasure as my climax roared through me until, finally, I swam up from the depths of my orgasm and opened my eyes, suddenly aware of his lips on my inner thigh. I released a great cleansing exhale then moaned loudly in delight.
“That was a good one,” I sighed, warm and relaxed. I started pulling him upwards, wanting to taste his lips, and he came. I took his lips with gusto, taking my fill of his kiss and then tried to twist him to his back.
He moved, rolling to his back, and I followed, my lips caressing his chest. As I began to work lower he took me by the shoulders, stopping my advance.
“No,” he said softly as he pulled me back up from his stomach. “Tonight is your night.” He pulled me gently into a kiss as he steered my hips over his. Never breaking t
he kiss, I took his cock into my hand and steered it into me as I slowly surrounded him.
As he entered me, I once again delighted in the feeling of him inside of me with nothing between us, skin on skin. I put everything I had into that kiss, and he met me, the power of his kiss rising to surpass my own. He held me tight, his arms going around me as he began to drive into me with long firm strokes.
I couldn’t breathe. “Oh god!” I gasped as he thrust into me, nearly overwhelmed by the pleasure of our joining. I curled an arm around his head and pulled it up as I slid forward, giving him more room to thrust. As he nursed me, his cocking began to hit me just right. I gasped, a sound of pure pleasure, as he began to drive me headlong into another orgasm.
“I’m going to come again,” I murmured.
I heard him grunt softly as he began to drive into me harder and faster.
“Yes…” I hissed as I began to coil up for another explosive release. My orgasm hit me like a thunderclap and I groaned softly as I fought through a mind-bending orgasm. Just before I was buried under a tidal wave of pleasure, he gasped softly and then became still.
I giggled, low and deep in my chest, as I surfaced from the ocean of pleasure. I kissed him sloppily, aglow in pleasure. “Did you come?” I whispered as our lips parted, though I already knew the answer.
“No,” he whispered as he tasted my lips again.
“No?”
“No, I didn’t come,” he clarified.
I smiled at him as I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “We’ll have to do something about that.” I pushed myself upright, my ass forcing his legs down as I rotated my hips. I braced my arms against his chest and began to rise in fall. With two orgasms under my belt, I was ready to settle in and wear his ass out.
I watched his face as we moved together, his hands on my hips, steadying me as we gave and took pleasure. “You’re going to come, Cain,” I whispered, feeling wicked and in control.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I want to come with you. I want us to come together.” His hands left my hips and began to caress my breasts, his fingers occasionally pinching the nipples to the threshold of pain, making me hiss and squirm as bolts of searing pleasure radiated from his touch.
I was slowly working my way up to another orgasm when he twisted his hips violently, tumbling me to the bed. Before I could protest, he was moving behind me, tipping me up onto my side. He grabbed the thigh of my upper leg with one big hand while the other took the wrist of my lower arm and held it across my chest, pulling me in tight. He released my thigh just long enough to find my opening with his cock, before he began to thrust hard and fast, his breath hot on my neck.
As he thrust, his cock was hitting me right on my sweet spot. Wrapped in his arms I felt my orgasm swell and I reached behind me, placed my hand on his head and pulled it hard into my neck, unable to even speak.
Cain began to growl as his thrusts increased in speed and power. He was tipping into his orgasm and my mouth opened in a silent scream of pleasure as I followed. With a hard grunt, he drove into me, pressing hard and deep as I became lost in the river of pleasure flowing through me. We held each other tight, straining through our releases until we gasped and I felt him relax just as I did. I had come so hard that I couldn’t even speak for a moment.
“Did you come that time?” I gasped when I finally found my voice.
“Mm-hmm,” he mumbled into my neck with a slight nod as he continued to hold me.
I released my death-grip on his head, but he continued to hold me securely, breathing into my neck, his cock still deep inside of me. I thrilled in his embrace as I twisted around, searching for his lips, and found them. We kissed, a long, slow, loving kiss that stirred the embers of passion spent.
We lay together, his knees tucked in behind mine, his chest in my back and his arms around me. “Cain…stay with me.”
“I will.”
“No. I mean, stay with me here in New Orleans. Don’t go back to Dallas.”
He was quiet a moment, as if thinking. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to sort some things out first.”
“What?”
He sighed. “Alex…I want to stay. But I can’t. How would I live?”
“You can stay with me until you find something.”
“I have no skills, Alex. I will be pushing a broom and emptying trash cans. How would I support a family on eight bucks an hour?”
“We can make it work.”
“I know. And we will. But give me a chance to do better than minimum wage. Alex, I make over a hundred thousand a year now. That is the life I want to give you. Not the life of a guy that flips burgers.”
A hundred thousand dollars a year? The amount ricocheted around in my mind. I thought I was doing well at sixty. What did he do? “How much you make isn’t important.”
“It’s important to me.”
I thought about that a moment. I knew some men didn’t want their partners making more than them, but I was surprised that Cain was like that. Or was he? Maybe it wasn’t the money as much as being a good provider. “Why? Why does it matter?”
“Because, it does. I remember when we didn’t have anything and I want better for my kid.”
“Tell me what you do, Cain. Please. I won’t tell a soul.”
He was quiet for a long time, but I waited him out. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“Okay.” I felt the connections that had formed with him wither.
“Alex, please understand. I swore an oath. I can’t break that. The only thing I ever had was my word. I can’t break it. Just like I’m promising you, I will be here for you. All you have to do is call and I will be here. Every doctor’s appointment, every class, every time you need me, I will be here.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” he murmured.
“So am I,” I whispered as I rolled to my side and turned my back to him.
He pulled me in close but the connection was gone. There was so much about him that I didn’t know, so much that he wouldn’t tell me. Was I just supposed to trust him? There were just too many unknowns. The 1% patch was a big problem. He could tell me it meant he rode his bike rain or shine, but I didn’t believe it for a moment. Not with him pulling down six figures working for the club. No, he was mixed up in something illegal, no matter what he said. Maybe it wasn’t drugs, but it was something.
Machined Parts… Something they imported and put together. I tried to figure out what he wasn’t saying, but I kept coming up empty. Something illegal, but not illegal. Something that generated a lot of cash. As my eyes began to grow heavy I finally gave up thinking about it. It didn’t matter what machine they built, it was still obviously illegal. If it was machines at all. It was just as likely it was all a bunch of lies and they were dealing drugs, despite what he said.
I sighed. I always thought I would be a mother someday, but not like this. Tomorrow I would take him to get his bike, and then he would be gone. Out of my life. I knew I could do this on my own. I had no choice.
Chapter 11
Cain dismounted his bike after leaning it over onto the stand in the Hellhounds’ clubhouse parking lot, tired and saddle sore from the eight-hour ride from New Orleans. The time on the road had given him a chance to think, to think about Alex and all that could have been. He needed to check in, but as soon that was done, he was out of there and headed home. First thing in the morning he would contact the bank and start the paperwork to get checks cut for her every week. She would either cash them or not, but if she didn’t, the next contact she received from him would be from a lawyer. He was ready to wash his hands of her.
“Cain! Where have you been, man? Thad has been looking for you,” Clyde said as Cain walked into the clubhouse.
“Yeah. Something came up while I was in New Orleans. I called him yesterday and told him I would be late. I’m going to see him now.”
“Glad you’re back. Trouble’s brewing, bro.”<
br />
“What kind of trouble?”
“Bulls trouble.”
“Shit…okay. Where’s Thad?”
“Try the office.”
Cain walked down the short hall to the President’s office, dragging his hand along the restored, teal, 1950 Panhead that decorated the main room.
“Thad?” he asked quietly as he stuck his head into the President’s office.
“Cain, glad you’re back. Get your…issue…resolved?”
“Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, I need you to get your head back in the game. The Bulls are making a move on us.”
“What kind of move?” The Blacktop Bulls were a rival club and were a constant pain in the Hellhounds ass, always yapping at them like one of those little dogs chasing cars. All bark, but if they ever caught the car, they wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with it.