by D. D. Prince
“I fucked up, baby. I’m sorry.” I winced. “But, I bought you presents and we could just do that… just you and me and have your cake together if you want."
He blew out a breath and let go of me, but immediately grabbed my hand and started walking, pulling me along. We were heading back to the Roadhouse, to the stairs that led to the clubhouse and the evidence of my stupidity. He wasn’t talking. I wasn’t talking. I just followed along, staring at his strong, muscular back as he held my hand in his.
He flung the door open and looked ahead at the space. It was empty of people. Bronto wasn’t there.
The whole row of barstools had bundles of balloons tied to them.
There were five happy birthday banners taped up in various places and loose metallic balloons all over the floor. Lots of streamers that I’d curled with scissors dangled from the ceiling.
On the bar sat stacks of party hats with the number 26 on them. I had a big colorful donkey pinata dangling from the ceiling that I’d filled with candy.
On the coffee table was the closed cake box with a lighter sitting on top. Stacks of Star Trek party plates and cups sat beside that. There was a table to the side with four presents on it. All from me. The framed and signed Bam Margera skateboarding poster, his wrapped waffle iron, the watch, and a new pair of really cool and expensive motorcycle boots that had a tag that said, “To Daddy, Love Chakotay.” Chakotay was again with Beau for the weekend.
Three of the gifts were wrapped in Star Trek paper and one of them (the waffle iron) in yellow paper with orange and yellow sunshine happy faces all over it.
“You said you liked big family things with food and stuff and I heard about your birthday and Jojo said you didn’t like it, but I just thought maybe…” I trailed off and searched his face. I didn’t know how to read it. “I should’ve listened to her.”
He looked down at the presents and lifted the wrapped boots box tag.
“You bought me a birthday present from my dog?”
His eyes moved to me. He shook his head. “You’re chewin’ that lip so hard, you’re gonna break the skin.”
I released my lip from my teeth.
“Fuckin’ hate my birthday, Sunshine.”
I slumped. “I’ll cancel it, take it all down, and---”
“But, I fuckin’ love you.”
My body jerked in surprise.
He grabbed me by the face with both hands and planted a wet one on my mouth. I gasped in surprise and grabbed his coveralls at his chest.
The kiss didn’t last long; he broke away and his eyes were closed. His face looked riddled with emotion, with pain.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “I didn’t intend---”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along, heading to his bedroom.
I swallowed. My heart was at full gallop.
The door slammed, and his arms were around me. His hands went up under my hoodie at the back as he held me. He often put his hands to my bare skin under my shirt when he held me. His hands moved around and his face went confused as his fingers trailed along the lace.
I chewed my lip. “There’s another part of your present under my hoodie.”
My hoodie immediately got yanked up over my head.
He stared at the upper part of my lingerie.
I blushed.
“Shoes off,” he ordered, eyes on my chest. I toed them off and he immediately hauled my jeans down. His eyes then trailed up my bright red stockinged legs to the garters and then up my hips and about to touch the red lace of my merry widow.
“This is for me, too.”
I nodded.
“Fuck. Got filthy fuckin’ hands.”
“I don’t care,” I shook my head.
“I do. Not ruinin’ this. Be right back.” He slipped out.
I blew out a breath. There was a mark on my jeans from his hand and I had grease on my hand, too, from when he’d held my hand. I looked at it, trying not to touch the bed. I sat up and reached into my bag with my clean hand and found a packet of wet wipes. I wiped the grease off my hand and caught my reflection in the mirror, seeing a dark smudge on my jaw, too. I wiped at it.
Okay, so he wasn’t happy. But, he wasn’t yelling. And he told me he loved me for the first time. Well, that he ‘fuckin’ loved me. What a biker declaration of love, though. I smiled to myself, feeling all squishy and gooey inside.
He was back. I dropped the wet wipe into the trash bin beside his bed.
“Dad has this stuff in the laundry room. Rips the skin off your hands but gets rid of the grease. Hate bein’ a fuckin’ grease monkey.”
I said nothing, just stared at him as he stalked toward me.
“Lie back,” he ordered.
I swallowed and smiled then stretched out on the bed for his inspection.
“This is beautiful,” he said, running his hands up my stomach, my sides, over my breasts, and continuing an upward journey until they were in my hair. He hovered over me.
“You’re not mad at me?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I don’t know why you hate your birthday. I love mine. I’m so sorry, I just---”
“Shh. I wanna just look at you for a minute. Touch you. Fuckin’ soak in the fact that you’re mine. Finally mine.”
I swallowed. God, it was beautiful, the way he was looking at me, like he won the lottery.
“Ten years from now, I’ll still feel this. That you’re mine. Know it in my gut.”
Holy crap. I blinked a couple times in shock. Ten years?
“When you agreed, when you agreed to be with me, you went all in, didn’t you?”
I blinked at him.
“Of course you did. ‘Cuz that’s you.” He looked really happy about it, too, and that felt great. “You thought the hard part was getting over the fear of bein’ with me, right? Well, now’s the hard part. The part where you see how fucked up I am.”
He touched the spaghetti straps with his fingertips. He caressed the space between my breasts where the lace narrowed into multiple triangles that went from the cleavage to my belly button, showing bare skin. He slid his fingertips into the elastic at my hips, grazing the v between my legs.
I’d done a fresh Brazilian the day before, too, at work before leaving, along with red fingernails and toenails so it’d match my lingerie.
He lifted the pendant of my sunshine necklace and straightened it and set it on my cleavage.
“You’re fucking beautiful,” he said.
I smiled.
“Inside and outside,” he added.
“So are you. They don’t call you boys the Beautiful Bikers of South Dakota for nothin’.”
“I’m not,” he told me. “I’m fuckin’ hideous on the inside.”
My smile dropped. The look on his face felt like a hot knife stabbing my chest.
My phone rang from my jeans on the floor. I ignored it.
“I’ve done some bad shit, baby. To enemies yeah, and to people I love. I’m such a fuckin’ asshole. I’ve been bitter. Miserable. Hard to love for even my own family at times.”
I sucked on my bottom lip.
“Maybe part of the reason why is the bitch who raised me. But fuck. I’m a man, not a kid anymore. That excuse wore thin years ago.”
“What did she do?” I whispered.
His eyes were cold as he stared off, curling his lip. “What didn’t she do? Birthdays? Loved Ride’s birthday, Deacon’s. Joelle? Fuckin’ loved her own birthday the most. But mine?” He shook his head and his gaze went dark. Angry. Pain was behind the anger. I could see it as plain as day.
“Really started to suck on my tenth. She sat there, pissed drunk on the edge of my bed after I’d gone in, so fuckin’ disappointed ‘cuz Dad couldn’t get back on time. His car broke down on the way home from outta town, so I had a nothin’ birthday. I’d gotten in shit at school for fightin’ the day before, so she told me my birthday was canceled. Sat there, sloppy drunk, and told me what a disappointment I was to her.
No cake, no presents, fuckin’ nothing. Joelle was a four-year-old and called her a wicked witch to her face and got sent to bed without dinner for it. Deacon snuck her a peanut butter sandwich and got a slap across the back of his head for that. That’s the first ugly birthday I remember. ‘Cuz Dad wasn’t there. Jojo snuck in and gave me her favorite stuffed animal. Deacon and Ride gave me a souped up skateboard they’d built for me together. We sat and had packaged cupcakes Ride ran out and bought at the Seven Eleven. So, it wasn’t a nothin’ birthday, because they did that after she passed out, but fuck.” He stared into space a minute. “She often pulled shit on my birthday. Or ignored it. Didn’t show up for it. Pulled shit constantly. Regular days too, but especially my birthday for her own twisted fuckin’ reasons. Dad usually shielded me from her on my birthday, tellin’ me when I was a kid that she had somethin’ bad happen on that day a few years before I was born, but fuck, you’d think the birth of her kid woulda overwrote it. He tried to always be there, keep her from ruinin’ it, did a do-over the day after my tenth, but a few years later, I was not at all about my birthday. Nine years old since I had one I celebrated willingly. No, wait. That’s not exactly true. She threw together this weird birthday dinner for me and when I was tryin’ to walk out wanting no part of it, announced to the family that Joelle wasn’t fathered by my dad. She lied. But it set off a shitstorm. A huge one.”
Oh God. What a bitch.
“Don’t wanna talk about this shit,” he said and thrust his fingers through his hair.
“Your family, your friends, me? We wanna celebrate you tonight. We’re all here to celebrate who you are. Having you in our lives. With presents and food and cake and silly string and laughing and music and dancing.”
He touched my bottom lip with his fingertips, staring at my mouth.
I kept talking, staring at his beautiful eyelashes, absorbing how awesome it felt, the way he was looking at me, despite the fact I was forcing him to feel things he didn’t want to have to feel.
“And maybe later, if you like, with copious amounts of lovemaking for me and you.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. My heart sank.
“Spencer, if you want me to cancel, I will. I don’t want to put you through this.”
“Naw, baby. You did this for me. It’s okay.”
“You sure?”
He nodded. He still didn’t look happy though.
“I’ll make it all go away if you want me to. But, if you want to try to let people who care about you celebrate you… come out, open the present your dog bought you, and the ones I bought you, and then unwrap this present later.” I gestured to myself.
He gave me a heated look.
“When you’re drunk and feeling loose and happy and horny, and then tomorrow is a new day. We’ll sleep late and then it’s a new day where maybe your birthdays don’t suck so much anymore, except for the getting older part, but I think you’re gonna just keep aging like a fine, fine wine.” I wiggled my eyebrows dorkily.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me.
“Sleep late?” He cracked a half a smile. “What’s late for you? Seven o’clock?”
“Seven thirty,” I amended.
“How much time we got? Wanna unwrap my favorite present now.” His expression went heated.
“You don’t know this is your favorite. You haven’t opened the others yet.”
“I know,” He said with certainty.
I glanced at the alarm clock. “Not much. Maybe for a quickie, but like a fast one. Like ten minutes, no longer.”
And then he was dropping the coveralls, undoing his jeans, kissing me, biting my neck, running his hands all over the red lace with reverence, watching his fingers as they caressed my nipples, then watching as they trailed down and unsnapped the snaps between my legs.
He kicked off his boots and reached to the side, pulling up a strip of condoms from between the mattress and box spring. He pulled one off, dropped the others, tore the corner off with his teeth, not breaking eye contact, and rolled it on. He hauled me up by my armpits and then I was straddling him, him with his feet off the side of the bed, my legs on either side of his hips. He guided himself to me and feeling that I was slippery and ready down there, his lips went to my ear and he kissed the spot behind it as he sank inside.
“Oh, yeah,” I whispered, threading my fingers into his hair on both sides of his head.
He kept his arm around me, staring at me and then dropping his gaze to where we were joined, lifting the flap from the merry widow to look. He put his thumb there and rubbed circles around my clit as I rode him, watching him look down there at us. It felt amazing. The feel of him inside, the feel of him touching me, the way his eyes looked at my body.
His eyes came up and locked with mine.
His eyes had so much emotion in them. No one had ever looked at me like they wanted me so much. It made me feel like I was flying. Just like Jojo talked about.
I was flying high, coming, and that was when he took my mouth with his and swallowed my cries of ecstasy.
“Spencer,” I moaned and dropped my forehead to his shoulder. He put me on my back and pulled my legs up so that they were over his shoulders and he rubbed the nylon of my stockings as he thrust in over and over, powering into me. Kissing my calves, rubbing my over-sensitized clit again, making me whimper with pleasure.
It was not a quickie, not by a longshot. With Spencer, it was never a race to his orgasm, more like a competition to see how many he could wring out of me until he’d let himself have one.
He worked me up with his fingers again, and we came together. He came with a grunt, his face buried in my hair, my fingers woven into his hair, my mouth agape, my eyes rolling back as I absorbed the feel of him, wishing I could see from above, thinking we really needed to mirror this ceiling.
He had an amazing ass, that sexy back, these big strong shoulders. I planted a kiss on the right one.
My phone rang again.
Spencer reached down and grabbed it from my pocket.
“Unknown,” he said.
I shrugged. “Answer it. It could be the Chinese food place or might be someone who’s coming tonight that needs to talk to me.”
He answered it. “Hello?”
He held it to his ear. “Hello?” he repeated.
He looked at the screen a second and then tried one more time. “Who’s this?”
He shook his head and ended the call. “No clue. Getting prank calls?”
“Nope.”
He put the phone down, rolled to his back, and pulled me close.
“So,” I asked. “You’re okay? You don’t need me to call everyone and tell them not to come?”
He shook his head. “Naw. I’ll deal.”
“Yeah? You sure?” I got up on an elbow and played with his hair.
“Yeah.”
“I got Andie to make you an awesome cake. And we’ve got a plethora of delights coming from our favorite Chinese food place. And… silly string.”
“Ooh, silly string!” He acted fake-enthused, running his hand from my hip up to the side of my boob and then back down.
“My plan was to get me, Ella, and Jenna waiting by the door for you to come in and surprise you by spraying you with all sorts of silly string.”
He snickered.
“But now we can’t say surprise. Because you know.”
“Yeah, well, it’s good you told me. Might not’ve been a good scene if I walked in to a surprise party.” He thrust his hand through the flop of hair that fell over his forehead. “And I could’ve taken frustrations out on you. In case you hadn’t heard, I can be a bit of a dick sometimes.”
“You’ve never been a dick to me,” I said.
“I don’t ever wanna be.”
I sighed and put my chin to his chest and looked into his eyes.
“When’s your birthday?” he asked, caressing my jaw with his fingertips.
“July 2.”
“Hm,” he said.
“I love surprise parties. And presents.” I snuggled in. “And big huge cakes. Feel free to jump out of a cake in a Spandex thong and a bow tie.”
He laughed underneath me.
I kissed him. “I should get out there, see if anyone is here. Oh! Rider was waiting for you down there to finish the bike.”
“Naw, it was bullshit. I saw the customer p.o. The date was two weeks later than he let on. He played stupid when I saw it. Usin’ him as one of your minions to keep me busy today?”
“Oh. He seemed like an unwilling minion, but I guess he was a minion, just the same.”
“Who else you recruit?” He ran his hand over the swell of my ass.
“Bronto has been running around for me all day, helping me decorate.”
He busted up laughing. “That’s rich. The girl you’re crushin’ on recruits you to be her slave for a party she’s throwing for her man. He’s such a---”
“Hey! Don’t be mean. He’s a good friend. We called a truce and---”
“And he’s still carrying that torch…”
“If he is or isn’t, it doesn’t matter. I’m taken.”
His eyes traveled the length of me. “Very taken.”
“Yep. Anyways, your dad was gonna get you here later. Lure you up from the Roadhouse. I’d sneak up the inside stairs quick while he talked to you outside and then BAM. Silly string.”
He chuckled. “You really wanted to use that silly string tonight, didn’t you?”
“I bought like seventeen cans of it. Every can in stock. Can we spray you?”
“No.”
“Please?” I gave him a pout.
“No,” he repeated. “Feel free to spray everyone but me. Naw... in fact, give them all to me. It’s my birthday. I’ll decide how the silly string gets used.” He slapped my butt.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“I’ll put them in here. You hide them and throughout tonight, whenever you want, boom, bam! Silly string attack.”
“I make the silly string rules, not you.” He squeezed my butt again.
“You’re like… fixated on my butt, aren’t you?”
“Fuckin’ right.” He ran both hands up and down it. “Who’s gonna be here?”
“Ella, Deacon, Rider, Jenna, Andie, Brady, Bronto, Scoot ‘n Dee, Pudge, Skip, Blow and Marlena, your Dad and Laura, Bertie and Rob. I think that’s it. I invited Brice, but he said he had to work. He also told me that I was taking my life into my hands by throwing you a surprise party. Not Jesse. Bronto said he’s at your family’s cabin?”