A Civilian for Silo

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  I couldn’t disagree.

  It had been my plan to give him the same delight he’d given me but it hadn’t taken much for my body to engage, to reignite as I worked. It wasn’t long and his hands were kneading my butt cheeks and our bodies were coming together harder and faster. Our voices mingled, softer than the sound of our joining and as I reached again for my pinnacle, I felt Silo stiffen and then jerk as a groan, deeper than the others seemed to bloom from inside his chest. But by the time I crested, it was only a soft, heavy audible sigh.

  I, on the other hand, tasted blood from the lip I’d bitten in an effort not to make noise while falling from the heaven we’d created.

  Collapsing against him, I heard his breathy chuckle. “Goddamn, princess.”

  “Right back at you, big guy,” I panted.

  “Hell if I’d known having guests was gonna fucking curb our play, I would’ve put ‘em in a hotel or something.” His words were a complaint, but I could hear the smile in his voice, feel the satisfaction in the hands that were caressing my back. My own mouth, only slightly swollen from where I’d bitten it, curved up and I felt my own sigh come up from my toes.

  The man was a god in bed.

  His hands moved to my sides and I sat up. “Gotta take care of the glove, baby.”

  After he came back from the bathroom, I was already dressed in his borrowed t-shirt and underneath the covers. Slipping in the other side but making his way to where I laid, he gently turned me, curling himself against my back.

  “Did you enjoy that, Shelly?”

  I smiled into the dark. He knew I did, but like a lot of men, Silo needed a recap afterward. “Yeah. It was all right, I guess.”

  My hair moved as he chortled quietly, wrapping his arm around my waist and cupping one of my breasts in his big hand. “Just all right?”

  “Don’t want to over-inflate your ego, Si’.”

  He hitched himself closer to me and I felt a renewal of interest against my seat. “If you need more…”

  I couldn’t help my giggle as I tried to pull away from him. “I think I’m good.”

  “Don’t cha mean I’m good?” came the sleepy rejoinder. “Come on, say it, baby.”

  “Say what?” My voice was just a mumble as my body continued to relax.

  His voice went up an octave. “Oh, Silo, that was the best. You were the best ever, honey!”

  I tried to snort but don’t think I even made a sound as I fell head first into my slumber.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Silo tightened the connection on the new washer until the muscles in his forearm strained.

  They’d been in Billings a full week and it had only taken the sisters three days to convince him that the washer and dryer that had come with the house weren’t big enough for their family of five. So he had grabbed Hardwood and bit the bullet before purchasing a set of the huge, high-energy variety that had been delivered earlier that morning.

  Hardwood had connected the dryer and Silo the washer.

  He was just putting his tools away, clanking them into his grandpa’s rusted, red metal box when he zeroed in on the convo the girls were having as they sat at the dining room table.

  “What? You don’t see yourself with Silo long term?” Lulu was asking. Maybe it was the use of his name that had caught his ear or maybe it was the shock in Lulu’s tone, but whatever it was had him standing statue-like on the small, screened-in back porch.

  “Not really,” came Shelly’s slow reply, as if she was working it through in her head.

  “But he’s a great guy, Shell. Really great, albeit a little goofy sometimes.” Silo could’ve kissed the Hellion receptionist who had come to their company with the hair closest to her skin dyed a bright pink, dresses with petticoats combined with either fishnet or seamed stockings and towering heels. A true visual delight within the confines of their rough and tumble construction world. Even with her hair now dyed a complete blue-black, she was still a looker. “Why not?”

  Shelly’s voice was still low and Silo strained to hear her reply. “He’s a biker, Lu. A total Hellion through and through.”

  “And the problem with that is…?”

  There was a beat of silence and Silo wanted, no, needed to get closer. He didn’t want to miss not even a syllable of Shelly’s reply to her sister’s question. The door between the kitchen and the porch wasn’t all the way closed, and he shifted in order to look through the small crack of its opening. But he could only see the back of Shelly’s head and the side of Lulu’s face.

  Lulu looked fucking pissed as hell and had Silo taking an indrawn breath in gratitude.

  “I know you and Mel are happy,” Shelly started only to be cut off by Lulu’s interjection.

  “Damn straight!”

  “But isn’t it hard? I mean, these men are nothing like we’re used to, Lulu.”

  “Thank god!” Lulu’s tone was firm, resolute in whatever she was feeling. “They’re so much more! Hard-driving, hard-loving and wonderful with everyone they claim as theirs.”

  Silo saw Shelly’s shoulders come up and her head dip as if she was taking another sip of coffee, something he’d discovered she needed a fucking gallon of before noon. “What happens when they don’t want you anymore?”

  Lulu sat back in her chair and tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

  Shelly gave a tiny shrug. “We seem to piss each other off all the time. Every day. Silo and I are just so…different.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  Shelly turned her head and looked at her sister. “That’s not my idea of a good life. And I don’t think he’d think so either.”

  The girls seemed to be in stare-down mode before Lulu spoke again. “I think you’re wrong, Shelly. Dead wrong.”

  Shelly dropped her gaze and turned back forward.

  “In fact, I think the junk in your head is from what dear ol’ dad conditioned us to believe when we were growing up. That we had to marry a man of wealth, taste and who was, worst of all, suitable enough to be tied to the Palmer name. That’s just a load of crap!” Lulu’s hand slap on the tabletop was loud in the quiet house. “Number one, it’s a lie. Wealth means nothing compared to happiness, taste can be faked and our name? Lord, Shelly! Our name isn’t worth anything anymore.”

  “I know that, it’s just…”

  “What? That the man who looks at you with his heart in his eyes, who dropped everything so he could get to you, keeps you safe and makes you feel more than you ever have before isn’t good enough for you?” Lulu’s shapely chest was heaving and her cheeks flushed in her pique at her sister. “Cheese and rice, Shelly. Silo is into you! As in way into you. And you don’t want him over the long haul because of what? A silly dream? Some weird fantasy daddy sketched out for you when we were in grade school?”

  Shelly didn’t respond.

  Much to Silo’s dismay because in his mind, her not refuting Lulu’s harsh words was as good as agreement.

  “You know what I think, sister of mine?” Lulu shoved her chair back, the legs squealing on the linoleum floor. “I think you need to grow the heck up!” The woman took two thudding, heeled, angry stomps towards the living room before turning back to her sister. Pointing a finger at the woman who lingered at the table, Lulu added, “and you better not flipping break his heart in the process!”

  Shelly didn’t move and the only noise was a sigh that broke the quiet Lulu had left in her wake.

  Silo turned away from the door and snapped up the handle of the toolbox, only dimly aware of the churning in his gut and the burning just behind his eyes as he plowed through the screen door, allowing it to flop back with a bang. His legs felt leaden and he realized he was moving jerkily as he stepped down the back walkway towards the garage.

  Shelly didn’t want him.

  The thought cut through him ruthlessly, scoring deep.

  All they’d been doing, building, was just a fucking interlude to her. Not the foundation for the connection they’d share
d from the beginning, from the first fucking time he’d seen her across Lulu’s hospital bed, those big frosted blue eyes flashing up at him as he’d taken her hand and brought it to his mouth.

  She didn’t want him in her forever.

  He stumbled as his knees weakened, his normally steady pace, even when so shitfaced he couldn’t put two fucking coherent words together, off cadence.

  God, it hurt!

  It fucking killed to hear that she didn’t want to be with him. That all they’d shared had been a fluke, another momentary fling. And that he was just someone she would use until the right man, a cultured, refined fucker—the kind of man she needed and fucking wanted, came along.

  Shoving the toolbox into the slot he’d assigned it in the built-in shelves, Silo leaned his palms onto the counter.

  “You okay, brother?” Hardwood’s voice broke the shell of silence that the big, bald biker had erected as soon as he’d fucking exited the house.

  “Fine,” came the clipped reply on a voice deeper than the pipes of his bike.

  “You don’t fucking look fine. In fact, you look like somebody just died.”

  They did, Silo’s mind roared as he squeezed his eyes shut, recognizing the truth in Hardwood’s observation. All his hidden hopes and dreams of the future, a future of a life with Shelly, had been burned to ash with what he’d overheard, had eavesdropped on.

  What was it that his nana had always said?

  ‘If you look hard enough, boyo, you’ll always find the worst truth you sought.’

  Fucking A, the old broad had gotten it dead on the money.

  A-fucking-again.

  *.*.*.*.*

  I sat at the table after Lulu left and reviewed our conversation. One that had started out pleasant enough with her teasing me about the noises that emitted from Silo’s room in the middle of the night and that I didn’t deny. But I’d felt my face flame at it when remembering.

  Ever since the first night Lulu, Mel and Julie had been in residence, I’d stayed in Silo’s room. And had even moved my stuff into his closet, my toiletries into his bathroom. All pretense I was just there for his protection and safety shot to hell and back.

  Why then had I balked at her suggestion that Silo and I were a couple?

  If a person looked at it from the outside, we more than were.

  And even I had to admit the two of us had a certain tie…a link between us that was almost tangible.

  When Silo wasn’t involved in club or company business, he was with me. We ate together, laughed together, fought and slept together. We had our own inside jokes, small soft touches that conveyed more than what our words actually said.

  And shared sex.

  Silo and I had physical relations that took us far beyond the realm of everyday coupling into a world I’d never known was there. To a place where heaven met earth and bliss was only a couple of touches, a few strokes of either a mouth or our fingers away.

  Where I was replete, complete with the satiation, in all the glory he had to offer.

  He excited me in so many ways: mentally, emotionally and physically. But not all of that excitement was good. In fact, the man pissed me off in many ways and many more times than he made me hot! But even his anger was almost foreplay. And the way he let me argue right the hell back? God. I’d never met another man like him!

  But was what we had, the good portions we had between us, enough for a lifetime?

  I heard the bang of the back porch’s screen door and twisted to look over my shoulder. As the heavy wooden portal between the kitchen and laundry room swung, I caught a glimpse of Silo’s back as he made his way into the garage.

  ‘Hope he didn’t hear us,’ I thought on a frantic note.

  ‘Of course he did, you ninny,’ the other voice in my mind responded derisively. ‘It wasn’t like you two were quiet, by any means.’

  ‘He’s probably relieved.’

  “Does he freaking look relieved?’

  Aw geez.

  He didn’t.

  Not from the set of his shoulders to the strikes of his boots. And then I saw him stumble on the walkway, giving evidence to something going on inside him.

  I whipped back around, my eyes going to the big picture window of the dining room, unable to see a gosh-darned thing over the image of him walking away.

  But he couldn’t have been disappointed.

  Not really.

  Not in his heart of hearts.

  Because we were totally unsuitable.

  He was beer and pretzels where I needed champagne and canapés.

  His style was t-shirts, big belt-buckles and jeans that molded to his beautiful butt, his hard muscled thighs, and I drifted towards tailored suits paired with pearls.

  Reading was his favorite past time while I preferred movies.

  He was into the cheap, the generic and I…wasn’t.

  ‘Superficial,’ that voice in my head yelled. ‘You’re only seeing the surface things that really don’t matter.’

  “They matter,” I whispered, but it sounded weak even to my own ears. What did it mean when you couldn’t really convince even your own self?

  Then I remembered the look on Lulu’s face, her sharply pointed and manicured finger as it had poked my direction. Did I really have the ability to break Silo’s heart?

  But a more interesting question rose to the top.

  Did I already hold his heart in my hands without even realizing it?

  I stood up and took my coffee mug to the sink to rinse it before placing it into the dishwasher, almost without a conscious thought.

  Because I was mentally gearing myself up into moving all my stuff, all the things that had been purchased on Silo’s dime, back into my own room.

  *.*.*.*.*

  Silo stood next to the bar-b-que that held less than a third of the burgers, chicken quarters and steaks that the one in Missoula held during a typical Hellion doing. But then, he and Brand still weren’t through the list of members that had put their name forward to join them in Billings.

  He cast his glance around the large patio and noted all the people. The women outnumbered the men for fucking once. And since he didn’t recognize most of the females, he knew they were some of the local gals that had somehow caught wind of the party. Lots of flesh, shiny hair and shimmering skin were sheer magnets for a Hellion brother, and he watched as the couples came together then split apart before regrouping.

  He stuck a fork in one of the chicken legs, moving it to the cooler end of the big grill before finishing off the beer he held in his other hand.

  “Your glare is almost as heated as the coals, Silo.” Brand’s voice while soft was deep. His big hand hit Silo’s shoulder heavily. “Something is on your mind, yes?”

  Silo shook his head but his eyes quickly moved to one of the back tables where Shelly sat with Lulu, Tight and the new girl, Liv.

  “Shelly said she didn’t want our brother long term.” Hardwood added his two-cents to the burgeoning conversation, the gleaming new patch on his vest a beacon in the reflected lights. “He’s takin’ it hard.”

  “Fuck you, Hardwood,” came the groused reply but there was no real heat in Silo’s words.

  “Ahh…I understand or as you would say, I fucking get it,” the new chapter’s president stated. “You want her but she doesn’t seem to want you.”

  “I think she does. So does Lu.” Hardwood just couldn’t seem but to butt in with opinions he should’ve been keeping to his fucking self. “Shelly’s just in denial.”

  Brand threw back his head as he laughed. His dark blonde hair, grown longer than Silo had ever seen it, rippled at the move. “Have been there and done that, my warrior brother.”

  Silo turned to check out the other man who had taken the gavel for the new club and saw that, even though the other man was laughing, his light green eyes were serious. “It seems much like me and my Reese. She, too, did not want me over the long haul in our beginning.”

  Silo felt his eyebrows raise e
ven as his heart stuttered.

  “Yes, my friend. It has taken us a long bumpy road to get to the couple you see before you today.”

  “But you two are…well, you seem to be, damn near perfect for one another,” Hardwood stammered.

  Fuck! Didn’t the kid ever fucking shut up? Just because he was now a full-fledged member instead of a fucking recruit, he still should’ve known when to keep his fucking mouth closed!

  “No. When we married, it was only because I could keep her safe from the people that wanted her. I knew I loved her then, but she was…slow to come around in recognizing her feelings for me as well.”

  Silo’s eyes went back to Shelly, watching her as she laughed brightly at something one of the other girls had said. And was caught such a wave of longing that his balls pulled up sharply inside his boxers.

  Fuck, she was beautiful.

  Too beautiful, smart and stylish for the likes of an awkward, country boy like him.

  He sighed deeply as his eyes drifted down to the meats on the grill.

  “Do not give up hope, Silo,” Brand offered with another clasp of Silo’s shoulder. “The harder the hunt, the sweeter the prize.”

  “She don’t fucking want me,” Silo finally admitted with a shrug.

  “Moved her shit outta his room and back into her own,” the younger former-recruit added, much to Silo’s shame.

  “Does she not? Then why is it that she cannot keep her eyes off of you, my big friend?” came the dark whisper. “Watch! See how she continually glances at you while seemingly staying involved in the other women’s conversations?”

  Silo glanced up quickly and caught the edge of Shelly’s eyes across the space. His heart, his poor weary heart, picked up its beat with only the briefest moment of their shared gaze.

  “She is aware of you. And that, my brother, is half the battle.” Brand initiated a double-pound on his back, hard enough for Silo to brace himself before the other man turned away to where Reese was standing between two of the local girls.