by Paula Cox
“Okay, good.”
I swagger to the door.
“Wait, where are you going?” Hope calls after me.
“I have a meeting,” I grunt back.
I sit in the car park opposite the Gourmet, where I first waited for Hope. Man, that seems like a long time ago now. I feel closer to her, much closer. I feel like we’re much more than just casual fuck buddies, much more than the women I’ve been with before.
Focus, I tell myself.
I take out my cell and dial in Shane the Dealer’s phone number. It rings three times, and then he answers. Music blares in the background, club music thumping, pounding through the cell’s speakers.
“Who is this?” Shane the Dealer shouts. “Hello?”
The only nightclub near the Cove is called The Loft, a converted warehouse two miles south. “You in the Loft?” I shout, making my voice casual.
“Yeah, who are you? You a customer, man?”
I hang up the phone, kick away the stand on my bike, and rev it into life.
Soon I’m going south, toward The Loft and the man who sold my woman’s sister drugs.
My woman, I think forcefully. My goddamn woman.
It’s a quiet night at The Loft.
Ten or so people mill around on the dance floor and a scattering of men and women stand at the bar. They’re mostly teenagers or college kids, which makes finding Shane the Dealer no problem at all.
He stands next to the toilets, one hand in his pocket, the other fiddling with a clear plastic bag. As I watch, a kid no older than seventeen hands him a note, and Shane hands back one of those plastic bags. Weed, coke, heroine—I don’t care.
Rage fills me, boiling hot lava filling every part of me.
Shane is a tall, wide man. His arms are muscular beneath his shirt. A chain dangles from his jeans and I see the outline of a pistol bulging from his shirtfront. He’s wearing an armpit holster.
I don’t care.
I pace across the dance floor, clenching my fists, clenching my jaw, my body trembling with rage.
Give my woman’s sister drugs?
Make my woman’s life more difficult?
Make my woman cry?
Shane looks up at the last moment.
“The fuck is your problem?” he shouts over the music.
“You are,” I growl.
Then I hook him across the cheek. He stumbles, cracks his head on the wall, and falls to the ground. His hand darts into his shirt, for the pistol. I step on his wrist and lay into him. Punch, punch, punch. Until his face is a bloody patchwork.
Then I lean into his, my lips near his ear. “Sell to Dawn Jackson again, the whole goddamn Numb will be with me next time. We’ll leave you for fucking dead.”
I punch him once more in the belly. Tears spring to his eyes.
“Do you hear me?” I grunt.
“I hear you, man!” he weeps. “I hear you! I hear you!”
“Good boy.” I reach into his shirt and take out his pistol. “I’ll keep this.”
Then I stand up, put the pistol into the inner pocket of my vest, and walk out of the club, around thirty people gawping at me.
Now I get to spend a few days with Hope at a lakeside house. Is that really so bad?
Chapter Eleven
Hope
Detox again, I think, as I lead Dawn downstairs, a bag slung over my shoulder: clothes, makeup, a few books and DVDs.
“I’m tired,” Dawn grunts, clinging to my hand.
“I know. You’ll be able to sleep soon.”
“I’m really tired,” she states.
“I know,” I sigh.
We get to the bottom floor of the apartment building and I go to my mailbox, unlock it, and look inside. On top of the letters from gas companies and electricity companies there is a set of keys on a key ring. I take them and drop them into my pocket, and then close the box.
“What’re they?” Dawn asks.
“Car keys.”
“Whose?”
“Ours, I guess.”
We go out into the street. It’s a brisk autumn day, the sky a solid grey, the air cold. Dawn shivers and rubs her arms, and then hugs herself, standing next to the door. “Can’t I just go upstairs and sleep? I’ll be okay after a sleep.”
I ignore her. It’s not true and we both know it. She’ll sleep and then she’ll get up and want more drugs. She’ll be a nightmare then. She’ll do anything it takes. She’ll fight me if she has to. I’ve been with Dawn while she detoxes before. Hell, I was with her a few weeks ago when she kicked it for the hundredth time. She screamed at me, raged at me, blamed me for Mom and Dad’s death and told me I was a whore. That’s just how it goes with addicts when they don’t get what they want.
A car I’ve never seen before sits outside of the building: a hot pink Mustang.
“Wow,” I mutter, going to it and sliding the key into the lock. Sure enough, it unlocks and the door opens. “Wow,” I repeat. When Killian said a car, I expected a beat-up junk vehicle, not a factory-new Mustang.
Dawn stands near my shoulder. “Wow,” she agrees. “This is pretty cool.”
I’m about to reply when Dawn swivels away from me, hunches over, and vomits violently on the pavement.
“Ah,” she grunts, as the sick spews from between her lips. “That was . . . unexpected.”
“Come on,” I say, taking her by the elbow and leading her to the passenger side. “Let’s get going.”
This is my chance to make it right.
That’s what I tell myself, over and over, as I drive the Mustang towards Sapphire Lake. Dawn has quit dozens of times, but it’s never stuck. But before now I’ve been on my own. I’ve had to leave the house. I’ve had to leave Dawn on her own. Now, with help, Dawn won’t be able to trick me. She’ll be watched nonstop. There will be shifts. Despite how many times I’ve been through this—despite how many times I’ve been let down—I feel hope. Foolish hope, perhaps, but hope all the same.
Killian’s text told me the house overlooked the lake from the northern side, sitting on a small hill and staring down at the water. When I get there, I drive around until I find the dirt road, and then drive up it. It is bumpy and the car bounces up and down.
“Do you have to do that?” Dawn snaps.
“Yes,” I reply. “I have to.”
“This is a joke,” she mutters under her breath. “This is a joke. A joke. Since when did we need anybody else to help with our business? Since when did that happen, Hope? Tell me that.”
“I can’t do it by myself anymore. Killian’s trying to help.”
“Oh, yeah, of course he is. Help himself into your pants.”
“Well that’s already happened, so how does that work?” I shoot back, my voice meaner than I intended.
“Wow, way to have self-respect, Hope. Give it to a man after knowing him for—what? Knowing him for five minutes?”
I ignore her and drive up the hill toward the house. She’s always like this when she’s coming off the drugs. She’s always mean and vindictive. Hateful. When she’s coming off the drugs it’s like a different person emerges, a person who is usually deep down in her.
The house is a large wooden cabin built on bricks. The front faces the road, one side faces the lake with a balcony on the second floor, one side faces the other incline of the hill, and the back of it faces a large swimming pool and hot tub. Killian has really pulled all the stops out. There’s no way I could’ve afforded to rent this place on my own, especially on the spur of the moment.
I wonder what he wants in return, I think idly.
But then I push the thought from my mind. After all, whatever he wants, it’s not like I’m unwilling, is it?
I stop the car on the gravel parking space, open the door, and walk around to Dawn’s side.
Opening the door, I take her by the elbow and help her to her feet.
“I need something,” Dawn whispers. “Just a little something.”
So it’s started.
“No, come on, follow me.”
Killian opens the door, Patrick standing behind him.
“Everything is ready,” Killian tells me, as Dawn and I walk into a wide entranceway. The floors and walls are wood, and on the walls paintings hang, along with a mounted deer’s head. “Dawn, your room is upstairs. Come on everybody, follow me.”
We follow him to a double staircase, wide and leading both left and right at an intersection. On the large wall above the staircase hangs a portrait of an old man in a suit. “Some fancy family owned this place,” Patrick explains. “But I think the Satan’s Martyrs can make better use of it.”
Dawn’s room is at the back of the house, overlooking the lake. The bed is well-made and clean. The whole room, in fact, smells of cleaning product. It is pristine. There are no pictures on the walls. There’s just the single bed, a bookstand, and a TV. Next to the bed sits a jug of water, potato chips, and fruit.
“This is you,” Patrick tells Dawn, smiling at her with more kindness than I would’ve given him credit for.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Dawn lets go of my arm and paces into the bedroom, looking around at it.
“Rest. Let the heroin out of your system.”
“I didn’t do any heroin—”
“You did,” Killian says calmly. “I was there. I saw it all. But it’s all gone now. The needles and the baggies, all of it. And your dealer, Shane, isn’t going to sell to you anytime soon.”
“Jesus,” Dawn sighs, and then slumps onto the bed. “This is just great, isn’t it?”
And it starts just like that, with a simple sarcastic comment.
After the drugs leave her completely, she hunches in a ball on the bed, her knees to her chest, sweating madly.
“I always hated you!” she shrieks at me, as I dab her forehead and offer her water.
“You were always ugly and mean! You were always stupid! I hate you! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”
I let the words ricochet off of me. I’ve heard them before.
Hours pass like this, Dawn sweating and screaming and raging, me beside the bed, Patrick and Killian standing opposite, watching.
Finally, Dawn’s eyes slide closed and she snores softly. She’s soaked through with sweat. I dry her with a towel, and then we all leave the room.
Killian takes a key from his pocket and locks the door behind us.
“Is that necessary, brother?” Patrick asks.
Killian shoots him a dagger-eyed look. “You know how sneaky addicts can be, Patrick.”
Patrick goes quiet and looks at the ground.
“I’ll wait up here with Dawn,” he says, when Killian and I make for the stairs. “Just in case she wakes up and needs someone.”
“Are you sure?” Killian asks.
He nods. “Like you said, I know addicts. I know how tough it can be.”
Killian hands him the keys. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Then Killian takes my hand and leads me downstairs.
“That was tough,” I say, when we’re sitting in the living room. “But she’s called me worse before, much worse. She’s done worse, too. I—thank you, Killian. Thank you for this.”
Killian leans back in his chair, and then shrugs. “Drugs, Hope. Drugs. I can’t stand them. Drugs are the only thing I won’t let the club get into. Well, drugs and human trafficking and shit like that. It’s a cowardly way to make your living, preying on the weak, the addicts. No, a man shouldn’t make his living that way. We make our living with our goddamn grit and our goddamn bikes and our goddamn fight.” He growls the last word. “Not by slinging poison.”
He pauses, and then points at the ceiling, upstairs where Dawn writhes in her sleep. “And that’s why. Look at what it does to a person.”
“Oh, I know,” I nod. “I know too well.”
Killian’s fists are clenched, shaking.
I walk across the room and lay my hands upon his. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go out back. You haven’t shown me the pool yet.”
He nods, stands up, and then stands up and wraps his arm around me. We walk like that—me pressed into him, feeling his muscles, his strength—out into the back garden and to the pool.
The pool has a safety railing skirting it, around four-feet high. I guess the previous owners had children.
As soon as we’re outside, Killian approaches me from behind. I’m wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, nothing more exciting than sneakers on my feet, but when he presses his groin into me, he is rock-hard. “Your ass looks fucking amazing in those,” he breathes.
I know I should only care about Dawn right now, but his cock feels too good, too hard. I can’t ignore it.
“Bend over that railing,” he commands.
I swallow as my pussy gets immediately wet, soaking at the thought of bending over for him, soaking at the feel of his huge, hard cock pressing into me.
“Bend over it, Hope. Now.”
I walk to the railing, place my hands on it, and bend over.
He walks to where I stand, reaches out, and grabs my ass.
“You have a perfect ass, an ass made to fuck.”
Shivers move through me. I let out a moan. I know that we can be seen from the house, but I also know that Dawn’s room faces the lake, not the pool. And then I don’t know anything at all, except pleasure.
In what seems like one swift motion, Killian pulls my sweatpants down, my underwear, exposing my soaked pussy. Then his huge cock slides inside of me, his hands digging into my bare ass cheeks.
“Oh, fuck,” I moan, as he drills into me.
He doesn’t go slow, he doesn’t wait. We’re animals unleashed upon each other. He grabs my ass and pounds into me, hard, vicious, pounds into my sweet spot with violence.
I push back on him, moaning loudly, not caring.
It’s so sudden, so unexpected, that my pussy begins to burn up almost straightaway, burn up and get hotter and wetter until it goes very, very tight around his huge cock.
“Oh . . . oh . . . fuck . . .”
“Come,” Killian barks. “Come for me.”
I grip the railing hard, and I come. I come hard. I come so hard that I squirt all over his cock.
“Thank fuck for that,” he moans, when the orgasm has passed.
He leans forward, his chest and belly muscles against my back, reaches over and grabs my large breasts. He squeezes them hard as he explodes inside of me.
“Fuck,” he grunts, as he pulls out of me.
Then he takes my hand and leads me to the hot tub, which sits a few feet from the pool.
“I need you again,” he says, removing the tarpaulin and turning on the heat.
He turns to me as the bubbles rise to the surface of the water.
He’s just come, and he’s hard again, I think in awe.
My lust takes over. I take off all my clothes, standing naked in the garden, and then step into the hot tub.
A minute later, we are in the water, his cock deep inside of me, fucking like our lives depend on it.
Chapter Twelve
Killian
When the sex is done and we are both aching and smiling, I jump out of the hot tub, pull on my jeans, and go into the house. I return with a towel. “Come on, pretty lady. We have to keep your modesty intact, don’t we?”
She smiles at me wickedly, her cute elfin face lighting up. The sun is beginning to set, painting the bubbles in the hot tub light orange. She steps out of the tub and into the towel, which I wrap around her shoulders. It falls low, covering her to her shins. As soon as she’s covered up, I want to tear it away, but even the leader of the Satan’s Martyrs gets tired.
We go into the living room, around a small partition, and into the hideaway, where there is a long, wide couch sitting in front of a small electric fireplace. I turn it on and it hums, the faux-flames crackling yellow.
Then I collapse onto the couch and pat the space next to me. “You coming?” I say.
She stands uncertainty, he
r fingers clutching the towel. “What about Dawn?” she says.
“Patrick is watching her. Patrick can be trusted.”
“I thought you said he was going off the rails—a little.”
“He is, but when it comes to this, he can be trusted. He’s been through it himself. Aren’t you tired?”