by Jessie Cooke
“What?”
“Why did you bring me all the way up here, just to turn around and go back?”
“I thought you could use some fresh air.”
“You wanted to kiss me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just now...it was going through your head, don’t deny it.”
“Okay, I won’t deny it. It was going through my head, but I shut it down.”
“Why?”
“We really shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Why not? You want to kiss me. Why don’t you?”
“You really want me to answer that, Sabrina?” She nodded and then held her breath and waited. “Okay, first of all, you’re just a kid. I don’t mess with kids.”
She audibly scoffed at that. “I’m nineteen years old—do you want to see my ID?”
“Nineteen is a kid when you’re nearly thirty. I’ve got ten years on you.”
“And I wasn’t proposing marriage and children...we’re talking about a kiss...” Before she finished talking, he grabbed her. The breath rushed out of her lungs as her body slammed into his hard chest. He grabbed her by the ponytail and firmly, but gently tipped her head back so that she was looking up at his face.
“Listen, Sabrina, because I’m only going to say this once, okay?” She couldn’t move her head to nod and she didn’t have enough air to speak. He didn’t wait anyways, he went on. “I want to kiss you. I want to do more than kiss you. I was so fucking horny last night thinking about you across the hall in my t-shirt that it almost fucking killed me. So yeah...I brought you up here with that in mind. But the facts are that whether you think so or not...you’re still a kid. The ten years between us may as well be twenty or thirty thanks to the life I’ve led. And if I were to kiss you, I wouldn’t stop there, Sabrina, because I don’t want to just kiss you. I want to taste you. I want to lick every part of your luscious body. I want to feel every delicious inch of you. I want to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before and never will be again. No fucking way am I stopping with a kiss. But this...you and me...can’t happen, ever.”
With a raspy voice that was still gasping for air she said, “Just because of the age difference?”
“No,” he said. His voice was raspy too. It sounded like he was forcing out each word. She was pressed against him so tightly she could feel the pounding of his heart...and the erection that was rapidly growing between them. “The age difference is a big deal. The lifestyle, a big deal, but the deal breaker is your relationship to my late president and my current one.”
“You think Wolf would have a problem with it?”
“It doesn’t matter. It isn’t done. It would be disrespecting him and this club and I’d never do that. No prize is worth losing what I have in this club.”
Sabrina didn’t know how to respond to that. He was talking about a motorcycle club. She remembered the way Coyote used to talk about them. He told her that the most important thing to them, always, was loyalty. But she couldn’t imagine a job that would be important enough to her that she would arrange and live her entire life around it. Sometimes Sabrina had a problem where she said things before she had truly thought them through. This was one of those times. “So, you have to run your women by Wolf for approval before you fuck with them?”
Bruf let out a little growl and suddenly his big arm was around her waist. He was holding her so tightly that it was cutting off her air and the look on his face looked more like anger now than lust. With a concerted effort she said, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.” In the next instant she saw his mouth coming toward her and she sucked in as much of a breath as she could before his lips connected with hers. He kissed her...hard, rough, passionate...shoving his tongue in between her lips and giving her a preview of just how badly he wanted to taste her. His hands came up and gripped the sides of her face and he tipped her head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It was like he was trying to crawl down inside of her and she was opening up to him as wide as she could, hoping that he would do just that.
Sabrina had brought her arms up and she had her hands wrapped around the back of his neck. He slid his hands down her arms and then gripped her hips tightly with both of them. She felt them moving up slowly, touching her bare skin along the edges of where her pants met her shirt. His hands were warm and rough, and they felt amazing against her skin. He slowly slid them up, stopping just short of touching her breasts, and that was when he pulled back. They both gulped for air and panted heavily. She was staring up at his face, wishing she could read his mind. She didn’t understand why, if he felt as good as she did, he had such a tortured look on his face. When she could breathe again she said:
“Touch me, Bruf.”
He shook his head from side to side. “No. I can’t.”
“Yes...you can. I’m giving you permission. Hell, I’m begging you for it. Please, kiss me again. Put your hands on me. It’s only you and me here...no one else has to know.”
He looked like he was going to lower his mouth down again but this time his growl was loud and deep, and he pushed her back, almost hard enough to knock her on the ground. “We can’t do this. I would know.”
“You act like I’m twelve. I’m not a kid.”
“Pull yourself together and put on your helmet. Wolf is waiting to talk to you.”
“Fuck him!” Bruf was adjusting the front of his jeans. He raised an eyebrow at her, walked over to the bike, and pulled her helmet off and shoved it into her hands.
“You can tell him that yourself.”
“Fuck you too!”
He nodded. “Okay.” He pulled on his gloves and bandanna and started the bike. She had barely climbed on behind him and gripped onto his shirt and he was taking off. Whatever spell he was under a few minutes ago was completely broken. He was cold and hard again, like the guy that had held the gun to her head and promised her he could pull the trigger. She had to ask herself why...Why would I want a man like that to touch me anyways? What was wrong with me? Maybe it was just all the stress. She would talk to Wolf and if he wouldn’t help her, she’d leave the clubhouse and never look back. If he did agree to help her, she’d still leave. There was no way she could stay in that trailer with Bruf tonight...or ever again. Fuck! Why can’t things ever be easy?
9
The girl looked older, cleaned up and dressed in Amara’s clothes. Bruf had brought her into Wolf’s office and then went over to stand in the corner with his arms folded and a mean scowl on his face. The girl’s eyes were red and puffy...not tired like they had been the night before, but like she’d been crying. She kept glancing over at Bruf, but he wouldn’t look at her. Wolf wondered what happened between them, and then wondered if he really wanted to know.
“So,” he said to Sabrina, “start talking.”
“Where do you want me to start?” She was small and kind of pitiful, but she had an edge to her too...almost an arrogance, or a defiant streak. It wasn’t hard to believe she could be related to him and his stubborn father.
“When did you first meet Coyote?”
“When I was thirteen.” She started talking, telling him about Coyote showing up, and him and her mother springing the fact that he was her father on her. While she talked, Wolf did the calculations in his head. When she was thirteen, he was already twenty-four years old. His mother died when he was twenty-four. Coyote, the cheating son of a bitch, had gone right back to his old mistress as soon as his mother’s body was cold. Sabrina talked for fifteen minutes, uninterrupted, ending with the last visit where she discovered that the only reason Coyote had shown back up was because his wife had died. “I told him to go get fucked. He didn’t come around after that. He told me before he left that if I ever needed him, I could find him here.”
“So suddenly you need him?” Wolf asked. “For what? Money? Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in jail,” she said.
Wolf raised an eyebrow. “What did she do?”
“She didn’t
do anything. Can I finish my story?” He gestured with his arm and she glanced at Bruf again. Wolf’s sergeant-at-arms was staring at a spot on the wall and wouldn’t look at her. Fuck...he fucked her. Shit. “I was graduating from high school that last time I saw him. After that I was at CSUF. I still lived with my mother and worked on campus while I was going to school. Toward the end of my first semester, I went to this party...it was at a frat house.” Another nervous glance in Bruf’s direction. He was still ignoring her. Fuck. “This guy that I was kind of dating was part of the fraternity and he’d invited me. We were all drinking and having fun...I thought...when I started feeling really weird and sick. I don’t remember much after that. I woke up the next day on the front lawn of my own house. My mother found me out there, freezing and half-dressed.” Bruf was finally paying attention and the look on his face was murderous. Yep. He has definitely fucked her. She brought me in the house and fixed a warm bath for me. That was when we realized I didn’t have my panties and I was bleeding.”
Sabrina had tears running down her face, but Wolf didn’t think she even realized it. She didn’t look sad, she looked angry, and he saw his dad...and himself...in her demeanor once again. “Mom wanted to call the cops and I should have let her, but I begged her not to. I was embarrassed, and I just wanted it to go away. She finally gave in and once I was cleaned up, she gave me some pain medicine and I slept for like twelve hours. It wasn’t until the next day that I started getting the text messages. They were clips of a video...I was the star. There were four guys and they all had black ski masks on, but whoever was shooting the video made sure my face was showing. I looked drunk, but I looked awake...I looked like I knew what they were doing to me.”
“Fuck.” Wolf muttered that one aloud. He looked at Bruf. If those boys were standing in front of him right then, Wolf had no doubt that he would kill them all with his bare hands. Wolf would too...but this was probably his sister. He couldn’t help but worry about what Bruf’s stake in it was.
“They did some pretty disgusting things to me. I lost it, and again Mom tried to get me to go to the cops. I knew that there was no way they could identify them, though. They had made sure of that. They hadn’t spoken, they hadn’t shown their face. None of them had scars or tattoos that were visible. I wasn’t about to go through examinations and court and all of that public bullshit for nothing...I wasn’t going to be raped all over again. I dropped my classes and for a while, I just hung out at the house, with Mom. For the most part I thought I was doing okay, but I started having night terrors and anxiety so bad that I couldn’t leave the house. Poor Mom was trying to work and take care of everything and me at the same time. She was all alone, as usual.”
Sabrina looked directly at Wolf when she said that, like it was his fault that Coyote was a selfish bastard. “Things went on like that for a while. I finally agreed to go to therapy and it took three or four months, but I finally started getting a little better. My anxiety wasn’t so bad, and I could sleep through the night. Mom hadn’t been anywhere for a long time and I overheard her on the phone one day, turning down a friend who was asking her out to dinner and a movie. It took me all day, but I finally talked her into going. I didn’t realize until much later that the friend she was seeing was the father of this guy from the fraternity...the one I’d been dating, before the...before that night. They had met at a parents’ day at school, but she didn’t talk about her private life to me, not that she ever had much of one...and I had just started seeing that guy, so I don’t believe I ever even told her his last name...but anyways, he put it together and while Mom was out with his father that night, he knew I’d be alone. I’m so stupid...he knocked right after they left, and I thought Mom forgot something. I opened the door and there he was. I was sober this time, so I fought him...but he was a lot bigger than me. He managed to rape me...again...before I got my hands on the scissors in the nightstand next to my bed and stuck them in his back.”
“Fuck.” Wolf knew that wasn’t helping, but he didn’t know what the fuck else to say. The guilt of almost turning this little girl out on the street was practically killing him and warring with the rage that was brewing up a storm inside of him as well. “You killed him?” he asked, finally.
“Yes. I pushed him off of me and watched him bleed to death. When Mom got home hours later, I was sitting in the corner holding the scissors, out of my mind...she called the police that time, and when they got there, she had rearranged everything. She told them she walked in on him raping me and she killed him. They arrested her. She’s in jail and I can’t even afford to bail her out. That’s why I came here. I was hoping that he would help. She doesn’t deserve to be in jail. She won’t let me tell them what really happened. She said that she would just tell them I was lying to save her. Please, Wolf...if you can just help me pay her bail...I’ll pay you back somehow, I promise.”
Wolf didn’t know if this girl was his sister, although he suspected from her looks and her demeanor that she was. But at that point, he didn’t care. He wanted to kill someone, anyone. He wanted someone else to pay for what had happened to her. “What’s her name?”
“Mary Turpin. She’s in Fresno County lockup.”
Wolf looked up at Bruf. He looked almost frozen with rage. They would have to talk about what was going on between his sergeant and his sister when this was over, but for the time being he said, “Call Vic and tell him to get her out of there tonight, and then have two men sit on the house. Tell him she needs a criminal lawyer too, a good one...not him.” Vic was the MC’s attorney, and he had been since Coyote was a youngster. He was a shrewd old man with no scruples and, in any other case, would be exactly who Wolf wanted on the job. But he didn’t want Sabrina’s mother affiliated with them, at least for the time being. This thing would get public and ugly, and an affiliation with the Westside Skulls would only make it uglier. Bruf continued to stand rooted to the spot, staring at Sabrina like he wanted to comfort her. Wolf couldn’t deal with that now. “Now, Bruf!” The gruff order snapped him out of his trance and he nodded at his boss. With one last heart-wrenching look at Sabrina, he left the room.
When they were alone, Wolf dug through his desk until he found a clean bandanna, and he handed it across the desk to Sabrina. She took it and used it to wipe the tears from her face. She was shaking all over and Wolf’s heart felt like it was breaking for her. He waited a few beats and then he said, “Sabrina, do you know the names of the other...boys...that did this to you?” She nodded slowly. Wolf pushed a pad and pen in her direction and said, “Write their names down for me, and anything else you know about them?” He posed it like a question. He had a feeling that even in her current state of mind, she wasn’t going to be okay with him barking orders at her. Suddenly looking completely spent, she picked up the pen and slowly wrote down three names. Then underneath them she wrote the name of the fraternity and said:
“That’s all I know. Thank you for helping my mother. She’s had a shitty life for the most part, because of me. She deserves so much better. Maybe your lawyer can convince her to tell the truth...”
He shook his head. “No. You’re going to tell anyone that asks whatever story your mother told you to tell, and you’re not going to mention the first rape.”
“She’ll go to jail,” she sobbed again.
“No, she was protecting you. He was stabbed in the back, right?” She nodded, slowly. “Then all they need to know is that she walked in while he was attacking you. If you had been there when the cops showed up, she probably wouldn’t have even been arrested. You do what the attorney tells you, okay? Once the cops talk to you and you back up her story, they won’t have any case against her.”
She nodded again and wiped her nose with the bandanna. “What about the other guys?” she asked, looking at the pad she’d written the names down on. “What are you going to do to them?”
“You won’t ever have to worry about that, or hear their names again, I promise.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she said again, this time breaking down into sobs once again. Wolf knew he should comfort her, but it just wasn’t something he was good at. He did the next best thing. He called one of the girls in and had her take Sabrina to their trailer to get her calmed down and fed. He promised her he would call if he heard anything. Before he left the office, he had one more thing to do. He called in Smoke, Manson, and two of the club’s enforcers and they began to make a plan...the other three men involved thought they’d gotten away with what they did to his sister...but they were in for a rude awakening.
10
“Oh my God! Finally! Where have you been? I’m going crazy in this house and you’re out gallivanting all day!” Amara met him at the door. She was dressed in a pair of red boy shorts and a red satin tank top that hugged her big breasts and flat belly. She looked good enough to eat, if he wasn’t too fucking tired to eat her.
He wrapped his arms around her and tried to pull her in for a kiss, but she pushed back and turned her face away. “Aw, baby, don’t be that way. I wasn’t gallivanting. I was working. It’s been one hell of a fucking day.”
She stuck out her big, red bottom lip. “Working, really?”
“Really. I’ll tell you all about it...but tomorrow, okay? I’m so tired, baby, and hungry...”
“And horny?” Her pout was receding, and he knew if he told her he was too tired to fuck, she’d go batshit crazy on him, so he said:
“Always horny for my sexy baby. Can I eat first, baby, and have a beer?”
She rolled her eyes and tossed her long, curly hair back over one shoulder. Batting her long, dark lashes at him she said, “Fine.” Folding her arms over her chest, she added, “I had nothing else to do so I made chili verde and tortillas.”
“Mm, that’s my girl. I thought I smelled something else delicious besides you.”