by Kara Kelley
“Is this you?” Addi asked, looking over her shoulder at him. He nodded. The painting was of him on his dad’s bike, sketching in the lamplight of the dingy alley the night Officer MacAfee had been killed. Every detail was in that painting, from the trash on the ground to the look of pure evil on his father’s face, everything was perfectly captured.
“How old were you again?”
“Twelve.”
She looked closer, pointing at the man with the tattoo of the devil on his neck. “He was here.”
Drew nodded. “The acting vice president of the Skull Grinders, Mauler.”
“Acting?”
He looked down a moment. “Acting because I was the true vice president. As soon as I was old enough, Mauler was going back to his position of sergeant at arms.” Drew figured that might be another reason why he hadn’t been found. Some of the Grinders wouldn’t want him back.
She nodded and moved on to the next painting. This one focused on a man rounding the corner, a bag of Chinese food in his hand. Drew painted the scenes as if they were a graphic novel but in realism. His face in the scene was in shock, his mouth open in a shout.
“What were they doing to this guy?” Addi pointed at the man that Mauler held as his father, fist extended, was about to hit him.
“Teaching him a lesson, I suppose.” Drew stepped further into the room to point out his father to Addi. “This is my father, the president of the Skull Grinders. This is Dingo, acting sergeant at arms here.” Drew pointed to the victim. “I don’t know what this guy did, but he crossed my father so they were going to make an example out of him.” Drew shoved a shaking hand through his hair.
“My job was to keep six.”
“Keep six?” Her bows scrunched and he fisted his hands to keep from pushing her hair back from her face. He wouldn’t touch her now. Not until she knew everything.
“Lookout, babe. I was the lookout.”
“But you were just a kid.” She frowned, and managed to look both angry and sad. “You should have been at home, doing schoolwork or playing basketball or street hockey.”
“I was the future president of the Grinders, babe. I had my place. It was what was expected of me.”
“You didn’t want to be a biker?”
“Not the kind the Grinders are.” He drew in a breath. “These clubs can be really great places for guys like me to feel like part of a brotherhood where everyone has each other’s back. The Grinders were into bad shit though. I’ve never been interested in hurting anyone.”
She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing the painting of Drew’s dad and then moved on. The next scene was of the shot, a flare of orange at the front of the gun, and the guy lying lifeless in the filthy street. Addi covered her mouth and squeaked as she saw the boy in the alley. His pants were wet and his eyes wide in horror.
“A child, a baby?” she stammered.
“The off-duty cop’s son. He witnessed his father’s murder.” Drew swallowed hard at the memory, his chest constricting as if an anaconda had him.
The next painting showed his father shooting the other man, Drew holding his hands over the cop’s wound, blood seeping through his fingers and a shadowy form hovering over Drew. The form was hooded and dark, a sickle in its hand. He’d painted more details, like a sketch pad on the ground beneath the bike’s tire and the bag of Chinese food tipped to its side, but it was the reaper she stared at. It was what drew his eyes too. It was his interpretation of what had happened as the man died beneath his hands. He’d become the reaper. That would’ve been his patched name.
The paintings were his living nightmare on display before the woman he loved and it chilled him when he watched her face examining them.
Addi moved to stand before the final painting. It was of Drew shoving the boy behind the dumpster.
She stood for a long time staring before going back to look at the others again. And finally when he didn’t think he could stand another second in the room confronted by his demons, with the walls closing in on him, she turned to him. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Oh, Drew. I thought I had it bad. But you… you had it so much worse.”
“I know I was too young to walk away from my father and the Grinders. I know those deaths weren’t my fault. For years I blamed myself but Ray helped me see things differently. The thing is, I still witnessed two men lose their lives and a kid lose his father. I was still the one that called out. And I still took the place of those killers in jail. I’ve been making fucked-up decisions my whole life, babe. This shit has shaped me.” He pulled off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, holding out his arms for her to see.
“Look at me. I’m a man who will never escape my demons. You deserve better.”
“You know what I see when I look at you?” she asked and he swallowed hard. “I see a hero. A man who has always put others before himself. Me and my uncle included.”
“You really believe that?” His brow furrowed tightly.
“Don’t you?”
He shrugged and sat in the desk chair staring. Addi climbed onto his lap. “I give all the proceeds from my art to a couple of charities I founded.”
“You do? Is that for them or because you feel like you don’t deserve it?”
He gave her a sad smile. “You know me so well already, baby girl.” He brushed her dark hair back from her face. “Both. I want to help them, but I don’t deserve good things either. I helped put that kid through university, and countless others but it’ll never make up for what I did.” He looked at her pointedly. “I don’t deserve you.” She leaned against him, her head cradled in the hollow of his neck and shoulder.
“When I was twelve my mom was in an accident. She was in a coma.” His hand went to her head and he began stroking her. He knew some of this story from Ray. He didn’t stop her though. She needed to tell it in her own words.
“I had to decide whether to keep her on life support or take her off.” He felt Addi tense against him, so he left her hair to knead her shoulder. “My dad left the decision up to me. I chose to stop all life-saving measures because I knew it’s what she would have wanted, and what my dad and the doctors wanted, but I hated them all for it. Her for needing the adventure and screwing me out of a mother, my dad for not wanting the burden of a family but especially a bedridden wife, and the doctors for taking away my hope. I hated my mother as she struggled to take her last breath.”
“Of course you did, baby girl. You were sixteen. You should never have had to make that decision.”
“I wasn’t enough for her. She always had to have the next adventure. I wasn’t enough to get my father to leave his office.”
He felt her hot moist breath against his neck. Her hurt was crushing him. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight.
“Addi, you’re the fucking strongest woman I know.” He leaned his forehead against hers, keeping his eyes pinned to hers. “You’ve had to deal with so much and you’re still not only upright and functioning but an amazing person. Your parents were self-involved narcissists.” He released her face to wipe her tears away.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Neither of us deserved what we were dealt in life.” He kissed her mouth gently. “I love you, baby girl.” He would do whatever it took to keep her safe from his father and the Grinders.
“Drew?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“Make love to me. Please.” Her eyes were glossy from emotion and he could see she was still haunted by her confession. He needed to take her mind elsewhere, bring her to a place she couldn’t think of her fucked-up childhood—a place she couldn’t think at all. One where they could both forget what they were up against.
“I thought you’d never ask.” His mouth quirked up to the side and she pressed her lips to his mouth. It started as a peck, but morphed, slowly, into a hot mating of tongues.
“I want to paint you,” he said, his voice husky with desire and breathy across her face. Her eyes fluttered open, widen
ed and darted to his. Lifting her, he carried her, legs around him, her ass resting on his arms, out of the room. He watched her throat work as she swallowed.
“You’ve painted me hundreds of times.” She pointed to the various paintings of herself around the kitchen.
“That’s not what I meant, baby girl.” His crooked half smile had her biting her lip. She was nervous and he loved it. Her mind was already focused on what he would do to her, not on her mother, her father, or even her uncle.
He took her to the big bright room with all his painting supplies and let her down, loosening his tie and tearing his shirt open. He palmed her cheek and as he leaned down to her mouth, his fingers weaved through her hair and he gripped her head steady. His mouth took hers, thoroughly and completely, until her knees went slack and she had to wrap her arm around his neck. Her right hand stroked his bare chest. His free arm swung around her waist and he held her as her knees gave away fully.
When he set her back on her feet and pulled away, she looked dazed. He smiled fully then. He loved kissing this woman senseless.
Shedding his clothes, all but the tie, he stood naked before her. His cock, fully erect, glistening at the swollen tip where his pre-cum beaded for her. By the longing on her face, he could tell she wanted to touch him. And he wanted that, too. God, did he ever, but he wanted something else more.
“Stay.”
Her head bobbed eagerly and he grabbed a drop cloth and spread it out on a backless settee in the corner. Shoving away crates, easels, and anything else he could trip on, he pulled the couch to the middle of the room.
The lighting was perfect in the room with the cloudless sky. It would bathe her skin in a glow.
“You have a great ass, Drew.” His eyes shot to her and her face bloomed pink.
“Is that so, babe?” He smirked.
“Your penis is pretty magnificent, too.”
Tipping his head back, he laughed. She was too damn cute when she was nervous and the way she chewed the corner of her lip was making him ache with want. “It’s a cock, sugar—and if you keep nibbling your lip like that you’re going to make both my cock and I forget we’re gentlemen.”
Pulling his tie over his head, he nodded to the settee. “Sit.” Once she’d obeyed, he wrapped the tie around her head to cover her eyes and kissed her nose. “I fucking adore you.”
“You’re painting me with a tie around my eyes? Is this going to be the cover for another one of those novels?”
He just chuckled and started unbuttoning her dress.
She reached for his hand. “No!” Her face paled and all the playfulness gave way to her nerves. Her teeth sank deeply into her bottom lip.
“No?”
“I don’t want you to paint me naked. I…” Her voice cracked and he tilted her face up with his finger. She looked instantly calmer.
“Babe, do you still trust me?”
“Yes.” Her lip trembled when she released it, so he kissed it still. “But I…” Her mumbled words against his lips made his mouth quirk. God, she was adorable.
“You’re beautiful—every single part of you, inside and out—and you’re mine to do as I please with.”
“I don’t want my body, in all its inglorious detail, immortalized forever on canvas, Drew.”
“If you put yourself down again, babe, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”
She lowered her head and licked her lip. “I do.”
“What’s that, baby girl?”
“You’ll spank me?”
“Mhmm. Daddy will spank your naughty ass crimson.” He used a dry paintbrush to swirl around her nose and across her lips lightly. She shivered and he blew out to keep from losing control. Her reactions were so damn sexy.
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“Good girl. Now I want you naked and lying down.” Her brow furrowed and she bit her lip again. He cleared his throat.
“You aren’t painting on canvas, are you?”
“Nope. You’re my medium today.” He ran his thumb over the apple of her cheek, which was pink and warm to the touch. “I do have another one of you started. You can’t see it until it’s done, though.”
“Okay.”
He took the sides of her dress and pulled it off. Unhooking her bra, he let it slide off her arms while eyeing her thong panties. They could stay, he decided, tracing the little triangle covering her bare mound with his paintbrush. He liked it naked and smooth.
“You were going to wear this at the charming little old lady B&B?”
“No, they’re my motivational panties. I’ve never worn them. I just keep them packed to push me to remember to eat properly and jog while I’m away. I only wore them today because my only funeral-appropriate dress was a clingy material and I didn’t want panty lines.”
“Do you know how amazing you look in them?”
“Don’t tease me, Drew.” Her mouth was a flat line and it made his jaw tense.
“Get up,” he said firmly. She swallowed audibly and he grabbed her arm to pull her up before she could disobey. Bending, he tossed her over his shoulder. She squealed.
“Drew!”
“It’s Daddy,” he grumbled.
“Fine! Daddy!”
“The sarcasm doesn’t impress me, babe.” His palm cracked against her naked flesh again. It sounded sharp and her gasp said it felt that way too. “Be a good girl now.”
He flicked on the light switch as he walked into the large bathroom down the hall from the kitchen. Lowering her to her feet, he spun her to face the full-length mirror and yanked off the blindfold.
“Look at yourself.”
She crossed her arms and looked skyward, stubbornly.
“God, with that attitude, babe, you’re asking for a spanking so badly right now. Is that what you want?”
“No.” It was sullen and she sighed forcefully.
“I had other plans, but I’ll always give my baby girl what she needs.”
He propped his leg on the edge of the soaker tub and grabbed her, pulling her over his knee. Her legs flailed without purchase, but her hands grasped his leg. His hand whaled on her naked bottom, making crisp spanks and squeals echo throughout the bathroom. Her struggling was no real deterrent. He was strong enough to keep her steady over his knee and continue reddening her ass.
“Are you ready to behave and lose the attitude?”
“Yes, Daddy. Jesus, yes!” Her legs scissored and he leaned forward, opening the drawer beside the sink.
“Language when you’re being spanked, babe, language.” He swatted her bottom with his wooden-backed hairbrush and she hollered. He got in half a dozen whacks when she started shouting.
“Oh, God! Sorry! Sorry! Yes, I’m ready!”
“That’s better,” he said, dropping the brush to rub the sting away. “I’m going to put you down now.”
She sniffed and nodded. When he set her on her feet in front of the mirror she rubbed her bottom and pouted, looking through her lashes at him. He wanted to comfort her right there, but he needed her to see what he saw.
“Look at yourself.” He pointed at the mirror.
Her eyes swung slowly to her reflection and he moved to stand behind her. He towered over her and he was wide enough to block her from view if he stood in front of her. He couldn’t see why she thought she was fat. Her distorted body image was way off base.
He watched as she sniffled and her eyes perused her body. When they stopped on her breasts he reached around and cupped them. “Beautiful. Round and full. They feel fantastic in my hands.” Her nipples budded beneath his palms and his cock twitched. He pushed it against her ass so she could feel it.
When her eyes went lower to her belly, she shut them and whimpered, “Please don’t make me do this.”
“Open them, baby. You’re gorgeous. This belly is cute, and supposed to be a little rounded.” His hands smoothed down her front before making a heart shape with them. He waited for her to look. When she had, he grabbed her hips, making f
ingerlike dimples in her flesh. “These are nice to hold, and squeeze,” he added through clenched teeth, as he once again ground his even harder cock into her ass.
She pushed her bottom back and hissed. He chuckled and his hands smoothed back up. His left hand grabbed her tit and tweaked the nipple, but his right palm slid to her mound, beneath the little patch of silk and his fingers pressed down between the crevice of her pretty shaved pussy.
“Watch your face,” he demanded and slid further between her folds to get his finger good and wet with her juices. He stroked her nub, and her bottom lip quivered. He stroked again, a little harder and her knees wobbled. Pulling her lip through her teeth, she moaned.
“Mm, babe, does that feel good?”
“Yes,” she answered breathily.
“Hands on your head,” he demanded, while rolling her nipple between his thumb and finger. She obeyed and he stroked her clit again, faster this time. “Spread those legs.”
She opened for him and he smiled over her shoulder at her in the mirror. Her head tipped back and her eyes closed as she leaned against him. His fingers stopped playing and he pulled his hand away. Her eyes burst open just as his palm swatted her mound and his fingers slapped against her clit. It wasn’t too hard but enough to make her lurch.
“Watch.”
“Yes, sir.”
He grunted approvingly and his fingers started their gentle explorations again. Her cheeks were glowing and pink as she got closer to climax. She began rocking against his hand, her breathing steady puffs.
“Take Daddy’s gift of pleasure. It’s yours. Pleasure is good, your body was designed for it. Take it like you own it, because right now, in this moment, you do. That won’t always be the case, babe.”
As he worked her, they both watched. He loved her expressions, the way her eyes lit and her face flushed. And damn it, that wobbling lip would be the death of him if he didn’t capture it between his own teeth soon.
She started to make a mixture of moaning and heavier panting sounds and he kept up his pace, then suddenly wanting more than anything for her to come on his tongue, he dropped, turned her around, and brought his mouth to her. She had been so close to going over, it only took moments of his suckling and flicks before she came in a shudder against his mouth. He immediately looked up to watch her face as the spasms took her away from this world.