by Lena Bourne
He sort of nods and shakes his head at the same time. “I don’t work as a plumber. I’m a hit man for the local cartel.”
His admission makes me jerk away from him all the way, and he just lets me go. But the second we’re no longer touching I miss him.
“I kill people,” he says very sadly, roughly, coldly, and the words land like a jagged block of ice in my stomach. “Is that something you can live with?”
His eyes change as he asks me that, tentative rays of sunshine like those that filter through the clouds after a vicious spring storm, washing over me. I don’t know if my answer is a resounding yes, but I’m sure as hell gonna try.
I smile at him, and wrap my arm around his again. “So you kill bad guys on the orders of other bad guys? It’s not exactly as bloodless as being a banker, but it’s not that much more ruthless.”
Maybe it’s not the best comparison, but the way his whole face lights up now tells me it’s good enough. And the more I consider it, the more the fact that he’s an assassin doesn’t even bother me. It just bothers me because it should, because it’s the accepted way to view it, but I’ve always known the world was a dark and shady place and not at all like the one shown in TV shows and movies. It’s filled with child molesters, killers, rapists and abusers of all kinds.
“You think?” he asks and I just nod, lean my head against his bicep and look out over the water.
We stay like that for awhile, not speaking, not moving. His body slowly softens from the jagged, uninviting rock into the protective, soft, moss-covered one that I can hide behind forever and always be safe.
Once the sun sets, he loosens his grip on me and I lean back, look up into his face.
“Right now, I want to ride,” he says, a distant look in his eyes. “If we leave now, we can maybe catch sunrise over the Mayan sun pyramids. What do you say?”
I smile, glad that tense and awkward whatever it was is gone. “Yes!”
BRETT
We didn’t catch sunrise over the pyramids. But we watched it from a secluded beach, surrounded by tall cliffs, holding onto each other, time standing still, the world seemingly not moving around us. But it’s been moving. And fast too. The number of missed calls from my employers reached one hundred in the early hours of this morning. I’ve been dodging their calls, since I kissed Sam, even managed not to think about it at all. But I called them back at dawn while she slept beside me on the beach. Lied that I was out staking out the target’s property, waiting for his return. And they bought it. I think. I hope. Because this freedom, this belonging I feel with Sam in my arms is all I want.
Her acceptance of what I am means everything to me. But I didn’t tell her the whole story. My life is headed nowhere fast, and she should know that. But I can’t tell her. Not yet.
We’re riding back now, the afternoon sun setting behind us, making the shadows over the vast and empty fields lining this deserted stretch of pavement long and comforting. The feeling of returning home is strong, and Sam’s arms wrapped around my waist have a lot to do with it. My shoulders and spine are aching from the long hours we’ve spent on my bike, but her soft, pliant body pressed against my back makes it all better, erases the pain, drives the dark thoughts from my mind, blowing them away like gale force winds.
I could just keep going south along this road. Out of Mexico, down to Argentina, which has no extradition treaty with the US. We could make our life together there. But that’s not even the worst of my problems right now. The cartel would find us there, kill us both on principle. Or maybe kill me, and torture her, make her a sex slave again, or worse.
It’s not something I’m willing to risk. I’ll kill them all before that happens. Or maybe I won’t have to. Maybe just the threat will be enough. They know how efficiently I can kill. And how well I can hide. It’s a vague idea, one I’m not ready to fully contemplate yet, because it may well be impossible. But right now my wish to do exactly that is a burning ball in the pit of my stomach, and I see no other option but for it to come true. I’ve already started the ball rolling by not answering their calls for the past three days.
“Let’s stop for the night,” she says as we reach a small town, gliding her hand up under my shirt, obliterating all my worries and doubts. “There’s a motel right there.”
With her free hand she points at a run down, low structure, the sign announcing it as a motel broken, the L hanging off with electric sparks flying out of it.
I roll to a stop and look at it, then back at her, wishing it was actually a nice place worthy of taking her to. “I think we’d get hepatitis just walking through the door of this place.”
She laughs, both her hands now under my shirt, wrapped tight around my stomach. My dick is so hard it’s throbbing, loudly announcing I made the wrong choice telling her that.
“Maybe you’re right,” she whispers, her breath tickling my neck. “But I want to get naked with you.”
Just hearing her say it makes my dick even harder. It’s now pressing painfully against the zipper of my jeans. And with any other girl, I’d relieve that pressure right away, take her up on the offer, fuck her until I couldn’t get it up anymore, even on the filthiest mattress. But not with Sam, she’s worth any amount of waiting.
“We only have about fifty miles left to go,” I tell her. “I can drive fast.”
She holds me tighter, and laughs, the reverberations passing through my back into my chest, making me laugh too.
“Then let’s ride,” she says, and I don’t need to be told twice.
SAMANTHA
We start kissing on the landing in front of his apartment door, don’t stop until we’re naked on the bed. We both need a shower, but not yet, it’s just perfect this way. I can taste the road on him, the dust, and the saltiness still lingering on his skin from our skinny dips in the sea along the way. And I can smell the clean, clear tang of the wind still clinging to his skin, his hair, and I don’t want to lose that, don’t want to change any of it.
He must be in agreement, because his lips are everywhere on my body and his hands too. And this connection the touches, the kisses, the licks, the pinches and bites are forging is otherworldly, surreal, so much more than what I ever imagined feeling that it still takes my breath. It hasn’t faded yet, keeps growing, expanding, becoming more powerful, more real, more lasting each time we make love. His passion for me keeps growing too. It’s now so strong it puts to shame even his initial one, the one that hooked me in the first place, on the first night we spent together. And it’s my passion too. We share it. I want to give not just my whole body, but my entire being to him, and I’ve almost found the way to do it, but not quite yet. I will though, there can be no other way.
The sheet came off the corners of the mattress and is now bunched up under our writhing bodies as we struggle to find new ways of being together, to tame the passion, control it. But it won’t be tamed, and it won’t be controlled. Because it has a life of its own, it is greater than just us, wider, bigger. Yet it is ours. Borne of love and desire and belonging and lust. And if I’d known all this was out there for me to find, I wouldn’t have held out this long. But then again, this is the first time I’ve found it, and I’ve done plenty of searching. It’s him. Him and me. Brett and Samantha. If I were sitting down at a desk, I’d draw a heart around our names. A heart with no pointing arrow piercing it.
His cock is inside me, pumping and thrusting, fast then slower, the jabs, their timing, the sensations they bring perfectly meeting my needs as my body satisfies his. All that is just an extension of this otherworldly bond we share. The physical manifestation of it, the joining of the flesh of two people whose souls are already merged.
The waves of pleasure stirred by his cock are slower, longer, more lasting, timeless like long waves hitting the sandy shores on a clear summer evening. And the waves of this pleasure keep rising higher and higher with each of his thrusts, each welcoming movement of my hips, and I’m panting, moaning, whimpering, holding onto his bro
ad back, which I know will shelter me from now until forever no matter what, no matter where. I don’t want this ecstasy to go, want it to keep growing. But it’s time. And I know the next time will be even better.
So I close my eyes and open my body, let the orgasm I’ve been holding back flood every last crevice of my being. Surrender to it until I’m as weightless as light, as malleable as water, as free as the wind blowing from one end of the earth to the other.
Chapter Thirteen
BRETT
Sam fell asleep in my arms, our bodies tangled up in all possible ways. But I couldn’t sleep, so I came out to the beach while it was still pitch dark outside. I have decisions to accept and plans to make. And things to tell her that she might never accept.
Yet she needs to know them.
In the cold, white predawn light as I watch the waves roll onto the sand, I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in months.
And making things right again starts with me no longer being the cartel’s bitch.
I should’ve realized that a long time ago. But it took meeting Sam to really see it, to wish it was different, to take charge of my life again.
What I’m planning could get me killed. But it won’t, because nothing can hurt me now. Not a damn thing. But Sam needs to be out of harm’s way first. And then I’ll finish this the way I should’ve in the beginning, when it first started. Once that’s done, I’ll come for her. Take her away. And we can spend the rest of our lives just riding, and none of what I’ve done will matter. Because in the end, I did it for her. So we can be together. So I can protect her.
My phone starts ringing, but it isn’t the cartel. It’s Tommy.
“How’s everything?” he asks, a cold edge in his voice.
“Good,” I say.
“So Samantha’s still safe?”
She’s better than safe, she’s mine now. I’m nodding stupidly before I realize he can’t see me.
“Yes, and I mean to make sure that never changes,” I say.
“You didn’t…” he snaps, but leaves it hanging.
“Didn’t what?”
“Fall for her,” he says. “Did you?”
“All the way.”
He lets out a loud, exasperated sigh. “Don’t even know why I’m surprised. I knew it would happen.”
“How did you know?” I’m pretty baffled at this reaction. Or the fact that I’m actually seeking his approval. Though technically, he’s almost her brother now, so maybe that’s why.
“Because you always go for the bad girls,” he says. “But Sam’s pretty messed up. I’m not sure you can handle her.”
My blood’s starts flowing faster and hotter at this insult. If he was here, I’d be starting something.
“Let me fucking decide what I can handle,” I bark. Back home, I was forever hearing the other MC members go on and on about how they’d trade all the easy pussy hanging around the club for one innocent girl, so they could corrupt her, ruin her, break her in, make her bad, and make her theirs. I never saw any sense in that. Because then you’re just stuck with a bad girl, or alone again, since that’s not what you wanted in the first place. No. I want a woman just as she is. I don’t want to change her. And I want Sam above all others.
“Alright, I won’t rattle your chain,” Tommy says, surprisingly backing down.
“I’m sending her back home though,” I say. “I need to handle some shit here before I can join her.”
“What shit? What do you do there?” I never told him, and he never asked this pointedly before. But the time for him to know is here.
“You won’t like it,” I start, not sure if I’ll even be able to say it, but then the words just start rolling, “I’ve been working for the Sinaloa cartel as their sniper, dispatching their enemies with my trusty rifle. A motherfucking Vago recognized me at a club not long after you betrayed the MC. And before I knew it, I was in some alley behind a dumpster, getting kicked and punched by at least ten of them. And the ones that weren’t beating me to death, were ripping off Candy’s clothes to pull a train on her. I had to stop that. So I told them to take me to the boss, said I had an offer he couldn’t resist. Turns out, I was right. My services have been in high demand ever since.”
I didn’t want it to sound quite so accusatory. But hell, I’ve been holding that back too.
He doesn’t say anything, the line so silent he might as well not be there anymore.
“I’m sorry about that,” he finally says. And I knew that without him having to say it. But it changes nothing.
“I’m coming back soon, in the beginning of next week hopefully, and then I’ll fix it,” he continues.
“How will you fix it?”
“The way I should’ve handled it from the beginning,” he says, that cold steel back in his voice. “I should’ve challenged Shade, taken over the MC myself. I should’ve done that before I even met Tara.”
The words hit me like a sucker punch to the chest. “Too little too late, Tommy. Everyone of the brothers will fucking kill you on sight now. There’s no coming back after what you did.”
He chuckles, but it’s a very cold sound. “Maybe, but I think there is. I’m willing to risk it. I was too blinded by needing to protect Tara, and save her from suffering any more than she already had, so I wasn’t willing to engage Shade before. But waiting for her to heal this past week made me realize things…things I should’ve realized back then. I didn’t want to put her through something as bloody as a war with Shade for the presidency. But the MC’s all I’ve ever known. I was fucking raised by those guys, some of them were more like a father to me than my own father ever was. And you and Ian, you’re like brothers to me, the brothers I chose. I need to save that, or at least replace it. I owe it to everyone that stayed loyal.”
“Ian will be the first to put a bullet in your chest over what you did, you know that as well as I do.” What he said about us being brothers touched me, it really did, but that shit’s a given, and it’s too late to get sentimental.
He laughs. “Yeah, that’s what he told me. He’s out.”
“How did that happen?” Ian was serving a one-year sentence for assault when Tommy ratted out the MC, and the sheriff’s protection ended. Ian should have been facing at least twenty-five to life for his part in the Indian casino heist. I’m facing a first-degree murder charge for my part in it, for killing that rent-a-cop guarding the money.
“I asked that too, and he just cursed me out. Said he’s coming for me right after he gets Sara back.”
“No way that’s gonna happen,” I say. “She moved to Phoenix and changed her name, that’s how serious she is about never letting him find her.”
“You know where she is?” he asks pointedly, and I can practically hear him planning something. But I promised Sara I won’t tell anyone where she’s hiding. Not even Tommy.
“I do,” I say anyway. “But Ian won’t find out from me. Not even through you.”
Tommy sighs. “Yeah, alright. But you know they’ll end up together anyway.”
I haven’t spoken to Sara since before New Year’s. At the time, she was dead set on never seeing Ian again, but Tommy’s right too. They could never stay away from each other for very long.
“Be that as it may, I’m gonna stay out of it,” I finally tell him, and it’s the last I’m gonna say on the subject.
“Fine,” he says. “But I can count on you to have my back, right?”
“Yeah, you know you can,” I say without even thinking about it, because hearing him speak about resurrecting the MC almost makes me think it’s possible. But it’s not. It’s just a dream. “But I suggest you save your wife the grief and just stay where you are,” I add, less bitterly than I intended, because it’s a nice dream.
He laughs this time. “Noted. But there won’t be any grief. So don’t do anything stupid until I get there, and then we’ll fix this together.”
“What makes you so damn certain you can do this?”
“I�
�m the founder’s grandson, and I have a reputation,” he says. “Now I’ve just upped that reputation to include the unthinkable. No one can predict what I’m capable of, or what I’m gonna do next. They might say they will, but I doubt anyone’s just gonna kill me on sight without first hearing me out. I can fix what I broke. Make it better than it was. Except for Shade and his lackeys. They’ll rot. Shade had Blade killed, so he could take over the MC.”
He pauses, waits for my reaction to that final revelation. This is the first I’m hearing that Shade had anything to do with the MC’s former president’s death. I don’t know if I can just believe that.
“How do you know? Do you have proof? Do the other members know?”
“No, Shade worked with the Vagos and your new bosses to make it happen,” he says. “I’ll find the proof. I should’ve done that before I left. But in the meantime, they can have my word.”
He sounds like he can actually pull this off. And I’m starting to believe him.
“Then we can make all your problems go away again,” he says. “Including the one back home.”
The reminder makes doubts creep back in. The MC could protect me from a first-degree murder charge back when it was still fully operational, but a fledgling, broken one in a bad need of fixing, which I don’t know if Tommy can really pull off, won’t be able to, not for a long time yet. And I need to fix my problem with the cartel now.
“Alright, we’ll talk when you get back,” I say and he lets me go.
The sun’s up. I need to start dealing with shit.
The conversation and the hope it brought is still echoing in my head as I walk back to my apartment. But it evaporates like the bullshit wishful thinking it was from the start the second I walk in.
The Henchman is sitting at the head of my kitchen table, his cold, mocking gaze fixed on Sam who’s bringing him a cup. Her hands are shaking so badly the coffee’s spilling over the rim, leaving puddles in her wake. She’s naked like I left her in bed early this morning. I’m so angry, the edges of my vision are completely black, all but the cholo’s bastard face out of focus. But I noticed his two thugs towering by the front door when I entered. And I better not do anything stupid, or I’ll get us both killed right here in my kitchen. It’s never been this hard to hold my anger back. And I’ve always been a patient guy with a long temper.