Sledge

by Jessie Cooke

His mouth hovered just above hers. “That’s gonna be all you, baby.” Before she could say anything else, his lips came crashing down onto hers. He kissed her hard, and she returned the kiss with a fervor of her own. They touched and groped each other with a wild, intense passion and when he took her hair in his hands and gripped and pulled it, she groaned in response and bit at his lips and tongue. Her hands were on his belt, undoing it with quick, efficient movements. He let her finish undoing his pants and then his hand slid out of her hair and down to her waist, where he gathered up the fabric of her dress and began to pull it upward. Their kiss, still hot and wet, had to be broken so that she could lift her arms and he could remove it. As soon as it was gone, her hands went to his shirt and she began to unbutton it while his hot mouth nipped and sucked at her throat.

  His hands were on her breasts now, caressing her hot flesh and hard nipples through the thin fabric of her bra. Once she had his shirt unbuttoned, he stopped long enough to take off the jacket and the shirt, leaving the tie dangling from around his neck. Without his belt, his pants had slid down to his knees and he stood there in black cotton boxer briefs with a huge bulge in front, and the necktie. If you took away the bandages on his muscular arms he would look like a part of a Las Vegas all-male revue. Daria giggled at the thought.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking about sticking a dollar in your shorts.”

  He looked down at himself and laughed. “Pretty hot, huh?”

  “Every woman’s wet dream,” she said, leaning forward to put her lips against his hard chest. “And he’s mine.” She looked back up at his face and said, “Right? You’re not going to forget me again, are you?”

  He put his big hands on the sides of her face and said, “I never forgot you, Daria…not for a second.” Her lips were back on his again, hungrily. She bit on the bottom one and he groaned in need. When she slid her hand down to the top of his shorts, he reached down and pulled the elastic away from his waist so that she’d have better access. He gritted his teeth and sucked a breath in through them when he felt her hand wrap around his twitching, throbbing cock. His hand was shaking as he snaked it around her back and unhooked her bra. Once it was gone, he leaned down and took one of her breasts in his mouth. He didn’t lick it gently, instead he sucked it hard and bit at the nipples like an animal in heat; at the same time he was tugging and pulling at the little thong she was wearing. When he finally got his whole hand snaked underneath it, he pulled hard, ripping it off her before standing up straight and pushing his shorts down to meet his pants around his ankles.

  As soon as there was nothing left between them he slipped an arm underneath her butt and lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist, shoes still on and digging into his back. He pushed her bare back against the wall and let her slide down his chest until his cock pressed against her opening. She used her hold on his shoulders to help him out from there, pushing herself down lower, feeling the soft, slick walls of her pussy open up to accommodate his big, hard cock. He let her play for a minute, but then he got impatient and with a wild grunt and a thrust of his hips, he buried himself inside of her as deeply as he possibly could.

  They both cried out and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, scraping the skin with her fingernails as she did. Daria realized as he began to thrust up into her, hard and relentlessly, that this was the first time she’d been really and truly fucked. There were no other words for what they were doing. It was much more than having sex, but it was definitely not making love. It was pure, raw emotion and need…and it was incredible. They were sweating and grunting like a pair of rutting animals with nothing but their own satisfaction on their minds. Daria felt her toes and legs begin to tingle as the orgasm began to build inside of her. It worked its way up toward the center of her body, tickling her pussy and settling in her core, where it would lie in wait for him to pull it out of her.

  Meanwhile, he was pressing her body against the wall even harder. She was slipping and sliding against him thanks to the sweat built up on both of their bodies, and he was trying to hold her in place. She felt his body tense up and she cried out when she felt his already massive, hard cock swell even more inside of her. It was like a steel rod and it made contact with that place inside of her where the orgasm had gone to hide. It was like he’d burst open a water balloon, and she felt the tingle in every part of her body as she exploded and her desire for him liquefied.

  As soon as he felt her come, he let out what sounded like a growl and she felt him let his orgasm go as well. As soon as he did, he found her lips again and engaged her in another hot, toe-curling kiss. She sucked at his tongue, encouraging him to slide it into her mouth until he practically choked her with it…and together they rocked back and forth against the wall until the orgasms were milked completely from them both and their bodies had begun to quiver.

  Sledge finally lifted her up off of him and then slid her down to her feet. He didn’t let go of her until she felt steady enough and as soon as she did, she went over to the sink and took a look at herself in the mirror. She was on the verge of being shocked by her own appearance and worried about making it back through the lobby to the elevator when there was a knock on the door. With wide eyes, she looked at Sledge. He was smiling, having fun. She couldn’t help but smile back as she said, “Just one minute!”

  “Daria? Is that you? I thought you and your date went up to bed.” Her hand flew up to her mouth to keep the giggles from escaping when she realized it was Allie. Sledge looked like he was holding back his own laughter as he pulled on his clothes.

  “Um…yeah, I’ll be right out,” she said again. Scrambling for her strapless bra and dress, she threw them both on, haphazardly and picked her torn panties up off the floor and started to shove them in her little bag. On second thought, with a wicked grin, she dropped them into the little waste can next to the toilet. Then she went over and washed her hands, swept her hair back away from her face, and looked at Sledge. He had his shirt back on, but not buttoned all the way up. The tie still dangled down onto his bare chest, against the tattoos that were now showing. His hair had come loose from the elastic band and was hanging wildly around his head and down to his shoulders. Feeling naughty and knowing that the second they were up in their hotel room, she was going to have to have him again, she pulled open the door to the sight of Allie’s shocked face. “All done,” Daria told her with a smile. “Come on, baby,” she said, taking Sledge’s hand. “Let’s get upstairs.”

  “Excuse me,” Sledge said to Allie with a smile of his own. The producer didn’t even try to hide her shock as she watched them leave and head hand-in-hand toward the glass elevators in the lobby. Daria gripped his hand so tightly that it hurt while she sprinted across the lobby trying to avoid the reporters, but the second the doors of the glass elevators closed, she pushed him against the glass that faced the lobby and kissed him again, hard. They didn’t come up for air until the elevator dinged, signaling they were on the fifth floor. Before stepping out of the elevator Daria looked back down. The people in the lobby looked tiny from where they stood, like little LEGO figures. She smiled brightly and waved. She wasn’t sure…but she thought that a few of them, waved back.

  25

  Saying goodbye to Daria at the airport had been hard, especially since they’d gotten no sleep the night before. They went to their room after they finished in the bathroom downstairs and had another round of wild sex in the bed…and then in the shower. They lay there for a few hours afterward talking about where to go from there. It was probably the most time Sledge had ever spent talking all at once in his life…but it was good. Daria assured him that she could write from anywhere, and where she wanted to be was with him. He had offered to leave the club and leave California…but he’d been relieved when she told him no way. He loved his club. He loved his brothers and he was happy with his life. Daria was the only thing missing and although he really intended to change his life to be with her, he was glad that was
n’t what she wanted.

  He made love to her one more time before she had to get ready to catch her plane, and then he’d left her at the airport with her promise to wrap things up in New York and be back soon. He drove Mack’s car back to the club, blinking back sleep and daydreaming about how good his bed was going to feel. He still had a week left of the time Wolf had given him off after his injuries…and he thought he might just spend it all sleeping.

  He parked Mack’s car in front of her and Ash’s trailer and was headed to his own when he realized there was someone there, knocking on his door. He didn’t recognize the skinny man until he turned toward him and suddenly sleep was all but forgotten and he was thrust into a place in the past where he didn’t want to go.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? How did you get through the gates?”

  “Sledge, wow, it’s good to see you, buddy.”

  “Trucker, what the fuck are you doing here? If Wolf sees you, you’re a fucking dead man.”

  “I need help, man. Please, I just want to talk.” Sledge hesitated, and the grungy-looking biker said, “You owe me.”

  “Get the fuck out of my way.” Trucker moved off the steps and Sledge unlocked the door and went inside. He left the door open and he wasn’t surprised when the other man followed him. “Close the fucking door,” he growled, “unless you’re looking to get your stupid ass shot.”

  Trucker closed the door and then said, “I’m sorry, man. I know I’m putting you in a bad place by being here…”

  Sledge turned on him and Trucker took a step back. He was always a skinny, pale kid, but he looked even worse now than he had back then. Sledge could kick his ass with one of his injured arms and as stupid as Trucker was, he knew it. “Sit,” Sledge told him. Trucker perched himself on the edge of Sledge’s small couch and Sledge really looked at him then. His face had sores all over it; his hair was thinning already, although he couldn’t be more than twenty-four or five by now. His lips were dry and cracked and his skin was so pale that his veins were visible in places…all except the ones on his arms, which were covered by a long-sleeved shirt, despite the ninety-degree weather outside. That meant he was still using, if the rest of it hadn’t given it away. If Wolf found him here, Sledge would be in almost as much trouble as the junkie was.

  “You’ve got five minutes and then I want you out of here.”

  “I need help, Sledge.” He scratched at his arms and face and Sledge had to turn away. He couldn’t stand to watch him. Heroin addiction was one of the worst things on the planet as far as he was concerned. The addict didn’t care for anything else. Anything or anyone he ever loved took a back seat to the drug. Any morals or values he ever possessed became nonexistent. He would lie, cheat, steal, and even kill for it. Sledge had tried to understand it once when he was trying to help Trucker…but he’d never been able to wrap his head around it. He supposed you had to come face to face with the demon before you could ever really know it. But Sledge had lost anything he felt for Trucker a long time ago, after years of taking care of him and standing up for him ended in manipulation, lies, and the death of an innocent girl. “They’re going to kill me. I don’t have nowhere else to go, nobody else to turn to…”

  “What the fuck makes you think you have me? We were done six years ago when you stole from the club and killed Ivy.”

  “I didn’t kill her!”

  “You stole those drugs and you put that needle in her arm! You fucking killed her and the fact that you’re still breathing is nothing short of a miracle. How fucking brain-dead are you that you chose to come here of all places? If Wolf sees you, you’re a fucking dead man.”

  “I’m dead anyways,” he said, clawing at his arms. “Mario Soto wants me dead.”

  “Oh, you stupid fucker. You stole from Soto?”

  “No! I didn’t steal nothing, I swear. I was with this girl, see…I didn’t know she was Soto’s cousin…”

  “Fuck me! You’re stupider than I thought.” Mario Soto was a well-connected drug dealer who was supplied directly from one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico. He was someone the Skulls used to do business with, back in the days when they were in the drug transport business. He was a dangerous man and he’d almost destroyed the club when Wolf pulled them out of the drug business. For the last few years, they’d just stayed out of each other’s orbits…but Soto was always a threat in the back of all their minds. “What did you do?”

  “I just fucked her, man…she told me she was eighteen…”

  “Oh my fucking God! You fucked an underage girl, Soto’s cousin? Jesus, you’re like an infection that just keeps popping up and getting nastier every time. Get the fuck out of here, you’re not bringing this club down with your bullshit.”

  “You owe me, man,” Trucker said, again. That did it—Sledge’s patience was gone. He used his good hand to grab the skinny man up by the collar. He literally tossed him into the wall. The impact sent the only two pictures that Sledge had hanging crashing to the floor, and Trucker tumbled down after them.

  “You’d better go, before I kill you myself.”

  Trucker’s sad, faded brown eyes moved back up to Sledge’s face. “Kill me, please. At least you’ll make it quick. Soto will fucking torture me, you know he will.”

  “And you’ll deserve every minute of it.”

  Trucker looked back down at the floor and in a flat voice that Sledge could hardly hear he said, “There was this one guy I knew who crossed Soto. They drove him down to the border and they buried him out in the desert, alive. They left his head sticking out and he lived for days with bugs and reptiles crawling all over him while his body died a little bit at a time of heat exhaustion, dehydration, and starvation. They say that you could hear him screaming at night for miles…”

  “Save the fucking dramatics, Trucker. I don’t give a fuck.”

  “I did two years for you.”

  “Fuck you! I stole that bike for you and I repaid you by sitting up with you at night for two weeks straight while you went through withdrawal, and begging Coyote to fucking let you stay, and standing up for you when everyone else around here would just as soon kick your ass as look at you. I paid you anything I owed you, a thousand times over. So, fuck you!”

  “Please, Sledge,” Trucker begged, with tears running down his face. “Please just kill me.”

  Sledge walked over to the door and opened it. “Get the fuck out.”

  “Sledge…”

  “Get the fuck out!” Sledge was just about to grab him again and throw him out when he said:

  “I told Soto’s men where the club keeps the guns.”

  “Who is this guy?” Ash asked, as he eyed the skinny, dirty junkie sitting on the couch in Sledge’s trailer. Sledge knew he should just take the junkie punk to Wolf, but for some reason, he’d called Ash first. Ash hadn’t been around yet when Trucker was, so he didn’t know the story, at least not all of it.

  “I found him on the side of the road one day, broken down in an old Chevy pickup. He was barely eighteen. He’d left the foster home he was in down in Oregon, stole the truck, and Fresno was as far as he got before the engine blew up. He was pathetic, and I felt sorry for him. I brought him back here and convinced Coyote to let him stay. I was a prospect at the time, and he wanted to prospect worse than anything, but he didn’t have a bike and he didn’t even know how to ride one. He was a hang-around for a while and during that time, I got patched in and I helped him learn how to ride. He still didn’t have a bike and neither of us had any money…so we got drunk one night and stole one.

  “He sold the Chevy for a few hundred bucks and we used that money to change out the seat and handlebars on the bike and paint it. Dumb fuck got stopped on it one day, going 70 in a 25, and when they ran the VIN, they arrested him for grand theft. He never popped on me, so a year and a half later when he got out of county, all strung out on heroin, I felt guilty, and once again I convinced Coyote to let him stay. I spent a week sitting with him twenty-four/seven whil
e he got that shit out of his system. I taught him how to work on engines and do bodywork, and he started working in the shop. He was doing good, or so I thought. A few of the guys gave him a hard time, picked on him because he was small and weak. I got in a lot of fights defending his stupid ass, and lost a few friends over it. You know how I am about bullies.

  “Fuck, anyways, back in those days, we would ride down to the border and pick up Soto’s drugs and run them up to Sacramento, pick up the cash, and hand it off to Soto for a cut. Dumb fuck here was never in on those rides. Coyote didn’t want him tempted by the drugs. He was patched in by then, though, and he’d gotten so good at the mechanical work that he was practically running the shop. No one thought anything about it the night they parked one of the vans full of Soto’s shit in the shop and left it there for the night…that is, until the next morning when we found this fool with a tourniquet on his arm and a needle sticking out of it…and a dead girl lying next to him with a needle in hers.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah, right? The dead girl was the daughter of one of the old timers. He died not long before you got here. We called him Coffee and the girl’s name was Ivy. She was a good kid…barely eighteen years old…and this fucker killed her.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Shut up!” Sledge and Ash both yelled at him. “Coffee beat the shit out of him while he was still wasted. He would have killed him, but Coyote stopped him.”

  “Why?” Ash was looking at the junkie clawing at his face and Sledge could see the disgust in his eyes.

  “That was about the time that the task force was being formed and they were constantly on our doorstep. This little fuck was on probation and his PO showed up to see him once a week. There was no way to make him disappear without drawing suspicion. So, Coyote stripped him of his patch and had Wolf and a couple other guys take him downtown and drop him off. When his PO came by, we told him he’d left the club and the guy found him out there on the street. We figured he’d kill himself in a matter of months. Figures—it seems that morons are invincible.”