Wild Ones (The Lane)

by Wyllys, Kristine

  “No, really, I’m...”

  “Go,” he insisted, his voice turning suddenly stern. “It’s polite, Rosemary. And we must be polite.”

  Unease skidded across my spine, making me wish, belatedly, I could take it all back.

  Oh, God, Rosie. I’m so sorry. And I don’t even know why, really.

  She nodded and got up, moving mechanically toward our table. When she was far enough away, I turned to Joshua.

  “I know about you,” I said quietly.

  He chuckled lightly, reminding me a comic-book villain.

  “Do you?” he wondered. “How interesting.”

  I scowled at him. “Yeah. Interesting. Not my first choice of words, but let’s go with that.”

  He leaned forward, crowding into my space. Past him, I could feel Luke’s eyes on us, watching closely as the mousy Ted muttered something that sounded more like a squeak than “I’m just going to go get us more drinks” before getting up and scampering away.

  “I would be careful if I were you, Brianna. It’s a dangerous world your man is involved in. Accidents happen.”

  “Is that a threat?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Because I don’t handle threats too well.”

  He leaned back, the amused expression back in place, and he chuckled again. “Oh no. Not a threat at all. Just...advice.”

  “Right. I’ll keep it in mind.” I pushed my chair back slowly, my eyes never leaving his.

  “Do that. Now be a dear and send Rosemary back over to me. Ted and I have business to attend to whenever he returns, and I like Rosemary to keep notes.”

  I resisted the urge to flip him off as I stood and grabbed my drink. I was on my way back to the table, fighting back something akin to regret and something that was surely rage, when a familiar figure stumbled in the door, catching my attention. My stomach did a slow roll as I recognized Preach. Preach, whom I hadn’t seen since that fateful night when his wails filled the air. Preach, who had been my friend.

  He hadn’t taken note of me yet. Instead, he was headed for the bar and Fury behind it, his walk uneven and frantic. He was gesturing wildly before he even got there, and even from my position, still several feet away, I could see that his eyes were a little crazed. The ghost of that same old worry floated up, and I quickened my pace, wondering what was wrong. He was speaking to Fury in low, urgent tones, so fast that I was unable to make out what he was saying even as I got up behind him.

  “Come on, Pops. You gotta calm down. No one is following you.”

  I stopped in my tracks and stared quizzically at the back of Preach’s shaggy, dirty head.

  “He’s your son?” I heard myself ask dubiously from some place far away.

  Preach turned around and his eyes lit up when he caught sight of me. It almost broke my heart.

  “Little girl! Little red-dressed girl with the lips of red. Oh, little girl, where have you been?” And I knew it was true. This was Fury’s father. I couldn’t believe I’d never noticed the resemblance before, not just in looks but in the way they spoke. I shook my head like a punch-drunk dog, attempting to clear it.

  Preach’s face suddenly twisted and he reached out, hand blurring like a snake striking, latching on to my arm. “You’re not safe, little girl. There’s forces of evil.”

  Before he could finish whatever he was about to say, several things happened at once. Fury told his dad to let me go—his dad Preach—and from behind me, a table scraped against the aged wooden floor. I glanced over my shoulder in time to catch Cam and Luke jumping to their feet, Jax half out of his chair. I wanted to shake my head, do something to discourage them, but they were already rushing forward and Preach let me go. I jerked back around as Preach took a step backward, his eyes wide, his finger shaking as he pointed at Luke and Cam.

  “The dark man! The dark man!” He continued to walk backward, an air of unease hanging over him, stopping only once his back connected with the bar behind him. “Oh, where is my friend? He only exists with my friend!” He clutched at his head with trembling hands and I started to approach him, but he flinched, pointing again to the two boys behind me.

  I frowned, wondering if Luke had lied and hurt Preach that night that felt like so long ago. Looking back, however, I realized it wasn’t Luke he was pointing at.

  It was Cam.

  I took a step toward Preach, hesitantly, reaching for him, and his wild eyes swung to stare in mine, insanity tripping across his gaze in a fast-paced waltz.

  “He comes without my friend. Without my release. His soul is dark. He’s dark. Stay away from him, little girl!”

  The realization slammed into me like a linebacker.

  Cam was his fucking dealer.

  Without thinking, I swung around, rushed Cam, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him into the closest solid thing, which happened to be a booth.

  “You’re his fucking supplier?” I heard myself shout, and it sounded inhuman, not like my own voice. “You son of a bitch!”

  Hands were on my waist, attempting to pull me off, but I held fast to Cam, slamming him roughly into the booth again.

  “You asshole! Why the fuck would you sell that shit to an old man?”

  Cam didn’t attempt to fight back and the hands on my waist became insistent, finally succeeding in lifting me completely off the ground. As my grip was being ripped away from Cam’s shirt, I reared back and landed a solid punch on his mouth, my knuckles connecting with his teeth, breaking the skin there on impact.

  “Bri! What the fuck?” Luke roared from behind me, and I tossed my hair out of my face, feeling like the fabled banshee my da had used to scare Christian and me when we were younger.

  “You deserve worse, you prick. You fucking deserve worse.”

  Luke quickly pulled me farther away from Cam before setting me down on my feet. I was still fighting to get back to him, my fist itching to bloody my knuckles further on his teeth so long as his teeth were being driven down his throat.

  As if he sensed what I was thinking, Luke grabbed my arms forcefully from behind and shook me hard.

  “What the hell, Bri? Get your shit together!”

  “Why are you defending him?” I shot over my shoulder, continuing to struggle against his hold on me. “How can you stand there and defend what he does? He’s selling poison to an old man. He’s killing an old man!”

  “I’m not defending him,” he ground out, trying and failing to pull me back against his chest where he would no doubt pin me. “This is who we are. We have jobs. We gotta do them. There’s consequences if we don’t. I’m not his judge and neither are you.”

  Before I could respond, Jax was there, standing between Cam and me, glaring at Luke.

  “Get your hands off her,” he said in a steely voice, and had I not been so intent on bloodshed, I probably would have told him to back off. As it were, I said nothing, still fighting to get free and rush Cam for a second time.

  “You need to back off my nuts, boy,” Luke growled and Jax moved, stepping between us, breaking Luke’s hold on me. It was almost painful to turn away from my target but I did just in time to stop Luke from swinging at Jax. It was a narrow miss and I pushed him back, momentarily forgetting my own fight.

  “The shit is this?” I yelled at him, using my body to keep Jax from pushing in between us again. Luke’s face was stone as he glared at each of us in turn.

  “Pick a side, Bri. You can’t have both.”

  “Like hell I can’t, you irrational bastard! I don’t have to choose between shit. For the thousandth time, there’s nothing going on between me and Jax.”

  “Yes, there is,” Jax piped up from behind me, still attempting to move around me. “She’s been with me.”

  I whirled around to face him, my face a mask of the wrath I was feeling. “What the hell?”
>
  Jax ignored me. “I don’t know what she told you, but I know what she’s told me. We’ve got feelings for each other, dude. She just didn’t know how to tell you.”

  I felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on me. Turning to Luke, my mouth hanging open, I prepared to reassure him that Jax was lying, but I didn’t get the chance. Luke was glowering at me, and with a sudden flip of his middle finger in our direction, he turned and stormed out.

  “You dick,” I snarled at Jax before taking off after Luke. But not before I caught sight of Joshua, still in the corner, glass raised to his lips, that eternal amused expression on his face, watching as though he’d enjoyed every second of what had just happened.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Luke! Wait!” I cried as I burst out the side door and onto the still-packed street. He didn’t even pause as he continued to storm in the general direction of where we had parked. I’d expected this and broke into a run, my heels clicking loudly against the sidewalk as if they were calling out to the people I passed to check out the crazy running girl with the desperation in her voice.

  I ignored the curious stares they drew and focused instead on Luke’s powerful retreating back.

  “Baby, please. He was lying!”

  “You expect me to believe that?” he snapped, coming to an abrupt stop that caused me, still in a full sprint, to collide into his back. Shoulders heaving with his pent-up anger, he turned and continued, “You live with a dude, Bri. And I’m not blind. He’s a good-looking dude. You can’t tell me you guys have never, not once, hooked up.”

  I stared up at him, letting my eyes slide down first to his chest, a chest worth giving up sanity for, the material there forced to stretch unnaturally then down to his sturdy arms with the too-tight sleeves. How could he believe that I would ever hook up with Jax now that I knew he existed? After he spent time in my bed and me in his? There was no way. It just didn’t compute.

  “Yes,” I told him with conviction and something like worship. “That’s exactly what I expect you to believe.”

  “Yeah, well. Sorry, sugar. It ain’t happening. Your boy busted on you back there. Why would he lie?”

  “Because he wanted to piss you off?” The same question had been playing on repeat in my own head. Why lie? Especially Jax, who’d always been honest and loyal when it counted.

  It took a lot more convincing, standing out there on the street, surrounded by people who were all too willing to casually eavesdrop, but finally his eyes lost that sharp edge and I think he almost believed me. The walk to his truck was still tense. Jax’s words, believed or not, hung in the air between us, and nothing we said could drive them away. When we got into the truck, I wasted no time climbing over the console and straddling his lap.

  “He was wrong,” I whispered against his lips and a shudder passed through him, his eyes slid closed, and I bit back a self-satisfied grin. His hands came up to dive in my hair, wrapping the strands around his fists.

  “I’ve never had feelings for him,” I continued and he jerked my head back, exposing my neck. He lowered his head, nipping first at my pulse point then at my collarbone, making me arch my back and his.

  “He had better be wrong,” he muttered against my skin before kissing his way up my throat. “Because if I find out you’ve been with him, I’m likely to kill him, sugar.”

  Now it was my turn to shiver as heat slammed into my stomach and fanned out. I couldn’t help but think how fucked up I had to be for that to turn me on.

  “He is.” I jerked my shirt over my head and unsnapped my bra with a sense of overwhelming urgency. “He couldn’t have been more wrong. He was lying.”

  Luke leaned back slightly to rip off his own shirt and flesh meeting flesh felt a lot like home. My skin hummed, water to his live wire, and I could practically see the sparks flying.

  “I fucking love you,” he growled before capturing my lips with his. Tongue battled tongue for dominance, making me moan into his mouth.

  There were still too many clothes between us, and as we kissed, I frantically worked at his belt buckle, my movements taking on a clumsy urgency only true addicts know. I was too close to the object of my addiction and yet not nearly close enough. It was the sweetest kind of torture, one I needed to end before I combusted.

  And maybe he felt the same way because his hands were hiking up my skirt forcefully and jerking my panties to the side. He chuckled that dark, promising laugh of his when I gave up trying to get his pants undone and just started ripping at them. He brushed my fingers aside and popped the button, sliding them down, barely moving me, and before he’d even readjusted himself, I was grabbing hold of him and guiding him into me.

  Like every other time, we let out a dual hiss and my head spun, the feeling of completion, of obsessive dependency making my chest tight and my nipples hard. I swam deeper in it, rocking my hips forward, desperate to feel everything and nothing all at once. He complied. He always did. He was sweeter than any drug, though just as habit-forming.

  His hands were everywhere, skating across my skin, grabbing, clutching, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. When he clamped on to my hips and drove himself upward, I was arching, the steering wheel connecting sharply with my back, wails filling the air. I almost didn’t recognize my own voice making those primitive sounds, but I recognized his when bestial roars came pouring out of his mouth, ripping through me, turning my wails into something barbaric, almost savage. It was a language born in the Garden of Eden, when Eve first met with Adam behind the bushes and learned him in ways that were almost unholy.

  Maybe it was a night for quotes, but as we pounded into each other, skin slick with sweat and need, a single thought kept playing through my head on repeat and it drove my movements, turned into a soundtrack that throbbed at the base of my skull.

  The devil hath power to assume a most pleasing shape.

  Was it Shakespeare who had once uttered those words? Perhaps writing about this boy beneath me, the one whose eyes were boring into mine, the one whose lips nipped and outright bit every inch of skin he could reach?

  And if this was hell, why did it feel so good? Why did my nerve endings ache with pleasure?

  When he slammed up into me a final time, I had already come at least twice and my skin felt too tight for my frame. I was a puddle of sensation as he lifted me up, both gentle and rough, to pull his pants up and help me with my bra. I leaned up against him, feeling his sweat-soaked skin against my own and I sighed, deep and almost dreamy, both content and strung out. It was a lesson in extremes, being with Luke, and I was a willing, eager student.

  “Your boy wouldn’t be able to make you feel like that,” he remarked as he moved me back over into my own seat before reaching over and pulling the belt across my chest. I promptly unclicked it, earning myself a glare.

  “My boy would never get the opportunity.” I leaned toward him and brushed the hair back from his forehead. With a defiance I knew too well, it promptly fell back into his eyes and I could feel myself grinning.

  “He better not.”

  Luke put the truck in drive, not bothering to put his shirt back on. The sight of him bare-chested and glistening was almost too much to bear.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked, slipping my own shirt back on. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. Not even the Judas back at the Tap Room who hadn’t even been promised silver to betray me.

  Luke looked over and grinned at me, his eyes shadowy omens in his face. Something inside of me trembled with excitement.

  “Anywhere we want, sugar.” He winked and I smiled because I’d go wherever he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the days that followed, I refused to go home, not wanting to even see Jax’s face, let alone have to talk to him in any capacity. The lengths I had to go through to avoid dealing with him at work were bad enough. I star
ted taking my drinks from Annie, something that irritated me almost as much as Jax did, and I had Mike or Jared cash me out, a task that was definitely not in their job descriptions. I had always loved being at Duke’s, it had always felt more like home than a job, but now that was soured, ruined by the blond-haired betrayer who kept trying to catch my eye.

  If all that wasn’t enough, Joshua, who’d always been like an absentee father—we knew he existed but rarely saw him—was suddenly a permanent fixture at Bar 9 and Duke’s. I didn’t think it was just my imagination whenever I felt his eyes on me, which was frequently, watching with both interest and consideration.

  Sometimes I felt like there was another shoe somewhere, just waiting to drop.

  Just over a week later—a week of silence between Jax and me that everyone noticed, of me wearing the same clothes over and over, reminding me of the days I slept on the streets and scrounged together change to use the laundromat—I cut out of work early, unable to deal with the presences of both Jax and Joshua. I didn’t even give them a choice, instead pulling Joshua aside and telling him to cash me out, something he insisted on doing whenever he was there. I had expected at least a little resistance—after all, we had been pretty busy—but I got little more than an amused look and a slight nod before he led the way back to the office.

  “Going to be meeting up with your boyfriend this evening?” he asked as he added up my sales. I wanted to tell him to quit with the attempts at small talk like the encounter at the Tap Room had never taken place, but I nodded instead.

  “Yeah. Figured I’d head over to the gym and watch him train for a while.”

  Joshua glanced up at me, that ever-present amusement dancing in his eyes.

  “It’s interesting to me how involved I hear you are,” he remarked with a tone that was somehow too nonchalant. “I never took you, or Turner for that matter, to be the type to be exclusive.”

  I gritted my teeth, not wanting to discuss any aspect of our relationship with him but forced myself to answer, reminding myself that he was the guy who cut my paychecks. “We appeal to each other, I guess.”