At Last (Brimstone Lords MC 2)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  Prettiest thing I ever saw, at least up ’til now. She was a few years younger than me and she’d missed so much school, her mama decided to homeschool.

  She’d been in remission the first time we met. Thick, burnished chestnut hair swayed as she sashayed, swaying those hips which for sure caught my attention next. And the kicker, she didn’t even realize she was doing it, getting me harder the longer I watched.

  Dawna was sixteen to my Twenty. Some of my buddies knew who she was and told me not to bother with the homeschooled freak.

  I, however, thought more with my dick and my dick told me any girl who looked that good in a bikini, it had to get to know intimately.

  When I plunked my cocky, dumb-ass body down on the bank next to her and her sister, it was done because I was done for. That gorgeous, petite woman became my world.

  “Hey, Duke.” Caitlin actually leaves her little girl’s side to come to me, meet me halfway inside the room. I blink back the thoughts of Dawna. Can’t be thinking about her when I got Caitlin here with me, especially not when she wraps those thin, shapely arms up around my neck, resting her cheek against my collarbone.

  My arms, I bring around her waist to hold her back. She feels good here. I hate that she feels so good here.

  “Who’s dat, Mama?” The little girl’s scratchy voice pulls my attention away from the gorgeous woman who I should be smart enough to walk away from, but clearly, I ain’t. A full night of her sleeping on my lap, no sex involved, tells me I ain’t smart enough for that.

  Doc drops her hold from around my neck and shifts around to face her daughter. She glides one of her hands down to lock with mine and drags me over to the bed. “This is my friend, Duke.”

  “He the one who wides motocycwols?” the girl asks. She has her hand raised to her mouth like she’s whispering her question so I don’t hear, though she says it full volume. And what the fuck does it mean? Did Caitlin tell the little angel about me specifically, maybe because I brought her here? Or had she talked about the club in general?

  “Yes,” Caitlin tells her. “He’s the one who rides motorcycles. But he brought his truck to take us home in.”

  That her way of telling me she wants me to stay until the girl gets released? Why do I like the thought of that so well?

  Both Caitlin and her daughter look to me as if waiting for me to introduce myself. I say the first thing that comes to my head. “Hey, Peaches.”

  Caitlin chuckles, probably because her daughter scrunches up her nose at the endearment. “My name is Jade,” she says. “Nowt peaches.”

  “Yeah, but you got peaches and cream skin like your mama. So it’s either that or creamy.” I tease.

  Jade giggles her high-pitched little girl giggle. “I wike peaches.”

  And the way she giggles, fuck, I’d hardly know she’d been injured last night. Let alone how bad it could have been.

  Then Caitlin, one hand still locked with mine, grabs a hold of one of Jade’s, and looks between us. “The nurse came in for a vitals check and said the on-duty doctor should be around with the discharge papers in about a half hour, which means we’ll be here for another couple of hours, at least.”

  “Giving away doctor’s secrets?” I ask with an eyebrow raised. Fuck, am I flirting? What the hell is wrong with me? I don’t flirt. Ever.

  When she levels that smile of hers on me again, shit. I know I’m in trouble. I was flirting and Caitlin likes me flirting.

  I sit down on the club chair next to Caitlin, who’s resumed her spot on the bed next to Peaches, and for the next two hours, I get to know the little angel.

  Before they’re finished with the discharge, I swing back by the clubhouse to grab Peaches’ booster seat from the back of Doc’s car, and give the order for one of the prospects to drive it to her house once I call. After that, I swing by the pharmacy and grab a buzzer. It’s loud, really fucking annoyingly loud. So when Caitlin is off somewhere in the rest of the house, if Peaches needs her mama, Caitlin will hear her.

  Finished with my errands, I drive back to the hospital to pick up Peaches and Doc and to drop ’em back home for a little bit ’a girl time. Though not before I tell ’em about the prospect bringing the car and handing off the buzzer to Jade, explaining what it’s for. Even with Peaches on her hip, Caitlin bends the top half of her body into the cab and draws my face to hers for a quick lip touch.

  “Thank you,” she says. “For everything.” We kissed three times now, and all three ’a those times she initiated. I have a mind to initiate the fourth, but don’t get the chance when she gently shuts the door and walks inside her house. Her little girl waving at me as they go.

  I wait until Jesse pulls the Jeep into Doc’s driveway. He runs the keys up to the porch, knocks on the door, and when Caitlin answers, she smiles at him, they share a laugh then she shuts the door and he runs to climb into my truck.

  “She’s something,” he says while clicking his seatbelt in place. “Good choice, Prez.”

  Now prospects think I’m hot for doctor? I can’t deal with that and straight up ignore him altogether. A short grunt is the only response he gets.

  The punk laughs at me.

  With so much on my mind, we drive back to the compound in total silence, I don’t even bother with the radio. Not a prospect, but Blaze is on the gate and opens it to let us in when we arrive. Blaze is a patched-in brother now. Something don’t feel right. Then Jesse taps my shoulder and points for me to look over to the right where a large group of brothers, including my two lieutenants still in town, stand in a huddle.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I bellow. Truck parked, I stalk towards my brothers.

  They’re standing around a long, thin, white box with a red satin bow affixed to the lid. The kind the flower shop in town uses for long-stemmed roses. I know because I used to buy Dawna roses once a week right up to the week she died. She loved ’em.

  Sneak looks up at me and breaks the huddle apart so I can get to it. “Tommy’s on his way,” he tells me.

  Jesus.

  “What now?” I ask. Sneak, because he’s the one wearing the gloves, bends down to pull the top off the box. It’s long-stemmed roses alright. Dead, withered, black long-stemmed roses. The note laying on top says ‘Congratulation on your little angel.’ The ‘angel’ is underlined. If that ain’t a threat, I don’t know what one is. And it’s signed, H.

  “It gets worse,” Carver, my other lieutenant, says.

  Worse? How could it get worse?

  Sneak bends down to pick up a photo from the bottom of the box, stem end. Carver is right, shit got worse. Again, with Sneak’s wearing the gloves, I let him show me instead of taking it from his hand, so as not to leave my fingerprints. It’s of Elise and baby Gun taken here on the compound, probably through one ’a those telephoto lenses. The bastard has eyes on Elise and Gun. The photo was just taken yesterday. Elise has Gun, and she’s standing next to Caitlin’s Jeep, talking to her.

  “Who dropped this off?” I ask, trying like hell but failing to keep the bite from my voice.

  Bobby-Wayne, one of the newer prospects, speaks up. “It was a Hildegarde Flowers driver.” Hildegarde Flowers. Yep, that’s the flower shop in town, alright. “He drove up to the gate, said he had a delivery for Elise Hollister and handed me a clipboard with a paper to sign for the delivery. So I did. But I got nosey and opened the box.”

  Well thank our lucky-fucking-stars the kid got nosey.

  I run my hands over my face and grumble. “Anyone call Boss?”

  “Not yet. We still need him with Chaos and Blood. And you know, he hears this, he’s on his way home.” Carver. He’s right. We need Boss to stick with Chaos and Blood. Liv. Damn that woman. She should’ve kept her ass here with her man and her brother who love her and would die to keep her safe. Damn all women.

  This is the last shit I need to be dealing with. I sigh, then order, “Double Elise’s guard. She don’t leave the compound without at least two ’a you, got me?” When the me
n mutter their agreement, I turn to the three I want specifically on her. “Blaze, Blue and Hero,” I yell loud enough for Blaze on the gate to hear. “You all got Elise duty.” Then quieter I ask, “Anyone tell Elise?”

  Rounds of “Nah” or “No way” or “Fuck no” travel around the group.

  “Good. Don’t. She don’t need to worry about this. We already got one stupid woman on the run.” Caitlin Brennan came along at the wrong time. Houdini going after Elise again, and I can’t stop thinking about how bad I want to fuck the good doc. Maybe I just need to fuck her and get it over with. Nah, I need to let her alone and never look back. “Let me know when Tommy gets here. I’m going in for a drink.”

  3.

  Caitlin

  “Duke? What are you doing here?” I ask the sexy biker at my front door.

  He holds up bags of groceries in each hand for me to see. “You need to eat.” Then he pushes his way through the door, moving me aside with his large frame, in the process.

  His boots clomp against the hardwood flooring as he makes his way to the kitchen. Like he’s been in my house a hundred times, though today is his first visit.

  I blink at an empty doorway, unsure of what is happening at the moment. Then once I get my wits about me, turn to follow him. When I reach the kitchen, he’s pulling items from the plastic bags. Some he leaves on the counter and others, he opens cupboards to look for places to put the boxed or canned goods.

  “I have a pantry.” I point to the door next to the utility room. “All my cans and boxes go there.”

  With a full armload, he walks to the pantry. It occurs to me he won’t be able to open the door, and so I jog to reach the handle before he drops boxes all over the floor.

  The thing about Duke, when he looks at me, it’s as if he’s accessing the innermost recesses of my mind and heart. Even for the briefest look, which he gives me now. It’s as unnerving as it is exhilarating. What does he see when he looks at me?

  How do I measure up with the women in his past—and why do I care about the women in his past? They’re none of my business.

  Though he is here, isn’t he?

  No one is forcing him to be. But what does he want? Why is he here?

  Duke shuts the pantry and slips out of his cut, that’s what Elise told me the vest he wears with the big patch indicating he’s a member of the Brimstone Lords is called. He slips it off his shoulders to drape over the back of one of my high-backed, wooden kitchen chairs. Then he walks to the sink to wash his hands.

  Turning back to me, he grunts out, “Pan.”

  Again, it takes my brain a second to kickstart, but I go to the pots and pans cupboard under the counter next to the oven and pull a cast iron skillet with a lid out for him.

  “Might as well pull a pot, too. Big one,” he says.

  I watch in bewilderment as the man works at the counter, this time ripping open a box of cornbread mix.

  While he’s busy I move to the dishwasher to pull the measuring cups from the clean dishes and grab him the carton of eggs from the fridge.

  Duke pours the oil into the measuring cup and cracks one of the eggs into the oil, whisking them together with a fork, then he pours the mixture into the skillet. The man works comfortably in my kitchen. I can’t wrap my head around this personality one-eighty he’s spinning. For almost a year I’ve seen him grumble, grunt and bark orders at his MC brothers. I’ve seen him accept touches from the women who hang about the clubhouse and even the starts to some pretty bawdy activities with them.

  He uses my electric can opener to open a can of cream corn and dumps it into the skillet before giving the whole thing a mix. Though he hadn’t preheated the oven. I help with that because it gives me something else to focus on, even for a moment.

  Sure I’d thought he was sexy before. Commanding and always charismatic in the way he holds himself and takes charge of any given situation, at least any given situation I’d been around to witness. I guess that’s why he’s their president.

  What am I supposed to do with this new information? That he can be sweet and kind, and now domestic? I’d wanted to sleep with him before. But the man he’s showed me yesterday, and now today, that’s not the kind of man you simply sleep with. That’s the kind of man you lose your heart to. The kind you give of yourself completely. He’s a paradox of the greatest order. Who would have thought?

  While we wait for the red light on the oven to turn off he opens a package of ground beef and dumps it in the pot. It hits me, the cans on the counter, the meat in the pan, he’s making chili for us. Chili. I love chili.

  My stupid heart fills with warmth for the enormous biker filling my kitchen.

  Emotion clogs my throat, but I swallow it back without calling attention to it. “Can I get you a beer?”

  On a nod, he uses a spatula to mix the beef. “Two,” he says.

  He opens the oven to place the cornbread inside while I pull three beers and put the eggs away.

  Duke twists the cap off the first Guinness. He takes a long drink, then twists the cap off the second Irish stout and pours it into the pot with the meat. It fizzes, perfuming the whole kitchen with a deliciously meaty-yeasty smell. Duke and chili, it’s a heady combination.

  Mid-dinner preparation, he pauses to flick on the old radio secured beneath the top cupboard next to the refrigerator, where Ann Wilson from Heart belts out some amazing high notes about a magic man. I’d never understood the lyrics before. That is, I’d understood the meanings behind them, just not the emotion. Now, in the kitchen with my very own magic man, I understand completely. That’s after only a few kisses shared between us.

  My belly pangs, and not from want of food. To distract myself from these understandable, yet wonton thoughts, I start to open the cans.

  It doesn’t work when he puts his hand up. “Stop. Sit,” he orders. Duke Ellis, Brimstone Lords President, is cooking me dinner. I don’t think any man has ever made me dinner before. Even through the late night study sessions when a boyfriend should. Or when I started as an intern with crazy intern hours. Jade’s father never lifted a finger to help me.

  God, I remember a few arguments when he’d yelled at me because I’d chosen to catch up on sleep rather than get dinner on the table for him once he got home from work. He, I’d found out after we began living together, had very ‘traditional’ expectations for gender roles, unfortunately.

  Well, Duke’s wish is my command, at least right now. I hoist my bottom up onto the countertop, my bare feet dangle over the side.

  The burly man grabs my foot to run his fingers over my glitter-pink polish. It’s just a touch on my foot but constitutes more intimacy than I’ve had in years.

  I laugh uncomfortably. “Jade likes pedicures. Typically, we do it when we’re home. Friday or Saturday nights.”

  “You always use glitter?” His laugh is not uncomfortable, but teasing—in a good way.

  “No. Not always glitter, but Jade always picks.”

  “So you don’t go out, then? At all?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “That night at the clubhouse was my first night out since Jade was a baby. There’s just not enough time in the day. And I have to trust people to care for her. Look how that turned out. I sent her to her first sleepover, she ended up in emergency.”

  Before I’m ready for him to stop touching me, because honestly, the contrast of his smooth skin and rough, calloused fingers— I suck in a sharp breath and shudder. If it wouldn’t be so obvious as to why I fanned myself, I’d fan myself. His feather-soft caresses simultaneously calm me and shoot white-hot tingles up my leg.

  The man is a serious tease whether he knows it or not. Yet in the tradition set down by the centuries of serious teases before him, he ends the foot fondling to stir the chili simmering on the stove.

  I don’t even freak out that he’d neglected to rewash his hands before picking up the cooking utensil. A freak-out might deter him from making a move like that again, and I’d greatly enjoy for him to make a
move like that again.

  Besides, it’s my foot. I know my showering habits, so I figure I’ll be fine this one time.

  “Right, no going out with your girls. Does that go for dating, too?” He asks, pulling me back from the mental shutdown which he caused. It’s a good thing he’s cooking and not assisting me with a patient.

  “Dating?”

  “Yeah, you know—where a man picks you up and takes you out to dinner, or where the fuck ever.” He picks up the can of tomatoes and one of the cans of beans to dump into the pot.

  “A man? I don’t think I remember what one looks like.”

  His eyes grow huge, choking on the drink of beer he’d just lifted to his mouth.

  Abruptly, I take in how what I’ve said might be construed and attempt to backpedal. “I mean a man on a date. Not saying you aren’t a man. You’re actually quite manly, um… strong… confident… handsome.”

  The word vomit keeps spewing from my mouth while Duke throws his head back and laughs loudly. Still deep. Still gritty. Still unbelievably sexy. The sound reverberates throughout the kitchen.

  Oh god, had I told him he was handsome?

  I bring my bottle up to my lips. What I need to do is shut up now. But I’ve once again given him the upper hand, which means I have to act fast to get it back and cock an eyebrow his direction. “Tisk, tisk, tisk, if that was your way of getting me to divulge what I think of you. Men like you needn’t fish, Mr. Ellis,” I say, then take a long drink. Hoping to all get out, that it sounds more confident than I feel saying it.

  At least my voice didn’t tremble.

  Duke turns from the stove to push my hand, and thus my bottle, away from my mouth. I guess I sounded confident, because then he kisses me.

  No, no. Not just a kiss. His beautiful, slow, sensual assault on my lips far surpasses any ordinary kiss. Dominant and powerful yet allowing me the time to respond.