Stone Hard: A Secret Baby MC Romance

by Melinda Minx

  “Well,” Jane says, “real life isn’t a movie, and what are the chances he’s going to win the tournament? Against all those other gladiators?”

  “He’s got an inside man,” I say, “someone who will rig the tournament in his favor. Though I don’t know if I trust this inside man.”

  Jane gives me a frustrated smile. The gossip in her desperately wants to know what I’m actually asking. “Okay, so have Stone do the hard labor--”

  “Russell,” I correct.

  “Yes, tell Russell Crowe to do hard labor.”

  “Then he’ll be away from his family for a long time, and he’ll miss three--five--years of his son’s life.”

  “Okay, so it’s only three years then.”

  I grit my teeth.

  Jane sits up straighter and puts her hands on the table. “I get it. He wants to do something risky so he can be with his family, but there’s a safer option that will mean he can eventually be with you. I guess you could have made some kind of Law and Order analogy instead, but it would have hit too close to the real situation.”

  “Jane!” I plead. “Come on! Stop trying to figure it out and just help me.”

  “Don’t get mad at me if I give you my honest opinion, okay?”

  I throw up my hands. “Why does everyone always think I’m going to get mad at them?”

  “You look mad already,” Jane says. “Anyway, if Russell Crowe is the one that is going to be doing the hard labor, then he’s the one that has to suffer the most. Doing hard labor and being away from his family? His wife still gets to chill on the farm with the kid, so to speak--”

  “His wife still has to work on the farm!”

  “Would you rather work on a farm that you owned, or haul marble blocks to build an aqueduct while some big scary slave driver is whipping your back? I’d personally rather risk the tournament. With my inside man, of course.”

  “So you think it’s his choice to make, since it affects him more?” I ask.

  “That’s part of it,” Jane says. “The other part is that only he knows how good a fighter he is, right? I mean, maybe his wife has an idea...but if he misses his family bad enough to risk it all on a tournament, then he knows just how hard he’s going to fight.”

  I bite my lip. Is she right? Is this not really my choice to make?

  “So what should Russell’s wife do, Jane? Should she just sit back and let the man take charge?”

  “Well, yeah, back then that’s what women did,” Jane says, grinning.

  “What if she had more modern sensibilities?”

  “She could let her husband know what she thought, but not force her opinion onto him. If I knew specifically what we were talking about, I could give a more accurate assessment, but if it’s Russell Crowe and Russell Crowe’s wife on the Roman farm, then this is my advice.”

  I see anticipation fill Jane’s face as I think it over, but I disappoint her by saying, “Thanks, Jane, that was helpful.”

  “Shit,” she whispers. “I thought you were going to tell me.”

  16

  Stone

  “Drink with me, Aldus,” I grunt.

  “Me?” Aldus asks, looking around.

  “Do you see anyone else here?”

  Aldus is one of the freshest recruits, which is why he’s on bar cleaning duty.

  “Aren’t you like, OG, man?” Aldus asks. “Why you cleaning the bar anyway?”

  “Don’t ask,” I say, pulling the tap and filling a glass.

  I slide it to Aldus. He must only be 19, but his hair is already receding. His goatee and long beard does little to compensate for it.

  Aldus sits on the bar stool, and I remain standing behind the bar. “You got a woman?”

  Aldus grins wide. “Which one we talking about?”

  “I’m talking about one,” I say. “You got one woman? Or you ever had one?”

  “Oh,” Aldus says. “I mean in high school, er, before I dropped out, I mean. That was before I bulked up and could take whatever woman I wanted.”

  I force myself not to roll my eyes. I seriously doubt that this scraggly kid can get any woman he wants, but he’s trying to look hard for someone he sees as higher up on the food chain.

  I take a swig of beer. “I never wanted to settle down with one woman,” I say, “but then I met the right one.”

  Aldus sips at his beer and looks at me, he seems afraid to speak his mind.

  “Stop sipping it and drink,” I order.

  He starts to chug, and when the glass is empty I fill it again. “Just because we’re talking about women doesn’t mean you have to drink like one.”

  I chug my beer and fill it again.

  After three or four beers, Aldus is waxing poetic about his lost love. The hard exterior is gone, and all he can talk about is Maya.

  “It was like…” he says, burping. “Like you could see the fucking stars in her eyes. Not just any stars, man, but the stars, you know? The ones you see way out in the desert, not the dirty city ones.”

  Shit. I made him drink too much. I just wanted to loosen him up a bit.

  I nod. “What if Maya asked you to do something that made you feel weak? Made you feel like a coward?”

  “I’d do it!” Aldus says. “I’d do anything to get her back!”

  “What if you hadn’t already lost her?” I say. “What if the thing she wanted you to do was to let her go? Would you let her go if she asked?”

  Aldus’s face glazes over, and he looks grief-stricken and deep in thought. He looks up at me with clear eyes and says, “If you got her, you can’t let her go, man. Never let her go. Trust me.”

  Once I’m sobered up, I ride up to Joanna’s place. She’s not home yet, so I wait.

  When she drives up, I expect her to be angry, but she just looks tired.

  She helps Logan out of the car, and when Logan sees me standing in front of the bike he starts to make vroom vroom noises.

  “Can I put him on the bike?” I ask Jo.

  She nods.

  I lift Logan up and put him onto the seat. He can’t reach the handlebars, so I hold him steady. “Want to hear the real vroom?” I ask him.

  I look at Jo to make sure it’s okay, and she doesn’t object.

  I start the bike up, put it in neutral, and rev the engine. Logan laughs, but I can barely hear him over the engine. He can feel all the power of the engine vibrating through the leather seat. More horsepower than a horse, that’s for sure. In a year or so he’ll be old enough to ride on the back of the seat with me. If I’m free that is.

  I rev the engine a few more times, and after Logan is done laughing, I kill the engine and put Logan back down.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” I say.

  Logan runs up to Jo and starts doing the excited toddler thing: talking faster than his brain can handle and only getting out a few coherent words.

  “You want to come in?” Jo asks me.

  I nod.

  We go inside and watch TV, neither of us talking. There’s thick tension in the air still, but watching cartoons and just being near each other helps to bring things closer to normal.

  “It’s Logan’s bedtime,” Joanna says. “You want to help me put him down?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”

  We give him a bath, help him brush his teeth, and get him into his PJ’s. It’s all routine for Jo, but for me it’s a glimpse into the life I could have. It’s showing me how it feels to be there as a father to Logan.

  When he’s asleep, Jo finally says, “I thought about it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” she says.

  “There’s only one thing to do,” I say. “It sucks, but I’ve gotta do it.”

  I thought it over a lot. Jo and Logan have been safe only because Lenk has left them alone. And he left them alone because he needed me as his pawn. If I go back to prison before Lenk can put me into play, he may just sacrifice me. And I already saw the way Lenk
looked at Jo. I saw what he’d do to her if I weren’t there to stop him.

  There’s no real choice.

  “Don’t fuck up,” Jo says. “You have to win the tournament.”

  “The tournament?” I ask.

  “Never mind,” she says. “Just fight and win.”

  “If everything goes according to plan,” I say, “there won’t be any real fighting.”

  She buries her head into my chest and wraps her arms around me. Shit, it feels good. That warmth against me. It’s not just the warmth of a body, but the warmth of someone I’d fight and die for.

  “Logan is a sound sleeper?” I ask.

  “What are you getting at?” Jo says, grinning up at me.

  My dick is hard. It wants her. I want her.

  “Will we wake him up?” I ask.

  “What would we do that could possibly wake him?” Jo asks, pretending to be dense.

  “I can keep quiet,” I say. “But you sure as hell can’t. Not with me at least.”

  She scoffs and pulls away from me. “You really don’t think I can stay quiet if I have to?”

  “Nope,” I say. “That’s why I asked if Logan is a sound sleeper.”

  “You are so full of yourself,” Jo says. “You think your cock is God’s gift to women.”

  “Not to women,” I say. “To you. My cock belongs to you, Jo.”

  She reaches down and grabs me over my pants. “Oh, it’s hard.”

  I grin. “I’ll give it to you, but you gotta promise not to wake Logan.”

  She starts to shove me toward the bedroom, and I let her.

  She laughs, but I hold my finger up and press it against her warm lips. “Shh, you’re already getting loud.”

  I throw her down onto the bed, and we fight to get our clothes off as fast as possible. I go straight down on her, not wasting a moment. She lets out a moan, but covers her mouth with her hand in surprise.

  I look up and say, “I told you--”

  She grabs my head and presses it back down between her legs. I don’t complain, and I go right back to work.

  I give it my all, tonguing her clit just right, listening to her stifled moans and feeling her body move. It’s kind of like working on a bike--but a lot more fun--you have to really listen to it to know what’s wrong and what needs done. I listen to Jo’s body and feel the vibrations, and I know just where my tongue needs to go.

  She grabs a pillow and pushes it over her face. I hear a muffled scream through the pillow.

  I can’t help but feel like it’s cheating to still make a lot of noise but to cover your mouth with a pillow. If I make her come loud, I’ve proved my point. Using outside tools to muffle the sound doesn’t mean that she was able to resist me.

  She reaches climax, and I have to grab her hips to hold her still. Her body seizes and twitches as she screams and moans into the pillow, but I show no mercy. I keep right on her, and I give her exactly what she needs as she comes and drips all over me.

  When she finally falls down, aftershocks of orgasm still rocking through her, she drops the pillow and pants.

  “Want me to go check on Logan?” I ask. “You were pretty damn loud--”

  “No I wasn’t!” she says. “Asshole!”

  “If you weren’t loud, then what was the pillow for?”

  “Do you hear him?” Jo asks. “If he wakes up, he calls for me, do you hear him?” She puts a hand to her ear.

  “I mean you were loud,” I say. “Very loud. You just muffled the sound. That’s why he’s not awake.”

  “I win,” she says. “I was quiet enough not to wake him. So check your ego.”

  I fall down onto my back, lying beside her. My cock is rock hard against my equally hard abs, but I want to give Jo some time to catch her breath.

  I see her eyes lock down onto my dick, and just as I reach an arm out to pull her against me, she jumps on top of me. Heh, I guess she needs me inside her more than she needs to rest.

  But then she slides down my body, and she grabs my cock in her hands, her lips just inches from the head of my dick.

  “Let’s see how quiet you can be,” she says, moving her mouth toward me, but staying just a half-inch away, not touching me.

  I laugh. It’s typical; women always think that a dick is like their clit--they think we want some slow teasing, some light pressure, a slow build-up. A man’s cock is a blunt instrument, it’s not like it can be too sensitive, and so few women realize that--

  Jo swallows my cock in one big gulp. Her lips lock onto me, the pressure goes from zero to 10 in an instant, and her warm lips slide down my veiny shaft.

  Pleasure floods me all at once, and my balls tighten. My chest flexes, and I pull my shoulders back. “Fuck!” I grunt. “Shit!” It’s a loud cry.

  I cover my mouth with my hand. Crap.

  Joanna sucks on my cock, which is deep in her mouth. She sucks hard as she pulls her lips up, and there’s a wet pop as her lips leave me. “You need a pillow, Stone?”

  “I’ll be quiet,” I say. “Just please, keep doing that.”

  The days leading up to the raid pass quickly. Way too quickly. I spend as much time as I can with Jo and Logan. I need to remember at all times what I’m fighting for.

  I meet with Ramirez again, this time in a diner in another city. The closer we get to the raid, the more paranoid I feel.

  “I want a panic button,” I tell her.

  “A panic button?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I don’t trust Lenk, and I don’t trust you. I’ve asked my family to put everything on the line for this, and I want to be able to hit the eject button if I see anything going wrong. You got it?”

  “This isn’t your operation, Harding,” Ramirez says. “You’re a pawn, and--”

  “Then I walk,” I say. “If I’m just a pawn, then do it without me.”

  She takes in a deep breath and glares at me. “Fine, tell me what you want. A burner phone to call it off with?”

  “No,” I say. “I can’t risk being seen making a phone call. I want a button. Make it like a car door remote, your tech guys can do that, yeah?”

  “You think we’re the CIA, this--”

  “Do it, or I walk!” I say through clenched teeth.

  “Alright, fine,” she says.

  “Make it so that if I press the button, you guys know that the whole thing is off.”

  She looks at me for a long time, then says, “Do you understand how much work has gone into this, Stone? The feds are risking a deal with the cartel. If you press that button, you’re done. Your deal is off, and you go back to prison. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal clear,” I say.

  17

  Joanna

  “Where Daddy go?” Logan asks me.

  I can still hear the roar of his engine in my mind, but he disappeared down the road a few minutes ago. I realize I’ve just been standing there for several minutes, watching the empty road. Logan must realize something is wrong.

  “Nowhere,” I say. “He’ll be back.”

  Don’t make a liar out of me, Stone.

  The raid is happening today. I’ll be at work when it goes down. Logan will be at daycare. It will be like any normal day, though it’s anything but. If all goes well, Lenk will be taken down tonight, and Stone will come back in the morning, a free man.

  And if something goes wrong...I’ll get a call from the cops while I’m at work. And I’ll have to find a way to tell Logan that Daddy isn’t coming back.

  Jesus, how did I agree to this?

  “Let’s get ready for daycare,” I say, still looking toward the empty road.

  I get Logan into the car, though my hands are shaking. My nerves are totally shot. Maybe I should just call in sick to work? No, then I’d just be sitting there with nothing to keep my mind occupied. It would be even worse.

  I start the car and drive toward Logan’s daycare.

  My mind is racing as I drive, and my brain drives on autopilot as I think and fret.
>
  “Vroom, mom, vroom vroom!! Logan says, bobbing up and down in his car seat.

  Then I hear it, a bike behind us. I check the rearview mirror. Did Stone change his mind?

  Then I see three bikes. Fear floods through me.

  “Coincidence,” I whisper to myself. Three bikes behind my car on the day of the raid. Coincidence.

  “Is Daddy?” Logan asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s go to daycare, okay? Play with your friends. We’ll see Daddy later.”

  The bikes are getting closer. Soon they’re right behind me. I start to drive faster, way over the speed limit, but they keep right behind me.

  I reach an intersection and turn without warning.

  The bikes follow--two pass by me. One stays at my side, and the other goes right in front of me. They’re boxing me in.

  I fumble for my cellphone, and I call Stone. It goes straight to voicemail.

  “Shit!” I throw the phone down into the empty passenger seat.

  The brake lights on the bike in front of me flash, and instinctively I slow down.

  Am I panicking? I could just hit the gas and knock this asshole off. Stone’s phone is off...and I’m not supposed to know he’s undercover. For all I know, he’s still in the MC for real. If I panic, I could blow his cover. Ruin the raid and his shot out of this life.

  I slow down. Even if I did run, there are two more bikes, and it’s naïve to think these guys don’t have guns.

  They signal me to pull over to the side of the road. They’re wearing helmets. I’ve never seen Stone wear a helmet.

  At least I’m on a public road, in broad daylight. There are a lot of cars passing by. They wouldn’t kill me or Logan in plain view.

  Once I come to a complete stop, one of the men gets off his bike, helmet still on, and walks up to my car. He taps on the glass.

  I consider grabbing the phone and just calling the police. I eye the phone.

  He taps on the glass again, harder this time.