by KB Winters
I stopped and turned to Cross, my hands tingling with the urge to punch him in the fucking face.
“I’m not running, Cross. I just have shit I need to take care of, if that’s all right with you?” He nodded and I walked off, making a beeline for my bike before anyone else decided they wanted to fucking chitchat.
“Yo, Lasso! Wait up, man.” Savior’s gravelly voice grew closer. “What’s your hurry?”
“Shit to do.” I should have that printed on a t-shirt since it was becoming my mantra.
“Ran into your girl the other day coming from the shooting range. She ran away from me and sped off like I was chasing her.”
Of course, Rocky hadn’t said one word to me about it until well after the fucking fact. “Yeah she heard our entire conversation and I had to drive to fucking Arizona to track her down.”
It wasn’t Savior’s fault, but I felt good laying the blame on his feet for the club’s reluctance to help out a woman in need.
“Oh, shit man, that’s rough. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
I gave him a look and he shrugged and said, “That’s not up to me.”
Bullshit. “I have to go,” and turned for the parking lot.
“Lasso don’t do this. Not for some chick you don’t know.”
“You mean like you didn’t know Mandy, not since she was a kid. But we all showed up to help keep her safe. I got it. See you around.”
This would all blow over. Eventually. Maybe.
I revved up the motorcycle and took off for the open road. The cool evening air washed over my bare forearms, and the exposed skin at the back of my neck. By the time I walked up to my house and stepped inside, I didn’t want to punch anyone and when I caught a whiff of Rocky’s flowery, earthy scent, punching someone was the last thing on my mind.
She was sprawled out on the sofa in nothing but a pink tank top and a pair of pink panties. Only a tank and panties. Large, hard pink nipples winked at me through the thin cotton until my mouth watered. She was a fucking vision lying there asleep and my cock grew hard. Why couldn’t I stop wanting her?
It was a question for another time because now, I questioned my sanity when I picked her up and carried her to my bed. It was pure torture, all that silky soft skin and womanly curves pressed up against me, the way she nuzzled into my neck even in her sleep. Oh God, how I wanted to strip her down and drive into her wet, hot pussy, but I couldn’t. I put her to bed, showered, and curled my naked body around hers while I drifted off to sleep.
Nothing had ever felt as good as the weight of Rocky’s body against mine, until I felt the swell of our baby beneath my hands.
Chapter 13
Rocky
Being out of work was not as liberating as I thought it would be when I was working two jobs and wishing for enough cash to check out completely.
I was bored and climbing the walls. It had been three days since we’d spotted Big Boy’s car hawking us and I still didn’t have a solid getaway plan. My mind wouldn’t stop working trying to come up with something that wouldn’t force me to take Lasso’s kid away from him but would keep me out of Genesis’ reach.
Every plan I came up with had a flaw, so I reverted back to form. Crafts had always helped me in the past, so I bought some nice organic Merino wool and started making a baby blanket. It was three shades of green ranging from shamrock to teal, in a hypnotic swirling pattern. As I settled into a mindless design, it pushed away all the clutter in my mind—Lasso and the baby and my business—so I could find a plan to get me free.
Just because I hadn’t seen his fat ass in a few days didn’t mean Big Boy had gone back to California. They wouldn’t go until I was with them or in the ground, and details started to slide into place. I needed an isolated location that couldn’t be linked to me, just enough to send Genesis and his thugs running all over the country for me, exhausting time and resources to find someone they should assume was dead.
I froze at the creak of the back door. Lasso had said he would fix it at least a hundred times this week because the screen door squeaked like crazy. He hadn’t gotten to it yet and I didn’t hear that deafening bike of his, so I reached behind the sofa for the bat that had been with me since I’d left Florida.
My right hand wrapped around the handle and I pushed up to a standing position, taking slow careful steps toward the kitchen, avoiding the noisy parts of the floor. I turned at the hall and ran smack into Navajo, the blondest white boy I’d ever seen with iceberg blue eyes and a hard on for all things Native American. Or Native American adjacent. His angry scowl resonated first, and I screamed.
“Loud bitch,” he grunted and punched me square in the face. His grubby, calloused knuckle hit me square in the nose. The awful crunching noise sounded first and then the feel of warm blood sliding down my nose and over my lips.
“Fucker,” I grunted and stumbled back. I bit back a groan when the bat knocked against my ankle and grinned as I pulled my arm back and cracked the bat against his shins.
“You crazy bitch, that’s a metal bat!”
“Aluminum, actually. Light weight but hurts like hell.”
Navajo rolled around on the kitchen floor between the metal work table and the sink, groaning and gripping his shins. “Just come back with us, Rochelle, make it easy on yourself.”
“I can’t do that, Navajo. I won’t.”
“You will. Eventually. You think the Reckless Bastards will fight a war with us over you? You overestimate your importance, sweetheart.”
He might have been right about that, but I wasn’t counting on some biker gang and I wasn’t counting on Lasso either. Not when I wasn’t sure that he could be trusted yet.
“Yet here you are, chasing me down. I’m not going back, Navajo and fuck you for thinking any of this is all right.” I’d quickly unrolled a yard of paper toweling from holder I’d been able to reach on the counter and jammed it under my nose. It had already filled with blood.
“We all got jobs to do, Rochelle.”
He grunted, too much, as he wiggled around before lunging at me, a switchblade clutched in his hands.
“Ow, you crazy bitch!” he said when I whacked him again with the bat. He looked at me with wild blue eyes, clutching his now aching forearm.
“And we all have to fight for the life we want.” I stood and he grabbed my ankle, forcing me to send the handle of the bat flying into his nose in a sudden need for revenge. He dropped like a rock.
I made it to the phone and dialed Lasso. “Trouble at the house. Come quick. And alone.” I ended the call and took a seat in a chair at the small table in the corner of the kitchen, keeping a close eye on a now unconscious Navajo while I waited. Head back with fresh paper towels under my nose, tapping my feet, I was the definition of anxious.
I was lucky Navajo had drawn the short straw today. He had more heart than brain and lacked the cruel streak Genesis preferred in his men. It could have been real bad and all I had was a fucking bat, making me really regret not taking Lasso up on his offer to get a gun. Maybe we’d revisit that later. After we dealt with the unconscious gangster on the kitchen floor.
I couldn’t believe I was sitting around once again waiting for a man. But this was the kind of shit Lasso wanted me to include him in, so I would.
“What’s going on?” He didn’t waste any time, pushing inside the house and stalking straight to the kitchen where he was brought up short. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Navajo. Remember him from San Diego? One of Genesis’ men you bloodied that night. He’s alive. Just had a run in with a bat.” Lasso smirked but his face and his body were lined with anxiety. Around his mouth and eyes, pulling his shoulders and spine tight, he was one big ball of tension.
“I remember. What’s he doing here?”
I rolled my eyes and sat back down. “I invited him over for tea, thought we could work out some kind of fucking treaty.”
“Smartass.” Lasso had his phone out and was mumbling into it, calling, I assumed, member
s of his own gang to come and deal with this shit.
I heard, “Cross, need some help at the house.” There were a few more mumbled words and then he shoved the phone into his back pocket.
“It doesn’t sound to me like you called the police.” Arms crossed, I stared at him, demanding an explanation with my silence.
“The club can handle it.”
I could tell by his expression that he believed it, but they were his friends not mine. The Reckless Bastards hadn’t earned my loyalty yet.
“No offense but I don’t need this handled that way. He broke in and I defended myself, end of story.”
“The cops will never believe—”
“I’ll make them believe it and that’s that. Don’t even think about going behind my back on this.” My biggest fear in all of this was that when the dust settled I’d still be running from Genesis. I couldn’t let that happen. No matter what.
“I need you to trust me, to trust us on this.”
I shook my head, letting him know just how impossible an ask it was.
“I don’t. I’m sorry but I don’t and I can’t afford to. Your friends have made it clear how they feel about helping me and I’m fine with that, but that means I get to decide how I handle the shit that happens to me.”
I poked him in his chest just to make sure he got the message.
“Only that baby in your belly means it happens to me too, don’t you forget that!”
A knock on the door had us both jumping apart and staring as Cross entered the house with who I assumed to be Jag and Savior.
“Are we interrupting?” one of them said.
“Like it matters,” I mumbled, bending to pick up my phone and call the police. “Lasso made a mistake calling you, the police will be here soon.”
Cross, in a show of power, stared at me and took a seat in the living room while Lasso and his friend followed suit. “We’ll wait with you. Just to be safe.”
It didn’t matter. Not to me anyway. I knew Lasso was pissed about their reluctance to help but it was easier for me on my own. I didn’t have to consult anyone else on my plans and I could leave whenever I wanted. Now I had ties, dammit. “Do whatever you want,” I shrugged.
***
The phone rang, making me drop a stitch in the new booties I was knitting for the Olympic soccer player growing in my belly, at least that was what he or she was practicing for today. I ignored the phone because I didn’t want to talk to anybody.
The ringing stopped for about thirty seconds before it started up again. And again. And again. My patience was so fucking close to snapping that I yanked the phone off the table and answered without looking at the screen. “Yeah?”
“Come home and your boyfriend lives.”
Genesis. “Fuck off.” I hung up the phone and let out a primal scream that was so filled with pain and frustration there was a good chance it would split me in half. I couldn’t let him get to me because that was what he wanted, to get in my head. To make me afraid.
The ringing started up again and I let it ring because I couldn’t decide what was the better option, the incessant fucking trill of my old school ringtone or Genesis and his pathetic words. I answered when it rang again because I knew it wouldn’t stop, not until he said what he had to say.
“What?”
“Remember when we went to Catalina for the first time? You squealed like a little girl at the glass bottomed boat.” This was the calm before the storm Genesis, where he pretended everything was all right and that he was a normal sane man.
“I remember.” It started out as a great little getaway. “I also remember you losing your shit because a guy offered to buy me a drink. And you ruined the rest of the weekend because you turned into an overly aggressive alpha dick to everyone. Me included.”
He growled until it became an all-out roar. “You always remember the bad shit!”
I laughed. “Because it was all bad shit with you, Genesis. You’re unstable and insecure and I’m not interested.” Five. Four. Three. Two.
“Then you both will fucking die!” There he was. The unstable asswipe I was used to dealing with. “That’s too bad, Rochelle. We could have been good together.”
I laughed again and hung up the phone, knowing he would call again. “Hello?” I answered like I didn’t know who it might be on the other end of the line.
“Just one job, Rochelle. One fucking job so we can recoup what we lost when one of the stash houses was raided. Fuck!” I’d seen a couple of their stash houses, so I knew he’d lost at least a couple million dollars.
“No. Maybe you should recruit more stable criminals and you wouldn’t have drunk assholes running their mouths when they shouldn’t.” I froze as I finished speaking and I put him on speakerphone, so I could type something into a notepad. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but details were currency when you were fighting for your life.
“Maybe you should think about who the fuck you’re talking to, Rochelle. Out of respect for our past, I tried to do this the easy way.”
I laughed again because I knew it would piss him off. The man couldn’t handle being laughed at. “The easy way was sending your goons to fuck up my life and beat up my friends? Good to know.”
“You left me!”
“You’re a fucking nut job, Genesis, and I’m not coming back. You do what you gotta do and I’ll do the same, fuck you very much.”
This time I put the phone on silent and sat with my half-finished baby booties in my lap. And then, I cried like the baby I was carrying. Genesis continued to call, as evidenced by the voicemail chime that sounded every couple of minutes. I refused to listen to them.
That was how Lasso found me when he came home, bawling like a wounded banshee over a damp half of a baby booty.
“What’s wrong, Rocky?”
I opened my mouth to speak and a squeak came out, followed by more tears. My shoulders shook, and I was sure my skin was the color of an overripe tomato.
The seat cushions shifted under Lasso’s weight and his big, warm arms circled my body and pulled me close. “If you’re crying about the lack of tacos in the house, don’t. I brought like twenty of ’em from that truck you follow around town.”
I smacked his chest. “I follow them on Twitter and then when I’m hungry I go where they are. It’s how the food industry works, cowboy.”
Every one of my words was still muffled by tears and worry flashed in those big blue eyes of his, so I shoved my phone at him.
“Did you…what the fuck?” He glared at me, angry and worried as Genesis’ psychotic ramblings played out in his ear. Lasso cut off the words after a few minutes and turned to me. “Rocky,” he said, sounding disappointed and hurt. And pissed off.
“I know what you’re going to say. And you’re probably right.” It wasn’t just me involved anymore and I should have told him. “I’m still trying to figure things out and that’s all I can say,” I told him as my tears finally began to dry.
Blue eyes studied me and then went to my phone and back, like he was trying to figure out some damn riddle.
“You know I’m going to kill that shit stain, don’t you?”
I nodded, secretly echoing those sentiments. “I know you want to, but I’m not going to let you.”
“Feeling nostalgic and kindhearted towards your ex?”
“Fuck no, I’m feeling like he isn’t worth running from a murder charge.” It was my turn to take his face in my hands, force his eyes to look in mine so he could see how deadly fucking serious I was about this.
“I don’t know you well Lasso, but I do know that you’re a good man with a good heart.”
“No, I’m not,” he insisted, and I only smiled because in my experience, the actual good ones never thought they were.
“And no, you don’t know me that well.”
“You are, trust me. I also know that I don’t know much about your motorcycle gang.”
“Club,” he corrected.
“Fine, I don�
�t know much about your club but I’m guessing that saving my life won’t be a good enough excuse for any lawman to shy away from trying to nail a biker gang—er—club. If you really think about it, you know it’s true.”
He pushed back out of my grasp with a dark frown. “You’re seriously worried about this?”
I sighed. “Like it or not Lasso, this baby is yours too. I’m never going to be safe from Genesis, but this baby can be, but only if you’re not locked up in some prison.”
“I won’t make you a promise I’m not sure I can keep, Rocky, but I promise to make sure you and our baby are safe. Always.”
I believed him and when he cupped my face and pressed his forehead against mine, I knew we were in this together. I’d have to make sure that if it came down to it, I’d be the one who took Genesis out.
In another life I might have deserved a man like Lasso, even if he was in a biker gang. Excuse me, motorcycle club. He was truly a good man and I’d put him in an impossible position and he just went with it. Rolled with it like it was totally fucking natural to be tangled up with a crazy fucker like Genesis.
I rested my forehead on his chest and breathed, “I can live with that. For now.”
“Good, because I can’t handle your tears.”
I lifted my head and rolled my eyes. “Typical male. Wants to go up against a psychopath but you’re afraid of a few drops of salty water.”
I laughed and when he pulled away, I reached for him, pressing my mouth to his and letting myself get lost in him. In that moment, I could pretend we had the potential to be something more. I could pretend that when his hands went to my hips and pulled me onto his lap, pressing me against his steel hard cock, that we were making love. That we were celebrating something deeper than the basic desire to come.
“Are we doing this?” he growled.
His big hands were on my tits, cupping them while he pinched them between his thumb and forefinger and I arched into him. His mouth dropped to one breast, sucking it through the thin fabric of my t-shirt and I let out a hiss, arching to feed him more of me.
“Seems like we are,” I purred. “Is that a problem?”