Jump: Book 7 in the Vengeance MC series

by Natasha Thomas

  “Anyone offered to show you around yet? After I’ve dropped this off to my dad,” Austin says, shaking the takeout bag he’s holding, “I’m free to give you the grand tour if you’re interested.”

  The way Austin asks if I’m interested sounds as if it has a dual meaning, and he only goes on to confirm it by adding,

  “Or if that doesn’t interest you, maybe the party I’m going to later will. Half naked girls in bikini’s, wet t-shirt contests, beer, and plenty of guys to keep you company. All the hallmarks of an epic night. So what do you say? Personal tour or public debauchery?”

  The sexual undertone of his question isn’t lost on me, practically knocking me on my ass for the second time today. Lust blazes through my bloodstream and my cock goes rock solid. There’s no hiding from Austin how hard I am; all he has to do is look down, and he’ll see the thick ridge of my erection. But the real question is, do I want to hide it or do I want him to see what he does to me?

  In the next instant, Austin decides for me as he makes a leisurely study of my body, coming to an abrupt stop at the bulge in my pants. I watch as his breathing escalates and his pupils dilate until there’s almost no trace of hazel left, leaving only intense black orbs that are hazy with desire.

  Wanting to test his boundaries, I say,

  “I prefer my parties a little less public that way I can focus on the debauchery, so I’m going to have to pass. Good to meet you, though. See you round maybe.”

  Austin doesn’t say anything for long minutes, making me think I misinterpreted what he was hinting at. I mean, I don’t think I’m completely off the mark, if the huge bulge laying down the leg of his jeans is anything to go by, but maybe it was thinking about the half-naked girls that made his dick hard. Who knows? What I do know is that I’m not sticking around to have my ass kicked if I did misunderstand him.

  Turning to walk away, Austin grabs my arm and drags me around the corner into the small space between his dad’s hardware store and the bakery next door. With his body hard up against mine, Austin leans into me, at the same time, rubbing his cock along the length of mine.

  His hands run up my sides, which cause me to shudder at the sensation of his calloused fingertips through the fabric of my shirt. I want him to touch me. I want to feel his hands and mouth on my bare skin.

  Austin’s so close to me that I can feel his heated breath on my neck when he growls,

  “You should be careful what you offer because one day, someone might take you up on it.”

  I didn’t get a chance to reply before Austin’s mouth came crashing down on mine. His lips were firm and warm, just like the rest of him. And fuck me, did he know how to kiss. Our tongues battled with each other in a fight for supremacy, Austin only winning when his hand snaked into my hair to bring me closer. Although this wasn’t my first kiss – far from it, considering I’d lost my virginity at fifteen

  – it was the most erotic.

  By the time we broke apart, both of us were panting, and I was seconds away from coming in my pants. The backs of Austin’s fingers ghosted over my cheek as our eyes locked, and that’s when I knew I was right from the very beginning.

  The fact that our feelings for each other developed quickly didn’t matter to Austin, but the intensity of what I felt for him still scared the shit out of me months later. In the end, it wasn’t until he told me he loved me for the first time that I allowed myself to truly open my heart to someone other than my mom or brother. And fuck me did it feel good.

  Eight months, three weeks, and six days…that was how long we lasted before shit went south. Nearly nine months in which I can honestly say, I’ve never been happier.

  In hindsight, I’m glad we chose not to tell our friends and family about us. Not only because Austin and I were worried they wouldn’t accept it, but because it ended before either of us felt comfortable taking out relationship public. We weren’t ashamed of what we were doing, not even close. It’s just that we both had so much to lose. Albeit our concerns were different, we agreed there was one constant in our decision to keep us quiet; we both had a hell of a lot to lose if or when it came out.

  While Austin’s issues were centered around his dad’s antiquated views on same-sex relationships, mine were based on the fact that I hadn’t found a way to explain my sexuality yet. And if I couldn’t explain it, I figured I had no business talking about it. It wasn’t until years after Austin and I split that I was able to give what I wanted a name.

  Polyamory, bisexual, ménage, my sexual preference goes by several different names, but they all boil down to the same thing; I need both a man and a woman to feel complete.

  It’s not just about sex either. I don’t engage in meaningless threesomes, but I have been the third in a few already established relationships when a couple wants to spice things up. Although there’s nothing better than having four hands, two mouths, and numerous possibilities for where and how to use them, I don’t need it to get off. I’m perfectly capable of being with just one person, it just isn’t what I want when I think about settling down in a long-term committed relationship.

  I’m not going to lie and tell you I’m there yet, that I want to find a man and woman to play house with. But in saying that, if the opportunity presented itself, I wouldn’t blink at reaching out and holding onto it with both hands. However, there is one problem with the hypothetical scenario of me settling into a permanent ménage relationship. That being, when my mind does inevitably explore the possibility of forever, only two people come to mind. One of which I haven’t seen in over a decade, and the other, well, she is barely speaking to me, let alone willing to entertain the idea of me sharing her with another man indefinitely.

  Like I said before, the second I met Austin Masters, I knew that he was going to be an important part of my life, maybe even the most important. And he was until I met her, and then I finally knew what it felt like to be whole.

  CHAPTERFOUR ~ Jump ~

  “Shetoldmetostop pokingherwithmy morningwood,andItoldhernottoplaywith her breakfast.Unfortunatelyfor both ofus,

  she went home hungry.”

  –Jump’s starttotheweek “I can see that talking about your mom upsets you. If you’d prefer, we can move on to something else,” Shauna speaks gently, letting me know that I’d spaced out on her. For how long, I don’t know, but it must have been a while based on the odd look she’s giving me.

  Apologizing quickly, I mutter, “Sorry, was a million miles away.” With a small quirk of her lips, Shauna nods down at her legal pad and says,

  “So I noticed. Would you like to continue now, or is it better if we break for lunch and regroup in say, an hour?”

  “I’d prefer to get this over with if you’re good to keep going.”

  “Of course,” she nods again, enthusiastically. Thinking about it for a minute, I ask,

  “Look, I figure it’s better if I just give you the condensed version from here on out. My past is full of shit that doesn’t need to grace the pages of a glossy magazine.”

  “But…” Shauna stammers. I cut her off before she can protest any further. “I’m not going to leave anything out, just cut it down some. The fact that my mom’s death is still a mystery to my brother and me, seeing as it was ruled an overdose and to our knowledge she had never touched drugs in her life, isn’t something I want to be published. I don’t want to discuss my sperm donor, either, and my personal relationships are off-limits too. I’ll talk, you listen, and if you save your questions until the end, I’ll answer just about anything you want. Does that work for you?”

  Shauna considers my suggestion and, eventually, tilts her head in agreement. Not that she really had any choice. Either she complies with my requests, or I walk the fuck out. Simple.

  This isn’t easy for me, knowing that every word from here on out could be printed in black and white, and picked over by a bunch of judgmental fucking strangers. However, I’m choosing to look at this as me letting go of some of my past. Call it cathartic. Call
it therapeutic. Call it fucking stupid for all I care. If life has taught me anything, it’s the bigger the problem, the more radical the solution has to be.

  Since everything else I’ve tried to let go of the guilt hasn’t worked, and I know that I’m only one slip up away from losing everyone that matters to me, I’d say radical is just what the doctor ordered. And fuck Boss for knowing what I needed before I did, the insightful bastard. He’s never going to let me live this down if it works either.

  There’s just one thing I need from Shauna before I start, and that is,

  “You’ve got to promise me that if I do this, you’ll leave names and places and how they’re connected to me out of your article. That’s non-negotiable, and if you can’t promise me that, then I’m out of here.”

  Shauna doesn’t blink at the harsh tone in my voice, agreeing immediately, just like I thought she would.

  “You have my word I’ll keep the specifics off the record.”

  “Let’s just hope your word is good because if it isn’t, you’re not going to like the consequences,” I warn seriously. A visible flinch has Shauna shifting in her seat, but I have to give it to her, she doesn’t run screaming from the room which means she’s stronger than I first gave her credit for.

  “You don’t know me well enough to trust me, Patrick, I understand that. However, you’re going to have to put your preconceived notions that everyone’s out to fuck you over aside for as long as it takes to do this interview. It might not make any difference to you one way or the other, but I have no reason to go back on my word.”

  She’s right, you know. Shauna doesn’t have any reason to screw me over, but I can’t help being cautious. Especially where my brother and his family are concerned. The last thing I want is Cash’s history to rear its ugly head and bite him in the ass, along with the humiliation and condemnation that comes with a past like his.

  For my entire life, Cash has been my protector, my best friend, and the only father figure I’ve ever known. As a kid, I looked up to him, idolized him even, and with everything in me, I strived to be just like him. Cash is the kind of man who would risk his life for the people he loves, in fact, he has more than a handful of times. He’s fiercely loyal, devoted, and it’s almost impossible to trigger Cash’s temper unless you fuck with his family, then all bets are off, and he’ll come out swinging.

  But above all, Cash’s greatest gift, what I would most like to have inherited myself is his ability to forgive and forget. Somehow, regardless of the horrors of his past, Cash has been able to put it behind him. To look at him now, so in love with his wife, Kennedy, how deeply protective he is of her son and our half-brother, Talon, and how much he adores their six-month-old son, Caine, you’d never guess that Cash was once exactly like me. Cold and unbending with a heart encased in an impenetrable fortress of stubbornness and hatred.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I summon up the courage I’ll need to get through this and start talking. “You already know that I was sick as a kid, but it got so much worse after mom died. Not only because the surgery didn’t go ahead, but because Cash and I were living on the streets. We couldn’t risk Child Services splitting us up, putting us in different foster homes, so the stupid, naïve kids we were figured it was better to be homeless together than have a roof over our head and be separated. In theory, our plan was solid, just not so much in practice. We left home the day after the coroner came and took mom’s body away and Cash gave his statement to the cops. They weren’t interested in talking to me outside of asking if I’d seen or heard anything suspicious, seeing as I didn’t get home until after Cash had found her.”

  “When Cash woke me up and told me to pack one bag with clothes, a jacket, some shoes, and bathroom crap, and the other with the shit I really couldn’t leave behind, I’ll admit that I freaked the fuck out. We were just kids for fucks sake. Neither of us had the first clue what we were doing or where we were going, and we didn’t have the resources to find out either.”

  I remember watching Cash pack up the only items of value we had in the house, thinking that if he sold them, they wouldn’t get us far. In total, we walked out the door with mom’s diamond earrings, a watch that our grandparents gave her for her eighteenth birthday, a gold necklace, three silver photo frames, and a silver candlestick holder. I also remember how sad it made me that what was contained in one small backpack was the sum total of nice things mom had accumulated over the years.

  She deserved so much more than some useless trinkets such as a candlestick that sat on a dusty shelf and a few photo frames. Mom was the most amazingly selfless woman I’ve ever met. She put everyone else’s needs ahead of her own, and never complained when she had to go without to make sure we had what we needed.

  What made me even sadder was how little Cash got from pawning the only things we had left of our mom. To me, everything she touched should be treasured, priceless just because she had come into contact with it.

  Cash reassured me that this is what mom would have wanted, that if she were here, she would have done the same thing. I wanted to believe him, of course, but knowing that and reconciling the feelings that came with selling part of my mom were two different things. I mean, it wasn’t as if we were using the money to buy stupid shit, it was for cough medicine and food, but it still gutted me.

  “Shit didn’t hit dire straits until the winter six months after mom died. Cash and I were living in an abandoned building in Billings when I got so sick I could barely stand up to take a piss. There was no money for medicine or to pay for a doctor’s visit, and as minors who were runaways to boot, we couldn’t just show up at an ER. Jesus, it was enough that we were living as squatters, praying every day that no one reported us to the cops, let alone me getting sick on top of that, but that’s exactly what happened. For a while there, I honestly thought that was the end for me, that I was going to die cold, hungry, and homeless and my brother would have to sit idly by and watch it happen.”

  My greatest fear back then was that if I died, Cash would live thinking it was his fault, that he was somehow responsible for my fucked up heart finally giving out. I knew Cash would carry my death on his conscience forever, that’s why no matter how bad it got, how fucking sick I was, I used all of my strength to fight. I promised myself that I’d keep fighting until I took my last fucking breath to make sure Cash could live without yet another dark mark etched into his soul.

  Swallowing past the lump that’s formed in my throat, I continue. “Cash did everything he could to find work, but jobs aren’t easy to come by at the best of times, let alone when you’re underage and unskilled. He picked a few that paid cash under the table, which we managed to make do on for a while, but when I started getting sicker, we both knew a couple of hundred bucks a week wasn’t going to cut it.”

  This is where I want to preface what I’m going to say next with desperate people do desperate things, but I don’t. If Shauna listens as intently as she has been, she’ll know without a doubt that what my brother did for me was not only an act of desperation but out of unconditional love. “Four weeks without any work, we were starving, and

  my health had deteriorated so badly that even breathing was becoming a struggle for me. Cash scoured the streets practically begging for a job, day in and day out before a woman who owned a clothing store finally took pity on him and offered him a few hours a day unloading boxes of stock. I didn’t meet her until well after Cash started working for her, but my impression was that she was an ice cold bitch.”

  My hands shake as the memories of Francesca, her friend, and the proposition they offered Cash. They considered what they were doing a gift of sorts, a handout for the poor, homeless boy and his little brother. What it really was, was two women taking advantage of a kid who only wanted to protect his brother and keep him alive by any means necessary.

  I’ve already done this once when Cash forced my hand, making me tell our brother, so I assumed this time it would be easier; I was wrong. It isn’t harder, just
different. My brothers and I don’t live a life that leaves a lot of room for judgment or shame. We make decisions and live with the consequences of them, good or bad. A stranger, though. Well, who knows how Shauna will react? Which in essence is what has me clenching my jaw.

  Biting the bullet, taking the first leap of faith I have in a long time, I grit out,

  “In essence, the owner of the shop offered to pay for my surgery, medical expenses, and medication, give us food and a room in her house if Cash promised to do certain things for her for two years.”

  “Wow,” Shauna gapes at me. “No. Fuck no! You don’t get it,” I snarl at Shauna, vibrating with rage. Not at her, but at the situation in general. “What she wanted Cash to do for her wasn’t wash her car or clean her fucking house. No, that cunt wanted my brother to hand himself over as her willing sex slave. A toy for her and her friends to use and abuse as they saw fit. And the participants of this sick as fuck sex free for all weren’t just women.”

  “Oh, God,” Shauna hiccups.

  Yeah, that doesn’t even come close to covering it. “Two years. Two fucking years that fucking bitch held my health and the promise of paying for my operation over Cash’s head. Two years, she kept putting it off, trying to placate us with gifts she gave us expecting our undying gratitude. And when they didn’t work, when Cash still asked every day when she was going to make good on her promise, she fucking lied. My life was hanging in the goddamn balance, and she didn’t give the first fuck.”

  I snort derisively at just how fucking cold blooded Francesca was.

  “You know it’s funny how karma works. That bitch spent so much time concocting lies and making up excuses, that it ended up costing her more than it would have if she just let the operation go ahead from the outset. After the first surgery, I needed another one. Forget the fact I’d contracted a post-op infection, and set aside the weeks spent in hospital and months of recovery time, my heart was rejecting the replacement valve. In the end, the bitch had to cough up for private nurses, rehab to help rebuild the muscle I lost when I was confined to a bed and enough medication that I could put drug dealers out of business. But ever the crafty cunt, she found the silver lining in my health complications. Swapping my painkillers and antibiotics with aspirin kept the doctor’s busy trying to figure out why I wasn’t getting any better, and me bedridden barely able to lift my own head up.”