by April Lust
Chapter 3
The next day, Olivia showed up on time, pen and paper at the ready, ignoring the weird looks she got from MC members and their groupies on her way up to Xander’s loft. Jerry had given her a key for her own personal use. She made a mental note not to mention that to Xander until trust had been established. And I will establish trust, she promised herself. She had never failed before, not even with the most violent criminals. There was no way this silly little biker boy was going to stump her, no matter how unpredictable he was.
When he walked up into the loft, he didn’t look surprised to see her this time. He nodded in greeting, slamming his backpack down roughly on the ground and stretching his arms out like he was getting ready to either break into a run or go to bed.
“You’re late,” she said to him in as strong a voice as she could muster. He was really only about four or five minutes behind schedule, honestly better than she expected, but she needed to establish rules early on. They were partners, but she was the authority here. That’s how it worked. It was the only way they could make progress.
But Xander didn’t acknowledge her comment, instead marching over to his kitchen area to grab something from the fridge.
Olivia sighed deeply. Oh, of course. This couldn’t be easy, could it? “Would you mind remaining sober for the duration of our visit today? I’d like to get the clearest, most lucid answers possible,” she said.
“You want one? All you had to do was ask,” Xander said, turning around to head back to the kitchen.
“No! Nope, that’s fine,” Olivia said, and Xander sank into a chair near Olivia instead.
He cracked open his beer and took a deep drink.
When do I bring up his obvious alcohol abuse? Olivia wondered to herself. But, then again, her inner voice argued, you’re really in no position to judge, hanging out at the bar every night of the week.
Fuck off, Olivia told her inner voice. It’s not my job to be a fully-functional adult. It’s my job to help other people get there.
Xander stared at her expectantly, his legs spread out as far as they could go.
Olivia wondered if he was trying to be obnoxious or if he just naturally sat that way. She cleared her throat and clicked her pen to signify the start of the session. “So. Xander. What do you want to get out of this partnership with me?”
He answered by way of a half-shrug, barely lifting one shoulder. His face was expressionless, completely blank.
Okay, so this was going to be a hard nut to crack. That was fine with Olivia. She had plenty of experience with unwilling, obstinate clients. She could do this. “Are you unhappy to be here with me?” she asked.
Xander just grunted.
Olivia waited, expecting him to open his mouth and say actual words, but a true response never came. She sighed. “So I’m getting the sense that you’re not excited to be here.” She tapped her pen impatiently against her paper. “What would you like to talk about? Nothing’s off-limits. We can open with something easy.”
Xander shrugged again and turned his head to look out the window.
Okay, this strategy isn’t going to work, Olivia thought. Let’s try a different angle. “So when did you first ride a motorcycle?” she asked, putting her pen down. Maybe a casual vibe would work better.
“Long time ago,” Xander muttered, still not looking at her.
Olivia started to feel her back muscles tense up in anxiety. She expected him to be difficult, but there was something about the flat, deflated way he was sitting in the chair, like he was a puddle instead of a person. It was like his brain had detached from his body and left.
Olivia cleared her throat and tried again, pivoting back to a direct approach. “Are you upset with your uncle for setting this up?”
Xander’s eyebrows twitched a little at that, but he still refused to say anything substantial. “It’s whatever,” he grunted.
Olivia tapped her knees thoughtfully. Maybe he was just nervous about opening up. In her experience, anxious clients tended to clam up if they felt like the meeting was an interrogation rather than a conversation. Maybe she just needed to talk more. “Perhaps you’d like to know more about my goals and objectives being here.”
“Cash?” Xander suggested, his voice cold and low.
Olivia laughed at that, too loudly for the awkward tension in the room. “Well, aside from monetary compensation, I want to help you self-actualize, Xander. Do you know what that means?”
He stared at her, offering nothing in the way of response.
“It means being able to achieve your full potential. Being all you can be. Knowing yourself and what you want, and finding a path to get there. Doesn’t that sound appealing?”
Xander shrugged again. “I’m fine right now.”
Yeah, you’re just peachy fucking keen, Olivia thought. “Of course,” she lied. “Of course you are. But wouldn’t you like to be more than fine? Wouldn’t you like to be doing well? Doing as well as you can?”
“I think I’m there already, thanks,” Xander said. This time his voice had an edge to it, like he was getting pissed just listening to her.
That set something off inside Olivia. He was sitting there barely contributing a single spot of help and he had the audacity to get annoyed with her? Time to take the gloves off. “Do you have any interest in contributing to this conversation?” she asked.
His expression changed, finally. Now his brows were pushed together and his nose scrunched up in disgust. “Depends,” he spat, “are you gonna talk like a human being or just throw around psychobabble for the rest of the afternoon?”
Olivia had to suppress the groan of frustration that threatened to leave her throat. This was getting ridiculous. She felt like she was trying to climb a rope slicked with butter, just slipping down every time she tried to get a single inch higher. “I’m just here to help you, Xander,” she said, keeping her voice steady and calm. “That’s all I’m here to do. But unless you’re willing to help yourself, all you’ll be doing is wasting your uncle’s money.”
“He’s got plenty of it to throw around,” Xander argued, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Want one?”
“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.” Outside of bars, Olivia added silently.
“Suit yourself,” Xander muttered as he lit up and took a long, slow drag.
Olivia waited, expecting him to say something else, something about Jerry, something about the club—anything, really. But nothing came. “So is this what it’s going to be like for the next few months? I stare at you and you stare back at me and nothing gets accomplished?”
“Months?” Xander asked around his cigarette.
“Well, your uncle didn’t give me a timeline. But he paid me more than I make in a year, so I’m willing to stick around for as long as it takes.”
Xander frowned again, his whole face turning hard and cold. “Until what?”
Until you surrender to me, fucker. “Until you come around and start contributing to our conversations.” They just stared at each other for a long moment, neither moving an inch, before Olivia spoke again. “The sooner you talk, really talk, the sooner I’ll be out of your life.”
Xander blew out a slow, steady stream of smoke. “All right.”
“All right?” Olivia repeated. Did that really work? Was she finally getting somewhere with this asshole? Fuck. She inwardly berated herself for thinking of her client poorly. She was supposed to be objective. Neutral. A trusted authority figure. She couldn’t very well do that if she was letting herself get annoyed with a troubled man.
“I’ll fucking talk,” Xander said. “But I ain’t gonna say shit you want to hear.”
Olivia straightened up in her seat and clenched her pen tighter. Maybe she cracked him open. “That’s fine. There are no rules here.”
“Okay, look,” Xander began, pausing to suck on his cigarette. “You’re not gonna be happy with whatever this is. It’s just not going to happen. You’re better off leaving now a
nd never coming back because it’s just a waste of your time. I’m okay with where I am and how I am right now, and I don’t need to fucking change.”
She looked at him a moment, watching how he sat, how his muscles moved, how his fingers twitched around his cigarette. “Hmm.”
Xander looked up from his lap to glare at her. “What’s that for? What you fucking humming about?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” she lied, turning to her pad of paper to scrawl some gibberish down, just to cultivate the image that she’d just made a great breakthrough.
“Now, what the fuck are you writing? What? Come on, what?”
Olivia sighed. “Oh, it’s just—you know, another silly psychobabble term. You wouldn’t like it.”
“What is it?” Xander demanded. There was an edge of urgency to his voice this time.
“In my profession, we call it ‘denial.’ When the brain literally can’t accept what’s plain as day. That’s all,” she said, a casual tone to her voice, before turning back to her papers to pretend to write something highly important.
“Oh, yeah?” Xander said, standing up from his chair. Olivia looked up to see him with clenched fists. “And what the hell am I ‘denying,’ exactly, doc? Tell me.”
Olivia tapped her pen against her legs, a little too roughly. A pink spot started to form on her knees, but she liked the stinging sensation. She liked that little edge of pain. “You claim to be happy with where you are in life. But you’re smoking and drinking constantly, filling up every spare moment with something to distract you.”
Xander scoffed. “Everyone in the club does that. You’re gonna have to reach harder if you’re gonna diagnose me as fucked up.”
“The fighting, Xander. Constantly hitting your own men. What’s that about?” Olivia asked.
“I fucking feel like it!” Xander half-yelled. “That’s a good enough fucking reason.”
Olivia shook her head. “No, it’s not. It’s not good enough. You’re hurting people. You’re hurting yourself. That’s not okay.”
“Yeah, yeah, save me the sermon, okay?” Xander shot back. “I’ll live my life my way. It’s none of your concern.”
She tapped her feet in thought for a second, watching him as he walked closer to the couch, clearly fuming. Olivia wondered, distantly, if she should have been scared, if he would hurt her. Her heart was pumping, but it wasn’t out of fear. She felt like her blood was going crazy inside her veins, begging her to do something. She got to her feet and walked to the center of the room, mere inches away from Xander. “You’re right, you know,” she said, and her voice was surprisingly low, barely above a whisper. “It’s not my problem. I’m here to get paid. I really shouldn’t care if you get better or not.”
Xander glared at her, his jaw clenched tight.
“I do care, though. Maybe it makes me unprofessional, but I do. I’m not going to stop caring. And I’m not going to stop trying until you get your life together. So get used to me, buddy.”
“You’re fucking psychotic,” Xander laughed, walking away. For a second, Olivia thought he was going to go downstairs and get away from her, and she prepared to break into a run to stop him, but instead he just went over to an ashtray on a counter and put out his cigarette. “You’re out of your goddamned mind.”
Olivia shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, it’s not about me. It’s about you.”
Xander marched back over to her. “Nah, no, come on. I found a topic I wanna talk about. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about what kinda fucking psycho comes to a motorcycle club to help a guy run drugs better. I mean, what the fuck?”
Olivia stepped closer to him and stared up into his eyes. “Sure. Sure, we can talk about that. But you know the difference between you and me? I know what I’m doing. I might not be okay with it, but I’m aware. You’re stumbling around in the dark.”
“Oh, and what, you’re gonna shine a fucking nightlight in my direction??”
Olivia stepped a little closer. “If that’s what it takes.”
Xander’s eyes were full of something Olivia couldn’t read. Something beyond anger, beyond irritation. Again, she wondered if he were about to hit her, if this is what it looked like when a man decided that you were a piece of shit.
No. No, he won’t hurt me, she thought to herself, and she was surprised at how certain she felt.
“You’re a fucking piece of work,” Xander murmured, putting a firm hand on her shoulder.
“I’m very determined,” Olivia whispered. Her heart pounded like a ticking bomb in her chest.
Xander slammed his mouth against hers, lips hard and unrelenting. His tongue slipped against the crack between her lips, not quite dipping inside but slicking along both lips.
Olivia moaned at the sensation, opening her mouth to let him in. What am I doing? What am I doing? Olivia asked herself. I don’t care, she answered. I’m doing what I want. For once in my life, I’m doing what I want.
Neither of them talked. They didn’t have to. They grasped at each other’s bodies, nails digging into bare skin painfully. Olivia felt so desperate, like she was starving, like she was being denied the oxygen that she needed to survive, and the only way to keep going was to suck on Xander’s lips, lick his tongue, drop wet kisses all over his chin and cheeks and ears. “God,” she grunted out into his ear. “God, fuck, damn.”
“Yeah,” Xander said into her mouth, his hand coming up to wrap around her neck. “Fuck, yeah.”
Olivia pushed Xander’s shirt up, clawing at his stomach and chest and clavicle. His abs were so hard, so solid. She wanted to dig in and never let go. Instead, she pushed her hands around to claw at his back, scratching up between his shoulder-blades and down into the dimples above his ass. God. He was so fucking firm. Pure muscle.
Xander pushed her skirt up, scratching along the insides of her thighs and then up to her stomach and hips. He squeezed her waistline, hard, hard enough that Olivia squealed like a little girl. But one hand traveled north, pushing up over her bra and clenching over it. Olivia gasped into his mouth, accidentally dragging her tooth along his bottom lip, but he groaned, deep and long, and Olivia took the hint and sucked his lips between her teeth.
He pushed one hand into her bra, grabbing at her bare breast, kneading it in his palm. Olivia moaned and leaned forward into his touch. She wanted him to take more and more of her flesh. She pulled her hands out of Xander’s shirt, ignoring his groan of annoyance, to reach back under her dress and unclasp her bra. Xander took the hint and yanked the bra away, throwing it halfway across the room.
Olivia pushed her hands along his shoulders and collarbone, digging her nails in hard enough to leave long red streaks behind every stroke of her fingers. She dug her nails past his neckline, down across his chest, before resurfacing to tear his shirt over his head and off his body. God, he looked so gorgeous, so fucking perfect without a shirt on.
Meanwhile, Xander’s hand found her zipper and tugged it down, pushing her dress aside and leaving her in just her black panties. Olivia moaned quietly as she was stripped bare, her hands coming up to hide her nipples as Xander pulled the fabric away.
He bent his head down and licked along her neck, biting down on her veins, the rhythm of his tongue matching her pulse. Olivia arched up into his touch, bending her neck to give him better access. He licked to her ear, nibbling her lobe and then moving to the sensitive top corner of her ear. He pulled it into his mouth, scraping with his teeth, rubbing little circles with his tongue.
“God!” she yelled out.
“Careful,” Xander warned her as he licked his way back down her neck. “You don’t want anyone downstairs to hear what a bad little girl you are.”
She groaned, wrapping her arms around Xander’s waist. “Fuck.”
“Shh, shh, shh,” Xander whispered in her ear before biting down on it gently, sending sparks shattering down Olivia’s spine.
“Fuck, I’m sorry, shit,” she whispered, rubbing her hand through his hair, turning it in
to a wavy, sweaty mess.
“No, no,” Xander rushed to say, pressing his mouth against hers again. “I like it. I like hearing you want me.”
“I do,” Olivia admitted. “I want you.”
“Yeah?” Xander said, pushing his hand up her neck and tangling into her hair. “You fucking want me, baby? You want me to fuck you?”
Olivia moaned weakly into Xander’s neck and ran her nails down his bare back. “I want it.”
Xander’s hands drifted down past her waist and over her hips, down to the band of her underwear. “You want me to fuck you? You want me inside you? You want my fucking cock?”
“Yes,” Olivia moaned, biting lightly on Xander’s neck. “I want you. I fucking want you.”
“I’m gonna give it to you, baby. I’m gonna give it you hard,” Xander promised before biting the edge of Olivia’s chin, sucking so hard that he definitely left a mark.