by Liz K. Lorde
THE STICK TURNS BLUE and I’m flooded with a sense of shock and joy.
I’m going to be a mom.
Holy shit. “It’s blue!” I shout from the bathroom and drop the white stick on the bathroom counter of our apartment. I turn on my heel and head through the open doorway into the master bedroom where Connifer’s laying on the black sheet covered bed. He’s already looking at me with that infectious grin on his face, and a gleam of joy in his cool blue eyes. Morgana’s clothed in her pint-sized lilac dress and sitting on her daddy’s stomach, pulling playfully at his beard.
“It’s blue?” Connifer asks with naked joy.
“It’s blue!” I practically squeal before jumping onto the bed and joining them, snuggling up to Connifer and kissing him over and over. I don’t know how many times I repeat it’s blue while my lips are on him, but I’m sure that it’s enough to break some sort of Guinness world record. I slip my hand in Connifer’s and squeeze him tightly, hoping to give him some of the love that’s pumping through me.
The baby looks to our engagement rings for a moment before throwing her arms around my back and neck, jealous that I’m stealing some of her precious time with Con. “Bwu,” she vocalizes, “mama bwu.”
Connifer laughs, “I think you got her excited, love.”
“That’s because it’s blue,” I giggle, kissing his lips for a good long time, sending my other hand to the back of Morgana’s head and holding her from an awkward position. “She’s going to have a sister.”
“Or a brother.”
My eyes go wide with a mix of excitement and, “Or both.” Now I’m thinking about all the people I’ll have to have over for the baby shower. Ray and his fiancé Charles. Leo and Tabitha. Dad and Belle and Samantha.
“Two boys,” Connifer says with the weight of impending sleep in his tone, kissing my lips again, “two strong boys and their little sister.”
I smile at him, putting my hand on his face, and in that moment the warmth of our soul’s entwine with one another. The love that we share crystallizes in time, like a morning rise of orange against the lush green of nature; joy cloaks itself around the three of us, and I know like a holy truth that our bond is going to carry us from here and into a blissful forever.
THE END.
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STEEL KNIGHTS (Motorcycle Club Romance)
Revved Up Soul - Novel - Book 1 (not standalone) [FREE w/ MAILING LIST]
Revved Up Hearts - Novel - Book 2 (not standalone)
Gabriel: MC Romance - Novel - Book 3 - standalone
HELL REAPERS (Motorcycle Club Romance)
Hunter: MC Romance - Novel (100K words) - Book 1
CHAOS, NEVADA (Mafia / Various Genres Romance)
Our Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Novel - Book 1 (Standalone)
Hotstreak: A Badboy New Adult Romance - Novel - Book 2 (Standalone)
SPECIAL THANKS
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HUNTER: MC ROMANCE - HELL REAPERS MC BOOK #1 (limited bonus book)
1
Jessica
You know your day’s going bad when you find yourself having to recklessly speed downtown; I could hear my boss grinding his teeth just waiting for my late ass.
I’d slept late and though it wasn’t like me to hit snooze on the alarm sixteen times; I forced my white 2002 corolla to slow down, taking a sharp right turn against a red light. Yeah, never mind, that sounds like me nearly every damn day. My tires screeched like a banshee in heat and a few people in traffic were kind enough to tell me to go and get myself laid.
Couldn’t disagree with that solid advice.
I rolled my eyes briefly and sped onward to the Applegate Sun. They were of course, one of the more modestly sized newspaper companies, but a girl’s gotta get paid somehow. It wasn’t all bad, spending most of my days writing for people that thought less of me than the shoes they would come in to work with.
Alright, well at least the pay was still solid. Mostly.
Some of my coworkers saw me as ‘lucky’ for having our head writer, Amanda Childes, get a nasty case of bronchitis. Me? I found myself supremely unlucky. Not that that was much different than how things usually were for me. With Amanda benched, my hardass and notoriously Machiavellian boss, Franklin Gates, was on the hunt for her temporary replacement. Someone, and I’m not naming names – but it was probably Laura Tankretti, sly as a fox and total office BFF, had the bright idea to float my name in his ear. Can’t say it was my cheery demeanor that caused me to make a good impression on people.
Whatever it was about me, it always seems to get me in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Wrong described my life all too well, and I was starting to get sick of the taste of those bitter ashes in my mouth. People in life always had the mind to mention that hard work and being kind led to good things, that something better is always just right around the corner. Yeah, well, guess Fate didn’t get that notice – seems like nobody above, or below, knows my name.
Flying like a bat out of hell through another red light, I expertly weaved my now going on six years old labor of love through a frantic sea of mechanical beasts, prowling the rough and tumbled streets. I could feel my nerves flaring up; a horrible mix of anticipation, fear, and eerie serenity. Horns wailed, but all I could hear was the cranked up smoothness of my rock ‘n roll; the flow and motion of the car as I turned and threaded the needle, so to speak.
Alright Jessica, get your head in the game - you keep this up, you’re going to hurt somebody. Keep cool. Everything around you is just a distraction, just noise.
Beat the noise.
The gripping tightness in my gut wound itself tighter when I had to slam on my brakes for the guy ahead of me. The four banshees screamed their displeasure, and my hand found its way quickly to the horn. When I was in my more rebellious youth, I tended to watch a lot of action movies and car chases were my absolute jam. Dad, when he was around, half expected I’d end up in jail for boosting cars or playing driver to some robbery. I always did have a knack for disappointing him.
This fracking guy, what the hell is he doing? He had no reason to stop. I blare my horn again quickly and check my mirror, switching over to the right lane and throwing up my favorite finger at the SUV as I pass him.
***
Rolling to a stop, I arrive in the parking lot at work. Even though I know I’m running late, I give myself a quick once over in the mirror; green eyes, framed by what an ex used to call ‘fiery’ orange hair, stared back at me. I wrinkled my nose and took a deep breath. You can do this, don’t let them smell the fear on you. If Gates knows you’re afraid, he’ll rip you apart.
Getting out of my corolla, I slam the door shut and strut my way through the parking lot. I wasn’t wearing anything particularly fancy; I liked to keep things casual and not too serious. Black workpants with a white button-up and my favorite pair of faux-leather lace-up boots.
Finding myself at the door connecting to the Applegate building, I went through and padded down the empty hall. Maybe I didn’t want to dres
s too sharp after what happened, subconsciously I guess. Jerry was, well, a real piece of work. Just thinking about him made it feel like there were spiders crawling all over me, I could feel them. I could feel them and a cold shudder passed through me at the memory of his hands pushing me and shoving me, touching me and probing me.
I felt like I was suffocating all over again, and I knew that I had to reign myself in. Or else.
Don’t think about that creep, I thought. He’s dead to you now. I pushed the thought from my mind and spent a spell getting through the hornets’ nest of writers, editors, researchers, interns and a potpourri of other various journalistic specialists. The main office room was a series of cubicles, warm electronic lights and natural shafts of sunlight; of which, they poured from the large windows on the wall that faced towards the bustling streets and buildings outside.
There was one employee, my good friend Laura, who had the gall to actually come and notice my late ass. “Finally decided to show up huh?” She asked. She was a rough and tough country girl, probably more used to horses than to men. Laura liked to frequently eschew the normal dress code, even more so than me, and dressed herself in a plaid top. I envied her though, for having a definitive style and managing to make it work for her.
I gave her a quick wave, hurrying myself along, “Yeah, well,” I started, “you know. I thought to myself ‘why come in today? If I come in, Laura’s not going to have to get a damn thing done’.”
She nodded her head sarcastically, “Right. You slept in,” she called out matter of fact as I passed her.
“I totally slept in,” I turned and admitted, starting to walk backwards, and brought my arms out, giving her a look that said ‘fuck me, right?’ “I realize sleep isn’t what they pay us in, but it’d be nice if they’d let us have some of it every once in a while. You know, just to pretend like we’re normal.” I spun on my heel, turning away from Laura and continuing to Mr. Gates’s office.
Before me was the glass behemoth that no man or woman was ever supposed to come out of alive, or so I’d been told often enough. I’d only met the man a handful of times while I’ve been working the job, but every time I saw him he had a look on his face that told me ‘Hey, Jessica, if you could do me a favor and just lay still for me while I rip out your guts and feed it to the peanut gallery, that’d be great’. He had the most intense silvery eyebrows I’d ever seen, like someone had taken a hammer to his face and just forged him to be some pure machine of hate and disappointment.
I steeled myself for the moment to come and straightened down my clothes, trying to put out wrinkles that weren’t there.
I reached for the door handle and turned it. I looked back briefly behind me, and then shut the door. He was sitting there, in his throne of a chair, a quiet rage seething just below his skin. Mr. Gates looked at me with those cold, appraising brown eyes. “Ives,” he said simply. He had a receding head of wispy grey hair that was parted to the left, and a strong, historic jaw.
“Sir, I can explain—”
He put up a hand and shook his head. I could feel my heart tapping against my chest. “No need to explain,” he let out a breath like he had been practicing since he realized that I was going to be late this morning, as though it were the one thing that gave him joy in his life. “Can’t expect the best when you don’t have the best.”
I smiled, like I usually did when I wanted to rip off someone’s head. Hard to expect the best out of your employee’s when your boss treats them like garbage.
“Sit,” Gates pointedly insisted, steepling his hands together.
Finding my way over to the seat, I sat down and settled in. “I am sorry, sir,” I did my best to assuage the man’s temper. I was probably wasting my breath, but in the world of politics only two things got you further up the shit ladder: kissing ass and faking statistics. And on the truly rare occasion, doing hard, honest work.
He gave a single chuckle, “I don’t want sorry, Ives. You know Amanda’s sick, everyone does. You’re lucky to be sitting here, you know,” Gates pulled himself up from the large, red leather chair. “I could have pulled anyone from the pit, so trust me on this, Ives,” a throne hand-stitched for assholes. The man slowly crept over towards me. His eyes narrowed and his face darkened, “I will not tolerate failure.”
I can hardly tolerate you, “I understand, sir.”
He said nothing about that, but instead gave me a concerned look. “I know what’s going on with your mother,” he said, his tone turning softer, gentler, like he was reconsidering his hard position. “She’s good people.”
A finger of warmth pressed against my chest, and I found that a pebble had made its home in my throat, “She is.”
“Let me cut this down to the brass tacks,” Gates backed away from me then, moving over to his giant, rich, cedar wood desk. “If you agree to take this job, and by no means is this going to be easy, mind you. I’m not going to lie to you, kiddo,” his eyes told me more than his mouth ever could - it was strange, to have him come across as so cruel, but now so concerned. “You do this, and I’ll put you on the clock for every billable hour you can give me, and I’ll pay you at double your rate. If you can deliver me a truly substantial piece, I’ll throw in a bonus and have you as first in line, come promotional rounds.”
Fire went through my flesh freely. All of that for Amanda’s assignment? This has got to be huge. Just what am I getting myself into? “Sir, that’s very generous of you - but I’m, I’m not in the know,” I admitted, confused. The wire of my well-worn bra poked at my breast when I moved in my seat, “what was Amanda tasked for?”
A smile walked along the lines of Mr. Gate’s face. “You ever hear of the Hell Reapers? Notorious guys, I’ll tell you that much.”
I narrowed my brows and tilted my head, I hadn’t heard of a hell nor a reaper. “Can’t say that I have, sounds pretty grimdark, though.”
He nodded his head, “They’re bikers. Gangsters even, to me at least. They style themselves as kings of the underworld, Ives, and what they do? The people need to know. They’re out there, and they’re bleeding this city for all she’s worth.” It looked like Mr. Gates needed to have a drag of a cigarette just talking about these people, could they really be that bad? I wasn’t convinced.
“I’ve literally never heard about them on the news, sir,” surely they couldn’t all be such terrible people. I honestly thought most of those ‘gang’ type clubs were for shows, like Sons of Anarchy or something. “Not in the paper; not on SM, radio or anything.” SM being paper slang for Social Media. Facebook and twitter, along with reddit and tumblr, even occasionally LiveJournal; they were all strangely reliable sources for people admitting to things they shouldn’t.
“They keep things low key,” Gates waved a hand, “but to those who have their ears to the ground, you’ll find that they are the biggest, nastiest players in the game. The good book would burn at their feet in repulsion, if they were ever inclined to own one,” Gates looked stressed, he shifted along the edge of his massive desk, his custom tailored suit moving along with him. “Drinkers. Smokers. Hitters. Dealers. They’re all of the above, Ives,” he pointed a fatherly kind of finger at me, “there’s a sin, you’ll find it in every corner of their house. They style themselves as a ‘club’ but they’re only a small step above gangbangers.”
Tingles ran through me at the thought of what those men might look like. I used to be all about the cute, bookish types - and I guess, maybe, a part of me still is. But I could never resist the inner, typical fangirl lust in me; the thought of some tatted up, muscular man-with-a-plan made my lady bits ache delightfully. “What do these guys look like? If you don’t mind me asking.” Please don’t mind.
“Probably how you imagine them,” Gates offered. Naked and wet from a fresh shower? Yes please. “My sources tell me the Club President, Brad, has a real gruff beard,” check, “and of course, these guys do time, they live it rough. They’re all looking like roided out freaks, to me,” delicious, so long a
s they’re ‘cut’ and not ‘roided out’. “And when you live the life, Amanda was telling me, if you’re patched in, then you’re tatted in as well. Guys wear lots of ink.” Sounds like heaven to me.
“Sounds like these are some pretty rough guys, where can I find them?”
“Not a lot is known about their legitimate spots, but there is one location that Ms. Childes had scoped out. Couple of the mid-level players like to hang out at Club Vivid.”
“The one down on Evelyn street?” I tried my best to look innocent. I could feel my inner self crossing her arms and giving me a pointed look. Good luck with that, Jess.
Gates gave me a funny look, his brows furrowing, making him look like an owl that wanted to peck my face off. “Yes…” he trailed off, “the one on Evelyn. Amanda theorized that it’s probably a legit front.”
“You mean like, a place where they clean money? So that the dirty money comes across as if it’s from legitimate business?”
Gates shook his head in acknowledgment. “I want you to infiltrate these guys, I’ll give you three, maybe four weeks, to gather what you can - and I’ll let you keep a log of your hours spent on this.”
“That’s very kind of you sir, very kind.”
Gates smiled then, “I’m a kind guy, Ives, don’t you know?” Your daily yelling and monthly firing of personnel tells me otherwise, sir.
“I do now,” I felt a smile stretch out the lines of my face.
“This won’t be easy, Ives. I can’t give you any advice on how to actually approach this, but I do wish you luck. Gods know you’ll be needing it. I need information on the drugs, guns, or whatever else in the hell they could be running. Tear these guys to shreds, Ives, they’re the scum of this city - and it’s going to be our paper that brings them out into the light.”
I felt a small laugh escape me, and I threw back my wild hair over my shoulder, “Don’t worry, Boss. Us women have our ways,” men are like dogs. Show them a bone and they’ll scurry to your heel; give them what they want and they’ll tuck tail and run.
Gates looked pleased, “Of that I have no doubt, Ms. Ives,” he said, “of that, I have no doubt.”