“It's cold out tonight.”
Beck laughs raucously, tossing his head back.
“Shoot, it's warmer than a whore's cunt out here.”
“I want my jacket, please.” I touch my fingers to the leather, pursing my lips and waiting while he looks me over, eyes cutting deeper than I'd like them to. “This area, it's not home to any club. Nobody will even notice the patches on our jackets, I promise you that. I have a lot of free time on my hands, and Seventy-seven Brothers is my life. We're very careful not to step on anyone else's toes. Something that you and yours could learn something about.” Beck laughs at me again. Everything is fucking funny to this man.
I take a step back and bump into the warm metal of his Suzuki Savage as Beck leans forward, getting so close to me that I have to look up to keep hold of his gaze. Our foreheads touch, just enough that I can feel the sweat on his skin.
“You've got balls, Miss Emilie 'Tease' Hathorne. Wear your damn coat, but don't cause me any trouble. Your President knows we got you, and you're right: he wants your ass back real, real bad. We're arranging a meeting place as soon as Melissa can be moved.” Beck looks off to the side for a second, like he's trying to process the thought.
“I told you, Seventy-seven Brothers is a family. And we understand family. If they have your friend, they'll keep her alive. That's what we do. We don't post armed gunmen on roofs.” I blink and my eyelashes actually brush across Beck's skin. His turn to shiver as he pulls back and looks me up and down again. In his pants, I can see the shadow of his cock, hard and ready. My palms start to sweat and I get nervous again.
“Then who did, Tease? Who shot my friend in the back?”
“If my brother ordered that, she wouldn't have been hit in the back; she'd be dead.”
Beck stares at me, gaze hard, like he's trying to determine whether or not I'm lying to him. I keep my eyes open and my face still. After a moment, he pulls away, shaking his head.
“We lost ten people today, Tease. Ten. One in five of the people I called family are dead.” Beck turns to look at me. “Eight of yours. So, eighteen people died because someone fired that shot. Now, who the fuck would do that?”
“Eighteen?” I ask, mouth dry. Beck ignores the question and starts off towards the doors to the restaurant. I grew up with this club; I know everybody. Everybody. Everybody. But at least my brother's okay, right? He said the President. “Tax,” I say, slipping my feet into the flip flops and following after Beck. I completely dismiss any fantasies of hitting him in the back of the head or anything like that. This man obviously knows his shit. Getting the jump on him is going to take something big, like sex. But even that was just barely. I may just decide to wait this out. “The President. You said President. Is it Tax?”
“Ain't nobody being real specific here. This is all a bit of a clusterfuck. We're all a little scatterbrained at the moment. In short, I don't rightly know.”
I fight tears, pushing them back for another day. I won't show this man any emotion. Eight people dead? I run my hands down my cheeks, blinking hard as we enter into the bright light of the restaurant. Beck holds the door open for me as I shuffle inside in my borrowed shoes. I refuse to think about where they came from.
“Table for two there, twinkle toes,” Beck says to the waiter. I watch as he pulls the wool over his own eyes, hiding from the emotion I saw in him this morning when he snatched me off my porch. I bet there's a lot of that buried deep down inside. I … felt it when we were having sex, too. Beck is a bottle whose top is about to burst off.
I follow him to the table and scoot into the seat opposite the green-eyed devil. It feels so wrong to sit here with a menu, under these fluorescent lights and pretend like everything is normal, like I'm out on a cheap date. I purse my lips tight.
“Don't need these plastic sheets there, friend,” Beck says, grabbing my menu from my fingers and tossing them both to the end of the table. The waiter sets our water glasses down and stands there looking like he'd rather be anywhere but here. “Two burgers, medium, with fries. Two Cokes. Make it quick. I am fuckin' starved.” The man grabs our menus and retreats with a small exhalation of breath.
Awkward silence descends around us. Or maybe it just descends around me. Beck doesn't seem to acknowledge it. He sits there staring at my face, tapping his fingers on the speckled gray laminate of the tabletop. The word less stares back at me from his knuckles. I can't believe I had sex with this man. I think this, but even as I do, I know it's a bit of a lie. I can smell his spicy, warm scent from across the table. My eyes unconsciously trace the lines on his arms, sorting through the darkness of his tattoos and focusing on the bronzed skin beneath. My throat gets a little tighter.
“When are we meeting for the exchange?” I ask, acting as if this is any other business transaction. The right side of Beck's lip twitches up into a smile. He rubs at the blood stains on his shirt, the ones that actually aren't drawing as many suspicious glances as I thought. The people in this diner are all quiet, bent over coffee. Mostly truckers, I guess. They probably don't give a fuck about some biker in a bloody shirt. I bet they see a lot worse.
“A week.”
I almost explode from my seat.
“A week?” I ask, curling my hands around the edge of the table. My heart speeds up again, but I ignore it, mostly because I'm afraid of what it might mean. Triple M. I get to meet the other people, get to see how they work from the inside. This also means I'm stuck with Beck. I cross an arm over my chest and grab onto my bicep, digging my nails into the gray cotton of my shirt. A lot can happen in a week. “I have to go an entire week without knowing who I've lost?”
“You play nice; I play nice,” Beck repeats, drawing my temper out again. I don't mean to get so riled up, but something shifted in me after we had sex. I just feel angry with him. I can't fucking explain it.
“Yeah, well, you keep saying that, but what does that mean?” I don't bother to keep my voice down. It's obvious now that nobody cares what we're doing here. We're in the middle of Goddamn nowhere right now. “You want me to be your whore for the week? Give you favors in exchange for favors?”
“You been hangin' out with the wrong crowd, sugar tits.”
“I don't like pet names,” I tell him honestly. I especially hate the term princess. Beck raises his red brows and leans forward. His face is so rough and handsome, so masculine. Even his mouth, full and sensual, doesn't have a drop of femininity. Beck is a man's man if I've ever seen one, and trust me – I've seen a lot. He's older than me, not excessively so, but there's definitely an age gap here. Beck has very thin, very fine laugh lines at the edges of his eyes. Instead of seeing it as a flaw, I find it hot. I don't know why. Obviously this man isn't as simple and carefree as he pretends to be. Still, nobody with lines like that can ever be considered austere or straitlaced, not like my brother at all.
“Your fuckin' nickname is Tease, and you don't like pet names? You tell me how the hell that makes any good sense.” Beck sits back and slaps his palms on the table.
“As far as you're concerned, my real name is Tease. That's what I go by. It's not a pet name; it's a fact of my life. I hang out at the clubhouse and I look good because that's what everybody expects from me. It's the easiest way for me to keep my brother out of hot water with the rest of the guys. I'm a drain on the group, and I don't put out, and I don't work, so I have to do fucking something, okay?” I get angrier than I mean to, leaning forward and then slumping back. “I am a cock tease. A tease. Tease. That's my fucking name.”
“Your fucking name is Emilie. Wear what your momma gave you with pride.” Beck and I stare at each other with our green gazes, speaking the same language in different dialects. “How the fuck old are you anyhow? A little young to be so cynical, don't you think?”
“I'm eighteen.” Beck whistles under his breath, shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair. I stare at the patches on the front of his vest and pretend his reaction isn't bothering me.
“Woo wee. Shit, fuck and damn. You are young. I hate being right sometimes.” Beck looks around and then gets out a cigarette. Nobody seems to care when he lights up. “You don't sound like any eighteen year old I ever met. What's the matter with you, woman? Where's your sense of fun?” I tilt my head to the side and stare at him.
“Fun? What fun am I supposed to be having here, with you? You kidnapped me. You took my family members away from me.” I touch a hand to my chest and fight the tears back. I almost don't want to know who's gone. If I don't know, it can't hurt me. I swallow hard and sink into the red pleather of the bench seat.
Beck doesn't answer for awhile, smoking his cigarette and staring out the window at the darkened sky. Stars are twinkling like diamonds, wrapped in a sea of black velvet. The diner is quiet, just a slight clinking of silverware and the gentle clatter of porcelain in the background.
“I don't act eighteen because I don't feel eighteen. I've had a strange life. My father and my brother were very protective of me and my sister.” Fuck, Tease, why are you telling this man your life story? He doesn't care. And even if he did, he doesn't have a right to know. I think of Lizzie, living in her apartment near the college, going to school for engineering. She's basically the opposite of me. A wild party girl with an independent streak. She's always known what she wanted, and when the time came, she went out and took it. I bet she'd like Beck. “What about you? You act like a teenage boy. What's your story? How old are you?” I try not to sound too eager, but I'm kind of desperate to know. I've only been with … boys before. I had sex with two of my high school boyfriends, and only a handful of times. I've never been with a real man. I slide my hand down my arm and feel goose bumps. In the back of my mind, I keep trying to tell myself it doesn't count because I did it for reasons other than lust or love. But I know it really does, maybe even more than any other encounter I've ever had with a guy.
“I'm dumb as a bag o' hammers, and I ain't got no sense. Life's more enjoyable that way, you know?” Beck winks at me, and his smile turns into a sizzling smirk. I can tell he knows what I'm thinking. “And shoot, I'm an ol' man. Why do you want to know my age?” I cross my arms over my chest and glance up as the waiter appears and delivers our Cokes, no straws, no smile. Guess he doesn't like Beck's pet names either.
I watch as Beck drags his drink over and downs near half of it in one gulp. I like the way his throat muscles move as he swallows, the slight swell of his Adam's apple bobbing slightly. I wrap my fingers around my sweating glass and wait for him to finish.
“Ah, that hit the fucking spot,” he growls, making my body purr in response. I look away and bite my lip hard to get control of myself. This is fucking stupid. So fucking stupid. Now I am acting like a horny eighteen year old. “You done talkin' to me, sweets?”
“I might be,” I whisper, taking hold of the mixed bag of emotions I've got hanging around in my gut. I wrap them up and toss the out the window, looking for that calm, apathetic disconnect I'm so good at. It's like that weird calmness Beck pulls over himself. We are pretty similar in a lot of ways.
“How 'bout this? I'm thirty years old, and all I have in my life worth living for are my friends.” I look back at him and see that he's still smiling, but with a heavy melancholy in his gaze. “You and I, we ain't so different. I'm sorry about what happened today, I really am. But maybe we can call a truce for now?” He lets his smile melt into a grin. Defense mechanism. But that's okay – we all need one occasionally. “After all, I had a real good time earlier today.”
I breathe in deep and try to find the right words to say, but nothing'll come out. I open my lips and close them tight. Shit. He knows now. I don't think he did at first, but he does now.
“And good job on that one. I didn't see it comin'. You almost got me there, sugar, and that rarely fuckin' happens.” Beck finishes his cigarette and pushes open the window next to him, flicking it out into the night. “And,” Beck leans forward on his elbows, ignoring the waiter when he sets our meals down in front of us. “If you ever want to try again, I'm more than willing.” I reach out for my plate, looking him in the face and nearly exploding from my skin when he clasps his warm, sweaty hand around mine. My heart jumps into my throat as I struggle to breathe. “But if you don't, I won't touch you. You can bet your tits on that.”
Beck lets go of me and sits back, spinning his plate of food around and throwing me a smile.
A moment later, I smile back.
Beck
Chapter 13
Austin doesn't want me to come all the way to Nashville. I don't tell Tease, but her President, her brother I guess, doesn't just want her back. He is fucking furious, not just about the kidnapping but also the fight that went down. So am I, but fuck and shit? Who the hell fired their gun on Melissa? If that wasn't a call to arms, what was? I'm mourning, too; I'm grieving, too. Doesn't matter to Seventy-seven Brothers though. They want us to take responsibility for what happened back there, admit to starting the fight, and then they want a whole other host of shit that ain't ever going to happen.
I zip down the interstate looking for a place to stay. My pick is going to be random, somewhere off the beaten path and out of sight. I gotta keep our trump card secret. Emilie Hathorne. Shoot. She is tough shit and a whole handful of hotness. I still can't believe she was able to pull my gun on me and fire a shot. I guess I was mesmerized by that tight, young pussy of hers. Fuck. That is exactly what she wanted, and I fell right into the trap. I might just feel a bit slighted that she didn't want me for me, you know what I'm sayin'. I'm a good lookin' guy, right? This is by far the most lady trouble I have had in a good, long while.
Oh well. Miss Tease here and I are going to be hanging out until we can sort this shit out. We hand her back now and then what we will have? Melissa, yes, but probably not for long. Last thing Triple M needs right now is a full on war with an MC as organized and well run as Seventy-seven Brothers. They will flat out fucking destroy us.
I don't let my brain dwell on the lives lost today. That'll come later, in the night no doubt. Sometime in the future, I am going to wake up screamin'. But at least I know the people I'm closest to are alright: Austin, Gaine, Mireya, and Kimmi. And Melissa Diamond. She is actually a-fucking-live. I don't know why Seventy-seven Brothers decided they were going to snatch her up, but it's a blessing. They coulda just shot her dead.
I swing down an exit, enjoying the feel of Tease's hair against my neck. I got a helmet strapped to the back of my ride, but I haven't given it to her to wear. I like being able to smell her sweetness, the gentle allure of shampoo. My dick has been perpetually hard since we fucked earlier. I didn't get any release from that shit, and I'm ready for a second round. Tease, though, I'm having a hard time figuring her out. I don't know if she wants me or not.
Get through this, Beck. This is a low point in life, but that's alright. 'S all about balance. I got shit, so next round, I'm gettin' gold.
I swing into a parking lot and slide up to the front doors of the lobby. Tease doesn't look all that excited about our stop, but that's alright. Soon as this is over, she can go back to her clubhouse and her MC.
“Come on in and let's get ourselves a room. I am damn near beat.” I hold out my hand for Tease's, but she doesn't take it, climbing off my metal beauty with grace and a confident half-smile on her face. I have no clue what she's thinkin', but at least she's cooperating right now. I like the girl, but I have to be careful with her. If she somehow managed to get a hold of her brother and told him how to find us, I would be fucked up ass creek without any lube. Yee-fucking-Haw. That would be some major hurting and then probably end up with me pushin' up Goddamn daisies.
I make Tease walk in front of me, guiding her up to the counter with my hand on her lower back. I got plenty o' money on me, thanks to Austin and Kimmi's latest conquest. Good thing about dealing with motels like this is, they take cold, hard cash and don't ask questions. We're not staying at no fancy bed and breakfast like we were in Korbin, but that's alright. I
ain't picky.
“Room 105,” I say, tucking our keycard in my front pocket and moving back out to my bike to grab my stuff. Tease doesn't say a word to me until we actually get in the room, and I start first thing with unplugging the phone from the wall. I open the sliding glass doors that lead out to the pool area and toss the damn thing in the bushes nearby. It'll be there when we check out, and this keeps Tease from getting easy access to it.
“I won't pretend I have any clue what you're doing,” Tease says, leaning against the wall with her eyes locked on me. She's stopped looking for petty routes of escape. By now she'll have recognized that I am a genuine badass extraordinaire. I chuckle at my own inner joke and squeeze past her, leaving the sliding glass doors unlocked. If she tries to run, I can catch her pretty easy. I still got some skills left over from my time wearing a green beret.
“Give you a hint. It has to do with the bed and a pair of handcuffs.” Tease raises her brows and gives me an odd look. I put my hands on my hips and stare right back at her, taking in the ugly orange linens on the single bed, the faded paintings, the crooked desk, all out of the corner of my eye. “I gotta get some sleep, too. Since I'm on duty by myself, I have to take precautions. Hope you don't mind, but you'll be sleeping in cuffs tonight. I'll try to make it pleasant for ya.”
I breathe out, letting go of the day along with it. Picking up a lady tonight isn't an option, and I've been riding all day, so my priority right now is finding some way to relax. I need to let some pressure out of the cooker, or I'm goin' to blow my top. I move past Tease, tasting her scent on my tongue as I slide open the doors and step out onto the pavement. Surprisingly, she follows along with me. Thank Christ because I don't know what I'd do if I was dealing with someone like Mireya, all headstrong and full of claws. To kidnap her, I'd have to keep her perpetually knocked out and dreamin'. On the other hand, Tease isn't screamin' and cryin' neither. We both know what's going on here, what's at stake for both of us. It's just easier to go along with the flow.
Needing Me, Wanting You Page 8