by Nicole Fox
“Yeah.” I sigh, staring up at the ceiling through half-open eyes. I feel more relaxed, more able to talk. Maybe I ought to keep some of these meds on hand for when I leave, but then that’ll make me a junkie, just like the assholes who killed Jimmy. “What sort of a father am I going to be, Ranger? Ask yourself that. The fuck am I going to do for a kid? Teach him how to shoot, how to ride? And then he’ll end up exactly like me.”
“You don’t have to do that, though,” he says. “You can be somebody else, somebody new. That’s the beauty of children.”
“I guess so,” I whisper. “But here’s the thing. What can I offer except for my outlawin’? What am I if I ain’t an outlaw?”
Ranger leans forward. “All right, fella, it’s time to stop this self-pitying shit. I’m gonna ask you a series of questions and I want you to answer with yes or no. Are you a coward?”
“Come on, man …”
He squeezes down on my wrist, just hard enough to hurt. “I know what you’re gonna say. If you weren’t in this bed you’d get up and knock my head off. But you are, so fuckin’ deal with it. Now, are you a coward?”
“No.”
“Do you love Allison?”
“Yes.” That one comes with an ease which would have shocked me only a week ago: which still shocks me now.
“If she is pregnant, are you going to abandon her?”
“What? No. Of course I’m fuckin’ not.”
He leans back. “Then everything else will sort itself out. If you love her and you’re determined to stick by her, then what’s the problem? Don’t worry about all that other shit.”
“You know, Ranger, you’re a good friend. A really good friend. But if you ever lay your hands on me like that again, I’m going to break your goddamn neck.”
“Not until those wounds’ve healed, you ain’t.” He grins down at me. “This is quite fun, actually.”
“You’re a sick bastard. Why’nt you stop wagging that fuckin’ tongue of yours and go and find Allison. I’m going crazy here, man. I just got her back and now she’s gone AWOL.”
“That means Absent Without Official Leave, don’t it? What sort of official leave would she need to get, your permission?”
“Don’t get all fuckin’ feminist on me. Just go find her.”
He puts on his Stetson and goes to the door. “If I find her, I’ll send her up. I need to get back to the diner now, man. You know what it’s like there without me.”
“Yeah. Peaceful. Fun. Maybe you ought to stay away longer.”
He smiles, tips his hat. “If that’s an invitation to a double date, Maria and I would be happy to oblige. Dinner. I’ll cook.”
“Of course you fuckin’ will. See you later, man.”
He leaves and I close my eyes. I don’t know how much time passes, only that when I open them again the night is even darker than it was when Ranger was here, and the hallway is even quieter.
Then the door opens and Allison walks in. She’s blurry at first, but when I focus my eyes I see that her face is pale and tired-looking and so clean it’s like she’s disinfected it. She walks over to me half-hugging herself, like she’s seen a ghost. She sits down next to me and places her hand on mine. It’s cold, clammy.
“Are you okay?” I whisper. Dammit, I wish speaking wasn’t so draining.
“Yes,” she replies. “It’s just … I …” She closes her eyes, takes a breath, and then tells me what she did at the warehouse.
The more she talks, the further my mouth falls open, until I’m like a cartoon character. “I must be hallucinating. There’s no other explanation. No damn way. I don’t … this just doesn’t make sense. Squeeze my hand.” She does it, and it feels real, but then earlier today when Jimmy was sitting in the corner and talking to me that felt real, too. There’s no way to know. “You’re telling me that you, Allison, went to the warehouse and took out the rest of the Brass Skulls, on your own.”
“Yes,” she says, offering a shaky smile. “I know. I get it. I hardly believe it myself. I don’t know what got into me. When I look back on it, it seems completely crazy. But it happened. That’s why I took so long. I went back to my place and had a shower, but I still didn’t feel clean so I had a bath as well, and then I still didn’t feel clean so I had another shower.” She shivers. “I know one thing for sure after today. You can’t die on me, Granite. I need you to help me get through this. You know more about this stuff than I do.”
“Feelin’ like you’re standing on the tip of a spire and if you go too far either way you’ll fall right down to your death, just keep fallin’ until you can’t even die anymore ’cause you’ve died too many times?” I’m dribbling, I realize. Fuckin’ meds. Allison dabs my lips. “Ignore me,” I tell her. “One second I’m floatin’ and the next I’m fallin’. I don’t know where my head is. But you, Allison, you fuckin’ did it. Don’t feel bad about those pricks. The way they had you bent over when I found you; bent over like you were there to service them or some shit.”
“Hush.” She kisses my forehead, stroking my hand until I stop clenching it. Not that I can clench it hard. It’s more like a child’s trembling. “Don’t get yourself worked up. It’s over.”
“Over. To me it’s like it’s only just beginning. Don’t laugh at what I say next, ’cause right now real and imaginary ain’t so different. Before I went into the warehouse for your brother, did you tell me you were pregnant? Or was that all in my head?”
“Pregnant?” She tilts her head, purses her lips, looks inward as though searching for an answer.
“I knew it,” I say, a heavy weight settling on my chest. I guess I didn’t realize how badly I actually wanted a kid with her until now. “It’s strange, because I heard you say it just as clear as you’re talking to me now.”
“How did you feel about it?” she asks.
“Like I wanted it to happen. Like I wanted to rise to the challenge. That ain’t to say we have to have a kid, not if you don’t want—”
“But you want to?”
“Yeah.” I laugh, and it’s a free laugh, the way I’d laugh as a kid with Jimmy. Magical meds.
“Good.” She reaches into her pocket and takes out a small white stick. “Because I really am pregnant. I’m sorry. I know it’s a cruel trick. I just wanted to see how you felt.”
“That is a damn cruel trick!” I snap, but I’m smiling. “Goddamn, Allison, what sort of game are you playing? But you are, you really are?”
“You sound like a kid on Christmas.” She has tears in her eyes. Dammit, I have tears in mine, too. “Like you can’t believe the present you’ve got. Do you really feel that way? Are you really happy?”
“Happy,” I mutter. “That word ain’t enough for it. I’m—I feel different, I already feel different. I feel like I can’t die now ’cause I’ve got somebody waiting on me. I can’t die when I’ve got a kid on the way, can I? What sort of fucked-up move would that be? No, I have to live. I have to be strong. For him—and for you.”
“For him?” She kisses my cheek over and over, her tears dripping down my face. “Doesn’t that seem a little presumptuous?”
“Marry me!” I shout, though it’s more of a quiet whisper the state I’m in. “Marry me, Allison! I want you to be my wife. I wanna be out in the yard working on my bike and then come into the house and you’re there with our baby, cooking or playing video games or reading or whatever it is both of you wanna do, and I wrap my arms around you both and you wrap your arms around me and—that’s love, right there, that’s what love is. Marry me.”
She wipes tears from her face, kisses me one final time, and then leans up. “I won’t give you my answer now, because you’re on all this medication. Ask me when you’re not high.” She smiles. “That stuff looks good. I wish I had some.”
“I’d give you all of it if I could,” I say. I feel lightheaded, like I could fly through the ceiling and up into the sky. “I’d give you everything. I love you. There, I said it. I love you!”
; She smooths her hand up and down my arm, sending electrical prickles all over my body, healing me. “I love you too.”
Epilogue
Allison
“I’ll never get used to morning sickness.” I emerge from the bathroom dabbing my mouth with a paper towel. Granite’s on the couch, smiling over at me, smoothing his hand over the raw pink gunshot wound. “You shouldn’t do that,” I tell him, sitting down next to him.
“I’m just glad they’re healing,” he says. “Glad I’m alive. Goddamn.”
“Do you still want to visit my brother with me today?” I ask.
He smiles over my head, glancing around the house: my place, but also his place now, too, half filled with his stuff. Not that there’s much: a few leather jackets, clothes, a couple of framed photographs of him and his little brother. “This place needs some work,” he says. “Some man’s work. A few nails. A hammer. A saw.”
“A saw?” I fall into his lap. He catches me, kisses me. “What do you need a saw for?”
“To cut that baby out of you!” He tickles me, lifting me off my feet and then hugging me close to him, holding me off the ground. We kiss for a long time, losing ourselves in the kissing, our lips fusing together each moment. I love the way his tongue feels, rough and familiar, the way his body feels pressed up against mine.
Then he carries me up the stairs and into the bedroom, kissing all the while. When he lays me down and yanks my pants and underwear off, a shiver runs through me. His tattooed, scarred body would have scared me once, but now it promises pleasure, promises comfort. He leans over me and pushes his massive cock inside of me. We’ve made love countless times and yet each time it feels new, a host of novel sensations working their way through my body. He slides his cock deep, deep, deep inside of me, staring in my eyes the whole while, and I stare back at him, and for a moment it’s like we’re one body, one person, and then we split apart and throw ourselves into animal fucking—not lovemaking anymore.
I grab onto his shoulders and bounce up and down on his cock, grinding my hips against him as he thrusts into me, his cock smashing into my sweet spot over and over. The orgasm explodes in my pussy, a small tingling that throws its pleasure outwards like the Big Bang: a tiny pinprick of pleasure turning into an entire universe of euphoria. I close my eyes, open them when he kisses me, kiss him through the orgasm, nipples tingling, body on fire, everything flushed, steamy, wet. I squirt onto his cock, hard, the orgasm emptying out of me, and then he arches his back and thrusts into me deeper than he’s ever been before, coming so hard that his body seizes up. He collapses onto top of me, panting.
We lie like that for a long time and then silently get dressed and return to the living room, both of us basking in the afterglow of the sex.
“You changed the subject,” I say after a few minutes of sitting in front of the TV.
“Did I?” He grins at me. “I don’t remember.”
“I asked if you wanted to visit my brother with me.” I kiss him on the nose. “You look so cute when you’re trying to get out of things.”
“Get out of it?” He jumps to his feet and throws on his leather jacket. “I can’t wait to go to the hospital! Do you know how much gunshot victims love hospitals, my sweet angel?”
“Don’t be a jerk.” But we’re both smiling as we walk down to the car.
“Maybe you ought to give me those keys,” he says. “I reckon I can drive, now that these wounds are healed.”
Before I can answer he snatches the keys and climbs into the car. He leans across and opens the passenger side door for me. I climb in, unable to stop smiling at him. These are the most fun times, when we’re messing around like this. It’s like we’re teenagers on one long date, always playing with each other, always making each other laugh.
“I love you,” I say, as he starts the engine.
“Don’t get all soppy on me now.”
The visit with Brandon goes as expected. He’s recovering but that infection that hit him a few weeks back has taken his toll. He’s going to be okay, but it’s a long process. He’s asleep when we get there so we just sit with him for a while.
Granite pats him on the back of the hand. “All right, fella,” he says. “I want you to know you’ve got a family waitin’ for you, all right? The old lady’s told me all about you, so I know you ain’t a bad person.”
“That was nice,” I say, as we stroll back toward the car.
“Don’t act like that,” he says, stopping me with an arm and turning on me.
“What do you mean?” I look up at him, perplexed.
“These past few weeks, tiptoeing around it.” He grins at me. “Tryin’ to work out if I remember sayin’ it but not wanting to come out and ask.”
“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.” Although I do; I think I do.
“I meant it,” he says, looking seriously into my eyes, more serious than he’s been since the hospital. He reaches into his pocket and falls to one knee in one fluid motion, despite his injuries. He opens the ring box and looks up at me. “I love you, Allison. I love you more’n a man like me will ever be able to understand. I love you more’n I thought a man like me could love. I want to marry you. I want you as my wife. And I wanna be the best goddamn husband and father I can be. Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” I squeal, the answer so obvious I hardly need to say it. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
He slides the ring onto my finger, lifts me over his shoulder, and carries me to the car. “I’m taking you home!” he says, laughing. “I reckon it’s time we learned what engaged sex is like.”
THE END
***
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Books by Nicole Fox
Click any of the covers below to go straight to the book page!
Born to Ride: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Midnight Hunters MC) (Beards and Leather Book 3)
I was born to ride her ‘til she breaks.
She was never meant for a man like me.
But a vicious blizzard drove her into my arms.
So I did the only thing I know how to do:
I bent her over my chopper and made her MINE.
KARA
There’s no feeling quite like walking in the door of your home and seeing your fiancé getting hot and heavy with a strange woman in your bed.
It’s rage and sadness and embarrassment all mixed up in one nasty cocktail.
And coincidentally, a cocktail is exactly what I needed after I caught that lousy S.O.B. cheating.
After that stiff drink (and maybe a couple more), I had to decide what I’d do next.
Maybe a few days at home with my family would do my soul some good.
I pack up my things and hit the road, but it doesn’t take long before my luck gets even worse.
A nasty blizzard drives me off the highway.
Now, I’m stranded, freezing, and alone…
Except for the dying man in the ditch.
I almost screamed when I saw him.
A brawny, tatted beast lying half-naked in the snow.
I don’t know whether to help him out or run screaming for the hills.
But my conscience won’t let me leave him there.
So I bundle him into my car and go searching for somewhere to stay while the storm blows over.
We find an abandoned cabin…
The beast wakes up…
And that’s where my troubles truly began.
RYDER
I woke up freezing and on the verge of death.
My memory is a painful blank.
But I know one thing: whoever did this to me is going to pay the price.
I’m not sure who it was or how I ended up here.
But I’m glad the girl picked me up.
> I might be dead if not for her.
Time to show my appreciation… the way only an outlaw biker knows how.
She takes us to an isolated shack, and then we started drinking.
The first whiskey warms us up.
The second gets us talking.
The third strips her naked.
Making her mine is savage and sweaty.
But what she doesn’t know is that the men who put me in that ditch are coming to finish the job.
If she wants to survive this ride on the wild side, she’ll have to follow my commands.
Get on your knees.
And get ready to open wide.
Built to Kill: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance (Moretti Family Mafia)