Willa thought of her tall, lanky father, a rough man who’d raised up rough sons and tomboy daughters. He was older than their mom by a bit—more than the ten years between Rad and Willa. He’d left Duchy for a spell when he was young, did a couple of years riding bulls without much acclaim, then tramped around on oil rigs for awhile. When his father had needed help on the farm, he’d come home and married a little local girl.
Rad was a lot like her dad, she thought—rough on the outside, brusque and sometimes harsh, but tender deep down, and fiercely protective.
Her dad had really struggled with her problems with Jesse, and he hadn’t been there the way Willa had needed. To him, Willa was too headstrong. He’d seen Jesse as trying to get control of his woman, and he’d seen that as a thing a man should do. Until Jesse had hurt her badly. Then it had probably become as difficult for Jesse to be in Duchy as it had been for her.
She didn’t know about that, because she hadn’t come back.
Her mom was little and bubbly, happy to fill in her husband’s laconic silences, and happy to let him think the family ran his way. They’d made a good pair to balance a family out. Their kids learned which parent could be worked in which way, and which parent to avoid in certain circumstances. Willa had never felt anything but loved here.
Even when they hadn’t understood her need to be away, or her need for more than Jesse. Even when they hadn’t been able to see that the way he treated her wasn’t just ‘old-fashioned’—or if it was, that she couldn’t abide it. Even then, she’d known they loved her.
And they hadn’t kept her in Duchy. They’d let her take her scholarship and fly. When she said she had to stay away, they’d understood. When she said no one could know where she was, they’d kept her secret.
They’d done their best.
After a calm stretch of quiet, Rad set his hand on her leg and slid his palm up the inside of her thigh. “I fuckin’ love these little dresses you wear.”
She hadn’t changed after church, except to switch her ballet flats out for an old pair of scuffed cowboy boots she’d found in her closet. For church, she’d worn a little grey fit-and-flare dress with pink roses. It had spaghetti straps, and her dad had made her cover up—he hated her tattoo, even if it was a memorial to her grandma, his mother—so she’d worn a denim jacket over it, but by the time they’d gotten home, it was far too hot for a jacket.
Now she was sitting on this rock in her little sundress and battered boots, and Rad’s hand had made it all the way to the top of her thigh.
“Sittin’ in church, thinkin’ about how close I was to this,” he rasped at her ear. “They should do a sermon about your pussy. It’s a goddamn miracle.”
“Blasphemer,” she giggled.
“No, baby. I am a true believer in the glory of your body.”
Oh man, how his fingers felt, his touch light, his skin coarse, leaving little shockwaves in their wake. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she let her legs relax and fall open.
When his fingers pushed under the elastic band of her underwear, she whimpered and put her hand on his. They were within sight of the house—through a narrow band of trees, and about a hundred yards away or so, but still. Her parents were in that house. Her father. “Rad, what are you doing?”
“I told you once I’d take you somewhere private and fuck you outside.” His fingers found their goal and slid inside her. When she arched back, he caught her with his other arm and held her close.
“On your bike,” she gasped. “You said you’d fuck me on the saddle.”
“Drove my truck out here, though. Don’t see your old man lending me his Softail so I can bang his little girl on the seat, do you?”
Willa laughed. “Yeah, no.”
Rad took his hands away, released her, and stood up.
Surprised and disappointed, Willa scowled at him—but her expression wouldn’t hold when she saw him put his fingers into his mouth.
“You stopped,” she pouted.
“I ain’t done. Get up, baby.” She stood up. His eyes gleamed down at her. “Take that little dress off.”
Reflex had her crossing her arms over her chest. “Rad…”
He caught the hem in his hands and lifted. “Off. Everything but your boots.”
She looked over her shoulder at her parents’ house—it was pretty far away, and the trees would obscure them from view better than they obscured the whole house from here.
“Willa.”
She let him take her dress off, and her bra. He laid them both on the rock, then slid his hands over her hips, taking her panties down. He knelt before her, and she set her hands on his shoulders and stepped out of her underwear.
She was naked but for the boots. Out by the pond. All they needed was Hugh Hefner, and they’d have themselves an erotic photo op. Girls of West Texas.
Staying on his knees, Rad hooked his hands around her thighs and pulled them apart. Then, clutching the globes of her ass in a punishing grip, he put his mouth to her.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” she breathed as his tongue swiped a long path through her folds and over her clit.
Overwhelmed almost at once by every conceivable sensation—the warm air, the sweet scent of the trees, the sound of the ducks, the knowledge that she was within sight of the house, within the range of risk of discovery, the feel of his beard and his tongue and his lips, and his teeth, the tactile sound of his own enjoyment—Willa’s knees gave, and only his grip of her ass and her hands digging into his shoulders kept her from tumbling to the ground.
She held on, her eyes squeezed shut tight as the blood in her veins fizzed. Each place that he touched her made a spark, and they all converged into a blaze until she found herself trying somehow to climb onto him, to get closer, to find the answer to her need.
When she cried out that she was coming, oh yes, oh yes, he tore away with a noise like a bear and stood up. Before she could wail a complaint, he kissed her hard, dragging his soaked beard over her skin, making her taste herself completely, and then he grabbed her neck and was behind her, shoving her forward and down until instinct threw her hands up and she was bent over on the rock.
He was behind her, and then she shrieked as she was impaled. She felt his jeans against her ass, the metal teeth of his open zipper nipping at her skin with each powerful thrust of Rad’s hips. She heard his guttural shouts every time he went deep, felt the brutal bliss of his cock driving in, and in, and in, and holy shit, this was intense. They were always intense, but this was something else.
Even in the bright red haze of Rad’s wild taking, even as she lost control of her voice and yelled with every thrust, making a chorus with his own outbursts, Willa needed more. Her clit missed his attention. So she moved her own hand, but he saw her and reared back, bringing her upright, slamming her to his chest, and then his hands were on her, between her legs, and grabbing a nipple, his body still thrusting and thrusting so deep into hers.
She came riotously, totally forgetting where they were, scaring the ducks into flight, and Rad came right after her, lifting her from the ground and shouting to the sky.
~oOo~
When they went back for lunch, her father was sitting under the oak tree with the Sunday paper. He watched them approach. The squint of his blue eyes gave him a wise, evaluative aspect. The reading glasses perched on his nose added to the affect.
“Well, I guess you’re both about ready for a big lunch now, ain’t ya?”
He stared at Rad as he spoke.
Willa could almost hear Rad’s cocky, serpentine smirk. “Yes, sir. We sure are.”
The men held eye contact for a few more seconds, long enough for Willa to worry. Then her dad twitched a smile. “Be sure you wash up first.”
He went back to his paper.
As Rad and Willa headed to the house, he leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I think I’m in.”
Willa smiled and hugged his arm. They both were.
EPILOGUE
“Here. Hand hi
m over. I can feed him while I sit here.” Willa held up her arms.
Rad shifted his screaming son to his other shoulder and asked Barry, “That okay?”
The tattooist sat back and nodded. “Yeah, sure. If it’s okay with Willa.” To her, he said, “Just let me know before you move.”
When Willa bared her breast—she did that all the time now, wherever they were, whenever Zach wanted to eat, and woe to anyone who tried to complain about it—Rad felt the same territorial, protective twist he always felt. Those were his tits, dammit, and he did not like them out where people could see. Where any random asshole could get an eyeful.
Like Barry, for instance, who didn’t seem to be looking, but Rad knew he would. How could he not?
But they weren’t actually Rad’s tits anymore. He hadn’t even been granted post-baby access yet. Those glorious puppies were all Zach’s. And Zach wanted them right the hell now.
Rad handed him over and watched Willa settle him at his meal, smiling down at him and talking to him in a soft, sweet voice, one that was both familiar and new. Zach quieted at once and got to sucking.
There was a moment, every time, just when Zach latched on to nurse, that was absolutely fucking magical, a moment that stopped Rad giving a shit about who could see or what he was missing. The boy looked up at his mom. Mom smiled down at her son. Somebody should paint that scene. Hang it in the Sistine Chapel.
So far, in all things parental, Rad deferred to his old lady. After six weeks, the little guy was still mostly a puzzle to him. He’d gotten forty-one years in life thinking he’d never be a father, that he shouldn’t be a father, and any parental sense he might once have had had atrophied.
He’d been there for Willa; through the pregnancy and the birth, he’d been right there. He was happy to have Zach. He loved him. Holy Christ, did he love him. But there hadn’t been some sudden epiphany where he’d held his own son in his arms for the first time and had immediately known exactly what to do and how to be. His prevailing emotion, if it was an emotion, had been awe—every definition of it. He’d been thrilled. He’d been amazed. He’d been fucking terrified.
But Willa spent her life taking care of people. She spent her career with newborn babies. So he followed her lead. He knew she wouldn’t lead him astray.
She said it was easy: food, diaper, sleep. All three were means of comfort. If numbers one and two were addressed, you gutted out the screaming until number three happened. If numbers one through three couldn’t get you to comfort, then you called the doctor.
Sometimes, babies just wanted company. And sometimes, they just wanted to cry. Like everybody else on the planet, she’d said.
Despite her reassurances that babies this young cried because they had no other way to communicate, Rad felt like he was doing it wrong when Zach cried. He wished he could ask.
For now, though, it seemed Rad’s son was happiest when he had the same thing Rad wanted most of all: Willa.
He walked around to see what Barry was doing on the back of her right shoulder. Rad’s flame. He’d let her pick the style, and she’d chosen an old-style piece, with a fat red heart, colorful flames rising up from its curves, and a fluid banner across it with his name. Tucked into the banner, she wanted a tiny yellow daffodil, the birth flower for March, the month Zach had been born.
Rad watched Barry ink the ‘a’ in his own name. His name. Right there on her shoulder. She wasn’t the first woman to keep his flame, but she would be the last. And she was certainly the best.
He turned over his own right arm. On the day after Zach was born, while he and Willa were still in the hospital, Rad had come here and had Barry cover over a faded piece of his own ink with a globe, blue and green, wrapped in two banners, one reading Willa and the other Zachary. His world. As long as he had them, nothing could pull him off his axis.
After a summer and fall of chaos, the club had quieted down again this year. The Rats had cowered before Irina Volkov and simply closed up shop in Lubbock. Smithers’ death got some renewed law enforcement attention after the Rats clubhouse was blown, but both of those were eventually ruled accidental. An overtired driver and a faulty gas line. Irina Volkov was a smooth operator.
The Dyson crew had been working with the Rats, dealing their horse and coke. Dyson had pulled intel from Chet as a favor for the Rats—a favor since regretted, after Irina took her pound of flesh for Dyson’s part in getting her son killed. Levi Oates was no longer a factor.
The once-solid truce between Dyson and the Bulls had blown apart, making a mess out of the end of last year, but that mutual need to keep their troubles out of town, combined with some Volkov pressure on Dyson, had brought them back together to talk it out, and a new truce had held since Christmas. The Bulls stayed out of Dyson territory now, and vice versa. No more hanging out at Terry’s.
Now, the club was doing its business and keeping everything mellow. The gun routes were smooth. The Night Horde and the Great Plains Riders were both pulling their weight. Everything was quiet. And Rad had a family.
His son had been born into a little life that was about as safe as Rad had any hope of making it. Safe and full of love.
It wasn’t, strictly speaking, good club form to take ink for a woman before she’d taken his, but Rad didn’t give a shit. They were his family, and he wanted them on him. Willa’s doctor hadn’t wanted her to get ink while she was pregnant, so she’d had to wait. He’d wanted her to wait until after her six-week postpartum checkup.
They’d come here straight from the doctor. She was all-clear—for ink and for everything else.
Willa turned her head and smiled up at him.
Eight weeks and two days since he’d had his old lady’s naked body against his own.
~oOo~
That night, Rad sat on the patio, drinking a beer. Ollie lay at his side, and Rad scratched absently at the dog’s ear.
The baby monitor sat on the table, its lights glowing green in time with Willa’s voice as she put their son to bed. The only thing that could have made him happier in this moment was if he were inside her—and he would be, just as soon as she got that hot little ass back down here. He’d fuck her screaming right here on their patio. Give Mrs. Abrams next door a thrill.
Her little house was their little house now. He’d moved out of his crappy rental and pitched most of his belongings. His bikes and tools were in the garage, side by side with a little gym she had set up in there.
Nothing about her house had changed, except for the garage and his clothes and boots in her closet. He’d had very little in the way of possessions that mattered to him, and he liked Willa’s style, so he’d had no interest in ‘making his mark’ on this house. It was his because Willa was his, and that was all that mattered.
They weren’t married. Willa didn’t want it, and Rad knew by experience that a piece of paper didn’t mean shit between two people, for good or ill. Her folks were going crazy over it, however, even more since Zach’s birth. He’d fielded a few angry verbal attacks from Ellery Randall, wanting Rad to get Willa ‘in hand’ and make her do what was right.
Willa’s father was a good man. Rad liked him, and all Willa’s people, a lot. But they were crazy if they thought it was up to him what his old lady did. He’d learned—to get his way, he needed a good reason. He didn’t have one to get married.
Zach had his name, and Willa now had his ink. His club was in its usual groove. Rad had everything he wanted or needed.
The monitor got quiet. Rad heard the careful ratcheting sound that meant she was winding up Zach’s mobile and trying to be quiet about it, and then the light, high tones of a lullaby began to play. Zach was asleep, and she’d put him to bed. They probably had three, maybe four hours.
Rad finished his beer, picked up the monitor, and stood up. He’d meet her inside and take her to their bed, where he had some range of motion.
“Come, on, Ollie. Let’s call it a night. Daddy’s missed Momma.”
CLOSING NOTE
As might be clear to readers of other Freak Circle Press writers, all our MCs exist in the same world, more or less. Though we don’t (and couldn’t possibly) try to align all our timelines, and though our stories are not interdependent, we do refer to each others’ clubs and have small moments where our stories might cross over. Our collaborative project Postcards from Sturgis, a collection of connected stories we all wrote together (and which is available to read for free on our website at https://freakcirclepress.com/works/postcards-from-sturgis/) is the nexus of that shared world.
I bring this up because for the first time, the crossover from one independent series to another has been substantive and truly collaborative. The Volkov brotherhood that appears in this story, and will appear throughout the series, is an invention of fellow Freak Catherine Johnson (https://www.facebook.com/rittenkitten/), who is in the early stages of a planned Russian Mafia series: The Red Star Series.
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 33