“Then why don’t you come on inside where it’s safe?” my mother asked.
My mother ushered all of us inside as Emery continued to yawn. My mother walked down the hallway, opening up one of the guest bedroom doors to lay the little girl down. I could see the shock of her being a grandmother washing over her face, but my mother had always been in control of her emotions. The initial shock was all the emotion she would show us towards the situation, and the moment she came back down the hallway, she embraced Sydney yet again.
“She’s beautiful,” my mother said.
“She looks just like her father,” Sydney said.
“How about this? It feels like you and Hawk have a great deal to talk about. The little one is sleeping-”
“Emery,” I said. “Your granddaughter’s name is Emery.”
I saw her eyes light up with joy as my mother took both my hand and Sydney’s.
“Emery’s fast asleep, and when she wakes up I think she’ll enjoy a bit of ice cream for breakfast.”
“Already being spoiled, huh?” Sydney asked.
“We’ll have a wonderful time. Right now, you and Hawk should take some time to talk. If you want to talk here, I’ll put on a pot of coffee and make myself scarce. If you want to find a place on the beach to speak, I’ll have lunch here when you come back.”
“Mom, Emery doesn’t know yet. About me, and now you.”
“I figured as much. Just know I already love that little girl, and when you two are ready to tell her, I’ll be right there cheering you on.”
I could see the tears trickling down Syd’s face as she embraced my mother once again. She sobbed into her shoulder, allowing the past few days to come tumbling out. My mother calmed her down, soothing her lowly in her ear as I stood by the door. The fight we had before Sydney left came wafting back to my memory. How I’d yelled at her and grabbed her harder than I’d ever intended. How I had blamed her for all the havoc that was being rained down on us without giving a second thought as to what this was doing to her.
I’d never heard Sydney cry so hard she started to hiccup until that very moment.
“Emery is safe with me, I promise. Go. Take a walk. Get it all out. Make Hawk talk to you. And come back with a clear head ready to formulate a plan.”
“Yes… Miss.. Maria…” Sydney said through her hiccups.
I held out my hand and held Syd tight as we left out through the back. My mother lived right on the ocean, a quaint little beach house with its own private view. No one really came up this far to enjoy the beach because there were hardly any bars in Ferndale. It was a small town of retirees that wanted to enjoy the waters during the late stages of their lives.
The sand crunched beneath our feet as Sydney held onto me tighter than I’d ever felt her before.
“Did anything else happen with the agent?” I asked.
“That was the gist of it. They don’t have anything that connects me to their routes other than the joyrides we took, so they can’t do anything. They’re still looking, I’m apparently a shit mother, they’ve picked up my nickname recently from my conversations with you, and now we’re here.”
“Well, it’s mandatory if something like this happens for our houses to be swept for bugs. Mac, our current President, knows where my spare key is. If the house is bugged, I’ll know within the next day or so,” I said.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I brought the DEA to you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Emery. I’m sorry I fucking left, and I’m sorry we now have to run. I’m just… I’m such a fuck up, and I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
“Hey, hey, hey. Stop that. Look at me.”
I stopped us walked as Sydney’s beautiful blue eyes turned up to me. They were the exact color of the ocean, stormy and dark. Her mind was plagued with so many different things, and all I wanted to do was settle her eyes back into the pale blue I’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
“Everything’s all right. Things on my end will be just fine, and if they go as planned, I think you’re gonna be fine with how it turns out,” I said, grinning.
“I never thought they would follow me to you. I don’t even understand why I’m a person of interest. I swear I don’t know anything. I’m not a connection.”
“Then they’ll figure that out soon enough. They’re on a witch hunt, and you couldn’t have known that,” I said.
“I wasn’t involved with anyone in the club. Not romantically anyway. None of them stopped by the house or saw me outside of their compound. Hell, I was never patched as someone’s property. I was just one of the outsiders that enjoyed hanging out with them. At the bar and stuff. They…”
I cupped my hand over her cheek and watched her skin flush underneath my touch.
“They what?” I asked.
“They reminded me of you guys,” she said breathlessly. “I-... loved the feeling of family.”
“Oh, Syd.”
“I didn’t feel like I was with family when I was with my mother. I thought I would, with all the letters we wrote back and forth. But I didn’t. I gravitated towards the Iron Souls because they felt more like family than she did. Hell, when I complained about not having enough money to finish out the rest of my vocational schooling, they gave me a job at their bar so I could save up for the rest of my classes. Mom babysat during my hours-- which were usually during the evenings-- then I’d be home just in time to take care of Emery while she went to the hospital.
“When the hell did you sleep?” I asked.
“When Emery napped,” she said.
I was looking at one of the strongest women I’d ever known. The shit she dealt with raising Emery for the first six years of her life… I never could’ve imagined going through it myself. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her deep into me as the waves roared in the background. The sun was rising in the sky as the wind blew around us, kicking up sand as Sydney buried herself deeper and deeper into my body.
“Please don’t be angry with me anymore,” she said, whispering.
“I could never be angry at you for long. It was wrong of me to be angry in the first place,” I said.
She looked up at me with those piercing blue eyes, the storm slowly fading as they returned to their vibrant, sparkling state. My arms drew her up to me, bringing her lips painfully close to mine as I ghosted them over her own. I heard her sigh, her hands rushing up my arms and hanging onto my shoulders.
It was then I spotted a rundown shack, abandoned and worn down by years of storms as a grin crossed my face.
“Follow me,” I said as I took Sydney’s hand.
“Where’re we going.”
I whipped around to her and pulled her into me. Our lips crashed into one another’s, her back bowing as I followed to taste her lips upon mine. Her hands flew to my hair, raking her fingernails over my scalp as I groaned into her mouth. I felt her smile on me, her tits rising to painful peaks I could feel even through the bra she was wearing.
“To make up,” I said darkly. “After all, it’s what couples do.”
Chapter 14
Sydney
My back slammed against the wall of the rickety shack as Hawk’s hands traveled all over my body. We ripped each other’s clothes off, showing our bodies to a world devoid of people. The ocean barked against the sand as the sun beat down onto the roof of the house, but all I could feel was Hawk’s hands rounding the globe of my ass. I jumped, wrapping my legs around him as his throbbing cock grew between my legs, and before I knew it, he was sliding into me, peeling me open for the taking as a groan left my lips.
“Fuck, Syd. You’ve always been so tight.”
“That’s because it’s only ever been you.”
His eyes rose to meet mine, half-hooded with pleasure as his cock bottomed out into me. Our hips were synced, his undulations pulling small whimpers from my throat as his body grazed against my swollen clit. I dug into his pelvis, wanting the friction of his hip moving against my pussy as much as I could get it.
His eyes held mine as we slowly chased our highs, our hips moving with one another as his hands pressed deeply into the wall behind me.
“What?” he asked.
“There was no one after you. I… I couldn’t. I just couldn’t,” I said breathlessly.
I saw guilt roll over his features and my lips sprang into action. They wrapped around his, my tongue pressing into his luxurious mouth as I sucked the guilt right from his stomach. I didn’t want him to feel guilty. I didn’t want him to think that was expected of him, too. It was just my truth. My own personal truth.
No one shook me the way Hawk did, and I knew no one ever would.
His lips grazed my cheek before he nibbled on my neck. His palm massaged my tits, flicking his thumb over my nipples as I jumped and moaned in pleasure. I could feel the heat building in my pelvis as my juices dripped down his cock, coating his balls as he slammed up hard into me.
“I love it when your body jumps for me,” he said. “You’ve always had such luscious curves.”
“Fuck, your muscles. The way they twitch and contract against me. Your rock hard body’s enough to keep me up at night.”
“I’ll keep you up every night,” he said. “Just let me dive between your legs, and you’ll never want for anything again.”
His lips marked my neck, trailing red welts down to my breasts as my pussy began to milk his cock. I could feel my body pulling him in deeper, throbbing and pulsing with my need for release. His body raked against my clit as his balls smacked my ass. His dick grew inside of me, pressing against every inch of my walls as I wound my fingertips into his hair. He growled, a vibration ricocheting beneath the nipple he pulled between his soft, pillowy lips.
It was all I needed to fall over the edge as he began pounding into me.
“Hawk. Hawk. Yes. Don’t stop. I’m cumming. I’m cumming. I’m cum-”
My back arched into him as I pressed his head into my breasts. His cock pumped into me one last time, pulsing as it spurted its hot cum all over the walls of my body. I trembled in silent satisfaction, his name getting choked in my throat as my pleasure held me by my own neck.
I felt Hawk’s thick streams of cum dripping beneath me as he finally collapsed to his knees. He held me close before we both laid down on the ratty floor. Our chests were panting as the ocean breeze filled the rickety shack. The waves were crashing against the shoreline, slowly approaching us as we laid there, trembling in one another’s arms.
I looked over at Hawk and caught his emerald stare, and for the first time in years, I felt home again.
He was my home, and I wasn’t willing to give him up a second time.
“We need to figure out how to get that agent off your case,” he said breathlessly.
“I don’t know what to do, Hawk,” I said. “I just don’t.”
“Come here.”
He pulled me close to him, our legs threading together. His naked body pressed against mine was a feeling I would remember for the rest of my life. His hand lazily stroked my back as I looked up into his eyes, and I couldn’t help but smile. Even with the looming danger over our heads, Hawk was soothing to me. He had always had that effect on me, even as a little girl.
A scared little girl who didn’t know what to do after she’d lost her father.
“The Road Rebels have a plan to sic the DEA onto The Devil Saints, but we still don’t know how to get them off your trail.”
“Wait, you’re gonna blame the Saints for something?” I asked.
“No, we’re simply gonna turn their sights over to them. Talon had some serious information he brought our way. Shit that would promote whoever in the DEA could bust them and bring ‘em down.”
“Talon,” I said, smiling. “How is he?”
“Road Captain now,” I said, grinning.
“Quiet little Talon?”
“You helped him out a lot with that,” I said.
“Can you tell me about the plan?” she asked.
“You know I can’t. Just know we’ve got that part covered. I’m concerned, though, that getting the DEA off your trail means you coming back to The Road Rebels.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’m gonna have to bring you to the bar. They gotta know what’s going on. I can keep you on the run, sure, but they can keep you safe. You know we can.”
“Hawk, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. What about Emery?” she asked.
“I’m sure my mother won’t mind keeping Emery, but it’s our only shot. Our only shot of getting the DEA’s stink off you is to somehow work you into this plan we’ve got goin’ on. I know you’re scared, but you know I’m right, too.”
“Hawk, they’re gonna hate me for what I did.”
I felt the tears rising in my eyes as quickly as they poured down my cheek. He leaned in, kissing away one of my tear trails as I sniffled lightly. This was what I was scared of. This was what petrified me at night. Going back to The Road Rebels, sinking Emery into his lifestyle, and her losing her parents at a young age.
Just like Hawk and I had lost our parents.
“I know you’re scared, but you know they all love you. You impacted every single person in that club somehow. I don’t know if they’ll take you back, but I know they’ll help,” he said.
“And this is the only way? After leaving them once, my father died?”
“It’s the only way I know to keep you safe for good. Please, Syd. Let me do what I do best.”
He was pleading with me, and that was something I’d never heard before. Hawk pulled me into his body, and I buried my face into the crook of his neck. I was terrified, yes. This had just as much of a chance of being successful as it did of backfiring. And what would happen once the DEA was off my trail? Were The Road Rebels gonna expect me to stay? I couldn’t subject Emery to that lifestyle.
Not with everything else she’s been through because of me.
That moment, Hawk’s phone rang out. He unwound himself from me and sat up, and I couldn’t help but admire his body. The way his tattoos cascaded over his skin. The way his muscles flexed with every movement of his body. Had we not been in such a dire situation, I would’ve been adventurous and sucked his cock while he was on that phone call.
But the moment I heard Mac’s name, I sat up straight.
“By the fucking windowsill? Outside? How the hell did I keep missing that thing? Painted over? Are you fucking-... yep. Yeah. Uh huh. Listen, there’s a part of this story that’s gonna make you angry, but I need you to understand that it doesn’t affect anything. Could you guys meet us at the bar tomorrow? Yes. Us. You heard me right. Nope, plan’s still good. Yes, I fucking promise, all right, Mac? Damn. I’m not that big of an idiot. Uh huh. See you tomorrow night.”
Hawk hung up his phone and started putting his clothes on. I stood up from the floor, wobbling a bit as a smirk crawled across my face. I felt Hawk’s arms wrap around me, helping to steady myself on my feet as he planted a kiss on the bare skin of my shoulder.
“Trouble walking there, beautiful?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Badge of honor and all that shit. Got it.”
“Can’t say it’s not a beautiful sight. I’ve missed it a lot,” he said.
“I’ve missed you,” I said as I put my clothes on. “Was that Uncle Mac?”
“You remember him?” he asked.
“How could I forget? He was the one that taught me how to defend myself in hand-to-hand combat.”
“Yeah, that was him. He’s President now.”
“No shit!” I exclaimed.
“Yep. That was him calling me and telling me there was a fucking bug planted in the corner of my windowsill.”
“The DEA?” I asked. “They can’t bug your house, they didn’t have a-”
“It was on the outside. It’s how they got away with it,” he said. “They painted over that shit and everything so we couldn’t see it. Any conversation we had in that foyer was heard.”
“That's how tha
t agent knew my nickname,” I said.
“That’s right. No one else’s house was bugged, though.”
“Ah. That’s why you need to take me to the bar.”
“They probably think I’m cooperating or some shit. Bringing you to the bar will help me piece together for them what’s happened,” he said.
“Gotcha.”
“We can go talk to my mom, I’m sure she’ll be just fine with watching Emery until this all blows over. She’s gonna be safe with her, you know this.”
“I know, I know. I just… I’m so sorry, Hawk,” I said.
“Stop that.”
“I brought you so much fucking trouble, and all because I went on some stupid joyrides,” I said.
“Syd, for all I know the Iron Souls set you up to take the fall for this shit. We’re gonna fix this. We’re gonna make it better again. But you gotta trust me when I tell you that The Road Rebels can help you. We all can. You and Emery will be safe.”
“But won’t they expect me to stay? After this is all said and done, won’t they want me to stay with them?” she asked.
“We can talk about that when the time comes. Lot's changed since you’ve been gone. I think you’ll enjoy the dynamic a bit more,” he said.
“I’m scared,” I said breathlessly.
“And you have every right to be. But I promise you this, Sydney Marshall, so long as you’re by my side, you and Emery both will be safe.”
I looked deep into his eyes and threw my arms around him. I crashed my lips into his, soaking up his strength and courage as his hands dropped to the small of my back. I had no idea what I was walking into, and I had no idea how anyone would react, but all I knew was this.
If my next few steps ensured Emery a stable life, one where I wasn’t thrown into jail, then I would endure whatever ridicule came my way in order to give that to her.
After all the shitty decisions I’d made, it was the very least I could do for my daughter.
Chapter 15
Hawk
I took Syd back to my mother’s house, and we promptly sat her down. Emery was still sound asleep, even as lunchtime began to roll around. Syd wanted to go wake her up, fearful that she wouldn’t sleep tonight if she didn’t wake up now. But my mother insisted that she slept as long as necessary and sat us both down with cups of coffee in front of us.
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