by V. Theia
“Is that what I should do then to get your affection, Penn, act aloof and uninterested and then I can eat out of your hand?”
“It’s not my affection you want.”
Benz smiled in his sly way, moving his hand up from Lawless’ chest to his neck where he squeezed tight enough he felt pain.
“How wrong you are, but I accept what you give because you’re incapable of giving more. I wonder if you even have it in you to love someone.”
For the first time in their association, Lawless read everything on Benz’s face. It was clear he had feelings for him—other than wanting to suck Lawless off, which he did like a champ.
Giving a little shove, Lawless felt the brick wall at his back and Benz came up into his space. This was usually when Lawless would rip someone’s head off. He stood there like a piece of rancid meat with a guy looking at him like he loved him or something equally repellent.
“Look how scared you are because you figured it out,” Benz said in a quiet tone, a curl to the edge of his mouth. A touch of sadness too. “Don’t worry, darling boy, nothing has to change.”
But it already had.
The ground moved under Lawless, his brain screaming for him to get away from this scene.
This wasn’t his kind of noise.
He didn’t do connections which resulted in having sob stories cried all over his shoulders. He wasn’t that life anymore where he had to take care of someone else’s feelings and wellbeing. The din roaring out of Benz as he went on looking at him with his hand still tight around Lawless’ neck, was deafening.
He should have seen it and he didn’t.
“Come back inside. Marco is waiting to give you a gift.”
Marco was a pain slut who begged like a bitch for any dominant hand to hurt him so he could come all over himself.
Lawless went inside on autopilot.
He beat the fuck out of that young boy with every apparatus he could get his hands on. Marco came like a horse in stud, there was no enjoyment in it for Lawless, not when he was so fucking busy trolling through Benz’s revelation.
He watched Benz fuck one of his dancers in the ass while she came on the fingers of one of the party-goers. Benz fucked that chick while his greedy eyes lapped up Lawless, who felt every lick like it was tiny cuts.
Avoidance came easy when he was traveling doing Benz’s dirty work.
From New York to Tennessee and Seattle, he stayed out of the way only exchanging a few phone calls with Benz. Until he summoned Lawless again.
Only this time he didn’t go right away. He took three weeks.
The next time he took five weeks to return.
He worked side by side with the crime boss for years. Well into his mid-twenties while Benz turned Chicago into his war territory. Gangs formed, crimes tripled, the cops were bought off and Benz made money hand over fist.
The pair of them fucked their way through the country.
It was fun.
Until it wasn’t.
Those same feelings were clear to understand in Benz’s eyes now he’d confessed them. Leaking all over Lawless, until it was hard for him to choke down a scotch without tasting the unspoken need clouded in the air.
Benz tried more than one way to get Lawless to come to heel like his stable of playthings. And he grew angrier with each rejection.
“I don’t want you fucking anyone else when I’m not around.” Jay demanded the night after Lawless got back from sorting out a problem with one of the Italian gangs in midtown. He sliced the fucker from forehead to navel, leaving his buddies to clean up the mess. And to take it as a warning not to overstep the patch of real estate they’d been sold to deal their shit.
Lawless drifted the glass away from his lips. Eyes flared at the tone he was hearing. Benz stood in the middle of Lawless’ apartment, with his hands pushed down in his pockets, his white shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
A businessman with a devils soul.
“Say what?”
“You heard me, you’re not dumb, you have too many degrees to pretend you are.”
“I wasn’t faking dumb; I was giving you a chance to change the fucking words you said to me.”
“Marco said you were at the club last night playing with a little cocksucking shit.”
“We’ll circle back to you spying on me. What’s the big deal what I do and with who?”
The fire entered Benz’s eyes. The dangerous man had arrived in the arena.
Lawless didn’t brace, he did drain the scotch and abandoned the glass on the table.
“You belong to me,” Benz hissed.
Oh, wrong move, dipshit, Lawless thought, cocking his head to the side.
“You don’t fuck some idiot sub in my club and humiliate me.”
“I didn’t fuck him. I did choke the snake though; he has good lips. Then I put him in the corner and the maggot came all over himself.” Tension left Benz’s shoulders as if relieved. Lawless was anything but. He went on calmly. “Humiliate you? Don’t put your insecurities on me like a fucking blanket. We are nothing. We are empty, you asshole, and you assume to put a leash on what I can do?”
A hand shot out and grabbed Lawless around the throat.
Honestly it surprised him into laughing as the hand squeezed to the point of loss of air, but he didn’t struggle.
Not the first time he was choked out.
Maybe his Johnson gave a kick of excitement.
He was a nasty little bastard after all.
“No one talks to me the way you do. I’ve been too good to you, Penn. My men tell me I’m a pushover for you, for the affection I hold for you. Maybe they’re right. Am I too easy on you?”
Manipulation for a psycho was like breathing.
It came from his lungs and entered his fingers as he took his hand and roamed it under Benz’s shirt directly over his hard stomach.
That one little unguarded touch and the hand locked around his throat lessened enough Lawless could knock it away and then he took the fucker down to the ground with a knee in Benz’s chest.
Never turn your back on a rabid animal.
The dickbag smiled like he loved him or something.
That shit made Lawless angry and his blood screamed under his taut skin.
Fury and sex went hand in and hand, and right there on the living room floor he fucked ten rounds of hell into Benz.
There wasn’t an ounce of affection in each rough touch. There was no love shared with every orgasm he spilled.
It was a fuck of fury for giving him no other choice but to severe what they were. Benz knew this because he gave as good as he got.
Dominance reigned like hell was spewing its guts up to earth and the monsters were free.
They were torn and bloody when it was over.
Deplete of body fluids, Lawless felt empty as he looked at the sack of meat at the side of him with his eyes closed on the unmade bed. The cock was loose on his thigh as Benz slept like a man who’d been fucked furiously and put away dead.
Lawless looked at him a minute longer. This man who’d taught him things—showed him the world with arms wide open for the taking. And stood by like a proud father as Lawless sucked the pleasures from the world like he was at a tit.
In a way, he meant more to him that his own bitch of a mother did and any uncles that came through the years. Yet even in that he still meant nothing to Lawless. Benz read him right that he couldn’t feel a thing.
Not for what he craved from Lawless, as all needy animals craved from another person.
His head was not right in these things and he was good with that, who the fuck had time and energy to give to someone else.
It was nauseatingly normal.
He dragged his weary body off the bed and hooked up his jeans, followed by the t-shirt and boots.
He had a small bag packed and his stashed money with the personal effects he carried from place to place. It was very little and Lawless’ entire world.
“Don’t.”
the croaked warning came from behind and he cut a glance to the bed.
Benz was awake, propped on an elbow. He switched on the lamp and brought light into the room.
Both men stared at each other.
Knowing the ugly truth.
Lawless turned to walk away.
“I said don’t.” Benz warned again, this time a little pleading in his tone.
Love was so insipid and it tasted wrong in his mouth.
He couldn’t love Lawless. This was his own fault, Benz did this to himself. He could cry into his own feelings later.
He’d ruined this, not Lawless. He had no one to blame but his own ludicrous neediness.
“Penn.”
“My name is Lawless.”
“I gave you the fucking name,” the growled response.
“And I paid for it tenfold.”
Benz knew it was the end of their road but as all humans in despair did, he clung to a thread that was no longer there.
Hope smelled like burned wood in Lawless’ nose.
Out of bed, his lover rushed to pull on his tailored pants, those eyes that held such hate for every person in the city was unnaturally dark as he stared at Lawless.
“You walk away from me now, Penn, I’ll make sure you know it’s a regret you live with for the rest of your life. There isn’t anywhere you can go that I don’t fucking own. I’ll make it my mission to find you and I’ll destroy anything you covet. However long it takes me, this I promise you. This is the choice in front of you now. Make the right one.”
Lawless felt loose in his limbs. Almost as if his bones drained of humanity. He walked slowly until he was toe to toe with the only man who’d been a constant in his life.
Father figure. Friend. Boss. Lover. Teacher. Mentor. Pain in the fucking neck.
He could have worn any one of those hats and Lawless would have accepted it.
But he wouldn’t accept an owner.
He wouldn’t tolerate him being a dictator.
He certainly wouldn’t wear the skin of someone else’s emotions, choking him to death.
Set a maggot free, let it survive by itself.
He leaned in—and give him his due, Benz never backed down from anyone, Lawless included. Even when he called him an intimidating little bastard for the violence he watched coming out of Lawless’ hands.
Benz called him a serial killer in the making.
If that were true then Benz could take some of the credit.
Their mouths inches apart, as if about to kiss. Air shunted from lips to lips. He tasted the booze on Benz’s breath and saw the lust burning in his eyes even now.
If Lawless reached down and palmed between Benz’s legs, he’d find his piece of meat hard and ready.
“You’re a machine walking through life, untouchable to human suffering.”
“Don’t die, Jay, maybe I’ll let you catch me for that kill one day. See you around.”
“Penn.” His name shrilled through the air twice more, angry and demanding that he come to heel.
Lawless walked out of his apartment with no direction in mind.
Did he think the threat was real? He smiled to himself as he hit the street, knowing Benz, it probably was.
Kingpins were highly temperamental when they lost their toys.
Benz had been wrong.
Kings with friends were the most powerful men of all.
But Lawless wouldn’t know that for a while yet.
He left Chicago and did what psychos do best.
Wreaked havoc while he ate pop tarts.
ACT II
SIX
“Will the psycho enforcer please stand up.” The Renegade Souls MC
Lawless was born to be morally poor.
He didn’t see in colors of right and wrong.
He didn’t taste the pains of the world.
Learning to block out the degradation of human neediness was one way to not give any fucks about what he did. Or the laws he might have broken along the way.
Living by his own rules meant he didn’t give a fuck about much in general.
And he didn’t give a fuck in a spectacular way.
Having stayed in Buffalo a while, his predator soul—if he possessed one and according to his dear crazy momma he didn’t—started to long for wide open spaces.
He’d won the pink slip to a Harley a few months back. With his few pieces of shit belongings, he climbed on the Hog and didn’t stop riding until he smelled clean air. The coldness of a mountain breeze brushed his sharp cheeks. Stepping down off the bike, more than fatigued and in need of food, he glanced at the city sign a few miles back. Lawless had arrived in Armado Springs, Colorado.
Not as big as Denver, but not far from it either.
He did what he always did when he landed somewhere new.
He checked out the local bars to grab a steak dinner.
Hitting on a biker bar, he made it his haunt for the next week.
And the one after that.
No one bothered Lawless, but oh, the bad fish did lap him up with their greedy eyes. Men and women, and if he had a taste in his throat for any of them he might have made good use of that greed.
The peace he felt was odd.
It could be that he had a brain tumor.
He gave it a few days and then he gave it a few more for boredom to settle in and let Lawless know it was time to move again.
It didn’t come.
A few weeks into his new digs, he was in that same bar when a group of bikers ambled in noisily and took over the back tables.
Uninterested, Lawless prowled to his seat with a fresh beer.
That was until he felt eyes on him.
It was different to the usual intrigue.
Seeking out the itch on the back of his neck, he saw among the rabble of bikers, there was a set of demon eyes pale as ice staring across at him.
If Lawless was in any way the kind of guy who got intimidated by anyone, he would have felt it under that stare.
But he wasn’t that guy.
Would never be that guy.
He could already see the play in those eyes.
Wary. Untrusting. Dangerous.
Lawless did the only thing he could do when faced with impending danger. He grinned and winked at the fool and went back to his beer.
An hour later that same tickle in his skull became a full blown itch and now he was beginning to get irritated.
The meat did not learn it was fucking rude to stare.
Up off his stool, he strode like a storm across the packed bar. Ignoring all the naughty maggot eyeballs lapping up the new guy in town.
Hearing whispers, he caught curious conversations wondering who he was.
He was a guy who wanted peace and quiet. Not salivated over by the long-haired demon with the scowl to match. Standing with his back to the wall while his boys drank around him.
All eyeballs came at Lawless when he got to their area.
It took around three seconds for Lawless to get the lay of the land with these fellas.
The notorious Renegade Souls he hadn’t stopped hearing about since he landed in town. There was some big girlie drama involving the leadership he didn’t care about.
“I’m taking it that since you haven’t peeled your eyes off me, that you wanna date me, smiler.” Lawless started, garnering the attention of the entire table. He hit back with the same stare he was receiving from the pale-eyed dipshit. “But here’s the thing, I’m such a shy motherfucker that I need some warming up first.”
The table erupted in belly laughter.
“Oh, fuck, If you’re gonna go apeship, VP, let me grab my wings first.” One of them said.
“Thought I should let you know, before you go on eating me up with your naughty eyes.” Lawless didn’t adhere to the lesson for when to shut his trap. And he wasn’t learning it now when the smiler started to growl like a Mastiff.
The bad fish was a dog. So noted.
He turned to leave and heard in
a dark voice. “You’re trouble.”
Smirking at the guy, he couldn’t dispute this and every man there took a very sudden and serious interest.
Ahhh, maybe it was kindred spirits after all that made the top of his skull give off the bat signal.
Was he recognizing one of his psycho own?
Aw, he might clutch his pearls with emotion..
They stared and Lawless started to smirk when he saw he was angering the big scruffy bastard.
“I’m Lawless, the chrome beauty out front is mine. I’m a Scorpio and I’m hoping to find my soulmate on match dot com.” He walked two steps then cocked his head to the side. Pale eyes and the other shrewd gazes on him. “And yeah, I’m fucking trouble. Maybe keep it in mind the next time you eye-fuck me for my attention, smiler.”
He strode off, but not before he caught. “For fucks sake, stand down, Hawk.”
Yeah, bad dog, stand down, let me enjoy my beer.
It was not the last run in with the bikers.
Okay, fine, Lawless instigated some banter with a few of them, only because he could and it angered the big dumb one.
One night he situated himself with a beer, resting against the bar and watched two of them get into a brawl. The violence was impressive and his tongue tingled to have a go. It was way back in Kansas he put the hurt on anyone.
When they put the bar back together, kicking the two guys out who got their asses handed to them, the biggest one called Preacher, belly laughed and ambled up to the bar to order jugs of beer.
“Don’t worry, Otis, chucked the trash out.” He bragged to the old guy serving. The green eyes switched to Lawless and he thought here we go again.
What did these chumps want, to sit in a circle and braid his hair?
“Lawless, right?”
“Don’t tell me you’re playing wingman for smiler over there.”
The bigger bastard chuckled and knocked ringed fingers on the bar top. “Don’t mind my VP, He doesn’t trust faces like yours.”
“Not my fault I’m fucking handsome, he needs to look elsewhere for a date. He’s not my type.”
Though he was smiling, there was a warning in those eyes. Aww, how sweet, he was ready to defend his best friend forever.