Dreams in the Dark (Destroyers Book 2)

by A. R. Case

  “Changing the subject, TomTom catches a flight to Chicago next week. He goes as prospect for four weeks. They’ll patch him over. Then he’ll move out West to set things up for Vega.” The room needed to hear this. Limit the number of people repeating a different story. “I’ve rented a house on the west side. He’ll be working with the Henderson chapter for a year if she gets the audition. Then he can petition for nomad so he can travel with her should she get a tour.” I stopped and looked specifically at TomTom. “It’s the best I can do.”

  He shrugged. “I made it through prospect here, can’t be that bad.”

  Snake made a sound.

  “You got anything to say about that?” Walt interjected.

  “Keep your shit tight.” Snake said.

  I echoed his sentiment. “You keep your shit tight. You have my best girl there.”

  TomTom looked at his shoes.

  “About your best girl…” Walt’s voice hinted at sarcasm. “You tell Edie yet?”

  That was my hill to conquer, and likely the biggest reason my gut ached.

  Edie

  Fin and Indy were outside. Indy felt it was necessary to add a security system. The cabin I rented likely wasn’t worth more than a few thousand dollars, and yet I was getting locks, cameras, and what seemed like a completely unnecessary alarm system. The nearest police station was ten miles, and doubled as a fire house. The state forest fire crews were closer for Pete’s sake.

  Of course, I got no say in it. Indy bought it. I just hoped my four percent would cover everything, because things would not keep up at that rate. Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t keep up. I couldn’t.

  In frustration, I began cleaning the house. The art area was first. All my paints, pencils, sketch pads, materials put away. Check. Dishes, ugh. Check. Twice as many lately. Indy pitched in, but there was always some stray on the porch or beside the bed that would get missed. Fridge? I peered in. Nope. That would wait for another day. I was and wasn’t hungry, but cleaning the fridge would be dangerous either way.

  Indy and Fin came in to wire the last of the little white beepy things at the two doors.

  “What code do you want?” Indy asked.

  “None.”

  “Edie.”

  “Pick one, but you know I’m not going to remember it.”

  “It only needs to be five digits.” Fin was trying to be helpful, I glared at him anyway.

  It bounced off him.

  “One, twenty-nine, sixty-nine.” Indy said.

  “I’ll never remember that.” I crossed my arms.

  “Well, then I guess I don’t get birthday presents, huh?” Indy stepped into my space and was trying to rub the knots out of my neck.

  “Your birthday?”

  “Told you that before.”

  We discussed birthdays over coffee. Now I felt horrible. Drat this man, steamrolling me into feeling guilty about a stupid alarm system. “You are a sneaky man, Nicholas.”

  He cringed. “Not the first name. Ouch.”

  “Oh, like you never got that yelled at you when you were little.”

  “Actually, it was ‘Nicholas Allen, dammit-you-need-a-longer-name, Jones’ when I was little.”

  “Oh my God, your dad must have been mad.”

  “Mom. She did the yelling. Dad would hide in the garage with the cars.”

  He got maudlin whenever he mentioned his father. From what I had pieced together, his father’s second wife was still alive, but his father had passed. His mother was alive and still living in Oklahoma, but now on husband number three. “You must have tried to hide there with him, right?”

  He nodded, fingering the little pieces of hair that had escaped my pony-tail. I reached up to drag my fingertips through the hair on the outer edges of his jaw. He hadn’t shaved in a long time. It must have felt good, because his eyes closed.

  “You two can that shit before I puke.” Fin growsed. “Alarm’s coded. See if it works, so I can get.”

  Indy stepped away and set, unset and set the alarm. “You try.”

  January 29th, huh. His armor should have frost on it. I set the alarm enough times to satisfy Indy then grabbed my sketchbook to capture the idea.

  Much later, Indy walked out of the shower with just a towel wrapped around his waist. He stood over me. His hair dripped on me.

  “Hey! You’ll get the drawings wet.”

  “Follow me.”

  Huh? “Why?”

  One fist kept the towel up, the other wove through my hair. “Horny. While it’s sexy as all Hell seeing you creating, you have been drawing for four hours.”

  His fingers felt good in my hair. I needed to put up a protest for appearances. “I’ve been known to go down for days.”

  “If only you could go down for days on me.”

  His voice had gotten that husky tone I liked so much. “Magic word.”

  He got really close. His lips were against my ear. “Cunninglingus.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “You are terrible.”

  His smile was wide. “Since the day I was born.”

  “Where we going?” My pencil clattered in the jar I kept them in.

  “Don’t rightly know, ma’am. Somewhere soft. I think it’s a cloud or something.”

  He dropped the towel outside my bedroom door. I followed, mesmerized by his hips. One of the few areas Indy doesn’t have tattoos is the smooth skin of his ass. He arranged the pillows then settled dead center in my bed with his back against my headboard.

  “Straddle me, babe.”

  “I’m dressed,” I observed.

  “Well, you don’t have to be.” The afternoon light turned his skin golden brown.

  Of course, I didn’t. I slipped out of the jeans and comfy shirt I’d been working in. My bra went into the pile, Then my underwear. He stroked his erection while he watched.

  Feeling bold, I crawled up from his feet, spending a moment to kiss each thigh, then moved his hand out of the way to cradle his dick in my hand. The head of it was slick on my lips. I used my tongue to smear the juices around. Then I took him into my mouth to suck it off. My mouth was where my pussy wanted to be, and it was making me get wet. The air on my exposed ass felt like sin.

  Indy groaned. He leaned over to the night stand to get a condom. It broke my suction on him. “Need to be in you.”

  I waited until he was ready, and got into position over him. He held his dick, giving it one last stroke before letting me take over.

  With his hands free, he massaged my breasts. His mouth joined them as I eased him in. His tongue flicked at my nipple. The fingers of his other hand mimicked the action, ending with a light pinch. I moaned as he did that. This rewarded me with a fast series of pulsing pinches and his mouth sucking on the other side. I moved up and down on him slowly, savoring all the sensations of being stretched and squeezed.

  But I was unable to get him inside me fully without breaking the hold his mouth had on my breast. Priorities being what they were, my breast lost.

  He made it up to me by nibbling his way to my neck. His teeth grazed the tendon from collar bone to jaw and back down. I sank down on him deeper, then ground my clit on him. His dick filled me and shifted with my movements, rubbing deep inside me.

  “That’s it baby.” His breath heated my ear. “Ride.”

  He made it sound like silk with a low rumble. I rode. His skin got slick as we strained together. He bit and I bit back. The magic built up as I moved. He pushed upwards trying to hit deeper inside. Always deeper and higher.

  “Indy?” I begged.

  “Keep going babe.” His voice was strained.

  I pleaded his name again. This time it stretched out as I found a point where everything met in that perfect connection.

  My orgasm started where we made contact and spread through my entire body. I shuddered and tried to hold on and failed. My being was falling into an abyss of light and sensation. Indy got drawn into it with me, and I felt him come.

  We melted ag
ainst each other as the world came back. His hand shook as he brushed my hair away from my shoulder. “Edie, love.”

  He breathed it. Then we breathed a kiss that exhaled more kisses until the last bit of our energy was spent.

  I rested with my ear over his heartbeat. My fingers brushed aside some of the curly hair on his chest to trace the lines of tattoos. Near where you could just begin to feel his right ribs, I skimmed over a raised, puckered scar. “Where did you get this?”

  The hand he’d been brushing back and forth on my side stilled. “Outside Houston. Little dive called Bobby’s.”

  “Gunshot?”

  The brushing started back up again, but not as languid as before. “Shot the day I got arrested.”

  Oh. Numerous versions of how Indy went to prison got speculated upon by the dancers. Every version ended the same way, he killed a man who was trying to shoot him. But being a biker, he went to prison anyways.

  “I’m not certain I know the real story.”

  His fingers traced little circles over my back as he let the silence stretch out. “Not many do.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I’ll deal with being curious.”

  “You’ll make up shit in your head, you mean.” His tone was light. But his heartbeat had picked up just slightly. He wove his fingers with mine. I toyed with the rings he wore.

  “I won’t be that person.” I was dead serious. People asked me all the time about my scars. “Did they hurt? Did you bleed a lot? Was it difficult learning how to use your arm again?”

  What no one ever asked was, “How do you think you’ll exist without your daughter?”

  The truth was, I didn’t exist for a while. I still don’t exist as I was before. That woman is gone. This new person isn’t the same. It isn’t the same body, the same mind, or the same soul.

  “I had a ring in my pocket.” He started. “Been carrying it for four weeks. She was raped the week I bought it. May have been three days, or five, but the same week. I honestly can’t remember. I just remember thinking that I should have given it to her right away.”

  He unthreaded his fingers and held up his hand, the right one. His pinky finger wiggled. “The mate to it, the wedding band, was on this finger the day I went in. I pawned it to get drunk when I got out. The diamond disappeared in between central booking and the storage sign out.” He shifted me so I was tucked closer. “The guy that did it was this bastard from a group that runs along the border. They had members who were constantly giving us shit. This guy comes up from San Antonio or somewhere, and tried to pick off some of the new members. That meant me. I was just patched in. Which is why I could finally ask Lisa to marry me. Prospects don’t have old ladies, least they didn’t then. Some clubs do it different, but …”

  He trailed off. After clearing his throat, he continued. “Well, we were boosting a bike. I saw him come out of the bar. I lost it. Ran at him. He pulled out his gun and got one off. It skinned me right there.” He lifted his arm lifted to expose the scar. “I didn’t feel it. I pounded on him until his head broke.”

  In the silence, he swallowed.

  “Is that why you buy wedding bands?” I brushed my fingers along some of the smooth bands on his hand. “To get the one back?”

  “Naw. Found out they are good pawnable cash that don’t go missing easily.”

  My laugh was just a gust of air. It wasn’t funny, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “I’m pretty certain some would go missing.”

  His face twisted up. “Yeah. Can’t figure how to hide them well enough.”

  I thought about it. “What did you get to keep?”

  “My boots, clothes that were twenty years old and too small.” He laughed.

  “You try sewing them into your clothes?”

  “Cops would feel them out, think they were drugs or something. I’d probably lose them for sure then.”

  “Hide in plain sight.” I thought out loud.

  “That’s the theory.”

  “What about a belt?”

  “Locked up. You could hang yourself.” He chuckled at some morbid joke in his head.

  “But you get it back, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll make you one. Weave the rings in like they are meant to be there.”

  His face crept into a lopsided smile. “Baby. That would be one hell of a going away present.”

  Things had come together in Vegas. Indy hired a moving van which would move the belongings out. Vega would fly. TomTom would join from Chicago sometime in a week or two. Apparently, he was being patched into the Destroyers so he could have support in Vegas. I would stay behind. My choice. I wasn’t ready to upend my life like that. Things had moved quickly. There was a potential buyer for shoe designs flying into Vegas in under a month. I’d join then for a week, then return here to hide in this sanctuary and create in peace. I had my life here, the festival season, my little cabin, now a bit more secure thanks to Fin and Indy, and a slightly larger bank account. Again, thanks to Indy.

  I fought too hard to chart my own course. This was where I wanted to be. I could fly out, visit, and still run back here and hide.

  The best thing for a mudhen.

  Chapter 7: Masks

  Indy

  The van was right on time. I swapped clothes with the driver, a brother from Chicago who owed me a favor. He took off with my bike, the face mask I wore, and a few of my nicer rings. Edie’s belt held most of the generic ones. Her eyes bugged a little when I brought my collection to her. As such, my hands were naked for the first time in maybe ten years. It felt like I was missing something. I rubbed my chest to snuff those feelings out. Now wasn’t the time.

  TomTom was at the wheel of the van. We headed south.

  Yeah, I know, Vegas is west. However, Landon Page of Frederick was south.

  It was still very early when I let myself into his house with the third-rate surveillance system. I made some coffee and eggs. TomTom had eaten, so he searched the house for back up surveillance systems. I’d eaten too, but that’s beside the point.

  Landon came down the stairs, still half groggy, and only in boxer shorts. He hit the landing before he saw me at his kitchen table.

  “Morning.” I lifted my fork.

  “What are you …?” He panicked and tried to run back up the stairs, but TomTom blocked his path.

  “Have a seat. Eggs?”

  Landon shook his head. Figured he wouldn’t.

  “Coffee?”

  Another shake.

  “Sit.” I pointed to the other chair.

  He took a look at TomTom, and then sat across from me.

  I took a bite of eggs as he settled in.

  “I’ll call the police for breaking and entering.” His voice was a bit steadier.

  “Didn’t do no breaking.” I played with a forkful. “As far as crimes go, you are up on us by two.”

  “Two?”

  “Yes. We didn’t press charges for the assault in the club that Sunday.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Touching Cherri’s ass.”

  “That’s not assault. I didn’t hit her.”

  “Battery is hitting, you groped her ass.”

  “It meant nothing. People do that all the time to strippers.”

  “And, they get permanently banned for it, too. You know why? Because it is assault.”

  “It’s their job.”

  “No, it ain't. They dance pretty, show some skin, all legal like. You get entertained and spend money, everyone is happy.” I stretched my feet out a bit, getting comfortable. “But touching, no. Against the rules and against the law.”

  His eyes darted around looking for something to defend himself with.

  “Orange Juice?”

  He again shook his head.

  I set my fork down. “We’re talking here. You went over a line, grabbing her ass. I get that. But what part of you thought it was okay to knife our sweet Cherri?”

  There
was uncomfortable silence.

  “See, you know that was wrong, don’t you?”

  “She’s a stripper. What does it matter?”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot of folks who think like that. Then again, I’m certain they are the same sort of folks who don’t want their kids trafficked into prostitution. So, which is it, should you value everyone or only certain folks?”

  By the way his eyes darted around the kitchen, I’m certain he wasn’t thinking of the conundrum I’d put on the table. He eyed the distance between his seat at the table and the kitchen counter where there was a knife block. An empty one. TomTom had emptied it.

  “You don’t have an answer? What about this one, it’s easier, do you believe in the Bible?”

  His eyes widened a bit. Good old Landon was a deacon. “I do.”

  “You believe in atonement? Asking God for forgiveness?”

  His voice was firmer. “I do.”

  Ain’t that convenient.

  “TomTom, you a praying man?”

  “Can’t say I am.”

  “Well, then there are two sinners here who need to kneel and ask God for forgiveness.” I motioned to the floor as I got up. “Landon, right here would be good. TomTom, in good faith, you want to kneel right here?” I pointed to a spot in front of where Landon was hesitating.

  TomTom kneeled, going down on one knee like he was proposing or some shit. Landon followed suit, but did it right, both knees down.

  There was a preacher my mom dragged her second husband, me, and my younger brother to. He talked quiet, until he got loud. I liked him quiet. Loud made me uncomfortable. I talked quiet, like the him I liked. He walked around a lot. I did too. I touched Landon’s shoulder, giving him a pat. I touched TomTom’s head, then walked back to Landon as I spoke. There was a bible verse or two I remembered. Mama would be proud.