by Jessie Cooke
Poppy took a deep breath. She had loathed the son of a bitch that took her innocence...the monster Chance had killed the night he found out...but she hated Marlene even more. She had one job, and that was to protect her children, and she’d failed miserably. All she was ever interested in was where her next high was coming from, and as long as her pedophile husband could provide that, what went on behind Poppy’s bedroom door was of no concern to her. Poppy sucked in another breath and turned back around to face Blackheart. “Why do you think she knows?”
“There were witnesses that placed her at that group home the night they took him there. She was asked to leave the first time, and the second time the police were called, and she was physically removed from the property. It was only hours later that your brother went missing.”
Poppy looked at Chance. “You watched her for what? Like two years? You said you didn’t see any sign of Bubba. Then when we found her in Baton Rouge, we didn’t see any sign of him there either...”
“He didn’t say he thought Bubba was with her, Poppy,” Chance said. “He said that he thought she knew what happened to him. She disappeared after that time we found her in Baton Rouge; maybe she was hiding him somewhere, so Children’s Services didn’t take him back.”
“You think she’d be happy to be rid of him,” Poppy said. “She never wanted to be a mother to begin with.” With a sigh she looked at Blackheart and said, “Once you find her, how do we make her tell us what she knows?”
“Like I said, if you want my help, you’ll leave the details to me. There won’t be any ‘we.’”
“It doesn’t make sense. If you’ve known, or thought, all along that she knew something then why wait five years to do something about it?”
“I never told you, but the first time Blackheart got involved, Poppy, and hired the investigator, it was about a year after he went missing. Blackheart had the investigator offer her money to tell us what she knew. She turned it down.” Poppy raised an eyebrow. The “mother” she knew would have stolen from an old blind woman if it meant having money to support her habits. “I know,” Chance said, reading her thoughts. “I thought that was weird too. I would have thought she’d just make something up in order to get her hands on the money if she really didn’t know anything...but, she just flat-out turned it down. I convinced myself over time that meant she really didn’t know anything. But Blackheart had a friend of his run her finances this morning. Right after Bubba went missing, she didn’t have a penny to her name, but not long after that meeting with the investigator she had over thirty grand in the bank...She opened the account with eight grand and then made six more deposits in a six-month period...all small enough not to trigger the IRS.”
“She was with that new man by then, right? It was probably his.”
“You saw where they lived in Baton Rouge. It wasn’t the trailer park, but not a palace either. You really think he had that kind of money?”
“So... you’re saying you think she sold our brother?” That idea caused her to be happy, at the hope he was still alive, and sick, thinking about all the reasons why a person would “buy” a child. “Why would she wait a year to get paid for that? I mean,” she looked at Chance again, “you know who we’re talking about here.”
“So, the trail didn’t lead to her,” Blackheart said.
“She’s not that smart,” Poppy told him. “Honestly, most of her brain was gone from the drugs before we were even born.”
“Maybe her new old man is smarter,” Blackheart said. “Maybe they were giving her enough in cash that first year to satisfy her, and they made a lump-sum payment after a year to keep themselves from looking suspicious. There are a lot of variables we need to chase down, and it could all be for nothing but unless you think you have a better idea...other than that your brother killed him,” Blackheart said, with the undertone of some kind of threat in his voice, “...then why not let us chase it?”
She looked at Chance then and back at Blackheart and said, “I’m here for three weeks. I’ll give you two.”
Chance shook his head at her, but Blackheart laughed and said, “No, young lady...I’ll give YOU two.”
Chance was exhausted by the time he sent Poppy back to her hotel room and Gabe took him to get his bike. They trailered it back to his house, but he couldn’t stand being there alone. As soon as Gabe was gone, he called a cab and went back to the hospital. Since Sharon put him down as the baby’s father, he could come and go even when visiting hours were over. He went to her room first but didn’t find her there. He found her in the NICU, sitting in the rocking chair with her gown down off her shoulder and the baby lying against her chest, skin to skin. Her pretty face was glowing, and all the stress of the day he was still carrying was washed away, just like that.
She smiled when she saw him and when he got close, she said, “How’s your sister?” Sharon and Poppy had never met before that day, and he’d been just a little worried about introducing them. But as she did with almost everyone she met, Sharon seemed to smooth out his little sister’s rough edges and go straight to her heart.
“She’s okay. She agreed to let Blackheart help...”
“And stop talking crazy?”
Chance smiled. He’d told Sharon about Poppy’s claims that he’d maybe killed Bubba. Sharon had laughed aloud at that. He hadn’t been sure how to feel about it when she said, “Is she serious? She thinks you could actually kill someone?” Sharon knew about his stepfather, but she had always refused to call that “murder.” She told Chance as soon as he told her about it that she fully understood why he’d done it and in her mind it was justifiable. But Chance was the sergeant at arms of the Jokers MC. He’d gotten that position by proving to his president that he had the balls to do whatever job was necessary to protect his club, and he was sure he wouldn’t stop short of murder if that’s what it took, just like he didn’t stop short the night he’d killed his stepfather. If it was about protecting the people he loved, he knew he could do anything. Still, he had told himself that it was a good thing that Sharon didn’t see that side of him. It was a big reason why they didn’t live on the grounds of the club like so many others did. Chance wanted to keep his family and his “work” as separate as possible, so he’d only laughed along with her.
“Yeah,” Chance said, pulling on his own gown and gloves and taking a seat next to her. “Blackheart told her that keeping her mouth shut about that was part of the deal.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine that her mind would ever even go there,” Sharon said.
She lifted the sleeping baby off her chest, kissed his forehead, and then handed him over to Chance. It was still hard for him to get used to the way the boy felt almost like nothing in his arms. But as soon as he put him to his own chest, his body was filled with warmth...and an odd feeling of peace. He ran his lips across the fuzz on the baby’s head and looked back at Sharon. “Poppy’s had a hard life, baby. She learned not to trust anyone...even me, I guess. But it’s okay. One of these days we’ll find out what happened to Bubba and when she knows for sure it wasn’t me, maybe we can start over.”
Sharon nodded. “I hope so. I saw how sweet she was with our Bubba earlier. I’d like it if he had an aunt, he could be close to.” They sat silently for several minutes and then she said, “Chance...does she know?” Chance didn’t have to ask Sharon if she knew what. Sharon survived her own trauma, only to be reminded of it daily since. Chance shook his head and said:
“All she knows is that you’re my old lady, and Bubba here is my son, and I love you both. I think that’s all anyone really needs to know, don’t you?”
She had tears in her eyes when she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Yeah,” she said, linking her arm through his and putting her head on his shoulder. “Yeah, I think so too.”
9
Poppy stripped off her t-shirt and kicked off her shoes. It had been a long, emotionally wrought day and she felt it all the way down to her soul. She was about to pull off the c
amisole she was wearing when a knock on the door startled her. She stood quietly, thinking it was probably Chance again, and hoping he’d think she was asleep and go away. There was another knock, this one harder, and she sighed and said, “Go away, Chauncey. We’ll talk tomorrow, I’m exhausted.”
“It’s not Chance.” Shit. That voice sent shivers down her spine. She let several minutes pass, still frozen to the spot but with her insides shaking, but he wasn’t going away.
“Poppy, please. I won’t stay long. Can we just talk for five minutes?”
She walked over and pulled open the door. Again, her entire body reacted. Those eyes...the color of warm steel...surrounded by dark eyelashes and framed by that light brown hair highlighted by the sun and just aching for a woman’s fingers to drag through it. She shuddered again. Shit. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Okay, I’ll talk, you listen.”
She rolled her eyes but took a step back and let him inside. God...he even smelled good. She hated him. “You’ve got five minutes,” she said. “Go.”
“I miss you.” She tried not to swallow the lump in her throat. She concentrated on keeping her facial features neutral. She was playing a role...a woman who wasn’t affected at all by the sexuality the man in front of her was exuding. She waited, but when he didn’t go on, she finally said:
“Is that all?”
“Poppy...it’s been five years. Can we...?”
“What?” she said. “Can we what, Gray?”
“Start over?”
“Why? I’m not here to stay. I’ll be leaving in a few weeks back to California...so what would be the point in starting anything?”
He smiled, but sadly. “I wanted to go with you, Poppy...”
“But you didn’t, and that’s okay. Your money helped. It kept me off the street until I could find a job, so you can feel good about that. I don’t hold any grudges against you, Gray. But you have to realize that I just don’t think anything of you anymore, at all. Whatever I felt back then was a childhood crush and most of it was based on the trauma I was going through, and the fact that you were my savior so many times...”
“I didn’t save you. I should have. I should have told Chance...”
“I asked you not to because I knew what would happen if he knew...and I was right, wasn’t I? He killed him as soon as he found out. I didn’t want either of us to be responsible for that.”
“We wouldn’t have been, just like Chance wasn’t. That son of a bitch was responsible the second he put his hands on you...”
“Stop, Gray. Stop. I don’t want to talk about any of that, okay? I’m tired. I need you to go, please...just go and leave me alone.”
He took a step toward her and she took a step back. She couldn’t trust herself within an arm’s reach of him. He still had the same effect on her that he did five years ago, and she hated herself for it. “Poppy, I never stopped loving you. I never stopped wanting you...”
She felt tears stinging her eyes and she was going to hate herself even more if they spilled down her cheeks in front of him. She kept her eyes down as she batted the tears back, and without looking at him she said, “You don’t forget about people you love.”
“I never forgot about you. You want proof? You live in Irvine, in the Woodbridge area, right by the water. You take classes at USC twice a week. You belong to the drama department there and...”
“You’ve been following me? That’s just creepy.”
“It’s not like that. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I tried calling you, but you wouldn’t take my calls, and then you changed your number...”
“Why didn’t you ever knock on my door in California? Too busy making a shrine of me in your closet or...?”
“I was going to. Just like I told you, as soon as you turned eighteen, I planned on moving out there to be with you. But then I saw you with that guy...the blond guy that looked like he walked off a movie set. You were with him at a restaurant, and then he went home with you and didn’t leave until the next morning. He was back that night...you were in a relationship, how was that going to look to him if some guy from the swamps walked up and knocked on your door? I didn’t want to mess up your life.”
“So, this was all about me? Letting a scared sixteen-year-old go two thousand miles from home, alone, was for my benefit?”
“I was an adult; you were a kid. I didn’t know if your mother and stepfather would be looking for you. They could have come after us, and charged me with kidnapping, or worse yet, statutory rape, and I would have been branded a sex offender the rest of my life. So yeah, it was about me too back then. But I promise you that after that, it was about not wanting to fuck up your life and drag you back down into the swamp with the rest of us.”
“So, what’s this about? It’s okay to ‘drag me back down’ now?”
“No. I don’t expect you to reciprocate, Poppy. I just wanted you to know...I still love you.” She was silent again and after a few seconds he said, almost in a whisper, “I’ll go now.” She watched him reach for the door and fought every instinct in her body to call him back. He pulled it open and she closed her eyes, willing him to hurry. She’d dated men in California, quite a few of them...good-looking men, nice men, rich men, sexy men...but not even one of them came close to doing to her what Gray did. She opened her eyes as he was pulling the door closed behind him, and suddenly every impulse in her body was gone; they just vanished.
“Gray!’ He turned to look at her and before he was even back inside the room, Poppy was on him. She knew she was going to regret this, probably even before it was over, but she was overwhelmed by her need for him, and incapable of fighting it. Gray wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her off the floor as he carried her back inside, and kicked the door closed behind him with his boot. Poppy had her hands on his face, holding him in place while they kissed. They’d only kissed once before, that night on the train platform. He’d always been so careful with her before that...but that night, that kiss had been so intense that she was sure it would have convinced him to go with her. It was explosive and there was no part of her body that didn’t feel it.
Gray broke the kiss, and she was whimpering about that, when he spun her around to face the full-length mirror attached to the closet door, so she could see her face, and his beautiful face behind her. He drew her body tightly up against his and leaned down to kiss her neck. One of his hands slid underneath her camisole and his hand felt like fire against her abdomen. With his other hand, he cupped a breast, skillfully teasing the hard nipple through the fabric of her bra. Unhurried, his big hands touched her body all over, pulling her back even harder so that there was no question about how badly he wanted her. She couldn’t catch her breath, but she wasn’t worried about it. She’d gladly suffocate as she watched him slide the camisole up and over her head. His eyes moved to the lace bra she was wearing, and she could see the desire in them. He grinned at her slightly and then moved one of his hands up her back and unhooked her bra. She watched her own breasts spill out and his other hand come up to cup one. It felt so good, but watching it added even more eroticism to the moment.
While he caressed her breast and teased her nipple, his other hand went to her jeans. She’d unbuttoned him before he came in, so he slid down the zipper and then she watched his hand disappear down inside. She gasped and pressed her head back into his chest. His fingers danced across her swollen lips and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out and alerting the rest of the hotel as to what she was feeling. His lips went back to her neck as his fingers dipped into her most intimate place, rubbing against her hard clit at the same time. She moaned aloud and she felt him growl against her neck. Her entire body was on fire and she’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted him at that moment...right or wrong, she had to have him.
She began pushing her jeans down and Gray took a small step back to watch her. She bent slightly forward at the waist and in the mirror, she could see his gray e
yes were glued to the strip of light blue lace that lay against her cheeks. As soon as she stood back up, kicking the jeans off her foot as she did, his hands were on the waistband of that thong and he was peeling it off her. He pushed it down to her ankles and she kicked it off. Gray’s eyes were all over her body then in the mirror, hungry, full of lust, leaving a trail of fire in their wake.
He groaned before spinning her around again, this time to face him. He cupped her face in his big hands and then leaned down to devour her lips again. Her hands got a hold of the edges of his t-shirt and she began to push it up. Gray broke the kiss long enough to let her push it off him and finally she got to touch him, finally she got to put her hands all over the hard lines of his chest, his shoulders, and down his back. She explored his body both with her hands and her lips, breaking their kiss to let those lips slide down across his collarbones to his chest. Her heart was racing, and she could feel the hot moisture running down the inside of her thighs. Gray let her kiss and suck at his chest for a while before he finally picked up her naked body and carried her over to the bed. He tossed her down on top of it and then before taking off his jeans, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a condom. Poppy lay back on the bed, hair sticking to her face and down in her eyes, and she watched him slide down his shorts. His cock was as big and hard and beautiful as the rest of him and as soon as he had shed everything, she reached out for it. He groaned as soon as she touched it and she felt it throb in her hand. Rolling over onto her back, she guided him to her lips. “Oh fuck, Poppy,” he gasped when she let her tongue come out and lip the tip of it. She opened her lips and let the tip slide in between them, and she felt his body convulse. His response only egged her on and she engulfed the rest of him, lying upside down on the bed, with his hands now in her hair and his hips rocking back and forth, forcing his thick cock all the way to the back of her throat each time.