by Krane, Kasey
Goddamn motherfucking son-of-a-bitch.
What possessed Jules to think that she could pull a stunt like this? People didn’t sneeze in Deming without asking the Dead Legion if they could first. Did she honestly think that she could march into the library and start asking questions about the death rate caused by Dead Legion members, and not get some kickback?
I grabbed her helmet and buckled it under her chin, then strapped my own on. She crossed her arms across her chest and glared at me. I ignored her. I had to do something with her that didn’t involve the Dead Legion, or the microfilm machine at the library. I had to hide her dumb ass far, far away from Ghost.
I swung my leg over onto the bike.
“Get on!” I yelled at her. After a moment’s hesitation, she swung her leg over and settled in behind me. She didn’t snuggle up against me though; she held herself away from me like someone had built a wall between us. I started my Harley and roared out of the parking lot. I didn’t have time for her snotty attitude. She could hold on or fall off. I wasn’t going to continue to protect her.
As I went around a corner, she grabbed me and held on tight.
That’s better.
Unable to think of a better place to take her, I decided to drive us to my apartment but I impulsively hung a left at the stop sign and roared out of the town instead. I wanted to clear my head. I had to figure out a way to convince her to stop being an idiot.
Or at least to hide it better.
After a decently long ride through the countryside, I turned back and made my way to my place. The ride worked its magic, as it always did, and I felt calmer. Not happy - that’d take a lot more than a ride around Deming - but not quite as willing to strangle Jules, which was a goddamn improvement.
We tore through Old Town and up to my apartment. I lived in a shithole and I hated to bring Jules to it, but where else was I supposed to hide a nosy, pain-in-the-ass journalist?
I pulled to a stop and turned off my engine. In the silence, Jules asked, “Where are we?”
I was startled for a moment and then realized that of course she wouldn’t know where I lived. “Home sweet home,” I said sarcastically. I unlocked the front door and we walked in. It was a disaster. I hadn’t exactly expected to bring home a chick that evening. I rarely brought women back to my apartment - I usually just used the rooms at the clubhouse to fuck ‘em. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Jules agreeing to that.
I looked around, tempted for a moment to clean up, but I knew my place would need more than a rearranging of pillows on the couch so I decided to pass on it. What-fucking-ever. She could live with it.
“Wanna beer?” I asked as I headed into the kitchen.
“Sure,” she said, following behind me. Her lack of enthusiasm was obvious in her voice, and I paused.
I was being a dick and she didn’t deserve it.
Goddammit.
Jules was only doing her job - she was sent to Deming to be a journalist. It was Ghost who deserved to be pistol-whipped for his part in all of this. He was the dumbass who fucking invited a journalist to hang out with an outlaw motorcycle gang the week before the biggest illegal gun deal Dead Legion had ever put together went down.
I had to stop being angry with Jules for Ghost’s mistake, although dear God, it’d be a hell of a lot easier if she’d just be more…pliant. Stupid. Malleable.
Less…Jules.
Swearing a blue streak that would turn even the heads of my fellow Dead Legion, I turned and headed to the door.
“C’mon, let’s go,” I tossed over my shoulder, and walked out to my bike. I unlocked our helmets from the bike and tossed hers to her.
“Where are we going?” she asked, confusion bright in her eyes. I didn’t answer but just swung onto the bike. She mounted behind me and we took off.
We pulled into the grocery store parking lot and I switched the motor off, the abrupt silence deafening in its own way. Ignoring her questions, I dragged her into the store and down to the meat department. Picking out two marbled and stupidly expensive steaks, I then moved onto the produce department. Realizing questions weren’t getting her anywhere, Jules started helping me pick out produce, and we finally decided on fresh green beans with garlic and onions and baby red potatoes.
Instead of going home though, I headed to the liquor store. When we walked into the pleasantly freezing store, I heard Jules heave a big sigh of happiness. I couldn’t help but silently agree. I grew up in Deming and still found the summers oppressively, stupidly, horribly hot.
“So, what’s your favorite mixed drink?” I asked, carrying our grocery sacks as we wandered around the store. Leaving meat out in the black leather bag of a Harley parked in the sun in July in New Mexico was a guaranteed episode of food poisoning. The clerk gave me the stink eye, probably not appreciating my cut, Roger, or the grocery sacks, but I ignored him. There were benefits to being a Dead Legion, and doing whatever the hell you wanted in Deming was definitely at the top of that list.
“Long Island Iced Tea,” she said and then laughed. “So cliché, especially for someone who’s from New York, but hell, I happen to like that one.” She grinned at me. I felt my toes tingle, and other places too. I ignored it.
“Fair enough,” I said. “How the hell do you make it?” The women I fucked at the clubhouse all did shots of tequila in an attempt to get blitzed as quickly as possible, and my girlfriend from high school liked wine coolers. I’d only heard of Long Island Iced Teas in passing and had certainly never mixed one.
“Vodka, gin, rum, tequila, Triple Sec, and lemon juice, topped with cola,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Cola? You mean like a Coke or something?” I asked, confused. I’d heard it referred to as Coca-Cola, of course, but just cola?
“Well, yeah, Coke is fine. Or Pepsi. Why, what do you call cola?”
“Soda. Usually I’ll call it a Coke or a Pepsi, but if I want a generic term, I use ‘soda.’” We stared at each other, smiling, for a moment. I had no idea why this struck me as being so…lovable, but it did. Her green eyes were intoxicating all on their own. I felt stupidly happy.
“All right, let’s round up the ingredients then,” I finally said. I started hunting for the vodka, smiling as I went.
18
Bishop
“So after that, my mother never let me ‘borrow’ her sheets without asking why first,” I finished, and Jules bust out laughing.
“You sound like you may have been more than just a handful as a child - more like an armful,” she said, her words slurring just slightly. Her New York accent had grown on me but a drunk New York accent was even more delightful. My eyes swept over her gaping blouse, allowing me a generous view of her generous tits. I felt my cock stir in my pants. I hadn’t tried this hard to win over a girl since prom.
“You never told me how you got stuck babysitting me,” she said out of the blue. Her green eyes were dancing with mischief. “Did you draw the short straw? Or did you and Tats arm wrestle and he won?”
I bust out laughing - I couldn’t help it. Tats was a nice guy and all, but he was 20 years older and at least 50 pounds lighter. There was a good chance Jules could beat him in an arm wrestling match.
“Or…” I said, drawing it out, “Ghost is the president and I’m his veep. If anyone’s gonna get ‘stuck’ babysitting you, it was gonna be me. Although if I’d known it’d be this much fun, I would’ve been happy to take Tats on.”
“What is Ghost doing this week?” she asked. She was more serious than she had been a moment before, and I felt my stomach drop with dread. “Why is he foisting me off onto you?”
Foist. Who the fuck says ‘foist’ when they’re drunk? Her head was listing a little to the side and I knew she had long passed buzzed and was now happily ensconced in Drunk Land. How she was concentrating enough to question me like this was beyond me. Hopefully if I answered her, she wouldn’t remember the answers tomorrow anyway.
“Ghost had some things come u
p this week.”
“What kind of things?” she persisted. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
“Club business. It was supposed to happen in a couple of weeks but it got moved up, so he’s been concentrating on making it happen quickly.”
She opened her mouth to ask another question and in desperation, I leaned forward and kissed her. It was instinctual - anything to stop her questions that I could not answer - but it quickly became so much more. She sucked in her breath sharply, surprised, and I took the opportunity to slip my tongue inside her mouth. Warm, wet, sweet from the liquor…Jules. It was her breath, her scent, her amazing personality, her fucking amazing body…I couldn’t get enough.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the bedroom. She stumbled for a moment and grabbed my arm for stability. She smiled up at me, happy and sexy and drunk and I just couldn’t wait another moment. I scooped her up in my arms and carried her, laughing at her protests, to my bed.
“You’ll hurt your back!” she half yelled but I could tell it was all for show. The laughter was spilling out of her and I felt a lightness inside that almost felt foreign. She was so goddamned beautiful and sexy and happy, it was hard to remember what the fuck I was always so worried about.
I feinted a drop and she squealed in surprise and clung tighter to my neck.
There, that was better.
I grinned. Being around Jules made me…happy. God-fucking-damn happy. I almost didn’t know what to do with myself.
Almost.
19
Jules
Bishop laid me down on the bed and I stared up at him with joy thrumming through my veins. He was such a force of nature - too sexy and fuckable for his own good. I reached up and ran my hands through his dark brown hair, then clenched my fist in his hair and pulled him down on me. He laid across me, carefully placing his weight on his elbows and off me. Our faces were only inches apart when he smiled at me. I flicked my tongue across my lips, and then, unable to wait anymore, I pulled him the rest of the way down.
I closed my eyes and sighed with happiness and lust as our lips met. It was fireworks exploding and orchestras playing and choirs singing and every other cheesy analogy that I’d always read in romance books but had never experienced in real life. Yeah, I was 29, and yeah, I lived in New York. I’d fucked more than my fair share of guys.
But Bishop…this was so much more than a quick tumble in the hay. He made me feel all of the shit fairytales had always promised but had never delivered.
He made me feel special.
He pulled my tongue into his mouth and I explored, strong, sure, confident in what I wanted. I rolled him over so I was laying on top of him, staring down at him. I traced my fingernail across his chest. “So, are you ready to fuck a New York Yankees fan?” I said teasingly. “Are you sure that’s even allowed in the state of New Mexico?”
“I’m an outlaw,” he said, grinning. “Laws aren’t something I worry about too much.”
I grinned back. “I’ve always wanted to fuck an outlaw,” I whispered, and then ducked my head to meet his lips. Our tongues dueled and played, darting in and out, teasing. He reached up and wrapped his fingers in my hair and pulled me closer. The urgency rose between us. Laughter gone, he ran his hands up and down me, stroking me, telling me with words and gestures how beautiful he thought I was. How much he loved my curves. How much he loved my smile.
And for the first time in my adult life, I believed a man who told me I was beautiful. Because it was so much more than lip service. It was in his eyes and his hands and his arms and his toes - he really thought I was beautiful.
I realized through a haze of alcohol that this thought only made partial sense - how did his toes tell me anything? - but instead of fighting the alcohol and regaining my senses, I gave into it. I let my stress and my perfectionism and my need to always be in control go and gave myself over to feelings.
It was liberating.
He lifted me and pulled me up towards him, as if I weighed no more than a Barbie doll, until I was leaning on my elbows on top of him, my breasts hanging down, settling on either side of his head. His objective achieved, he began suckling on my tits, switching back and forth between them, sucking, nibbling, pulling. It was sending flames of desire through me.
It was amazing.
He flipped me back over, laying me on my back as he worked his way down my stomach. He ran his tongue around the edge of my belly button and then down to my pussy. He licked his tongue up one side of my pussy and down the other, loving it, telling me how good I tasted and how good I smelled before plunging into my moist center. His tongue stroked my clit and I moaned with pleasure.
“It…feels…so…fucking good!” I said, panting, high on sex and love and lust. “Oh Gooooooddddddd!!!” I moaned, my hips bucking as wave after wave of orgasm washed over me. Slowly, I settled back down, and he pushed a rough, calloused finger inside of me.
“You’re so goddamn wet,” he said with a groan, then pushed two fingers inside of me. He began pumping his fingers in and out, running his thumb over my clit, teasing it, stroking it, with every move inside of me. It was heaven at the center of me, and I was going to ride this wave of pleasure forever.
Suddenly his fingers were gone and I moaned, missing them, and then his cock slid inside of me. “Oh…fuck…yes!” I groaned, my voice husky, and I breathed him in, the desert air, his aftershave, leather. “Please…I need…I want…” I couldn’t remember what I was going to ask or say but I knew I needed it. Needed it all. Needed him.
He began fucking me, sliding in and out, riding me, groaning my name. I felt the orgasm building inside of me, growing, spreading, tingling all over. “Bishop!” I shouted.
“Jules, oh Jules, I’m gonna…Jules I’m gonna come!” His back arched and he poured his seed into me.
Slowly, ever so slowly, we drifted back to earth, I rolled over against him, and we slept.
20
Bishop
Beep. Beep. Beep. BEEP!
I rolled over and blindly whacked at the alarm clock until it finally shut up. Opening one eyeball, I saw Jules staring at me, surprise and alarm written all over her face. I grinned at her and she started laughing.
“Do you always start your mornings out by murdering your alarm clock?” she asked drily.
“Maybe. There is perhaps a good chance that my mother buys me an alarm clock every Christmas because she knows I’ve destroyed the last one she gave me.” I reached out and ran my hand up her arm and to her face, stroking my thumb across her plump, pink lips. “Now this is a view I could wake up to every morning.”
She curled her lips around the tip of my thumb and began sucking it into her mouth, running her teeth along the calloused pad. I closed my eyes, loving the sucking motion, imagining her replicating the movement on my cock…
She sat up. “Hold on, why was the alarm going off?”
“Fuck!” I said, sitting up in a panic. “Today is the charity ride for Dad. We’ve got a lot of shit to get together before we can head out.” I regretfully slid my legs off the bed and stood up, willing my dick to calm down. It seemed pretty happy with the idea of fucking Jules, and I did too.
For the first time that I could recall, I regretted being in the club. My cock and my mind were in perfect agreement - there would be no better way to start the morning off than a sexy, slow round of lovemaking with Jules.
Lovemaking? Since when the fuck did you start calling fucking ‘lovemaking’?
“I need to go back to my motel room so I can get dressed,” Jules interrupted my thoughts.
“We can do that, but we also need to stop by my mom’s house.” Jules looked at me, wide-eyed and more than a little panicked. “Don’t worry,” I reassured her, “this will be a short visit. She has leather chaps from the days of her riding with Dad, and you’ll want to borrow those today. She was about your size when she wore them, so I think they’ll fit you nicely. She also has a close-faced helmet you’ll want to wear instea
d of the open-faced one you’ve been borrowing from me. We’ll be hitting freeways and without good face protection, you’ll get wind-burnt and damn miserable in no time. Not to mention that in case of a wreck, this is a better helmet to be wearing.”
Jules reached out her hand and touched my shoulder. “Thank you.” I felt a shiver of lust and…something else I couldn’t identify run up my spine at her touch and tone of voice. “I really appreciate you caring so much about my safety. I love that you’re smartly stupid about riding.” I laughed, a lightness in my chest that was starting to feel almost…normal. Right.
Although the alarm had gone off at 5:45 a.m., it seemed like time flew by as we worked to get breakfast (breakfast burritos to the rescue again) and morning ablutions out of the way. Finally, we pulled up in front of my mother’s house at 6:45.
“Is she expecting us this early?” Jules asked, once I cut the engine on the Harley. We swung off the bike and began walking up to the front door of the adorable, if small, cottage-style home. I could see Jules taking it all in - the stone pathway, the hibiscus bushes, the saguaro in the corner of the yard - and wondered what she thought of it. It was my childhood home and although it was small and humble, it was well loved.
“Today’s ride is in memory of her husband’s death,” I said quietly. Jules drew in a quick breath and I knew she hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. “She only wishes she could come on the ride with us, but she was never the motorcyclist - my dad was. After he died, she stayed in the club as an honorary Old Lady but she never attended another get-together. It was too hard. In a small way, you could say the club killed her husband. It’s…complicated.”