Connected in Pain

by Ryan Michele

  Snatching the phone, I swiped it to answer. “Crow.”

  “Brother,” Brewer said with no preamble. “Where the fuck are you? We’re ready to roll out.” Turning to the clock, it read eleven thirty. We were supposed to meet up at noon to leave. Fuck, I was going to be late.

  “Be there in an hour. Have somethin’ to do.” I disconnected after his later.

  Tossing the phone back to the nightstand with a clatter, I rolled into Rylynn’s warm, sated, soft body wanting nothing more than to sink back inside and kiss every inch of her body over and over again. Instead, responsibilities meant leaving. “Gotta go.”

  Her smile knocked me on my ass, so wide and bright. She was sunshine beneath all the dark clouds pushing the ugly away to let her brightness through. It took me aback wanting that feeling never to end. It was a gift, one she didn’t know she was giving.

  The darkness of my life at times overshadowed everything. Getting that from Rylynn was a breath of fresh air.

  “Know that.” Her hand came up to cup the side of my face in a very comforting gesture, putting me off guard, but I wasn’t sure why I felt that way. Maybe it was the moment or the soft look in her eyes, or maybe it was just her.

  “Get dressed and I’ll take you home.”

  She stared up at me, her eyes now dancing with something I couldn’t nail down. Fuck, they were so damn expressive as if she had nothing to hide and showed herself off to the world.

  “I’m good. I know my way home.”

  Stubborn. That’s what she was, and no fucking way was I letting her get herself home with no ride. Fuck if she was going to call a damn Uber or some shit. Let alone walk home. No, not happening.

  “Get dressed and I’ll take you home.” The growl caught her attention, but the smile only widened making me want to pull her in closer but I was on top of her; couldn’t get much closer than that except inside her, and there wasn’t time.

  She got off on giving me shit, and fuck if that didn’t turn me on. Anyone else would get a bullet between the eyes, yet Rylynn could do it every minute of the day and I’d welcome it.

  “You really should tone down the growl, Grizzly.” Her voice deepened. “Only you can protect forest fires.”

  Fuck, she was funny. That smart little mouth on her was something I didn’t expect, but liked it. A lot. Probably a bit too much. And the fact that I didn’t give a shit that she called me Grizzly and not Crow wasn’t my style. With her though, it was like another gift somehow. Her giving me something that was just between her and I. Fuck, I was going to end up getting my balls cut off if this kept up.

  “Don’t got time to show you the fire, Pixie. Get your ass moving,” I said, rolling off the bed to stand beside her and grabbing my clothes.

  She shifted off. “Pixie? How the hell do you think that name fits me?”

  This made me chuckle as I got dressed. Rylynn was the furthest thing from a pixie being around five-ten or five-eleven. She was tall for a woman, and it was all legs. They went on for fucking miles, thought for sure they’d wrap around my back twice when I fucked her.

  Then there was the fact that she had a smart mouth she used regularly. Therefore, I named her Pixie because why the fuck not even if it’s the total opposite for her. It made the entire thing work. If I was Grizzly, she was Pixie.

  She got tired of waiting for me to answer, shook her head and said, “Pixie my ass,” bending down to grab her jeans and pull them on.

  “Your legs, babe. All fuckin’ legs,” I responded, putting my leather cut on my back as she slipped on her boots. The jeans she had on completely gave every bit of truth to my words. The way they hugged her ass and accentuated her hips and legs made my mouth water to kiss and nip.

  “Aren’t they great?” she said, not missing a beat, sticking her legs out and showing them off.

  I burst out laughing, that damn sharp tongue of hers, as she continued. “My ass too.” Ry turned around giving me a view of her ass as she looked down at it giving it a small bounce. My cock jerked.

  “Don’t got time to fuck you.”

  Her face twisted humorously. “Pity.” She threw her mass of blonde hair on top of her head and tied a band around it, pieces going every which way. Even that was hot, all the thick shininess confined and ready to be pulled while I fucked her. Coming up on her, I wrapped my arms around tight and pulled her to my body kissing her hard, wet, and deep, needing that contact from her.

  Not once while with Rylynn did the weight of life try to crush me. Just being in the same room as her I didn’t feel it. It was something I only got on the open road, but here in a hotel in Georgia, she’d given it to me freely. Fuck. How many times had there been when I couldn’t get away from the woman in my bed fast enough? Now with Rylynn it was the complete opposite.

  She relaxed into me, her hands going to the nape of my neck then to my hair. When I pulled back and looked into her eyes, I wished I could stay just a few more days—work her out of my system. Explore her. Do all the things I was dying to with her. Have her on her knees in front of me taking my cock. Fuck her against the wall. Spank her ass red then fuck her until she screamed. Have everything inside of my head calm and become clearer because she could do it with a look.

  But we would part here and go on with our lives. Her life was here in Sumner. Mine was in Rebellion. Life was life, and it took you on different paths. Our time was up. It was a fucking great one.

  “Come on. Let me take you home.” Her head shook as she smiled, stepping back and grabbing her bag. Her ass swayed all the way to the elevator, to my bike, and once on her pussy was hot on my ass. Fuck.

  The ride to her place wasn’t long, maybe twenty minutes. She used her fingers to point what direction to turn. Her arms were wrapped tight around me the other times, her tits pressed to my back. My damn cock was hard as a rock once again feeling her heat all around me. There wasn’t time for another round. Another chance to be inside the sweetest pussy I’d ever tasted. The club always came first, and my brothers were waiting as it was.

  Pulling up, I took in the large building. It was three stories high covered in a light green siding. The front of the building had three separate entrances labeled with letters making it clear it was an apartment complex.

  With the manicured lawns, marked parking, and cameras on the outside of the building, it was what I would consider upscale for the average person. It was obvious Rylynn was younger than me, but gauging her place, I would guess she had to be in her mid-twenties in order to afford this on her own. Reading people, I did it often needing to know everything around me to stay alive. The read I got on Rylynn was she wasn’t the kind of woman to let anyone pay her way in life.

  A strong woman taking care of business, that was a fucking turn on. Not that I wasn’t already rock fucking hard. Now, it pressed so tight against my zipper it was sure to leave impressions. Dammit.

  I shut down the bike, flipping down the kickstand, and looked at my watch. It told me I needed to get a move on for the guys, so any plans of a quick fuck at her place wouldn’t be happening even if I thought about it the entire ride.

  Club before pussy.

  Always.

  Rylynn swung her leg over the bike and hopped off like a pro definitely knowing her way around a steel machine. She leaned over and kissed my lips quickly. “Thanks for the ride, Grizzly.”

  This made me chuckle. Wrapping my hand around her neck, I pulled her in tight, kissing her hard one last time and taking everything possible from her and giving just the same. “Take care of yourself, Rylynn.”

  She smiled, and it beamed like a strobe light. “Always. Same with you.”

  Rylynn didn’t wait for me to start the engine. Instead, she turned and took off inside the building. Once the middle door was shut, I took off to find my brothers.

  Time waited for no one, not even a fucker like me.

  3

  Crow

  “Tell me what the fuck happened?” My tone was clipped because I was fucking pis
sed. No, more than pissed—fucking livid.

  “Prosecution pulled up some trumped up evidence to say it was premeditated. They just threw it on the table today,” Kevin, the club’s newest lawyer said, looking me square in the eye, but there was a small tick at his temple telling me that it was taking everything inside of him not to flinch.

  Smart man.

  “What evidence?”

  “They didn’t give specifics,” he answered, still holding his ground. “There is a process, you have to understand that,” he began to explain, and I threw my hand up silencing him. Fuck the process, I didn’t want to hear that shit. Ravage had their own process. It was called get my fucking brother out of the joint before you end up six feet under process.

  “You gonna be able to make this go away?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as we stood outside the clubhouse, under the sun in the parking lot. The last guy didn’t and paid the price for it.

  Kevin never made it inside the clubhouse because as soon as he stepped foot on Ravage property, I stormed out to meet him. This was too important to waste the precious seconds it would take him to get to me. I was fine with our meeting in the parking lot. He needed to get shit done not waste time walking and talking. He knew I was already pissed from his phone call not twenty minutes ago, and nothing had changed in those minutes. Controlled rage was what my father called it.

  It was a skill. Keeping it controlled was difficult at times, but in my line of work, no control got you killed.

  “Gotta see what they have and go from there.”

  He was definitely a smart man. Telling me what I needed to hear and yet giving me nothing. True lawyer speak. No promises, yet keeping everything open to possibilities. I knew his fucking game, and I wasn’t playing it.

  I leaned in close making Kevin’s body stiffen. The fear was trying to take him over, but he forced it to recede. That, I respected a little. “Make sure this shit goes away and our boy comes home. Don’t give a fuck how that happens, but that’s the outcome.”

  Unfortunately, punching him in the temple wouldn’t speed up the process here, even if he needed to be laid the fuck out. This was me. I had to think every move out. I hit him, well, then we’d have to cover the hospital bills because I couldn’t kill him… yet. Right now, he had a job to do and to do it, he needed to have his brain intact and not jumbled into mush by my fists.

  Rook, one of our brothers, had been in prison for four years on a manslaughter charge that never should’ve stuck in the first damn place. Surprised the hell out of us that it did. That was when we brought Kevin into the mix, getting rid of the previous lawyer.

  Kevin had one job. We paid him a fuck of a lot of money to make Rook his only priority. His single task was to get our brother free, and he needed to get it done sooner rather than later. This was our opportunity for that.

  Patience was a virtue. One I didn’t fucking have when it came to my club and my brothers. Action needed to be taken.

  Judge Hugo White, the judge in Rook’s case, didn’t like his palms greased. Another problem. But Rook was set to be released in four months and two days from that pit on good behavior, and now the Alabama Department of Corrections wanted to keep him locked up for the full eight years, leaving him four more to serve. That didn’t work for me. It definitely didn’t work for him.

  The change to keep him inside didn’t make sense to anyone, but this was something we couldn’t control; therefore, Ravage needed to keep tabs on it and be prepared to fight for his release. If we could have controlled this situation, Rook never would have been locked up in the first fucking place. I would’ve shipped his ass to Mexico or Canada if I’d have known.

  “I’ll do my damnedest,” Kevin said.

  Getting straight up in his face not leaving an inch of breathing room, I warned, “Better, because this is your ass if he doesn’t get out.”

  He paled, but nodded and trotted off to his car carrying that stupid briefcase like it had something important in it. Swore he carried it just to use as a weapon if he had too. A lot of good a hunk of leather would do you against a bullet or a crowbar.

  Kevin knew what he was signing up for getting involved with us. We’d made it crystal clear before hiring him. He accepted. Therefore, he needed to do his damn job or he’d end up like the previous lawyer. Gone.

  Looking up into the sky, it was a sunny, hot day in Alabama. A perfect day for everything to go to hell it seemed, considering we’d only been home a few hours and this shit landed in my lap.

  My cell rang as I made my way into the clubhouse. Ours was different from the Sumner Ravage MC. Theirs was all one floor made of concrete blocks, while ours was not. We had two levels all made of brick and mortar. It was an apartment building at one time, but my father, who was president at the time, had it gutted, redone, and added on to creating a large area with a covered roof for our parties to bleed out onto. He’d even kept the pool, but over the years, it had been dug up and replaced with a much nicer, bigger one. Women loved it and usually ended the night naked inside of it.

  Church was held in the basement, and my office was down there next to it. The first floor was the bar, game, and television area. A huge area that we spent most of our time in. The top floor was where most of our club rooms were. It was another upgrade to the building creating a mini apartment for each of us. They were big enough to live in if needed with no problems. A few of the guys wanted to be on the first floor and we made an area in the back for that, but most were upstairs. For us, it worked.

  “Crow,” I answered, pushing open the steel door to the front of the clubhouse, entering and getting chin lifts from the guys. I returned them, but headed to my office downstairs.

  “Hey, Dad.” My boy Greer greeted me through the phone as I entered my office, shutting the door behind me.

  Falling into the seat that creaked with my weight, my head fell back to rest on the high-backed chair. “Hey.”

  My office was where most of the Ravage businesses were ran out of. There were stacks of filing cabinets keeping all our documents in place anytime they were asked for. That was the negative of having the motor fuel, liquor and tobacco licenses that covered our outside businesses. Everything had to stay on point.

  A large sofa covered one wall with a wide black and white image of the Welcome to Rebellion sign hanging above it. My desk was the original one from my father that he used for more than thirty years. It was part of Ravage history, therefore became my desk as well to continue the legacy.

  Three chairs sat in front of the desk, and a bathroom was off to the side only accessible through the room. Behind my desk was a secret room only reachable with keys and a thumbprint on the door. Few had access to it.

  “You comin’ to my game this week?” Greer asked into the phone. He was sixteen and played on the Panthers high school football team. I went to as many games as possible since he began playing his freshman year, as a starter nonetheless. Now, three years later he was one of the best running backs in the state. He had massive skills on the field, great hand-eye coordination, and fast as hell. Each year he got better and better upping the records from the school by smashing old ones.

  There was talk of scouts coming to watch him play, but I wasn’t sure that was the path my boy wanted to take. If it was, I’d stand behind him a hundred percent. If it wasn’t I’d do the same. If he got a full ride to college with it and wanted to, I’d stand by that as well. If he didn’t get a full ride and wanted to go, he’d go. If he wanted to join the club, I’d stand by that too.

  The only thing I wouldn’t stand for would be him becoming a pussy and not working to earn his way through life. No child of mine would take that road. Therefore, he had some hard decisions coming up in the next year that he really needed to sit back and think about.

  He was free to choose his path in life as long as it was something. He would not be thirty-years-old still living with his momma and bumming money off me. Never.

  “Yep.”

  “R
ight. Can I stay with you after the game?” His tone gave him away, the worry plain and clear about something and it was riding on him hard. My boy felt deeply for those around him with the desire to protect. His mother and sisters were the main focus of this urge. He was still learning how to put that focus and desire into something that he could actually do to solve whatever the problem was, instead of getting angry and going off halfcocked. It was difficult to do when you loved someone, and reigning that in was taking some effort on both of our parts.

  He was a kid, though learning his way through life, and this situation could be anything at this point.

  “Of course. What’s goin’ on?”

  The phone rustled on the other end. “Can we talk about it when I get there?”

  Rubbing my hand down my trimmed beard, I let it go for now. The time to talk would be after the game when I had him face to face and wouldn’t let squirm out of talking to me. “Yeah. How’s school goin’?”

  The line grew quiet for a moment, this telling me he wasn’t doing something he was supposed to and his father wouldn’t be too happy about it. Usually his grades were pretty good, but lately he’d been having a bit of trouble. “Doin’ good.”

  “Except for?”

  He sighed loudly knowing I wouldn’t give up. He knew I let go of what he wanted to talk about earlier, and he wouldn’t press me on this as well. My boy knew how far to push and two things in one conversation was one too many. “Got a D on my last test in math. That shit is frustrating.”

  I could only imagine. He brought his math home one day and asked me a question. I went cross-eyed just looking at the problem. Most of the shit they learned now we did the easy way. Schools now did everything the backward, hard way that took thirty minutes to figure out one problem. If I took thirty minutes to figure out one problem in my life, I’d never fucking sleep. He still needed to keep his grades up or no football and no life. “You gettin’ help?”

  “Yeah. I went to Ms. Airy and she put me with a tutor. I start with her next week.”