It was hard to tell, because Len hadn’t left Caster much of a face, but it looked like what was left was screwed up in an ugly cry. “It’s not a she, man,” he whined. “You don’t get it.”
Isaac backhanded him. “I get it. We all get it. You, though, you’re havin’ some trouble with simple concepts. Let’s try again. Kerry. Stay the fuck away from her. Catch me?”
The asshole finally nodded, and Isaac pulled his knife out of his leg and wiped it on Caster’s jeans. Then he slapped the same leg, and Caster moaned again. “Good man.” He looked down the row. “Anybody else need some extra help with this assignment?”
Three bloody, broken heads, shaking, with determination.
“Good. That’s good.” Isaac stood. “Happy holidays, boys. I suggest you make some New Year’s resolutions.”
The Horde left Bob Caster and his posse sitting against the building and returned to their van.
~oOo~
They drove back to the hospital, the roads beginning to worsen noticeably. As they got out of the van, Isaac held Len back. When they were a little behind the others, with his hand heavy on Len’s shoulder, he asked, “You forcing your…sex stuff on Tasha? Your basket of bunnies?”
“What?” Len was dumbstruck.
“You know what I’m askin’. You makin’ her fuck other people?”
No way in fucking hell would he answer that question. “Jesus fuck, boss. You need to step back and now. You got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, and no fuckin’ say in the first place. She is my wife. Step. Back.”
For several seconds in which Len took serious stock of the hot pain in his hands and prepared to make them work long enough to take on his President, Isaac and Len stared a challenge at each other. And then Isaac stepped back with a curt nod.
Len took a breath to steady himself and quell his outrage. He’d been feeling good—better than in a while. Putting hurt on those assholes had been cleansing. He made himself see Isaac’s challenge as chivalrous concern for Tasha—not that Isaac had any right to it—and he took another breath. Then he followed his brothers and let his President pick up the rear.
After they cleaned themselves up as well as they could in a hospital restroom, they headed up to regroup with Tasha and her friends.
She came to him as they approached the waiting room. Nadia was standing in the middle of the room. The others were asleep, awkwardly arrayed on uncomfortable chairs. Len sympathized. He’d done his time sitting vigil more than once.
“Okay?”
He put his arms around her waist and brought her close. “Yeah. Handled. They won’t bother her again.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tommy pass them and head for Nadia.
“Thank you.” Her eyes were bright and shimmery and beautiful.
He smiled and brushed his lips over hers. “Glad to do it.”
“Roads are bad. We gotta get moving on home, brothers.” Show had come up and was standing at his shoulder.
Tasha stepped out of Len’s embrace. “Wait. That’s too long a drive with the weather like this.”
“No interest in sleeping here tonight, Tasha. I got it.”
“I know, Show. But you don’t need to. We decided to start splitting up shifts here when you guys came back. Chad has this one. So I’m going back to my loft. It’s under contract, but it’s still mine until the loan commitment. And it’s still furnished, cabinets are still full. There’s no food, but there’s a ton of bedding and air mattresses, and there’s a bakery on my block that opens at five and has the best pastries and coffee on the planet.
“Ooh! Sleepover party!!” Nadia had bounced over.
“No, chicklet. Not like that.” Len was not getting into this shit with Isaac or anybody else, and Isaac was eyeing Tasha in a way that was going to piss him off. It was complicated enough, and Nadia was nothing if not a complication. But too late he realized that what he’d just said was already raising eyebrows and making Isaac’s expression go dark again. Fuck.
Nadia pouted. “Fine. But I’m taking Uh Tommy with me, then. I get at least one biker tonight.”
Len shot a look at Tommy, who looked more than amenable to that plan.
Isaac came up and loomed over the group, his growing bad temper obvious. “I got no idea what the fuck is going on around here. Will I or will I not have a bed tonight? Because my back would like to stop holding me up for a couple of hours.”
Tasha looked Isaac over as if curious about his attitude, but then she smiled. “Not a bed. I’m going to claim my bed. But a long, comfortable sofa, a chair that folds out, and some top-notch air mattresses. Pillows and blankets. Not far from here. And I can administer a little first aid, too. You all need some. Good enough?”
Isaac looked at Badger and Show, who both nodded. Tommy was obviously otherwise engaged. Len wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Tasha’s loft filled with Horde, but it was better than slogging home so late in the shitty weather. It was better than sleeping without her tonight.
“Okay,” Isaac said. “Let’s go, then. Tommy, I’ll call you in the morning, and we’ll hook back up.”
~oOo~
It felt strange to be spending the night in Tasha’s apartment again. Except to help her pack some things and prepare the place to go on the market, Len hadn’t spent any time in it since the morning they’d left for Chicago.
A lot about his life, a lot about him, had changed in the intervening months.
He watched Isaac, Show, and Badger look around and felt proud to see that they were impressed by Tasha’s place. He had no right to be proud; this apartment represented a life that had barely included him even as an afterthought, but he was nonetheless, in the way he was proud whenever he saw her wearing her white doctor’s coat. Because he had known her forever, he loved her, and she had achieved great things.
And now she was living in the clubhouse with him.
He supposed he should feel guilt about that. He had felt guilt. He and the Horde had brought her down from the heights of her life before. But he couldn’t find guilt, not anymore. He loved her. He needed her. What’s more, she needed him. She loved him. And though she was not as outwardly successful as she had been, she had changed for the better, too. She was stronger. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, because she had never been weak. But she was a great deal less anxious than she had been.
Then, watching her pull out her medical kit and lead his brothers to her steel dining table and then take his hand to lead him likewise, Len put his finger on what the difference in her meant.
She was open. As she smiled and gently teased Badger about getting blood in his beloved beard and then stuck her tongue out at Show when he made a friendly sideways comment about her upscale taste in home décor, Len saw clearly what was different. There was no remove, no distance between her and these men. For years, she’d held herself stiffly at arm’s length from the world and life in which she’d grown up. She’d been there for them, supporting them, but aloof, living a life that was not club. That was gone.
And she was happier. Even in the middle of the darkness and chaos, Tasha was happier.
Once she got them cleaned up, taped up, stitched up, she packed away her kit and started working on getting beds set up. Tasha was well equipped to make comfortable sleeping arrangements. They all helped, and within fifteen minutes or so, the living room had been converted into a fairly comfortable dorm. A king-size air mattress for Show, the sofa for Isaac, and the white chair folded out into a single bed for Badger. Plenty of pillows and blankets.
Len, of course, had the best situation of anyone—in that huge canopy bed. With his wife. Alone. His cock swelled hugely.
He pulled her into the bedroom and closed the door, and then he yanked her hard to his chest. She gasped in surprise, but he took her mouth before she could do more, say anything that would stop him. Since he’d watched her tending to his brothers, her loving care for them blazing out of her eyes and her touch and the sweet sound of her easy banter, her laughter,
he’d been consumed by his need of her.
That Caster douchebag had split his lip, and he felt the pull of the wound as his mouth moved over Tasha’s, but he didn’t care. In fact, he liked it, that sharp twinge making him feel alive and present and in this room with his woman, his wife. He was alive. He was alive.
He was alive, and he was not alone.
With that thought, he grabbed the front of her shirt in his fists. She’d been dressed up, a little, for Christmas dinner—Shit, it was Christmas; he’d forgotten—and the shirt she wore was blue silk. It gave easily when he jerked his hands apart.
He lifted her and put her up against the wall, his mouth hard on hers, then sliding roughly along her jaw, biting and sucking, to her neck. His hands couldn’t be full enough of her, couldn’t be full at all, and they grabbed and clawed as if of their own will.
That hurt, too; his hands had not recovered completely from Santaveria’s men—maybe they never would—and the work of teaching Bob Caster a lesson had taken a heavy toll. But he liked it, he wanted it, he needed the pain. His hands aching as he clutched at his wife’s—his wife’s—silkysoft, firmly ripe body reminded him that he was vital. That he had fight. And something to fight for. And it made him fierce.
“Len!”
He stilled and pulled up a little, enough to look into her two gorgeous amber eyes with his one weary brown. She was flushed and panting, and the sparkle in those unique eyes was wild—but whether with fear or excitement, he was not sure.
She had blood on her mouth.
“Am I hurting you?” He shifted, holding her to the wall with his body, and brought a hand to her face, sweeping his thumb gently over the red smear on her lips.
“No. No. That’s yours, babe.” She swept her own thumb over his mouth, and he felt the sting from his split lip. “It’s just…you haven’t been like this for a while. Since…” She shook her head once, as if erasing the rest of that thought. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah. I just…fuck, Doc. I need you so bad. I love you so much.”
“I love you.” She smiled then and pushed against him, making him take a step back and release her from the wall. Then she pushed his kutte off his shoulders and down his arms. Folding it carefully, she laid it on top of her tall dresser. She stroked a hand down its length, and that gesture made his insides roll. Only a woman who really understood this life, what that hunk of leather meant, would do such a thing, without a thought. Just an instinct.
She turned back to him, and her eyes had darkened, still glittering, but now with purpose. She opened his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders, letting that drop to the floor. He stood before her bare-chested, his cock so erect that he could feel the seam of his jeans digging deeply into his tender skin, but he stayed still, waiting to see what that look in her eyes foretold.
She lifted his right hand in both of hers. She kissed each finger at each point between the knuckles. She kissed the back of his hand. She turned it over and kissed his palm; he felt her tongue tracing a circle in the center. And then she moved up, stepping into the circle of his arm as she did so, her mouth traveling upward, kissing each new scar. Every letter of his HORDE ink had been cut through with a mark like an “X.”
During one round in the torture cell, Santaveria’s men had simply carved up his arms and legs, one on each side of him, slicing away eagerly. He’d thought at the time they were hacking randomly, but when he’d first taken real stock of his healing body, he’d realized that they had cut through every single distinct tattoo on his arms and legs. He was now striated with fresh scars, all of his ink marred. Why they’d left his torso and neck alone, he didn’t know. Especially considering what they’d done to Badger. And they’d torn Show’s ink up, too. And Havoc’s. Each in different ways.
They’d had a real hard-on about their ink, and, except for what they’d done to Badge, he hadn’t realized it until after the fact. He wondered if it was important in some way.
That was a thought for later, because Tasha’s tongue was running over the scar at his right shoulder and then across his chest to his left arm, and he didn’t want to be thinking about Santaveria and torture and losing Hav and his brothers’ pain and his pain and—
He flinched at the wave of emotion and memory and stepped back, away from her.
She stood up straight and caught his face in her hands. “Len?”
After a shaky breath, he smiled down at her. “Sorry. I’m good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Don’t stop.”
With a sweet lift at the corners of her mouth, she brushed her knuckles over his left cheek. Then she slid her fingers under the strap of his eye patch and pulled it off.
He jerked away again. “No, Tash. Not that.”
“Yes.” Her hands holding his head, she pulled him downward, toward her. He resisted—he hated this, it was not sexy, it was not hot, it reminded them both of that fucking day and he didn’t want that, not now, not when they were like this. Not ever. He wanted to erase what they had done from his memory. But she kept up the downward pressure, staring intently at him, and he finally closed his eye and let her bring his face down to hers.
He felt her lips on his left eyelid, now forever closed. Without moving away, she whispered, “I love you. I will love you forever.” He felt the words on his scarred skin.
His heart hurt, like it was being squeezed in an iron fist. He heard some kind of sound come out of his throat, and then he wrapped her up tight in his arms and tucked his head against her neck, letting the soft warmth of her skin soothe him. He felt her pulse tapping gently on his cheek. And then he felt her hands opening his belt and his jeans, then wrapping around his cock.
He moved to lift her, intending to turn and lay her on the bed, but she stepped back and pushed his jeans down from his hips. Then she gave his chest a sharp push with both hands, and he sat hard on the bed, his jeans around his knees. As he toed his boots off and got rid of his clothes, she stripped down to her underwear.
She always wore underwear in a matched set, always silky and lacy, usually blue. This set, though, was red. Christmas red. The was a tiny little white puff at the center of both bra and panties—thong style, they were. Len grinned. She looked like the world’s sexiest elf.
“Leave those on, baby.”
“Oh, I intend to.” She stepped to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and her legs on either side of his. “Lie back, hon. I’m taking you for a ride tonight.”
Damn. Tasha had told him early on that she preferred to get fucked, and that was certainly true. She leaned strongly to submissive. So her on top was not a frequent position, which was fine, because he tended to want to be in charge. But the thought of her in her Christmas elf lingerie, riding him like a horse, made his cock bounce. He lay back, and she climbed on.
As she hovered over him, her hands roaming over his torso and her hips flexing gently, he had a thought and caught those hips to still them.
“Lot of ears in the next room, baby. You okay with that?” Isaac’s ears were in the next room, in fact, and Len wasn’t sure if Tasha might feel strange about that. He’d understand if she did.
But her smile was broad and bright. “Can I tell you a little secret?”
“You can tell me anything, baby.”
“I kinda like that Isaac is over there. I kinda want to be extra loud. Is that bad?”
He laughed. He liked that idea, too. There was a weird tension between him and Isaac over Tasha, and it was hard to get a clear read on it. Like jealousy but not quite. As if Isaac still felt some kind of claim over Tasha without actually wanting her. It pissed Len off. So a little territorial assertion sounded like a great idea to him. “If it is, it’s okay by me. I’m happy to make you scream.”
“I was thinking maybe I’d make you scream.”
“Like to see you try.”
With a wiggle of her eyebrows, she grabbed his cock with one hand—roughly, making him jump—pulled her thong to the side with the other, an
d sat down forcefully on him.
“Ah! Fuck, baby. You mean business.”
“Yeah, I do. I’m feeling badass, sending my ‘pet bikers’ off to wreak bloody justice.”
Her hips had picked up a strenuous rhythm immediately, and he felt his breath leaving him already as his nerves danced in his cock, surrounded by her writhing, squeezing flesh. “You’ve always been badass, Doc. You were just pretending not to be.”
She stopped moving and stared down at him. Not sure if he’d said something wrong, he stared back, waiting. Then she dropped down, her chest on his, and kissed him, claiming his mouth as ferociously as he so often claimed hers. He brought his hands up and threaded his fingers through her beautiful hair, spread over his shoulders and draping their faces.
Jesus, the feel of her taking control like this, her body moving however she wanted, her frenzied mouth sucking his sore lip, her hands clawing into his chest—she might manage to make him scream, which would be a damn first.
Suddenly, she pushed away from his mouth with a gasp, her eyes alight with fiery need. Her pussy began to contract around him, and she sat straight up, her hips going hard, grinding down on him. Jesus, Jesus. When he saw her hand move, rubbing her belly, then down to work her clit, he about blew his load. He reached up and yanked her pretty Christmas bra off her shoulders until the cups came down, exposing her lovely tits. Then he took two brilliant handfuls and twisted her tight, pink nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.
She arched backward so fast and hard that he lost contact with her, and he sat up to follow her, crossing his arms behind her back. Her tits were at his face now, and that was an opportunity he never passed up. He took one in his mouth, biting down on a nipple still swollen from the attentions of his hand and sucking hard.
“Oh fuck, oh God, oh Len! Yesyesyesyes! Now!”
He tried to move his hips with her, to help her, but she was going so fast and hard that he couldn’t keep up, so he quit trying and let the frenzy of her rising orgasm catch him in its wake.
When she peaked, he was right behind her. She went rigid and still, as she always did, but he was so close himself he felt robbed by her sudden stillness, even as her muscles kneaded and milked him, bringing him steadily but fractionally closer, making him insane with need.
Show the Fire (Signal Bend Series) Page 28