by Bourne, Lena
“Here he is,” Piston announces loudly once we reach the table. “The guy who was at the right place at the right time!”
That’s one way of putting it. Strange how my mind immediately drifts to Stormi as he says it, so strongly I glance back at her. Our eyes lock across the room, pure, hot sunlight streaming from hers to mine and for that split second the room is completely silent and no one’s moving. All the noise comes back as she looks away and turns her back on me again. She really shouldn’t’ve come after me before. And I shouldn’t’ve said all those things either.
I clear my throat and turn back to the bandaged guy. He gets up, moving like he’s a hundred years old instead of just about ten years older than me. The half of his face that’s visible is contorted in pain and he’s breathing deeply, most likely breathing through the pain, but he’s grinning when he finally straightens up.
“Thank you,” he says solemnly. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. I owe you. Anything you need, just ask. The name’s Brick.”
He offers me his left hand to shake, because his right one is strapped up in a sling across his chest and almost as heavily bandaged as his head. Both his bandages are still clean and bright white, but they won’t stay that way long in this filthy, smoky place. His bloodshot, dark brown eyes are encircled by very dark rings.
“Don’t mention it. It was my pleasure,” I say, shaking his hand, but nowhere near as hard as I’d shake a healthy man’s. “I’m just sorry the bastards got away. But I’ll get them.”
“And I’ll help,” he says and starts the process of sitting back down, which looks even more painful than the getting up was. I can’t help but wince as the jarring motion of his ass hitting the wooden seat makes him groan.
I sit down on the other side of the injured guy, next to Horse. Stormi is still behind the bar, still pretending I don’t exist. I’ll sit here for a bit, have a whiskey or two, or five and then go talk to her. I don’t remember a single other time when I’ve cared so much over correcting what I said to a woman, and I’ve said plenty of shit to them over the years. The stony way she’s ignoring me tells me I’ll have my work cut out for me when I try.
I’m hoping she’s gonna come serve us, but Horse waves another woman over—a tall, skinny one with fire-engine red hair, which comes down to her ass that’s barely covered by the tiny leather skirt she’s wearing. She has legs for days, but they’re thin and willowy and her boobs are the size of an average apple. Not my type.
“Bring a bottle of Jack,” Horse barks at her before she even reaches our table. She turns on her toes, making nothing of the sky-high heels she’s wearing. Probably a veteran stripper. There’s a pole at one end of the space, but there’s no room for the girls to actually do anything with it seeing as the tables are arranged right up to it.
Horse’s long face is dark and surly, the injured guy is adjusting the strap around his neck, and Piston finds something at the other end of the bar more interesting than the three of us.
I point at the strippers’ pole and ask of no one in particular. “Does that ever get any use?”
They all look to where I’m pointing. The bandaged guy turned too quickly and groans again.
“Not for a good long while now,” he answers. “There were too many fights over the girls. The strip club’s down by the warehouse now. I can take you there, if you’re in the mood.”
I grin and open my mouth to tell him we can do it some other time, when Horse grabs the redhead’s arm, as she sets the bottle on the table, and flings her in my direction. I have no choice but to catch her and set her down in my lap, otherwise we’d both have gone sprawling on the floor, her on top of me.
“Ace here’s in the mood for a lap dance, Lisa,” Horse tells her, while she’s still catching her breath from the sudden motion. “See that he’s not disappointed.”
In the next moment she’s smiling at me, her flaming red hair framing her face and making her look pale as a sheet.
“It’ll be my pleasure,” she coos, flipping her hair back over her shoulders. In one practiced twist she’s straddling my lap, her white-toothed, wide grin all I see for a second before she wraps her arms around my neck and throws her head back, while grinding her pussy against my crotch.
“Lets give them their privacy,” Horse orders and Piston and the bandaged guy laugh, then get up.
What the fuck did I get myself into? The redhead is still grinding her crotch against mine, I’m getting hard despite wanting none of her right now, and it gets words as she slides off her flimsy white tank top and flings it away with another toss of her hair. She has no bra underneath it. Stormi’s not ignoring me now. I don’t have to see her to know. I can feel her look with all the heat of the noonday sun in the desert beating down on my neck.
Best to get this done sooner rather than later.
I bury my head between the red head’s firm breasts, as I grab her ass and ram my hard cock against her pussy. Bony or not, she’s wet for me. I’d enjoy her. But I’ll enjoy Stormi more.
I roar and groan as I come back up for air. “That was just what I needed!”
She gives me a puzzled look like she thinks I’m out of my mind. I give her a nudge to get her off my lap. “Come back later. But bring me a beer in the meantime.”
She’s picking up her shirt, still eyeing me like I’m not right in the head.
“A beer, sweetie, now” I remind her and give her a slap on the ass to hurry her along. I glance back at the bar, fully expecting to meet Stormi’s more approving and welcoming eyes this time, but she’s not there.
She’s nowhere in the room. God fucking damn it! Where did she go now?
My twisted luck answers the call for the second time tonight. Horse drags Stormi in from the courtyard just as I think it. Her hair’s all messed up because he’s got a vicious grip on it as he pulls her after him, and her cheeks are rosy from more than just anger. Then that piece of shit slaps her hard right before my eyes, because she’s resisting him!
I’m on my feet, take two steps toward them, ready to tear them apart, ready to give him a taste of his own medicine, when logic catches up with me. If I step between then now, tear him off her and teach him his lesson, I might as well pack up and go home right after. It’s damn hard to stand still and do nothing though. Harder than moving a mountain, since every cell in my body is telling my fists to go deal with him.
Horse whispers something in Stormi’s ear angrily, then pushes her in the direction of a group of yuppies huddled near the main door, as he waves at them and points at her. They all grin at him as one, most of them also giving him the thumbs up, both handed, like the bunch of chumps they clearly are. She starts swaying towards them, going very slowly and very shakily, while looking past them.
I’m in her path in three strides. I scoop her up in my arms and twirl her around like I’m some sailor that just returned home to his sweetheart after months at sea.
“There you are!” I yell loud enough for most to hear me. Horse certainly did. His face is a shade of dark red I’ve never seen on a human before. I don’t let it faze me. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” I tell Stormi with the widest grin I can manage.
“Do you have a death wish?” she hisses in my ear as I hug her close. “Put me down.”
“I’m not gonna let a bunch of yuppie chumps run a train on you,” I whisper into her ear, then loosen my grip on her, but keep my arms still firmly around her.
“Unless that’s what you’re in the mood for,” I add, grinning at her.
“Go to hell,” she tells me, but she’s holding onto me very tightly. Her eyes are flashing hotter than the sun again, just the way I like it.
“It’s your funeral, I warned you,” she adds. “Can’t say I didn’t.”
I laugh. “I’m hard to kill, babe. I’m a lot like a cockroach that way.”
“Yeah, that’s a good—” I don’t let her finish the sentence. I kiss her hard and deep, adjusting my grip so that I’m holding
her up by her ass.
Her legs wrap around my hips like they belong there. I don’t break the kiss, don’t even take my tongue out of her mouth, as I carry her out by the back door. I ignore Horse completely, though I do look at him from the corner of my almost closed eye as we pass him. He’s livid, his face so dark red it’s black. But he makes no move to rip her from my arms like I half expected him to.
He said I could have her if I wanted her. I plan on holding him to those words if he gives me any shit over this. A man’s honor is in his word. I can only hope he believes in that too, because I’m not letting Stormi back into his power. That much I know.
* * *
Stormi
I tried not to watch Lisa wiggling her skinny ass in Ace’s lap, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. So I didn’t see Horse come up right behind me where I was standing at the sink.
“You’re lucky,” he hissed and the dumbness of those words almost made me laugh out loud and miss the rest of his sentence which was, “Those yuppies you stood up the other day are back tonight, and you’re gonna show them the best time they’ve ever had.”
I looked over at the group of leering guys he was talking about, all wearing khakis and polo shirts, huddled so close together by the door that I couldn’t even count them. Scared sheep. Why do they even come here if they’re this frightened of being here? The only difference between them that I could notice was the color of their polo shirts.
“Lisa would do a better job of that, I’m sure,” I said, somehow finding my anger despite the cold that rose inside me. Horse didn’t used to whore me out, but he’s gonna start now and he’s clearly gonna do it with joy if his wide grin, that clearly showed me both rows of his yellowed, crooked teeth was anything to go by.
Though really, it was the black hate in his eyes that told me that. I shouldn’t show him how much the thought of becoming a run-down, abused, ruined biker whore scares me, but I doubt I did a very good job of hiding it. My heart was thumping too hard to even try, and the whooshing in my ears was loud enough to drown out all the other noise in the bar. Belatedly, I remembered Brenda’s advice and ran my hand down his shirt, smiling at him in what I hoped passed for seduction.
“Wouldn’t you rather I made you very happy tonight?” I asked in the sweetest voice I could muster, which wasn’t very sweet at all.
He grinned meanly, snarled more like, grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me all the way to the back door and out into the courtyard. My eyes were tearing up with more than just pain when he slammed me against the wall outside.
“You’re nothing but a whore here, Stormi,” he hissed. “Time you get used to that.”
“And if I don’t?” I asked, like the idiot that I am. But in that moment I knew, absolutely knew without a doubt, that if I let go of my anger, if I try to douse it, pretend I don’t feel it, give in to how useless feeling it is, I’m as good as dead, as good as the ruined biker whore I’m so afraid of becoming.
I was straightening my hair when he backhanded me across the face. He slapped me from the other direction right after, leaving my ears ringing, the stinging in my cheeks growing worse and worse with each passing moment until I was sure my skin was melting right off.
“Go back inside and do what you’re told,” he barked at me.
I didn’t move fast enough to obey him, so he grabbed a fistful of my hair and dragged me back in, slapped me again to hurry me along, but I hardly felt any of that. The yuppies were just a giant blur of pastel colors as I approached them, my face probably as dead as I felt.
Then Ace appeared, swooping in out of nowhere, standing like a wall between me and them, shining bright enough to raise the dead.
He hugs me tight, lifts me up, all while smiling wide and saying the dumbest and most nonsensical things. Did I just lose the last of my marbles? Am I imagining him rescuing me, because that’s what I want most to happen?
He’s probably fucking Lisa in that chair right now, seeing nothing through the curtain of her fake red hair. Yet here he is too. His strong arms are holding me tight and out of harm’s way. If this is madness then I never want to be sane again. That I know. That is clearer than any reality can ever be.
I say things, warn him, call him crazy for helping me as he carries me outside. He deflects my warning like the empty words it is. We can do anything we want to do, his kiss and his strong arms holding me are saying.
“I was an idiot before,” he tells me as he sets me down outside, cementing that knowledge even deeper into my soul.
“You’re being an even bigger idiot now,” I counter, but make no move to step out of the circle of his arms or removing my hands off his waist.
“Because you think Horse will be mad at me for intercepting you and taking you out?” he asks, like it’s a dumb idea all around. “I’ve dealt with guys much scarier than him. Besides, I saved the guy’s life. He owes me big time.”
“He ordered me to make those yuppies happy,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I figured. Is that what you want to do?” he asks, faking surprise. “You wanna go back inside?”
I slap his chest lightly. “Be serious.”
“OK,” he says and his face turns as solemn as I’ve ever seen it. “I’m completely serious when I say that I’m not gonna let Horse mess with you while I’m here, and that I’m not gonna let him whore you out while you’re with me.”
“That’s a lot of whiles. What about after you leave?”
He shakes his head and smiles. “Then you’ll come with me, obviously.”
I open my mouth to argue, to tell him that kinda talking means exactly nothing, since it’s just words. That I could be in worse trouble when he decides he doesn’t want me anymore.
But he kisses me before I can get the words out, and all the truth that couldn’t possibly be in what he said is there in the kiss. All the sweetness and hope too. It’s all there in the sparks his lips against mine wake in my blood, in the way his tongue in my mouth somehow tugs at my soul and makes it glow. I never felt more myself than I do when he’s kissing me. And that’s one truth that no amount of logical thinking will ever threaten.
From the first time we kissed, I felt like his lips on mine ignited something inside me, something beautiful and sparkling and perfect. With each next kiss, the feeling grew more and more pronounced. Now it’s a torch, illuminating and banishing all the darkness that’s been my life since I met the Sinners. That’s been my life even before then? Yes, I think so.
His hands are under my shirt, groping my breasts, then on my ass, squeezing, marking, caressing, claiming. Mine are gliding along his rippled abs under his shirt, getting stuck in his hair, my palms prickled by the stubble on his cheeks. I want to touch every inch of him, want to know it, remember it, claim and mark it too.
He pulls me to him by my ass, grinds his hard cock against my belly, and I feel its throbbing urgency through the fabric of our clothes, the barrier of our skin, feel it pulse against the very essence of me. I suddenly don’t want anything to stand in the way of our essences joining, of flowing together, mingling into one. He breaks the kiss as he groans, probably with the very same need I have for us naked and joined, with nothing between us but skin and air.
I’d let him take me right here. I’d let him take me anywhere. But we’re in plain view out here, since several of the clubhouse’s windows look onto this courtyard, and I don’t want to share him with anyone.
“Let’s take this somewhere more comfortable,” I suggest in a whisper as he tries to kiss me some more.
“Yeah, let’s,” he says hoarsely.
I take his hand and lead him inside to my bedroom, feeling like I’m floating, like something fluid, yet steady, warm and pleasant is flowing beneath me like a river guiding me to safety, pleasure, bliss, belonging. Home. I could let myself drown in this river, drown in him, in this pleasantness that being with him is, and I’d never regret a thing. I know I wouldn’t.
He grabs me and kisses me again as soon as
the door of my tiny bedroom closes behind us, and by his kiss, I know he shared every one of those sensations that floated with me on the way here. He’s ready to surrender too.
Our clothes end up in a heap by the door with almost no effort on our part. Now his weight is pressing me down onto the cool sheets of my unmade bed, his kisses banishing the last dregs of the darkness, the doubt, the fears that threatened to swallow me and never let me back up for air less than an hour ago.
His body covering mine is better than any blanket, and I feel safer, more cared for, more loved and appreciated than I ever remember feeling before. It’s chemistry, it’s hormones, it’s the urgency and desire of the moment, it’s lust. Yet it’s more than that. It’s meeting someone that wakes you, that calls your soul to life, that shows you what life is supposed to be. Somehow, inexplicably, we two make a perfect, complete whole from the broken parts that are us separately.
I surrender to his kiss, to his hands on my skin, to his weight covering me, to knowing all this, which makes no sense yet is inarguably so.
I surrender to his throbbing cock as it enters me too, gasping and moaning, welcoming it with my body and soul. For a blissful moment I’m aware of nothing but how perfectly he fits me.
Then his thrusts, long and deep and just fast enough, wake other sensations. Bliss and pleasure soon lash through me like a summer squall’s waves hitting the shore, each higher, angrier, stronger than the last, each bringing more pleasure, more bliss, other knowing, other needs, needs he can fulfill perfectly too. My moans are bordering on screams, not caring who can hear me through the thin walls of my bedroom, the thin walls of the clubhouse, not caring that a hostile world that wants me broken, wants me dead exists just beyond them.
I’m safe here, I’m satisfied, protected and worshiped. I’m alive here. More alive than I’ve ever been anywhere. This perfect moment of sharing, of pleasure, of bliss is enough. No need to worry about the next. No need to worry about anything at all. So I don’t.