Kinsmen MC (Complete Series)

by J. C. Allen

  “Whenever we finish, you can come over tonight. If you aren’t doing something at the club.”

  And that was exactly what I needed to hear—to know that I could get some much needed stress relief when the time came. Heaven knew I was dealing with enough bullshit at the club—if she could even give me twenty minutes of relief, that would be worthwhile.

  “I shouldn’t be.”

  Nor will I allow myself to be. Of course, that might have been wishful thinking, but that was really about all I had right now.

  “Good. I mean, do you have to go back to the club today?”

  I sighed deeply. There was no getting away from the issue now, not if Isabelle was bringing it up.

  “Yeah, actually. I’ve got to hold a meeting.”

  “You sound so official.”

  She sounded turned on by that, as if she loved that I was so formal and such a leader. Well, maybe I wasn’t formal, but I was the leader, for better and for worse.

  “I guess I am,” I said. “Why, do you like that kind of thing? Does it make you excited?”

  I could practically hear her getting aroused on the line. She was getting hornier by the second, and I fucking loved it.

  “Yeah, maybe I do.”

  Mmm. Go for the kill.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to wear my cut the next time I fuck you.”

  “I guess you will,” she said. “That better be a promise, Jaxson.”

  She sighed, breathless. I didn’t know how she wasn’t touching herself at this point—maybe she was. But in any case, the thought alone was enough to relieve some of the stress from Simon’s call. I only needed to talk to her for a few more minutes, the conversation going more lighthearted, before I felt ready to move on with my day. I hung up, wished her well, and told her I’d see her real soon. Hopefully today.

  I tugged on my jeans and a gray hoodie, then put my cut on over it. I set off for my bike, kicked it into gear, and took the long way to the club just so I could feel the wind on my face and in my bones.

  And, admittedly, so I could stay away from the club for just a little bit longer.

  When I showed up to the club, despite my best attempts to show up early for my meeting, everyone else had already gotten there. It looked like they all had the same thought—the meeting might have been set up for a certain time, but it was really going to start as soon as possible. All of my brothers were there, as were all the officers.

  And without any hesitation, Matthew started right off the bat.

  “Jaxson, we are out of fucking options,” he said. “We need to get dirty. We need, to put it bluntly, to get into the drug business.”

  I’m not sure I had ever reacted so strongly so quickly in my entire life.

  “Drugs?”

  I thought of how my father would have reacted. It was an understatement to say he would have been repulsed. There was no chance.

  “Fuck no!”

  I banged the gavel, which I normally never did. I had to hear, though, just to drive home the damn point. The officers seemed to get the picture.

  My brothers, though?

  “Come on, you know Sean and Ethan have been doing it for a while now,” Zeke said. “How do you think we got top shelf liquor? New equipment for the garage, and why they always seem to have more money than anyone else?”

  Doesn’t matter. Not going to get into that game.

  “They never did it in the name of the club, though.”

  “Well it worked,” Zeke said. It working doesn’t mean it’ll work as club business. “And it could keep the club going. One run, with a few of us working, could get us a hundred grand, easy. It’s not transport, it’s security. And we could always play dumb if we got arrested.”

  I almost laughed at Zeke but fortunately managed not to. There was no way that a laughter in his face would have kept the peace.

  “Sean and Ethan would have to talk to me about it, then,” I said. “I’m sorry, but unless we have literally no other option—”

  “Guess what?” Matthew said. “We literally have no other option.”

  I could see by his face it wasn’t just a response meant to shut me up. He was deadly serious. I leaned back in my chair, covered my face with my hands, and moaned.

  “So… you’re considering this?” Simon said.

  “Simon,” I said. “We have no choice but to pay now, right?”

  “Afraid so.”

  It would be the end, then. It isn’t just the club and the people. This building has been in the family for years, my family, and then the club as a whole. Losing it would be… the most painful thing I could experience.

  Simon wasn’t the only one who was on the verge of saying “afraid so.” I was about to venture into territory that I was going to regret.

  But…

  “If it saves the club,” I said. “Then… fuck it. Let’s do it.”

  Forgive me, Dad.

  14

  Isabelle

  I got to bed late because I had to clean the kitchen and was paranoid that Riley would still be able to tell about the escapade Jaxson and I had.

  I wound up cleaning the entire place, all the while thinking about Jaxson and the things he did to me… the things he said to me… and the things that would come. It was probably accurate to say that no man had ever made me feel like Jaxson had—and I meant that as a compliment.

  That man made me so dirty I didn’t even know what to do with myself. Jaxson was very well endowed, no less than ten inches. Every time through was the most unbelievably riveting experience ever—it was like he was going places no woman probably could have ever imagined any man going, and for that reason, he was someone worth coming back to.

  But, obviously, it went beyond just the sex.

  And after he said I was his girl, it just made everything better. I didn’t have to imagine and guess things anymore. I knew what we were, and I wanted to stay that way. During the day and during the night, I dreamed of him, like I always did.

  But it was a more domesticated dream, like of him and I living together, or me just riding on the back of his bike. Except I wasn’t just on his bike—I was on his bike, riding away from our wedding.

  Crazy, yes. but it had never been like this with anyone.

  Frankly, even the L word started to loom in my mind. I tried to shove it away, as we couldn’t be that serious yet. But…

  I felt him in my bones. I thought about him all the time. I worried for him. I wanted to support him and be there for him, just as he did for me, too. With every passing day, even though our worlds felt as distant as the entire universe, it felt like our mutual efforts were doing their best to bridge that gap. It was not going to be easy, but hard felt like a significant upgrade over impossible as I’d felt when I first felt his eyes at his bar.

  And then, just after I woke up after a long night of cleaning the kitchen, long after Riley had come, not noticed anything, and gone to bed, long after I had had a conversation with my mother and still managed to keep Jaxson out of my mouth, he called. He was practically my alarm clock.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Jaxson always had a way of making my mornings feel brighter, and on this particular day, it was no different. He engaged me, flirted with me, had me on the verge of touching myself… it was the full Jaxson Kinsmen experience.

  But there was just something about this particular conversation that left me a little worried. I didn’t think it was anything between us or about us, but there was a very real sense that Jaxson’s club issues were getting heavier and heavier by the day. Granted, he hadn’t sounded like anything was imminent, but the stress seemed to be building to the point that he was going to snap at some point.

  Snap at me? I didn’t think so. But snap in a way that affected our relationship? That seemed possible.

  So long as he figures it out. It’s not your world, but things always seem to work out in that world.

  Still, once he hung up and things had settled down from the fire that he
had stoked on the call, I decided it was time to move on for my day and start cooking food. Just as I was halfway through making my breakfast omelet, Riley appeared, looking beat as hell—maybe not hungover from alcohol, but hungover from something for sure.

  “Damn girl, you look beat,” I said.

  Riley gave the kind of smile someone gave when they had to acknowledge the truth in a statement like that. It was easy to tell that she wasn’t smiling because she was happy.

  “I had a long night.”

  Riley moved and sat down… across, but not at, where Jaxson and I had had our wild sex. Even though I had cleaned the spot so thoroughly that it was probably cleaner than before we had gotten it on, I wasn’t about to take any risks. All it took was a whiff of skin-on-skin contact lingering in the air for our roommate relationship to turn a bit awkward.

  “Really? What happened?” I said, trying not to show the distress in my voice.

  “Some server got in an altercation with a customer. Some pregnant lady had an allergy and the server didn’t know the steak was cooked in butter. She literally started yelling at her, and she’s only in high school, she started crying in front of everyone. It was so sad.”

  “Oh no,” I gasped.

  Admittedly, the whole thing sounded ridiculous, although I could see how it stressed Riley out.

  “I know, I was pissed for her. There’s no reason to yell, especially since I found out she only avoids it by choice, she isn’t allergic. I resolved it but she even yelled at me and you know I can’t take yelling. Me and the server cried together.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry.”

  Riley just shook her head with a laugh, as if she was trying to bury everything that had happened that night. I couldn’t really blame her, either; something like that, in which someone had very little control over the situation, was the kind of thing that most people would have just wanted to bury in their past. Riley wouldn’t be able to do that so soon, but eventually, she would.

  “So…” Riley said after a long pause. “How is Jaxson?”

  I flushed red and avoided looking at the counter. How is Jaxson? Why don’t you smell the counter and tell me?

  It went without saying that I didn’t say anything even remotely close to that.

  “Good. Last night he said that I’m his girl.”

  I tried not to smile… but I failed, and I wasn’t particularly sad about it. Riley squeezed my leg in excitement—real, genuine excitement..

  “Oh my god! You know that means you’re like, more than his girlfriend to him? Men do that all the time. Oh, maybe you can be his old lady?”

  She nudged me, as if I had just gotten the world’s greatest deal. I shook my head at her—it was nothing I was complaining about, but it was also early. All of those other perks would come, but to me, the most important thing wasn’t the perks.

  It was Jaxson.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. He is having a hard time at the club, though. I just hope he makes it through.”

  Riley, though, either didn’t pick up on my concern for him or was just so thrilled at my status that she chose to ignore the ominous news.

  “Aw, you guys will be so cute!” she said. “He has made you so happy. And, if I may, well fucked.”

  Oh, God! She knows. My face got even redder. Riley just burst out laughing. I decided I was going to be coy about what had happened in this spot, but…

  Well, the secret, if I could even call it that, sure wasn’t much of one now.

  “Sorry if we ever kept you up,” I said, my voice dropping.

  “Please, I used to come home to my roommate literally having sex near the front door, it’s fine.”

  That was… oddly comforting? I definitely wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  “I still feel bad and embarrassed, though. Like you shouldn’t—”

  “Come on, don’t be embarrassed. Anyone getting sex good enough to literally shriek should not feel bad about anything. He seems to like it too.”

  She shrugged. She was definitely a lot more comfortable about it than I was—granted, since he was only my second partner, I guess it made some sense, but still. It was a very different world than the one I was used to.

  “Really?”

  I looked at her cautiously, a little worried that Riley was sarcastically fucking with me before dropping how angry she actually was. And I had been worried about Jaxson because it was obvious that he liked to have sex a certain way.

  I was just a worrier, I realized. I would be a lot better off if I could just stop giving a shit about so many things. But then again, that was just a part of who I was.

  “Yeah girl, men don’t usually moan. And he moans like the fucking titanic.”

  “I guess I didn’t notice. I didn’t know that.”

  That was another white lie; there was no way I couldn’t know how loud and how much he seemed to enjoy sex. I just didn’t want to look like I was reveling in it before the girl who, at the moment, wasn’t getting any sex—as far as I knew, at least.

  “Well, it’s true. And the way he growls your name… oh my God. I had to stop listening before I would never be able to look you in the eye again.”

  I just laughed. Now I was beginning to feel like she was backhanded mocking me, even though intellectually I knew full well she wasn’t. Still, I kept it in mind not to be too loud or too aggressive with the sex, lest I awaken a sort of jealousy in her.

  “Are you hanging out with him today?”

  I wasn’t sure why she asked that.

  “Um, I thought we were going shopping. Unless you were joking.”

  “I totally wasn’t, I’m glad you remembered. I figured that with the way Jaxson and you were clicking, I’d never see you again!”

  Riley let out a laugh, but it definitely seemed like a laugh tinged with a hint of truth underneath it.

  “Aw, I’d never forget about you. You’re my only friend.”

  I was surprised to hear myself speak so honestly, but it was true. Granted, a large part of that was because I just hadn’t been there that long, but even so, I loved Riley. I had to have someone I could complain to about Jaxson, anyways.

  Riley mostly brushed off the compliment with a thanks; I didn’t begrudge her for it. I just figured that she wasn’t ready for such a heavy compliment, and there was no need for us to get so deep so quickly.

  We then finished breakfast before splitting our separate ways to get changed. As I did, I kept in mind that I would probably be seeing Jaxson later—and I wanted to both arouse him and make it easy for him to take my clothes off.

  What I did not expect, however, was for Riley to also look like she was expecting to see someone as well. She wore leggings, a tight black sweater, and high boots—she was most certainly dressed as if she was going to have an equally fun time elsewhere.

  “You look nice. Are you expecting to see someone?”

  “Maybe I am.”

  I thought about pressing, but I decided she could tell me later if there actually was something to it all. Instead, we headed over to the mall, taking our sweet time shopping. There was just so much to see, and though the holidays were still a little bit off, they were closer than not, making it have an early festive feel for it. It was just what I think we both needed after relatively long nights, though at least mine had had something of a happy ending.

  “I thought you went to the club last night,” Riley said as we headed for the makeup store. “How come you were at the apartment?”

  Oh, boy. This story.

  “I did. I thought…”

  Probably not your place to tell her what happened. It wasn’t anything, anyways, so it’s not worth diving into.

  “Well, I thought something happened with Jaxson and so I left. But it was a misunderstanding.”

  “What happened?”

  Well, damnit. If she’s going to press, you might as well explain what happened. Might as well tell her.

  “I thought he was with a girl.”

  “
What the hell? I’ll kill him.”

  There was no mistaking her voice for anything other than completely serious. She was not going to let Jaxson fuck me over—which was sort of appreciated, although the intensity in her eyes did scare me a bit.

  “No, no, it was a misunderstanding, really. I’m not just saying that to cover his ass. He was just talking to her because she came to find him. He came to find me right after and showed up at our place. I mean, I believe him. I have no reason not to.”

  I sighed.

  “I just… I didn’t realize I wanted him that badly. I reacted so strongly that I think it showed something.”

  “Aw, it happens like that.”

  “I know.”

  That was a bit of an oversimplification, but I wasn’t sure there were any words to properly capture everything. That was probably just so—there were no words to describe Jaxson and I. Trying to pin it down… perhaps only Jaxson could explain it, which was funny since I was the playwright and he was the biker.

  And then, as if on cue, my phone buzzed with a message from him.

  “We can have dinner at your place and then head to the club.”

  Perfect. And he’ll get to meet Riley.

  I responded with an OK and then put my phone away, unable to hide my smile as Riley looked at me with suspicion.

  “So Jaxson said that he is coming over for dinner tonight to meet you.”

  “Oh fun. I’ll make my special then.”

  I rolled my eyes at her with a grin.

  “Yes, because TV dinner is just what he needs,” I said with a chuckle.

  I wasn’t laughing, though, when I remembered that Jaxson had left me for a very serious meeting—one that I still didn’t know if it had been productive or not. I quickly pulled back out my phone to text him more.

  “Hope the meeting went okay.”

  It took almost zero time for the text bubble to appear, telling me Jaxson was already getting back to me.

  “It’s still going ongoing, but we still don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  Shit… that’s not good.

  “Well, we do, but I don’t like it.”