Inked & Dangerous

by Evelyn Glass

  I wonder what he wants in return, I think idly.

  But then I push the thought from my mind. After all, whatever he wants, it’s not like I’m unwilling, is it?

  I stop the car on the gravel parking space, open the door, and walk around to Dawn’s side.

  Opening the door, I take her by the elbow and help her to her feet.

  “I need something,” Dawn whispers. “Just a little something.”

  So it’s started.

  “No, come on, follow me.”

  Killian opens the door, Patrick standing behind him.

  “Everything is ready,” Killian tells me, as Dawn and I walk into a wide entranceway. The floors and walls are wood, and on the walls paintings hang, along with a mounted deer’s head. “Dawn, your room is upstairs. Come on everybody, follow me.”

  We follow him to a double staircase, wide and leading both left and right at an intersection. On the large wall above the staircase hangs a portrait of an old man in a suit. “Some fancy family owned this place,” Patrick explains. “But I think the Satan’s Martyrs can make better use of it.”

  Dawn’s room is at the back of the house, overlooking the lake. The bed is well-made and clean. The whole room, in fact, smells of cleaning product. It is pristine. There are no pictures on the walls. There’s just the single bed, a bookstand, and a TV. Next to the bed sits a jug of water, potato chips, and fruit.

  “This is you,” Patrick tells Dawn, smiling at her with more kindness than I would’ve given him credit for.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  Dawn lets go of my arm and paces into the bedroom, looking around at it.

  “Rest. Let the heroin out of your system.”

  “I didn’t do any heroin—”

  “You did,” Killian says calmly. “I was there. I saw it all. But it’s all gone now. The needles and the baggies, all of it. And your dealer, Shane, isn’t going to sell to you anytime soon.”

  “Jesus,” Dawn sighs, and then slumps onto the bed. “This is just great, isn’t it?”

  And it starts just like that, with a simple sarcastic comment.

  After the drugs leave her completely, she hunches in a ball on the bed, her knees to her chest, sweating madly.

  “I always hated you!” she shrieks at me, as I dab her forehead and offer her water.

  “You were always ugly and mean! You were always stupid! I hate you! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”

  I let the words ricochet off of me. I’ve heard them before.

  Hours pass like this, Dawn sweating and screaming and raging, me beside the bed, Patrick and Killian standing opposite, watching.

  Finally, Dawn’s eyes slide closed and she snores softly. She’s soaked through with sweat. I dry her with a towel, and then we all leave the room.

  Killian takes a key from his pocket and locks the door behind us.

  “Is that necessary, brother?” Patrick asks.

  Killian shoots him a dagger-eyed look. “You know how sneaky addicts can be, Patrick.”

  Patrick goes quiet and looks at the ground.

  “I’ll wait up here with Dawn,” he says, when Killian and I make for the stairs. “Just in case she wakes up and needs someone.”

  “Are you sure?” Killian asks.

  He nods. “Like you said, I know addicts. I know how tough it can be.”

  Killian hands him the keys. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Then Killian takes my hand and leads me downstairs.

  “That was tough,” I say, when we’re sitting in the living room. “But she’s called me worse before, much worse. She’s done worse, too. I—thank you, Killian. Thank you for this.”

  Killian leans back in his chair, and then shrugs. “Drugs, Hope. Drugs. I can’t stand them. Drugs are the only thing I won’t let the club get into. Well, drugs and human trafficking and shit like that. It’s a cowardly way to make your living, preying on the weak, the addicts. No, a man shouldn’t make his living that way. We make our living with our goddamn grit and our goddamn bikes and our goddamn fight.” He growls the last word. “Not by slinging poison.”

  He pauses, and then points at the ceiling, upstairs where Dawn writhes in her sleep. “And that’s why. Look at what it does to a person.”

  “Oh, I know,” I nod. “I know too well.”

  Killian’s fists are clenched, shaking.

  I walk across the room and lay my hands upon his. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go out back. You haven’t shown me the pool yet.”

  He nods, stands up, and then stands up and wraps his arm around me. We walk like that—me pressed into him, feeling his muscles, his strength—out into the back garden and to the pool.

  The pool has a safety railing skirting it, around four-feet high. I guess the previous owners had children.

  As soon as we’re outside, Killian approaches me from behind. I’m wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, nothing more exciting than sneakers on my feet, but when he presses his groin into me, he is rock-hard. “Your ass looks fucking amazing in those,” he breathes.

  I know I should only care about Dawn right now, but his cock feels too good, too hard. I can’t ignore it.

  “Bend over that railing,” he commands.

  I swallow as my pussy gets immediately wet, soaking at the thought of bending over for him, soaking at the feel of his huge, hard cock pressing into me.

  “Bend over it, Hope. Now.”

  I walk to the railing, place my hands on it, and bend over.

  He walks to where I stand, reaches out, and grabs my ass.

  “You have a perfect ass, an ass made to fuck.”

  Shivers move through me. I let out a moan. I know that we can be seen from the house, but I also know that Dawn’s room faces the lake, not the pool. And then I don’t know anything at all, except pleasure.

  In what seems like one swift motion, Killian pulls my sweatpants down, my underwear, exposing my soaked pussy. Then his huge cock slides inside of me, his hands digging into my bare ass cheeks.

  “Oh, fuck,” I moan, as he drills into me.

  He doesn’t go slow, he doesn’t wait. We’re animals unleashed upon each other. He grabs my ass and pounds into me, hard, vicious, pounds into my sweet spot with violence.

  I push back on him, moaning loudly, not caring.

  It’s so sudden, so unexpected, that my pussy begins to burn up almost straightaway, burn up and get hotter and wetter until it goes very, very tight around his huge cock.

  “Oh . . . oh . . . fuck . . .”

  “Come,” Killian barks. “Come for me.”

  I grip the railing hard, and I come. I come hard. I come so hard that I squirt all over his cock.

  “Thank fuck for that,” he moans, when the orgasm has passed.

  He leans forward, his chest and belly muscles against my back, reaches over and grabs my large breasts. He squeezes them hard as he explodes inside of me.

  “Fuck,” he grunts, as he pulls out of me.

  Then he takes my hand and leads me to the hot tub, which sits a few feet from the pool.

  “I need you again,” he says, removing the tarpaulin and turning on the heat.

  He turns to me as the bubbles rise to the surface of the water.

  He’s just come, and he’s hard again, I think in awe.

  My lust takes over. I take off all my clothes, standing naked in the garden, and then step into the hot tub.

  A minute later, we are in the water, his cock deep inside of me, fucking like our lives depend on it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Killian

  When the sex is done and we are both aching and smiling, I jump out of the hot tub, pull on my jeans, and go into the house. I return with a towel. “Come on, pretty lady. We have to keep your modesty intact, don’t we?”

  She smiles at me wickedly, her cute elfin face lighting up. The sun is beginning to set, painting the bubbles in the hot tub light orange. She steps out of the tub and into the towel, which I wrap around her shoulders. It f
alls low, covering her to her shins. As soon as she’s covered up, I want to tear it away, but even the leader of the Satan’s Martyrs gets tired.

  We go into the living room, around a small partition, and into the hideaway, where there is a long, wide couch sitting in front of a small electric fireplace. I turn it on and it hums, the faux-flames crackling yellow.

  Then I collapse onto the couch and pat the space next to me. “You coming?” I say.

  She stands uncertainty, her fingers clutching the towel. “What about Dawn?” she says.

  “Patrick is watching her. Patrick can be trusted.”

  “I thought you said he was going off the rails—a little.”

  “He is, but when it comes to this, he can be trusted. He’s been through it himself. Aren’t you tired?”

  She lets out a long sigh. “Yes, of course I’m tired. My eyes are heavier than bricks.”

  “Well, come on, then, pretty lady. Come and lie in your man’s arms.”

  “Ooh, my man?”

  She dances over to the couch, pushing away her problems for the moment, and drops next to me. I grab a blanket resting on the arm of the couch and throw it over us. Then I move close to her, wrap my arms around her so that we’re spooning. I get hard again, but I ignore it. For some bizarre reason lying with her like this is all I want right now. I’ve never had that with a woman. Never. Just lying here. Peace. It’s strange, but I can’t deny that I like it.

  “So am I your woman now?” When she speaks, her breath caresses my forearm.

  “You’re my woman,” I say, “if you want to be.”

  “Of course I do, you silly man.”

  I close my eyes. I can’t see her, but I know she’s closed her eyes, too.

  After a few minutes, she lets out sleepy breaths.

  After a few more minutes, I’m falling through the couch and into a dream.

  I’m standing in a field of blood-red roses. They stretch from where I stand—trampling roses underfoot—all the way to the horizon, which is tinged red with the flowers. I turn in a full circle and roses extend as far as my eye can see, until a fog blocks them, a fog which is far, far away.

  For a while I just stand where I am, smelling the roses, taking in their scent and relaxing. My life is wild, hectic, violent. In my waking hours I would never just stand in a field like this, at peace. But right now it’s heaven.

  I walk through the endless field, brushing the petals under my hands, brushing them and feeling the tickle of them on my palm. I have a foolish grin on my face, a grin which would make the men laugh at me, question my leadership. But they’re not here. I don’t have to be the leader right now. I can just walk; I can just be.

  I don’t think about anything as I walk, the sound of the roses crunching under my footsteps my only companion. I just walk, and smell, and empty my mind of all worries.

  After a half hour—or a half month, or a half year—I come to a tall rose, stretching over the others like a parent over his children. It’s three times the height of the other flowers. Its petals are larger, more like leaves, and the red of them is deeper.

  I approach the rose and extend my hand, desperate to touch it.

  I grip the step, not caring when the thorns pierce my skin, and then slide my hand up and stroke the petals. I wonder if this rose is my feelings for Hope or my contentment or my longing for my dad or what, but I don’t know. I’ve never known stuff like that about myself. So I just touch this massive rose, touch and smell it and enjoy it.

  But there’s something solid beneath one of the petals. It pokes through the petal, a small spike. Not a thorn—it’s too thin for that—but something else.

  I peel away the petals, chucking them into the air where they flutter down to the other roses. I peel and peel until the needle is revealed. A giant needle, like the kind heroin addicts use. A giant needle full of something sick-looking, something life-wrecking, something which does no good for anybody.

  “No,” I mutter, as the stem of the rose peels away to reveal the needle in its entirety. “No, no, no, no.”

  Then I look down. The roses are gone. Fields and fields and miles and miles of roses disappear. Needles sprout from the earth, pushing through the dirt and rising high around me, giant needles which push toward the sky, sky-scraper needles which surround me, box me in.

  “No, no, no, no, no.”

  I smash my hands against them, but I might as well smash my hands against marble. They’re solid, immovable.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no!”

  When I wake, sunlight filters through the partition, shining onto me and Hope.

  She looks down at me, her elfin face framed in the light. I reach up and touch her lips, run my forefinger along her lower lip. “You’re so beautiful,” I say. I don’t know where the words come from. I’m not a soft man, but these are soft words, aren’t they? But it’s true. She is beautiful. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  “Did you have a nightmare?” she asks, touching my arm, moving her feathery fingers up and down my skin.

  “Yes, but I can’t remember much about it now.” There was a flower? Something else? I reach for the dream but it drifts away from me.

  Hope is fully dressed, wearing tight-fitting jeans and a tank top, through which I can see her bra.

  “Did you check on her?”

  “Yes. She was sleeping. Patrick said she woke up in the night and screamed, but he just went in there and gave her some water and told her to take a painkiller for the headache. He even made her a peanut butter sandwich.”

  “Good.” I nod. “Our relief should be here soon.”

  “Our relief?” She arches an eyebrow at me. “Are we soldiers now, Mr. Biker?”

  “Addiction is a war, so yeah, I guess we are.”

  I lean up on the couch, stretching my arms out, yawning.

  “I need coffee.” A thought occurs to me, rising out of my sleepy mind suddenly and urgently. “Hope, are any of your pictures on display at the gallery in town?”

  She bites her lip, a nervous schoolgirl in front of a teacher. “Yes,” she says finally. “Why?”

  “Good. I’ll get coffee and then we’ll go and take a look.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “I want to see what you’ve presented to the world, I guess. Yeah, that’s it. Goddamn, I don’t know. You’ve cast some kind of spell on me, Hope. I’m not myself.”

  “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

  I shrug. “I don’t think about stuff like that too deeply. All I know is that it’s a true thing.”

  “You’re so poetic, you know that?” she pouts.

  I jab her softly, playfully, in the side.

  She winces and then slaps me on the arm. “You’re an animal!” she snaps, smiling. “You’re a beast.”

  “I am,” I agree. “You’ve got me pegged.”

  “Anyway,” she sighs, taking my hand in hers, her small fingers gripping my large, callused fingers, “haven’t you seen enough? You looked at thirteen of them the night before last!”

  “You’re an amazing painter. What do you want me to say? And they were private paintings, weren’t they? I want to see what you’ve thrust out there. It’s the difference between seeing a whore and taking your woman to dinner.”

  She tilts her head at me. “How’s that?”

  “One’s dark, hidden, secret; the other’s out there for all to see.”

  “I don’t know if I like my secret paintings being called whores,” she comments, with a small smile on her lips.

  “Nobody likes being called a whore.”

  She brings her hand to my face and prods me in the forehead. “You know, I didn’t expect much in here, Mr. Biker. I thought you’d be just an animal. I mean, you are an animal. Your performance last night proved that. But you’re not just an animal. There’s more to you, isn’t there, Killian?”

  I fidget uncomfortably. She’s looking deeply into me. Her dark brown eyes are staring right into my thoughts.


  “Maybe there is,” I mutter. “But don’t go telling the men that, alright? A biker club is like a Viking war band or something like that. An army. Men only follow strength.”

  “You can be strong and deep, you know.”

  “Not in this world, not with these people.”