Thirty-Four
Ava felt wicked. There was no other word for it. Thoroughly, whole-heartedly wicked. She’d spent an entire day introducing herself to professors and students, playing those little get-acquainted games, entrenched in an academic environment – and they’d been talking about writing. The serious study of writing as an art form, and as a legitimate career. It felt like getting away with something. It felt like majoring in recess, that was how fun her subject matter was to her. To blend study with passion like that – wicked. She felt as if she’d been truly delinquent.
And she’d more or less broken things off with Ronnie.
And here she stood in front of her closet, trying to decide what to wear, because the sun was slipping low over the trees and she’d agreed to spend the night with Mercy.
She was convinced it was all some sort of dream, at this point.
She fingered sleeves of blouses and the legs of slacks, the girlish hemlines of skirts. She frowned. None of this was right. None of this was her. Because the real her wrote like a madwoman, laughed at preppy boys, and wanted to look like herself for her man.
Ava shoved the hanging clothes aside, going deeper into the closet, to her old stuff, to the jeans and thick socks and boots and there, right where she’d left it, her leather jacket.
Welcome back, a small voice chimed inside her head.
She went for simple: jeans, her black Durangos, black tank, jacket, a fast toss to her hair so it fell in messy curtains on either side of her face.
Maggie glanced up from dinner preparations when her boot heels struck the kitchen tile. One corner of her mouth pulled up in a little enigmatic smile. “There she is.”
Ava didn’t smile back. “For the record, I haven’t accepted the whole Stephens getting me into college situation yet.”
Unperturbed, Maggie said, “I didn’t figure. You wouldn’t be my girl if you had.”
Ava rolled her eyes and gathered up her purse and keys, ensured her snub-nosed .38 was secure in the inside pocket of her bag. Littlejohn was packing no doubt, but she didn’t believe in leaving things up to someone else.
“Where are you off to?” Maggie asked, cheerfully.
“Ronnie’s. I’m spending the night.” She glanced up, to check for a reaction, shaking her overnight bag for emphasis.
Maggie nodded as she stirred her white cream sauce, taking it all in stride. “Take this.” She slid a brown paper lunch sack down the counter toward her with her elbow.
Ava picked it up and unfolded the top, saw the gauze, tape, syringes and ointment inside.
“You know,” Maggie said with another sideways grin. “In case Ronnie comes down with a bad case of gunshot wound.”
Ava felt her mouth tug at the corners, a reluctant smile.
“Tell him I said ‘hi.’ ”
“I’m leaving.”
Littlejohn was waiting for her in the driveway, having a smoke with Harry.
“Prospect,” she said, and Littlejohn flicked his cigarette away. “Remember the conversation we had yesterday?”
For a moment, it looked like he fought not to smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“The gag order’s still in place. Let’s go.”
She went in the back door, chickening out at the last second, unable to walk brazenly through the common room. Too many looks, too many questions. And God help her if her brother was there; he’d throw himself in her path. The one issue he took seriously as a brother was the one she didn’t want him to notice.
She stood at the door, took a deep breath of evening air that smelled like exhaust fumes and heat fading off the pavement, watched the sun say its last farewell to the day. She saw Littlejohn, waiting on her to go in, so he could leave. She’d told him to take the night off, go lay low somewhere, lest Ghost notice he was off-duty and start asking why.
Then she turned the knob and went in.
The hall was warm and smelled faintly of Lysol; her dad mandated a clean house, the prospects and hangarounds always jumping for mops and brooms and polishing rags when his eyes fell across them. That smell helped: it made her feel safe, protected, at-home. All the dorm room doors stood open a sliver, all but the last one, her favorite, and she figured that was where Mercy was living for the time being. She didn’t knock, but tested the knob, and let herself in without a sound.
She could hear the shower running behind the closed bathroom door, and that gave her a minute. She set her bag down, wiped her suddenly-clammy palms down the thighs of her jeans. She was nervous; this wasn’t happenstance, not a crazy rush she couldn’t control, like yesterday in the office. This was premeditated delinquency. This was purposeful sin. There was a thin coil of fear in her belly because of that. There was a prickling up the back of her neck, and a little tremor in her breathing.
The bed was made, and she sat on the foot of it, on top of the old worn, but clean blankets, the mattress dipping. The room smelled like him: his quiet cologne, his cigarettes, his leather, his skin. Ava crossed her legs, braced her hands on the mattress and bobbed her foot in time to her pulse; that was the picture she presented when Mercy stepped out of the bathroom.
The steam rolled out ahead of him, theatrical enough she would have smiled if she hadn’t been choking on nervous butterflies. He wore a towel knotted around his hips. His hair was down, shiny and wet, slicked down the back of his neck. He’d taken his bandage off himself beforehand, and the bullet wound was red and angry-looking; her throat tightened at the sight of it.
And then there was the rest of the picture: that lean, muscled-up stretch of him, his muscles solid, but unrefined. He didn’t spend hours sculpting himself in front of a gym mirror; his was a natural, powerful, incomprehensible strength, unselfconscious, not-braggadocios. It just was. He had long legs, wide feet, such pretty arms, if anyone besides her thought that kind of musculature “pretty.” The black hair on his arms and legs was coarse; such a contrast from Ronnie’s smooth, almost hairless limbs. She liked the rough; liked the masculinity of it, the way it made her feel small and feminine.
Ava expected something cocky, some eyebrow twitch, a suggestive comment. What she got was this truly delighted, boyish smile, like he couldn’t believe she was there, and was thrilled about it.
That was her undoing, his honest excitement.
“Ava Rose,” he said, scratching at his wet scalp, coming to stand in front of her. “When did you get into town?”
She swallowed. “You know that old saying? That the clothes don’t make the man? It works for women, too.”
“Hey, I don’t care about clothes.” He splayed a hand across his chest, fingers overlapping the tattoo of her teeth. “But you do. And you’re happier when you’re dressed like that.”
She lifted her chin, tipping her head back so she could maintain eye contact as he stepped in even closer. She could feel the clinging heat of the shower coming off his skin. All his bare skin, right in front of her. “You’ve seen me for five seconds. You don’t know if I’m happy or not.”
He grinned again, with the same exuberance. “Yeah, I do.”
She stretched, reaching up to meet his kiss as he leaned over her. It was sweet. Slow. Like he hadn’t bent her back over a desk yesterday. She laid her hands on his wrists, felt the hard thump of his pulse against her palms.
But then he pulled back, his hand suddenly under her chin, his thumb tracing the line of her lower lip. With their noses overlapping, he said, “You look real pretty, ma chérie.”
She was blinking back tears as he sat down beside her, hooked a heavy arm around her waist and pulled her up into his lap. Her arms went around his neck on impulse, careful of the wound; she tucked her face in against his throat and his hand came up to cup the back of her head, holding her there, helping her burrow. She had missed the shape of him so dearly, the way her body fit against his.
She could just see his chest tattoo from this angle, and she passed her fingers across it, tracing its lines with the slow precision she hadn’t been afforded last night. “You had a bandage, that morning I came and was going to tell you about…” The baby.
“Artist in South Carolina did it for me.” His voice reverberated through his chest, through her, low, deep, Cajun-flavored.
“Was that your plan all along? When you had me…” Bite you?
A warmth came into his tone. “Yeah. Why, you don’t like it?”
“No. No…I like it.”
His fingers knotted through her hair, the tips stroking the back of her neck. “I…” Slight catch to his voice, little breathy show of nerves. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
As strong as he was, he’d never been the silent type, but the emotion in his voice now did things to her insides, made her almost nauseas with regret. Why did we lose five years? she wanted to ask him. Why, if you were afraid I wouldn’t come, did you ever turn me loose? The waste of it all, the ridiculous loss, made her want to scream.
She slid off his lap and put her back to him. He clung to her shirt, pulling backward gently at the fabric of her tank, urging her back, but she shook him off and went to the overnight bag, found the paper sack inside it.
“I’ve gotta dress your neck,” she said, her own voice full of little cracks. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Or did you want that backrub first?”
She didn’t trust him anymore, and he knew it, and he looked devastated about it. But he said, “Rub first, if I get to choose.”
She pulled a bottle of lavender massage oil from the bag and turned to face him, her stomach quivering. This was different from their fast crashing together yesterday. This was deliberate, slow, and therefore more intimate. This was stilted movements and hesitant questions.
“Come sit here,” she suggested, turning the chair away from the desk so its back was to her. “To start with. Then you can lie down while I do your lower back.”
He moved to comply, his shoulder blotting out the lamplight for a moment, and he stepped over to lock the door before he dropped down into the chair before her. Ava’s heart leapt at the soft sound of the tumblers clicking.
She flicked open the bottle with her thumb, and the lavender scent unfurled beneath her nose, strengthening as she poured a healthy dollop into her palm.
“What’s that?” Mercy twisted to see, and she didn’t miss his grimace as the movement pulled at his wound.
“Lavender. For relaxation.”
His blade-edged nose wrinkled. “It smells like flowers.”
“That’s what it’s made from.”
“Oh no. Don’t go rubbing some hippy flower bullshit all over me.”
“Shut up,” she said, sweetly, setting the bottle aside and working her hands together. “It’ll feel good.”
The first touch sent a jolt up her arms, pressed at her chest, caused her heart to falter a beat. She had always loved the idea of loving him, taking care of him, treating him like her very own beloved pet and making him feel special. A girlish dream, one she hadn’t allowed herself for five years – not until now. Now, all the old elation returned to her, the heady fantasy of exercising her rights as his woman.
She placed her hands on the knob of his spine between the tops of his shoulder blades and dug her fingers in. He tensed for just a moment, and then his head bowed as he arched up into her touch like a cat.
“Christ,” he murmured.
She saw the tremors under his skin, the way the pain and stiffness fought against the pleasure of her searching fingers. The lavender oil glistened in the lamplight, gilding his taut skin as she smoothed it outward, across the wide expanse of his shoulders.
“Feels alright?” she asked, voice deeper than she’d expected it to be.
He grunted and leaned into the heel of her hand as she dug it into his deltoid.
Not like a cat, she decided with a smile; like a dog, a great beastly dog who breathed heavy and wanted more and encouraged her with low, deeply satisfied murmurs.
She worked slowly up the back of his neck, long, firm strokes with her fingertips, up into his damp hair, working his scalp with her fingertips. He tipped his head back, eyes closed, so she could get his temples, along his hairline at his forehead.
“Don’t you get the Bitches to do this for you?” she asked without rancor, just genuinely curious. His hair slid like heavy silk between her fingers. The lavender smell was thick now; she felt her eyelids grow heavier.
“Never,” he said, and she knew it was true.
Down the side of his neck again, skimming around the raw red edges of his gunshot wound, pressing gently at the trapezius, pattering at the stiffness there.
He made an unhappy sound, but he moved his head to the side, giving her full access to the spot.
Ava felt the tears returning, building behind her eyes. “Poor man,” she cooed, circling the wound. “Poor sweet man. Oh, Merc, you could have…” She bit hard on her lip, unable to finish. He could have been hurt worse. He could have been killed.
Mercy stood, and before she could protest, he’d gathered her close and picked her up into his arms.
“Don’t–”
“Your turn to shut up,” he said, not unkindly. And he laid her down on the bed, climbed over her, kissed her.
“Your massage–”
His tongue filled her mouth, cutting her off. He spread the halves of her jacket, worked his hand beneath her tank top, passed it across the bare skin of her stomach.
Ava tangled her hands in his wet hair and gave herself up to him.
Maggie was pouring the heavily peppered cream sauce over their noodles and chicken when Ghost came in the back door, kicking off his boots in the direction of the shoe rack and sighing like it was an effort just to exist. That President patch weighed heavy on his chest, she knew, dragging at him, pressing at the sides of his skull like a vise.
She gave the pasta a quick toss and moved toward the fridge, snagging him two beers and setting them beside his already-set place at the table.
“Hey, baby. You okay?”
He grunted a response as she kissed him and then moved away, back to the pasta, more stirring in order.
“Your boyfriend was there today, kicking over rocks,” he said.
She snorted. “Don’t you dare call that man my boyfriend. You’ll ruin my appetite.” She turned and set the big serving bowl on the table. “What’s he looking for?”
Ghost sank down into his chair, shaking his head. “PD’s not even looking into Andre – which is a good thing in and of itself – but Stephens is using the cops as his personal attack dogs. Fielding is looking for any and all dirt, on any of us. The city’s got its marching orders: get rid of the Dogs.”
She chewed at her lip. “It’s not just the cops.”
When he lifted his brows, she told him about her visit to Daisy with Jackie that afternoon, and he swore.
“He’s gonna sic the villagers with pitchforks after us.”
Maggie nodded as she served him and then went back for her glass of wine on the counter. “It’s looking that way.”
“We’ve survived worse,” he said, without real conviction. It was different now; as president, the burden rested entirely on his shoulders.
“We have,” she said, because it was what she had to say as the president’s wife.
Ghost shook himself, refocused visibly, picked up his fork. “Where’s Ava?”
Maggie felt a beat of guilt. “With Ronnie. Oh, shit, the salad.”
“What? I don’t need salad.”
But she was already up and going to the fridge for a head of romaine. “It won’t take but a sec.”
“Ronnie’s?” Ghost asked behind her. “God, I hate that little puss. Did Littlejohn follow her like he’s supposed to? I don’t like her being off like that with him. She’d have to be the one protecting him.”
She passed the knife through the lettuce in hard, sure slices. “Littlejohn’s got it covered. You know, I like him. Harry, too. They’re respectful, focused–”
“And what do you mean she’s ‘at Ronnie’s’? What are they doing there they can’t do here?”
“Don’t be that dad.” Maggie clucked her tongue as she scooped the lettuce curls into a bowl. “She’s twenty-two. You know why they want some privacy.”
“Fuck me,” he grumbled. “I don’t like it. She shouldn’t be…doing that. It’s not right.”
“It’s normal.”
“Well she isn’t!”
Maggie glanced at him over her shoulder, brows lifted. Care to explain?
He speared a chunk of chicken and aimed it at her with his fork. “She’s too good for that shithead. He doesn’t understand her, doesn’t appreciate her, and he damn sure can’t look after her while all this shit’s going on.”
Maggie debated a long moment, feeling traitorous, cringing inwardly. “I agree,” she said, finally. “He’s not good enough for her. Mainly because he doesn’t care about her. Not the way she deserves.”
“That’s my point.”
“I want you to keep that in mind, then, baby, Kenny, love of my life–”
His eyes narrowed. “Mags.”
“ – when I tell you that Ava isn’t actually with Ronnie tonight.”
He was out of his chair in an instant. “Mercy. She’s with him? Jesus Christ, I’m going to–”
“Going to what?” Maggie shouted, to catch his attention. “Honestly, Ghost, what are you going to do? Lock her up in the attic? Geld Mercy? Send him away again?”
Before he could interrupt, she said, “My God, think about what you just said. You want her appreciated, you want her loved, you want her understood and protected and sheltered – are you so stubborn you can’t see that’s exactly what she has with Mercy? They can’t keep away from each other because they can’t help it. The thing between them is bigger than your orders or the club’s judgment, or any kind of threat you can make to them.”
“It’s disgusting,” he said.
“No. No, it’s not. If you’d open your eyes and look at them, you’d see how much he loves her. It is heartbreaking, how much they miss each other. You can’t…” She threw up her hands, sighing, tears pricking at her eyes. “I was sixteen,” she said in a choked voice. “And I loved you, and you gave me your eight-year-old son, and I graduated high school with a baby bump.” She blinked furiously. “How is Mercy loving Ava any more disgusting than that?”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at the grout line in the tile. “Because he is–”
“Your guy.” She came around the table, to get close to him, to plead with her presence, her body, and not just her words. “He’s your club brother, and Aidan’s brother. He’s your go-to killer, and he’s done violent, unspeakable things. Trust me, I know, because a lot of those unspeakable things he’s done for me, and for Ava. Mercy’s the reason I had to pull up the carpet in Ava’s room fourteen years ago. He’s also” – her voice caught – “the only reason I have Ava alive and whole today.
“And when she went to him tonight, you know what I thought? I didn’t think about him defying you, or breaking your trust, or doing something sick. I thought about him taking the skin off any motherfucker who dared to look at her funny. Because I don’t ever, for a second, worry about my little girl when she’s with him.
“Who in this whole world would you trust more with her wellbeing? Him, Ghost. Him and only him, or you wouldn’t have charged him with her when she was eight.”
It felt like forever that she stared at the spiked tips of his dark hair while he studied the floor. When his head lifted, his expression was a rare, tortured mask of regret. It melted her instantly; she laid hands on his chest, pressed in close to him.
“Baby…”
“I did wrong by you,” he said, quietly.
She flashed back to a breezy autumn afternoon, the rough brick of the back of the liquor store digging into her shoulder blades through her denim jacket, the air cool against her stomach as his hands slid up under her shirt and lifted. He moved faster, surer than the clumsy boys her age. She’d gasped and arched, and he’d put his tongue in her mouth and asked her if she liked the feel of his hand going down inside her jeans, finding her panties damp.
“I wanted better for her,” he admitted. “I wanted to make up for…what I was.”
Maggie took his face in her hands. “What you were,” she said, fiercely, “was everything I’d ever wanted in a man.” She tapped his temples with her thumbs. “Even if you’re still a stubborn ass.”
He grinned.
“Don’t take that away from our girl,” she said. “That’s not doing better.”
His arms went around her waist. “Nobody’s ever taken advantage of you for a second, have they?”
“You wanna try?” She made her brows jump.
“You’re just distracting me.”
“Is it working?”
He grinned again, a shark smile this time. “You’ll have to microwave dinner.”
“I need to clean this.” Ava ran her fingernail around the outer edges of Mercy’s GSW, touch feather-light.
“Later.” He made a dismissive, waving gesture that she swatted away.
“Do you want it to get infected? You won’t be able to do what we just did if your arm rots off.”
In answer, his hand slid down from its place at her hip, around to cup her bottom and squeeze. She lay snugged against his side, her head pillowed on his chest, her arm draped across his waist, one leg hitched over his thigh. They were both damp with sweat and glowing in the aftermath. He’d been thorough, slow; she was still pulsing all over, the warmth still shifting under her skin.
“Baby, I don’t need an arm to do what we just did.”
“I like your arm, though.” She stroked the soft inside of his wrist where it lay against her hip.
“Should other parts of my anatomy be offended by that?”
She grinned. Patted the back of his hand. “Let me up. I gotta go get the alcohol and stuff.”
He let her sit up, but his arm tightened around her waist, holding her beside him. With his other hand, he reached for the half-full bottle of Johnnie Walker on the nightstand. “You don’t gotta get up for that.” He pressed the bottle toward her and she rolled her eyes, still smiling.
“You know what I meant.”
“But choosing to ignore it.”
She made a show of looking disgruntled as she took the Scotch and raised it to her lips. “I don’t know why you drink this rancid shit.” The mouth of the bottle was slightly sticky with residue, tasted faintly of cigarettes; he always smoked when he drank.
The red Scotch burned as it flooded across her tongue and assaulted the back of her throat. She managed to swallow it down without making too much of a face, gasping a little as she pulled the bottle back.
“It gets better the further you go,” Mercy said with a grin that was downright leering.
“You’re French Canadian. Shouldn’t you drink Crown?”
“A quarter Canadian,” he corrected, taking the bottle back from her, taking a slug of it himself. “And I ain’t drinking anything out of a bottle that pretty.”
She snorted. “How broad-minded of you.”
He took another pull, and then lifted it to her again, putting the rim right up against her lips. She pursed them around the mouth and tipped her head back, let him pour three long swallows down her throat. If spontaneous human combustion was really a thing, she was in danger of immolating.
She sucked in a huge breath, turning her head away. “Are you trying to get me drunk? You’ve already got me naked.”
“Yeah, but I want to keep you that way.”
Flushed, self-conscious suddenly and aware that the covers were down around her waist, she plucked the sheet up over her breasts.
Mercy pulled it back down, one hard tug that dragged the scratchy fabric across her nipples and left them hard little buttons.
“Don’t keep covering up,” he said; it was a plea more than anything, his voice soft, confused.
“You’ve already seen me. Why do you need to keep ‘looking at’ me?” she asked, using his words of yesterday.
He gave her a sideways non-smile. “Because you’re ten in the only picture I’ve got of you, and I’ve got five years’ worth of looking to make up for.”
The Scotch was getting to her, hitting her harder and faster than she would have thought. She felt burning hot on the inside, shivery cold on the outside, her skin prickling, desire quickening in her belly.
“Are you ever going to explain it to me?” she asked, voice just a whisper. “Was it just…too messed up? Us together? Or was it because the baby–”
He sat up in a sudden rush, caught her head in his hands and kissed her hard.
They were both breathing like racehorses when he finally pulled back and rested his forehead against hers, his fists clenched tight in her hair.
“Explaining it won’t make it better,” he said. “You don’t want to know.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with all this anger?” She pressed both hands to his chest, the right one covering his tattoo. “Because I am so angry with you, all the time.”
“I know, fillette.”
She shouldn’t have had that much to drink; she could feel herself unraveling, and that wasn’t what she’d wanted to do tonight, not in front him like this.
“I needed you,” she said. “I needed you more than I needed anyone, and you left.” She closed her eyes. “It’s not…it’s not unfair to want to know why.”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “It’ll only make things worse; trust me.”
“Trust you? Trust you.” She laughed, the sound a little deranged. “How can I trust you?” But the Scotch had hold of her and he was so warm and so right in front of her. Even as she laughed, she pressed her face into his neck, the stubble rough against her face, caught his skin in her teeth, bit him and kissed him and wondered, fleetingly, if she could tear his throat out like a wild dog. “I can’t trust you,” she whispered against his pounding carotid.
His hands migrated, down to her waist, pulled her in closer to him. His voice turned rough around the edges. “You can use me, though.”
In a rush, the covers were flipped back and he was pulling her astride him, up into his lap. Ava pressed at his sternum, her strength laughable, but he yielded to her, lay back on the pillows, his hands sliding down her thighs and back up, subtle, gentle encouragement.
She didn’t even need him inside; she could have come just staring at him, spread out beneath her, hers to do with what she wanted. But where was the fun in that?
She wanted to punish him, at least a little. She raked her nails up his chest, rewarded with shallow red scratches across his golden skin. His muscles leapt beneath her hands; the low-lidded, dark glittering points of his eyes told her he liked it.
She leaned low, her hair falling off her shoulders, around her face; soft rustling sounds as it pooled across his chest. Ava fitted her teeth to the marks inked into his pectoral. I can’t trust you, she’d said, but he’d had her bite him here on purpose, right over his heart. In maybe the only way an inelegant quarter-Frenchman biker could express himself, he’d told her that he’d needed her, too. That her love had affected him deeply. She’d put her teeth in his heart, long ago, and he’d left the print there, evidence that he wanted her love. That he returned it.
She pulled back a fraction, lifted her head so she could see his face: the strain of keeping still, the leashed power.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Me, too, sweetheart.”
She sat up, caressed slowly down his stomach, traced the grooves between his abs, the harsh lines at his hip bones. When she curled her hand around his cock, it felt like he was the one touching her, the damp heat building between her legs, her pulse struggling to match his. When she slowly lowered, and took him inside, she murmured a curse. She was still sore from yesterday’s vigorous round in the office, but it was a good pain. A sharp counterpoint to the pleasure of pulling him deep into her body.
Mercy said something in French she didn’t understand and his hands came up to cover her breasts.
She leaned into his touch and rose up on her knees, lowered back down, sheathing him again. Her hands fluttered against his stomach, useless movements she couldn’t seem to coordinate. She wanted to touch him everywhere, to take her time, to tease him; she wanted him to do the same to her, too, but she wanted to rush headlong at the same time, too fractious and overwhelmed to plan any of it out. It was the idea of doing more, taking it further, that drove her hips into a grinding rhythm.
When he came, he lifted up into her, the deep penetration igniting her own release.
After, she hardly had the strength to dismount, managed to slump down beside him on the bed, bleary-eyed and dizzy. She didn’t know if that was the effect of the orgasm, or the Scotch.
Mercy put the bottle back into her hand and she took a grateful sip. He’d been right; the taste wasn’t so bad now.
In the moonlight-slatted dark of their bed, Maggie told her husband about Jackie’s strange mood that afternoon. Maybe that was betrayal to her sister in arms, but her husband’s wellbeing mattered more to her than any friendship.
“I don’t know why she brought it up,” she murmured, curling her fingers through his chest hair as she studied the blue bars of light at the window.
She felt his shoulders shrug. “Women like to gossip.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence for the gender,” she said with a snort. “But I meant, it was out of character for her. And there we were going in to talk to Ramona, and she blurts that out. It was random. It was…I dunno.”
His finger thumping at her arm was silent encouragement.
“It was like she was trying to distract me. Or mention it to me while I was distracted. It was just weird.”
Another shrug. “Maybe Collier’s running his mouth at home. He’s not right in the head since Andre bit the big one.”
“Probably,” she said, not convinced. Then: “But while we’re talking about it…what about Aidan? Is he upset?”
Ghost sighed. “Aidan’s too busy chasing tail to know who’s in which chair. When he gets his head out of his ass, then we’ll talk officer spots. Until then, he can fall in line.”
Maggie bit back what she wanted to say: Maybe, if you did more encouraging and less dismissing, he’d be better suited to follow in your footsteps.
He cupped her hip in his hand and dragged her up higher against his shoulder. “Why are we talking about him? You’re supposed to be distracting me from how pissed I am.”
“Right.” She smiled and kissed his jaw.
“How was school?”
She grinned; she was drunk at this point. Just a little; not puking drunk, but happy drunk. “Amazing. Just…I mean, can you imagine that they’re letting me study writing? How is that possible? Why haven’t the fun police showed up yet?”
She was still lying down – the room was giving a slow twirl – but Mercy was sitting; he’d pulled her feet into his lap and was massaging the arches with a touch too light to have possibly come from his big hands. God bless the French, she thought, for their sensitivity in all things.
He snorted. “I’m pretty sure writing papers counts as torture for most people.”
“Most people aren’t me,” she declared, and then laughed.
Oh, yeah, she was drunk.
“Good point.”
“I have this one prof – Pitts – who teaches Themes in Contemporary Literature, who is obsessed with that whole postmodern downfall of mankind thing.”
“Uh-huh,” Mercy said.
“And that class is going to be a pain, because I don’t like writing that kind of crap, but he, get this, loves crime novels told from the criminal perspective.” She laughed again. “So I should have plenty of material for that class.”
She lifted her head and propped her elbows up behind her. “Hey, maybe I can take you for show and tell.”
His brows lifted in mild amusement. He raised her left foot, tapped the top of it with his thumb. “Speaking of show and tell, what’s this?”
Her tattoo. “That’s my gator.” She wiggled her toes. “I got it right after I lost the…” All the breath went out of her as she went staggering back into Memoryland. “Well, I got it a while back.”
“Five years back?” he guessed, his expression softening, saddening.
“Yeah.”
He lowered back down to the bed, stretched out beside her, laid his hand over her belly, down low, where the baby would have been. He was a little bit drunk, too, she saw, as she turned her head to meet his gaze; his eyes were too-wide, too-dark, not sharp like they should have been.
“You have to know I never wanted that to happen,” he said, earnestly. “If I’d known, I would have wanted it. I would have done anything–”
She laid her finger against his lips. “I know, baby,” she whispered. She hadn’t ever called him that before; they took a moment to let it settle over them, this idea of her being the one to comfort him, the grown woman inside her coming out, taking its rightful place beside him.
It was a good night for firsts.
“I love you,” he said against her finger. “You know that, don’t you? I always did, fillette. It just…changed.”
“It didn’t change,” she said. “That’s just the lie we tell ourselves to make it sound better.”
Because she would always be the ten-year-old girl in his faded wallet photo, and he the lanky kid who bought her sodas and spoke to her like she wasn’t a child. That love, the closeness it had bred, the way they’d grown to want one another, that was a progression, not a change.
He kissed her, and they traded the taste of Scotch back and forth.
“Get some sleep,” he instructed when he pulled back, tucking her head beneath his chin.
Her eyes closed and she was gone.
Ava didn’t know where she was, but she was warm, and sleepy, and sore in a good way, exhausted in every muscle, loose in every tendon. It was dark, and the scents that pressed around her were familiar, comforting: Mercy.
She lay on her stomach, and a hand passed down her back, lingering in the tender hollow of her waist, traveling downward, stroking her bottom until she ground her hips into the mattress. The hand moved down, between her legs, long fingers giving her something to grind against.
She was a little drunk, and very tired, but she was swamped with a sense of safety, security, like she was loved and watched over. She felt lips beside her ear, warm breath inside it. Mercy spoke entirely in French, his voice low and rich, the words reaching for something inside her that had her leaning into his hand. The room was dark; he’d turned out the lamp and that heightened the sensations, his touch the central point of her world.
She felt him move. Hands on her hips, lifting her onto all fours. His chest at her back; his cock at her wet entrance.
“Mon amour,” he said as he entered her.
She’d taken Spanish in high school. “It’ll be more useful,” he’d told her, and so she’d taken it. And so she only knew a handful of French phrases, the ones he used all the time. She knew “mon amour” was my love, and a shudder passed through her, the words tightening the pleasure, elevating her pulse.
Never before had he said such long strings of sentences in French before, like he did now. In the sheltering dark, his thrusts were slow, deep, sure, his hands digging bruises into her hips, the French rolling in thick purrs off his tongue; she had the impression it was sexual, whatever he said, the way the words caressed and encouraged her.
One of his hands left her hip, went down between her legs, to her slippery sex, her clit. He stroked her with expert flicks of his thumb; pulled her backward into each thrust, bringing her ass in tight to his hips as he pushed inside her again and again.
She bit the pillow when she came.
He didn’t stop; rode her through the rippling shockwaves and into another climax, joined her on the second one, his body a great spring-loaded machine behind her as the spasms tackled him.
She collapsed, knees giving out, hands reaching blindly through the dark for something to hold onto. She was sobbing when he lay down beside her, bawling into the mattress, overcome in every sense of the word.
Mercy brushed her hair to the side and kissed her neck. “Poor little thing,” he whispered, an echo of five years ago. But then she heard the raw emotion in his voice. “Let me make it up to you. All of it. Give me a chance to do that.”
Sleep claimed her again, while the tears were still wet on her face.
At six, they had microwaved pasta on the couch in front of the morning news, coffee steaming on the table, in sweats and warm socks. One of those mornings they never got to have anymore: irreverent, careless, unhurried. A morning like they used to have before they were married, up early, before Aidan was awake, Maggie in one of his shirts and a nuked breakfast shared between them. They needed to make time for this, she decided, twirling fettuccini noodles onto her fork. Life was nothing but work, and she missed her husband; missed him badly, she realized, as he handed her coffee over unasked for out of habit.
Her heart melted around the edges, just a little, like warm caramel. He was a sweet man, deep down, really he was, even if he forgot to show it most of the time.
“Hey.” She set her plate down on the coffee table, leaned into him and raked her fingers through his tousled hair. “What are you going to say to Ava this morning?”
His eyes cut over, blue with the reflection of the TV, one corner of his mouth curling. “I dunno. What am I supposed to say?”
“I’m right, you know,” she said with a soft smile.
“I get real sick of that being the case.”
“Don’t let her safety be another worry on top of the pile,” she urged. “Let him look out for her.”
He sat back with a deflating sigh. “God, raising a girl’s a pain in the ass.”
“So’s being married to one,” Maggie added, cheerfully, and he grinned.
A cellphone trilled, somewhere in the house.
“Mine,” Ghost said, standing.
As he left the room, the news caught Maggie’s attention.
“…breaking story coming to us live from Walter Brantwell in the field.” The camera cut to an image of leaping flames against the black, predawn sky. Not a campfire, no. It was a building that burned like a torch.
Another cut, this time to the reporter in his light wool jacket, serious face, mike in hand, gloved fingers pressed to the piece in his ear as he struggled to hear the crew back at the studio.
“Walter, what can you tell us?” the desk anchor said.
Walter nodded. “I’m standing in front of Milford Mattress…”
Ghost reappeared, expression grim, and Maggie knew their morning was over. “Get dressed and I’ll follow you in.” Kenny her husband was gone, replaced by Ghost the MC president. “Shit just blew up. Literally.”
**
“If it gets infected, it’s your fault.”
“Hmph.”
At six-fifteen, the first brush of gold had passed along the tops of the trees. The incoming light had paled to a deep gray in the high window above the bed. The lamps were back on, and by their glow, Ava cleaned and repacked Mercy’s wound. His hair was tied back in a neat queue, out of her way; she missed passing her fingers through it already.
“And then what are you going to tell the doctor when you’re finally forced to go to the ER? ‘Ya see, doc, first I got shot, then I refused to have the wound cleaned because I was too busy trying to get it all night.’ ”
“Trying?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Getting it,” she amended. “To excess.” The last edge of tape went down. “There. All done.” She set the gauze and tape roll on the desk, and was pulled off her feet, into Mercy’s lap, the breath knocking out of her when she landed.
“Oh no,” she said with a mock groan. “Even you can’t go again. Not possible.”
He pulled an affronted face. “I want my girl to sit with me, and suddenly I’m asking for something? Am I really that disgusting?”
She opened her mouth to respond –
And someone knocked on the door.