Ice

We not only reached Nevada, we’ve now nearly crossed it, because I’ve been in no mood for just cruising today. I didn’t have another nightmare last night, but the one her softness and her purring moans chased away lingered. Which is a shame, because Nevada is one good looking state to ride through, if you have the time and the peace in your head. I have neither. The sun’s starting to set, it’s still hot as hell, and I’ve been putting off this phone call long enough.

There might be no news. Barbie and I might be free to do some more riding before the reckoning comes. But I gotta know. That damn nightmare’s been flashing before my eyes all day, and nothing Barbie does or says is chasing it away.

She’s sitting there all pretty on my bike, with one of her long, tasty legs propped up on the seat and nothing but soft brown desert all around her. This gas station I pulled into looks closed, but the payphone works. Nothing’s moving in this heat except the air around Barbie, that’s all wavy and shimmering like she’s the source of it.

“Ice, where the hell have you been?” Roxie asks in that shrill voice she gets when she’s worried and which always annoyed me no end. As it does now, especially since I can sense there’s more to it than a mere annoyance that I haven’t called her in a couple of weeks. Or maybe that’s just my fear talking.

“Riding,” I tell her. “How’s everything there?”

She doesn’t answer and I can hear her speaking to someone.

“I’m good, and the baby’s good too,” she says as she comes back on the line. “Cross wants to talk to you.”

Here comes the reckoning.

“Put him on,” I tell her, my voice all tight. But not as tight as my chest. I’ve caused so much shit for this guy already, and he’s not even my president. He has every right to tell me to go to hell right now.

Seconds tick by and he doesn’t come on the line. I can hear rusting and footsteps then a door rattling shut. He’s probably in that posh office of his now, because he doesn’t want Roxie to hear what he’s about to tell me. Though knowing my sister, she’ll probably ferret it out of him later anyway.

“What have you been up to, Ice?” he asks, uncharacteristically not getting to the point right away.

“This and that,” I tell him, but don’t go on, since I have no idea where to begin telling him about what’s happening.

“I’ve been getting calls about a certain woman you took without permission,” he says once he gets tired of waiting for me to speak. “They want her back.”

“Without permission? Since when do I need permission to hook up with a woman? That guy was just giving her away to some other dude, and she didn’t want to go. So I helped her out. And girlfriends aren’t something you gift, they’re not things. Or are they?” I wanted to start this conversation differently, but damn it if this isn’t important either.

“Be careful what you say, Cross. You’re with my sister,” I add when he doesn’t answer right away, kinda regretting it once it’s out there, but kinda not.

I understand perfectly well that rules about club whores and old ladies are different for every club. My father had strict but fair ones, and no one dared mess with any of our ladies, not even the brothers. But I don’t exactly know what Cross’ rules are, although the women I’ve seen at their clubhouse were treated well and seemed happy to be there.

“Don’t worry about Roxie,” he says, chuckling softly. “I take good care of her. She’s happy and well-looked after.”

Nothing I’ve seen or heard suggests otherwise. I shouldn’t have brought this up.

“Let me start this conversation again,” he says. “The Bloods and the Kings claim you disrespected them by taking a woman that belongs to them. They want her back, and they’re coming here to get her.”

The world stops and grows even hotter as I hear that, but it’s what I expected to hear, I just hoped I wouldn’t. So much for hope. Revenge always trumps it. I hoped Barbie wouldn’t have to learn that lesson as clearly as I have, but here it is.

“I’m not giving her back to them,” I say.

Cross sighs. “I didn’t expect you to. Bring her here, and we’ll figure it out. But I will avoid bloodshed, I’m telling you that right now. If she’s some president’s old lady and they didn’t say goodbye properly, then they’re gonna have to do that, one way or another. I’m not getting us into the middle of another war.”

“When are they due?” I ask, ignoring all the other things he said, along with the tightness in my chest, which is already turning into cramps.

“I didn’t do much talking to the guy who called. Told him that you’re not here and she’s not here. Hawk is keeping a lookout for them though,” Cross says. “Either way, you should come here.”

“It’s better if I stay away,” I say. “Then you can just keep telling them you know nothing about me.”

“No, Ice, that’s not how it works,” he says. “We’ll help you make this right.”

“You’ve done enough for me, Cross,” I tell him, since it’s the truth. “I won’t bring this down on you. I’ve done enough of that kinda thing already.”

“Like I said, not how it works. You won’t call yourself our brother, and I get why, but we all consider you one,” he says, speaking slowly like he’s explaining all this to a child. I don’t like this turn in the conversation, it makes the regret and hate in my stomach an even heavier empty, dead weight.

“If you want to keep this woman, we’ll help you out,” he adds with a chuckle. “But we’ll do it peacefully, is what I’m saying.”

And yeah, I guess that’s what he’s been saying all along.

The air around Barbie is still shimmering, but that just makes her look more like a dream now, like a mirage, something that’s not really there.

“I won’t risk any more brothers,” I say quietly, not even sure if I said it aloud or not.

“Come home, Ice. Roxie wants to see you, and I know she wants to meet this new lady friend of yours. Then we’ll figure all this out,” he says.

What he’s saying makes perfect sense. But I know how little it takes for lives to be lost. The thing that ended my father’s life, and all my brothers’ lives was so tiny, no one had ever heard of a war breaking out over it. But they all died anyway.

I tell him sure, even though I’m not thrilled about lying to him, but I see no other way out of this conversation at the moment. Roxie might want to see me, but she knows what’s at stake as well as I do, and she’ll get over not seeing me once I explain.

But I’m not gonna do that right now.

What I’m gonna do now is enjoy Barbie some more, while I still have her.

* * *

Barbie

Everything is perfectly still, not even a breeze stirring this suffocating, hot air, but for some reason I feel things breaking, shattering and crumbling before my eyes as I watch him talk on the phone. He’s glancing at me every so often, but it’s like he doesn’t even see me, like I’m just a ghost, and that thought gives me the shivers despite the heat. I don’t have to know much to know that we’re getting close to the ocean. This is Nevada and California is next. I know that much. I also know that I don’t want our trip to end yet.

“You know, I was thinking,” I say as he approaches. “After we reach the ocean we could just keep going.”

The shadows on his face have no place being there, because it’s a bright sunny day.

“Keep going where?” he asks harshly. “It’s the ocean, there’s nothing forward of it except more water.”

I stand up and wrap my arms around his waist, but he doesn’t hug me back, he just stands there like a slab of stone.

“I know how the ocean works,” I chide. “I meant, we could turn back once we reach it, maybe go down south or something. You know, just keep riding.”

His eyes are frosty enough to give me the chills despite the heat all over again. The winter is back in them, and it’s a bad one. They’re saying, “No”, loud and clear, but he’s not actually saying it, and that’s something. I guess. I hope.

“Let’s get some dinner and a drink,” he says and moves away from me just as I was about to kiss him, because that’s the one thing that always makes everything alright.

I nod and let him go, get on the bike and don’t say anything more, but I feel the pressure mounting. Something went wrong during that call he made. No, something’s been wrong since we left the motel at dawn, despite the sweet way he made love to me in the middle of the night and how tightly he held me until morning. That’s why he’s been riding so fast all day.

All my failed relationships are playing on repeat in my mind, and I hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for us. But I’ve seen plenty of ends, and this feels like one of them, no matter how hard I hope I’m wrong. Even holding on tight and leaning against his back doesn’t help. And that scares me.

* * *

“Is everything alright with your sister,” I ask once we’re sitting at a roadside restaurant on the edge of another town that’s bigger than the last one we stopped at.

This time, there was no parking on the edge of it to go in search of a cool place to eat. He just pulled into the first place we passed and here we are. Eating and not talking. Well, I’m talking, but it’s a one sided conversation, and it doesn’t look like that’s about to change.

The sun is setting lilac and purple outside the window, and I wish I was enjoying it with his arms around me, but he’s taking up the entire bench on his side of the booth, and I don’t think he wants any company. For the first time since we met, I’m kinda reluctant to keep pushing myself on him. This is just like those first few days we spent together, only so much worse because those days weren’t supposed to return, we left them far behind. I thought.

“Yeah, she’s fine,” he says and eats the last bite of his steak.

“You can finish the rest of mine, if you want,” I say and push my plate towards him. I barely touched my food. “But me, I could go for another beer. Then we could play a game of pinball.”

I’ve been eyeing the pinball machine in the corner since we got here, thinking how nice it’d be to play it with his arms wrapped around me. Free and carefree, the way it used to be. It’s been so long since I did something like that with a guy I loved that the memory of it is faded like an old photograph. Then maybe we could dance some, like we did the other night. That’d be nice too.

He shakes his head, and stops the advance of my plate across the table. “Get a beer if you want, but then I just wanna get out of here and find a place to sleep.”

My pussy pings at the thought that we’ll probably not do much sleeping, but I’m sure he wasn’t actually suggesting a night of passion. He looks tired and weary, and sounds like the only thing he wants to do is sleep. But then he grins as I smile, so maybe I’m wrong.

“I’ll skip the beer. We can just go to bed,” I suggest, and I do like that sparkle in his eyes, but the winter’s still blizzarding in there, everything frozen. I see the same cold edge in his eyes that I saw the first night he took me. It’s faint, but it’s there, and I don’t know what that means. He’s been nothing but good to me since we met. Please don’t let that change tonight.

I don’t say anything more while he pays, then follow him out and get on the back of the bike, and just nod when he points out a motel and asks for my opinion.

“Well, this place looked better on the outside,” I remark, as we enter the room, which smells like a lemony cleaner that doesn’t quite mask the stench of old and dirty things underneath it.

He pulls me to him and grinds his cock into my belly. “Do you really care?”

I don’t like his tone, it’s too much like when he called me a whore in the beginning and not like the way he’s been talking to me since. But his kiss is sweet and full of hope and promise for better things, and once it gets going, I no longer know what to think, or how to.

But something started changing inside him and between us, when I asked him to get that half a heart tattoo to match mine, started boiling while he was on the phone with his sister, and it’s spilling over hot and scathing now. And not in a good way. I feel that freight train approaching, the ground is shaking beneath my feet because it’s going so damn fast, and this time it will run me over. It will kill me. I know it will and that pisses me off.

I wish he’d just tell me what’s bothering him. Then we could figure it out together. Because him figuring it out on his own is just leading him back to that cold wintery place that I had such a hard time dragging him out of in the first place.

He’s already ripping my dress off, one of its cheaply made straps tearing, which pisses me off even more, because I was supposed to wear it to the beach. The beach he promised to take me to, but I’m no longer sure that’s where we’re heading anymore.

“Easy there,” I snap, as he squeezes my boob too hard, while biting down on my neck too hard at the same time. That was just pain, no pleasure. And it’s like he’s not even here with me.

He responds by kissing me wildly and tugging on my dress some more, but I want to salvage what I can of it. Maybe I can still sew the strap back on, but that won’t work if he just rips the whole thing to shreds.

“Let me get that for you,” I say and smile at him as I try to take a step back. There’s no fire in his eyes, no softness, no loving spring, only ice. But I know he has all those things and plenty of them for me, so where are they hiding?

For a second I fear he’s not gonna let me go, but he does, and I turn my back on him, let him get a good look at my ass as I peel the dress down to my ankles.

“You like looking at my ass, don’t you, big boy?” I ask, trying to make this fun again.

His eyes and his face are incredibly hard though, too hard. I don’t like it. He doesn’t want to have fun. Why the hell am I even trying? Inside, I’m desperate and nervous like I get every time I feel an end approaching with a guy. But this time I’m angry too, because we’re meant for each other. There can’t be an end for us. I think it’s staring me right in the face regardless.

“My personal theory is that the more a guy likes ass, the more of a dog he is,” I tell him, because I can’t hold my angry disappointment in anymore. The winter in his eyes turns to a frozen wasteland that’s even scarier than the winter was. I went too far and I didn’t mean it. He’s not one of those guys. He’s the best guy I ever met.

But something snapped inside him when I said it, and I know how badly before he even closes the distance between us and wraps his arm around me. Not gently like he did by the jukebox.

“You calling me a dog?” he growls more than says. “That’s funny, I was just thinking about how much fun it’d be to fuck your ass for a change.”

He’s already undoing his belt and my heart is racing. “No, Ice, come on, not just like that.”

But he’s not listening as he forces me forward towards the bed.

“I wasn’t calling you a dog. I shouldn’t have said that.”

He’s still not listening and he already has me on my stomach on the bed.

The bed shakes and groans as he kneels over me, holding me down with one of his strong hands on my upper back. With the other, he’s already pulling my thong string aside. I can’t get away, I can’t even move very well.

I hear him spit into his palm, his hard cock hot and pulsing against my ass cheek.

“I can’t take you like that,” I complain.

“You’ll do just fine, a girl like you,” he says.

He’s probably not wrong. I’ve taken it that way many times, and I even like it when done right. But he’s so huge, and I feel no love inside of him right now.

“Let me turn around, Ice,” I say. “Let’s kiss some more first.”

I’m trying to turn on my own, but he’s not letting me. And I can’t even relax, because this is too wrong, too harsh, too much like everything I hoped he wouldn’t be. Things are well and truly breaking right now, crumbling to dust in my mind and all around me. And it hurts so bad.

Any moment now he’s gonna thrust that huge cock of his into my ass, and I’ll have no choice but to take that pain too. But moments float by and he doesn’t. I’ll just have to relax and take it, like I’ve had to so many times before, but hoped I wouldn’t with him, because he always said things like, “Whatever you want, Barbie”, and “If you’d like”, but he never said those other three important words. He never said them because he doesn’t love me. He’s not the guy I thought he was. He’s not my only one, not my soul mate. I was wrong. And I’m already crying, even though I never cry.

Any moment now, he’s gonna show me just how wrong I was, because I wouldn’t take his word for it. I don’t know what’s taking him so long now. He’s still holding me down, his cock is still rock hard and pulsing hot against my asshole, but he’s not thrusting it in. This could feel so good if he’d go slow, if he’d let me get used to it first, if he’d done it out of love. But he’s not gonna do it out of love tonight, because he doesn’t love me. The pain in my mind is bad enough, and I can’t even take the thought of him physically hurting me, let alone this drawn out anticipation of it.

“Please, Ice, you’re hurting me too much,” I sob, giving it one last shot to turn tonight around.

He grows heavier on top of me, but then he just lets me go, removing all the weight as he stands up. It leaves me light headed, because I didn’t expect it. I expected him to fuck my ass regardless of my pleas, because that’s how it always goes. Most guys enjoy hurting me even more if I beg them to stop.

Yet he did stop, he didn’t rape me, he didn’t hurt me physically. But he almost did. The next time he might, and I promised myself I’d leave him the second he hurt me. But that was before I fell hopelessly in love with him. How can I leave him now? Why doesn’t he love me back?

By the time I get my sobbing and my racing thoughts under control enough to turn around he’s already opening the door.

“I did warn you about me, Barbie,” he says and doesn’t meet my eyes. “You should’ve listened.”

There’s no apology in his voice, no softness, no care, only this cold, hard fact he just uttered. I should’ve listened. But words are one thing, and how his loving arms felt around me was so real and so right. So very right, it feels like someone died now that he’s shown me this side of him. This thing that makes him almost exactly like all the other assholes in my life up until now.

Tonight he didn’t rape me, but he’s probably just one of those who gear up to it slowly, after first reeling me in with soft kisses and loving ways. And that just makes him the worst dog of them all. Because he showed me everything is possible, but now he’s gonna just take it away before he even gives me more than a taste.

I have nothing to say to him. And I don’t get a chance to try either, because the door is already closing behind him. Maybe he’s never coming back. Maybe I won’t be here when he does.

But, damn it, I start missing him two seconds after he’s gone, and all my well laid plans of leaving him before he got violent, before it got painful and hurtful, all pretty much left with him. Because I’m an idiot who keeps making the same mistake over and over again, keeps falling for the wrong guy over and over again, and expects to force love where there’s none to give.

But not this time.

This time I’m gonna get out while most of the memories are still good. Even this one will turn good in time, because he stopped when I asked him to. But next time he might not stop, and then the good memories we made will be ruined forever. I can live with a lot, but I know I couldn’t live with that. So I’m leaving instead.