“Master of my fate:
Captain of my soul”
Snapper
“Hey, honey.”
Snap turned from marking the wall where he and Shy were going to mount the cupboard to see his Rosie strolling in with Kane, better known as Playboy since the kid, not but a few months old, was a damned flirt. The baby was on her hip.
He was Shy and Tab’s little boy.
Tabby was following her toting a diaper bag, Tab’s eyes going to her man, but Rosie’s eyes were on Snap.
His woman looked seriously fucking good with a baby on her hip.
And she just looked seriously fucking good always.
Shy moved to Tab.
But Snap stood still because Rosalie was moving to him.
When she made it, he gave her a lip touch then gave Playboy a tickle to which the kid wobbled and gurgled but mostly just hung on to Rosie (this hanging on meaning grabbing onto her tit, freaking little flirt) and he looked back to his woman.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She took her eyes from him and looked to the cupboards Shy and him were installing.
It was his condo, where he lived. Or now, where he used to live.
Before Rosie, he’d spent most of his time in his room at the Chaos Compound, but if he felt the need to have quiet, get some space just to himself (which was not rare), he came there.
But since he now spent all his time with Rosie, he wasn’t a big fan of having a property that he wasn’t using that was also not doing anything for him. Seeing as he’d moved into the place as is and didn’t do shit to update it when he did, but the building was a nice one and he could get decent rent if he fixed it up, he was putting in a new kitchen, new bathrooms, painting the walls, and tiling the floors.
And he’d been able to gut it and start doing that because the week before, he’d full-on moved in with Rosie.
Snap moving into their carriage house had been a hiccup in their lives, something that wasn’t the same as every day before had been, but each day wasn’t much different. Not to mention it hadn’t taken much since most of his stuff he sold on Craig’s List because with Rosie’s stuff, and the extra she’d bought, the crib was sweet and they didn’t need his shit messing with her mojo.
But all in all, that was the way they were. Each day bleeding into the next, nothing new (except a dining room table, garden furniture and his “reading nook”—something he thought was hilarious and cute—hilarious because the words were goofy as shit, cute because she thought of him, even if he still read most of the time camped on the couch because she could stretch out beside him).
But everything was solid. It was not good, but instead golden.
Rosalie Holloway was not about adventure and excitement. She was just about being with the people who meant something to her, dialing down the world so all you needed to feed your soul was an hour with her quiet, stretched out with you on the couch.
And learning that, Snapper had fallen in love with her even more.
“They look good,” she declared, attention on the cupboards they’d already put in.
“You’d think that you picked them,” Tabby replied to Rosalie and looked at Snap. “They are nice. I still think you should have gone with the cream.”
“The place is modern, cream is more traditional,” Rosalie said.
“Cream is more neutral,” Tab returned.
Rosalie shot her a smile with her eyebrows raised. “More neutral than white?”
Snap was not a fan of the eyebrow raise only because it took his attention to the split in the left one.
Her scars were visible, thin white marks that ran through her brow, along her jaw, and one that was about a half an inch down the left side of the bridge of her nose.
Since they had the conversation now months ago, she hadn’t mentioned them, and that was good.
But every time his attention was turned to them, he saw her on the floor of that warehouse, and that was bad.
He’d lied to her that night he came clean about what Chaos’s real plans were with her ex. He did not think there was anything Gerard Beck could do to atone for what he’d done to Rosalie. He thought the guy was a useless piece of shit and apologies after you and your brothers delivered a beat down to a defenseless woman because you’d been caught breaking the fucking law were worthless—if they came in words, or if they came in deeds.
But Rosie seemed mellow about it, was definitely on the path of moving on from it and Throttle, and he wasn’t about to do anything to bite into that.
“Need you to look at those tile samples, Rosie,” he said to take his mind off that shit. “We need to make a decision so I can order it and get it delivered.”
She nodded to him and moved with Playboy over to a box that had a cupboard in it that Shy and him hadn’t taken out yet where there were a bunch of tile samples on top.
“The black,” Tabby, having wandered over to have a look too, decreed.
“My woman’s always got an opinion,” Shy muttered through a smile, stripping the shrink wrap and protective covering off the cupboard they were about to mount.
“Gray,” Rosalie said.
“Gray-shmay,” Tabby returned. “Gray’s boring.”
“It’s a rental, Tab,” Rosalie replied in that sweet, lilting voice of hers, not upset in the slightest about Tab’s outspoken ability to share her opinion. Then again, that was the way it was with those two, or Rosie with anybody. She didn’t get wound up a lot. In fact, since she settled in after what happened to her, she never got wound up. “It needs to be neutral so people can build on it with their own things.”
“You can build on black,” Tabby said.
“And black shows everything. It’s harder to keep looking nice,” Rosalie retorted.
Tabby had nothing to say to that because Rosalie was right.
The gray it was then.
Needless to say, the women had become friends. Outspokenly opinionated or not, it was hard not to like Tabitha Cage. She was just good people. And if you were a woman, she was the best kind of friend you could have around (if often a nutcase, but since Rosalie was totally not, they evened each other out). And straight up with everything, it was impossible not to like Rosie.
They’d gotten close. It might have been about Rosie opening the doors for Tab to swoop in because she was worried after what had happened to Rosalie. Mostly it was about the fact that they all just liked each other. History didn’t factor. It was just done in a way that there wasn’t even awkwardness. There was just what they had now.
Furthermore, they were the generation of the brothers and their women in the Club that were around the same ages, so with Joke and Carrie, they hung together a lot.
Playboy reached out to his momma and Tabby took her son.
Rosie turned to Snap. “We came to check out the cupboards and look at the samples. We also came to see if you guys wanted to take a break and go out to lunch with us.”
“Lunch sounds good,” Shy replied, moving to his wife and son, and when he did, his boy lost interest in Momma and reached out to Daddy.
Shy didn’t make him want. He took his little man and pulled him close, brushing his lips across the top of his cranium, then breathing in deep, like the essence of his son was the elixir of life.
And it probably was, something Snap looked forward to getting his own whiff of when the time was right.
“Joker, Carissa, and Travis are meeting us at Las Delicias in half an hour,” Tabby told the men.
“Perfect,” Snapper said, looking to Rosie. “You on the back of my bike, baby?”
She looked him right in the eyes.
“Absolutely.”
At her word, the way it settled down low in his gut, he smiled.
He was that guy who’d always known his destiny. Whatever life smacked him with, he knew he’d deal with it while he headed unerring for one thing: keeping himself breathing while finding a woman to love and building a family.
He didn’t give that first fuck if he did this rich or poor. He didn’t care if he did it in Denver, where he’d grown up, or in Alaska, or on the moon. He’d liked school but when it was done, he was done with it. He didn’t want to play a corporate game. He didn’t want to face a life of monotony. And he made it so he had none of that. He just wanted family, his bike, his brothers, solid and steady.
But most important, he wanted a world where his woman looked him in the eyes when he asked her to be close to him, close to the man who wanted what many would consider as limits that were all of that, not riches in the bank, not vacations in Tuscany, just whatever life led them to, and her answer was, Absolutely.
He’d found it in Rosalie.
He had it in his home, in his bed, on the back of his bike.
It was a miracle, quiet and true and constant.
And no matter what he had to do to keep it…
He was not ever going to let it go.
* * * *
“Snap?”
“Yup?”
She was lying on him.
It was after lunch at Las Delicias with their crew. After he and Shy went back to the condo to finish with the cupboards and the women went where women went to work off burritos (in Rosie and Tabby’s case, the mall). After he’d come home and showered and ate dinner with Rosalie then took her out for a ride in the early summer waning sun. After they’d returned home, got beers and stretched out on the couch, him with his book, her with hers that he’d noticed she was not reading, but he didn’t think much of it. When she had a book of her own, her mind wandered often, but he could tell by the look on her face when it did, her reflections never took her anywhere she didn’t want to be.
“You never said what you thought of the name Hermione.”
He felt his body tense.
This happened right before it shook uncontrollably because he burst out laughing.
When he got some control over it, if not a lot, he saw her smiling down at him.
It was then he realized a promise he made her he was not keeping.
He’d told her that he was going to get her to a time in her life when she’d spend a lot of it laughing.
So far this hadn’t happened.
Instead, she’d gotten him to a time in his life where he did that, no…she gave him that, and when she did, she just watched him, happy and smiling.
He again vowed to himself to do what he could to give that back.
But he had a feeling they both were totally down with the way it turned out.
When he finally got control of his humor, he lifted his brows and asked softly, his arm around her going tight, “You thinkin’ about babies, baby?”
“Would that freak you?” she asked back.
“Fuck no,” he answered firmly.
And earned another smile.
“Two for you too, or…?” she prompted.
“As many as you want, I’ll give you,” he replied.
The smile he got from that was seriously sweet in ways he felt the urge to do something about it.
“Rosie, Cotton’s up to some serious shit. You need to let me finish this,” he declared. “Then I’ll spend time finishing you.”
She turned her gaze to his book. “I’m always losing you to Steve Berry.”
“The man puts one book out a year,” he informed her.
She looked back to him but dipped her head sideways to his book. “How many times have you read that one?”
“Three.”
And it finally came.
Her body moving on him with her laughter.
Still doing it, she propped her book up on his chest and ordered, “Finish your chapter.” Her attention turned to her own pages. “Then you can finish me.”
Snap also returned his attention to his book.
And he never read so fast in his life.
* * * *
Snapper was behind the bar at the Chaos Compound.
They had three new recruits who he could press into service, as was their duty, but he was playing bartender like he often played bartender—definitely since the shit with Valenzuela started—doing it keeping an eye on his brothers.
And now Rosalie.
She was on the couch in the corner with Speck, a Corona in her hand, a smile on her face.
Her mass of thick dark hair, her slim figure, her long legs, her pretty face, those warm hazel eyes, that fucking smile…
Yeah, he’d caught hold of a miracle.
Whatever they were talking about made Speck feel good and loose, in their own little world the only way Rosalie could give a man, though with obvious differences for Speck.
She had this knack, brother, old lady or biker groupie. Rosie was not one to slam tequila shots, get loud, move straight to crazy, then come on strong so he had no choice but to mostly fuck her against a wall on a trajectory to his room.
Quiet communion was where Rosie was at.
And if she wanted his dick, all she had to do was give him that look. The one she had that had two versions. And depending on the version, Snap could gauge where it was as to where they would go with it. If it was urgent, he’d get her ass to his room in the back of the Compound so he didn’t make her wait to give her what she wanted. If it wasn’t, he’d get her ass home.
He tore his eyes from Rosie and scanned the bar.
Boz was sitting a stool, pounding tequila shooters. Rough count, so far he’d had seven.
He was doing this staring at the bar and not being social in a way that wafted off him like a nasty cloud, warning everyone to stay away.
Not a single brother or any of their women were stupid, so they stayed away.
There were a lot of reasons for Boz’s current disposition. But in his present mood, Snapper could not make an approach to try to pry out of him which one was fucking with his head right then and driving him to get shitfaced. Or worst case, if all of them were.
If the man wanted alone time, even if he was seeking that in a room full of people, Snap was going to give it to him.
So he let that go.
Big Petey was in a huddle at the far end of the bar with Dog and Brick.
Both Dog and Brick had left some time ago for the Western Slope to open up a new shop there. But now, both were back in Denver to help them concentrate on their troubles.
Brick would be taking off soon, though. He needed to get back. He’d found a woman worthy of him, a feat for Brick since most the women he chose fleeced his ass or ended up making a play at leading him around by his dick. All reports, this one was neither. This one was all good. She lived in a biker town called Carnal. The wedding was imminent, and for it, the brothers would soon ride.
Snap did not like the look of this huddle. Shit was serious and it wasn’t getting any better mostly because it wasn’t getting anything. Since Rosalie had taken her beating from Bounty months ago and Chaos rained down retribution, the only thing that had happened had been the fact that not too long ago, they got a delivery on their picnic table outside that very building.
But that had been some nasty shit and as such had sent all the brothers, already on edge, straight to the verge. Worse, they didn’t even have enough a hold on what was happening to give it a damn good yank in an attempt to shake something loose.
No one wanted Armageddon.
But it was worse knowing it might be out there, waiting, and they had no choice but to wait for it to hit, a sneak attack.
That huddle could indicate sides were being taken even if the thing they most didn’t need in the Club right then were lines being drawn. Snap felt a line had been drawn when Rosie had been pulled in then torn apart, it was just that after that had happened, in Snapper’s estimation all the men had stepped to the right side of that line.
In its history, Chaos had splintered once. It got ugly. Right now, it could not splinter again. And even though every brother knew that to be true, with the shit going down, it seemed an inevitability.
On the fucking verge.
Tab and Shy were not there. Nor was Rush, Tabby’s brother by blood, Snapper’s brother of the cut. Tack and Tyra either.
Tab had recently sustained a loss. The night of the picnic table. She hadn’t been back to the Compound since and was finding recovery difficult. So Shy, Rush, Tack, Tyra, and Tab and Rush’s little half-brothers, Rider and Cutter, were seeing to their girl.
Another shot across the bow.
Yeah, on the goddamned verge.
Roscoe and Hopper were playing pool with Lanie and Carissa. Joke was in the garage across the forecourt, keeping his shit tight by letting his head fall deep in a build.
Lanie and Carissa were losing in a big way. Lanie and Carissa also did not care, their frequent laughter and bright personalities, along with Rosie’s quiet serenity, were the only things that was keeping the doom hanging over the Chaos Compound from enveloping them, choking out the air, strangling them standing.
Snap saw it in Roscoe and Hop. The brothers shot smiles at the women but their bodies were tight. Of late, Roscoe had taken to habitually cracking his knuckles, and right then was no different. Hop had wound his head around to loosen the neck muscles twice that Snap had caught.
On the verge.
Big Petey moved from the huddle toward Renae, who was shooting the shit with Arlo on stools at the other end of the bar, close to the double doors that led to the Compound. This happened as Dog headed to the back hall, where he’d left his old lady, Sheila, in his room. His woman was undoubtedly passed out or simply physically immobile after the hard-core sex sounds they’d all heard drifting into the common room, prompting Snap to turn up the music. Brick’s route was to the pool table.
Snap watched Pete’s movements closely.
Arlo had a woman who he’d claimed as his for a long time, and Snap didn’t know a lot about that, he just knew he stepped out on her. Frequently. After Boz (who also liked variable pussy even when his cock was owned by just one) left Bev, Arlo was the last brother with a Chaos patch who did that shit. And Snap had not left attention to Renae to that brother alone. He’d kept an eye.
He didn’t like it.
Pete, it was coming clear, liked it less.
Then again, the look on Pete’s face, the reason why Snap wasn’t a big fan of Arlo setting up to make a move on Rosalie’s mother was not why Pete didn’t like it. Pete had around ten years on Arlo, but he wore it on his face more like it was fifteen. Or thirty.
But the man was the most loyal, solid human being Snap had ever met. More than Tack, who could be volatile, even if he had a fierce check on that shit. Even more than High, who’d learned the hard way to keep his shit cool. More even than Brick, who was mellow and smooth almost all the time, even if he hadn’t just finished a blunt.
As Pete instigated a cockblock, Snap again scanned the space.
High and Millie had High’s daughters that he’d had with his ex, so they were up in that crazy-ass mansion the man had bought his girls in north Denver.
Yeah, Logan “High” Judd was a biker who lived in a gothic Victorian manor that dripped class from every square centimeter, the same as his old lady. All of it, except the basement man-cave that was such a stark contrast to all that was around it, Snap couldn’t walk into the fucking place without feeling an instant sense of culture shock, then fast on the heels of that busting a gut laughing.
Whatever they were doing up there, Snap had no doubt High often found times to reflect on current times, and when he did, he’d wind his neck around just like Hop.
Notably absent was Hound. He used to be around a lot. Serious shit had gone down with him—him and his brothers, him and his now-woman. Snap was frankly shocked as shit Hound had nailed down any woman at all, much less the one he went balls to the wall for. Snap was under the impression that the man had always been about brotherhood, blood, guts and attachment-less booty.
Then again, a lot had surfaced about Hound recently that was shocking as shit.
So in a rare instance, when it came to Hound, Snap had learned he was wrong.
But in this instance, he was glad to be that.
His eyes lit on Rosalie, and not unusually, his dick had the response.
She was mellowed out, with her people, but the vibe had penetrated, she knew what it did to her man, and she was all in to do something about that.
He lifted his chin to accept her offer.
She smiled and looked to Speck.
Snap moved to Boz and poured another shot in the empty shot glass Boz was scowling at.
Then he shouted, “Chill!” and the recruit that had been doing whatever the fuck he’d been doing behind the bar with Snap loped over.
“You got the bar,” he said to the prospect.
“You got it, brother,” Chill replied.
Snap moved around the bar and it was not a surprise to him that, in sync, he met Rosalie at the door that was the mouth to the back hall, the hall that led to all the brothers’ rooms.
Returning her small grin, probably also returning the heat he felt from her eyes, he slid an arm around her shoulders and felt hers glide along his waist.
They had to turn slightly sideways to get through the door, but they did it, moving attached through it, down the hall and all the way to his room.
* * * *
He took her with two fingers, sucking rhythmically on her clit, but harder, then harder, and then harder, eyes up watching her strain into him, naked, arched, legs dropped wide to the sides.
As he intended, she found it for him, her body bolting against his mouth, and he kept sucking and stroking her through it until he knew it was too much and only then did he unlatch and lift away, still watching her, eyes glued to the beauty of his Rosalie gripped with an orgasm.
But he kept his fingers buried deep, part of her, and only when her frame settled and her gaze drifted hazily down her body to catch his did he come up on his knees, withdrawing his fingers slow, tender, floating them over her clit with a light touch, listening to the soft noise she made telling him she liked that.
He kept his eyes on his woman, her eyes on him, as he knelt between her legs, wrapping his left hand around his cock and stroking slowly while he lifted his right hand, fingers coated with her, and drew them into his mouth to suck her sweetness down his throat.
Another noise, a deeper mew, and she writhed in front of him.
He’d taken her there.
But she was ready for more.
He slid his fingers out between his lips and ordered gently, “Turn over, baby. On your knees.”
She nodded and did as told instantly, offering her sweet ass and wet, pink cunt to her man, spreading her thighs to give him the perfect angle to position.
God, fuck, he loved this woman, her hair on his pillow, the smell of her sex in his nose, the quiet unity they shared all the time, but especially in these times, the straight-up trust she gave him all the time.
But especially in these times.
He wiped the wet of her from the whiskers around his mouth with the back of his forearm, not licking it clean but leaving it there so he could smell her on him after they’d passed out to sleep.
Then he walked on his knees to her, guiding his cock, now unsheathed since they’d both been tested and she started taking care of family planning.
He’d lay seed in her womb. Soon. After Chaos shit was finished and he could hand her nothing but steady and true.
The ring he’d give her, though, that’d come sooner.
He slid in slowly, watching her strain to hold back and take him how he wanted to take her. He knew his baby was wild in just one way and he gave her that, after he took her to a place where the end result would blow her mind but reduce their world to nothing, not a thing, but their two bodies in a bed.
He rocked in her, watching her arms come out, dig under the pillows, reach to wrap her fingers around the headboard.
And he continued to rock in her, giving her just his cock, not even caressing the skin of her beautiful ass with his fingers.
As he watched the tension gather in the muscles along her spine, felt her thighs and ass quivering as she took his slow thrusts, holding back for him, he went faster, catching her at the waist, pulling her to meet him.
“Snap,” she whispered.
He said nothing. He was right there. Right where he was made to be. And she couldn’t miss it.
But he bent over her, gliding his hands up her ribs and in. The light twists he gave her tight nipples caused her entire body to buck.
Christ, she was fucking magnificent.
“Snap.” It was a plea.
He dragged the pads of his thumbs hard over her nipples, then tweaked them with his thumbnails.
“Oh God, baby,” she breathed.
Moving his hands, he held her with his left at her waist and flattened his right on the small of her back.
It was time.
“Go, baby,” he whispered.
And she went. Head flying back, fingers tight around the headboard to give her leverage, Snapper watched her at first, fucking herself on his dick.
Then he watched their glistening connection as she drove back into him, again, again, again.
One of her hands released the headboard, dove between her legs, and Snap clenched his ass, then his entire body to beat back the rush of feeling that would overwhelm him if he let it as she rode his cock on her knees, touching herself. She didn’t do this long before she cried out and kept at her rough ride through coming, coating him so fucking slick, they both had to be dripping.
Only then did he let go but he did it focused on his dick sinking deep into her wet until he could see none of him, none of her, just the two of them together, and he gritted his teeth to drive the beauty of what they had down his throat, his lungs, his gut, his ass, through his balls, out his cock, shooting it in glorious pulsing floods into his Rosalie.
He came down to find she was already down, now fucking herself, and him, on sweet glides.
That was when he moved his hands over her skin, taking her in in a different way, giving her something at the same time.
She made a move as if to draw him out, shift position, and he murmured, “No, honey,” and she stilled that movement, but continued to fuck him sweet.
He let her until he lost it and had to slide out completely, but he kept his hands moving on her waist, her lower back, hips, ass, fingertips tracing down the backs of her thighs.
She shivered in front of him and didn’t move, quiet, contained, the world that bed and their bodies and Rosalie offering him everything he needed, on her knees, dripping his cum, holding for him, there for him, his world.
“Pete’s making a play,” he said softly.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“How you feel about that?” he asked, still touching her.
“If she lets it happen, happy for Mom. Thrilled for Big Petey.”
He smiled at her back because her words were good.
Renae needed happiness in her life that came from more than her daughter, her daughter’s happiness, the relationship she was building with her daughter’s man and the Club that man gave them both, and if Pete, who hadn’t reached for it himself in years, could give it to her, that worked for Snap.
But he was on the other side, knowing Pete as he did. He’d be happy for Pete if he found someone again. He’d be thrilled for Renae, because she couldn’t do better than finding Petey.
The silence settled nice and warm but Rosalie broke it.
“Things are not good.”
Yeah, he was right, Rosie had felt it.
“Nope,” he confirmed.
“You’re all twitchy.”
“Yep.”
“Anything I can do?” she asked.
“Nope,” he answered.
She jerked her head so her hair slid to one side and looked up at him out of the sides of her eyes.
“You sure?”
Laid out, ass up, pussy dripping.
Her invitation was not veiled.
He grinned at her.
“Nope.”
She grinned back and wiggled her ass. “Take your time, Mulder.”
His drifting fingers slid between her legs. “You better believe it, Scully.”
She bit her lip.
He started playing with her clit.
Slowly, his old lady closed her eyes.
And nothing penetrated, not rival bike clubs, not dealing, pimping psychopaths, not what was left for them on that picnic table, not the shift happening in the Club.
The world was small.
In the scheme of things, tiny.
Just Snapper and his Rosalie.
But it was about to crack open.
Open wide.
Sucking them all into a dark void of insanity.
* * * *
It was raining hard.
He was soaked.
His throat was choked.
His hair was straggling in his eyes, eyes that were blinking away the hair and the wet.
And the blood.
His hands were in fists, including the one with its fingers curled around the butt of his gun.
And Everett “Snapper” Kavanagh stared.
This was it.
The end was near.
And by what he was right then seeing, what had just been done, something that had already been hideously nasty was going to get seriously…fucking…ugly.
The red staining the rainwater was pooling at his boots.
It was Black again.
The asshole had tried to pull the same thing on Snap that his mentor had succeeded in doing to Black.
Take out the brother that everyone liked. The even-keeled one.
The calm in the storm.
Take out the brother that would light a fire under the whole Club that was already a powder keg in an attempt not to blow it sky high, but to force them to scramble to put the light out then toe the line.
But this time, seriously fucking fortunately, they’d failed.
“I am the master of my fate,” he whispered, head unbowed, blood and water and sweat mingling as it trickled down his neck, into his cut, drenching his tee, the adrenaline that had suffused him as the life he wanted to share with Rosie nearly went black on the stroke of a blade, staring, damned staring, unable to tear his eyes away. “I am the captain of my soul.”
It took a lot but he broke eye contact and walked away, sliding up the safety and shoving his gun in the back waistband of his jeans before pulling out his phone, ignoring the pizza he was picking up for him and Rosalie, moving to his truck.
He had to make decisions, and fast.
He made them.
Fast.
So his first call was Rush.
His second call was Throttle.
His third call was Tack.
His last call was Rosalie.
The End
* * * *
Also from 1001 Dark Nights and Kristen Ashley, discover .