The party was already in full swing when they got to the bar. Angel was surprised to see two topless women dancing on top of the pool tables in the back. That was new. She looked at Dax and he shrugged and said, “It looks like some of the girls from the porn shop showed up tonight.”

Angel still wasn’t overly comfortable with a lot of the things that went on at these parties, but with Dax holding onto her as they made their way deeper into the bar, she at least felt safe. The place was teeming with the people from the ranch; heavily tattooed men and women both littered the dance floor and sat or stood around the pool tables hooting and hollering as the women on top shook and gyrated every part of their bodies. There also seemed to be a lot of locals from town. That made Angel a little nervous. First, she worried that someone might recognize her and secondly, she worried that with all the angst going on in the community over the MC wars that mixing the two might be a volatile situation.

Dax led her to a booth in the back where Beezy sat making out with some woman almost twice his size. She was wearing a pink halter top and Beezy had one of his hands shoved down inside. Angel could clearly see that he was fondling the woman’s tit. She looked away toward Clay, who sat next to the woman, and a girl sitting next to him that almost looked too young to be in a bar. Angel didn’t recognize her. The girl looked nervous so Angel smiled at her, trying to put her at ease.

The girl looked like she was about to smile back when Dax said, “What the fuck are you doing here? Clay, what the hell are you thinking, bringing her here?”

“I didn’t bring her here, boss. She was here when we got here. I just made her sit down with me where I could watch her.”

“Symone! Look at me,” Dax told her. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for someone to fuck!” she said, defiantly. She started to slide out of the booth and stand up but Clay grabbed her by the arm. Throughout the entire exchange, Beezy never stopped fondling the Amazon chick’s tit. He had one hand under the table now and Angel hated to imagine what they were up to down there.

“Let go of me!” the girl snapped at Clay.

“He’s going to take you home,” Dax told her.

“I don’t have a fucking home!”

“Symone. Get up and go with Clay. He’ll drop you back at your grandmother’s house.”

“Fuck you, Dax! You’re not my father.” Angel felt the muscles in Dax’s arm go as hard as steel. He moved her hand off it and stood up. Even Beezy and the Amazon stopped what they were doing to see what would happen next.

“Is she drinking again?”

“What do you care? I’m tired of being your community service project.”

“Your father was a good friend of mine.”

“My father was bat-shit crazy, which is why he is dead. His mother is a fucking nut-case alcoholic, and don’t even get me started on his perverted brother…”

“Look, Symone, I know you’ve had a hell of a time…”

“You don’t know shit. You don’t know what it’s like to be abandoned by your father because he’s either fucking always in jail or playing gangster, and then he just goes off the deep end one day and picks a gunfight with the cops. You don’t know what it’s like to not have a mother or to live with a grandmother that drinks and beats you. And just when I thought nothing could be worse, you all sent me to live with my aunt and uncle.”

Angel wasn’t sure what was going on, but everyone else at the table seemed to know. Dax didn’t look angry, he looked sad. Clay almost looked scared and Beezy actually looked interested. In a voice that was surprisingly soft Dax said, “Look, Symone, for tonight, you are going home, you’re going to wash that shit off your face, and go to bed. I will check in on you tomorrow and I promise, we’ll figure this out, okay?”

Symone stood up. Her eyes were still linked with Dax’s. Clay stood up too and Dax nodded at him. He went to take the teen’s arm and she jerked it away. But, with one more defiant look at Dax, she followed Clay to the door. Dax watched them until they were gone. The cocktail waitress must have been waiting for the fight to be over. She stepped up and sat a bottle of whiskey down in front of him with two glasses. Looking at Angel she said, “Do you want something different, hon?”

“No, the whiskey’s fine,” Angel told her. When the waitress was gone, Angel was about to ask Dax about the girl when Beezy said:

“She’s just grieving, man. She’s been through some shit, too much shit for a kid to have to go through.”

Dax nodded, poured two shots of whiskey, and pushed one over to Angel. He picked his up and downed it. “Who is she?” Angel finally said.

“Bobby was her father.”

“Bobby? The one that got killed in the shoot-out with the cops a few weeks ago?”

Dax nodded and poured himself another shot. “She was living with her mom in New Hampshire. The mother died of cancer a few years ago. Bobby was in prison at the time and I wasn’t gonna be responsible for a pre-teen out on the ranch. She went to live with an aunt and uncle, and that went all bad. She’s got a lot of issues because of it and Bobby finally just got her back before he got his crazy ass shot.” Dax took a third shot of whiskey.

“How old is she?” Angel asked.

“Fifteen, I think,” Dax said.

“She was born at the club; don’t you remember it?” Beezy asked him. “We were both there. Scared the shit outta me, watching her mama push out that bloody, wrinkled-up little human. I swore off women for a whole week after that.”

“I’m glad you went back to them, baby,” the big, blonde woman said in a slurred voice.

“Light us a smoke, baby,” Beezy told her with a peck on her lips.

“I remember,” Dax said. “And yeah, it scared the shit out of me too. Made me swear I was never getting anyone pregnant. I guess that was fifteen years ago. The more I know about these teenagers, though, the more I’m starting to think popping them out was the easy part.”

“Oh, baby! I love this song. Dance with me?” the big woman told Beezy as a big puff of smoke came out of her mouth. She handed Beezy the joint and he took a long drag before handing it across to Dax. Dax took it and inhaled as Beezy and the woman got up and went out to the dance floor. He handed the joint to Angel and as she took it between her fingers she said:

“It’s nice how you look after all these kids. I bet someday you’re going to make an amazing father.”

Dax turned to look at her. She could see emotion in his eyes as he said, “You want kids, Angel?”

“Yeah, someday. What about you?”

“I never thought about it…until recently. In the past I just figured I’d never find anyone that I wanted to have kids with…you know, someone I trusted enough to want to keep in my life that long.”

“What happened recently to change your mind?”

He leaned in and kissed her on the lips. “You happened,” he said. Angel felt overwhelmed, both by the gravity of what he was saying to her and the guilt she felt as soon as he mentioned trust. Angel kissed him back and wondered how much longer she could keep up this charade. Dax was a good man…why couldn’t the task force, and most especially her brother, just accept that? “Come on,” he said, taking her by the hand. She didn’t question him. Despite her own issues with guilt because she wasn’t being honest with him, she trusted him with her life.

He led her past the prospects’ table. The six young guys were whooping it up, taking shots of straight whiskey and fondling the cocktail waitress, who looked old enough to be their mother. One of the “porn stars” danced nearby on top of the back of one of the booths, shaking her excessively enhanced, naked tits to the sounds of AC/DC blaring out of the juke box in the corner. Just beyond that booth sat one of the older guys in the club. Angel couldn’t remember his name but unfortunately after that night the memory of a sixty-nine-year-old man masturbating openly in public would be burned into her brain. His eyes were glued to the dancer as he stroked himself with vigor. It was almost like a train-wreck…too horrible not to look. Angel was grateful Dax was pulling her along or she might have stopped and gaped openly at him.

Dax led her through a door at the back of the bar and suddenly they were outside in a picnic area, surrounded by trees. The sun was getting low in the sky and the blue background looked like it had been brushed with varying shades of red, yellow, and orange. It was beautiful, and a nice reprieve from the smell of marijuana smoke, motorcycle oil, sweat, vomit, and sex inside.

“This is nice….”

“Get naked.”

Angel looked around. “Um…what?”

“Take off your clothes.”

“Right here?”

“It’s just you and me, baby.”

“Yeah, but…I mean anyone can walk out….” Or someone in the surveillance van up the road might be able to see us if they looked hard enough. She wracked her brain, trying to remember who was up tonight. God please don’t let it be Kyle…or Micah. Shit, no matter who it was, if she did this, she was screwed.

“I thought you trusted me.”

“I do. Of course, I do. It’s just…”

“Nobody will come out here. If they do, I guarantee you they’ll turn right around when they see us and go back inside. No, unless there’s some other reason you don’t want to fuck me…” Angel reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it off over her head. She tossed it aside and looked back at Dax. He was smiling. “That’s my girl.” She figured out as soon as he started talking that this was some kind of test. If the guys gave her shit for it, she would defend herself with that statement.

Angel stripped off the rest of her clothes, slowly, as Dax leaned against one of the wooden picnic tables and watched. His blue eyes were filled with lust and every so often, his tongue came out and he licked his lips. She loved how he wanted her and by the time she was completely nude, she’d almost forgotten who else might be watching. It didn’t matter. She’d already decided Dax was what she wanted and if she had to give up other things and people in order to be with him, then so be it.

He pulled her over to him and started by caressing her breasts. She loved the way his fingers played across her hard nipples. The intense look in his blue eyes as he touched her sent a convulsive shiver down her spine. He bent down and swiped across one of her nipples with his tongue, then he let it swirl around the tip before sucking the nipple into his mouth. She loved the way he sucked and licked her breasts, especially the way he used the sides of his teeth to lightly scrape across them. She could almost come without his ever touching her pussy…not that she wanted to. The more his mouth worked her nipples, the wetter she got and the more she wanted him inside of her.

He suddenly picked her up underneath her arms and flipped her around, sitting her up on top of the picnic table. Then he dropped down to his knees in front of her and pushed her legs apart. Leaning in, he let his tongue slowly and lazily tease her outer lips, which were already soaked with her own juices. She held herself in place with her hands pressed against the table. It was hard not to writhe all over when he did that, it felt so good. She let her head fall back and moaned aloud as he slid his tongue up inside of her. He moved it in and out slowly, driving her crazy. She had to reach down and push his face harder into her pussy. She needed more. She wanted more of him inside of her. He licked up her wet slit and found her swollen clit. His tongue picked up its pace as he flicked across it and pressed into it, moving it from side to side. The volume and intensity of her moans rose as quickly as his tongue was moving, and she wrapped her fingers up tightly in his long hair, pushing him and begging for more. It wasn’t long before the orgasm washed over her in wave after wave of delicious ecstasy. She cried out his name and he kept up the pressure on her clit lightly until she finished coming and collapsed forward, shaking and quivering all over.

He slowly moved back, holding onto her as he did, so she wouldn’t fall, and he got to his feet. He leaned down and kissed her, and Angel grabbed his face and licked and bit at his lips. The taste of herself on him drove her crazy. He was the first man she’d ever been with that would leave the evidence of her climax there for her to lick off, and she loved it. When she finished and let go of his face he grinned at her, and she watched as his hands went to his belt. Her tongue came out of her mouth practically of its own accord, slowly running across her bottom lip as she watched him unbutton his jeans and slide down his zipper. It was obvious that he had a raging hard erection underneath. He pushed down his jeans until they fell around his ankles and then did the same with his shorts. Angel’s hands automatically reached out and wrapped themselves around his throbbing cock. She could feel it throb in her hands and she could feel how hot it was and how badly he wanted her. Suddenly she felt like she could come again already. This man drove her insane.

She leaned forward and ran her tongue up and down the shaft, letting it swirl around until she reached the head and sucked it into her mouth. She held it there against her tongue, sucking on it slowly as she continued stroking the shaft with both hands. She let her hands run down every so often, cupping his balls and gently rolling them between her fingers. He let out a long, sexy moan before taking her hair in his hands and wrapping the long, blonde strands around his fingers. He held her head in place and pushed forward with his hips, making her take all of him into her mouth until the tip of his cock rested against the back of her throat. He groaned again and then he started moving in a rhythmic fashion, fucking her in the mouth the way he would her pussy. Angel let it hit the back of her throat each time, sucking as he moved into her and licking the shaft as he moved out. He let her suck and lick him until she felt him tensing and his cock getting even harder, and then suddenly he pulled back and said:

“Bring that sweet ass back to the edge of the table.”

She did as he told her, bringing her hips even with his. He reached down and took his throbbing cock in his hand and slowly entered her. When he was filling her up he reached down and parted her legs wider. He liked to watch himself go in and out of her and it turned her on too.

He just fucked her then, in and out, hard and fast, the way they both liked it. She clawed at his shoulders through the shirt he hadn’t taken off and he held onto her ass, digging his fingers into her flesh. They came at the same time, so hard that he had to pick her up off the picnic table and hold onto her to keep her from flying off in the other direction.

He held her for a long time and when they both came down from their high he said, “I leave at dawn and I’ll be back sometime on Sunday. When I get back, I think it’s time you and I talk more about our pasts, the real ones, and our future.”

Angel nodded, hoping that the knot of terror that had formed in her stomach wasn’t apparent in the look on her face. What did he mean, the real ones?