THIRTEEN
Lea
It happened almost naturally.
The first night, we finished building the bathroom. We ordered in. We went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to Shane kissing up my legs and, well, things got heated from there. I woke up. Not in his arms, because I apparently had battles when I slept, something Shane was all too tickled to point out to me. Besides, Shane got up early because he was one of those morning people freaks. So I woke up in a big rumpled bed with the smell of fresh coffee everywhere.
And let’s not mention a warm, gooey feeling inside that I tried hard to ignore.
Shane went to work, dropping me at my apartment on the way and telling me with no preamble, “Pack some shit and drive over to my place when you’re done with work.”
I got ready for work. And, not sure how I felt about doing so, I packed a small bag with just the basics: toothbrush, deodorant, makeup, ‘just in case’ tampons, a couple pairs of panties and one change of clothes. I didn’t want it looking like I was going to be moving in there.
Then I went to work. After work, I went to Shane’s where he had left the door open and was passed out in bed. Unsure what to do, I quietly backed toward the door again.
“Get your ass in this bed,” his sleep-rough voice demanded, muffled by the pillow his face was half-buried in.
“You’re sleeping. It’s late. I’ll…”
“Don’t make me get up and drag you over here,” he warned, still making no move to turn to face me.
“Shane…”
“Lea…” he said back, a trace of humor there.
On a shrug, I locked the door, set down my bag next to it and made my way to the bed. Kicking off my shoes, I moved to grab the sheets.
“You can’t possibly sleep in those tight ass jeans,” he mumbled and I agreed so I undid them and slid them down my body. “Or that bra,” he went on and there was definite humor in it. But, again, he was right. I reached behind my back and unclasped, dragging the bra through my arm hole.
“Am I ready for bed now?” I asked, smiling a little at his back.
“I don’t know. I don’t think you’re naked yet.”
“You’re not naked either,” I pointed out, the blanket tangled around his thighs, letting me see his black boxers.
Just then, his body jumped, flipping onto his back. He reached down, snagged aforementioned boxers, and ripped them off. “Sure am,” he said, cocking an arm behind his head and sending me a devilish little smirk, completely comfortable in his own nudity. As he should be with a body like he had.
“Alright,” I said, lifting my chin a little and quickly pulling off my shirt.
“Panties too. We’re free-balling it.”
I laughed at that, snagging the lacy pink panties I had put on because I knew at some point Shane would be seeing them, and slid them down my legs. “We good now?”
Shane’s eyes slid over me for a second then he grabbed the blanket and held it up for me to slide under. Which I did, happily. His arm snaked around my back and hauled me to his side. And while his fingers did trace up and down my spine for a long couple of minutes, it wasn’t sexual. It was just intimate, sweet.
And before my greedy body could get too worked up, Shane’s breathing went deep and even and I craned my neck up to see he had passed back out again. And that, somehow, meant something to me. He didn’t want me in his bed directly after work just to fuck me. Not that I would have complained about that. Any excuse I could find to get his hands and mouth on me, well, I’d take it. But it felt good to know that he sometimes just wanted me there, just wanted me in his bed, just wanted me to lay on his chest and in his arms while he slept.
Yeah, that was an unexpectedly amazing feeling. And I let myself stay up until almost six AM basking in it before my overtired eyes finally shut.
For all of half an hour before Shane’s internal clock woke him up and I was suddenly rolling onto my back. My mostly-asleep brain was present enough to take in the sensation of his fingers teasing up my belly and tracing the sensitive undersides of my breasts, but not present enough to make me open my eyes. So I lay there and let him stroke over me, the sensation almost reverent, like he was worshipping each inch of me, trying to commit it all to memory. Then, when I was writhing and moaning enough to make a porn star blush, he slipped inside me.
It wasn’t what seemed to be our usual desperate fucking. It was slow and sweet, like we had all the time in the world, like nothing was more important than sharing our bodies with each other.
The words making love popped into my head just as the orgasm coursed through my body, seeming to only intensify it with that realization.
Because with all the sex I had had in my life… I had never had someone make love to me. I wasn’t even entirely sure I understood the turn of phrase until Shane showed it to me. And, judging by the contented yet confused and a bit awestruck look on his face as he looked at me after he came as well, I was pretty sure the experience was a new one for him.
He held me for a long while until his phone started blowing up across the room and he sighed, smacked my ass lightly, and got out of bed to go get it. He did this completely naked, I might add. And I felt no embarrassment whatsoever in watching as he answered his phone and moved around the kitchen making coffee.
I passed out while he was in the shower and woke up alone with a note on the coffee pot when the smell eventually dragged me from bed.
Need to handle some gym shit. I’ll be back in a couple hours to fuck you. Fee said you’re off today so I’m gonna take you out to Chaz’s. Mark owes you a couple rounds. He reminded me this morning.
He didn’t sign it and there was no real sweet sentiment to it, but it took just about everything I had not to carefully fold it and tuck it away in my overnight bag for safekeeping.
But I wasn’t that big of a sap.
Except I was and I had it folded in my bag for a second before I grabbed it again, balled it up, and made sure I mushed it into the old coffee grounds in the garbage so I didn’t try to save it again.
I took an obnoxiously long shower in his luxurious bathroom, put on some makeup, but not much because if he had plans to fuck me when he got back, I knew it would be of the rough, wild, sweaty variety and I didn’t need mascara running down my face.
I wasn’t wrong either.
Shane got in around four, gave me a good solid fucking that I swear made me have a complete out-of-body tet-a-tet with God, then we got dressed and hit Chaz’s.
Mark did as he had promised, buying us rounds. Eventually, Ryan and Eli showed up, joining in until I was good and wasted. Years of drinking with men who did so like they were stranded in the Sahara making my tolerance good and therefore preventing me from ever getting to the point where I was sloppy.
“Come on now, he’s hardly the prize of the family,” Mark said, hopelessly flirting with me (and any other girl one of his brothers showed interest in, just to piss them off). Mark was the shit-starter of the family I learned really quickly. Shane was the brute with a lot of opinions and, luckily, enough brains to back them up. Ryan, the business head. I couldn’t really get a feel for him, always being so staid. I couldn’t even tell if he liked me and I found myself overly concerned with that approval. Eli, well, was Eli. He was a strange mix of restrained and friendly. His dark intensity didn’t seem to lessen in getting to know him better, but instead became one of the most interesting things about him. I learned around the fourth round that he was a painter and a writer and that some day he hoped to make that a bigger part of his life. There was a sadness when he said it though, as if he knew the chances were slim.
Sometime around midnight, two guys walked in, making the Mallicks shake their heads. One was slim, a swimmer’s kind of body, completely covered in tattoos, even across his neck, with slicked back hair and green eyes, dressed in tight black jeans, a black Alice In Chains tee, and freaking creepers. Beside him was a giant mixed-race light-skinned black man who was tall and wide and tatted as well with a sharp, perfect face and a relaxed kind of confidence about him.
“Who are they?” I heard myself asking, considering them over my drink.
“Shooter is the fuck with the greaser look,” Shane informed me, jerking his head at the man in question who gave him a smile that faltered a bit as the man’s eyes followed the length of Shane’s arm to where it draped over my shoulders. Then the smile positively threatened to split his face.
“And the other?” I asked.
“Paine. He’s a tattoo artist. He’s done some of my work.”
“But Hunter is a tattoo artist,” I said, not understanding why someone so fiercely loyal to his family would go to someone else.
“Hunt took off for a while some years back. That’s how he met Fee. I still needed to get inked and Paine is just as good.”
“Sugar, honey, sweetie, darlin’,” I heard drawled behind me with a hint of a southern accent which just made it all the more appealing. When I turned, there was Shooter who I remembered Fee telling me was a sniper. He certainly didn’t look the part. “What is a a woman like you’d doing with a man like this?”
“Shoot, Lea. Lea, Shoot,” Shane said, raising the arm that was behind me and whacking Shooter on the back.
“He’s bad news,” Shooter warned, making a show of looking gravely serious.
I leaned forward toward him. “I hear you’re bad news too.”
He jerked back, hand to his chest like I stabbed him. “Oh, that hurts!” he said, giving me a grin that surely worked on the ninety-nine percent of the female population that did not belong to Shane Mallick.
“You want to get your ass kicked?” Paine, the sexy light-skinned black guy said coming up, nudging his friend. “Got a bar full of skirts and you have to hit on the one who has a man?”
“Oh, no worries,” I said, waving a hand. “Mark has already thrown his name in the cap too.”
“If you ever feel like taking a break from the Mallick brothers…” Shooter offered, taking my hand and kissing it.
“This doesn’t phase you at all?” Paine asked, gesturing at Shoot.
“Nah.”
I stiffened a bit at that, turning to look at him. “Well, why not?” I demanded.
To that, he shrugged. “‘Cause you’re not going anywhere.”
Alcohol making me even a bit bolder than usual, if that was possible, I blurted out. “You don’t know that. Shooter’s got a little something,” I said with a smile.
“Oh, shit,” Paine said, drawing my attention. He clamped a hand at the back of Shooter’s neck and pulled him away. “Have a good fight.”
I turned back to Shane, brow raised. “Well?”
“I’m not a jealous person, baby.” I opened my mouth to say something and he put two fingers on my lips, stopping me. “Being jealous of Mark or Shoot showing you attention says that I don’t trust you. I do trust you. You, however, don’t trust me. Which is something we need to work on.”
With that, his hand dropped. “I trust you,” I rushed to say.
To that, his brow raised. “The hostess of Famiglia?”
“That’s different. She was being outright disrespectful. Eye-fucking a man who is there with a woman. That is unacceptable behavior.”
“I had no interest in…”
“That’s not the point though. The point was, she disrespected me and the very idea of exclusivity by openly flirting with a guy who, at least it looked like, belonged to another woman. It’s different with Mark and Shoot because they’re joking.”
“Lea, they’re not joking,” Shane said, shaking his head a little, lips twitching. “I fuck this up? We fuck this up? They’re all over it. Shoot because, while we don’t mess with each others’ businesses, a friendly rivalry over women is fine. Mark because he would much rather ask for forgiveness than permission. They’d fuck you in a heartbeat.”
“In that case, I feel like I should be insulted that you aren’t putting them in their place about it.”
“Why?”
Because it showed he valued me. Because it said he cared. But I couldn’t bring myself to say that to him.
“Nothing. Never mind,” I said, waving a hand and turning to face the bar which made his arm drop from my shoulders.
I took a breath, trying to remind myself not to get too wrapped up, that it was doomed to fail eventually. Shane moved in behind me, arms going on the bar to either side of my body, caging me in. He leaned in close, his mouth going close to my ear, his warm breath sending chills down my body. “Just because I don’t fuck up every man who shows interest in you, doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit about you. It means I am showing self-preservation. Because if I started shit with every guy who wanted to fuck you, I’d never stop fighting. Maybe that ex of yours fucked with your head or maybe you’re like every other chick in the world who has no fucking idea how hot they are, but let’s get this shit clear now- you’re gorgeous. Men will want to fuck you. I can’t get mad about that because fact of the matter is, you choose to fuck me not them. So instead of getting pissed about them, I’m gonna go ahead and be amused by it because when the night is over and I am the one inside you, I get the last laugh.” He paused, letting that settle in. And it did, down to my bones. “So we done with this asinine conversation?”
I felt myself nod as I swallowed hard. “But I reserve the right to put that hostess in her place if she ever tries it again.”
“Babe, I’d pay to see that,” he said, planting a kiss against my neck and I could feel his lips smiling there.
Right.
God, it felt so right.
My gaze lifted, finding my reflection in the mirror of the backbar. The look in my eyes said it all.
I knew that things feeling so right only meant that when they went wrong, it was going to really, really hurt.
But as Shane said in that deep, sexy voice of his that it was time to get out of there and into his bed, I decided that that was something to worry about another day.
—
The next day when I woke up, Shane was already fully dressed, walking across the building toward me with a laptop in his hands. When my brows furrowed, he tossed it onto the bed. “I have a job,” he said, and the tone in which he said it implied it was of the illegal, knee-breaking sort, not the gym or apartment building sort. “I want you to hang here. Watch TV, search around online, order food. But be here.”
There was a certain amount of need in his voice that made the sleep fog pull back suddenly. It wasn’t something that seemed to suit him. “Shane, I have work tonight.”
He nodded at that, like he knew, as he sat down on the side of the bed and held up his arm, opening his hand. A key dangled from the loop he had around his finger. “Go to work. But then come back here, alright? Lock the door behind you and just… be here.”
I felt my brows draw together, not understanding why he was repeating himself. I had barely seen my apartment in three days. It wasn’t a stretch for me to stay another night. “Okay,” I said, appeasing him as I took the key.
“Come over here and give me a kiss,” he said, eyes light again, smile wicked, like my agreeing to stay took a burden off his back.
And, well, when a man as sexy as Shane freaking Mallick told you to give him a kiss before he left, you crawled across the bed, grabbed the sides of his face, and kissed him like he was going off to war. Which, in a way, he was.
“I should be back by morning, he said, stroking his fingers down my cheek, then neck. “You have fun faking orgasms all night. When I get home, I’ll give you real ones.”
With that, and just a smile, he got off the bed, grabbed a bag that was sitting by the door, and left.
I sat there for a long couple of minutes, just thinking about his somewhat unusual behavior and what it meant. Maybe the job he had was a particularly unsavory one and he wanted some kind of comfort when he got back. Or maybe it was as simple as he got worked up on the job and needed an outlet for that energy before he got some sleep. So maybe he just wanted me for a good fuck.
Whatever it was, I would be around to see.
I wanted to see and know everything about Shane.
I wasn’t sure I ever truly felt that way about someone before.
But with Shane, I was greedy for every little piece. I watched and listened and catalogued the information for later. For instance, his family was forever calling or texting him. And, save for when we were in the middle of sex, he always got up and answered. But he wasn’t annoyed or angry; he always seemed genuinely happy to talk to them, even when they were calling with problems. He liked action movies and comedies and rolled his eyes at chick flicks. He was an early riser and a big eater and a workout freak. His dishes never piled up as he seemed of the ‘clean as you go’ mindset. Not much seemed to shake him, no matter how many small crises seemed to come along at once. He was unflappable.
And, well, he paid attention. To me. I wasn’t sure I had ever experienced that before, but let me tell ya’, it was something else. When I talked, he listened. Even if he interrupted me mid-thought, he knew what I was saying. He got me. He knew my rhythms, even after just a couple days. He had coffee for when I got up, even though it was hours after him. He suggested food at my unusual eating schedule. He didn’t pounce on me when I got back from work, letting me get some sleep before he woke me up in inventively sexy ways.
I got up off the bed and made my way to the kitchen to get more coffee, resisting the urge for maybe five minutes before I started looking around. I didn’t want to call it snooping, because I wasn’t looking for some buried secrets or hidden porn collection (especially since such a thing didn’t exist in the age of internet porn). I was looking for pieces of him, wanting a full picture. What I found was a photo album in a knick-knack drawer where I found dozens of childhood pictures of Shane and his brothers. In some, they had big Popsicle grins, in others they had bloody noses, in more still they were covered in bruises from recent fights. But in all, they were happy. I found out that he had far too many protein powder canisters in a cabinet above the fridge and that he didn’t seem to own even one baking item.
I had learned already that the wall behind the bed and bath had a giant closed walk-in closet where he kept most of his clothes and his cleaning supplies. There was also a staircase leading up. But I hadn’t explored it yet. So, coffee in hand, and a bit excited to see what else his house had to offer, I started climbing. What I found was a finished floor with a laundry area, a small but well equipped gym, and an array of men’s toys: a kayak, skis, basketballs, hockey sticks, the works. What I also found was yet another staircase up. Curious, I went, but found an unfinished space with just cleaning supplies. I wondered what he had in mind for it… a living space? Extra bedrooms?
Curiosity satisfied, I made my way back down to the main floor and went back to the bed, flicking around the channels mindlessly. Every once in a while, my gaze would move to the laptop and I would force the urge away, knowing it would only lead to bad things.
But, several hours later, I had the laptop on my lap and was bringing up my email.
See, when I left, I left. I didn’t keep in contact with anyone. I didn’t keep tabs on them on social media or even check my own email. Because a part of me knew it would mean disaster. It would ruin me.
As such, I never bought a laptop and I didn’t even have a data plan on my phone. I avoided temptation whenever possible.
I scanned through a seemingly endless amount of junk emails before I saw one from a name I recognized. My heart seemed to stop beating immediately, my stomach twisting painfully. But my hand moved without me telling it to, drifting over the email and clicking it.
There were two attachments, one an image, the other a video. Then there was one typed sentence:
Come back and it stops.
Heartbeat going into overdrive, I clicked the image first. It was the obituary page in my old local paper and my stomach twisted into knots as I searched the images for those of my father and brother. I didn’t find them. I did, however, find a picture of a girl I knew. We hadn’t been close but we would occasionally go out and get coffee or manicures or other girly shit together. I had seen her the day before I left.
And she was dead.
Her grainy black and white picture didn’t do her justice. In real life, she was short and perfectly curvy with big gray eyes and long wheat-blonde hair around her sweet, delicate face. The obituary had obviously been written by the family she was estranged from, very generic and unfeeling. It only said that she died unexpectedly, no details. But I needed to know. So, I went online and started looking around. I found a police report about her, but the details weren’t public knowledge. A good twenty minutes later, I came across a Kill Club website for freaks obsessed with violent crimes. I put in her name, and there it was. The full police report plus the crime scene pictures.
They had found her hanged from a tree limb by her wrists, completely naked. She had been beaten badly, half her body looking blue with bruises. There had been cigarette burns on her butt, breasts, inner thighs, and crotch. She had been, it went without saying, raped. They had found she was severely dehydrated which implied that she had been out there a good long time. The official cause of death, though, was his typical style seeing as Rey had a thing for blades.
Her throat had been slit so deep that her head almost detached.
I swallowed hard, closing my eyes to try to force away the images.
I knew my loved ones would be at risk when I left. But I had no idea that casual acquaintances would suffer for my leaving too. Though, that was Rey. He was vengeful and evil and merciless. There was no such thing as an innocent. If he was in a mood, you would pay for it.
As such, as I clicked back to my email window and moved the cursor over the video, I knew it was going to be bad. And it likely wouldn’t be a stranger. I should have just shut it all down, saved myself any more guilt and horror. But I couldn’t bring myself to, knowing my imagination could be every bit as bad, or worse, than the reality.
It was immediately clear that whoever was filming was not Rey because as soon as the video started, you could see Rey walking purposefully into the room. It wasn’t a room I was familiar with, white, dingy, a little dark. A bunch of men were standing around including my father and brother.
Rey walked straight up to my brother who stood as he approached, brows drawn together like he was confused by the attention. I almost missed the motion it happened so fast. Rey’s hand went into the back waistband of his pants and the camera caught the flash of the blade just a second before Rey plunged forward with it, stabbing it into the center of my brother’s stomach.
I cried out in the empty warehouse as my brothers face contorted with pain, half collapsing onto his attacker.
The video cut out just then, leaving me completely unsure if it was just the one stab, just to get my attention, or if it kept going. If there was real damage. If my brother was even still alive.
On that thought, I opened a new window and searched for any evidence that my brother was dead. I found none, but I also knew that that was not definitive.
I slammed the laptop shut and threw it onto Shane’s side of the bed, curling up on my side and pulling my legs to my chest. It hurt. It was like I had been stabbed as well, like my insides were becoming outsides as I rocked my body, looking for comfort. My eyes stayed oddly dry, like no tears could be brought forth through the guilt and fear.
I stayed that way as the sun hit mid day and then as the sun went down. Eventually, I forced myself to get up and changed for work. About a dozen cups of coffee and six hours later, the pain had turned to a dull ache that I could almost ignore if I set my mind to. I drove back to Shane’s to find he still wasn’t home, something I was thankful for as I slipped out of my clothes and into the bed.
And then, for the first time in almost a year, I let my mind go there. I let it go back.
My family was three generations deep in a one-percent, heroin-dealing MC in California. My grandfather had been in since he was a teenager. My father and brother both aged in at their own pace. As for me, well, girls weren’t allowed. At least, girls weren’t allowed in any capacity more than a scullery maid or set of holes for men to plug. Being that my mother died when she brought my brother into the world, I was literally raised in the clubhouse. I learned to be tough, to not show my weakness, to understand loyalty. The president, Rick, had been like an uncle to me and had actually, despite club rules about chicks not having bikes, bought me my first one when I was sixteen and taught me to drive it in the field behind the clubhouse.
But as I got older and started to develop, I realized quickly that it was smart for me to start hanging out elsewhere except for on nights when my presence was needed. See, it didn’t seem to matter to the vast majority of the men that they had literally watched me grow up, that they had bought me Christmas presents as a kid and kept up the Santa Claus charade for me. As soon as my tits became more than a wish and prayer, I was prime meat and they were hungry dogs. I couldn’t walk through the clubhouse without having my ass smacked or my tits felt up. I worried for worse from men I had known as family so I stopped going.
I didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about a normal view of womanhood in the world, but I damn sure knew that the life of a clubwhore was not for me. I wasn’t about to be passed around and fucked in all my holes at once while men got in line to take their turn.
Granted, I learned from a very tender age to be comfortable with and to use my sexuality, as taught to me from some of the older clubwhores, I always knew that I wanted it to be my choice. I wanted to give it away to men I liked, not just because it was demanded of me.
So from age seventeen on, I had very little to do with them.
Around the time I turned twenty-three, the old president died and his son stepped up. I didn’t know much about Rey. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I could point him out in a lineup at that point. But he knew me. He had seen me. And when Rey saw something that he wanted, he put things into motion to make sure they became his. I was made to start coming around and Rey started showing me attention.
And, well, Rey was hot in all the ways I liked. He was tall and a lean kind of strong, covered in tats, covered in scars, with somewhat shaggy brown hair, and almost black eyes. He had one of those smooth voices too, all whiskey and molasses. I wasn’t exactly uninterested. If anything, I was flattered. When I was around, even though we were just talking, he never showed any interest in the clubwhores. He never flirted with anyone else. His focus was fully on me. Fresh off a breakup with a guy who seemed to be more interested in his Xbox than me, I was eating it up.
We started fucking about a week after we officially met. The sex? Yeah, it was all kinds of dirty and amazing. Then, to not only my, but all the club members’ shock, he wanted exclusivity. Given that I was never the kind to fuck two men at the same time anyway, I already was. I knew enough about bikers to know they fucked around as much as they pleased, so I was distrustful. In the end though, Rey’s vow to be exclusive was the one promise he stuck to.
On that thought, I figured that was enough for one night and I forced the memories away.
Eventually, I fell asleep.