THIRTY-FIVE

Dog

 

Ever tried to fire a rifle while your cock throbs against the restriction of your pants? No? Well, consider yourself lucky then. It’s a hell of a distraction to put up with.

I line the makeshift target up in the sight again and then shuffle my hips for what feels like the millionth time. Pretty sure Mel thinks I went straight to sleep last night, but the truth is I lay there staring at the plain green canvas stretched over me, trapped in my thoughts.

She fucking loves me back.

I don’t know if life could get any better, right now. I’ve officially become one of those guys who gladly places his balls in his woman’s handbag. She could ask me to do anything at all, crazy or insane as it might be, and I’d fucking get it done.

Dew soaks the front of my pants, sending a chill through to my bones that snaps me back to the now. I lie on my stomach in the clearing, rifle set up to sight it in before we head out. The first hues of dawn broke through the canopy of the trees half an hour ago, rousing me from my shit attempt at sleep.

I draw in a deep breath, and fire.

Slightly to the left.

If I had my own rifle, not this new unbroken one, I wouldn’t need to do this shit. But Dad being the asshole he is, I shouldn’t have been surprised he’d pull that kind of shit on me.

Still makes my blood run hot when I think about how he spoke to Mel, though.

“Could have given me some warning.”

I roll onto my left shoulder and look behind me at the woman in question as she stares out from the door of the tent. Her dark hair falls in messy waves over her shoulders, my sweatshirt pulled low over her crouched legs. She’s a fucking sight for sore eyes, even in her sleepy morning state.

“Got you up, though, didn’t it?”

She rolls her eyes. “Almost made me wet myself in the process, too.”

I chuckle, rolling back to my stomach and clicking the dial on the scope two to the right. “Hey, Mel?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna shoot the gun.” Crack.

“Asshole,” I hear muttered behind me before the rustle of the tent fabric.

Bang on target. I set the rifle down, and then push up off the grass to go check exactly where I hit the empty tin from last night. Mel emerges from the tent, dressed and ready to go, as I walk back to my firing spot with the tin in hand—hit perfectly center, thank you very much.

“Is it not a problem making all this noise?” she asks, her arms raised high as she ties her hair back.

I freeze a moment, just ogling the slender line of her neck and remembering how soft that flesh felt beneath my lips last night. I’m fucked. As bad as it sounds, I guess I got one thing going for me given Judas is six foot under—no crazy old man trying to kill me when he realizes I fucked his daughter.

Only her equally crazy younger brother. Damn.

“Ideally, nope, I wouldn’t be makin’ this much noise. But there ain’t any point tryin’ to hunt something if you’re just gonna miss it anyway.”

“Can I try?”

“Sure.” I point to her air rifle, which I loaded before mine. “Use that first. It’s ready to go.”

She picks it up, and then promptly leans it against her leg, barrel pointed at her head while she fixes a loose strand of hair.

I slap a hand to my face and shake my head. This girl’s going to kill me; no way in hell is she carrying the “real” gun while we’re out today.

“What?” Mel asks, picking the air rifle up again and walking over to my squashed patch in the grass.

“If that was an actual rifle, and it misfired, you would have just blown your head off.”

She stills, staring at me while it sinks in. I swear I almost see the cogs turning behind her eyes.

“Oh. Right.” A blush colors her cheeks as she looks down at the damp grass. “Is there something to lie on?”

“The ground.”

Her eyes narrow. “Hilarious.”

I cross my arms and watch as she lowers herself to the grass, pure disgust on her face. “I didn’t pick you for the prissy type.”

“I’m not,” she snaps. “I just don’t have another change of hunting clothes if I get these ones soaked.”

“Shame,” I mutter behind my hand, picturing her crouched beside the fire in her bra and panties while we dry them off. Note to self: find a stream to push her in. “You know what you’re doin’?”

The look she fires across at me has me lifting my hands in surrender.

“Yes, Dog. I know how to shoot. I just haven’t done it much.” She positions herself with the stock tucked into her shoulder, cheek rested against the pink design as she lines up the second target through her open sights.

The can vibrates with a loud ping.

“Got the other pellets?” she asks with a smug smirk.

Ignoring the fact I feel like a chauvinistic douche for assuming she’d need more practice, I point to my rifle beside her. “Still got plenty in it. Have a go with that.”

She sets the pink air rifle aside, and brings the heavier model to her shoulder, propping the end on the small log I dragged in for doing exactly this.

I give myself a sneaky slap to the face to knock the lust out of my gaze. Seeing her laid out like that in her cute-as-fuck pink camo pants and fitted T-shirt, holding my gun … fuck me dead. A man’s allowed to role-play, right?

The crack of the rifle echoes off the trees as the can falls. She rolls to her side and waggles her eyebrows at me, and damn it all if I don’t want to kick that rifle aside and fuck her senseless all over again.

Stay on task, Dog. You’re here to clear her head.

Much rather be filling something else after getting a taste.

“We’ll go check where you hit it, huh?”

She’s up like a rabbit, darting over the dewy ground to collect the tin. Her lips curl on one side as she inspects it on her way back to where I stand, tucking that motherfucking boner into the waist of my boxers.

How the fuck did I think I’d survive several nights in the woods with her?

“Show me how you did, babe.” I jut my chin towards her treasure as she inspects the entry and exit hole.

Right at the top, but definitely square enough.

“Good work.”

She beams, clutching the tin as though it’s a fucking trophy. “Not just a pretty face, huh?”

“Never said you were.”

Mel pushes up onto her tiptoes to smack a kiss to my cheek. “Thanks for taking me out, Dog.”

I link my arm around her waist and hold her to me. “We haven’t started the actual hunt yet.”

Her eyes search mine, and she smiles. “Haven’t we?”

I should let go, pick up the rifle and the daypack and get us going before the morning’s over. But fuck … she just licked her lips.

“Dog?”

“Yeah,” I breathe.

“Are you going to kiss me, or am I just going to stand here pretending I don’t feel your dick shoved against me a little longer?”

The corners of her eyes crinkle as I lift a finger to the side of her face and stroke a line to her chin. Our breath heats the morning air between us, her gaze flicking between my eyes as I slide my finger under her chin and tilt her head up a little. Her body goes lax in my hold, the air escaping her lungs on a sigh as I ever so gently lay my lips on hers and capture the bottom one in a pinch. Her back arches, those full breasts pressed hard against my chest as she silently urges me to continue, to stop stringing her out.

The anticipation is what I love the most, that excitement that builds deep in your chest and shoots outwards in a buzz that rips through your limbs. I hope it never goes away when I’m with this woman.

I don’t hesitate a second longer, using my fingers pinched on her chin to angle her head so I can thrust my tongue inside her sweet-tasting mouth. She groans, swirling the tip of her tongue around mine as though licking me clean like a bowl of cream.

Mel pulls away, a smile twitching at her lips before she leans in again. One taste was never going to be enough.

I’ve kissed plenty of women in my time, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I enjoyed simply making out with a girl like this; driven by nothing but my raw hunger for her taste, the warmth of her lips on mine, and the remnants of her kiss tingling on my tongue.

Sure, the sex was great, but damn, there’s so much more to her that makes her special. So much more that I enjoy about being with Mel, and each little thing has its own perks.

“You might think you’re messed up sometimes,” I murmur when she finally has her fill. “But baby, the most beautiful things I know are faultless in their imperfections.”

She snorts a contented little laugh and then shoots her arms around my middle, holding me tight as she nestles the side of her head to my chest.

It’s all I wanted; for her to feel secure and okay about where she is in life. Some really shit things happened to her these past two years, and anybody who thought wrong of her for taking the impact hard is a lesser person in my eyes.

We all deal differently.

“Ready to go shoot something?” I ask.

She untangles herself from me and, with a deep breath, nods. “Lead the way.”

A few minutes later, I have her air rifle stowed away inside our tent and a daypack on my back. I agreed to let her carry the rifle, only because she looked like a lost lamb without anything in her hands. Plus, I think she gets a kick out of looking all kinds of badass, even though her pink camo softens that a little.

“How far do we walk?” she whispers as we step through the tree line and onto a worn path through the forest.

“It’s about twenty minutes.” Vines grow over the fallen branches on the forest floor, making it a trap for anybody who isn’t watching where they step.

In a perfect world, I would have come up here a few weeks ago and scoped the place out, looked for sign, and made a plan of attack to ensure we get a kill. But life with the MC, as quiet as it is right now, doesn’t lend much to getting out anymore.

We walk in silence for a while, only the scrape of our boots in the dead undergrowth accompanying us as I lead us towards a valley a little further in. The hillsides get enough shade in the cooler months to end up covered in lush green grass that the deer go wild for. It’s a sure spot for a sighting, and right now, looking at the face of the beauty that walks behind me, I want nothing more than to keep her happy.

“You ever do anythin’ like this?” I ask as I hold a low-hanging branch out of the way of our faces. “With your brother and old man, I mean?”

“Go on nature walks?”

“Yeah. Get out for a while.”

She waits on the side of the track for me to resume my lead. “Only a couple of school outings. Daddy was never much of an outdoorsman, and Hooch has other interests.”

“And your momma?”

The rumors are thick and plenty about Mel’s mom, yet today, I want to hear about the woman from the closest source to her. The history of the Aces intrigues me, mostly because it’s kept so close to everyone’s chests. I’ve got the gist of why the club was formed, and we all know who the founding members were, but there’s speculation around why the chapters all operate so independently.

“Momma was a goal-driven woman,” Mel states simply.

She keeps her chin down, watching the dead leaves pass under her feet as she walks. I steal a few more glances back at her, yet she doesn’t say any more.

“Why’d she leave you?”

“Frustrated, I think.” She shrugs. “I was old enough to know that Mom and Dad didn’t love each other anymore, but young enough not to know why.”

“You ever talk to her?”

“Don’t even know where she is. I’ve kind of come to that point in my life where I don’t have a mom anymore, you know?”

I slow a little and reach out for Mel’s hand. It guts me that her momma could just leave her kids behind without keeping in touch. But I also know that a person shouldn’t be judged until they’ve had a chance to tell their own side of the story.

Mel links her fingers through mine and swings our arms as she walks. “Bit cozy for a hunt, ain’t it?”

Every moment I’ve spent with her has been a bit cozier than usual for me, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“Felt right, is all.” I smile down at her.

She tracks along beside me in seemingly content silence until I reach the landscape I know by heart: a rock embedded in the slope to our left, an opening in the trees to our right that lets the sunshine flow in, and the distant rush of a stream that runs along the base of the valley.

“We’re here,” I whisper. “Stay close.”

Mel shadows me as I lead us down over the edge of the hill, into the junction where the valley starts. From this vantage point we can scope both sides and cut our wait time in half.

I point to a semi-flat section behind a rock. “Sit there.”

She squats down and then flicks her legs out onto the top of the rock, eyes scanning the horizon. “How will I know if I see one?” she whispers.

“It’ll look like a deer,” I tease.

She flips me her middle finger and then returns to casing out the hillside.

I slide the pack off and set it down a little further up from where I’ll sit so I can use it as a leaner. Mel watches quietly while I settle in beside her and lift the rifle to rest atop my knee. If I’d managed to get into Dad’s house, I could have retrieved my binoculars and made this a whole lot easier, but the scope will do.

A few minutes pass without any trace of a living thing on the slopes, so I set the gun down between us and stretch my legs out beside Mel’s. “Now we wait.”

She lies back on the grass, stretching her arms out over her head as she stares up at the clouds. “I wonder what Mom is doing right now.”

Who would fucking know, but I can’t think of anything more important than knowing what her daughter is up to. “Maybe wonderin’ the same about you?”

“Hope so.” She lets the sentiment linger between us, closing her eyes with a sigh. “Tell me what happened while I was gone, Dog. All of it. I want to feel like I didn’t just miss out on the freshman year of college while all my friends got to party it up.”

“It wasn’t much of a party. We took out a couple of threats and put the plan to clean up Lincoln into action.”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

King has a grand idea about whittling away at the drug problem on our streets until it’s near non-existent, by controlling the supply. We’ve got the contacts and the physical presence to intimidate anybody from setting up a new source in our area, but the longevity of it? I don’t see it sticking.

“Not long term.”

“Yeah.” She drops an arm over her eyes. “I wonder a lot, you know, what will become of the club in ten, even twenty years time.”

“It’ll be around.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she says, rolling to her side to face me. “I just wonder what sort of club it’ll be, you know?”

Yeah, I do. I’ve seen it already in my short tenure with the guys; men who let the power go to their heads. As much as we all know it’s wrong, the lure of quick, easy money through drugs and weapons is a siren that calls to us all.

“I wonder the same thing,” I admit. “But then I look at the men around me, and I get the sense that a few bad eggs won’t spoil the carton.”

“Poetic,” Mel teases.

I grab a fistful of grass and toss it over her head.

“Hey,” she whisper-yells, rolling away as she bats it away from her eyes and nose.

My suppressed chuckle escapes as a snort, which simply sends her off the deep end. Mel’s whole body shakes as, with hands clamped over her mouth, she tries her damnedest to stop her laugh from bubbling free and echoing around the valley.

I lift the rifle to my knee again and glass the slopes, pretty sure my failsafe spot has let us down when I get the glimpse of something that doesn’t quite fit with its surroundings. Sure enough, a doe lifts her head and looks across the valley to where we are, before ducking down to eat again.

Where there are females, the boys are sure to follow.

“Have you got something?” Mel whispers, her breath hot on my neck.

“As much as I love you this close, babe, you won’t be able to see down the scope too.”

She playfully punches me, and I almost lose sight of the doe. Alternating between the scope, and my naked eye, I run a grid over the area around her looking for a buck. Sure enough, he emerges from behind a stand of trees, the steps he takes between each head-twisting tear at the grass painfully slow.

“Here.” I beckon for Mel to slip in closer.

She tucks herself under my arm and brings her eye to the scope.

“By the trees to the right of the rock line.”

Seconds pass with my heart beating painfully hard in my chest, the panic that he’ll spook making my trigger finger itch. Calm, and steady.

“I see it,” she whispers, eye still on the prize. “He’s got lots of horns.”

“Antlers, babe.”

She snorts a little laugh and slips away again. “How old do you think he is?”

I line the stag up in my sight again and count his points. Eight. “It’s hard to tell until I see his teeth, but he’s not too old.”

“Wouldn’t you want to shoot the old ones?”

“Nope. They usually have the most does to protect, so you let them run and do their job.” I lift a finger to my lips and focus on the stag.

Mel sits still as a statue, her breathing barely audible beside me as I wait for the animal to turn side on. He takes his sweet time, but with a little patience, I get my chance.

I count the seconds between each breath, my finger slipping the safety off. The stag stalls, his head lifts, and I hold my next intake of air so that I’m rock solid as I pull the trigger.

The crack of the shot echoes around us, bouncing from hillside to hillside as it descends the valley. The beast falls, and I wait to see if he staggers back up again.

Nothing. Only the mound of his rounded belly and one perfectly formed side of the rack protruding from the grass.

“Did you get it?”

“Uh-huh.” Making note of his position using landmarks, I push to my feet, scooping the bag up in the process. “Now for the hard part.”

“Is it heavy?” Mel asks as she falls into step beside me. “Like, do you think I’ll be able to help you carry it back to the truck?”

I smirk at the wide-eyed innocence on her sweet face. “It’ll be a darn sight lighter once it has no legs or gut.”