Chapter 9

A giant cup of shut the fuck up.

-Coffee cup

Sterling

I opened the door, surprised to see a cop on the other side of it.

“Can I help you?” I asked, scratching my beard.

The cop looked me up and down, cataloged my tattoos. The gun that I’d tucked inside its holster at the small of my back just as I’d opened the door. The scowl on my face.

Then instantly took a step back.

One predator knew another when they saw each other.

“Is Ms. Comalsky home?” He asked briskly.

I raised a brow at him.

“She’s getting dressed,” I told him, crossing my arms over my chest.

His eyes flicked behind me, looking for her, before he turned back to me.

“What’s your name,” he demanded.

Not a question, very much a demand.

But I knew my rights, and I didn’t have to tell him a damn thing. And I wasn’t liking the way he was being so rude, and challenging me in my woman’s house.

“My name’s none of your business,” I said just as Ruthie came up behind me.

“Officer Ryan,” she said the moment she came up behind me.

She pressed her face against my bare arm, wrapping both hands around my arm.

I wasn’t sure whether she was doing it because she could tell I was pissed, or because she wanted to just hold my hand.

Whatever the reason, I was happy for it.

I liked the possessive action coming from her.

Any other woman and it would’ve pissed me off, but Ruthie was mine. And she could have me. Touch me. Do anything she fucking wanted to me and I’d allow it.

Officer Ryan’s eyes narrowed, and it was then I saw that he was attracted to Ruthie.

His eyes had dilated the moment she’d come into the room, and then darkened when he saw how she was holding on to me.

And I knew the second he decided he was going to be a dick.

He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “Didn’t want it to get wet this time.”

Ruthie took it from his outstretched hand and crumbled it in her hands.

“Thanks,” she said through gritted teeth.

I took the crumpled piece of paper from her hand and scanned it quickly while Officer Ryan turned his back to us and started down the walk in the rain.

I followed him out the moment I realized she was getting a ticket.

The water hit my chest and started to slide down my skin in cool rivulets, but I couldn’t even contemplate that right then because I was so goddamned pissed.

It was likely steam was pouring off my skin with how mad I was.

I looked first left down the street, then right.

In those two glances, I saw eight cars, three on the left, and five on the right.

“Did you give them tickets, too?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything, only started towards his car.

Rage boiling in my gut, I pulled out my phone and hit Loki’s face on the screen.

“Yeah?” Loki asked roughly.

He sounded like he’d been sleeping.

But I didn’t care right then.

“I’m about to fight a cop…” I said, making the cop walking away from me freeze. “How many years in prison is it if I hurt him?”

“Threatening one’ll get you prison time, too. Where are you?” He asked, sounding more alert now.

“I’m at Ruthie’s. And this isn’t a fuckin’ threat. This is real life, I’m going to bust his face in, seriousness,” I spat.

“I’ll be there in ten.”

I bet it was more like five, but I didn’t contradict him.

I also knew he’d be calling in backup.

The rain started to pour down harder, and my pants really started to get soaked.

My phone would probably be fried shortly, too.

Yet that didn’t bother me.

I was so fucking tired of Ruthie being treated like shit.

Beyond tired of it.

I was tired of it three months ago, and it split me in two to know she’d been dealing with this while I was gone.

“So tell me,” I snarled. “Did you give all of them tickets, too?”

The officer looked wary.

His hand was hovering close to his gun as if he was ready to go for it at any second.

And his eyes were watching me like I was a poisonous snake ready to strike.

“I can’t divulge that information,” he answered smoothly.

I smiled. “You can’t, can you?”

My eyes perked when I heard motorcycles heading towards us, and I smiled.

Which made the jerkoff in front of me step back.

This time he rested the palm of his hand on the butt of his gun.

“You gonna go for that without reason?”

“All I have to do is fear for my life, and there’s my reason,” he answered.

“Do you fear for your life?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer.

The motorcycles that’d been coming towards us finally stopped, but I didn’t look at them.

You didn’t take your eyes off a target that was ready to shoot.

“What’s going on here?”

Loki.

“Officer?”

Silas.

“Sterling, what the fuck is going on?”

Cleo.

I smiled darkly at the officer, and his eyes narrowed.

“Y’all need to back up and step back to your bikes. There’s no reason you need to be here,” Officer Dickhead said.

“Actually, these are my brothers,” I said. “And they have every right to be here.”

“Not right now they don’t. I’ll call in back up if you don’t get on your motorcycles right now and leave,” he growled.

I was completely soaked to the bone when I heard the first siren.

And it was obvious the second Officer Ryan heard the first siren, that he was relieved to be having backup.

I had a feeling he didn’t know what kind of connection that I had, nor who and what I was.

Because if he had, he would’ve known that it was futile to try anything with me.

The Dixie Wardens owned this town.

Something he found out when Trance finally showed.

Loki caught his eye and gestured forward.

When they both got to my side, they turned to stare at Officer Ryan like he wasn’t playing on their team.

“Officer,” Loki said. “What’s going on?”

Officer Ryan looked from me, to Loki, to Trance, then back to Loki before saying, “Gave the woman a ticket for parking overnight. He wouldn’t let it go.”

He pointed me out like I was a schoolyard bully, and it made me want to laugh my ass off.

I managed to suppress it, though.

Instead I crossed my arms over my slippery chest and waited.

And it didn’t take long.

“What do you mean you gave her a ticket for overnight parking?” Loki asked.

Officer Ryan sneered at Loki.

“She was illegally parked,” he defended.

Loki looked up and down the street and pointed at several different cars.

“Did they get tickets?” He asked.

“No.”

“Why not?” Trance asked.

Officer Ryan sneered. “Because they weren’t there all night.”

“How do you know she was there all night?” Trance countered.

“Because I came at the beginning and end of my shift,” he said. “She was there both times.”

“But you don’t know that she was there all night. It could be that she was there when you came, left in between, and came and parked once again,” Trance said.

“In the exact same spot?” Officer Ryan countered.

“Well, you can’t prove that she didn’t move, unless you have video surveillance of it. Not to mention you started shift at ten at night, and it’s only just now sun up,” Loki said. “And if you didn’t give these people over here tickets,” he indicated the cars with a pointed finger. “Then that’s not fair and equal treatment.”

Let’s just say, it only digressed from there.

Thirty minutes later, the entire city block was the proud new owner of a parking ticket, and the neighborhood drivers who were unlucky enough to park in the road were not happy campers.

Especially the ones I assumed called in the first place.

There were a trio of women staring at us from the front porch, two houses down, and I could tell from the way they were pointing and sneering that they thought this was a joke.

But Silas and Loki hadn’t been joking.

And the chief wasn’t joking.

Since Ryan refused to take back the ticket, he was forced to give one to everyone he saw parked overnight, and that was something easily resolved by pulling his dashboard cam.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ruthie said quietly at my side.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her into my side.

“I know,” I said.

And I did.

It would only make the entire situation worse.

Way worse.

“I have to go to lunch,” she whispered. “Do I go pay the ticket on the way home?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “The officer has to send his paperwork in, and my guess would be he won’t turn any of this paperwork in at all. It would be too much work for him to. And I bet every one of you protest the ticket. The law is stupid and shouldn’t have been made into one in the first place. It’s too hard to enforce it.”

She nodded at my side.

“So I just wait for the information in the mail to see if they process it?” She asked.

I nodded. “That’s what I would do.”

“Okay,” she said. “Can I get out of here without hitting anybody?”

“I’ll pull it out for you,” I said.

She was boxed in on three sides. The back side with bikes, the front side with a cruiser, the left side by the curb, and the right side by Trance’s K-9 unit.

She handed me the keys to her car, and I had to laugh at the sheer amount of key chains she had on it.

“You know,” I said. “This isn’t good for your ignition to have a key chain this heavy hanging from it.”

She glared at me.

“I don’t remember asking your opinion on the state of my steering column,” she griped, turning on her heel and walking back into her house.

“Testy,” Loki said.

I nodded. “She’s upset that I butted my ‘fat head’ into the problem and made it ‘ten times fucking worse.’”

I used air quotes as I repeated what she’d said to me, causing him to laugh.

“Sounds like a good woman you have there. Better hold onto her,” Loki said.

I winked at him.

“Plan to.”

“Come down to the station and let the chief know what happened for me. He wants to keep on top of it. Says we may need to call the PAR officer out here,” Loki said, looking up at the rain.

We were standing under the awning of Ruthie’s front porch now that it was raining harder than it had been, waiting for the rest of the officers that’d been called in as backup by the neighbors to disperse.

Not to mention riding a motorcycle in the rain wasn’t something that we did if we didn’t have to.

And apparently they were all off today.

“Okay,” I said.

I didn’t like the PAR officer for this area; she was rude and treated everyone like they were beneath her.

She also hated me because we’d been in the same foster home. For a year, at least.

If she’d only known how bad Garrison, Cormac, and I had had it, she wouldn’t hate me.

Except she didn’t know.

She was blissfully unaware because she was the chosen foster child.

The one kid that never got beaten.

That never had to do chores.

She thought we were always getting to go out with our ‘foster dad.’

What she didn’t know was that when she thought we were ‘going out,’ we were actually getting the shit beaten out of us one at a time.

When she thought we used to go get drunk, we were actually so beaten to shit and back that we couldn’t walk straight.

“I’m not calling that bitch. She can go fuck herself. I’ll move Ruthie out of here before she gets involved,” I growled.

“She’s already involved,” an amused woman’s voice said from in front of us.

I wanted to throw Ruthie’s five pounds of key chains at her.

Instead, I closed my eyes and counted to ten.

When that didn’t work, I counted to twenty.

Then I walked inside and slammed the door.

Ruthie was standing there, eyes wide.

She looked to be close to coming out of the house, almost as if her fingers had been on the door handle, and she’d jumped back when I’d thrown it open.

“What’s going on?” She asked.

“The devil’s on your front porch and I don’t want to talk to her,” I answered, leaning my back against the door.

Ruthie’s eyes roamed down my chest, stopping at the bulge in my pants that seemed to come alive anytime she was near.

“I thought the devil was a man,” she said lazily, moving closer to me.

I shook my head. “All devils are women.”

“How do you know?” She teased, leaning into me.

Her soft breasts pressed into my diaphragm, and I inhaled swiftly, drinking her scent in.

“Because women are the torturers. Men can torture, but women know how to do it wayyy better than men,” I answered her, snaking my arm around her back and pulling her into me roughly.

“And what’s this devil ever done to you?” She asked.

“The devil, her name is Thomasina Daniels, and she made the last year of my life a living hell on an island of viperous snakes, with a constant firestorm devouring it. I’d describe it as worse than hell,” I informed her.

Her lips moved forward until they hovered over mine.

“And what are we going to do about her being out there?” She asked. “What’ll make her go away?”

“Nothing,” I answered honestly.

It was honest, too.

Brutally honest.

I avoided the bitch because she never left me the fuck alone when she saw me.

And I knew it’d take a miracle to get her to leave.

She took pride in fucking with me.

The bad thing was that I didn’t really even know why.

“She won’t go away at all?” She asked.

I shook my head. “No. She’ll stay there until I get out, unless the boys convince her to go…and I don’t think they’re capable of convincing her of that.”

“Well,” she said, pulling out her phone and texting someone.

Her fingers moved expertly over the keyboard of her phone before she shoved it back in her purse and dropped her purse to the floor.

“What was that?” I asked worriedly.

“I texted the girls,” she answered.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to be late…” she said.

Then her mouth was on mine, and I forgot how to breathe.

“We can’t…” I tried.

There were about ten people on the front porch only separated from us by a shitty front door.

They’d hear.

I knew they would.

Ruthie was too loud, and I was too rough to keep her from being loud.

“Sure we can,” she said, her hands going to the buckle of my pants.

That was the easy part.

The rest was hard because my pants were still wet, sticking stiffly to my thighs and nearly impossible to remove since they were quite tight.

But she tried, and got my pants down to just about mid-thigh before she gave up.

“That’s enough,” she said. “I got what I want out.”

I would’ve been more amused had she not taken that moment to drop to her knees and suck my entire cock into her mouth.

She swallowed the motherfucker, and I was completely hard.

I felt the back of her throat, and threw my head back in ecstasy.

“Holy fuck!” I exclaimed as the back of my head hit the door with a solid thud.

Ruthie laughed, and I felt that laugh in my feet.

“Fuck,” I said again.

I was being really articulate, I knew.

But I could do nothing less.

The woman had the power to scramble my brains with just her mouth alone.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I continued as she started to bob her head.

And when she swallowed, making her throat muscles work on my cock head, I pulled her up by her armpits and spun around so her back hit the door with a solid thwack.

“Take me,” she ordered as I ripped her shorts and panties down her legs.

I went down to my knees, bending as best I could with my wet jeans around my thighs.

Although awkward, I managed to throw one of her legs over my shoulders, opening up her pussy to my starving mouth.

I didn’t waste time fucking around, I went straight for the good stuff and latched on to her throbbing clit.

Her flavor burst onto my tongue, spreading through my system so fast that I could’ve come.

She wouldn’t have liked that, though, and I would’ve been embarrassed.

So I dropped one hand to my throbbing cock and squeezed the head tightly as I started to suck on her clit.

When she yanked on my hair to force me lower, I took the hint and thrust my tongue inside of her pussy.

She was so wet that I slid straight inside, and my eyes rolled back at the honeyed taste of her.

I fucked her with my tongue, and she urged me on by using her hands in my hair.

And just when I felt her orgasm start to take over, I shot up, dropping her leg as I went.

She gasped in surprise, or annoyance at me for having stopped, but I didn’t make her wait long before I fed my cock deep inside her pussy.

I didn’t stop until I bottomed out inside of her.

Our hips met, and I lifted first one leg, then the other, until both circled around my back.

Then with little preamble, I started to fuck her.

Long, deep strokes.

I was taking her so hard that she bounced against the door.

However, my mind wasn’t on the people on the other side of the door.

It was all on the woman that was staring into my eyes, looking at me like I was her world.

The only thing that mattered in hers was whether I was with her in it.

And that was something I’d never had from anybody else.

Sure, I had great friends, but the human mind has a certain protectiveness about it.

It always looks out for itself first, then others that you love.

Well, that wasn’t what was in Ruthie’s eyes right then.

It was all her love.

For me.

She wanted me to be happy.

And I wanted her to be happy over my own happiness.

Which was, I guessed, what made a real relationship, one that was true and pure, work.

“You stopped,” she whispered, her hands framing my face.

I turned my head and kissed the palm of her hand.

“I have to tell you something…after we’re done. Don’t let me forget,” I told her.

Her eyes widened. “Are you going to say you’re breaking up with me and just getting this done before you do?”

My mouth dropped open.

“That was not what I was going to say…not even close!” I snapped.

She looked wary and I sighed, pressing into her even deeper, letting my cock and the weight of my body hold her up so I could raise my hands up to her face.

“I wanted to tell you I love you, but I thought it was a little cliché to do it while we were fucking,” I snapped.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Well, you could call it something other than ‘fucking.’ That sounds tacky when in the same breath you told me you loved me,” she snapped back.

I blinked.

“Well…?” I asked, waiting patiently.

“Well what?” She asked nonchalantly.

I dropped my hands from her face and grinned.

Well if that’s the way she wanted to play it, I could deal with that.

Holding onto her ass, I withdrew my cock from her tight heat all the way before I slammed back inside.

It was a furious movement, in and out; so fast that I barely had time to realize I was out before I was back inside her.

She screamed.

Loudly.

Then she was coming.

Coming so hard that her pretty pussy clamped down on my cock, and I saw the heavens.

“Sweet, merciful mother of God…” I gasped.

She was so fucking tight.

“God, Sterling. Yes!” Ruthie cried. “Yes!”

I couldn’t even function.

I was coming too, and I hadn’t even been aware I was close.

Come shot out of my cock in long spurts, bathing her insides in my essence as she continued to call my name.

“Sterling,” she gasped.

I growled as I started to work the last few dregs of come out of me, coming down from my orgasm gradually.

“You’re like a freakin’ drug,” she whispered.

I buried my face in her neck before there was a loud pound on the door nearly on top of my face.

“I’m not going away, even after hearing how slutty you and your woman sound.”

I stiffened and started to pull away when Ruthie’s arms tightened around my neck.

“Go out the back,” she whispered.

I pulled out of her wetly, smiling when my come started to leak out of her, falling to her thighs like an erotic picture.

She looked down, following my gaze, and laughed.

“You would find this sexy,” she shook her head.

But when she would’ve walked to the bathroom, I stopped her with a hand in her hair.

“You forgot to say something,” I whispered darkly.

She snorted.

“I didn’t forget a damn thing,” she answered, walking forward until I either let her hair go or hurt her.

I let her go.

But then she turned to look at me over her shoulder, dressed only in a shirt with her hair a messy mass around her face and over her shoulders.

“Sterling?” She asked.

I rose one brow at her. “Yeah?”

“You’re gonna laugh,” she admitted.

“Laugh at what?” I wondered aloud.

“I don’t want to say I love you…because love screwed me over once and I don’t know if I can ever say it again. Because those words lost meaning to me. But I...ich liebe dich,” she said before hurrying to the bathroom.

I followed her, stripping my wet pants off and kicking them against the far wall of her bedroom.

“What language is that?” I asked her softly, taking a seat on the bed so I could see her as she wet a washcloth in the sink.

Her head hung.

“It’s something I remember my…dad…saying to someone on the phone. I looked it up one day. It means I love you in German,” she whispered.

Almost so softly that I couldn’t even hear her.

But it was enough.

For now, it was enough.