Bones by the Wood (37 page)

Thea answered his attentions with her own animal sound, and went for his belt.  She freed his cock, only pushing Dizzy’s jeans over his hips as little as was necessary for her to get to that solid shaft, and before she did so, she slipped her hand in the back pocket of his denim and slid out the condom that she knew she’d find there.  Dizzy didn’t stand back, but he did stop his assault on her breast while she rolled the latex onto him.

Even before she’d finished he was pulling at her dress, yanking it up, bunching it in his fists.  It ended up as a coil of fabric around her middle.  He tore at her underwear and the lacy thong ripped away from her body, the fabric cutting a burning trail into her hip.

Dizzy wrapped his fingers around Thea’s thighs, she gave a little hop as he lifted and shoved and he was suddenly and completely buried inside her.  The force with which she’d been slammed against the wall when he’d entered her knocked the breath from her body.  She wound her legs around him, simply needing a point to anchor to.

He fucked her without speaking.  They communicated only with bestial grunts.  It was an animal coupling, a claiming.  The violent fuck erased anyone that had come before for either of them.

“Take my ink.  Thea... say you’ll take my ink.”  He gasped at her ear.

She had a nebulous idea of what he was really asking her, but whatever he wanted from her, she would give.  “Yes.  Oh... god... yes.  I will.”  She panted.

Thea’s emotional rollercoaster peaked, and with a scream into the flesh of Dizzy’s neck, she came.  Her body spasmed around his, gripping it, pulling his cock further, tighter, until he was roaring into her shoulder until his voice was hoarse, as his orgasm emptied him of everything he had to give.

Thea unwrapped her legs from around him and he let them drop.  Her feet hit the floor, her legs shaking.  She whimpered when the movement robbed her of his cock.

He leaned his forehead against hers.  His hat was long gone and forgotten.

“I love you.  Ain’t no use pretendin’ otherwise.  Sweetheart, if you turn away, you’ll rip the heart from my chest.”  His voice was little more than a series of gasps.

“I love you, too.  I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

~o0o~

It had taken them a while to recover, and straighten their clothing to a presentable manner before they re-appeared in the main room.  They’d barely walked in, Dizzy had headed to the bar for drinks, when Moira planted herself in front of Thea and indicated a free table in the corner of the room.

Thea tried not to sigh as she followed the President’s wife over to the private corner.  She sat down and waited for whatever was going to be thrown at her next.  And oh great, because she was apparently going to have a conversation with the First Lady while she wasn’t wearing any panties.  Thank God the dress was floor length.  Thank the baby Jesus it wasn’t white.

“I see you two got straightened out, cher.”

Thea only shrugged.  No way in hell would she elaborate on that.

“I wanna know, cher.  Where’s your boy’s father?”

Thea gave Moira a hard look.  Old lady or not, she was overstepping.  “Did you ask Josh about his daddy?”

“No.  I’m askin’ you.”  Moira’s response could be described as frosty at best.

“His daddy don’t give a shit about him.  Ain’t never tried to contact him, ain’t never ever sent so much as a card in ten years.  Dizzy’s all the father Josh needs.”

Moira’s eyebrows rose up her forehead at that statement, and then they dropped and her eyes narrowed.  “If you let him, Dizz will always do his best by you and your boy.  Question is, can you cope with his life?  He will love you hard, cher, but this life is no joke.  Can you cope if he gets put away?  I did six years with two kids on my own while my husband served time.  If you’re gonna take Dizzy’s ink, then you got to know that you can take what his life will throw at you.  Do you know what it means?  To have his ink?”

“How did you...?”  Jesus, Thea hoped the dorm room walls weren’t that fucking thin.

“From the moment you waked in, cher. Just the fact that he brought you and your boy here at all.”

Big sigh of relief.  “I know it means I belong to him, that we’re together.”

“It’s a bit more than that, cher.  All us women, the Old Ladies, we have angels as our ink for our men, because that’s what we are.  We’re their strength, we soothe them.  We support them, we love them, we guide them – when they let us and sometimes without them knowin’.  We watch over them.  I admit, I wondered at first, whether a young thing like you can carry the burdens he’ll bring you, but I think you’ll manage, cher.”

Well, it was a hell of a burden he’d handed her today, but Thea was convinced, despite what most people on the street would consider overwhelming signs to cut and run, that her place was forever by Dizzy’s side.

“I can cope.  I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“Good girl.  You got any more babies in you, you think?”

Oh hell no.  The sudden and unexpected intrusiveness of that extremely personal question caught Thea off guard.  Her jaw dropped before the wave of anger took her.  She appreciated Moira’s direct attitude; she thought maybe she could be a good guide through this life.  Thea had thought that she could see them getting along like she did with Annelle, but this would be where she told Moira to step the hell off.

Thea focused all her anger into her words.  “With all due respect, I know Dizzy thinks a lot of you, but that is none of your fucking business.”

Moira threw her head back and laughed.  “Oh I do like you, cher. You’ll do just fine.”

“What’re you cacklin’ about?”  Dizzy voice intruded from behind her. Thea’s head snapped around and she found him standing behind her, holding two bottles of beer.

Chiz was just behind him.  “She’s in the coven now, bro’.  You’re well and truly fucked.”

Thea took a large measure of comfort from the fact that Dizzy didn’t seem at all perturbed by that.

The rest of the party passed in a crazy blur.  Josh and Jenny were almost inseparable for the whole time.  Thea kept an eye on them to make sure that they didn’t get in anyone’s way, but almost everyone, especially the largest people in the room, seemed to enjoy having them around.  And it didn’t hurt that Scooby and Shaggy were obviously watching out, too.  No one wanted to argue with those two walking mountains.

When the children started to fade, Josh almost dropping asleep on his feet, Dizzy suggested that they head to the motel that the club had booked into for the night.  Leaving the rest of the patches to step the party up a gear, Thea lifted Josh into the back seat of the truck, and with Dizzy following, headed out from the clubhouse.

Dizzy checked them in, then carried Josh from the truck, into the family room that they were sharing.  While she was waiting for him to be done at the desk, Thea experienced a disquieting unease that this might have been the motel from the article that Annelle had shown her.  It could have been the very place that Elvis had died, where the man she was about to settle down to sleep with had killed half a dozen men.

But if she was going to make a life with Dizzy, the life that she’d promised him, she had to let that thought go.  So she did.  And when she was lying in bed, with her head on Dizzy’s chest, listening to the regular thump of his heart, she couldn’t bring herself to find wrong in that decision.

~o0o~

Several hours later, Thea woke, groggily, unsure as to what had disturbed her sleep.  Until her bleary eyes cleared and focused on the ring of shadowy figures around the bed.  She snapped awake and bolted upright, launching her face directly into the rag in the palm of an outstretched hand.

The sound of her son’s name was muffled by the drug that was robbing her of consciousness.  She helplessly flopped back down, unable to command her mind or her limbs.  Through closing eyes she saw Dizzy, awake, in pain and bleeding.

Pain screamed through Dizzy as the knife, heated to a dully luminescent red, was embedded in the skin of his arm.

He would not scream.

Would not. 

These bastards would not break him.

Would not.

Would not.

Would not.

He could only hope that Thea and Josh were okay.

Hope.

Hope.

Hope...

She was awake, she thought.

Josh?!

Focus!  Goddamn.  She couldn’t fucking see!  What had the shadows done to her?

The fog was clearing.  She blinked and blinked again.  Adrenaline began pumping through her.

Josh?

“Mama?”

Oh sweet Christ, he was there.

Where was there?

She blinked and shook her head, shaking the fog away.

Oww!  Jesus. Sledgehammers pounded in her skull.

“Joh....”  She coughed.  Her mouth was bone dry.  She had to speak, had to let him know she was okay, that she was awake.

“Josh.”  She had razor blades in her throat and cotton in place of her tongue.

“Mama?  What’s happenin’, Mama?”

Oh God, he sounded so scared, so young.  She needed to hug him, to make it better.  She had to move, had to... wait.  She couldn’t move.  What the… ?

Oh shit.  Oh shit.  She was tied to a chair.

Thea shook her head again.   Finally the fog cleared.  The sledgehammers were still pounding.

Oh Holy Christ.  This was bad.  So very, very bad.

“I’m scared, Mama.” 

Her heart was lying in a bloody puddle in her chest, and her soul was going to hell. She’d failed to keep her boy safe.

Thea’s vision finally cleared fully, although the pain in her head and her desperate need for water was making her thoughts muddy. 

She looked over at Josh. He was pale and terrified.  He was shaking like a leaf despite the fact he was tied securely to a wooden straight-backed chair.  As she was.  But he wasn’t bruised and he wasn’t bleeding.  Small mercies.

Where were they?  She had no fucking clue.  They were in a small room.  It smelled of damp.  Paint that might have been any color in its past life was peeling in huge flakes off every wall. The brick ceiling was arched with a tiny sky light in the middle, which was crossed with two thick metal bars.  Sunlight attempted to filter into the miserable space.  How long had she been unconscious for?  How long had she been out of it while her boy was sitting there awake and scared?  She’d failed him.  She wanted to vomit that knowledge onto the floor.

“Mama, what’s goin’ on?”

She was going to fail him again, because she didn’t have a fucking clue.

“I don’t know, bud.  I don’t know.”

“Where’s Dizzy?”

Where was Dizzy?  They were the only two people in the room, in the cell.  That’s what it was, a fucking cell.  Where was Dizzy?  The last time she’d seen him he’d been bleeding and trapped, unable to help them.  Where was he?  What was happening to him?  She listened, so hard she thought her ears were going to grow out on stalks.  Nothing.  She couldn’t hear a fucking thing.  No screams.  Was that a good sign?  Or was it that the walls were just that thick?  Or was he dead?  Oh God.  She couldn’t think that.  She mustn’t think that.  She had to have hope.  But how the fuck could she have hope when she was tied to chair in a fucking cell?