Breath on the Wind (28 page)

“Thank you.  Now, what do we do about this mess?”  Samuel motioned at the guns, bullets and bodies that were littering the dirt.

“Do not worry,
ese
.  I will make a call.  The managers of this facility may wonder where the dents in their shiny pipes came from, but there will be no evidence.”  Eduardo’s voice dropped to a lower register with both sincerity and caution.  “I will call you with the details of the next run, Samuel. If anyone else from our organization contacts you, you must tell me immediately.  Accept no other instructions but mine.  We will find our traitors, and we will eradicate them.”

“Message received and understood,” Samuel confirmed.

Chiz and his brothers returned to their bikes.  Having not been used for cover, they’d fared better than Eduardo’s vehicle, but they were not completely unscathed.  Crash’s bike would fit right in with the collection of dents and scratches now, rather than standing out like a sore thumb.  They all fired up just fine, though, to everyone’s relief.

Samuel led their group away from the compound, leaving the dead and carnage to Eduardo to clear up.  Samuel headed east, towards home, but pulled off the highway at the first sign for a motel that they passed.  Chiz was relieved.  His arm was agony from his shoulder down to his fingers now, from the radiated pain of the wound.  He was not in the condition, or the mood, to try and push on for home.  He wanted whiskey first, and sleep.

After they’d checked in at the motel, they congregated in the room that Chiz and Shark would be sharing.  Samuel dispatched Sinatra for some liquid anesthetic.  The bleeding had stopped, but Chiz’s clothes were soaked with blood, which was sticky and uncomfortable, so he stripped to his jeans.  Sinatra, showing the initiative which had earned him his patch, returned with a fresh hoody and t-shirt, along with the alcohol, and several bags of fast food.  Chiz decided to give him a pass the next time his mouth got smart.

Chiz didn’t let anyone tend to his arm until he had three swallows of bourbon in him, and then he didn’t pay any more attention to it until Terry had finished cleaning the blood away.  Even then Chiz was mostly bothered about the damage to his ink.  The tattoo on his right arm was his club ink, and now there was a wide gouge running through most of the detail of the rosary twisted around the praying hands.  Quaid, the guy who did most of the ink for the club members, was a true artist, and had wrought some miracles with ink over scars, but Chiz feared this was past saving.  But as much as he mourned the original, he felt a thrill at the idea of getting Quaid to design him something new.  He was plotting ideas for a full back piece, even as Terry started wrapping cotton and gauze around the wound.

Shark dug into the sacks of food, and handed burgers and fries around.  They didn’t last long.  As a nod to the brotherhood, once Terry was done playing nurse, Chiz relinquished the Jack so that everyone could have a drink.  He passed the bottle to Samuel first.  Samuel took a swallow, and passed it to Terry. 

“I want radio silence on this until we get back,” Samuel instructed.  “There’s no one at home gonna benefit from knowin’ we had a close shave.  We’ll tell ‘em when they can see that we’re whole.”

“You think Eduardo’s on the level boss?  You think we can trust him not to use us as bait again?”  Chiz asked the question that was making his head noisy.

Samuel did not look happy.  “I ain’t gonna lie, I’m not happy about what went down tonight, and I don’t trust anyone in that organization farther than I can spit ‘em, but him I have trust for.  Only him.  We do nothin’ that hasn’t come as a direct instruction from Eduardo.  I think this mess is gonna get worse before it gets cleaned up, brothers.  And I’ve got a feelin’ that by the end of it, we may no longer have an association with the Rojas family.”  Samuel sighed heavily.  “But that’s a discussion for the table.  For now, sleep.  I want to be on our way at dawn tomorrow.”

No one disagreed with their president.  Samuel, Terry and Sinatra left for their rooms, and Shark and Chiz finished what was left of the Jack between them before they turned in.

Chiz tried to sleep, but his head was buzzing with thoughts about the situation that the club was in.  He wasn’t a long-term strategist.  He trusted Samuel and Terry to see a way out of the tangle they were in.  Chiz could only fight what was in front of him, and when the threat wasn’t immediately presented, ready and waiting to be found and shot, Chiz got antsy.

~o0o~

The next morning when he woke, the buzzing was less, but still there.  The whiskey had helped some, and blood loss and plain old tiredness had taken care of the rest.  He’d slept, eventually. 

Chiz didn’t like the buzzing of the riotous angry bees in his head.  Normally he would’ve found a whore, and fucked his head quiet, but that was almost guaranteed to land him in trouble.  And he had Elmo now.  He’d have to find a new way to cope.  He didn’t want to stick his dick in some rancid, used-up cunt when he had a woman like that waiting for him at home.  But that didn’t mean that the need to find relief in some form wasn’t riding him hard.

He had hoped that the long ride to Absolution would even him out, and it did, to an extent.  But then they went to the table as a club, and rehashing the events of the day before got him wound up tight again.  He couldn’t even ask Shark to go a few rounds in the ring.  The moment the meeting was declared over, his brother had disappeared back to his wife and daughter.  There was no one else around who could give Chiz the fight he was looking for, the challenge he needed.

He knew he should have stayed away, maybe tried to drown his head in whiskey, but he wasn’t that noble.  And at the end of the day, he’d missed his woman and the feel of her body coming alive in his arms.  Knowing it was a bad idea, one of his worst, Chiz swung onto his bike and headed to Elmo.

Chapter Twenty-Five

When Andy heard the roar of a Harley engine, she ran to the widow to check the street.  Sure enough, she saw Chiz pulling into the spot by the curb that he favored.  She was surprised at how anxious she’d allowed herself to become while he was away. He’d only been gone one night.  They’d spent much longer periods apart in the short time that they’d known each other. 

It wasn’t that she was scared to be on her own.  She felt safe in Absolution. She knew that if anything happened she could call one of the numbers that Chiz had programmed into her phone, at any time of the day or night, and someone would be there with her in no longer than the time it took to ride across town.

It was Chiz that she’d been worried about.  He hadn’t given her details of this ‘run’ that he’d been on, but she’d gotten the sense that he wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about it.  Knowing how much he loved to ride, that struck her as odd.  She reasoned that if it wasn’t the riding that he didn’t want to do, then it was the business at the other end that the ride necessitated.  That was the part he hadn’t elaborated on, the part she didn’t want to know about, so she hadn’t been sure how to help him at all.

For now, she did as much as she could to make him comfortable.  She already had beers chilling in the refrigerator, next to the steaks that were waiting to be broiled, and a bottle of Jameson on the counter.  He was earlier than she’d expected.  She hadn’t expected to see him before nightfall.  Still, she wasn’t going to argue about him being back early.  If he was back, he was safe.

Chiz let himself into her apartment.  She’d given him a key on the day she’d moved in.  It seemed such an inconsequential thing to do, given that she’d moved hundreds of miles to be with him.

“Hey, doll.”

Even before he spoke, Andy knew something was wrong. 

It had been years since she’d had to be on her guard against the smallest change in expression, attitude or tone of voice, but the disquiet was rolling off Chiz in waves.  She’d have had to have been blind, deaf and dumb not to notice it.  Externally, the signs were limited to maybe a touch of stiffness when he moved, a certain tightness around his eyes.  If she had to explain to someone who didn’t know, Andy knew that person would think her mad.  But she knew she wasn’t mad, or wrong.

“Hey, baby.  What do you need?”

“Huh?”  Chiz seemed surprised, not by the question, but that she’d known to ask it.

“Something’s up.  You tell me what you need and I’ll try to help.”

“Just you, doll.  That’s all I need.”

“There’s beer in the fridge.  If you want one, I can get one.” 

Andy would have thought twice about getting Chiz drunk, but a certain amount of alcohol could be useful.  A small amount was relaxing, a large amount would allow him to pass out.  It was the space in between that she knew to avoid.  That space was where danger to her lay, when the alcohol warped thoughts, emotions and decisions, but didn’t sufficiently slow a body down.  That was the danger zone.

Chiz considered her offer, then shook his head.  “No.  Just you.”

Andy slipped her hand, in what she hoped was a casual gesture, into the back pocket of her jeans.  What she was really doing was checking that her phone was still there.  She wanted it close by.  It would be no good to her if it was in a different room.  Satisfied that she had a means of communication, a way to escape or call for help, at hand, she caught Chiz’s fingers with hers. 

“Okay, baby.  Let’s go to bed.”

This was something she knew, too.  The endorphin rush following an orgasm was a powerful relaxant.  If a body could be pleasured enough, it would almost be debilitating. 

Andy hated that she was thinking of Chiz in terms of ways to ensure her safety, but her alarm bells were clamoring, and she would be a fool to ignore them.  Nothing good had ever come of ignoring them.  What she should have done was gotten the hell out of the apartment, and let Chiz drink, rage and tear up the furniture, or do whatever he needed to in order to be able to find his center, but she wasn’t that sensible.  He’d come to her.  If he wanted to drink himself stupid, she was sure he would already be in a puddle by the clubhouse bar.  He’d come for her, and she wanted to be there for him.

Andy led Chiz to the bedroom.  He followed, almost dumbly.  When they got there, he dropped her fingers, and began to strip.  He hadn’t even kissed her.  Andy was about to shed some clothes, too, but she was distracted by the hiss of pain that Chiz made as he pulled his hoodie off. He’d taken his t-shirt with it, and as he tossed the garments to the corner of the room, she saw the source of the problem.  His right bicep was wrapped in gauze.  There was lump that looked like cotton padding on the outside aspect of the muscle.

Initially she wasn’t sure which route to take, which role to play.  Should she ignore it?  Would noticing call attention to a weakness that would be an affront to his masculinity?  Or would ignoring it be callous disregard?  Was she expected to play nurse?  Andy wondered momentarily if normal people ran through these mental acrobatics for every interchange in their relationships, but she let that thought fly.  She wanted to be with Chiz, and if that meant she had a few protocols of mental assessment to complete occasionally, than so be it.  They were still new to each other.  There were going to be times of the month where he would have to make the same considerations about her moods and responses.

She opted to go with the path of concerned lover.  That was what she was, after all.  “You’re hurt.”  She went to him, and laid her fingertips under the bandage.  “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Someone tried to shoot me.  They didn’t quite miss.”  He was looking at her hand on his arm, as if surprised to see it there. 

“Does it need stitching, or cleaning? I can…”

“No.” Chiz interrupted her, shaking his head.  “Thanks, doll, but it’s good.  I think it’s stopped bleedin’.  I’ll wash it, and change it later.”  Now his blue eyes found hers.  They were flashing with the sparks of his intentions.

“Okay.”  Andy gave Chiz a smile and reached down to the hem of the beater she was wearing.  In one move she pulled it up and over her head.  She tossed it in the same direction that Chiz had thrown his clothes. 

She was going to go for the fastening of her jeans next, but Chiz reached forward, looking almost dreamlike, and undid the front fastening of her bra.  Released from the tension of the material, Andy’s breasts sprang free.  She couldn’t help her small groan of relief.  There was no feeling like removing her bra.  It was possibly the second best feeling next to orgasm, maybe it ranked above orgasm, well, maybe before Chiz.

Chiz cupped her breasts in his palms, rubbing his thumbs with their rough skin over and over her nipples.  Andy instinctively arched her back, pushing her flesh further into his hands.  Andy watched Chiz through half-lidded eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her, he was watching his hands on her.  The expression of intense concentration on his face was as erotic as it was disturbing.

While Chiz was entranced with her flesh, Andy unfastened her jeans, and his.  That seemed to bring him back to some awareness.  As Chiz pushed his jeans down his hips and stepped out of them, Andy wriggled out of her own.  She climbed onto the bed, and moved to the middle of it, lying on her back.  The bed was soft.  As much as she liked being bent over the kitchen counter, she was taking precautions, and the more soft surfaces around her, the better.

Chiz joined her on the bed, crawling up and over her.  Andy was prepared for him to disregard foreplay, he didn’t seem to be in an overly attentive frame of mind, but he surprised her.  He held himself over her on one forearm, and dropped his head to her breast as his fingers trailed up the inside of her thigh.  At the same time that he took her nipple into his mouth and began to suck, alternating with small nips at the tender flesh, his fingers slipped between her folds. 

Andy was taken aback by the gentleness and control that he was showing her, so much more than she had expected, given his mood.  She relaxed, and gave herself over to the sensations, allowing the pleasure to build, undampened by caution.

When Chiz settled into the cradle of her thighs and slid into her, filling her with his cock, Andy tried to wrap herself around him.  She crossed her ankles at the small of his back, and slid her hands further around his shoulders, so that she could pull herself up, almost off the bed, to get as close as possible. 

Chiz stopped moving for a moment, and leaned up.  Without speaking, he ran his palms from Andy’s shoulders, disentangling her arms from around him, as he pushed them out and up.  He continued, applying a light pressure as he smoothed his palms to her wrists, until her arms were over her head, and he could catch both of her wrists in one of his, much larger, hands.  He’d done it so slowly and sensually that Andy didn’t even realize that she’d been caught until it was too late.

Before she could switch her mind back from pleasure to full awareness, Chiz caught her hip in his free hand to steady her, and then he really began to move.  This was the fucking that she’d been expecting when he’d walked through her door.  He was thrusting hard and deep, and picking up speed every time he plunged into her.

He wasn’t hurting her, not in any of the bad ways, but her alarm bells were ringing now, almost loud enough to give her a migraine.  He let go of her wrists, which shocked her a little, but she didn’t waste the opportunity to push at his chest, to try and move him, to get him to roll over so that she would be on top.  But Chiz had a far greater mass than she, and he apparently did not want to be moved.

Chiz’s eyes were blank.  He didn’t seem to be seeing her underneath him.  That lack of recognition triggered Andy to swap to an entirely different way of thinking.  Her mind was no longer thinking about the sensation of Chiz’s body in hers, of the slide and thrust.  Now, she was only going through the motions of the act, her full awareness on the actions of the man leaning over her. 

She was too alert to fully experience the potential pleasure in the movement of their bodies.  That was dangerous in itself.  She’d been in situations where that change in attitude had been noticeable, and had resulted in anger, but it was better that she be ready for the whiplash moods.  She would try to ride it out, let him finish, and then… well, who the fuck knew what she was going to do then.

Chiz began to slide his hand up her chest towards her neck.  Andy tried to will herself to relax, and to give him the benefit of the doubt.  But when he spread his fingers and thumb to catch her throat in his grip, and began to squeeze and press, she gave up all pretence and began to wholeheartedly try to dislodge Chiz off her, out of her.

Chiz’s eyes were still blank. He hadn’t registered at all that she was no longer on board.  Andy started thrashing, as much as she could with a heavy, muscular man pinning her to the bed.  “Chiz?  No!  I don’t want that.”

She scratched at his back and hit at his wounded arm, hoping that pain would bring him back to their reality, but he kept squeezing.  As her own vision began to grow fuzzy, Andy saw the light spark in Chiz’s eyes, but not in the way that awareness was returning.  It was like watching a possession take place, like he was being filled up with another person, another kind of spirit.  Andy chanted a mantra in her head to keep breathing, to not panic.  If she began to hyperventilate, she would pass out more quickly.

“Chiz!  No.  Stop.  Please.” 

The words were choked out between gasps.  She needed to make him stop.  She knew, for an absolute certainty, that he did not want to hurt her, only that he needed to hurt something, and she’d allowed herself to be that thing.

“Chiz.  Don’t.  I love you.”

Those were all the words she had to give.  She had no breath for more, but miraculously his grip lightened.  She took a deep, fulfilling breath, and this time when Andy shoved, Chiz moved.  He slipped out of her, but she barely felt that loss, she didn’t care about it.  The break in connection seemed to shatter the spell that Chiz was under.  For an instant, he looked utterly horror-stuck.  He rolled off her completely.

Andy paid no more mind to him for a moment.  She curled onto her side, into a ball, and concentrated on her breathing, trying to get blood and oxygen back to where they were most needed in her body.  Her mind was a riot of memories, fear and relief.  So many times she hadn’t been able to call a halt.  So many times the situation had gone from bad, to worse, to nightmarishly fucking awful, but not this time.  This time she’d been able to stop it.