Los Perdidos: The Novel (Sons of Glory Motorcycle Club Romance) (11 page)

“So… Where’s Smoke’s mom now?” I asked, and took a drink of my diet coke.

“She’s around,” Roxy replied, “but she doesn’t see much of Smoke these days. When he got patched, she turned her back on him. My guess is, the idea of losing him the way she lost Rooster hurt her so much, she decided to cut him off on her own terms before something happened to him. To protect herself from the pain.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” I protested. “She’s lost her son when she didn’t have to! Why would she do that?”

“We all have different ways of dealing with grief,” Roxy intoned. “I don’t understand Maria’s way, but then, she and I never really did see eye to eye about Rooster or Smoke. You can imagine, when his mom cut him off, it hurt Smoke. A lot. Losing his father before he was born, and losing his mother because she needed him to choose between her and his father’s club.” Roxy looked at me now, with a directness that made me blanch. “Look, darlin’. I’m sure you’re very nice and all, and I’m sure you have feelings for Smoke,” she began. “But the thing is, he’s been hurt enough by having one woman in his life who doesn’t understand or accept the club.” Her gaze turned hard, unforgiving. “He don’t need an old lady who’s constantly pulling at him to step back from this life. That kind of old lady, well, she’s a distraction. A danger. A woman like that, she makes a man’s head cloudy, when he needs to be sharp. If you can’t accept this life… then you need to let Smoke go. For both of your own good.”

Roxy’s eyes bored into mine as she said this, and after a moment I couldn’t handle her gaze anymore. I looked down at the table, my eyes moistening. “I know,” I whispered. “I just don’t know whether I can accept it. It’s so… so overwhelming. You know?”

“I know. But you better decide.” Roxy drew herself up in her seat and gave me an appraising look. “And once you do, no going back. This isn’t child’s play, darlin’. This is real life. And real life is dangerous.”

Just then Rosie came up to our table. “Hey, Ma, Ram just called. He wants you to give him a call back on the secure cell.”

Roxy got up from the booth, stretching as she stood. She looked at me one last time. “You think about what I said. If you care about Smoke, it’s something you won’t take lightly.” She turned and walked back toward the clubhouse, leaving her daughter and me behind.

“What was that all about?” Rosie cocked her head at me.

“Nothing,” I said, sighing deeply. “Just your mom giving me some background about Smoke.”

“Oh. About his mom and dad, I s’pose? Yeah, Smoke’s dad was my dad’s best friend, back in the day. My dad was his V.P. Took over as president when Rooster died.”

“So your dad’s been president ever since. And you’ve always been around the club,” it was a statement rather than a question.

“Yup,” she replied. “Never known anything else.”

I tried to imagine what it would be like for a kid, growing up around all of this. “Rosie,” I began pensively. “What do the Perdidos do, exactly? I mean, how do they make their money?”

“Drugs,” she shrugged. “Weed, mostly, I think. Some harder shit, too, but only recently. They got some other businesses, too. Like running protection, and the Black Dog.”

“Running protection? What does that mean?”

“Just what it sounds like,” said Rosie patiently. “Say you’re a business owner in San Cristobal, and you got a problem with break-ins, people stealing your shit. You set up a deal with the Perdidos to protect you, and word gets around, nobody’s gonna bother you anymore. You see what I mean?”

“Yeah…” I wondered if the Perdidos did any arm twisting to get the local businesses to accept this ‘relationship’ with them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Anything else?” I asked her.

“I dunno. They don’t tell the women much. They say the less we know, the more protected we are.” Rosie dumped the melted ice out of her drink and reached in to the freezer to get some more.

I frowned at her. “Doesn’t that bother you? Make you feel a little weird, how they earn their money?”

“Nah,” Rosie scoffed. “They’re not doin’ anything that bankers and politicians don’t do all the time. Everybody cuts deals. Everybody who has money does bad shit to get it. Anyway, I’ve been around it my whole life.” She looked at me. “I suppose to a college girl like you, it all seems wrong.”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “Dangerous, yeah. Scary, maybe. It’s… I don’t know. It’s different thinking about it in the abstract, and thinking about being part of it. Like you said, you’ve been around it your whole life. I’ve been around it for less than a month.”

“Sure, I get that,” Rosie said easily. “But there’s obviously something about this life that you’re attracted to. Maybe there’s something you’re missing in your other life. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here now.”

She had that right, anyway. I marvelled at her perceptiveness, given that she barely knew me. “Rosie,” I continued, changing the subject slightly. “Do you want to be an old lady some day?”

“’Course,” she replied easily. “But it’ll have to be someone who isn’t scared of Ram.” I thought of Rosie’s father, and realized that would be a tall order to fill. She leaned into me, and said with a conspiratorial grin, “I kinda got my eye on one of the prospects!”

I smiled at her. “Really? Which one?”

“The hot one with the tattoos on his skull. And I think he’s been eyein’ me, too. But he won’t make a move until after he’s patched,” she reasoned. “Too risky.”

I laughed. “Good point.”

“Come on,” Rosie said, hooking her arm through mine. “Let’s play a game of pool.”

“I’d love to, but I have to get my friend’s car back to him. I’ll see you later, though, okay?” I was genuinely sorry to have to leave. I liked Rosie more and more all the time.

“Sure,” she replied easily. “The guys are gonna be back from the run tomorrow, so I imagine I’ll see you then.”

“Great,” I smiled. “Hey, can you give me a call when you know something?” We exchanged cell numbers, and I waved to her as I walked out the door.

I contemplated Rosie’s words on my way back to campus:
There’s obviously something about this life that you’re attracted to. Maybe there’s something you’re missing in your other life. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here now.
She was more right than she knew. But how could I choose between the life I’d always known and this one, exciting but terrifying and uncertain? As Roxy had said, I would need to decide once and for all if I could be Smoke’s old lady, with everything that entailed. For his sake, I had to be all out or all in.

Once I returned Josh’s car to the campus lot, I texted him so we could do the key exchange. He told me Kara was looking for me and that I could just give them to her when I saw her. So, I texted Kara, and she immediately wrote back:

Hey girl u wanna go 2 dinner w Dana n me?

Oh, yeah. Dinner. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since early this morning, when I’d grabbed a granola bar between classes. My stomach growled in protest at the thought of food.
Sure
, I typed back. A flood of warmth surged through me at the thought of my two friends, who loved me and wanted the best for me even when we didn’t agree. Suddenly, I missed them both terribly.
Yes! Can we go 2 Lenny’s? Im dying for a burger
.

Half an hour later, we were seated at our customary table, A little of the tension that had been between us for the past couple of weeks was still in the air around us, but we were all trying our hardest to not notice it there. Eventually, though, the elephant in the room got too big to ignore. “So,” Kara asked, keeping her tone light and playful. “Someone didn’t come home last night. How’s Mister Hottie biker guy?”

“He’s good,” I replied. “We’re great, actually. It’s the club I’m not so sure about.” I looked at my two good friends and smiled ruefully. “Look, you guys. I know things have been weird between us because of Smoke and me. And I just wanted to say, I’m sorry if I’ve been distant or defensive. I know you only want the best for me. I love you guys.”

“We love you, too, Jenny-Butt!” Dana cried. She looked at Kara before continuing. “We’ve been talking, and we’re sorry, too. You make your own decisions. If you’re with Smoke, there must be a good reason. We’re here for you, whatever you need.” Kara nodded at me as Dana spoke, her eyes bright.

“Thanks, you guys,” I said gratefully. “The truth is, I don’t know what I’m going to do, exactly. Smoke and I – well, he’s great. We’re great. But he comes with a lot of… heavy stuff, you know? If it was just us two, I’d have no doubts whatsoever. But Smoke comes with the club, and I can’t change that. So I either need to accept it, or admit I can’t and move on.”

Kara, always the reasonable one, gave me a pensive look. “Jen, I know you’ll do the right thing. Whatever it is. But I’m going to give you the advice my mom always drummed into me growing up. She was a stay at home mom, and she abandoned her studies at MIT to marry my dad. She loved us kids, but she regretted that decision a lot. She always told me, ‘Don’t sacrifice your own goals for a man. If he’s the right one, you’ll manage to work it out so that both of you can succeed. If you have to give everything up to be with him, it’s not the right relationship.’”

I nodded, pursing my lips. She was right: if this thing with Smoke was real, then there was room in our relationship for both of us to be who we were. I resolved to remember that, and to not let Smoke’s world swallow me up completely. “Thanks, Kara,” I smiled, reaching over to hug her.

The tension broken, we spent the rest of the meal engaging in some much-needed girl time with my besties. Dana told us about her frustrations with her economics class, doing a hilarious imitation of the professor trying to explain a concept during class. “And then I went to the tutoring center, and the econ tutor explained it to me in like thirty seconds,” she fumed as we sympathized. “Why the hell is that guy getting paid to teach us when he can’t even explain things so that we understand them?” Kara was still in the cute honeymoon phase of her relationship with Josh, and Dana and I amused ourselves by asking her personal questions to make her blush. They asked me about Smoke, too, and I found myself enjoying telling them what he was like. I even told them about his psycho ex-girlfriend, leaving out some of the scarier parts that would just have made them worry about me.

We had just left Lenny’s and were wandering back to campus arm in arm when my phone rang in my pocket. I took it out and saw Rosie’s name on the screen.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Flame, you gotta come quick,” she said urgently. “Something’s gone wrong with the run. Smoke and some of the other guys have gone missing.”

I had never been more thankful to have access to transportation. After promising Kara to return Josh’s key later, I raced out of Lenny’s and practically flew to the contract lot. When I got to the clubhouse, Bullet was there, sitting at a table and looking worn out and angry. One of the prospects and a few of the women, including Roxy and Rosie, were standing around him as he talked. Rosie broke away from the group and headed toward me when she saw me come in.

“Bullet managed to get away from the ambush with some of the others. Ram told him to come back here and wait for instructions,” Rosie whispered as she brought me over to the table.

Bullet had just finished explaining the situation to the women. “That’s all I know,” he was saying as I walked over. “Ram sent me back here to make sure y’all were safe.”

“Who’s all missing?” Roxy asked.

“Smoke, Squig, and Uncle all took off after some Alliance guys and we haven’t heard from them since,” Bullet said, his face hard. “Ram’s with the rest of them, out looking.”

My mind went numb with fear at the thought that Smoke could be in danger.
This is it, I thought. This is what it’s really like: what it would be like to be Smoke’s old lady. Worrying about him, wondering every time he left whether he’d be coming home.

Bullet went into a back room to make some calls, leaving the women to mill around restlessly, waiting. I wandered over to Roxy. She looked tense but resolute, clearly the matriarch in charge of keeping up morale. I knew my face looked stricken and panicked when I stopped next to her. “Is it always like this?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “Things are a little messed up right now, but they’ll settle down. They always do. You just gotta be strong, and wait for word. Our men, they need us to be strong for them. They got enough on their minds out there, without worrying about us.”

I tried to do what she said and just wait it out, but I was out of my mind with worry. So much so that Smoke had died a thousand times in my imagination by the time we finally heard the sounds of their engines pulling up a few hours later. When he straggled in the door with the rest of them came, I flew into his open arms. “Oh, my God,” I whispered in his ear as he held me. “I thought you were dead!”

“Not a chance, darlin’,” he smiled as he looked down at me. “I’m a lot harder to kill than you think.”

Smoke, Squig, and Uncle sat down as the rest of us crowded around them. Roxy quickly called Ram to tell him they were back. “Sorry we didn’t call,” Uncle explained. “They took our phones when they ambushed us, and we didn’t have time to grab them when we escaped.”

“Alliance?” Roxy asked, coming back from her phone call.

“Yeah,” Smoke said tiredly. “The Alliance set it up so that it looked to the Aztecs like we were ambushing them. There was a standoff, and a couple of Aztecs got killed. Now some of them think it was our guys who killed them. We got out, but just barely.”

“Fuck,” said the prospect, whose name was Robbie.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” replied Uncle drily.

I didn’t understand much of what they were saying, and for the moment I just tried to concentrate on the fact that Smoke was back, and safe. The others continued to ask the men questions, and I paid attention as best I could without knowing enough to really grasp everything. Later, when Smoke asked me if I was coming home with him, I made a mental note to ask him to explain it all to me when we were alone.

In bed that night, our bodies came together with the need born of knowing we might have been separated forever. “I’ve been waiting to do this all day,” Smoke growled as he picked me up the second we were inside his door and unceremoniously carried me to his bedroom. He threw me on the bed and was on top of me in a second, his lips crushing mine as his tongue forced my mouth open. His hand came up and brusquely pushed my shirt up, then reached his thumb inside my bra to caress my nipple.
The jolt from it ran straight through me to my dripping sex. As I moaned in response I felt his cock stiffen in his pants.

He pulled his mouth away from mine and began kissing a blazing trail down my neck. “Oh, Jesus,” he groaned. “Do you know how crazy you drive me? Watching your tight little ass in those jeans and these skimpy little tops you wear to the bar?” He brought his hand down and undid the button of my pants, reaching inside to caress my swollen inner folds. I moaned as his fingers found me, and he gasped. “You’re so wet!” I arched my hips against his hand, wanting him so badly I couldn’t think of anything else. Blindly, I fumbled for the button on his fly, desperately trying to get his flesh next to mine. He continued to caress me there as his lips lowered onto my nipple, biting and teasing it as I whimpered and squirmed underneath him.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore; I had to have his skin next to mine. I brought my hands down to his shoulders, trying to push him into a standing position. He seemed to understand, and moved off the bed to stand before me, all magnificent masculinity. My mouth was practically watering to see him there. I knelt and unbuttoned his jeans, then unzipped his fly. He wasn’t wearing any underwear, I noted with glee. His pants fell to the floor, and his huge, hot shaft sprang free in front of me. Eagerly, I moved closer and placed my hands on his hips. Opening my mouth, I wrapped my lips around his shaft and began to swirl my tongue around the tip. Smoke groaned with satisfaction. “Oh, yes, baby, just like that. Oh, God, Flame, what you do to me…”

I slowly began to move up and down. I loved the way his skin felt in my mouth – hot and hard, but soft at the same time. He was so big I could only go about halfway down before I had to stop, but I made up for the rest of it by clasping my hand around the base like an extension of my mouth. I started stroking up, and down. Up and down. His groans of pleasure got louder, and he began to meet my strokes with thrusts of his hips. I could tell I was doing something right, and began to lose myself in the moment. He grasped my head in his hands and wound his fingers through my hair, then started whispering to me. “Oh, God, Flame, your mouth feels so good.” I was so mesmerized by the feel and taste of him, and so happy to know how good I was making him feel. I really wanted to give him an orgasm just like this, so I kept going, more and more excited with each thrust. A few seconds later, he stopped me. “No, darlin’, not yet.”

He leaned down and pulled me to my feet, pulling off my shirt and unhooking my bra. Laying me back on the bed, he pushed up my skirt and reached up to remove my soaked pink panties. He pushed my legs apart and plunged his tongue inside me, licking and pleasuring me as I began to writhe and cry out. His tongue flicked against my pink nub, teasing and swirling against it, before plunging back inside me. It was so intense that I was screaming incoherently, driven half mad with desire as I instinctively angled my hips down to get my needful sex closer to his tongue. He kept me on the edge, though, giving me only a lick or two every few seconds until I was crying out his name and begging him.

“Please what, baby? Tell me what you want!”

“I want… I
need
you to make me come!” I blushed even as I said it, but I didn’t care. I needed it so badly I would have said anything he wanted just so he would end my agony. Finally, he chuckled against my slick folds and sucked my desperate nub into his mouth, rolling it gently with his lips as he flicked at it with his tongue. In seconds, I exploded, screaming until I was hoarse and bucking against his mouth. I felt like all of my cells were flying apart, like a ball of heat exploding outward into the universe. His tongue continued to play more softly on my clit as I shuddered and bucked, eventually quieting to lie there gasping, my cells slowly recomposing themselves.

Smoke softly lapped at me for a moment longer, and then raised himself up to lean over me, kneeling between my legs. He kissed me deeply, and I could taste my juices on his lips and tongue. He covered my mouth and neck with kisses. The strain in his voice was obvious as he groaned, “I can’t wait any longer. I have to feel your lips sliding down my cock. I need to feel it…”

He bent his head down and began to lick and suck on one of my nipples as he caressed the other with his thumb. Instantly, they were hard as diamonds and my body tensed again with pleasure. I ached to have him push his huge length between my folds, filling me. Involuntarily, my hips began to move, seeking his hot shaft in desperation. Smoke leaned back to tower above me, his eyes dark and smoldering with desire. “Are you ready for me, babe?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Take me now…”

I felt Smoke move against me, and then his swollen head was pressing against my dripping entrance. I moaned and spread my legs to take more of him in. He began to rock slowly, pushing in an inch at a time with each thrust. My sex was tight around him, gripping him with every thrust. “Oh, God, Flame!” Little by little, he pushed into me, and I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him as far inside me as he could go. He grabbed my hips and began to thrust fast and deep, harder and harder. Soon there was nothing in the universe but pure pleasure. As I moved against him, he shifted his angle slightly so that his shaft was rubbing against my aching nub, and suddenly I was launched into the orbit of my second orgasm. I cried out, grabbing at his hands as they held my hips, and soon I heard him groan, “Oh, fuck, yes, baby…” I felt his cock twitch and expand, and then he erupted inside me. He shuddered against me, thrusting three or four more times, and finally collapsed on top of me. Eventually, he lifted his head up and kissed me gently. Pulling the covers around us, he took me in his arms and laid back. A contented sigh escaped him as he softly kissed my forehead. “My God,” he breathed. “You are a force to be reckoned with.”

We lay there for some time afterward, my head on his chest. Eventually, we began to talk softly, and I decided now was the time to ask him what I needed to know. “Smoke,” I said carefully, “What the hell happened out there today? I heard what you said to the others, but I didn’t understand much. Who are the Aztecs?”

Smoke stiffened, just a little, and then relaxed. In a soothing tone, he began: “Darlin’, don’t you worry about all that. It’s no big deal. I’ve been in worse situations than that, believe me.”

I stopped him. “Please, Smoke. If I’m going to be with you – if I have any chance of learning to accept this life -- I have to know what it is I’m accepting. I need to understand what the club is involved in. What you’re up against.”

Smoke was silent for a moment. Then I felt, rather than saw, him nod his head. In a soft voice, he replied: “Okay. I see your point. What do you want to know?”

“Well…” I began, “for starters, what’s your club’s business, exactly? How does the club make money?” I figured I might as well hear everything, even the stuff I already knew, from the horse’s mouth.

“A few different things,” he said carefully. “Uh, primarily, our revenue has come from weed, and occasionally some harder drugs. But that’s all going away, and the club has some big decisions to make.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look. Pot’s legal in Cali now for medical purposes. Soon it will be legal for recreational use, too. What happens when it’s fully legalized? That revenue stream is lost. We’ll be in competition with legit pot growers then, and the competition is going to be fierce. So, we’re at a fork in the road. Some of us want to take the club legit. The rest want to look at other, more profitable income streams. We’re having some inner conflict about it. But it will get resolved, one way or another.”

“Which camp are you in?” I asked.

“I want us to go legit,” he answered. “Drugs, in the future, are gonna be high risk, high reward. Dealin’ in the harder shit, that brings all sorts of complications for the club. Seems like there’s better ways of spendin’ our time.”

“Okay,” I said. That much made sense to me, and I was glad to know that the side he was on would mean less danger, if the club decided to go that way. “And what happened today with the Alliance and the Aztecs?”

Smoke sighed and shifted his weight under me. “The Perdidos share a border with the Iron Alliance, for territory. Lately, the Alliance has been trying to push into Perdidos territory. The Alliance deals in some serious shit – horse, meth. They’ve been working on breaking up our relationship with the Aztecs out of Pueblo, to try to shut us out in case we start dealing the same product they are. The Alliance set it up so that it looked to the Aztecs like we were ambushing them at the pickup tonight. There was a standoff, and a couple of their guys got killed. Now some of the Aztecs think it was our guys who killed them. Their president doesn’t, but their V.P. is a viper who’s gunnin’ for control of their club. We think he’s working with the Alliance to turn the Aztecs against their current president, and us.”

“And realistically…” I made myself say the words out loud, before I could lose my nerve. “Realistically, you could have been killed today.”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “I’m not gonna lie to you about that. But darlin’, I know how to take care of myself. Anyone could die, any day. Even you. The life I’ve chosen for myself, it’s a little more dangerous than most. But it’s mine. I’ll take the danger, and the freedom to do what I want, over being chained to a desk any day of the week.”

Being chained to a desk.
The world I lived in, in other words. I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. He was right, in a way. My plan had always been to finish college, go out and look for a job, and settle into my adult life, but the reality was, I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t know what kind of a job I wanted to do. My thoughts about having a successful future basically involved being able to afford the trappings of a middle-class life. But since I had been with Smoke, those things had begun to seem hollow, pointless. I felt like the future I had been working toward was merely an existence, not a life.