Taking It All: A Hellfire Riders MC Romance (The Motorcycle Clubs Book 6) (5 page)

Thinking of that First Lady clause again, maybe. “To most of them it’s nothing,” I tell her. “It’s nothing to Spiral. But it’s not nothing to
them
.”

Old Timer and Helena. Jenny looks to the older man, then to his old lady. They’re holding each other’s gaze as Spiral slowly pumps into her and, judging by their faces, they’re both getting more out of this than the man fucking her is. And yet Helena’s still not getting enough, though Spiral’s going deep. Her cunt honey shines the full length of his dick. With every stroke, he almost withdraws before leisurely sinking in up to his balls again. Biting her full lower lip, she tilts her ass up higher and her arms flex as she pushes against the edge of the pool table, trying to force him faster, harder. He only grabs her hips and holds her still for the long slide of his cock.

She raises pleading eyes to Old Timer. He gives a shake of his head and she responds. Maybe cursing him, maybe begging. I can’t hear a word over an old Guns N’ Roses ballad that’s the worst accompaniment to a screwing I’ve ever heard, but her frustration is clear. She’s right on the edge but Spiral’s not pushing her over yet. Instead he catches her arms when she shoves against the table again, pulling her wrists to the small of her back and holding them in his left hand while he takes hold of her thick hair in his right. She’s bent over at her hips, back arched, and he uses his grip on her wrists and hair to drag her back over his dick. Still so fucking slow, and every time he pulls her back all I can imagine is Jenny in front of me, her pussy a hot vise around my cock. Then as Helena suddenly writhes and shakes, her mouth falling open, there’s only the memory of Jenny’s cunt milking every inch.

Jesus. I chug a few swallows to cool my blood and glance at Jenny. She’s flushed and squirming.

Still staring at Helena, she says, “I want to do that when we get to your place.”

“Fuck, yeah.” Trapping her wrists and hauling her back over my cock. “Slow or hard?”

“Both.”

“You’ll get both.” The way my cock feels, she’ll get both a couple of times over. But now I can only bend my head and taste her mouth. I don’t want to let her go. My fingers stay clasped around her nape when I straighten again. Spiral hasn’t finished. He looks to Old Timer, who signals to Hashtag. The prospect doesn’t waste a second before scooting around in front of Helena and freeing her tits. His mouth latches onto one of her fat nipples just as Spiral starts pounding into her. Her eyes glaze over and pure bliss slackens her lips.

And screw this shit. If anyone has more business they can bring it to me tomorrow. Helena’s a pleasure to watch but my woman is in need, and there’s no one more beautiful than Jenny when she comes.

I sweep my thumb down the side of her neck. When she looks up, I ask, “Ready to get the hell out of here?”

She’s off the stool almost before I finish. “Yes.”

I grab her hand and head to the door. But it’s never that easy. There’s more business already waiting outside. With her blonde hair hanging down her back, Zoomie is in the corner of the lot, tinkering with the guts of a crotch rocket under the flood of a streetlight. Next to the other bikes, it’s an emaciated video-game shit-stain of a ride.

Fuck. I can’t ignore this. Her custom chopper was trashed but better to ride around in a cage than on that piece of shit. Still holding Jenny’s hand, I cross the lot. It’s still hot as hell outside, though it’ll start cooling off fast around midnight. “Zoomie!”

Her spine stiffens before she looks over her shoulder. She knows what’s coming but she plays it off like nothing. “Yeah, boss?”

“You rode that here?”

“Mostly.” She gets to her feet and the look she gives the crotch rocket would have made most men back up a step. “The engine cut out on the way.”

“Were you wearing your colors on it?” A fucking embarrassment to the whole club.

Her blonde eyebrows shoot together. “Hell, no. I came over like this.”

In a black tank and jeans. So I won’t be kicking her ass. Instead I might be kicking my veep’s. “Blowback gave you a bike that doesn’t run? A fucking
Honda
?”

“No. I borrowed it from a friend.”

“He was supposed to find you a ride.”

“And I told him to shove it up his ass,” she says and because she’s talking to me, her voice stays even, but every line of her body tells me how pissed she was when Blowback came to her. “I’m not taking anything from him. Next thing he’ll be saying I need handouts or some shit. That I can’t pull my weight.”

No, he wouldn’t. She only thinks so because back when she was making her bid for a patch, Blowback got tired of the brothers focusing on the fact that she had tits and he spoke up on the only point that really mattered: He asked whether she could hold her own when she’s throwing down. Zoomie read that as him believing she was weak and Blowback never corrected her. I’m not going to, either. That’s their shit to work out.

But this is my shit. “
I
told him to get it for you.”

She flushes a little. “And I’m grateful, boss. But I don’t want it from someone who thinks I’d be better off hanging up my kutte and become a fucking old lady. No offense, Jenny.”

“None taken,” she responds easily and I like that a hell of a lot. Jenny doesn’t want to be an old lady, either—but she doesn’t correct Zoomie’s assumption and say that she doesn’t belong to me. “We all know you’d never fit.”

Zoomie snorts. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“And as long as you don’t mind a cage for the night,” Jenny adds, “you can take my truck. If you pick me up at Saxon’s place in the morning, we can head out to the ranch. I’ve got a ride you can borrow.”

Face blank, Zoomie glances at me. I know what she’s asking—whether a Hellfire Rider can even think about heading out to the Erickson’s ranch right now, let alone borrow a ride from the daughter of the Titans’ president.

“You can take a look,” I tell her. No matter what came out of the Titans’ meeting, Red wants these clubs together as badly as I do. He won’t throw shit over this.

She glances at Jenny. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. What time?”

“No later than eight.”

Not a lot of time. Because she’s got work at her brewery—and tonight I’m going to have her bent over in front of me and dragging her back over my cock. I’m not wasting another second. I wait just long enough for Jenny to hand Zoomie her keys and then I’m sweeping her up, carrying her to my bike while she laughs. Before I start up the engine, she slides her hands around my waist and says huskily, “Don’t forget: slow
and
hard.”

I ride like hell for home. Sweet and slow, I remind myself. Just like Jenny deserves. But when we get there, slow turns to rough and hard real fast—and a little rougher every time she comes.

Jenny

I wake up alone in Saxon’s big bed, with the breeze from an oscillating fan sweeping over the single sheet covering my naked body. There’s no air conditioner in the house, so Saxon leaves the window open overnight to let out the heat that builds up during the day. The pale light peeking around the edge of the curtain tells me it’s just after dawn. Not much noise is coming from the cul-de-sac outside, not this early on a Sunday morning. Just a few twittering birds. The world is in bed, except for Saxon.

And me. I’m still tired, but I know I won’t go back to sleep. It hasn’t been coming easily lately and probably won’t come at all without Saxon beside me.

I steal a big T-shirt from a shelf in his closet and go in search of him. He can’t be far. The house isn’t big, just a one-bedroom bungalow. He lives alone—but doesn’t seem to
live
here that much, though I know he moved in about six years ago. No pictures hang on the walls. No rugs cover the wood floors. He’s got a couch and a bookshelf in the living room, but no TV. Only a small table with two chairs sit in the kitchen, and there’s nothing but a bed and a fan in the bedroom. The house just seems to serve as a place for him to eat and sleep.

But even though it’s just a pit stop, he keeps it clean. Much cleaner than I expected from a man living on his own. Saxon tells me that I give him too much credit, that he has a housekeeper come in once a week, but he makes her job easy. I’ve never seen him leave anything lying around. From his toothbrush to a drinking glass, as soon as he uses it he puts it away.

The hallway is dark. Both the living room and kitchen are empty but now I hear a faint
whump whump whump
through the door connecting the kitchen to the garage, where he keeps his motorcycle and his exercise equipment. Aside from the bed, it’s the one place he seems to spend any significant time while he’s here.

The noise tells me what I’ll see before I open the door, but I still stop in my tracks. A woman can’t be expected to keep her brain cells running when Saxon is stripped to the waist and pummeling the heavy bag hanging from the garage’s ceiling. He’s facing away from me. I don’t see his naked back often. My fingers have gripped those massive shoulders so many times now, clinging to his solid flesh as he pounds into me, but I haven’t had much opportunity this week to simply
look
. When his shirt is off, he’s usually above me or behind me.

Now my eyes are greedy, drinking in every inch and returning for seconds. Thirds. I’ll never get my fill of him. Sweat gleams over tanned skinned. The Hellfire Riders emblem is tattooed across his broad shoulders and with every punch, his muscles flex smoothly beneath fiery wings and give life to the ink. His heavy arms are ripped; his biceps bulge and his triceps look carved from stone. His gray sweatpants hang low on his hips and I just want to lick my way along the taut, defined lines of muscle that lead beneath his waistband to his perfect ass.

And this beautiful man is mine. For a second I can’t even breathe, my heart is so tight.

Saxon pauses, his chest heaving. Without looking over his shoulder he says, “Get over here.”

The concrete floor is cold beneath my feet, but only a few steps carry me over to the black gym mat that covers the back half of the garage. A rack of dumbbells and a tree of Olympic plates stand against the wall behind his weight bench. He tosses his boxing gloves onto the bench as I come. His big hands are wrapped and he slides his fingers into my hair, pulling me in for a kiss. It’s not deep and hot, just a sweet “good morning” but it still sears me to my toes. God, I love the way he smells and all this sweat just makes his scent stronger.

He begins unwrapping his hands and his dark blue eyes narrow as he looks down at me. “You ought to be in bed still. When did you finally fall asleep—an hour ago, maybe?”

Maybe. I didn’t keep track. But if Saxon did, he must not have been sleeping, either. “You’re up,” I point out.

“Yeah, because my woman was lying awake all night, even though she should have been fucked into exhaustion hours ago. Is that First Lady crap bothering you?”

“No. Is it bothering you?”

“Only that it came up and gave you even a second of worry. That clause is bullshit and everyone knows it.”

I nod, watching the flex of his pectorals as he unwinds the handwrap from around his wrist. “Actually, I was thinking of your business plan for after you move the Riders out to the ranch and turn your old clubhouse into a gym.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm-hmm. I think you should put a big window in the front of the building and do your workouts right there. With your shirt off. You’ll bring in so many new customers that—”

He shuts me up with a kiss, laughing against my lips. “I’m not into making that public, either. Now make yourself useful and ride my back for a few minutes.”

“What?” But it becomes clear when he drops to the mat in a pushup and waits. “Seriously?”

“Your weight will give me just enough resistance to make these interesting again. C’mon. Sit your little ass right between my shoulder blades and then hold still.”

Crazy. Gingerly I lower myself, tucking the long length of the T-shirt between my legs because I’m naked beneath and suddenly my face is burning red. But he just waits, solid as a rock beneath me. When I’m balanced with my knees bent and my toes on the mat, he pushes smoothly up. I almost fall but grip his shoulders, giggling all at once. God. He goes down again. As far as I can tell, he’s not making any real effort, despite lifting an extra hundred and twenty pounds.

“If you’re trying to impress me, it’s working,” I tell him.

I feel the short laugh rumble through his chest, then he’s all business again. I can’t be. Lightly my fingers trace the top edge of his tattoo. He’s got another high on his arm—a grinning skull and crossbones. Some bikers wear skulls on their skin and it doesn’t mean anything. But Saxon wears a similar patch on his kutte, and it does mean something: he killed someone.

“Is this for Timothy Reichmann?” The man who attacked me all those years ago—and the reason the Eighty-Eight Henchmen have it in for me now. The Eighty-Eight’s current president is Reichmann’s younger brother.

A grunt serves as Saxon’s answer.
Yes.
Maybe it’s not as effortless now that he’s hitting fifteen or twenty of these.

“What are these numbers in the teeth?” In the skull’s upper teeth, a gap separates a one and two twelves from a six, fifteen, and eighteen; ten, five, fourteen, another fourteen, and twenty five are inked into the bottom teeth.

He lowers onto his stomach. “It’ll come to you. And don’t move, because I’m going to do another set in a minute.”

I study the numbers. The two on top might be dates. “When did you get the tattoo?”

“The first year I was out.”

Of prison. So he got it nine years ago. If the numbers represent a date, I can’t figure out what it refers to, and I’m distracted now, anyway. A thick scar runs from beneath his underarm and up toward his shoulder blade. It’s straight, but the edges are ragged.

I can’t imagine what caused it. “What is this from—an accident?”

“Shrapnel. Part of a Humvee’s door panel got wedged up in there.”

A Humvee? My fingers sweep over the pale ridge. “You served? When? Where?”

Not as long as I’ve known him, and he was only twenty when the jury convicted him of manslaughter and sent him away for five years. I know for certain he didn’t enlist afterward.

“Kosovo. And it was right out of high school. I joined the Marines, went through basic training, got assigned to my unit, and we were deployed about three months later. A peacekeeping mission, but inside a week, we were hit by insurgents. I was sent home on disability.”

“Disability?”

“Yep.” Smoothly he pushes up again. “I couldn’t lift that arm high enough to aim a rifle. I couldn’t for about three years.”

Softly I say, “You were in prison by then.”

“With nothing to do but rehabilitate it.” Up and down. “And it’s why I kicked Reichmann instead of pulling him off of you. I still barely had any strength in that arm.”

My gaze slides over to the skull inked into his shoulder. “So I guess you can blame killing him on the insurgents.”

“No.” He pauses with his elbows bent, his triceps like sculpted bronze. “I blame Reichmann. The fucker got what he deserved. But he might not have gotten it if my arm had been working right. I’d have just beat his ass and walked away.”

“I guess.” With a sigh, I smooth my hand over the skull. His muscles flex rhythmically beneath my palm. “Did you like being in the corps?”

Another grunt.
Yes.

I’m not really surprised. “The club’s the same in some ways, isn’t it? At least it is for a lot of the Titans.” Many of whom are ex-military. So are most of the Riders. “There are just different rules.”

But it’s still all about loyalty and brotherhood and serving a purpose. The purpose is different, sure. At the core it’s all about freedom, though. The corps defends it and the clubs embrace it.

“A lot of different rules. But I won’t argue. You’re not all right but you aren’t wrong, either. Now lift up.” When I do, Saxon turns over and lies with his back on the mat, then brings me down so I’m straddling his stomach. “I’ll tell you true, Jenny, I was in a pretty bad place when I came back. I liked being in the corps, liked serving, then I was out. Like I hadn’t been able to hack it. So joining the Riders felt like a second chance to be a part of something like that again.” His gaze shoots to my thighs, spread over him and with the long T-shirt hiding everything between. “You wearing panties?”

I shake my head.

“Is that your pussy getting wet all over me?”

Grinning, I brace my hands on his wide chest and wiggle my ass a little, rubbing my heated flesh against his ridged stomach. “Maybe. And I’ve got you trapped. Now tell me why you’re up so early.”

His hand catches the back of my neck and he hauls me down, until my breasts are flattened against his chest and our mouths are just a whisper apart. His voice is rough. “You think it works like that?”

“It seems to work for you.” Slowly I rub against him again and watch lust darken his eyes. “Every time I try to hide something from you, you just fuck it out of me.”

“Then what are you hiding now, princess?” His free hand slides up my thigh. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”

My throat tightens. Suddenly I don’t feel so hot and sexy. Saxon frowns and rolls onto his side, carrying me over. His big hands cradle my face.

“Jenny?”

“I’m not hiding it.” My voice has thickened. “I’m just trying not to think about it.”

“Your dad?”

My breath shuddering, I nod and he tucks my head against his shoulder. “He’s been seeing his lawyer all week,” I tell him. “And yesterday afternoon he came in with a stack of papers for me to sign. Putting the property in my name, adding me to the bank accounts, making all the arrangements for…after.”

“Because he doesn’t want you to have to deal with that shit when you’re grieving.”

“I know.” Though if it hurts this much now, I don’t know how I’ll get through it anyway. “There wasn’t a living will—you know, for when he’s so sick that he can’t…” I can’t finish. Shaking my head, I say, “All those papers, and no living will. You’d think it would be the first thing the lawyer would give him.”

“Yeah.” The response sounds full of grit. “It was the first thing we got for my mom.”

Because Saxon has gone through the same. He never mentions it, but it’s a small city, so I remember hearing when she passed six or seven years ago. Breast cancer, I think.

I come up on my elbow. He’s wearing that stoic expression again. This time I can’t read past it but I probably don’t need to. I lost my mom, too. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know her well.” By sight, and mostly I just remember her crying in the courtroom after he received his guilty verdict—a tall, dark-haired woman with soft eyes and a quiet way of moving. “She seemed very sweet.”

That makes the corners of his mouth kick up. “Nah, she wasn’t. She was a tough old broad.”

“Really?”

“My dad ran off when I was three, so it was just her and me. She cleaned rooms up at the Pine Valley Lodge until her back got messed up, but even after she couldn’t work full-time there was always food on the table, always a roof over our heads. She always pulled through.” His smile fades. “Until she didn’t anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head and focuses in on my face again. “You’re thinking there’s a reason Red didn’t make out a living will.”

“Yes.” My lips press together and a long second passes before I can continue. “I don’t think he’s going to wait until the cancer takes him. I think he’s just going to take a ride and he won’t come back from it.”

His thumb brushes my trembling lips in a soft caress. “I would, too. I’d fight it. But when there’s nothing left to fight? I’d get everything settled and hold out until waiting any longer means that I couldn’t steer my bike. Then I’d take that ride, too.”

Tears spill over when I nod. “I know. And my head gets it. But here?” I thump my knuckles over my heart. “It’s not so easy. And last night I was just thinking: He’s all alone out there. And what if he goes tonight? Or what if he’s sick and needs help and I’m not home? He’s not at that point yet, but I just…I…I feel so guilty.”

Saxon catches my face and rolls me onto my back, looking down at me with his brows drawn. “Because you’re with me instead of at home?”

“Not because I’m with you. Because I’m not there.”

“You want to start spending nights out at the ranch again?”

My breath shudders. What I want doesn’t matter much right now. And I
do
want to be with my dad. But even that’s not as important as being there
for
him. “I think I should.”

“Then you should. You and me, we’ve got lots of time. You and your dad don’t. So take as much as you can and I’ll be here when you need me. Or out there, if you need me there. All right?”

God. Thirty seconds ago, I thought I loved Saxon Gray. But that was nothing,
nothing
to what I’m feeling now. My chest hitches, then I’m reaching for him, my fingers sliding into his dark hair. His kiss is hot and sweet and too short. He lifts his head and wipes the tears from the corners of my eyes.