“You’re kidding me, right?” I tried to keep my tone light, but just as I started to make a dash for the open hangar door, I noticed the glint of metal in Slit’s hand.
A knife.
Slit said smoothly, “I think it’d be in your best interest to let Mack train you.”
“Be a good little girl,” goofed the third guy, who I hadn’t even looked at yet.
Breathing deeply, I prepared myself for a good long wait. I could think about other things. I could think about my job, of coronary artery bypass grafting, about laser revascularization, of making channels through the heart muscles and chambers.
Yes
. This would work, and then it’d be over, and then I never had to come to the Citadel again.
“Ooh, yeah, chickie,” gushed Mack, grabbing one of my boobs full-on. “I think you’ll be trainable into a—”
He never got the chance to finish, though, because suddenly he was flying through the air.
At first, in the dim light of the echoing hangar, I thought it was Cropper who beat on Mack.
The assailant was pummeling away on the fallen warrior, just mercilessly pounding his face, gut, chest with strikes that were blurry, they were so fast.
Slit took off like a shot, and I started inching toward the door, hoping no one saw me.
“
Motherfucker
,” seethed the assailant. It seemed like I could see droplets of sweat flying off his forehead as he pounded, but I realized it was droplets of blood I saw glinting in the thread-like rays of sunshine that came through cracks in the walls.
“Dude! Dude!” Mack kept crying. His only protest was to stomp his feet and slap his hands against the cement floor, and his face was increasingly beginning to look like a piece of raspberry pie.
“Ford!”
With my instinctual nurse’s training, I leaped on top of Ford and pulled with all my might. I couldn’t stop the pounding machine he’d become. He just kept punching the guy, snarling “motherfucker.”
“Ford! It’s me, Madison! Stop it right this instant! Do you fucking want to kill the guy? Do you want his blood on your hands?”
This was laughable, because the guy’s blood was
already
on Ford’s hands.
But it seemed to work. Ford wrenched himself to his feet and stood with bloody hand at his side, snarling down on the fallen Allman Brother. When he whipped his head around to look at me, the snarl fell from his mouth, and his fist unclenched.
“You’re coming with me,” he said mildly, as though it were only a suggestion.
Taking me by the hand, it was Ford’s turn now to jerk me through the hangar.
“That guy!” I protested. “I’m a nurse, Ford. I can’t just let him lie there in a pool of his own blood.”
He glanced from side to side as though expecting an ambush. His beautiful brown eyes flashed with emotion. His nostrils flared with the exertion of having pummeled Gregg into a pulp. “No worries. There are always tons of brothers around to help the fallen.” He stopped by the dispatcher’s door, his hand on the knob. “In here, woman.”
I would have gladly gone—in fact, had no choice, with Ford yanking me toward the office—but the sight we both saw when Ford shoved the door inward had us pausing, stunned.
Turk Blackburn was pressed up against the wall, furiously making out with another man. They ground their hips together lustfully, no holds barred.
I was so shocked I’m sure I just stood there gaping, and Ford’s hand in mine froze absolutely solid.
I don’t know how severely Ford was shocked because I sure as hell didn’t look at his face.
I was too busy looking at this abso-fucking-lutely
stunning
man in the throes of lust, the back of his cut blurring the dry-erase list on the board behind him.
Biceps clashed with biceps, erections ground together, muscular jaws working, mouths clashing.
I was simply stunned speechless. It was Ford who slammed the door shut on the two groping men, so as far as I know, they didn’t even notice us.
“This way,” he said simply. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
He was hauling me back toward the toilet trailer, clattering up the front steps.
“I don’t call this more private,” I said, but Ford had already yanked the women’s door open.
He bellowed into the fluorescent interior, “All right, ladies! Clear out! Need this room. Shake it, shake it!”
Their chattering stopped abruptly, as though someone had hit the pause button on a party sound effects CD. Hushed, they hustled themselves out the door with their combs and lipsticks. Ford slammed and locked the only door of the windowless trailer. It was actually a smart idea.
Turning to me, he rushed me.
Every inch of my skin tingled with anticipation of what Ford might do. Was he going to make love to me, or hit me?
The answer turned out to be neither.
FORD
“The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of being miraculous. The language of society is conformity; the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as people shut their eyes to reality.” ~ Henry Miller,
Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
F
ord crushed Maddy in his arms as though he wanted to break her bones.
She felt like a little bird in his big, punishing arms. He hadn’t even bothered to wash that guy’s blood and teeth off his hand before lifting her ass onto the rickety sink and grabbing a fistful of her hair.
He was still breathing heavily from the beatdown he’d administered to that jackoff in the hangar. It always riled all of his senses to the utmost to take his anger out physically on someone. He got a strange high, probably of adrenaline and testosterone, that was almost better than anything.
And he probably panted a little from the shock of seeing his best friend making out with another man.
But all that stuff was peripheral right now.
Right now, Ford pressed his forehead against Maddy’s while tearing off his cut. Normally he liked to fuck with it on. It gave a sense of authority and edge to his fucking. Today, he wanted to feel her skin against his as he ruthlessly assaulted her.
Throwing the cut into another sink, he said, “Maddy. You’re mine. I fucking mean it. You belong to me. No more of this fucking around, this back and forth.”
Her eyes were big and pleading, like those paintings of the large-eyed kids that were supposed to be haunting but were just plain creepy. “I know,” she cried, flinging her arms around his neck.
The day was just full of surprises.
Already she had one high heel lodged in his back jean pocket and she was peppering his face with tiny sucking kisses.
She knows? When did she make this one eighty?
Maybe she didn’t really know. Ford stripped off his black T-shirt while telling her, “It means you can’t fuck anyone else, Maddy. It means your fucking heart belongs to me and no one else.”
As much as he loved showing off his carved torso—he saw her finally admiring the pictograph of the Apache hunter he’d had inked under his nipple after he’d said goodbye to his mother—he had to grab Maddy forcibly by the jaw to get her to see reason.
He wasn’t going to play this back and forth game anymore. Either she agreed with him, or she didn’t. If she didn’t, he’d just have to force himself on her, because he was going to finally, seriously mount her anyway.
“I mean it, Maddy. Do you understand what this fucking means? It means you’re my property, part of my tribe.” He’d been calling his club a “tribe” lately, too.
“Yes,” she cried breathlessly. “I want to be yours, Ford. I can’t tell you why I left Cottonwood twelve years ago, I really can’t. You have to trust me it was nothing you did wrong. I love the man, and I can learn to love the club.”
She loved him. That was good enough for Ford, and he slid his tongue down her throat while tearing her dress asunder at the collar. He was consumed by a wild combination of lust and anger—anger at her for having left twelve years ago and having told him no two months ago. His pride wouldn’t let him forget that, so he mauled her with urgency and more than a little bad temper.
He just wanted to ram it inside her and shoot his load. He lapped away at the bottom of her tongue, at last able to slide his hands inside the big cups of that teasing push-up bra. The way she mewled when he tweaked her bullet-like nipples riled him even higher. Her little hands scrabbled at his Bare Bones buckle. She gave up and just wrapped her arms around his naked back, pressing him to her. The barbell that pierced his nipple twisted, sending erotic arrows straight into his groin, and he practically tore his sturdy leather belt ripping it open.
They came up for air, panting against each other’s mouths as Ford unsheathed his throbbing dick. His low-slung jeans immediately dropped to his boots. He’d been waiting for this pussy for so long and had tasted it in so many daydreams and nightmares, it was incredible that he was finally mashing her big, fat tittie in his hand, was scouring his bulging cockhead against her slick pussy lips. It was never an option to don a rubber, although of course he had one in his back pocket.
“I mean it, Maddy. This cunt is mine. These lips are mine. These tits are mine. No one else’s.” To punctuate his point, Ford pulled back slightly and slapped her tit. Her eyes popped open with surprise, but she didn’t protest, and he slapped her tittie again. She gave little jumps, little arches of her back like a cat on an electric fence, every time he slapped her, so he kept doing it.
She shook her head tauntingly, probably knowing her hair would bounce around her shoulders, accentuating her uplifted boobs. “All yours, Ford. No kidding. I want your big dick inside of me.”
“And this pussy? All mine.” Ford drew back even farther so his erection stood out at a right angle to his body, knowing how impressive it was. He slapped her cunt and it made a satisfying, wet sound. “This pussy belongs to me.”
Again, she jumped and twitched every time he slapped her trim. She was arched erotically, her titties jutting out as though posing for an X-rated sign. His slapping seemed to be arousing her, so he kept it up, a pattering of wet smacks, each one making her jump and climb the wall a bit higher. Her eyes became bigger, moister, more pleading with each slap, until she gasped.
“Please, Ford! Just do me! You know what I want. I’ve been waiting longer than you have.”
Ford locked eyes with her as he impaled her on his hungry cock.
He sank far into her with a low, beastly groan while the vocalist onstage wailed about iron hooves and steel horns. Already, bitches were pounding on the flimsy bathroom door, and Ford had to holler like an unholy guardian of Hell.
“Keep your fucking pants on, bitches!”
They heard his voice, and shut the fuck up.
When he turned back to Madison her eyeballs had rolled up into her head. She seemed to be praying as her tight pussy clenched his cock. One of her arms was flung above her head, gripping the sink faucet. The faucet wobbled so loosely he thought she might tear it out.
A sudden fury overcame him when he saw his blood-caked hand slapping her undulating boob. He started fucking her so furiously that with each stroke her head banged against the wall. He wanted to pound his frustrations away inside of her. Each precision swivel of his hips, each stab of his pulsating dick inside the clenching maw of her cunt, each angry thrust brought him closer to some sort of absolution.
He needed to forgive her. He couldn’t love freely while holding a grudge for past wrongs.
He stopped slapping her and she started moaning. She made long, drawn-out caterwauls like a midnight tomcat on the prowl. She unfurled her spine and wrenched the faucet, and the more the cold water spilled over the jiggling mounds of her tits and down the valley in between, the harder Ford fucked her. The coldness swirled around the root of his dick and cooled his balls, and he fucked her so desperately his stabs sent water splashing onto his face.
“Fuck me, Ford,” she gritted out between clenched teeth. “I want to feel your big cock exploding deep inside me. I want to feel you as close to me as possible. I want to feel your long, thick penis ejaculate up against my womb.”
That really got to him, her saying “penis” and “womb.” It sounded dirtier, in a way, than any cocks or pricks. He just didn’t hear talk like that around the Citadel.
It made him pause, panting down on her. She looked so vulnerable lying there with one arm twined around the running faucet. The stream of water chilled his sac, which had retracted close to his body in preparation for a monumental orgasm.
Ford was into orgasm denial, usually for the woman. His prick twitched with a thousand electric shocks as he held it still inside Madison’s searing heat. Usually the longer he held it, the more exquisite the orgasm. But if he held it too long, that perfect moment would pass.
He heard himself say roughly, “’At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love—just enough to feed the birds.’”
Recognition washed over her face. Maybe she’d read the words of his favorite writer way back when, and actually remembered them. He supposed he was trying to express his love for her without actually
saying
it.