Thrash (24 page)

She rubbed at her eyes furiously, then muttered, “And I want Cheetos.”

I just stared at her, then burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it, either.

“You are a beautiful mom-to-be!” I gasped, and I really meant it. “No matter what happens, you are going to be a good mother.”

“Thanks…”

We both looked down at the orange dust coating the surface of her yogurt. Finally, I just said: “That looks disgusting.”

It was Layla’s turn to laugh, although she did it through another bout of inexplicable tears. “Of all the crap that has come along with pregnancy, I am eating Cheetos-ice-cream.”

“
Frozen yogurt
,” I corrected her, teasing.

“Because it’s
healthier
,” she said, grinning in spite of it all.

I shook my head and grinned. “You are so awesome.”

And she was. Because even when the world didn’t make sense, even when she was on the floor bawling behind the bar, I never doubted for a second that Layla would do what needed to be done. That was just who she was.

“I don’t feel awesome right now, but thanks… How’s the mural coming?”

“Good,” I said, feeling a little brighter.

“Is… Are you worried about Thrash?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes. But there isn’t much I can do about it. So I paint and distract myself until I
can
do something. Hey, Layla?”

“Hmm?” she murmured around her spoon.

“Do you know Audrey?”

She went still at that, and I wondered if I had just ruined her good mood.

When she spoke, though, her voice was calm. “Audrey had problems. She has been abused all her life. It’s made her cruel…” I could tell she was holding back her anger. Fears and tears, she couldn’t hold back. Not tonight. But anger, she seemed to be able to handle. “You met her?”

I nodded, not sure what to say or not say.

“Be careful,” she warned me. “She might collect you on Bones behalf. For Thrash.” Something about the way she said it reminded me of Audrey’s snide little remark about it being a ‘pity’ I wasn’t interested in being passed around. “Just watch out. She won’t keep you long.”

“I don’t need her to. I just need to stay valuable enough to her that she finds someone else to take her mean streak out on.”

Layla nodded. “You do that. And… be careful. She… She helped Bones kidnap me. She was going to let him rape me. She was going to help him do it.”

My jaw fell open. I’d met Audrey. I wasn’t surprised, but it was horrifying all the same.

“Don’t trust her, Nora. And don’t underestimate her.”

I nodded. I was grateful when she squeezed my hand.

We were all under a lot of stress lately. It was good to have someone to talk to. It was good to know what I was dealing with. Most of all, it was good to know that, if we had to face people like Audrey, Thrash and I had Fire and Steel at our backs.

30

I shouldn’t have been surprised when the nightmares came. The way Bones had me working, the things I had been doing, it was inevitable.

I thrashed in my blankets, the broken faces of all the men I tormented slashing in my mind. Not all of them were from the past few weeks.

A voice inside my head kept asking me, “Are you doing this because you have to? Or because you enjoy it?”

“No.” I cried back at it. “I don’t enjoy it. Not at all.”

I reached out in my sleep for Nora, wished she was beside me, but she wasn’t there. No one was there. No one but me.

I woke in a cold sweat, beads streaming down my forehead. Adrenaline was pounding through me.

I sat up and looked around. No one else was in the bunk room. Occasionally, someone slipped in so that they could nap between their patrols, but the cracked walls leaked in cold air. Most of the guys chose to sleep in the other rooms.

I was glad. I never wanted anyone to see me when I was like this. I fought these dreams, fought the nightmares, but they always found me. Especially when I did things that brought them out. I wasn’t sure if I liked hurting people or not anymore, but I knew it ate at me afterwards. Tore at my insides and left me sick and shaking.

I let myself catch my breath before I shifted and put my feet on the cool floor.

It was a chilly night, and I regretted leaving the blankets. But I had other things I wanted more. I jumped down and went to my locker, unlocking it and rifling around my bag for my phone.

I dialed Nora and waited.

“Hello?”

Her voice was so soft and light. I’d woken her.

“Thrash?”

“It’s me. Can you meet me?” I asked.

I needed to see her. To pull her into my lap and feel her against me.

“Where?” she asked.

I could hear it in her voice. We were both desperate to see each other.

I rattled off an address for her to put into her GPS. It was a little park nearby. I could say I wasn’t leaving the territory and mean it. I really did need to see her, though. This wasn’t about business.

She agreed.

I hung up.

“Need your girl?” Bones asked.

I flinched hard.

Bones had been leaning on the door, listening to me. I was thankful that I hadn’t said anything that could incriminate me.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s been a while.”

He nodded. “I get it, man. That the only place you are going?”

I nodded again.

“Good, we have to be somewhere at five, so make sure you are back by then. You can drop her off here if you want. Audrey’d want the company.”

A meeting at five in the morning? It was going to be a long day.

“I’ll see if she has to work.”

I didn’t want to tell him that his girl was creepy as fuck, so I tried to keep it realistic. Nora did have work on the mural. And maybe I’d send her on some errands for me.

“Alright, man.” The way Bones said it left me uneasy. He was in one of his moods where nothing could make him happy. He’d probably hit the bottle later. That was his business, but I was sick of worrying about whether I’d piss him off or not.

For tonight, I just wanted to get away.

I walked out without further explanation.

When the sky greeted me, I almost broke out in a run to my bike.

For the first time since the party, I had something to look forward to.

* * *

“I almost didn’t think you were coming.” I flinched as soon as I said the words.

I knew I should’ve greeted her better, but when she was late, anxiety had leapt to eat me alive.

“Sorry,” she said, looking confused. “I had to get showered and dressed. Then I called my friends and let them know where I was going to be.” By friends, she meant Fire and Steel.

“It’s okay, we can talk here.”

I pulled her into my arms and hugged her tight, making sure not to squeeze her too hard. She spread out a blanket in the high weeds and we sat on it, crunching them down. It was soft beneath us.

The shadows spread out around us like ghostly wings, sliced where the grass caught the streetlamps. I looked at her by the light of the nearest streetlamp and smiled. She was so beautiful.

Her smile wavered though as she noticed the bruises on my hands. “Are you okay?” My knuckles were sore and red, but not from anything honorable.

I winced, but not from the pain.

“What happened?”

“I had to do my job. Enforcing taxes.” My face scrunched up in disgust.

“They – you all hurt people?” she asked, her eyes wide. Sometimes I forgot that she wasn’t used to this life.

I nodded. It was an uncomfortable truth, but I would never lie to her about it. I couldn’t even say it was just Bones club. Fire and Steel occasionally had to make a point. It was the ugly truth of life on the streets.

“I’m sorry that you have to do that.” She bent down and kissed my knuckles then looked up at me. “Is this worth it?”

“My club is worth all of this. They were there for me when no one else was.”

Sean and Cullen, they were the ones that deserved my loyalty. I knew that. Nora knew it, too. Somehow she saw everything, commenting on my life without making me angry. No one else could do that. No one else understood me so well. I bent down and kissed her.

She nodded. “They’re loyal to you. They’ve been loyal to me, too, even though we’re just dating.” She smiled crookedly as she said the last bit.

I grinned for the first time in weeks. “You’re my girl.”

I brushed a few strands out of her face and was surprised when she looked down at her hands. She did that when something was bothering her. I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, but it was serious, whatever it was.

I wanted her to believe what I was saying, to understand what I meant. I wanted her to trust me enough to tell me what it was that was tugging at the corners of her mouth, silently stressing her.

“I’ll always be here for you, Nora.”

She looked up at me, stunning me with the profound sadness I saw in her eyes. “Until I don’t fit your idea of perfect.”

I was shocked. Her voice was soft, but the words were so jaded, so cold.

I gripped her hands and leaned closer. “For as long as I’m alive,” I told her emphatically. “If I can live a day longer than you so you never have to be alone, I will be happy.”

Those deep eyes looked up at me through a veil. I could see how much she wanted to believe me. And I could tell something had made this beautiful creature into a skeptic about the one thing she wanted most.

“Who hurt you?”

I could see the question cut close, but I hoped it wouldn’t frighten her away.

She turned to look out across the playground, but she didn’t leave. She didn’t answer, either.

“I don’t want you to pretend to be something you aren’t, Nora. I’ve told you that. I want you. Who you are. You see things others don’t, and you’re strong. Not in traditional ways…”

She would never be able to pound a punching bag for long, or swing a bat with enough force to crack a man’s skull. But she had the strength to look someone who could in the eye without flinching. That was no small thing.

“I love everything that makes you who you are, Nora. And I’m ready to face anything I have to. I know what I want. I want you. All of you.”

I wanted to find the words to explain to her how I felt, how rare and vast and deep my love for her was. I didn’t get the chance, though.

She climbed into my lap and kissed me, her soft, sensitive lips refusing to allow me to utter another word.

I was lost in that moment, caught up in the warmth of her touch, the curve of her waist beneath my palms clouding my brain, making me forget everything but my need to hold her, have her, drown in the feel of her lips...

Under the tree, no one could see us. This park had been abandoned ages ago by the city. We were hidden by high weeds, protected only by the blanket that bought us our own little space. There was just the dark sky and the chirping of the night bugs, and the low, dull roar of the city’s more active blocks in the distance.

Oh, fuck, I wanted her so bad. I tasted her mouth again, my tongue hungry for hers, my body hard and eager. I pressed her down against the blanket, savoring the way the ground kept her from getting away.

“Thrash,” she whispered, her voice like a spell as she looked up at me, those pale lashes fluttering. She was in just as much of a trance as I was.

My voice was hoarse as I told her, “DeMarcus. Call me DeMarcus.”

She purred low in her throat and the noise that came out of her throat tugged my groin and vaguely reminded me of my name. She ran her hands over the hard thick knot inside my jeans, and the kisses I licked along her throat became bites. I sucked in when she wrapped a leg around my ass, pulling me closer.

I jerked the front of my jeans open and let her do as she pleased. She liked using her hands, so I decided to return the favor.

Meanwhile, I slid my hands under her blouse, my fingers tracing up her torso, along her ribs, brushing the undersides of her perfect breasts. I lingered beneath them though, frustrating her into groaning. I got a kick out of the way she bit her lip, and I pressed my fingers over her narrow ribs, feeling her restlessness growing.

Her body fascinated me. I could feel her ribs under her skin. They weren’t dangerously pronounced, just the natural layer of skin over an otherwise lithe waist. A temporary thing that would fade with time.

I didn’t care. I wanted to feel this now, so that one day, when we were older, I could tell her how I had savored her body in this moment.

One day, if I lived long enough, I would become wrinkled. I would have to fight harder to remain stronger. I’d have to kick the world in the teeth and depend on the experiences of my life more if I wanted to survive.

If watching Bones had taught me nothing else, it had shown me that pretending I would never grow old would trap me.

I’d grow old or die young, but either way, I’d have to fight for every inch.

I remembered my father, the man he had been: his strength; the way he had faced the future. It hadn’t mattered to him if he had a future or not. He wasn’t going to be afraid to face his fate.

If he had felt fear, he had not let it stop him. And he had loved my mother, even when she left him.

I kissed Nora deeply, using her ribs as a ladder leading up to her breasts. While she pulled open my zipper and stroked the length of my cock rigid, I unhooked her bra and pulled away from her. Unbuttoning her blouse took a stupid level of concentration, but for some reason that got me even more hot and bothered. I finally managed to free the last button and pulled the blouse open, baring her creamy breasts and the delicious pink of her nipples.

It was ridiculous but I felt a tingle of pride as she grinned up at me, pleased and pink cheeked. Her eyes were glazed. She had never stopped stroking me while I worked.

I ran my tongue across one bared nipple and relished the way her back arched under me.

She hissed slightly and gripped my cock, almost like a warning, but it was a warning not to stop.

I paused over her and growled to her chin, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Nora looked down at me and cut to the chase.

“I want you.”

Three words. The way she said them sent shivers down my spine. I wanted her, too, and I was having a hard time controlling myself. Which was why I was trying anyway. She was the only one I’d ever hold myself back for. I needed her to enjoy herself. I needed to see and feel and taste how much she wanted me.

“Girl, you have no idea what you do to me,” I warned her.

“Oh, I think I do.” She dragged gently on the loose skin of my cock, then drew her hand up to her mouth, licking each finger delicately. It was unexpected and strange, and made my insides jerk and clench. It was as though I could feel each little lick along the length of my cock, and they would never be enough. I needed her swallow me whole.

Her eyes flashed as she dragged her fingers over that full bottom lip, taunting me slightly to put myself inside her.

She knew exactly what mischief she was causing, and she took full advantage of it. She pushed me back, dragging my pants down just far enough to give her free access to my boxers. I caught myself on my elbows, looking down at her and laughing. With a wicked little smirk, she slid her fingers under the band, one by one, and drew my boxers down. The motion was so soft and quick at once, and before I knew it, she had swooped in, parting her lips and running her tongue over my cock.

I grunted, burying my hand in the halo of her hair, gently drawing her closer. “God, Nora. Don’t stop.”

She didn’t. She took me into her mouth, sucking gently, squeezing with her tongue and upper pallet until I had to fight not to pull her away. There would come day for letting her finish what she had started and giving her back as good as she gave, but I needed more today. I needed to look into her eyes while I came. I needed to crawl between her thighs and pound myself into her. Watch her face while the pleasure rippled through her.