Thrash (32 page)
Authors: Kaylee Song
46
It didn’t help that he was half-rolled on top of me.
I never wanted to leave his arms, but breathing was important, too. I pushed away from him carefully, trying to gulp down fresh air when he opened his sleepy eyes and smiled at me.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“Hi,” I said, amused. He seemed so docile like this, more of a squishy teddy bear than a biker. But I knew the truth.
This was a man of many talents. I giggled, remembering just how varied he could be.
“What?”
I grinned at his confusion. I loved this man. Not just the bits and pieces I wanted to love, but all of him.
I kissed him softly, looked him over, and then asked, “How do you feel about eggs and bacon for breakfast?”
He smiled. “Who would say no to that?”
I got up out of bed and padded around to his dresser, letting him enjoy the view. I chose one of his shirts and put it on, loving the way the fabric fell around my hips. It was just a little too short to be a dress, the curve of my ass just peeking out from the hem.
I caught the look on his face and giggle-squeaked.
He was grinning liked a wolf. “Is that all you’re wearing today? Because I might just skip breakfast and eat you.”
I fought down another squeak. It was all so corny and so hot at the same time. Because I really, really wanted him to eat me out again. Dear god, did I want that.
I grinned and grabbed a pair of panties, pulling them on quickly.
I was still sore from last night, but my body was a little confused on whether that was really important. The panties helped. A little.
Food
! We needed food. Then he could nom on me until I couldn’t stand up straight.
Until then, I needed sustenance.
I put my hair up and hurried to the kitchen, busying myself with breakfast. He followed after, pouring us some juice, a wicked little grin tickling the corners of his mouth. He seemed to find my concentration very funny. I was cracking eggs and picking apart bacon as though they were the most important tasks in the world.
But he took the hint, grabbing some utensils and taking a seat out of my way. I knew the man could cook. That was why I wanted to do it. And why he wanted to watch.
Thrash really did have a thing with watching. He was a voyeur.
I was an artist. Shy as I was, I still liked an appreciative audience for my work.
I grinned over the crackling of slowly heating bacon.
It was all so simple, making breakfast in the morning like a million people did all over the world, but today felt special. I felt special. Particularly with him here, watching me while I did it. It had been so long since we had woken up together.
“Salt and pepper?” I asked.
He nodded.
I felt comfortable in that moment, him with nothing but his boxers on, sitting at the table, watching me. I wished every morning could be like this. And I’d deal with a hundred monotonous ones for another like it.
I loaded the plates, complete with toast and a tomato slice. My mother ate like bird, but she had always liked a tomato with her breakfast. I didn’t like her, but I’d liked the tomato on my eggs.
It was a bittersweet thing, but it was mine. And damn it, I wasn’t going to let her crap ruin my breakfast.
DeMarcus helped me get it all to the table.
“Can I stay?” I asked suddenly, unable to hold back that thought.
He nearly spit up his eggs.
“What?” he asked, looking confused.
“Here. With you. Can I stay?” It was his apartment after all, and he didn’t have to let me. He could easily ask me to go back to the collective or stay at the clubhouse for him. The clubhouse was fine, but I wasn’t… I liked people, but I liked privacy, too. I needed space to recharge. I could live with the rest of Fire and Steel if he needed me to, but it would wear me out.
DeMarcus seemed to get it. “Of course you can stay. I keep this place to get away every once in a while. I don’t have people over, so if you want to take the couches out of here and use it to paint… I’d actually like that.”
My eyes widened and my mouth formed an ecstatic “Oooo!”
The look on my face caused him to laugh like I had never heard him laugh. “Damn! I gotta figure out how to do that more often!”
He leaned over and kissed me.
He reached across the table and pulled me into his lap. “Please stay, Nora. I want you here. You can work. The area’s pretty safe over here if you needed to get out and about. There’s a library a few blocks down, and the café at the grocery doesn’t look like much but they make damned fine coffee. Cheap, too.”
He had never seen my little vices but he knew me too well. I wasn’t sure whether to enjoy it or feel insulted.
I didn’t feel like fighting or fussing, though. “What about the club?” I asked instead.
“We’re going to need you to stick around to keep the mural up,” he said as he took another bite of toast.
Sitting in his lap like this made me want to nibble the toast from his fingers.
I smiled up at him, leaned up and then kissed his forehead. He was beautiful.
“I can keep working for Fire and Steel? For money?” I asked hesitantly. I liked the job, but the money was important. Too many people had tried to persuade me to do things for them for free at my expense. I had learned just how important actually being paid was.
“I talked with Layla. She okayed it. As for here,” he nodded to the apartment. “You can stay as long as you like.”
“I think forever will do just fine,” I admitted.
“Well then, we have some things to think about doing,” he considered aloud.
“Like what?”
“A bigger house, and maybe a pretty little ring for that finger?”
“I -” I started to question his sincerity. Did he really mean that? But I thought better of it. “Maybe we should.”
He beamed at me.
For the first time in my life, I was content.
I scootched up to kiss him and wriggled my way onto that delicious bulge in his lap. He pulled me up and against his chest, while I slid my legs around him, grinding against him, already wet through my panties.
He had caught my head to the side to kiss along my ear when we were interrupted by a hard knock on the door. It was so loud and so sudden that it felt like my heart was trying to jump out of my chest.
I jumped out of his lap, grabbing the counter to keep from falling over. DeMarcus caught me around the waist and kept me upright. “Go on,” he whispered in my ear. “Get dressed, Nora. It seems like we have some visitors.”
He didn’t look happy about it. I wondered who it could be, but I got up and ran back to the bedroom. I stumbled into a pair of pants and nearly tucked in the shirt as I heard him put our dishes in the sink.
Someone was still knocking at the door. When I hurried back out, I tossed him a t-shirt.
He dragged it on and went to answer the door.
When he opened the door, I nearly threw up my breakfast.
It was my parents.
47
“Mom. Dad,” she breathed.
I started, surprised, and looked them over. The man was a middle-aged man who worked hard to look younger than his years. His wife was young yet and had probably had undergone surgery to look younger still. They both looked harried and deeply aggravated.
Before I could invite them in, they pushed past me, like I wasn’t even there.
“Finally!” Nora’s mother exclaimed. “If you had left us out there any longer in this neighborhood, I would have called the cops!”
In this neighborhood
? I snorted aloud, drawing a chill look from her.
Damn… So that was where Nora learned it. I really hoped she didn’t sharpen it over the years, because looking into her mother’s eyes was like letting a woman stab me in the eyes with tiny shards of ice.
“This is my home. Who are you?” I replied with a growl.
Nora’s mother ignored the question. “Impressive,” she sneered, casting her eyes around the small space and orange walls.
I almost laughed at her. I was the only one in the room who knew it, but I owned the entire house. My mother had left me the house, hoping to entice me away from the club. I hadn’t needed so much space, but I did like having my own little corner. So I had renovated the place a bit over the years, then opened it up as a series of apartments, keeping one for myself.
I collected rent from the tenants each month, and kept the place up. I tried to be fair, but everyone knew better than to screw around with their payments. I wouldn’t hurt them, but I didn’t play games.
Play games with payments and I threw you out. And Fire and Steel backed me on that.
Something about my reaction intimidated Nora’s father, pissed him off. Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t scared of him. I knew he was rich. I didn’t care.
What did matter to me was finding out how Nora felt about it all.
I knew how it was, ranting about your parents for the shit they messed up. But it was different when they were right there. At the end of it all, accepting that the adults who raised you were flawed was part of growing up, growing beyond it. You either remembered the stuff that was important or you remembered the stuff that hurt. Sometimes both. Sometimes shit was just awful, period, and those weren’t tales people liked to tell.
Nora didn’t seem to have anything good to remember. When her parents walked in, the light died in her eyes. It scared the shit out of me.
When her father snarled at her to sit down, she didn’t argue and that scared me worse.
She slunk down onto the couch, and I watched her become a husk of herself right before my eyes. Obedient. Serene-faced. Empty. The woman I loved was suddenly hiding behind a wall of her own making.
Disgustingly, Nora’s sudden doll-like behavior was the only thing her mother seemed to approve of. “I told you she was holed up here,” she said to her husband. “But I didn’t realize she was with –” The woman trailed off as she eyed me, her eyes picking over my boxers and – yes – my dark skin.
I was a well-read man. I knew rich people did not hate black people in general. But to be black and not rich? Well, I might as well be picking cotton and threatening the plantation owner’s daughter with my wild, heathen cock.
I smirked at her. I was pretty sure Nora was perfectly happy with my cock. She seemed pretty thrilled with all of me, actually.
The vicious obsession with who was fucking whom was ironic. All these two hypocrites cared about was that their wealth stayed within approved circles.
“With whom would she be living?” I asked.
Nora’s mother had already decided I had no worth, and she missed the polite warning. “Someone like
you
.”
As it turned out, I didn’t have to answer.
Nora spoke up. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She looked really pissed, but she didn’t explode. It was all in the eyes. They crackled and I could almost feel the bite in her tone. “You think you can just come into our house and talk to us this way.” I’d never seen her so angry.
“
Our
house?” her father bleated.
She waved him off, stiff as a statue and frighteningly poised. For the moment. “Our home.” She did not elaborate. “And it is time for you to leave.”
Her mother started, “Nora, this is nonsense –”
Nora cut her off, too. “This is not nonsense. Get out."
“You haven’t thought this through –”.
“Yes, I have. But you really haven’t. What did the two of you intend to do?” Nora asked. “Are you going to drag me back into your home? Tell me what to do? Hit me when I don’t do it perfectly?”
Her father wasn’t having of that. “Enough of this. Get in the car, Nora. We are going home.” His voice was commanding. “Let’s forget about this whole mess and go home.”
“You aren’t listening to me!” Nora stood up now, her voice ragged and the poise gone. She had reached her limit. “You are not listening. I want nothing to do with either one of you, and I thought that was a reasonable request. After all, you told me you didn’t want anything to do with
me
. I am happy here. I am happy like this. Please. Go. Leave me alone.”
“Nora, do not -” her father started, but by that time I’d had enough.
Nora had been respectful. She had been adamant. She had stood up to them, asked them again and again. Fuck, she had done everything as “right” as a person could do it, and these fuckers did not care.
I’d known they were probably jag-offs, but they not only did not care what their daughter did right – they would tell her till the day she died that she was a failure.
This was sick.
“You heard the lady,” I interrupted him coldly, glaring at them both. I stepped over the kitchen and picked up my pants from where they had been left the night before. I set them over my chair. Nora’s mother looked like she was going to sneer something at me, but when I laid my hand on the back pocket of the pants, her husband put a hand on her arm.
“She wants you to go,” I said quietly. “This is our home. Get out of here before I call the police.”
“Fine. We’re going,” said her father. “But if you turn your back on us, Nora, everything you were going to receive is gone. No more trust fund, no more money. All of it. Gone.” His eyes were completely cold. Dead to any emotion to the world. He meant it.
Nora didn’t care. “You already made that clear. I don’t want your money. All I ever wanted was your love.”
“Love dies! Success does not.”
Her father almost snarled the words. His wife’s face spasmed. Their hostility and pain were suddenly very real.
That was when it hit me why this was all so personal to them. However they had treated her, Nora was doing something they hadn’t dared to do. Something they were frightened of.
“Come on, Marge,” her father snapped.
Her mother followed behind, and for a moment I felt for them.
Then, Nora’s mother lingered at the door a half second, waving off her husband. When he was apparently out of sight, she turned and looked at her daughter. The venom and rage and pain in her face made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Her face twisted up and she spit vehemently in the doorway. That was it. She sauntered out, leaving behind a chilly cloud of hate in her wake.
We stood there a second in silence. Then I got up and closed the door.
Nora sighed softly, curling up into the couch on her side like a wounded bird. She would be fine, but that fight had worn her out.
I locked the door and went and put on my pants. Then I took a seat in the chair next to Nora.
“I’m sorry I ever opened the door,” I admitted after a minute.
She looked up from over her arm. “No, don’t be. They were going to keep coming back, keep bothering me, until they got their way or I stood up to them. I needed to do that.”
I could see the tears welling up in her eyes.
I walked over and wrapped my arms around her. “I’m sorry, Nora.”
“You didn’t do it. They did.”
“I know. I am so glad you got away from that. Look at you. Look at what you do. Who you are. You are amazing.”
She sniffed. “Do you really think so?” she asked, laughing at nothing in particular. Just old stress finding an outlet.
I nodded. “More than anything.”
“I have something to show you.”
Nora stood and wiped her eyes, then smiled.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Follow me.” She padded down the hall towards the bedroom, and I grinned.
Before I followed her, I reached into my back pocket and felt the knife. It was a small and smooth-bladed, a fold-over, nothing special. But it was sharp, and I knew how to use it.
I had not been bluffing. Man-to-man, Nora’s father had known that.