Coletrane (23 page)

Even Cat and Nick Loveland turned up.

It was the craziest fucking thing ever. And actually I did need a handkerchief. The MC—the extended version—sat in the audience. Retribution had multiplied. They were all there with their old ladies and growing families.

I tried to harden my face, but when I returned to look at Sin . . .
shit.

Front and center, she glowed more than ever. She wore a deep green dress that hugged every sexy curve, and a short jacket in soft white zipped to her neck. Her hair shined, but her smile was even brighter as she hugged her hands to her chest.

I still couldn’t believe she was with me. She was my wife.

Dipping my head in her direction, I winked.

Finally, the ceremony began with trumpets sounding off. Our names were called one by one. When my turn came, I strode across the stage, my smile huge.

“FUCK YEAH, COLE!” Kinkaid yelled.

Then it was like he’d triggered fireworks. All the guys shouted and whistled. The women stood and clapped.

“THAT’S OUR BOY!” Brodie rose up on his chair, raising a fist to the air.

Sin got to her feet, her claps joining the others, and soon the entire crowd was giving a standing O.

“I love you,”
I mouthed to Sin.

She blew me a kiss back.

I returned to the line formation, only half listening to the rest of the ceremony, my eyes on Sin the entire time. I wanted her in my arms. STAT.

At the end, the honor guard fired off, straight into the air with rounds of shots that left clouds of gun smoke hanging in the atmosphere.

Bo belted out, “Jesus. Trying to give me flashbacks or fucking what?”

Walker appeared out of nowhere, his long black braid hanging down his back. “I still got some C4 left from Jacksonville. Really set your nuts on edge.”

They bro-hugged, then Walker turned to me with an oddly regal bow.

I was stunned he’d showed.

Finding Hunter in the crowd, I narrowed my gaze on him.

He shrugged, trying to appear innocent. Totally failing.

And this was my family—crazy and mixed up as it was.

I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Released from my rigid posture after shaking hands with my fellow graduates, I walked down the steps of the stage. I kissed my mom on the cheek. She recognized me enough now so it wasn’t unusual, although she still didn’t return my hugs all that often.

Regina pulled me to her, whispering, “
Ah
am so proud of you, Cole.”

Leland was next, formidable as ever, but no longer quite as scary.

We shook hands before slapping each other’s backs.

“Proud of you, son. You done good, for yourself and Sinclair.”

I chugged down the emotion in my throat, nodding at him.

Sin.

Fucking A.

My heart almost spun out of control every time I looked at her.

In uniform for the first time, I approached her.

Her white-blonde hair loose over her shoulders, she flicked her eyes up and down my body. Her gaze was a match igniting me. The things I wanted to say to her. The things I couldn’t wait to do to her.

The ways I wanted to
love her good
.

“Cole,” she breathed out.

“You like the duds.” I brushed her bottom lip with my knuckle.

“Can’t wait to get you out of them.”

“That so?” I spun her in my arms, bringing her to me so her so-fucking-hot ass nestled against my cock. “What do you want tonight, precious? A long fuck. A slow wet one?
Handcuffs
?”

She arched into me.

Cupping her chin, I turned her to me so I could kiss her shiny red lips. “Handcuffs it is.”

“Yes,” she moaned, tilting further back.

“
Mmm.
” I spread my hands over her belly that had grown a little round and fertile. “How are my babies?”

Sin kissed me long and rough. She kissed me until I felt the raw urge to have her.

Pale green eyes gleaming, she asked, “Which one?”

“You and these little ladies, precious.” I trailed my fingers from her hips over the small swell of her stomach, feeling the tight heat.

“All my beautiful girls.” I bent to kiss Sin again, tangling my tongue with hers.

We never did do things by the book. This time was no different—we found out Sin was pregnant before the wedding. The early scans showed twins. It was too soon to find out the babies’ sex, but there was no doubt in my mind they were girls. And I’d never been prouder.

Sin slipped from my arms when Tail shotgunned
his bike to life.

“Party at the Retribution House!” he roared.

The thunder of motorcycle engines already rumbled underfoot as I steered Sin
toward the Trans Am she let me drive . . .
sometimes
.

“You ready for this, precious?” I settled her inside, kissing her with all the need she spiked inside me.

She broke away with a gasp, her hands curled into my shirt. “I’m ready for
everything
with you, Cole.”

Hunter
:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UWHWMO8

Kinkaid
:

http://www.amazon.com/Kinkaid-Bad-Boys-Retribution-Book-ebook/dp/B0107FKIP4/

Bo
:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZDWEBJQ

Coletrane
:

http://www.amazon.com/Coletrane-Bad-Boys-Retribution-Book-ebook/dp/B011ADPC26/

Suck

MAY. MYRTLE BEACH, SOUTH Carolina. Bike Week. Destination? Suck, Bang, Blow bar.

I hadn’t been here for five years, about the time my folks died, Cat almost killed herself, and Boomer and I tried to make it all better.

Fuck yeah, I needed this. I loved this. I rode down the strip as multicolored lights flashed from electric billboards for attractions offering cheap thrills. The seabreeze off the shore sent salt across my skin. The road into Myrtle Beach was one big bitching battle of hogs and Harleys and MC hotheads ready to tank back a beer or two or many more before doing the charity thing tomorrow. Rough thugs, bearded dudes, and men with handlebar mustaches to rival the handlebars of their rides.

Nick Love might cruise on a beautifully restored ’46 Chief—hell, he rode my sister, not that I wanted to think about that—but I handled hot metal like it was an extension of my cock. I muscled my Harley with the new angel emblems and polished ape hangers through the forest of black leather, bright bandanas, and honeys slinging their bikini tops off at every stoplight.

I reached into my saddlebag for a brew, cranked it open against my palm, and got ready to glug it while I sat at the last red light between the Suck Bang Blow Roadhouse and me. When the light turned green, I took a sharp left and slipped into a sweet slipstream that landed me in the last ounce of space amid my home away from home. The parking lot was congested with cigarette smoke, motorcycles, the noise of laughter, and RPMs that tore up pavement.

An unlit cigarette dangled from my lips as I throttled down. I eased off my Harley and lifted the black brain bucket from my head. I’d detailed it to say:
FUCK IT. I’m late. But fucking off takes a lot of time.

I tapped my Marlboro Red on my wrist before lighting up. I only lit up when I planned on drinking it up. That I intended to do, as well as getting laid every imaginable way as long as I was the one in the driver’s seat. I’d spent far too long on the sidelines, being the responsible one. It was time to shed all that shit, if only for one week.

I blew smoke rings and fucking sailboats with each exhale, ambling through the crowd. I drew deep from the beer in my hand.

“Hey, Steele!”

“Brodie, dude.”

“Where the fuck ya been?”

During my walk toward the ramshackle roadhouse I was offered beer, coke, pussy, crank, joints, and more pussy. Armloads of pussy.

I declined all offers. The pussy would come later. Hell, maybe a spliff too, but I was rarely in the mood for it. And I didn’t touch the street drugs. Bad shit happened to people who got hooked, and I didn’t have that hero-cannot-die complex anymore.

When your younger sister went off the rails because she got addicted to smack, and your folks died in a horrific car wreck . . . When you were the last one standing after all the carnage to identify your parents’ bodies so they could be properly buried, you figured out pretty fucking fast how fragile life was.

You learned where and when to take your risks. A needle full of dope or a sniffer full of coke, both were not odds I’d ever play with.

I took a last drag from my cig and mashed it under foot.

It was so hot the black tar stuck to my boots. The parking lot of the SBB bar was a thousand times busier than the basement at that girl Belinda’s house in high school. For two bucks a pop, she’d let anyone feel her up. The line usually stretched up the stairs and out the front of her house. She’d made a killing off her 38DDs.

Whatever happened to Busty Belinda?

The scorching parking lot may have been hot, but the women were even hotter. Okay, not that grandma-type over there. Her bikini top barely covered her sagging titties beneath the beaten-to-shit, hell-to-leather jacket she wore.

Fuck me. My eyes.

But whatever, her hog was bigger than mine.

Maybe the one in her pants, too.

Nah.

The parking lot was hundreds of bikes deep from one side to the other in orderly columns that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was a gleaming, glittering, rumbling heaven. The road beyond roared with metal machines matched only by the beer-drinking, pot-smoking, loud-talking crowd I swaggered through until I reached the saloon-style doors that led into Hell on wheels on earth.

It was dark inside Suck, Bang,
Fuck
. Damp. Dim. The perfect place to commit some secret perversion you’d been dreaming about all year long before you returned to humdrum real-life that included work, worries, and shit-gone-sour.

Concrete and come. Road tar and grease. That was what it smelled like inside the roadhouse. Loud rock tunes blasted from the speakers. Every charter in South Carolina and beyond was represented from Lesbian Leathers to the Asheville hippies to Sand Hill’s Sons O’Bitches.

Pool cues knocked against balls.

The bar was heaving. The crowd cheering.

A leather-clad honey held the dance floor. She worked that shit like she was earning cash instead of ear-bashing “bring it on!” yells.

My
balls knocked in my pants at the sight of the woman.

She looked familiar. So did the bottle of beer Tuck pushed into my hand as soon as I drained my first. He was with the Presidents of Retribution MC. I was the VP. Boomer, my brother, the Prez. Tuck was the moneyman. Tuck, as in Friar Tuck, plus his real name was Tucker. He was as round and bald as the Robin Hood money launderer, except for the wicked handlebar mustache he waxed to two precise points. Hey, we might be goons, but we weren’t fucking illiterate. We had a brain cell or two left, and some of us even knew the classics. Like the Costner version of
Robin Hood
where that Alan Rickman Snape-dude stole the evil show.

Tuck was like a grandfather to Boomer, Cat, and me. He’d held our wrecked family together after our folks died.

He didn’t wear a brown cassock but a Big and Tall Retribution MC cut unzipped over the round belly that matched his round face. The backpatch on his leather was identical to mine: a bony white skull weighing down the scales of justice.

Tuck knocked his bottle against mine. “Good ride up?”

“Yeah. Fucking perfect. Open road between Mt. Pleasant and Georgetown. I just had to avoid those speed traps and the LEOs.” I turned and set my elbows on the bar. “I swear, Tuck, every time I see a cop on a moped, I think it’s Kingston out to bust my chops.”

“You gotta get over that shit. The past is the past. What’s done is done. Besides, Kingston never arrested you. She nailed Cat, and that was Cat’s wake-up call to get cleaned up.” He gripped the back of my neck. “If you ask me, Officer Kingston did you a solid.”

“Not my parents though.”

“She had nothing to do with their deaths, Veep.”

I shrugged off his hand. “They wouldn’t have been on that stretch of road, heading to the rehab center, if Kingston hadn’t arrested Cat in the first place.”

“And Cat would probably be dead from heroin or worse by now if Kingston hadn’t done what she did, boy.”

“Who we talkin’ about?” Handsome asked from beyond Tuck’s shoulder.

“Your momma.”

“Bent over a Buick,” Tuck added.

“Getting fisted.” I grinned into Handsome’s hair-covered face.

“Cool. Guess I was too busy bangin’ Tuck’s bitch Maid Marion to notice,” Handsome riffed.

I bumped my knuckles against his. “Boss.”

Handsome—so-called because he was anything but—probably looked butt-ugly on his best days. But who the hell could tell? His hair hid his face nine-tenths of the time, and he didn’t seem inclined to give a shit. Tall, rangy to the point of skinny, my friend just needed to put on fifty pounds or so and get his fucking hair cut. Didn’t matter. Handsome had the biggest, most giving heart, was loyal to a T, and I’d kick anyone’s ass who dared look at him crossways. The ladies always gravitated to him as if they knew deep down he was the real keeper of the club.

We were trading MC smacktalk—who was going Nomad, who was dissolving, who was being hounded by the pigs—when Tail emerged from the murky depths of bike club nirvana.

“Yo, don’t go getting all fuckin’
feel
-oh-sophical on me tonight. I ain’t doing that shit. I’m Zen. I am in the zone.” He strutted up to the bar and rapped his three heavy gold rings on the surface to get some service.

“Yeah. Fucking Buddha material you are not.” Tuck aimed his trigger finger at Tail.

“Who said anything about that fat bastard. The only thing I meditate about is pussy.”

“Otherwise known as wet dreams.” I slid a fresh beer to Tail.

“I got a wet dream right here in my pants.”

“Because you have an early release problem. ’S’what I heard.” I lifted an eyebrow at the man.

He cranked an arm around my neck. “Braw, if I didn’t love you so much I’d kick your ass for that.”

“Ready to take it outside when you are.”

“Hell no, I’m not going outside with you. I heard about what you get up to. Brodie Steele likes to cop a feel in public.”

I slid out of his hold. “That happened once.”

“Twice.”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

Tuck and Handsome stared at me like I’d grown two heads.

“I’m talking about fucking babes in public, not dudes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Jesus, my future braw-in-law was gay for a couple days with Stone.”

“Plus Stone’s boy Javier has a sweet ass.” Tuck chuckled.

“And a sweet boyfriend named Tate who would probably fuck up anyone who so much as came onto his man. It’s kinda cute.” Tail looked wistful for a moment.

Tail had been my buddy in high school. Back then we’d been a couple of jackasses and part-time basketball jocks, in between smoking joints in the locker room. Tail was Taylor. He got his road name because he always snapped up the tastiest tail unless I got there first. And he used to be after my sis, Cat. He’d been
Cat’s tail
, so to speak, until Boomer and I gave him the lowdown on what would happen if he so much as said
boo
to Cat. Something ugly that would’ve included more than just losing his famed dick.

“Hey, are we here to have fun, get fucked, stoned, blown, or what? Time to lay some cherries.” Tail slung his arm around my shoulders and dragged me into the crush of bodies.

Smoky, muggy, murky, perfect. Bikers still streamed in from outside. The overcrowded room quickly overheated. Sweat trickled down my back. The moist heat embraced me all over like a sleek hot pussy.

We shouldered our way to the middle of the cavernous room. The place was stacked like the bikes outside. Elbow-to-elbow, fifty-deep, hot, and everyone out to have a good time. Instead of a bull ride set up in the middle of the mobbed floor, a bucking Harley rocked on mechanized springs. There weren’t any cushy landing pads for pussies who couldn’t handle the chrome stallion should they take a tumble from the saddle. Just the concrete floor.

“What’d I miss?” Our newest member slid between Tail and me.

“Your dick,” I said.

“It’s too small.” Tail leaned over to rap my knuckles.

“Don’t worry. We don’t blame you.” I winked at the newest kid who wanted to be part of our charter. “You’re still ridin’ the sissy bar.”

The probie had a name but damned if I could remember it. The boy was wet behind the ears. Probably had a wet nurse, too. And not in the kinky, sexy kind of way.

“Get us a round,” I said.

“Of . . . uh . . . drinks?” Probie stammered.

“No. Girls. Jesus.” Tail smacked the back of his head.

“But I don’t think—”

I took pity on our youngest member who shaved clean and looked fresh out of pimple-hood. “A round of drinks.” I unfolded a fifty and slid it into his palm. “Don’t forget a Shirley Temple for yourself.”

“You’re such a dick-wheel,” Probie muttered.

“
Aww
, and you’re the cutest little butt plug I ever did see.” I got in his face. “PS. Cadet Shit-stain, keep up that attitude and I’ll make sure you get a flash patch instead of the MC colors. You’re on toilet cleaning duty for two months once we get back to Rancho Del Retribution.”

He strutted to the bar with a low, “
Fuuuuck
.”

“Make that four months!” I called out after him.

“You’re wearing the VP vest well,” Tuck mentioned.

“Isn’t he just?” A feminine voice worked its lazy way to my ear as slim fingers wormed beneath the waist of my leathers.

Oh, Christ. Not
that
cherry. Leta had popped hers long before I’d done her, Tail had done her, Tuck had probably done her, too. She was an MC wench. She had a bad habit of hanging around and hanging on.

I pushed Leta’s hands away and moved off. She was with our sister charter, the First Ladies of Redemption. She was numero uno there, but persona non grata with me. One fast fuck did not merit future nuptials. Didn’t matter that she wore the sisterhood Redemption rag. Once she got her nails into you, she acted like
she
was on the rag twenty-four-seven. I’d seen dudes go down because of her.