Force: Blacktop Sinners MC (15 page)

Chapter Twenty Five

“Alright,” she said, as they shut the door to what looked like a pantry. It had whatever dry goods they seemed to use for the bar’s questionable food, including tons of cooking oil and frying batter. Clearly a chicken wing type place then. Tess rolled her eyes at that as she put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. It was hard to do and strained her neck. With no shoes on at all and him well over a foot taller, it was like looking up at the Jolly Green Giant or something. “You need to tell me whatever the hell is going on. There’s human blood on that blade, and I know it’s connected to the warehouse shootout. You say you’re not a murderer, but why do you need it that badly, and then there was so much more. So talk.”

Derek sighed and his face seemed more lined, his azure eyes duller somehow. Tough, she might be attracted to him still, but there was lust and then there was love. If she was even going to try loving him, sticking with him, then he needed to be honest with her. If admitting to his actual job as enforcer and explaining why that was okay somehow was what it took, then he’d have to be discomforted for a bit.

“There was a set up. The rival gang, Death’s Head crew, has converted one of our inner circle. They said it was about some peace talks and some territory boundary renegotiations. It wasn’t. They tried to kill my president, and they didn’t. Spike was able to fight them off, and the blade killed one of theirs, Gunner Hansen. We fled, and I took the proof so he couldn’t be fingered. That’s why he put a time limit on me getting it back. He can’t afford to go to jail, and until it’s recovered, it looks incriminating. Hell, it is. Everyone thinks I turned traitor.”

“They’ll kill you? It’s your club,” she said, feeling vaguely nauseated. What he was telling her did make sense. He’d been asking after Spike after all, concerned about him. It would also explain all the threats that Smitty and the others had made to him, the taunts.

“So if you don’t get it back, you’ll be dead?”

He looked at his watch. “In less than twenty-three hours.”

She shivered and, despite everything, reached out for his chin. His trimmed beard felt prickly beneath her palm, biting into her just a bit and grounding her. “It was used in a murder.”

“It was self-defense because they were aiming to off Spike and subsume our club.”

“You’re a criminal,” she said, her voice, hesitant and scared. “Have you killed people before?”

Derek sighed and took her hand in hers. “Once, but I didn’t mean to. I’ve ‘enforced’ a lot. I’ve beaten people badly to get them to lay off or follow our rules or cede to what we want. I’ve landed people in the hospital. The one time, though, got me sent for eighteen months to the pen. There was a bar fight at a neutral place, and I beat a Death’s Head crew member to death. He already had asthma or some shit, and it was too much. Kicker is, normal guy? He’d have been fine.”

“But you like to hurt people, and you did kill them,” she continued, and the passion from before had suddenly frozen to ice in her veins. It was getting harder to breathe, and things felt so false; time was ticking by slowly, and she couldn’t think.

Like when Jason had his accident
.

So much trauma flooding through her.

“And I’m good at it,” he admitted. “But I don’t kill for fun. I get our point across with broken knee caps.”

She felt the bile rise in her throat and pulled back, starting to pace. “I spend my whole life trying to heal people. I don’t even know how we could work. Jesus, but I don’t have anything else I can do but give you the knife. I don’t want to see you dead.”

“Thanks for your overwhelming concern,” he quipped.

“I’m serious!”

“Well so am I. I care about you a lot. I didn’t just ask you out for the blade. No one’s ever given a shit about me outside of Ron, my best friend, and I thought the club, but a lot of them have thrown me to the damn wolves. You do care, and I thought we had something that night.” He punctuated his point by reaching out to her and cupping her cheek.

She shuddered at his touch. His hand was callused and rough, probably from years of both beating others and from riding in all conditions on the open road. It was a heady combination, and Tess struggled to keep to her principles, to the morals that guided her.

“I felt something too,” she admitted.

“Then we get the blade and we’ll take care of the Death’s Head crew our way, make our traitor pay and tell them the territory war is over.”

“I’d turn it in to the cops if damn Chief Johnson wasn’t bought and paid for by you, or I could guarantee that psycho Smitty and his minions wouldn’t hurt me and mine.”

Derek chuckled, but it was sad and sobering. “Bones and Bullet usually work for me. They’re hard-headed but loyal. They just want the club safe. Besides, how the hell did you know about the chief of police?”

“I’m smart,” she huffed, her stomach roiling as she imagined Derek ordering those mountains of men to beat people with crow bars or baseball bats. How could the gentle man who’d seen into her soul and this man brimming with violence be the same?

Jason’s voice flittered through her mind again, “
You’re always stubborn, sis, and you never bend
.”

Could she bend now?

Let the club dole out justice in its own way.

Could she really learn to love all of Derek?

Sighing, she tilted her head enough to kiss his thumb. His eyes rolled back a little as she did that, and Tess even snaked out her tongue a bit to tease him, to let him know what else she could do with it.

“God, blondie, can’t you see I care about you? Just get me the blade and let me make you safe. Please.”

“I don’t know. I just feel so much.”

“Then,” he said, reaching down with his other hand to cup her breast. “You should let yourself feel.”

She nodded and, with his prompting, held up her arms over her head. He slipped her camisole over her and whistled at her breasts. She’d always been self-conscious, knowing that they weren’t as big as Lizzy’s, that she’d gotten flack in middle school for them. Still, he was looking at them like a man in the Sahara stared at water.

“Amazing,” he said, and he bent down so he could breathe over them.

His breath was warm, and it made her nipples pebble all over again. They’d relaxed with her stress but now were surging forth, tight buds waiting for their own release. Derek seemed to sense that and cupped her breasts. Then he poked out his tongue and started to lave over her right nipple. At first, it was long, languorous licks, but then he seemed emboldened by everything and started to flick it out over her in short, pointed bouts. It made her areolas pebble even harder, and she moaned against him.

She couldn’t really grind against him as he did that, as he was so focused in his ministrations. He was so much taller than she. Still, she was able to reach out to his jeans. With fumbling hands, she zipped him down and was pleasantly surprised to realize he was “going commando” under the denim. His cock was hot and heavy in her hand, and so very hard, like steel but covered in velour or something equally soft on the surface.

Experimentally, she ran one delicate nail over its impressive length, and grinned when it jerked.

“Someone’s definitely missed me.”

Derek pulled away from her right nipple just long enough to smirk and add, “You have no idea.” He went back with that same singular focus to his work, his mouth circling her full left nipple. He suckled at it then and her whole body was tingling with need, and her jeans, themselves, were soaked through already.

“Me too,” she admitted, as she wrapped her fingers around his shaft.

She started with a loose, slow-paced stroke, just enough to coax it to even harder than before, like granite or obsidian. She loved the noises he made---the groans, the mewling, even the long drawn out moans---as he sucked her tit. They increased in pitch, got so much louder, once she wrapped her fingers tightly around him and started to pump in earnest.

They stayed there for a while, her enjoying the three alarm fire raging over her, him shuddering beneath her touch, and the chorus of wanting noises they made between them, until Derek suddenly pulled away. Fumbling through his jeans’ pocket, he swallowed down at her.

“Need you more than that.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, hesitating before pulling her hand back. “Was that not good?”

He chuckled and kissed her lips, and she noticed his were a bit swollen from all the careful attention he’d been giving her chest. “Amazing, but I need to be inside of you. Just give me a second.”

She nodded and undid her own jeans and shoved her pants and underwear down. That gave him the time needed to pull out the ubiquitous foil packet and slide the condom on over his member.

Grinning back at him, Tess crooked her pointer finger towards herself. “Then come and get it, Grinder. See if your name is as good as it promises to be.”

He nodded, his expression fierce and wild. Just like him. He picked her up easily in both arms and brought her up against the wall. Then he eased her slowly down on his waiting, engorged cock. It was an easy fit. She was already used to him after all, and she was so wet, so ready. However, it didn’t make the feel of every warm inch of his girth sliding into her any less revelatory, any less scorching and orgasmic.

She was fuller than she’d ever been. He started to rock his hips, and she moved with him. Her eyes stayed focus on the gorgeous ice blue of his as he looked up at her. However, and she wasn’t surprised, his lips and tongue had returned to lavishing attention over her right breast. The rapid tempo of his thrusts increased as he pounded into her. He was so fast, so frantic, that she could even feel his balls slap against her core in his need.

She relished that.

Her clit was pounding, and it felt like her blood was matching that same staccato beat in her veins. There was nothing now but his eyes, his mouth, and now the building waves of pleasure rolling over her body. He found her G-spot eventually, after so much pressure and friction built between them, and she came with an explosion of sparks over her eyes.

“God! Yes, fuck yes!” she screamed, and a part of her hoped the rest of the club heard, that they knew what Derek was doing and that he was
hers
, that she’d claimed him as surely as he’d become fixated on her.

Her walls spasmed around him, she felt him eventually reach his own release, and a small part of her wished they almost hadn’t used the protection so that she could feel every part of him inside of her, even his seed.

Strong arms set her down on her feet and, then, once he was situated, let her sit and curl up on his lap. Tess curled into his arms and loved the feel of him, this bear of a man, all solid muscle, protecting her.

Being there for her.

Maybe if he was as loyal to her as he was to his brotherhood, well, she could maybe live with that.

Chapter Twenty Six

They cleaned themselves and slipped off once their legs could move and muscles felt like more than just Jell-O. He climbed in to her car, wishing she hadn’t favored a sporty update of the classic Volkswagen Beetle. His legs were going to be pretzels by the time they reached Asheville. He had to give her credit for being smart, for getting Lizzy to help her move the blade to her parents’ home, far from Boone and far from anywhere
either
club would first assume to look.

They’d have figured it out eventually and, even though they weren’t consolidated there, they’d have come for her.

The thought of Smitty sending Bones and Bullet for her, of that rat bastard laughing as she screamed for her parents’ safety, made him furious. He clenched his right hand by his side and wished he could just punch through the other man’s damn cheek bones. Derek would teach him why he was the “Grinder,” what kind of Hell there was to pay for ever thinking of hurting his girl. As it was, the palm mark was still there, a fresh reminder of his failure to save her truly when it mattered. The marred flesh was there to taunt him.

No one---not the Blacktop Sinners, not the Death’s Head crew, no one---would get a second chance to touch her.

He’d fucking scorch the earth before he allowed it.

With his other hand, he reached out and grabbed hers, letting his fingers entwine with hers in a silly, sentimental way that he would have laughed at before. He still would have if he could see himself doing it with the average sweet butt. She was better than that. Hell, now that she was back and
his
, Tess felt like a damn angel.

She stilled for a minute, and maybe she hadn’t been expecting the gesture.

He hadn’t expected to make it.

Tess smiled at him and continued on down the highway. “Well it won’t be long now. You can get that blade and get it back to Spike first thing in the morning, and then you all can kick some serious Death’s Head crew ass.”

The words were right, but the tone was wrong, too forced and cheery to be genuine.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“I know what I do bothers you, so don’t think about what comes after. We have to get that knife to Spike for my sake but for yours. Your instincts are correct, blondie. You do not want the Blacktop Sinners after you, and you do not want them motivated to hurt you and yours.”

“Like you’ll do to anyone who’s not me,” she said, her voice soft and sad.

It was worse than if she’d just screamed at him. As if she’d resigned herself to it, no matter how much she resented it, as if she were chained to it.

“We don’t have to figure out everything right now,” he reminded, focusing on the road and not her crestfallen expression. “Just make it simple, get the blade and get to the roadhouse again.”

She nodded, but he could tell from the way she was biting her lip to keep silent that they’d definitely be coming back to this point soon. “Alright,” Tess finally agreed.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. How could one blonde spitfire really control him that badly? How could he worry so much about a woman he hardly knew? Well, scratch that. He knew her biblically, but he felt like somehow he was disappointing her, that he could be better or smarter or if he just had a normal nine-to-five, then their relationship could be perfect.

All hearts and flowers.

Or some shit like that.

“So,” he asked, genuinely curious. “What actually made you come back? You were furious before, and there was no way you were happier when you had to have heard about the hospital.”

She nodded. “Yeah, Lizzy called me in from Asheville to be questioned. That’s how I met that delightful Chief Johnson.”

“He’s a dick, but he works for the right price.”

“Which is?”

“A hell of a lot of zeros,” he conceded. “Seriously, you wanted me dead last time we spoke, it just radiated off you, that rage. What changed?”

She sighed and slipped her hand out of his. He almost took offense but then noticed how tightly
both
hands were gripping her steering wheel. Derek could easily make out the whites of her knuckles. “I couldn’t stop remembering Jason, my brother.”

“Okay?”

“He died in a bike accident like I said, but I always thought that being so closed off, that just almost being a damn hermit like Lizzy jokes was because of that.”

“Still following,” he said, frowning back at her.

“But then I remembered one of the last fights we ever had over his damn bike.”

“Don’t knock one until you’ve tried one.”

“You’d never catch me on one.”

“They’re the ultimate rush, the perfect amount of power. I think you’d like it, if you let yourself go. Yes, people wipe out,” he said, gesturing to his toes and then to the scar on his forehead. “But you could be in a mugging or a car accident or eat something with E. Coli at a restaurant. You don’t know when your number’s up.”

“Jason’s shouldn’t have been,” she said, her teeth gritted. “But in that fight, he did tell me that I never bend. Then it was so tense that I just stopped trying to even talk to him. The three months before he died, it was like the Cold War in our house. I’d give anything if I’d not given up on him.”

“You didn’t want to give up on me?” he asked, his voice incredulous. The only two people besides her who didn’t seem to do that so far were Spike, who while upholding the law seemed to take no pleasure in it, and, as always, his brother in arms and everything else, Ron. “Why?”

She shrugged but kept her hands on the wheel. “I don’t know completely. I just know the way you make me feel, the feelings you stir up, and I can’t turn my back on that. I have no idea what it means or where we go from here, but it’s the first time I’ve felt alive since…No, screw it! This is the most alive I’ve felt ever,” Tess finished, and she looked at him for a moment, her hazel eyes bright with need, as if she were willing him to understand her.

He stared into those haunting gold flecks and licked his lips. How desperately he wanted to make her stop the car and fuck her right here. God, it was more than that. Derek needed to hold her tight, to let her know everything would be alright, that he’d never leave her.

That they were family now, kindred.

“Well I can take that. I know what it’s like to have someone special like that in family. Ron and I, we’d been in foster home and juvie together, like I said.”

“Yeah, and at least for part of it, you had someone. If Jason and I couldn’t cling to each other until the Everharts, then I don’t know what I would have done,” she admitted.

“Ditto, so I get ‘brothers.’ They can annoy you like no other.”

“Oh Jason was a master at it, loved practical jokes and ones that involved fake spiders or rubber snakes were his favorites. I ran out naked of the bathroom more than once ‘cause I
thought
a giant tarantula or wolf spider or whatever was in the drain.”

He chuckled.

Note to self
.

“I think I would have liked your house growing up.”

She chuckled even as she lightly slapped his left shoulder. “I bet. The point is that if I’d bent before, maybe things would have ended different. Or better. I’m trying to bend, but I’m just not sure yet how far I can go.”

“Because I’m a criminal,” he said hollowly.

“Yes, but we just have to play it by ear, see how everything works out,” Tess admitted.

“Then, in the spirit of playing it by ear,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I have something I think you’re going to be glad for.”

“What?” He loved watching the smile spread across her face when she spied the silver St. Christopher medal glinting in his grasp. Bright white teeth gleamed back at him, and her cheeks had the slightest flush in her excitement. “Where did you find it?”

“I’m a man of many surprises.”

“Then we can both agree on that,” she huffed.

He didn’t quite like the double entendre there.

***

Tess knocked on the door of her parents’ home and was beyond nervous. Dan and Barbara Everhart were about as clean cut as they came. He’d been a civil engineer and her mom had her own career as well. They went to church every Sunday and always paid their taxes on time, and she couldn’t remember any time in the past twenty years when her parents had so much as had a parking ticket. They weren’t just law-abiding. Her whole family was completely sold on being on the straight and narrow, no doubt.

So she had no idea how she’d explain a giant biker, no not just that but an enforcer who specialized in making other bikers suffer, to them. It wasn’t that he was wearing his jacket or screamed obviously that he was a felon. After all, he’d fooled both her and Liz, hadn’t he? Of course, she’d never brought home six and a half feet of rippling biceps, stubbly beard, and black on black wardrobe. The barbed wire tattoo around his large left arm just served to highlight it wasn’t just any intern or doctor she’d brought home this time.

Taking in a deep breath and also gaining comfort from his hand in hers, Tess waited until her parents showed up. Her dad was in a truly appalling Hawaiian shirt (
a joy of retirement, honey
), and her mom still had her reading glasses perched on the top of her head. To their credit, when they spied Derek, they didn’t act rude. She caught the hesitation on their faces but it was barely a few seconds. After a pause, her dad was shaking Derek’s massive hand and beaming back at him.

“Tess, you said you were bringing back company, but we assumed Lizzy,” her dad said first.

Her mother smirked, her eyes twinkling and crow’s feet pulled tightly across her cheeks with the gesture. Was it Tess’s imagination or was her mother blushing? Hell, even the tips of her ears looked pink. “This is certainly a
pleasant
surprise.”

“Uh, Mom, Dad, this is Derek Allanson. Derek, my parents, Barbara and Dan.”

He surprised her then by finishing up the handshake with her father and then taking up her mom’s hand and kissing the back of it. “Charmed, Mrs. Everhart.”

Her mom had gone fire hydrant levels of red. “Call me, Barbara, please.”

Her dad just rolled his eyes. “Well, maybe I have some competition here.”

Tess laughed and hugged him and then pulled playfully on his beard. “Dad, it’s fine. Derek’s the blind date that Lizzy set me up with and, well, we might have patched things up a lot.”

Derek smiled at that, and she was glad he had. Despite what he did, most of her was happy to have him back in her life, to know that such a gorgeous, passionate man was
hers
. “Yes so what’s for dinner, and how may I help?”

Tess hoped her parents had already been turned as they led Derek to the kitchen because her jaw was dropped. That was not at all how she expected the surly, in charge biker to act in such a domestic setting. Again, a small voice niggled at the back of her mind. Who was he really? Which Derek was the real one---the biker, the lover, or even this surprisingly warm gentleman? Could they all three be him or was it an act that would leave her more wrecked than when she’d first found out what “in security” actually meant?

Sighing, Tess steadied herself and followed her family into the kitchen. There was going to be a lot of play acting tonight, and she’d need to be at the top of her game to convince her mother of so many things.

After all, she’d learned how to ferret clues together from somewhere, hadn’t she?