Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (14 page)

He leaned on the counter across from his mom. “They’re just closing the shop, so she’ll be here in about twenty minutes.” He was jonesing bad for Iris tonight. He’d spent the last hour, since he’d gotten back from his ride, pacing like a lion or something around his mother’s house.

It was taking every ounce of patience and will he had to be okay. To push away the call he’d made to California and be the Nolan everybody needed him to be.

His mom nodded. “That’s great. You want me to call the pizza order in now? Do you know what she likes?”

Nolan thought of the Frankenpizza, and for the first time since he’d parked in Bart’s driveway that afternoon, he smiled. “Actually, no.”

“Okay. We’ll just wait until she gets here, then. Maybe you two can go get it and make out in the truck like teenagers.”

“Not funny, Mom. But—how would you feel about her spending the night?” They really needed somewhere better to be together than the clubhouse. They had a fucking audience in the Hall every morning, and it sucked. Tonight, of all nights, he needed to be with her, and he needed some privacy. His mom’s house was the best option they had, unless they left town and got a motel. But that seemed cheap.

And her house had her father in it.

He was going to be twenty-seven in a few months. The time might have come to think about a better living arrangement than the clubhouse or his mother’s house.

In the meantime, he needed Iris now.

“I don’t know, Nolan. Loki…”

“Loki’s a club kid. He gets it. And it’s not like we’re gonna get naked in the living room.” Although Iris could be a little bit loud.

“Okay,” she sighed and selected a bottle from the wine rack. “Everybody fully dressed outside your room, please. And cool it with the PDA in front of the fifth-grader.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The next thought rose to the fore, and Nolan decided to go with it rather than think about it too much. Seemed like his day for going with his gut, even when it made him sick. “Mom—can I ask you something?”

“Sure, kiddo.” She opened the bottle and nodded at Nolan. “Second shelf. Left side. Two glasses. Unless you want some, too.” She smirked; she knew the answer. He did not drink wine.

He brought down two glasses from the shelf she’d designated. Managing a wine bar, his mother had developed a sophisticated taste for wine and an encyclopedic knowledge of it and all its accessories. She probably had fifty wine glasses in different shapes and sizes.

“You and Bart?”

She stopped and stared. “What do you mean?”

“Mom, come on. You like him.”

“Of course I like him. He’s family.” She busied herself pretending that the glasses needed to be wiped, and she turned and got a fresh towel from the drawer.

“Mom.”

With her back to him, she asked, “What do you want me to say, Nolan? We’re friends. He needs help. I’m helping. End of story.”

“I know that’s the end for him. Is it for you?”

“Of course it is.”

Nolan walked around the peninsula counter and went to her side. “Mom. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

She sighed, and he knew he was right. “It’s fine, Nolan. I’m not trying to make something happen. But I’ve been alone a very long time. It’s nice to…I don’t know. Be needed like that? And we talk about Hav. I never knew Bart much before, but he’s a good man, and he was Hav’s best friend. It’s nice to talk about him with somebody who knew him so well. It’s the opposite for him—he needs to talk about Riley to somebody who didn’t know her at all. So…I guess we help each other. That’s all it is. Friends helping each other. Besides the kids, our main topic of conversation is the people we lost. Okay?”

He put his arm around his mom. “Okay. Like I said, I just don’t want you hurt.”

She laughed sadly. “Kiddo, I’ve already been hurt as bad as I could possibly be.”

And that was David Vega’s doing.

Nolan pulled his mother into his arms.

~oOo~

“She’s really okay with this?”

Nolan kissed Iris’s head. His mom and brother had unsubtly left the room a few minutes earlier, when the television show they’d been watching ended, and they were alone in the living room. As soon as the others left, he’d pulled her close against his chest.

The minute she’d arrived, he’d felt better. He was getting his fix. He’d barely thought of Vega or Bart or Sherlock since.

She liked sausage and olives on her pizza. And she didn’t mind red wine—she and Nolan’s mom had finished the bottle. It had been a good night, with a lot of laughter.

“She is. It’s better than the clubhouse, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” She snuggled close. “The girls in the clubhouse don’t like me much.”

“They give you trouble?”

“No—God no. Just a look I catch sometimes.”

“Fuck ‘em, then.”

She laughed. “I think that’s the problem. You’re not fucking them anymore.”

“You know that none of them mean shit to me.” That wasn’t strictly true; he cared about a lot of the girls. But not in the way he meant now. In that way, they were meaningless.

“I know. I’m not jealous.” She sat up and met his eyes. “I’m not jealous of anyone, Nolan.”

He stared back, knowing whom she was talking about and trying to decide how he felt about that, and what he should say.

Before he figured it out, she cupped her hands over his winter beard. “I’ve been waiting for a time to tell you this, and I don’t know if this is the right time or not. But I want to say something else, too, and I think they’re related. So: I don’t need you to stop loving Analisa. I hope you love her forever. You have a big heart, and I know there’s room for me, too. That’s…” she stopped, he saw her throat move as she swallowed. “That’s why I love you.”

In that moment, Nolan knew that he didn’t need to chase down Vega. It didn’t matter whether he was right or the club was. He needed to stay home, with his club and his family and his girl. He needed to stay with Iris. She was his, and he couldn’t leave her. Maybe he was addicted, but that was okay. She made everything okay. She made him okay.

He pulled her onto his lap. “Jesus, Iris. I love you.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Iris loved Signal Bend. She loved the people, the area, the businesses, the cozy, intimate culture. She loved her family—and here, they let her be who she was. This little hamlet was her hometown, and she didn’t want to be anywhere else.

But it was strange to be so connected to a place, to feel so at home there—to
be
so at home there and have her history deeply woven with it—and also to be a stranger. She’d been eight years old when Daisy had been killed and her mother had barely slowed down between the hospital and Little Rock, Arkansas. She’d taken Rose and Iris away from their home—she’d even taken Daisy’s body, too—and hadn’t given them a chance to say goodbye to anybody. Not even their father.

Since then, she and Rose had only been in Signal Bend for visits—a week here, a couple of weeks there—until they’d gone to college and had more control over where they spent their breaks. Still, they’d had to divide the time between their mom and dad. Iris had spent most of a couple of summers here, but that had been the longest.

It was strange to feel so comfortable and so unfamiliar at the same time. Tonight was a case in point: she barely knew Nolan’s mom. They’d spent the evening getting acquainted. But Cory was part of her own family. She had deep connections with most of the same people Iris did, and yet they were practically strangers. It was disorienting sometimes.

Now, Nolan had led her into his bedroom in Cory’s house, and she was getting to know
him
all over again. They were both club kids, both children of the Horde, but she’d been taken away from the connection before he’d been brought to it, and so they were almost strangers that shared a family.

On a big corkboard over a small desk were pinned several photographs—of her own father and her own uncles, in their kuttes, with their bikes. Some of the same photos hung framed on the wall in her father’s house. More drawings were pinned to the corkboard as well, but nothing like the dragon he had hanging in his dorm room. These were drawings of bikes, and pieces of bikes. More like plans than fantasies. In fact, as Iris peered at the sketches, she realized they were of the bike he rode. His Ironhead.

“I don’t think I ever knew that you built your bike. You did, didn’t you? That’s what these are?”

Nolan stood behind her and set his hands on her shoulders. “Yeah. Hav gave me the bones for my birthday. God, it was wrecked. All rusted and bent. We were gonna build it together…” His sentence had trailed off as if it were incomplete, but he was quiet behind her until she looked over her shoulder. He was staring at his hand on her, and he brought his eyes up to hers when she turned her head. “He was killed before we got much done. Badge helped me finish.”

One of the drawings was a sketch of the gas tank, with the art that was now airbrushed onto the actual tank:
Wreaking Havoc
. Seeing it on his bike, she’d thought it was a tribute, but now she understood it was more than that. “He rides with you.”

“I like to think that, yeah. I want to be the Horde he was.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that because she didn’t know what kind of Horde his father had been.

Sometimes she felt furious with her mom. As bad as the really horrible thing had been that had taken Daisy, they shouldn’t have lost their father and their family and their home, too.

“I barely remember him. I wish I’d known him better.”

Nolan’s short laugh had the low ring of melancholy. “Me, too. He wasn’t even in my life for two years, but he changed everything for me. And my mom, too. He was the first person who ever really cared about us. It was the first time I thought somebody would take care of my mom.”

“I’m sorry.”

He turned her around and took her hands. “He did take care of us, though. He’s still taking care of us. He gave us the Horde.”

As she watched, Nolan’s face seemed almost to melt. First, it was just a frown. Then the furrows in his brow deepened, and the frown became a grimace. He shook his head abruptly, like he was trying to elude a vexing thought, and he blew out a shaky sigh.

Then he dropped, releasing her hands. He sat down abruptly on the side of the bed and put his hands to his face. “Fuck,” he muttered into his palms. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He began to cry.

Shocked, Iris fell to her knees in front of him. She laid her hands on his thighs. “Nolan? Honey?” He didn’t respond, so she rose and sat next to him on the bed and tried to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders. “Nolan. What is it?”

With another heavy sigh and a sound like some kind of laugh, he shook himself and pulled both hands through his hair. He looked up and smiled at her, and she was not at all convinced of its truth.

“Sorry. I’m okay.”

“You are
not okay
, Nolan. Stop saying that.”

“I am. There’s just shit stirred up in my head today. But I’m okay.” The shape of his mouth changed into something she could trust a bit more, and he hooked his hand over the back of her neck. “You make me okay. I need you.”

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good. Don’t.”

“I won’t.”

He bent to her and covered her mouth with his, and Iris knew exactly what she wanted, and what Nolan needed, of this night. When he leaned harder, meaning to push her back to lie on the bed, she put her hands on his chest and instead leveraged him to lie back. He let her, easing himself around so that he could stretch out fully, his head on the pillows.

Pulling off her boots but not undressing more than that, Iris straddled his hips and kissed him lightly, combing her fingers through his dark hair. It was a little bit wavy, and he wore it just long enough that it was always a little bit messy. He had a habit, too, of raking his hands through it.

“I’m here,” she murmured against his lips. As her hands moved to his shirt and worked at his buttons, she slid her lips from his mouth, over his bearded cheek, along his jaw, and down his throat. She followed the trail her hands made as they opened his buttons. He wasn’t wearing a thermal or t-shirt under his flannel—the past few days had been spring-like—so his skin was bared to her touch as his shirt fell away.

“I love your body. It’s so strong and beautiful.” She moved to suck at his nipple, just beneath the star, and as it grew tight against her tongue, he groaned and clutched his hands into her hair.

“Iris…” he moaned and tried to sit up.

She pushed him flat again. “Shh. Just be calm and feel me. I’m here.”

He relaxed, his hands yet tangled in her hair, and she continued her oral exploration of his body.

They’d been together for a couple of weeks now, and they’d been intimate as often as possible. But they were still in the phase of discovery, and every time was a new thing. Every time Iris got the chance to explore his body, she marveled, and she sought ways to make him feel so good that even he seemed surprised.

Now, she used her tongue to limn the lines of each of his muscles: the sweep of each pec, the furrow down the center of his belly, the rolling ridges of his abs. Drawing wet lines back and forth over his skin, she could feel the pattern of goose bumps on her tongue, and the tremor of the very muscles she traced.

As she got to his happy trail, she opened his belt and unbuttoned his jeans, nipping a line of tiny bites along the edge of his waistband. Then she reached in and took hold of his hard, hot, lovely cock.

“Iris, Jesus. Get up here.” Nolan pulled sharply on her hair. “I need you.”

“I’m here,” she said, smiling up the length of his body at him. Then, with her eyes fixed on his, she sucked his tip into her mouth. He grunted, lifting his head off the pillows and then letting it fall back.

It was only the second time she’d really given him head, not counting their first time, when he’d pulled her off her knees before she could get started. He seemed to have a little hang-up about it, and she was fairly certain she understood. Club girls gave head. She’d been around enough to know, and to see, that they gave head a lot—considerably more than they fucked, she thought. He seemed to want to make a clear distinction between her and them, and she didn’t mind that one bit.

But she enjoyed giving head, and she did mind the thought of not being able to. So she’d decided to press the point occasionally. Tonight, she wanted to pull all of his attention from whatever had him so upset, and she wanted to control their pace.

So she worked his tip, flicking her tongue all around the ridge of his glans, licking over the whole surface, tasting his need. His hips bucked when she let her teeth brush lightly over the wedge of skin on the underside of his tip, and his hands jerked. She felt her scalp give up its hold on some of her hair.

She dipped her head and sucked his balls, and he let loose of her hair with a loud, strained grunt and instead grabbed handfuls of the comforter. God, she loved this feeling, knowing that what she was doing had his full attention, the she was the focus of everything he wanted in that moment.

Wanting more access, she tugged on his jeans, and he raised his hips and helped her get them down and then off. Now he lay beneath her in nothing but his open shirt, and Iris couldn’t help but skim her hands over his legs, savoring the light scrape and tickle of his hair over her palms. She watched his cock bob and his muscles tighten as she turned her nails down and scratched gentle swirls up the inside of his thighs. She traced the scars over the leg that had been so badly hurt when he was a kid.

“Please,” she heard him whisper, and she took pity and returned to her first task. Wrapping her hands around his shaft, she sucked him into her mouth as deeply as she could. Using a rhythm that he had responded to the first time, she gripped him snugly in her hands, twisting them in opposite directions, while she sucked him down and released him again and again, until his hips rocked back and forth under her and his breath was loud and erratic.

When she could tell that he was close—when he got suddenly even harder and swelled in her grip, just at the point she thought he was ready to come—she stopped her hands and, backing her mouth from him, blew gently over him.

His head flew up from the pillow and he stared desperately down at her. “Fuck, Iris! Don’t stop!” he pleaded. “Jesus Christ, don’t stop!”

Pleased with herself, she sent him a little smile and finished him off. When he came, she stayed on him, swallowing, and he arched so far off the bed he almost achieved a backbend before he flopped back to the mattress.

She licked the last from his tip, making him twitch and shiver, and then she eased her body—realizing just then that she was still full dressed—up his until she could kiss him.

He grabbed her head and pushed her away, just a little. “I need to feel you. Your skin.”

Rising up on her knees, Iris unbuttoned her own shirt and tossed it away. Then her bra went after it. Before she could work out how to get out of her jeans in a sexy way, Nolan sat up, rid himself of his shirt, and clamped her in the vise of his arms. He rolled, and she was on her back, under him. He went for her jeans right away, yanking the button loose, tearing down the zipper, and she let him. She had kept him calm and done for him what she’d wanted. Now she would let him have the frenzy that he needed.

Once he had her naked, though, that frenzy passed. He lay on her and, for a few moments, he simply held her, interlacing their legs, closing her in his arms, covering her body with as much of his as possible. His labored breath moved his chest against hers, and she could feel him settling down.

She smoothed her hands over the planes of his back. “Nolan?”

Against her neck, he mumbled, “I love you.”

She believed him, and she loved him, wholeheartedly, and she thought her father was wrong. She wasn’t loving him to save him. If she was saving him, it was so that she could love him. “I love you, too.”

He was hard again; the steely rod of his cock pressed into her thigh. She brushed a hand down the length of his back, over his ass, and around his hip, finally pushing it between them so that she could hold him again. He grunted as her hand closed around him, and she moved her hips until he was settled between her legs. She had to scoot downward a little to get the right connection, but when she did, and brushed him back and forth over her clit, they both groaned.