Shooter (Burnout) (40 page)

Chris’s fingers tightened on her flesh and he thrust forward, burying himself in one stroke. Hayley screamed. Chris didn’t give her time to adjust. He pulled back out and shoved into her again. It was all she could do to hold onto the headboard to steady herself as he began pounding her relentlessly. Hayley cried out loudly.

“Who’s fucking you, Hayley?” Chris demanded.

“Chris,” she barely managed to get out.

“Who’s fucking you?” he urged again, louder.

“Chris!” she screamed.

“Come on my cock, Hayley,” he ordered. “You’ve got at least two more in you. I know it. Come on my cock.” Hayley felt her stomach muscles clench and she clamped down on his shaft. “There’s my girl,” he growled but didn’t let up on his pace. After a few dozen more strokes, he let go of her hips and took both her nipples between his fingers. She gasped as he pinched them just a bit. “Fuck me, Hayley. Give me everything.”

Hayley gripped the headboard and shoved herself backward, taking him completely inside her. She yanked herself forward and felt the delicious friction of his dick sliding out of her. She impaled herself again and again. Chris squeezed her nipples and she felt her pussy clamp down in response. “Come with me, baby. We’re almost there,” he told her. “One more. Just for me. Right with me, baby. Right with me.”

Hayley panted and tried to catch her breath to speak. “It’s- oh God, it’s so close!”

“I know baby. I can feel that pussy tightening up. Tighten up on me, sweetheart. Let me feel it. I’m gonna come, Hayley. It’s right there. Give me all that sweet cream, honey, one last time.” Chris bit her shoulder and she screamed out her third orgasm of the night. Her clenching was met with his pumping throbs, prolonging her climax.

************************

Chris rubbed Hayley’s shoulders as she leaned back against him in the steamy hot water. “Maybe I need to re-think this bath thing,” he told her. “I think I might like this.”

She moaned incoherently and laid her head on his shoulder. “Really?” she finally asked.

He grinned. “Well yeah. It’s fun. See, you can drop the soap…” He demonstrated by letting the bar slip through his fingers and between their legs. “And then…you’ve gotta search for it.” He pushed his hand between her legs and she twisted and giggled and attempted to fight him off. It was cute the way she resisted but she was far too exhausted to really put up much of a fight. He had mercy on her and drew her back against him again. He sighed, contentedly. “Next time we have food in the bedroom, we’re definitely doing this after.”

“Who says there’ll be a next time?” she asked. Chris didn’t answer and she was forced to surrender. “Okay, yeah. There will totally be a next time.”

He nuzzled her ear. “There’s my girl.” Hayley yawned. “Don’t fall asleep on me,” he warned.

“You won’t let me drown,” she said drowsily.

He slid his arms around her and pulled her closer. “No. I’d never let anything happen to you.”

“Did you get everything you wanted for your birthday?” she asked, smiling.

Chris pretended to consider this. “Hmm. Well. Almost.”

She jerked in his arms. “Almost! What do you mean ‘almost’? I fail to see how I could have done a better job!”

He gripped her tightly and kissed the side of her head. “Almost, Slick. Finish up, I’m gonna change the sheets,” he told her and slid out of the tub.

“Almost,” he heard her grumble as he wrapped a towel around his waist and set off in search of clean sheets. He had the final corner of the topsheet tucked underneath the mattress when Hayley came in. She pulled one of his t-shirts over her head, but neglected to don a new pair of panties he noticed approvingly. She turned off the bedroom light as he slid in between the sheets. She climbed in after him and assumed her position at his side, head resting on his shoulder. Just as he was about to drift off she ran her fingers over his bare chest.

“Chris?” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

There was an ensuing silence that stretched out over them for several moments until Chris wasn’t sure she hadn’t fallen asleep. Then she finally filled the quiet. “I love you.”

Chris closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and curled his arm around Hayley, bringing her in closer. “There’s my girl,” he whispered back.

************************

Chris woke up, showered, and headed out to work, leaving Hayley sprawled in the bed. Sore, in a good way, from last night. She smiled at the empty cake plate on the nightstand. After he’d left, she sat up and stretched and scoured the room for some comfortable clothes. While grabbing a shirt from the closet, she caught sight of her duffel bag, folded in the corner. She pulled it out and took out the cell phone she’d had tucked inside it.

She still hadn’t told Chris about the phone. On the one hand, it felt so much like actual lying that it made her feel awful about keeping it from him. On the other hand, she was determined to keep him separated from that other life, where a looming threat would probably never really ever go away. She’d be damned if she’d lose Chris the same way she’d lost Jake.

She switched the phone on. It beeped immediately, indicating a text message.

Call me immediately. 9-1-1.

The message was 5 days ago.

Shit. Hayley’s fingers fumbled over the keys as she tried, failed, and redialed her parent’s number. She should have checked more often. Her mother finally answered on the third ring.

“Oh, God,” said the older woman. “Oh, thank God. Sarah, honey. It’s your father. It’s not good.”

Hayley Crystal Turner Sarah Marie Davis took no longer than three seconds to snatch her black duffel bag off the closet floor.

Chapter 31

As Hayley sat down on the bus, an impossibly loud rumbling started down the street. As if it already wasn’t loud enough to wake the dead, the noise as it approached grew nearly deafening. She craned her neck to look out the window and saw dozens of motorcycles coming down the street, taking up both lanes. She looked behind her and saw equal that number of bikers approaching from the opposite end of the block.

They surrounded the bus on three sides, to the growing alarm of most of the passengers. The bus driver looked white as a ghost, he hurriedly reached out and slammed the door shut. Barely half an inch of glass and metal seemed a laughable barricade under the onslaught of at least two dozen men on Harleys.

Hayley watched from the window as only one biker kicked down the stand for his chopper and swung one leg over the seat. He had brown hair down to his shoulders, a short scruffy beard which she had to admit didn’t look nearly as dirty as it did outright handsome. He had on worn blue jeans, a blue long sleeved henley, and over that, a leather jacket with the sleeves cut off. As he turned, she recognized the Buzzard on the back of the cut.

He stalked slowly around the front of the bus, rounded the front, and politely knocked on the glass. In any other circumstance, Hayley would have laughed at the civility of it coming from such an obvious outlaw.

The bus driver actually seemed to be debating with himself about whether or not to open the door. Hayley half considered telling him that it would be much better for him to cooperate, then half hoped he wouldn’t, just on principle. Eventually, the door slid open and the sound of steel toed boots climbing the stairs filled the silence. The biker’s hulking frame filled the aisle as he stood at the front. His eyes swept over the passengers, each one of them cowering when his gaze fell upon them. He finally located Hayley.

She would not have been surprised if he produced a club, grabbed her by her hair, and dragged her out. But he merely crooked one finger in her direction. Hayley glowered as the other passengers, the traitorous bastards, sighed in relief. Everyone, it seemed, was fine with offering a lamb for slaughter to protect themselves. It didn’t take long to weigh her options, because they were exactly zero. She stood up, grabbed her bag with one hand and clutched her book to her chest as if it might offer her some protection, and made her way to the front of the bus.

The bus driver, another traitorous bastard, slammed the door shut behind her the second her feet hit the sidewalk, cutting off any means of retreat. The biker, whose lapel patch said “President”, simply headed back to his bike, fully expecting her to follow him. Which she did.

Finally turning to her, the biker lifted his hand, placing a finger underneath her chin to force her gaze to his. She was surprised to see bright blue eyes appraising her. Also surprisingly, his expression was far from menacing or even unkind. “We have eyes, little mouse,” he told her. “Everywhere. And you don’t belong to yourself anymore. Like it or not, you are owned. You leave when your old man is done with you and not before.” Then he took her book from her hands and tucked it inside his cut. He straddled his bike and gave her a pointed look. She approached slowly, and slid onto the back behind him.

************************

Chris heard them before he saw them, which was almost always the case. He dropped his rag on the workbench as Hawk and Tex set down their tools as well. All three headed toward the garage bay doors and stepped out into the midmorning sun.

“What the hell?” Hawk muttered as easily a group of riders glided down the street toward them.

“Should we break out the ordinance, L.T.?” Tex asked, half jokingly, but half not.

Chris eyed the procession. “Wouldn’t do any good, Sundance. But somehow I doubt they’re making a play in the middle of the day. Besides, I don’t have anything they want.”

Hawk narrowed his eyes. “Looks like they got
something
you want, Shooter.”

Tex and Chris looked more closely and finally saw what Hawk saw. “Motherfucker,” Chris growled and stalked out into the gravel parking lot. Hawk and Tex flanked him on both sides.

Only two bikes rumbled into the lot while the others hung back, lining the side of the street. Chris watched in seething anger as Slick got off the back of Jack Prior’s Dyna Super Glide. He nearly shattered his own molars as Jack took Slick’s arm at the elbow and marched her toward him. Slick was appropriately contrite, keeping her eyes on the crushed rock at her feet, rather than look at him.

Jack reached into his cut and brought out a paperback book, handing it over. The book itself was of little interest, Chris noted, but pulled out the bus ticket stub tucked between its pages and examined it.

“Caught your house mouse trying to scurry away,” Prior announced. “Maybe she needs a stronger cage.”

Chris glared at Slick, who still did not look up. “Thinking about it.”

“Needs to stay where she’s put. I told her the way it is, but she needs to hear it from you.”

“I’ll make that clear,” Chris ground out between clenched teeth.

“See that you do. I got better things to do than round up wayward old ladies.” Jack turned and stalked back to his bike.

Grudgingly, Chris bit out, “Thanks, Jack. I owe you.” The smile that reached Jack Prior’s glittering eyes said he knew Chris owed him. Big. And there was no doubt that Prior would come to collect. Soon.

When Jack and his minions drove away, Slick finally risked a glance at him. “Chris,” she entreated softly.

“Save it,” he snarled. “Get your ass in the office.”

“I-”

“Get. In. That. Fucking. Office.”

Hayley’s breath caught and she skirted around the three men, practically running for the door.

When the three men entered the garage after her, Hawk took a seat on a stool, and Chris grabbed the edge of a workbench and flipped the whole thing, scattering tools and parts all over the concrete. The bench itself rolled end over end until it crashed into the wall.