Roll Me Away: A Smokey's Roadhouse Novel (16 page)

E
ven Rooster conceded
that his boy had gone too far this time. We’d told him no more drug dealing. What happened with Zach was not only a tragedy for him, but could result in some serious prison time. All Jake cared about was his bike and the loss of income from the meth being impounded as evidence. However, he was Rooster’s son, and the star of our other business. We had no choice but to rally around him and make sure he wasn’t touched by the mess.

Carl had told me the cops found cocaine, but I knew better. Jake had cooked meth before, and only stopped when we leaned on him. I didn’t know why he and the cops were lying to Carl. On the other hand, it did mean he had some way of persuading them to do what he wanted.

Jake and his crew had already made it clear that Zach was to take the rap. I wasn’t so sure the fix was in. As much as I hated dealing with them, I told Jake I had to talk with his connection, who he’d implied was cartel. Only after his dad and I shook him down about cooking meth in the compound around the women and kids did he admit the connection was just a courier, and the deal had been arranged by the buyer.

After strutting around like his old man’s namesake for a while, he arranged a meeting. The fucker’s name was Juan Smith, or so he claimed. It was possible. He was at least part Latino, from his looks. He threw a Spanish word into every sentence or three. But his accent was pure California. We met him in Rawlins, and I lied through my teeth when Jake introduced me.

“Good to meet you, Juan.”

“What can I do for you,
esse
? Jake here says you have a problem in Rawlins?”

“Jake here has the problem, and I understand it may impact your business as well. I’m here to learn if we can cooperate in some way to make the problem go away.” I looked him in the eye, standing up for my status in the conversation. I didn’t like this guy even before I met him. His cocky attitude didn’t change that.

“You want us to make this asshole that wrecked Jake’s ride get dead?”

“Fuck, no! How’s that going to solve anything? I want to know if you have anyone on the payroll in the police department. Someone who can maybe make the evidence disappear and find its way back into Jake’s hands.”

“Why would I want the evidence in Jake’s hands? If I can make it disappear, why not into my hands? Cut out the middle man, much simpler.”

I held my hand across Jake’s chest as he started forward. “Settle down, son. I’m negotiating this. Stay out of it or get lost.” Jake stopped straining against my hand, but I could feel the tension coming off him.

“I think you’d be burning a bridge between a valued connection and yourself. But whatever. I just want the evidence gone.” Beside me, Jake growled low in his throat.

Smith faked a laugh. “Oh, I was just joking. But it would be easier to get it into the hands of an employee of mine. I will pay Jake, can we say, half of his fee? Because he failed to deliver. It will cost me to retrieve our order.”

I looked at Jake. He wouldn’t like it, but Smith’s logic was sound. And like he said, it was a concession. There was nothing to stop him from taking the ‘shipment’ and not paying at all.

“Seventy-five percent.”

“Sixty.”

“Done.” Jake punched the wall beside us, but said nothing. He’d be even less happy when I told him he’d be splitting that with the club. I’d had to clean up his mess, so it was only fair. But I had one more play.

“Half now.”

“What? Are you
loco
? We don’t pay until we have secured the package.”

“Half now, or I let Jake show you what he thinks of the deal.”

Jake picked up on it and somehow swelled to be even more intimidating than he already was. I never would have risked it if Smith had been an actual member of the cartel, but Jake had let it slip he was just a go-between. I’d have some words with Jake about his stupid choices when this was all done, but for now I had to maintain the upper hand.

“Okay, fuck it.” He led us to his car, a late-model Cadillac with lowered suspension. More words for Jake and the company he kept leaped into my mind. I didn’t want to be seen anywhere near that cop magnet. I hung back while Jake went to the trunk with Smith, covering him in case it was a trap.

To tell the truth, I wouldn’t risk my ass for him if it did go south, but he didn’t need to know that. I was holding my breath, though. This was exactly the kind of bullshit the club didn’t want to get into. We liked our nice, peaceful life.

In a minute, Jake was back with a small gym bag. “Big bills,” he explained. We waited for Smith to leave, and a few minutes more, and then made our way back to the van.

“Why did the cops tell Carl it was cocaine in the saddlebags?”

“I asked Juan to fix it so Zach would go down for it without a squawk. They were supposed to tell him that if he cooperated, they’d lose enough of it so he’d get a lighter sentence.”

“You think he can get their help with the change of plans?” I asked Jake.

“I know he can.”

“Well, he better. Because if Zach has to pay anymore for your fuckup, I will personally see to it you end up in the hospital in worse shape he’s in. You got me?”

Jake tried to stare me down. “You can try it, old man. I can take you, and you know it.”

“Son, you don’t know a damn thing about jungle warfare. You better pray you don’t find out what I know.”

W
hile my therapists
put me through torture like no one would believe, I sometimes occupied my mind with wondering why I hadn’t heard from a lawyer. The cops hadn’t been around again, either, so it wasn’t a big deal, except that it would have eased my mind to know someone had my back.

Every day, I felt a little stronger. And each time I showed I was, they increased the work, until I felt like I couldn’t take any more. The worst of the torturers was a girl who couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two in stilettos. They sent her to support me while I learned to use my legs again. Since even with the weight loss I’d suffered with the atrophy of my leg muscles I had to weigh twice what she did, I refused to put my full weight on her. I was afraid I’d break her. I figured they’d done that on purpose, to make me work harder.

I had full range of motion in my arms again, and they were regaining their former strength just from hauling myself into my wheelchair and back out to the bed. The doctor in charge of my program visited at the end of the second week and said he’d never seen such rapid progress. I stared him down, certain he was the one responsible for the pixie therapist.

He was still there, going through my chart with me, when Cricket showed up one afternoon. One look at her told me she had news, but her eyes went straight to the doctor and she became all business.

“What’s the prognosis, Doc?” she asked. “Is he going to be able to carry me over the threshold?”

I pressed my lips together to keep from spoiling the joke as he looked at her in surprise.

“I, ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were engaged, Mr. Hayes. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” I said, sending her a ‘you’re in trouble’ look. “So what’s the answer?”

We kept it up, harassing the poor man into giving us a prognosis, though he clearly didn’t want to say something he’d regret later. Finally, he conceded that if our wedding date wasn’t in the near future, there was a possibility I’d be able to do just that.

With that answer, our little joke backfired on us. Neither Cricket nor I had really expected that to be reality, even if we were engaged. When he said it, she gasped.

Later, as we lay in my narrow bed, spooning, she apologized. “I didn’t mean…”

“Cricket, just because I haven’t asked you yet, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to marry you someday. I just need to know I really can be a husband to you.”

“Zach…”

“Shh. Leave it right there. As long as you can wait for me, I promise I’ll fucking get there.”

She took the hand that lay curled around her shoulder and raised it to her lips. “I know you will.”

We left it at that, but it was one more step in the right direction. She hadn’t said she couldn’t wait.

“Hey! You had news when you came in. What was it?”

“Oh, my God. I can’t believe I forgot. You’ll never guess!”

“Okay, I’ll never guess. I give up. What?”

“There was a story on the news today. The evidence room at the police station was broken into. Every bit of drug evidence is gone. They had to turn a bunch of people loose today because they can’t prove their cases against them.”

“Does that mean…?”

“Yeah. The evidence against you is gone, too.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think Carl had something to do with it. We talked about it last week, and he was going to reach out to that Sarge guy.”

“Wow, that’s good news!”

“Yes, it is. And don’t think I haven’t noticed your hand on my boob, Zach.”

“Oh? You did?”

“Not only that, but I think there’s other evidence of good news poking me in the rear.”

“Hmmm, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, turning over to face me and palming the evidence that my body was returning to normal.

“Do you think?” she whispered.

“If you’ll lock the door. And if you have a condom handy,” I answered.

As it turned out, she didn’t have a condom. She locked the door anyway, and stood where I had a million-dollar view as she stripped for me and I lost my pajama bottoms, my only clothing. As my eyes feasted on parts of her I’d only glimpsed before, when she wasn’t mine to see, I experienced feelings I’d never had before with any woman. I wanted her satisfied, whether I got off or not. “Bring me those,” I said, reaching for her.

She moved toward the bed and dangled the ripe fruit in my face as she crawled up on the bed. I grasped with both hands, pulling one nipple to my lips and groaning as I circled it with my tongue. Her gasp told me all I needed to know about how to please her.

For long moments, she hovered over me, bracing her arms on either side of my head, while kneeling beside me. When she was almost humming with desire and her body undulated against mine, I reached one hand for her center. Her hips pulled toward my hand as I dipped one finger into her depths, then added another. I found her clit with my thumb and circled it, causing her to throw her head back in ecstasy.

“Lie down.”

Obediently, she lay at my side, and I turned toward her, giving my hand a better angle and allowing her to experience her pleasure without the need to worry about hurting me. I kissed her deeply while pumping my fingers in and out, wishing all the time it was my dick and knowing we couldn’t afford to risk her getting pregnant right now.

When she lay down, her hand immediately found me, and she stroked as well, matching her strokes to mine within her. Her thumb spread the pre-cum down, around the rim of the corona, and farther, while her fingertips alternately caressed my balls and stole around my shaft to squeeze with her whole hand while milking me up and down. It was all I could do to hold back, since it had been months since I last had sex, and never with her.

Even though I now realized I’d get my pleasure too, I wanted her to come first. Scooping her juices up and covering her clit with them, I increased the speed and pressure of my thumb. “Baby, I want to taste you. Can you..?”

“Mmm, hmm,” she said. “But you don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

With a smile, she sat up and moved to kneel over my face, bringing her sweet clit to my lips, and her lips to my cock. Each time I dipped my tongue into her, she gave a muffled cry and sucked harder. When I sank my thumb into her while sucking on the little bud, she raked her fingernails lightly under my balls.

My climax began to build when I felt her body tense and start to shake, but she beat me to the top, and I couldn’t hold her above me anymore when she slumped to the side and lay quivering, still stroking me.

After a moment, she got on her knees again and changed positions, crouching between my legs and taking me in her mouth again. I watched until my eyes squeezed shut with the force of my climax, the joy on her face as she finished me off with her mouth testifying to her feelings. Moments later, we lay in each other’s arms, completely spent.

“Zach! That was…”

“Miraculous?” I supplied, when she paused to come up with a word.

“Yes! Has it only been a month since we thought you were completely paralyzed? It
is
a miracle!”

“Well, I had some inspiration. Trust me, Pixie the Terrible doesn’t inspire that response.”

She laughed. “Is that what you’re calling her now? She doesn’t get up on the bed and wiggle her butt in your crotch, does she?”

“No. I mean, I’d rather she do that than the… oof. Hey, watch it. I’m injured, you know.”

She pulled her sharp little elbow out of my solar plexus. “That’s nothing to what’s going to happen to her if I ever catch her doing any such thing. And you’d have to start learning to use your extremities all over again.”

“Duly noted,” I said. “Hey. In all seriousness. I know that wasn’t all that and a bag of chips for you, but I’ll get stronger.”

“You remember when you told me you had eleven inches?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, embarrassed at my exaggeration. I knew I was at least ten and a half, but…

“I think you underestimated,” she whispered.

After that, I had even more incentive to work hard. I wanted to be at home, where we wouldn’t have to worry about someone walking in on us. And I wanted to be strong enough to take her in ways I knew would make her as happy as she made me. I pushed myself harder and harder, until even PT, as I’d shortened her nickname to, was satisfied with both my effort and my progress.

Now that I knew full recovery didn’t come with the consequence of having to stand trial for the drug charges, it seemed I was able to do more and more each day. Or maybe that was just the outcome of the healing. Another MRI showed the previous results to have been a little misleading. There’d been a serious contusion, but not even a partial severing of the bundle of nerves I now knew more about than I’d ever wanted to.

Freed from both worries, all I could think about was Cricket’s next visit and the moment when I could actually get down on one knee and propose.