Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (34 page)

Maybe he could try doing it one question at a time.  One carefully crafted query, offered in either an innocent or bored voice, as if he didn’t give a good goddamn about her answer, might be just the way to get her to fucking open up.

Bishop glanced at the clock on the cable box and saw it was eleven-thirty.  Perfect.  J.R. would be in bed and asleep.  Dory would be just getting ready to turn out her light after spending time with her e-reader.

Since it had been almost two weeks since his last house call, it was more than time for another.

After round one of taking her from behind, her chest to the mattress as she offered her succulent ass up to receive his hard, driving thrusts until they’d both hit it, Bishop began his campaign.  She was still beside him as he slid off and out of her warm depths, but he didn’t stray far.  With his chest pressed into her side, a head in a casually canted hand, he started.  “Heard you’re getting involved in the Honey’s Christmas Charity Drive.”

She was still on her belly, although stretched out flat on the mattress as he laid beside her, trailing his fingers over the skin of her back, her butt.  “Yeah.  The shop is offering a 20% discount on each service if the client donates a toy.”  Dory paused and Bishop didn’t race to fill the silence but just kept caressing her lightly with only the tips of his fingers.  “As soon as Ryley suggested it, I thought it would be a good way to market the shop while getting involved with the community.”

He waited, not speaking.

“I was kind of surprised to hear about Honey Haven and how they help out teens in the area.”  The muscles in her back tightened as she twisted her head towards him.  “I don’t remember any of that when I was a Honey.”

“You’re talking about the charity shit?”

“Yeah.  I mean, I remember the club taking care of the senior bikers and the families of the Hellions that were in prison but doing nothing for civilians.”  Bishop did a quick glance at her face and saw she was deep in thought.  “I can’t tell you the amount of times I caught hell just for being nice to someone who wasn’t with the club.  I don’t remember if it was Dee or one of the others but they made it clear that civilians were the enemy, that I needed to ‘get with the program’ and ‘pull my head out of my ass’.”  She sighed and turned her body towards him as she re-adjusted the sheet over her breasts.  Her lips held a rueful grin.  “Truth of the matter was, in everyone’s eyes, up to and including my own, I didn’t make a very good biker’s old lady.”

Bishop chuckled and rolled over onto his back.  Now they were getting to it! 

“I wouldn’t have been with you if you had, mama.  Christ, those old bitches were fucking harsh and scary as shit!”  He twisted his head so he could look at her.  “I once told Grams that I’d never fucking pledge if that was the kind of woman I’d end up with.”

“That’s what I didn’t understand,” Dory mumbled, shifting closer, close enough so she could rest her head on his bicep.  Without thinking about it, he lifted his arm and wrapped it around her, feeling her head move to the side of his chest.  “Your grandma was so sweet, so caring but
she’d
been a Honey.  Not a bitch in the least.  I guess I thought I could join the Honeys and just be…well, me.”  He heard her sigh and there was something about it that made him listen carefully to her next words.  “But I couldn’t.  I wasn’t allowed to just be myself, not without a fight.”  Her voice wound down until it was just a murmur.  “It got to where I couldn’t fight anymore.”

What Dory admitted was fucking
huge
, but Bishop somehow suspected she’d confessed it before, only he’d been too young, too fucking caught up in his own troubles to pay attention to it at the time.  Too unwilling and without any real power in order to take on the old fuckers who’d then ruled every goddamn area of his life.  And he realized, with more than a healthy dose of guilt, his motherfucking lack of action had left his wife swinging in the wind, vulnerable to the Honeys who’d had it out for her. 

With a shock, he got an immediate inkling of what she must’ve felt.  Of how alone she’d been without even her young husband to take her side or even goddamn
listen
to her when she needed to vent. 

Christ!

And that it his way of handling their problems for fucking
years
?

Yeah, he would’ve packed his shit and hightailed it out too.  Real and true, he would’ve done the same fucking thing.  Especially if he’d thought there was no hope that any of it would change.  That how it was, was how it would always fucking be.

Fuck!

“Are you okay, honey?” She asked, tilting her chin up to catch his eyes.

He swallowed, knowing his next words were gonna be a lie.  “Yeah, why?”

“Your heart is racing like you’ve just run a mile.” 

He pulled at her until her body was fully on top of him.  “Just trying to plan round two, babe.  How about you drive this time?”

*.*.*.*.*

As soon as he was back in his own place, having the presence of mind to leave before he was asked to, Bishop finally gave vent to his anger, to the goddamn fury that he’d shoved aside in order to enjoy the few infrequent moments of connection he had with his girl in their current time.

A woman he’d let down in too many ways to count.

Who he’d basically shoved away long, long before she climbed into her little Toyota and had driven out of his life.

He was furious at himself, absolutely raging at his complicity in leaving Dory to her own devices, expecting her to conform to Hellion ways just as he had been expected to.  Because, although he’d grown up in the club, his gramps had been the barrier.  Had been his protector against all the rude, crude and fucked up shit that the Hellions had tried to put into play as they messed with a young boy’s head.

The door had taken the first of it as he’d kicked it shut, but his boots only left a small dent in the thick wood.  Not enough to even signify.  So the new, metal kitchen trash can had been next, much more satisfying as it had clanged into the new tile, a deep depression in its side that was the length of his heavy boot.  But it still wasn’t enough, not nearly fucking enough to fill the hole his guilt had drilled into the depths of him as he’d recognized his role in what his wife had gone through so long ago.

Nor was his punch to the hallway wall, the one he’d slammed his fist into so hard it made a hole in the drywall and had split his knuckle.  Providing a pain he welcomed, a sting that he received willingly.  Although the blood that was dripping off his fist and onto the carpet went further in calming him than any of his previous actions had.

He’d turned towards the bathroom before he realized he needed to go back into the kitchen in order to take care of his new wound.  And as he put his fist under the running water, he considered his next move.

More than anything else, he wanted to call Dee and didn’t rightly give a rat’s ass that it was after two in the morning!  To give him the full 4-1-1 on what she and the other bitches had put his woman through.  And if she wasn’t willing to ‘fess up, he’d fucking
make
her even if he had to haul his ass all the way to Spokane to do it!

Bishop hung his head, keeping his hand under the icy water knowing in his heart of heart’s that wasn’t the way to play it.  That kicking Dee’s ass, even if only verbally, wouldn’t take away his guilt, couldn’t make up for his own behavior. 

Because none of it would cause a rewind so he could just fucking go back and change the past.  One that would find him and Dory still married, raising J.R. together, all of them in one house.  Living, loving and laughing together.

Resting his elbows on the edge of the sink, he dropped his face into his forearms.  What was it his granddad used to say? 
Wish in one hand and shit in the other, Stan.  Figure out which one fills up faster.
 

Yeah, that was just about the size of it.  A lesson to teach him that wishing didn’t do shit, didn’t change one goddamn thing. 
The measure of a man isn’t in how he wishes, but in what he fuckin’
does
, little man.

So maybe it was time for the big, bad biker to step up to the plate, to man up and claim what he wanted.  What he’d always wanted.

Perhaps it was fucking time to stop dicking around and start wooing his ex-wife.

*.*.*.*.*

I turned and punched the pillow before laying down and draped the comforter back over me, trying to find a more comfortable position in the bed.  One that seemed entirely too large without Stan in it.

But I couldn’t seem to find that sweet-spot, the one that would provide enough comfort and allow me to fall asleep.

Maybe it was because I could still smell him on the bedding, on the pillow and even on my skin.  Or perhaps it was how he’d left without me having to demand it.  Kissing me softly and oh-so thoroughly before he’d dragged on his jeans and thermal, snagging his jacket on his way out of my room. 

“Later, babe,” he’d whispered with a quirked grin as he’d quietly left the house, had left me alone in the vastness of my bed.

That night, of all the nights we’d been together, had felt different somehow.  Oh, there was still pleasure just as there always was when we got naked and rambunctious.  But the air had held a note of poignancy as we came together, a certain hint of emotion that I couldn’t quite identify as we’d worked our naked mojo.

Stan had been quieter.  Not trying in any way to pressure me into talking or cuddling.  Not forcing me to see the bond we still shared.  And because he hadn’t, I’d found myself admitting to shit that was probably best left in the past.  But it had been playing on my mind, especially after talking with Dallas, Ryley and Carly as I’d worked their hair.  On how much different the new order of women were compared to the Honeys I’d spent time around before.

This new hive reminded me of the stories Stan’s grandma had told.  Of how the club, while a law unto themselves, had more than gotten along with the other people in Missoula, that they’d all been a part of the larger community.  And that the credo of ‘live free and die’ was the expectation of how every damn human on the planet should think.  No discriminating or judging because someone else held a different view from yours, that every person was allowed and even encouraged to find their own brand of happiness as long as no one else was hurt in the process.

But that had been far from my experience in my time in the Hive.  A completely different attitude had somehow infected the group and though I gave it a lot of time, had tried to find my way in all the hate that permeated the group, I’d finally just taken myself out of the game.

Had taken myself so far away in order to finally breathe free, discover what happiness meant to me.

To just live the way I wanted even though I’d lost Stan, the love of my life in the process.

But had gained another when J.R. was born.

Flopping back onto my other side while giving my pillow another vicious punch, I found myself mumbling.  “It’s just too damn bad I couldn’t have had them both at the same time!”  And as I tucked the comforter higher on my shoulder, I heard a teeny, tiny voice coming from a small, deep place inside my chest.  Asking a question I wasn’t sure I could answer, but that I found myself wanting to.

Why not, though?  Why can’t you have them both at the same time?

Chapter Twenty Seven

“So since Teri’s parents said no to her going to the party full-stop, I was thinking of asking Bella,” J.R. announced. 

Bishop and his son were working the various pieces of his Harley, stripping it down so he could show the kid all the internal doings of the engine and what a biker spent his time on in the dead of winter.  And his boy had been yammering the entire time, talking of his friends, his classes and of some big blow-out the boy was planning to attend in the upcoming weekend.  One that was, according to the calendar in Dory’s kitchen, Bishop’s.

“That the blonde or the one with the tits?”  Bishop tried to cast his mind over all the girls J.R. had confessed drove his nightly wet-dreams but honest to Christ, he couldn’t keep up with them all.

J.R.’s eyebrows waggled at his father’s question but his eyes remained on the gear he was using a wire brush on.  “Titties in abundance.”

Seriously?  Had Bishop himself been that shallow at that age?  A thought that had him grinning and turning his face away from his kid, reaching for a part that he was aware didn’t need any refurb.  Yeah, he probably had.  Thirteen had been hard since he’d been too old for kid shit and yet too young to be included in the adult stuff.  Which is probably why ‘Lady C’ had made her appearance in his life around that time.  As in hitting his coke pipe was his only way of balancing his teenaged emotions with real life.

“And since mom is going away for the weekend, I was hoping to bring whichever girl I could snag back to the house.”

Wait…what?

Dory was not going to be home?

“What do you mean?  Your mom is going away?”  Why did Bishop’s voice sound as tight and as dry as the emotions that were overtaking his insides?

“Yeah.  She’s been fluttering around, packing up one of her fancy dresses and her heels.  Lacy underwear and the skimpy nightgown she doesn’t know I know about.”  The top of J.R.’s head should’ve burst into flames at the look Bishop knew he was boring into the teenager.  And the shrug that lifted the wide but skinny shoulders didn’t help.  “So would it be okay if you like, stayed at your place Saturday night, away from our house?  Just in case, you know, I get lucky or something?”

But Bishop didn’t answer, couldn’t even fucking breathe as his mind churned and his heart dropped to somewhere around his knees.  Dory was actually gonna do what he’d told her to do!  What he’d motherfucking
demanded
she do when she’d challenged him about how they were gonna live separate lives while residing next door to one another.

Why? 

Or more to the point, which motherfucker had a dick that she’d found so fuck-worthy?