Kinkaid (Bad Boys of Retribution MC Book 2) (12 page)

I considered it a favor to him. I’d added a nice shiner to go with his tough
boi
attitude. Call it stage makeup.

Even that little incident didn’t ruin my mood. As soon as my shift was over, I was on the way to Sadie’s.

****

I cleaned myself up at The GQ then made for the Retribution clubhouse later that night, closer to morning, to make sure all was spick-and-span. Thank fuck everyone was either passed out on the couches, across the tables, or even on top of the bar. I must’ve missed one hell of a party. But I had the bruised knuckles to show for my own little bust up keeping Cat’s name clean, as well as a wallet full of cash I’d put in the bank tomorrow.

By the time I throttled down outside Sadie’s apartment it was three. Since I’d been spending more time with my girl, Miss Solange had taken on longer hours. I’d felt guilty at first, but Grampa told me to stuff the guilt shit down my throat.

“You been nursing me and mother-henning me half out of my mind, son.” He cracked a smile over gummy teeth. “’Bout damn time you gave me a few minutes away from all that pecking and got somethin’ goin’ on with your pecker instead.”

I let myself into Sadie’s apartment, quiet as a mouse. I’d had a spare key since she’d moved in, and she was expecting me. I didn’t think she’d still be awake but that didn’t matter. All I wanted to do was get out of my clothes and fall asleep with her in my arms.

If she happened to wake up—say, if I brushed my cold toes against her warm ones—I wouldn’t be too upset. Especially if it led to a round of sleepy sex.

The thought of being inside her without anything between us sucked the oxygen from my lungs and propelled all the blood in my body to my cock. She felt so damn good to me. Better than being on my Harley. Better than the open road. Better than that high I got from dancing.

We’d always connected as friends. Now our bond forged deeper, burned brighter.

I prodded off my boots by the door and shook off my leather jacket. I stripped off and placed everything carefully on a chair. I didn’t want her to get up in the dark and trip on my shit. I didn’t want to leave a mess all over her place.

Lifting the blankets as little as possible, I crawled in and curled up beside her. Her arms were wrapped around the pillow I used. I gently replaced its softness with my shoulder, shifting her into my embrace.

She was naked and long and tawny, and her hair tickled my arms. I kissed her on the forehead.

“
Mmm
. Kaid,” she drowsily mumbled.

That was good. I could be reasonably assured she wasn’t inviting any other men to her bed.

She cuddled closer, smushing against me. I reached down and filled my palms with her more-than-a-handful ass.

She kissed my neck. Then she sniffed at me.

Flinging off the covers, she sat up and sniffed at me again. “Where the hell have you been?”

I’d taken a shower as usual but there must’ve been some lingering scent of strip club/dance club/and my own fight club on my flesh.

Fuck.

The room was dim but not dark enough I could ever miss the set of Sadie’s stiff shoulders or the way her eyes sparked like hard blue diamonds.

“Working?”

“Working where?” The blue diamonds compacted into deadly deep water ice.

“Just finished a shift at The Gentleman’s Quarters.” I shrugged.

“You WHAT?” she shrieked.

I STARED AT SADIE in shock. This was not the happy homecoming I’d expected. “I always work Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. What’s the problem here?”

If I was shocked by her reaction, Sadie vibrated with an emotion I couldn’t name. Incredulity? Complete and uncontrollable rage?

After a moment when her mouth opened but nothing came out, she screeched at me. “You’re still working there?” She scrambled off the bed. Breasts heaving. Hair tousled. Finger pointing in accusation. “You’re still fucking stripping?”

Ahh.
Well, that made it clear enough. She was pissed right to high heaven.

I stood slowly, suddenly wary of her. “Well yeah. I thought you knew.”

“How could you?” She snatched on a big billowing CofC T-shirt and yanked it down to her thighs. “How could you after you . . . and me . . . and we . . . ” she spluttered to a stop.

My lips popped open. Before I could get a word in edgewise, she barged straight ahead. “Do you know how I felt that night I saw you there?” She thumped her hand to her chest. “What it was like watching you on stage, flirting, flinging off your clothes?”

I knew better than to try to answer now. I learned my lessons fast.

“I was angry! I was jealous! All those women getting to see what I so desperately wanted, all because they paid for you to take off your clothes!”

My nostrils flared wide. My eyes narrowed to slits. I leaned forward from the waist dressed in absolutely fucking nothing and pushed my face into hers. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed about, Sadie. It’s my job. I’ve got fucking bills to pay in case that’s escaped your attention!”

She blanched and tried to back up with my angry breath blowing in her face.

I wrapped a hard arm around her waist and tugged her against me. My voice lost some of its sharp edge. “I didn’t think it bothered you like that.”

Reaching up, she yanked my face down to hers. “Let me put it this way, if I was stripping down to a tiny see-through bra and a thong in front of a bunch of drooling guys, how would you react?”

“IT’S NOT LIKE THAT!”

“It is to me!”

I stalked away from her and back, rubbing my hands over my head, muttering through my teeth. The thought of anyone seeing her the way I did, or of her giving them a show, sent a streak of white hot rage through my body.

I grabbed her wrist, yanking her to me. “For the record, I’d kill anyone who so much as stared at you two seconds too long, clothes on or not.”

“Double standard. Male chauvinistic
pig
.” Ripping her hand free, she crossed the room.

“Maybe that’s true. I don’t give a shit. I’m not interested in those women at all. I don’t feel one iota for any of them what I feel for you.”

Her disbelieving snort rang in my ears and put an end to any more talking.

“Oh, want me to prove it to you?” The violence of my seething rage transferred to my cock.

It rose, thickened, curved upward. Hard, long, and thick I was ready to fuck the brains out of her in seconds.

Sadie sneered in my face, hissing. “Go ahead. Fuck me.” She tossed her hair back with the dare.

She didn’t run when I padded to her. I must’ve looked like an animal, intent, dangerous, on the edge of out of control.

I curled two fists in the neck of her T-shirt and shredded it right down the middle. Flicking the two halves off her shoulders, I palmed her tits roughly, mauling them with my fingers and my mouth. I moved to her neck, sucking hard enough to leave hickeys on both sides of that soft expanse of skin.

Mine.

Seizing her with one hand squeezing the flesh of her breast, the other under her ass, I vaulted her up against the wall.

No preliminaries. No words. Our eyes locked, unforgiving.

The head of my cock slipped against her. My dick didn’t give a shit what my intentions were. It wanted inside her body. It wanted
now
.

I chuckled—a raw harsh sound. Dripping from her cunt, she was ready, as aroused as she was angry.

I bent my knees, held her in place, punched up from my feet and rammed into her.

The sensation knocked the breath out of me. Hot gripping heat and slippery wet, her pussy rippled around me. Her moan was loud and husky. I tore out of her, kept her pinned against the wall and sheathed myself again with the same terrible force.

Fingernails scored my back as I plowed into her. Crouching then thrusting up so hard I must’ve hit the mouth of her cervix. I wanted deeper. I wanted it harder. I wanted faster and forever.

Fucking her up against the wall. Let the neighbors file a complaint about that.

She grabbed me, smashing me against her. Her lips crashed onto mine.

I growled with her sudden savage surrender.

Urgency. Volatile. A powder keg about to explode.

Deep jarring thrusts became less volcanic, more liquid fire. Sadie rose and fell in my arms, her fingers wrenched into my hair. The last deep jarring thrusts pushed her ass against the wall and knocked her head back as her breath hitched high.

It came fast. A wildfire racing through my skin, combusting the moment she wailed my name. Inside, her body clasped me tight as a fist but soft as a woman’s kiss.

I grunted her name, dragging it through my clenched teeth. Burying myself inside her and pouring into her.

I pressed her against the wall beneath my body. I was shaking. She trembled like a leaf. I heard nothing but our breaths slowing, slowing, slowing down.

Withdrawing from her, I made sure she wouldn’t fall over before finding the scrap of her T-shirt. I gently wiped between her legs while she watched me through lowered eyelids. Awareness crept back, stealing any sense of peace we might have found together in the mad rush of sex.

Sadie tried to sidle away but I caged her against the wall with an arm blocking her way. She refused to look at me.

“You think I wanna do
this
with anyone but you?” My other fist came down on the wall beside her. “I don’t. I don’t see any other woman but you. I don’t look at any other women. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you!”

“Really? Do you do home visits or parties? Private dances?” she hissed.

“It doesn’t matter if I do or not. Don’t you get it, Sadie?” I lowered my voice. “You and me, it’s not about my body or
your
body. It’s about
this
.” I took her hand and pressed it against my chest where my heart beat so loudly for her. “I’m giving you my fucking soul here.”

“And hundreds of other women are seeing you every time you work”—she sneered—“at The GQ.”

“They don’t see me like this. Only you do. Only you ever have. What I do there? That’s an act.” I dropped my knees and took her chin between my fingers. I brought her face around.

She looked at me with sad, solemn eyes. “How do I know this isn’t an act too?’

“Sadie, please . . .”

She shook her head. “I can’t.” Her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible.

I backed away from her and tried to swallow but my throat was full of bile or tears or—
fuck
—it felt like rusty nails embedded in there.

I stood there looking at Sadie, my fists curled up at my mouth. “That’s it? You can’t?”

“I won’t.” Her eyes were too bright, her voice a razor sharp slash.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “If you’re too fucking insecure to deal with it then I guess you really can’t, huh?” The muscle at the corner of my jaw ticked.

“I’m not even gonna dignify that with an answer, Kinkaid Ryder.” The iciness of her tone seeped into my veins. “You know damn well that’s not the problem.”

“No I don’t!” Frustration. Futility. The onslaught of cold fury and even colder fear swept over me.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about who sees me naked or not because it definitely won’t be you ever again.” She threw the bundle of my clothes at me. They hit me in the chest. “Get the fuck out. And leave the key.”

“If I go, I won’t be back.”

Sadie stood facing away from me, looking out the window. She was naked, just like the first night I’d made love to her when I’d woken up and asked her to come back to bed. She’d been warmth and love and beauty.

Now she was cold and pain . . . and still, always beautiful.

She didn’t answer me in words. All she gave was one short nod to confirm she’d heard my ultimatum. And she wasn’t going to change her mind.

Something settled in my stomach then. It couldn’t have been my heart. That was already crushed underfoot. Maybe it was all those foolish hopes and dreams I’d allowed myself to think were possible.

With my clothes on, my feet pushed into my boots, my leather zipped tight, I left the spare key spinning in the center of the table. Then I walked out the door, severing not just our relationship but our friendship, too.

IN MERE SECONDS I regretted the final words I’d said to Sadie. A minute later, I’d pulled my Harley over on the side of the road. Hopping off, I’d stumbled against the nearest building where I’d bent over, nearly taken to my knees as huge gasping breaths ripped through me.

I was still reliving those last painful moments a week later, pulling them apart and trying to put them back together so everything ended differently. I couldn’t make anything fit the way I wanted. Not after being such a royal asshole.

“If you’re too fucking insecure to deal with it then I guess you really can’t, huh?”

With a groan, I plunked my head down on top of the bar in the Retribution clubhouse. Maybe if I hit my head with enough force I could render myself brain dead, then I wouldn’t have to think anymore.

“That bad?” Hunter asked.

I considered flipping the man off, but he might possibly go Rambo on me, and I was in no mood to try out my newly acquired boxing skillset.

I settled for a noncommittal grunt instead.

“Well, maybe this’ll help.” He got a good grip on my short hair and pulled my head up. “Your girl’s here.”

I shook my head free and dropped my eyes. “Not better.”

“
Ahh
. I see.” He leaned an elbow on the bar. Whether he did it on purpose or not, he blocked my view of Sadie, and I was thankful. “You know, you look like a big pile of shit.”

I rubbed my hands down my face. I knew exactly what I looked like. Micah had berated me for my
been dragged behind a tractor facedown
appearance the night before, and Grampa Dean—king of the grilled cheese—was trying to force food into me. I didn’t need a mirror to know I had dark rings under my eyes, the start of a beard on my jaw, and my fade had begun to grow out from its usually tight cut.

“That’s what I feel like, so it all makes sense, right?” I answered.

“You want me to get Cole for you?”

I snorted. “Why? So he can babysit me? Look, man, I appreciate the thought, but I think everyone just better leave me alone.”

His all-seeing yellow-gold eyes searched my face. I hated when he did that shit. I had no idea what he knew about me, or what he thought he knew, but I didn’t want him or anyone else in my headspace.

I blanked out my expression and set my jaw.

“I get it.” He clapped me on the shoulder and ambled away.

With Hunter out of the picture, I got a full visual on Sadie. I could have done without that brand new sucker punch to the gut.

Turning my back, I made every effort to ignore the fact I knew exactly where she was and what she was doing and who she talked to over the course of the next two hours. I didn’t have to look at her. I just
knew
, like a magnet connected me to her. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference though. We were in the same room and a million miles apart, with a distinct boundary line drawn between us. Neither of us crossed that barrier. It hurt to see her, in fact, those few moments I forgot to keep my head averted. That raw pain in my stomach expanded like a flesh-eating virus.

I was glad to see she looked at least as miserable as I felt. Then I wanted to kick myself in the ass. I should only want the best for Sadie. Clearly that wasn’t me.

One more torturous hour later, I caught sight of her making her way to the door.

The overpowering need to talk to her, if not touch her, moved my feet in her direction before I was aware of it. Maybe we could be friends again if I apologized.

I touched her on the arm, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

“Sadie . . .”

She looked up at me with such sad eyes I let her go. I watched her retreat all the way to the door, swallowing the lump in my throat.

When I returned to the bar the usual MC dudes peered at me with cloying sympathy, but that didn’t last long. They weren’t into pity parties and neither was I. Tuck started razzing me to my complete relief.

“Got yourself foxed in a hole this time, didn’t ya?” He tweaked the long, curly mustache.

Brodie jumped right in. “I’d say he fucked himself in the A-hole from the looks of it.”

Big, black-haired Boomer rounded it out. “I’m thinking I might need to hire a relationship counselor for Retribution. Jesus,” he said with a full body shiver.

“Good. We can start with you and Rayce.” Brodie shot back at his brother. “Handsome can do it.”

“Handsome?” Boomer’s face screwed up in a skeptical frown.

“Didn’t you know he’s got him a psychology degree?” Tuck nodded, crossing thick, hairy forearms over his belly.

“The hell you say. Don’t matter anyway. I’m not entrusting my deep relationship secrets to a dude whose face I can’t even see. What is he tryin’ to be? An anorexic Snuffaluffagus?” Boomer did a good impression of the giant wooly
Sesame Street
character, lumbering in front of the bar.

Brodie punched him on the arm, leaving the imprint of his big silver rings. “Hey. I’m workin’ on him. Got him pumping iron with me. We’re gonna put some muscle on those bones. And I think he might even be good looking under all that hair. I swear if it’s the last thing I do, I’m getting that shit trimmed up . . .”

The three head MC officers made way for one of the pool tables, discussing possible hairstyles for Handsome—the club’s secretary—like they were Tim Gunn, although the only thing they had in common with the debonair fashion guru was his last name and the fact all three of them did actually carry guns when the occasion warranted it.

Cole sidled up and shoved a beer in my hand. “What’d you do to Sadie this time?”

No beating around the bush for him, and we’d already been to this rodeo once before, on New Year’s Eve.

I couldn’t tell him the real truth: I was a stripper, danced and took off my clothes for money, and Sadie didn’t agree with me getting my jock off on stage in front of a bunch of lusty ladies. Go figure.

I settled for a simple variation. “Everything wrong, it appears.” My smile resembled a grimace more than anything else.

“Can’t you fix it?”

“Don’t think so.”

****

The next night I left Retribution early. I didn’t want to chance another encounter with Sadie.

“How’s it going, Gramps?” I hugged his bony broad shoulders after I relieved Solange Curry of her night nurse duties early.

“Well, it’s like this. My eyes hurt some fierce. My
arthuritis
ain’t no walk in the park.” He squinted at me in amusement despite his complaints. “Howsoever, when that purty Nurse Curry gave me a sponge bath earlier I surprised us both by springin’ a boner. So I guess the old cock ain’t dead yet.”
Cackle cackle.

I burst into laughter until tears streamed down my face. “What’d she do?”

“She said takin’ care of that particular appendage was beyond mere medical matters, and it was a good thing my hands still had some function.”

I could imagine less fun ways to get an erection. Solange was beautiful with coffee-and-cream-colored skin, a voluptuous figure, a voice like honey, and she was only in her mid-twenties.

“There’s some good days and there’s dem bad days, but I reckon you might know somethin’ about that, eh, son?” He had the x-ray look down almost as well as Hunter.

I declined to answer with a
no comment
shrug.

“
Hmmph
,” Grampa returned.

After a light dinner, he and I set up the Scrabble board, but it wasn’t the same. Sadie’s presence hung on the air in every room in the small cottage. I knew he felt her too, but he refrained from mentioning
she who would not be named
after his latest failed attempt at making me talk.

Trying to snuff out the pain, I got Grampa reminiscing as we racked up the word points. He was twelve ahead of me, and I’d had to consult the dictionary on more than one occasion while he smirked at me.

“You really are a blessing, my boy.” He patted my hand with the crooked fingers of his.

“Right. You’re just saying that because I gave you a refresher of bourbon.” I turned my palm, curling my younger, stronger fingers around his.

I tried every day not to dwell on how frail he’d become. I was going with Sadie’s prescriptive advice now instead of the doctors’ esteemed recommendations. If Grampa wanted an extra glass of bourbon, I wasn’t about to deny him. At this late stage in the game, it wasn’t gonna hurt him. It might well let him rest easier.

I wanted him comfortable and as content as possible for the remainder of his days, bourbon and all.

“I tell the truth,” he said, assembling another triple word score on the Scrabble board.

“For a change.” I scribbled down his score, scowling. Thirty-six points ahead.

Looking bleakly at my arranged letters on the wooden stand in front of me, I tried to piece them together in a better way, just like I’d attempted to figure out how to make Sadie and me work again.

“Now when your mama died so suddenly I might’ve gone off right behind her if it wasn’t for you.”

I closed my mouth that had fallen open in surprise. Grampa had never kept any secrets from me that I knew of, yet he’d rarely talked about my mother, his daughter.

“Don’t know what that gal was thinkin’, leaving you entrusted to me. And with my Sarah not long gone. Hell if I knew what to do with such a l’il youngin.” He took a long sip of his drink and let it heat his tongue before swallowing with a sigh. “But you did save me. Yes, you did.

“Had no choice but to get my ass out of bed and out to work. Learn how to feed ya, and Jesus help me, change ya.” His eyes twinkled as he scrunched his nose. “The stink of ya!
Lawdee!
Make a man go blind and singe his nose hairs off at the same time.
Oooeee
.”

My mom, Alice, had died when I was a year-and-a-half. The brain aneurism hit her fast, hard, and lethally from out of nowhere. At the time we lived with Grampa since my deadbeat dad had up and left my mom holding the baby bag all on her own. I didn’t know all the details about how Grampa found her, just that it had been too late. No one had been able to revive her.

“Hey, at least you had disposable diapers by that time.” I tried to ease the odd grief of never knowing my mom in a way most kids took for granted.

“Amen to that.” The Scrabble game forgotten, Grampa sat back in his chair, glass of bourbon nestled against his stomach. “I used to rail against your daddy for up and leavin’. Good for nothin’ but knockin’ up our Alice. But I gave my prayers after that. He wasn’t man enough to stick around in the easiest of times. Hate to think what would’ve become of ya in the worst of times. Nope, there wasn’t nothin’ for it but to dig in and get it done where you were concerned. Yet you became the purpose of my life from that day forward.”

As he was mine.

I filled my own glass and hid my face in it. The old man was always affectionate in his gruff irascible way. This was something different, and it made my throat thick to hear him talk of me in plain truth with love shining in his voice.

“Not that you’re the love of my life or anything like that.” He sniggered, as if overhearing my thoughts.

“I wouldn’t presume.” I winked. “That was Grandma Sarah, ’course.”

He hooted with laughter. “God rest her soul, no.”

I gawked at him, coughing over my last mouthful of liquor.

Pounding me on the back, he smiled. “Close your flytrap, son. Don’t want any blue bottles landing in there.”

My jaw snapped shut.

“I did love your grandmother, of course. But not the way I had someone else, long before her and long after.” His gaze took on a dreamy, faraway quality of hopelessly in love. I knew that feeling all to well. “S’pose some things just aren’t meant to be. No”—he shook his head, a thick white forelock falling across his brow—“she married another fella, that one did, and raised her own family. The one that got away.” He sighed.

Shadows thickened around us in the small homey living room, the cold winter night held at bay outside by the clanging pipes of the radiator groaning to life and the small lamps beating off the darkness. Ghosts and specters of the past collided with the very real image of Sadie sitting beside Grampa as she’d been the last time she was here.

“We should find her, Gramps. Maybe she’s a widow.”

His laugh crackled back to life. “That’s a bit morbid, don’t ya think?”

“Well, maybe it’s hopeful. Since you still love her and all.”

“I knew you had the romantic bone in you. Must be a Ryder thing. Sure am glad you got my name, son, and my looks too.” In full tale-telling mode, Grampa settled deeper into his seat. “I reckon it’s not the same for everyone. But I only had the one true love. Might be the same for you, huh?”

The smoldering pain of love lost fired to life in my chest. I preferred to think it was simply the bourbon burning there. “If you mean me and Sadie, doubt it. She’s not even talking to me right now.”

“So that’s why you’ve been more ornery than a coon cat caught in a possum trap? Had you a fight, did ya?”