Steel & Ice (33 page)

We pulled up to a dive bar. The one J had
mentioned before. He stowed our helmets, and he took my hand as we
walked into the bar. It was your typical dive, but with a few
tables set up in front of the bar. To the left, were three pool
tables and a dart board. “Beer? Wine? Vodka?” J asked as we stood
by the bar.

“
Beer.”

A man came up to us. He was fifty or so,
just shy of six feet tall, a mix of bulk and pudge. His beard that
was more grey than brown. He put his fist out for J to bump.
“Usual?”

“
Yeah. And a LaBatt’s for
her,” J said, nodding toward me.

“
No LaBatt’s,” the man said,
not looking at me.

“
MGD is fine,” I chimed
in.

“
Food?” he asked, still not
looking at me.

“
Yep. Two.”

“
Got it.” The man walked
away and J led us to a table by the window. We were in the Missouri
side of Kansas City, in a slightly run down part of town. Not that
I needed to worry about my safety when J was around, but instinct
made me do a scan of the lot when we pulled in, noticing the sparse
buildings, gas station, and field nearby. I did the same scan when
we walked in the bar, noting a hallway with bathrooms and
potentially an exit. There was a door on one side of the bar that I
assumed lead back to the kitchen. The man who’d taken our orders
emerged and grabbed two beers out of the cooler. He put our beers
down without saying a word to J or me. J drank half his beer in one
drink. I took a sip of mine, watching J and trying to decide what
was going on. I’d never seen him act this weird. He drank another
giant gulp of beer. The man behind the bar looked at us and J stuck
his finger in the air and spun it around indicating he wanted
another beer.

J was about to kill his bottle of beer or
tear his shoulder apart when I finally broke the silence. “You
gotta give me something here, J.”

He ran his hands through his silky black
locks that were a bit of a mess from being tugged on too much.
Normally it was my hands tugging, but not tonight. “I’m sorry. This
is supposed to be a fun weekend for us. That wasn’t supposed to
happen until tomorrow morning. I was going to meet up with them and
let you sleep in.”

“
It’s obvious it wasn’t a
pleasant meeting.”

J laughed. “Pleasant is about the last word
I would use to refer to dealing with Cane and his boys.”

“
Care to elaborate?” I
asked, raising an eyebrow.

The man came back with another beer for J.
He nodded to my bottle and I shook my head no. J finished off the
last drink of his and handed the bartender the bottle. He took
another big swig off his second bottle before he spoke. “You
remember what you said to me at Eight Oh Eight? About why you don’t
take drinks from guys?”

“
Yeah. I don’t like owing
anybody.”

“
Well, me neither. But I’m
stuck in debt for life to these guys.”

“
Your MC?” I asked. TV made
it seem like bikers were all about their MCs.

“
It ain’t my MC anymore.
It’s a bank that gave me a loan a long time ago, and now I’m stuck
paying it back until the sun sets on my name.”

“
You can’t get
out?”

“
Not without moving across
the country. Fuck maybe to Mexico.”

I sat back in my chair thinking. So he
didn’t want to be in the MC. I kinda knew that. They were making
him do something he didn’t want to it appeared. Did I want to know
that? I leaned forward. “Fuck J. This ain’t Compton. You really
can’t get out?”

He set his beer down and took my hands in
his. “I’ve been wanting out for a while, but haven’t said anything.
I didn’t have any reason to push it with Prez.”

“
Is Cane the
president?”

“
Cane? Fuck no. He’s Prez’s
little bitch. Prez rarely delivers orders or does much. He and his
inner circle make decisions, and then he sends someone to tell me
what I have to do. I told you, I’m in the middle. The only way I
was able to come back to my house, my Gramps’ house was to agree
to, fuck, shit I never should’ve agreed to. Now that you’re in my
life, I asked Prez about getting out. I should’ve known. I’ve
become too valuable to him. He’s never gonna let me go. I know he
changed the meet time on purpose. Cane’s probably back at the club
on the phone with Prez telling him I showed up with a woman on my
bike. Fuck!” J banged his fist on the table. “I didn’t want them to
know about you.”

“
Why not?”

“
It’s more to hold over me.
Fuck,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I
just wanted everything to be perfect.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I did what I
do best. I deflected for the both of us. “Look at me, J.” He pulled
his eyes up to mine. I folded my hands around his. “Do you have to
see them again while we’re here?” He shook his head from side to
side. “Alright. Well then we are going to sit here and have some
drinks, eat whatever you ordered us. It better be good by the way.
And then we are going back to the amazing room you got us, and we
are going to fuck on every surface possible. You are going to put
this out of your head as am I. We can deal with it when we return.
And we can deal with it together. Alright?”

J reached forward and cupped my check with
his hand. I wrapped my arms around his wrist, and leaned onto his
hand before turning and kissing his palm. “That sounds fantastic.”
I smiled and kissed his palm once more. Before we could say more,
our food arrived. It was a pasta in cream sauce with shrimp and
scallops. Fucking orgasm in my mouth.

“
Dude,” I said, with pasta
hanging out of my mouth. “This is the shit. What kind of dive bar
is this?”

J chuckled. “Ole Bill back there is the best
cook there is. I bought this bar for him a while ago. He helped me
out of a few jams. There are only a few things he makes and they
are good enough to keep him in business and then some. He was kinda
my Gramps when I left home and went to St. Louis. Some shit went
down and he needed to get out of St. Louis. I knew this place was
for sale, so I hooked him up.” J said it so matter of factly. Like
buying a bar for someone was no big deal. Like a $500 vase was no
big deal. Or our suite was no big deal.

“
J? Are you rich?” I felt
stupid asking. Obviously he was, but he rarely showed it off. He
wasn’t flashy. He didn’t wear designer clothes and drive exotic
cars.

“
I don’t spend a lot of
money. And we all make the same in the MC regardless of what we do.
Well, all of us except Prez and his brother. He always takes an
extra cut of our earnings for himself. Missouri Mayhem owns most of
Missouri and part of Kansas in one way or another, so the cash flow
is pretty steady. I just sit on it mostly. Or I was, until you came
along and made me want to spend it.”

“
You know I don’t care about
your money? Right?”

“
Baby, of course I know. Now
eat up. We got surfaces to fuck on.”

We finished our meal and beers. The mood had
lifted and we chatted about the other rooms at the Avalon. There
were a lot and they all sounded fabulous. Like Aaron fabulous. When
it was time to go, he just gave Bill a head nod and left. I guess
buying someone a bar means free food for life.

We got back to the suite and J told me he
would meet me in the bathroom. I walked up the spiral staircase to
the top floor where I found blue and purple candles spread around
the whirlpool. There was a small table with champagne on ice and
two glasses. I pulled my hair up in a clip and undressed while the
tub filled. J came in right as I was pouring us each a glass of
champagne.

“
Your skin glows in the
light of those candles.”

I couldn’t help smiling. I was used to guys
telling me I was hot, sexy, and beautiful. I wasn’t fixated on my
looks, but I knew I was attractive. J somehow managed to compliment
me in ways that seemed honest, authentic. Like he wasn’t just
saying it to get something from me. He meant it.

I handed him his champagne glass. “You make
me glow.” I reached up on my tiptoes to kiss him. “Cheers.” I
clinked his glass and we both drank. The moment was perfect.
Storybook perfect. But it wasn’t my storybook. It was the girl who
dreamed of white dresses and 2.5 kids’ storybook. That wasn’t me.
So I made it perfect in my storybook by saying, “Damn that’s some
good shit. You think you might want to get naked anytime soon?” J
laughed, as always at my vulgar humor.

I set my glass down and turned off the
water. I barely stepped into the whirlpool when I felt J behind me.
He disrobed in record time. The night had turned cool, and the ride
back to the Chateau had made me cold to my bones. The water felt
amazing as I submerged my body into it, leaning back against J. He
passed me a rocks glass full of champagne.

I turned to look at him. He was smiling down
at me with a knowing smile. He remembered I wasn’t a fan of
stemware. Or it wasn’t a fan of me I might say. We sipped champagne
and lounged in the whirlpool, jets on low, making the perfect
amount of waves around us. J wrapped his legs around me and I ran
my hands up and down them. I couldn’t reach all the way to his
toes, his legs were so long. The tub was huge.

J draped one arm around my shoulders and
rested it against my clavicle, using his other hand to sip
champagne. We were silent for some time, just enjoying the feel of
each other’s body against one another. It was rare for me to feel
this kind of peace with another person. I usually found my peace
alone. Even when Chris stayed at my place, I was always aware of
her presence and it kept me turned on and alert. She was my best
friend, but anybody’s presence in my space automatically put me on
alert. With J it was different. It wasn’t just that his calm
demeanor or his low husky voice that put me at peace.

You would think that in a private suite, on
the outskirts of town, where no one knows me, and a locked door
would put me at ease. Normally it wouldn’t. Normally I would still
keep my sensors on alert. I wasn’t paranoid to the level that I
thought someone was going to come in to my room guns blazing. It
was just automatic. Certain life experiences shape our behavior,
and it is hard to break those behaviors without good reason. In my
apartment, alone, with the doors triple locked, I could relax. But
the level of relaxation and peacefulness I felt in that moment with
J superseded any peace I’d ever found. It was always me against the
world. For once, I trusted someone to protect me, to give and not
just take, to respect me, and accept me.

I felt the water shift and was pulled out of
my reverie. J took my glass and put it on the small table. He
leaned forward and trailed kisses down my neck and over my
shoulders. He’d discovered both of my strange erogenous zones. One
on the back of my neck, the other my lower back, right at the end
of my spine. It had to be slow kisses or gently running fingers
over these spots to trigger throbbing between my legs. With my hair
up, he had perfect access to the back of my neck and he took full
advantage.

I took a sharp inhale of breath when I felt
one hand go between my legs and the other twist my hardened
nipples. He stroked my folds as if he had all time in the world,
and I wasn’t moving towards spontaneous, orgasmic combustion. He
kissed and licked the back of my neck. In contrast, he squeezed and
rolled my nipples, one at a time, with just the right amount of
pressure to almost hurt, but not quite. He’d also discovered I
liked it when he bit my nipples more than when he licked them. I
felt my clit start to throb from the variety of sensations J was
providing me. I laid my head back against J’s chest and whispered
to him, “Touch me where I want to be touched.”

I leaned forward and he sucked my earlobe. I
felt his hand slowly make its way up to my clit. He gently rubbed
it with his thumb and whispered back in my ear, “You mean
here?”

“
Yesssss.” I felt my body
tense as he plunged two fingers in me while applying more pressure
to my clit and nipples. I lay back against him as I felt it
building inside me.

“
I love the noises you make
when you are turned on and about to come. I love the way it feels
around my cock, my fingers, or my tongue when you get off and your
pussy throbs for me.”

His voice sent me over the edge, and I
bucked as stars exploded behind my eye lids. He continued stroking
until I was limp in his arms. I hummed my thanks to him.

I’d barely come back to this planet, when I
felt him pull the plug to the whirlpool with his foot, letting the
water begin its descent down the drain. He lifted me up under my
arms and stepped onto the rug in front of the whirlpool. He held
his hand out to steady me, always the gentleman. Standing face to
face with him, dripping water from our bodies, he took my face in
both his hands and slowly leaned down to kiss me. It was gentle and
soft. He sucked my lower lip into his mouth and I moaned. He’d
figured out how much I liked that too. He’d figured out all the
things I liked.

“
Come with me. I want to
tell you something,” he said, taking my hand and leading me down
the stairs to the bed. It was covered in rose petals like something
out of a movie. He laid me gently down on the giant bed and crawled
between my legs. He repeated what he had done with his hands in the
whirlpool with his tongue, tracing the edges of my folds, inside
and out. He licked the crease of my legs and kissed the inside of
my thighs, again making my clit throb. Just when I thought he would
lick my clit he pulled away and got on top of me. He lay over me,
holding his weight up with his fore arms.