“Fuck no, you’ll probably poison me,” he says, and I pout. “I’ll make the food. You come sit your pretty arse on my bench and let me see that pussy while I cook.”
“Done.” I laugh and admire the view as he gets up. The huge demon tattoo on his back ripples as he moves. It’s such a terrifying piece; in fact his whole demeanour is a contradiction to such a sweet, attentive man. I laugh inwardly at the thought. If I said that aloud, he’d put me over his knee and spank me to show me how “sweet” he wasn’t.
Okay, so sweet might be a stretch, but up until this point all I’ve ever known from men is a hard hand and an even harder cock, and it’s always been enough. It’s what I was used to, but Tank shows me tenderness I’ve never known before, and it puts every kiss, every touch, and every damn whispered word that came before him to shame.
“What’re you thinkin’ ’bout, pretty girl?”
I smile and shake my head. “Nothing. Just it’s odd how I’m here, in your bed, you know?”
“Doesn’t look odd to me. Looks fuckin’ perfect, actually,” he says, pulling on his jeans and tucking his thick cock inside. He watches me, watching him. “Now get the fuck up before I eat you out again.”
I laugh. “Er … that’s not really a deterrent.”
“Oh, I’ll make it one. Get your arse in the kitchen, bitch.”
“No,” I say, and roll over onto my stomach. Tank climbs back onto the bed and hovers over me. He kisses his way over my arse and up my spine, and then finally lowers his body down on top of mine and whispers, “You have three seconds to get this hot-as-fuck arse out of bed and into my kitchen before I spank you like a naughty girl.”
I laugh softly and stay exactly where I am, and Tank sits back on his heels. “Gonna be like that is it? Alright then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says, and no sooner than the words leave his mouth his hand smacks my arse, hard. I squeal and turn around to glare at him.
“Arsehole,” I screech.
“I did warn you.”
I rub at my smarting flesh, but then find myself airborne and flung over his shoulder, as though I weigh nothing. “Put me down, you bastard.”
“No,” he says, as he slides off the bed and carries me into the kitchen, depositing me on the island bench. “Stay.”
“Bite me.” I scowl. Tank smiles and sinks his teeth into my shoulder. “Ow.”
I playfully shove him off, and he gives me this look that has my heart stuttering. He’s like a little kid, and it makes my chest hurt, though I’m not sure why. He leans in and kisses the teeth marks he left in my shoulder, and then takes my face in his too-large hands and tenderly kisses my lips. His tongue pushes into my mouth, but it’s not passionate, it’s not sexual. It’s sweet. He’s gentle, and I kiss him back with just as much tenderness, because he deserves that. He deserves so much more than that. In all the time I’ve known him, it never occurred to me that he might have needed me just as much as I needed him.
Tank cooks up entirely too much food—bacon, eggs, sausage and beans—and we sit at the dining table to eat. We sip coffee as though we both want to be exactly where we are right now, as though we hadn’t been thrown together by circumstance or fate, or his Prez’s orders. Somehow—despite years of friendship, tantrums, drugs, sex and lots of illegal activity—we are meant to be exactly here.
I stare at him for a long time over the rim of my coffee cup, and he stares back. It isn’t awkward; it’s enlightening. We’re reinventing, he and I, and I don’t think either of us knows how to stop it. Of course, I don’t think either of us wants to try.
When we’re done eating, I ask questions about his past: girlfriends—there were none, save for some girl in high school. Family—he tells me all about growing up with his mother, but doesn’t say a word about his father, and he changes the subject when I prod further. Finally, I ask what he would have done with his life if he’d never found the club, to which he just shrugs and says, “What’s the point in thinking about the maybe? All we have is who we are today, and who we’re satisfied with being tomorrow.”
And he’s right. I’ve never really thought about what could have been, if I hadn’t had a father who’d destroyed all the strength within me. I never gave those things any thought, because thinking like that was reckless and foolish. Thinking like that would get me killed. I couldn’t have had a life other than the one my father had created and I’d followed, but sitting across from Tank, in his quiet mountain cabin, thoughts of another life don’t matter. I have this life, and despite what I’ve been through, despite the fact that I still fidget and shake and my body still craves the poison I’ve willingly fed it since the time I was seventeen years old, it isn’t so bad.
“What are you smiling at?” Tank says, as he stands and takes the plate from in front of me, sitting it on the island bench behind us.
“I’m smiling because I’m really glad Prez ordered you to babysit me and not Country, or Grim, or … Kick.”
Tank comes up behind me and gathers my hair to the side. He gently kisses my neck, his hand coming around my front to squeeze my breast, as he whispers, “You’re here because I want you here.”
And I believe every word, because if there’s one thing I know about Tank it’s that he doesn’t bullshit, and he doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean.
“Why do you want me, Tank?”
He continues kissing a path down my neck and across my shoulder. Both hands knead at my breasts, and I don’t really expect an answer, but I get one anyway, “I’ve wanted you in one way or another since the first day I laid eyes on you, babe. You sucked my cock and stole my goddamn heart, and I don’t even want the fuckin’ thing back. Keep it, ’cause I ain’t got no use for it without you in my arms, and in my bed, and on the back of my bike.”
He trails more kisses over my neck, and then he lowers his voice to a whisper as he says, “If there’s a God up there, I ain’t ever fuckin’ seen him, and if there is I know I’m goin’ to hell for all the shit that I do, all the people I killed, but I’d take an eternity in hell over never havin’ you in my arms.”
I don’t say anything to that. What can I say? I just push away from the table and turn towards him. Grabbing his face in my hands, I pull him down to me. I kiss him as I never have before. I kiss him as if we’re in a damn movie, and I don’t care that it’s cheesy, or that I can’t possibly feel the way for him right now that he does for me. I haven’t given him my heart. Up until now, I’ve been too stupid to see what I had right in front of me, but the fact that this big, stoic, scary-as-fuck biker has given me his heart completely? Well, you can be damned sure I’m going to take care of it, because no one has ever trusted me with that before. No one has ever treated me like I’m the most important thing in their world, until now.
Until him.
I didn’t expect to spend the night of my formal, my last farewell to high school and all the bullshit that that entails, with blood on my hands. Well, that’s not entirely true.
I’d been putting up with Tami Roger’s bullshit for the last three months, and so far she hadn’t yet put out, but after agonising over this fuckin’ decision as if it were going to change her entire life, she’d finally decided tonight was the night.
And I’d thought I’d fuckin’ earned it after the bullshit she’d put me through for weeks in the lead up to the dance. I’d been rimmed out by Tami’s dad for wearing my leather jacket instead of a fuckin’ monkey suit, and her mum hadn’t wanted me in the pictures at all. Suited me just fine. I hated havin’ my photo taken. I had confiscated a Polaroid of Tami though, and tucked it in the pocket of my leather jacket, because she looked fuckin’ hot in that dress, and I’d use it to spank my monkey to when she wasn’t around to blow me.