Page 10 of A Brother At My Back

“Been a pleasure, Sweetheart,” he murmured and then he was gone. The way he’d said it, well, it held the distinct flavor of goodbye. Not as in I would never see him again, but definitely that… the professional relationship was done. I looked down at the cool grand between my hands, leafing through the bills, counting it three or four times to make sure I was really seeing it right. By the time I stuffed it into my purse I was definitely sure that it was my severance package and I couldn’t say I wasn’t a little sad about that.

Dragon, by far and most certainly, had been my best client. Respectful, and gentle for the most part, just an all-around nice guy. I couldn’t say I blamed him for wanting the distance, though. My situation was complicated and messy, and by coming to him for help had definitely blurred the set lines we had both abided by up to this point, unspoken as they may have been.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on my socks and boots, getting dressed mechanically as I pondered where things were going to go from here. It was the worst sort of feeling, knowing something bad was on the horizon but not knowing what shape it would take. This wasn’t like a storm you could prepare for. There was no telling what kind of crazy Silas was capable of at this point. He’d had three years to think about all sorts of inventive things to do by way of revenge for having him locked up. I had thought I had about five to finish paying for things and to get away from him.

I should have known better. The system had only ever been good at one thing where I was concerned and that one thing had been to fail me. I stood up with a harsh, angry sigh and tried to shake the emotion off. It hadn’t done me any good before and being angry would just turn me into the same damn thing I was running from. Silas was always angry.

Silas is just a dick.I thought bitterly and yeah, he was that too. A dick with a less than impressive one at that.

I let myself out into the hall and looked around. It was a bit of a ghost town and I was okay with that. Somehow me slinking out of Dragon’s room felt like it should be a walk of shame, but fuck that. I wasn’t ashamed of getting what I had honestly come here for in the first place. I was used to the judgment that came along with the job and that was when people only thought I was a stripper. If they knew I was an actual whore? I didn’t want to think about that so much. Not here in the Bible Belt of good ol’ Kentucky. Hell, the bible-thumpers would have my ass branded a harlot in nothing flat.

People here just didn’t know how to mind their own business; it was like it was impossible for them to stay in their own goddamn lane. It’s what I liked about Dragon. He never tried to pry, he minded his own business and let me keep mine to myself. I could and did respect that.

I found his man in the barroom, sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of him that was mostly empty. He looked up and stood up as I came into the room and said, “Cuppa?”

I think he was asking if I wanted a cup of coffee myself but it was a weird way of doing it. Probably from where he was originally from. I shook my head and said, “No, thanks, I can make fresh when I get home; which I would really like to do.”

“Ah, yeah, this way, then.”

He led me out into the sunshine and I winced as it sent a railroad spike through my eye and up into my brain. I fished a pair of large, bug-eyed sunglasses out of my purse and shoved them onto my face the same time he slid a pair of wraparounds of his own out of the inside pocket of his cut. He walked up to a battered old Harley in the line of bikes and I blinked, waiting for him to say ‘just kidding’ and move to one of the other bikes.

Instead, he dropped onto the seat and gave a twist to the bars, kicking up the stand it had been leaning heavily on and thumbing the switch.

“You’re joking, right?” I asked and I immediately winced and apologized. “Sorry, didn’t mean for that to come out so bitchy.”

“Hangover’s got you good, eh?”

“Something like that,” I agreed. Really, it was starting to hit me that I’d lost my best damn client and I was starting to worry about cash flow some. Not to mention I was really starting to realize that it sort of hurt that Dragon had taken a walk on me. I hadn’t expected that, like at all. I mean it made all sorts of sense, and I didn’t know how I had convinced myself that nothing was going to change. I mean… really. Still, I felt myself going into an almost mourning phase. Like you do after a breakup, which was just goddamn ridiculous.

“Go on, then,” he said, in that rich accent.

“What?” I asked.

“Get it out of your system, eh,” he said affably, sort-of smiling and I couldn’t help but smile a little myself, though I tried not to.

I mean, I was serious when I asked, “Does it even run?”

He grinned and fired it up and oh god, I wished he hadn’t. The angry, protesting growl the bike let out thrummed through my whole abused, aching body that I had so thoroughly poisoned with that fine tequila and punishing fuck-fest last night and my body was letting me know All. About. It.

My head throbbed, my face felt as if it was going to slide off and I swear every joint creaked like his leather jacket had inside the closed space of Dragon’s room. My teeth were set on edge, and I gritted them and waited for some nausea to pass before I put one hand on his offered arm and swung a protesting leg over the seat behind him.

Good gracious, that hurt. Dragon had done a great job of getting between my legs the night before, and given my ‘day job,’ you would think I would be limber enough that I wouldn’t hurt where my legs met my body, but nope. I’d overdone everything to excess, apparently, and my body was pissed and just letting me know about it at every turn.

“You good?” he asked, over the loud chugging of the beast beneath us.

“As I’ll ever be!”

“Right, where you live then?”

“Oh! Shit, sorry…” I gave him the address and he thrust a helmet back at me. I put it on, even as he shook out his shaggy hair and wrapped a bandana around his head, tight to his skull.

He dropped another half-helmet-looking thing onto his own head and without even bothering with the straps, said to me, “Hang on, then!”

I did, because honestly, I expected the bike to fall apart beneath us at any moment; it looked that bad. To be honest, it rode even worse – the vibrations were terrible. I don’t know that I could entirely chalk that up to the miserable hangover, either.

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