Page 67 of Lawless
"You're still here," she murmured sleepily, as if surprised by that.
I remembered her comment about this being nothing more than sex, which seemed to be in the same vein. She trusted me more than before, but still expected me to use and discard her. I wasn't sure how to tell her that wasn't where my head was.
"I don't want to go back to work yet." I traced her jaw, bringing her lips to mine for an open-mouthed kiss.
I wasn't normally such a kissy guy, but I couldn't get enough of how she tasted. Next time, I absolutely had to taste her pussy. She must have tasted divine.
"Hades," she giggled, noticing his big black form at the end of the bed. "You aren't supposed to be jumping on things, silly boy." She scratched his head with her toes, making him grunt and look at us upside down.
"Can't keep a good dog down," I mumbled against her cheek, dragging my mouth down to her collarbone. Fucking hell, her taste and smell were nothing short of intoxicating.
"So what's next?" she asked, her lips brushing my forehead.
I took my time kissing her collarbone before answering. "Next, we can fuck in the shower. Maybe by the pool. Somewhere the gimpy mutt won't follow us."
She laughed lightly, scooting down to rest her head on my shoulder. "So this is something you want to repeat?"
"Yes." I rested my hand on her waist again. "That sounds like a loaded question, though."
Her fingers began tracing the Steel Demons tattoo on my chest. "Will you be sleeping with others?"
My hand began mimicking hers, fingertips tracing on her skin. "I don't plan on it."
Her hand stopped.
"You don't plan on it," she repeated.
"If you want something from me, just come out and say it," I said. "I should warn you, though, I don’t do traditional relationships."
"I know," she whispered. "Noelle told me a little about how you grew up. In the matriarchal communities."
"Yeah? What'd she tell you?"
"That you had one mother and three fathers. That it was accepted for women to be with multiple men at the same time."
"Yeah, and look how well that turned out," I scoffed. "The Collapse put an end to those communities."
"What happened to your family?" she looked up at me. "How did you end up as an MC's president?"
"A long story for another day, sugar," I stroked my fingers through her hair. "Preferably after I find out who wants my club annihilated."
She was quiet for a moment. "Then can you tell me what happened to your brother?"
I almost said no. My own story was long and bloody, but it was mine. Ultimately I didn't care who knew it. But Daren's was different, partly because he was such a different person than me. He was bright-eyed and hopeful, nowhere near as jaded as me. I wanted to keep those memories of him close to my chest, a well-guarded secret. He deserved to be remembered as how he was, not how he died.
If it were any other woman next to me, I would have told her to mind her own fucking business. But somehow, I knew Mariposa would understand.
"Daren was nothing like me and Noelle," I said. "He was the youngest of us three, but acted like a fourth father sometimes." Mari's lips curved into a smile at that. "Noelle and I were the daredevils," I went on. "We had drinking and smoking contests in our teens. We stole a tattoo gun once and gave each other our first tattoos." I raised my arm to show her the faded blue squiggle near my wrist. "And it was never our parents scolding us, it was Daren. But as the world got shittier and the Collapse became imminent, he always believed things would get better."
"I used to think the same thing," Mari answered softly, her fingers resuming tracing the lines of ink on my chest.
"Right, well," I sighed. “Long story short, the club rode through this little shanty town near the old Utah border a bit over a year ago. Hardly anything was there, so we rode through without stopping. Not even a full day later, everyone is fucking sick. Like, deathly ill."
Mari's eyes widened. "A virus? Some kind of airborne bio-weapon?"
"That's what we think," I said. "Some asshole might've bombed the place in a border war. Anyway, we were all on death's doorstep and could barely sit on our fucking bikes. Somehow, we found a small clinic and just raided the fucking place. We shot ourselves up with every vaccine we could find. We holed up there for a week and most of us started to feel better."
My hand curled into a fist in her hair. I didn't even know if I could bring myself to say what happened next. I never talked about it. Everyone was there and saw it for themselves.
