Page 33 of The Taste

“Phantom…” she slurred. She wanted to lay down, she wanted to fling her head back and feel his naked chest beneath her. She wanted him inside her, moving freely.

He staggered backward, looking appalled. At himself. Looking like a lost deer, terrified of what he had just done. Sophie knew she had to pull herself together, pull herself out of the haze and act quickly. She had to reassure him, before he bolted. She had to create order out of the raw chaos he’d unleashed.

“Tomorrow, I close at five p.m., if you want to… to spend more time together, just come back when I’ve closed up, after five, if that’s okay…” She sat up now, trying to pat down her hair that had gotten rucked up as he’d pushed her down onto the picnic table.

He bit his lip. Like he wanted to say something. Like he didn’t want to leave. He paused for a fraction of a second. She liked that. She liked that he had to really tear himself away from her. But tear himself away he did, and after that moment, he turned and stomped off into the shadows, the darkness melting him, reabsorbing him. Taking him back from her.

The bell on the door tinkled as a group of new customers came in. Sophie looked up, smiling, happy to serve whoever was coming in. Of course, she hoped it was him. Phantom. After what had happened the other night. And she’d been left feeling curious, hopeful, aroused. All that day and night she had thought of him. Burned and shivered for him.

But someone was coming into her shop now. And her mouth gaped open. Three bikers. Three big bikers, dressed in black leather. They stomped in wearing their black leather and their heavy boots and suddenly her little shop felt very small. Her eyes flew to the emblem on a patch sewn into their leather sleeveless jackets that they wore on top of black leather jackets. Black Coyotes.

She cleared her throat, intimidated but determined to be polite. If they were friends of Phantom’s then they were friends of hers.

She took a breath. “Good morning, gentlemen, what can I get you?” She held that breath but smiled at them.

“Nothing gentle about us, ma’am,” one of them replied. Her eyes flicked over his jacket. Colt. President. She gulped.

“We’ll take three Americanos… black.” Her eyes flicked to the other man who spoke up then. Ash. Sergeant at Arms. He had floppy, skater boy hair, unkempt looking. Blue eyes, sly like a cat.

“Nice place you’ve got here.” The third one nodded, looking around. He looked older, more travel worn somehow. His eyes were practically black, with longer dark hair that half flopped over his face. Lyle. Just a regular member, like Phantom then, she guessed.

She busied herself making the coffees. “I... yes... it took some work but... I’m happy with it so far... I mean, considering I just opened recently...” She let the noise of the coffee machine drown her out.

She turned back around with the three coffees in cardboard, to go cups. Three sets of eyes were fixed on her, watching with intense curiousness.

Colt spoke first, “We wanted to formally welcome you to the neighborhood. You have any problems, any issues, you let us know.”

“Same time, this is our town, you bring trouble with you, invite it in, and you won’t find you have many friends here. Or customers, for that matter,” Colt continued. She heard the warning in his voice loud and clear.

She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry, I’m not trouble. I just wanted to open my own cafe, my little brother will hopefully join me soon enough, there’s not much more to me than that,” she said quietly.

Colt cleared his throat. “You and Phantom fucking?”

Her breath hitched, her face flushed. She felt her core melt a little at the blunt question. The image in her mind it conjured up. What they had done. Him inside her, not moving, barely breathing. That feeling of his piercing, sliding into her, the extra drag, the extra fullness. Him nearly killing someone, while still inside her. How to answer this question. “No,” she said with dry lips.

Colt frowned. “You want to?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What a question to ask! I don’t even know you!”

Lyle had been watching her carefully. “She wants to,” he muttered.

Sophie scoffed. But they all stared at her with heavy looks. “Yes, okay, fine! Is that a crime? I like him, I want to spend more time with him, I want to go out on a date with him-”

Lyle laughed out loud.

Sophie continued, unperturbed, “-I want to kiss him, I want to touch him-”

“Alright, alright, jeez, you trying to get us all riled up?” Colt ran a hand over his swept back hair, then dipped his head. “Phantom brought back that Latino guy the other night and told us all about it… well, told us as he doesn’t… anyway, Phantom is… he’s different, okay?”

“He broke into my shop, gagged me, fucked me, then almost killed someone. Believe me, I am well aware that he is different. You think I haven’t noticed that?”

Colt flexed his jaw. She realized she was coming across fiery, abrasive even. But these men had stomped rudely into her shop and demanded answers to questions she was still mulling over herself. She had felt attacked, so the best defense was an offense. She wasn’t sorry, she wasn’t going to back down.

Colt regarded Sophie with his clever brown eyes. “You’re okay with that?”

“The killing part? No, that’s why I said don’t do it, and he didn’t do it. The rest of it…” She shrugged, trying to feign bravado and nonchalance. “You are, aren’t you? Is it so strange to think someone else could tolerate him, too? Someone else might want to spend time with him, be around him, learn to communicate with him, as you have?”

“I…” Colt trailed off. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. “He’s not just a bit broken, in need of a good fuck and he’ll be fixed, have you seen his scars? He’s full on… he’s…”

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