Burn Down the Night (22 page)

“That sounds like there's a but coming.”

“But,” Eric smiled ruefully, “he's expensive.”

I felt myself bristle. Because I'd go into the deepest debt I could to save Jennifer, but it's not like there were tons of people ready to loan me money.

“And,” Fern jumped in, “I'm going to cover the costs for you.”

“Aunt Fern,” I breathed. “It's going to be so expensive.”

“It will be,” she said. “But I've got the money.”

My head fell forward. It was just too heavy to hold up.

“He's ready to meet with you tomorrow at ten thirty in his Tampa offices,” Eric said. “I've given him the gist of the situation, but you have a lot to talk about. Here's his card.”

Eric handed me a little white card of really nice paper.

Darren Jackson, Attorney-at-law.

There was an address and phone number.

“Okay,” I said. “This…this—” It was so much and I was completely overwhelmed. Max's arm over my shoulder felt very much like the only thing keeping me on my feet.

“I don't know how to thank you,” I said. “All of you.”

“Well,” said Fern. “You can take this seriously as your one chance to really help Jennifer and not sabotage it.”

“Fern!” Eric chastised and Max all but hissed at her, pulling me closer to him.

“No,” I said, jumping to Fern's defense. “That's fair. That's…legit. I'm pretty good at sabotaging things when I put my mind to it.”

“You…you can't sabotage this,” Eric said. “I can't guarantee there's a second chance with this opportunity. Darren—”

“I understand that,” I said. “And I won't.”

I made myself look straight into Aunt Fern's eyes. “I promise,” I told her.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “That wasn't kind.”

“I've done plenty to deserve it. Don't sweat it.”

I promised to call both of them when I got back from Tampa, to tell them what the lawyer had to say. Fern looked like she was going to hug me but I managed to telepathically fend her off.

“You better lawyer up, too,” Eric said to Max.

“Don't worry about me,” Max said.

“Your boys in the club. They've already been talking and you'll get pulled in on this and it will mean serious time.”

“Don't worry about me.”

Eric stared at him hard, one last, long minute, and then slapped his hands together twice like he was washing himself clear of responsibility.

Eric and Fern left and Max and I stood there. I couldn't speak for him but I felt hollowed out.

“It's going to be okay,” Max said.

“Don't say that.”

“What? Why?”

“You'll jinx it.”

He rolled his eyes at me but I wasn't joking. Good things were fragile in my life. Either I broke them on purpose or I broke them by accident. It didn't matter. Good didn't last. Not for me.

I was scared of breathing too deeply in case I might wreck something.

“Joan,” Max breathed. “Relax. I'm gonna get you a drink.”

“Yes,” I said. “A drink is a great idea.”

She was strung so tightly I was scared to touch her. One wrong word and she might spook. Fuck. How had this happened? How had she gotten so used to eating worms and dirt and garbage that when something good came along she was terrified?

Well, I knew how that happened. I'd eaten my own share of dirt and called it dinner. After a while, it didn't even taste bad. It tasted like what you deserved.

Clock and BLJ had talked in prison. I couldn't even muster up the surprise.

I got Joan another glass of that punch and a beer to chase it down. Which I watched her do, like she was taking medicine.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Better,” she said.

And then, because I never saw her eat, not really, I loaded up a plate at the buffet table. I'd noticed she liked cheese a lot, so I grabbed a bunch of the little cubes all cut up on a tray. I threw on salami and some crackers. Helen had made tamales and they were going fast, so I grabbed two of them. There were plenty of peel and eat shrimp but Joan didn't seem like she had the patience for that. A whole bunch of dips and chips. Some vegetables. I remembered she'd complained about there not being enough vegetables during the steak night and I grabbed even more. A plate full of carrots and shit.

My hands full, I headed back over to her just as she was finishing the last of her beer. She looked wild-eyed.

Completely unpredictable.

“What's that?” she asked. Her voice had an edge like she was digging around for a fight.

“Food. When's the last time you ate?”

“I'm not hungry.” She met my eyes square and I didn't know if she meant to show me as much as she was showing me. But it was all right there. She wanted me to push so she could push back.

“Cool,” I said. I put the plates down on a wicker end table and picked up one of the tamales. My mom used to make tamales; she had learned it from her mom. Who learned it from hers. On her good days, when I was growing up, she talked about how she was going to teach me to make them. She never did though.

I wanted to tell Joan that story, break off that little piece of myself and hand it over. But I could tell by the way she was standing what she would do with that. I'd give her some other shit we could fight over, if that's what she wanted. But not that.

Some things you couldn't unsay after a fight. And my guess was me and Joan had plenty of experience with that. I wouldn't give her the ammunition to destroy this little thing we had.

I took a big bite and the flavors were perfect. The masa melted on my tongue. “That's good,” I said. “Really good. You don't want that one?”

“No,” she said and put her beer down on the wicker table. “I'm gonna get another drink, you want something?”

There were tons of other people in this world who would not understand what she was doing. Who wouldn't get it. But what I saw was a person who had no idea what to do with something that was bright and shiny and clean. Not when everything in her life was dirty. So, the only thing to do was to take the bright and shiny and clean thing and mess it up. Just a little. Just so she could hold it in her hand.

She got another beer and I watched her circle the tables. Making tense small talk, leaving people in her wake looking at each other with worried expressions. When she got back to me I had a plan in place.

“You ready to go?” I asked her, wiping my hands on a leftover Easter napkin. I dropped it, crumpled on the paper plate of vegetables.

“Go where?”

“Back to the condo.”

I ran my eyes down her body, nice and slow. Insulting a little. Because it was something she would recognize.

I took the bottle from her hand and tipped a sip into my mouth. The glass rim was warm from her mouth but the beer was still cold. A combination so like her.

“End it with a bang?” She smirked. “Really, Max?”

I didn't smile. I didn't feel like smiling. I felt like throwing her over my shoulder and carrying her back to the condo so I could burn my hands on her body. I used to try and control a group of criminals with the power of my will. My intent, if I wanted it to, could be broadcast over a room.

I let my intent, my will, fall over her and I watched as that smirk fell from her face. She glanced around as if she wondered if other people were feeling what she was feeling. If they could sense what was playing out in our little corner of this lobby.

I didn't give a shit. I would fuck her here if that was what she wanted.

Her eyes met mine and it was over. No more games. No more pretend.

“Let's go,” I said. I turned and walked out of the lobby.

Joan followed.

Every hair on my body was standing up. It was as if all the warning systems I'd accrued over the years were blaring their alarms and flashing the red lights. It was dangerous, following this guy back to our condo, for a whole truck full of reasons.

And—I'm not kidding—that's why I went.

Our footsteps were loud in the hallway, against the painted cement floor. But our silence was even louder. It pounded. It pushed against my chest. I wanted to scream just to break it, just to find some relief.

We'd been fucking each other for months without touching. And the last few days had this thing between us strung so tightly it was amazing we could move.

He was going to wreck me. Break me.

And I'd never needed anything more.

He stopped at our door and unlocked it with the key Fern gave us. He pushed open the door and stood there, holding it for me. His face was still. Calm. Like he wasn't feeling what I was feeling. Like his heart wasn't pounding in his throat and his dick wasn't hard at the thought of what we were going to do to each other.

It made me want to punch him.

Hurt him.

I wanted to snarl and bite and claw my way past that calm face into whatever he had for a heart.

He must have seen it because he smirked. “Get inside before I fuck you against this wall.”

Yeeeeees.

I walked past him, through the open door, and into the dark condo beyond, but my fingers brushed his cock, hard as a rock beneath his jeans.

I heard the door slam and then he was behind me. Not touching me, but there. Solid and warm against my back. I stopped moving, bracing myself for some kind of impact, but he stopped just short of touching me.

There was no pretending anymore. I wasn't going to put on some kind of game face. I didn't want to play. I wanted him to put me right. To smooth these broken and jagged edges that were slicing me to ribbons.

So, I stepped backward and our bodies fell into each other in pieces. My ass against his cock. His chest against my back. My head against his shoulder—we were like magnets that had been flipped and as hard as we'd repelled each other—that's how hard we came together.

His hand touched the bare skin of my thigh and I felt it like electricity all through my body. He was breathing hard in my ear and I was holding my breath, waiting for more. Wanting more.

But his hand stayed there, on my thigh, spread wide, like he was cupping the muscle. The callouses at the base of his fingers and on his thumb were not enough. Not close to enough. I pushed back hard against him, until he gave me something in return. A sigh. A muffled “damn.”

His hand on my thigh dug into my skin, the pleasure/pain of a harder touch just the beginning of what I wanted. His hand slipped to the inside of my thigh, pushing up my skirt until his thumb was up against the wet crotch of my panties.

On his shoulder, I turned my head away from his face. So he couldn't see me, maybe. I don't know.

Again, his hand stopped, touching me but nothing else. A feather light touch more agonizing than anything. I curled my hips forward and then back, seeking out some friction but again. Nothing.

“Max,” I groaned.

“Turn around.”

“No. Just—”

He grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me to face him. I reached forward to put my arms around his neck, but he held me back.

Finally, sensing that was what he wanted, I looked at him with a scowl.

“There you are.” He smirked and I wanted to smack him. He was fucking this up. He pulled me toward him slowly, and finally he was kissing me.

His beard prickled and his lips were chapped. Dry. But soft. His kiss was soft, too.

This was all wrong.

I did not want careful.

I kissed him harder, opened my mouth against his and licked at those chapped lips. I pulled that decadent lower lip into my mouth and bit at it with my teeth. I pulled and groaned, arching up into his body as best I could considering he was literally holding me away from him.

But then his mouth opened and he was drawing me in. Sucking me in. Biting me and kissing me with his whole mouth. It was hard and it hurt just a little, but a woman didn't make out with an MC president without wanting to be hurt.

I strained against his hands, wanting to be against him. Wanting to feel how hard he was. I reached out and put my hand against the fly of his jeans and the wide stiff cock beneath it. My hand pressed flat against it, squeezing him between my touch and the hard muscles of his abs. He pushed into me, seeking more and I smiled into his mouth.

Between my legs I was so wet. So hot.

“Come on,” I said, pulling at the button of his jeans.

“Hold on.”

“Why?”

He leaned back from me and I caught the look in his eyes before he could shutter it.

Pity. Or something far too close to it. Sympathy maybe?

Oh, fuck no.

I smacked him. Across the face with the flat of my hand, I smacked him as hard as I could. Hard enough that his head snapped back. His lip must have caught on his tooth because he wiped his mouth with his thumb and it came away bloody.

I stood there panting, shaking. So on the edge of myself I couldn't feel anything anymore. Not fear or desire.

“Don't fuck me like you're some soldier going off to war.” I snarled at him.

“You want me to fuck you like you are the war.”

Yes. Exactly. I didn't have to say it. His blue eyes blazed and he stepped forward and I held my ground, not moving until he was pressed up tightly against me.

“Remember,” he whispered. “When this is all done—you asked for it.”

Literally.

And then he kissed me. He kissed me like I needed to be kissed. Like we were both fighting for the same air. The same space. Like we were each on fire and wanted to burn the other down, too.

He caught my hair in his big giant fists, pulling it until it hurt. I gasped, tears stinging my eyes. And I put my hands under his shirt, slipping them up over all that smooth, silky skin until I had his shoulders in my palms and dug my nails in until he hissed.

“Fuck you,” he gasped.

“Now you get it.”

With his arms around my waist, he lifted me, walking me backward until we hit a wall. Then he turned around and held me up, squeezed between the wall and his weight. His chest and the slow push of his hips. I arched forward against him, reaching down to yank up my skirt, until it was the damp silk of my underwear pushed up against the ridge of his cock.

He was kissing me so dirty. So wet and wild and fierce. I tasted the blood on his lips and sucked more onto my tongue. He growled and bit my lip until both of us tasted the blood, the pain a bright light in all the dark pleasure.

I shook my shoes off and put my toes on his boots, bracing myself so I could grind against him.

He pulled back, his mouth wet, his lips shiny. His eyes all dilated and mean. He put his hands back in my hair, resting his elbows against the wall.

“Fuck yourself against me,” he said and I arched again, sliding on the wet silk against his jeans. I shifted on his boots when he hit my clit so I could stay right there, throbbing against him.

“Take off your shirt,” he said.

I was sidetracked by the hard pressure on my clit. The pleasure/pain radiating out in my body.

Max leaned back, taking that hard pressure away, and then he leaned forward and through the thin silk of my shirt, he sucked the whole of my nipple into his mouth.

“Oh my God!” I cried out, my feet scrambling against his boots. Trying to find some way to support myself or he was going to hold me up by my hair and his mouth on my breast. He closed his mouth, raking his teeth across me through the fabric until he had the point of my nipple in his mouth. I held my breath waiting for him to let me go.

But he bit harder and I jerked between him and the wall.

“Take,” he said into my ear, “your shirt off.”

“I can't…” I gasped, swallowing air. “Your hands…they're in the way.”

“Lift it.” His tongue traced the curve of my ear, a light, ticklish touch that after the pain of my nipple in his teeth felt like too much, and at the same time not at all enough. “Show me, baby. Show me your tits.”

I lifted the shirt and my black bra up over my breasts until they were all bunched up in my armpits. My breast, the one he bit, was red. And wet.

I groaned, arching forward with my hips, trying to find that hard pressure of his cock, but he stepped back. Out of reach.

Clit tease.

“I hurt you,” he murmured, a sort of assessing kind of whisper. He was looking at my breast, that red mark. The indention of his teeth, that as we both watched, were fading.

“I like it,” I told him. “I want more.”

“More,” he said like he was considering it. Like it was an avenue he might take, but he just needed persuading.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. His eyes flared and he looked right at me. Right into me. Held up by my toes and his hands in my hair, I lifted my shirt to show him my tits. My skirt was lifted, so he could see how wet I was—there was no way for me to hide. Nowhere to run.

I had to simply stand there, spread out for him, and let him see me.

Let him see every filthy and wrong thing I wanted.

Every dark and dangerous thing I needed.

His hands untangled themselves from my hair and he carefully let me go. My feet fell securely on his boots. He put a hand at my hip and stepped back, pushing me off him as he went. Holding me against the wall. His eyes raked my body, stopping at the hot-pink silk between my legs that was wet and skewed from the way I'd been rubbing myself against him. He put his hand over the silk, covering it completely with his palm and I gasped, arching into his rough, warm touch.

Slowly he closed his hand, his fingers slipping into my wet slit, the heel of his hand pushing down on my clit. It was like he was making a fist around my pussy.

I opened my mouth to say something; what I had no idea. But only a long, slow breath came out. I was pinned to the wall by his eyes, and held there by his hand. He squeezed and I nearly screamed.

“I'm gonna fuck you,” he said, his voice a hot, burnt whisper.

“Yes.”

“But first I want you to suck my dick.”

“Yes.”

“On your knees.”

He let go of me and I fell to the floor at his feet, my hands braced on his denim-covered thighs. His hand, wet from touching me, lifted my chin so I was looking up at him. Then he slipped his fingers into my mouth and I licked and sucked the musty taste of my pussy from his skin.

He undid his pants and pushed down his underwear with one hand until the long hard length of his cock was free. I moaned against his fingers, the muscles of my pussy clenching hard at the sight.

One by one he pulled his fingers free. “Suck me good,” he said. “And I'll let you come.”

Beyond gentle, I grasped him in my fist and pulled him down while I raised up on my knees. I licked the head with the whole of my tongue, tasting the salt of his come and sweat. I moaned low in my throat, liking everything about him. Liking how I could feel his heartbeat in the thick throb of his cock. I liked how the head filled my mouth and when I took him deeper, he stretched my lips.

“Look at me,” he groaned and I did, lifting my eyes to his as his cock slowly, so so slowly filled my mouth. He braced one hand against the wall and the other came down on the side of my head, cupping my chin and my cheek, his thumb tracing my ear.

“More,” he said and I took more. I felt him at the back of my throat. A burn and a pressure.

“More.” Breathing deeply through my nose, I did nothing. Instead, I teased him with my tongue. Squeezed him with my hand with my eyes still on his. If he wanted more, I wanted him to take it.

And as if he knew it, that gentle hand against my face speared into my hair, holding me still while he pushed deeper. And deeper.

I loosened my throat, relaxed my mouth. My eyes burned with tears and it was hard to breath but I took what he gave me.

Total surrender. Exactly what I wanted. Those rough edges sanded down by rougher edges.

“Look at you, baby,” he whispered, easing out a little so I could breathe and then pushing back in deeper and harder. Pushing the pleasure into pain and then back again. Muddying the line until it wasn't there anymore. Everything was just feeling.

He pulled out again, all the way out this time, my spit on his dick and on my face and then he pushed in again. He controlled the tempo. He controlled everything. Short and fast or deep and slow, I didn't have to worry or think. It was him. And the spiraling painful pleasure filling my body.

“Look at you suck my cock. So good. So fucking deep. You like this don't you? If I put my hand between your legs, you'd come, wouldn't you? What if it was my cock between your legs? Fucking you.”

I stretched up on my knees, aching and restless and ready to come just from his words. Just from the look on his face. His heavy, lidded eyes. His cock stretching my throat.

“Yeah,” he said with the dirtiest, sexiest smile I'd ever seen. “I want you to come all over my dick.”

He pulled out of my mouth and I fell forward, weak and gasping for breath. He lifted me with rough hands and pushed me face-first against the wall. He held me there with a hand in the middle of my back.

“Condom,” I said. “I have one—”

“I got it.” I heard the rustle of something. I saw his wallet fall to the floor out of the corner of my eye. I closed my eyes and waited, holding my breath.

“Spread your legs.”

I did. All the while my heart beating—
yes, yes, please, yes.

“Your ass,” he said, shoving my thong down between my legs far enough that I could wiggle it off and drop it to the floor. “You weren't lying. It is something special.”

I smiled even as I was dying.

He grabbed my hips, popping them out, and I shifted, bracing myself against the wall. I felt his hand between my legs, holding his cock so he could notch himself against me.