Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (11 page)

Ghost went dark. “What?”

“Toby,” nodded Bridget. “The kid who
talked to you the other day?”

“Oh, fuck,” said Ghost. “That
adorable little nerd? No, no. Don’t say that.”

“I don’t know for sure,” said
Bridget. “Not yet. Well, I mean I don’t have
proof
yet. My gut knows for
sure.”

Ghost gave her a thoughtful, sad
look. “You strike me as someone with a finely-tuned gut.”

Bridget sighed. Sadness dropped over
her posture.

“Hey,” he said, and leaned forward to
kiss her deeply. “Don’t get down about it tonight. I’ll help you find a way to
help Toby.”

She frowned at him in disbelief.
“Really?”

“Yeah, totally. Toby’s my bro now.
And even if he wasn’t, like I’m just going to sit back and do nothing to stop
some child-beating fucker.”

“I don’t even know what I’m going to
do about it,” she said. “And you could get in trouble.”

Ghost gasped dramatically and clasped
at his non-existent pearl necklace. “Oh, heavens,
trouble?!
Lord have
mercy, my fragile constitution could never endure the barbs of disobedience!”

Bridget started laughing, even with a
few sad tears still in her eyes. She play-tackled him on the couch and made out
with him while Ghost ground his hips against her bare skin.

She pulled away and looked at him.
“So you think the soldier thing is hot, huh? I’m really not sure whether to
take that seriously.”

Ghost made a groaning noise. “Oh,
baby, do I ever. You’re basically the hottest soldier on base, and you’re in my
bed. We could fuck
and
kill together. What else is there?”

Sometimes, like right now, the
backtalk about how he was too much of a jokester cut a bit deeper. He really
did find everything about her incredibly sexy, and he wanted her to believe it.
Jokes were just his mechanism, but it wasn’t because he had nothing to say.
Quite the opposite.

He watched and waited for her
expression to become dark. But it didn’t. Instead, Bridget smirked and laughed.
Something in her eyes said she didn’t quite agree with him, but she sure as
hell wasn’t throwing him out on his ass, calling him a fucked-up freak. She was
wrapping her arms around his neck. She was planting a sweet little kiss on his
nose.

“You’re a different sort of guy,
aren’t you, Ghost?” she said.

“So I’ve been told,” he said. He bent
down and kissed her slowly, deeply, and felt whatever sassy response she’d been
building melt away on his tongue.

~
ELEVEN ~

Bridget

Recharged from her weekend with Ghost, and the
wonderful sensation of multiple orgasms, Bridget returned to the Academy on
Monday morning fully ready to conquer the problem of Toby Cary. The last few
days had been an incredible new adventure for her with Ghost, who had arrived
for their originally planned date Friday night to take her out for a nice steak
dinner. After, he didn’t leave her house for the rest of the weekend. In fact,
the two of them had barely left her bedroom. It had been a flurry of laughter,
sex, cuddling, and swapping war stories that had lit up areas in her brain she
didn’t even realize had been dimmed.

Unfortunately, children often stand in
the way of even the best laid plans. It was a lesson Bridget already knew well,
and yet she walked right into the trap anyway. After trying and failing all of
last week to make some kind of subtle inclination to Toby about the secret they
shared, she decided to try a more direct approach, and asked him to take a walk
with her to get supplies from one of the closets down the hall, shared by the
teachers.

Toby happily followed along beside
her as they walked the hall and answered her questions about his recent
birthday party, and how much he loved the new section they had started in
science about the way planets are formed. Bridget smiled at him as she unlocked
the supply closet and went inside, flipping on the light. Toby stood by the
door, propping it open with his foot and standing weirdly, like kids were known
to do.

As she gathered armfuls of
construction paper, she said, “Hey, you know I gave my phone number out to all
of you guys at the beginning of the school year, right?”

“Yeah, on those papers,” said Toby.
He was watching something down the hall and making a buzzing sound
absentmindedly.

“Right. Do you have your own phone,
Toby?”

He didn’t answer. Bridget carried
some of the supplies over to him and saw the humor had fallen from his face. He
took the supplies in his arms.

Bridget acted nonchalant, waving her
hand and immediately returning to the supply shelf like it was no big deal. “I
ask because I had a phone number call me last week that I didn’t recognize, and
I wondered if it was one of you guys trying to get a hold of me. Whoever called
wouldn’t answer when I picked up.” She resisted the urge to glance over at him
as she pulled bottles of glue off the shelf.

Toby didn’t say anything for a few
heavy moments. When Bridget turned back to him, done gathering what she needed,
he looked up at her slowly and met her eyes for just a moment. Then he looked
down again and said, “I don’t have a phone anymore.”

Grief pierced Bridget’s heart, its
blade coated with poisonous anger. Toby’s discomfort and fear was a palpable
force in the air. Whatever was happening, he was clearly not ready to have a
face-to-face conversation about it.

Bridget quickly smiled. “That’s okay,
I was just wondering. What are you going to make for your art project today?”

It took a few slow, sad blinks, but
Toby took her offer of distraction as they closed up the supply closet and
walked back to class. He wasn’t himself after that, and Bridget was overcome
with guilt. She hadn’t meant to upset him; she just didn’t know what else to
do.

She tried her best to get hers, and
Toby’s, good moods back by launching into a surprise game time after the
students completed their spelling test. They played until the lunch bell rang,
and as she hoped, it had lightened the classroom quite a bit. Red-faced and
laughing, the kids spilled out into the hallway and headed for the cafeteria.
Toby melted into the group and disappeared along with them, and Bridget decided
that was an improvement and tried to let herself off the hook.

Before she could get too comfy at her
desk, her phone lit up. It was a picture text from Ghost. She smiled as she
pulled it up: a phone selfie of him leaning back seductively on his bike, doing
the kissy duck face so popular with teenage girls in their photos. Along with
the photo was a smattering of nonsense emojis with a single word:
lunch?
She looked closer at the photo and realized Ghost was in the Academy’s parking
lot, and she quickly locked up her classroom and headed out to meet him.

Ghost stood waiting for her in the
bright sunshine with a bag of sandwiches from the deli down on Vine Street.
Bridget felt like a schoolgirl, but she couldn’t help herself from running up
to meet him in a tight bear hug. He lifted her up off the ground and she
giggled.

“What are you doing here?” she asked
happily.

“Duh, lunch, like I said!” He held up
the bag.

Bridget laughed. “You’re not sick of
me yet, huh?”

“Sick of you? Jase had to talk me
down from bringing you breakfast, too.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and
pulled her close to kiss her. Bridget moaned against his mouth. “Hop on the
bike, baby. Let’s go find a place to eat.”

Bridget bit her lip. “I can’t. I have
to make arrangements to leave school grounds during the day unless it’s an
emergency.”

“Oh,” said Ghost. He turned his
shoulders to look around. “Well, is there somewhere on the grounds we could go
to be alone?”

“Be alone?” said Bridget with a
mischievous smile. “You got something on your mind other than sandwiches?”

“I think I might have something else
hot and meaty you can enjoy, yeah,” he said in a low voice, pulling her into
him.

Bridget laughed. “That was almost too
silly to be sexy.”

“ ‘Almost’ is my middle name.
C’mon,” he said, taking her hand.

He led her across the parking lot
toward the sloping hill on the east side of the grounds, where the landscaping
was filled with tall bushy trees and clean-cut hedges. None of the school yard
extended this far east, but technically, it was still school grounds, so
Bridget shrugged and sat down next to Ghost in a sweet, grassy little clearing
just a few yards into the tree line. Most of the local noise became subsumed by
the lovely lilt of chirping birds and buzzing bugs, the breeze in the leaves of
the budding spring forest.

Ghost sat down and patted his lap
playfully. Bridget obliged, and while she didn’t sit
on
his legs, she
did sit up against him, enjoying the feeling of his strong chest at her back.

“How’s Tommy?” asked Bridget as they
dug into the sandwiches he had brought.

Ghost swallowed and said, “He’s
improving. He’s spending more time awake, but he’s still all jacked up from the
pain meds.”

“Poor guy. He’s going to be okay
though?”

“Oh, yeah. Doc says he’ll be right as
rain after all the broken bones heal.”

“What’s going to happen about Lucero?”

Ghost sighed, and Bridget almost felt
bad for bringing it up. “I’m not sure. I know the whole Eagleton charter—what’s
left of them, anyway—is on their way down here right now so we can sort this
out. They basically had to close up shop to do it, they’re so low on men.”

“Sounds like you guys are going to
have a face-off.”

“I would duel the shit out of him if
Henry would let me,” said Ghost with a shake of his head. “I was born in the
wrong century.”

Bridget giggled. “Well, I’m sorry you
can’t just duel him and fix it. He’s a giant shithead for what he’s done. I
hope you make him pay.”

Ghost narrowed his eyes at her, his
mouth twisting in a naughty grin. “Ooh, say that again,” he said with a
mouthful of sandwich.

“I hope you make him pay?” said Bridget.

“Mmm, again, but all sexy-like.”

Bridget laughed and leaned back
against his ear. She felt his heart beating fast against her back. “I hope you
make him pay,” she whispered slowly in her best throaty voice.

From behind she felt Ghost’s dick
push against her, hardening instantly. He groaned and leaned down to latch his
teeth and tongue onto her exposed neck. His hands dropped the food and slid
around her torso, one pushing up to lightly tease at the underside of her
breasts, the other creeping slowly south.

“Ghost,” she said in an aroused
whisper. “We can’t…”

“Can’t what?” he mumbled as he took
one breast fully in his hand and squeezed. Bridget sighed softly and pushed her
face against his as he sucked on the skin of her neck.

“Can’t…” she trailed off when Ghost’s
hand pushed down the front of her black pants and past her panties in one swift
movement. Suddenly his dexterous fingers pawed at her clit, spreading the
wetness that was already building across her pussy lips like oil.

“Mmmm,” said Ghost against her neck.
He rubbed her chest rhythmically and pushed his fingers deeper inside her
pants. “Fuck, you’re so wet.”

“Ghost,” she was begging, bucking her
hips up to meet his hands and writhing against his back. Ghost held her tight
against his body and pushed his hand further down her pants, until his fingers
had enough room to slide inside her soaking pussy.

Bridget let out a cry so loud, Ghost
released her breast and clamped a hand gently over her mouth. “Shhhhhh,” he
said and sucked on her earlobe. “Don’t wanna get caught, do you, naughty girl?”

Bridget moaned helplessly against his
hand as he pumped his fingers in and out of her in slow, painful rhythm. The
way her body was writhing made Ghost so hard it hurt, and all he wanted was to
throw her down on that meadow grass and fuck her senseless, but instead he
decided it would be more fun to keep her dreaming about his cock the rest of
the day—and give himself a little edging at the same time.

As his fingers fucked her pussy,
Ghost put three of them in Bridget’s mouth and she immediately began to suck on
them. It was Ghost’s turn to moan, and his dick pulsed hard against his jeans,
and against Bridget’s ass. It wasn’t long before she came all over his fingers,
pressed stiffly against his body as he held her tight, muffling her cries of
pleasure.

He teased her sensitive pussy as she
came down from her orgasm, planting little kisses all over her neck and
shoulders. Bridget continued to suck at his fingers, albeit with softer,
gentler pressure, settling back down in Ghost’s lap, skin aglow.

“You are my favorite,” said Ghost. He
gave her clit a few more rubs before he pulled his hand out of her pants and
brought his fingers to his mouth to clean them off with a satisfied sound. “And
you are too goddamn hot for your own good.”

“
I’m
hot?” said Bridget,
turning to kiss him. “I’m not the one starting quickies in the woods behind
school.”

“You didn’t say no, either,” he said
with a wink.

Bridget only had a few minutes left
to get back, so they cleaned themselves up and started to head back. As he
escorted her back to the school, Ghost reached his big hand over and grasped
onto hers, twisting their fingers together. She didn’t know why, but the move
surprised her. She looked over at him and he turned to look at her. He gave her
a simple, handsome smile and squeezed her hand. Bridget felt a fluttering in
her stomach as she returned it.

Before they could head over toward
the fountain and front entrance, Bridget heard a voice calling out over the din
of the lunch recess madness. She and Ghost both searched for the source, and
saw Toby clinging to the schoolyard fence, fingers wrapped around the chain
link.

“Ghost!” he said. “Hey, Ghost!
Remember me? Toby?”

Ghost didn’t let go of her hand, but
only pulled it to lead her over to the fence. “Shit yeah, I remember you! Were
it not for your brave messenger skills, I wouldn’t be having lunch with this
lovely lady today.” He put his fist up against the fence for Toby to bump with
an awkward laugh. “You’re my wingman, bro.”