Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (28 page)

Laurel paused. Her breathing slowed
down a little, like she was doing it on purpose to stay calm. “I grew up in a
family completely different from me. Conservative… religious…
boring,
”
she said with a self-effacing laugh. “I was the black sheep. We didn’t hate
each other, but I just never belonged. And I always promised myself I would get
out and make something of myself on my own terms. I got this tattoo to make
myself remember… so that when things got dark and I got scared, I’d remember…”

“Remember what?”

“Remember that as complicated as
things seem, there’s only ever really two choices. Leave what you’re doing if
it’s wrong, or live and die with it.”

My heart actually ached, listening to
her talk. She understood so much of the isolation I had felt in my life.

“I love that,” I told her. “That’s
really fucking beautiful, Laurel.”

She shrugged and took a drink of
beer. “Yeah, everyone says that.”

I frowned. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

She looked up at me with worried
eyes. “I just mean… I don’t know. I don’t want to offend you.”

“Try me,” I said.

“I’ve just heard that a lot before,”
she said, the exhaustion in her voice more than apparent. “Guys are always very
impressed with my… fire. My drive. My ambition. At least, impressed enough to
flirt and fuck me. It doesn’t seem to impress them very long, though.”

She had to be exaggerating. Was she
seriously trying to tell me she couldn’t get a guy to stick around? “Are you
joking? You’re telling me, with the way you look, the way you fuck, and all the
awesome shit you’re into, you have trouble getting dudes?”

She shrugged again and took the joint
from my fingers. She held the drag in her lungs longer this time and blew it
out slowly. “It’s a mystery for the ages.”

“It’s no mystery. The men you’ve met
are fucking idiots, obviously.”

Laurel laughed, but it was quiet and
a bit sad. She passed me the joint and leaned her blonde head against my chest,
tucked under my chin. “Eh, it’s fine. I have other things going on, and dumbass
dudes only get in the way of it, anyway.”

I smiled and kissed the top of her
head. “I think that’s sexy as fuck.”

“You do?” She didn’t look up at me,
but I could still feel her face twisted into some disbelieving frown.

“Yeah,” I said. “Most of the women I
interact with are just… passive. They swim behind other people until they get
swallowed up by the sea. But you, shit… you’re a shark.”

She looked up at me this time, and I
met her eyes with a serious face. She stared at me, like she was trying to
decide if I was full of shit.

“Most people are afraid of sharks,”
she said quietly. Her eyes fell.

With one hand running through her
soft hair, I said, “Because they don’t understand them.” Then, for good
measure, I added, “And I’m not most people.”

Laurel’s smile glowed up at me. “No…
you’re not.”

“I feel like I never meet anyone who
wants to live,” I said. “Everyone is so fucking eager to settle down and get
their routine going… that schedule they can follow right up to the cemetery
gates.” I put the joint carefully in the ashtray on my bedside table and
wrapped both my arms around her. “I think your fire is beautiful.”

Laurel’s face softened. She crawled
up my body until her lips were over mine, and she kissed me with a heated
tenderness that made me ache. I wrapped my arms around her body and pulled her
into me.

With the quiet storm pattering
outside and Laurel burning in my arms, everything else in the world faded into
nothing.

~
NINE ~

Laurel

Hours passed, and Noah and I didn’t seem to want to do
anything except talk and fuck and touch each other. The driven part of me felt
guilty, because I didn’t feel like I was at work anymore. I felt… different.
Like I was just out with someone whose company I enjoyed, and who happened to
be a stone-cold fuck-machine.

After we got tired of lying in his
huge bed, I got up and wiggled my ass until he followed me into the shower.
Under the stream of hot water, Noah wrapped his arms around me and made out
with me like we were teenagers, caressing my face, pressing his taut body up
against me, and me up against the wall. When he bent to kiss my neck, his beard
tickled my sensitive skin and made me shiver. My hard nipples rubbed up against
the muscles of his chest, and I sighed softly when he brought a hand up to
touch them.

“You’re so fucking hot,” said Noah,
desperation in his voice. “I could fuck you forever.”

His words made my knees weak. I bit
into his shoulder and pushed my body tighter against his. “I wish you would.”

His giant dick was already hard
again. I took it in my hands and smiled as Noah shivered under my touch,
bending his head into my shoulder as I stroked him under the spray of the
shower. I felt his teeth pressing into my neck as he mauled my breasts with his
strong hands while I increased my rhythm. As soon as I felt his cock spasm and
release, his hands slipped around to grip my ass and pull me against his wet
body. His cum covered the front of my pussy and tops of my thighs, and I
moaned.

“You’re something else, you know
that?” he said, cupping my jaw before he kissed me.

Noah held me under the warm shower
spray and gently cleaned me off, never making me lift a finger. He nuzzled into
the side of my neck and kissed my cheek.

When we finished, Noah wrapped me in
his own gray bathrobe and only took for himself a towel around his waist—which
I, of course, wasn’t complaining about. His hard body looked even more
incredible soaking wet, the water beading off the colors of his tattoos and
rolling down his muscles like raindrops. He took a minute to run a black
plastic comb through the bit of blonde hair on the very top of his head that
wasn’t shaved close, and I watched him with an endearing smile.

“You hungry?” he said, wrapping his
arms around my waist.

“Starving,” I suddenly realized with
a laugh. “But I also don’t want to go anywhere that would require us to, you
know… put on clothes.”

Noah grinned and squeezed my ass. “I
like the way you think. Delivery?”

“How about Chinese?”

“Done,” he said. “I’m sure I’ve got a
menu buried in the kitchen somewhere.” While he did the work of gathering
dinner, I finished drying off and hung up his bathrobe. Feeling bold after so
many orgasms under my belt, I sauntered into the kitchen, naked, and whipped
Noah’s towel off his waist while he was still on the phone with the Chinese
place.

Noah whirled with a surprised face,
which turned into a pretend mad face as soon as he saw me grinning at him,
dangling the towel next to my naked body. He looked me up and down, and between
his legs his dick twitched just a bit.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” he
asked the person on the phone. “There’s someone here who is in for a world of
trouble if she doesn’t stop distracting me from my phone call…”

His playfulness revved me up like
nothing else, and I took a few steps backwards, out of his reach. “Oh, really,
tough guy? What are you gonna do to me… if I distract you?” I seductively
dropped my right hand down my body and between my legs. Noah bit his lip and
bent at the waist, trying to suppress a groan as the worker at the restaurant
read back his order to him.

“Yes, that sounds correct,” said
Noah, his voice strained, his eyes glued to the hand between my legs. Already
his dick was half-hard again. “Thirty minutes sounds perfect.” He looked up and
met my eyes. “Just enough time for someone to get punished.”

If I wasn’t wet before, I certainly
was after that line. Noah ended the call and took a few hard steps toward me,
lifting me off my feet into his arms. He dragged me a few feet into the
carpeted living room as I squealed in mock protest.

Noah lowered me to the floor, but
kept a tight grip on my wrists which he held above my head as he hovered over
me. He ground his waist against mine, dragging his massive erection along my
pelvic bone, teasing my lips.

“You just don’t like taking orders,
do you?” said Noah before he bent to lick my nipples, sucking each of them into
his mouth one at a time.

“Aren’t we both in the wrong scene
for that?” I responded, lifting my hips up to meet him, trying to get his cock
inside me. But Noah moved out of the way and pushed his body against mine to
hold it still.

“I could always try fucking the
insubordination out of you,” he said, tightening his grip on my wrists.

I bit my lip, but it wasn’t enough to
stop the sound of delight that came from deep in my throat.

“That’s what you want?” he asked. I
could feel the tip of his thick cock pushing against my pussy.

“Yes,” I begged. “Please fuck me,
Noah.”

He didn’t have it in him to resist
any longer. He reached over to a condom he had left on the coffee table and
rolled it on quickly before shoving his cock deep into my pussy with a guttural
moan. My legs clenched around his waist reflexively as I tried to drive him
harder into me. Each thrust pushed me against the floor, his heavy body nearly
knocking the wind out of me each time he pressed me down. His hands gripped my
hair and shoulders, using me for leverage as he pounded into me desperately.
His cock filled me up until an orgasm washed over my body, lasting twice as
long as the last one. Noah sweated and cursed above me as I clenched his
hardness with my quivering muscles, massaging his cock until he was coming hard
inside me.

I could already feel the carpet rash
on my back, but I didn’t care. My body felt incredible after all these orgasms,
and even more so when I had Noah’s pressed up against me. He kissed me a few
more times, and then withdrew his half-hard dick and helped me up off the
floor. We got cleaned up just in time to answer the door for the delivery
driver, Noah wearing only the gray robe as I kept out of sight.

The day had cleared up a bit and the
air was warm, so Noah grabbed a few blankets and spread them out on the grass
in his backyard. The foliage and fence line made the place very private, so we
opted to picnic naked, spreading the little boxes of Chinese food out across
the blanket.

“So, can I ask you something?” I said
as I lowered some chow mein into my mouth. “It’s kinda personal.”

“I think we’ve established something
of a personal relationship,” said Noah with a wink. His gaze fell down to my tits
and I rolled my eyes.

“Anyway,” I said dramatically.
“What’s the deal with you still being single? I could’ve sworn everyone in your
band was spoken for.”

Judging by the look on Noah’s face, I
had hit a nerve. Guilt twisted up my spine, but I didn’t try to take it back.

“Eh, it’s… it’s a bit complicated.”

“Try me,” I said. “I’m the queen of
complicated.” And I meant it.

Noah took a few bites of a spring
roll. He didn’t look up when he spoke. “I just came from a rougher scene than
the other guys, is all. Quinn and Jeff know a little bit about it, and endured
a lot of it with me, but they also had better parents than I did. Parents that
protected them.”

I was quiet while Noah found his
words.

“It’s dumb. I’ve never been in a war,
or anything as heinous as all that, but I still… still have some of the same
problems. Just too many years in the fringes of the scene, you know? Barely
finding the money to scrape by for rent and food and a little beer, maybe sneak
into a show every couple weeks if you learned the bouncers’ schedules. Fights,
cheating girlfriends, band drama… watching friends OD or lose out to
depression… having nothing but the music to make it all feel better.”

Despite my full tummy, a phantom pain
squeezed my abdomen anyway: memories of being hungry and cold that first winter
in New York, when I had nothing and no one, just my writing and the shows and
hope that the future was going to look different than the past. Noah
understood.

He scratched absently at his beard as
he shook his head. “When I really stop and think about it, it all feels a
million years old, another lifetime ago. But at night, when I’m all alone and
everything’s quiet, it doesn’t feel that long ago. It feels like it’s still
happening. And… long story short… that makes it really difficult to have
anything meaningful with a woman. Eventually, even the craziest groupies want
someone stable to settle down with.”

Ache gnawed at my heart. “You might
not believe me, but I understand. And I’m sorry to hear that.”

Noah shrugged and cocked his head
without looking at me, as if to say it was no big deal. He reached out with his
chopsticks and tossed a few pieces of chicken in his mouth. “I don’t mean to
make it sound like I never got
any
attention. That would just be a lie.”

“Well, you’re certainly getting
attention from the ladies now, hot stuff,” I said.

“Once I found my place in the
hardcore scene, I started getting a reputation for being a moody, mysterious
little shit, and that really helped me get the chicks. And it only got better
when I started bulking up. The Raven of Thornwood, that’s what they called me.”

I burst out laughing, hand to my
mouth to keep a bite of orange chicken from spraying over the picnic. I’d been
around the block enough to know a rehearsal when I heard it. “What?! You’re
full of shit, no they didn’t! Your hair isn’t even black!”

Noah’s face flushed almost instantly,
but his mouth was pulled in a full grin, like he was glad he got caught. “Well,
that story has worked on dumber women.”

Noah watched me laugh for a little
bit before he started playfully shoving me over and saying, “Okay, okay! You
got your laugh in, sugar. Not all of us can have the opposite sex at our feet
all the time like you.”

“When did you start bulking up? Kevin
said you were still pretty scrawny when he met you.”

“Been talking to Kevin about me?” he
said, nudging his elbow into my leg.

“That is none of your business,” I
said, poking him with one of my chopsticks. “Don’t change the subject.”

Noah ran a hand over his own ab muscles,
like he was still not used to having them. “I suppose I was about twenty-two
when I finally started taking it seriously. I’d learned to fight before then.
Being as deep in the scene as I was, you had to.”

“Boston had some rough years like
that, too,” I recalled. The metal and hardcore scenes were far more peaceful
than outsiders ever imagined, but we had our asshole groups that ruined it for
everyone else.

“There was this one show, I can’t
even remember the name of the band now, but it was me and Quinn and a bunch of
other dudes from high school. We got jumped on-stage. They almost put Quinn in
the hospital. After that, it just seemed stupid not to try and get stronger. If
this was the world I lived in, I had to adapt,” he said.

Palm running down his colorful arm, I
said, “Wow. So this isn’t just some tough guy thing… this is you surviving.”

Noah didn’t reply or look up at me.
He shifted a bit and reached for a fortune cookie. “Tell me what your deal is,
sugar. How come I’m lucky enough to not be competing with some strapping,
hipster boyfriend?”

Immediately I could feel a strange
shame rising in my blood, the same feeling I always got whenever things got too
emotional or vulnerable for me. Opening up with my feelings was not exactly my
jam. But in that moment it was like I couldn’t stop myself.