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  Her back hunched, and she draped herself over me, relieved but short of breath from excitement. “You fucking monster,” Star whispered in my ear. “I want you so fucking bad.”

  The wet gunmetal glistened in the white floodlights from the parking lot. Locking eyes with her, I brought the tip of it to my lips and tasted it “Mmm... Much better.”

  She dragged her bottom lip past her biting teeth. She unzipped my pants, put a hand through my boxers to grab my rigid cock, and used it as a handle to pull me into the hotel room. She slammed the door shut behind us.

  Extremely turned on, she forgot how bad my injuries were and threw me onto the bed.

  White hot fire streaked through my ribs and chest at the impact.

  She gasped. “Oh shit, Remy are you—”

  I held up a hand to stop her concern. I exhaled and let the pain die down, then smiled. I deserved that for the gun stunt.

  I’d lain next to this woman for weeks and hadn’t been able to touch her the way I wanted to. Pain or no pain…that ended now.

  Everything was slower than I would have liked, but I eventually got my damn shirt off. She looked me over. I was all tattoos and a patchwork of scars and stitches, making me feel a little like Frankenstein’s monster. At this point, my body was a roadmap of a life with heavy consequence.

  And Star was pure, smooth, soft, sexy, especially when she peeled off that silly cat shirt. I yearned for her. My dick couldn’t have been any harder.

  Her body screamed for my touch.

  She dropped her bottoms and walked around to the side of the bed near my head.

  “You got me all revved up. You sure you’re up for this? I don’t want to hurt you,” Star teased, standing there, touching herself. Flicking, pressing, rubbing... “Why don’t you just watch me instead?”

  Star’s pussy was so close that I could taste her scent. It was torture. “Fuck that.” My eyes burned for her. When I couldn’t refrain any longer, I grabbed her and pulled her over me onto the bed. My chest screamed at the torqueing motion, but her soft, tight pussy beckoned for me.

  Everything else I pushed out of my head.

  I had her arms pinned. My legs on the outside of hers with my raging cock pressed over her pussy. Slowly, I plunged into her inviting puffy nipples first. I bit down on the hard nub and craned back, stretching her tit toward me while rolling my tongue around the tip. I studied her face to find the line between delight and discomfort, and right when she wanted more, I released her. I put one of her legs on my good shoulder, spreading her wide before me. I squeezed her thighs, and sank my teeth into her calf.

  Star propped herself up so that she could get at me better. She licked her palms and furiously stroked my cock. My mind swam as she squeezed my shaft tighter. Her every digit worked up to and over the ridge of my sensitive head, then down and back again. Both hands milked me, moving in tandem – one at the top and the other at the base – incredible sensation flooded through every inch of my dick.

  She was unraveling me.

  “Please,” she moaned.

  I wanted to toy with her more, but after wanting her like this for so long, I couldn’t stop myself. I jerked my cock out of her hands, slapped her pussy with it, then dragged the tip along every one of her slippery bumps and folds. When neither of us could bear to be apart any longer, I thrust into her.

  Star cut off an escaping scream which became a lips-pressed moan. She was soaked, open, and ready for me. I didn’t ease in. I wasn’t gentle. Fuck foreplay, this was sweaty, pent-up obsession that demanded release.

  I wanted my cock to cut her in half.

  Every thrust contorted me, racking a new part of my body with aches or sharp discomfort. My body was an orchestra. It played pain like a symphony. The agony in my ribs was the brass section. My chest wounds pulsed like the beating of drums. My shoulder and spine ricocheted pain like a set of goddamn symbols.

  My body was on fire.

  But behind the agony—was the fuck. This unbridled lust for the most amazing woman I’d ever known. It lit me up, and that only made me want her more. Pain was nothing compared to how much I needed her.

  Star was my rib-shaking bass line, that rhythmic thrumming that rattled my soul. It reverberated outward through each limb. It drowned out every other screaming instrument. Her pussy was the note that kept me grounded in ecstasy.

  Only between her thighs was I truly alive.

  Star’s smooth curves, the softness of her skin... I was infatuated, rocked with pleasure. I ravished her. I buried my cock into her as deeply as I could, and she crushed me from the inside.

  “I’m coming! I’m coming!” she cried out, frantically rubbing her clit and watching along as I slid in and pulled out of her over and over with thunderous rhythm. If anything, I only rammed my cock into her swollen pussy faster, harder.

  The pain made my eyes water, but it felt too amazing to stop.

  “Remy!” she managed to blurt in between breathy gasps. “Your chest…”

  I was bleeding. I had felt the skin tear, and one of the wounds reopen a while ago, but I didn’t care. The blood ran down my chest like lava and I was so close.

  “Remy!” she repeated again.

  I came like a cannon, coating her stomach as I pulled out. The release and exhaustion physically dropped me to the bed beside her. Everything that was muted before roared up with a vengeance. I didn’t cry out or grunt, but Star could sense my anguish.

  “Oh shit! How bad is it?” Star was worried but calm, as she’d seen far worse by now. She immediately rolled out of bed and turned on a light.

  “Just the one.” The stitches on the wound closest to my heart ripped out. I took the casing off a pillow and applied it as pressure to stem the bleeding.

  “What can I do?”

  “Take the car, hit up that TSC store out on the highway. Go to their veterinary afterwards and grab a few suture kits, gauze, tape, and betadyne – that ugly brown stuff that stains like fuck.” I scanned around me. The place was filthy to begin with, and fucking the way we did didn’t do it any favors. I was covered in blood, becoming an advertisement for any opportunistic infection. “Pick up something to clean all this shit up. We tend to make a mess of things.”

  “You want me to sew you up? Are you sure? I’ve never done anything like that before.” She wiped herself down and started to dress.

  She appeared nervous, but I knew she’d be able to handle it. It really wasn’t that big a deal. “Sewing cloth and sewing skin isn’t all that different. Same principles apply. It’s actually kind of hard to fuck up once you got rolling. You never put the safety of a gun on before either. You learned that pretty fast.”

  Star had wiggled her pants halfway up when she paused to look at me.

  Such a god dammed sexy sight. Had I been less broken, I’d have had her wiggle them back down.

  She stood there a moment at a loss for words, wearing a mask of disbelief and feigned outrage. Eventually, her mischievous smile betrayed her and her resolve broke.

  She loved it and she knew that I knew she did.

  “You’re lucky you have a cute ass. It’s the only reason I tolerate you.” Star then kissed me.

  “Have you seen this mug?” I playfully tapped my cheek scar. Oddly enough, lying on the bed covered in blood, stitched up like a voodoo doll, my cheek was the only part of me that wasn’t screaming with pain. “I’m pretty all over.”

  “You sure you’re all right? We haven’t talked much about what happened at the Lobos clubhouse.”

  “I don’t know how much there is to talk about,” I deflected. “Five bullets pretty much sums up my experience there. Three stars on Yelp. Would not recommend.”

  “Remy!”

  “Listen,” I exhaled. Why’d we have to ruin a perfectly good evening rehashing the past? “What happened, happened. I’m just sorry you had to be there to watch it all go down.”

  “If I hadn’t been there, you’d probably be dead.” She frowned as she slipped on
her shoes and stood up.

  There was no probably about it, I would definitely be dead.

  “Yeah. I owe you one.”

  “Technically two, but who’s counting?” She shrugged, letting the tone lighten back up.

  “Apparently you are. I think that actually makes us square.” I chuckled darkly, leaning my head against the bed’s rickety headboard. “Either way, let’s not make a habit of that.”

  “Hey.” Star walked over to my side of the bed, her tone a tender reminder that she cared. “You know I’m with you until the end of the road, right?”

  “I know.” I wiped the blood off as best I could and grabbed her hand. “I’ll get us through. I promise you.”

  “We’ll get us through, Remy.” She squeezed my hand.

  There was fierceness in her grip and her tone that I loved more than anything. I nodded. Star had proved to me that she was tough enough for anything this life could throw at her. She wasn’t that innocent, pretty piece-of-ass wasting away at a gas station anymore.

  She was so much more now.

  “Go. I’ll be okay.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles.

  Star looked me over another minute then slipped on a light jacket and left.

  Some time later, I slowly rolled off the bed and rummaged through my duffel bag. The bag was a lot lighter than I’d remembered. After paying Doc, getting this motel, and a few other things, there wasn’t much cash left.

  Apparently, we’d be getting a clean slate from money as well.

  We’d have to fly below the radar in Lobos country a little while longer until we had the cash to start new somewhere more neutral, and I was fit enough for the journey. Star had already scouted the area for some waitress jobs. I’d pick up something temporary, too, when I was back on my feet. I had money, but most of it was stashed in my room back at the clubhouse. Not a place I should be showing up to any time soon. Who knew if it was even still there? Probably wasn’t.

  Once a member dies, unless there’s a will or next of kin, any money he had, goes right back into the club. To them, I was dead and the club knew where my safe was. It wasn’t like I had to hide the money from them while I was alive. While I was a member, I could rest easy, knowing that no one ever went into my room while I wasn’t there. At least not without a search warrant.

  I found what I was looking for in the bag. A bottle of whiskey. I sighed when I realized it was Old Crow Reserve. It’d been a long time since I put together this stash. In a bag with over twenty grand in cash and some hardware, I had put in a ten-dollar bottle of whiskey.

  God damn, I was such a stupid kid back then.

  “Now you’re just a stupid adult.” I snorted, considering the condition I was currently in.

  I climbed back onto the bed and drank my whiskey. I tried wrapping my head around what a legit life with Star was going to look like. Part of me was worried that I couldn’t hack going straight. Worried that all I was good at was putting two wheels on the ground and putting out fires. I was willing to try though. For Star, I would try anything.

  How bad could it really be? I mused. People went legit all the time.

  Chapter Three

  …

  Remy

  “Ah, marron... How many times I gotta tell you, Thompson? Between these two fucking bones! Not those!” Joseph Moretti hollered with what seemed like perpetual exasperation.

  We nearly ran out of money a few weeks back. When I was healed up enough to work, I eventually picked up a job at a Moretti’s House of Meat. Star had also found work waitressing at Nachomama’s Mexican Kitchen across town.

  This whole thing was proving to be pretty fucking intolerable.

  “Fucking show me then, Moretti.” It was a constant battle reining in my irritation with the owner’s endless nitpicking. I honestly didn’t know how I hadn’t killed him yet.

  Finding work with no ID had been tricky. I’d been rejected from most places outright, and the few I did find weren’t good fits for me. I’d landed one warehouse gig a week ago but had to leave the following day when the feds raided the place. Turned out it was a front for a Lobos drug running distribution operation.

  I’d barely gotten out of there before being arrested.

  Now I found myself at Moretti’s. And from what I could tell, the only thing he was guilty of was racism and price gouging. He was also the micro-management type which always drove me up a fucking wall. I’d used a fake name – Ronald Thompson. He knew something was up with me, but didn’t ask a lot of questions and he paid under the table. As long as I showed up on time and did my job, he didn’t give a damn who I really was.

  “Get outta the goddamn way.” Moretti snatched the knife out of my hands and made quick work of the chicken in front of me. “Cut here, here, and here!” Despite his shaky arthritic fingers, he had the chicken fully quartered and separated in a fifty seconds flat.

  I was pretty good with a knife, but he was something else entirely. For being an incredible pain in the ass, the old man was a surgeon with a blade.

  “Clean this up. Put the meat in the icebox,” he grumbled, slapping the knife down on the cutting board.

  As impressive as he was, Moretti was a terrible teacher. He went too fast for me to grasp the process. He didn’t pause to tell me where the cuts were and why they were done like that. The process was so automatic to him that he probably didn’t realize how fast he was going. “All right, I understand the cuts for the legs, but how do you hold it to best expose the cutting lines?” I asked, picking up the knife along with another prepped and plucked chicken.

  “Goddamnit, Thompson! The fuck do I pay you for? What’sa matter with your eyes? I just showed you! Y’know what? Go work the killing cone and pluck for the rest of the day!”

  I exhaled in frustration, squeezing the knife handle until my knuckles turned white. Finally, I buried the tip of the knife in the cutting board with such force that a running split threatened to snap the wood in half. Better that than his wrinkly forehead.

  “You pull that shit out!” Moretti’s aged face boiled over.

  “Can’t. I gotta go fucking kill chickens.” I pulled off my latex gloves, slapped them on the table, and walked from behind the glass divider to the attached retail store to cool off and grab a drink.

  “That board is coming outta your fucking pay!” He cursed at me before switching to Italian. Seeing that it was a lost cause, Moretti made Julio, the dishwasher, remove the knife instead.

  I’d been a part of the Veins for as long as I could legally ride a bike. And before that, the club hooked me up with my first jobs back in the day. The Steel Veins were heavily tied to the labor unions, so the jobs I got were mostly low-shows. I’d swing by to punch in, then fuck off and chill with Top and the rest of the guys.

  If this going legit thing made me realize anything it was that I’d developed a very unique skill set. Unfortunately, it was just one I couldn’t use in civilian life. Getting Moretti to give me a week’s pay through bribes, blackmail, and threats was nothing, but actually working for the man… Fucking like getting my teeth pulled one by one.

  I was doing my damnedest with this legit lifestyle – I really was – but I was struggling something fierce. This was a lot tougher than I’d thought it’d be. It felt like my every step on this path was through molasses.

  How the hell did people put up with this shit?

  I palmed the glass on the wall cooler that held the drinks out by the front entrance of the store. Being an avid reader, I started picking up Zen and stress management books, searching for ways to cope. I recited a calming mantra and tried to center. I grumbled to myself when the self-help techniques inevitably failed. I felt ridiculous. I shouldn’t be here doing this shit. But when I opened my eyes, I could see my faint reflection in the glass. I was mostly translucent with the exception of the bullet scar on my cheek. That was a daily reminder of the price I paid to wake up next to Star every morning.

  That was the price to not have to
always be looking over my shoulder or worrying about who might be ready to kick our door in. I saw that ragged line across my face and remembered why I was doing all of this. I remembered why Star puts up with Nachomama’s.

  It was the cost of our freedom.

  “Your only real job is not to fuck that up.” I scowled at myself then opened the door, grabbing a soda. I chugged half of it and ran my hand over my face a few times, letting the calm set back in. A few more weeks and we’d have enough to get us the hell out of New Mexico. Maybe we’d ride up west to Washington or Cali. I had a few distant cousins that might be able to get us back on our feet.

  Endure, Remy. Endure.

  I can do this, I reassured myself, running my hands through my hair and beard once again.

  Suddenly, I felt a small hand push into the back of my thigh. I turned and saw the big, brown eyes of a toddler looking up at me. “Hey, there.” I picked the boy up and held him before me.

  He giggled and slapped playfully at my arms as I considered him.

  I’d never thought about having kids, how could I? To bring a child into my world was probably the single worst thing I could do. The kid wouldn’t stand a chance. At best, he’d get caught in the wreckage of the club and be dead before he was an adult. At worst… I glanced past the boy and caught my own reflection off the cooler.

  Rounding one of the racks of convenience store food was clearly the boy’s worried mother. When she found her son was all right, she placed a hand over her heart and thanked God. The poor woman looked severely overworked and sleep deprived. In Spanish, she apologized for her son.

  I just smiled at the boy and handed him back to her. There was nothing to apologize for. As long as he had someone who cared about him as much as she did, the kid would have a fighting chance in life.

  I wasn’t in that MC world anymore, I reminded myself, grabbing a soda, but then paused.

  Would it be so wrong to bring a child into this life?

  Through the store’s wall of window, I saw a biker pull into one of our handicap spaces. Beyond him, across the street were two more bikes wearing the cut and colors of Los Lobos. With folded arms, the two across the street sat on their bikes and watched the much younger biker enter our store.