Still Standing Read online

  He yanked up my skirt so it was around my waist, pushed down my panties. I stepped out of them and kicked them free and Buck’s hands went to my behind again. I hopped up and wrapped my legs around him, but my hand went to his jeans. I undid the zipper, reached in, pulled his thick, rock-hard cock free and guided him to me.

  He surged in.

  My head flew back.

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  Buck pounded into me, pounding me into the wall.

  It felt super good.

  My mouth found his. “Harder, baby.”

  He pounded into me harder.

  “God,” I whispered against his lips and he slid his tongue inside my mouth.

  I took his thrusts, tilting my hips to deepen them, our tongues tangling, his hands at my bottom, my arms around his shoulders, holding on.

  Then I couldn’t kiss him because I couldn’t breathe anymore.

  “God,” I moaned.

  It was going to hit me, and when it did, it was going to be hard.

  “Clara, baby, let go,” he growled against my lips.

  I let go even though I didn’t know I was hanging on. My head flew back, slamming into the wall, and I cried out.

  Ah.

  May.

  Zing.

  Buck kept thrusting through my orgasm, grunting with his thrusts and I kept tilting my hips, offering myself to him, seeking the connection, loving the feel of it.

  I curved my fingers around either side of his head.

  “Baby,” I whispered against his lips, “you feel beautiful.”

  At my words, he drove deep, stayed planted and groaned into my mouth.

  Yes.

  I moved my lips to his jaw, his neck, his ear, touching my tongue to his earlobe, tasting Buck, tasting man, smelling it, loving it as I felt his fingers tighten on my behind.

  On my mouth’s journey back to his, he pulled me from the wall, turned and walked us to the bed.

  My lips hit his midway, his mouth opened, and I slid my tongue inside.

  He fell back to the bed, me on top of him, and through it all, I never stopped kissing him.

  I finally lifted up and looked down at him, my hands still framing his head.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Maybe this once, I’ll live more.”

  He looked up at me and smiled that fabulous smile, white teeth, thick, dark beard.

  Then he rolled me to my back.

  “Buck!” I cried.

  “Let go.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Baby, fuckin’…let…go,” he growled.

  I let go, crying out loudly, my back and neck arching, my heels digging into his thighs. He slid his finger from between my legs so both of his hands could go to my hips, lifting them as he drove deep, deep and fast, his breathing labored, his grunts so powerful, they rumbled against the skin of my neck.

  Amazing.

  I came down and helped him out, whispering in his ear, and I felt the power of his thrusts intensify, telling me he liked what he heard. Then he lifted his head, his mouth slammed down on mine, and I slid my tongue inside so I could feel his groan against it.

  Yes.

  Amazing.

  He stayed buried inside me as I kissed him then he took over the kiss, both were hungry. His kiss gentled to soft, sweet, then he stopped kissing my mouth in order to kiss my nose. Finally, he rolled off, pulling out, falling to his back, tucking me to his side.

  I rested my head on his shoulder, my arm around his tight stomach, and I bent my leg so my thigh fell on his.

  I was still drunk, but not so drunk I didn’t feel his soft, sweet kiss or the softer, sweeter one he planted on my nose.

  West “Buck” Hardy, president of a motorcycle club, kissed my nose.

  I smiled against his shoulder.

  He started sifting his fingers through my hair.

  West “Buck” Hardy, president of a motorcycle club, was sifting his fingers through my hair.

  My arm around his stomach tightened.

  “Tell me about Tia,” he said into the now dark room.

  “What about her?” I asked.

  “She all you got?” he asked back.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  His hand in my hair stilled.

  “Babe,” he whispered.

  “It’s okay.” I gave his stomach a squeeze. “She’s enough.”

  “Fuck me,” he muttered into the semi-dark (night had fallen, we’d been busy, Buck had only turned on one lamp, and it didn’t cast a very wide glow).

  I raised my head to look at his shadowed face.

  “No, really, she is,” I told him. “She’s sweet and she’s kind and she’s generous.”

  “Darlin’,” he moved his hand to cup the back of my head and bring it closer to him, “I can tell you’re tight with her, but you gotta know, a woman who puts you in the path of man like Esposito and lets him use you like he does is not sweet, kind and generous.”

  “That’s not how it happened,” I replied softly.

  “Then explain how it happened,” he demanded.

  “He’s done with her,” I informed him.

  “Come again?” he asked.

  “He’s done with her, Buck,” I repeated. “But Enrique Esposito doesn’t throw anything away. He keeps everything just in case it proves useful. And Tia is useful to him.”

  “How?”

  Okay.

  How did I allow us to get here?

  I closed my eyes and looked away, wishing I was smashed again and not just drunk.

  Smashed, I could forget.

  Just drunk, it came tumbling back.

  And just drunk, I didn’t guard myself, and Tia, from me needing to relay this information.

  But something was happening between Buck and me.

  It might just last this day and that was probably precisely how long it would last.

  That said, I liked him.

  I liked having sex with him.

  I liked talking to him.

  I liked not-quite learning pool from him.

  I just liked him.

  And I wanted him to understand what made me.

  In other words, since I did not guard myself, or Tia, from this, I needed to relay this information.

  “Toots,” he called on a prompt.

  I opened my eyes and aimed them at his face.

  “He loans her out,” I whispered and felt his body go solid against mine.

  Solid in the sense of stone.

  Then he said in a way that I could tell his words were coming from between his teeth, “He does what?”

  “She’s very pretty,” I told him.

  “I’ve seen her.”

  “So you know.”

  “She’s not hard to look at,” he agreed.

  “Well, if the price is right, he loans her out.”

  “Fuckin’ hell,” he muttered.

  “That’s about it,” I replied. “So, Tia told me this and I talked to Esposito. Made a deal. He stops doing that and I work for him.”

  Buck’s body went solid against mine again.

  This before he asked, “You did what?”

  “I made a deal. It wasn’t a bad deal. Not only does he stop doing that to Tia, every message I deliver, I get a thousand dollars. It’s actually, if you think about it, a really good deal.”

  Both his arms went around me, and he pulled me mostly on top of him and up so we were face to face.

  “Toots, he’s sent you with messages to Breaker Walinski and Imran Babić. Break’s a biker who sells safe passage for drugs, guns and anything else illegal. Babić is a Bosnian lunatic who sells drugs, guns, pimps women, strongarms protection money, floats loans at a one hundred percent interest rate, makes book and is into anything else that’s illegal. These are not guys you fuck with. Enrique Esposito is a sociopath and he’s ambitious, not a good combination. Break’s got a sense of justice. The disrespect Esposito dished out by sendin’ you to the meet he’ll take out on Esposito. Babić, babe, you gotta
know, him lettin’ you go in, deliver Esposito’s message and walk out in one piece is a fuckin’ miracle. I see you wantin’ to look after your girl, but the deal you made is not a good deal.”

  “You’re wrong, West,” I whispered.

  “I’m right, Clara,” he replied not in a whisper.

  “She’s all I’ve got, and he was loaning her out,” I reminded him. “Not to mention, I need the money.”

  “It worth that to her, to you, to get dead?” he asked.

  “You do what you have to do,” I told him on a shrug.

  “Yeah, and what you shoulda done is put her in your car and got the fuck outta town, found yourselves jobs doin’ whatever the fuck you could do under names that are not your own and prayed he never found you.”

  “He’d find us,” I returned. “Therefore, that really wasn’t an option.”

  “Clara, a man like Esposito burns fast, he burns bright and then someone snuffs him out. He’s makin’ enemies everywhere. He is not long for this world. All you had to do was wait him out.”

  His point held merit.

  “Your point holds merit,” I told him.

  He was silent a moment before he burst out laughing, his arms tightening around me, and he rolled me to my back, him on top.

  “Though,” I continued, “I didn’t have a biker advisor when I was making this decision.”

  “Bad luck, baby,” he said softly.

  “Mm,” I mumbled in reply, before I asked, “Are you ever going to let me deliver his message?”

  “His message is, no, he’s not gonna pull his shit off our patch. He’s gonna keep sendin’ his dealers in, he’s gonna keep movin’ his product through, and he’s gonna do this too fuckin’ close to our shop. I knew that was his reply to my request the minute you walked in.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’m gonna hafta expend the effort of pullin’ his shit off my patch.”

  Oh dear.

  That didn’t sound good.

  “Buck—”

  He cut me off.

  “No. Me and my brothers got mortgages and mouths to feed. We cannot have customers not show to buy ceiling fans and mix paint because some dealer is makin’ a sale on the corner where they can see. We got a situation where people think it’s cool to buy a paint roller from a bunch of bikers. We don’t need them to think we got seedy shit happening on our turf. That would fuck everything.”

  It would, indeed, fuck everything.

  Though, I had to admit, his commitment to this seemed pretty intense, considering, as mentioned, he and his boys were pretty rough-looking.

  Not to mention, it seemed he knew a whole lot about men like Esposito, Breaker Walinski, and Imran Babić.

  I shouldn’t judge.

  However…

  “So you guys are totally clean?” I asked.

  “We are.”

  Wow, I thought.

  “Wow,” I whispered out loud. Then, “Cool,” I finished.

  He was quiet.

  I felt his hand rest against my face before he said softly, “And I take clean to my bed, baby.”

  Oh dear.

  “Buck—”

  “You’re cute, Toots, you got courage and you got heart. Now, you gotta use both a’ those to fight for clean.”

  Oh God.

  “You think I’m dirty?” I whispered, horrified.

  “Babe, point of fact is, you take drug and pimp money to deliver messages.”

  Oh God.

  He did.

  He thought I was dirty.

  And that felt…

  It felt…

  Somehow, it felt worse than having everyone in Phoenix think I was insanely greedy or a chump.

  A lot worse.

  “Please get off me.” I was still whispering.

  “Toots—”

  “No,” I said, pushing at his shoulders. “Please get off me.”

  “Clara, listen to me.”

  “No,” I repeated, still pushing at his shoulders and also bucking against his body.

  “Cool it, Toots, and listen to me.”

  “Get off me.”

  He pressed me into the bed with his long frame and his hand slid from my face to my neck and curled around, the pads of his fingers digging in gently to make a point.

  “I said, listen to me.”

  “No, Buck, you’re judging me again,” I retorted.

  “You cannot say what I said isn’t true.”

  I stilled. “You’re right. Absolutely right. Now, before I sully your safeguarded cleanliness any further, you should release me from your bed.”

  “Babe, don’t piss me off,” he warned. “You’re not lettin’ me finish my point.”

  I stared at his face in the semi-dark.

  There I was, drunk, naked, stupid, desperate, and in bed with a man I barely knew.

  What was wrong with me?

  When did it happen?

  I’d kept myself safe for years.

  When did I start making all the wrong moves?

  “You know,” I started conversationally, “I have to say, I don’t care to let you finish your point. You’ve said enough. Now, I’d like to go.”

  “Yeah? And where are you gonna go?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Toots—”

  “I get it. I understand fighting to be clean. I get that. Because the only person who ever loved me was pimped out by her husband. So I did what I had to do to help her stay as clean as she could get. Which, by the way, is never, ever going to be clean. Not in her mind. So yes, I took drug money to do it. If that makes me dirty, so be it. For me, my company is Tia, and I’ll take that. So, I’ve asked you, repeatedly, to get…off…me.”

  I shoved his shoulders on my last word and lifted him off me enough to scoot out from under him. I almost made it to the end of the bed. But then he hooked my waist with his arm and pulled me back under him.

  Thus started a tussle. Which, a few seconds in, I knew I wasn’t going to win because, firstly, he was bigger than me, secondly, he was stronger than me, and thirdly, he wasn’t (kind of) drunk like me. So I gave up and glared at his face in the semi-dark.

  “You gonna listen to me now?” he bit off.

  “I will hear you, but I can’t guarantee I’ll listen to you,” I returned.

  “Fuckin’ hell, babe, you need to get smart real fuckin’ fast.”

  “Oh, so now I’m dirty and stupid.”

  “You’re the last if you don’t learn to make the right allies, and the right allies are not sociopaths who’ll send you to deliver messages hopin’ you won’t come out alive or, one way or another, no longer intact.”

  “So, what you’re saying…your advice is I should sleep with you to keep you sweet so you’ll take care of me?”

  “Actually, yeah.”

  I stared at him through the dark.

  I was being facetious.

  He was not.

  Then I asked, my voice pitched higher, “Is that clean?”

  He lifted a hand and glided his fingers through my hair, down, pulling it over my shoulder and his voice was gentle when he replied, “Yeah, Clara. It’s honest. We both know what it is. We both get somethin’ out of it. So it’s clean.”

  Oh God.

  I was going to cry.

  I thought my life couldn’t possibly get worse, and here it was, worse.

  This really cool, handsome man who listened well and was great at sex wanted me to prostitute myself to him so he would take care of me and I could “make a good ally.”

  “Please…please get off me,” I whispered.

  “You bring Tia with you, I’ll keep her safe too.”

  Oh God.

  “You can’t, he won’t let her go,” I replied.

  “Babe, he’ll have to get through me and all of my boys to get to you or her.”

  “And all I have to do is sleep with you?” I asked.

  “Well, no,” he answered.

  “
Does Tia have to sleep with you too?” I pushed, and his body went stone solid again.

  Except maybe more stone solid, something I wouldn’t think was possible.

  But it was.

  “Babe,” he growled.

  A warning.

  Definitely.

  I’d gone too far.

  I also didn’t care.

  “Okay, so then does Tia have to sleep with one, or, say, all of your boys?”

  “Don’t do that shit. You know that’s not what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “So maybe you’ll explain what you’re talking about.”

  “I would, you shut your trap.”

  I shut my trap and stared at his shadowed head.

  He stared at mine.

  Then he muttered, “Christ, need my head examined.”

  “You could get off me,” I reminded him.

  “Is this shuttin’ your trap?”

  I shut my trap again.

  “You take of care my house and my business as well as me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means you move outta your apartment before they kick your ass out. You move into my house. You keep it clean. You keep me fed, that is, when I’m not feedin’ you, and I like to cook, so mostly, I’ll be feedin’ you. You come to work with me and take care of the office, and you go home with me.”

  Wow.

  Was he serious?

  That sounded like…it sounded like…

  My God, it didn’t sound like a sex-for-safety arrangement.

  It sounded like a relationship.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “The office work, I pay you for,” he went on.

  He’d pay me for it?

  As in, a job?

  “What?” I repeated.

  “And give you a car since the repo men, babe, just gotta say, they’ll get yours before you get a chance to sort that shit out.”

  Good God.

  He knew everything about me.

  “Do you know everything about me?”

  “Everything from your master’s degree up. That foster care shit, no. We didn’t have the chance to dig that deep.”

  “Why did you dig at all?”

  “Toots, I knew he was gonna send you and you don’t go up against an enemy you don’t know. Word about you was all over the street. Anything on radar that may touch my Club, I find out about it.”

  That made sense and it was thorough and protective. It kind of made me wish I had a club. Then again, I’d always kind of wished I’d had a club.