Rock Chick Reckoning Read online

  Duke was a Harley guy, long gray hair in a braid, thick gray beard, always wearing a black leather vest over a Harley shirt and a rolled, red bandana around his forehead. He was gruff with a velvet and stone Sam Elliott voice but he was a good guy. He walked in, counted heads, muttered, “Shee-it, we’re all fucked,” and walked out again, not to return.

  Then a big black man strolled in. He scanned the room and his eyes hit me. Then he looked at Shirleen and stated, “You owe me fifty bucks. I told you it would be the Hawaiian.”

  My eyes went to Ava.

  “They had a bet to see which Hot Bunch Boy would get picked off next by a Rock Chick,” Ava explained.

  A bet?

  These people bet on this shit?

  Effing hell.

  “His name is Mace, you jackass,” Shirleen shot back.

  “I try not to learn their names. If I know their names, means I know them and if I know them, I gotta go to their funerals when they get themselves blown to shit,” Smithie returned.

  I stopped breathing.

  “That’s Smithie,” Jet whispered to me. “He seems tough but he’s actually a very caring person.”

  Right.

  “Smithie! A little sensitivity, if you don’t mind,” Roxie warned, her gaze sliding to me.

  Smithie’s eyes came back to me. “Yeah, heard you got shot. Flesh wound. Big deal. These bitches seen worse.”

  Oh my God! Were these people insane?

  “Stop calling us bitches!” Ally snapped.

  “Crazy white bitches, the lot of you. ‘Cept you.” He nodded at Shirleen. “You’re a crazy black bitch. Fuck,” Smithie finished then walked out before Shirleen could lose her mind like she looked like she was about to do.

  “He was just here to see if we were all right,” Indy assured me.

  I was beginning to think the whole bunch of them were beyond insane, they were certifiable.

  Then Annette showed. She was Roxie’s best friend, just moved to Denver from Chicago and about to open her new head shop called “Head West”. She already had one in Chicago, now re-christened “Head East”.

  “Yo bitches!” she shouted when she arrived.

  Yep, these people were certifiable.

  “Okay, let me get this straight.” Annette stood in the doorway staring at us. “First, you all meet Roxie, now that’s after Indy got kidnapped a couple times, shot at and car bombs were exploding. And after Jet got shot at, kidnapped a couple of times and almost raped. Then came Roxie and I was around when Roxie was assaulted at a haunted house and held hostage at a society party after, of course, she got kidnapped. I leave and new girl Jules starts a vigilante war against drug dealers and ends up in ICU with two bullet holes in her. Then new, new girl Ava survives a drive-by, gets kidnapped repeatedly and ends up on a wild ride, exiting a wrecked car right before it explodes. Now all of you are getting shot at… at the same time?”

  “That about sums it up,” Ally told her.

  “Denver is cah-ray-zee,” Annette announced. “I love this fuckin’ place!”

  Totally certifiable.

  “Oh my God!” Annette screamed making me jump and scaring the beejeezus out of me. Her eyes were locked on something across the room. “You got a PlayStation 3? I’m going out right now and getting Guitar Hero!”

  Off she went to get Guitar Hero and when she came back we all stood around playing Guitar Hero, sometimes two of us at a time.

  Now I could stand in front of a heaving crowd of hundreds of people playing Ram Jam’s “Black Betty”. What I could not do was stand in Daisy’s living room with a toy guitar in my hands and get through the length of Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” on beginner level, which meant I only had to master three buttons, without getting “booed off the stage”.

  What was up with that?

  Later, Daisy sent one of the be-suited members of the big gun toting army out to get the items on a grocery list I wrote. Jules’s uncle Nick came over after he finished work and he helped me as I made herb-buttered salmon wrapped in puff pastry, potatoes dauphenois with cheese and steamed asparagus. None of the Rock Chicks offered culinary assistance, which was cool because it meant Nick and I could get to know each other and he thought everyone was certifiable too.

  “They may all be kooks,” Nick said, “but they’re lovable.”

  Sheesh.

  Most everyone loved the food (Annette: “You might be shit at Guitar Hero but your cooking is phat.”). Tex declared Nick and my meal “fancy-ass nonsense” and went out and got himself takeout chicken burritos (smothered, with lettuce and cheese) from El Tejado.

  When Tex got back, we all played more Guitar Hero.

  By that time, my hip hurt, like, a lot.

  Indy saw the pain pinching at my mouth and leaned into me. “Lee called and said if I didn’t hear from him, we’d be staying here tonight.”

  This was not good news. I really wanted to go home. However, I also wanted my heart to be beating, my lungs to be working, my blood to be flowing through my veins and my brain to be functioning a lot more than I wanted to go home. Therefore I decided against throwing a hissy fit, going home and likely getting murdered on my way there.

  I took the last two pain killers the doctor gave me and Juno and I crashed.

  For your information, none of the Rock Chicks asked me about my tête-à-tête with Mace, mainly because they heard my side of it as I’d been shouting and they’d been eavesdropping.

  This brought me up to now.

  In bed. Again. With Mace.

  I moved cautiously forward hoping he wouldn’t notice.

  His arm got tight.

  Yep, he noticed.

  “Mace, let me go.”

  He didn’t let me go.

  He buried his face in my hair and murmured in a rough, tired, deep voice, “Christ, I feel like I’ve had ten minutes of sleep.”

  This was a toughie. Back in the day (as in, the day before yesterday), if I heard that, I would have barred the door and taken down anyone who dared to disturb Mace’s rest (unless, of course, they were a member of my band).

  But that was the day before yesterday.

  “Mace, let me go,” I repeated.

  His chin moved my hair.

  “You still use the same shampoo,” he said against the skin at the back of my neck.

  “Mace –”

  “Smells like mint.”

  Oh lordy be.

  “Mace, I need to get up and see to Juno.”

  “I wanna see your wound.”

  Why on earth would he want to do that?

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Daisy gave me some ointment that’s supposed to make it heal and help the scarring. She cleaned it, treated it and then she redressed it. It’s fine.”

  “I wanna see it.”

  “It’s fine.”

  His arm got a fraction tighter. “I’m the reason it’s there, Kitten, and I wanna see it.”

  What could I say to that?

  Except nothing.

  So I said nothing.

  I lay there awhile, my new plan being if Mace was exhausted, if I stopped yapping, he’d probably fall back to sleep. Then when he did, I’d get up and get the hell out of there.

  This plan was shit therefore it failed.

  Once I thought he was asleep, I tried moving away again and his arm got even tighter.

  “Mace –”

  “Stella –”

  Effing, effing, hell.

  “I want to talk to Buzz,” I said. I didn’t know why (well, I knew why, because I wanted to talk to Buzz).

  His body went still for a beat then he rolled away.

  I took that opportunity to attempt an escape. I was sitting on the side ready to push myself up when one of Mace’s arms went around my waist, stalling my progress. His other hand came up in front of me. It was holding my phone.

  I pulled in a breath then I took the phone.

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  He moved as I flipped it
open and scrolled down to Buzz. I couldn’t get up because he kept his arm around me. He straddled me on a diagonal with one long thigh the length of mine, foot on the floor, his other leg stretched out beside me on the bed.

  Juno was up and nuzzling the both of us, in a tizzy of excitement, not knowing who to allow to lavish affection on her. I hit the go button to call Buzz, put the phone to my ear and scratched Juno’s head. Mace moved the hair off my shoulder and rested his chin there.

  I closed my eyes trying not to feel how good that felt.

  “Stella Bella.” I heard in my ear.

  “Hey Buzz,” I said softly. “How you doin’?”

  “Not good, Stell.” The words were an understatement which, for Buzz, was a miracle. Let’s just say Buzz could be dramatic.

  “I figured that,” I replied, still using my soft voice.

  Mace pressed closer to my back.

  I went on, trying to ignore Mace and how good it felt, his strong presence surrounding me (another one of the seven hundred, twenty-five thousand things I missed about him most of all, FYI), “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Nothin’ to do. You got your own worries anyway. Mace told us at the band meeting yesterday.”

  Erm, excuse me?

  My back went straight and I didn’t have to ignore how good Mace felt anymore.

  “The band meeting?” I asked, my soft voice not so soft anymore.

  Mace’s arm tensed.

  “Floyd called an emergency meeting. Mace came with him, told us what was goin’ on,” Buzz said.

  I turned narrowed eyes to Mace. His head came up from my shoulder, he took one look at me and his eyebrows went up.

  Buzz kept talking in my ear. “At least it’s good you two are back together.”

  My mouth dropped open and my eyes popped out.

  Mace did a heavy sigh.

  I looked away.

  “Who told you we were back together?” I asked.

  “Mace did, yesterday,” Buzz answered.

  Okay, I was going to kill Mace. I just hoped my jury was made up mostly of jilted women but at that moment I was happy to do my time.

  The bastard!

  “We are not –” I started to tell Buzz but he interrupted me.

  “Linnie would have been beside herself with fuckin’ glee. She loved you two together. Think she was more upset when you two broke it off than you were.”

  I doubted that.

  I also again had no way to respond. It was better to think of Linnie beside herself with glee than lying in a bed with half her head blown off.

  Buzz finished up, “Keep safe. Don’t worry about me or the band. We’ll be okay.”

  I doubted that too.

  “Buzz, I… um…” I didn’t know what to say. What could you say? “Do you need anything?” I finished lamely.

  “Linnie’s parents are coming in this morning. They’re planning everything. I’ll let Mace know what’s goin’ on.”

  “You’ll let Mace know?” I asked, my eyes went back to narrowed and this was a different kind of narrowed, a dangerous kind of narrowed.

  Juno caught my look, read my look, knew my look, sat on her doggie heiny and woofed a “What now?” doggie woof.

  “Yeah, he told us you were incommunicado and we should talk through him to you. We’re cool.”

  Erm, ex-kah-use me?

  “Buzz –”

  “Later, Stella Bella.”

  Disconnect.

  I flipped the phone shut. Then I took a deep breath. Then I wondered where the mellow, laidback, I don’t have time to be pissed off Stella Gunn disappeared to.

  Then I tossed the phone aside, shot from the bed breaking free from Mace’s arm and turned on him.

  “You held a band meeting,” I accused.

  Mace’s leg on the bed came down so he was in a full sitting position. His elbows went to his knees, his hands dangling between them and he tilted his head back to look up at me.

  In keeping the information flowing, Mace often sat like this, this was Mace’s way. For some weird reason, I always found it sexy. Now I found irritating.

  “Stella –”

  “With my band,” I went on.

  “Stella –”

  “Without me,” I kept at it.

  Mace decided to keep silent.

  You should also know Mace often fell silent when I was in rant mode.

  Juno decided to woof then pant, unsure what this turn of events meant to her imminent bathroom break.

  “Who happens to be the leader of the band,” I reminded him.

  Mace kept his silence.

  “You told them to communicate with me through you.” I was on a roll.

  Mace still didn’t speak.

  I waited. Mace did too.

  I was wearing nothing but a white tank top Daisy gave me and my white panties. Mace was wearing nothing but light blue boxer shorts. I ignored the state of our undress and his utterly fantastic body and put my hands on my hips.

  Mace didn’t move. I lost patience.

  “How dare you come between me and my band!” I shouted.

  He started to push off the bed and I don’t know what came over me (maybe temporary certifiable insanity seeping into my pores after a day with the Rock Chicks), I launched myself at him.

  Full body.

  I hit him in the chest. This surprised him and he took my weight with a grunt. My head connected with his chin which was kind of painful and his arms went around me. We fell back onto the bed, me landing on Mace.

  Why I decided to wrestle with Mace, both of us barely-clothed, on a pull out bed would forever remain a mystery for the ages.

  But wrestle with Mace I did.

  We rolled, we tussled, the bed creaked loudly and frighteningly. We rolled back, we tussled some more, the bed creaked louder and more frighteningly and Juno woofed, now thoroughly confused about the current state of affairs.

  I tried to gain the upper hand, an impossible feat. Mace’s long fingers wrapped around my wrists and mostly we tested each other’s strength with me losing.

  Mace got on top, his face in my face, his was angry and he clipped, “Damn it, Stella, stop. You’re gonna tear your stitches.”

  “Piss off,” I shot back, not caring about my stitches, in the throes of undeniable temporary insanity, I pushed off with my foot and rolled him again.

  He rolled me back. We tussled some more.

  Looking back, it wasn’t about the band (not totally) it was about being pissed at him for leaving me. Then being pissed at the way he came back in my life. And taking out on him (even though it wasn’t his fault) the fact that I was pissed because Linnie was dead and I was shot. Not to mention him wanting me back and me knowing that couldn’t happen because I couldn’t live through him walking out on me again.

  He somehow got on top with his hips between my legs and my hands pinned above my head.

  I was defeated, I knew it and so did he.

  We stared at each other both breathing heavily. Him, I would realize later, from attempting to hold back knowing if he used his full strength, he’d hurt me. Me, I knew at the time, because I gave it everything I had.

  Eyes locked, we just panted in each other’s faces.

  Then, face still angry, that anger warring with something a whole lot different, he said through his teeth, “Christ, I forgot how fucking good you feel when you’re beneath me.”

  At his words, something shot through me, an electrical current vibrating through every nerve and ending with a sizzle.

  Then, do not ask me why, still deep in my insanity, I lifted my head, pressed my lips against his and kissed him.

  Without hesitation, his head slanted and he kissed me back, open-mouthed, wet and deep.

  Oh dear.

  I forgot how good a kisser Mace was.

  We then tussled a different way. He let go of my wrists and our hands started bumping into to each other’s as they moved, mine over the muscles of his back, his sides, his che
st, my fingers sliding up his neck and into his hair. His up my sides, in the tank, he tilted up his abs and ran his hand along my belly, up, to cup my breast, sliding his thumb across my nipple.

  Lordy be.

  I moaned into his mouth.

  It didn’t take long for it to get out-of-control mainly because it had been out-of-control since I threw myself bodily at him – a weird, wild foreplay. I was so turned on I was ready, beyond ready; I’d been waiting a year for this. The feel of his mouth on mine, his sleek skin and hard muscle under my fingers, the taste of him, the smell of him, his touch, his weight.

  I started to tug down my own panties. Mace rolled to the side, I lifted my knees and he took over, yanking my underwear down my calves and over my ankles and tossing them away. He rolled to his back, bucked his hips, pulling off his boxers and tossed them in the direction of my panties. Then he rolled back to me, sliding between my opened legs, his hands came behind my knees, he pulled them high and in one smooth, long, hard stroke, he drove into me.

  It felt great.

  “Harder,” I demanded, my voice low, my arms wrapping around his back.

  “No, Kitten, I’ll hurt you,” he replied, his voice rough, up on his elbows, his fingers sifting into my hair at the sides of my head, his thrusts firm and fantastic, but controlled.

  I kissed him, he took over the kiss but I got what I wanted, his control slipped and he slammed into me harder.

  “Yes,” I breathed when our mouths disengaged.

  One of his hands went between us, and, right where I needed it, his finger honed in, pressed deep, circled, pressed deeper, circled more.

  I felt it, it was coming.

  My mouth against his, I caught my breath, holding back and then I whispered, “Mace, I’m –”

  “Kitten, let it go.”

  I let it go.

  I came, hard and overpowering, my arms tightened around him, my thighs pressed into his sides, his mouth absorbed my moans as it overwhelmed me.

  No other way to describe it, it was beautiful. It had always been beautiful.

  Always.

  I took his final strokes, my orgasm still tingling, my head turned to the side. His face was in my neck, his breathing was ragged. I turned my face to look at him, his head came up and his eyes caught mine. They were hot on me, hot and aroused and intense and I felt like I was the center of the entire effing universe.