“Hey, not that I’m not grateful for the warm welcome but you need to calm down, babe. Your heart’s racing a hundred miles an hour.”
“Did you see him?” I ask, my voice pitched high with fear.
He slides his hands into my hair and leans down to kiss me. “Nothin’ out there but the icy cold wind, babe.”
I sit back on my heels. “But I—”
“It’s a side effect. It happens.” He takes off his jeans and climbs under the covers. “I set the alarm, I got a gun in the bedside drawer, and a hunting knife strapped to the underside of the bed. We’re safe as houses.”
I glance at him, annoyed that he’d had weapons stashed in this room, probably all over the house, and I didn’t know about it.
What I would have done with that information a week ago.
“Now get your arse in here,” he says. “My balls are fuckin’ freezin’ off.”
I rub my hands up and down my arms to ward away the goose bumps that have broken out all over my body, and then I climb under the covers. Tank rolls me on my side and pulls me against him. He’s freezing, so different for him, but I hardly feel it because the chill in my bones has already struck me to the core.
If he wasn’t here, then I hallucinated it. While that may be infinitely better than him finding me, it still means that no matter what I do, where I go or who I’m with there is no escaping my father.
Maybe this is my karma for all the shitty things I’ve done—to live in fear for the rest of my days, to have to run from not just my past, but my future too. I wish I had a hit right now. I wish I hadn’t tossed those pills down the drain, and I wish I hadn’t made promises to Tank I couldn’t keep.
Tank collapses on top of me with a groan. “Christ, you kill me, bitch.”
I laugh. “Yeah well, be thankful you only came twice. I thought by orgasm number six my clit was going to drop off.”
He groans and stirs, raising himself up on his forearms so I’m not completely squashed beneath him, and then he kisses my forehead. I close my eyes and sigh. Despite the restless night’s sleep, and the anxiety gnawing at the edges of my conscience, as if it were reminding me of something I forgot to do—hang out the washing, feed Butch, run for your life—I feel good this morning. Tank has a way of knowing just what a woman needs when she needs it.
Tank’s cock slides deeper as he shifts his weight again, and I suck in a sharp breath. He glances down at me with an eyebrow raised and an incredulous expression.
“Fuck, woman. You tryin’ to kill me?” I push my hips towards him and he growls. “You gotta give me a minute to catch my breath.”
I laugh. “Come on, old man. Surely you can go another round?”
He shakes his head gravely. “I need food before I go another anything.”
“Damn, here I was hoping you could just eat me.”
“Tempting,” he says. “Really, babe, but a man can’t live on pussy alone.”
“I’ll get you a sandwich.”
“Fuck no, you’ll probably poison me,” he says, and I pout. “I’ll make the food. You come sit your pretty arse on my bench and let me see that pussy while I cook.”
“Done.” I laugh and admire the view as he gets up. The huge demon tattoo on his back ripples as he moves. It’s such a terrifying piece; in fact his whole demeanour is a contradiction to such a sweet, attentive man. I laugh inwardly at the thought. If I said that aloud, he’d put me over his knee and spank me to show me how “sweet” he wasn’t.
Okay, so sweet might be a stretch, but up until this point all I’ve ever known from men is a hard hand and an even harder cock, and it’s always been enough. It’s what I was used to, but Tank shows me tenderness I’ve never known before, and it puts every kiss, every touch, and every damn whispered word that came before him to shame.
“What’re you thinkin’ ’bout, pretty girl?”
I smile and shake my head. “Nothing. Just it’s odd how I’m here, in your bed, you know?”
“Doesn’t look odd to me. Looks fuckin’ perfect, actually,” he says, pulling on his jeans and tucking his thick cock inside. He watches me, watching him. “Now get the fuck up before I eat you out again.”
I laugh. “Er … that’s not really a deterrent.”
“Oh, I’ll make it one. Get your arse in the kitchen, bitch.”
“No,” I say, and roll over onto my stomach. Tank climbs back onto the bed and hovers over me. He kisses his way over my arse and up my spine, and then finally lowers his body down on top of mine and whispers, “You have three seconds to get this hot-as-fuck arse out of bed and into my kitchen before I spank you like a naughty girl.”
I laugh softly and stay exactly where I am, and Tank sits back on his heels. “Gonna be like that is it? Alright then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says, and no sooner than the words leave his mouth his hand smacks my arse, hard. I squeal and turn around to glare at him.
“Arsehole,” I screech.
“I did warn you.”
I rub at my smarting flesh, but then find myself airborne and flung over his shoulder, as though I weigh nothing. “Put me down, you bastard.”
“No,” he says, as he slides off the bed and carries me into the kitchen, depositing me on the island bench. “Stay.”
“Bite me.” I scowl. Tank smiles and sinks his teeth into my shoulder. “Ow.”
I playfully shove him off, and he gives me this look that has my heart stuttering. He’s like a little kid, and it makes my chest hurt, though I’m not sure why. He leans in and kisses the teeth marks he left in my shoulder, and then takes my face in his too-large hands and tenderly kisses my lips. His tongue pushes into my mouth, but it’s not passionate, it’s not sexual. It’s sweet. He’s gentle, and I kiss him back with just as much tenderness, because he deserves that. He deserves so much more than that. In all the time I’ve known him, it never occurred to me that he might have needed me just as much as I needed him.
Tank cooks up entirely too much food—bacon, eggs, sausage and beans—and we sit at the dining table to eat. We sip coffee as though we both want to be exactly where we are right now, as though we hadn’t been thrown together by circumstance or fate, or his Prez’s orders. Somehow—despite years of friendship, tantrums, drugs, sex and lots of illegal activity—we are meant to be exactly here.
I stare at him for a long time over the rim of my coffee cup, and he stares back. It isn’t awkward; it’s enlightening. We’re reinventing, he and I, and I don’t think either of us knows how to stop it. Of course, I don’t think either of us wants to try.
When we’re done eating, I ask questions about his past: girlfriends—there were none, save for some girl in high school. Family—he tells me all about growing up with his mother, but doesn’t say a word about his father, and he changes the subject when I prod further. Finally, I ask what he would have done with his life if he’d never found the club, to which he just shrugs and says, “What’s the point in thinking about the maybe? All we have is who we are today, and who we’re satisfied with being tomorrow.”
And he’s right. I’ve never really thought about what could have been, if I hadn’t had a father who’d destroyed all the strength within me. I never gave those things any thought, because thinking like that was reckless and foolish. Thinking like that would get me killed. I couldn’t have had a life other than the one my father had created and I’d followed, but sitting across from Tank, in his quiet mountain cabin, thoughts of another life don’t matter. I have this life, and despite what I’ve been through, despite the fact that I still fidget and shake and my body still craves the poison I’ve willingly fed it since the time I was seventeen years old, it isn’t so bad.
“What are you smiling at?” Tank says, as he stands and takes the plate from in front of me, sitting it on the island bench behind us.
“I’m smiling because I’m really glad Prez ordered you to babysit me and not Country, or Grim, or … Kick.”