Black and Blue (Chubby Chasers, Inc. Series Book 3) Page 8

  All I need is an apple in my mouth and I’d be ready for the spit.

  An apple. Juicy, wet, sweet. At the thought of the forbidden fruit, my stomach has the audacity to gurgle. What condition will I be in at this time tomorrow? Raving mad, biting at my shoulders, trying to chew through my own flesh and blood to get away? Or eating it? Ugh.

  I can’t help it. The thought of that red delicious apple, dripping juice down my chin, makes me cry harder than the thought that I am dispensable, left here to die. Another chubby girl with black hair and pinup red lips will be stepping in to take my role.

  Hope he changes the sheets.

  Sasha

  He hasn’t said word one about his cum-dump confession. I don’t wanna bring it up. So we straighten the room, get drinks, and get into bed without uttering a single word. Like we’re already married and avoiding each other.

  Later, while lying under a blanket of uncomfortable silence, he finally breaks the ice. “I guess that must have freaked you out back there. The kid talk, I mean.”

  I use his chest to rest my chin on and look into his eyes. “It was the submission stuff, I think. Listen, we’re never gonna end up in the bondage hall of fame—too much giggling and fuckery—but it still does something to your mind. Flips a switch, opens the floodgates. Brings up memories of other times when you’ve felt helpless.”

  I soothe him, kissing his chest. A little aftercare goes a long way. I’m learning as I go. “This was the most perfect, special day of my life.” I kiss the tip of his nose. “You done good, Riley bear.”

  “If I wouldn’t have ruined it by bringing up the farm, like I did,” he grouses, but I don’t let him. It’s me, after all.

  My hand slides down his chest, under the Hanes, but he pulls back. “He needs a minute to recover, beautiful.”

  I laugh and continue rubbing his chest, enjoying the scratchy feel of his chest hair, as I think of what to say next.

  Which makes me giggle, and I stifle it against his pec. “Honestly, the farm talk weirded me out more. What was that about, Riley? Why do I have to hide my kids on a farm? Kids, I might add, that haven’t even, in my wildest daydreams, been named. No cutesy matching names, no adding my current guy’s last name. No doodles in notebooks. And already you have me with kids, plural, and we’re playing hide and seek in the cornfields?”

  I face him, using his arm as a pillow, my own slung loosely over his chest. I’m not rushing him.

  He hugs back, almost too tight. “I know. I know. It’s just that, it feels like we’ve known each other forever. It feels like you know all about me, and you’re just cool with everything. I’ll explain, but it’s no bedtime story. No, this is the stuff of furry, jagged night terrors.”

  I’m suddenly cold. I grab the blanket at the end of the bed and cover us both.

  “I can take it.” I kiss the side of his ribs while he uses the hand tucked behind his head to fold his pillow in half. So he can see me. He holds his vape pen, the one with the good stuff, out to me. I shake my head, a clear mind is needed for late-night confessions, but wave it towards him as if to say, Bake away.

  He pulls a long drag from the device. Holds the air in as he turns the horizontal pen this way and that, making a lava lamp out of the illegal jelly juice inside. Once the bubble in the liquid moves from one end to the other, he exhales the sweet cherry aroma, blowing out an enormous gust of cherry vape.

  I can’t help it, my stomach rumbles. It’s the cherry smell, reminiscent of pies and sundaes.

  “I should’ve stopped for a bite on the way over,” I grimace, hating that my stomach, as usual, is dictating my life for me.

  Then my face gets hot, and this Pop-Tarts out of me. “At least it didn’t happen during sex. Can you imagine?”

  He laughs at my red cheeks.

  “Watch out, baby. One sec.” He gets up and disappears through the open slider, walking naked onto the back deck. I enjoy the view the whole way.

  When he comes in, my mouth waters. Hot dogs, complete with buns and a splotch of mustard. Just how I like them. I clap my hands in glee.

  “They were sitting in the warming tray on the grill. The plan was to eat…”

  “Shut up and give me my wiener!” I yell, content in the knowledge that I’ve found a keeper.

  We sit cross-legged, eating the hot dogs, and he won’t stop staring. Emotions too strong for anyone to feel swirl in those pale eyes. Shit’s going sideways quick. Serious. I shove the rest of the food in my mouth, tilt my head back and squirt mustard from the bottle on top of the train wreck. When it feels sufficiently disgusting in my mouth, I open wide and push out my tongue. ABC, my favorite icebreaker.

  He wrinkles his nose and grins. “Milady, you are the epitome of class,” he says as he bows.

  “So true,” I mutter around the mess in my mouth.

  Later, unable to stop my swirling thoughts, I can’t sleep. My legs shake the bed with anxiety.

  “You still awake?” he whispers.

  But I’m at regular volume, my thoughts running rampant. “Like I could sleep, with kids running around hay bales circling my brain.” I squeeze his hand and in my best royal voice, I say. “Speak Baby Bear.”

  “Sasha,” he warns, dragging my name out, “I’m only Baby Bear, or Cub, or Toy when you’re holding the whip. The last thing I need is for Frankie, or one of the other guys to catch wind of my slave name, and boom, it will be stenciled on the side of my gas tank. In sparkly red writing, complete with a set of matching furry kitty cuffs.”

  I belly laugh at the thought. My big bear of a man being referred to by his fellow bikers as, “boo-boo.”

  Too much.

  He shakes his head, takes a sip from the ice water and lays back, pulling me back onto my favorite place, his chest. “That thing, the pain and pleasure thing, has been part of my life since as far back, as I can remember.” He pulls me in close, maybe wants to end it there, but I’m not having it. This is the absolute first I’ve heard of it. He never talks about his past, content to wear his listening ears at all times.

  “I’m listening,” I breathe as I trace circles on his muscular chest. I’m all ears.

  He’s quiet for so long, that I look at him. Maybe I tuckered him out?

  But he’s thinking. I give him all the time he needs.

  His voice is gravelly when he speaks. “It all started on the farm. That was the name of it. Nothing fancy, just THE FARM stenciled on a faded piece of wood.

  It was a working farm. There were cows to be milked, ponies to brush, pigs to feed. We grew produce, fruits. None of those crops were what brought in the real money though. No, their biggest cash cow was little orphaned biker bastards, abandoned and cultivated there.”

  What? I go to sit up, but he holds my head right where it is. “It’s easier just to say it this way.” He pats his chest, and I turn my face away, towards his feet. To hide my tears. It’s the ominous way he sounds. I’ve never heard such bleak sadness. “Don’t cry for me, hon. I’m fine. I swear.”

  He strokes my hair and continues. The glimpse I got of his eyes, well, hell, they looked haunted. Shit’s going down in Riley’s head.

  “I ended up on the farm sometime in the year that I turned twelve. It’s hard to say exactly when. Once I got there, no more birthdays.

  “The weather was always sunbaked hot, making it hard to tell that time was even passing. Every day ran into the next. No school or little league practices to break up the monotony.

  “There was just the time before the farm, with good old Mom, and the time after. She was a lady who wanted better for herself. It’s too bad fate didn’t feel the same way.

  “She and my dad weren’t technically together. She left the farm for good when she was seven months pregnant. With a broken nose. Lived in her car for a month to save enough to get us into the shithole we lived in.

  “For a while she made a real go of her shot. That’s what my dad called it. One shot to go straight. But didn’t tell her the game was r
igged from the beginning.

  “She hustled and tried her best to stay clean, work a real job. She was never any June Cleaver, don’t get me wrong, but she was home. And most important, Sash? I knew she was trying her best.

  “She was in and out of rehab, but there was beauty there, beneath the caked mascara and wrinkles left behind by years of drug use.

  “That’s about the best memory I have of her. Sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette dangling from the corner of pursed lips, doling out lines of coke for a barrelful of bikers. Their presence so strong, they seemed to ooze out from the seams of our tiny apartment. All of them had a grunt or a ruffle of my hair for me.

  “For my mother, there was open disdain. She was a woman. The lowest of the low. In their eyes, she was a wiper of the asses in the toilet bowl of life.

  “They’d come by like clockwork, once a month. Dropping off or picking up, it was all the same. It came down to drugs. Our little apartment seemed to be a way station for narcotics and money to funnel through. Yet we ate dry Cheerios for dinner most nights. But Saturdays and Sundays were the worst. No free school lunches. My stomach would gurgle so loud the neighbors would holler, ‘Feed that kid!’”

  His sad attempt at a chuckle is strangled in bitterness.

  “Yet, in the room I wasn’t supposed to ever-under any circumstances-go into, there were bricks of money wrapped in cellophane, and baggies full of white stuff. Probably heroin, now that I think about it. Stashed in a recovering drug addict’s home. The epitome of torture. Sometimes, late at night, I’d hear Sugar—that was my mother’s name—crying.”

  When he stops talking, I turn to him. He’s got a frown on his face. “Sugar. That’s what everyone called her. Like a pet name, not her real name. Honestly, Sash. I don’t know her real name.” He takes a drink. Says her name, “Sugar,” and shakes his head before continuing.

  “I’d sneak out of the cot, where I slept, cramped in a corner of Sugar’s room—the drugs and dope money got the master—and peer through the crack in the door.

  “All the lights would be off. I’d wait for my eyes to adjust, for her to come into view. Leaning on the never to go in door, weeping. Her hand caressing the knob, but never turning.

  “Pitiful, desolate…it was the strongest I’d ever seen here. Fighting her demons on the daily, you know?”

  I nod, feeling real empathy for his mother. “Like me in a bakery with no money. Smelling the donuts, practically tasting the buttercream frosting on the cakes, and watching as new trays of sweets are loaded into the glass cases and me, without a cent Pure torture.”

  He snorts, but I’m serious. “You got it.”

  He stops to take a sip of the water. Offers the glass to me, but I wave him off. My bladder’s almost in the red as it is, no need to slop more liquid on top of it.

  “We lived in what was called a clean house. Off the books, not under the watchful eye of the police. That was why it was so important for Sugar and myself to behave a certain way.

  He lists them on his fingers. “Weed, okay as long as the kid—me—went to school without marks on him. But no needles. No welfare—she’d have to work. Me? My only job was to go to school, be a straight little boy. They came to party at our house once a month ‘to check in on us.’”

  “Each monthly checkup occurred around the first of the month. ‘All your loser neighbors will be out cashing their welfare checks. Fewer witnesses.’ Dope was loaded or unloaded, and money was collected. Then the sampling. Mom’s job to cook it and shoot them up.

  “‘It will make you strong,’ my dad would say. This was her punishment for going it alone.

  “It didn’t need to be said, but each patched member better get the good stuff, and all the brotherhood better get the same amount. She’d better be able to find a vein, or God bless her, because I was afraid they’d wring her scrawny neck right on the spot.

  “‘Finish up here and I’ll give you a fat baggie of shake weed. You’ll like that, won’t you, honey?’

  “My dad’s hands down the front of her blouse the whole time.

  “She nodded, numb, and with what I thought was her usual efficiency, she started. It only took a minute before I knew. Something was wrong with her.

  “First of all, there was no small talk. My mom was the queen of chit. Without a word she assembly lined the heroin, working her way down the line of beefy arms.

  “That’s how I knew. My mom seemed removed. Detached, even from me. She’d usually give me a smile, a wink, something to let me know we were all right, but not that day.

  “I watched her over the back of the couch. Each stab took longer than the last, because she was distracted. Her eyes kept returning to the dwindling pile of hot syringes.

  “My stomach filled with acid as she grabbed the last syringe. My father’s. Blustering going on all around her, but she never gave any indication that she even heard any of the lewd comments.

  “She turned to face me, her back to my father. And stabbed the loaded syringe into her pulsing neck vein, before pushing the plunger down.

  Relief flooded her eyes, before they rolled back into head. When she fell, it sounded like the end of my world. I leaned over the couch, my swirling stomach protesting, but I had to see.

  “Now that my father had broken her and gotten his way, he was gentle as he caressed her pale face. ‘You know what this means, dontcha, Sugar?’

  “She nodded, sluggish. Her words were slurred, but hard to miss. ‘Take him, I can’t do this anymore.’

  “My ears perked up at that. Was I the him?

  “My father jerked a thumb in my direction. His chest swelled with pride as he boasted. ‘He’ll become a man on the farm.’

  “The farm was a threat I knew all too well.

  “My mom would say, ‘No, I can’t afford a baseball mitt; you know I’ve gotta make the rent. If I’m late one day, off to the farm you go,’ or, ‘No, you can’t go to the show. I need a hit, and we can’t all get what we want. No show for you. Life sucks, but the farm sucks way worse.’

  “But it came out the same in the end. The farm was the real threat. Without even a discussion, an argument, or a heads up, she gave me…away. Tossed me back to the wolves.”

  Riley stands and stretches. “Need some air babe.”

  He uses my new Domi-bear to give me an Eskimo Kiss. He smiles and says, “Bring him.” He drops him on my chest.

  I walk out to the deck, careful of the pond’s edge, and stare at the stars. “The sky’s beautiful.”

  It really is. So many stars. I lie down on the swing, a custom job, and relax, right in the middle. My arms crossed over my chest, hugging the Teddy to me. Riley grabs the platform and gives an enormous push before he hops on. I’m still processing what he’s told me, but one thing bothers me.

  “Riley, can I ask you a question?”

  He snuggles in next to me and says. “Sash, I’m telling you all this because I want your questions.” He tilts his head to look into my eyes. “I want you to understand my past, no secrets, okay?”

  I nod. “Why did they give her pot? I mean, if she was in and out of rehab, why?”

  He nods. “To keep that choke chain nice and tight around her neck. To keep her in a constant state of craving. They just didn’t know about her ravenous appetite. For the last month of my kid life, my mom was gone a lot. It was like she was disappearing from my life, preparing me to be without her.

  “Lots of long afternoons watching the tube with homework spread all around me. A kiss on the top of my head as she left for an afternoon out in a halter top and see-through heels. By the time the uncles showed up for their monthly welfare checkup-slash-fix, they got a full taste of the bad way.

  “She had to go and do crazy with the needle and let the cat out of the bag. I don’t know if they knew she was hooking, but they sure knew everything was not okay in Squaresville.

  “Now, I’d be planted on the farm. To grow into a hard, unbending man. She’d had her rigged chance, left to
fend for herself with a growing teen and a growing habit. All just a set-up.

  “The bikers made sure of it. Making her respectable house a stash house. Showing up once a month. If it was a real chance, they should have just left her the fuck alone.”

  He takes a savage hit from his vape pen, which makes me jump.

  “Water?” I turn to take the offered bottle, noting the shake of his hand, and drink.

  “What was the farm?” I’m almost afraid to ask, hoping it was full of magical talking animals, something good for little Riley, but the look in his eyes clues me in. It was a whole lot of misery piled onto pain.

  He stiffens at my question. When he answers, his voice is venomous. “It was the breeding ground for my family. The Blood Bastards.” He spits the name out. “Stev-o, my dad, was raised there. He was a biker through and through. Zero empathy on two wheels. I’d seen him only a handful of times, always at my mother’s, before he was killed in a bar.

  “Each time, I remember the table shaking above my head when he slammed his beer down. That was always my go-to hiding spot when I was still small enough to fit. I’d hear the roar of his chopper turn down our street and dive under the faded Formica table. The earth seemed to quiver under his boots with each step. Everything he did was thunderous.

  “I feared him, sure. What sane little kid wouldn’t? But I wanted to be just like him. As I got older, the monthly visits stayed constant. It was me who changed, I couldn’t fit under dinette sets any longer.”

  He stretches and kisses my nose. “You comfy?” he asks, and I nod, staring into his eyes. Storm clouds with a chance of showers as he continues.

  “The family farm dated back to the 1930s. Right outside Barstow, two hundred dry acres in the desert. My family brought water and life to the grounds. Initially, I have to believe it was built to be something good, an actual home. But somewhere along the line it crossed from a family heirloom to the bloodline prison. The dumping ground for all of the biker’s bastard children.

  “All of us related, in some way or other. There would be no way to know. Cousins upon cousins, brothers, everyone looked alike. All boys. Didn’t want any mishaps to occur, so the girls were sacrificed. Thrown back into the gutter with their junkie mothers.